_CHRISTIAN DUTY IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORD'S RETURN AND IN THE POWER OF
HIS PRESENCE_
ROMANS xiii. 11-14
The great teacher has led us long upon the path of duty, in its
patient details, all summed up in the duty and joy of love. We have
heard him explaining to his disciples how to live as members together
of the Body of Christ, and as members also of human society at large,
and as citizens of the state. We have been busy latterly with thoughts
of taxes, and tolls, and private debts, and the obligation of
scrupulous rightfulness in all such things. Everything has had
relation to the seen and the temporal. The teaching has not strayed
into a land of dreams, nor into a desert and a cell; it has had at
least as much to do with the market, and the shop, and the secular
official, as if the writer had been a moralist whose horizon was
altogether of this life, and who for the future was "without hope."
Yet all the while the teacher and the taught were penetrated and
vivified by a certainty of the future perfectly supernatural, and
commanding the wonder and glad response of their whole being. They
carried about with them the promise of their Risen Master that He
would personally return again in heavenly glory, to their infinite
joy, gathering them for ever around Him in immortality, bringing
heaven with Him, and transfiguring them into His own celestial Image.
Across all possible complications and obstacles of the human world
around them they beheld "that blissful hope" (Tit. ii. 13). The smoke
of Rome could not becloud it, nor her noise drown the music of its
promise, nor her splendour of possessions make its golden vista less
beautiful and less entrancing to their souls.[227] Their Lord, once
crucified, but now alive for evermore, was greater than the world;
greater in His calm triumphant authority over man and nature, greater
in the wonder and joy of Himself, His Person and His Salvation. It was
enough that He had said He would come again, and that it would be to
their eternal happiness. He had promised; therefore it would surely
be.
How the promise would take place, and when, was a secondary question.
Some things were revealed and certain, as to the manner; "_This same
Jesus, in like manner as ye saw Him going into heaven_" (Acts i. 11).
But vastly more was unrevealed and even unconjectured. As to the time,
His words had left them, as they still leave us, suspended in a
reverent sense of mystery, between intimations which seem almost
equally to promise both speed and delay. "Watch therefore, for ye know
not when the Master of the house cometh" (Mark xiii. 35); "After a
long time the Lord of the servants cometh, and reckoneth with them"
(Matt. xxv. 19). The Apostle himself follows his Redeemer's example in
the matter. Here and there he seems to indicate an Advent at the
doors, as when he speaks of "_us_ who are alive and remain" (1 Thess.
iv. 15). But again, in this very Epistle, in his discourse on the
future of Israel, he appears to contemplate great developments of time
and event yet to come; and very definitely, for his own part, in many
places, he records his expectation of death, not of a death-less
transfiguration at the Coming. Many at least among his converts looked
with an eagerness which was sometimes restless and unwholesome, as at
Thessalonica, for the coming King; and it may have been thus with some
of the Roman saints. But St Paul at once warned the Thessalonians of
their mistake; and certainly this Epistle _suggests_ no such upheaval
of expectation at Rome.
Our work in these pages is not to discuss "the times and the seasons"
which now, as much as then, lie in the Father's "power" (Acts i. 7).
It is rather to call attention to the fact that in all ages of the
Church this mysterious but definite Promise has, with a silent force,
made itself as it were present and contemporary to the believing and
watching soul. How at last it shall be seen that "_I come quickly_"
and, "_The day of Christ is not at hand_" (Rev. xxii. 12, 20, 2 Thess.
ii. 2), were both divinely and harmoniously truthful, it does not yet
fully appear. But it is certain that both are so; and that in every
generation of the now "long time" "the Hope," as if it were at the
doors indeed, has been calculated for mighty effects on the
Christian's will and work.
So we come to this great Advent oracle, to read it for our own age.
Now first let us remember its wonderful illustration of that
phenomenon which we have remarked already, the concurrence in
Christianity of a faith full of eternity, with a life full of common
duty. Here is a community of men called to live under an almost opened
heaven; almost to see, as they look around them, the descending Lord
of glory coming to bring in the eternal day, making Himself present in
this visible scene "with the voice of the archangel and the trump of
God," waking His buried saints from the dust, calling the living and
the risen to meet Him in the air. How can they adjust such an
expectation to the demands of "the daily round"? Will they not fly
from the City to the solitude, to the hill-tops and forests of the
Apennines, to wait with awful joy the great lightning-flash of glory?
