This being clearly understood at the outset, we shall be prepared to follow the Apostle"s course of thought while he points out the conditions upon which the possession of that inheritance depends. It is children of G.o.d who are heirs of G.o.d. It is by union with Christ Jesus, the Son, to whom the inheritance belongs, that they who believe on His name receive power to become the sons of G.o.d, and with that power the possession of the inheritance. Thus, then, in this condensed utterance of the text there appear a series of thoughts which may perhaps be more fully unfolded in some such manner as the following, that there is no inheritance without sonship, that there is no sonship without a spiritual birth, that there is no spiritual birth without Christ, and that there is no Christ for us without faith.
I. First, then, the text tells us, no inheritance without sonship.
In general terms, spiritual blessings can only be given to those who are in a certain spiritual condition. Always and necessarily the capacity or organ of reception precedes and determines the bestowment of blessings. The light falls everywhere, but only the eye drinks it in. The lower orders of creatures are shut out from all partic.i.p.ation in the gifts which belong to the higher forms of life, simply because they are so made and organised as that these cannot find entrance into their nature. They are, as it were, walled up all round; and the only door they have to communicate with the outer world is the door of sense. Man has higher gifts simply because he has higher capacities. All creatures are plunged in the same boundless ocean of divine beneficence and bestowment, and into each there flows just that, and no more, which each, by the make and const.i.tution that G.o.d has given it, is capable of receiving. In the man there are more windows and doors opened out than in the animal He is capable of receiving intellectual impulses, spiritual emotions; he can think, and feel, and desire, and will, and resolve: and so he stands on a higher level than the beast below him.
Not otherwise is it in regard to G.o.d"s kingdom, "which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." The gift and blessing of salvation is primarily a spiritual gift, and only involves outward consequences secondarily and subordinately. It mainly consists in the heart being at peace with G.o.d, in the whole soul being filled with divine affections, in the weight and bondage of transgression being taken away, and subst.i.tuted by the impulse and the life of the new love. Therefore, neither G.o.d can give, nor man can receive, that gift upon any other terms, than just this, that the heart and nature be fitted and adapted for it. Spiritual blessings require a spiritual capacity for the reception of them; or, as my text says, you cannot have the inheritance unless you are sons. If salvation consisted simply in a change of place; if it were merely that by some expedient or arrangement, an outward penalty, which was to fall or not to fall at the will of an arbitrary judge, were prevented from coming down, why then, it would be open to Him who held the power of letting the sword fall, to decide on what terms He might choose to suspend its infliction. But inasmuch as G.o.d"s deliverance is not a deliverance from a mere arbitrary and outward punishment: inasmuch as G.o.d"s salvation, though it be deliverance from the penalty as well as from the guilt of sin, is by no means chiefly a deliverance from outward consequences, but mainly a removal of the nature and disposition that makes these outward consequences certain,--therefore a man cannot be saved, G.o.d"s love cannot save him, G.o.d"s justice will not save him, G.o.d"s power stands back from saving him, upon any other condition than this that his soul shall be adapted and prepared for the reception and enjoyment of the blessing of a spiritual salvation.
But the inheritance which my text speaks about is also that which a Christian hopes to receive and enter upon in heaven. The same principle precisely applies there. There is no inheritance of heaven without sonship; because all the blessings of that future life are of a spiritual character. The joy and the rapture and the glory of that higher and better life have, of course, connected with them certain changes of bodily form, certain changes of local dwelling, certain changes which could perhaps be granted equally to a man, of whatever sort he was. But, friends, it is not the golden harps, not the pavement of "gla.s.s mingled with fire," not the cessation from work, not the still composure, and changeless indwelling, not the society even, that makes the heaven of heaven. All these are but the embodiments and rendering visible of the inward facts, a soul at peace with G.o.d in the depths of its being, an eye which gazes upon the Father, and a heart which wraps itself in His arms. Heaven is no heaven except in so far as it is the possession of G.o.d. That saying of the Psalmist is not an exaggeration, nor even a forgetting of the other elements of future blessedness, but it is a simple statement of the literal fact of the case, "I have none in heaven but Thee!" G.o.d is the heritage of His people. To dwell in His love, and to be filled with His light, and to walk for ever in the glory of His sunlit face, to do His will, and to bear His character stamped upon our foreheads--_that_ is the glory and the perfectness to which we are aspiring. Do not then rest in the symbols that show us, darkly and far off, what that future glory is. Do not forget that the picture is a shadow. Get beneath all these figurative expressions, and feel that whilst it may be true that for us in our present earthly state, there can be no higher, no purer, no more spiritual nor any truer representations of the blessedness which is to come, than those which couch it in the forms of earthly experience, and appeal to sense as the minister of delight--yet that all these things are representations, and not adequate presentations. The inheritance of the servants of the Lord is the Lord Himself, and they dwell in Him, and _there_ is their joy.
