'Beloved of God.' Now we are so familiar with the juxtaposition of
the two ideas, 'love' and 'God,' that we cease to feel the
wonderfulness of their union. But until Jesus Christ had done His
work no man believed that the two thoughts could be brought together.
Does God love any one? We think the question too plain to need to be
put, and the answer instinctive. But it is not by any means
instinctive, and the fact is that until Christ answered it for us,
the world stood dumb before the question that its own heart raised,
and when tortured spirits asked, 'Is there care in heaven, and is
there love?' there was 'no voice, nor answer, nor any that regarded.'
Think of the facts of life; think of the facts of nature. Think of
sorrows and miseries and pains, and sins, and wasted lives and
storms, and tempests, and diseases, and convulsions; and let us feel
how true the grim saying is, that
'Nature, red in tooth and claw,
With rapine, shrieks against the creed'
that God is love.
And think of what the world has worshipped, and of all the varieties
of monstrosity, not the less monstrous because sometimes beautiful,
before which men have bowed. Cruel, lustful, rapacious, capricious,
selfish, indifferent deities they have adored. And then, 'God hath
established,' proved, demonstrated 'His love to us in that while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us.'
Oh, brethren, do not let us kick down the ladder by which we have
climbed; or, in the name of a loving God, put away the Christian
teaching which has begotten the conception in humanity of a God that
loves. There are men to-day who would never have come within sight
of that sunlight truth, even as a glimmering star, away down upon
the horizon, if it had not been for the Gospel; and who now turn
round upon that very Gospel which has given them the conception,
and accuse it of narrow and hard thoughts of the love of God.
One of the Scripture truths against which the assailant often turns
his sharpest weapons is that which is involved in my text, the
Scripture answer to the other question, 'Does not God love all?' Yes!
yes! a thousand times, yes! But there is another question, Does the
love of God, to all, make His special designation of Christian men as
His beloved the least unlikely? Surely there is no kind of
contradiction between the broadest proclamation of the universality
of the love of God and Paul's decisive declaration that, in a very
deep and real manner, they who are in Christ are the beloved of God.
Surely special affection is not in its nature, inconsistent with
universal beneficence and benevolence. Surely it is no exaltation,
but rather a degradation of the conception of the divine love, if we
proclaim its utter indifference to men's characters. Surely you are
not honouring God when you say, 'It is all the same to Him whether a
man loves Him and serves Him, or lifts himself up in rebellion
against Him, and makes himself his own centre, and earth his aim and
his all.' Surely to imagine a God who not only makes His sun to shine
and His rains and dews to fall on the unthankful and the evil, that
He may draw them to love Him, but who also is conceived as taking the
sinful creature who yet cleaves to his sins to His heart, as He does
the penitent soul that longs for His image to be produced in it, is
to blaspheme, and not to honour the love, the universal love of God.
God forbid that any words that ever drop from my lips should seem to
cast the smallest shadow of doubt on that great truth, 'God so loved
the world that He gave His Son!' But God forbid, equally, that any
words of mine should seem to favour the, to me, repellent idea that
the infinite love of God disregards the character of the man on whom
it falls. There are manifestations of that loving heart which any man
can receive; and each man gets as much of the love of God as it is
possible to pour upon him. But granite rock does not drink in the dew
as a flower does; and the nature of the man on whom God's love falls
determines how much, and what manner of its manifestations shall pass
into his true possession, and what shall remain without.
So, on the whole, we have to answer the questions, 'Does God love
any? Does not God love all? Does God specially love some?' with the
one monosyllable, 'Yes.'
And so, dear brethren, let us learn the path by which we can pass
into that blessed community of those on whom the fullness and
sweetness and tenderest tenderness of the Father's heart will fall.
'If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love
him.' Myths tell us that the light which, at the beginning, had been
diffused through a nebulous mass, was next gathered into a sun. So
the universal love of God is concentrated in Jesus Christ; and if we
have Him we have it; and if we have faith we have Him, and can say,
'Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
II. Then, secondly, mark the universal obligation of the Christian
life.
'Called to be saints,' says my text. Now you will observe that the
two little words 'to be' are inserted here as a supplement. They may
be correct enough, but they are open to the possibility of
misunderstanding, as if the saintship, to which all Christian people
are 'called' was something future, and not realised at the moment.
Now, in the context, the Apostle employs the same form of expression
with regard to himself in a clause which illuminates the meaning of
my text. 'Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ' says he, in the first
verse, 'called to be an Apostle' or, more correctly, 'a called
Apostle.' The apostleship coincided in time with the call, was
contemporaneous with that which was its cause. And if Paul was an
Apostle since he was called, saints are saints since _they_ are
called. 'The beloved of God' are 'the called saints.'
