A seal is impressed upon a recipient material made soft by warmth, in
order to leave there a copy of itself. Now it is not fanciful, nor
riding a metaphor to death, when I dwell upon these features of the
emblem in order to suggest their analogies in Christian life. The
Spirit of God comes into our spirits, and by gentle contact impresses
upon the material, which was intractable until it was melted by the
genial warmth of faith and love, the likeness of Himself, but yet so
as that prominences correspond to the hollows, and what is in relief
in the one is sunk in the other. Expand that general statement for a
moment or two.
The effect of all the divine indwelling, which is the characteristic
gift of Christ to every Christian soul, is to mould the recipient
into the image of the divine inhabitant. There is in the human
spirit--such are its dignity amidst its ruins, and its nobility
shining through its degradation--a capacity of receiving that image
of God which consists not only in voluntary and intelligent action
and the consciousness of personal being, but in the love of the
things that are fair, and in righteousness, and true holiness. His
Spirit, entering into a heart, will make that heart wise with its own
wisdom, strong with some infusion of its own strength, gracious with
some drops of its own grace, gentle with some softening from its own
gentleness, holy with some purity reflected from its own transcendent
whiteness. The Spirit, which is life, moulds the heart into which it
enters to a kindred, and, therefore, similar life.
There are, however, characteristics in this 'seal' of the Spirit
which are not so much copies as correspondences. That is to say, just
as what is convex in the seal is concave in the impression, and
_vice versâ_, so, when that Divine Spirit comes into our spirits, its
promises will excite faith, its gifts will breed desire; to every
bestowment there will answer an opening receptivity. Recipient love
will correspond to the love that longs to dispense, the sense of need
to the divine fulness and sufficiency, emptiness to abundance,
prayers to promises; the cry 'Abba! Father'! the yearning
consciousness of sonship, to the word 'Thou art My Son'; and the
upward eye of aspiration and petition, and necessity, and waiting, to
the downward glance of love bestowing itself. The open heart answers
to the extended hand, and the seal which God's Spirit impresses upon
the heart that is submitted to it, has the two-fold character of
resemblance in moral nature and righteousness, and of correspondence
as regards the mysteries of the converse between the recipient man
and the giving God.
Then, mark that the material is made capable of receiving the stamp,
because it is warmed and softened. That is to say, faith must prepare
the heart for the sanctifying indwelling of that Divine Spirit. The
hard wax may be struck with the seal, but it leaves no trace. God
does not do with man as the coiner does with his blanks, put them
cold into a press, and by violence from without stamp an image upon
them, but He does as men do with a seal, warms the wax first, and
then, with a gentle, firm touch, leaves the likeness there. So,
brother! learn this lesson: if you wish to be good, lie under the
contact of the Spirit of righteousness, and see that your heart is
warm.
Still further, note that this aggregate of Christian character, in
likeness and correspondence, is the true sign that we belong to God.
The seal is the mark of ownership, is it not? Where the broad arrow
has been impressed, everybody knows that that is royal property. And
so this seal of God's Divine Spirit, in its effects upon my
character, is the one token to myself and to other people that I
belong to God, and that He belongs to me. Or, to put it into plain
English, the best reason for any man's being regarded as a Christian
is his possession of the likeness and correspondence to God which
that Divine Spirit gives. Likeness and correspondence, I say, for the
one class of results is the more open for the observation of the
world, and the other class is of the more value for ourselves. I
believe that Christian people ought to have, and are meant by that
Divine Spirit dwelling in them to have, a consciousness that they are
Christians and God's children, for their own peace and rest and joy.
But you cannot use that in demonstration to other people; you may be
as sure of it as you will, in your inmost hearts, but it is no sign
to anybody else. And, on the other hand, there may be much of outward
virtue and beauty of character which may lead other people to say
about a man: '_That_ is a good Christian man, at any rate,' and yet
there may be in the heart an all but absolute absence of any joyful
assurance that we are Christ's, and that He belongs to us. So the two
facts must go together. Correspondence, the spirit of sonship which
meets His taking us as sons, the faith which clasps the promise, the
reception which welcomes bestowment, must be stamped upon the inward
life. For the outward life there must be the manifest impress of
righteousness upon my actions, if there is to be any real seal and
token that I belong to Him. God writes His own name upon the men that
are His. All their goodness, their gentleness, patience, hatred of
evil, energy and strenuousness in service, submission in suffering,
with whatsoever other radiance of human virtue may belong to them,
are really 'His mark!'
