Paul throughout his whole career looked back to the miraculous
appearance of Jesus Christ in the heavens, as being equally availably
as valid ground for his Christian convictions as were the appearances
of the Lord in bodily form to the Eleven after His resurrection. And I
may venture to work the parallel in the inverse direction, and to say
to you that what we see and know of Jesus Christ is as valid a ground
for our convictions, and as true and powerful a call for our obedience,
as when the heaven was rent, and the glory above the midday sun bathed
the persecutor and his followers on the stony road to Damascus. For the
revelation that is made to the understanding and the heart, to the
spirit and the will, is the same whether it be made, as it was to Paul,
through a heavenly vision, or, as it was to the other Apostles, through
the facts of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus,
which their senses certified to them, or, as it is to us, by the record
of the same facts, permanently enshrined in Scripture. Paul's sight of
Christ was for a moment; we can see Him as often and as long as we
will, by turning to the pages of this Book. Paul's sight of Christ was
accompanied with but a partial apprehension of the great and
far-reaching truths which he was to learn and to teach, as embodied in
the Lord whom he saw. To see Him was the work of a moment, to 'know
Him' was the effort of a lifetime. We have the abiding results of the
lifelong process lying ready to our hands in Paul's own letters, and we
have not only the permanent record of Christ in the Gospels instead of
the transient vision in the heavens, and the unfolding of the meaning
and bearings of the historical facts, in the authoritative teaching of
the Epistles, but we have also, in the history of the Church founded on
these, in the manifest workings of a divine power for and through the
company of believers, as well as in the correspondence between the
facts and doctrines of Christianity and the wants of humanity, a vision
disclosed and authenticated as heavenly, more developed, fuller of
meaning and more blessed to the eyes which see it, than that which was
revealed to the persecutor as he reeled from his horse on the way to
the great city.
Dear brethren, they who see Christ in the word, In the history of the
world, in the pleading of the preacher, in the course of the ages, and
who sometimes hear His voice in the warnings which He breathes into
their consciences, and in the illuminations which He flashes on their
understanding, need ask for no loftier, no more valid and irrefragable
manifestation of His gracious self. To each of us this vision is
granted. May I say, without seeming egotism to you it is granted even
through the dark and cloudy envelope of my poor words?
II. The vision of Christ, howsoever perceived, comes demanding
obedience.
The purpose for which Jesus Christ made Himself known to Paul was to
give him a charge which should influence his whole life. And the manner
in which the Lord, when He had appeared, prepared the way for the
charge was twofold. He revealed Himself in His radiant glory, in His
exalted being, in His sympathetic and mysterious unity with them that
loved Him and trusted Him, in His knowledge of the doings of the
persecutor; and He disclosed to Saul the inmost evil that lurked in his
own heart, and showed him to his bewilderment and confusion, how the
course that he thought to be righteousness and service was blasphemy
and sin. So, by the manifestation of Himself enthroned omniscient,
bound by the closest ties of identity and of sympathy with all that
love Him, and by the disclosure of the amazed gazer's evil and sin,
Jesus Christ opened the way for the charge which bore in its very heart
an assurance of pardon, and was itself a manifestation of His love.
In like manner all heavenly visions are meant to secure human
obedience. We have not done what God means us to do with any knowledge
of Him which He grants, unless we utilise it to drive the wheels of
life and carry it out into practice in our daily conduct. Revelation is
not meant to satisfy mere curiosity or the idle desire to know. It
shines above us like the stars, but, unlike them, it shines to be the
guide of our lives. And whatsoever glimpse of the divine nature, or of
Christ's love, nearness, and power, we have ever caught, was meant to
bow our wills in glad submission, and to animate our hands for diligent
service and to quicken our feet to run in the way of His commandments.
There is plenty of idle gazing, with more or less of belief, at the
heavenly vision. I beseech you to lay to heart this truth, that Christ
rends the heavens and shows us God, not that men may know, but that men
may, knowing, do; and all His visions are the bases of commandments. So
the question for us all is, What are we doing with what we know of
Jesus Christ? Nothing? Have we translated our thoughts of Him into
actions, and have we put all our actions under the control of our
thoughts of Him? It is not enough that a man should say, 'Whereupon I
_saw_ the vision,' or, 'Whereupon I was _convinced_ of the vision,' or,
'Whereupon I _understood_ the vision.' Sight, apprehension, theology,
orthodoxy, they are all very well, but the right result is, 'Whereupon
I was _not disobedient_ to the heavenly vision.' And unless your
knowledge of Christ makes you do, and keep from doing, a thousand
things, it is only an idle vision, which adds to your guilt.
But notice, in this connection, the peculiarity of the obedience which
the vision requires. There is not a word, in this story of Paul's
conversion, about the thing which Paul himself always puts in the
foreground as the very hinge upon which conversion turns--viz. faith.
Not a word. The name is not here, but the thing is here, if people will
look. For the obedience which Paul says that he rendered to the vision
was not rendered with his hands. He got up to his feet on the road
there, 'not disobedient,' though he had not yet done anything. This is
to say, the man's will had melted. It had all gone with a run, so to
speak, and the inmost being of him was subdued. The obedience was the
submission of self to God, and not the more or less diligent and
continuous consequent external activity in the way of God's
commandments.
Further, Paul's obedience is also an obedience based upon the vision of
Jesus Christ enthroned, living, bound by ties that thrill at the
slightest touch to all hearts that love Him, and making common cause
with them.
And furthermore, it is an obedience based upon the shuddering
recognition of Paul's own unsuspected evil and foulness, how all the
life, that he had thought was being built up into a temple that God
would inhabit, was rottenness and falsehood.
And it is an obedience, further, built upon the recognition of pity and
pardon in Christ, who, after His sharp denunciation of the sin, looks
down from Heaven with a smile of forgiveness upon His lips, and says:
'But rise and stand upon thy feet, for I will send thee to make known
My name.'
An obedience which is the inward yielding of the will, which is all
built upon the revelation of the living Christ, who was dead and is
alive for evermore, and close to all His followers; and is, further,
the thankful tribute of a heart that knows itself to be sinful, and is
certain that it is forgiven--what is that but the obedience which is of
faith? And thus, when I say that the heavenly vision demands obedience,
I do not mean that Christ shows Himself to you to set you to work, but
I mean that Christ shows Himself to you that you may yield yourselves
to Him, and in the act may receive power to do all His sweet and sacred
will.