If you will glance at your leisure over the whole context from which I
have picked these clauses as containing its essence, you will find that
the Apostle speaks of the things which the prophets foretold as being
the same as 'those which are now reported unto you by them that have
preached the Gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from
heaven.' I must not take for granted that you are all referring to your
Bibles, but I should like to point out, as the basis of one or two
things that I wish to say, the remarkable variety of phrase employed in
the text to describe the one thing. First, Peter speaks of it as
'salvation,' then he speaks of it in the next clause as 'the grace that
should come unto you.' Then, in the next phrase, he designates it more
particularly as 'the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
follow.' Now, if we put these designations together--salvation, grace,
Christ's sufferings, the subsequent glory--we come to this, that the
facts of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the great
vehicle which brings to men God's grace, that that grace has for its
purpose and its effect man's salvation, and that these facts are the
Gospel which Christian preachers have to proclaim.
Now notice what follows from such thoughts as these. To begin with, the
Gospel is not a speculation, is not a theology, still less a morality,
not a declaration of principles, but a history of fact, things that were
done on this earth of ours, and that the Apostle's Creed which is
worked into the service of the Anglican Church is far nearer the
primitive conception of the Gospel than are any of the more elaborate
and doctrinal ones which have followed. For we have to begin with the
facts that Christ lived, died, was buried, rose again from the dead ...
ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God. Whatever
else the Gospel is, that is the kernel and the basis of it all. Out of
these facts will come all manner of doctrines, philosophies of religion,
theologies, revelations about God and man. Out of them will come all
ethics, the teaching of duty, the exhibition of a pattern of conduct,
inspiration to follow the model that is set before us. Out of them will
come, as I believe, guidance and light for social and economical and
political questions and difficulties. But what we have to lay hold of,
and what we preachers have to proclaim, is the story of the life, and
eminently the story of the death.
Why does Peter put in the very centre here 'the sufferings of Christ'?
That suggests another thought, that amongst these facts which, taken
together, make the Gospel, the vital part, the central and the
indispensable part, is the story of the Cross. Now what Christ said, not
what Christ did, not what Christ was, beautiful and helpful as all that
is, but to begin with what Christ bore, is the fact that makes the life
of the Gospel. And just as He is the centre of humanity, so the Cross is
the centre of His work. Why is that? Because the deepest need of all of
us is the need to have our sins dealt with, both as guilt and as power,
and because nothing else in the whole story of Christ's manifestation
deals with men's sins as the fact of His death on the Cross does,
therefore the sacrifice and sufferings are the heart of the Gospel.
And so, brethren, we have to mark that the presentation of Christian
truth which slurs over that fact of the Sacrifice and Atonement of Jesus
Christ, has parted with the vital power which makes the story into a
gospel. It is no gospel to tell a man that Jesus Christ died, unless you
go on to say He 'died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' And it
is no gospel to talk about the beauty of His life, and the perfectness
of His example, and the sweetness of His nature, and the depth, the
wisdom, and the tenderness of His words, unless you can say this is 'the
Lamb of God,' 'the Word made flesh,' 'who bare our sins, and carried our
sicknesses and our sorrows.' Strike out from the gospel that you preach
'the sufferings of Christ,' and you have struck out the one thing that
will draw men's hearts, that will satisfy men's needs, that will bind
men to Him with cords of love. 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
unto Me.' So, wherever you get what they call an ethical gospel which
deals with moralities, and does not impart the power that will vitalise
moralities, and make them into thankful service and sacrifices, in
return for the great Sacrifice; wherever you get a gospel that falters
in its enunciation of the sufferings of Christ, and wherever you get a
gospel that secularises the Christian service of the Sabbath, and will
rather discuss the things that the newspapers discuss, and the new books
that the reviewers are talking about, and odds and ends of that sort
that are thought to be popular and attractive, you get a gospel _minus_
the thing that, in the Old Testament and in the New alike, stands forth
in the centre of all. 'We preach Christ crucified'; it is not enough to
preach Christ. Many a man does that, and might as well hold his tongue.
'We preach Christ crucified.' And the same august Figure which loomed
before the vision of prophets, and shines through many a weary age,
stands before us of this generation; ay! and will stand till the end of
the world, as the centre, the pivot of human history, the Christ who has
died for men. The Christ that will stand in the centre of the
development of humanity is the Christ that died on the Cross. If your
gospel is not that, you have yet to learn the deepest secret of His
power.
III. Once more, here we have Christ and His Cross as the study of
angels.
