Gloria Crucis Part 6

(1) The Spirit of Christ conforming our minds and wills more and more to the likeness of Christ.

(2) The co-operation of our whole personality with the work of the indwelling Spirit.

Our meditations this morning on the Seven Words in which Christ made some partial disclosure of His Mind and Will, will form some part of that co- operation, one little stage in the accomplishment of our life-long task.

II THE FIRST WORD

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." ST. LUKE XXIII. 34.

1. Here we are watching the behaviour of the Son of G.o.d, the Ideal and Ground of Divine Sonship in humanity.

Is this supreme example of forgiveness an example to _us_? Is it not something unnatural to humanity as we know it?

We must recall, from a former address, the distinction which we then drew between the animal in us, with its self-a.s.sertive instincts, and the Divine in us, that which const.i.tutes us not animal merely, but human, of which the very essence is the self-sacrifice of perfect love. Christ came to reveal G.o.d in our manhood. And I need this revelation, just because the animal in me has won so many victories in the past over the Divine, because in me the spiritual fire habitually burns so low and dim.

It is a very different thing to say that forgiveness of all serious injury is a hard thing. It is hard, but not impossible. That which makes it to be possible is the serious intention of discipleship, co-operating with the indwelling Spirit of Christ transforming us into His likeness.

To a.s.sert, on the other hand, that forgiveness of serious wrong is impossible, is to ignore the fact that He Who uttered these wonderful words is the true self of me, and of every man who breathes. He Who hung on the Cross, and spoke these seven words, is the Son of man, the Representative to all ages, to all varieties of human character, of true humanity.

2. Christ-like forgiveness is no weak thing, but the strongest thing in the world.

Yet, for its true effect to be produced, its true character must be recognised. No suspicion of cowardice or impotence must cleave to it.

The man who being obviously able to resent an injury, and not lacking in the capacity of resentment, yet for Christ's sake forgives, exercises on earth no inconsiderable share of the moral power of Christ. G.o.d now, as of old, "has made choice of the weak things of the world," those things which the world accounts weak, "to confound the strong." "The meek"

still "inherit the earth."

We are dealing, all through, with the injury which is personal, with the resentment which is the reaction of the individual against unprovoked wrong. Personal resentment we are bidden to relentlessly crush out--"to turn the other cheek" is the command of Christ. But the Christian man will recognise that the interests of the social order are not to be disregarded. These interests, and those of the offender himself, will sometimes demand that the wrong, even if it primarily affects ourselves, shall not go unpunished. Again, no one can be in the full sense a Christian, that is, a fully developed man, or a man on the way to the full development of his nature, who is without the capacity of moral indignation, in whom no flame is kindled by the oppression of the weak.

What the Christian moral law does demand of us, is the complete suppression of the merely personal anger which sometimes burns so fiercely in us when we receive unmerited insult or injury. That kind of anger belongs to "the flesh," is part of the defensive equipment of the animal nature. Before we can in any sense be Christ-like, the spirit must win many hard-won victories over its ancient foe.

To say "I will forgive, but I can never forget," is only to conceal from ourselves the defeat of the spiritual man, the Christ in us.

3. But carefully note the reason appended to the prayer: "they know not what they do." That is true, with every variety of degrees and shades of truth, of every sinner. It was true, clearly, of the soldiers then performing their duty: it was less true, but still in a real sense it was true, of the Pharisees, of the High Priests, of the Roman judge. It is true, but to a far less degree, even of us, that when we sin, we "know not what we do."

Sins are, in the language of St. Paul, works of darkness. That is the element in which alone they can exist. Sin is a huge deception. The very condition of its existence is the concealment of its true character.

All this is summed up in that experience which we call "temptation." We are so familiar with sin, the atmosphere we breathe is so infected with it, we have given way so many times in the past, that it needs the objective revelation of the Cross to bring home to us the real horror and malignity of sin. It has been finely said, "Sin first drugs its victims before it consumes them." We, too, or some of us, have known the strange petrifying, hardening effect of sin on the conscience.

Great, then, is our need that we should pray that the revelation of the Cross may more and more come home to us; great our need to pray for an ever fuller measure of that Spirit of Christ, Whose first work it is "to convince the world of sin," to make men realise its true character and its inevitable issue.

III THE SECOND WORD

"Verily I say unto thee, To-day thou shall be with Me in Paradise."

ST. LUKE XXIII. 43.

We judge of any power by the results which it effects. We gain some knowledge of the power of steam by its capacity to drive a huge ma.s.s of steel and wood weighing twenty thousand tons through the water at the rate of twenty knots an hour. There we have some standard by which we can gauge the force which sends our earth round the sun at twenty-five miles a second, or that which propels a whole solar system through s.p.a.ce.

