II. CORINTHIANS
‘For how many soever be the
promises of God, in Him is the yea: wherefore also through Him is the
Amen.’—2 Corinthians i. 20 (R. V.).
This is one of the many passages the
force and beauty of which are, for the first time, brought within the
reach of an English reader by the alterations in the Revised Version.
These are partly dependent upon the reading of the text and partly upon
the translation. As the words stand in the Authorised Version, ‘yea’ and
‘amen’ seem to be very nearly synonymous expressions, and to point
substantially to the same thing—viz. that Jesus Christ is, as it were, the
confirmation and seal of God's promises. But in the Revised Version the
alterations, especially in the pronouns, indicate more distinctly that the
Apostle means two different things by the ‘yea’ and the ‘amen’. The one is
God's voice, the other is man's. The one has to do with the certainty of
the divine revelation, the other has to do with the certitude of our faith
in the revelation. When God speaks in Christ, He confirms everything that
He has said before, and when we listen to God speaking in Christ, our lips
are, through Christ, opened to utter our assenting ‘Amen’ to His great
promises. So, then, we have the double form of our Lord's work, covering
the whole ground of His relations to man, set forth in these two clauses,
in the one of which God's confirmation of His past revelations by Jesus
Christ is treated of, and in the other of which the full and confident
assent which men may give to that revelation is set before us. I deal,
then, with these two points—God's certainties in Christ, and man's
certitudes through Christ.
Now these two things do not always
go together. We may be very certain, as far as our persuasion is
concerned, of a very doubtful fact, or we may be very doubtful, as far as
our persuasion is concerned, of a very certain fact. We speak about truths
or facts as being certain, and we ought to mean by that, not how we think
about them, but what they are in the evidence on which they rest. A
certain truth is a truth which has its evidence irrefragable; and the only
fitting attitude for men, in the presence of a certain truth, is to have a
certitude of the truth. And these two things are, our Apostle tells us,
both given to us in and through Jesus Christ. Let me deal, then, with
these two sides.
I. First, God's certainties in
Christ.
Of course the original reference of
the text is to the whole series of great promises given in the Old
Testament. These, says Paul, are sealed and confirmed to men by the
revelation and work of Jesus Christ, but it is obvious that the principle
which is good in reference to them is good on a wider field. I venture to
take that extension, and to ask you to think briefly about some of the
things that are made for us indubitably certain in Jesus Christ.
And, first of all, there is the
certainty about God's heart. Everywhere else we have only peradventures,
hopes, fears, guesses more or less doubtful, and roundabout inferences as
to His disposition and attitude towards us. As one of the old divines says
somewhere, ‘All other ways of knowing God are like the bended bow, Christ
is the straight string.’ The only means by which, indubitably, as a matter
of demonstration, men can be sure that God in the heavens has a heart of
love towards them is by Jesus Christ. For consider what will make us sure
of that. Nothing but facts; words are of little use, arguments are of
little use. A revelation, however precious, which simply says to us, ‘God
is Love’ is not sufficient for our need. We want to see love in operation
if we are to be sure of it, and the only demonstration of the love of God
is to witness the love of God in actual working. And you get it—where? On
the Cross of Jesus Christ. I do not believe that anything else
irrefragably establishes the fact for the yearning hearts of us poor men
who want love, and yet cannot grope our way in amidst the mysteries and
the clouds in providence and nature, except this—‘Herein is love, not that
we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.’
The question may arise in some
minds, Is there any need for proving God's love? The question never arose
except within the limits of Christianity. It is only men who have lived
all their lives in an atmosphere saturated by Christian sentiment and
conviction that ever come to the point of saying, ‘We do not want
historical revelation to prove to us the fact of a loving God.’ They would
never have fancied that they did not need the revelation unless,
unconsciously to themselves, and indirectly, all their thoughts had been
coloured and illuminated by the revelation that they profess they reject.
God as Love is ‘our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt,’ and the only way
to make absolutely certain of the fact that His heart is full of mercy to
us is to look upon Him as He stands revealed to us, not merely in the
words of Christ, for, precious as they are, these are the smallest part of
His revelation, but in the life and in the death which open for us the
heart of God. Remember what He said Himself,
not
‘He who hath listened to Me, doth understand the Father,’ but ‘He that
hath
seen Me hath seen the Father.’ ‘In Him is yea,’ and
the hopes and shadowy fore-revelations of the loving heart of God are
confirmed by the fact of His life and death. God
establishes,
not ‘commends’ as our translation has it, ‘His love towards us in that
whilst we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’
Further, in Him we have the
certainty of pardon. Every deep heart-experience amongst men has felt the
necessity of having a clear certainty and knowledge about forgiveness. Men
do not feel it always. A man can skate over the surface of the great deeps
that lie beneath the most frivolous life, and may suppose, in his
superficial way of looking at things, that there is no need for any
definite teaching about sin and the mode of dealing with it. But once
bring that man face to face, in a quiet hour, with the facts of his life
and of a divine law, and all that superficial ignoring of evil in himself
and of the dread of punishment and consequences, passes away. I am sure of
this, that no religion will ever go far and last long and work mightily,
and lay a sovereign hand upon human life, which has not a most plain and
decisive message to preach in reference to pardon. And I am sure of this,
that one reason for the comparative feebleness of much so-called Christian
teaching in this generation is just that the deepest needs of a man's
conscience are not met by it. In a religion on which the whole spirit of a
man may rest itself, there must be a very plain message about what is to
be done with sin. The only message which answers to the needs of an
awakened conscience and an alarmed heart is the old-fashioned message that
Jesus Christ the Righteous has died for us sinful men. All other religions
have felt after a clear doctrine of forgiveness, and all have failed to
find it. Here is the divine ‘Yea!’ And on it alone we can suspend the
whole weight of our soul's salvation. The rope that is to haul us out of
the horrible pit and the miry clay had much need to be tested before we
commit ourselves to it. There are plenty of easygoing superficial theories
about forgiveness predominant in the world to-day. Except the one that
says, ‘In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness
of sin,’ they are all like the rope let down into the dark mine to lift
the captives beneath, half of the strands of which have been cut on the
sharp edge above, and when the weight hangs on to it, it will snap. There
is nothing on which a man who has once learned the tragical meaning and
awful reality and depth of the fact of his transgression can suspend his
forgiveness, except this, that ‘Christ has died, the just for the unjust,
to bring us unto God.’ ‘In Him the promise is yea.’
And, again, we have in Christ divine
certainties in regard to life. We have in Him the absolutely perfect
pattern to which we are to conform our whole doings. And so,
notwithstanding that there may, and will still be many uncertainties and
much perplexity, we have the great broad lines of morals and of duty
traced with a firm hand, and all that we need to know of obligation and of
perfectness lies in this—Be like Jesus Christ! So the solemn commandments
of the ethical side of Divine Revelation, as well as the promises of it,
get their ‘yea’ in Jesus Christ, and He stands the Law of our lives.
We have certainties for life, in the
matter of protection, guidance, supply of all necessity, and the like,
treasured and garnered in Jesus Christ. For He not only confirms, but
fulfils, the promises which God has made. If we have that dear Lord for
our very own, and He belongs to us as He does belong to them who love Him
and trust Him, then in Him we have in actual possession these promises,
how many soever they be, which are given by God's other words.
Christ is Protean, and becomes
everything to each man that each man requires. He is, as it were, ‘a box
where sweets compacted lie.’ ‘In Him are hid all the treasures,’ not only
of wisdom and knowledge, but of divine gifts, and we have but to go to Him
in order to have that which at each moment as it emerges, we most require.
As in some of those sunny islands of the Southern Pacific, one tree
supplies the people with all that they need for their simple wants, fruit
for their food, leaves for their houses, staves, thread, needles,
clothing, drink, everything—so Jesus Christ, this Tree of Life, is Himself
the sum of all the promises, and, having Him, we have everything that we
need.
And, lastly, in Christ we have the
divine certainties as to the Future over which, apart from Him, lie cloud
and darkness. As I said about the revelation of the heart of God, so I say
about the revelation of a future life—a verbal revelation is not enough.
