To recur to my former illustration, we have to go up country to a still
higher level. What feeds the two reservoirs that feed the love? What
makes the heart pure and the conscience good? Paul answers, 'faith
unfeigned'; not mere intellectual apprehension, not mere superficial or
professed, but deep, genuine, and complete faith which has in it the
element of reliance as well as the element of credence. Belief is not
all that goes to make faith. Trust is not all that goes to make faith.
Belief and trust are indissolubly wedded in the conception of it. Such a
faith, which knows what it lays hold of--for it lays hold upon definite
truth, and lays hold on what it knows, for it trusts in Him whom the
truth reveals--such a faith makes the heart pure and the conscience
good.
And how does it do so? By nothing in itself. There is no power in my
faith to make me one bit better than I am. There is no power in it to
still one accusation of conscience. It is only the condition on which
the one power that purges and that calms enters into my heart and works
there. The power of faith is the power of that which faith admits to
operate in my life. If we open our hearts the fire will come in, and it
will thaw the ice, and melt out the foulness from my heart. It is
important for practice that we should clearly understand that the great
things which the Bible says of faith it says of it only because it is
the channel, the medium, the condition, by and on which the real power,
which is Jesus Christ Himself, acts upon us. It is not the window, but
the sunshine, that floods this building with light. It is not the opened
hand, but the gift laid in it, that enriches the pauper. It is not the
poor leaden pipe, but the water that flows through it, that fills the
cistern, and cleanses it, whilst it fills. It is not your faith, but the
Christ whom your faith brings into your heart and conscience, that
purges the one, and makes the other void of offence towards God and man.
So, brethren, let us learn the secret of all nobility, of all power, of
all righteousness of character and conduct. Put your foot on the lowest
round of the ladder, and then aspire and climb, and you will reach the
summit. Take the first step, and be true to it after you have taken it,
and the last will surely come. He that can say, 'We have known and
believed the love that God hath to us,' will also be able to say, 'We
love Him because He first loved us.' 'And this commandment have we of
God, that he who loves God loves his brother also.'
'THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF THE HAPPY GOD'
'The glorious gospel of the blessed God.'--1 TIM.
i. 11.
Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for our
consideration of this text. The first is, that the proper rendering is
that which is given in the Revised Version--'the gospel of the glory,'
not the 'glorious gospel.' The Apostle is not telling us what kind of
thing the Gospel is, but what it is about. He is dealing not with its
quality, but with its contents. It is a Gospel which reveals, has to do
with, is the manifestation of, the glory of God.
Then the other remark is with reference to the meaning of the word
'blessed.' There are two Greek words which are both translated 'blessed'
in the New Testament. One of them, the more common, literally means
'well spoken of,' and points to the action of praise or benediction;
describes what a man is when men speak well of him, or what God is when
men praise and magnify His name. But the other word, which is used here,
and is only applied to God once more in Scripture, has no reference to
the human attribution of blessing and praise to Him, but describes Him
altogether apart from what men say of Him, as what He is in Himself, the
'blessed,' or, as we might almost say, the 'happy' God. If the word
happy seems too trivial, suggesting ideas of levity, of turbulence, of
possible change, then I do not know that we can find any better word
than that which is already employed in my text, if only we remember that
it means the solemn, calm, restful, perpetual gladness that fills the
heart of God.
So much, then, being premised, there are three points that seem to me to
come out of this remarkable expression of my text. First, the revelation
of God in Christ, of which the Gospel is the record, is the glory of
God. Second, that revelation is, in a very profound sense, an element in
the blessedness of God. And, lastly, that revelation is the good news
for men. Let us look at these three points, then, in succession.
I. Take, first, that striking thought that the revelation of God in
Jesus Christ is the glory of God.
The theme, or contents, or purpose of the whole Gospel, is to set forth
and make manifest to men the glory of God.
Now what do we mean by 'the glory'? I think, perhaps, that question may
be most simply answered by remembering the definite meaning of the word
in the Old Testament. There it designates, usually, that supernatural
and lustrous light which dwelt between the Cherubim, the symbol of the
presence and of the self-manifestation of God. So that we may say, in
brief, that the glory of God is the sum-total of the light that streams
from His self-revelation, considered as being the object of adoration
and praise by a world that gazes upon Him.
