Does it need any word to emphasise the force of that motive to a Christian heart that loves the Master? Surely this is the great and blessed peculiarity of all the morality of Christianity that it has all a personal bearing and aspect, and that just as the sum of all our duty is gathered up in the one command, "Imitate Christ," so the motive for all our duty lies in "If you love Me, keep My commandments," and the reward which ought to stimulate more than anything besides is the one thought, not, of what I shall get because I am good, but of what I shall give Him by my obedience, a joy in the heart that was stabbed through and through by sorrow for my sake.
That we may please Him "who pleased not Himself," is surely the grandest motive on which the pursuit of holiness, and the imitation of Jesus Christ can ever be made to rest. Oh! how different, and how much more blessed such a motive and aim is than all the lower reasons for which men are sometimes exhorted and encouraged to be good! What a difference it is when we say, "Do that thing because it is right,"
and when we say, "Do that thing because you will be happier if you do," or when we say, "Do it because He would like you to do it." The one is all cold and abstract. To stand before a man and simply say: "Now go and do your duty," is a poor way of setting his feet upon a rock and establishing his goings. Duty is not a word that stirs men"s hearts, however it may awe their consciences. It rises up before us like some G.o.ddess statuesque and serene, with purity, indeed, in her deep and solemn eyes, but with nothing appealing to our affections in her stern lineaments. But when the thought of "You ought" melts into "For my sake," and through the dissolving face of the cold marble G.o.ddess there shine the beloved lineaments of Him who "wears the G.o.dhead"s most benignant grace," the smile upon His face becomes a motive that touches all hearts. Trans.m.u.te obligation into grat.i.tude, and in front of duty and appeals to self put Christ, and all the harshness and difficulty and burden and self-sacrifice of obedience becomes easy and a joy.
Then let me remind you that this one supreme aim of pleasing Jesus Christ can be carried on through all life in every varying form, great or small. A blessed unity is given to our whole being when the little things and the big things, the easy things and the hard things, deeds which are conspicuous and deeds which no eye sees, are all brought under the influence of the one motive and made co-operant to the one end. Drive that one steadfast aim through your lives like a bar of iron, and it will give the lives strength and consistency--not rigidity, because they may still be flexible.
Nothing will be too small to be consecrated by that motive; nothing too great to own its power. You can please Him everywhere and always.
The only thing that is inconsistent with pleasing Him is the thing which, alas! we do at all times and should do at no time, and that is to sin against Him. If we bear with us this as a conscious motive in every part of our day"s work it will give us a quick discernment as to what is evil, which I believe nothing else will so surely give. If you desire life to be n.o.ble, uniform, dignified, great in its minutest acts and solemn in its very trifles, and if you would have some continual test and standard by which you can detect all spurious, apparent virtues, and discover lurking and masked temptations, carry this one aim clear and high above all else, and make it the purpose of the whole life, to be well-pleasing unto Him.
II. Now, in the next place, notice the concentrated effort which this aim requires.
The word rendered in my text "labour" is a peculiar one, very seldom employed in Scripture. It means, in its most literal signification, to be fond of honour, or to be actuated by a love of honour; and hence it comes, by a very natural transition, to mean to strive to gain something for the sake of the honour connected with it. That is to say, it not only expresses the notion of diligent, strenuous effort, but it reveals the reason for that diligence and strenuousness in what I may call (for the word might almost be so rendered) the _ambition_ of being honoured by pleasing Christ.
So that the "labour" of my text covers the whole ground, not only of the act but of its motive. The concentration of effort which such an aim requires may be enforced by one or two simple exhortations.
First, let me say that we ought, as Christian people, to cultivate this n.o.ble ambition of pleasing Jesus Christ. Men have all got the love of approbation deep in them. G.o.d put it there for a good purpose, not that we might shape our lives so as to get others to pat us on the back, and say, "Well done!" but that, in addition to the other solemn and sovereign motives for following the paths of righteousness, we might have this highest ambition to impel us on the road. And it is the duty of all Christians to see to it that they discipline themselves so as, in their own feelings, to put high above all the approbation or censure of their fellows the approbation or censure of Jesus Christ. That will take some cultivation. It is a great deal easier to shape our courses so as to get one another"s praise. I remember a quaint saying in a German book. "An old schoolmaster tried to please this one and that one, and it failed.
"Well, then," said he, "I will try to please Christ." And that succeeded."
