Part 10 (1/2)

Christian exultation--Christian confidence--”Not in the flesh”--”In Jesus Christ”--The prize in view--No finality in the progress--”Not already perfect”--The recompense of reward--What the prize will be

In a certain sense we have completed our study of the first section of the third chapter of the Epistle. But the treatment has been so extremely imperfect, in view of the importance of that section, that a few further remarks must be made. Let us ponder one weighty verse, left almost unnoticed when we touched it.

Observe then the brief, pregnant _account of the true Christian_, given in ver. 3: ”We are the circ.u.mcision, we who by G.o.d's Spirit wors.h.i.+p, and who exult in Christ Jesus, and who, not in the flesh, are confident.” This is a far-reaching description of the true member of the true Israel, the man of the Covenant of grace.

Note first its positive lines. ”_We wors.h.i.+p_,” ”_we exult_,” ”_we are confident_.” Every affirmation is full of divine principles of truth.

”_We wors.h.i.+p_”; ours is a hallowed, dedicated, and reverent life. It is spent in a sanctuary. Whatever we have to be, or to do, as to externals; whether to rule a province, a church, a school, a home; whether to keep accounts, or sweep a room; whether to evangelize the slums of a city, or the dark places of heathenism, or to teach language, or science, or music; whether to be active all day long, or to lie down alone to suffer; whatever be our actual place and duty in the world, ”_we wors.h.i.+p_.” ”We have set the Lord always before us.”

We have ”sanctified Christ as LORD in our hearts” (1 Pet. iii. 15; so read). We belong to Him everywhere, and we recollect it. We owe adoring reverence to Him everywhere, and we recollect it. Let us reiterate the fact; ours is a hallowed life, for it belongs to a divine Master; it is a reverent life, for that Master in His greatness is to us an abiding Presence. The fact of Him, the thought of Him, has expelled from our lives the secular air and the light and flippant spirit. We are nothing if not _wors.h.i.+ppers_.

Then, secondly, ”_we exult_.” Ours is a life of gladness, so far as it is the true Christian life. Constantly and profoundly chastened by its wors.h.i.+pping character, it is constantly quickened and illuminated by this element of exultation. The word is strong, _kauchomenoi_, ”exulting.” We observe that the Apostle does not say that we are resigned, that we are at peace, that there is a calm upon us. This is true; but he says that ”we _exult_.” The ”still waters,” the _mey m'nuchoth_ of Ps. xxiii. 2, are anything but stagnant. They are a lake; but it is a lake upon a river, like the fair waters of Galilee, receiving and giving, and therefore alive with pure movement, while yet surrounded by the ”rest,” _m'nuchah_, which means repose not _from_ action but _underneath_ it. ”We exult.” Ours is not an autumn of feeling; not a state of the soul in which the characteristics are the sighs and starting tears of memory and apprehension. It is an everlasting spring, in which the mighty but temperate Sun of Salvation is s.h.i.+ning, and will not set; not parching but quickening all day long.

”We exult.” It is a happy life, not only with the happiness of a cheerful contentment, beautiful as that is; ours is the happiness of wondering discovery, and rich possession, and ever-opening prospects; it is ”quick and lively”; it is ”exultation.”

Then, ”_we are confident_.” If I traced the bearing of this clause aright, in the last chapter, we shall feel that the word _pepoithotes_ is meant to carry a _positive_ message. It is not only that ”we do not rely on the flesh”; it is that ”we are reliant, though not on the flesh.” Even so, in the true idea of the Christian life. ”_We are confident_.” We are not wanderers from one peradventure to another; we are reliant, we are a.s.sured, we know where we are, and what we are, and whither we are bound. True, we, are intensely conscious of the limits of our knowledge; it is only here and there that we can absolutely say, ”We know.” But then, the points where we _can_ say so are points of supreme importance. ”We know that the Son of G.o.d is come.” ”We know that our sins are forgiven us for His name's sake.” ”We know that all things work together for good to them that love G.o.d.” ”We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of G.o.d, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; therefore we are always _confident_.” And all this is summed up in the thought that ”we know WHOM we have believed, and that HE is able to keep what we have committed unto Him.” Our certainty is a confiding certainty.

