Expositions of Holy Scripture Volume III Part 47

May I say again, my text suggests conduct, and not verbal worship. You and I, in our adherence to a simpler, less ornate and aesthetic form of devotion than prevails in the great Episcopal churches, are by no means free from the danger which, in a more acute form, besets them, of subst.i.tuting partic.i.p.ation in external acts of worship for daily righteousness of life _Laborare est orare_--to work is to pray. That is true with explanations, commentaries, and limitations. But I wonder how many people there are who sing hymns which breathe aspirations and wishes that their whole daily life contradicts. And I wonder how many of us there are who seem to be joining in prayers that we never expect to have answered, and would be very much astonished if the answers came, and should not know what to do with if they did come. We live in one line, and worship in exactly the opposite. Brethren, creed is necessary; emotion is necessary; worship is necessary! But that on which these three all converge, and for which they are, is daily life, plain, practical righteousness.

II. Now let me say, secondly, that being righteous is the way to do righteousness.

One of the great characteristics of New Testament teaching of morality, or rather let me say of Christ's teaching of morality, is that it shifts, if I may so put it, the centre of gravity from acts to being, that instead of repeating the parrot-cry, 'Do, do, do' or 'Do not, do not, do not,' it says, 'Be, and the doing will take care of itself. Be; do not trouble so much about outward acts, look after the inward nature.' Character makes conduct, though, of course, conduct reacts upon character. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,' and the way to set actions right is to set the heart right.

Some of us are trying to purify the stream by putting in disinfectants half-way down, instead of going up to the source and dealing with the fountain. And the weakness of all the ordinary, commonplace morality of the world is that it puts its stress upon the deeds, and leaves comparatively uncared for the condition of the person, the inward self, from whom the deeds come. And so it is all superficial, and of small account.

If that be so, then we are met by this experience: that when we honestly try to make the tree good that its fruit may be good we come full front up to this, that there is a streak in us, a stain, a twist--call it anything you like--like a black vein through a piece of Parian marble, or a scratch upon a mirror, which streak or twist baffles our effort to make ourselves righteous. I am not going, if I can help it, to exaggerate the facts of the case. The Christian teaching of what is unfortunately called total depravity is not that there is no good in anybody, but that there is a diffused evil in everybody which affects in different degrees and in different ways all a man's nature. And that is no mere doctrine of the New Testament, but it is a transcript from the experience of every one of us.

What then? If I must be righteous in order that I may do righteousness, and if, as I have found out by experience (for the only way to know myself is to reflect upon what I have done)--if I have found out that I am not righteous, what then? You may say to me, 'Have you led me into a blind alley, out of which I cannot get? Here you are, insisting on an imperative necessity, and in the same breath saying that it is impossible. What is left for me?' I go on to tell you what is left.

III. Union with Jesus Christ by faith makes us 'righteous even as He is righteous.'

There is the pledge, there is the prophecy, there is the pattern; and there is the power to redeem the pledge, to fulfil the prophecy, to make the pattern copyable and copied by every one of us. Brethren, this is the very heart of John's teaching, that if we will, not by the mere a.s.sent of our intellect, but by the casting of ourselves on Jesus Christ, trust in Him, there comes about a union between us and Him so real, so deep, so vital, so energetic, that by the touch of His life we live, and by His righteousness breathed into us, we, too, may become righteous. The great vessel and the tiny pot by its side may have a connecting pipe, and from the great one there shall flow over into the little one as much as will fill it brim full. In Him we too may be righteous.

My friend, there are men and women who are ready to set to their seals that that is true, and who can say, 'I have found it so. By union with Jesus Christ in faith, I have received new tastes, new inclinations, a new set to my whole life, and I have been able to overcome unrighteousnesses which were too many and too mighty for myself.' It is so; and some of us to our own consciences and consciousness are witnesses to it, however imperfectly. G.o.d forgive us! We may have manifested the renewing power of union with Christ in our daily lives.

