The Christ of God (Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889) - Chapters 6-10

 

John 11:27

“She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”

Chapter VI

what follows this confession

THIS confession cannot be barren. It contains in it such truth as must be productive in many ways. All truth is indeed fruitful according to its kind, but this is the most fruitful of all.

It contains, besides, so much personal truth,—truth which we need, and truth which could not be reached in any other way. Its effect upon us is marvellous. Its teachings are as manifold as they are divine. It wraps up within it so many other truths, that in getting hold of it we find ourselves in possession of ‘unsearchable riches.’

If Thou art the Christ, then

1. I see in Thee the Love of God

It is specially with this that we have to do; for without this, man must be poor and dark,—a land without a stream,—a world without a sun. Messiah is (1) the gift of God’s love, (2) the embodiment of God’s love, (3) the pledge of God’s love, (4) the measure of God’s love. I read in Thy person, Thy words, Thy doings, Thy life, Thy death, that ‘God is love.’ It is of the love of Godhead that Thou hast brought us the glad tidings; for the Father sent Thee to announce His love. ‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.’ Love shineth in Thee; not merely love such as heaven needs, but such as earth needs,—love such as is needed by the unlovable and the unworthy,—the love of forgiveness, and reconciliation, and peace,—the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thy birth spoke of love. Thy life spoke of love. Thy words spoke of love. Thy miracles spoke of love. All Thy footsteps were the footsteps of love. And Thy death was the death of love. It was the love of God that shone down from Thy cross upon earth, like a new-lighted sun. The love of the cradle was much; the love of the cross was more. In Thee, the Christ of God, we learn the love of God.

2. I see in Thee my Way of Access to God

Through Thee, O Christ, I have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Thou hast drawn nigh to me, that I might draw nigh to Thee and to the Father. Thou hast prepared a way; nay, Thou art Thyself the new and living Way. Thou art the altar and the laver by which I pass into the holy place. Thou art the incense, the perfume of which makes me acceptable in the courts of the Lord. Thou art the veil which was rent in twain, that I might enter into the holiest. Thou art the mercy-seat, the throne of grace to which I am to come boldly, with a true heart, and in the full assurance of faith. Through Thee I have access with boldness, and everything in Thee assures me that all that might have repelled or discouraged me has been removed. The greatness of my sins cannot shut me out, for Thy blood cleanseth from all sin. The distance to which I have gone from God need be no discouragement, for by Thee we are brought nigh. Thou art the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Through Thee, I, though exceeding sinful, go in to God, worship in His holy place, and have communion with Himself. I hear the voice from the rent veil, which says, ‘Let us draw near,’ and I draw near. It is now not danger, but safety, to go in. My guilt is not in entering, but in refusing to enter; not in being bold, but in refusing to be bold; and my presumption is not in believing, but in doubting; not in simply crediting the word of God, and the record which He has given of His Son, but in setting aside that record, and making Him a liar.

3. I see in Thee the Forgiveness of Sins

Forgiveness! That was, if not the words, at least the meaning, of the first promise concerning Thee, the seed of the woman. ‘Forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin,’ was Thy name of old to Israel, and it is so still to us. Thou hast come to earth as the Christ, with forgiveness in Thy hand; forgiveness from the Father; forgiveness, free as the sunshine which Thou daily makest to arise upon us; forgiveness, without a grudge, or price, or reservation. I hear the cry from the cross, ‘Father, forgive them;’ and from that I learn Thine errand to us. I mark Thy words to the guilty woman, ‘Neither do I condemn thee,’ and from them I understand Thy pardoning grace. Thou cleansest from all unrighteousness, and turnest the scarlet into snow, the crimson into wool. Through Thee is preached unto us the forgiveness of sins! Through Thee there is no condemnation for us, so that we can take up the apostle’s challenge joyfully, and say, ‘Who is he that condemneth?’

4. I see in Thee my Justification

In Thee I am more than pardoned; I am justified freely by Thy blood. I am partaker of a divine righteousness, so that all my imperfection vanishes, and becomes invisible in the glory of Thy perfection. In Thee, the Christ of God, I find not merely the Just One taking the place of the unjust, that the penalty might be remitted, and the wrath removed; but I find the Just so substituting Himself for the unjust, that the unjust rises to the judicial level of the Just, and is dealt with by God as if he were the Just One, possessing the excellence of His righteousness, and standing before God in His divine beauty. This is the fulness of that justification which we receive from Thee when we believe in Thee, consenting to take Thee as our substitute, and to be received by God according to the merits of Thee, the Christ, the Son of the living God. O Christ, I take Thee as my righteousness, my justification, my perfection, and gladly give up every claim of my own, hiding myself beneath Thy robe, and being ‘found in Thee,’ ‘complete in Thee,’ ‘accepted in the Beloved.’

5. I see in Thee my Life Eternal

I take Thee as my life, for I am all death; and the life which I find in Thee is everlasting life. Because Thou livest, I live, and shall live. Life eternal! That is what I need; and of Thee, O Christ, I find it written, ‘This is the true God, and eternal life’ (1 John 5:20); nay, I find it also written, ‘This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life; and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life’ (1 John 5:11, 13). Again and again didst Thou speak of the life that is in Thee, and of that life as presented to us, that we might have it,—have it in receiving the Father’s testimony to Thee. We have heard Thy voice, telling us of this life, and all its blessedness; putting to our lips the vessel containing it, that we might know both Thy love and the nearness of the proffered gift. We take the gift, so earnestly and so sincerely pressed upon us; and as those whose portion was death, we accept the blessed exchange, and enter into life through Thee, the living One, the Son of the living God. Thou art the tree of life; and under Thy shadow I sit down to eat Thy pleasant fruit. Thou art the bread of life; and on Thee would I daily feed, as Israel on their morning manna. Thou art the water of life; and of Thee would I drink every hour and moment, that I may thirst no more, and yet thirst for ever!

6. I see in Thee my Peace

Thou art the Peacemaker. Yea, Thou art the Peace: as it is written, He hath made peace by the blood of His cross; He is our peace; and Thy name is the ‘Son of peace’ (Luke 10:6), the ‘Lord of peace’ (2 Tim. 3:16), the ‘Prince of peace’ (Isa. 9:6). There was distance between God and me, there was variance, nay, enmity; but Thou hast removed these, and the quarrel is at an end for ever. Thy blood speaketh peace to me, and it keeps my soul in peace. When sin comes in, and threatens to break it up, I betake myself to Thee. I go back to the place where I found it at first, and I find it there again. The cross stands immoveable. The value of the blood never changes: it is always able to do the same thing for us to the end that it did at first; and to those who accept God’s testimony to that blood, all its value belongs, unfailing and unchangeable. The value of that blood is my security for abiding peace. Were its value less than divine, my peace would be both imperfect and insecure. To-day it might be peace, to-morrow disquietude and doubt; to-day nearness, to-morrow distance. But the value of the blood is infinite, and avails for ever for all who stand not aloof from it, or undervalue its efficacy. Our peace-offering has been offered once for all, and its efficacy is everlasting. We have not to present, a new peace-offering for ourselves of any kind whatever,—the peace-offering of our prayers, or tears, or repentances, or almsdeeds, or fervent feelings, or attractive rites. Thou, O Christ, art our one peace-offering; and we take Thee as such, not trying to make again a peace already made, but satisfied with Thee as all we need for the maintaining of that peace which can only rest upon reconciling blood.

7. I see in Thee my Health

‘Thou hast healed me,’ were the words of an Old Testament saint; and again we have other words like them, ‘He healeth all thy diseases’ (Ps. 103:3). The first Adam was the destroyer of our health, the last Adam is the restorer of it. As healer both of body and soul, Thou didst show Thyself when here, O Christ of God, ever healing, ever soothing, ever comforting;—ever administering Thy balm of Gilead! True healer of the soul! True strengthener of the weak! True physician of the sick! True light of the sick-room, and companion of the sick-bed! Thy fellowship is healing. Thy words are healing. Thy touch is healing. Thy love is healing. Long ere Thou camest to earth, Thy people knew of Thy healing skill and power. Often didst Thou heal Thy Israel, in Thy great love and pity; and when healing the bitter waters of Marah, Thou didst proclaim Thyself the healer of Israel: ‘I am Jehovah that healeth thee’ (Ex. 15:26). O health of the soul, show Thyself to me in all Thy fulness; heal me more and more. Heal my understanding, heal my conscience, heal my heart. Let that be true of me which was written concerning Thy healing wonders of old, ‘As many as touched Him were made perfectly whole.’ I am as yet but very imperfectly recovered; slowly, slowly am I returning to spiritual health. Oh, hasten the desired end, intensify Thy medicines, put more vigour into Thy touch, make my recovery more rapid, perfect that which concerneth me: oh, heal me, and I shall be healed!

8. I see in Thee my Wisdom

Thou, O Christ of God, art the wisdom of God; and I am wise in Thee. Thy hidden treasures are all open to me, and I am welcome to search every chamber of Thy storehouse, and to appropriate all that is there. ‘The world by wisdom knew not God’ (1 Cor. 1:21); but by Thy wisdom I am made acquainted with God. I say, Show me the Father, and Thou showest Him to me. I lack wisdom, and I ask of Thee; and Thou givest liberally, and upbraidest not. All wisdom is in Thee, and I may have it all. Thou teachest, and Thou art also the lesson taught. I have come into Thy school, for the door was open; I have sat down there upon its benches as a scholar, and Thou didst not frown upon me. Oh, then, teach me, teach me! I am weary of other teachers. They profit nothing. They cannot reach the recesses of my dull and unteachable heart. They are impatient, and will take no pains with my ignorance and stupidity. They do not love me, even when they instruct me. But Thou art different. Thou teachest the inner man. Thou art always pitiful and loving, never impatient because of my ignorance, nor fretted at my frowardness. Thou takest such pains with me, day by day, as if I were Thy only scholar. O teach me more and more!

