Bible Commentaries
Colossians 3

Verse 1

Risen with Christ

If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.— Colossians 3:1.

1 There are three aspects in which the New Testament treats the resurrection, and these three seem to have come successively into the consciousness of the Church. First, as is natural, it was considered mainly in its bearing on the person and work of our Lord. We may take for illustration the way in which the resurrection is treated in the earliest of the apostolic discourses, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Then it came, with further reflection and experience, to be discerned that it had a bearing on the hope of the immortality of man. And last of all, as the Christian life deepened, it came to be seen that the resurrection was the pattern of the life of the Christian disciples. It was regarded first as a witness, next as a prophecy, then as a symbol. Three fragments of Scripture express these three phrases: for the first,” Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead”; for the second, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept”; for the third, “God raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places.”

2. The resurrection of our Lord secured His ascension to the right hand of God and His eternal session on the equal throne of Deity. As “the power of his resurrection” is applied to the believer, the process of the Saviour’s triumph is re-enacted in one who is still encased in the disabilities of this earthly life, and is constantly and painfully aware of the pertinacity of the law of sin in his members. His life occupies at one time two spheres, that of the flesh and that of the spirit (“The life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God”). Through the spirit there is conveyed to him without intermission the life of the ascended and glorified Lord; the flesh still solicits to sin. The two spheres must be brought into one: the life in the flesh—trials, sorrows, anxieties, perplexities, infirmities, temptations—must be taken up and placed in the region of spirit. Every desire springing from the flesh that is not itself sinful, every thought which is straitened by the limits that our encompassing mortality imposes, must be lifted into the presence of God, that it may there be disciplined and controlled by the Spirit of Christ who dwells within us.

A great principle animates all the members of the animal kingdom, from the lowest to the highest organism, a principle that prompts them to rise towards the great source of light and heat in order to perfect their structure and improve their functions in the glorious light of the sun. The infusoria of the deep seas ascend from a lower existence in the sunless abyss, they rise into the upper, illuminated waters; give time enough, and they leap on shore, and succeeding species are slowly perfected until the obscure life that originated in the ocean slime mounts the air, exulting in the lark singing at heaven’s gate and in the eagle soaring in the sun. Everywhere an instinct stirs in the animal creation, prompting to aspirations in perfecting organisms and their functions. There is also an inherent principle in plants urging them to rise from underground darkness into the regions of light, from the gloomy cave into the bright realms of day, from the shady forest high up into the radiant sky. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 95.]

Every clod hath a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, grasping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.

I

A Possession

1. The possession is life through Christ’s resurrection.—When Christ rose from the dead, He raised His people with Him into a new life. In St. Paul’s conception, those who had not accepted Christ were “dead in trespasses and in sins.” He looked upon the natural state of man as a state of spiritual death; and every step out of that natural condition he regarded as corresponding to something in the life and experience of Jesus Christ. Thus, as Christ died for sin, men were exhorted to die unto sin: to be “buried with him in baptism.” They were asked to crucify their flesh, as He was crucified. Then, after the crucifixion of the flesh—after the burial of the old man in baptism—they were said to “put on the new man” and to “walk in newness of life,” after the pattern of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The man who had thus died to his old life was made alive with a new life. The highest and best faculties, the spiritual faculties, which were lying, as it were, shrouded in the tomb, were called into new life and activity. And thus men were said to be risen with Christ. For himself, St. Paul says, “I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord … that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.”

The spiritual facts in a man’s experience, which are represented by these two great symbols of a death and a rising, are like the segment of a circle which, seen from the one side, is convex, and from the other, is concave. But however loosely we may feel that the metaphors represent the facts, this is plain, that unless a man dies to flesh, to self-will, to the world, he never will live a life that is worth calling life. The condition of all nobleness and all growth upwards is that we shall die daily, and live a life that has sprung victorious from the death of self. All lofty ethics teach that, and Christianity teaches it, with redoubled emphasis, because it says to us, that the Cross and the resurrection are not merely imaginative emblems of the noble and the Christian life, but are a great deal more than that. For by faith in Jesus Christ we are brought into such a true deep union with Him that, in no mere metaphorical or analogous sense, but in most blessed reality, there comes into the believing heart a spark of the life that is Christ’s own, so that with Him we do live, and from Him we do live a life cognate with His, who, having risen from the dead, dieth no more, and over whom death hath no dominion. 1 [Note: A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, 133.]

2. Resurrection with Christ is a present experience.—There is a triumph over death for which we do not need to wait until the graves are opened. We may have it at once. There is a victory of life for which we do not need to look to some far-distant morning. We may feel it to-day. St. Paul felt it as he sat in his Roman prison, writing to his friends at Colossæ. Worn, and feeble, and aged before his time, bound with chains, waiting for his trial before a cruel and bloody Cæsar, St. Paul knew even then that he was a risen man. By faith in the things that are unseen and eternal he had already won the victory over the world. In prison he was free, in weakness he was strong, in chains he was cheerful, in exile he was exultant, in trouble he triumphed, and in the drear winter of old age his spirit was quickened with an immortal spring. Surely this is a veritable resurrection, and they who have entered into such an experience are risen indeed.

The higher Christian life, rightly conceived, not only does not separate itself from the present, or make the saving of the soul something distinct and apart from doing good now, but it finds its development in well-doing. It takes up into itself every aspect of our present existence—personal, social, even political—and throws around all its own hallowing lustre. It raises our whole life by rooting it in God; and so far from discrediting or belittling any real interest of humanity, it really magnifies and exalts every such interest. It implies the cultivation of every noble quality and high affection of our nature; the amelioration of human society; the development of “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.” It embraces whatever tends to exalt or idealize man—to make him more of a true hero—courageous, temperate, and self-restrained in the hour of danger, as well as whatever makes him meek and lowly of heart; the zeal that may work for God and the bravery that may die for Him; as well as the purity that can alone see God. The Christian ideal is no one-sided development of our manifold nature; still less is it any mere longing after a heavenly Jerusalem with milk and honey blessed. Such pictures have their use. There is good in a vivid realization of the heavenly state if God grant us such a blessing. But there is a higher good in rightly setting the affections on things above—in the culture, that is to say, of all good within us, the achievement of every real virtue, the beautifying and ennobling of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come.

For resurrection living

There is resurrection power,

And the praise and prayer of trusting

May glorify each hour.

For common days are holy,

And years an Eastertide,

To those who with the living Lord

In living faith abide.

3. Death to sin precedes resurrection.—We die to sin when we sink ourselves into the death of our Lord. We identify ourselves with Him, receiving into our own life (in the contact of faith and of the Spirit) all the triumphant energies of a love, a compassion, an endurance, a meekness, a lowliness, a truthfulness, a fidelity, a righteousness, which rose to meet the last and loftiest demands of the Divine holiness. We withdraw the controlling force of our nature (let us call it our personality) from those sinful affections which reside in the flesh, and centre it on those which have been introduced into our life through union with Christ.

