tender, pitying love, which heaps coals of fire on the head of the
wrongdoer, and will never rest content until it has subdued the evil of
his heart, overcoming it with good. Love must ultimately conquer hate,
as surely as tomorrow's sun will conquer the darkness that now veils
the landscape.
XVIII
The Work of the Holy Spirit on the World
"He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of
judgment."--JOHN xvi. 8.
Three facts forced themselves home on the apostles during the Lord's
parting words. _First_, that they were to be bereaved of their
Master's presence (ver. 5). _Second_, that they were to be left alone,
amid the world's hatred--"Whosoever killeth you" (ver. 2). _Third_,
that their mission would be witness-bearing to the unseen Lord (xv. 27).
And as they fully realized all that these facts involved, they became
too absorbed in their own sorrowful conclusions to inquire what bourn
the Master sought as He set sail from these earthly shores. "O
Master," they said in effect, "why canst Thou not stay? Our orphaned
hearts will never be able to endure the blank which Thy absence will
cause. Easier could a flock of sheep withstand the onset of a pack of
wolves than we the hatred of the world! And as for our
witness-bearing, it will be too feeble to avail aught."
And the Master, in effect, answered thus: "I will not leave you without
aid. I shall still be with you, though unseen. My presence shall be
revealed to your spirits, and made livingly real through the blessed
Comforter. He will be with you, and in you. He will authenticate and
corroborate your witness. He shall testify of Me; and when He is come,
He will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
You see then that I shall be able to help you better by sending the
Holy Spirit than by staying with you Myself. It is expedient for _you_
that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come to
you, but if I depart I will send Him unto you."
We may not be able to fathom all the reasons for Christ's withdrawal
before the Spirit's advent was possible. But some of them are obvious
enough. The full union of the Son of God with our race must be secured
through death and resurrection, and His full union with the Father must
be indicated in His glorification with the glory He had or ever the
worlds were made, before He could be the perfect channel of
communicating the Divine fullness to our human nature. The Head must
be anointed before the Body. There must be no physical distraction
arising from the outward life of Jesus to compete with the spiritual
impression of His unseen presence. The text must be completed before
the sermon can be preached. Christ must die, or there can be no
witness to His atonement; must rise, or there can be no testimony to
His resurrection; must ascend, or there can be no declaration as to His
finished work and eternal intercession. Since the Spirit reveals
Christ, all that was appointed unto Christ to do must be completed ere
the Spirit can commence His ministry.
The work of the Spirit on the world is through the Church, and is
described by our Lord as threefold. By His revelation of Christ He
creates three convictions. Each of these is necessary to the
regeneration of man. There must be the sense of sin, or he will not
seek the Saviour. There must be a belief that righteousness is
possible, or the convicted sinner will die of despair. There must be
the assurance that sin is doomed, and shall be finally vanquished, or
the baffled warrior will give up the long conflict as hopeless.
I. THE CONVICTION OF SIN.--We are constantly meeting people who are
perfectly indifferent to Christianity, because they say they do not
feel their need of it. Why should they trouble about it, when they
suppose themselves able to do perfectly well without it?
In dealing with these, it is a great mistake to entice them toward the
gospel by describing the moral grandeur of Christ's character and
teaching. We should at once seek to arouse them to a sense of their
great sinfulness. When a man realizes that his life is being eaten out
by some insidious disease, he will need no further urging to go to a
physician. This is the weakness of modern preaching--that we expatiate
on the value of the remedy to men who have never realized their dire
necessity.
But what is the truth most appropriate for producing the conviction of
sin in the human breast? "Preach the Ten Commandments in all their
stern and uncompromising 'shalts' and 'shalt-nots,'" cries one. "Read
out the descriptions given in Scripture of the evil things that lurk in
the heart of man as filthy things in darksome caves," says another.
"Show men the results of sin, take them to the edge of the bottomless
pit," insists a third. But not one of these is the chosen weapon of
the Holy Spirit. He convicts men of the sin of refusing to believe in
Jesus Christ.