9. I see in Thee my Captain

Thou leadest me on to victory; for Thy name is Captain of Jehovah’s hosts. I will follow whither Thou leadest. ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,’ is the watchword which Thou givest us. And Thou goest before us to the battle-field, and marshallest all our array. Thou givest us the whole armour of God,—the sword of the Spirit, the helmet of salvation, the girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith: for every soldier in Thy host is well armed and disciplined, able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. My foes are many and fierce; I have no strength against them; no skill with which to cope with their skill and stratagem. Captain of Jehovah’s host, lead me on to victory. The promises are to him that overcometh; oh, help me to fight and overcome, that I may win the prize. Enable me to war the good warfare, to fight the good fight of faith. There are fightings without, and fears within; but lead me on. The principalities and powers of hell come against me, the rulers of the darkness of this world; but Thou art mightier than they: make them to flee before me. I would choose no other commander; I put myself at Thy disposal; order the array for me, and make me more than conqueror through Him that loved me.

10. I see in Thee Him whom I must love

The Christ of God is the infinitely lovable one; the chief among ten thousand. All beauty, all perfection, all excellence, are in Thee, O Christ. There is none like Thee among the sons of men; neither is there any love like Thy love. Thou art He whom the Father loveth, and He whom the Father loveth must be worthy of my love. Thon lovest us, and shall we not love Thee? Thou gavest Thy life for us, and shall we not love Thee? Thou didst rise from the dead for us, and shall we not love Thee? Altogether lovely art Thou; and we give Thee our love, as the only one worthy of it. There is nothing in Thee but what is attractive; all that Thou hast said and done is fitted to command our love. Help me to love Thee; to love Thee perfectly; to love Thee more and more; to requite Thy love with mine, and to show my love to Thee by the devotedness of my daily life. If I love Thee not, all is wrong with me. Oh, set me right, and shed abroad Thy love in my heart, that I may render Thee my best and warmest affections. Thou askest me the threefold question once asked of a denying disciple, ‘Lovest thou me?’ oh, teach me to answer with the same confidence as he did, even in the full remembrance of his sad denial: ‘Yea, Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’

11. I see in Thee one whom I can trust

What I have heard and known of Thee, O Christ of God, makes me feel that Thou art infinitely trustworthy. I can trust Thine arm, for it is strong. I can trust Thy guidance, for it is sure. I can trust Thy guardianship, for it is almighty. I can trust Thy light, for it is the light of heaven. I can trust Thy rod and staff, for they lead and guide aright. I can trust Thy shade in the day of heat, for it is the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. I can trust Thy patience, for it is perfect. I can trust Thy words, for they are true and faithful. I can trust Thy love, for it passeth knowledge. Oh, help me to trust Thee more! Why should a suspicion ever cross me? Why should any distrust ever find its way into my soul? Why should I not know at all times what is confidence in Thee, the Son of the living God, the lover of the lost, the helper of the helpless, the healer of the sick, the succourer of the poor, the uplifter of the fallen, the rest of the weary? Let Thy perfect love cast out fear, for fear hath torment; and he that feareth does not comprehend this perfect love of Thine. Let me hear the gracious words ever sounding in my ears: Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. I will trust, and not be afraid.

12. I see in Thee One whom I must worship

Thy name is Jehovah, and Thou art God over all, blessed for ever. Thou wert ‘in the beginning,’ Thou wert with God, and Thou wert God. All things were made by Thee, and without Thee was not anything made that was made. Thou art the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Shall I not worship and bow down before Thee? Shall I not praise Thee,—not as one man praises another, but as they praise Jehovah who worship in His temple, crying, Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of Thy glory! Thy name is above every name in heaven and earth, and the glory of the universe is Thine. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! Not less than God art Thou, therefore I praise Thee. Immanuel, the Word made flesh, Son of God, and Son of man, I worship Thee. Light of the world, Light of life, Prince of the kings of the earth, King of nations, King of kings and Lord of lords, I worship Thee! The heaven of heavens cannot contain Thy glory, and all creation sends up to Thee its everlasting song. I join my voice with them in adoration, and extol Thee both as Creator and Redeemer; for in Thee I see Him who made all things by the word of His power, and Him who redeemed us to God by His blood. I sing, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.… Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.’

13. I see in Thee Him to whom I must consecrate myself

Thou art worthy of myself, and of my all. There is none like Thee in heaven or in earth. Even hadst Thou not loved me, nor done ought for me, Thy excellency is enough to lead to the consecration of myself, and of everything which I possess, to Thee. But Thou hast loved me, and therefore I give myself to Thee. Thou hast loved me with an immeasurable love, and therefore Thou must have my complete self,—spirit, soul, and body. Thou hast given Thyself to me, and I give myself to Thee. Thou hast been born for me, Thou hast lived for me, Thou hast died for me; and I devote my whole self perfectly to Thee, that I may serve Thee, obey Thee, follow Thee, delight in Thee. I would keep back nothing from Him who bought me with such a price, and washed me in blood so precious. I give my strength to Thee; my powers and faculties; my time and health; my gold and silver; my life and my death,—all I have and own I give to Thee, O Christ, Son of God, and Lord of heaven and earth. Uproot selfishness, and self-seeking, and self-glorying. God forbid that I should glory, save in Thy cross, and that I should make the object of my life anything save what in some way or measure bears upon Thy honour and subserves Thy cause. Draw me, and I will run after Thee. Make me wholly Thine, in every part of my being. Life is not life, if Thou art not its beginning and its end; nor is there any joy of earth which I ought to separate from Thee. It is not, what will man say of me? that I must ask myself, but, what will Christ say?—not, how will this bear upon my own wealth, or influence, or honour? but, how will it bear upon the cause, the work, the glory of Him whose I am, and whom I serve? Be Thou all, in everything, small and great, private or public. Fill up my days and nights with Thyself, that no part of my time may he without Thee. In the closet, in the family, in the street, in the place of business, in solitude, in company, be Thou ever with me, and in me. In my joys and in my sorrows, in my gains and losses, in my health and in my sickness, in my silence and in my speech, in my journeying or in my resting, in my plans, my perplexities, my conflicts, my frets and troubles, my disappointments and vexations, my waiting and weariness, my riches and poverty,—in all these, be Thou with me, and I with Thee; so consecrated to Thee, that I shall feel every fragment of my life and every change of my lot a new opportunity for developing that consecration which I owe Thee, and which will give to me, not bondage and irksomeness, but liberty and gladness. O Christ, help me more and more to take up my cross, to deny myself, and to follow Thee; to present my body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God and unto Thee, walking in Thy steps and shining in Thy light, and bearing every burden which Thy love may lay upon me.

Set me as a seal upon Thine heart,

As a seal upon Thine arm;

For love is stronger than death,

Jealousy is cruel as the grave:

The coals thereof are coals of fire,

A most vehement flame.

Let Him kiss me with the kisses of Thy mouth,

For Thy love is better, than wine.

14. I see in Thee Him for whom I must watch

Thou art absent, and I will remember Thee; I will think upon Thee, even as Thou rememberest me, and thinkest upon me. For absence makes no difference in love. It but whets the appetite. I cannot forget what Thou wert, when here in Thy lowliness and sorrow. I cannot cease to meditate on what Thou art now in Thy exaltation. Teach me the meaning of these words: ‘Whom having not seen we love; and in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’ But this is not all. We are not content with absence. We wish to see Thy face, to hear Thy voice, and to have fellowship such as Thy disciples had when Thou wert with them,—such as Moses and Elias had upon the mount of transfiguration. And Thou hast promised that it shall be so. Thou wilt not be always absent. Thou hast promised to come again for us, and be with us for ever. Thou hast not revealed the day or hour, so that we know not when we may expect Thee. But we love Thee, and we will watch. We long to see Thee, and we will watch. We are weary of absence, and we will watch. The world is getting darker and sadder, and we will watch. Thou hast bidden us, and we will watch. It is long, long since Thou didst warn us to trim our lamps, and we will watch. The night may be nearer its end than many think, and we will watch. The world has forgotten Thee, and is occupied with its commerce and science, saying, These are thy gods, O men; therefore we will watch. The first resurrection may be nearer than we think, and we will watch. We hear Thy voice, ‘He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly;’ and we reply, Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter VII

god’s mighty work in and through the church

‘THAT God may be all in all’ is the basis of all apostolic doctrine, from which it sets out, and into which it returns, and round which it revolves. ‘Of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things,’ is the refrain of the apostle’s songs; a refrain which the whole early Church took up and sung with so loud a harmony, that the sound went over earth, and pagan nations awoke, startled at the name of the one living and true God, King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only wise God, so different from their Jupiter, their Mercury, and other such false and unclean gods. The burden of these doxologies is: Glory to that eternal Jehovah who worketh all in all, who filleth all in all.

God is the doer as well as the purposer of everything connected with the Christ, and of everything relating to the redeemed and their connection with the Christ, who is the centre of all His purposes and desires. The Church is His creation. Each saint is His creation. There is no religion in a man save that which originates with Him, and is consummated by Him. Religion that is self-made, consisting of doctrines, feelings, rites, self-taught and self-wrought, is no better than ancient paganism. ‘We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them’ (Eph. 2:10): that is, we are His workmanship, not our own (ver. 8); nay, we are His ‘creation,’ nay, His creation in and by Christ Jesus; and all this for ‘good works,’ for which God had made all this vast preparation, ‘that we should walk in them.’

Thus God is in Christ purposing concerning us; for Christ and the redeemed are inseparable in the eternal purpose of the Father. That purpose embraces both, and embodies the mutual relationship of the one to the other. It contemplates also, and makes preparation for, the holiness of each redeemed one, as well as for the perfection of the whole Church of God; as it is written, ‘Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Tim. 1:9, 10).

Thus God is in Christ working concerning us; for all His operations for us and in us are in connection with the Christ. From the first touch of His hand, when He arrests us in our folly, to the last, when He finishes the glorious work in the resurrection of our bodies, all His doings concerning us are ‘in Christ.’ ‘He created all things by Jesus Christ,’ is as true of the new creation as of the old. He is the former of all things, the Lord of Hosts is His name. Each hour bears witness to the unceasing and unwearied touches of His hand in moulding us anew after His own image. And all this is the working and the purposing of ‘love,’—the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. And all this to the praise of the glory of His grace, that God may be all in all.

