Those of you who use the Revised Version will see that it makes an
alteration in the last clause of our text, and instead of 'eternal
life' it reads 'the life which is life indeed,' the true life; not
simply designating it as eternal, but designating it as being the only
thing that is worth calling by the august name of life.
Now it is quite clear that Paul here is approximating very closely to
the language of his brother John, and using this great word 'life' as
being, in substance, equivalent to his own favourite word of
'salvation,' as including in one magnificent generalisation all that is
necessary for the satisfaction of man's needs, the perfection of his
blessedness, and the glorifying of his nature. Paul's notion of life,
like John's, is that it is the one all-comprehensive good which men need
and seek.
And here he seems to relegate that 'life which is life indeed' to the
region of the future, because he contemplates it as being realised 'in
the time to come,' and as being the result of the conduct which is here
enjoined. But you will find that substantially the same exhortation is
given in the 12th verse of this chapter, 'Fight the good fight of faith;
lay hold on the life eternal'--where the process of grasping this
'life,' and therefore the possession of it, are evidently regarded as
possible here, and the duty of every Christian man in this present
world. That is to say, there is a double aspect of this august
conception of the 'life which is life indeed.' In one aspect it is
present, may be and ought to be ours, here and now; in another aspect it
lies beyond the flood, and is the inheritance reserved in the heavens.
That double aspect is parallel with the way in which the New Testament
deals with the other cognate conception of salvation, which it sometimes
regards as past, sometimes as present, sometimes as future. The complete
idea is that the life of the Christian soul here and yonder, away out
into the furthest extremities of eternity, and up to the loftiest climax
of perfectness, is in essence one, whilst yet the differences between
the degree in which its germinal possession here and its full-fruited
enjoyment hereafter differ is so great as that, in comparison with the
completion that is waiting the Christian soul beyond the grave, all of
the same life that is here enjoyed dwindles into nothingness. It appears
to me that these two sides of the truth, the essential identity of the
life of the Christian soul beyond and here, and the all but infinite
differences and progresses which separate the two, are both needful,
very needful, to be kept in view by us.
There is here on earth, amidst all our imperfections and weakness and
sin, a root in the heart that trusts in Christ, which only needs to be
transplanted into its congenial soil to blossom and burgeon into
undreamed of beauty, and to bear fruit the savour of which no mortal
lips can ever taste. The dwarfed rhododendrons in our shrubberies have
in them the same nature as the giants that adorn the slopes of the
Himalayas. Transplant these exotics to their native soil, and you would
see what it was in them to be. Think of the life that is now at its
best; its weakness, its blighted hopes, its thwarted aims, its foiled
endeavours; think of its partings, its losses, its conflicts. Think of
its disorders, its sins, and consequent sufferings; think of the shadow
at its close, which flings long trails of blackness over many preceding
years. Think of its swift disappearance, and then say if such a poor,
fragmentary thing is worthy of the name of life, if that were all that
the man was for.
But it is not all. There is a 'life which is life indeed,' over which
no shadow can pass, nor any sorrow darken the blessed faces or clog the
happy hearts of those who possess it. They 'have all and abound.' They
know all and are at rest. They dread nothing, and nothing do they
regret. They leave nothing behind as they advance, and of their serenity
and their growth there is no end. That is worth calling life. It lies
beyond this dim spot of earth. It is 'hid with Christ in God.'
II. Secondly, notice that conduct here determines the possession of the
true life.
Paul never cares whether he commits the rhetorical blunder of mixing up
metaphors or not. That matters very little, except to a pedant and a
rhetorician. In his impetuous way he blends three here, and has no time
to stop to disentangle them. They all mean substantially the same thing
which I have stated in the words that conduct here determines the
possession of life hereafter; but they put it in three different
figurative fashions which we may separate and look at one by one.