And if this be the notion of the glory of God, is it not a startling
contrast which is suggested between the apparent contents and the real
substance of that Gospel? Suppose a man, for instance, who had no
previous knowledge of Christianity, being told that in it he would find
the highest revelation of the glory of God. He comes to the book, and
finds that the very heart of it is not about God, but about a man; that
this revelation of the glory of God is the biography of a man; and more
than that, that the larger portion of that biography is the story of
the humiliations, and the sufferings, and the death of the man. Would it
not strike him as a strange paradox that the history of a _man's_ life
was the shining apex of all revelations of the glory of _God_? And yet
so it is, and the Apostle, just because to him the Gospel was the story
of the Christ who lived and died, declares that in this story of a human
life, patient, meek, limited, despised, rejected, and at last crucified,
lies, brighter than all other flashings of the divine light, the very
heart of the lustre and palpitating centre and fontal source of all the
radiance with which God has flooded the world. The history of Jesus
Christ is the glory of God. And that involves two or three
considerations on which I dwell briefly.
One of them is this: Christ, then, is the self-revelation of God. If,
when we deal with the story of His life and death, we are dealing simply
with the biography of a man, however pure, lofty, inspired he may be,
then I ask what sort of connection there is between that biography which
the four Gospels gives us, and what my text says is the substance of the
Gospel? What force of logic is there in the Apostle's words: 'God
commendeth _His_ love toward us in that whilst we were yet sinners
_Christ_ died for us,' unless there is some altogether different
connection between the God who commends His love and the Christ who dies
to commend it, than exists between a mere man and God? Brethren! to
deliver my text, and a hundred other passages of Scripture, from the
charge of being extravagant nonsense, and clear, illogical _non
sequiturs_, you must believe that in that man Christ Jesus 'we behold
His glory--the glory of the only begotten of the Father'; and that when
we look--haply not without some touch of tenderness and awed admiration
in our hearts--upon His gentleness, we have to say, 'the patient God';
when we look upon His tears we have to say, 'the pitying God'; when we
look upon His Cross we have to say, 'the redeeming God'; and gazing upon
the Man, to see in Him the manifest divinity. Oh! listen to that voice,
'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' and bow before the story of
the human life as being the revelation of the indwelling God.
And then, still further, my text suggests that this self-revelation of
God in Jesus Christ is the very climax and highest point of all God's
revelations to men. I believe that the loftiest exhibition and
conception of the divine character which is possible to us must be made
to us in the form of a man. I believe that the law of humanity, for
ever, in heaven as on earth, is this, that the Son is the revealer of
God; and that no loftier--yea, at bottom, no other--communication of the
divine nature can be made to man than is made in Jesus Christ.
But be that as it may, let me urge upon you this thought, that in that
wondrous story of the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ the very
high-water mark of divine self-communication has been touched and
reached. All the energies of the divine nature are embodied there. The
'riches, both of the _wisdom_ and of the _knowledge_ of God,' are in the
Cross and Passion of our Saviour. 'To declare at this time His
_righteousness_' Jesus Christ came to die. The Cross is 'the _power_ of
God unto salvation.' Or, to put it into other words, and avail oneself
of an illustration, we know the old story of the queen who, for the love
of an unworthy human heart, dissolved pearls in the cup and gave them to
him to drink. We may say that God comes to us, and for the love of us,
reprobate and unworthy, has melted all the jewels of His nature into
that cup of blessing which He offers to us, saying: 'Drink ye all of
it.' The whole Godhead, so to speak, is smelted down to make that
rushing river of molten love which flows from the Cross of Christ into
the hearts of men. Here is the highest point of God's revelation of
Himself.
And my text implies, still further, that the true living, flashing
centre of the glory of God is the love of God. Christendom is more than
half heathen yet, and it betrays its heathenism not least in its vulgar
conceptions of the divine nature and its glory. The majestic attributes
which separate God from man, and make Him unlike His creatures, are the
ones which people too often fancy belong to the glorious side of His
character. They draw distinctions between 'grace' and 'glory,' and think
that the latter applies mainly to what I might call the physical and the
metaphysical, and less to the moral, attributes of the divine nature. We
adore power, and when it is expanded to infinity we think that it is the
glory of God. But my text delivers us from all such misconceptions. If
we rightly understand it, then we learn this, that the true heart of the
glory is tenderness and love. Of power that weak man hanging on the
Cross is a strange embodiment; but if we learn that there is something
more godlike in God than power, then we can say, as we look upon Jesus
Christ: 'Lo! this is our God. We have waited for Him, and He will save
us.' Not in the wisdom that knows no growth, not in the knowledge which
has no border-land of ignorance ringing it round about, not in the
unwearied might of His arm, not in the exhaustless energy of His being,
not in the unslumbering watchfulness of His all-seeing eye, not in that
awful presence wheresoever creatures are; not in any or in all of these
lies the glory of God, but in His love. These are the fringes of the
brightness; this is the central blaze. The Gospel is the Gospel of the
glory of God, because it is all summed up in the one word--'God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'
II. Now, in the next place, the revelation of God in Christ is an
element in the blessedness of God.