It seems to me that the Bible teaches us that such truths as that of the death to sin are by no means to be considered as true only under conditions and limitations, only by a tacit suppression of existing facts; nay, that such truths express just the most absolutely true and fundamental facts, and that any other facts which are apparently at variance with them are themselves only conditionally and secondarily true.

St. Paul acknowledges the deflexion of men’s acts from the state in which he believes them actually as a matter of fact to stand, just as much as any modern religionist could do; but he does not make the deflexion itself to be the true characteristic of men. He says, “You are in a right and true state, I beseech you to walk accordingly.” This is hip standard formula. He refers men’s irregular acts to their walk, not to what they are. There is, of course, a question behind, on which language must needs be contradictory—In virtue of what are men dead to sin? and further, Who then are dead to sin?

The first question is of course answered by St. Paul—in virtue of Christ’s death on the cross. But, though this really contains the answer to the second question, it is not usually understood to do so. The answer must be, All who bear the same flesh and blood which Christ bore. It is therefore strictly true that every Jew, heathen, or outcast from the true fold of any kind is, in St. Paul’s words, already “dead to sin.” But it is not the less needful that this eternal and invisible truth should have a temporal and outward embodiment and attestation; and that can be only by baptism. Therefore St. Paul connects the state with a past completed act, by which it was formally taken possession of. The outward temporal act of passing from the world into the Church was the true symbol of the transition (if so it may be called) from “nature” to “grace,” from the life of sin and death of man ( Romans 7:9-10) to the death to sin and life of man, which in reality does not belong to time at all, at least only in so far as evil and sin themselves are only temporal. 1 [Note: F. J. A. Hort, Life and Letters, i. 407.]

As Christ died, so must we die. Wilberforce died to fashion that he might live unto humanity; Ruskin died to gold that he might live to beauty; Darwin died to society that he might live to science; and every man’s higher life begins in a death. 2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 111.]

A beautiful treatise has come to us out of the Middle Ages. It is entitled “The Craft of Dying.” Its aim is so to fortify the child of God, as he addresses himself to go down into the “ghostly battle” that marks the end of his militant course, that he may “die well.” We need a similar treatise to teach us how to die with Christ. “Ye have died with him,” says the Apostle, therefore “reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” 3 [Note: D. M. McIntyre, Life in His Name, 176.]

Touch the rock-door of my heart,

Christ, dead for my sin!

Say, “Come—let us rise, and depart

From the shadows within—

Out where the light of the stars

Shines clear overhead,

Where the soul is free from its bars,

And Sin lies dead.”

And dead the old Shadow lies,

That has chilled my breast;

Say to the sleepers, “Arise!”

Lead them to rest!

(1) The Apostle seems to have had in his mind the sacrament of Baptism, which was viewed as symbolic of the death and rising again of Christ, and of the Christian in mystical union with Him. The convert went solemnly down into the font, and this was expressive of his spiritual burial; then after immersing his head three times, he ascended out of the font, and this was expressive of his new and spiritual life in Christ. In the previous chapter we read, “Buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

(2) But there was another sense in which men were said to be “risen with Christ.” When He came forth from the tomb, it was not as a single instance of Divine power over life and death; it was to show the purpose of God in respect to all mankind. He came forth from the grave to prove that there was immortality for all God’s children. The bursting open of His tomb was a prophecy of the opening of every grave, and of the resurrection of all flesh. To St. Paul, Christ crucified was the great sacrifice for sin, but Christ risen was the pledge of the glorious destiny of every believer in Him. Men rose with Him in faith, in hope, and in assurance, to the heavenly mansions of the Father’s house.

Our Lord’s resurrection from the grave is no greater miracle than His being man, and yet absolutely sinless. His power over sin and His power over death are, like the heat and light of the sun, two radiations of the self-same energy—either of them containing evidence of the presence of the other, either of them justifying His own claim to be the very God, the central source alike of holiness and of immortality. And because He is divinely, creatively holy and immortal, He can and will make His people holy and immortal too. But while in Him the two attributes are in reality but one, in us the creatures of time there lies a lifelong day between them. First we hear His voice saying, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” and afterwards “Arise and walk.” Once to have heard the first voice is a pledge that we shall hear the second. For once to have felt within us the victory over sin is a proof—an infinitely stronger proof than any philosophic speculation ever gave—that we already possess the quickening, immortalizing Spirit that will not suffer His holy ones to see corruption. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” It is this confidence that makes St. Paul view our two resurrections so closely together that he speaks of them in places as virtually one, and addresses Christians as already risen with Christ, that is, not like Christ, but in, and through, and by, the actual presence of Christ within them.

In an address which he gave at the West London Mission, he said, “I hope I shall not soon forget the resurrection sweetness that I instantly knew when I felt that I had really died to self. It seemed so proper a foretaste of the passage into the world which is to come … How wonderfully small a thing death may be; not a river, but a rill, scarce ankle-deep, across which we may step into the Glory-land beyond.” 1 [Note: J. Rendel Harris, Life of F. W. Crossley, 212.]

What lies beyond?

I have but little care—

Since Christ is there—

Himself the deathless bond,

For ever binding me

Unto the Home where I would be—

Himself its temple, and its light,

Of more than noonday radiance bright—

Himself the Rest where I would dwell—

The Haven where my anchor soon shall fall—

Himself my All in all.

I cannot tell

Of glory that awaits

Within the gates:

A little while I walk with vision dim,

But O, I know that He is there,

All-glorious, All-fair,

And I shall be with Him. 2 [Note: E. H. Divall, A Believer’s Rest, 15.]

II

A Prize

1. The prize is “the things that are above.” When St. Paul speaks of the things above, and the things below, he is not setting in contrast the abode of the blessed and our present dwelling-place. The contrast is rather between the good and the evil, the fleshly and the spiritual, Christ’s way of looking at things, and the ordinary earthly way. There is a way of measuring and estimating things as if we were merely human; not only so, but as if we were just educated animals with bodily affections and feelings, short-lived and perishable, like all the material things around us. And there is another way of surveying and judging them, which is the way of elevated, immortal, and spiritual creatures, creatures who are akin to Christ, and look with Christ’s eyes. And this higher way is what we are to aspire to. Christ has enthroned certain qualities with Himself at the right hand of God—certain qualities and thoughts, ways of thinking, and ways of judging. He has exalted them with Himself. He has made them supremely beautiful. They are the Divine, all-attractive, all-victorious things, and we are to prize them above all things and to set our affections on them. Think of all things as Christ thinks of them, judge and weigh all things as Christ judges them. Read His meaning into all things. You are risen with Him; let your thoughts and affections move on His high level.

O glorious Head, Thou livest now!

Let us Thy members share Thy life;

Canst Thou behold their need, nor bow

To raise Thy children from the strife

With self and sin, with death and dark distress,

That they may live to Thee in holiness?

Earth knows Thee not, but evermore

Thou liv’st in Paradise, in peace;

Oh fain my soul would thither soar,

Oh let me from the creatures cease:

Dead to the world, but to Thy Spirit known,

I live to Thee, O Prince of life, alone.

Break through my bonds whate’er it cost,

What is not Thine within me slay,

Give me the lot I covet most,

To rise as Thou hast risen to-day.

