'This.' What is _this_? The answer will tell us what are the central
essential facts, faith in which makes a Christian. Of course the form
in which our Lord's previous utterance was cast was coloured by the
circumstances under which He spoke, and was so shaped as to meet the
momentary exigency. But whilst thus the form is determined by the fact
that He was speaking to a heart wrung by separation, and as a
preliminary to a mighty act of resurrection, the essential truths which
are so expressed are those which, as I believe, constitute the
fundamental truths of Christianity—the very core and heart of the
Gospel.
Turn, then, but for a moment, to what immediately precedes my text. Our
Lord says three things. First, He asserts His supernatural character
and divine relation to life: 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.'
Next, He declares that it is possible for Him to communicate to dying
and to dead men a life which triumphs over death, and laughs at change,
and persists through the superficial experience which we christen by
the name of Death, unaffected, undiminished, as some sweet spring might
gush up in the heart of a salt, solitary sea. And then He declares that
the condition on which He, the Life-giver, gives of His immortal life
to dying men, is their trust in Him. These three—His character and
work, the gifts of which His hands are full, and the way by which the
gifts may be appropriated by us men—these three are, as I take it, the
central facts of Christianity. 'Believest thou this?'
The question comes to us all; and in these days of unsettlement it is
well to have some clear understanding of what is the 'irreducible
minimum' of Christian teaching. I take it that it lies here. There are
two opposite errors which, like all opposite errors, are bolted
together, and revolve round a common centre. The one of them is the
extreme conservative tendency which regards every pin and bolt of the
tabernacle as if it were equally sacred with the altar and the ark. And
the other is the tendency which christens itself 'liberal and
progressive,' and which is always ready to exchange old lamps, though
they have burnt brightly in the past, for new ones that are as yet only
glittering metal and untried. In these days, when it is a presumption
against any opinion, that our fathers believed it (an error into which
young people are most prone to fall), and when, by the energy of
contradiction, that error has evoked, and is evoking, the opposite
exaggeration that adheres to all that is traditional, to all that has
been regarded as belonging to the essentials of the Christian faith,
and so is fearful, trembling for the Ark of God when there is no need,
let us fall back upon these great words of the Master, and see that the
things which constitute the living heart of His message and gift to the
world are neither more nor less than these three: the supernatural
Christ, the life which He imparts, and the condition on which He
bestows it. 'Believest thou this?' If you do, you need take very little
heed of the fluctuations of contemporary opinion as to other matters,
valuable and important as these may be in their place; and may let men
say what they will about disputed questions—about the method by which
the vehicle of revelation has been created and preserved, about the
regulation of the external forms of the Church, about a hundred other
things that men often lose their tempers and spoil their Christianity
by fighting for, and fall back upon the great central verity, a Christ
from above, the Giver of Life to all that put their trust in Him.
Let me expand this question for you. 'We all have sinned and come short
of the glory of God'—'believest thou this?' 'We must all appear before
the judgment-seat of Christ'—'believest thou this?' 'God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on
Him should not perish'—'believest thou this?' 'The Son of Man came… to
give His life a ransom for many'—'believest thou this?' 'Being
justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ'—'believest thou this?' 'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and
become the first fruits of them that slept'—'believest thou this?' 'I
go to prepare a place for you'—'believest thou this?' 'Where I am there
shall also My servant be'—'believest thou this?' 'So shall we ever be
with the Lord'—'believest thou this?' That is Christianity; and not
theories about inspiration, and priesthood, and sacramental efficacy,
or any of the other thorny questions which have, in the course of ages,
started up. Here is the living centre; hold fast, I beseech you, by it.
