The form of words in the original, 'loved' and 'given,' all but
necessarily requires us to suppose that their reference is to some one
definite historical act in which the love was manifested, and, as love
always does, found voice in giving. Love is the infinite desire to
bestow, and its language is always a gift. Then, according to the
Apostle's thought, there is some one act in which all the fulness of the
divine love manifests itself; some one act in which all the treasures
which God can bestow upon men are conveyed and handed over to a world.
The statement that there is such renders almost unnecessary the question
what such an act is. For there can be but one in all the sweep of the
magnificent and beneficent divine deeds, so correspondent to His love,
and so inclusive of all His giving, as that it shall be the ground of
our confidence and the warrant for our prayers. The gift of Jesus Christ
is that in which everlasting consolation and good hope are bestowed upon
men. When our desires are widened out to the widest they must be based
upon the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ; and when we would think most
confidently and most desiringly of the benefits that we seek, for
ourselves or for our fellows, we must turn to the Cross. My prayer is
then acceptable and prevalent when it foots itself on the past divine
act, and looking to the life and death of Jesus Christ, is widened out
to long for, ask for, and in the very longing and asking for to begin
to possess, the fulness of the gifts which then were brought to men in
Him.
'Everlasting consolation and good hope.' I suppose the Apostle's
emphasis is to be placed quite as much on the adjectives as on the
nouns; for there are consolations enough in the world, only none of them
are permanent; and there are hopes enough that amuse and draw men, but
one of them only is 'good.' The gift of Christ, thinks Paul, is the gift
of a comfort which will never fail amidst all the vicissitudes and
accumulated and repeated and prolonged sorrows to which flesh is heir,
and is likewise the gift of a hope which, in its basis and in its
objects, is equally noble and good.
Look at these two things briefly. Paul thinks that in Jesus Christ you
and I, and all the world, if it will have it, has received the gift of
an everlasting comfort. Ah! sorrow is more persistent than consolation.
The bandaged wounds bleed again; the fire damped down for a moment
smoulders, even when damped, and bursts out again. But there is one
source of comfort which, because it comes from an unchangeable Christ,
and because it communicates unfailing gifts of patience and insight, and
because it leads forward to everlasting blessedness and recompenses, may
well be called 'eternal consolation.' Of course, consolation is not
needed when sorrow has ceased; and when the wiping away of all tears
from off all faces, and the plunging of grief into the nethermost fires,
there to be consumed, have come about, there is no more need for
comfort. Yet that which made the comfort while sorrow lasts, makes the
triumph and the rapture when sorrow is dead, and is everlasting, though
its office of consolation determines with earth.
'Good hope through grace.' This is the weakness of all the hopes which
dance like fireflies in the dark before men, and are often like
will-o'-the-wisps in the night tempting men into deep mire, where there
is no standing--that they are uncertain in their basis and inadequate in
their range. The prostitution of the great faculty of hope is one of the
saddest characteristics of our feeble and fallen manhood; for the bulk
of our hopes are doubtful and akin to fears, and are mean and low, and
disproportioned to the possibilities, and therefore the obligations, of
our spirits. But in that Cross which teaches us the meaning of sorrows,
and in that Christ whose presence is light in darkness, and the very
embodied consolation of all hearts, there lie at once the foundation and
the object of a hope which, in consideration both of object and
foundation, stands unique in its excellence and sufficient in its
firmness. 'A good hope'; good because well founded; and good because
grasping worthy objects; eternal consolation outlasting all
sorrows--these things were given once for all, to the whole world when
Jesus Christ came and lived and died. The materials for a comfort that
shall never fail me, and for the foundation and the object of a hope
that shall never be ashamed, are supplied in Jesus Christ our Lord. And
so these gifts, already passed under the great seal of heaven, and
confirmed to us all, if we choose to take them for ours, are the ground
upon which the largest prayers may be rested, and the most ardent
desires may be unblamably cherished, in the full confidence that no
petitions of ours can reach to the greatness of the divine purpose, and
that the widest and otherwise wildest of our hopes and wishes are sober
under-estimates of what God has already given to us. For if He has
given the material, He will apply what He has supplied. And if He has
thus in the past bestowed the possibilities of comfort and hope upon the
world, He will not slack His hand, if we desire the possibility to be in
our hearts turned into the actuality.
God has given, therefore God will give. That in heaven's logic, but it
does not do for men. It presupposes inexhaustible resources,
unchangeable purposes of kindness, patience that is not disgusted and
cannot be turned away by our sin. These things being presupposed it is
true; and the prayer of my text, that God would comfort, can have no
firmer foundation than the confidence of my text, that God has given
'everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.' 'Thou hast helped
us; leave us not, neither forsake us, O God of our salvation.'