Well then, if that be even partially true--admitting all that you may say about circ.u.mstances which go to make some portion of the blessedness of that future life--if it be true that G.o.d is the true blessing given by His Gospel upon earth, that He Himself is the greatest gift that can be bestowed, and that He is the true Heaven of heaven--what a flood of light does it cast upon that statement of my text, "If children, then heirs"; no inheritance without sonship! For who can possess G.o.d but they who love Him? who can love, but they who know His love? who can have Him working in their hearts a blessed and sanctifying change, except the souls that lie thankfully quiet beneath the forming touch of His invisible hand, and like flowers drink in the light of His face in their still joy? How can G.o.d dwell in any heart except a heart which has in it a love of purity? Where can He make His temple except in the "upright heart and pure"? How can there be fellowship betwixt Him and any one except the man who is a son because he hath received of the divine nature, and in whom that divine nature is growing up into a divine likeness? "What fellowship hath Christ with Belial?" is not only applicable as a guide for our practical life, but points to the principle on which G.o.d"s inheritance belongs to G.o.d"s sons alone. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see G.o.d"; and those only who love, and are children, to them alone does the Father come and does the Father belong.
So much, then, for the first principle: No inheritance without sonship.
II. Secondly, the text leads us to the principle that there is no sonship without a spiritual birth.
The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel, where all deepest truths concerning the Eternal Being in itself and in the solemn march of His progressive revelations to the world are set forth in language simple like the words of a child and inexhaustible like the voice of a G.o.d, draws a broad distinction between the relation to the manifestations of G.o.d which every human soul by virtue of his humanity sustains, and that into which some, by virtue of their faith, enter. Every man is lighted by the true light because he is a man. They who believe in His name receive from Him the prerogative to become the sons of G.o.d. Whatever else may be taught in John"s words, surely they do teach us this, that the sonship of which he speaks does not belong to man as man, is not a relation into which we are born by natural birth, that we _become_ sons after we _are_ men, that those who become sons do not include all those who are lighted by the Light, but consist of so many of that greater number as receive Him, and that such become sons by a divine act, the communication of a spiritual life, whereby they are born of G.o.d.
The same Apostle, in his Epistles, where the widest love is conjoined with the most firmly drawn lines of moral demarcation between the great opposites--life, light, love--death, darkness, hate--contrasts in the most unmistakable ant.i.thesis the sons of G.o.d who are known for such because they do righteousness, and the world which knew not Christ, nor knows those who, dimly beholding, partially resemble Him.
Nay, he goes further, and says in strange contradiction to the popular estimate of his character, but in true imitation of that Incarnate love which hated iniquity, "In this the children of G.o.d are manifested and the children of the devil"--echoing thus the words of Him whose pitying tenderness had sometimes to clothe itself in sharpest words, even as His hand of powerful love had once to grasp the scourge of small cords. "If G.o.d were your Father, ye would love Me: ye are of your father, the devil."
These are but specimens of a whole cycle of Scripture statements which in every form of necessary implication, and of direct statement, set forth the principle that he who is born again of the Spirit, and he only, is a son of G.o.d.
