'Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in
sincerity.'--Eph. vi. 24.
In turning to the great words which I have read as a text, I ask you to
mark their width and their simplicity. They are wide; they follow a very
comprehensive benediction, with which, so to speak, they are concentric.
But they sweep a wider circle. The former verse says, 'Peace be to the
brethren.' But beyond the brethren in these Asiatic churches (as a kind
of circular letter to whom this epistle was probably sent) there rises
before the mind of the Apostle a great multitude, in every nation, and
they share in his love, and in the promise and the prayer of my text.
Mark its simplicity: everything is brought down to its most general
expression. All the qualifications for receiving the divine gift are
gathered up in one--love. All the variety of the divine gifts is summed
up in that one comprehensive expression--'grace.'
I. So then, note, first, the comprehensive designation of the recipients
of grace.
They are 'all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption.' Little
need be said explanatory of the force of this general expression. We
usually find that where Scripture reduces the whole qualification for
the reception of the divine gift, and the conditions which unite to
Jesus Christ, to one, it is faith, not love, that is chosen. But here
the Apostle takes the process at the second stage, and instead of
emphasising the faith which is the first step, he dwells upon the love
which is its uniform consequence. This love rests upon the faith in
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Then note the solemn fulness of the designations of the object of this
faith-born love. 'Jesus Christ our Lord'--the name of His humanity; the
name of His office; the designation of His dominion. He is Jesus the
Man. Jesus is the Christ, the Fulfiller of all prophecy; the flower of
all previous revelation; the Anointed of God with the fulness of His
Divine Spirit as Prophet, Priest, and King. Jesus Christ is the
Lord--which, at the lowest, expresses sovereignty, and if regard be had
to the Apostolic usage, expresses something more, even participation in
Deity. And it is this whole Christ, the Jesus, the Christ, the Lord; the
love to whom, built upon the faith in Him in all these aspects and
characteristics, constitutes the true unity of the true Church.
That Church is not built upon a creed, but it is built upon a whole
Christ, and not a maimed one. And so we must have a love which answers
to all those sides of that great revealed character, and is warm with
human love to Jesus; and is trustful with confiding love to the Christ;
and is lowly with obedient love to the Lord. And I venture to go a step
further, and say,--and is devout with adoring love to the eternal Son of
the Father. This is the Apostle's definition of what makes a Christian:
Faith that grasps the whole Christ and love that therefore flows to Him.
It binds all who possess it into one great unity. As against a spurious
liberalism which calls them Christians who lay hold of a fragment of the
one entire and perfect chrysolite, we must insist that a Christian is
one who knows Jesus, who knows Christ, who knows the Lord, and who
loves Him in all these aspects. Only we must remember, too, that many a
time a man's heart outruns his creed, and that many a soul glows with
truer, deeper, more saving devotion and trust to a Christ whom the
intellect imperfectly apprehends, than are realised by unloving hearts
that are associated with clearer heads. Orchids grow in rich men's
greenhouses, fastened to a bit of stick, and they spread a fairer
blossom that lasts longer than many a plant that is rooted in a more
fertile soil. Let us be thankful for the blessed inconsistencies which
knit some to the Christ who is more to them than they know.
There is also here laid down for us the great principle, as against all
narrowness and all externalism, and all so-called ecclesiasticism, that
to be joined to Jesus Christ is the one condition which brings a man
into the blessed unity of the Church. Now it seems to me that, however
they may be to be lamented on other grounds, and they are to be lamented
on many, the existence of diverse Churches does not necessarily
interfere with this deep-seated and central unity. There is a great deal
said to-day about the reunion of Christendom, by which is meant the
destruction of existing communions and the formation of a wider one. I
do not believe, and I suppose you do not, that our existing
ecclesiastical organisations are the final form of the Church of the
living God. But let us remember that the two things are by no means
contradictory, the belief in, and the realising of, the essential unity
of the Church, and the existence of diverse communions. You will see on
the side of many a Cumberland hill a great stretch of limestone with
clefts a foot or two deep in it--there are flowers in the clefts, by the
bye--but go down a couple of yards and the divisions have all
disappeared, and the base-rock stretches continuously. The separations
are superficial; the unity is fundamental. Do not let us play into the
hands of people whose only notion of unity is that of a mechanical
juxtaposition held together by some formula or orders; but let us
recognise that the true unity is in the presence of Jesus Christ in the
midst, and in the common grasp of Him by us all.
There is a well-known hymn which was originally intended as a High
Church manifesto, which thrusts at us Nonconformists when it sings:
'_We_ are not divided,
All one body _we_.'
And oddly enough, but significantly too, it has found its way into all
our Nonconformist hymn-books, and we, 'the sects,' are singing it, with
perhaps a nobler conception of what the oneness of the body, and the
unity of the Church is, than the writer of the words had. 'We are not
divided,' though we be organised apart. 'All one body we,' for we all
partake of that one bread, and the unifying principle is a common love
to the one Jesus Christ our Lord.