Then, again, the significance of this question is in the direction of
making clear for us the way by which men lay hold of these great
truths. The truths are of such a sort as that merely to say, 'Oh yes, I
believe it; it is quite true!' is by no means sufficient. If a man
tells me that two parallel lines produced ever so far will never meet,
I say, 'Yes, I believe it'; and there is nothing more to be done or
said. If a man says to me, 'Two and two make four,' I say, 'Yes'; and
there my assent ends. If a man says, 'It is right to do right,' it is
quite clear that the attitude of intellectual assent, which was quite
enough for the other order of statements, is not enough for this one;
and to merely say, 'Oh yes, it is right to do right,' is by no means
the only attitude which we ought to take in regard to such a truth. And
if God comes to me and says, 'Thou art a sinful man, and Jesus Christ
has died for thee; and if thou takest Him for thy Saviour thou shalt be
saved in this life, and saved for ever,' it is just as clear that no
mere acceptance of the saying as a verity exhausts my proper attitude
in reference to it. Or to come to plainer words, no man will really,
and out and out, and adequately, believe this gospel unless he does a
great deal more than assent to it or refrain from contradicting it.
So I desire to urge this form of the question on you now. Dear
brethren, do you _trust_ in 'this,' which you say you believe? There is
no greater enemy of the Christian faith than the ordinary lazy—what the
philosophers call _otiose_, which is only a grand word for lazy—assent
of the understanding, because men will not take the trouble to
contradict it or think about it.
That is the sort of Christianity which is the Christianity of a good
many church and chapel-goers. They do not care enough about the subject
to contradict the ordinary run of belief. Of all impotent things there
is nothing more impotent than a creed which lies idly in a man's head,
and never has touched his heart or his will. Why, I should get on a
great deal better if I were talking to people that had never heard
anything about the gospel than I have any chance of getting on with
you, who have been drenched with it all your days, till it goes over
you and runs off like water off a duck's back. The shells that were
hurled against the earthworks of Sebastopol broke away the front
surface of the mounds, and then the rubbish protected the
fortifications; and that is what happens with many of my hearers. You
have heard the gospel so often that the _debris_ of your old hearings
is raised between you and me, and my words cannot get at you.
'Believest thou this?'—not in the fashion in which people stand up in
church or chapel and look about them and rattle off the Creed every
Sunday of their lives, and attach not the ghost of an idea to a single
clause of it; but in the sense that the conviction of these truths is
so deep in your hearts that it moves your whole nature to cast
yourselves on Jesus Christ as your Saviour and your all. That is the
belief to which alone the life that is promised here will come. Oh!
brethren, I have no business to ask you the question, and you have no
need to answer it to me! Sometimes good, well-meaning people do a mint
of harm by pushing such questions into the faces of people unprepared.
But take the question into your own hearts, and remember what belief
is, and what it is that you have to believe, and answer according to
its true significance, and in the light of conscience, the solemn
question that I press upon you.
II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to think of what depends upon the
answer.
In the case before us—if I may look back to it for an instant—there is
a very illuminative instance of what did depend upon it. Martha had to
believe that Christ was the Resurrection and the Life as a condition
precedent to her seeing that He was so. For, as He said Himself before
He spoke the mighty word which raised Lazarus, 'Said I not unto thee
that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?'
and so her faith was the condition of her being able to verify the
facts which her faith grasped. Well, let me put that into plainer
words. It is just this—a man gets from Christ what he trusts Christ to
give him, and there is no other way of proving the truth of His
promises than by accepting His promises, and then they fulfil
themselves. You cannot know that a medicine will cure you till you
swallow it. You must first 'taste' before you 'see that God is good.'
Faith verifies itself by the experience it brings.
And what does it bring? I said, all for which a man trusts Christ. All
is summed up in that one favourite word of our Lord as revealed in this
fourth Gospel, which includes in itself everything of blessedness and
of righteousness—life, life eternal. Dear brethren, you and I, apart
from Jesus Christ, are dead in trespasses and sins. The life that we
live in the flesh is an apparent life, which covers over the true death
of separation from God. And you young people, fix this in your minds at
the beginning, it will save you many a heartache, and many an
error—there is nothing worth calling life, except that which comes to a
quiet heart submissive and enfranchised through faith in Jesus Christ.
And if you will trust yourselves to Him, and answer this question with
your ringing 'Yea, Lord!' then you will get a life which will quicken
you out of your deadness; a life which will mould you day by day into
more entire beauty of character and conformity with Himself; a life
which will shed sweetness and charm over dusty commonplaces, and make
sudden verdure spring in dreary, herbless deserts; a life which will
bring a solemn joy into sorrow, a strength for every duty; which will
bring manna in the wilderness, honey from the rock, light in darkness,
and a present God for your sufficient portion; a life which will run on
into the dim glories of eternity, and know no change but advancement,
through the millenniums of ages.