Not so. They somehow, while "looking for the Saviour from the heavens"
(Phil. iii. 20), attend to their service and their business, pay their
debts and their taxes, offer sympathy to their neighbours in their
human sadnesses and joys, and yield honest loyalty to the magistrate
and the Prince. They are the most stable of all elements in the civic
life of the hour, if "the powers that be" would but understand them;
while yet, all the while, they are the only people in the City whose
home, consciously, is the eternal heavens. What can explain the
paradox? Nothing but the Fact, the Person, the Character of our Lord
Jesus Christ. It is not an enthusiasm, however powerful, which governs
them, but a Person. And HE is at once the Lord of immortality and the
Ruler of every detail of His servant's life. HE is no author of
fanaticism, but the divine-human King of truth and order. To know Him
is to find the secret alike of a life eternal and of a patient
faithfulness in the life that now is.
What was true of Him is true for evermore. His servant now, in this
restless close of the nineteenth age, is to find in Him this wonderful
double secret still. He is to be, in Christ, by the very nature of his
faith, the most practical and the most willing of the servants of his
fellow-men, in their mortal as well as immortal interests; while also
disengaged internally from a bondage to the seen and temporal by his
mysterious union with the Son of God, and by his firm expectation of
His Return. [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =And this,= this law of love and
duty, let us remember, let us follow, =knowing the season,= the
occasion, the growing crisis (καιρόν); =that it is already the hour
for our awaking out of sleep,= the sleep of moral inattention, as if
the eternal Master were not near. =For nearer now is our salvation,=
in that last glorious sense of the word "_salvation_" which means the
immortal issue of the whole saving process, nearer now =than when we
believed,= and so by faith entered on our union with the Saviour.
(See how he delights to associate himself with his disciples in the
blessed unity of remembered conversion; "when _we_ believed.")
[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =The night,= with its murky silence, its "poring
dark," the night of trial, of temptation, of the absence of our
Christ, =is far spent,[228] but the day has drawn near;= it has been a
long night, _but_ that means a near dawn; the everlasting sunrise of
the longed-for _Parousia_, with its glory, gladness, and unveiling.
=Let us put off therefore,= as if they were a foul and entangling
night-robe, =the works of the darkness,= the habits and acts of the
moral night, things which _we can_ throw off in the Name of Christ;
=but let us put on the weapons of the light,= arming ourselves, for
defence, and for holy aggression on the realm of evil, with faith,
love, and the heavenly hope. So to the Thessalonians five years before
(1, v. 8), and to the Ephesians four years later (vi. 11-17), he wrote
of the holy Panoply, rapidly sketching it in the one place, giving the
rich finished picture in the other; suggesting to the saints always
the thought of a warfare first and mainly defensive, and _then_
aggressive with the drawn sword, and indicating as their true armour
not their reason, their emotions, or their will, taken in themselves,
but the eternal facts of their revealed salvation in Christ, grasped
and used by faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =As by day,= for it is already
dawn, in the Lord, =let us walk[229] decorously,= becomingly, as we
are the hallowed soldiers of our Leader; let our life not only be
right in fact; let it _shew_ to all men the open "_decorum_" of truth,
purity, peace, and love; =not in revels and drunken bouts; not in
chamberings,= the sins of the secret couch, =and profligacies,=
not--to name evils which cling often to the otherwise reputable
Christian--=in strife and envy,= things which are pollutions, in the
sight of the Holy One, as real as lust itself. =No; put on,= clothe
and arm yourselves with, =the Lord Jesus Christ,= Himself the living
sum and true meaning of all that can arm the soul; =and for the flesh
take no forethought lust-ward.= As if, in euphemism, he would say,
"Take all possible _forethought against_ the life of self (σάρξ),
with its lustful, self-wilful gravitation away from God. And let that
forethought be, to arm yourselves, as if never armed before, with
Christ."
How solemnly explicit he is, how plain-spoken, about the temptations
of the Roman Christian's life! The men who were capable of the appeals
and revelations of the first eight chapters yet needed to be told not
to drink to intoxication, not to go near the house of ill-fame, not to
quarrel, not to grudge. But every modern missionary in heathendom will
tell us that the like stern plainness is needed now among the
new-converted faithful. And is it not needed among those who have
professed the Pauline faith much longer, in the congregations of our
older Christendom?
It remains for our time, as truly as ever, a fact of religious
life--this necessity to press it home upon the religious, _as_ the
religious, that they are called to a practical and detailed holiness;
and that they are never to ignore the possibility of even the worst
falls. So mysteriously can the subtle "flesh," in the believing
receiver of the Gospel, becloud or distort the holy import of the
thing received. So fatally easy is it "to corrupt the best into the
worst," using the very depth and richness of spiritual truth as if it
could be a substitute for patient practice, instead of its mighty
stimulus.
But glorious is the method illustrated here for triumphant resistance
to that tendency. What is it? It is not to retreat from spiritual
principle upon a cold naturalistic programme of activity and probity.