I nought can do, a slave to death I pine,

Work Thou in me, O Power and Life Divine!

Work Thou in me, and heavenward guide

My thoughts and wishes, that my heart

Waver no more nor turn aside,

But fix for ever where Thou art.

Thou art not far from us; who loves Thee well,

While yet on earth in heaven with Thee may dwell. 1 [Note: Tersteegen.]

2. Where is it that Christ sitteth on the right hand of God? Surely not in some distant region, invisible and inaccessible to mortals. To read the law of the risen life thus would be to rob it of its meaning and its power for the present moment. God is not secluded in some far-off heaven. He is dwelling and working in this very world where we live. His “right hand” is manifest in all His works of wisdom and righteousness and goodness and love. Christ sitteth on the right hand of His Father because He is exalted to share in all these glorious works, because He is the Mediator between the Divine and the human, because His spirit brings men into harmony with God and inspires the pure and holy thoughts, the just and noble deeds, the generous and blessed affections that lift the world. He is not far away from us. He is with us always, even unto the end of the world. He sitteth close beside us, breaks bread at our tables, walks with us in the city streets and among the green fields and beside the sea. The “things that are above” are the things that belong to Him and to His Kingdom, the spiritual realities of a noble life, whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report. These are the things that we are to seek.

There is a kind of life, that of the mole or of the worm, which burrows in the dark; another life, like the reptile’s which crawls. The life in the eagle makes it soar up to gaze at the sun. Put the eagle-life into the mole, and it would seek to rise. Put the mole-life into the eagle, and it would seek to burrow. By nature we have the mole and reptile life which burrows in the dark or crawls on the earth’s surface. God gives us through Christ the resurrection life which looks up, and its very nature leads us to “seek the things above.” 2 [Note: A. C. Dixon.]

3. Let us practise the upward look: it brings heaven nearer. We stand on some height just before sunrise, gazing upon a dull, opaque mass of cloud and vapour, chilly and sad, till, presently, a broad band of gold appears on the horizon, broadens, changes into a ruddier glow, and the sun himself appears, and diffuses an unutterable glory over the whole scene. So there are times when the outlook on this life, with all its dulness under the show of activity, all its falsehood beneath the mask of a thousand hypocrisies, depresses, disgusts, saddens and chills us to the very heart. And the saddest of all is that we feel ourselves to be a part of this melancholy system, and as mundane as all the rest. And then it is that those magnificent inspirations and revelations of the Gospel burst upon us, and we feel that behind these lifelong disguises, often so hideous, always so perplexing, something glorious is concealed.

A year or two ago, after the Lord’s Day service, I was standing before the house of a friend with whom I was staying, and looking abroad upon one of the fairest scenes in Scotland. At the horizon’s edge there was a great cincture of hills; the middle distance was filled with woods and fields yellowing into gold; and just at our feet, at the bottom of a little hill, there was a town, with the smoke sunfilled rising into the windless heavens. An expression of unlimited admiration escaped me; but a friend who stood by said: “Yes, it is beautiful, but it is too circumscribed; there is no outlook on the world beyond. It does not lie in a wide horizon.”

If you were to ask me to describe in a sentence the difference between a Christian and another man, picking out the best natural man you know, the finest specimen you can, and putting him over against the Christian man, the grand difference is this: the Christian has an infinite horizon, and that infinite horizon dominates the whole situation. 1 [Note: John Smith, in The Keswick Week, 1899, p. 156.]

During the fifteenth year of the ministry of Horace Bushnell he had a marvellous revelation, enabling him spiritually to discern spiritual things. On an early morning of February (1848) his wife awoke to hear that the light they had waited for had risen indeed. She asked, “What have you seen?” He replied “ The Gospel!” It had come to him, not as something reasoned out, but as an inspiration—a revelation from the mind of God Himself. This new and glorious conception of Jesus Christ lifted Bushnell into a higher life, gave him new insight and power, and shaped all the remaining years of his quickening and extraordinary ministry. His voice, like the lark’s, sang at heaven’s gate. 2 [Note: T. L. Cuyler.]

4. The vision of the ideal influences and controls our daily life. In morals every man is subject to the highest he knows. The standard is that which is absolute and ideal, according to the measure of a man’s knowledge and feeling. The only things worthy of man’s seeking are “with Christ at the right hand of God.” The unrest which destroys men’s lives and the sense of dissatisfaction with themselves arise from their aim being below their conscious standard of conduct. And it is here that the practical value of fellowship with Christ is clearly seen. Through the life which men thus obtain, they are helped to do what they see and acknowledge to be right. And in nothing is this more apparent than in men’s efforts at moral reformation. It is a great matter that men desire to reform themselves. But when they enter upon their task they speedily discover how true are the words of Christ, “Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin.” One of the penalties of sin is impaired willpower. What men most need in such cases is an accession of spiritual energy. It is new life they want, and this new life they receive who are risen with Christ: and in its power they are able to free themselves from the accursed fetters of old sins, and to find a new desire for higher things, a new joy in seeking them.

This natural world is part of a grand universal system; its vital forces stream in from wider regions, its tides and seasons are governed from above; so man is the subject of a vast spiritual kingdom, whose influences penetrate, whose laws determine, all his mundane and physical interests. To seek other things in preference to that kingdom and its righteousness is to subvert the rational order, to subordinate the higher to the lower, the principal to the secondary; it is to take the surest way to failure even in our secular pursuits, which lose their vitalizing elements and true savour so soon as they are cut off from the springs of spiritual motive and experience. 1 [Note: G. G. Findlay, The Things Above, 11.]

As the culminating point of a mountain-chain bears on the lower hills that for miles and miles buttress it, and hold it up, and aspire towards it, and find their perfection in its calm summit that touches the skies; so the more we have in view, as our aim in life, Christ who is “at the right hand of God,” and assimilation, communion with Him, approbation from Him, the more will all immediate aims be ennobled, and delivered from the evils that else cleave to them. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” and all your other aims—as students, as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business, as parents, as lovers, or anything else—will be granted by being subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down, diapason note, through all our lives. Perfume can be diffused into the air, and dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can be pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones, and is inconsistent with nothing but sin. 1 [Note: A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, 138.]

III

A Pursuit

1. “Seek,” says the Apostle—“seek the things that are above.” That is the pursuit. It is an image based on our moral nature, local elevation being the instinctive symbol of spiritual aspiration and refinement. They were to seek above what they had once sought below—above the level of the ordinary pagan desire and aim; higher things than money, place, selfish gratification, or any material and secular good, and distinctively those things for which Christ had been distinguished, and which prevailed at their best and brightest, which ruled, and were everything in that upper realm to which He had passed—truth, righteousness, purity, and noble love.

The real aim of the Christian is an upward one. “Things that are above” are of supreme consequence to him, and the setting of his affection on them determines the fashion of his whole life among men. His spiritual conceptions and aspirations are expressed in the ordinary activities of his life before others, and he makes all its necessary duties but stepping-stones to the realization of the higher realities. Indeed, the direction of all our external doings is in the nature of things determined and controlled by the power of our inner life. Hence to realize that we are “risen with Christ” lends to all life a sanctifying force which manifests itself in every sphere and realm.

