'These things have I spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace.'
Peace is not lethargy; and it is very remarkable to notice how, in
immediate connection with this great promise, there occur words which
suggest its opposite--tribulation and battle. 'In the world ye have
tribulation.' 'I have overcome'--that means a fight. These are to go
side by side with the peace that He promises. The two conditions belong
to two different spheres. The Christian life bifurcates, as it were,
into a double root, and moves in two realms--'in Me' and 'in the world'
And the predicates and characteristics of these two lives are, in a
large measure, diametrically opposite. So here, without any
contradiction, our Lord brackets together these two opposite conditions
as both pertaining to the life of a devout soul. He promises a peace
which co-exists with tribulation and disturbance, a peace which is
realised in and through conflict and struggle. The tree will stand,
with its deep roots and its firm bole, unmoved, though wildest winds
may toss its branches and scatter its leaves. In the fortress,
beleaguered by the sternest foes, there may be, right in the very
centre of the citadel, a quiet oratory through whose thick walls the
noise of battle and the shout of victory or defeat can never penetrate.
So we may live in a centre of rest, however wild may be the uproar in
the circumference. 'In Me... peace,' that is the innermost life. 'In
the world... tribulation,' that is only the surface.
But, then, note that this peace, which exists with, and is realised
through, tribulation and strife, depends upon certain conditions. Our
Lord does not say, 'Ye have peace,' but 'These things I have spoken
that you _may_ have it.' It is a possibility; and He lays down
distinctly and plainly here the twofold set of conditions, in
fulfilment of which a Christian disciple may dwell secure and still, in
the midst of all confusion. Note, then, these two.
It is peace, if we have it at all, _in Him_. Now you remember how
emphatically and loftily, as one of the very key-notes of these
discourses, our Lord has spoken to us, in them, of 'dwelling in Him' as
the prerogative and the duty of every Christian. We are in Him as in an
atmosphere. In Him our true lives are rooted as a tree in the soil. We
are in Him as a branch in the vine, in Him as the members in a body, in
Him as the residents in a house. We are in Him by simple faith, by the
trust that rests all upon Him, by the love that finds all in Him, by
the obedience that does all for Him. And it is only when we are 'in
Christ' that we rest, and realise peace. All else brings distraction.
Even delights trouble. The world may give excitement, the world may
give vulgar and fleeting joys, the world may give stimulus to much that
is good and true in us, but there is only one thing that gives peace,
and that is that our hearts should dwell in the Fortress, and should
ever be surrounded by Jesus Christ. Brother! let nothing tempt us down
from the heights, and out from the citadel where alone we are at rest;
but in the midst of all the pressing duties, the absorbing cares, the
carking anxieties, the seducing temptations of the world, and in the
presence of all the necessity for noble conflict which the world brings
to every man that is not its slave, let us try to keep the roots of our
lives in contact with that soil from which they draw all their
nourishment, and to wrap ourselves round with the life of Jesus Christ,
which shall make an impenetrable shield between us and 'the fiery darts
of the wicked.' Keep on the lee side of the breakwater and your little
cock-boat will ride out the gale. Keep Christ between you and the
hurtling storm, and there will be a quiet place below the wall where
you may rest, hearing not the loud winds when they call. 'These things
have I spoken that in Me ye might have peace.'
But there is another condition. Christ speaks the great words which
have been occupying us so long, that they may bring to us peace. I need
not do more than remind you, in a sentence, of the contents of these
wonderful discourses. Think of how they have spoken to us of our
Brother's ascension to Heaven to prepare a place for us; of His coming
again to receive us to Himself; of His presence with us in His absence;
of His indwelling in us and ours in Him; of His gift to us of a divine
Spirit. If we believed all these things; if we realised them and lived
in the faith of them; if we meditated upon them in the midst of our
daily duties; and if they were real to us, and not mere words written
down in a Book, how should anything be able to disturb us, or to shake
our settled confidence? Cleave to the words of the Master, and let them
pour into your hearts the quietness and confidence which nothing else
can give. And then, whatsoever storms may be around, the heart will be
at rest. We find peace nowhere else but where Mary found her repose,
and could shake off care and 'trouble about many things,' sitting at
the feet of Jesus, wrapt in His love and listening to His word.
II. Then note, secondly, the outward tribulation which is the certain
fate of His followers.
Of course there is a very sad and true sense in which the warning, 'In
the world ye shall have tribulation,' applies to all men. Pain and
sickness, loss and death, the monotony of hard, continuous, unwelcome
toil, hopes blighted or disappointed even in their fruition, and all
the other 'ills that flesh is heir to,' afflict us all. But our Lord is
not speaking here about the troubles that befall men as men, nor about
the chastisement that befalls them as sinners, nor about the evils
which dog them because they are mortal or because they are bad, but of
the yet more mysterious sorrows which fall upon them because they are
good, 'In the world ye have tribulation,' is the proper rendering and
reading. It had already begun, and it was to be the standing condition
and certain fate of all that followed Him.
I have already said that the Christian life moves in two spheres, and
hence there must necessarily be antagonism and conflict. Whoever
realises the inward life in Christ will more or less, and sooner or
later, find himself coming into hostile collision with lives which only
move on the surface and belong to the world. If you and I are
Christians after the pattern of Jesus Christ, then we dwell in the
midst of an order of things which is not constituted on or for the
principles that regulate our lives and the objects at which we aim. And
hence, in that fundamental discordance between the Christian life and
society as it is constituted, there must always be, if there be honesty
and consistency on the side of the Christian man, more or less of
collision between him and it. All that you regard as axiomatic the
world regards as folly, if you take Christ for your Teacher. All that
you labour to secure the world does not care to possess, if you have
Him for your aim. All that you live to seek it has abandoned; all that
you desire to obey it will not even consult, if you are taking Christ
and His law for your rule. And therefore there must come, sooner or
later, and more or less intensely in all Christian lives, opposition
and tribulation. You cannot get away from the necessity, so it is as
well to face it.
