I
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS
The object with which we meet here can be expressed in a Pauline phrase
of three words, it is "to learn Christ."
But, in those three words, there is contained, in the manner of St. Paul,
a wealth of meaning. To learn Christ is clearly an affair of the
intellect, in the first place. It quite certainly, in this sense, does
not mean merely to accumulate information regarding the words and acts of
our Lord. St. Paul himself is singularly sparing of allusions to the
history of Christ, if we exclude from that His Death, Burial, and
Resurrection. The phrase, in fact, describes that kind of knowledge to
which a detailed study of the Saviour's Life is related as means to an
end, the knowledge, namely, of Christ's character, of His Mind and Will.
Such knowledge is not to be acquired in one hour or in three. It is, it
ought to be, the life-long object of a Christian man to gain it in an
ever-increasing measure of fulness and accuracy. But the last words of
the Lord, the seven sayings from His Cross, constitute a special and in
some measure unique disclosure of His Mind and Will. And, therefore, to
meditate upon them, as we are now proposing to do, will be to advance one
stage further, and a distinct stage, in the process of "learning Christ."
1. But we do well to remind ourselves, at the very outset, that our aim
is not merely intellectual, but also practical. There is no real gain
arising from the knowledge of Christ's Mind and Will, save so far as that
knowledge enables us to make that Mind and Will our own mind and our own
will. _That_ is the very meaning of Christian discipleship. "Let this
mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
2. The end thus set before us is one capable of attainment by all. The
individual, indeed, cannot hope to realise that end completely by
himself. The embodiment of Christ's Mind and Will is the supreme task
and the final achievement of the whole Body of Christ. The purpose of
the long development of the Church on earth is, that "we should _all_
(not _each_) arrive at a perfect man, at the measure of the stature of
the fulness of the Christ." The whole Church, the Body in its
completeness, is meant to reflect back in the eyes of the Father, the
moral glory of the Son of man. Each individual has been called into
membership in the Body, in order that he might reflect some one of the
scattered rays of that glory; might embody in himself one aspect of the
infinite perfection of the Son of man. So would each of us truly "come
to himself," realise all that he is capable of becoming.
That progress of the Body of Christ towards its goal is described by St.
Paul as being a growth of the Christ Himself. He is "at all points in
all men being fulfilled." There is a true and important sense in which
the Incarnation is as yet incomplete, in which the life-history of the
Church is its growing completeness. Our individual task is the
realisation in ourselves of that part of the Christ life which we,
individually, have been created to embody.
3. It will be useful to sum up the Character, the Mind and Will of
Christ, in a single phrase. Consider how He impressed His
contemporaries. What was it which they saw in Him, who knew Him best,
and had been united to Him by close ties of comradeship and discipleship?
In one word, what they saw was Sonship. "We beheld His glory, as of an
Only-Begotten from a Father." The Mind and Will of Christ are the
perfect realisation of the Divine Sonship in our humanity.
But what is the meaning of God's Fatherhood and man's sonship? The
ultimate truth of the relationship, the truth which underlies all such
conceptions as care, love, obedience, is community of nature. Our human
nature is really akin to the Divine. We are sons of God because our
spiritual life is of one piece with His as derived from it. Baptism
introduces no new element into our nature. By sacramental union with the
Only Begotten, the Ground and Archetype of all sonship, it enables us to
realise that which is in us, to actually become that which, potentially,
we are. It gives us "power to become children of God," to attain the
meaning of our manhood, to regain our true selves.
4. Baptism gives power, all sacraments give power, but in such wise that
that power is useless, even, _in a sense_, non-existent, till we make it
ours by deliberate exertion, by co-operation of mind and heart and will
with the Divine in us.
The end of our living, to become truly and completely the sons of God, is
to be attained by the joint action of two factors--
(1) The Spirit of Christ conforming our minds and wills more and more to
the likeness of Christ.
(2) The co-operation of our whole personality with the work of the
indwelling Spirit.
Our meditations this morning on the Seven Words in which Christ made some
partial disclosure of His Mind and Will, will form some part of that co-
operation, one little stage in the accomplishment of our life-long task.
II
THE FIRST WORD
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." ST. LUKE
XXIII. 34.
1. Here we are watching the behaviour of the Son of God, the Ideal and
Ground of Divine Sonship in humanity.