Thus God is in Christ reconciling us to Himself; for the reconciliation comes through this living channel, and this only. God approaches us in Christ, lays hold on us in Christ, looks at us in Christ, makes proposals to us in Christ, links us to Himself in Christ. ‘You hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death’ (Col. 1:22). The reconciliation of the covenant is Christ Jesus our Lord. Save in Him, there is no nearness, no favour, no friendship, no fellowship. The one Mediator is the one reconciler, through whom God says to us, ‘Come unto me;’ and as there is but one mediation, so there is but one atonement, one propitiation, one reconciliation; one cross, one blood, one death, one burial, one resurrection. For in each of these Christ is all. ‘He of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’

Thus God is in Christ, not imputing unto us our trespasses; for the forgiveness of all sin comes through Him, ‘in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace’ (Col. 1:14). The non-imputation of sin takes for granted its existence. It exists, but it is not imputed to us, because it has been righteously imputed to another; and that vicarious imputation has been accepted by the Judge, and is presented to us, that we, accepting it, may have all the fulness of the non-imputation or no-condemnation made over to us. We acknowledge the sin, but we recognise the substitute taking our sin that we might take the pardon; we see the Father reckoning the sin to the sin-bearer, that it might not be reckoned to us.

Thus God is quickening us; for it is written, ‘God, who is rich in mercy, for the great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ’ (Eph. 2:4); and as He quickeneth us now with Him, so hereafter He will raise us up with Him, in the day of which He speaks, ‘My dead body shall they arise’ (Isa. 26:19). The life of Christ becomes our life, flows into us, flows through us, imparting to both soul and body the spiritual energy, or ‘everlasting life,’ contained in Him as the one fountainhead, communicating both the present and eternal vitality, which, beginning in the new birth here, is to be consummated in the glories of the first resurrection, at His second coming. For it is one life, and one life-giver, and one fountain of life, from first to last.

Thus God is enlightening us; for it is by our connection with Him who is the Light of the world that we are enlightened. ‘In Him was life, and the life was the light of men’ (John 1:4); and it is the light proceeding from Him which reveals God to us, and makes us light in the Lord. That which alone is light to us is ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ As of the New Jerusalem hereafter, so of the Church now, and so of each believing soul, ‘the Lamb is the light thereof;’ and the light of the Lamb is the light of the cross. The cross is our lamp. All is darkness to which the illumination of the cross does not extend. Light for the human spirit! Light for the gloom of earth! Light for the Church of God! All these are to be found in the cross of Him whom God hath set forth as a ‘propitiation, through faith in His blood:’ for without the propitiation of the blood, light cannot come to the sinner. Heaven may not need that light, but earth does. It is through the blood of the everlasting covenant that the light streams into the soul; and it is thus that it is to stream into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23), filling it with redemption-light for ever. ‘I am the Light of the world,’ is the bright message that is going through earth just now, in the day of her darkness; and it is this that is to be perpetuated for ever in the peculiar glory of the celestial city,—a city which, though coming down from God out of heaven, is yet to have for its citizens, not angels, but men who have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.

Thus God is strengthening us. Our helplessness and the divine power meet together, and find how entirely suitable they are, each to the other. We need divine strength; for the weakness introduced into the human soul by sin is great. The divine strength needs weakness such as ours on which to show itself; for in no case save this can it find occasion for coming forth in all its fulness. God’s purpose,—both to manifest Himself and to deliver us,—was to make us absolutely dependent on His power in every region of our being, and in every part of that mysterious process of our restoration to His image. Therefore He strengthens us with might by His Spirit in the inner man. He makes us ‘strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might;’ teaching us to ‘glory in our infirmities, that the peace of Christ may rest upon us.’ There is strength enough in Him for us. Every day we need its fulness; every hour we are welcome to it in all its magnitude.

Thus God is comforting us. In the everlasting covenant, the Church is recognised as passing through much tribulation; as being in deep waters and in burning fires:

The path of sorrow, and that path alone,

Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;

No traveller ever reached that blest abode,

Who found not thorns and briars in his road.

For He who knew what human hearts would prove,

How slow to learn the dictates of His love;

That, hard by nature, and of stubborn will,

A life of ease would make them harder still;

In pity to the souls His grace designed

To rescue from the ruins of mankind,

Called for a cloud to darken all their years,

And said, Go spend them in the vale of tears.

Such was the purpose of God both concerning the discipline and the deliverance, the road through which His saints were to pass to the kingdom, and the consolation as well as companionship which they were to have upon that way. The Christ was made ‘perfect through sufferings;’ and so is the Church. Therefore is consolation needed; otherwise the way would be too sad, and the discipline too heavy. And a Comforter is also needed; that Comforter, the promise of the Father, sent down by Christ to sustain us in the day of His absence. He who purposed all things from the beginning, and now worketh all things according to that purpose, suits the discipline to the case, and suits the consolation to the discipline. He comforteth us in all our tribulation; nay, He makes us to glory in tribulation: for this is the road by which all the former saints went to the kingdom; the way by which all are going now; the way by which the Master went during His sojourn here.

Thus God is purifying us. The furnace was provided in the eternal purpose. We were not in a moment to be transferred to the glory above, as soon as we were begotten again to the lively hope. We were not to be instantaneously perfected and purified, so that sin should be utterly expelled from us, and we should have no more need of the blood; no more need of the daily discipline. God’s purpose was, that our preparation should be by a process, not by an act: that by gradual progress we should he the occasion for drawing out the power and grace of God. Instantaneous perfection seems to some more glorifying to God than gradual improvement. But God does not think so. He wants to show us what sin is, what the power of evil is, what a human heart is, what the blood of Christ can do, what the power of the Spirit can do. And so He purifies us gradually. He has done so from the beginning; and there is not one instance in Scripture of instantaneous perfection, nay, not one instance of perfection at all. The law of the kingdom is expressed in the following prayer of the apostle: ‘The God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you’ (1 Pet. 5:10).

Thus God is making us His witnesses. Ye are my witnesses, He says to us. Witnesses of whom? Of the Christ of God. We testify of Him; we reflect His light; we radiate His glory. We are His mirrors here. We are like the moon, giving back some of the light He sheds on us; like the sea, shining with His brightness; like the mountains, telling of His greatness; like the wind, speaking of His power; like the flowers, displaying His beauty; like the blue arch, proclaiming His vastness; like the sands, symbolizing the years of His eternity; like the rainbow, unfolding His varied perfections; like the rivers, reminding men of the ceaseless roll of His providence; like the rain, showing His refreshing bounty; like the harvest field, displaying the exuberant fulness of His love.

Thus are we in these ways, and in a thousand more, His witnesses: telling out all His glory, and power, and holiness, and love. Our life is to be one continuous witness-bearing to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Christ Himself, who, when He left this earth, left us behind Him to represent Him here. Let our testimony be full; let our representation be worthy of Him whose representatives we are.

We are left here to bear witness to the Christ of God. Let us see that we do it well.

The world needs our testimony, for it knows Him not, neither cares to know Him. Let our lives be such a testimony as shall win the very worst, and attract the most distant and heedless. Let that testimony be full; let it be consistent: for who can tell the injury that has been done by inconsistent testimony,—by the lives of Christians who were far more like the world that they professed to have forsaken, than the Lord to whom they had joined themselves?

The Church, too, needs consistent witness-bearing. It needs to be lifted up; and who is to lift it up? It needs to be more completely unworldly and unearthly; and who shall help to make it such? It needs to be roused and quickened; but who shall rouse and quicken it, if all be slumbering and sleeping? It needs to start upon a new career of devotedness, and fervent self-denial, and holiness, and love; but who is to begin?

Chapter VIII

life through faith in the christ of god

AT the close of his Gospel, John warns us against supposing that he had given a complete narrative of the words and works of the Lord Jesus (chap. 21:25); or that even a complete narrative could possibly be given. The grace, the glory, the number of these, were far beyond the pen or lips of man. The speaker and the doer of these was the Infinite One; and His words and works, both in number and excellence, were like Himself.

In the conclusion of his twentieth chapter we have a statement of a similar kind to the above, and one which bears very closely upon the truths we have been endeavouring to bring out in the preceding pages concerning the Christ of God. The apostle seems afraid of allowing the very thought to enter any reader’s mind for a moment, that his Gospel was to be received as a complete record of the life of the Son of God on earth. It was not such. It could not be such. It was not intended to be such. What! A short treatise of twenty-one brief chapters contain the full history of the Christ of God! Impossible! Could the hollow of a babe’s hand contain the ocean?

It is with the remembrance of these things that we are to read this marvellous Gospel. It is but one star, or fragment of a star, taken out of myriads,—myriads now hidden, but all of which we shall one day see.

But let us take up the passage under the following points: (1) the signs; (2) the faith; (3) the life; (4) the name.

I. The Signs.—The word sign does not confine itself to miracles; nor does it refer to something future, as if it contained something prophetical. It is something which signifies that the person speaking is really the person whom he professes to be; something which identifies the individual, which verifies his statements. The turning of Moses’ rod into a serpent was to be a ‘sign’ to Pharaoh that God had spoken to Moses. The going back of the shadow upon the dial of Ahaz was to be a sign to Hezekiah that God would heal him. The Jews asked a sign from Jesus, to prove to them that He was the Messiah.

A sign, then, in the case of Christ, was something which signified that He was really that which He professed to be. Of these signs His miracles formed the chief part, though not the whole. His resurrection from the dead was the one great sign given specially by God to prove that He was the Christ. The proofs of the reality of that resurrection, and of the identity of Him who was now appearing to the disciples as their risen Master, with Him who went out and in among them so long, and who was at last nailed to the cross, were the wounds in His hands, and feet, and side, which He now exhibited to Thomas and the rest of the disciples.

Of such ‘signs’ John had recorded many; but he intimates to us that there were many more behind, many more which he might have recorded, many more which his own memory could recall,—all of them bearing upon the point of the Messiahship of Jesus; all of them public ‘signs’ too, not done in a corner, but openly, before men: ‘Many other signs truly did Jesus, in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book.’ The events in the life of Jesus may well be compared to the stars in the night skies. The eye sees many, and what we see is enough to attest the power and glory of Jehovah; the telescope shows many more; if our telescopes were enlarged and improved, we might see more still; were our powers of vision increased, or were we translated to some other sphere, we should see more and more of them, all proclaiming the might and majesty of their Maker. So with the facts in the life of Jesus. The evangelists have gathered up a few, and presented them for us to gaze upon. But they are, after all, but few in comparison with those which remain ungathered; and we must wait the day when we shall hear the whole glorious history of that wondrous life, and have fact upon fact presented to us, and word upon word,—all detailed to us in blessed profusion and endless number, either from the lips of His disciples, or, better still, from His own. The full detail of these will of itself be enough to fill up the days and nights of eternity.