It is to penetrate through the spiritual principle to the Crucified
and Living Lord who is its heart and power; it is to bury self in Him,
and to arm the will with Him. It is to look for Him as Coming, but
also, and yet more urgently, to use Him as Present. In the great Roman
Epic, on the verge of the decisive conflict, the goddess-mother laid
the invulnerable panoply at the feet of her Æneas; and the astonished
Champion straightway, first pondering every part of the heaven-sent
armament, then "put it on," and was prepared. As it were at our feet
is laid THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, in all He is, in all He has done, in
His indissoluble union with us in it all, as we are one with Him by
the Holy Ghost. It is for us to see in Him our power and victory, and
to "put Him on," in a personal act which, while all by grace, is yet
in itself our own. And how is this done? It is by the "committal of
the keeping of our souls unto Him" (1 Pet. iv. 19), not vaguely, but
definitely and with purpose, in view of each and every temptation. It
is by "living our life in the flesh by faith in the Son of God" (Gal.
ii. 20); that is to say, in effect, by perpetually _making use of_ the
Crucified and Living Saviour, One with us by the Holy Spirit; by using
Him as our living Deliverer, our Peace and Power, amidst _all_ that
the dark hosts of evil can do against us.
Oh wonderful and all-adequate secret; "Christ, which is the Secret of
God" (Col. ii. 2)! Oh divine simplicity of its depth;
"Heaven's easy, artless, unencumber'd plan"!
Not that its "ease" means our indolence. No; if we would indeed "arm
ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ" we must awake and be astir to
"_know whom_ we have trusted" (2 Tim. i. 12). We must explore His Word
about Himself. We must ponder it, above all in the prayer which
converses with Him over His promises, till they live to us in His
light. We must watch and pray, that we may be alert to employ our
armament. The Christian who steps out into life "light-heartedly,"
thinking superficially of his weakness, and of his foes, is only too
likely also to think of his Lord superficially, and to find of even
this heavenly armour that "he cannot _go_ with it, for he hath not
proved it" (1 Sam. xvii. 39). But all this leaves absolutely untouched
the divine simplicity of the matter. It leaves it wonderfully true
that the decisive, the satisfying, _the thorough_, moral victory and
deliverance comes to the Christian man not by trampling about with his
own resolves, but by committing himself to his Saviour and Keeper, who
has conquered _him_, that now He may conquer "his strong Enemy" for
him.
"Heaven's unencumbered plan" of "victory and triumph, against the
devil, the world, and the flesh," is no day-dream of romance. It
lives, it works in the most open hour of the common world of sin and
sorrow. _We have seen_ this "putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ"
victoriously successful where the most fierce, or the most subtle,
forms of temptation were to be dealt with. _We have seen_ it
preserving, with beautiful persistency, a life-long sufferer from the
terrible solicitations of pain, and of still less endurable
helplessness--every limb fixed literally immovable by paralysis on the
ill-furnished bed; _we have seen_ the man cheerful, restful, always
ready for wise word and sympathetic thought, and affirming that his
Lord, present to his soul, was infinitely enough to "keep him." _We
have seen_ the overwhelmed toiler for God, while every step through
the day was clogged by "thronging duties," such duties as most wear
and drain the spirit, yet maintained in an equable cheerfulness and as
it were inward leisure by this same always adequate secret, "the Lord
Jesus Christ put on." _We have known_ the missionary who had, in sober
earnest, hazarded his life for the blessed Name, yet ready to bear
quiet witness to the repose and readiness to be found in meeting
disappointment, solitude, danger, not so much by a stern resistance as
by the use, then and there, confidingly, and in surrender, of the
Crucified and Living Lord. Shall we dare to add, with the humiliated
avowal that only a too partial proof has been made of this glorious
open Secret, that _we know_ by experiment that the weakest of the
servants of our King, "putting on HIM," find victory and deliverance,
where there was defeat before?
Let us, writer and reader, address ourselves afresh in practice to
this wonderful secret. Let us, as if we had never done it before, "put
on the Lord Jesus Christ."[230] Vain is our interpretation of the holy
Word, which not only "abideth, but _liveth_ for ever" (1 Pet. i. 23),
if it does not somehow _come home_. For that Word was written on
purpose to come home; to touch and move the conscience and the will,
in the realities of our inmost, and also of our most outward, life.
Never for one moment do we stand as merely interested students and
spectators, outside the field of temptation. Never for one moment
therefore can we dispense with the great Secret of victory and safety.
Full in face of the realities of sin--of Roman sin, in Nero's days;
but let us just now forget Rome and Nero; they were only dark
accidents of a darker essence--St Paul here writes down, across them
all, these words, this spell, this Name; "_Put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ_." Take first a steady look, he seems to say, at your sore
need, in the light of God; but then, at once, look off, look _here_.