We have enough of arguments; what we want is facts. We have enough of
man's peradventures about a future life, enough of evidence more or less
valid to show that it is ‘probable,’ or ‘not inconceivable,’ or ‘more
likely than not,’ and so on and so on. What we want is that somebody shall
cross the gulf and come back again, and so we get in the Resurrection of
Christ the one fact on which men may safely rest their convictions of
immortality, and I do not think that there is a second anywhere. On it
alone, as I believe, hinges the whole answer to the question—‘If a man
die, shall he live again?’ This generation is brought, in my reading of
it, right up to this alternative—Christ's Resurrection,—or we die like the
brutes that perish. ‘All the promises of God in Him are yea.’
II. And now a word as to the second
portion of my text—viz. man's certitudes, which answer to God's
certainties.
The latter are
in
Christ, the former are
through
Christ. Now it is clear that the only fitting attitude for professing
Christians in reference to these certainties of God is the attitude of
unhesitating affirmation and joyful assent. Certitude is the fitting
response to certainty.
There should be some kind of
correspondence between the firmness with which we grasp, the tenacity with
which we hold, the assurance with which we believe, these great truths,
and the rock-like firmness and immovableness of the evidence upon which
they rest. It is a poor compliment to God to come to His most veracious
affirmations, sealed with the broad seal of His Son's life and death, and
to answer with a hesitating ‘Amen,’ that falters and almost sticks in our
throat. Build rock upon rock. Be sure of the certain things. Grasp with a
firm hand the firm stay. Immovably cling to the immovable foundation; and
though you be but like the limpet on the rock hold fast by the Rock, as
the limpet does; for it is an insult to the certainty of the revelation,
when there is hesitation in the believer.
I need not dwell for more than a
moment upon the lamentable contrast which is presented between this
certitude, which is our only fitting attitude, and the hesitating assent
and half belief in which so many professing Christians pass their lives.
The reasons for that are partly moral, partly intellectual. This is not a
day which is favourable to the unhesitating avowal of convictions in
reference to an unseen world, and many of us are afraid of being called
narrow, or dogmatisers, and think it looks like breadth, and liberality,
and culture, and I know not what, to say ‘Well! perhaps it is, but I am
not quite sure; I think it is, but I will not commit myself.’ All the
promises of God, which in Him are yea, ought through Him to get from us an
‘Amen.’
There is a great deal that
will always be uncertain. The firmer our convictions, the fewer will be
the things that they grasp; but, if they be few, they will be large, and
enough for us. These truths certified in Christ concerning the heart of
God, the message of pardon, the law for life, the gifts of guidance,
defence, and sanctifying, the sure and certain hope of immortality—these
things we ought to be sure about, whatever borderland of uncertainty may
lie beyond them. The Christian verb is ‘we
know,’
not ‘we hope, we calculate, we infer, we think,’ but ‘we
know.’
And it becomes us to apprehend for ourselves the full blessedness and
power of the certitude which Christ has given to us by the certainties
which he has brought us.
I need not speak about the
blessedness of such a calm assurance, about the need of it for power, for
peace, for effort, for fixedness in the midst of a world and age of
change. But I must, before I close, point you to the only path by which
that certitude is attainable. ‘Through
Him is the amen.’ He is the Door. The truths which He confirms are so
inextricably intertwined with Himself that you cannot get them and put
away Him. Christ's relation to Christ's Gospel is not the relation of
other teachers to their words. You may accept the words of a Plato,
whatever you think of the Plato who spoke the words. But you cannot
separate Christ and His teaching in that fashion, and you must have
Him
if you are to get
it.
So, faith in Him, the intellectual acceptance of Him, as the authoritative
and infallible Revealer, the bowing down of heart and will to Him as our
Commander and our Lord, the absolute trust in Him as the foundation of all
our hope and the source of all our blessedness—that is the way to
certitude, and there is no other road that we can take.
If thus we keep near Him, our
faith will bring us the present experience and fulfilment of the promises,
and we shall be sure of them, because we have them already. And whilst men
are asking, ‘Do we know anything about God? Is there a God at all? Is
there such a thing as forgiveness? Can anybody find anywhere absolute
rules for his life? Is there anything beyond the grave but mist and
darkness?’ we can say, ‘One thing I know, Jesus Christ is my Saviour, and
in Him I know God, and pardon, and duty, and sanctifying, and safety, and
immortality; and whatever is dark, this, at least, is sun-clear.’ Get high
enough up and you will be above the fog; and while the men down in it are
squabbling as to whether there is anything outside the mist, you, from
your sunny station, will see the far-off coasts, and haply catch some
whiff of perfume from their shore, and see some glinting of a glory upon
the shining turrets of ‘the city that hath foundations.’ We have a present
possession of all the promises of God; and whoever doubts their certitude,
the man who knows himself a son of God by faith, and has experience of
forgiveness and guidance and answered prayer and hopes whose ‘sweetness
yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality,’
knows
the things which others question and doubt.
So live near Jesus Christ, and,
holding fast by His hand, you may lift up your joyful ‘Amen’ to every one
of God's ‘Yeas.’ For in Him we know the Father, in Him we know that we
have the forgiveness of sins, in Him we know that God is near to bless and
succour and guide, and in Him ‘we know that, though our earthly house were
dissolved, we have a building of God.’ Wherefore we are always confident;
and when the Voice from Heaven says ‘Yea!’ our choral shout may go up
‘Amen! Thou art the faithful and true witness.’
‘Now He which stablisheth us with
you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God.’—2 Corinthians i. 21.
The connection in which these words
occur is a remarkable illustration of the Apostle's habit of looking at
the most trivial things in the light of the highest truths. He had been
obliged, as the context informs us, to abandon an intended visit to
Corinth. The miserable crew of antagonists, who yelped at his heels all
his life, seized this change of purpose as the occasion for a double-barrelled
charge. They said he was either fickle and infirm of purpose, or
insincere, and saying ‘Yea’ with one side of his mouth and ‘Nay’ with the
other. He rebuts this accusation with apparently quite disproportionate
vehemence and great solemnity. He points in the context to the
faithfulness of God, to the firm Gospel which he had preached, to God's
great ‘Yea!’ as his answer. He says in effect, ‘How could I, with such a
word burning in my heart, move in a region of equivocation and
double-dealing; or how could I, whose whole being is saturated with so
firm and stable a Gospel, be unreliable and fickle? The message must make
the messenger like itself. Communion with a faithful God must make
faith-keeping men; the certainties of God's “Yea,” and the certitudes of
our “Amen,” must influence our characters.’ And so to suppose that a man,
influenced by Christianity, is a weak, double-dealing, unsteadfast man is
a contradiction in terms. In the text he carries his argument a step
further, and points, not only to the power of the Gospel to steady and
confirm, but also to the fact that God Himself communicates to the
believing soul Christian stability by the anointing which He bestows.
So, then, we have in these words the
declaration that inflexible, immovable steadfastness is a mark of a
Christian, and that this Christian steadfastness, without which there is
no Christianity worth the naming, is a direct gift from God Himself by
means of that great anointing which He confers upon men. To that thought,
in one or two of its aspects, I ask your attention.
I. Notice the deep source of this
Christian steadfastness.
The language of the original,
carefully considered, seems to me to bear this interpretation, that the
‘anointing’ of the second clause is the means of the ‘establishing’ of the
first—that is to say, that God confers Christian steadfastness of
character by the bestowment of the unction of His Divine Spirit.
Now notice how deep Paul digs in
order to get a foundation for a common virtue. There are many ways by
which men may cultivate the tenacity and steadfastness of purpose which
ought to mark us all. Much discipline may be brought to bear in order to
secure that; but the text says that the deepest ground upon which it can
be rested is nothing less divine and solemn than this, the actual
communication to men, to feeble, vacillating, fluctuating wills, and
treacherous, wayward, wandering hearts, of the strength and fixedness
which are given by God's own Spirit.