There is no other worth talking about, and to you Christian men I
come and say, Be very sure that your professions of inward communion
and happy consciousness that you are Christ's are verified to
yourself and to others by a plain outward life of righteousness like
the Lord's. Have you got that seal stamped upon your lives, like the
hall-mark that says, 'This is genuine silver, and no plated Brummagem
stuff'? Have you got that seal of a visible righteousness and
every-day purity to confirm your assertion that you belong to Christ?
Is it woven into the whole length of your being, like the scarlet
thread that is spun into every Admiralty cable as a sign that it is
Crown property? God's seal, visible to me and to nobody else, is my
consciousness that I am His; but that consciousness is vindicated and
delivered from the possibility of illusion or hypocrisy, only when it
is checked and fortified by the outward evidence of the holy life
which the Spirit of God has wrought.
Further, this sealing, which is thus the token of God's ownership, is
also the pledge of security. A seal is stamped in order that there
may be no tampering with what it seals; that it may be kept safe from
all assaults, thieves, and violence. And in the metaphor of our text
there is included this thought, too, which is also of an intensely
practical nature. For it just comes to this--our true guarantee that
we shall come at last into the sweet security and safety of the
perfect state is present likeness to the indwelling Spirit and
present reception of divine grace. The seal is the pledge of
security, just because it is the mark of ownership. When, by God's
Spirit dwelling in us, we are led to love the things that are fair,
and to long after more possession of whatever things are of good
report, that is like God's hoisting His flag upon a newly-annexed
territory. And is He going to be so careless in the preservation of
His property as that He will allow that which is thus acquired to
slip away from Him? Does He account us as of so small value as to
hold us with so slack a hand? But no man has a right to rest on the
assurance of God's saving him into the heavenly kingdom, unless He is
saving him at this moment from the devil and his own evil heart. And,
therefore, I say the Christian character, in its outward
manifestations and in its sweet inward secrets of communion, is the
guarantee that we shall not fall. Rest upon Him, and He will hold you
up. We are 'kept by the power of God unto salvation,' and that power
keeps us and that final salvation becomes ours, 'through faith.'
II. Now, secondly, turn to the other emblem, that 'earnest' which
consists in like manner 'of the Spirit.'
The 'earnest,' of course, is a small portion of purchase-money, or
wages, or contract-money, which is given at the making of a bargain,
as an assurance that the whole amount will be paid in due time. And,
says the Apostle, this seal is also an earnest. It not only makes
certain God's ownership and guarantees the security of those on whom
it is impressed, but it also points onwards to the future, and at
once guarantees that, and to a large extent reveals the nature of it.
So, then, we have here two thoughts on which I touch.
The Christian character and experience are the earnest of the
inheritance, in the sense of being its guarantee, inasmuch as the
experiences of the Christian life here are plainly immortal. The
Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the objective and
external proof of a future life. The facts of the Christian life, its
aspirations, its communion, its clasp of God as its very own, are the
subjective and inward proofs of a future life. As a matter of fact,
if you will take the Old Testament, you will see that the highest
summits in it, to which the hope of immortality soared, spring
directly from the experience of deep and blessed communion with the
living God. When the Psalmist said 'Thou wilt not leave my soul in
_Sheol_; neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption,' he
was speaking a conviction that had been floated into his mind on the
crest of a great wave of religious enjoyment and communion. And, in
like manner, when the other Psalmist said, 'Thou art the strength of
my heart, and my portion for ever,' he was speaking of the glimpse
that he had got of the land that was very far off, from the height
which he had climbed on the Mount of fellowship with God. And for us,
I suppose that the same experience holds good. Howsoever much we may
say that we believe in a future life and in a heaven, we really grasp
them as facts that will be true about ourselves, in the proportion in
which we are living here in direct contact and communion with God.
