"Now _is_ Christ risen," says he, defying, as it were, doubt and negation, and basing himself upon the firm a.s.surance which he possesses of that historical fact. "Ah!" you say, "seeing is believing; and he had evidence such as we can never have." Well! let us see. Is it possible for us, nineteen centuries nearly after that day, to catch some echo of this a.s.sured confidence, and in the face of modern doubts and disbeliefs, to reiterate with as unfaltering a.s.surance as that with which they came from his glowing lips, the great words of my text? Can we, logically and reasonably, as men who are guided by evidence and not by feeling, stand up before the world, and take for ours the ancient confession: "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day He rose again from the dead"? I think we can.
The way to prove a fact is by the evidence of witnesses. You cannot argue that it would be very convenient, if such and such a thing should be true; that great moral effects would follow if we believed it was true, and so on. The way to do is to put people who have seen it into the witness-box, and to make sure that their evidence is worth accepting.
And at the beginning of my remarks I wish to protest, in a sentence, against confusing the issues about this question of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in that fashion which is popular nowadays, when we are told that miracle is impossible, and _therefore_ there has been no Resurrection, or that death is the end of human existence, and that _therefore_ there has been no Resurrection. That is not the way to go about ascertaining the truth as to a.s.serted facts. Let us hear the evidence. The men who brush aside the testimony of the New Testament writers, in obedience to a theory, either about the impossibility of the supernatural, or about the fatal and final issues of human death, are victims of prejudice, in the strictest meaning of the word; and are no more logical than the well-known and proverbial reasoner who, when told that facts were against him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, is reported to have said, "So much the worse for the facts." Let us deal with evidence, and not with theory, when we are talking about alleged facts of history.
So then, let me remind you that, in this chapter from which my text is taken, we have a record of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, older than, and altogether independent of, the records contained in the gospels, which are all subsequent in date to it; that this Epistle to the Corinthians is one of the four undisputed Epistles of the Apostle, which not the most advanced school of modern criticism has a word to say against; that, therefore, this chapter, written, at the latest, some seven and twenty years after the date of the Crucifixion, carries us up very close to that event; that it shows that the Resurrection was _universally_ believed all over the Church, and therefore must have then been long believed; that it enables us to trace the same belief as universal, and in undisputed possession of the field among the churches, at the time of Paul"s conversion, which cannot be put down at much more than five or six years after the Crucifixion, and that so we are standing in the presence of absolutely contemporaneous testimony. This is not a case in which a belief slowly and gradually grew up. Whether we accept the evidence or not, we are bound to admit that it is strictly contemporaneous testimony to the fact of Christ"s Resurrection.
And the witnesses are reliable and competent, as well as contemporaneous. The old belief that their testimony was imposture is dead long ago; as, indeed, how could it live? It would be an anomaly, far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these people, Mary, Peter, John, Paul, and all the rest of them, were conspirators in a lie, and that the fairest system of morality and the n.o.blest consecration that the world has ever seen, grew up out of a fraud, like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not hold water; and even those who will not accept the testimony have long since confessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my context, seems to think that that is the only tenable alternative to the other theory that the witnesses were veracious, and I am disposed to believe that he is right. He says, "If Christ be not risen, then, are we" the utterly impossible thing of "false witnesses to G.o.d," devout perjurers, as the phrase might be paraphrased: men who are lying to please G.o.d. If Christ be not risen, they have sworn to a thing that they know to be untrue, in order to advance His cause and His kingdom. If that theory be not accepted, there is no other about these men and their message that will hold water for a minute, except the admission of its truth.
The fashionable modern one, that it was hallucination, is preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared!
Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread at intervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included eating and drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and the feeling of the breath! Hallucinations that brought instruction!
Hallucinations that culminated in the fancy that a gathered mult.i.tude of them saw Him going up into heaven! The hallucination is on the other side, I think. They have got the saddle on the wrong horse when they talk about the Apostolic witnesses being the victims of hallucination. It is the people who believe it possible that they should be who are so. The old argument against miracles used to say that it is more consonant with experience that testimony should be false, than that a miracle should be true. I venture to say it is a much greater strain on a man"s credulity, to believe that _such_ evidence is false than that _such_ a miracle, _so_ attested, is true.
And I, for my part, venture to think that the reasonable men are the men who listen to these eye-witnesses when they say, "We saw Him rise"; and echo back in answer the triumphant cert.i.tude, "Christ is risen indeed!"