There stands the Cross, the evidence and symbol of God's love; and
there stands the risen Christ, offering Himself to men. There is
nothing which more certainly proves the innate evil of the human heart
than its refusal of that mystery of grace. Disbelief is the creature,
not of the intellect, but of the will. It is not the result of
inability to understand, but of stubborn obstinacy and stiffneckedness.
Here is the supreme manifestation of moral beauty, but man has no eyes
for it. Here is the highest revelation of God's desire for man to be
reconciled with Him, and be at one with Him, His happy child; but man
either despises or spurns His overtures. Here is the offer of pardon
for all the past, of heirship of all the promises, of blessedness in
all the future, but man owns that he is indifferent to the existence
and claims of God, and is quite willing to accept the sleeping
retribution of bygone years, and to risk a future irradiated by no star
of hope. Here is God in Christ beseeching him to be reconciled,
declaring how much the reconciliation has cost, but the frail child of
yesterday absolutely refuses to be at peace. No trace of tears in his
voice, no shame on his face, no response to God's love in his heart.
This is sin at its worst. Not in a Nero drenched with the blood of
relatives and saints; nor in an Alva expert to invent new methods of
torture; nor in the brutalized expression of the felon; nor in the
degradation of the heathen: but in those beside you, who have heard of
the love of Jesus from their earliest childhood, and who know that He
died for them, and waits to bless them, but who deliberately and
persistently refuse Him, you will find the most terrible revelations of
what man is capable of. "This is the condemnation, that Light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their
deeds were evil."
Conviction in itself is not enough. Many have been convicted who have
never gone on to conversion. They have dropped to the ground as
untimely fruit, blighted before its maturity.
Conviction of sin does not come to all in the same manner or to the
same extent. Indeed, those who have come to Christ in early life are
in a degree exempt from drinking this bitter cup, though they have much
tenderness of conscience afterward.
Do not wait for more conviction, but come to Jesus as you are, and tell
Him that the saddest symptom in your case is your inability to feel as
you know you should. Do not tarry to be convinced of sin. Do not stay
away till you feel more deeply. Do not suppose that strongly roused
emotions purchase His favor. His command is absolute--_Believe_. But
whenever that true repentance is wrought which needs not to be repented
of, or those tears of penitence fall from the eyes of the suppliant,
the means will always be the person and work and love of Jesus Christ.
This is the burning-glass through which the Spirit focuses the rays of
God's love on ice-bound hearts.
II. THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.--The aggravation of sin of which
the Spirit convicts the sinner seems to present a gloom too dark for
any ray to penetrate. He cannot forget. The dead past will not bury
its dead. The wind of eternity blows away the leaves with which he
tries to hide the corpses of murdered opportunities, broken hearts, and
dissipated years. He cannot forget. He may close his eyes, but still
the memories of the past will haunt him, the deeds he would undo, the
words he would recall, the dark ingratitude toward the love of Jesus.
Conscience is a flaming terror till a man finds Christ as his Saviour.
Her brow is girt with fire, her voice peals with doom.
"Can I ever be cleansed?" cries the convicted soul. "Can these awful
gnawings be silenced, and these terrors laid? Can I rise from this
ruin and become a new, righteous, God-like man?" These questions are
answered by the Spirit who induced them. "There is righteousness," He
says, "because Christ is gone to the Father, and ye see Him no more."
He is gone to the Father; and the seal of Divine authenticity has
therefore been placed on all He said and did in the Father's name.
He is gone to the Father; and it is clear, therefore, that He has been
accepted as the Saviour and Redeemer of men.
He is gone to the Father in the likeness and nature of men; evidently,
then, man is an object of God's love, is reconciled to God, and is
admitted to the rights and privileges of a son and heir.
