Of course the corner-stone here is the foundation-stone and not 'the
head-stone of the corner.' Jesus Christ is both. He is the first and
the last; the Alpha and Omega. In accordance with the whole context, in
which the prevailing idea is that which always fired Paul's imagination,
viz. that of reconciling Jew and Gentile in one new man, it is best to
suppose a reference here to the union of Jew and Gentile. The stone laid
beneath the two walls which diverge at right angles from each other
binds both together and gives strength and cohesion to the whole. In the
previous context the same idea is set forth that Christ 'preached peace
to them that were afar off (Gentiles) and to them that were nigh
(Jews).' By His death He broke down another wall, the middle wall of
partition between them, and did so by abolishing 'the law of
commandments contained in ordinances.' The old distinction between Jew
and Gentile, which was accentuated by the Jew's rigid observance of
ordinances and which often led to bitter hatred on both sides, was swept
away in that strange new thing, a community of believers drawn together
in Jesus Christ. The former antagonistic 'twain' had become one in a
third order of man, the Christian man. The Jew Christian and the Gentile
Christian became brethren because they had received one new life, and
they who had common feelings of faith and love to the same Saviour, a
common character drawn from Him, and a common destiny open to them by
their common relation to Jesus, could never cherish the old emotions of
racial hate.
When we, in this day, try to picture to ourselves that strange new
thing, the love which bound the early Christians together and buried as
beneath a rushing flood the formidable walls of separation between them,
we may well penitently ask ourselves how it comes that Jesus seems to
have so much less power to triumph over the divisive forces that part us
from those who should be our hearts' brothers. In our modern life there
are no such gulfs of separation from one another as were filled up
unconsciously in the experience of the first believers, but the narrower
chinks seem to remain in their ugliness between those who profess a
common faith in one Lord, and who are all ready to assert that they are
built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, and that Jesus
Christ is from them the chief corner-stone.
If in reality He is so to us, and He is so if we have been builded upon
Him through our faith, the metaphor of corner-stone and building will
fail to express the reality of our relation to Him, for our corner-stone
has in it an infinite vitality which rises up through all the courses of
the living stones, and moulds each 'into an immortal feature of
loveliness and perfection.' So it shall be for each individual, though
here the appropriation of the perfect gift is imperfect. So it shall be
in reference to the history of the world. Christ is its centre and
foundation-stone, and as His coming makes the date from which the
nations reckon, and all before it was in the deepest sense preparatory
to His incarnation, all which is after it is in the deepest sense the
appropriating of Him and the developing of His work. The multitudes
which went before and that followed cried, saying, 'Blessed is He that
cometh in the name of the Lord.'
'THE WHOLE FAMILY'
'The whole family in heaven and earth.'--Eph. iii. 15.
Grammatically, we are driven to recognise that the Revised Version is
more correct than the Authorised, when it reads 'every family,' instead
of 'the whole family.' There is in the expression no reference to the
thought, however true it is in itself, that the redeemed in heaven and
the believers on earth make up but one family. The thought rather is,
that, as has been said, 'the father makes the family,' and if any
community of intelligent beings, human, or angelic, bears the great name
of family, the great reason for that lies 'in God's paternal
relationship.'
But my present purpose in selecting this text is not so much to speak of
_it_ as to lay hold of the probably incorrect rendering in the
Authorised Version, as suggesting, though here inaccurately, the thought
that believers struggling here and saints and angels glorious above 'but
one communion make,' and in the light of that thought, to consider the
meaning of the Lord's Supper. I am, of course, fully conscious that in
thus using the words, I am diverting them from their original purpose;
but possibly in this case, open confession, _my_ open confession, may
merit your forgiveness and at all events, it, in some degree, brings me
my own.
I. Consider the Lord's Supper as a sign that the Church on earth is a
family.
The Passover was essentially a family feast, and the Lord's Supper,
which was grafted on it, was plainly meant to be the same. The domestic
character of the rite shines clearly out in the precious simplicity of
the arrangements in the upper room. When Christ and the twelve sat down
there, it was a family meal at which they sat. He was the head of the
household; they were members of His family. The early examples of the
rite, when the disciples 'gathered together to break bread,' obviously
preserved the same familiar character, and stand in extraordinary
contrast to the splendours of high mass in a Roman Catholic Cathedral.
The Church, as a whole, is a household, and the very form of the rite
proclaims that 'we, being many, are one bread.' The conception of a
family brings clearly into view the deepest ground of Christian unity.
It is the possession of a common life, just as men are born into an
earthly family, not of their own will, nor of their own working, and
come without any action of their own into bonds of blood relationship
with brothers and sisters. When we become sons of God and are born
again, we become brethren of all His children. That which gives us life
in Him makes us kindred with all through whose veins flows that same
life. It is the common partaking in the one bread which makes us one.
The same blood flows in the veins of all the children.
Hence, the only ground on which the Church rests is this common
possession of the life of Christ, and that ground makes, and ought to be
felt to make, Christian union a far deeper, more blessed, and more
imperative bond than can be found in any shallow similarities of aim--or
identities of opinion or feeling. The deepest fact of Christian
consciousness is the foundation fact of Christian brotherhood; each is
nearer to every Christian than to any besides. A very solemn view of
Christian duty arises from these thoughts, familiar as they are:
'No distance breaks the tie of blood,
Brothers are brothers ever more.'
and every tongue is loud in condemnation of any man who is ashamed or
afraid to recognise his brother and stand by him, whatever may be the
difference in their worldly positions. 'Every one who loveth Him that
begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him.'