And let me remind you that a second part of the concentration of effort which this aim requires is to strive with the utmost energy in the accomplishment of it. Paul did not believe that anybody could please Jesus Christ without a fight for it. His notion of acceptable service was service which a man suppressed much to render, and overcame much to bring. And I urge upon you this, dear brethren, that with all the mob of faces round about us which shut out Christ"s face, and with all the temptations to follow other aims, and with the weaknesses of our own characters, it never was, is not, nor ever will be, an easy thing, or a thing to be done without a struggle and a dead lift, to live so as to be well-pleasing to Him.
Look at Paul"s metaphors with which he sets forth the Christian life--a warfare, a race, a struggle, a building up of some great temple structure, and the like--all suggesting at the least the idea of patient, persistent, continuous toil, and most of them suggesting also the idea of struggle with antagonistic forces and difficulties, either within or without. So we must set our shoulders to the wheel, put our backs into our work. Do not think that you are going to be carried into the condition of conformity with Jesus Christ in a dream, or that the road to heaven is a primrose path, to be trodden in silver slippers. "I will not offer unto the Lord that which doth cost me nothing," and if you do, it will be worth exactly what it costs. There must be concentration of effort if we are to be well-pleasing to Him.
But then do not forget, on the other hand, that deeper than all effort, and the very spring and life of it, there must be the opening of our hearts for the entrance of His life and spirit, by the presence of which only are we well-pleasing to Christ. That which pleases Him in you and me is our likeness to Him. According to the old Puritan ill.u.s.tration, the refiner sat by the furnace until he could see in the molten metal his own face mirrored, and then he knew it was pure. So what pleases Christ in us is the reflection of Himself. And how can we get that likeness to Himself except by receiving into our hearts the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, and will dwell in us, and will produce in us in our measure the same image that it formed in Him? "Work _out_ your own salvation,"
because "it is G.o.d that worketh _in_ you." Labour, concentrate effort, and above all open the heart to the entrance of that transforming power.
III. Lastly, let me suggest the utter insignificance to which this aim reduces all externals.
"We labour," says Paul, "that whether present or absent, we may be accepted." What differences of condition are covered by that parenthetical phrase--"present or absent!" He talks about it as if it was a very small matter, does he not? And what is included in it?
Whether a man shall be in the body or out of it; that is to say, whether he be alive or dead. Here is an aim then, so great, so lofty, so all-comprehensive that it reduces the difference between living in the world and being out of it, to a trifle. And if we stand so high up that these two varieties of condition dwindle into insignificance and seem to have melted into one, do you think that there is anything else that will be very big? If the difference between life and death is dwindled and dwarfed, what else do you suppose will remain?
Nothing, I should think.
So if we only, by G.o.d"s help, which will be given to us if we want it, keep this clear before us as the motive of all our life, then all the possible alternatives of human condition and circ.u.mstance will sink into insignificance, and from that lofty summit will "show scarce so gross as beetles" in the air beneath our lofty station.
Whether we be rich or poor, solitary or beset by friends, happy or sad, hopeful or despairing, young or old, wearied or buoyant, learned or foolish, it matters not. The one aim lifts itself before us, and they in whose eyes shine the light of that great issue are careless of the road along which they pa.s.s. Do you enlist yourselves in the company that fires at the long range, and all those that take aim at the shorter ones will seem to be very pitifully limiting their powers.
Then remember that this same aim, and this same result may be equally pursued and attained whether here or yonder. It is something to have a course of life which runs straight along, unbent aside, and not cut short off, by the change from earth to Heaven. And this felicity he only has who, amidst things temporal and insignificant, sees and seeks the eternal smile on the face of his unchanging Saviour. On earth, in death, through eternity, such a life will be h.o.m.ogeneous and of a piece; and when all other aims are hull down below the horizon, forgotten and out of sight, then still this will be the purpose, and yonder it will be the accomplished purpose, of each, to please the Lord Jesus Christ.
My dear friend, remember that in its full meaning this aim regards the future, and points onward to that great judgment-seat where you and I will certainly each of us give account of himself. Do you think that you will please Christ then? Do you think that when that day dawns, a smile of welcome will come into His eyes, and a glow of gladness at the meeting into yours? Or have you cause to fear that you will "call on the rocks and the hills to cover you from the face of Him that sitteth on the Throne?"
