The words of my text receive, perhaps, their best commentary and
explanation in those words which the writer of them heard, on the
Damascus road, when the voice from heaven spoke to him about men
'obtaining an inheritance among them that are sanctified.' It almost
sounds like an echo of that long past, but never-to-be-forgotten voice,
when our Apostle writes as he does in our text.
Now what does he mean by 'saints'? Who are these amongst whom the broad
acres of that infinite prairie are to be parted out? The word has
attracted to itself contemptuous meanings and ascetical meanings, and
meanings which really deny the true democracy of Christianity and the
equality of all believers in the sight of God. But its scriptural use
has none of these narrowing and confusing associations adhering to it,
nor does it even directly and at first mean, as we generally take it to
mean, pure men, holy in the sense of clean and righteous. But something
goes before that phase of meaning, and it is this--a saint is a man
separated and set apart for God, as His property. That is the true
meaning of the word. It is its meaning as it is applied to the vessels
of the Temple, the priests, the services, and the altar. It is its
meaning, only with the necessary substitution of spirit for body, as it
is applied in the New Testament as a designation co-extensive with that
of believers.
How does a man belong to God?
We asked a minute or two ago how God belonged to men. The answer to the
converse question is almost identical. A man belongs to God by the
affection of his heart, by the submission of his will, by the reference
of his actions to Him; and he who thus belongs to God, in the same act
in which he gives himself to God, receives God as his possession. The
thing must be reciprocal. 'All mine is Thine'; and God answers, 'And all
Mine is thine.' He ever meets our 'O Lord, I yield myself to Thee,' with
His 'And My child, I give Myself to thee.' It is so in regard of our
earthly loves. It is so in regard of our relations to Him. And that
being the case, purity, which is generally taken by careless readers as
being the main idea of sanctity, will follow this self-surrender, which
is the basis of all goodness, everywhere and always.
If that be true, and I do not think it can be effectively denied, then
the next step is a very plain one, and that is that for the perfect
possession of God, which is heaven, the same thing is needed in its
perfection which is required for the partial possession of Him that
makes the Christian life of earth. And just as here we get Him for ours
in proportion as we give up ourselves to be His, so yonder the
inheritance belongs, and can only belong to, 'the saints.' So, then, one
can see that there is nothing arbitrary in this limitation of a
possession, which in its very nature cannot go beyond the bounds which
are thus marked out for it. If heaven were the vulgar thing that some of
you think it, if that future life were desirable simply because you
escaped from some external punishment and got all sorts of outward
blessings and joys, felicities and advantages, hung round the neck, or
pinned upon the breast, as they do to successful fighters, why then, of
course, there might be partiality in the distribution of the
decorations. But if that possession hinges upon our yielding ourselves
to Him, then there is not an arbitrary link in the whole chain. Faith is
set forth as the condition of heaven, because faith is the means of
union with Christ, by and from whom alone we draw the motives for
self-surrender and the power for sanctity. You cannot have heaven unless
you have God. That is step number one. You cannot have God unless you
have 'holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.' That is step
number two. You cannot have holiness without faith. That is step number
three. 'An inheritance among them that are sanctified'; and then there
is added, 'by faith which is in Me.'
It is clear, too, what a fatal delusion some of us are under who think
that we shall, and fancy that we should like to, as we say, 'go to
heaven when we die.' Why, heaven is here, round about you, a present
heaven in the imitation of God, in the practice of righteousness, in the
cultivation of dependence upon Him, in the yielding of yourselves up to
Him. Heaven is here, and by your own choice you stop outside of it.
There must be a correspondence between environment and nature for
blessedness. 'The mind is its own place,' as the great Puritan poet
taught us, 'and makes a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' Fishes die on
the shore, and the man that drew them out dies in the water. Gills
cannot breathe where lungs are useful, and lungs cannot, where gills
come into play. If you have not here and now the holiness which knits
you to God, and gives you possession of Him, you would not like
'heaven,' if it were possible to carry you to that place, in so far as
it is a place. It is rather strange, if you hope to go to heaven when
you die, that you should be very unwilling to spend a little time in it
whilst you are alive, and that you should expect blessedness then from
that presence of God which brings you no blessedness now.
III. Lastly, we have here the heirs' present knowledge of their future
blessedness.
The Apostle asks that these men may know a thing that clearly seems
unknowable. It is an impossible petition, we might be ready to say,
because it is clear enough that there can be no true knowledge of the
conditions and details of that future life. The dark mountains that lie
between us and it hide their secret well, and few or no stray beams have
reached us. An unborn babe, or a chrysalis in a hole in the ground or in
a chink of a tree, might think as wisely about its future condition as
we can do about that life beyond. There can be no knowledge until there
is experience.
What, then, does Paul mean by framing such a petition as this? The
answer is found in noticing that the knowledge which he is imploring
here is a consequence of a previous knowledge. For, in a former verse,
he prays that these men may have 'the spirit of wisdom in the knowledge
of God'; and when they have got the knowledge of God he thinks that they
will have got the knowledge of 'the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints.' Now, turn that into other words, and it is
just this, that the knowledge of God, which comes by faith and love
here, is in kind so identical with the fullest and loftiest riches of
the knowledge of Him hereafter, that, if we have the one, we are not
without the other. The one is in germ, the other, no doubt, full blown;
the one is the twinkling of the rushlight, as it were, the other is the
blaze of the sunshine. The two states of being are so correspondent that
from the one we draw our clearest knowledge of the other. There are
telescopes, in using which you do not look up when you want to see the
stars, but down on to a reflecting mirror, and there you see them. Such
a reflecting mirror, though it be sometimes muddied and dimmed and
always very small, are the experiences of the Christian soul here.
So, dear friends, if we want to know as much as may be known of the
blessedness of heaven, let us seek to possess as much as may be
possessed of the knowledge and love of God on earth. Then we shall know
the centre, at any rate; and that is light, though the circumference may
be very dark. Much will remain obscure. That is of very small
consequence to Hope, which does not need information half so much as it
needs assurance. Like some flower in the cranny of the rock, it can
spread a broad bright blossom on little soil, if only it be firmly
rooted.
The path for us all is plain. Come to Jesus Christ as sinful men, and
take what He has given, who has given Himself for us. Touched by His
love, let us love Him back again, and yield ourselves to Him, and He
will give Himself to us. They who can say, 'O Lord! I am Thine,' are
sure to hear from heaven, 'I am thine.' And they who possess, in being
possessed by, God Himself, do not need to die in order to go to heaven,
but are at least doorkeepers in the house of the Lord now, and stand
where they can see into the inner sanctuary which they will one day
tread. A life of faith brings Heaven to us, and thereby gives us the
surest and the clearest knowledge of what we shall be, and have, when we
are brought to heaven.