'Even as He is righteous'--the water in the great vessel and the little one are the same, but the vase is not the cistern. The beam comes from the sun, but the beam is not the sun. 'Even as' does not mean equality, but it does mean similarity. Christ is righteous, eternally, essentially, completely; we may be 'even as He is' derivatively, partially, and if we put our trust in Him we shall be so, and that growingly through our daily lives. And then, after earth is done with, 'we know that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'

May we each, dear brethren, 'be found in Him, not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of G.o.d by faith.'

CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF G.o.d'S LOVE

'Herein is love, not that we loved G.o.d, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'--1 John iv. 10.

This is the second of a pair of twin verses which deal with substantially the same subject under two slightly different aspects. The thought common to both is that Christ's mission is the great revelation of G.o.d's love. But in the preceding verse the point on which stress is laid is the manifestation of that love, and in our text the point mainly brought out is its essential nature. In the former we read, 'In this was _manifested_ the love of G.o.d,' and in the present verse we read, 'Herein _is_ love.' In the former verse John fixes on three things as setting forth the greatness of that manifestation--viz., that the Christ is the only begotten Son, that the manifestation is for the world, and that its end is the bestowment of everlasting love. In my text the points which are fixed on are that that Love in its nature is self-kindled--'not that we loved G.o.d, but that He loved us'--and that it lays hold of, and casts out of the way that which, unremoved, would be a barrier between G.o.d and us--viz., our sin: 'He hath sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'

Now it is interesting to notice that these twin verses, like a double star which reflects the light of a central sun, draw their brightness from the great word of the Master, 'G.o.d so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' Do you not hear the echo of His voice in the three expressions in the verse before the text--'only begotten' 'world' 'live'? Here is one more of the innumerable links which bind together in indissoluble union the Gospel and the Epistle.

So, then, the great thought suggested by the words before us is just this, that in the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have the great revelation of the love of G.o.d.

I. Now there are three questions that suggest themselves to me, and the first is this, What, then, does Christ's mission say about G.o.d's love?

I do not need to dwell on the previous question whether, apart from that mission, there is any solid revelation of the fact that there is love in Heaven, or whether we are left, apart from it, to gropings and probabilities. I need not refer you to the ambiguous oracles of nature or to the equally ambiguous oracles of life. I need not, I suppose, do more than just remind you that even the men whose faith grasps the thought of the love of G.o.d most intensely, know what it is to be brought to a stand before some of the dreadful problems which the facts of humanity and the facts of nature press upon us, nor need I remind you how, as we see around us to-day, in the drift of our English literature and that of other nations, when men turn their backs upon the Cross, they look upon a landscape all swathed in mists, and on which darkness is steadily settling. The reason why the men of this generation, some of them very superficially, and for the sake of being 'in the swim' and some of them despairingly and with bleeding hearts, are turning themselves to a reasoned pessimism, is because they will not see what shines out from the Cross, that G.o.d is love.

Nor need I do more than remind you, in a word, of the fact that, go where we will through this world, and consult all the conceptions that men have made to themselves of G.o.ds many and lords many, whilst we find the deification of power, and of vice, and of fragmentary goodnesses, of hopes and fears, of longings, of regrets, we find nowhere a G.o.d of whom the characteristic is love. And amidst that Pantheon of deities, some of them savage, some of them l.u.s.tful, some of them embodiments of all vices, some of them indifferent and neutral, some of them radiant and fair, none reveals this secret, that the centre of the universe is a heart. So we have to turn away from hopes, from probability dashed with many a doubt, and find something that has more solid substance in it, if it is to be enough to bear up the man that grasps it and to yield before no tempests. For all that Bishop Butler says, probabilities are _not_ the guide of life, in its deepest and n.o.blest aspects. They may be the guide of practice, but for the anchorage of the soul we want no shifting sand-bank, but that to which we may make fast and be sure that, whatever shifts, it remains immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in 'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion consists of the things of which we are sure, and not of the things which are probable. 'Peradventure' is not the word on which a man can rest the weight of a crushed, or an agonising, or a sinking soul; he must have 'Verily! verily!' and then he is at rest.