Is this supreme example of forgiveness an example to _us_? Is it not
something unnatural to humanity as we know it?
We must recall, from a former address, the distinction which we then drew
between the animal in us, with its self-assertive instincts, and the
Divine in us, that which constitutes us not animal merely, but human, of
which the very essence is the self-sacrifice of perfect love. Christ
came to reveal God in our manhood. And I need this revelation, just
because the animal in me has won so many victories in the past over the
Divine, because in me the spiritual fire habitually burns so low and dim.
It is a very different thing to say that forgiveness of all serious
injury is a hard thing. It is hard, but not impossible. That which
makes it to be possible is the serious intention of discipleship,
co-operating with the indwelling Spirit of Christ transforming us into
His likeness.
To assert, on the other hand, that forgiveness of serious wrong is
impossible, is to ignore the fact that He Who uttered these wonderful
words is the true self of me, and of every man who breathes. He Who hung
on the Cross, and spoke these seven words, is the Son of man, the
Representative to all ages, to all varieties of human character, of true
humanity.
2. Christ-like forgiveness is no weak thing, but the strongest thing in
the world.
Yet, for its true effect to be produced, its true character must be
recognised. No suspicion of cowardice or impotence must cleave to it.
The man who being obviously able to resent an injury, and not lacking in
the capacity of resentment, yet for Christ's sake forgives, exercises on
earth no inconsiderable share of the moral power of Christ. God now, as
of old, "has made choice of the weak things of the world," those things
which the world accounts weak, "to confound the strong." "The meek"
still "inherit the earth."
We are dealing, all through, with the injury which is personal, with the
resentment which is the reaction of the individual against unprovoked
wrong. Personal resentment we are bidden to relentlessly crush out--"to
turn the other cheek" is the command of Christ. But the Christian man
will recognise that the interests of the social order are not to be
disregarded. These interests, and those of the offender himself, will
sometimes demand that the wrong, even if it primarily affects ourselves,
shall not go unpunished. Again, no one can be in the full sense a
Christian, that is, a fully developed man, or a man on the way to the
full development of his nature, who is without the capacity of moral
indignation, in whom no flame is kindled by the oppression of the weak.
What the Christian moral law does demand of us, is the complete
suppression of the merely personal anger which sometimes burns so
fiercely in us when we receive unmerited insult or injury. That kind of
anger belongs to "the flesh," is part of the defensive equipment of the
animal nature. Before we can in any sense be Christ-like, the spirit
must win many hard-won victories over its ancient foe.
To say "I will forgive, but I can never forget," is only to conceal from
ourselves the defeat of the spiritual man, the Christ in us.
3. But carefully note the reason appended to the prayer: "they know not
what they do." That is true, with every variety of degrees and shades of
truth, of every sinner. It was true, clearly, of the soldiers then
performing their duty: it was less true, but still in a real sense it was
true, of the Pharisees, of the High Priests, of the Roman judge. It is
true, but to a far less degree, even of us, that when we sin, we "know
not what we do."
Sins are, in the language of St. Paul, works of darkness. That is the
element in which alone they can exist. Sin is a huge deception. The
very condition of its existence is the concealment of its true character.
All this is summed up in that experience which we call "temptation." We
are so familiar with sin, the atmosphere we breathe is so infected with
it, we have given way so many times in the past, that it needs the
objective revelation of the Cross to bring home to us the real horror and
malignity of sin. It has been finely said, "Sin first drugs its victims
before it consumes them." We, too, or some of us, have known the strange
petrifying, hardening effect of sin on the conscience.
Great, then, is our need that we should pray that the revelation of the
Cross may more and more come home to us; great our need to pray for an
ever fuller measure of that Spirit of Christ, Whose first work it is "to
convince the world of sin," to make men realise its true character and
its inevitable issue.
III
THE SECOND WORD
"Verily I say unto thee, To-day thou shall be with Me in Paradise."
ST. LUKE XXIII. 43.
We judge of any power by the results which it effects. We gain some
knowledge of the power of steam by its capacity to drive a huge mass of
steel and wood weighing twenty thousand tons through the water at the
rate of twenty knots an hour. There we have some standard by which we
can gauge the force which sends our earth round the sun at twenty-five
miles a second, or that which propels a whole solar system through space.