I suppose I need not remind you that
from beginning to end of Scripture, ‘anointing’ is taken as the symbol of
the communication of a true divine influence. The oil poured on the head
of prophet, priest, and king was but the expression of the communication
to the recipient of a divine influence which fitted him as well as
designated him, for the office that he filled. And although it is aside
from my present purpose, I may just, in a sentence, point to the felicity
of the emblem. The flowing oil smoothes the surface upon which it is
spread, supples the limbs, and is nutritive and illuminating; thus giving
an appropriate emblem of the secret, silent, quickening, nourishing,
enlightening influences of that Spirit which God gives to all His sons.
And inasmuch as here this oil of the
Divine Spirit is stated as being the true ground and basis of Christian
steadfastness, it is obvious that the anointing intended cannot be that of
mere designation to, and inspiration for, apostolic or other office, but
must be the universal possession of all Christian men and women. ‘Ye,’
says another Apostle, speaking to the whole democracy of the Christian
Church, and not to any little group of selected aristocrats therein—‘ye
have an unction from the Holy One,’ and every man and woman who has a
living grasp of the living Christ, receives from Him this great gift.
Then, notice further that this
anointing by a Divine Spirit, which is a true source of life to those that
possess it, is derived from, and parallel with, Christ's anointing. We use
the word ‘Christ’ as a proper name, and forget what it means. The ‘Christ’
is
the Anointed One. And do you think that it was a
mere accident, or the result of a scanty vocabulary, which compelled the
Apostle, in these two contiguous clauses, to use cognate words when he
said:—‘He that establisheth us with you in the
Anointed,
and hath
anointed
us, is God’? Did he not mean to say thereby, ‘Each of you in a very true
sense, if you are a Christian, is a
Christ’?
You, too, are anointed; you, too, are God's Messiahs. On you in a measure
the same Spirit rests which dwelt without measure in Him. The chief of
Christ's gifts to the Church is the gift of His own life. All His brethren
are anointed with the oil that was poured upon His head, even as the oil
upon Aaron's locks percolated to the very skirts of his garments. Being
anointed with the anointing which was on Him, all His people may claim an
identity of nature, may hope for an identity of destiny, and are bound to
a prolongation of part of His function and a similarity of character. If
He by that anointing was made Prophet, Priest, and King for the world, all
His children partake of these offices in subordinate but real fashion, and
are prophets to make God known to men, priests to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, and kings at least over themselves, and, if they will, over a
world which obeys and serves those that serve and love God. Ye are
anointed—‘Messiahs’ and ‘Christs,’ by derivation of the life of Jesus
Christ.
And if these things be true, it is
plain enough how this divine unction, which is granted to all Christians,
lies at the root of steadfastness.
We talk a great deal about the
gentleness of Christ; we cannot celebrate it too much, but we may forget
that it is the gentleness of strength. We do not sufficiently mark the
masculine features in that character, the tremendous tenacity of will, the
inflexible fixedness of purpose, the irremovable constancy of obedience in
the face of all temptations to the contrary. The figure that rises before
us is that of the Christ yearning over weaklings far oftener than it is
that of the Christ with knitted brow, and tightened lips, and far-off
gazing eye, ‘steadfastly setting His face to go to Jerusalem,’ and
followed as He pressed up the rocky road from Jericho, by that wondering
group, astonished at the rigidity of purpose that was stamped on His
features. That Christ gives us His Spirit to make us tenacious, constant,
righteously obstinate, inflexible in the pursuit of all that is lovely and
of good report, like Himself. That Divine Spirit will cure the fickleness
of our natures; for our wills are never fixed till they are fixed in
obedience, and never free until they elect to serve Him. That Divine
Spirit will cure the wandering of our hearts and bind us to Himself. It
will lift us above the selfish and cowardly dependence on externals and
surroundings, men and things, in which we are all tempted to live. We are
all too like aneroid barometers, that go up and down with every variation
of a foot or two in our level, but if we have the Spirit of Christ
dwelling in us, it will cut the bonds that bind us to the world, and give
us possession of a deeper love than can be sustained by, or is derived
from, these superficial sources. The true possession of the Divine Spirit,
if I might use such a metaphor, sets a man on an insulating stool, and all
the currents that move round about him are powerless to reach him. If we
have that Divine Spirit within us, it will give us an experience of the
preciousness and the truth, the certitude and the sweetness, of Christ's
Gospel, which will make it impossible that we should ever cast away the
confidence which has such ‘recompense of reward.’ No man will be surely
bound to the truth and person of Christ with bonds that cannot be snapped,
except he who in his heart has the knowledge of Him which is possession,
and by the gift of the Divine Spirit is knit to Jesus Christ.
So, dear friends, whilst the world
is full of wise words about steadfastness, and exalts determination of
character and fixity of purpose, rightly, as the basis of much good, our
Gospel comes to us poor, light, thistledown creatures, and lets us see how
we can be steadfast and settled by being fastened to a steadfast and
settled Christ. When storms are raging they lash light articles on deck to
holdfasts. Let us lash ourselves to the abiding Christ, and we, too, shall
abide.
II. In the next place, notice the
aim or purpose of this Christian steadfastness.
‘He stablisheth us with you in
Christ,’ or as the original has it even more significantly,
into
or ‘unto
Christ.’ Now that seems to me to imply two things—first, that our
steadfastness, made possible by our possession of that Divine Spirit, is
steadfastness in our relations to Jesus Christ. We are established in
reference or in regard to Him. In other words, what Paul here means is,
first, a fixed conviction of the truth that He is the Christ, the Son of
God, the Saviour of the world, and my Saviour. That is the first step. Men
who are steadfast without their intellect guiding and settling the
steadfastness are not steadfast, but obstinate and pigheaded. We are meant
to be guided by our understandings, and no fixity is anything better than
the immobility of a stone, unless it be based upon a distinct and
whole-brained intellectual acceptance of Jesus Christ as the All-in-all
for us, for life and death, for inward and outward being.
Paul means, next, a steadfastness in
regard to Christ in our trust and love. Surely if from Him there is for
ever streaming out an unbroken flow of tenderness, there should be ever on
our sides an equally unbroken opening of our hearts for the reception of
His love, and an equally uninterrupted response to it in our grateful
affection. There can be no more damning condemnation of the vacillations
and fluctuations of Christian men's affections than the steadfastness of
Christ's love to them. He loves ever; He is unalterable in the
communication and effluence of His heart. Surely it is most fitting that
we should be steadfast in our devotion and answering love to Him. And Paul
means not only fixedness of intellectual conviction and continuity of
loving response, but also habitual obedience, which is always ready to do
His will.
So we should answer His ‘Yea!’ with
our ‘Amen!’ and having an unchanging Christ to rest upon, we should rest
upon Him unchanging. The broken, fluctuating affections and trusts and
obediences which mark so much of the average Christian life of this day
are only too sad proofs of how scant our possession of that Spirit of
steadfastness must be supposed to be. God's ‘Yea’ is answered by our
faltering ‘Amen’; God's truth is hesitatingly accepted; God's love is
partially returned; God's work is slothfully and negligently done. ‘Be ye
steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.’
Another thought is suggested by
these words—viz. that such steadfastness as we have been trying to
describe has for its result a deeper penetration into Jesus Christ and a
fuller possession of Him. The only way by which we can grow nearer and
nearer to our Lord is by steadfastly keeping beside Him. You cannot get
the spirit of a landscape unless you sit down and gaze, and let it soak
into you. The cheap tripper never sees the lake. You cannot get to know a
man until you summer and winter with him. No subject worth studying opens
itself to the hasty glance. Was it not Sir Isaac Newton who used to say,
‘I have no genius, but I keep a subject before me’? ‘Abide in Me; as the
branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can ye
except ye abide in Me.’ Continuous, steadfast adhesion to Him is the
condition of growing up into His likeness, and receiving more and more of
His beauty into our waiting hearts. ‘Wait on the Lord; wait, I say, on the
Lord.’
III. Lastly, notice the very humble
and commonplace sphere in which the Christian steadfastness manifests
itself.