Nothing in all this contradicts the belief that all men are the children of G.o.d, inasmuch as they are shaped by His divine hand and He has breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. They who hold that sonship is obtained on the condition which these pa.s.sages seem to a.s.sert, do also rejoice to believe and to preach that the Father"s love broods over every human heart as the dovelike Spirit over the primeval chaos. They rejoice to proclaim that Christ has come that all, that each, may receive the adoption of sons. They do not feel that their message to, nor their hope for, the world is less blessed, less wide, because while they call on all to come and take the things that are freely given to them of G.o.d, they believe that those only who do come and take possess the blessing. Every man may become a son and heir of G.o.d by faith in Jesus Christ.
But notwithstanding all the mercies that belong to us all, notwithstanding the divine beneficence, which, like the air and the light, pervades all nature, and underlies all our lives, notwithstanding the universal adaptation and intention of Christ"s work, notwithstanding the wooing of His tender voice and the unceasing beckoning of His love, it still remains true that there are men in the world, created by G.o.d, loved and cared for by Him, for whom Christ died, who might be, but are not, sons of G.o.d.
Fatherhood! what does that word itself teach us? It speaks of the communication of a life, and the reciprocity of love. It rests upon a divine act, and it involves a human emotion. It involves that the father and the child shall have kindred life--the father bestowing and the child possessing a life which is derived; and because derived, kindred; and because kindred, unfolding itself in likeness to the father that gave it. And it requires that between the father"s heart and the child"s heart there shall pa.s.s, in blessed interchange and quick correspondence, answering love, flashing backwards and forwards, like the lightning that touches the earth and rises from it again. A simple appeal to your own consciousness will decide if that be the condition of all men. Are you, my brother, conscious of anything within you higher than the common life that belongs to you because you are an immortal soul? Can you say, "From G.o.d"s hand I have received the granting and implantation of a new and better life?" Is your claim verified by this, that you are kindred with G.o.d in holy affections, in like purposes, loving what He loves, hating what He hates, doing what He wills, accepting what He sends, longing for Himself, and blessed in His presence? Is your sonship proved by the depth and sincerity, the simplicity and power, of your throbbing heart of love to your Father in heaven? Or are all these emotions empty words to you, things that are spoken in pulpits, but to which you have nothing in your life corresponding? Oh then, my friend, what am I to say to you? What but this? no sonship except by that spiritual birth; and if not such sonship, then the spirit of bondage.
If not such sonship, why then, by all the tendencies of your nature, and by all the affinities of your moral being, if you are not holding of heaven, you are holding of h.e.l.l; if you are not drawing your life, your character, your emotions, your affections, from the sacred well that lies up yonder, you are drawing them from the black one that lies down there. There are heaven, h.e.l.l, and the earth that lies between, ever influenced either from above or from below. You are sons because born again, or slaves and "enemies by wicked works." It is a grim alternative, but it is a fact.
III. Thirdly, no spiritual birth without Christ.
We have seen that the sonship which gives power of possessing the inheritance and which comes by spiritual birth, rests upon the giving of life, spiritual life, from G.o.d; and unfolds itself in certain holy characters, and affections, and desires, the throbbing of the whole soul in full accord and harmony with the divine character and will.
Well then, it looks very clear that a man cannot make that new life for himself, cannot do it because of the habit of sin, and cannot do it because of the guilt and punishment of sin. If for sonship there must be a birth again, why, surely, the very symbol might convince you that such a process does not lie within our own power. There must come down a divine leaven into the ma.s.s of human nature, before this new being can be evolved in any one. There must be a gift of G.o.d. A divine energy must be the source and fountain of all holy and of all G.o.dlike life. Christ comes, comes to make you and me live again as we never lived before; live possessors of G.o.d"s love; live tenanted and ruled by a divine Spirit; live with affections in our hearts which _we_ never could kindle there; live with purposes in our souls which _we_ never could put there.