But though by far the greater number of His words and deeds is left unrecorded, enough has been preserved to answer the divine purpose with us here. Nay, we may say that this abstract or abridgment of His life, this culling from the events of that life, is far better for us than a larger history would have been. We should but have been bewildered, distracted, with more; and though we have often said to ourselves, and to one another, ‘Would that we knew more of the Lord’s life!’ we knew not what we said. The gratification of such a wish just now would not be for the better to us, but for the worse. All that we need has been retained for our use here, and we are quite sure that the rest are not thrown away. They are too precious jewels to be lost. They are but treasured up for future use, to be brought forth to us hereafter. For we have not done knowing Christ when we see Him face to face. We shall only have begun.

Had this abridgment or selection been a human one, we might have been somewhat stumbled. We might have asked, Is it a fair one? Does it give a proper view of the case? Does it place the evidence upon its proper basis, and bring out all its strength? But knowing that it is a divine, not a human selection, we have no such questions to ask. The selection of facts and words must be perfect of its kind, misrepresenting nothing, neither understating nor overstating anything; giving us such a sketch of the earthly life of the Christ as would produce upon us the true impression, the exact feeling or state of mind, which would have been produced had the whole been presented to us, and had we been able to grasp, or weigh, or comprehend that whole. It is the Holy Spirit who has abridged for us the life of the Son of God; and that abridgment must not only be thoroughly accurate, but so adjusted and balanced in all its parts as to do its work most efficiently, to present the evidence most strongly; to strengthen, not to weaken, the intended impression; to concentrate, not to diffuse or dilute, the light.

Hence it is that the apostle, while reminding us of the many unrevealed signs, adds this regarding the recorded ones: ‘These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.’ We take the recorded signs as so many divine messages to us, so many heavenly rays converging on the person of Jesus of Nazareth; and we take them, too, as specimens of the unrecorded,—each miracle a representative of multitudes of unrecorded miracles, each word a representative of millions of unrecorded words. We thus learn, that while much has been left ungathered, yet that which is left is of the same tenor with that which has been preserved: the unknown does not contradict the known; the evidence remaining unproduced is all in the same direction, adding to the proof that Jesus of Nazareth is all that He professed to be.

These signs are worth the studying. They are full of meaning. Each one is big with everlasting truth, with divine and infinite love.

II. The Faith.—The faith has its root in the ‘signs,’ or in the divine statement concerning the signs; for faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The signs were specially wrought for the production of this faith, and they are selected and recorded for the same purpose to us. They are the foundation of faith, not simply as miracles, but as miracles of a certain kind, and with a definite bearing. Their meaning is unambiguous. They have one voice and one object. They all bear upon the person and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. They speak out the mind of God concerning Him, leaving us in no doubt as to this point, what God thinks of Him.

These signs, though having one voice and one meaning, bear upon our faith in a threefold way.

(1.) They testify that Jesus of Nazareth is the Sent of God.—As Nicodemus declared, ‘No man can do these miracles except God be with him.’ This was the point to which Jesus brought the Pharisees: Either these miracles are God’s doing or Satan’s, and prove that I am sent either of God or of Satan. But as these miracles are all against Satan and for God, as well as for the good of man, they must be of divine origin, and prove me to be sent of God. ‘I came from God,’ He said, and these works are the proof that this is true.

(2.) They testify that Jesus is the Christ.—The miracles were not merely great, but peculiar; just such miracles as the prophets had predicted that Messiah when He came should perform. Hence, when John’s disciples came with the question, ‘Art thou He that should come?’ Jesus ‘in that same hour,’ and before their eyes, wrought certain miracles, and sent back the messengers to John with this message from Himself: ‘Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them’ (Matt. 11:4, 5). These were the signs which were to satisfy John and his disciples that Jesus was the Christ of God, the Messiah of the prophets, the seed of the woman who had come to bruise the serpent’s head, and to destroy the works of the devil.

(3.) They testify that Jesus is the Son of God.—If He were Messiah, then, by inference, was He known to be the Son of God. But some of His ‘signs’ went more directly to prove the Sonship, especially the resurrection. By this, says the apostle, He was ‘declared to be the Son of God with power.’ It was as the Son that He had so often spoken in the Psalms concerning His own resurrection by the Father’s power, and as the fruit of the Father’s love. ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.’ And when proving to Thomas that He was in very deed the crucified Jesus, who was dead and was alive again, He was proving that He was the Son of God, He of whom it had been said, ‘Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee.’

Thus, then, these divinely selected and divinely recorded signs bear upon the person of Christ in these three points. They declare Him to be the Sent of God, to be the Christ of God, to be the Son of God. And under these three heads, all that we need to know of Him is comprised. These signs have no meaning, if they do not mean these these three things; and if they do mean these things, then what excuse have we for unbelief? What a perfect foundation have we for faith in Him! How can we but believe? ‘These are written, that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.’ And in the day of weariness and doubt, let us ever fall back on these to renew and confirm us. Let us not delude ourselves with the idea that we are only ‘doubting ourselves,’ or doubting our own faith, and not doubting what God has recorded. Unbelief is a far deeper and deadlier thing than merely doubting ourselves. No man ever dishonoured Christ or flung away his soul by doubting himself. The evil is, that at such times we really doubt the very simplest truths of Christianity, and we deceive ourselves, and soothe our consciences with the idea that we are doubting ourselves, not God, nor His testimony; not Christ, nor the signs concerning Him. He who has gone into these doubtings, and been, by the mercy of God, recovered from them, will be the first to acknowledge that his doubts were, when analyzed, of a far deadlier nature than he had at first supposed them; that they really struck at the very truth of God, and that in all these doubts he discovered not only the manifestations of self-righteousness, but the indications of atheism. He thought at first that he was humbly siding with God against his own evil self, but soon he saw that he was siding with self and with the devil against God and His truth. He was actually rejecting the testimony of the Father concerning the Son. He was refusing either to believe the signs, or to interpret them aright. The secret thought of the doubting heart, under whatever disguises it may cloak itself, is, Jesus of Nazareth is not the Christ, nor the Son of God.

III. The Life.—The faith which roots itself in these signs is connected with life. We believe, and we live. ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ And when faith is connected with the Christ, then the unseen thing which it finds in Him is life. He that hath the Son hath life. ‘He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.’

It is not easy to define ‘life,’ but we may say that it consists in such things as these: (1.) Forgiveness, or deliverance from condemnation; for condemnation is death, and the life which we get from Christ is the reversal of this death: ‘Through this man is preached unto us the forgiveness of sins; there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.’ (2.) The possession of that new being or nature by which we are made to resemble the living God and His living Son: that Jehovah whose name is I Am; that Christ who is the life; that last Adam, who is not only a ‘living soul,’ but a ‘quickening Spirit.’ (3.) Replenishment with holiness; for as unholiness is death, and death is unholiness, so holiness is life, and life is holiness. The sinner exists, but does not live; the saint lives as well as exists. (4.) Participation of all happiness. Life is not life without joy. Joy is like the blood of the body. Exhaust the blood, the man’s life is gone. So drain the soul of joy, and all that deserves the name of life has fled. It is not so unimportant or unessential a thing to be happy as some men tell us. Happiness is the very essence of true life; and hence Jesus comes to us with rest, and peace, and joy, at the very outset. ‘These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.’ Christ’s own joy in its fulness is then the very life of life. (5.) Hope of resurrection, or rather we should say, resurrection itself. For in Christ we have such a pledge of resurrection, that we may be said to be already risen, already possessed of our resurrection bodies. ‘When Christ who is our life shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory;’ meanwhile, until He appeareth, we may reckon ourselves possessed of the glory and the life, even in the midst of the shame and death of this present evil world.

All these things are comprised in the ‘life’ of which our text speaks. Life is not merely salvation, or deliverance from the eternal woe. It includes these, but it rises far beyond them. It is the reversal of all that the first Adam brought on his sons by his transgression; it is the bestowment of the fulness of the last Adam upon us, making us one with Him who is our life, making us partakers of the divine nature, filling us not merely with the life of angels, or the life of heaven, but with the life of the Son of God. His life is ours; because He liveth, we live also; our life is hid with Christ in God.

The link, the one link, between us and this life is faith. Believing, we have life. It is the link between us and the life, because it is the link between us and Christ. Life is the result of connection with Christ Himself.

In the days of His miracles here on earth, contact with Him was everything. In some cases it was the sick man’s touch of Him, in others it was His touch of the sick man that accomplished the healing. Both ways are recorded, that we may see that the contact is mutual; that the great thing, the one thing, is contact, whether that be our touching Him, or His touching us. Just as sometimes He is spoken of as coming to us, and at other times we are spoken of as coming to Him; so in reference to the touch. He is said to touch us, we to touch Him. In both cases it is personal and direct contact with Himself. Nothing else will do.

There must be connection with the Christ, the Son of God. Not connection with a creed, or a catechism, or a Church, or a minister, or a godly ancestry, but with Christ Himself. It is this that saves, and everything that falls short of this fails to win the life. Pardon, peace, rest, life,—all that a sinner needs, is to be thus obtained. There is no other way. Prayers, tears, almsdeeds, mortification, penance, toil, suffering, religious performances, all are vain. Only in contact with the living Christ is there life for the dead in sin.

It is the Holy Spirit’s work to bring about this vital contact. It is He who takes the dead soul, and connects it with the source of life. Flesh and blood could not accomplish this; would never think of this, nor wish it; nay, would resist to the uttermost. Yes, it requires the almightiness of God to effect a result so utterly opposed to, and so strenuously resisted by, every feeling of the natural man.

But while the work and the Agent are supernatural, the way is natural. The Holy Spirit ‘worketh faith in us, and thereby uniteth us to Christ.’ He opens our eyes to see the signs done by Jesus, and to understand the truth connected with these. When thus brought to recognise in Jesus Him whom the Father had sent into the world as the life of men, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the connection between us and the source of life is established: life flows into us, His life, the life which quickens the dead, the life which makes us fit for the kingdom of life.

‘Believing,’ we have life! Whether we may be sensible of it or not, we have it; for the word of God is sure, and the life is connected not with feeling, but with faith.