There is another consideration that I might put briefly. A very valuable way of establishing facts is to point to the existence of other facts, which indispensably require the previous ones for their explanation. Let me give you an ill.u.s.tration of what I mean. I believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, amongst other reasons, because I do not understand how it was possible for the Church to exist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ rose again. Why was it that they did not all scatter? Why was it that the spirit of despondency and the tendency to separation, which were beginning to creep over them when they were saying: "Ah! it is all up! We _trusted_ that this had been He," did not go on to their natural issue? How came it that these people, with their Master taken away from the midst of them, and the bond of union between them removed, and all their hopes crushed did not say: "We have made a mistake, let us go back to Gennesareth and take to our fishing again, and try and forget our bright illusions"? That is what John the Baptist"s followers did when he died. Why did not Christ"s do the same? Because Christ rose again and re-knit them together. When the Shepherd was smitten, the flock would have been scattered, and never drawn together any more, unless there had been just such a thing as the Resurrection a.s.serts there was, to reunite the dispersed and to encourage the depressed. And so I say, Christianity with a _dead_ Christ, and a Church gathered round a grave from which the stone has _not_ been rolled away, is more unbelievable than the miracle, for it is an absurdity.
Then there is another thing that I would say in a word. Let me put an ill.u.s.tration to explain what I mean. Suppose, after the execution of King Charles I., in some corner of the country a Pretender had sprung up and said, "I am the King!" the way to end that would have been for the Puritan leaders to have taken people to St. George"s Chapel, and said, "Look! there is the coffin, there is the body, is that the king, or is it not?" Jesus Christ was said to have risen again, within a week of the time of His death. The rulers of the nation had the grave, the watch, the stone, the seal. They could have put an end to the pestilent nonsense in two minutes, if it had been nonsense, by the simple process of saying, "Go and look at the tomb, and you will see Him there." But this question has never been answered, and never will be--What became of that sacred corpse if Jesus Christ did not rise again from the dead? The clumsy lie that the rulers told, that the disciples had stolen away the body, was only their acknowledgment that the grave was empty. If the grave were empty, either His servants were impostors, which we have seen it is incredible that they were, or the Christ was risen again.
And so, dear brethren, for many other reasons besides this handful that I have ventured to gather and put before you, and in spite of the prejudices of modern theories, I lift up here once more, with unfaltering cert.i.tude, the glad message which I beseech you to accept: "Christ is risen, the first fruits of them that slept."
II. So much, then, for the first point in this pa.s.sage. A word or two about the second--the triumph in the cert.i.tude of that Resurrection.
As I remarked at a previous point of this discourse, the Apostle has been speaking about the consequences which would follow from the fact that Christ was not raised. If we take all these consequences and reverse them, we get the glad issues of His Resurrection, and understand why it was that this great burst of triumph comes from the Apostle"s lips. And though I must necessarily treat this part of my subject very inadequately, let me try to gather together the various points on which, as I think, our Easter gladness ought to be built.
First, then, I say, the risen Christ gives us a complete Gospel. A dead Christ annihilates the Gospel. "If Christ be not risen," says the Apostle, "our preaching," by which he means not the act but the substance of his preaching, "is vain." Or, as the word might be more accurately rendered, "empty." There is nothing in it; no contents. It is a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind.
What was Paul"s "preaching"? It all turned upon these points--that Jesus Christ was the Son of G.o.d; that He was Incarnate in the flesh for us men; that He died on the Cross for our offences; that He was raised again, and had ascended into Heaven, ruling the world and breathing His presence into believing hearts; and that He would come again to be our Judge. These were the elements of what Paul called "his Gospel." He faces the supposition of a dead Christ, and he says, "It is all gone! It is all vanished into thin air. I have nothing to preach if I have not a Cross to preach which is man"s deliverance from sin, because on it the Son of G.o.d hath died, and I only know that Jesus Christ"s sacrifice is accepted and sufficient, because I have it attested to me in His rising again from the dead."
Dear brethren, on the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is suspended everything which makes the Gospel a gospel. Strike that out, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral teaching, a lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His own importance and His relation to men and to G.o.d; but you have got nothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You have the cross rising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless on the other side of the river you have the Resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrown across the black gulf, and the Cross remains "dead, being alone." You must have a Resurrection to explain the Cross, and then the Life and the Death tower up into the manifestation of G.o.d in the flesh and the propitiation for our sins. Without it we have nothing to preach which is worth calling a gospel.