And I want to urge this thought, that the centre point of the Gospel is this regeneration; because if we understand, as we are too much disposed to do, that the Gospel simply comes to make men live better, to work out a moral reformation,--why, there is no need for a Gospel at all. If the change were a simple change of habit and action on the part of men, we could do without a Christ. If the change simply involved a bracing ourselves up to behave better for the future, we could manage somehow or other about as well as or better than we have managed in the past. But if redemption be the giving of life from G.o.d; and if redemption be the change of position in reference to G.o.d"s love and G.o.d"s law as well, neither of these two changes can a man effect for himself. You cannot gather up the spilt water; you cannot any more gather up and re-issue the past life. The sin remains, the guilt remains. The inevitable law of G.o.d will go on its crashing way in spite of all penitence, in spite of all reformation, in spite of all desires after newness of life. There is but one Being who can make a change in our position in regard to G.o.d, and there is but one Being who can make the change by which man shall become a "new creature." The Creative Spirit that shaped the earth must shape its new being in my soul; and the Father against whose law I have offended, whose love I have slighted, from whom I have turned away, must effect the alteration that I can never effect--the alteration in my position to His judgments and justice, and to the whole sweep of His government. No new birth without Christ; no escape from the old standing-place, of being "enemies to G.o.d by wicked works," by anything that we can do: no hope of the inheritance unless the Lord and the Man, the "second Adam from heaven," have come! He _has_ come, and He has "dwelt with us," and He has worn this life of ours, and He has walked in the midst of this world, and He knows all about our human condition, and He has effected an actual change in the possible aspect of the divine justice and government to us; and He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and the urn was broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out, and whithersoever that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not there is death!
IV. Last of all, no Christ without faith.
It is not enough, brethren, that we should go through all these previous steps, if we then go utterly astray at the end, by forgetting that there is only one way by which we become partakers of any of the benefits and blessings that Christ has wrought out. It is much to say that for inheritance there must be sonship. It is much to say that for sonship there must be a divine regeneration. It is much to say that the power of this regeneration is all gathered together in Christ Jesus. But there are plenty of people that would agree to all that, who go off at that point, and content themselves with _this_ kind of thinking--that in some vague mysterious way, they know not how, in a sort of half-magical manner, the benefit of Christ"s death and work comes to all in Christian lands, whether there be an act of faith or not! Now I am not going to talk theology at present, at this stage of my sermon; but what I want to leave upon all your hearts is this profound conviction,--Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us. Do not let us, my friends, blink that deciding test of the whole matter. We may talk about Christ for ever; we may set forth aspects of His work, great and glorious. He may be to us much that is very precious; but the one question, the question of questions, on which everything else depends, is, Am I trusting to Him as my divine Redeemer? am I resting in Him as the Son of G.o.d?
Some of us here now have a sort of nominal connection with Christ, who have a kind of imaginative connection with Him; traditional, ceremonial, by habit of thought, by attendance on public worship, and by I know not what other means. Ceremonies are nothing, notions are nothing, beliefs are nothing, formal partic.i.p.ation in worship is nothing. Christ is everything to him that trusts Him. Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation to him who trusts Him not. And here is the turning-point, Am I resting upon that Lord for my salvation? If so, you can begin upon that step, the low one on which you can put your foot, the humble act of faith, and with the foot there, can climb up. If faith, then new birth; if new birth, then sonship; if sonship, then an heir of G.o.d, and a joint-heir with Christ." But if you have not got your foot upon the lowest round of the ladder, you will never come within sight of the blessed face of Him who stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you at this moment, saying to you, "My child, _wilt_ thou not cry unto Me "Abba, Father?""
SUFFERING WITH CHRIST, A CONDITION OF GLORY WITH CHRIST
"...Joint heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together."--ROMANS viii. 17.
In the former part of this verse the Apostle tells us that in order to be heirs of G.o.d, we must become sons through and joint-heirs with Christ. He seems at first sight to add in these words of our text another condition to those already specified, namely, that of suffering with Christ.
