The figure is, of course, originally drawn from the registers of the
tribes of Israel. In that use, though not without a glance at some
higher meaning, it appears in the Old Testament, where we read of 'those
who are written among them living in Jerusalem'; or 'are written in the
writing of the house of Israel.' The suggestion of being inscribed on
the burgess-rolls of a city is the first idea connected with the word.
In the New Testament, for instance, we find in the great passage in the
Epistle to the Hebrews the two notions of the city and the census
brought into immediate connection, where the writer says, 'Ye are come
unto the city of the living God . . . and to the church of the first-born
whose names are written in heaven.' In this very letter we have, only a
verse or two before my text, the same idea of citizenship cropping up.
'Our _citizenship_ is in Heaven, from whence also we look for the
Saviour.' That, no doubt, helped to suggest to the Apostle the words of
my text. And there is another verse in the same letter where the same
idea comes out. 'Only act the citizen as becometh the Gospel of Christ.'
Now, you will remember, possibly, that Philippi was, as the Acts of the
Apostles tells us, a Roman colony. And the reference is exquisitely
close-fitting to the circumstances of the people of that city. For a
Roman colony was a bit of Rome in another land, and the citizens of
Philippi had their names inscribed on the registers of the tribes of
Rome. The writer himself was another illustration of the same thing, of
living in a community to which he did not belong and of belonging to a
community in which he did not live. For Paul was a native of Tarsus; and
Paul, the native of the Asiatic Tarsus, was a Roman.
So, then, the first thought that comes out of this great metaphor is
that all of us, if we are Christian people, belong to another polity,
another order of things than that in which our outward lives are spent.
And the plain, practical conclusion that comes from it is, cultivate the
sense of belonging to another order. Just as it swelled the heart of a
Macedonian Philippian with pride, when he thought that he did not belong
to the semi-barbarous people round about him, but that his name was
written in the books that lay in the Capitol of Rome, so should we
cultivate that sense of belonging to another order. It will make our
work here none the worse, but it will fill our lives with the sense of
nobler affinities, and point our efforts to grander work than any that
belongs to 'the things that are seen and temporal.' Just as the little
groups of Englishmen in treaty-ports own no allegiance to the laws of
the country in which they live, but are governed by English statutes, so
we have to take our orders from headquarters to which we have to
report. Men in our colonies get their instructions from Downing Street.
The officials there, appointed by the Home Government, think more of
what they will say about them at Westminster than of what they say about
them at Melbourne. So we are citizens of another country, and have to
obey the laws of our own kingdom, and not those of the soil on which we
dwell. Never mind about the opinions of men, the babblements of the
people in the land you live in. To us, the main thing is that we be
acceptable, well-pleasing unto Him. Are you solitary? Cultivate the
sense of, in your solitude, being a member of a great community that
stretches through all the ages, and binds into one the inhabitants of
eternity and of time.
Remember that this citizenship in the heavens is the highest honour that
can be conferred upon a man. The patricians of Venice used to have their
names inscribed upon what was called the 'golden book' that was kept in
the Doge's Palace. If our names are written in the book of gold in the
heavens, then we have higher dignities than any that belong to the
fleeting chronicles of this passing, vain world. So we can accept with
equanimity evil report or good report, and can acquiesce in a wholesome
obscurity, and be careless though our names appear on no human records,
and fill no trumpet of fame blown by earthly cheeks. Intellectual power,
wealth, gratified ambition, and all the other things that men set before
them, are small indeed compared with the honour, with the blessedness,
with the repose and satisfaction that attend the conscious possession of
citizenship in the heavens. Let us lay to heart the great words of the
Master which put a cooling hand on all the feverish ambitions of earth.
'In this rejoice, not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather
rejoice that your names are written in heaven.'
II. Then the second idea suggested by these words is the possession of
the life which is life indeed.
The 'Book of Life,' it is called in the New Testament. Its designation
in the Old might as well be translated 'the book of living' as 'the book
of life.' It is a register of the men who are truly alive.
Now, that is but an imaginative way of putting the commonplace of the
New Testament, that anything which is worth calling life comes to us,
not by creation or physical generation, but by being born again through
faith in Jesus Christ, and by receiving into our else dead spirits the
life which He bestows upon all them that trust Him.