Again, a living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. The Apostle here in the context twice says, according to the Authorised Version, that a dead Christ makes our faith "vain." But he really uses two different words, the former of which is applied to "preaching," and means literally "empty," while the latter means "of none effect" or "powerless." So there are two ideas suggested here which I can only touch with the lightest hand.
The risen Christ puts some contents, so to speak, into my faith; He gives me something for it to lay hold of.
Who can trust a _dead_ Christ, or who can trust a _human_ Christ?
That would be as much a blasphemy as trusting any other man. It is only when we recognise Him as declared to be the Son of G.o.d, and that by the Resurrection from the dead, that our faith has anything round which it can twine, and to which it can cleave. That living Saviour will stretch out His hand to us if we look to Him, and if I put my poor, trembling little hand up towards Him, He will bend to me and clasp it. You cannot exercise faith unless you have a risen Saviour, and unless you exercise faith in Him your lives are marred and sad.
Again, if Christ be dead, our faith, if it could exist, would be as devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. For such a faith would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead mother"s breast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an extinguished lamp. And chiefly would it fail to bring the first blessing which the believing soul receives through and from a risen Christ, namely, deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed to be our sacrifice by His death and our sanctification by His life has not risen, then, as we have seen, all which makes His death other than a martyr"s vanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. Only when we recognise that in His Cross explained by His Resurrection, we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and by the communication of the risen life from the risen Lord possess that new nature which sets us free from the dominion of our evil, is faith operative in setting us free from our sins.
So, dear friends, the risen Christ gives us something for faith to lay hold of, and will make it the hand by which we grasp His strong hand, which lifts us "out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and sets our feet upon a rock." But if He lie dead in the grave your faith is vain, because it grasps nothing but a shadow; and it is vain as being purposeless; you are yet in your sins.
The last thought is that the risen Christ gives us the cert.i.tude of our Resurrection. I do not for a moment mean to say that, apart from the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the thought, be it a wish or a dread, of immortality, has not been found in men, but there is all the difference in the world between forebodings, aspirations, wishes it were so, fears that it might be so, and the calm cert.i.tude that it is so. Many men talked about a western continent, but Columbus went there and came back again, and that ended doubt. Many men before, and apart from Jesus, have cherished thoughts of an immortal life beyond the grave, but He has been there and returned. And that, and, as I believe, that only puts the doctrine of immortality upon an irrefragable foundation; and we can say, "Now, I know that there is that land beyond." They tell us that death ends everything. Modern materialism, in all its forms, a.s.serts that it is the extinction of the personality. Jesus Christ died, and went through it, and came out of it the same, and I will trust Him. Brethren, the set of opinion amongst the educated and cultured cla.s.ses in England, and all over Europe, at this moment, proves to anybody who has eyes to see, that for this generation, rejection of immortality will follow certainly on the rejection of Jesus Christ. And for England to-day, as for Greece when Paul sent his letter to Corinth, the one light of cert.i.tude in the great darkness is the fact that Jesus Christ hath died, and is risen again.
If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His own immortal life. "The first fruits of them that slept" is the pledge and the prophecy of all the waving abundance of golden grain that shall be gathered into the great husbandman"s barns. The Apostle goes on to represent the resurrection of "them that are Christ"s" as a consequence of their union to Jesus. He has conquered for us all. He has entered the prison-house and come forth bearing its iron gates on His shoulders, and henceforth it is not possible that we should be holden of it. There are two resurrections--one, that of Christ"s servants, one that of others. They are not the same in principle--and, alas, they are awfully different in issue. "Some shall wake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
Let me beseech you to make Jesus Christ the life of your dead souls, by humble, penitent trust in Him. And then, in due time, He will be the life of your transformed bodies, changing these into the likeness of the body of His glory, "according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself."
THE DEATH OF DEATH
"But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. 21. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.... 50. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of G.o.d; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 51. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, (for the trumpet shall sound;) and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pa.s.s the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56. The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57. But thanks be to G.o.d, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."--1 COR. xv. 20, 21; 50-58.
This pa.s.sage begins with the triumphant ringing out of the great fact which changes all the darkness of an earthly life without a heavenly hope into a blaze of light. All the dreariness for humanity, and all the vanity for Christian faith and preaching, vanish, like ghosts at c.o.c.k-crow, when the Resurrection of Jesus rises sun-like on the world"s night. It is a historical fact, established by the evidence proper for such,--namely, the credible testimony of eye-witnesses.