‘Believing,’ we have life! However unlike the living we may be, however burdened, and feeble, and dark, we have life, for God hath given His sure word of promise.

Having life, we walk, and work, and act, and speak as living men. We go forward in joy, and liberty, and vigour to do the work of Him who hath quickened us. We start upon the race set for us, not darkly nor uncertainly, but as men who know their calling, and have their eye distinctly upon the goal.

IV. The Name.—In Scripture, the name of a person has a twofold reference. (1.) It distinguishes the individual from all others; (2.) It expresses his character. So the name of God, ‘Jehovah,’ marks Him out from all other gods, and also indicates His character, ‘the Lord God, merciful and gracious.’ So the name or names of Christ both single Him out, and intimate His nature, His character, His work,—Jesus, Immanuel, Christ, the Lord, the Lamb.

Through these, as it were, the life flows out from Him to us. They are the fountains to which we apply our thirsty lips, and drink of the water of life. From each of them pours a gushing stream of immortality.

The use of the singular number here, and often elsewhere (‘name,’ not ‘names’), implies, however, something more than this. ‘Name’ is no doubt the gathering together or concentration of the ideas contained in the others into one. But there is more in the word than this. The name of a person is often used as equivalent to the authority or power of that person; so that when I use his name, all his influence passes over to me, and I get all that he would be entitled to obtain. In order to get the full meaning of our text, we must add this last idea to the former. Thus, in Acts 3:16, ‘His name, through faith in His name, hath made this man strong.’

It is then the name of Christ as ‘a power,’—something potential, influential, omnipotent,—that our text speaks of. It is not only the name of names; it not only contains in itself that truth and love which, when believed, quicken the soul; but it is all-prevailing, when made use of by the sinner with God in order to obtain life.

This name is mighty. It can command. It speaks with authority. He that uses it may reckon on receiving what he needs. ‘Concerning the works of my hands command ye me.’ Thus we go to God, employing this omnipotent name.

This name is of great price. It can purchase life; nay, all things that we need. He who makes use of this name in his heavenly commerce is sure to prosper. Going with it into the heavenly market, he can purchase anything. There is nothing in all the stores of God which is too precious to be bought by gold like this.

Specially, however, in obtaining life is this name to be used. Having learned who Jesus really is; having discovered in Him the Christ, the Son of God, we say: Ah, then, His name is all we need. It must be sufficient to obtain life for us. And thus going to God, we get life ‘through His name.’

Life in Christ! Life from Christ! Life through His name! This is the sum of our message. It is glad tidings of great joy. We proclaim aloud this name. We tell its virtues, its power, its preciousness, its sufficiency. We present it to each of you for use, present use. God bids you use it. It is just the name you need. He bids you come to Him with it, and you are sure to succeed, on whatsoever errand you come. Nothing can withstand. Nothing is too excellent to be beyond its power to purchase. Only credit what God tells you of it; take it at once; use it as those who know that God would not deceive you in such a matter, nor put a false value on the name of His Son.

Life through the name of Jesus! Listen, ye dead in sin. Hear, and your souls shall live. There is no other name possessed of virtue or value equal to this. Honour this excellent name by using it; show that the value which you set upon it is the same that God does by going to Him with it, to purchase from Him the life which a sinner needs.

Do not undervalue that name, nor discredit the divine testimony to its potency. Do not mistrust it when you go to God with it; but act with the confidence,—the reverent confidence,—of a man who is assured that that name is all that has been said; nay, that the half has not been told him concerning its power and value. Mix nothing with it; add nothing to it; nothing of self, nothing of man, nothing either of earth or heaven. Take it as it is,—alone, perfect, all-powerful. You cannot trust it too much; nor expect too great things from your employment of it in the transactions between you and God.

Horatius Bonar, The Christ of God (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1874), 156–174.

Chapter IX

abiding in the son and in the father

THE Lord’s own words in the Gospel of John are remarkable for their references to our connection with the Christ, as that of being in Him and abiding in Him; of being in the truth, and abiding in the truth.

The bearing of all the preceding remarks upon this, and of this upon the preceding remarks, will be obvious. Connection with the Christ of God in most intimate closeness is that which is affirmed to be the beginning, middle, and end of a Christian man’s life on earth. This connection is brought about through the truth, by the power of the Holy Ghost; and the exhortations as well as warnings respecting all this are of the most solemn, and I might add, vehement kind.

Let us, for the enforcement of this, take up more specially and in detail one verse, viz. 1 John 2:24. The whole of this Epistle bears more or less directly upon these points; but this verse brings them home to the Christian’s conscience, and refers to their lifelong application to the Christian’s walk with God.

The word ‘you’ is, in the Greek, emphatic, from its position and its construction. The apostle is writing to men exposed to seducing influences; tempted with perilous error, and assailed by ‘many antichrists.’ ‘Whatever others may think or do; however far they may go astray or blaspheme,—do you hold fast that which ye have received.’ This was his earnest message to the saints of the first century; it is no less his exhortation and his warning to the Church of the nineteenth.

It is of ‘the truth’ (ver. 21) that he is speaking; he gives it a special name, ‘that which they had heard from the beginning;’ he beseeches them to let that truth abide; he announces the blessed results of so doing.

I. The Truth.—Both in his Gospel and in his Epistles he dwells on what he calls by pre-eminence the truth, and lays great stress on the things that are true; the true words, and the true facts. He relates, too, the Master’s allusions to His speaking the truth (John 8:45); and to Himself as ‘the truth;’ and he takes special pains to inform us that his own record is true, and that he knows that it is true; and all this to furnish a firm foundation for our faith: ‘He that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe’ (John 19:35). The Master had said,—‘My record is true;’ ‘My judgment is true;’ ‘If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?’ and so the disciple speaks. On true things, true words, a true person, and a true history, John would have us rest our faith; not on opinion, or speculation, or reasoning, but on evidence of the surest kind, the testimony of honest witnesses; on that which is more satisfying and immoveable than human demonstration, the testimony of the God who cannot lie. Thus, he teaches us to say in regard to divine things, ‘we know them;’ not we think or conjecture, but we know; they are absolutely true and certain; and our belief of them rests on the explicit word of God. Our faith rises above all other faith, not because it is of superior quality in itself, but because it rests on a divine basis,—the authority of the God of truth. This is the immoveable rock on which we rest; a rock which time and age cannot crumble down; a rock against which waves rush and winds roar in vain. O rock of God, rock of ages, rock of eternity, how firm the faith, how blessed the man, that rests on Thee!

II. The name by which he here designates the Truth.—‘That which ye have heard from the beginning;’ an expression very like one of the Master’s, when He said to the Jews, ‘Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.’ The truth, then, of which John spoke to them was not new, but old; it was the one unvarying thing which they had all along heard: not modified, or improved upon, or refined, so as to suit the times; but the same, unchanged and unchangeable. When apostles came amongst them for the first time, they preached ‘the word of the truth of the gospel;’ and in that word, that truth, that gospel, there had been no improvements; nothing had become obsolete, and nothing required amendment. That which they had heard from the beginning was all that they were called to abide on now. Nothing needed to be added to, or taken from it. Its contents were infinitely varied; but itself remained ever the same.

In this respect it is like the works of God’s hand around us. There is the sun in the firmament, just the same as at the beginning, in form, motion, light, and heat. It has not begun to be reckoned obsolete; nor has something new been proposed as a substitute. It does not require improvement: men have not begun to weary of it; nor have flaws been discovered in its glorious radiance. Development, in the sense of drawing out its treasures, and unfolding its beauties and perfections, is proceeding as science expands; but development in the sense of addition, or improvement, is not dreamt of even as a possibility. Men are content with their old sun, the sun of Adam, the sun of Noah, the sun of Moses and Joshua; the sun that was lighted up on the fourth day, the sun that rose over Sodom, the sun that stood still on Gibeon, the sun that was darkened for three hours at Jerusalem and over all the land. Modern enlightenment has not yet affirmed that its theories of progress admit of application to the sun, or that a higher science may yet do for astronomy what a higher criticism and a more advanced theology are doing for religious truth, and for ‘the Christ of God.’

That which we have heard from the beginning is the same that we are to hear and obey now; for the truth is like the true One Himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. And like as the sun in the firmament is still the same full source of light, and heat, and fruitfulness, so is the Christ of God still, as in ages past, the fountainhead of life, and health, and gladness. Earth is not weary of her sun; so let not the Church be weary of hers. The light of the world eighteen centuries ago is the light of the world still. Truth never grows old. On her brow there are no wrinkles; no grey hairs upon her head. She does not totter with age, nor does her tongue stammer. She knows no second childhood; for she is always young, yet always ancient as well; unchanging amid changes, immortal in a land of death; perfect amid imperfection, and weakness, and decay.

But what is it that we have heard from the beginning? We have heard that the Word was made flesh; that God so loved the world as to give His Son. We have heard that God is love; that the cross of Christ is the exponent of that love, and the exhibition of the righteousness in conjunction with which that love has come to us. We have heard of the precious blood of Christ as cleansing, reconciling, healing, comforting. We have heard of the eternal life which has come to us as God’s free gift through the death of the Prince of Life. We have heard of the record or testimony concerning this life which God has proclaimed. We have heard of the Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. We have heard of the divine generosity that has made us sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus. We have heard of the promise of His appearing in His glory, bringing with Him resurrection, and glory, and the incorruptible inheritance. These are some of the things which we have heard from the beginning; and in hearing of which we believed, and in believing became sons and heirs.

These things have not changed nor grown obsolete. They have proved their excellency through the ages, and passed through many a trial, many a scrutiny. They have resisted triumphantly the assaults of scepticism and superstition; paganism persecuted, popery veiled, rationalism undermined. But all in vain. The well is too deep for man’s appliances to fill up, too clear for man’s hostility to disturb, too perennial for man’s anger to dry up. The living water in it is as transparent as at the first. It quenches man’s thirst as thoroughly in these last days as it did in ages past. It is still a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

Most venerable name, ‘that which we have heard from the beginning;’ even more venerable now than in the days of the apostle, and becoming more venerable every day! We need and we desire no new gospel, no new truth, as if ancient truth had become antiquated. That which gladdened the sinners of Jerusalem, or Corinth, or Ephesus, or Philippi, can gladden us still. That which fed the Church of God in primitive times can feed us in these last days. Can we ask for anything better, truer, more suited to our condition than that which the Church has heard, and which apostles preached from the beginning?