Now, of course, whatever may be the operation of suffering in fitting for the possession of the Christian inheritance, either here or in another world, the sonship and the sorrows do not stand on the same level in regard to that possession. The one is the indispensable condition of all; the other is but the means for the operation of the condition. The one--being sons, "joint-heirs with Christ,"--is the root of the whole matter; the other--the "suffering with Him,"--is but the various process by which from the root there come "the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear." Given the sonship--if it is to be worked out into power and beauty, there must be suffering with Christ. But unless there be sonship, there is no possibility of inheriting G.o.d; discipline and suffering will be of no use at all.
The chief lesson which I wish to gather from this text now is that all G.o.d"s sons must suffer with Christ; and in addition to this principle, we may complete our considerations by adding briefly, that the inheritance must be won by suffering, and that if we suffer with Him, we certainly shall receive the inheritance.
I. First, then, sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering with Him.
I think that we entirely misapprehend the force of this pa.s.sage before us, if we suppose it to refer princ.i.p.ally or merely to the outward calamities, what you call trials and afflictions, which befall people, and see in it only the teaching, that the sorrows of daily life may have in them a sign of our being children of G.o.d, and some power to prepare us for the glory that is to come. There is a great deal more in the thought than that, brethren. This is not merely a text for people who are in affliction, but for all of us. It does not merely contain a law for a certain part of life, but it contains a law for the whole of life. It is not merely a promise that in all our afflictions Christ will be afflicted, but it is a solemn injunction that we seek to know "the fellowship of His sufferings, and be made conformable to the likeness of His death," if we expect to be "found in the likeness of His Resurrection," and to have any share in the community of His glory. In other words, the foundation of it is not that Christ shares in our sufferings; but that we, as Christians, in a deep and real sense do necessarily share and partic.i.p.ate in Christ"s. We "suffer with Him"; _not_ He suffers with us.
Now, do not let us misunderstand each other, or the Apostle"s teaching. Do not suppose that I am forgetting, or wishing you to account as of small importance, the awful sense in which Christ"s suffering stands as a thing by itself and unapproachable, a solitary pillar rising up, above the waste of time, to which all men everywhere are to turn with the one thought, "I can do nothing like that; I need to do nothing like it; it has been done once, and once for all; and what I have to do is, simply to lie down before Him, and let the power and the blessings of that death and those sufferings flow into my heart." The Divine Redeemer makes eternal redemption.
The sufferings of Christ--the sufferings of His life, and the sufferings of His death--both because of the nature which bore them, and of the aspect which they wore in regard to us, are in their source, in their intensity, in their character, and consequences, unapproachable, incapable of repet.i.tion, and needing no repet.i.tion whilst the world shall stand. But then, do not let us forget that the very books and writers in the New Testament that preach most broadly Christ"s sole, all-sufficient, eternal redemption for the world by His sufferings and death, turn round and say to us too, ""Be planted together in the likeness of His death"; you are "crucified to the world" by the Cross of Christ; you are to "fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ."" He Himself speaks of our drinking of the cup that He drank of, and being baptized with the baptism that He was baptized with, if we desire to sit yonder on His throne, and share with Him in His glory.
Now what do the Apostles, and what does Christ Himself, in that pa.s.sage that I have quoted, mean, by such solemn words as these? Some people shrink from them, and say that it is trenching upon the central doctrine of the Gospel, when we speak about drinking of the cup which Christ drank of. They ask, Can it be? Yes, it can be, if you will think thus:--If a Christian has the Spirit and life of Christ in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really, by the same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes will produce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which--divine, pure, incapable of copy and repet.i.tion--in one aspect has ended for ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, by every Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world; who in like manner has to resist temptation; who in like manner has to stand, by G.o.d"s help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new nature of him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.
For were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings that were wrought upon Calvary? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings which came from the contradiction of sinners against Himself? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings which were connected with His bodily afflictions and pain, precious and priceless as they were, and operative causes of our redemption as they were? Oh no. Conceive of that perfect, sinless, really human life, in the midst of a system of things that is all full of corruption and of sin; coming ever and anon against misery, and wrong-doing, and rebellion; and ask yourselves whether part of His sufferings did not spring from the contact of the sinless Son of man with a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence and leaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for the Father. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ"s sufferings as the Son of G.o.d in the midst of sinful men would have been deep and real. "O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" was wrung from Him by the painful sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs. "Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest," must often be the language of those who are like Him in spirit, and in consequent sufferings.