I need only observe, further, that the word 'called' here does not
mean 'named' or 'designated' but 'summoned.' It describes not the
name by which Christian men are known, but the thing which they are
invited, summoned, 'called' by God to be. It is their vocation, not
their designation. Now, then, I need not, I suppose, remind you that
'saint' and 'holy' convey precisely the same idea: the one expressing
it in a word of Teutonic, and the other in one of classic derivation.
We notice that the true idea of this universal holiness which, _ipso
facto_, belongs to all Christian people, is consecration to God. In
the old days temple, altars, sacrifices, sacrificial vessels, persons
such as priests, periods like Sabbaths and feasts, were called
'holy.' The common idea running through all these uses of the word is
_belonging to God_, and that is the root notion of the New Testament
'saint' a man who is God's. God has claimed us for Himself when He
gave us Jesus Christ. We respond to the claim when we accept Christ.
Henceforth we are not our own, but 'consecrated'--that is, 'saints.'
Now the next step is purity, which is the ordinary idea of sanctity.
Purity will follow consecration, and would not be worth much without
it, even if it was possible to be attained. Now, look what a far
deeper and nobler idea of the service and conditions of moral
goodness this derivation of it from surrender to God gives, than does
a God-ignoring morality which talks and talks about acts and
dispositions, and never goes down to the root of the whole matter;
and how much nobler it is than a shallow religion which in like
manner is ever straining after acts of righteousness, and forgets
that in order to be right there must be prior surrender to God. Get a
man to yield himself up to God and no fear about the righteousness.
Virtue, goodness, purity, righteousness, all these synonyms express
very noble things; but deep down below them all lies the New
Testament idea of holiness, consecration of myself to God, which is
the parent of them all.
And then the next thing to remind you of is that this consecration is
to be applied all through a man's nature. Yielding yourselves to God
is the talismanic secret of all righteousness, as I have said; and
every part of our complex, manifold being is capable of such
consecration. I hallow my heart if its love twines round His heart. I
hallow my thoughts if I take His truth for my guide, and ever seek to
be led thereby in practice and in belief. I hallow my will when it
bows and says, 'Speak, Lord! Thy servant heareth!' I hallow my senses
when I use them as from Him, with recognition of Him and for Him. In
fact, there are two ways of living in the world; and, narrow as it
sounds, I venture to say there are only two. Either God is my centre,
and that is holiness; or self is my centre, in more or less subtle
forms, and that is sin.
Then the next step is that this consecration, which will issue in all
purity, and will cover the whole ground of a human life, is only
possible when we have drunk in the blessed thought 'beloved of God.'
My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of His giving of
Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannot argue a man
into loving God, any more than you can hammer a rosebud open. If you
do you spoil its petals. But He can love us into loving Him, and the
sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it, and it will
grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike in its measure
and according to its nature. So a God who has only claims upon us
will never be a God to whom we yield ourselves. A God who has love
for us will be a God to whom it is blessed that we should be
consecrated, and so saints.
Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon the reception
of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature, and leading to
all purity, is a universal characteristic of Christians. There is no
faith which does not lead to surrender. There is no aristocracy in
the Christian Church which deserves to have the family name given
especially to it. 'Saint' this, and 'Saint' that, and 'Saint' the
other--these titles cannot be used without darkening the truth that
this honour and obligation of being saints belong equally to all that
love Jesus Christ. All the men whom thus God has drawn to Himself, by
His love in His Son, they are all, if I may so say, objectively holy;
they belong to God. But consecration may be cultivated, and must be
cultivated and increased. There is a solemn obligation laid upon
every one of us who call ourselves Christians, to be saints, in the
sense that we have consciously yielded up our whole lives to Him; and
are trying, body, soul, and spirit, 'to perfect holiness in the fear
of the Lord.'
Paul's letter, addressed to the 'beloved in God,' the 'called saints'
that are in Rome, found its way to the people for whom it was meant.
If a letter so addressed were dropped in our streets, do you think
anybody would bring it to you, or to any Christian society as a
whole, recognising that we were the people for whom it was meant? The
world has taunted us often enough with the name of saints; and
laughed at the profession which they thought was included in the
word. Would that their taunts had been undeserved, and that it were
not true that 'saints' in the Church sometimes means less than 'good
men' out of the Church! 'Seeing that we have these promises, dearly
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and
spirit; perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.'