It was nothing of more importance
than that Paul had said he was going to Corinth, and did not, on which he
brings all this array of great principles to bear. From which I gather
just this thought, that the highest gifts of God's grace and the greatest
truths of God's Word are meant to regulate the tiniest things in our daily
life. It is no degradation to the lightning to have to carry messages. It
is no profanation of the sun to gather its rays into a burning glass to
light a kitchen fire with. And it is no unworthy use of the Divine Spirit
that God gives to His children, to say it will keep a man from hasty and
precipitate decisions as to little things in life, and from chopping and
changing about, with a levity of purpose and without a sufficient reason.
If our religion is not going to influence the trifles, what is it going to
influence? Our life is made up of trifles, and if these are not its field,
where is its field? You may be quite sure that, if your religion does not
influence the little things, it will never influence the great ones. If it
has not power enough to guide the horses when they are at a slow, sober
walk, what do you think it will do when they are at a gallop and plunging?
‘He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.’ So
let us see to two things—first, that all our religion is worked into our
life, for only so much of it as is so inwrought is our religion—and,
second, that all our life is brought under the sway of motives derived
from our religion: for only in proportion as it is, will it be pure and
good.
And as regards this special virtue
and prime quality of steadfastness and fixedness of purpose, you can do no
good in the world without it. Unless a man can hold his own, and turn an
obstinate negative to the temptations that lie thick about him, he will
never come to any good at all, either in this life or in the next. The
basis of all excellence is a wholesome disregard of externals, and the
cultivation of a strong self-reliant and self-centred, because
God-trusting and Christ-centred, will. And I tell you, especially you
young men and women, if you want to do or be anything worth doing or
being, you must try to get your natures hardened into being ‘steadfast,
unmovable.’ There is only one infallible way of doing it, and that is to
let the ‘strong Son of God’ live in you, and in Him to find your strength
for resistance, your strength for obedience, your strength for submission.
‘I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I
shall not be moved.’
There are two types of men in the
world. The one has his emblem in the chaff, rootless, with no hold, swept
out of the threshing-floor by every gust of wind. That the picture of many
whose principles lie at the mercy of the babble of tongues round about
them, whose rectitude goes at a puff of temptation, like the smoke out of
a chimney when the wind blows; who have no will for what is good, but live
as it happens. The other type of man has his emblem in the tree, rooted
deep, and therefore rising high, with its roots going as far underground
as its branches spread in the blue, and therefore green of leaf and rich
of fruit ‘We are made partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of
our confidence, steadfast until the end.’
‘Who hath also sealed us, and
given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.’—2 Corinthians i. 23.
There are three strong metaphors in
this and the preceding verse—‘anointing,’ ‘sealing,’ and ‘giving the
earnest’—all of which find their reality in the same divine act. These
three metaphors all refer to the same subject, and what that subject is is
sufficiently explained in the last of them. The ‘earnest’ consists of ‘the
Spirit in our hearts,’ and the same explanation might have been appended
to both the preceding clauses, for the ‘anointing’ is the anointing of the
Spirit, and the ‘seal’ is the seal of the Spirit. Further, these three
metaphors all refer to one and the same act. They are not three things,
but three aspects of one thing, just as a sunbeam might be regarded either
as the source of warmth, or of light, or of chemical action. So the one
gift of the one Spirit, ‘anoints,’ ‘seals,’ and is the ‘earnest.’ Further,
these three metaphors all declare a universal prerogative of Christians.
Every man that loves Jesus Christ has the Spirit in the measure of his
faith,’ and if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.’
I. Note the first metaphor in the
text—the ‘seal’ of the Spirit.
A seal is impressed upon a recipient
material made soft by warmth, in order to leave there a copy of itself.
Now it is not fanciful, nor riding a metaphor to death, when I dwell upon
these features of the emblem in order to suggest their analogies in
Christian life. The Spirit of God comes into our spirits, and by gentle
contact impresses upon the material, which was intractable until it was
melted by the genial warmth of faith and love, the likeness of Himself,
but yet so as that prominences correspond to the hollows, and what is in
relief in the one is sunk in the other. Expand that general statement for
a moment or two.
The effect of all the divine
indwelling, which is the characteristic gift of Christ to every Christian
soul, is to mould the recipient into the image of the divine inhabitant.
There is in the human spirit—such are its dignity amidst its ruins, and
its nobility shining through its degradation—a capacity of receiving that
image of God which consists not only in voluntary and intelligent action
and the consciousness of personal being, but in the love of the things
that are fair, and in righteousness, and true holiness. His Spirit,
entering into a heart, will make that heart wise with its own wisdom,
strong with some infusion of its own strength, gracious with some drops of
its own grace, gentle with some softening from its own gentleness, holy
with some purity reflected from its own transcendent whiteness. The
Spirit, which is life, moulds the heart into which it enters to a kindred,
and, therefore, similar life.
There are, however,
characteristics in this ‘seal’ of the Spirit which are not so much copies
as correspondences. That is to say, just as what is convex in the seal is
concave in the impression, and
vice versb,
so, when that Divine Spirit comes into our spirits, its promises will
excite faith, its gifts will breed desire; to every bestowment there will
answer an opening receptivity. Recipient love will correspond to the love
that longs to dispense, the sense of need to the divine fulness and
sufficiency, emptiness to abundance, prayers to promises; the cry ‘Abba!
Father’! the yearning consciousness of sonship, to the word ‘Thou art My
Son’; and the upward eye of aspiration and petition, and necessity, and
waiting, to the downward glance of love bestowing itself. The open heart
answers to the extended hand, and the seal which God's Spirit impresses
upon the heart that is submitted to it, has the two-fold character of
resemblance in moral nature and righteousness, and of correspondence as
regards the mysteries of the converse between the recipient man and the
giving God.
Then, mark that the material is made
capable of receiving the stamp, because it is warmed and softened. That is
to say, faith must prepare the heart for the sanctifying indwelling of
that Divine Spirit. The hard wax may be struck with the seal, but it
leaves no trace. God does not do with man as the coiner does with his
blanks, put them cold into a press, and by violence from without stamp an
image upon them, but He does as men do with a seal, warms the wax first,
and then, with a gentle, firm touch, leaves the likeness there. So,
brother! learn this lesson: if you wish to be good, lie under the contact
of the Spirit of righteousness, and see that your heart is warm.
Still further, note that this
aggregate of Christian character, in likeness and correspondence, is the
true sign that we belong to God. The seal is the mark of ownership, is it
not? Where the broad arrow has been impressed, everybody knows that that
is royal property. And so this seal of God's Divine Spirit, in its effects
upon my character, is the one token to myself and to other people that I
belong to God, and that He belongs to me. Or, to put it into plain
English, the best reason for any man's being regarded as a Christian is
his possession of the likeness and correspondence to God which that Divine
Spirit gives. Likeness and correspondence, I say, for the one class of
results is the more open for the observation of the world, and the other
class is of the more value for ourselves. I believe that Christian people
ought to have, and are meant by that Divine Spirit dwelling in them to
have, a consciousness that they are Christians and God's children, for
their own peace and rest and joy. But you cannot use that in demonstration
to other people; you may be as sure of it as you will, in your inmost
hearts, but it is no sign to anybody else. And, on the other hand, there
may be much of outward virtue and beauty of character which may lead other
people to say about a man: ‘That
is a good Christian man, at any rate,’ and yet there may be in the heart
an all but absolute absence of any joyful assurance that we are Christ's,
and that He belongs to us. So the two facts must go together.
Correspondence, the spirit of sonship which meets His taking us as sons,
the faith which clasps the promise, the reception which welcomes
bestowment, must be stamped upon the inward life. For the outward life
there must be the manifest impress of righteousness upon my actions, if
there is to be any real seal and token that I belong to Him. God writes
His own name upon the men that are His. All their goodness, their
gentleness, patience, hatred of evil, energy and strenuousness in service,
submission in suffering, with whatsoever other radiance of human virtue
may belong to them, are really ‘His mark!’