We are all close by one another; our voices are very audible to each other. Do you learn, Christian people, that the first,--or at least a prime--condition of all Christian and Christ-pleasing life, is a wholesome disregard of what anybody says but Himself. The old Lacedaemonians used to stir themselves to heroism by the thought: "What will they say of us in Sparta?" The governor of some outlying English colony minds very little what the people that he is set to rule think about him. He reports to Downing Street, and it is the opinion of the Home Government that influences him. You report to headquarters. Never mind what anybody else thinks of you. Your business is to please Christ, and the less you trouble yourselves about pleasing men the more you will succeed in doing it. Be deaf to the t.i.ttle tattle of your fellow soldiers in the ranks. It is your Commander"s smile that will be your highest reward.
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he p.r.o.nounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."
THE LOVE THAT CONSTRAINS
"The love of Christ constraineth us."--2 COR. v. 14.
It is a dangerous thing to be unlike other people. It is still more dangerous to be better than other people. The world has a little heap of depreciatory terms which it flings, age after age, at all men who have a higher standard and n.o.bler aims than their fellows. A favourite term is "mad." So, long ago they said, "The prophet is a fool; the spiritual man is mad," and, in His turn, Jesus was said to be "beside Himself," and Festus shouted from the judgment-seat to Paul that he was mad. A great many people had said the same thing about him before, as the context shows. For the verse before my text is: "Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to G.o.d: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause." Now the former clause can only refer to other people"s estimate of the Apostle. No doubt there were many things about him that gave colour to it. He said that a dead Man had appeared to him and spoken with him. He said that he had been carried up into the third heaven. He had a very strange creed in the judgment of the times. He had abandoned a brilliant career for a very poor one. He was obviously utterly indifferent to the ordinary aims of men. He had a consuming enthusiasm. And so the world explained him satisfactorily to itself by the short and easy method of saying, "Insane." And Paul explained himself by the great word of my text, "The love of Christ constraineth us." Wherever there is a life adequately under the influence of Christ"s love the results will be such as an unsympathising world may call madness, but which are the perfection of sober-mindedness. Would there were more such madmen! I wish to try to make one or two of them now, by getting some of you to take for your motto, "The love of Christ constraineth us."
I. Now the first thing to notice is this constraining love.
I need not spend time in showing that when Paul says here "The love of Christ," he means Christ"s love to him, not his to Christ. That is in accordance with his continual usage of the expression; and it is in accordance with facts. For it is not my love to Jesus, but His love to me, that brings the real moulding power into my life, and my love to Him is only the condition on which the true power acts upon me. To get the fulcrum and the lever which will heave a life up to the heights you have to get out of yourselves.
Now Paul never saw Jesus Christ in this earthly life. Timothy, who is a.s.sociated with him in this letter, and perhaps is one of the "us,"
never saw Him either. The Corinthian believers whom he is addressing had, of course, never seen Him. And yet the Apostle has not the slightest hesitation in taking that great benediction of Christ"s love and spreading it over them all. That love is independent of time and of s.p.a.ce; it includes humanity, and is co-extensive with it.
Unturned away by unworthiness, unrepelled by non-responsiveness, undisgusted by any sin, unwearied by any, however numerous, foiling of its attempts, the love of Christ, like the great heavens that bend above us, wraps us all in its sweetness, and showers upon us all its light and its dew.
And yet, brethren, I would have you remember that whilst we thus try to paint, in poor, poor words, the universality of that love, we have to remember that it does not partake of the weakness that infects all human affections, which are only strong when they are narrow, and as the river expands it becomes shallow, and loses the force in its flow which it had when it was gathered between straiter banks, so as that a universal charity is almost akin to a universal indifference. But this love that grasps us all, this river that "proceedeth from the Throne of G.o.d and of the Lamb," flows in its widest reaches as deep and as impetuous in its career as if it were held within the narrowest of gorges. For Christ"s universal love is universal only because it is individualising and particular. We love our nation by generalising and losing sight of the individuals. Christ loves the world because He loves every man and woman in it, and His grace enwraps all because His grace hovers over each.
"The sun whose beams most glorious are Despiseth no beholder,"
but the rays come straight to each eyeball. Be sure of this: that He who, when the mult.i.tude thronged Him and pressed Him, felt the tremulous, timid, scarcely perceptible touch of one woman"s wasted finger on the hem of His garment, holds each of us in the grasp of His love, which is universal, because it applies to each. You and I have each the whole radiance of it pouring down on our heads, and none intercepts the beams from any other. So, brethren, let us each feel not only the love that grasps the world, but the love that empties itself on me.