Apart from all revelation, we find in ourselves instincts seeking upward, aspirations towards things higher than those of time and sense; we look beyond the physical life; we conceive ideas and hopes touching the unseen and the eternal. However it may be explained, we persist in dreaming great dreams, we aspire to higher spheres, we seek to realize ourselves in an upper universe—we impatiently long for a sky in which to spread our wings as royal birds do, we reach yearningly towards a central light in which our being may glow and blossom like the flowers. Much about human nature and life seems poor and disappointing, but this impetus and this passion for the transcendent shed a wonderfully redeeming light on our apparent mortality and meaness. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 96.]

“Risen with him.” Seated with Him! Then our outlook in life is not an upward, but a downward one! Here is the demand for Christian imagination. How does life look from Heaven? Think of our discontent in lowly places, our feverish longing for great work, our love of tinsel, our chafing under discipline, our hard judgments, our cherished grievances. How would they appear to us, seen from above? How do they look to Jesus? Put yourself in your true place, and judge accordingly. Our citizenship is in Heaven; let our conversation be heavenly. 2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 28.]

I have done little more than desire the good thing, and seek to know nothing about the mysteries of our being, but I like to think that even unuttered aspirations may have a material force. 3 [Note: George Frederic Watts, i. 312.]

2. The very fact of being raised with Christ is an inspiration and incitement to reach up to higher levels of attainment. “Seek things above,” says St. Paul, “because of what has been granted you, not that you may have something granted to you.” There is nothing more to be procured; the utmost is yours in the ascension of Christ, for you are risen with Him; therefore give yourselves to excel. Virtue was the end—the end for which they were dignified with immortality. They were summoned to reach after it on the ground of their investiture. The inducement presented is the claim of high position, the responsibility of rich possession. It was as though the writer had said, “Remember your rank and standing, and act in accordance with it; labour to be worthy of it.”

There is in a little churchyard in Switzerland a simple inscription on the tomb of one who perished in an Alpine accident, which has always appealed to me with singular force: “He died climbing.” He had heard the call of the mountains and lost his life in endeavouring to respond. We have heard the call of the risen Christ, but unlike the climber, we gain our lives in our sustained attempt to respond worthily. “Seek those things that are above” is a call to enjoy the largest possible life, for the very struggle develops latent possibilities and capacities, and each step upward is into fuller liberty and more perfect manhood. 1 [Note: J. Stuart Holden, Redeeming Vision, 53.]

Higher still, and higher!

O to leave the clouds below,

And the creeping mists that throw

Doubt on all the way we go

As we would aspire

Higher still, and higher!

Higher still, and higher!

Ah! how little way I make,

Plunging where the black bogs quake,

Slowly hewing through the brake

Tangled with old briar!—

Higher still, and higher!

Higher still, and higher!

Courage! look not down to see

How high thy footing now may be,

Upward set thy face where He

Calls thee to come nigher,

Higher still, and higher.

Higher still, and higher!

Lo! the sun is sinking fast,

And lengthening shades are round thee cast,

Let not thy heart fail at the last;

’Tis no time to tire—

Higher still, and higher!

Higher still, and higher!

Sweet the air is, pure and clear,

And thy Lord is ever near

Yonder where the songs I hear

And the golden lyre—

Higher still, and higher.

Higher still, and higher!

What, if Death be standing right

In thy way, and dreadful night?

All beyond is life and light,

And thy soul’s desire—

Higher still, and higher! 1 [Note: Walter C. Smith, Thoughts and Fancies for Sunday Evenings, 104.]

3. To seek the things which are above is to show that our life is really hid with Christ in God. Little or nothing may be said; a look or whisper is often enough. Sometimes the change may be marked by self-restraint, by the absence of chatter about self and our petty likes and dislikes. Or it may be expressed in acts of self-denial which involve delicate consideration for the feelings as well as the tastes of others—that “sweet and innocent compliance which is the great cement of love.” Sometimes it may be seen in a quiet silent prayer in the bedroom a little longer than usual, a determination to have a few minutes in church before or after service, a posture of unaffected reverence, or a hushed tone in using Scripture words and in saying the name of God—all these are often eloquent signs.

The best motto is not an inscription for your tombstone: “ Resurgam, I shall arise, when earthly life is over, when the graves unclose.” It is a watchword for your hearts: “ Resurgo, I arise, I am delivered, I am quickened, I begin to live upward, through Christ, for Christ, unto Christ.” 2 [Note: H. van Dyke, The Open Door, 39.]

Myers said in most deliberate words that his own history had been that of a soul struggling into the conviction of its own existence, and that he had postponed all else to the one question whether life and love survive the tomb. To give and to receive joy, companionship with nobler spirits—these seemed to him the real aims of life; and while doubt remained as to the permanence of the human soul, even these aims appeared to be futile and fruitless. But when the conviction of immortality dawned upon him, as it did, he said that it gave him a creed which encouraged him to live at his best, and inspired the very strongest hopes that can incite to exertion. 3 [Note: A. C. Benson, Leaves of the Tree, 171.]

In the best pictures of great masters, tone is almost everything. Form goes for much. Form, indeed, and the steadiness of the drawing, go for very much in the “composition” of the picture; but deprive it of the wonderful non so che called tone, and it stands out hard and unpleasing, and supplies to the soul no real pleasure. On the other hand, let the tone of the true artist be there, and how it covers in a great degree even badness in the drawing. In the same way, in nature, atmosphere counts for much, very much, in the charm of a scene, in its power, that is, to touch the heart; and when you come to personal life, what tone is to the picture, what atmosphere is to the landscape, such is general temper to the human character. Now the power and beauty of “the things which are above,” and the consequent necessity and blessedness of seeking them—all this is placed in evidence by the altered temper of the life in an advancing Christian. 1 [Note: W. J. Knox Little, Characteristics and Motives of the Christian Life, 33.]

Lord, grant us wills to trust Thee with such aim

Of hope and passionate craving of desire

That we may mount aspiring, and aspire

Still while we mount; rejoicing in Thy Name,

Yesterday, this day, day by day the Same:

So sparks fly upward scaling heaven by fire,

Still mount and still attain not, yet draw nigher,

While they have being, to their fountain flame.

To saints who mount, the bottomless abyss

Is as mere nothing, they have set their face

Onward and upward toward that blessed place

Where man rejoices with his God, and soul

With soul, in the unutterable kiss

Of peace for every victor at the goal. 2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Out of the Deep, 9.]

Risen with Christ

Literature

Bradby (E. H.), Sermons Preached at Haileybury, 95.

Brown (C.), God and Man, 106.

Butler (H. M.), Public-School Sermons, 83.

Carter (T. T.), The Spirit of Watchfulness, 118.

Dick (G. H.), The Yoke and the Anointing, 112.

Findlay (G. G.), The Things Above, 11.

Hare (A. W.), The Alton Sermons, 145.

Holden (J. S.), Redeeming Vision, 48.

Illingworth (J. R.), University and Cathedral Sermons, 208.

Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 90.