We are come here into places where we see but very dimly, and it becomes
us to speak very cautiously. Only as we are led by the divine teaching
may we affirm at all. But it cannot be unwise to accept in simple
literality utterances of Scripture, however they may seem to strike us
as strange. And so I would say--the philosopher's God may be
all-sufficient and unemotional, the Bible's God 'delighteth in mercy,'
rejoiceth in His gifts, and is glad when men accept them. It is
something, surely, amid all the griefs and sorrows of this
sorrow-haunted and devil-hunted world, to rise to this lofty region and
to feel that there is a living personal joy at the heart of the
universe. If we went no further, to me there is infinite beauty and
mighty consolation and strength in that one thought--the happy God. He
is not, as some ways of representing Him figure Him to be, what the
older astronomers thought the sun was, a great cold orb, black and
frigid at the heart, though the source and centre of light and warmth to
the system. But He Himself is joy, or if we dare not venture on that
word, which brings with it earthly associations, and suggests the
possibility of alteration--He is the blessed God. And the Psalmist saw
deeply into the divine nature, who, not contented with hymning His
praise as the possessor of the fountain of life, and the light whereby
we see light, exclaimed in an ecstasy of anticipation, 'Thou makest us
to drink of the rivers of Thy pleasures.'
But there is a great deal more than that here, if not in the word
itself, at least in its connection, which connection seems to suggest
that, howsoever the divine nature must be supposed to be blessed in its
own absolute and boundless perfectness, an element in the blessedness of
God Himself arises from His self-communication through the Gospel to the
world. All love delights in imparting. Why should not God's? On the
lower level of human affection we know that it is so, and on the highest
level we may with all reverence venture to say, The quality of that
mercy . . . 'is twice blest,' and that divine love 'blesseth Him that
gives and them that take.'
He created a universe because He delights in His works, and in having
creatures on whom He can lavish Himself. He 'rests in His love, and
rejoices over us with singing' when we open our hearts to the reception
of His light, and learn to know Him as He has declared Himself in His
Christ. The blessed God is blessed because He is God. But He is blessed
too because He is the loving and, therefore, the giving God.
What a rock-firmness such a thought as this gives to the mercy and the
love that He pours out upon us! If they were evoked by our worthiness we
might well tremble, but when we know, according to the grand words
familiar to many of us, that it is His nature and property to be
merciful, and that He is far gladder in giving than we can be in
receiving, then we may be sure that His mercy endureth for ever, and
that it is the very necessity of His being--and He cannot turn His back
upon Himself--to love, to pity, to succour, and to bless.
III. And so, lastly, the revelation of God in Christ is good news for us
all.
'The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God.' How that word 'Gospel' has
got tarnished and enfeebled by constant use and unreflective use, so
that it slips glibly off my tongue and falls without producing any
effect upon your hearts! It needs to be freshened up by considering what
really it means. It means this: here are we like men shut up in a
beleaguered city, hopeless, helpless, with no power to break out or to
raise the siege; provisions failing, death certain. Some of you older
men and women remember how that was the case in that awful siege of
Paris, in the Franco-German War, and what expedients were adopted in
order to get some communication from without. And here to us, prisoned,
comes, as it did to them, a despatch borne under a dove's wing, and the
message is this:--God is love; and that you may know that He is, He has
sent you His Son who died on the Cross, the sacrifice for a world's sin.
Believe it, and trust it, and all your transgressions will pass away.
My brother, is not that good news? Is it not _the_ good news that you
need--the news of a Father, of pardon, of hope, of love, of strength, of
purity, of heaven? Does it not meet our fears, our forebodings, our
wants at every point? It comes to you. What do you do with it? Do you
welcome it eagerly, do you clutch it to your hearts, do you say, 'This
is _my_ Gospel'? Oh! let me beseech you, welcome the message; do not
turn away from the word from heaven, which will bring life and
blessedness to all your hearts! Some of you have turned away long
enough, some of you, perhaps, are fighting with the temptation to do so
again even now. Let me press that ancient Gospel upon your acceptance,
that Christ the Son of God has died for you, and lives to bless and help
you. Take it and live! So shall you find that, 'as cold water to a
thirsty soul,' so is this best of all news from the far country.