No doubt the form of antagonism varies. No doubt the more the world is
penetrated by Christian principles divorced from their root and source,
the less vehement and painful will the collision be. But _there_ is the
gulf, and there it will remain, until the world is a Church. No doubt
some portion of the battlements of organised Christianity has tumbled
into the ditch, and made it a little less deep. Christians have dropped
their standard far too much, and so the antagonism is not so plain as
it ought to be, and as it used to be, and as, some day, it will be. But
there it is, and if you are going to live out and out like a Christian
man, you will get the old sneers flung at you. You will be 'crotchety,'
'impracticable,' 'spoiling sport,' 'not to be dealt with,' 'a wet
blanket,' 'pharisaical,' 'bigoted,' and all the rest of the pretty
words which have been so frequently used about the men that try to live
like Jesus Christ. Never mind! 'In the world ye have tribulation.' 'I
bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus,' the branding-iron which
tells to whom the slave belongs. And if it is His initials that I carry
I may be proud of the marks.
But at any rate there will be antagonism. You young men in your
warehouses, you men that go on 'Change', we people that live by our
pens or our tongues, and find ourselves in opposition to much of the
tendencies of the present day--we have all, in our several ways, to
bear the cross. Do not let us be ashamed of it, and, above all, do not
let us, for the sake of easing our shoulders, be unfaithful to our
Master. 'In the world ye have tribulation'; and the Christian man's
peace has to be like the rainbow that lives above the cataract--still
and radiant, whilst it shines above the hell of white waters that are
tortured below.
III. Lastly, notice the courageous confidence which comes from the
Lord's victory.
'Be of good cheer!' It is the old commandment that rang out to Joshua
when, on the departure of Moses, the conduct of the war fell into his
less experienced hands: 'Be strong, and of a good courage; only be thou
strong and very courageous.' So says the Captain of salvation, leaving
His soldiers to face the current of the heady fight in the field. Like
some leader who has climbed the ramparts, or hewed his way through the
broken ranks of the enemies, and rings out the voice of encouragement
and call to his followers, our Captain sets before us His own example:
'I have overcome the world,' He said that the day before Calvary. If
that was victory, what would defeat have been?
Notice, then, how our Lord's life was a true battle. The world tried to
draw Him away from God by appealing to things desirable to sense, as in
the wilderness; or to things dreadful to sense, as on the cross; and
both the one and the other form of temptation He faced and conquered.
It was no shadow fight which evoked this paean of victory from His
lips. The reality of His conflict is somewhat concealed from us by
reason of its calm and the completeness of His conquest. We do not
appreciate the force that drives a planet upon its path because it is
calm and continuous and silent, but the power that kept Jesus Christ
continually faithful to His Father, continually sure of that Father's
presence, continually averse to all self-will and selfish living, was a
power mightier then all others that have been manifested in the history
of humanity. The Captain of our salvation has really fought the fight
before us.
But mark, again, that our Lord's life is the type of all victorious
life. The world conquers me when it draws me away from God, when it
makes me its slave, when it coaxes me to trust it, and urges to despair
if I lose it. The world conquers me when it comes between me and God,
when it fills my desires, when it absorbs my energies, when it blinds
my eyes to the things unseen and eternal. I conquer the world when I
put my foot upon its temptations, when I crush it down, when I shake
off its bonds, and when nothing that time and sense, with their
delights or their dreadfulnesses, can bring, prevents me from cleaving
to my Father with all my heart, and from living as His child here.
Whoso thus coerces Time and Sense to be the servants of his filial love
has conquered them both, and whoso lets them draw him away from God is
beaten, however successful he may dream himself to be and men may call
him.
My friends! there is a lesson for Manchester people. Jesus Christ was
not a very successful man according to the standard of Market Street
and the Exchange. He made but a poor thing of the world, and He was
going to be martyred on the cross the day after He said these words.
And yet that was victory. Ay! Many a man beaten down in the struggle of
daily life, and making very little of it, according to our vulgar
estimate, is the true conqueror. Success means making the world a
stepping-stone to God.
Still further, note our share in the Master's victory--'_I_ have
overcome the world. Be _ye_ of good cheer.' That seems an irrelevant
way of arguing. What does it matter to me though He has overcome? So
much the better for Him; but what good is it to me?
It may aid us somewhat to more strenuous fighting, if we know that a
brother has fought and conquered, and I do not under-estimate the
blessing and the benefit of the life of Jesus Christ, as recorded in
these Scriptures, even from that, as I conceive it, miserably
inadequate and imperfect point of view. But the victory of Jesus Christ
is of extremely little practical use to me, if all the use of it is to
show me how to fight. Ah! you must go a deal deeper than that. 'I have
overcome the world, and I will come and put My overcoming Spirit into
your weakness, and fill you with My own victorious life, and make your
hands strong to war and your fingers to fight; and be in you the
conquering and omnipotent Power.'
My friends! Jesus Christ's victory is ours, and we are victors in it,
because He is more than the pattern of brave warfare, He is even the
Son of God, who gave Himself for us, and gives Himself to us, and
dwells in us our Strength and our Righteousness.
Lastly, remember that the condition of that victory's being ours is the
simple act of reliance upon Him and upon it. The man who goes into the
battle as that little army of the Hebrews did against the
wide-stretching hosts of the enemy, saying, 'O Lord! we know not what
to do, but our eyes are up unto Thee,' will come out 'more than
conqueror through Him that loved him.' For 'this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith.'