Liddon (H. P.), Easter in St. Paul’s, 243.

Lilley (A. L.), Nature and Supernature, 233.

Little (W. J. K.), Characteristics of the Christian Life, 26.

McIntyre (D. M.), Life in His Name, 183.

Maclaren (A.), After the Resurrection, 130.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons on Eucharistic Subjects, i. 361.

Moore (E. W.), Life Transfigured, 205.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvi. (1880), No. 1530.

Taylor (W. M.), The Boy Jesus, 29.

Tipple (S. A.), The Admiring Guest, 30.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Bane and the Antidote, 95.

Webster (F. S.), The Beauties of the Saviour, 179.

Christian Age, liii. (1893) 211 (Cuyler).

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 342. (Johnson); xlv. 222 (Pierce).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Easter Day and Season, vii. 265 (Alsop).

Keswick Week, 1899, p. 156 (Smith).

Verses 2-4

The Hidden Life

Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory.— Colossians 3:2-4.

1. The mind of St. Paul moves in this Epistle on a very high level. He is speaking to the men of Colossæ of one who, in the estimate of unbelievers, was no more than a dead man. Whatever Christ had been, He is gone; and the new truth St. Paul is introducing to the consciousness of the world notwithstanding, is that there has been no severance between the life of Him who has gone and that of men now living on the earth. He is not like any other dead man; He is One who rose from the dead, and though He has since disappeared from sight, His resurrection is that characteristic thing which makes Him different from all other men who have lived and died. It is not only a physical but a moral resurrection; the coming to life again of all those holy principles of action and elements of power which seemed for a moment to have been overshadowed by the darkness of the grave. He is now not dead but unchangeably living. And together with this the Apostle insists on the indissoluble character of the common life between Christ and His disciples. That which has gone out of sight is the mere form and semblance of the Man Christ Jesus; the true Christ is risen and ascended. And if there be this indissoluble union, men now living on the earth have risen with Him; they are sharers, in a mystic sense which yet is consistent with the deepest reality, in that higher life of His in the heavenly places. To the old life which sought its Paradise on the earth which made this world the sum and substance of existence, they have died; they are now sharers with Him in the pure and holy life which has only one supreme ambition, the doing of the Heavenly Father’s Will. “Your life,” says the Apostle, “is hid with Christ in God.”

2. The fact that St. Paul should have felt justified in writing thus to inhabitants of Colossæ is a remarkable evidence of the power of Christianity to touch hearts and change lives. Colossæ, although no worse than the average contemporary city, can scarcely have been much better; and a few years before, it is tolerably certain, the notion of sending a communication of this kind to people of the place would have been a melancholy sarcasm. But all that had been changed. There were men and women in its streets and lanes now who had believed in Jesus Christ, and who possessed the peace and joy of reconciliation. Risen with Christ, they had the very springs of their being hid with Him in God. Once there had been no depths in their life; all had been shallow, specious, external, busy with affairs that mattered little, crowded with trifles, pathetically wasted in worthless ambition and fleeting pleasure. Then God called them, as He calls us, into a new domain, and their whole experience was re-created. In the barren wastes fountains of water were springing up; in wide ranges of unprofitable folly mines had been discovered that would yield the gold and gems of faith and hope and love. Once they were content with a poor, starveling, fortuitous morality; always untrustworthy, always unequal to a new or sudden strain, whereas now their stores of power and gladness in service were held high above the reach of sorrow and temptation, because treasured and guarded well by Christ in the unseen.

3. There are here two similar exhortations, side by side. “Seek the things that are above,” and “Set your mind on the things that are above.” The first is preceded and the second is followed by its reason. So the two laws of conduct are, as it were, enclosed like a kernel in its shell, or a jewel in a gold setting, by encompassing motives. These considerations in which the commandments are embedded are the double thought of union with Christ in His resurrection and in His death, and, as consequent thereon, participation in His present hidden life and in His future glorious manifestation. So we have here the present budding life of the Christian in union with the risen, hidden Christ; the future consummate flower of the Christian life in union with the glorious manifested Christ; and the practical aim and direction which alone is consistent with either bud or flower.

Maeterlinck tells us of the threshold of “the third enclosure,” behind which is the life of life. Browning, in his “Death in the Desert,” expounds the doctrine of the three souls in man which, in ascending order of importance, make up one soul: “What Does, what Knows, what Is, three souls, one man.” Matthew Arnold has written words about the “Buried Life” which can never be forgotten by those who know them, as he tells of those rare moments when a “bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, the eye sinks inward and the heart lies plain, and what we mean we say, and what we would, we know.” Carlyle, in a well-known passage, declares: “Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.” That is hardly true. Not what I have is my kingdom; we have learned that a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses: not what I know is my kingdom, so soon does knowledge become antiquated and obsolete; not what I say—in words always inadequate and often unreal—is my kingdom; nor even what I do, so little can I accomplish of what I would fain achieve, and my reach so far exceeds my grasp. No; what I am is my kingdom; and then the question presses, What am I? We turn from philosophy and poetry to religion, and especially to the Christian religion, and we are reminded of the “inward man,” the “hidden man of the heart,” and hear the memorable words, “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” That life is the one thing that counts for each one of us, and that alone. 1 [Note: W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, 298.]

It was the passionate and unceasing insistence on the Christ-nature within every man as such that gave dignity and power to the preaching of the early Quakers. Read George Fox’s Journal, and this emerges out of an astonishing amount of fanaticism and unfairness. It runs like a thread of gold through the whole narrative. On all hands religious men were disputing about the limits of Church membership, the rights of hierarchies, the importance of sacraments, the decrees of God in election and reprobation, and so forth; and there was immense excitement and vehemence and partisanship; Christianity seemed to have lost its moral force altogether; and the Image of Christ had faded from view. Then came this strange, youthful-looking man, with his long hair and brilliant eyes, and courage of a martyr blended with an extraordinary tenderness, and a fervent eloquence which held men spell-bound and called them away from the quarrelling Christians and their Churches, and pointed them to Christ within themselves. This is his habitual phrase. “I directed them to the light of Christ in them.” “I exhorted the family to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and hearken to His teachings in their own hearts.” “I directed them to Christ, the true teacher within.” These and similar expressions are scattered freely through the journal, and give it a distinct character. 1 [Note: Canon H. Hensley Henson.]

I

The Old Life Left Behind

1. “Ye died.” That represents a distinct element in Christian experience. It means that the soul passes through a death to earthly things—to sin and the allurements of the flesh, just as the Lord died upon the tree. The crucifixion has its counterpart within us. We die to the attractions of the world.

The new life we enjoy had its birth in the death of the old nature; it is preserved and flourishes now only by the continuous use of that cross on which the old desires were crucified and by which they must still be mortified right on to the very last, when the body itself is put off and earthly temptations cease. The inner life is one of continual joyful self-crucifixion, the doing to death of all that in tendency threatens the supremacy of the higher and better self. The power of the Cross alone can free from the guilt and stain of the past, as in it alone is found the secret of a new, sacred, ineffable life, named in St. John’s Gospel “eternal,” in one of Paul’s Epistles “life indeed.”