The conviction of immortality is the distinct and direct result of
the present enjoyment of communion with Him, and it is a reasonable
result. No man who has known what it is to turn himself to God with a
glow of humble love, and to feel that he is not turning his face to
vacuity, but to a Face that looks on him with love, can believe that
anything can ever come to destroy that communion. What have faith,
love, aspiration, resignation, fellowship with God, to do with death?
They cannot be cut through with the stroke that destroys physical
life, any more than you can divide a sunbeam with a sword. It unites
again, and the impotent edge passes through and has effected nothing.
Death can shear asunder many bonds, but that invisible bond that
unites the soul to God is of adamant, against which his scythe is in
vain. Death is the grim porter that opens the door of a dark hole and
herds us into it as sheep are driven into a slaughter-house. But to
those who have learned what it is to lay a trusting hand in God's
hand, the grim porter is turned into the gentle damsel, who keeps the
door, and opens it for light and warmth and safety to the hunted
prisoner that has escaped from the dungeon of life. Death cannot
touch communion, and the consciousness of communion with God is the
earnest of the inheritance.
It is so for another reason also. All the results of the Divine
Spirit's sealing of the soul are manifestly incomplete, and as
manifestly tend towards completeness. The engine is clearly working
now at half-speed. It is obviously capable of much higher pressure
than it is going at now. Those powers in the Christian man can
plainly do a great deal more than they ever have done here, and are
meant to do a great deal more. Is this imperfect Christianity of
ours, our little faith so soon shattered, our little love so quickly
disproved, our faltering resolutions, our lame performances, our
earthward cleavings--are these things all that Jesus Christ's bitter
agony was for, and all that a Divine Spirit is able to make of us?
Manifestly, here is but a segment of the circle, in heaven is the
perfect round; and the imperfections, so far as life is concerned, in
the work of so obviously divine an Agent, cry aloud for a region
where tendency shall become result, and all that it was possible for
Him to make us we shall become. The road evidently leads upwards, and
round that sharp corner where the black rocks come so near each other
and our eyesight cannot travel, we may be sure it goes steadily up
still to the top of the pass, until it reaches 'the shining
table-lands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon,' and brings us
all to the city set on a hill.
And, further, that divine seal is the earnest, inasmuch as itself is
part of the whole. The truest and the loftiest conception that we can
form of heaven is as being the perfecting of the religious experience
of earth. The shilling or two, given to the servant in old-fashioned
days, when he was hired, is of the same currency as the balance that
he is to get when the year's work is done. The small payment to-day
comes out of the same purse, and is coined out of the same specie,
and is part of the same currency of the same kingdom, as what we get
when we go yonder and count the endless riches to which we have
fallen heirs at last. You have but to take the faith, the love, the
obedience, the communion of the highest moments of the Christian life
on earth, and free them from all their limitations, subtract from
them all their imperfections, multiply them to their superlative
possibility, and endow them with a continual power of growth, and
stretch them out to absolute eternity, and you get heaven. The
earnest is of a piece with the inheritance.
So, dear brethren, here is a gift offered for us all, a gift which
our feebleness sorely needs, a gift for every timid nature, for every
weak will, for every man, woman, and child beset with snares and
fighting with heavy tasks, the offer of a reinforcement as real and
as sure to bring victory as when, on that day when the fate of Europe
was determined, after long hours of conflict, the Prussian bugles
blew, and the English commander knew that (with the fresh troops that
came on the field) victory was made certain. So you and I may have in
our hearts the Spirit of God, the spirit of strength, the spirit of
love and of a sound mind, the spirit of adoption, the spirit of
wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, to enlighten our
darkness, to bind our hearts to Him, to quicken and energise our
souls, to make the weakest among us strong, and the strong as an
angel of God. And the condition on which we may get it is this simple
one which the Apostle lays down; '_After that ye believed_, ye were
sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our
inheritance.' The Christ, who is the Lord and Giver of the Spirit,
has shown us how its blessed influences may be ours when, on the
great day of the feast, He stood and cried with a voice that echoes
across the centuries, and is meant for each of us, 'If any man
thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. This spake He of the
Spirit which they that believe or Him should receive.'