They could attest His rising, but the knowledge of the worldwide significance of it comes, not from testimony, but from revelation.
Those who saw Him risen join to declare: "Now is Christ risen from the dead," but it is a higher Voice that goes on to say, "and become the first-fruits of them that slept."
That one Man risen from the grave was like the solitary sheaf of paschal first-fruits, prophesying of many more, a gathered harvest that will fill the great Husbandman"s barns. The Resurrection of Jesus is not only a prophecy, showing, as it and it alone does, that death is not the end of man, but that life persists through death and emerges from it, like a buried river coming again flashing into the light of day, but it is the source or cause of the Christian"s resurrection. The oneness of the race necessitated the diffusion through all its members of sin and of its consequence--physical death. If the fountain is poisoned, all the stream will be tainted.
If men are to be redeemed from the power of the grave, there must be a new personal centre of life; and union with Him, which can only be effected by faith, is the condition of receiving life from Him, which gradually conquers the death of sin now, and will triumph over bodily death in the final resurrection. It is the resurrection of Christians that Paul is dealing with. Others are to be raised, but on a different principle, and to sadly different issues. Since Christ"s Resurrection a.s.sures us of the future waking, it changes death into "sleep," and that sleep does not mean unconsciousness any more than natural sleep does, but only rest from toil, and cessation of intercourse with the external world.
In the part of the pa.s.sage, verses 50 to 58, the Apostle becomes, not the witness or the reasoner, as in the earlier parts of the chapter, but the revealer of a "mystery." That word, so tragically misunderstood, has here its uniform scriptural sense of truth, otherwise unknown, made known by revelation. But before he unveils the mystery, Paul states with the utmost force a difficulty which might seem to crush all hope,--namely, that corporeity, as we know it, is clearly incapable of living in such a world as that future one must be. To use modern terms, organism and environment must be adapted to each other. A fish must have the water, the creatures that flourish at the poles would not survive at the equator. A man with his gross earthly body, so thoroughly adapted to his earthly abode, would be all out of harmony with his surroundings in that higher world, and its rarified air would be too thin and pure for his lungs.
Can there be any possibility of making him fit to live in a spiritual world? Apart from revelation, the dreary answer must be "No." But the "mystery" answers with "Yes." The change from physical to spiritual is clearly necessary, if there is to be a blessed life hereafter.
That necessary change is a.s.sured to all Christians, whether they die or "remain till the coming of the Lord." Paul varies in his antic.i.p.ations as to whether he and his contemporaries will belong to the one cla.s.s or the other; but he is quite sure that in either case the indwelling Spirit of Jesus will effect on living and dead the needful change. The grand description in verse 52, like the parallel in 1 Thessalonians iv. 16, is modelled on the account of the theophany on Sinai. The trumpet was the signal of the Divine Presence. That last manifestation will be sudden, and its startling breaking in on daily commonplace is intensified by the reduplication: "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." With sudden crash that awful blare of "loud, uplifted angel trumpet" will silence all other sounds, and hush the world. The stages of what follows are distinctly marked. First, the rising of the dead changed in pa.s.sing through death, so as to rise in incorruptible bodies, and then the change of the bodies of the living into like incorruption. The former will not be found naked, but will be clothed with their white garments; the latter will, as it were, put on the glorious robes above the "muddy vesture of decay," or, more truly, will see the miracle of these being transfigured till they shine "so as no fuller on earth could white them." The living will witness the resurrection of the dead; the risen dead will witness the transformation of the living. Then both hosts will be united, and, through all eternity, "live together," and that "with Him." Paul evidently expects that he and the Corinthians will be in the latter cla.s.s, as appears by the "we" in verse 52. He, as it were, points to his own body when he says, recurring to his former thought of the necessity of harmony between organism and environment, "_this_ corruptible must put on incorruption." Here "corruption" is used in its physical application, though the ethical meaning may be in the background.