There is no other worth talking
about, and to you Christian men I come and say, Be very sure that your
professions of inward communion and happy consciousness that you are
Christ's are verified to yourself and to others by a plain outward life of
righteousness like the Lord's. Have you got that seal stamped upon your
lives, like the hall-mark that says, ‘This is genuine silver, and no
plated Brummagem stuff’? Have you got that seal of a visible righteousness
and every-day purity to confirm your assertion that you belong to Christ?
Is it woven into the whole length of your being, like the scarlet thread
that is spun into every Admiralty cable as a sign that it is Crown
property? God's seal, visible to me and to nobody else, is my
consciousness that I am His; but that consciousness is vindicated and
delivered from the possibility of illusion or hypocrisy, only when it is
checked and fortified by the outward evidence of the holy life which the
Spirit of God has wrought.
Further, this sealing, which is thus
the token of God's ownership, is also the pledge of security. A seal is
stamped in order that there may be no tampering with what it seals; that
it may be kept safe from all assaults, thieves, and violence. And in the
metaphor of our text there is included this thought, too, which is also of
an intensely practical nature. For it just comes to this—our true
guarantee that we shall come at last into the sweet security and safety of
the perfect state is present likeness to the indwelling Spirit and present
reception of divine grace. The seal is the pledge of security, just
because it is the mark of ownership. When, by God's Spirit dwelling in us,
we are led to love the things that are fair, and to long after more
possession of whatever things are of good report, that is like God's
hoisting His flag upon a newly-annexed territory. And is He going to be so
careless in the preservation of His property as that He will allow that
which is thus acquired to slip away from Him? Does He account us as of so
small value as to hold us with so slack a hand? But no man has a right to
rest on the assurance of God's saving him into the heavenly kingdom,
unless He is saving him at this moment from the devil and his own evil
heart. And, therefore, I say the Christian character, in its outward
manifestations and in its sweet inward secrets of communion, is the
guarantee that we shall not fall. Rest upon Him, and He will hold you up.
We are ‘kept by the power of God unto salvation,’ and that power keeps us
and that final salvation becomes ours, ‘through faith.’
II. Now, secondly, turn to the other
emblem, that ‘earnest’ which consists in like manner ‘of the Spirit.’
The ‘earnest,’ of course, is a small
portion of purchase-money, or wages, or contract-money, which is given at
the making of a bargain, as an assurance that the whole amount will be
paid in due time. And, says the Apostle, this seal is also an earnest. It
not only makes certain God's ownership and guarantees the security of
those on whom it is impressed, but it also points onwards to the future,
and at once guarantees that, and to a large extent reveals the nature of
it. So, then, we have here two thoughts on which I touch.
The Christian character and
experience are the earnest of the inheritance, in the sense of being its
guarantee, inasmuch as the experiences of the Christian life here are
plainly immortal. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the
objective and external proof of a future life. The facts of the Christian
life, its aspirations, its communion, its clasp of God as its very own,
are the subjective and inward proofs of a future life. As a matter of
fact, if you will take the Old Testament, you will see that the highest
summits in it, to which the hope of immortality soared, spring directly
from the experience of deep and blessed communion with the living God.
When the Psalmist said ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in
Sheol;
neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption,’ he was speaking
a conviction that had been floated into his mind on the crest of a great
wave of religious enjoyment and communion. And, in like manner, when the
other Psalmist said, ‘Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion
for ever,’ he was speaking of the glimpse that he had got of the land that
was very far off, from the height which he had climbed on the Mount of
fellowship with God. And for us, I suppose that the same experience holds
good. Howsoever much we may say that we believe in a future life and in a
heaven, we really grasp them as facts that will be true about ourselves,
in the proportion in which we are living here in direct contact and
communion with God. The conviction of immortality is the distinct and
direct result of the present enjoyment of communion with Him, and it is a
reasonable result. No man who has known what it is to turn himself to God
with a glow of humble love, and to feel that he is not turning his face to
vacuity, but to a Face that looks on him with love, can believe that
anything can ever come to destroy that communion. What have faith, love,
aspiration, resignation, fellowship with God, to do with death? They
cannot be cut through with the stroke that destroys physical life, any
more than you can divide a sunbeam with a sword. It unites again, and the
impotent edge passes through and has effected nothing. Death can shear
asunder many bonds, but that invisible bond that unites the soul to God is
of adamant, against which his scythe is in vain. Death is the grim porter
that opens the door of a dark hole and herds us into it as sheep are
driven into a slaughter-house. But to those who have learned what it is to
lay a trusting hand in God's hand, the grim porter is turned into the
gentle damsel, who keeps the door, and opens it for light and warmth and
safety to the hunted prisoner that has escaped from the dungeon of life.
Death cannot touch communion, and the consciousness of communion with God
is the earnest of the inheritance.
It is so for another reason also.
All the results of the Divine Spirit's sealing of the soul are manifestly
incomplete, and as manifestly tend towards completeness. The engine is
clearly working now at half-speed. It is obviously capable of much higher
pressure than it is going at now. Those powers in the Christian man can
plainly do a great deal more than they ever have done here, and are meant
to do a great deal more. Is this imperfect Christianity of ours, our
little faith so soon shattered, our little love so quickly disproved, our
faltering resolutions, our lame performances, our earthward cleavings—are
these things all that Jesus Christ's bitter agony was for, and all that a
Divine Spirit is able to make of us? Manifestly, here is but a segment of
the circle, in heaven is the perfect round; and the imperfections, so far
as life is concerned, in the work of so obviously divine an Agent, cry
aloud for a region where tendency shall become result, and all that it was
possible for Him to make us we shall become. The road evidently leads
upwards, and round that sharp corner where the black rocks come so near
each other and our eyesight cannot travel, we may be sure it goes steadily
up still to the top of the pass, until it reaches ‘the shining table-lands
whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon,’ and brings us all to the city
set on a hill.
And, further, that divine seal is
the earnest, inasmuch as itself is part of the whole. The truest and the
loftiest conception that we can form of heaven is as being the perfecting
of the religious experience of earth. The shilling or two, given to the
servant in old-fashioned days, when he was hired, is of the same currency
as the balance that he is to get when the year's work is done. The small
payment to-day comes out of the same purse, and is coined out of the same
specie, and is part of the same currency of the same kingdom, as what we
get when we go yonder and count the endless riches to which we have fallen
heirs at last. You have but to take the faith, the love, the obedience,
the communion of the highest moments of the Christian life on earth, and
free them from all their limitations, subtract from them all their
imperfections, multiply them to their superlative possibility, and endow
them with a continual power of growth, and stretch them out to absolute
eternity, and you get heaven. The earnest is of a piece with the
inheritance.
So, dear brethren, here is a
gift offered for us all, a gift which our feebleness sorely needs, a gift
for every timid nature, for every weak will, for every man, woman, and
child beset with snares and fighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a
reinforcement as real and as sure to bring victory as when, on that day
when the fate of Europe was determined, after long hours of conflict, the
Prussian bugles blew, and the English commander knew that (with the fresh
troops that came on the field) victory was made certain. So you and I may
have in our hearts the Spirit of God, the spirit of strength, the spirit
of love and of a sound mind, the spirit of adoption, the spirit of wisdom
and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, to enlighten our darkness, to
bind our hearts to Him, to quicken and energise our souls, to make the
weakest among us strong, and the strong as an angel of God. And the
condition on which we may get it is this simple one which the Apostle lays
down; ‘After
that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy
Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance.’ The Christ,
who is the Lord and Giver of the Spirit, has shown us how its blessed
influences may be ours when, on the great day of the feast, He stood and
cried with a voice that echoes across the centuries, and is meant for each
of us, ‘If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink. He that
believeth in Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. This
spake He of the Spirit which they that believe or Him should receive.’
‘Thanks be unto God, which always
leadeth us in triumph in Christ and maketh manifest through us the
savour of His knowledge in every place.’—2 Corinthians ii. 14 (R. V.)