In the New Testament 'life' is far more than 'being'; far more than
physical existence; removed by a whole world from these lower
conceptions, and finding its complete explanation only in the fact that
the soul which is knit to God by conscious surrender, love, aspiration,
and obedience, is the only soul that really lives. All else is
death--death! He 'that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth.' The
ghastly imagination of one of our poets, of the dead man standing on the
deck pulling at the ropes by the side of the living, is true in a very
deep sense. In spite of all the feverish activities, the manifold
vitalities of practical and intellectual life in the world, the deepest,
truest, life of every man who is parted from God by alienation of will,
by indifference, and neglect of love, lies sheeted and sepulchred in the
depths of his own heart. Brethren, there is no life worth calling life,
none to which that august name can without degradation be applied,
except the complete life of body, soul, and spirit, in lowly obedience
to God in Christ. The deepest meaning of the work of the Saviour is that
He comes into a dead world, and breathes into the bones--very many and
very dry--the breath of His own life. Christ has died for us; Christ
will live in us if we will; and, unless He does, we are twice dead.
Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is
a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which
concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest,
best, and noblest life that is possible for him, who is united to Jesus
Christ, and drawing from Christ his own life. 'He that hath the Son hath
life; he that hath not the Son hath not life.' Either my name and yours
are written in the Book of Life, or they are written in the register of
a cemetery. We have to make our choice which.
III. Another idea suggested by this emblem is experience of divine
individualising knowledge and care.
In the Old Testament the book is called 'Thy book,' in the New it is
called 'the Lamb's book.' That is of a piece with the whole relation of
the New to the Old, and of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word and
Manifestor of God, to the Jehovah revealed in former ages. For,
unconditionally, and without thought of irreverence or idolatry, the New
Testament lifts over and confers upon Jesus Christ the attributes which
the Old jealously preserved as belonging only to Jehovah. And thus
Christ the Manifestor of God, and the Mediator to us of all divine
powers and blessings, takes the Book and makes the entries in it. Each
man of us, as in your ledgers, has a page to himself. His account is
opened, and is not confused with other entries. There is
individualising love and care, and as the basis of both, individualising
knowledge. My name, the expression of my individual being, stands there.
Christ does not deal with me as one of a crowd, nor fling out blessings
broadcast, that I may grasp them in the midst of a multitude, if I
choose to put out a hand, but He deals with each of us singly, as if
there were not any beings in the world but He and I, our two selves, all
alone.
It is hard to realise the essentially individualising and isolating
character of our relation to Jesus Christ. But we shall never come to
the heart of the blessedness and the power of His Gospel unless we
translate all 'us'-es and 'every ones' and 'worlds' in Scripture into
'I' and 'me,' and can say not only He gives Himself to be 'the
propitiation for the sins of the whole world,' but 'He loved _me_ and
gave Himself for _me_.' The same individualising love which is
manifested in that mighty universal Atonement, if we rightly understand
it, is manifested in all His dealings with us. One by one we come under
His notice; the Shepherd tells His sheep singly as they pass out through
the gate or into the fold. He knows them all by name. 'I have called
thee by thy name; thou art Mine.'
Lift up your eyes and behold who made all these; the countless host of
the nightly stars. What are nebulæ to our eyes are blazing suns to His.
'He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all _by name_ by
the greatness of His power, for that He is strong in might not one
faileth.' So we may nestle in the protection of His hand, sure of a
separate place in His knowledge and His heart.
Deliverance and security are the results of that individualising care.
In one of the Old Testament instances of the use of this metaphor, we
read that in the great day of calamity and sorrow 'Thy people shall be
delivered, even every one that is written in Thy Book.' So we need not
dread anything if our names are there. The sleepless King will read the
Book, and will never forget, nor forget to help and succour His poor
servants.
But there are two other variations of this thought in the Old Testament
even more tenderly suggestive of that individualising care and strong
sufficient love than the emblem of my text. We read that when, in the
exercise of his official functions, the high priest passed into the
Tabernacle he wore, upon his _breast_, near the seat of personality, and
the home of love--the names of the tribes graven, and that the same
names were written on his shoulders, as if guiding the exercise of his
power. So we may think of ourselves as lying near the beatings of His
heart, and as individually the objects of the work of His almighty arm.