The old life, like the trees the backwoodsmen cannot wait to cut down, is ringed; and, as when that strip of bark is cut out, its withering is only a question of time. Or, to change the figure, the channels in which its streams once flowed may now and then seem to run as copiously as ever; but gradually the parent spring is failing, and one day it will cease, never to fill again. You who have the new heart, but are sorely plagued by the old, remember this. Do not complain that the struggle is unavailing. Do not even grow impatient with yourselves; for not to have surrendered is itself a victory. 2 [Note: H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God’s Plan, 147.]

2. Paul is indicating a definite occasion in the past. Sometimes the passage of a soul into God’s Kingdom is a very sudden thing. It may even be as the flight of a bird for swiftness. We lie down one night our old selves, and ere we sleep again the revolution has occurred. In this text, however, suddenness of that kind is not necessarily implied. Men may die swiftly, or they may die slowly; it matters nothing, once they have wakened on the immortal side of death.

At the Equator no visible line is stretched round the world for all to see; nevertheless, the line is actually crossed; at some definite point the ship leaves one hemisphere and enters on the other. Just so, when God’s eye reads our past, many circumstances may take on a bold prominence and fixity of outline that were concealed, or only half displayed to our feebler gaze. Where we saw nothing but an unbroken, imperceptible advance, He, it is possible, may discern a cleavage, sharp as though effected by a scimitar-stroke, between the old existence and the new. And the fittest metaphor to illustrate the transition that St. Paul can think of is that passage from one world to another which we call death. 1 [Note: H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God’s Plan, 146.]

Yet one more step—no flight

The weary soul can bear

Into a whiter light,

Into a hush more rare.

Take me, I am all Thine;

I Thine now, not seeking Thee

Hid in the secret shrine,

Lost in the shoreless sea.

Grant to the prostrate soul

Prostration new and sweet;

Make weak the weak, control

Thy creature; at Thy feet

Passive I lie: shine down,

Pierce through the will with straight,

Swift beams one after one;

Divide, disintegrate,

Free me from self, resume

Thy place, and be Thou there.

Yet also keep me. Come,

Thou Saviour and Thou slayer! 1 [Note: Edward Dowden.]

II

The New Life Hidden in God

1. Every one has two lives, the outward and the inward; and although they are seemingly separate, having a different mode of manifestation, they are at the same time intimately connected. Even rude, undeveloped natures have that which they hide from men. Much goes on within them that does not show itself outwardly. Their cunning purposes, their selfish greed, their lurid and lustful desires—if not shame, then self-interest and safety lead them to secrete these bad elemental forces; and so the lowest natures have a hidden life of badness. Many men are bad outwardly who are a great deal worse inwardly.

But also when love has purified the soul; when men have risen through the social affections far above these vulgar conditions, they in like manner have secret lives, but of a different sort. Men revolve ten thousand thoughts which never find expression, and never can. We never can say our best things. We think a great deal better than we ever speak. Fancies thick as stars shine in the vault of souls elected to poetry. Our tender and affectionate natures are like nightingales, and will not sing in glare of day, nor without cover and retirement.

Every person of richness of soul will recognize the truth, that the dearest part of his life—that which seems to him the finest, the noblest, the deepest—never is fully and fairly exposed. And if we think a moment, we are conscious that all those subtlest sentiments, those rarest feelings, which, when they manifest themselves in us with power, give us some sentiment of divinity, are the strains of the soul which we cannot speak, and certainly do not. Our feelings towards each other, the feelings that parents have towards their children, are unutterable; and, surely, the feelings of affection which great natures have towards each other never find expression in words. There is more in one look that the eye gives than in all that the tongue utters in a lifetime.

When the Apostle, therefore, speaks of the Christian life as a hidden one, it is neither a paradox nor a mystery, though at first it may strike one as being so. Interpreted by the analogy of the soul’s best habits, it is only declaring the Christian’s hope to be the secret and spring of all the rest of his life. That which is the strongest in him, that which is the truest to his Divine nature, that which he considers the best part of him—in short, that which he will call his real life—is hidden. “Your life is hid with Christ in God.”

To his sense of responsibility to the Faith and the Church must be added his sense of responsibility as Bishop and Primate for national life. The three things went together; they would stand and fall together. The conviction came to him originally through his reading of Coleridge: “Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation; but a Life. Not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a living Process.” Dr. Temple applied this principle to all doctrines—notably to the doctrine of Easter Day. “Try to live by it,” he says to the boys at Rugby: “Try to live as if that other world were immediately before your eyes; try to live as if you were following your great Captain on the road to victory; and, believe me, you will never find the doctrine stale or commonplace or powerless!” This conviction only deepened as he grew older. 1 [Note: Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 670.]

As you cross a Highland moor you may come upon a curious bright streak of green, winding in and out among the heather, its pure and shining verdure clearly marked against the dull brown of its immediate surroundings. What is it, and how came it there? Whence rises the sap to feed this soft elastic ribband of turf? There is a tiny stream below, a runnel of sweet water flowing down there out of sight, only hinting its presence by the green beauty above. So the springs of Christian life are hid, hid with Christ in God. 2 [Note: H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God’s Plan, 148.]

2. The Christian life is hidden inasmuch as here on earth action ever falls short of thought, and the love and faith by which a good man lives can never be fully revealed in his conduct and character. Electricity cannot be carried from the generator to the point where it is to work without two-thirds of it being lost by the way. Neither word nor deed can adequately set forth a soul; and the profounder and nobler the emotion, the more inadequate are the narrow gates of tongue and hand to give it passage. The deepest love can often only “love and be silent.” So, while every man is truly a mystery to his neighbour, a life which is rooted in Christ is more mysterious to the ordinary eye than any other. It is fed by hidden manna. It is replenished from a hidden source. It is guided by other than the world’s motives and follows unseen aims. Therefore, the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.

There is an old and beautiful Spanish legend of a certain Convent of St. Benedict, not far from the old city of Toledo, which was the retreat of a sisterhood embracing some of the noblest blood of all Spain. When the Moors overran the country after Don Roderick and his fine chivalry were slain, they came to this convent and vowed its destruction. But just as they were making their final assault the convent disappeared. Cloisters, cells, chapel, belfry, with their inmates, sank underground. Forty years after a lonely traveller, journeying through the forest at eventide, heard in an open space of rising ground the mysterious echoes of vesper bells and voices floating on the still evening air, as they breathed forth the praise of evensong. Nothing but a moss-grown stone pinnacle surmounted by a Cross broke the dark glades of forest on either hand. Yet the harmonies from that buried convent thrilled his heart with wonder and awe. Ethereal, mystic, heavenly, they broke upon the ear like the echoes of another world. Such is the Christian life ever since the first Easter Day, buried away out of the sight of men, stolen from the grasp of the boasting foe, “hidden in the sealed stone,” yet still exerting its powerful spell almost unrecognized over the hearts of men, still breathing forth its heavenly music to souls who have spiritual leisure to hearken to it, still filling the solitary place with mysterious praise. 1 [Note: T. A. Gurney, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 96.]