And then again, another branch of the "sufferings of Christ" is to be found in that deep and mysterious fact on which I durst not venture to speak beyond what the actual words of Scripture put into my lips--the fact that Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation and by suffering. There was no sin _within_ Him, no tendency to sin, no yielding to the evil that a.s.sailed. "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." But yet, when that dark Power stood by His side, and said, "If thou be the Son of G.o.d, cast Thyself down," it was a real temptation and not a sham one.
There was no wish to do it, no faltering for a moment, no hesitation.
There was no rising up in that calm will of even a moment"s impulse to do the thing that was presented;--but yet it was presented, and, when Christ triumphed, and the tempter departed for a season, there had been a temptation and there had been a conflict. And though obedience be a joy, and the doing of His Father"s will was His delight, as it must needs be in pure and in purified hearts; yet obedience which is sustained in the face of temptation, and which never fails, though its path lead to bodily pains and the "contradiction of sinners," may well be called suffering. We cannot speak of our Lord"s obedience as the surrender of His own will to the Father"s, with the implication that these two wills ever did or could move except in harmony. There was no place in Christ"s obedience for that casting out of sinful self which makes our submission a surrender joined with suffering, but He knew temptation. Flesh, and sense, and the world, and the prince of this world, presented it to Him; and therefore His obedience too was suffering, even though to do the will of His Father was His meat and His drink, His sustenance and His refreshment.
But then, let me remind you still further, that not only does the life of Christ, as sinless in the midst of sinful men, and the life of Christ, as sinless whilst yet there was temptation presented to it--a.s.sume the aspect of being a life of suffering, and become, in that respect, the model for us; but that also the Death of Christ, besides its aspect as an atonement and sacrifice for sin, the power by which transgression is put away and G.o.d"s love flows out upon our souls, has another power given to it in the teaching of the New Testament. The Death of Christ is a type of the Christian"s life, which is to be one long, protracted, and daily dying to sin, to self, to the world. The crucifixion of the old manhood is to be the life"s work of every Christian, through the power of faith in that Cross by which "the world is crucified unto Me, and I unto the world." That thought comes over and over again in all forms of earnest presentation in the Apostle"s teaching. Do not slur it over as if it were a mere fanciful metaphor. It carries in its type a most solemn reality. The truth is, that, if a Christian, you have a double life.
There is Christ, with His power, with His Spirit, giving you a nature which is pure and sinless, incapable of transgression, like His own. The new man, that which is born of G.o.d, sinneth not, cannot sin.
But side by side with it, working through it, working in it, leavening it, indistinguishable from it to your consciousness, by anything but this that the one works righteousness and the other works transgression, there is the "old man," "the flesh," "the old Adam," your own G.o.dless, independent, selfish, proud being. And the one is to slay the other! Ah, let me tell you, these words--crucifying, casting out the old man, plucking out the right eye, maiming self of the right hand, mortifying the deeds of the body--they are something very much deeper and more awful than poetical symbols and metaphors. They teach us this, that there is no growth without sore sorrow. Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man"s path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour. In long lingering agony often, with the blood of the heart pouring out at every quivering vein, you are to cut right through the life and being of that sinful self; to do what the Word does, pierce to the dividing asunder of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and get rid by crucifying and slaying--a long process, a painful process--of your own sinful self. And not until you can stand up and say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," have you accomplished that to which you are consecrated and vowed by your sonship--"being conformed unto the likeness of His death," and "knowing the fellowship of His sufferings."
It is this process, the inward strife and conflict in getting rid of evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of "suffering with Christ, that we may be also glorified together." On this high level, and not upon the lower one of the consideration that Christ will help us to bear outward infirmities and afflictions, do we find the true meaning of all that Scripture teaching which says indeed, "Yes, our sufferings are _His_"; but lays the foundation of it in this, "His sufferings are _ours_." It begins by telling us that Christ has done a work and borne a sorrow that no second can ever do.