III. The necessity for the continuance of this truth.—We may see this from what we have already said, but much more might be added to enforce the apostle’s exhortation. There is no other truth to substitute for it; and besides, the old is better. No second revelation has descended to us. God has not broken silence since the day He spoke in Patmos. Any new revelation must be a human one; and a human one must be infinitely inferior to the divine. It is not merely continuance in truth, but in ‘the truth;’ nor the continuance of the truth, but the continuance of that truth in us; the truth in us, and we in the truth; it dwelling in us, and we in it, so that ‘that which we have heard from the beginning’ shall penetrate us in all its integrity and unmixed purity, pervading every part of our being, moulding us, quickening us, sanctifying us, remaining with us to the end.

The abiding of this truth in us, here inculcated, is broadly opposed to the flippant and superficial tenure of it by many in our day. The truth must not lie upon the surface, like water on the rock, it must sink deep into us: it must not be held with levity or in sport, nor dallied with as a thing of pastime; it must be grasped in earnest, as if part of our very soul. It must not come and go, by fits and starts, for convenience, or for gain, or for approbation; it must abide, unchangeable, not indeed like the rock, immoveable and uncommunicative, but like the river, ever flowing in its old and happy channel; diffusing fruitfulness and verdure all around.

The non-abiding of this truth in us is the cause of much that is false, hollow, and feverish in the religion of multitudes. True religion must rest upon the truth, upon ‘that which we have heard from the beginning.’ Truth and religion have too often been separated; and we find on the one hand truth professed without religion, and on the other, religion professed without truth. Indeed, as to the latter, it is beginning to be affirmed that a man may be a very religious man without holding the truth, and that it is the highest form of religion that soars above creeds and doctrines, and repudiates all theologies whatever. The current of public opinion runs strongly in favour of this idea, and it is promulgated as one of the discoveries of the age, that the religious sentiment is quite independent of doctrine, and can root itself in a negation or a falsehood as naturally and properly as in a truth or a positive creed. If the Bible is to be credited, this is simply and nakedly an impossibility. The ‘religious sentiment’ is nothing but a fancy, or a dream, or a flight of poetry, if not the offspring of truth. We may say more: the religious sentiment, either undirected or misdirected, either under no guidance of truth or under the guidance of positive error, must be identical with idolatry or blasphemy. The Bible acknowledges no God but Jehovah, and every deviation from the right knowledge and right worship of Him is a crime. It recognises no religion but one, founded on that which we have heard from the beginning. The religious ‘sentiment’ may be very fervent in the worshippers of Baal, or Jupiter, or Mary, but its fervour finds no acceptance with Him who is jealous for His name, to whom there is but one truth and one religion; who has never consented to recognise falsehood concerning Himself as an equivalent for truth regarding Himself; nor man’s ideas of what God should be as a substitute for what He declares that God is; nor the shifting theories of religion as equally good, equally safe, and equally satisfactory with ‘that which we have heard from the beginning.’

IV. The results.—‘Ye also shall continue in the Father and in the Son.’ There is certainly something wonderful and glorious here. There is another side of divine truth presented to us, and another view of our relationship to God. The result of abiding in the truth will he abiding in the Father and the Son; and, of course, departure from that truth will be expulsion or estrangement from the Father and the Son. The beginning of our religion was coming to the Father, and this we did in believing the truth upon His own testimony. The continuance of our religion was an abiding in the Father, and this through abiding in the truth. So with regard to the Son: we came to be in Him by being in the truth as revealed concerning Him; and as we began, so we carry on; that which we heard from the beginning remains in us, and so we remain in the Father and the Son. Rejection of the truth involves the loss of this position, this relationship; and the more of divine truth that we possess, the more is this position confirmed, and the more fully does this relationship develope itself.

But what is meant by ‘continuing in the Father and the Son’? It is not enough to say that it means continuing to know, or continuing to have fellowship with, or continuing to worship, or continuing to love and to be loved. It implies something deeper, more intimate, more full than this. The figure is taken first of all from our Lord’s own discourses. ‘At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.’ ‘Abide in me, and I in you: as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me.’ The connection between our abiding in Him and the truth abiding in us, is also affirmed by our Lord: ‘If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him;’ and again, ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you.’

(1.) We are in the Father and the Son, as the Father Himself is in the Son, and the Son in the Father (John 17:21). Nothing can imply intimacy more fully than this.

(2.) We are in the Father and in the Son as the seed is in the soil, or as the graft is in the branch. This is intimacy producing fruitfulness, and furnishing us with sap and life,—intimacy growing into perfect oneness.

(3.) We are in the Father and Son as the inmate of a house is within its walls, surrounded by it on all sides for shelter, comfort, and all the joys of home. This home intimacy is as close as can be conceived, he who enjoys it being compassed about with divine light, and love, and glory.

(4.) We are in the Father and in the Son as the gold and silver are in the treasure-house, and as the treasure-house itself is in the fortress, doubly surrounded, for completeness of safety. ‘Our life is hid with Christ in God.’

(5.) We are in the Father and in the Son as was Jerusalem in the midst of the encircling hills. ‘As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people, from henceforth even for ever.’ What absolute security and repose does this imply! The Father and the Son our walls and bulwarks!

(6.) We are in the Father and in the Son as was the manna in the ark of the covenant, safe in the very holy of holies; or as the pillar spoken of in the promise to the Philadelphian church: ‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out;’ the ornament and glory of the eternal house in which the redeemed shall dwell and worship for ever.

These may be taken as parts of the figure here made use of, in so far as it is a figure; but the fulness of the blessing, and honour, and joy, and security, and light, here shadowed forth, no human lip or pen can set forth. We cannot know it rightly now, but we shall know it hereafter; only there seems something so unutterably glorious and blessed in the thought, that we might almost say, we shall never fully understand the mystery. But God, our God, understands it fully, and He can and will give us the full benefit of it, whether we understand it or not. Out of these half-understood expressions, He can enable us to draw unceasing gladness and holiness, unfolding to us in His own way and time more and more of their unsearchable riches; and through ‘that which we have heard from the beginning,’ making us each day more abundantly partakers of His fellowship through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.

Chapter X

the future glory of the christ

EARTH has a future in connection with the Christ of God. His body is composed of its dust, and this of itself forms a link which cannot be broken.

The Son of God is the ‘second man,’ or ‘last Adam,’ and as such He is to have dominion over all that of which the first Adam was king. God’s eternal purpose includes not only the king, but the kingdom; and the history of the Christ carries along with it the history of this earth, past, present, and to come.

We have already alluded to this in passing, but let us ere we close take it up a little more fully; and let us do so in connection with the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the humiliation and the glory of ‘the Christ’ are brought strikingly into view. Without expounding that chapter in detail, we may bring out some of its more outstanding points.

Into four great parts, or sections, does the apostle here divide the history of Him who is the brightness of Jehovah’s glory, and the express image of His person. Of these sections the headings are these: The things which we have seen, or Jesus made a little lower than the angels; the things which we do not see (i.e. which do not yet exist), or all things not yet put under Him; the things that we do see (i.e. which now exist), or Jesus crowned with glory and honour; the things that we shall see, or all things put in subjection under Him, and the kingdoms of earth made His de facto, as they have been His de jure, from the beginning. Each of these four points the apostle brings to bear upon his argument, in his great demonstration of the super-Adamic, super-angelic, super-Mosaic, glory of the Christ, the last Adam, the Head, the King, the Priest of ‘the world to come.’

The first two of these four parts are marked by a common aspect of darkness; the second two, by a common aspect of brightness. The first of all is the period of Messiah’s self-abnegation here, in the days of His flesh, when, though rich, for our sakes He became poor, was made perfect through sufferings, and bore our curse upon the tree. The second is the present period of His non-manifestation and non-assumption of actual and visible rule in our world, to which as the risen Christ and the enthroned King He was entitled, but for which He was content to wait for the fulness of the times, and the gradual evolution of the Father’s eternal purpose. The third is the period of His investiture with the royalty of heaven, His session on the Father’s throne; angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject unto Him. The fourth is the period of His manifestation or glory here, when His enemies shall be made His footstool, and all things put under Him; when, as the ‘second man,’ He shall undo what the ‘first man’ did; and as Son of God, yet also Son of Mary, Son of David, Son of Abraham, Son of Adam, Seed of the woman, true Heir of all things, He shall gather up into Himself the unfinished types, and predictions, and foreshadows, in which the Church of past ages dimly saw Him, and in the name of that humanity which He represents, dispossess the usurper, and claim creation for His own.

The first of these four epochs has long since run its course, and the last has not yet begun; but the second and the third are now in progress. The things which we do not see, and the things which we do see, are now unfolding themselves, parallel and contemporaneous with each other; the one in heaven, the other upon earth; the one all obedience, and splendour, and holiness, the other all rebellion, and shadow, and sin;—like a sky of sunshine bending over a wild and lawless ocean; or like two streams, one clear, the other turbid, flowing separate, yet parallel, and terminating in a clear, calm lake, in which the one loses all its foulness, and into which the other pours all its translucent crystal.

It is at this interval that we stand; realizing both the evil and the good,—the evil all around us, and the good above us,—and longing for the time when the light shall descend and swallow up the darkness, when the terrestrial shall take on the image of the celestial, when neither the moral nor the physical world shall be ‘without form and void,’ when obedience shall take the place of rebellion, and instead of the multitude of jarring wills the one will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

Seeing Jesus now crowned with glory and honour, yet not seeing all things put under Him, but the world lying in wickedness,—the lawless one giving law to the nations, and Satan inspiring the false religions of earth,—we should feel like disappointed men, and be tempted to ask, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ did we not remember that the Church’s posture in the Bridegroom’s absence is that of patient waiting; and that it is God Himself who has taught us this song of hope: ‘Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth.’

This interval or break the apostle designates by the word ‘Now,’—‘Now we see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour.’ In reference to this interval, he elsewhere uses the same word, in various aspects: ‘Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us’ (Heb. 9:24). ‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation’ (2 Cor. 6:2). ‘The whole creation greaneth and travaileth in pain together until now’ (Rom. 8:22). ‘The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’ (Eph. 2:2). ‘Even now are there many antichrists’ (1 John 2:18). Of the length of this ‘now,’ little is said; but of its bearings on us, and of its momentous character as the womb of infinite events and eternal issues, much has been written by the Spirit of God. Again and again, for warning, persuasion, instruction, consolation, has He held up to us this interval, so unique in its character, and so marvellous in its results; and made that word ‘now’ to ring in our ears.