3. This life is hid, because Christ has gone out of sight, bearing with Him the true source and root of our lives into the secret place of the Most High. Therefore we no longer belong to this visible order of things in the midst of which we tarry for a while. The true spring that feeds our lives lies deep beneath all the surface waters. These may dry up, but it will flow. These may be muddied with rain, but it will be limpid as ever. The things seen do not go deep enough to touch our real life. They are but as the winds that fret and the currents that sway the surface and shallower levels of the ocean, while the great depths are still. The circumference is all a whirl; the centre is at rest.

In the early folk-lore of various countries, we come, here and there, on certain statements which have a singular affinity with what St. Paul says in the text and which may possibly have had something to do with the form, at least, of the thought which he there expresses. I refer to the accounts which are given about cruel giants and other monstrosities who could not be killed by wounds that would at once have ended the life of any other creature. They might be pierced through the heart with the sword of an assailant, they might be hurled from a precipice that should have broken all their bones, they might be left for dead in a burning fire that should have consumed them effectually, but nothing could touch their life, or even seriously hurt them. For, according to the story, their life was not in their own bodies, but somewhere else, and carefully concealed so that no one could reach it. It is represented as being, perhaps, hid in an egg, which is in the belly of a fish, which is swimming in a lake, which lies among inaccessible mountains or an island that is far away in some untravelled ocean; and unless you can discover that ocean and the island and the lake, and catch the fish, and lay hold on the egg, nothing you can do will anywise affect the life of the terrible being you are anxious, for some reason, to destroy. As a rule, the stories tell us that, after many had tried and failed, a hero comes at last who, by some means or other, discovers the secret, overcomes all the difficulties, and destroys the creature who had wrought so much mischief, but with that part of them we have at present nothing to do. What I want to point out is simply the idea, which seems to have been pretty widely prevalent, that one’s life could be kept apart from one’s self, and so hid as to be very hard to reach, and that no injury to one’s body could anywise affect such a life. 1 [Note: Walter C. Smith.]

Botanists tell us that there is a beautiful arrangement in nature for clothing our barren moorlands with a vesture of heather. The heather cannot nourish itself, but must be nourished, so to speak, by a foster-parent, which prepares its food for it, reducing the peat upon which it grows into a condition that renders it capable of being absorbed and assimilated. So at the extreme ends of the roots of the heather, you will find mingled with the finer fibres a tissue of delicate whitish threads. This is not part of the heather itself, but a separate plant or fungus which lives in association with the heather, and does for it the kindliest service, nourishing its vitals at the fountain head. Microscopic examination of the fine rootlets of the heather shows how filaments of its hidden friend and partner penetrate into the very cells of the texture of these rootlets, conveying life and strength to the whole plant. Without the help of this hidden intermediary the heather would wither and die. And whenever you transplant heather without securing its associate feeder, your labour is in vain, the heather infallibly dies. So our spiritual life is linked with Christ and hid in God. We are identified with Christ, and He communicates to us His own life. “Without me,” He says, “ye can do nothing.” But, says the Apostle, as if responding to Him, “I can do all things in Christ which strengtheneth me.” The hidden life of Christ works deep down at the roots of our being, and the chief hindrance to a noble and rich and fruitful career is that we do not sufficiently realize our oneness with Christ and His readiness to vitalize all our spiritual and moral energies. 1 [Note: Hugh Macmillan.]

Since Eden, it keeps the secret!

Not a flower beside it knows

To distil from the day the fragrance

And beauty that flood the rose.

Silently speeds the secret

From the loving eye of the sun

To the willing heart of the flower:

The life of the twain is one.

Folded within my being,

A wonder to me is taught,

Too deep for curious seeing

Or fathom of sounding thought,

Of all sweet mysteries holiest!

Faded are rose and sun!

The Highest hides in the lowliest;

My Father and I are one. 2 [Note: Charles G. Ames.]

III

The Coming Manifestation

1. The present has in it the promise of the future.—Eternal life is a condition of the soul into which we may pass without dying; indeed, at any moment this resurrection may take place, we may pass from death to life, or also from life to death; the lower sphere may be exchanged for the higher, or the higher for the lower. And so when the lawyer asked the great question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” the answer practically was that the love of God and man is eternal life. It is a change in the sphere and level of life and emotion now, not a succeeding stage in our existence. In fact, to be spiritually minded, this is life; and to be carnally minded, this is death. The teaching of the Apostles is everywhere clear. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” “Our citizenship is in heaven.” “We have come to the heavenly Jerusalem.” “Christ is our life.” The Gospel Christ preached is pre-eminently one of the present world; it is the release from the grip of sin now, that real redemption which we may daily verify when we give up any wrong act for the love of Christ; it is the presence of God in the heart now.

Union with Christ by faith is the condition of a real communication of life. “In him was life,” says St. John, meaning thereby to assert, in the language of our Epistle, that “in him were all things created, and in him all things consist.” Life in all its forms is dependent on union in varying manner with the Divine, and upheld only by His continual energy. The creature must touch God or perish. Of that energy the Uncreated Word of God is the channel—“with thee is the fountain of life.” As the life of the body, so the higher self-conscious life of the thinking, feeling, striving soul is also fed and kept alight by the perpetual operation of a higher Divine energy, imparted in like manner by the Divine Word. Therefore, with deep truth, the Psalmist goes on to say, “In thy light shall we see light”—and therefore, too, St. John continues: “And the life was the light of men.”

The training of a prince may, in some respects, be very much like that of other youths. He may have to endure hardness, to fare simply, to toil patiently, to deny himself, that he may be able for the tasks that await him by and by. All that will be good for him, and especially it will be needful that he should learn to have princely ideas of duty and a regal nobleness of mind; for the higher his position is, the more worthless would he appear if he were given to any kind of baseness. He must look, therefore, to the things that are above. He must converse with high affairs in a high strain of thought. Any littleness would only be made more glaring by contrast with the grandeur of his position at last. While his life is for a season hidden, then, it must be carefully preparing for the final manifestation of its regal dignity, which otherwise he would only dishonour. 1 [Note: Walter C. Smith.]

2. The manifestation of Christ will carry with it the manifestation of all life hid with Him in God.—There is nothing in the future, however glorious and wonderful, that has not its germ and vital beginning in our union with Christ here by humble faith. The great hopes which we may cherish are gathered up here into the words, “He shall be manifested.” That is far more than was conveyed by the old translation—“shall appear.” The roots of our being shall be disclosed, for He shall come, “and every eye shall see him.” We shall be seen for what we are. The outward life shall correspond to the inward. The faith and love which often struggled in vain for expression and were thwarted by the obstinate flesh, as a sculptor trying to embody his dream might be by a block of marble with many a flaw and speck, shall then be able to reveal themselves completely. Whatever is in the heart shall be fully visible in the life. Stammering words and imperfect deeds shall vex us no more. “His name shall be in their foreheads”—no longer only written in fleshy tables of the heart, and partially visible in the character, but stamped legibly and completely on life and nature. They shall walk in the light, and so shall be seen of all. Here the truest followers of Christ shine like an intermittent star, seen through mist and driving cloud: “Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in the kingdom of my Father.”