I suppose most of us have some
knowledge of what a Roman Triumph was, and can picture to ourselves the
long procession, the victorious general in his chariot with its white
horses, the laurelled soldiers, the sullen captives, with suppressed hate
flashing in their sunken eyes, the wreathing clouds of incense that went
up into the blue sky, and the shouting multitude of spectators. That is
the picture in the Apostle's mind here. The Revised Version correctly
alters the translation into ‘Thanks unto God which always
leadeth us
in triumph in Christ.’
Paul thinks of himself and of his
coadjutors in Christian work as being conquered captives, made to follow
their Conqueror and to swell His triumph. He is thankful to be so
overcome. What was deepest degradation is to him supreme honour. Curses in
many a strange tongue would break from the lips of the prisoners who had
to follow the general's victorious chariot. But from Paul's lips comes
irrepressible praise; he joins in the shout of acclamation to the
Conqueror.
And then he passes on to
another of the parts of the ceremonial. As the wreathing incense appealed
at once to two senses, and was visible in its curling clouds of smoke, and
likewise fragrant to the nostrils, so says Paul, with a singular
combination of expression, ‘He maketh
manifest,’
that is visible, the
savour
of His knowledge. From a heart kindled by the flame of the divine love
there will go up the odour of a holy life visible and fragrant, sweet and
fair.
And thus all Christians, and not
Christian workers only in the narrower sense of the word, who may be doing
evangelistic work, have set before them in these great words the very
ideal and secret of their lives.
There are three things here, on each
of which I touch as belonging to the true notion of a Christian life—the
conquered captive; that captive partaking in the triumph of his Conqueror;
and the conquered captive led as a trophy and a witness to the Conqueror's
power. These three things, I think, explain the Apostle's thoughts here.
Let me deal with them now.
I. First then, let us look at that
thought of all Christians being in the truest sense conquered captives,
bound to the chariot wheels of One who has overcome them.
The image implies a prior state of
hostility and alienation. Now, do not let us exaggerate, let us take
Paul's own experience. He is speaking about himself here; he is not
talking doctrine, he is giving us autobiography, and he says, ‘I was an
enemy, and I have been conquered.’
What sort of an enemy was he? Well!
He says that before he became a Christian he lived a pure, virtuous,
respectable life. He was a man ‘as touching the righteousness which is in
the law, blameless.’ Observant of all relative duties, sober, temperate,
chaste; no man could say a word against him; he knew nothing against
himself. His conscience acquitted him of wrong: ‘I thought I ought to do
many things,’ as I did them. And yet, looking back from his present point
of view upon a life thus adorned with many virtues, pure from all manifest
corruption, to a large extent regulated by conscientious and religious
motives of a kind, he says, ‘Notwithstanding all that, I was an enemy.’
Why? Because the retrospect let him see that his life was barren of the
deepest faith and the purest love. And so I come to some of my friends
here now, and I say to you, ‘Change the name, and the story is true about
you,’ respectable people, who are trying to live pure and righteous lives,
doing all duties that present themselves to you with a very tolerable
measure of completeness and abominating and trying to keep yourselves from
the things that your consciences tell you are wrong, yet needing to be
conquered, in the deepest recesses of your wills and your hearts, before
you become the true subjects of the true King. I do not want to
exaggerate, nor to say of the ordinary run of people who listen to us
preachers, that they commit manifest sins, ‘gross as a mountain, open,
palpable.’ Some of you do, no doubt, for, in every hundred people, there
are always some whose lives are foul and whose memories are stained and
horrible; but the run of you are not like that. And yet I ask you, has
your will been bowed and broken, and your heart overcome and conquered by
this mighty Prince, the Prince of Peace, the Prince of Life? Unless it
has, for all your righteousness and respectability, for all your outward
religion and real religiousness of a sort, you are still hostile and
rebellious, in your inmost hearts. That is the basis of the representation
of my text.
What else does it suggest? It
suggests the wonderful struggle and victory of weaponless love. As was
said about the first Christian emperor, so it may be said about the great
Emperor in the heavens, ‘In
hoc signo vinces!’ By this sign thou shalt conquer.
For His only weapon is the Cross of His Son, and He fights only by the
manifestation of infinite love, sacrifice, suffering, and pity. He
conquers as the sun conquers the thick-ribbed ice by raying down its heat
upon it, and melting it into sweet water. So God in Christ fights against
the mountains of man's cold, hard sinfulness and alienation, and by the
warmth of His own radiation turns them all into rivers that flow in love
and praise. He conquers simply by forbearance and pity and love.
And what more does this first part
of my text say to us? It tells us, too, of the true submission of the
conquered captive; how we are conquered when we perceive and receive His
love; how there is nothing else needed to win us all for Him except only
that we shall recognise His great love to us.
This picture of the triumph comes
with a solemn appeal and commandment to every one of us professing
Christians. Think of these men, dragged at the conqueror's chariot-wheels,
abject, with their weapons broken, with their resistance quelled, chained,
yoked, haled away from their own land, dependant for life or death on the
caprice of the general who rode before them there. It is a picture of what
you Christian men and women are bound to be if you believe that God in
Christ has loved you as we have been saying that He does. For abject
submission, unconditional surrender, the yielding up of our whole will to
Him, the yielding of all our possessions as His vassals—these are the
duties that are correspondent to the facts of the case.
If we are thus won by infinite love,
and not our own, but bought with a price, no conquered king, dragged at an
emperor's chariot-wheels, was ever half as absolutely and abjectly bound
to be his slave, and to live or die by his breath, as you are bound to
your Master. You are Christians in the measure in which you are the
captives of His spear and of His bow; in the measure in which you hold
your territories as vassal kings, in the measure in which you say,
stretching out your willing hands for the fetters, ‘Lord! here am I, do
with me as Thou wilt.’ ‘I am not mine own; be Thou my will, my Emperor, my
Commander, my all.’ Loyola used to say, as the law of his order, that
every man that became a member of the Society of Jesus was to be like as a
staff in a man's hand, or like as a corpse. It was a blasphemous and
wicked claim, but it is but a poor fragmentary statement of the truth
about those of us who enter the real Society of Jesus, and put ourselves
in His hands to be wielded as His staff and His rod, and submit ourselves
to Him, not as a corpse, but yield yourselves to our Christ ‘as those that
are alive from the dead.’
II. Now we have here, as part of the
ideal of the Christian life, the conquered captives partaking in the
triumph of their general.
Two groups made up the triumphal
procession—the one that of the soldiers who had fought for, the other that
of the prisoners who had fought against, the leader. And some commentators
are inclined to believe that the Apostle is here thinking of himself and
his fellows as belonging to the conquering army, and not to the conquered
enemy. That seems to me to be less probable and in accordance with the
whole image than the explanation which I have adopted. But be that as it
may, it suggests to us this thought, that in the deepest reality in that
Christian life of which all this metaphor is but the expression, they who
are conquered foes become conquering allies. Or, to put it into other
words—to be triumphed over by Christ is to triumph with Christ. And the
praise which breaks from the Apostle's lips suggests the same idea. He
pours out his thanks for that which he recognises as being no degradation
but an honour, and a participation in his Conqueror's triumph.
We may illustrate that thought, that
to be triumphed over by Christ is to triumph with Christ, by such
considerations as these. This submission of which I have been speaking,
abject and unconditional, extending to life and death, this submission and
captivity is but another name for liberty. The man who is absolutely
dependent upon Jesus Christ is absolutely independent of everything and
everybody besides, himself included. That is to say, to be His slave is to
be everybody else's master, and when we bow ourselves to Him, and take
upon us the chains of glad obedience, and life-deep as well as life-long
consecration, then He breaks off all other chains from our hands, and will
not suffer that any others should have a share with Him in the possession
of His servant. If you are His servants you are free from all besides; if
you give yourselves up to Jesus Christ, in the measure in which you give
yourselves up to Him, you will be set at liberty from the worst of all
slaveries, that is the slavery of your own will and your own weakness, and
your own tastes and fancies. You will be set at liberty from dependence
upon men, from thinking about their opinion. You will be set at liberty
from your dependence upon externals, from feeling as if you could not live
unless you had this, that, or the other person or thing. You will be
emancipated from fears and hopes which torture the men who strike their
roots no deeper than this visible film of time which floats upon the
surface of the great, invisible abyss of Eternity. If you have Christ for
your Master you will be the masters of the world, and of time and sense
and men and all besides; and so, being triumphed over by Him, you will
share in His triumph.