But we may apply the same method, of estimation by results, to the powers
of the moral and spiritual worlds. Judged thus, it was indeed a
stupendous power which was exerted by Christ from the Cross. For what
result can be more amazing than the reversal, at the last, of the
character slowly built up by the habits of a lifetime? It is, of course,
useless to speculate on the antecedents of the robber (not "thief") who
turned to our Lord with the words, "Jesus, remember me when Thou shalt
come into Thy kingdom." We know only what is implied by the word
"robber" or "brigand," and the fact that he had joined, with his fellow-
sufferer, in the mockery of our Lord. But the words thus addressed by
him to Christ, in their context, represent the most wonderful
"phenomenon" of human life, a genuine and thorough-going conversion. And
the power which wrought that stupendous result was the patience and
forgiveness of Jesus Christ. The weak things had, as so often since,
confounded the strong. In His matchless forbearance, in the prayer for
His executioners, the royalty of Christ our Lord was disclosed, and the
"title" over His head was vindicated.
1. First then, we learn from the Second Word the Mind and Will of God
towards penitence. There is no interposing of delay. Forgiveness is
instantaneous. No pause intervenes between the prayer for pardon, and
the pardon itself. But, that instant response was to genuine "change of
mind," not to the repentance which is merely regret for the past, still
less to a cowardly shrinking from a deserved punishment, but to a
definite act of the man's will, repudiating sin, and ranging himself on
God's side. The rejection of sin, the identifying of self with God's
attitude towards it, that, we have seen, is alone, in the New Testament
sense of the word, repentance.
2. The penitence of the robber, on analysis, discloses the three
familiar elements--
(_a_) Contrition is obviously implied in the whole action.
(_b_) Confession--"we receive the due rewards of the things which we
wrought."
(_c_) Amendment--in the separation of himself from those with whom he
had hitherto joined in reviling Christ.
Now it is worth noting, that our Catechism bids us examine ourselves not
about our sins, but about our repentance; "whether they truly repent." We
are meant to ask ourselves--
(_a_) Is our contrition real? And here, for our comfort, we remember
that God accepts as contrition the sincere desire to be contrite.
(_b_) Have we made such a painstaking self-examination as to ensure our
making a good confession? "If we confess our _sins_" (separate, detailed
sins, not our sinfulness in general terms), "He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins."
Have we used "sacramental" confession, according to the teaching of the
Prayer Book, that is, when our conscience told us that we needed it?
(_c_) Is our resolution of amendment a clear and honest one? What sins
are there, some of whose results we are able to modify or in part reverse
(false impressions, untruths, acts or words of unkindness)? God is
generous in forgiveness. Surely we are bound to be generous in our
amendment. There is a sense in which the results of sin abide beyond
possibility of recall. Yet I believe that the instinct which bids us
"make up for" a hurt inflicted on a beloved person, is a Divine instinct
in our nature, and one which we are to carry into the region of our
relation to God.
3. We notice another important truth as regards the Divine forgiveness.
It has nothing to do with the removal of punishment, the release from
penalty or consequence of sin. The forgiveness of the robber was
immediate and complete. But he had still to hang in agony, and there
awaited him the frightful pain of the crurifragium, the breaking of the
legs by beating with clubs.
The sooner we learn the two great truths about the punishment of sin, the
better.
(_a_) Punishment is inevitable. It is a necessary result of the
constitution of the physical and moral universe, of the working, in both
regions, of those laws which are the expression of the Divine Mind.
(_b_) Punishment is remedial. Many Christian theologians have fallen
far below Plato's conception of God, as One Who can only punish men with
a view of making them better.
Think of one of the punishments of repented sin, the haunting memories of
past evil. In this case, both principles are very clearly discernible.
Each recollection may be made the means of a renewed act of rejection of
sin, and thus become an opportunity for the deepening of repentance.
And what disclosure does this second word contain of the Mind and Will of
God in us, as manifested not towards, but by ourselves? Our lesson is
the prompt recognition and welcome of any, even the slightest signs of
amendment. It may be our duty to punish. It is always our duty to keep
alive, or to kindle, the hope in an offender of becoming better. In that
hope, alone, lies the possibility of moral amendment. There is the
golden rule, laid down by St. Paul for all who have to exercise
discipline over others, in words which ring ever in our ears--"lest they
be discouraged."
IV
THE THIRD WORD
"Lady, behold thy son."
"Behold thy mother."