'Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say,
rejoice!'--PHIL. iv. 4.
It has been well said that this whole epistle may be summed up in two
short sentences: 'I rejoice'; 'Rejoice ye!' The word and the thing crop
up in every chapter, like some hidden brook, ever and anon sparkling out
into the sunshine from beneath the shadows. This continual refrain of
gladness is all the more remarkable if we remember the Apostle's
circumstances. The letter shows him to us as a prisoner, dependent on
Christian charity for a living, having no man like-minded to cheer his
solitude; uncertain as to 'how it shall be with me,' and obliged to
contemplate the possibility of being 'offered,' or poured out as a
libation, 'on the sacrifice and service of your faith.' Yet out of all
the darkness his clear notes ring jubilant; and this sunny epistle
comes from the pen of a prisoner who did not know but that to-morrow he
might be a martyr.
The exhortation of my text, with its urgent reiteration, picks up again
a dropped thread which the Apostle had first introduced in the
commencement of the previous chapter. He had there evidently been
intending to close his letter, for he says: 'Finally, my brethren,
rejoice in the Lord'; but he is drawn away into that precious personal
digression which we could so ill spare, in which he speaks of his
continual aspiration and effort towards things not yet attained. And now
he comes back again, picks up the thread once more, and addresses
himself to his parting counsels. The reiteration in the text becomes the
more impressive if we remember that it is a repetition of a former
injunction. 'Rejoice in the Lord alway'; and then he seems to hear one
of his Philippian readers saying: 'Why! you told us that once before!'
'Yes,' he says, 'and you shall hear it once again; so important is my
commandment that it shall be repeated a third time. So I again say,
"rejoice!"' Christian gladness is an important element in Christian
duty; and the difficulty and necessity of it are indicated by the urgent
repetition of the injunction.
I. So, then, the first thought that suggests itself to me from these
words is this, that close union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of
real gladness.
Pray note that 'the Lord' here, as is usually the case in Paul's
Epistles, means, not the Divine Father, but Jesus Christ. And then
observe, again, that the phrase 'Rejoice in the Lord' has a deeper
meaning than we sometimes attach to it. We are accustomed to speak of
rejoicing in a thing or a person, which, or who, is thereby represented
as being the occasion or the object of our gladness. And though that is
true, in reference to our Lord, it is not the whole sweep and depth of
the Apostle's meaning here. He is employing that phrase, 'in the Lord,'
in the profound and comprehensive sense in which it generally appears in
his letters, and especially in those almost contemporaneous with this
Epistle to the Philippians. I need only refer you, in passing, without
quoting passages, to the continual use of that phrase in the nearly
contemporaneous letter to the Ephesians, in which you will find that 'in
Christ Jesus' is the signature stamped upon all the gifts of God, and
upon all the possible blessings of the Christian life. 'In Him' we have
the inheritance; in Him we obtain redemption through His blood, even the
forgiveness of sins; in Him we are 'blessed with all spiritual
blessings.' And the deepest description of the essential characteristic
of a Christian life is, to Paul, that it is a life in Christ.
It is this close union which the Apostle here indicates as being the
foundation and the source of all that gladness which he desires to see
spreading its light over the Christian life. 'Rejoice in the
Lord'--being in Him be glad.
Now that great thought has two aspects, one deep and mysterious, one
very plain and practical. As to the former, I need not spend much time
upon it. We believe, I suppose, in the superhuman character and nature
of Jesus Christ. We believe in His divinity. We can therefore believe
reasonably in the possibility of a union between Him and us,
transcending all the forms of human association, and being really like
that which the creature holds to its Creator in regard to its physical
being. 'In him we live, and move, and have our being' is the very
foundation truth in regard to the constitution of the universe. 'In Him
we live, and move, and have our being' is the very foundation truth in
regard to the relation of the Christian soul to Jesus Christ. All
earthly unions are but poor adumbrations from afar of that deep,
transcendent, mysterious, but most real union, by which the Christian
soul is in Christ, as the branch is in the vine, the member in the body,
the planet in its atmosphere, and by which Christ is in the Christian
soul as the life sap is in every twig, as the mysterious vital power is
in every member. Thus abiding in Him, in a manner which admits of no
parallel nor of any doubt, we may, and we shall, be glad.
But then, passing from the mysterious, we come to the plain. To be 'in
Christ' which is commended to us here as the basis of all true
blessedness, means that the whole of our nature shall be occupied with,
and fastened upon, Him; thought turning to Him, the tendrils of the
heart clinging and creeping around Him, the will submitting itself in
glad obedience to His beloved and supreme commandments, the aspirations,
and desires feeling out after Him as the sufficient and eternal good,
and all the current of our being setting towards Him in earnestness of
desire, and resting in Him in tranquillity of possession. Thus 'in
Christ' we may all be.
And, says Paul, in the great words of my text, such a union, reciprocal
and close, is the secret of all blessedness. If thus we are wedded to
that Lord, and His life is in us and ours enclosed in Him, then there is
such correspondence between our necessities and our supplies as that
there is no room for aching emptiness; no gnawing of unsatisfied
longings, but the blessedness that comes from having found that which we
seek, and in the finding being stimulated to a still closer, happier,
and not restless search after fuller possession. The man that knows
where to get anything and everything that he needs, and to whom desires
are but the prophets of instantaneous fruition; surely that man has in
his possession the talismanic secret of perpetual gladness. They who
thus dwell in Christ by faith, love, obedience, imitation, aspiration,
and enjoyment, are like men housed in some strong fortress, who can look
out over all the fields alive with enemies, and feel that they are safe.
They who thus dwell in Christ gain command over themselves; and because
they can bridle passions, and subdue hot and impossible desires, and
keep themselves well in hand, have stanched one chief source of unrest
and sadness, and have opened one pure and sparkling fountain of
unfailing gladness. To rule myself because Christ rules me is no small
part of the secret of blessedness. And they who thus dwell in Christ
have the purest joy, the joy of self-forgetfulness. He that is absorbed
in a great cause; he whose pitiful, personal individuality has passed
out of his sight; he who is swallowed up by devotion to another, by
aspiration after 'something afar from the sphere of our sorrow,' has
found the secret of gladness. And the man who thus can say, 'I live: yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me,' this is the man who will ever rejoice.
The world may not call such a temper gladness. It is as unlike the
sputtering, flaring, foul-smelling joys which it prizes--like those
filthy but bright 'Lucigens' that they do night work by in great
factories--it is as unlike the joy of the world as these are to the
calm, pure moonlight which they insult. The one is of heaven, and the
other is the foul product of earth, and smokes to extinction swiftly.