The Apostle closes his long argument and revelation with a burst, almost a shout, of triumph. Glowing words of old prophets rush into his mind, and he breathes a new, grander meaning into them. Isaiah had sung of a time when the veil over all nations should be destroyed "in this mountain," and when death should be swallowed up for ever; and Paul grasps the words and says that the prophet"s loftiest antic.i.p.ations will be fulfilled when that monster, whose insatiable maw swallows down youth, beauty, strength, wisdom, will himself be swallowed up. Hosea had prophesied of Israel"s restoration under figure of a resurrection, and Paul grasps _his_ words and fills them with a larger meaning. He modifies them, in a manner on which we need not enlarge, to express the great Christian thought that death has conquered man but that man in Christ will conquer the conqueror. With swift change of metaphor he represents death as a serpent, armed with a poisoned sting, and that suggests to him the thought, never far away in his view of man, that death"s power to slay is derived from--or, so to say, concentrated in--sin; and that at once raises the other equally characteristic and familiar thought that law stimulates sin, since to know a thing to be forbidden creates in perverse humanity an itching to do it, and law reveals sin by setting up the ideal from which sin is the departure. But just as the tracks in Paul"s mind were well worn, by which the thought of death brought in that of sin, and that of sin drew after it that of law, so with equal closeness of established a.s.sociation, that of law condemnatory and slaying, brought up that of Christ the all-sufficient refuge from that gloomy triad--Death Sin, Law. Through union with Him each of us may possess His immortal risen life, in which Death, the engulfer, is himself engulfed; Death, the conqueror, is conquered utterly and for ever; Death, the serpent, has his sting drawn, and is harmless. That partic.i.p.ation in Christ"s life is begun even here, and G.o.d "giveth us the victory" now, even while we live outward lives that must end in death, and will give it perfectly in the resurrection, when "they cannot die any more," and death itself is dead.
The loftiest Christian hopes have close relation to the lowliest Christian duties, and Paul"s triumphant song ends with plain, practical, prose exhortations to steadfastness, unmovable tenacity, and abundant fruitfulness, the motive and power of which will be found in the a.s.surance that, since there is a life beyond, all labour here, however it may fail in the eyes of men, will not be in vain, but will tell on character and therefore on condition through eternity. If our peace does not rest where we would fain see it settle, it will not be wasted, but will return to us again, like the dove to the ark, and we shall "self-enfold the large results of"
labour that seemed to have been thrown away.
STRONG AND LOVING
"Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. 14. Let all your things be done with charity."--1 COR. xvi. 13, 14.
There is a singular contrast between the first four of these exhortations and the last. The former ring sharp and short like pistol-shots; the last is of gentler mould. The former sound like the word of command shouted from an officer along the ranks; and there is a military metaphor running all through them. The foe threatens to advance; let the guards keep their eyes open. He comes nearer; prepare for the charge, stand firm in your ranks. The battle is joined; "quit you like men"--strike a man"s stroke--"be strong."
And then all the apparatus of warfare is put away out of sight, and the captain"s word of command is softened into the Christian teacher"s exhortation: "Let all your deeds be done in charity." For love is better than fighting, and is stronger than swords. And yet, although there is a contrast here, there is also a sequence and connection. No doubt these exhortations, which are Paul"s last word to that Corinthian Church on whom he had lavished in turn the treasures of his manifold eloquence, indignation, argumentation, and tenderness, reflected the deficiencies of the people to whom he was speaking. They were schismatic and factious to the very core, and so they needed the exhortation to be left last in their ears, as it were, that everything should be done in love. They were ill-grounded in regard to the very fundamental doctrines of the faith, as all Paul"s argumentation about the resurrection proves, and so they needed to be bidden to "stand fast in the faith." Their slothful carelessness as to the discipline of the Christian life, and their consequent feebleness of grasp of the Christian verities, made them loose-braced and weak in all respects, and incapacitated them for vigorous warfare. Thus, we see a picture in these injunctions of the sort of community that Paul had to deal with in Corinth, which yet he called a Church of saints, and for which he loved and laboured. Let me then run over and try to bring out the importance and mutual connection of what I may call this drill-book for the Christian warfare, which is the Christian life.