The first of them is this, that by our actions here we accumulate
treasure hereafter. 'Laying up in store for themselves' is one word in
the original, and it contains even more than is expressed in our
paraphrase, for it is really 'treasuring off.' And the idea is that the
rich man is bade to take a portion of his worldly goods, and, by using
these for beneficent purposes, out of them to store a treasure beyond
the grave. What is employed thus, and from the right motives and in the
right way, is not squandered, but laid up in store. You remember the old
epitaph,
'What I spent I lost;
What I gave I have.'
Now that is Christ's teaching, for did He not say: 'Sell all that thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven'? Did
He not say: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, . . . but lay
up treasures in heaven'? And if anybody's theology finds it difficult to
incorporate these solemn teachings of our Lord with the rest of it, so
much the worse for the theology.
I have no doubt at all that Christianity has yet a great deal to teach
the Christian Church and the world about the acquisition of money and
the disposal of money; and, though I do not want to dwell now upon that
specific application of the general principle of my text, I cannot help
reminding you, dear friends, that for a very large number of us, almost
the most important influence shaping our characters is the attitude that
we take in regard to these things--the getting and the distribution of
worldly wealth. For the bulk of Christian people there are few things
more important as sharp tests of the reality of their religion, or more
effective in either ennobling or degrading their whole character, than
what they do about these two plain matters.
But then my text goes a great deal further than that; and whilst it
applies unflinchingly this principle to the one specific case, it
invites us to apply it all round the circumference of our earthly
conduct. What you are doing here is piling up for you, on the other side
of the wall, what you will have to live with, and either get good or
evil out of, through all eternity. A man who is going to Australia pays
some money into a bank here, and when he gets to Melbourne it is
punctually paid out to him across the counter. That is what we are doing
here, lodging money on this side that we are going to draw on that. And
it is this which gives to the present its mystical significance and
solemnity, that all our actions are piling up for us future possessions:
'treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath'; or, contrariwise,
'glory, immortality, honour, eternal life.' We are like men digging a
trench on one side of a hedge and flinging the spadefuls over to the
other. They are all being piled up behind the barrier, and when we go
round the end of it we shall find them all waiting for us.
Then the Apostle superimposes upon this another metaphor. He does not
care to unravel it. 'Laying up in store for themselves a store,' he
would have said if he had been a pedant, 'which is also a good
foundation.' Now I take it that that does not mean a basis for hope, or
anything of that sort, but that it conveys this thought, that our
actions here are putting in the foundations on which the eternal
building of our future life shall be reared. When a man excavates and
lays the first courses of the stones of his building, he thereby
determines every successive stage of it, until the headstone is brought
forth with rejoicing. We are laying foundations in that profound sense
in this world. Our nature takes a set here, and I fail to see any reason
cognisable by us why that ply of the nature should ever be taken out of
it in any future. I do not dogmatise; but it seems to me that all that
we do know of life and of God's dealings in regard to man leads us to
suppose that the next world is a world of continuations, not of
beginnings; that it is the second volume of the book, and hangs
logically and necessarily upon the first that was finished when a man
died. Our lives here and hereafter appear to me to be like some
geometrical figure that wants two sheets of paper for its completion:
on the first the lines run up to the margin, and on the second they are
carried on in the direction which was manifest in the section that was
visible here.
And so, dear friends, let us remember that this is the reason why our
smallest acts are so tremendous that by our actions we are making
character, and that character is destiny, here and hereafter. You are
putting in the foundations of the building that you have to live in; see
that they are of such a sort as will support a house eternal in the
heavens.
The last of the metaphors under which the Apostle suggests the one idea
is that our conduct here determines our capacity to lay hold of the
prize. It seems to me that the same allusion is lingering in his mind
which is definitely stated in the previous verse to which I have already
referred, where the eternal life which Timothy is exhorted to lay hold
of is regarded as being the prize of the good fight of faith, which he
is exhorted to fight. And so the third metaphor here is that which is
familiar in Paul's writings, where eternal life is regarded as a garland
or prize, given to the victor in race or arena. It is exactly the same
notion as he otherwise expresses when he says that he follows after if
that he may 'lay hold of that for which also he is laid hold of by Jesus
Christ.' This is the underlying thought, that according to a Christian
man's acts here is his capacity of receiving the real life yonder.