But we may apply the same method, of estimation by results, to the powers of the moral and spiritual worlds. Judged thus, it was indeed a stupendous power which was exerted by Christ from the Cross. For what result can be more amazing than the reversal, at the last, of the character slowly built up by the habits of a lifetime? It is, of course, useless to speculate on the antecedents of the robber (not "thief") who turned to our Lord with the words, "Jesus, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom." We know only what is implied by the word "robber" or "brigand," and the fact that he had joined, with his fellow- sufferer, in the mockery of our Lord. But the words thus addressed by him to Christ, in their context, represent the most wonderful "phenomenon" of human life, a genuine and thorough-going conversion. And the power which wrought that stupendous result was the patience and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. The weak things had, as so often since, confounded the strong. In His matchless forbearance, in the prayer for His executioners, the royalty of Christ our Lord was disclosed, and the "t.i.tle" over His head was vindicated.

1. First then, we learn from the Second Word the Mind and Will of G.o.d towards penitence. There is no interposing of delay. Forgiveness is instantaneous. No pause intervenes between the prayer for pardon, and the pardon itself. But, that instant response was to genuine "change of mind," not to the repentance which is merely regret for the past, still less to a cowardly shrinking from a deserved punishment, but to a definite act of the man's will, repudiating sin, and ranging himself on G.o.d's side. The rejection of sin, the identifying of self with G.o.d's att.i.tude towards it, that, we have seen, is alone, in the New Testament sense of the word, repentance.

2. The penitence of the robber, on a.n.a.lysis, discloses the three familiar elements--

(_a_) Contrition is obviously implied in the whole action.

(_b_) Confession--"we receive the due rewards of the things which we wrought."

(_c_) Amendment--in the separation of himself from those with whom he had hitherto joined in reviling Christ.

Now it is worth noting, that our Catechism bids us examine ourselves not about our sins, but about our repentance; "whether they truly repent." We are meant to ask ourselves--

(_a_) Is our contrition real? And here, for our comfort, we remember that G.o.d accepts as contrition the sincere desire to be contrite.

(_b_) Have we made such a painstaking self-examination as to ensure our making a good confession? "If we confess our _sins_" (separate, detailed sins, not our sinfulness in general terms), "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins."

Have we used "sacramental" confession, according to the teaching of the Prayer Book, that is, when our conscience told us that we needed it?

(_c_) Is our resolution of amendment a clear and honest one? What sins are there, some of whose results we are able to modify or in part reverse (false impressions, untruths, acts or words of unkindness)? G.o.d is generous in forgiveness. Surely we are bound to be generous in our amendment. There is a sense in which the results of sin abide beyond possibility of recall. Yet I believe that the instinct which bids us "make up for" a hurt inflicted on a beloved person, is a Divine instinct in our nature, and one which we are to carry into the region of our relation to G.o.d.

3. We notice another important truth as regards the Divine forgiveness.

It has nothing to do with the removal of punishment, the release from penalty or consequence of sin. The forgiveness of the robber was immediate and complete. But he had still to hang in agony, and there awaited him the frightful pain of the crurifragium, the breaking of the legs by beating with clubs.

The sooner we learn the two great truths about the punishment of sin, the better.

(_a_) Punishment is inevitable. It is a necessary result of the const.i.tution of the physical and moral universe, of the working, in both regions, of those laws which are the expression of the Divine Mind.

(_b_) Punishment is remedial. Many Christian theologians have fallen far below Plato's conception of G.o.d, as One Who can only punish men with a view of making them better.

Think of one of the punishments of repented sin, the haunting memories of past evil. In this case, both principles are very clearly discernible.

Each recollection may be made the means of a renewed act of rejection of sin, and thus become an opportunity for the deepening of repentance.

And what disclosure does this second word contain of the Mind and Will of G.o.d in us, as manifested not towards, but by ourselves? Our lesson is the prompt recognition and welcome of any, even the slightest signs of amendment. It may be our duty to punish. It is always our duty to keep alive, or to kindle, the hope in an offender of becoming better. In that hope, alone, lies the possibility of moral amendment. There is the golden rule, laid down by St. Paul for all who have to exercise discipline over others, in words which ring ever in our ears--"lest they be discouraged."

IV THE THIRD WORD

"Lady, behold thy son."

"Behold thy mother."

ST. JOHN XIX. 26, 27.

In this Word we see the Son of G.o.d revealed as human son, and human friend, all the more truly and genuinely human in both relations, because in each and every relation of life, Divine.

1. The first lesson in the Divine Life for us to learn here is the simple, almost vulgarly commonplace one, yet so greatly needing to be learnt, that "charity," which is but a synonym of the Divine Life, "begins at home."