As the old TV commercial once put it, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Our lives are to point men to God but we should not be visible in the church only.
A Christian whose efforts stop at the church door is useless. They should be ever visible in the ordinary activities of life. They should be visible in the way that we treat our employees or our customers, in the way we play a game or drive a car, and by the language we use or the literature we read.
A Christian should be just as much a Christian in the factory, office, schoolroom, gym, kitchen, or golf course as in the church. We are the light of the world—not just of the church. It is by our good works that we are to attract others to God. Those who never would have beheld God otherwise may see him through your conduct.
It is an awful thing to think that the world always—always—takes its conception of Christianity from us, not from the Bible but from us. If we claim that our sins are forgiven and yet keep in the same old sins or if we exercise no self-restraint or purity of life, then we give a false concept of Christianity. Others may argue against a crowd, but they can’t argue with your courage, love, and purity in life.
Let us see to it that nothing mars our testimony for God and that we so live that we glorify him.