And again, we may illustrate the
same principle in yet another way. Such absolute and entire submission of
will and love as I have been speaking about is the highest honour of a
man. It was a degradation to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of
conquering general, emperor, or consul—it broke the heart of many a
barbarian king, and led some of them to suicide rather than face the
degradation. It is a degradation to submit ourselves, even as much as many
of us do, to the domination of human authorities, or to depend upon men as
much as many of us do for our completeness and our satisfaction. But it is
the highest ennobling of humanity that it shall lay itself down at
Christ's feet, and let Him put His foot upon its neck. It is the
exaltation of human nature to submit to Christ. The true nobility are
those that ‘come over with the Conqueror.’ When we yield ourselves to Him,
and let Him be our King, then the patent of nobility is given to us, and
we are lifted in the scale of being. All our powers and faculties are
heightened in their exercise, and made more blessed in their employment,
because we have bowed ourselves to His control. And so to be triumphed
over by Christ is to triumph with Christ.
And the same thought may be yet
further illustrated. That submission which I have been speaking about so
unites us to our Lord that we share in all that belongs to Him and thus
partake in His triumph. If in will and heart we have yielded ourselves to
Him, he that is thus joined to the Lord is one spirit, and all ‘mine is
Thine, and all Thine is mine.’ He is the Heir of all things, and all
things of which He is the Heir are our possession. ‘All things are yours,
and ye are Christ's.’ Thus His dominion is the dominion of all that love
Him, and His heritage is the heritage of all those that have joined
themselves to Him; and no sparkle of the glory that falls upon His head
but is reflected on the heads of His servants. The ‘many crowns’ that He
wears are the crowns with which He crowns His followers.
Thus, my brother, to be overcome by
God is to overcome the world, to be triumphed over by Christ is to share
in His triumph; and he over whom Incarnate Love wins the victory, like the
patriarch of old in his mystical struggle, conquers in the hour of
surrender; and to him it is said: ‘As a prince thou hast power with God
and hast prevailed.’
III. Lastly, a further picture of
the ideal of the Christian life is set before us here in the thought of
these conquered captives being led as the trophies and the witnesses of
His overcoming power.
That idea is suggested by both
halves of our verse. Both the emblem of the Apostle as marching in the
triumphal procession, and the emblem of the Apostle as yielding from his
burning heart the fragrant visible odour of the ascending incense, convey
the same idea, viz. that one great purpose which Jesus Christ has in
conquering men for Himself, and binding them to His chariot wheels, is
that from them may go forth the witness of His power and the knowledge of
His name.
That opens very wide subjects for
our consideration which I can only very briefly touch upon. Let me just
for an instant dwell upon some of them. First, the fact that Jesus Christ,
by His Cross and Passion, is able to conquer men's wills, and to bind
men's hearts to Him, is the highest proof of His power. It is an entirely
unique thing in the history of the world. There is nothing the least like
it anywhere else. The passionate attachment which this dead Galilean
peasant is able to evoke in the hearts of people all these centuries after
His death, is an unheard of and an unparalleled thing. All other teachers
‘serve their generations by the will of God,’ and then their names become
speedily less and less powerful, and thicker and thicker mists of oblivion
wrap them round until they disappear. But time has no power over Christ's
influence. The bond which binds you and me to Him nineteen centuries after
His death is the very same in quality as, and in degree is often far
deeper and stronger than, the bond which united to Him the men that had
seen Him. It stands as an unique fact in the history of the world, that
from Christ of Nazareth there rays out through all the ages the spiritual
power which absolutely takes possession of men, dominates them and turns
them into His organs and instruments. This generation prides itself upon
testing all things by an utilitarian test, and about every system
says:—‘Well, let us see it working.’ And I do not think that Christianity
need shrink from the test. With all its imperfections, the long procession
of holy men and women who, for nineteen centuries, have been marching
through history, owning Christ as their Conqueror, and ascribing all their
goodness to Him, is a witness to His power to sway and to satisfy men, the
force of whose testimony it is hard to overthrow. And I would like to ask
the simple question: Will any system of belief or of no belief, except the
faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, do the like for men? He leads through
the world the train of His captives, the evidence of His conquests.
And then, further, let me remind you
that out of this representation there comes a very stimulating and solemn
suggestion of duty for us Christian people. We are bound to live, setting
forth whose we are, and what He has done for us. Just as the triumphal
procession took its path up the Appian Way and along the side of the Forum
to the altar of the Capitol, wreathed about by curling clouds of fragrant
incense, so we should march through the world encompassed by the sweet and
fragrant odour of His name, witnessing for Him by word, witnessing for Him
by character, speaking for Him and living like Him, showing in our life
that He rules us, and professing by our words that He does; and so should
manifest His power.
Still further, Paul's thanksgiving
teaches us that we should be thankful for all opportunities of doing such
work. Christian men and women often grudge their services and grudge their
money, and feel as if the necessities for doing Christian work in the
world were rather a burden than an honour. This man's generous heart was
so full of love to his Prince that it glowed with thankfulness at the
thought that Christ had let him do such things for Him. And He lets you do
them if you will.
So, dear friends, it comes to be a
very solemn question for us. What part are we playing in that great
triumphal procession? We are all of us marching at His chariot wheels,
whether we know it or not. But there were two sets of people in the old
triumph. There were those who were conquered by force and unconquered in
heart, and out of their eyes gleamed unquenchable malice and hatred,
though their weapons were broken and their arms fettered. And there were
those who, having shared in the commander's fight, shared in his triumph
and rejoiced in his rule. And when the procession reached the gate of the
temple, some, at any rate, of the former class were put to death before
the gates. I pray you to remember that if we are dragged after Him
reluctantly, the word will come: ‘These, mine enemies, which would not
that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before Me.’
Whereas, on the other hand, for those who have yielded heart and soul to
Him in love and submission born of the reception of His great love, the
blessed word will come: ‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things.’
Which of the two parts of the procession do you belong to, my friend? Make
your choice where you shall march, and whether you will be His loyal
allies and soldiers who share in His triumph, or His enemies, who,
overcome by His power, are not melted by His love. The one live, the other
perish.
‘We all, with open face beholding
as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.’—2
Corinthians iii. 18.
This whole section of the Epistle in
which our text occurs is a remarkable instance of the fervid richness of
the Apostle's mind, which acquires force by motion, and, like a
chariot-wheel, catches fire as it revolves. One of the most obvious
peculiarities of his style is his habit of ‘going off at a word.’ Each
thought is, as it were, barbed all round, and catches and draws into sight
a multitude of others, but slightly related to the main purpose in hand.
And this characteristic gives at first sight an appearance of confusion to
his writings. But it is not confusion, it is richness. The luxuriant
underwood which this fertile soil bears, as some tropical forest, does not
choke the great trees, though it drapes them.
Paul's immediate purpose seems to be
to illustrate the frank openness which ought to mark the ministry of
Christianity. He does this by reference to the veil which Moses wore when
he came forth from talking with God. There, he says in effect, we have a
picture of the Old Dispensation—a partial revelation, gleaming through a
veil, flashing through symbols, expressed here in a rite, there in a type,
there again in an obscure prophecy, but never or scarcely ever fronting
the world with an unveiled face and the light of God shining clear from
it. Christianity is, and Christian teachers ought to be, the opposite of
all this. It has, and they are to have, no esoteric doctrines, no hints
where plain speech is possible, no reserve, no use of symbols and
ceremonies to overlay truth, but an intelligible revelation in words and
deeds, to men's understandings. It and they are plentifully to declare the
thing as it is.
But he gets far beyond this point in
his uses of his illustration. It opens out into a series of contrasts
between the two revelations. The veiled Moses represents the clouded
revelation of old. The vanishing gleam on his face recalls the fading
glories of that which was abolished; and then, by a quick turn of
association, Paul thinks of the veiled readers in the synagogues, copies,
as it were, of the lawgiver with the shrouded countenance; only too
significant images of the souls obscured by prejudice and obstinate
unbelief, with which Israel trifles over the uncomprehended letter of the
old law.
