Now we must discharge from the word some of its ordinary associations.
There is no reference to the thought of succession in it, as the mere
English reader is accustomed to think--to whom inheritance means
possession by the death of another. The idea is simply that of
possession. The figure which underlies the word is, of course, that of
the ancient partition of the land of Canaan amongst the tribes, but we
must go a great deal deeper than that in order to understand its whole
sweep and fulness of meaning.
What is the portion for a soul? God. God is Heaven, and Heaven is God.
No interpretation of 'the inheritance,' however it may run into cheap
and vulgar sensuous descriptions of a future glory, has come within
sight of the meaning of the word, unless it has grasped this as the
central thought: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon
earth that I desire beside Thee.' Only God can be the portion of a human
spirit. And none else can fill the narrowest and the smallest of man's
needs.
So, then, if there were realised all the accumulated changes of progress
in blessedness, and the withdrawal of all external causes of disquiet
and weariness and weeping, still the heart would hunger and be empty of
its true possession unless God Himself had flowed into it. It were but a
poor advancement and the gain of a loss, if yearnings were made
immortal, and the aching vacuity, which haunts every soul that is parted
from God, were cursed with immortality. It would be so, if it be not
true that the inheritance is nothing less than the fuller possession of
God Himself.
And how do men possess God? How do we possess one another, here and now?
By precisely the same way, only indefinitely expanded and exalted, do we
possess Him here, and shall we possess Him hereafter. Heart to heart is
joined by love which is mutual and interpenetrating possession; where
'mine' and 'thine' become blended, like the several portions of the one
ray of white light, in the blessed word 'ours.' Contemplation makes us
possessors of God. Assimilation to His character makes us own and have
Him. They who love and gaze, and are being changed by still degrees into
His likeness, possess Him. This is the central idea of man's future
destiny and highest blessedness, a union with God closer and more
intimate in degree, but yet essentially the same in kind, as is here
possible amidst the shows and vanities and wearinesses of this mortal
life. 'His servants shall serve Him, and see His face, and His name
shall be on their foreheads.' Obedience, contemplation, transformation,
these are the hands by which we here lay hold on God; and they in the
heavens grasp Him just as we here on earth may do. The 'inheritance' is
God Himself.
Surely that is in accordance with the whole teaching of Scripture, and
is but the expansion of plain words which tell us that we 'are heirs of
God.' If that be so, then all the other subsidiary blessings which have
been, to the sore detriment of Christian anticipation and of Christian
life in a hundred ways, elevated into disproportionate importance, fall
into their right places, and are more when they are looked upon as
secondary than when they are looked upon as primary.
Ah, brethren! neither the sensuous metaphors which, in accommodation to
our weakness, Scripture has used to paint that future so that we may, in
some measure, comprehend it, nor the translation of these, in so far as
they refer to circumstances and externals, are enough for us. It is
blessed to know that 'there shall be no night there'--blessed to grasp
all those sweet negatives which contradict the miseries of the world,
and to think of no sin, no curse, no tears, no sighing nor sorrow,
neither any more pain, 'because the former things have passed away.' It
is sweet and ennobling to think that, when we are discharged of the load
of this cumbrous flesh, we shall be much more ourselves, and able to see
where now is but darkness, and to feel where now is but vacancy. It is
blessed to think of the recognising of lost and loved ones. But all
these blessednesses, heaped together, as it seems to me, would become
sickeningly the same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God
for our very own. _Eternal_ is an awful word, even when the noun that
goes with it is _blessedness_. And I know not how even the redeemed
could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of
monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was
'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' We must rise
above everything that merely applies to changes in our own natures and
in our relations to the external universe, and to other orders of
creatures; and grasp, as the hidden sweetness that lies in the calyx of
the gorgeous flower, the possession of God Himself as the rapture of
our joy and the heaven of our heaven.
And if that be so, then these accumulated words with which the Apostle,
in his fiery, impetuous way, tries to set forth the greatness of what he
is speaking about, receive a loftier meaning than they otherwise would
have.
'The riches of the glory of His inheritance'--now that word 'riches,' or
'wealth,' is a favourite of Paul's; and in this single letter occurs, if
I count rightly, five times. In addition to our text, it is used twice
in connection with God's grace, 'the riches of His grace' once in
connection with Jesus, 'the unsearchable riches of Christ'; and once in
a similar connection to, though with a different application from, our
text, 'the riches of His glory.' Always, you see, it is applied to
something that is special and properly divine. And here, therefore, it
applies, not to the abundance of any creatural good, however exuberant
and inexhaustible the store of it may be, but simply and solely to that
unwearying energy, that self-feeding and ever-burning and never-decaying
light, which is God. Of Him alone it can be said that work does not
exhaust, nor Being tend to its own extinction, nor expenditure of
resources to their diminution. The guarantee for eternal blessedness is
the 'riches' of the eternal God, and so we may be sure that no time can
exhaust, nor any expenditure empty, either His storehouse or our wealth.
And again, the 'glory' is not the lustrous light, however dazzling to
our feeble eyes that may be, of any creature that reflects the light of
God, but it is the far-flashing and never-dying radiance of His own
manifestation of Himself to the hearts and souls of them that love Him.
And so the 'inheritance is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not
away'; not merely by reason of the communicated will of God operating
upon creatures whom He preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed
by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time
hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; and it
shall be as it was in the sweet parable of the miracle of old, the
fragments that remain will be more than when the meal began. 'The riches
of the glory of His inheritance.'