Our text is part of a 'song,' and is not to be interpreted in the
cold-blooded fashion that might suit prose. A voice, coming from whom
we know not, breaks in upon the first strain with a command, addressed
to whom we know not--'Open ye the gates'--the city thus far being
supposed to be empty--'that the righteous nation which keepeth the
truth may enter in.' The central idea there is just this, 'Thy people
shall be all righteous.' The one qualification for entrance into the
city is absolute purity.
Now, brethren, that is true in regard to our present imperfect
denizenship within the city; and it is true in regard to men's passing
into it in its perfect and final form. As to the former, there is
nothing that you Christian people need more to have dinned into you
than this, that your continuance in the state of a redeemed man, with
all the security and blessing that attach thereto, depends upon your
continuing to be righteous. Every sin, every flaw, every dropping
beneath our own standard in conscience of what we ought to be, has for
its inevitable result that we are robbed for the time being of
consciousness of the walls of the city being about us and of our being
citizens thereof. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who
shall stand in His holy place?' The New Testament, as emphatically as
the old psalm, answers,' He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.'
'Let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous.'
There is no way by which Christian men here on earth can pass into and
keep within the city of the living God, except they possess personal
purity, righteousness of life, and cleanness of heart.
They used to say that Venice glass was so made that any poison poured
into it shivered the vessel. Any drop of sin poured into your cup of
communion with God, shatters the cup and spills the wine. Whosoever
thinks himself a citizen of that great city, if he falls into
transgression, and soils the cleanness of his hands, and ruffles the
calm of his pure heart by self-willed sinfulness, will wake to find
himself not within the battlements, but lying wounded, robbed,
solitary, in the pitiless desert. My brother, it is 'the righteous
nation' that 'enters in,' even here on earth.
I do not need to remind you how, admittedly by us all, that is the case
in regard to the final form of the city of our God, into which nothing
shall enter 'that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or
maketh a lie.' Heaven can only be entered into hereafter by, as here
and now it can only enter into, those who are pure of heart. All else
there would shrivel as foul things born In the darkness do in the
light, and be consumed in the fire. None but the pure can enter and see
God.
'The nation which keepeth the truth'--that does not mean adherence to
any revelation, or true creed, or the like. The word which is employed
means, not truth of thought, but truth of character; and might,
perhaps, be better represented by the more familiar word in such a
connection, 'faithfulness.' A man who is true to God, keeping up a
faithful relation to Him who is faithful to us, he, and only he, will
pass into, and abide in, the city.
Now, brethren, so far our text carries us, but no further; unless,
perhaps, there may be a hint of something yet deeper in the next clause
of this song. If any one asks, How does the nation become righteous?
the answer may lie in the immediately following exhortation--'Trust ye
in the Lord for ever.' But whether that be so or not, if we want an
answer to the questions, How can my stained feet be cleansed so as to
be fit to tread the crystal pavements? how can my foul garments be so
purged as not to be a blot and an eyesore, beside the white, lustrous
robes that sweep along them and gather no defilement there? the only
answer that I know of is to be found by turning to the final visions of
the New Testament, where the spirit of this whole section of our
prophet is reproduced. Again, Babylon falls amidst the songs of saints;
and then, down upon all the dust and confusion of the crash of ruin,
the seer beholds the Lamb's wife, the new Jerusalem, descending from
above. To his happy eyes its glories are unveiled, its golden streets,
its open gates, its walls of precious stones, its flashing river, its
peaceful inhabitants, its light streaming from the throne of God and of
the Lamb. And when that vision passes, his last message to us is,
'Blessed are they that wash their robes that they may enter through the
gates into the city.' None but those who wash their garments, and make
them white in the blood of the Lamb, can, living, come unto the city of
the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; or, dying, can pass through the
iron gate that opens to them of its own accord, and find themselves as
day breaks in the street of the Jerusalem which is above.