Nor is this all. For there is yet another, and still tenderer,
application of the figure, when we read of the Divine voice as saying to
Israel, 'I have graven thee on the palms of My hands.' The name of each
who loves and trusts and serves is written there; printed deep in the
flesh of the Sovereign Christ. We bear in our bodies the marks, the
_stigmata_ that tell whose slaves we are--'the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
And He bears in His body the marks that tell who His servants are.
IV. Lastly, there is suggested by this text the idea of future entrance
into the land of the living.
The metaphor occurs three times in the final book of Scripture, the book
which deals with the future and with the last things. And it occurs in
all these instances in very remarkable connection. First we read, in
the highly imaginative picture of the final judgment, that when the
thrones are set two books are opened, one the Book of Life, the other
the book in which are written the deeds of men, and that by these two
books men are judged. There is a judgment by conduct. There is also a
judgment by the Book of Life. That is to say, the question at last comes
to be, 'Is this man's name written in that book?' Is he a citizen of the
kingdom, and therefore capable of entering into it? Has he the life from
Christ in his heart? Or, in other words, the question is, first, has the
man who stands at the bar faith in Jesus Christ; and, second, has he
proved that his faith is genuine and real by the course of his earthly
conduct? These are the books from which the judgment is made.
Further, we read, in that blessed vision which stands at the far-off end
of all the knowledge of the future which is given to humanity, the
vision of the City of God 'that came down from heaven as a bride adorned
for her husband,' that only they enter in there who are 'written in the
Lamb's Book of Life.' Only citizens are capable of entrance into the
city. Aliens are necessarily shut out. The Lord, when He writeth up His
people, shall count that this man was born there, though he never trod
its streets while on earth, and, therefore, can enter into his native
home.
Further, in one of the letters to the seven churches our Lord gives as a
promise to him that overcometh, 'I will not blot his name out of the
Book of Life, but I will confess his name.'
What need we care what other people may think about us, or whether the
'hollow wraith of dying fame' that comes like a nimbus round some men
may fade wholly or no, so long as we may be sure of acknowledgment and
praise from Him from whom acknowledgment and praise are precious indeed.
I have but one or two more words to add. Remember that Paul had no
hesitation in taking upon himself to declare that the names of these
anonymous saints in Philippi were written in the Book of Life. What
business had he to do that? Had he looked over the pages, and marked the
entries? He had simply the right of estimating their state by their
conduct. He saw their works; he knew that these works were the fruit of
their faith; and he knew that, therefore, their faith had united them to
Jesus Christ. So, Christian men and women, two things: show your faith
by your works, and make it impossible for anybody that looks at you to
doubt what King you serve, and to what city you belong. Again, do not
ask, 'Is my name there?' Ask, 'Have I faith, and does my faith work the
works that belong to the Kingdom of Heaven?'
Remember that names can be blotted out of the book. The metaphor has
often been pressed into the service of a doctrine of unconditional and
irreversible predestination. But rightly looked at, it points in the
opposite direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry, 'Blot me out of Thy
book'; and the Divine answer, 'Him that sinneth against Me, his name
will I blot out of My book.' And remember that it is only to 'him that
overcometh' that the promise is made, 'I will not blot him out.' We are
made partakers of Christ if we 'hold fast the beginning of our
confidence firm unto the end.'
Remember that it depends upon ourselves whether our names are there or
not. John Bunyan describes the armed man who came up to the table, where
the man with the book and the inkhorn was seated, and said: 'Set down
my name.' And you and I may do that. If we cast ourselves on Jesus
Christ and yield our wills to be guided by Him, and give our lives for
His service, then He will write our names in His book. If we trust Him
we shall be citizens of the City of God; shall be filled with the life
of Christ; shall be objects of an individualising love and care; shall
be accepted in that Day; and shall enter in through the gates into the
city. 'They that forsake me shall be written on the earth'; and there
wiped out as are the children's scribbles on the sand when the ocean
come up. They that trust in Jesus Christ shall have their names written
in the Book of Life; graven on the High Priest's breastplate, and
inscribed on His mighty hand and His faithful heart.