'...Joint heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with
Him, that we may be also glorified together.'--ROMANS viii. 17.
In the former part of this verse the Apostle tells us that in order
to be heirs of God, we must become sons through and joint-heirs with
Christ. He seems at first sight to add in these words of our text
another condition to those already specified, namely, that of
suffering with Christ.
Now, of course, whatever may be the operation of suffering in fitting
for the possession of the Christian inheritance, either here or in
another world, the sonship and the sorrows do not stand on the same
level in regard to that possession. The one is the indispensable
condition of all; the other is but the means for the operation of the
condition. The one--being sons, 'joint-heirs with Christ,'--is the
root of the whole matter; the other--the 'suffering with Him,'--is
but the various process by which from the root there come 'the blade,
and the ear, and the full corn in the ear.' Given the sonship--if it
is to be worked out into power and beauty, there must be suffering
with Christ. But unless there be sonship, there is no possibility of
inheriting God; discipline and suffering will be of no use at all.
The chief lesson which I wish to gather from this text now is that
all God's sons must suffer with Christ; and in addition to this
principle, we may complete our considerations by adding briefly, that
the inheritance must be won by suffering, and that if we suffer with
Him, we certainly shall receive the inheritance.
I. First, then, sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering
with Him.
I think that we entirely misapprehend the force of this passage
before us, if we suppose it to refer principally or merely to the
outward calamities, what you call trials and afflictions, which
befall people, and see in it only the teaching, that the sorrows of
daily life may have in them a sign of our being children of God, and
some power to prepare us for the glory that is to come. There is a
great deal more in the thought than that, brethren. This is not
merely a text for people who are in affliction, but for all of us. It
does not merely contain a law for a certain part of life, but it
contains a law for the whole of life. It is not merely a promise that
in all our afflictions Christ will be afflicted, but it is a solemn
injunction that we seek to know 'the fellowship of His sufferings,
and be made conformable to the likeness of His death,' if we expect
to be 'found in the likeness of His Resurrection,' and to have any
share in the community of His glory. In other words, the foundation
of it is not that Christ shares in our sufferings; but that we, as
Christians, in a deep and real sense do necessarily share and
participate in Christ's. We 'suffer with Him'; _not_ He suffers
with us.
Now, do not let us misunderstand each other, or the Apostle's
teaching. Do not suppose that I am forgetting, or wishing you to
account as of small importance, the awful sense in which Christ's
suffering stands as a thing by itself and unapproachable, a solitary
pillar rising up, above the waste of time, to which all men
everywhere are to turn with the one thought, 'I can do nothing like
that; I need to do nothing like it; it has been done once, and once
for all; and what I have to do is, simply to lie down before Him, and
let the power and the blessings of that death and those sufferings
flow into my heart.' The Divine Redeemer makes eternal redemption.
The sufferings of Christ--the sufferings of His life, and the
sufferings of His death--both because of the nature which bore them,
and of the aspect which they wore in regard to us, are in their
source, in their intensity, in their character, and consequences,
unapproachable, incapable of repetition, and needing no repetition
whilst the world shall stand. But then, do not let us forget that the
very books and writers in the New Testament that preach most broadly
Christ's sole, all-sufficient, eternal redemption for the world by
His sufferings and death, turn round and say to us too, '"Be planted
together in the likeness of His death"; you are "crucified to the
world" by the Cross of Christ; you are to "fill up that which is
behind of the sufferings of Christ."' He Himself speaks of our
drinking of the cup that He drank of, and being baptized with the
baptism that He was baptized with, if we desire to sit yonder on His
throne, and share with Him in His glory.
Now what do the Apostles, and what does Christ Himself, in that
passage that I have quoted, mean, by such solemn words as these? Some
people shrink from them, and say that it is trenching upon the
central doctrine of the Gospel, when we speak about drinking of the
cup which Christ drank of. They ask, Can it be? Yes, it can be, if
you will think thus:--If a Christian has the Spirit and life of
Christ in him, his career will be moulded, imperfectly but really, by
the same Spirit that dwelt in his Lord; and similar causes will
produce corresponding effects. The life of Christ which--divine,
pure, incapable of copy and repetition--in one aspect has ended for
ever for men, remains to be lived, in another view of it, by every
Christian, who in like manner has to fight with the world; who in
like manner has to resist temptation; who in like manner has to
stand, by God's help, pure and sinless, in so far as the new nature
of him is concerned, in the midst of a world that is full of evil.
