III. The discipline which is needed to secure the right direction of the
life.
The Apostle does not content himself with pointing out the aims. He adds
practical advice as to how these aims can be made dominant in our
individual cases, when he says, 'Set your affections on things above.'
Now, many of you will know that 'affections' is not the full sense of
the word that is here employed, and that the Revised Version gives a
more adequate rendering when it says, 'Set your _minds_ on the things
that are above.' A man cannot do with his love according to his will. He
cannot say: '_Resolved_, that I love So-and-So'; and then set himself to
do it. But though you cannot act on the emotions directly by the will,
you _can_ act directly on your understandings, on your thoughts, and
your thoughts will act on your affections. If a man wants to love Jesus
Christ he must think about Him. That is plain English. It is vain for a
man to try to coerce his wandering affections by any other course than
by concentrating his thoughts. Set your minds on the things that are
above, and that will consolidate and direct the emotions; and the
thoughts and the emotions together will shape the outward efforts.
Seeking the things that are above will come, and will only come, when
mind and heart and inward life are occupied with Him. There is no other
way by which the externals can be made right than by setting a watch on
the door of our hearts and minds, and this inward discipline must be put
in force before there will be any continuity or sureness in the outward
aim. We want, for that direction of the life of which I have been
speaking, a clear perception and a concentrated purpose, and we shall
not get either of these unless we fall back, by thought and meditation,
upon the truths which will provide them both.
Brethren, there is another aspect of the connection between these two
parts of our text, which I can only touch. Not only is the setting of
our thoughts on the things above, the way by which we can make these the
aim of our lives. They are not only aims to be reached at some future
stage of our progress, but they are possessions to be enjoyed at the
present. We may have a present Christ and a present Heaven. The
Christian life is not all aspiration; it is fruition as well. We have to
seek, but even whilst we seek, we should be conscious that we possess
what we are seeking, even whilst we seek it. Do you know anything of
that double experience of having the things that are above, here and
now, as well as reaching out towards them?
I am afraid that the Christian life of this generation suffers at a
thousand points, because it is more concerned with the ordering of the
outward life, and the manifold activities which this busy generation has
struck out for itself, than it is with the quiet setting of the mind, in
silent sunken depths of contemplation, on the things that are above. Oh,
if we would think more about them we should aim more at them; and if we
were sure that we possessed them to-day we should be more eager for a
larger possession to-morrow.
Dear brethren, we may all have the risen life for ours, if we will knit
ourselves, in humble dependence and utter self-surrender, to the Christ
who died for us that we might be dead to sin, and rose again that we
might rise to righteousness. And if we have Him, in any deep and real
sense, as the life of our lives, then we shall be blessed, amid all the
divergent and sometimes conflicting nearer aims, which we have to
pursue, by seeing clear above them that to which they all may tend, the
one aim which corresponds to a man's nature, which meets his condition,
which satisfies his needs, which can always be attained if it is
followed, and which, when secured, never disappoints. God help us all to
say, 'This one thing I do, and all else I count but dung, 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 may
attain unto the Resurrection from the dead!'