An interval so long and gloomy, filled up during so many centuries with revolt, and defiance, and blasphemy, is not what we should have expected. Seeing that all power, on earth as well as in heaven, was given Him as the risen Christ; seeing that He fought the fight, and won the victory upon the cross; we wonder that He should not at once reap the harvest; that He should still be the rejected of men, His Church a minority, His cause upon the losing side, Himself defied by that world which He overcame, that Satan whom He led captive, that death over which He triumphed, that curse, for the enduring of which He took flesh and died.

Under this sore perplexity and disappointment we take refuge where He did, when men turned away from His words: ‘Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.’ The purpose of God, as we read it in the light of ages, assumes the necessity for the development of evil, and error, and unbelief, and rebellion; so as to bring out, not merely what the fall did, the frailty of creaturehood, but the depths of Satan and the depths of sin,—the abysses of evil that are to be found in every corner of a human heart. In the sight of God, this development of creature fallibility and evil is a thing of vast moment, and has a far larger space assigned to it in the history of men and devils than our philosophy would deem safe, or our theology account for. The revelation of evil upon earth before Messiah came was fearful; but it was explicable on the fact that the Destroyer of evil had not yet descended. But its far wider range and more malignant type since He came; nay, since He finished His sin-bearing work; nay, since He sat down upon the throne, is more perplexing, and no less appalling. Terrible are these words of His, ‘I came not to send peace upon earth, but a sword.’

O sin, sin, what an infinite evil art thou! How exceeding sinful, and how prolific in thy sinfulness; how tenacious of life; how expansive in thy potency; how remorseless in thy cruelty; how all-pervading in thy dominion over creaturehood; one seed of thine, dropt in Paradise, covering earth for six thousand years with its hellish harvest! O heart of man, what a pit, what a sea of wickedness, and lawlessness, and atheism art thou! O Satan, Satan, god of this world, and ruler of its darkness, how vast thy resources of strength, and skill, and cunning; defeated, yet gathering power from defeat; wounded with a deadly wound eighteen hundred years ago, yet still surviving, and mustering thy hosts for battle; still multiplying thy subtle wiles, and seducing sophistries, and strong delusions, and dazzling falsehoods, to deceive if possible the very elect; still forging thy fiery darts and wounding men to death, or leading them captive at will; still warring against truth, hiding the gospel, raging against the Lamb, assailing His cross, His throne, and His saints; still vitalizing the old and sapless idolatries of earth, inventing new infidelities, sending forth new blasphemies, making, not heathendom, nor Moslemdom, but Christendom, thy chief seat and chosen citadel; and exercising a power everywhere that both alarms and perplexes us, as if the Christ of God had not been really crowned, or as if the reins of the universe had snapped asunder in His hands!

This, then, is the fact to which we ask your attention, ‘Now we see not yet all things put under Him.’

The word translated ‘put under’ does not merely intimate abstract right, but actual surrender and obedience. That Christ is Prince of the kings of the earth, and Head over all things, as well as Head of His body the Church, is part of every Christian creed; but to how few,—individuals, Churches, nations,—is it aught beyond a mere abstraction! The recognition of the dogma is accompanied with no acknowledgment of the laws in which it declares itself, and with no subjection, personal, political, or ecclesiastical, to Him for whom the Father claims absolute obedience: ‘Kiss ye the Son.’

The abstract right or prerogative is that which the apostle demonstrates from the eighth psalm: ‘Unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak; but one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the work of Thy hands.’ Thus this psalm, which carries us back to the first chapter of Genesis, and embodies God’s original grant of authority over creation to the first Adam, is accepted by the apostle as a proof of God’s purpose to confer on Christ, as the last Adam, the lapsed sovereignty and forfeited sceptre of the first; to perpetuate in the line and dynasty of that race which Adam represented the lordship of His handiwork; not to alienate the inheritance because of the transgression of the first proprietor, but to continue it in the same stock and family; to place, not upon an angelic, but a human brow, creation’s diadem; to confide, not to angelic, but to human hands, the sceptre of the universe.

This grant of dominion to the last Adam the apostle shows to be as wide as God’s creation. For thus he interprets and expands the psalmist’s words, ‘in that He put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him.’ So that as in person the last Adam is more glorious than the first, so is His throne more exalted, and His empire as much larger in compass as is His worthiness of honour and fitness to reign. In Him, as very God and very man, the crowns of heaven and earth are united; and the slain Lamb is He who alone is worthy to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and honour, and glory, and blessing, from every creature in heaven, and earth, and sea.

What then? Has God’s purpose failed or changed? Has the rebellion of this present evil world proved stronger than was reckoned on? For the right of dominion and the actual subjection have not been co-extensive. Christ is King of kings, yet Satan is still god of this world, and prince of the power of the air. It is to this point of divergency between the earthly and the heavenly, of conflict between the rightful and the actual, that the apostle brings us when he says, ‘But now we see not yet all things put under Him;’ just as our Lord Himself did in the parable of the nobleman who went into the far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return; but who, in the interval of absence, was but poorly served by some of his servants, and hated by his citizens. The divine meaning of this strange divergency between the upper and lower regions of Messiah’s domain is too large and too profound a subject for present discussion. The reasons for this delay in assimilating the terrestrial to the celestial; in transmuting the universal right into the universal fact; in following up the conferred sovereignty with the accomplished submission, would lead us into the mystery of sin’s first entrance and present sufferance, as well as into the question why a sinner at his conversion is not at once made perfect, and not at once translated into the heavenly glory. Our object is simply to call attention to the state of non-submission to Christ in which we find our world, and which is declared to he specially the characteristic of the interval, or ‘now,’ spoken of by Paul. Man and his world have not yet bent the knee to Him; and the Father has not yet interposed to bring about the submission. ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power,’ is still a futurity both for Israel and for the world.

Let us look at the facts referred to in the words, ‘We see not yet all things put under Him.’

I. Christ is a Saviour; yet all have not been saved. His power to deliver is as boundless as His right is unchallengeable; yet millions have perished since He ascended the throne. All have not come, and the Father has not drawn them. Few are saved; and many are called, but few are chosen. Messiah is still the rejected of men. This is personal non-submission, in other words, unbelief; individual refusal of the great salvation; the soul’s deliberate rejection of God’s free gift of everlasting life; the sinner’s determination not to submit himself to the righteousness of God.

Hear yon reckless scoffer, as he says, I want none of your Christs or your pardons, your gospels or your Bibles. I care not for your heaven, and do not fear your hell, or your devil, or your judgment-day. Hear yon proud Unitarian, as he tells you, I believe not in your Trinity, or your Incarnation; and I had rather risk all your hells than be so mean as to take a salvation which I had not deserved, or could not pay for: fair play and no favour is all I ask. See yon poor Romanist, doting upon his penances, and throwing them into the scale with the sufferings of the Son of God. Listen to yon Protestant, unpricked in conscience and whole in heart, but religious after a sort, as he congratulates himself on his good life and sound creed as his passport to the kingdom. Mark yon awakened sinner, who has just made the discovery of the hell within him, crying for mercy, and asking, What must I do to be saved? and to whom we speak in vain of the completed propitiation of the cross. Are not all these specimens of non-submission to the Son of God,—rebellion against His power as Saviour of the lost? Are they not some of the many ways in which man’s dissatisfaction with the cross, and his disbelief of the divine testimony to the work of the Sinbearer, give vent to themselves; in which is daily coming to pass the saying that is written, ‘Now we see not yet all things put under Him’?

O man, child of rebellion and wrath! hast thou submitted thyself to the Son of God? Hast thou received the Father’s testimony to Him by whom the lost are saved; and in receiving that testimony ended for ever thy rebellion against Him? Is the work done upon the cross by which God justifies the sinner, thy one resting-place? and does the great salvation satisfy thee, so as to give thee God’s sure peace, and introduce thee into the liberty of happy sonship? Or art thou still an alien, a stranger, a rebel? If so, poor soul, what will thy non-submission avail thee in the day when the Father shall take righteous vengeance upon the despisers of His Son? How shalt thou escape, if thou neglectest the great salvation?

II. Christ is Teacher; yet the world remains untaught. He has compassion on the ignorant, but the ignorant do not avail themselves of His pity. He says, ‘Learn of me;’ but men refuse His instruction, and slight His wisdom. He is God’s Prophet; the one infallible Master, in whose school there is no speculation, or conjecture, or mysticism, but only truth. He teaches as One that has authority, and claims the submission of the human intellect. Hear me, says a human teacher; and every one who has something of moment to say may claim a hearing. One Teacher alone is entitled to say, Hear me, and at your peril disbelieve my doctrine. Human reason asserts itself the judge of divine revelation, and declines to receive its philosophy or its theology from any infallibility beyond itself, from any oracle beyond its own intuitions. Science proffers but scanty allegiance to this heavenly Teacher; poetry does not sing His praises; history is not enwoven with His name; philosophy craves no help from Him; metaphysics is often the perversion of His truth; and fiction excludes Him from its pages of sensation, and passion, and vanity. The press is not upon His side; in the great world of journalism He is hardly named; in the chairs of learning He has no seat, and often in the pulpit His truth is muffled, if not disowned. Scholars blush to name Him; critics scrutinize His words with less reverence than those of Homer or Cicero; statesmen go not to Him for counsel; the wisdom of this world refuses to owe anything to Him, and its literature would count itself disfigured by an allusion to the cross. As a new classification of human ideas, or a new exposition of social ethics, somewhat more elevated than those of Persia, or Greece, or Rome, His Gospel may be listened to, but not as the good news from heaven, in the belief of which is life, in the non-belief of which is death.

