Christ Come Again.
"_And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in
swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger_."--Luke ii. 7.
"_Christ formed in you_."--Gal. iv. 19.
The life of Jesus Christ in Palestine was a foreshadowing of His life in
all who accept Him. God appointed Him a Saviour, not only because He
should bring redemption nigh by a sacrifice which He alone could offer,
but because He was also appointed to be the firstborn of many brethren, to
be the head of a new family, the beginning--the new Adam--the first of a
new line, in which character should cease to be merely human, even though
perfect with all human perfections, and should become a union of the human
and the Divine; in which, in fact, the body and mind and spirit of man
should continue to exhibit the wonder of Christ's Incarnation, and show
forth God clothed with man.
The life of Jesus divides itself quite naturally into several distinct
periods, each having its own special characteristics and peculiar history.
There is His birth and infancy; His childhood; His youth; His manhood; His
perfected or completed life following Calvary and the Resurrection; and,
may we not say, His eternal glory, upon which a few of His disciples saw
Him begin to enter in the transcending splendour of the Ascension.
Every one of these phases or sections of His wonderful experience of earth
has its continuing lessons for us. All speak aloud to us of His purposes
and plans, and reveal to us the power and force of His inner life in the
outward or public appearances and acts which belong to each. God has
hidden many things from us--mysteries of nature, of grace, of eternity;
but this mystery of God's relations to men, He has exhausted His resources
in order to make plain. Before all else the life of Jesus is a revelation
of the mind and methods, the principles and the practices of God, as they
ought to appear, and as they ought to work out, amid the surroundings and
limitations of humanity.
It is to the beginnings of that life to which our thoughts turn at this
Christmas season. We dwell with affection on the oft-depicted picture, and
repeat the oft-repeated words, and join in the old, old Hallelujahs of the
shepherds with something of the zest and freshness of a first love. The
story is so unlike all others, and touches with such unerring potency
chords in the human soul which call it to a higher and nobler life, that,
no matter who gazes upon the Babe of Bethlehem, he feels a kinship with
all the world in hailing the Desire of all Nations. The manger, the silent
companions of the stable, the swaddling clothes--what a touch of human
tenderness--_motherliness_, so to speak--is in that line, "and
wrapped Him in swaddling clothes"!--the adoring shepherds, the star, the
wise men (all thoughts of their wisdom for the moment gone); the gold, the
frankincense, the myrrh, the rejoicing and yet trembling mother, the
little Child--we see it all. Seeing, we believe; and believing, we
rejoice. The Day Star from on High hath visited _us_. We _know_
in whom we have believed. The great condescension is before us. Strength
has made itself dependent on weakness, cause upon effect, eternity upon
time, God upon man; and He has done it for our sakes.
The Divine condescension never appears so new and so real to us as when we
stand at the side of this lowly cradle. Here are no high-sounding
doctrines, no hard words, no terrible commands, no far-off thunders of a
new Sinai, no rumblings of a coming Judgment. Here we see Jesus, and Jesus
only. Jesus showing Himself in our very own flesh and blood; submitting
Himself to the weakness of our infirmities; voluntarily clothing Himself
with our ignorance, and making God the present tangible possession of the
whole human family, bringing Him "_very nigh to us, in our mouth and in
our heart, if we can but believe_." And, more than this, God joined in
that Babe His great strength to our great nothingness; He bound us to
Himself; He robed us, as it were, with Himself, and He robed Himself in
us. Henceforth the Tabernacle of God is with men. Henceforth every one of
us may be conscious of an inward Presence, of which we may say in holy
joy: "Angels and men before Him fall, and devils fear and fly."
It is this manifestation of Jesus in His people for which the Apostle
prays in the words I have quoted, "My little children, of whom I travail
in birth again until Christ be formed in you." Nothing less will satisfy
him, because he knew that nothing less will prevail against the power of
the world, the flesh, and the Devil, in any human heart. "_Christ formed
in you_," Christ born again in them--that is his agonised prayer, his
one hope for them.
In the workshops of human effort no instruments, no skill, no motive power
exist for the formation and development of character apart from the
energising vitality of God's Spirit dwelling in us. He is the
indispensable foundation of any goodness, or wisdom, or beauty that can
last. Purity begins and ends in Him. Faith finds her author and finisher
in Him. Truth, which is the beauty of the soul, is but a reflection of His
image, and love has no being but in Him. And so Paul says, _Let Him
in_. Conformity to His example is only possible by the re-formation in
you of His life, and the growth again in you of His person; the mind of
Christ in your mind, the spirit of Christ in your spirit, the presence of
Christ in your flesh and blood; the motive power of Christ, the Father's
will, prompting your every thought and word and deed, and thereby
transforming your body into a temple of the Son of God.
And, because, in this unity of purpose with the Father, the Christ of
Glory stooped to the infancy and childhood of Nazareth, yielding Himself
completely to the bonds and limits inseparable from the life and
conditions of a little child, and thinking no humiliation of our nature
too deep for His love to tread, _so He will condescend to the lowest
depths of weakness and want revealed in your heart and life_. He will
meet you where you are. He will deal with you just where you are weakest
and worst. This is indeed the key-note of all that God has to show you. It
is your own link in the long chain of patient and ever-new revelations of
God to man.
For what is the history of man, what is the story the Bible has to tell,
what is the testimony of all time, but that God has ever been speaking to
man, appearing to man, opening now his eyes, and now his understanding,
and now his heart, and making an everlastingly new revelation to the soul
that God in him is his sole hope of glory. And His Christmas-message
to-day is still the same. To you, if you are willing, Christ will come as
really, as sensibly, as wonderfully--nay, a thousand times more so--as He
came to Mary and to Bethlehem. In truth, a second coming; but in many and
wonderful ways like unto the first.