Then it tells us that Christ"s life of obedience--which, because it _was_ a life of obedience, was a life of suffering, and brought Him into a condition of hostility to the men around Him--is to be repeated in us. It sets before us the Cross of Calvary, and the sorrows and pains that were felt there;--and it says to us, Christian men and women, if you want the power for holy living, have fellowship in that atoning death; and if you want the pattern of holy living, look at that Cross and feel, "I am crucified to the world by it; and the life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of G.o.d."
Such considerations as these, however, do not necessarily exclude the other one (which we may just mention and dwell on for a moment), namely, that where there is this spiritual partic.i.p.ation in the sufferings of Christ, and where His death is reproduced and perpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying ourselves in the present evil world--there Christ is with us in our afflictions. G.o.d forbid that I should try to strike away any word of consolation that has come, as these words of my text have come, to so many sorrowing hearts in all generations, like music in the night and like cold waters to a thirsty soul. We need not hold that there is no reference here to that comforting thought, "In all our affliction He is afflicted." Brethren, you and I have, each of us--one in one way, and one in another, all in some way, all in the right way, none in too severe a way, none in too slight a way--to tread the path of sorrow; and is it not a blessed thing, as we go along through that dark valley of the shadow of death down into which the sunniest paths go sometimes, to come, amidst the twilight and the gathering clouds, upon tokens that Jesus has been on the road before us? They tell us that in some trackless lands, when one friend pa.s.ses through the pathless forests, he breaks a twig ever and anon as he goes, that those who come after may see the traces of his having been there, and may know that they are not out of the road. Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night, and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He pa.s.sed, and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrances and hidden strengths in the remembrance of Him as "in all points tempted like as we are,"
bearing grief _for_ us, bearing grief _with_ us, bearing grief _like_ us.
Oh, do not, do not, my brethren, keep these sacred thoughts of Christ"s companionship in sorrow, for the larger trials of life. If the mote in the eye be large enough to annoy you, it is large enough to bring out His sympathy; and if the grief be too small for Him to compa.s.sionate and share, it is too small for you to be troubled by it. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought, "Christ bears this grief with me," to those petty molehills that you sometimes magnify into mountains, think to yourselves that then it is a shame for you to be stumbling over them. But on the other hand, never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to bear, and help you to bear, the pettiest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that may come to ruffle you. Whether it be a poison from one serpent sting, or whether it be poison from a million of buzzing tiny mosquitoes, if there be a smart, go to Him, and He will help you to endure it. He will do more, He will bear it with you, for if so be that we suffer with Him, He suffers with us, and our oneness with Christ brings about a community of possessions whereby it becomes true of each trusting soul in its relations to Him, that "all mine (joys and sorrows alike) are thine, and all thine are mine." II. There remain some other considerations which may be briefly stated, in order to complete the lessons of this text. In the second place, this community of suffering is a necessary preparation for the community of glory.
I name this princ.i.p.ally for the sake of putting in a caution. The Apostle does not mean to tell us, of course, that if there were such a case as that of a man becoming a son of G.o.d, and having no occasion or opportunity afterwards, by brevity of life or other causes, for pa.s.sing through the discipline of sorrow, his inheritance would be forfeited. We must always take such pa.s.sages as this--which seem to make the discipline of the world an essential part of the preparing of us for glory--in conjunction with the other undeniable truth which completes them, that when a man has the love of G.o.d in his heart, however feebly, however newly, there and then he is fit for the inheritance. I think that Christian people make vast mistakes sometimes in talking about "being made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light," about being "ripe for glory," and the like. One thing at any rate is very certain, it is not the discipline that fits. That which fits goes before the discipline, and the discipline only develops the fitness. "G.o.d hath made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light," says the Apostle. That is a past act. The preparedness for heaven comes at the moment--if it be a momentary act--when a man turns to Christ. You may take the lowest and most abandoned form of human character, and in one moment (it is possible, and it is often the case) the entrance into that soul of the feeble germ of that new affection shall at once change the whole moral habitude of that man. Though it be true, then, that heaven is only open to those who are capable--by holy aspirations and divine desires--of entering into it, it is equally true that such aspirations and desires may be the work of an instant, and may be superinduced in a moment in a heart the most debased and the most degraded. "This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise,"--_fit_ for the inheritance!