It is not merely yon German pantheist, turning the New Testament story into a myth; nor yon Trench infidel, dissolving the biography of the Son of God into a romance; nor yon African dignitary, giving the broad lie to Moses and the prophets; nor yon philosophic lecturer, boasting of a Christian liberality that can afford to be generous to Jupiter; nor yon bevy of poets and artists, sighing over the gods of Greece, or re-touching the worn-out statues of Apollo, or re-beautifying the obsolete idolatries in their chants to Endymion and Astarte, or gilding (to speak colloquially, whitewashing) the obscenities of heathendom by their fair idealisms. But it is that the tone of literature, and science, and art, is not Christian. The current of the age,—in the Church an under-current, in the world an upper-current,—is running against the Bible, and especially against the cross of Christ. The leaders of opinion refuse to be led by the one Prophet sent from God, and would rather go back to the cave of the sibyl, or the grove of Dodona, than consult the Urim and the Thummim on the breastplate of God’s Prophet-priest, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This intellectual rebellion against Christ as the divine Prophet, this philosophical non-submission to Him, indicates too plainly that all things are not yet put under Him.

Going apart, then, from all these insincerities and perversities, separating thyself from these philosophies, hast thou, O brother-man, delivered thyself over to the divine tuition of the great Prophet, so as to draw thy scholarship from Him? Is that truth to thee which He teaches? Is that error which He disallows? Hast thou submitted thyself, thy mind, thy soul, thy body, thy whole being, to Him? Is thy daily life the echo of His teaching? Is thy business put under Him? Thy employments, thy recreations, thy pleasures, thy plans, thy expenditure, thy efforts for others, moral or physical, thy accomplishments, thy gifts, thy learning, thy speech, thy silence,—are all these put under Him? Is He thy absolute Master, the Manager of thy affairs, thy Counsellor, thy Lawgiver, thy Guide? And dost thou all the more unreservedly put what is thine under Him, because so few, in this creation of His, own either His sceptre or His rod?

These are solemn words of our Prophet, ‘Because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not’ (John 8:45); and again, ‘My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me’ (John 10:27). Hast thou, O man, heard this voice, and art thou following Him who speaks? Hast thou given thyself into the hands of this great Prophet, and submitted thy whole intellectual being unreservedly to His instruction? Say not, I should in that case be a machine, a slave. Suppose it were so, would it be a misfortune to be thus moulded, irrespective of that proud will of thine; to be clay in the hands of such a potter as the Son of God? But it is not so. Never art thou more thoroughly free, more truly thyself, than when completely in the hands of this Prophet. For all truth is liberty, and all error bondage; and He who can give us most of truth is our deliverer. Call it force or compulsion, it is divine force, and the compulsion of Omnipotence is the perfection of creature liberty,—the compulsion of the irresistible light, which liberates earth each morning from the bondage of darkness, which raises the dew-drop from the cold grass, and draws it up to roam the sky in liberty and brightness; the compulsion of the hammer that smites in pieces the prisoner’s chains, and compels him to be free!

III. Christ is Mediator; yet the world has not accepted His mediation. Its millions have chosen, and still choose, to stand upon their own footing, and be represented by no substitute. The communication between earth and heaven by one divine medium has never been recognised or acted on by men, though established and proclaimed by God. I do not refer merely to the supplanting of the One Mediatorship by that of Mary, or the saints, or the Church. I speak of man’s non-acceptance of the priestly intercession of the risen Christ, in various forms, and his preference of human mediatorship, or of no mediatorship at all, to this. To stand at a distance from God is felt to be incompatible with our relation to Him as creatures, or with our safety as sinners. There must be a drawing near of some kind, whether that may amount to fellowship or not; and men have multiplied inventions for securing an approach, in the idea that any method will do, if the inventor be at all in earnest. God’s one way of bringing the visible into contact with the invisible, the unholy into fellowship with the holy; His one meeting-place between Himself and the sinner, His one reconciliation between earth and heaven, is rejected, and each man will have his own way of dealing with Jehovah. Instead of the one Priest, the one temple, the one altar, the one sacrifice, there are priests many, temples many, altars many, and sacrifices without number. The one Sinbearer is not accepted; His blood, His cross, His advocacy, His intercession, are treated as unimportant, if not rejected wholly.

These are blessed words of the apostle elsewhere in this same Epistle, ‘Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus; and having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.’ In the midst of a world to whom the sacrificial mediation of Christ is nothing, shall we not cleave to the mighty privilege here presented to us? Shall we not personally realize the ‘boldness’ which the blood gives to each one who credits the divine testimony to its emboldening power? Or shall we treat that blood as if devoid of efficacy, and go to God in uncertainty, as men experimenting upon its properties, and incredulous of its power to purge the conscience and prevail with God?

IV. Christ is King; yet the world has not yet honoured His crown. I do not speak now of that ecclesiastical non-submission displayed by churches that name His name, yet are governed by other laws than His. I point specially to the political non-submission manifested by the kingdoms of earth. As Prince of the kings of the earth He is unrecognised, either by its princes or its people; and the thought of His royal sceptre is distasteful to kings and emperors, to presidents and statesmen. In their cabinets He has no seat assigned to Him. In their counsels He is not consulted. They prepare their congresses, and hold their conferences, and form their conventions, without reference to Him. They enter into commercial treaties; they send out their ambassadors; they make peace or war; they construct their navies; they muster their armies; they build their fortresses; they sheathe and unsheathe their swords, without taking Him into account. We seek Him in the palace, in the castle, in the senate-house, in the camp, in the fleet, in the hall of justice, but we find Him not. There was room once in Bethlehem for every one but the young Child; and there is room in this wide world for every one but its King. Republic, monarchy, despotism, federation,—they are all alike! Christ is shut out! He conies unto His own, and His own receive Him not.

Non-acceptance of the Seed of the woman as Saviour was the sin of the earlier ages, from the days of Cain; and non-submission to this promised Seed as King and Lord was the sin of succeeding times, from Nimrod downward. The world’s after-history, in all lands, and empires, and religions, shows us these two united; and earth to this day holds on in her old course of non-subjection to her rightful King. Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt have their counterparts in the modern kingdoms of the world. Lords many, kings many, emperors many, usurpers many, earth has had, and to them it has bowed the knee. But to this one King of the Father’s choosing, anointing, and enthroning, it will vow no allegiance; or gives at the most, mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not. He that sitteth in the heavens doth laugh, but He has not yet descended to speak to them in His wrath, nor to vex them in His sore displeasure. God is standing in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods, saying, How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the person of the wicked? But they know not, neither will they understand; and God has not yet arisen to judge the earth, nor to depose its rebellious dynasties, nor to constrain the obedience of the nations, nor to bring to pass the promised service of loyal love from the sons of the first Adam to their true Head and Kinsman the ‘second man,’ the Lord from heaven. The revolt is as widespread as ever, and it is only a handful, a remnant here and there, the result of God’s eternal election, that owns Him as Head and Lord. The rest are blinded and hardened: ‘Who is Lord over us?’ is the cry of earth. All the world wonders after the beast, worships him, and receives his name in their forehead and in their hand. The spirit of antichrist is lawlessness, the contrast and contradiction of Him who magnified the law, and made it honourable. Antichrist is the self-exalting one, the opposer of God and His Christ; his aim, the monarchy of earth. The personification of all rebellion and self-will, he does his utmost to perpetuate and extend the world’s non-reception of Christ, to prevent all things being put under Him.

As King, Christ is Judge; but the world accepts not His judgment; it believes not in His acquittals and His condemnations, either now or hereafter. His sentences, as moral verdicts of approval or disapproval, they may receive; but as judicial decisions of the highest court of appeal, inferring irreversibly the recompense of a glorious heaven or an unquenchable hell, they repudiate them. In this sense Christ is not Judge, and there is no judgment-day, and no great white throne. All things are not yet put under Him as Judge!

As King, He is Avenger, but the day of recompense has not yet come, and ‘sentence against an evil work’ has not yet been executed. Therefore not only does the world reject Him as the Avenger, but a large section of modern Christianity disowns the very idea of vengeance, as incompatible with love, and the effeminate theologies of the age refuse to believe that the wrath of the Lamb is a reality, that the day of vengeance is in His heart, or the rod of iron in His hand. They have yet to learn the divine antipathy to sin, and the divine determination either to pardon or to punish eternally every sin, and every fragment of a sin, on whomsoever it shall be found. They have yet to understand the meaning of these awful words, ‘I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury.’

As King, He is the Conqueror; but though His great victory is won, His conquest is not yet complete. The routed host still rallies, disputes the field, nay, recovers ground so widely, that men ask, Where is the Conqueror, and where is His victory? Heathendom is as populous and as idolatrous as ever, and Christendom is yet more hostile to Christ and to Christianity than paganism of old. The sway of antichrist is vast; and Satan is not yet bound, but goes to and fro throughout the earth, the inspirer of its false religions, the instigator of its rebellions, the forger of its errors, the soul of antichrist, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.

As King, He is Deliverer, the opener of all prisons, and the looser of all chains. But the gates of brass are not yet broken, nor the bars of iron cut asunder. The curse still poisons the soil and troubles its tillers,—the curse of barrenness, disease, pain, weariness, vanity, the sweating toil of man, and the travail-pangs of woman. The wilderness has not yet been glad, nor the desert blossomed as the rose.

As King, He is the Resurrection and the Life; but the dead have not yet risen, the grave has not refunded its ill-gotten treasure. The dust of saints, though precious in His sight, is undistinguishable from the mould of earth; and forms beloved of Him and beloved of us are still the prey of corruption. He has the keys of Hades and death, but He has not unlocked their two-leaved gates, nor said to the prisoners, Go forth. The churchyards of earth have not yet been emptied, nor has the sea delivered up its dead. The worm still feeds on bodies which are parts of Christ’s body, and the Head has not yet interposed. The shroud still wraps forms which are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and He who has the residue of the Spirit has not yet rescued one particle of that holy dust. Death still reigns, and ‘he who has the power of death’ still continues to slay. The tomb still holds the countless atoms of redeemed mortality, and this corruptible has not yet put on incorruption. Death, the last enemy, has not yet been destroyed, and the grave can still boast of its victory.

Now we see not yet all things put under Him; but we see Jesus on the Father’s throne, crowned with glory above, in anticipation of the like crown below. For earth’s long rebellion shall come to a ‘perpetual end.’ Each spoiler shall be spoiled, each conqueror conquered, each prison opened, each boaster silenced, each blasphemer confounded, each antichrist smitten, each rival throne overturned, when ‘the Christ’ shall take to Himself His great power and reign.

Horatius Bonar, The Christ of God (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1874), 190–216.

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