'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Now, the word that Peter
employs there is an unusual one in Scripture. Its force may, perhaps, be
best conveyed by referring to one of the few instances in which it is
employed. It is used to describe the attitude of Peter and John when
they stooped down and looked into the sepulchre. Perhaps there may be a
reference in Peter's mind to that incident, when he saw the 'two angels
... sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the
body of Jesus had lain.' Perhaps, also, there floats in his mind some
kind of reference to the outspread wings and bended heads of the
brooding cherubim who sat above the Mercy-seat, gazing down upon the
miracle of love that was manifested beneath them there. But be that as
it may, the idea conveyed is that of eager desire and fixed attention.
Now I am not going to enlarge at all upon the thought that is here
conveyed, except just to make the one remark that people have often
said, 'Why should a race of insignificant creatures on this little globe
of ours be so dignified in the divine procedure as that there should be
the stupendous mystery of the Incarnation, and the Death for their
sakes?' _Not_ for their sakes only, for the New Testament commits itself
to the thought that whilst sinful men are the only subjects of the
redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, other orders of creatures do benefit
thereby, and do learn from it what else they would not have known, of
the mystery and the miracle and the majesty of the Divine love. 'To the
principalities and the powers in heavenly places He hath made known by
the Church the manifold wisdom of God.' And we can understand how these
other orders--what we call higher orders, which they may be or they may
not--of being, learn to know God as we learn to know Him, by the
manifestation of Himself in His acts, and how the crown of all
manifestations consists in this, that He visits the sinful sons of men,
and by His own dear Son brings them back again. The elder brethren in
the Father's house do not grudge the ring and the robe given to the
prodigals; rather they learn therein more than they knew before of the
loving-kindness of God.
Now all that is nowadays ignored, and it is not fashionable to speak
about the interest of angels in the success of Redemption, and a good
many 'advanced' Christians do not believe in angels at all, because they
'cannot verify' the doctrine. I, for my part, accept the teaching, which
seems to me to be a great deal more reasonable than to suppose that the
rest of the universe is void of creatures that can praise and love and
know God. I accept the teaching, and think that Peter was, perhaps, not
a dreamer when he said, 'The angels desire to look into these things.'
They do not share in the blessings of redemption, but they can behold
what they do not themselves experience. The Seer in the Revelation was
not mistaken, when he believed that he heard redeemed men leading the
chorus to Him that had redeemed them by His blood out of all nations,
and then heard the thunderous echo from an innumerable host of angels
who could not say 'Thou hast redeemed us,' but who could bring praise
and glory to Him because He had redeemed men.
IV. And now my last point is that Christ and His Cross is, by the
Gospel, offered to each of us.
Notice how emphatically in this context the Apostle gathers together his
wider thoughts, and focusses them into a point. 'The prophets have
inquired and searched diligently ... of the grace that should come to
_you_.... To them it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but _unto
us_ they did minister the things, which are now reported _unto you_ by
them that have preached the Gospel _unto you_.' And so he would take his
wide thoughts, as it were, and gather all together, to a point, and
press the point against each man's heart.
Dear brethren, these wide views are of no avail to us unless we realise
the individual relation which Christ bears to each one of us. He bears a
relation, as I have been saying, to all humanity. All the ages belong to
Him. 'He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.' From His
Cross there flash up rays of light into the heavens above, and out over
the whole rolling series of the centuries, from the beginning to the
end. Yes; but from His Cross there comes a beam straight to your heart,
and the Christ whom angels desire to look into, of whom prophets
prophesy and Apostles proclaim His advent, who is the Lord of all the
ages, and the Lover of mankind, comes to thee and says 'I am thy
Saviour,' and to thee this wide message is brought. Every eye has the
whole sunshine, and each soul may have the whole Christ. His universal
relations in time and space matter little to you, unless He has a
particular relation to yourself.
And He will never have that in its atoning power, unless you do for
yourself and by yourself the most individual and solitary act that a
human soul can do, and that is, lay your hand on the head of 'the Lamb
... that takes away the sin of the world,' and put your sins there. You
must begin with 'my Christ,' which you can do only by personal faith.
And then afterwards you can come to 'our Christ,' the Christ of all the
worlds, the Christ of all the ages. Go to Him by yourself. You must do
it as if there were not any other beings in the whole universe but you
two, Jesus and you. And when you have so gone, then you will find that
you have 'come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of
angels, to the general assembly, and Church of the first born.' Christ
and His Cross are the substance of prophecy, the theme of the Gospel,
the study of the angels. What are they to me?