Here is the more than Antithesis to it all. Here is that by which you
can be "more than conqueror." Take your iniquities at the worst; this
can subdue them. Take your surroundings at the worst; this can
emancipate you from their power. It is "the Lord Jesus Christ," and
the "putting on" of Him.
Let us remember, as if it were a new thing, that He, the Christ of
Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, is a Fact. Sure as the existence
now of His universal Church, as the observance of the historic
Sacrament of His Death, as the impossibility of Galilean or Pharisaic
imagination having _composed_, instead of _photographed_, the portrait
of the Incarnate Son, the Immaculate Lamb; sure as is the glad
verification in ten thousand blessed lives to-day of all, of all, that
the Christ of Scripture undertakes to be to the soul that will take
Him at His own terms--so sure, across all oldest and all newest
doubts, across all _gnosis_ and all _agnosia_, lies the present Fact
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then let us remember that it is a fact that man, in the mercy of God,
_can_ "put Him on." He is not far off. He presents Himself to our
touch, our possession. He says to us, "Come to Me." He unveils
Himself as literal partaker of our nature; as our Sacrifice; our
Righteousness, "through faith in His blood"; as the Head and
Life-spring, in an indescribable union, of a deep calm tide of life
spiritual and eternal, ready to circulate through our being. He
invites Himself to "make His abode _with_ us" (John xiv. 23); yea
more, "I will come _in_ to him; I will dwell _in_ his heart by faith"
(Rev. iii. 20; Eph. iii. 17). In that ungovernable heart of ours, that
interminably self-deceptive heart (Jerem. xvii. 9), He engages to
reside, to be permanent Occupant, the Master always at home. He is
prepared thus to take, with regard to our will, a place of power
nearer than all circumstances, and deep in the midst of all possible
inward traitors; to keep His eye on their plots, His foot, not ours,
upon their necks. Yes, He invites us thus to embrace Him into a full
contact; to "put Him on."
May we not say of Him what the great Poet says of Duty, and glorify
the verse by a yet nobler application?--
"Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe,
From vain temptations dost set free,
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!"
Yes, we can "put Him on" as our "Panoply of Light." We can put Him on
as "THE LORD," surrendering ourselves to His absolute while most
benignant sovereignty and will, deep secret of repose. We can put Him
on as "JESUS," clasping the truth that He, our Human Brother, yet
Divine, "saves His people from their sins" (Matt. i. 21). We can put
Him on as "CHRIST," our Head, anointed without measure by the Eternal
Spirit, and now sending of that same Spirit into His happy members, so
that we are indeed one with Him, and receive into our whole being the
resources of His life.
Such is the armour and the arms. St Jerome, commenting on a kindred
passage (Eph. vi. 13), says that "it most clearly results that by 'the
weapons of God' _the Lord our Saviour_ is to be understood."
We may recollect that this text is memorable in connexion with the
Conversion of St Augustine. In his _Confessions_ (viii. 12) he records
how, in the garden at Milan, at a time of great moral conflict, he was
strangely attracted by a voice, perhaps the cry of children playing:
"_Take and read, take and read._" He fetched and opened again a copy
of the Epistles (_codicem Apostoli_), which he had lately laid down.
"I read in silence the first place on which my eyes fell; '_Not in
revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in
strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh in its lusts_.' I neither cared, nor needed,
to read further. At the close of the sentence, as if a ray of
certainty were poured into my heart, the clouds of hesitation fled at
once." His will was in the will of God.
Alas, there falls one shadow over that fair scene. In the belief of
Augustine's time, to decide fully for Christ meant, or very nearly
meant, so to accept the ascetic idea as to renounce the Christian
home. But the Lord read His servant's heart aright through the error,
and filled it with His peace. To us, in a surrounding religious light
far clearer, in many things, than that which shone even upon Ambrose
and Augustine; to us who quite recognize that in the paths of
homeliest duty and commonest temptation lies the line along which the
blessed power of the Saviour may best overshadow His disciple; the
Spirit's voice shall say of this same text, "_Take and read, take and
read_." We will "put on," never to put off. Then we shall step out
upon the old path in a strength new, and to be renewed for ever, armed
against evil, armed for the will of God, with Jesus Christ our Lord.
[227] Omitte mirari beatæ Fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ. (Horace.)
[228] Προέκοψε: literally, "_made progress_." The aorist may refer
to the event of the First Advent, when our eternal Sun was heralded by
Himself the Morning Star. But perhaps it is best represented by the
English perfect, as in the A.V. and above.
[229] Περιπατήσωμεν: perhaps the aorist suggests a new outset in the
"_walk_."
[230] From this point to the close of the chapter the writer has used,
with modifications, passages from a Sermon (No. iii.) in his volume
entitled _Christ is All_.