That is not given arbitrarily. Each man gets as much of it when he goes
home as he can hold. The tiniest vessel is filled, the largest vessel is
filled. But the little vessel may, and will, grow bigger if that which
is deposited in it be rightly employed. Let us lay this to heart, that
Christian men dare not treat it as a matter of indifference whether to
the full they live lives consistent with their profession, and do the
will of their Master or no. It is not all the same, and it will not be
all the same yonder, whether we have adorned the teaching, or whether
our lives have habitually and criminally fallen beneath the level of our
professions. Brethren, we are too apt to forget that there is such a
thing as being 'saved, yet so as by fire'; and that there is such a
thing as 'having an entrance ministered abundantly into the Kingdom.' Be
you sure of this, that if the hands of your spirits are ever to be
capable of grasping the prize, it must be as the result of conduct here
on earth, which has been treasuring up treasures yonder, and laying a
foundation on which the incorruptible house may solidly rest.
III. And now the last word that I have to say is that these principles
are perfectly compatible with the great truth of salvation by faith.
For observe to whom the text is spoken. It is to men who have professed
to be believers, and it is on the ground of their faith that these rich
men in Timothy's churches are exhorted to this conduct. There is no
incompatibility between the doctrine that eternal life is the gift of
God, and the placing of those who have received that gift under a strict
law of recompense.
That is the teaching of the whole New Testament. It was to _Christian_
men that it was said: 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatsoever a
man soweth that shall he also reap.' It is the teaching of Jesus Christ
Himself.
But there is a dreadful danger that we, with our partial vision, shall
see one side of the truth so clearly that we do not see the other; and
so you get two antagonistic schools of Christian teaching who have torn
the one word into halves. One of them says, 'Man is saved by faith
only,' and forgets 'faith without works is dead'; and the other says,
'Do your duty, and never mind about your belief,' and forgets that the
belief--the trust--is the only sure foundation on which conduct can be
based, and the only source from which it is certain to flow.
Now, if I should not be misunderstood by that same narrow and contracted
vision of which I have been speaking, I would venture to say that
salvation by faith alone may be so held as to be a very dangerous
doctrine, and that there is a very real sense in which a man is saved by
works. And if you do not like that, go home and read the Epistle of
James, and see what you make of his teaching: 'Ye see, brethren, how
that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.' 'Faith wrought
with his works, and by his works was his faith made perfect.'
Only let us understand where the exhortation of the text comes in. We
have to begin with absolute departure from all merit in work, and the
absolute casting of ourselves on Jesus Christ. If you have not done
that, my brother, the teaching 'Laying up in store for themselves a good
foundation' has no application to you, but this teaching has, 'Other
foundation can no man lay. Behold, I lay in Zion a tried corner-stone.
Whosoever believeth in Him shall not make haste.' If you have not
committed your souls and selves and lives and hopes to Jesus Christ, the
teaching 'Lay hold on eternal life' has only a very modified application
to you, because the only hand that can grasp that life is the hand of
faith that is content to receive it from His hands with the prints of
the nails in them. But if you have given yourselves to that Saviour, and
received the germinal gift of eternal life from Him, then, take my text
as absolutely imperative for you. Remember that it is for you, resting
on Christ, to treasure up eternal life; for you to build on that sure
foundation gold and silver and precious stones which may stand the fire;
for you, by faithful continuance in well-doing, to lay hold of that for
which you have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ. May it be true of all
of us that 'our works do follow us'!
'Thy works, thine alms, and all thy good endeavour
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod,
But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.'
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Part I,
Page 44, "transcendant" changed to "transcendent" (this one
transcendent)