III. The last thing here is the petitions based upon the contemplation
of the divine hearers of the prayer, and of the gift already bestowed by
God.
May He 'comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and
work.' I have already said all that perhaps is necessary in regard to
the connection between the past gift of everlasting consolation and the
present and future comforting of hearts which is here desired. It seems
to me that the Apostle has in his mind the distinction between the great
work of Christ, in which are supplied for us the materials for comfort
and hope, and the present and continuous work of that Divine Spirit, by
which God dwelling in our hearts in Jesus Christ makes real for each of
us the universal gift of consolation and of hope. God has bestowed the
materials for comfort; God will give the comfort for which He has
supplied the materials. It were a poor thing if all that we could
expect from our loving Father in the heavens were that He should
contribute to us what might make us peaceful and glad and calm in
sorrow, if we chose to use it. Men comfort from without; God steals into
the heart, and there diffuses the aroma of His presence. Christ comes
into the ship before He says, 'Peace! be still!' It is not enough for
our poor troubled heart that there should be calmness and consolation
twining round the Cross if we choose to pluck the fruit. We need, and
therefore we have, an indwelling God who, by that Spirit which is the
Comforter, will make for each of us the everlasting consolation which He
has bestowed upon the world our individual possession. God's husbandry
is not merely broadcast sowing of the seed, but the planting in each
individual heart of the precious germ. And the God who has given
everlasting consolation to a whole world will comfort _thy_ heart.
Then, again, the comforted heart will be a stable heart. Our fixedness
and stability are not natural immobility, but communicated
steadfastness. There must be, first, the consolation of Christ before
there can be the calmness of a settled heart. We all know how
vacillating, how driven to and fro by gusts of passion and winds of
doctrine and forces of earth our resolutions and spirits are. But
thistledown glued to a firm surface will be firm, and any light thing
lashed to a solid one will be solid; and reeds shaken with the wind may
be turned into brazen pillars that cannot be moved. If we have Christ in
our hearts, He will be our consolation first and our stability next. Why
should it be that we are spasmodic and fluctuating, and the slaves of
ups and downs, like some barometer in stormy weather; now at 'set
fair,' and then away down where 'much rain' is written? There is no need
for it. Get Christ into your heart, and your mercury will always stand
at one height. Why should it be that at one hour the flashing waters
fill the harbour, and that six hours afterwards there is a waste of ooze
and filth? It need not be. Our hearts may be like some landlocked lake
that knows no tide. 'His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.'
The comforted and stable heart will be a fruitful heart. 'In _every_
good word and work.' Ah! how fragmentary is our goodness, like the
broken torsos of the statues of fair gods dug up in some classic land.
There is no reason why each of us should not appropriate and make our
own the forms of goodness to which we are least naturally inclined, and
cultivate and possess a symmetrical, fully-developed, all-round
goodness, in some humble measure after the pattern of Jesus Christ our
Lord. Practical righteousness, 'in every good word and work,' is the
outcome of all the sacred and secret consolations and blessings that
Jesus Christ imparts. There are many Christian people who are like those
swallow-holes, as they call them, characteristic of limestone countries,
where a great river plunges into a cave and is no more heard of. You do
not get your comforts and your blessing for that, brother, but in order
that all the joy and peace, all the calmness and the communion, which
you realise in the secret place of the Most High, may be translated into
goodness and manifest righteousness in the market-place and the street.
We get our goodness where we get our consolation, from Jesus Christ and
His Cross.
And so, dear friends, all your comforts will die, and your sorrows will
live, unless you have Christ for your own. The former will be like some
application that is put on a poisoned bite, which will soothe it for a
moment, but as soon as the anodyne dries off the skin, the poison will
tingle and burn again, and will be working in the blood, whilst the
remedy only touched the surface of the flesh. All your hopes will be
like a child's castles on the sand, which the next tide will smooth out
and obliterate, unless your hope is fixed on Him. You may have
everlasting consolation, you may have a hope which will enable you to
look serenely on the ills of life, and on the darkness of death, and on
what darkly looms beyond death. You may have a calmed and steadied
heart; you may have an all-round, stable, comprehensive goodness. But
there is only one way to get these blessings, and that is to grasp and
make our own, by simple faith and constant clinging, that great gift,
given once for all in Jesus Christ, the gift of comfort that never dies,
and of hope that never deceives, and then to apply that gift day by day,
through God's good Spirit, to sorrows and trials and duties as they
emerge.