The work of Jesus on man's behalf finished at the Cross, accepted by
the Father--of which the resurrection is witness--presented by our
Great High Priest within the veil, is the momentous truth which the
Holy Spirit brings home to the convinced sinner. And inasmuch as we
are unable to see within the veil and discern the Divine marks of
approval and acceptance, the Holy Spirit descends, and in His advent
proves that Jesus has gone where He said, and done what He promised.
How do we know that the work of Jesus Christ has been accepted in the
courts of eternity? On this wise. Before He died the Master said that
He went to the Father, and that when He was glorified He would ask and
receive the Spirit in His fullness. After days had elapsed and the
second week from His ascension was already passing, the Spirit in
pentecostal fullness fell upon the waiting Church, giving it an
altogether new power to combat with the world. What the wagons were to
Jacob, proving that Joseph lived and thought of him still, and was
indeed supreme in Egypt, that the day of Pentecost was in declaring
that Christ's personal righteousness had been vindicated, and that the
righteousness He had wrought out for man had received the hallmark of
the Divine assay. Therefore the apostle says, "The Holy Ghost also is
a witness to us that He hath perfected forever by one offering them
that are sanctified." And again, "Him hath God exalted with His right
hand to be a Prince and a Saviour; and the Holy Ghost, whom God hath
given to them that obey Him, is witness of these things."
III. THE CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT.--When we have been freed _from_ sin,
and made righteous in Christ, we are left face to face with a
tremendous struggle against sin. The sin of the past is indeed
forgiven, the voice of conscience has been hushed, the sinner rejoices
to know that he is accepted on the ground of righteousness; but the old
temptations still crop up. Passion prompts us to live for present
gratification; the flesh deadens the burning aspirations of the spirit.
We ask in sad earnestness, How shall we be able to survive the terrible
struggle and to come off victorious? It appears a vain hope that we
should ever rise to perfect and victorious purity.
At such a time the Comforter convinces us of judgment. Not, as the
words are so often misquoted, of judgment to come, but in the sense in
which our Lord spoke of judgment to the inquiring Greeks: "Now is the
judgment of this world; now shall the Prince of this world be cast
out." Our Lord's references to the existence and power of Satan are
always distinct and unhesitating. It is impossible to accept Him as
our supreme Teacher without accepting His statements concerning His
great antagonist, to undo whose work brought the Son of God to earth.
The whole Gospel is a story of the duel in which our Lord forever
worsted and mastered Satan. The conflict began with the lonely
struggle of the temptation in the wilderness; it pervaded Christ's
earthly career; it culminated in the Cross. Its first note was, "If
Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread"; its
last note was, "If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross."
But when our Lord cried, "It is finished," with the shout of a
conqueror, He proclaimed to the universe that, though tempted to the
uttermost, He had not yielded in one particular, that evil was not an
eternal power, that wrong was not omnipotent. The Cross was the crisis
of this world's history: the prince of this world measured himself for
one final wrestle with the Son of God. Had he succeeded, evil would
have reigned; but since he failed he fell as lightning from heaven.
On this fact the Holy Spirit loves to dwell. He unfolds its full
meaning. "See," He says, "Christ has conquered for you, and in your
nature. You meet a foe who is not invincible. Christ conquered, not
for Himself, but for all who believe. The prince of this world has
been judged and found wanting. He is condemned forevermore. Only
abide in the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, and let Him abide in you,
and He will repeat through you His olden victories."
What a majestic thought is here! The world comes to us first with its
fascinations and delights. She comes to us next with her frowns and
tortures. Behind her is her prince. But since he has been cast out by
a stronger than himself, and exists only on sufferance, his most potent
bribes and lures, his most violent onsets, his most unscrupulous
suggestions, must collapse. Believer, meet him as a discredited and
fallen foe. He can have no power at all over thee. The Cross bruised
his head. Thou hast no need to fear judgment. It awaits those only
who are still in the devil's power. But thou mayest rejoice that for
thee a victory waits, the measure of which will only be explored when
thou seest the devil cast into the bottomless pit, and thence into the
lake of fire.