But there is one more remark that I wish to make in reference to this constraining love of Jesus Christ, and that is, that in order to see and feel it we must take the point of view that this Apostle takes in my text. For hearken how he goes on. "The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died, and that He died for all," etc. That is to say, the death of Christ for all, which is equivalent to the death of Christ for each, is the great solvent by which the love of G.o.d melts men"s hearts, and is the great proof that Jesus Christ loves me, and thee, and all of us. If you strike out that conception you have struck out from your Christianity the vindication of the belief that Christ loves the world. What possible meaning is there in the expression, "He died for all?" How can the fact of His death on a "green hill" outside the gates of a little city in Syria have world-wide issues, unless in that death He bore, and bore away, the sins of the whole world? I know that there have been many--and there are many to-day--who not accepting what seems to me to be the very vital heart of Christianity--viz. the death of Christ for the world"s sin, do yet cherish--as I think illogically--yet do cherish a regard for Him, which puts some of us who call ourselves "orthodox," and are tepid, to the blush. Thank G.o.d! men are often better than their creeds, as well as worse than them. But that fact does not affect what I am saying now, and what I beg you to take for what you find it to be worth, that unless we believe that Jesus Christ died for all, I do not know what claim He has on the love of the world. We shall admire Him, we shall bow before Him, as the very realised ideal of humanity, though how this one Man has managed to escape the taint of the all-pervading evil remains, upon that hypothesis, very obscure. But love Him? No! Why should I? But if I feel that His death had world-wide issues, and that He went down into the darkness in order that He might bring the world into the light, then--and I am sure, on the wide scale and in the long-run only then--will men turn to Him and say, "Thou hast died for me, help me to live for Thee."
Brethren, I beseech you, take care of emptying the death of Christ of its deepest meaning, lest you should thereby rob His character of its chiefest charm, and His name of its mightiest soul-melting power.
The love that constraineth is the love that died, and died for all, because it died for each.
II. Now let me ask you to consider the echo of this constraining love.
I said a moment or two ago that Christ"s love to us is the constraining power, and that ours to Him is but the condition on which that power works. But between the two there comes something which brings that constraining love to bear upon our hearts. And so notice what my text goes on to adduce as needful for Christ"s love to have its effect--namely, "because we thus judge," etc. Then my estimate, my apprehension of the love of Christ must come in between its manifestation and its power to grip, to restrain, to impel me. If I may use such a figure, He stands, as it were, bugle in hand, and blows the sweet strains that are meant to set the echoes flying. But the rock must receive the impact of the vibrations ere it can throw back the thinned echo of the music. Love must be believed and known ere it can be responded to.
Now the only answer and echo that hearts desire is the love of the beloved heart. We all know that in our earthly life. Love is as much a hunger to be loved as the outgoing of my own affection. The two things are inseparable, and there is nothing that repays love but love. Jesus Christ wishes each of us to love Him. If it is true that He loves me, then, intertwisted with the outgoing of His heart towards me is the yearning that my heart may go out towards Him. Dear brethren, this is no pulpit rhetoric, it is a plain, simple fact, inseparable from the belief in Christ"s love--that He wishes you and every soul of man to love Him, and that, whatever else you bring, lip reverence, orthodox belief, apparent surrender, in the a.s.say shop of His great mint all these are rejected, and the only metal that pa.s.ses the fire is the pure gold of an answering love. Brethren! is that what you bring to Jesus Christ?
Love seeks for love, and our love can only be an echo of His. He takes the beginning in everything. If I am to love Him back again, I must have faith in His love to me. And if that be so, then the true way by which you, imperfect Christian people, can deepen and strengthen your love to Jesus Christ is not so much by efforts to work up a certain warmth of sentiment and glow of affection, as by gazing, with believing eyes of the heart, upon that which kindles your love to Him. If you want ice to melt, put it out into the sunshine, If you want the mirror to gleam, do not spend all your time in polishing it. Carry it where it can catch the ray, and it will flash it back in glory. "We love Him because He first loved us." Our love is an echo; be sure that you listen for the parent note, and link yourselves by faith with that great love which has come down from Heaven for us all.
But how can I speak about echoes and responses when I know that there are scores of men and women whom a preacher"s words reach who would be ashamed of themselves, and rightly, if they exhibited the same callousness of heart and selfishness of ingrat.i.tude to some human, partial benefactor as they are not ashamed to have exhibited all their lives to Jesus Christ. Echo? Yes! your heartstrings are set vibrating fast enough whenever, in the adjoining apartment, an instrument is touched which is tuned to the same key as your heart.
