The Walk

The Christian life is described and illustrated in Holy Scripture by means of several faculties and actions of the human body. Sometimes the eye is used: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved” (Isa. xlv. 22). At others times the ear is mentioned: “Hear, and your soul shall live” (Isa. lv. 3). Yet again we have the hand: “Let him take hold of my strength” (Isa. xxvii. 5). And not infrequently the mouth is employed: “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. xxxiv. 8). But perhaps the commonest, and in some respects the most suggestive, is the illustration of the “walk” which is found very frequently both in the Old and the New Testaments. In the Epistle to the Ephesians the metaphor of “walking” is found no less than seven times. There is a remarkable appropriateness in this use of the metaphor to express the Christian life. Walking is one of the few perfect forms of exercise, those in which all parts of the body are brought into play; and its suggestiveness and appropriateness for Christianity are evident when we remember that religion is intended to affect with vital, practical reality every part of our being, and that every faculty of our nature is to be exercised to the fullness possible extent, “ever, only, all” for God.