XIX
Christ's Reticence Supplemented by the Spirit's Advent
"I have yet many things to say unto you; but ye cannot bear them
now."--JOHN xvi. 12-15.
How confidently our Lord speaks of the Spirit's advent; not more so did
the prophets foretell His own. Repeatedly He returns to the phrase,
_When He is come_. The advent of the Spirit to the heart of the Church
on the Day of Pentecost, was as distinct and marked an event as the
advent of the Son of God Himself to the manger-bed of Bethlehem. Let
every reader of these words be sure of having taken the full advantage
of His Presence, just as we would wish to have availed ourselves to the
uttermost of the physical presence of Christ, had our lot so befallen.
I. THE THEME OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS THE INCOMPLETENESS OF OUR LORD'S
TEACHING.--For three and a half years He was perpetually pouring forth
His wonderful words; in many _different places_--the market-place, the
home at Bethany, the hillside, the Temple cloister; to many _different
audiences_--now in thronging crowds, and again to the secret disciple
whose footfall startled the night, or the lone woman drawing water from
the well; on many _different themes_--to mention all of which would be
impossible, though He never spoke on any subject, common as a wayside
flower, without associating with it thoughts that can never die. We
have but a small portion of His words recorded in the Gospels, it is
therefore the more remarkable that He left anything unsaid, and that at
the close of His ministry He should have to say, _I have yet many
things to say unto you_. Many parables, fair as His tenderest, woven
in the productive loom of His imagination, remained unuttered; many
discourses, inimitable as the Sermon on the Mount, or as this in the
upper room, unspoken; many revelations of heavenly mystery not made.
A comparison between the Gospels and the Epistles will indicate how
much our Lord had left unsaid. The relation of the law of Moses to His
finished work was left to the Epistle to the Romans: the relation
between His Church and the usages of the heathen world, for the Epistle
to Corinth: the effect of His resurrection on the sleeping saints for
the Epistle to the Thessalonians. He said nothing about the union of
Jew and Gentile on terms of equality in His Church; this mystery,
hidden from ages and from generations, was only fully unveiled in the
Epistle to the Ephesians. It was left for the Epistle to the Hebrews
to disclose the superseding of the Temple and its ritual by the
realities of the Christian dispensation. The practical precepts for
the right ordering of the Churches were left for the pastoral Epistles;
and the course of the Church through the ages of the world's history,
for the Apocalypse of the beloved Apostle. When we perceive the many
things, taught in the Epistles, which were not unfolded by the Lord, we
discern a fresh meaning in His assurance that He left much unsaid.
We are perpetually assailed by the cry, "Back to Christ," which is
significant of men's weariness of theological system, and organized
ecclesiasticism, and of a desire to get away from the accretions of the
Middle Ages and the dead hand of Church Tradition, into the pure,
serene, and holy presence of Jesus of Nazareth. It always seems to us
as if the cry should be _Up to_ Christ, rather than _Back_ to Him. To
put it as men generally do, suggests the inference that Christ lies far
in the wake of human progress, and behind the haze of eighteen
centuries; that He was, but is no longer, a potent factor in the
world's life; whereas He is here, now, with us, in us, leading us as of
old through rugged passes, and to mountains of transfiguration.
If the endeavor to get back to Christ means the Synoptic Gospels to the
exclusion of the fourth, or the Epistles; or the Sermon on the Mount to
the exclusion of the Epistle to the Romans; or Jesus to the exclusion
of His Apostles, we feel it is but half the truth. Our Lord Himself
protested that His teachings were incomplete, that there was much left
unsaid which would be said by the Comforter, as even He could not,
because the Spirit of God speaks in the inner shrine of the soul,
uttering to the inner ear, truths which no voice could speak or ear
receive. Let us always remember therefore that the Gospels must be
completed by the Epistles, and that the Spirit who spake in the Son,
spake also in those whom the Son had prepared to be His mouthpieces to
men.