For were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings that were
wrought upon Calvary? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the
sufferings which came from the contradiction of sinners against
Himself? Were the sufferings of the Lord only the sufferings which
were connected with His bodily afflictions and pain, precious and
priceless as they were, and operative causes of our redemption as
they were? Oh no. Conceive of that perfect, sinless, really human
life, in the midst of a system of things that is all full of
corruption and of sin; coming ever and anon against misery, and
wrong-doing, and rebellion; and ask yourselves whether part of His
sufferings did not spring from the contact of the sinless Son of man
with a sinful world, and the apparently vain attempt to influence and
leaven that sinful world with care for itself and love for the
Father. If there had been nothing more than that, yet Christ's
sufferings as the Son of God in the midst of sinful men would have
been deep and real. 'O faithless generation, how long shall I be with
you? how long shall I suffer you?' was wrung from Him by the painful
sense of want of sympathy between His aims and theirs. 'Oh that I had
wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest,' must
often be the language of those who are like Him in spirit, and in
consequent sufferings.
And then again, another branch of the 'sufferings of Christ' is to be
found in that deep and mysterious fact on which I durst not venture
to speak beyond what the actual words of Scripture put into my
lips--the fact that Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a
man, through temptation and by suffering. There was no sin _within_
Him, no tendency to sin, no yielding to the evil that assailed. 'The
Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.' But yet, when
that dark Power stood by His side, and said, 'If thou be the Son of
God, cast Thyself down,' it was a real temptation and not a sham one.
There was no wish to do it, no faltering for a moment, no hesitation.
There was no rising up in that calm will of even a moment's impulse
to do the thing that was presented;--but yet it was presented, and,
when Christ triumphed, and the tempter departed for a season, there
had been a temptation and there had been a conflict. And though
obedience be a joy, and the doing of His Father's will was His
delight, as it must needs be in pure and in purified hearts; yet
obedience which is sustained in the face of temptation, and which
never fails, though its path lead to bodily pains and the
'contradiction of sinners,' may well be called suffering. We cannot
speak of our Lord's obedience as the surrender of His own will to the
Father's, with the implication that these two wills ever did or could
move except in harmony. There was no place in Christ's obedience for
that casting out of sinful self which makes our submission a
surrender joined with suffering, but He knew temptation. Flesh, and
sense, and the world, and the prince of this world, presented it to
Him; and therefore His obedience too was suffering, even though to do
the will of His Father was His meat and His drink, His sustenance and
His refreshment.
But then, let me remind you still further, that not only does the
life of Christ, as sinless in the midst of sinful men, and the life
of Christ, as sinless whilst yet there was temptation presented to
it--assume the aspect of being a life of suffering, and become, in
that respect, the model for us; but that also the Death of Christ,
besides its aspect as an atonement and sacrifice for sin, the power
by which transgression is put away and God's love flows out upon our
souls, has another power given to it in the teaching of the New
Testament. The Death of Christ is a type of the Christian's life,
which is to be one long, protracted, and daily dying to sin, to self,
to the world. The crucifixion of the old manhood is to be the life's
work of every Christian, through the power of faith in that Cross by
which 'the world is crucified unto Me, and I unto the world.' That
thought comes over and over again in all forms of earnest
presentation in the Apostle's teaching. Do not slur it over as if it
were a mere fanciful metaphor. It carries in its type a most solemn
reality. The truth is, that, if a Christian, you have a double life.
There is Christ, with His power, with His Spirit, giving you a nature
which is pure and sinless, incapable of transgression, like His
own. The new man, that which is born of God, sinneth not, cannot sin.
But side by side with it, working through it, working in it,
leavening it, indistinguishable from it to your consciousness, by
anything but this that the one works righteousness and the other
works transgression, there is the 'old man,' 'the flesh,' 'the old
Adam,' your own godless, independent, selfish, proud being. And the
one is to slay the other! Ah, let me tell you, these
words--crucifying, casting out the old man, plucking out the right
eye, maiming self of the right hand, mortifying the deeds of the
body--they are something very much deeper and more awful than
poetical symbols and metaphors. They teach us this, that there is no
growth without sore sorrow. Conflict, not progress, is the word that
defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by
any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by
day, and hour by hour. In long lingering agony often, with the blood
of the heart pouring out at every quivering vein, you are to cut
right through the life and being of that sinful self; to do what the
Word does, pierce to the dividing asunder of the thoughts and intents
of the heart, and get rid by crucifying and slaying--a long process,
a painful process--of your own sinful self. And not until you can
stand up and say, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,' have
you accomplished that to which you are consecrated and vowed by your
sonship--'being conformed unto the likeness of His death,' and
'knowing the fellowship of His sufferings.'