How do we know what a man is? By seeing what a man does. How do we know what G.o.d is? By knowing what G.o.d does. So John does not argue with logic, either frosty or fiery, but he simply opens his mouth, and in calm, pellucid utterances sets forth the truths and leaves them to work.

He says to us, 'I do not relegate you to your intuitions; I do not argue with you; I simply say, Look at Him; look, and see that G.o.d is love.'

What, then, does the mission of Christ say to us about the love of G.o.d?

It says, first, that it is a love independent of, and earlier than, ours. We love, as a rule, because we recognise in the object to which our heart goes out something that draws it, something that is loveable.

But He whose name is 'I am that I am' has all the reasons of His actions within Himself, and just as He

'Sits on no precarious throne, Nor borrows leave to be,'

nor is dependent on any creature for existence, so He is His own motive, He is His own reason. Within that sacred circle of the Infinite Nature lie all the energies which bring that Infinite Nature into action; and like some clear fountain, more sparkling than crystal, there wells up for ever, from the depths of the Divine Nature, the love which is Himself. He loves, not because we love Him, but because He is G.o.d. The very sun itself, as some astronomers believe, owes its radiant brightness and ever-communicated warmth to the impact on, and reception into, it of myriads of meteors and of matter drawn from the surrounding system. So when the fuel fails, that fire will go out, and the sun will shrivel into a black ball. But this central Sun of the universe has all His light within Himself, and the rays that pour out from Him owe their being and their motion to nothing but the force of that central fire, from which they rush with healing on their wings.

If, then, G.o.d's love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its rays breed corruption and in the other draw out beauty. That great love wraps us all, is older than our sins, and is not deflected by them. So that is the first thing that Christ's mission tells us about G.o.d's love.

The second is--it speaks to us of a love which gives its best. John says, 'G.o.d _sent_ His Son,' and that word reposes, like the rest of the pa.s.sage, on many words of Christ's--such as, for instance, when He speaks of Himself as 'sanctified and sent into the world,' and many another saying. But remember how, in the foundation pa.s.sage to which I have already referred, and of which we have some reflection in the words before us, there is a tenderer expression--not merely 'sent,' but 'gave.' Paul strengthens the word when he says, 'gave _up_ for us all.'

It is not for us to speculate about these deep things, but I would remind you of what I dare say I have had occasion often to point out, that Paul seems to intend to suggest to us a mysterious parallel, when he further says, 'He that _spared_ not His own Son, but freely gave Him up to death for us all.' For that emphatic word 'spared' is a distinct allusion to, and quotation of, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac: 'Seeing thou hast not _withheld_ from Me thine only son.' And so, mysterious as it is, we may venture to say that He not only sent, but He gave, and not only gave, but gave up. His love, like ours, delights to lavish its most precious gifts on its objects.

Now there arises from this consideration a thought which I only mention, and it is this. Christian teaching about Christ's work has often, both by its friends and its foes, been so presented as to lead to the conception that it was the work of Christ which made G.o.d love men. The enemies of evangelical truth are never tired of talking in that sense; and some of its unwise friends have given reason for the caricature. But the true Christian teaching is, 'G.o.d so loved ... that He gave.' The love is the cause of the mission, and not the mission that which evokes the love. So let us be sure that, not because Christ died does G.o.d love us sinful creatures, but that, because G.o.d loves us, Christ died for us.

The third thing which the mission of Christ teaches us about the love of G.o.d is that it is a love which takes note of and overcomes man's sin. I have said, as plainly as I can, that I reject the travesty of Christianity which implies that it was Christ's mission which originated G.o.d's love to men. But a love that does not in the slightest degree care whether its object is good or bad--what sort of a love do you call that?