And, therefore, let us not misunderstand such words as this text, and fancy that the necessary discipline, which we have to go through before we are ready for heaven, is necessary in anything like the same sense in which it is necessary that a man should have faith in Christ in order to be saved. The one may be dispensed with, the other cannot. A Christian at any period of his Christian experience, if it please G.o.d to take him, is fit for the kingdom. The life _is_ life, whether it be the budding beauty and feebleness of childhood, or the strength of manhood, or the maturity and calm peace of old age. But "add to your faith," that "an entrance may be ministered unto you _abundantly_." Remember that though the root of the matter, the seed of the kingdom, may be in you; and that though, therefore, you have a right to feel that, at any period of your Christian experience, if it please G.o.d to take you out of this world, you are fit for heaven--yet in His mercy He is leaving you here, training you, disciplining you, cleansing you, making you to be polished shafts in His quiver; and that all the glowing furnaces of fiery trial and all the cold waters of affliction are but the preparation through which the rough iron is to be pa.s.sed before it becomes tempered steel, a shaft in the Master"s hand.
And so learn to look upon all trial as being at once the seal of your sonship, and the means by which G.o.d puts it within your power to win a higher place, a loftier throne, a n.o.bler crown, a closer fellowship with Him "who hath suffered, being tempted," and who will receive into His own blessedness and rest them that are tempted. "The child, though he be an heir, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors." G.o.d puts us in the school of sorrow under that stern tutor and governor here, and gives us the opportunity of "suffering with Christ," that by the daily crucifixion of our old nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and change, there may grow up in us a still n.o.bler and purer, and perfecter divine life; and that we may so be made capable--more capable, and capable of more--of that inheritance for which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness is faith in His name.
III. Finally, that inheritance is the necessary result of the suffering that has gone before.
The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. It is not only because the joy hereafter seems required in order to vindicate G.o.d"s love to His children, who here reap sorrow from their sonship, that the discipline of life cannot but end in blessedness. That ground of mere compensation is a low one on which to rest the certainty of future bliss. But the inheritance is sure to all who here suffer with Christ, because the one cause--union with the Lord--produces both the present result of fellowship in His sorrows, and the future result of joy in His joy, of possession of His possessions. The inheritance is sure because Christ possesses it now. The inheritance is sure because earth"s sorrows not merely require to be repaid by its peace, but because they have an evident design to fit us for it, and it would be destructive to all faith in G.o.d"s wisdom, and G.o.d"s knowledge of His own purposes, not to believe that what He has wrought us for will be given to us. Trials have no meaning, unless they are means to an end.
The end is the inheritance, and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit"s work here, are the earnest of the inheritance. Measure the greatness of the glory by what has preceded it. G.o.d takes all these years of life, and all the sore trials and afflictions that belong inevitably to an earthly career, and works them in, into the blessedness that _shall_ come. If a fair measure of the greatness of any result of productive power be the length of time that was taken for getting it ready, we can dimly conceive what that joy must be for which seventy years of strife and pain and sorrow are but a momentary preparation; and what must be the weight of that glory which is the counterpoise and consequence to the afflictions of this lower world. The further the pendulum swings on the one side, the further it goes up on the other. The deeper G.o.d plunges the comet into the darkness out yonder, the closer does it come to the sun at its nearest distance, and the longer does it stand basking and glowing in the full blaze of the glory from the central orb. So in _our_ revolution, the measure of the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow, _to_ the throne, may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are _on_ the throne: for if so be that we are sons, we _must_ suffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, we _must_ be glorified together!
THE REVELATION OF SONS
"For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of G.o.d."--ROMANS viii. 19.