II. THE PARTIAL MEASURE OF HUMAN ABILITY TO KNOW.--"Ye cannot bear them
now." Our Lord's reticence did not arise from ignorance, He could have
said so much had He not been able to say more. All things were naked
and open to His eye, but He had a tender regard for these men whom He
loved.
_Their bodies_ could not bear more. When the mind is strongly wrought
upon, the delicate organism of the body is deeply affected. On the
banks of the river Hiddekel, words of such wondrous importance were
uttered to the lonely exile, that Daniel fainted, and was sick many
days. "When I saw Him," says John, "I fell at His feet as dead."
Flavel, on more than one occasion, asked that the excessive revelation
might be stayed. Our Lord, therefore, feared that in their weakened
state, torn by anxiety and sorrow, His followers would collapse if
further strain were imposed upon their powers of spiritual apprehension.
_Their minds_ could not bear more. The mind cannot receive more than a
certain amount. After a while its eye gets weary, it ceases to
receive, and even to remember. There are multitudes of cases in which,
when too great a weight has been crowded on the delicate organism
through which thoughts move, its balance has been upset, and it has
drivelled into idiocy. Against this danger, also, our Lord guarded,
for His disciples were already excited and over-strained. Their brains
were so exhausted that in a few moments they would be sleeping on the
cold ground of Gethsemane. Had He poured the light of the other world
in full measure upon them, the tide of glory had submerged them, like
spent swimmers.
_Their affections_ could not bear more. Because He had spoken to them,
sorrow had filled their heart, and He forbore to describe the valley of
shadow through which they were still to pass, lest their hearts should
break. They had hardly commenced to drink its cup: what would its
dregs be? The footmen had wearied them: how would they contend with
horses? The brink had terrified them: how would they do in the
swellings of Jordan?
It is thus that He deals with us still. He knows our frame, and
proportions our trials to our strength. He carefully feels our pulse
before commencing the operation through which He would lead us to
perfect health. He tempers His discipline to our spiritual capacity.
We desire to know many things: the reason why sin has been permitted,
the fate of the impenitent; the state of the great masses of men who
have passed into eternity without a true knowledge of God. Peter asks
for John, "What shall this man do?" Each wants to know the secret
plans, whether for himself, or his beloved, which are lying in the mind
and purpose of the Eternal. What will the end be? Where does that
path lead by which I am going, and which descends steeply into the
ravine? Will the fight between evil and good be much prolonged? What
are hell, and the bottomless pit, and the meaning of Christ's
references to the undying worm and unquenchable flame? And Christ
says, "My child, you cannot bear it; you could not sleep at night, you
could not play with the merry children by day, you could not perform
your slender tasks, if you knew all that I know, and see as I see. Be
at rest. Trust Me. I will tell you as soon as you are strong enough.
Nothing shall be kept back from you, all shall be revealed." And
surely the sufferings and limitations of this present time will not be
worthy to be compared with the exceeding weight of glory, when in the
presence of our Lord we shall see eye to eye, and know even as we are
known.
In the light of these words we may get comfort. When some crushing
trouble befalls us, He who only spoke as they were able to bear, will
not permit the flame to be hotter, the tide stronger, or the task more
trying than we have strength for. We often do not know our strength
nor the power of His grace. Sorrow may be sent to reveal us to
ourselves, and show how much spiritual energy we have been silently
acquiring. Do not, therefore, run to and fro, and say, "It is too
much, I cannot bear it." But know and be sure that Christ has
ascertained your resources, and is sure of your ability, before He
permits the extreme ordeal to overtake you. Dare to say with the
apostle, "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."
III. THE TEACHING OF THE DIVINE SPIRIT.--His _personality_ is
unmistakable; though the Greek word for Spirit is neuter, a masculine
pronoun is used in conjunction with it when Jesus says, "He, the Spirit
of Truth." The personal Christ sent as a substitute for Himself no
mere breath or influence, but the personal Spirit. The Advocate before
the Throne is well represented by the Advocate in the heart of the
Church, and these two agree in one. Distinct as different Persons, but
one in the mystical unity of the Holy Trinity.