Now, the immediate result of that grasp, when it is yielded to, is the
sense of the removal of guilt, forgiveness of sins, acceptance with God.
But these, the immediate results, are by no means the whole results,
although a great many of us live as if we thought that the only thing
that Christianity is meant to do to us is that it bars the gates of some
future hell, and brings to us the message of forgiveness. We cannot
think too nobly or too loftily of that gift of forgiveness, the initial
gift that is laid in every Christian man's hands, but we may think too
exclusively of it, and a great many of us do think of it as if it were
all that was to be given. A painter has to clear away the old paint off
a door, or a wall, before he lays on the new. The initial gift that
comes from being laid hold of by Jesus Christ is the burning off of the
old coat of paint. But that is only the preliminary to the laying on of
the new. A man away in the backwoods will spend a couple of years after
he has got his bit of land in felling and burning the trees, and rooting
out and destroying the weeds. But is that what he got the clearing for?
That is only a preliminary to sowing the seed. My friend! If Jesus
Christ has laid hold of you, and you have let Him keep hold of you, it
is not only that you may be forgiven, not only that you may sun yourself
in the light of God's countenance, and feel that a new blessed relation
is set up between you and Him, but there are great purposes lying at the
back of that, of which all that is only the preliminary and the
preparation.
Conversion. Yes; but what is the good of turning a man round unless he
goes in the direction in which his face is turned? And so here the
Apostle having for years lived in the light of that great thought, that
God was reconciled in Jesus Christ, and that he was God's friend,
discerns far beyond that, in dim perspective, towering high above the
land in the front, the snowy sunlit summits of a great range to which he
has yet to climb, and says, 'I press on to lay hold of that for which I
was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.'
And what was that? On the road to Damascus Paul was only told one thing,
that Christ had grasped him and drawn him to Himself in order that He
might make him a chosen vessel to bear the Word far hence amongst the
Gentiles. The bearing of His conversion upon Paul himself was never
mentioned. The bearing of His conversion on the world was the only
subject that Jesus spoke of at first. But here Paul has nothing to say
about his world-wide mission. He does not think of himself as being
called to be an Apostle, but as being summoned to be a Christian. And
so, forgetting for the time all the glorious and yet burdensome
obligations which were laid upon him, and the discharge of which was the
very life of his life, he thinks only of what affects his own character,
the perfecting of which he regards as being the one thing for which he
was 'laid hold of by Christ Jesus.' The purpose is twofold. No Christian
man is made a Christian only in order that he may secure his own
salvation; there is the world to think of. No Christian man is made a
Christian only in order that he may be Christ's instrument for carrying
the Word to other people; there is himself to think of. And these two
phases of the purpose for which Jesus Christ lays hold upon us are very
hard to unite in practice, giving to each its due place and prominence,
and they are often separated, to the detriment of both the one that is
attended to, and the one that is neglected. The monastic life has not
produced the noblest Christians; and there are pitfalls lying in the
path of every man who, like me, has for his profession to preach the
Gospel, which, if they are fallen into, the inward life is utterly
wrecked.
The two sides of Christ's purpose have, in our practice, to be held
together, but for the present I only wish to say a word or two about
that which, as I have indicated, is but one hemisphere of the completed
orb, and that is our personal culture and growth in the divine life.
What did Christ lay hold of me for? Paul answers the question very
strikingly and beautifully in a previous verse. Here is his conception
of the purpose, 'that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His
death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the
dead.' That is what you were forgiven for; that is what you have 'passed
from death unto life' for; that is what you have come into the sweet
fellowship of God, and can think of Him as your Friend and Helper for.
Let us take the clauses _seriatim_, and say a word about each of them.