What do you name it when a father shows it to his children? Moral indifference; culpable and weak and fatal. And is it anything n.o.bler, if you transfer it to G.o.d, and say that it is all the same to Him whether a man is living the life of a hog, and forgetting all that is high and n.o.ble, or whether he is pressing with all his strength towards light and truth and goodness? Surely, surely they who, in the name of their reverence for the supreme love of G.o.d, cover over the fact of His righteousness, are mutilating and killing the very attribute that they are trying to exalt. A love that cares nothing for the moral character of its object is not love, but hate; it is not kindness, but cruelty.

Take away the background because it is so black, and you lower the brilliancy of whiteness of that which stands in front of it. There is such a property in G.o.d as is fittingly described by that tremendous word 'wrath.' G.o.d cannot, being what He is, treat sin as if it were no sin; and therefore we read, 'He sent His son to be the _propitiation_ for our sins.' The black dam, which we build up between ourselves and the river of the water of life, is to be swept away; and it is the death of Jesus Christ which makes it possible for the highest gift of G.o.d's love to pour over the ruined and partially removed barrier and to flood a man's soul. Brethren, no G.o.d that is worthy the name can give Himself to a sinful soul. No sinful soul that has not the habit, the guilt, the penalty of its sins swept away, is capable of receiving the life, which is the highest gift of the love. So our twin texts divide what I may call the process of redemption between them; and whilst the one says, 'He sent His Son that we should have life through Him,' the other tells us of how the sins which bar the entrance of that life into our hearts, as our own consciences tell us they do, can be removed. There must first be the propitiation for our sins, and then that mighty love reaches its purpose and attains its end, and can give us the life of G.o.d to be the life of our souls. So much for my first and principle question.

II. Now I have to ask, secondly, how comes it that Christ's mission says anything about G.o.d's love?

That question is a very plain one, and I should like to press the answer to it very emphatically. Take any other of the great names of the world's history of poet, thinker, philosopher, moralist, practical benefactor; is it possible to apply such a thought as this to them--except with a hundred explanations and limitations--that they, however radiant, however wise, however beneficent, however fruitful their influence, make men sure that G.o.d loves them? The thing is ridiculous, unless you are using language in a very fantastic and artificial fashion.

Christ's mission reveals G.o.d's love, because Christ is the Son of G.o.d.

If it is true, as Jesus said, that 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' then I can say, 'In Thy tenderness, in Thy patience, in Thy attracting of the publican and the harlot, in Thy sympathy with all the erring and the sorrowful, and, most of all, in Thy agony and pa.s.sion, in Thy cross and death, I see the glory of G.o.d which is the love of G.o.d.'

Brother, if you break that link, which binds the man Christ Jesus with the ever-living and the ever-loving G.o.d, I know not how you can draw from the record of His life and death a confidence, which nothing can shake, in the love of the Father.

Then there is another point. Christ's mission speaks to us about G.o.d's love, if--and I was going to say _only_ if--we regard it as His mission to be the propitiation for our sins. Strike out the death as the sacrifice for the world's sin, and what you have left is a maimed something, which may be, and I thankfully recognise often is, very strengthening, very helpful, very calming, very enn.o.bling, even to men who do not sympathise with the view of that work which I am now setting forth, but which is all that to them, very largely, because of the unconscious influence of the truths which they have cast away. It seems to me that those who, in the name of the highest paternal love of G.o.d, reject the thought of Christ's sacrificial death, are kicking away the ladder by which they have climbed, and are better than their creeds, and happily illogical. It is the Cross that reveals the love, and it is the Cross as the means of propitiation that pours the light of that blessed conviction into men's hearts.