It is this process, the inward strife and conflict in getting rid of
evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of 'suffering
with Christ, that we may be also glorified together.' On this high
level, and not upon the lower one of the consideration that Christ
will help us to bear outward infirmities and afflictions, do we find
the true meaning of all that Scripture teaching which says indeed,
'Yes, our sufferings are _His_'; but lays the foundation of it in
this, 'His sufferings are _ours_.' It begins by telling us that
Christ has done a work and borne a sorrow that no second can ever do.
Then it tells us that Christ's life of obedience--which, because it
_was_ a life of obedience, was a life of suffering, and brought
Him into a condition of hostility to the men around Him--is to be
repeated in us. It sets before us the Cross of Calvary, and the
sorrows and pains that were felt there;--and it says to us, Christian
men and women, if you want the power for holy living, have fellowship
in that atoning death; and if you want the pattern of holy living,
look at that Cross and feel, 'I am crucified to the world by it; and
the life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of
God.'
Such considerations as these, however, do not necessarily exclude the
other one (which we may just mention and dwell on for a moment),
namely, that where there is this spiritual participation in the
sufferings of Christ, and where His death is reproduced and
perpetuated, as it were, in our daily mortifying ourselves in the
present evil world--there Christ is with us in our afflictions. God
forbid that I should try to strike away any word of consolation that
has come, as these words of my text have come, to so many sorrowing
hearts in all generations, like music in the night and like cold
waters to a thirsty soul. We need not hold that there is no reference
here to that comforting thought, 'In all our affliction He is
afflicted.' Brethren, you and I have, each of us--one in one way,
and one in another, all in some way, all in the right way, none in
too severe a way, none in too slight a way--to tread the path of
sorrow; and is it not a blessed thing, as we go along through that
dark valley of the shadow of death down into which the sunniest paths
go sometimes, to come, amidst the twilight and the gathering clouds,
upon tokens that Jesus has been on the road before us? They tell us
that in some trackless lands, when one friend passes through the
pathless forests, he breaks a twig ever and anon as he goes, that
those who come after may see the traces of his having been there, and
may know that they are not out of the road. Oh, when we are
journeying through the murky night, and the dark woods of affliction
and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or
a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of
His hand as He passed, and to remember that the path He trod He has
hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrances and hidden strengths
in the remembrance of Him as 'in all points tempted like as we are,'
bearing grief _for_ us, bearing grief _with_ us, bearing
grief _like_ us.
Oh, do not, do not, my brethren, keep these sacred thoughts of
Christ's companionship in sorrow, for the larger trials of life. If
the mote in the eye be large enough to annoy you, it is large enough
to bring out His sympathy; and if the grief be too small for Him to
compassionate and share, it is too small for you to be troubled by
it. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought, 'Christ bears
this grief with me,' to those petty molehills that you sometimes
magnify into mountains, think to yourselves that then it is a shame
for you to be stumbling over them. But on the other hand, never fear
to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is
willing to bear, and help you to bear, the pettiest, the minutest,
and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that may come to
ruffle you. Whether it be a poison from one serpent sting, or whether
it be poison from a million of buzzing tiny mosquitoes, if there be a
smart, go to Him, and He will help you to endure it. He will do more,
He will bear it with you, for if so be that we suffer with Him, He
suffers with us, and our oneness with Christ brings about a community
of possessions whereby it becomes true of each trusting soul in its
relations to Him, that 'all mine (joys and sorrows alike) are thine,
and all thine are mine.' II. There remain some other considerations
which may be briefly stated, in order to complete the lessons of this
text. In the second place, this community of suffering is a necessary
preparation for the community of glory.