'That I may know Him.' Ah! there is a great deal more in Jesus Christ
than a man sees when he first sees Him through his tears and his fears,
and apprehends Him as the Saviour of his soul, and the sacrifice on whom
the burden and the guilt of his sins were laid. We must begin there, as
I believe. But woe to us if we stop there. There is far more in Christ
than that; although all that is in Him is included in that, yet you have
to dig deep before you find all that is included in it. You have to live
with Him day by day, and year by year, and to learn to know Him as we
learn to know husbands and wives, by continual intercourse, by continual
experience of a sweet and unfailing love, by many a sacred hour of
interchange of affection and reception of gifts and counsels. It is only
thus that we learn to know what Jesus Christ is. When He lays hold of
us, He comes like the angel that came to Peter in the prison in the dark
and awoke him out of his sleep and said 'Rise! and follow me.' It is
only when we get out into the street, and have been with Him for awhile,
and the daylight begins to stream in, that we see clearly the face of
our Deliverer, and know Him for all that He is. This knowledge is not
the sort of knowledge that you can get by thinking, or out of a book.
It is the knowledge of experience. It is the knowledge of love, it is
the knowledge of union, and it is in order that we may know Christ that
He lays his hand upon us.
'The power of His Resurrection.' Now, by that I understand a similar
knowledge, by experience, of the risen life of Jesus Christ flowing into
us, and filling our hearts and minds with its own power. The risen life
of Jesus is the nourishment and strengthening and blessing and life of a
Christian. Our daily experience ought to be that there comes, wavelet by
wavelet, that silent, gentle, and yet omnipotent influx into our empty
hearts, the very life of Christ Himself.
I know that this generation says that that is mysticism. I do not know
whether it is mysticism or not. I am sure it is truth; and I do not
understand Christianity at all, unless there is that kind of mysticism,
perfectly wholesome and good, in it. You will never know Jesus Christ
until you know Him as pouring into your hearts the power of an endless
life, His own life. Christ for us by all means,--Christ's death the
basis of our hope, but Christ in us, and Christ's life as the true gift
to His Church. Have you got that? Do you know the power of His
Resurrection?
'The fellowship of His sufferings.' Has Paul made a mistake, and
deserted the chronological order? Why does he put the 'fellowship of the
sufferings' after the 'power of the Resurrection'? For this plain
reason, that if we get Christ's life into our hearts, in the measure in
which we get it we shall bear a similar relation to the world which He
bore to it, and in our measure will 'fill up that which is behind in the
sufferings of Christ,' and will understand how true it is that 'if they
hate Me they will hate you also.' Brethren, the test of us who have the
life of Christ in our hearts is that we shall, in some measure, suffer
with Him, because 'as He is, so are we, in this world,' and because we
must in that case look upon the world, its sins and its sorrows, with
something of the sad gaze with which He looked across the valley to the
Temple sparkling in the morning light, and wept over it. So if we know
the power of His Resurrection we shall know the fellowship of His
sufferings.
And then Paul goes on, in his definition of the purpose for which Christ
lays hold upon men, apparently to say the same thing over again, only in
the opposite order, 'that I may be conformable to His death, if by any
means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.' Both of these
clauses, I think, refer to the future, to the actual dying of the body,
and the actual future resurrection of the same. And the thought is this,
that if here, through our earthly lives, we have been recipients of the
risen life of Jesus Christ, and so have stood to the world in our degree
as He stood to it, then when the moment of death comes to us, we shall,
in so far, have our departure shaped after His as that we shall be able
to say, 'Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,' and die willingly, and at
last shall be partakers of that blessed Resurrection unto life eternal
which closes the vista of our earthly history. Stephen's death was
conformed to Christ's in outward fashion, in so far as it echoed the
Master's prayer, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,'
and in so far as it echoed the Master's last words, with the significant
alteration that, whilst Jesus commended His spirit to the Father, the
first martyr commended his to Jesus Christ.
These, then, are the purposes for which Christ laid His hand upon us,
that we might know Him, the power of His Resurrection, the fellowship of
His sufferings, being made conformable to His death yet by attaining the
resurrection of the dead.