It does not reside in our courage, or our mental insight; it is lodged in a Person, who is such that He claims our entire reliance on His work, His word, Himself.

Then from its other side this wonderful verse gives us the cautions, the negatives, of the Christian life; though even here it speaks the language of the highest positive truth. ”We wors.h.i.+p _by G.o.d's Spirit_”; our reverence, our adoration, the hallowing and religiousness of our lives, is not a form imposed from without; it is a power exerting itself from within, having come to our poor hearts from above.

a.s.suredly we do not neglect or slight actions and rites of wors.h.i.+p; He who has made each of us soul and body, one man, does not mean us to despise the outward and physical in devotion. But we watchfully remember that no such actions or rites are, for one moment, the soul of wors.h.i.+p, or its formative power. _That_ soul and power is ”G.o.d's Spirit” only; the Holy Ghost dwelling in the renewed being, and teaching the man ”to cry Abba, Father,” and ”making intercession for him with groanings which cannot be uttered,” and ”taking of the things of Christ, and shewing it unto us.” We pray, and it is ”in the Holy Ghost.” We wors.h.i.+p, and it is ”in Spirit, and in truth.”

Again, ”we exult _in Christ Jesus_.” Our glad and animated happiness lies in nothing short of HIM as its cause. We are thankful for n.o.ble religious traditions and inst.i.tutions, and for holy parentage, and for all which makes Christianity correspond in practice to its name. But we are watchful not to let even these blessings take the unique place of ”Christ Jesus” in our ”exultation.” ”In all things He must have the pre-eminence.” Piety itself without Him, if it can be found, is not a body but a statue. All the privileges of the Church of G.o.d, without Him, though we reverently cherish every teaching and every ordinance that is Christian indeed, are but the frame without the picture, the casket without the stone.

Then again, ”_not in the flesh_ are we confident.” We have learnt a deep distrust of everything which St Paul cla.s.ses under that word ”flesh.” It is always offering itself to us, in one Protean shape or another, to be our comfort and our repose. Sometimes it takes the form of our supposed usefulness and diligence; sometimes of our strict and exemplary observances; sometimes, putting on a disguise still more subtle, it sets before the Christian the depth, or the length, of his spiritual experience. Or it grows bolder, and is content with coa.r.s.er masks; it tempts us to a miserable reliance on some imagined betterness when we compare ourselves, forsooth, with some one else. I knew long ago an old shepherd, in my father's parish, who based a hope for eternity on the fact (if such it was) that he was never tipsy on a Sunday. We are amused, or we are shocked. But this was only an extreme type of a vast phenomenon, to be found lurking in countless hearts, when G.o.d lets in the light; the ”reliance” on our being somehow, so we think, ”not as other men are.” And from this whole world of delusion, in all its continents and islands, the Lord calls us away here by His Apostle. He bids us migrate as it were to another planet, laying our _whole_ confidence, not part of it, on HIM; let that other world, our old world, roll along without us.

Christ presents to us Himself (as we follow out this rich Philippian pa.s.sage) as _all_ our Righteousness, in His precious justifying Merit, offered for the acceptance of the very simplest faith. And He presents Himself as _all_ our Power, for deliverance and for service, in His resurrection Life; coming to reveal Himself to us in the divine beauty of His sufferings, His death, through which he has pa.s.sed for us into ”indissoluble life” (Heb. vii. 16). Our Righteousness--it is HE, ”the propitiation for our sins.” Our Sanctification--it is still HE, in ”the power of His resurrection, and fellows.h.i.+p with His sufferings, and a.s.similation to His death.” Our Redemption, from the power of the grave--it is still ”this same Jesus,” in union with whom alone we ”attain unto the resurrection which is out from the dead.”