I name this principally for the sake of putting in a caution. The
Apostle does not mean to tell us, of course, that if there were such
a case as that of a man becoming a son of God, and having no occasion
or opportunity afterwards, by brevity of life or other causes, for
passing through the discipline of sorrow, his inheritance would be
forfeited. We must always take such passages as this--which seem to
make the discipline of the world an essential part of the preparing
of us for glory--in conjunction with the other undeniable truth which
completes them, that when a man has the love of God in his heart,
however feebly, however newly, there and then he is fit for the
inheritance. I think that Christian people make vast mistakes
sometimes in talking about 'being made meet for the inheritance of
the saints in light,' about being 'ripe for glory,' and the like. One
thing at any rate is very certain, it is not the discipline that
fits. That which fits goes before the discipline, and the discipline
only develops the fitness. 'God hath made us meet for the inheritance
of the saints in light,' says the Apostle. That is a past act. The
preparedness for heaven comes at the moment--if it be a momentary
act--when a man turns to Christ. You may take the lowest and most
abandoned form of human character, and in one moment (it is possible,
and it is often the case) the entrance into that soul of the feeble
germ of that new affection shall at once change the whole moral
habitude of that man. Though it be true, then, that heaven is only
open to those who are capable--by holy aspirations and divine
desires--of entering into it, it is equally true that such
aspirations and desires may be the work of an instant, and may be
superinduced in a moment in a heart the most debased and the most
degraded. 'This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise,'--_fit_ for
the inheritance!
And, therefore, let us not misunderstand such words as this text, and
fancy that the necessary discipline, which we have to go through
before we are ready for heaven, is necessary in anything like the
same sense in which it is necessary that a man should have faith in
Christ in order to be saved. The one may be dispensed with, the other
cannot. A Christian at any period of his Christian experience, if it
please God to take him, is fit for the kingdom. The life _is_ life,
whether it be the budding beauty and feebleness of childhood, or the
strength of manhood, or the maturity and calm peace of old age. But
'add to your faith,' that 'an entrance may be ministered unto you
_abundantly_.' Remember that though the root of the matter, the seed
of the kingdom, may be in you; and that though, therefore, you have a
right to feel that, at any period of your Christian experience, if it
please God to take you out of this world, you are fit for heaven--yet
in His mercy He is leaving you here, training you, disciplining you,
cleansing you, making you to be polished shafts in His quiver; and
that all the glowing furnaces of fiery trial and all the cold waters
of affliction are but the preparation through which the rough iron is
to be passed before it becomes tempered steel, a shaft in the
Master's hand.
And so learn to look upon all trial as being at once the seal of your
sonship, and the means by which God puts it within your power to win
a higher place, a loftier throne, a nobler crown, a closer fellowship
with Him 'who hath suffered, being tempted,' and who will receive
into His own blessedness and rest them that are tempted. 'The child,
though he be an heir, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be
lord of all; but is under tutors and governors.' God puts us in the
school of sorrow under that stern tutor and governor here, and gives
us the opportunity of 'suffering with Christ,' that by the daily
crucifixion of our old nature, by the lessons and blessings of
outward calamities and change, there may grow up in us a still nobler
and purer, and perfecter divine life; and that we may so be made
capable--more capable, and capable of more--of that inheritance for
which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only
fitness is faith in His name.
III. Finally, that inheritance is the necessary result of the
suffering that has gone before.
The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must
needs culminate in glory. It is not only because the joy hereafter
seems required in order to vindicate God's love to His children, who
here reap sorrow from their sonship, that the discipline of life
cannot but end in blessedness. That ground of mere compensation is a
low one on which to rest the certainty of future bliss. But the
inheritance is sure to all who here suffer with Christ, because the
one cause--union with the Lord--produces both the present result of
fellowship in His sorrows, and the future result of joy in His joy,
of possession of His possessions. The inheritance is sure because
Christ possesses it now. The inheritance is sure because earth's
sorrows not merely require to be repaid by its peace, but because
they have an evident design to fit us for it, and it would be
destructive to all faith in God's wisdom, and God's knowledge of His
own purposes, not to believe that what He has wrought us for will be
given to us. Trials have no meaning, unless they are means to an end.
The end is the inheritance, and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit's
work here, are the earnest of the inheritance. Measure the greatness
of the glory by what has preceded it. God takes all these years of
life, and all the sore trials and afflictions that belong inevitably
to an earthly career, and works them in, into the blessedness that
_shall_ come. If a fair measure of the greatness of any result of
productive power be the length of time that was taken for getting it
ready, we can dimly conceive what that joy must be for which seventy
years of strife and pain and sorrow are but a momentary preparation;
and what must be the weight of that glory which is the counterpoise
and consequence to the afflictions of this lower world. The further
the pendulum swings on the one side, the further it goes up on the
other. The deeper God plunges the comet into the darkness out yonder,
the closer does it come to the sun at its nearest distance, and the
longer does it stand basking and glowing in the full blaze of the
glory from the central orb. So in _our_ revolution, the measure of
the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow,
_to_ the throne, may help us to the measure of the closeness of the
bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are _on_ the throne:
for if so be that we are sons, we _must_ suffer with Him; if so be
that we suffer, we _must_ be glorified together!