III. My last question is this: what does Christ's mission say about G.o.d's love to me?

We know what it ought to say. It ought to carry, as on the crest of a great wave, the conviction of that divine love into our hearts, to be fruitful there. It ought to sweep out, as on the crest of a great wave, our sins and evils. It ought to do this; does it? On some of us I fear it produces no effect at all. Some of you, dear friends, look at that light with lack-l.u.s.tre eyes, or, rather, with blind eyes, that are dark as midnight in the blaze of noonday. The voice comes from the Cross, sweet as that of harpers harping with their harps, and mighty as the voice of many waters, and you hear nothing. Some of us it slightly moves now and then, and there an end.

Brethren, you have to turn the world-wide generality into a personal possession. You have to say, 'He loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_.'

It is of no use to believe in a universal Saviour; do you trust in your particular Saviour? It is of no use to have the most orthodox and clear conceptions of the relation between the Cross of Christ and the revelation to men of the love of G.o.d; have you made that revelation the means of bringing into your own personal life the conviction that Jesus Christ is _your_ Saviour, the propitiation for _your_ sins, the Giver to _you_ of life eternal? It is faith that does that. Note that, in the great foundation pa.s.sage to which I have made frequent reference, there are two conditions put in between the beginning and the end. Some of us are disposed to say, 'G.o.d so loved the world that every man might have eternal life.' That is not what Christ said, 'G.o.d so loved the world that'--and here follows the first condition--'He _gave His Son_ that'--and here follows the second--'he that _believeth on Him_ should not perish, but have everlasting life.' G.o.d has done what it is needful for Him to do. His part of the conditions has been fulfilled. Fulfil yours--'He that believeth on Him.' And if you can say, not He is the propitiation for our sin, but for _my_ sin, then you will live and move and have your being in a heaven of love, and will love Him back again with an echo and reflection of His own, and nothing shall be able to separate you from the love of G.o.d which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD

'... As He is, so are we in this world.'--1 John iv. 17.

Large truths may be spoken in little words. Profundity is often supposed to be obscurity, but the deepest depth is clear. John, in his gospel and epistles, deals with the deepest realities, and with all things in their eternal aspects, but his vocabulary is the simplest in the New Testament. G.o.d and the world, life and death, love and hate, light and darkness, these are the favourite words round which his thoughts gather. Here are nine little monosyllables. What can be simpler than, 'As He is, so are we in this world?' And what can go beyond the thought that lies in it, that a Christian is a living likeness of Christ?

But the connection of my text is quite as striking as its substance.

John has been dwelling upon his favourite thought that to abide in love is to abide in G.o.d, and G.o.d in us. And then he goes on to say that 'Herein'--that is, in such mutual abiding in love--'is love made perfect with us'; and the perfection of that love, which is thus communion, is in order that, at the great solemn day of future trial, men may lift up their faces and meet His glance--which is _not_ strange to them, nor met for the first time--with open-hearted and open-countenanced 'boldness.'

But 'love' and 'abiding' are the source of confidence in the Day of Judgment, because love and abiding are the source of a.s.similation to Christ's life. We have boldness, 'because as He is, so are we in this world'; and we are as He is, because we love and abide in Him. So here are three thoughts, the a.s.similation of the Christian man to Christ; the frank confidence which it begets; and the process by which it is secured.

I. A Christian is Christ's living likeness.

That is a startling thing to say, and all the more startling if you notice that John does not say 'As He _was_,' in this earthly life of humiliation and filial obedience, but 'as He _is_,' in His heavenly life and reign and glory. That might well repel us from all thought of possible resemblance, but the light, however brilliant it may be, is not blinding, and it is the Christ as He _is_, and not only--true as that is--the Christ as He _was_, who is the original of which Christian men are copies.

Now _there_ is the difference between the teaching of such cla.s.ses of religionists as represent Christ's humanity as all in all, and preach to us that He, in His earthly life is the pattern to whom we are to seek to conform our lives, and the true evangelical teaching. That dead Man is living, and His present life has in it elements which we can grasp, and to which every Christian life is to be conformed.