Even so, Lord Jesus Christ; let us thus be ”found in Thee”; wors.h.i.+pping, exulting, confiding; resting on Thee, abiding in Thee, with an accepting faith which only grows more simple and single as the years move on and gather ”since we believed.”

”Help us, O Christ, to grasp each truth With hand as firm and true As when we clasp'd it first to heart A treasure fresh and new;

”To name Thy name, Thyself to own, With voice unfaltering, And faces bold and unashamed As in our Christian spring.” [1]

But St Paul is again dictating, and we must follow. He has confessed and affirmed, once for all, his standing and fixity in the Lord, and in Him alone. Now he must emphasize another aspect of the living truth, his progress in the Lord; the non-finality of any given attainment in union with Him.

Ver. 12. +Not as though I had already received+ (_elabon_) the crown of accomplished glory, +or had been already perfected+, with the perfection which shall be when ”we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” +No, I am pressing on+ (_dioko de_), as on the racer's course, +if indeed+, if as a fact, in blessed finality, +I may seize+ (_katalabo_) +that+ promised crown +with a view to which[2] I was actually+ (_kai_) +seized by Christ Jesus+, when in His mercy He as it were laid violent hands upon me, to pluck me from ruin, and to constrain me into His salvation and His service. Yes, ”I press on” to ”seize” that crown, with the animating thought that it was on purpose that I might ”seize” it that the Lord ”seized” me; and that so every stage in the upward and onward course of faith runs straight in the line of His will whose mighty, gracious grasp is on me as I go.

+Brethren+,

Ver. 13. (I speak the word of pause and of appeal, as if I could stand by you, and lay my hand upon your arm,) +I+ (_ego_), whatever others may think and do about _them_selves, +do not account myself+ (_emauton_, emphatic like _ego_) +to have seized+ the crown as yet; no, one thing (_en de_)--my thoughts, my purposes, are all concentrated on this _one_ thing--+the things behind forgetting+, as one experience after another falls behind me into the past, +and towards the things in front stretching out and onward+ (_epekteinomenos_), like the eager racer, with head thrown forward and body bent towards his object, seeking for more and yet more, in the grace and power of my unchangeable

Ver. 14. Saviour, +goal-ward I press on+ (_kata skopon dioko_), ”not uncertainly,” with no faltering or divided aim, +unto+ (_eis_), till I actually touch, +the prize+ (_brabeion_, 1 Cor. ix. 24), the victor's wreath,[3] the prize +of+, offered by, made possible through, +the high call of G.o.d+, the voice of His prevailing grace[2] coming from _the heights_ (_ano_) of glory and leading the believer at length up thither, +in Christ Jesus+; for through Him comes the ”call,” and its blessed effect is to unite the ”called,” the converted, sinner _to_ Him, so that he lives here and hereafter in Him. +So let all+

Ver. 15. +us perfect ones+ (_hosoi oun teleioi_), with the perfection not of ideal attainment but of Christian maturity and entirety of experience, +be of this mind+; the ”mind” of those who rest in Christ immoveably for their acceptance, and press forward in Christ unrestingly in their obedience, ever discovering fresh causes for humility and for progress, as they keep close to Him. +And if you are diversely+ (_eteros_) +minded in any thing+, if in any detail of theory or statement you cannot yet see with me, +this also G.o.d shall unveil to you+. Sure I am that ”the Spirit of G.o.d speaketh by me,” and that ultimately therefore you will, in submission to Him, see as I have taught you. But I am not therefore commissioned in this matter to denounce and excommunicate; I lay the truth before you, and in love leave it upon your reverent thoughts. +Only, as to+

Ver. 16. +what we have succeeded in reaching+,[5] so far as our insight into Christ has actually gone, up to our full present light in the Gospel, +let us step in the same path+ (_to auto stoichein_[6]), on the unchanging principles of faith, love, and holiness, and with a watchful desire to cherish to the utmost a holy harmony of spirit and conduct.