But, dear brethren, whilst thus, on condition of their faith, the door
into all divine and endless blessedness and progress is flung wide open
for men, do not forget the other side of the issues which depend on
this question. For if it is true that Jesus Christ is Life, and the
Source of it, and that faith in Him is the way by which you and I get
it, then there is no escape from the solemn conclusion that to be out
of Christ, and not to be exercising faith in Him, is to be infected
with death, and to be shut up in a charnel-house. I dare not suppress
the plain teaching of Jesus Christ Himself: 'He that hath the Son hath
life; he that hath not the Son hath not life.' The issues that depend
upon the answer to this question of my text may be summed up, if I may
venture to say so, by taking the words of our Lord Himself and
converting them into their opposite. He said, 'He that believeth …
though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and
believeth on Me shall never die.' That implies, He that believeth _not_
in Christ, though he were living, yet shall he die, and whosoever
liveth and believeth _not_ shall never live. _These_ are the issues—the
alternative issues—that depend on your answer to this question.
III. And now, lastly, let me ask you to think of the direct personal
appeal to every soul that lies in this question.
I have dwelt upon two out of the three words of which the question is
composed—'_believest_ thou _this_?' Let me dwell for a moment on the
third of them—'believest _thou_?'
Now that suggests the thought on which I do not need to dwell, but
which I seek briefly to lay upon your hearts and consciences—viz., the
intensely personal act of your own faith, by which alone Jesus Christ
can be of any use to you. Do not be led away by any vague notions which
people have about the benefits of a Church or its ordinances. Do not
suppose that any sacraments or any priest can do for you what you have
to do in the awful solitude of your own determining will—put out your
hand and grasp Jesus Christ. Can any person or thing be the condition
or channel of spiritual blessing to you, except in so far as your own
individual act of trust comes into play? You must take the bread with
your own hands, you must masticate it with your own teeth, you must
digest it with your own organs, before it can minister nourishment to
your blood and force to your life. And there is only one way by which
any man can come into any vital and life-giving connection with Jesus
Christ, and that is, by the exercise of his own personal faith.
And remember, too, that as the exercise of uniting trust in Jesus
Christ is exclusively your own affair, so exclusively your own affair
is the responsibility of answering this question. To you alone is it
addressed. You, and only you, have to answer it.
There was once a poor woman who went after Jesus Christ, and put out a
pale, wasted, tremulous finger to touch the hem of His garment. His
fine sensitiveness detected the light pressure of that petitioning
finger, and allowed virtue to go out, though the crowd surged about Him
and thronged Him. No crowds come between you and Jesus Christ. You and
He, the two of you, have, so to speak, the world to yourselves, and
straight to _you_ comes this question, 'Believest _thou_?'
Ah! brethren, that habit of skulking into the middle of the multitude,
and letting the most earnest appeal from the pulpit go diffused over
the audience is the reason why you sit there quiet, complacent, perhaps
wholly unaffected by what I am trying to make a pointed, individual
address. Suppose all the other people in this place of worship were
away but you and I, would not the word that I am trying to speak come
with more force to your hearts than it does now? Well, think away the
world and all its millions, and realise the fact that you stand in
Christ's presence, with all His regard concentrated upon you, and that
to thee individually this question comes from a gracious, loving heart,
which longs that you answer, 'Yea, Lord, I believe!'
Why should you not? Suppose you said to Him, 'No, Lord, I do not'; and
suppose He said, 'Why do you not?' what do you think you would say
then? You will have to answer it one day, in very solemn circumstances,
when all the crowds will fall away, as they do from a soldier called
out of the ranks to go up and answer for mutiny to his commanding
officer. 'Every one of us shall give an account of himself,' and the
lips that said so lovingly at the grave of Lazarus, 'Believest thou
this?' and are saying it again, dear friend, to you, even through my
poor words, will ask it once more. For this is the question the answer
to which settles whether we shall stand at His right hand or at His
left. Say now, with humble faith, 'Yea, Lord!' and you will have the
blessing of them who have not seen, and yet have believed.