The contrast to all this lies in our
text. Judaism had the one lawgiver who beheld God, while the people
tarried below. Christianity leads us all, to the mount of vision, and lets
the lowliest pass through the fences, and go up where the blazing glory is
seen. Moses veiled the face that shone with the irradiation of Deity. We
with unveiled face are to shine among men. He had a momentary gleam, a
transient brightness; we have a perpetual light. Moses’ face shone, but
the lustre was but skin deep. But the light that we have is inward, and
works transformation into its own likeness.
So there is here set forth the very
loftiest conception of the Christian life as direct vision, universal,
manifest to men, permanent, transforming.
I. Note then, first, that the
Christian life is a life of contemplating and reflecting Christ.
It is a question whether the single
word rendered in our version ‘beholding as in a glass,’ means that, or
‘reflecting as a glass does.’ The latter seems more in accordance with the
requirements of the context, and with the truth of the matter in hand.
Unless we bring in the notion of reflected lustre, we do not get any
parallel with the case of Moses. Looking into a glass does not in the
least correspond with the allusion, which gave occasion to the whole
section, to the glory of God smiting him on the face, till the reflected
lustre with which it glowed became dazzling, and needed to be hid. And
again, if Paul is here describing Christian vision of God as only
indirect, as in a mirror, then that would be a point of inferiority in us
as compared with Moses, who saw Him face to face. But the whole tone of
the context prepares us to expect a setting forth of the particulars in
which the Christian attitude towards the manifested God is above the
Jewish. So, on the whole, it seems better to suppose that Paul meant
‘mirroring,’ than ‘seeing in a mirror.’
But, whatever be the exact force of
the word, the thing intended includes both acts. There is no reflection of
the light without a previous reception of the light. In bodily sight, the
eye is a mirror, and there is no sight without an image of the thing
perceived being formed in the perceiving eye. In spiritual sight, the soul
which beholds is a mirror, and at once beholds and reflects. Thus, then,
we may say that we have in our text the Christian life described as one of
contemplation and manifestation of the light of God.
The great truth of a direct,
unimpeded vision, as belonging to Christian men on earth, sounds strange
to many of us. ‘That cannot be,’ you say; ‘does not Paul himself teach
that we see through a glass darkly? Do we not walk by faith and not by
sight? “No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him”; and besides
that absolute impossibility, have we not veils of flesh and sense, to say
nothing of the covering of sin “spread over the face of all nations,”
which hide from us even so much of the eternal light as His servants above
behold, who see His face and bear His name on their foreheads?’
But these apparent difficulties drop
away when we take into account two things—first, the object of vision, and
second, the real nature of the vision itself.
As to the former, who is the
Lord whose glory we receive on our unveiled faces? He is Jesus Christ.
Here, as in the overwhelming majority of instances where
Lord
occurs in the New Testament, it is the name of the manifested God our
brother. The glory which we behold and give back is not the
incomprehensible, incommunicable lustre of the absolute divine
perfectness, but that glory which, as John says, we beheld in Him who
tabernacled with us, full of grace and truth; the glory which was
manifested in loving, pitying words and loveliness of perfect deeds; the
glory of the will resigned to God, and of God dwelling in and working
through the will; the glory of faultless and complete manhood, and therein
of the express image of God.
And as for the vision itself,
that seeing which is denied to be possible is the bodily perception and
the full comprehension of the Infinite God; that seeing which is affirmed
to be possible, and actually bestowed in Christ, is the beholding of Him
with the soul by faith; the immediate direct consciousness of His presence
the perception of Him in His truth by the mind, the feeling of Him in His
love by the heart, the contact with His gracious energy in our recipient
and opening spirits. Faith is made the antithesis of sight. It is so, in
certain respects. But faith is also paralleled with and exalted above the
mere bodily perception. He who believing grasps the living Lord has a
contact with Him as immediate and as real as that of the eyeball with
light, and knows Him with a certitude as reliable as that which sight
gives. ‘Seeing is believing,’ says sense; ‘Believing is seeing’ says the
spirit which clings to the Lord, ‘whom having not seen’ it loves. A bridge
of perishable flesh, which is not myself but my tool, connects me with the
outward world.
It
never touches myself at all, and I know it only by trust in my senses. But
nothing intervenes between my Lord and me, when I love and trust. Then
Spirit is joined to spirit, and of His presence I have the witness in
myself. He is the light, which proves its own existence by revealing
itself, which strikes with quickening impulse on the eye of the spirit
that beholds by faith. Believing we see, and, seeing, we have that light
in our souls to be ‘the master light of all our seeing.’ We need not think
that to know by the consciousness of our trusting souls is less than to
know by the vision of our fallible eyes; and though flesh hides from us
the spiritual world in which we float, yet the only veil which really dims
God to us—the veil of sin, the one separating principle—is done away in
Christ, for all who love Him; so as that he who has not seen and yet has
believed, has but the perfecting of his present vision to expect, when
flesh drops away and the apocalypse of the heaven comes. True, in one
view, ‘We see through a glass darkly’; but also true, ‘We all, with
unveiled face, behold and reflect the glory of the Lord.’
Then note still further Paul's
emphasis on the universality of this prerogative—‘We all.’ This vision
does not belong to any select handful; does not depend upon special powers
or gifts, which in the nature of things can only belong to a few. The
spiritual aristocracy of God's Church is not the distinction of the
law-giver, the priest or the prophet. There is none of us so weak, so low,
so ignorant, so compassed about with sin, but that upon our happy faces
that light may rest, and into our darkened hearts that sunshine may steal.
In that Old Dispensation, the
light that broke through clouds was but that of the rising morning. It
touched the mountain tops of the loftiest spirits: a Moses, a David, an
Elijah caught the early gleams; while all the valleys slept in the pale
shadow, and the mist clung in white folds to the plains. But the noon has
come, and, from its steadfast throne in the very zenith, the sun, which
never sets, pours down its rays into the deep recesses of the narrowest
gorge, and every little daisy and hidden flower catches its brightness,
and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. We have no privileged
class or caste now; no fences to keep out the mob from the place of
vision, while lawgiver and priest gaze upon God. Christ reveals Himself to
all His servants in the measure of their desire after Him. Whatsoever
special gifts may belong to a few in His Church, the greatest gift belongs
to all. The servants and the handmaidens have the Spirit, the children
prophesy, the youths see visions, the old men dream dreams. ‘The mobs,’
‘the masses,’ ‘the plebs,’ or whatever other contemptuous name the heathen
aristocratic spirit has for the bulk of men, makes good its standing
within the Church, as possessor of Christ's chiefest gifts. Redeemed by
Him, it can behold His face and be glorified into His likeness. Not as
Judaism with its ignorant mass, and its enlightened and inspired few—we
all
behold the glory of the Lord.
Again, this contemplation involves
reflection, or giving forth the light which we behold.
They who behold Christ have
Christ formed in them, as will appear in my subsequent remarks. But apart
from such considerations, which belong rather to the next part of this
sermon, I touch on this thought here for one purpose—to bring out this
idea—that what we
see
we shall certainly
show.
That will be the inevitable result of all true possession of the glory of
Christ. The necessary accompaniment of vision is reflecting the thing
beheld. Why, if you look closely enough into a man's eye, you will see in
it little pictures of what he beholds at the moment; and if our hearts are
beholding Christ, Christ will be mirrored and manifested on our hearts.
Our characters will show what we are looking at, and ought, in the case of
Christian people, to bear His image so plainly, that men cannot but take
knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.
This ought to lead all of us who say
that we have seen the Lord, to serious self-questioning. Do beholding and
reflecting go together in our cases? Are our characters like those
transparent clocks, where you can see not only the figures and hands, but
the wheels and works? Remember that, consciously and unconsciously, by
direct efforts and by insensible influences on our lives, the true secret
of our being ought to come, and will come, fo