"Watch ye." That means one of two things certainly, probably both--Keep awake, and keep your eyes open. Our Lord used the same metaphor, you remember, very frequently, but with a special significance. On His lips it generally referred to the att.i.tude of expectation of His coming in judgment. Paul uses sometimes the figure with the same application, but here, distinctly, it has another. As I said, there is the military idea underlying it. What will become of an army if the sentries go to sleep? And what chance will a Christian man have of doing his _devoir_ against his enemy, unless he keeps himself awake, and keeps himself alert? Watchfulness, in the sense of always having eyes open for the possible rush down upon us of temptation and evil, is no small part of the discipline and the duty of the Christian life. One part of that watchfulness consists in exercising a very rigid and a very constant and comprehensive scrutiny of our motives. For there is no way by which evil creeps upon us so un.o.bserved, as when it slips in at the back door of a specious motive. Many a man contents himself with the avoidance of actual evil actions, and lets any kind of motives come in and out of his mind unexamined. It is all right to look after our _doings_, but "as a man _thinketh_ in his heart, so is he." The good or the evil of anything that I do is determined wholly by the motive with which I do it. And we are a great deal too apt to palm off deceptions on ourselves to make sure that our motives are right, unless we give them a very careful and minute scrutiny. One side of this watchfulness, then, is a habitual inspection of our motives and reasons for action. "What am I doing this for?" is a question that would stop dead an enormous proportion of our activity, as if you had turned the steam off from an engine. If you will use a very fine sieve through which to strain your motives, you will go a long way to keeping your actions right. We should establish a rigid examination for applicants for entrance, and make quite sure that each that presents itself is not a wolf in sheep"s clothing. Make them all bring out their pa.s.sports. Let every vessel that comes into your harbour remain isolated from all communication with the sh.o.r.e, until the health officer has been on board and given a clean bill. "Watch ye," for yonder, away in the dark, in the shadow of the trees, the black ma.s.ses of the enemy are gathered, and a midnight attack is but too likely to bring a b.l.o.o.d.y awakening to a camp full of sleepers.
My text goes on to bring the enemy nearer and nearer and nearer.
"Watch ye"--and if, not unnoticed, they come down on you, "stand fast in the faith." There will be no keeping our ranks, or keeping our feet--or at least, it is not nearly so likely that there will be--unless there has been the preceding watchfulness. If the first command has not been obeyed, there is small chance of the second"s being so. If there has not been any watchfulness, it is not at all likely that there will be much steadfastness. Just as with a man going along a crowded pavement, a little touch from a pa.s.ser-by will throw him off his balance, whereas if he had known it was coming, and had adjusted his poise rightly, he would have stood against thrice as violent a shock, so, in order that we may stand fast, we must watch.
A sudden a.s.sault will be a great deal less formidable when it is a foreseen a.s.sault.
"Stand fast _in the faith_." I take it that this does not mean "the thing that we believe," which use of the word "faith" is the ecclesiastical, but not the New Testament meaning. In Scripture, faith means not the body of truths that we believe, but the act of believing them. This further command tells us that, in addition to our watchfulness, and as the basis of our steadfastness, confidence in the revelation of G.o.d in Jesus Christ will enable us to keep our feet whatever comes against us, and to hold our ground, whoever may a.s.sault us.
But remember that it is not because I have faith that I stand fast, but because of that in which I have faith. My feet may be well shod--and it used to be said that a soldier"s shoes were of as much importance in the battle as his musket--my feet may be well shod, but if they are not well planted upon firm ground I never shall be able to stand the collision of the foe. So then, it is not my grasp of the blessed truth, G.o.d in Christ my Friend and Helper, but it is that truth which I grasp at, that makes me strong. Or, to put it into other words, it is the foothold, and not the foot that holds it, that ensures our standing firm. Only there is no steadfastness communicated to us from the source of all stability, except by way of our faith, which brings Christ into us. "Watch ye; stand fast in the faith."
The next two words of command are very closely connected, though not quite identical. "Quit you like men." Play a man"s part in the battle; strike with all the force of your muscles. But the Apostle adds, "be strong." You cannot play a man"s part unless you are. "Be strong"--the original would rather bear "become strong." What is the use of telling men to "_be_ strong"? It is a waste of words, in nine cases out of ten, to say to a weak man, "Pluck up your courage, and show strength." But the Apostle uses a very uncommon word here, at least uncommon in the New Testament, and another place where he uses it will throw light upon what he means: "Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man." Then is it so vain a mockery to tell a poor, weak creature like me to become strong, when you can point me to the source of all strength, in that "Spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind"? We have only to take our weakness there to have it stiffened into strength; as people put bits of wood into what are called "petrifying wells" which infiltrate into them mineral particles, that do not turn the wood into stone, but make the wood as strong as stone. So my manhood, with all its weakness, may have filtered into it divine strength, which will brace me for all needful duty, and make me "more than conqueror through Him that loved us."
Then, it is not mockery and cruelty, vanity and surplusage to preach "Quit you like men; be strong, and be a man"; because if we will observe the plain and not hard conditions, strength will come to us according to our day, in fulfilment of the great promises: "My grace is sufficient for thee; and My strength is made perfect in weakness."
And now we have done with the fighting words of command, and come to the gentler exhortation: "Let all your things be done in charity."