Pleasures, earthly aims, worldly gifts, the sweetnesses of human life, all these things set them thrilling, and you can hear the music, but your hearts are not tuned to answer to the note that is struck in "He loved me and gave Himself for me." The bugle is blown, and there is silence, and no echo, faint and far, comes whispering back. Brethren, we use no one else, in whose love we have any belief, a thousandth part so ill as we use Jesus Christ.
III. Now, lastly, let me say a word about the constraining influence of this echoed love.
Its first effect, if it has any real power in our hearts and lives, will be to change their centre, to decentralise. Look what the Apostle goes on to say: "We thus judge that He ... died for all, that they which live should not live henceforth unto themselves." That is the great transformation. Secure that, and all n.o.bleness will follow, and "whatsoever things are lovely and of good report" will come, like doves to their windows, flocking into the soul that has ceased to find its centre in its poor rebellious self. All love derives its power to elevate, refine, beautify, enn.o.ble, conquer, from the fact that, in lower degree, all love makes the beloved the centre, and not the self. Hence the mother"s self-sacrifice, hence the sweet reciprocity of wedded life, hence everything in humanity that is n.o.ble and good. Love is the antagonist of selfishness, and the highest type of love should be, and in the measure in which we are under the influence of Christ"s love will be, the self-surrendering life of a Christian man. I know that in saying so I am condemning myself and my brethren. All the same, it is true. The one power that rescues a man from the tyranny of living for self, which is the mother of all sin and ign.o.bleness, is when a man can say "Christ is my aim," "Christ is my object." "The life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of G.o.d, who loved me and gave Himself for me." There is no secret of self-annihilation, which is self-transfiguration, and, I was going to say, deification, like that of loving Christ with all my heart because He has loved me so.
Again, let me remind you that, on its lower reaches and levels, we find that all true affection has in it a strange power of a.s.similating its objects to one another. Just as a man and woman who have lived together for half a century in wedded life come to have the same notions, the same prejudices, the same tastes, and sometimes you can see their very faces being moulded into likeness, so, if I love Jesus Christ, I shall by degrees grow liker and liker to Him, and be "changed into the same image, from glory to glory."
Again, the love constrains, and not only constrains but impels, because it becomes a joy to divine and to do the will of the beloved Christ. "My yoke is easy." Is it? It is very hard to be a Christian.
His requirements are a great deal sterner than others. His yoke is easy, not because it is a lighter yoke, but because it is padded with love. And that makes all service a sacrament, and the surrender of my own will, which is the essence of obedience, a joy.
So, dear friends, we come here in sight of the unique and blessed characteristic of all Christian morality, and of all its practical exhortations, and the Gospel stands alone as the mightiest moulding power in the world, just because its word is "love, and do as thou wilt." For in the measure of thy love will thy will coincide with the will of Christ. There is nothing else that has anything like that power. We do not want to be told what is right. We know it a great deal better than we practise it. A revelation from heaven that simply told me my duty would be surplusage. "If there had been a law that could have given life, righteousness had been by the law." We want a life, not a law, and the love of Christ brings the life to us.
And so, dear friends, that life, restrained and impelled by the love to which it is being a.s.similated, is a life of liberty and a life of blessedness. In the measure in which the love of Christ constrains any man, it makes for him difficulties easy, the impossible possible, the crooked things straight, and the rough places plain. The duty becomes a delight, and self ceases to disturb. If the love of G.o.d is shed abroad in a heart, and in the measure in which it is, that heart will be at rest, and a great peace will brood over it. Then the will bows in glad submission, and all the powers arise to joyous service.
We are lords of the world and ourselves when we are Christ"s servants for love"s sake; and earth and its good are never so good as when the power of His echoed love rules our lives. Do you know and believe that Christ loves you? Do you know and believe that you had a place in His heart when He hung on the Cross for the salvation of the world? Have you answered that love with yours, kindled by your faith in, and experience of, His? Is His love the overmastering impulse which urges you to all good, the mighty constraint that keeps you back from all evil, the magnet that draws, the anchor that steadies, the fortress that defends, the light that illumines, the treasure that enriches? Is it the law that commands, and the power that enables? Then you are blessed, though people will perhaps say that you are mad, whilst here; and you will be blessed for ever and ever.
THE ENTREATIES OF G.o.d