The underground river, fed from hidden springs, will emerge in due time as a clear, full stream, at which the nations may drink. The coral polyp builds steadily on under the water amidst the ceaseless beating of the surf, and ere long there appears above the surface the atoll reef with its waving palms and still lagoon. Realities have their own way of asserting themselves, even in a world of shadows often mistaken for realities. The hidden life is the most potent life, even amidst the half-lights of earth, and the time will come when the day will break and the shadows flee away. “When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with him be manifested in glory.”

The Great Artist will then unveil His work, that has been long preparing in secret and behind the screen of an infirm decaying body, wrought out through the machinery of nature, which labours and groans beneath “the bondage of corruption” and moves with harsh grinding and torturing of the spirit through the flesh as it is placed upon the wheel. Yet from this factory and loom of time, with its unsightliness and disarray and its thousand seeming-cruel processes, God’s fairest work is coming, the adornment of heaven and the wealth of eternity. The Lord and Redeemer of men, when He appears the second time, shall appear “to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” 1 [Note: G. G. Findlay, The Things Above, 30.]

As the traveller starting for some distant mountain sees at the outset its cloudy and mysterious summits hanging in the far-off horizon, and is conscious that even then their presence adds a beauty and an interest to all the nearer landscape through which he is passing; but, as he advances on his way, every hour they engross a larger portion of the view, they become clearer and nearer, and fresh scenes of wonder and glory open up, till at last, without any perceptible break, he finds that his path has led him into the very bosom of the eternal hills; even so there are some whose way through this world is beautified and glorified, from dawn till eve, by the bright vision of the world beyond the grave. For them earth melts into heaven, and heaven sheds its radiance upon earth. 2 [Note: E. H. Bradby.]

3. This is the enduring life.—Such a life has nothing in it of the ephemeral and passing. It has no relation to the body, or the death of the body. Physical death is not its end, or its beginning, or its opposite. The life in God partakes of the Divine—unchangeableness and infinity and eternity. All on earth passes away; even the everlasting hills will at last change and disappear; but if we ourselves become in some way incorporate with the life of God, then we are safe for ever in His everlasting arms. Our life is verily “hid with Christ in God.”

As Ralph Erskine puts it: “When risen with Christ you have a Treasure, a Treasurer, and a Treasury. ‘Your Life’—that is your Treasure; ‘is hid with Christ’—He is your Treasurer; ‘in God’—that is your Treasury. Your life is hidden for secrecy and for security. The world knows not the sons of God; they draw their strength and inspiration from a secret source, they fix their hopes upon things unseen. Their life is hidden from the eyes of men. This makes it all the more secure. The foundations are beyond the reach of pickaxe or dynamite. The believer’s security does not lie exposed to the malice of man or devil. It is the security of a union which cannot be dissolved, of a trusteeship which never fails, of a covenant which cannot be broken. God the Father is the author of the Covenant. God the Son is the faithful guardian or trustee. God the Holy Ghost is the bond of the union. Secure indeed are those whose life is hid with Christ in God.”

The uncertainty as to what awaits us ahead, beyond the limit of our spiritual vision—this uncertainty, this mystery—is the only possibility of our life, because it secures the forward movement. We walk, as it were, through an underground passage and see ahead of us the illuminated point of the exit; but that we may reach this exit, ahead of us, in front of us must be an emptiness. The eternal life is eternal for the very reason that it deploys before us infinitely. If it were completely unfolded before us, and we could comprehend it here, in our temporal, carnal existence, it would not be the eternal life, as there would be nothing left beyond it. 1 [Note: Tolstoy, Thoughts and Aphorisms (Works, xix. 81).]

If you address any average modern English company as believing in an eternal life; and then endeavour to draw any conclusions from this assumed belief, as to their present business, they will forthwith tell you that “what you say is very beautiful, but it is not practical.” If, on the contrary, you frankly address them as un believers in eternal life, and try to draw any consequences from that unbelief,—they immediately hold you for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you. 2 [Note: Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive (Works, xviii. 392).]

IV

The Present Duty

1. “Set your mind on the things that are above.” The Apostle uses a word which indicates the application of the mind to the observation and study of any object. It is a stronger word and means more than the word “seek” used in Colossians 3:1. And what we are urged to do is to let our minds go out upon these things, and rest in quiet contemplation of them. He would have us take them as settled and indubitable facts, clearly revealed to us, and make them the object of our deep, continuous, and interested study. He calls us not to pry into things hidden and recondite, but to ponder things manifest and revealed. It is not to a process of research but to a process of reflection that he urges us. He would have us stand, as it were, at the gate of heaven, and inspire its hallowed atmosphere, and bask in radiance of its unutterable splendour. A mere baptism with the waters of the river of life will not suffice; what he exhorts us to is to cast ourselves into that heaven-born stream, and repose upon the bosom of its shining and ever-flowing waters. There must be the outgoings of the soul after those supernal realities, and the incomings of these into the soul in return. Our reflections must be after the similitude of those angels that are to be seen ascending and descending upon the Son of man, a continuous and reflexive process, yet ever finding in Him its alpha and its omega, its beginning and its ending, its first and its last.

One sunny day, as on my way I went,

And stooped to pluck the flowers I loved so well,

I saw that on each bloom o’er which I bent,

My shadow fell;

But when my wandering glances left the ground

And travelled sunwards up the shafts of light,

The shadow fell behind me, and I found

That all was bright.

So when, with earthward gaze, we set our minds

On flowers beside life’s pathway blooming fair,

Whoever stoops to seize their beauties finds

A shadow there;

But if, with eyes uplifted, we are wont

To scan the heavenward stair the angels trod,

Behind us is the shadow, and in front

The light of God. 1 [Note: E. T. Fowler, Verses Wise and Otherwise, 137.]

2. If the affections are habitually set on things above, this is the surest evidence of being in a state of grace. In the animal world we see life manifesting itself through an immense gradation, from the sluggish and hardly perceptible animation of the zoophyte up, through that of the insect and reptile tribes, to the finer perceptions and sensibilities of the more perfectly organized animals, until we reach its highest development in man. In all cases we are satisfied life is there, because the results of life are there; but as these become increasingly distinct and manifest, as we ascend the scale of being, so our assurance of it becomes proportionately stronger. It is the same as regards the spiritual life. That life may be very feeble in some, hardly perceptible, a mere zoophytic existence; but if it is there at all, it will show itself by its proper results, and most of all by some measure of spiritual sensibility and relish for spiritual things, the things that are above. And as the life becomes stronger, this manifestation of it will become increasingly distinct and convincing.

By holiness do we not mean something different from virtue? It is not the same as duty, as religious belief. Holiness is the name for an inner grace of nature, an instinct of the soul, by which, though knowing of earthly appetites and worldly passions, the spirit, purifying itself from these and independent of all reason, arguments, and fierce struggles of the will, dwells in living, patient, and confident communion with the seen and unseen good. 1 [Note: John Morley, Miscellanies.]

Our fathers understood by cultivation of the hidden life the practice of earnest prayer, reverent study of the Bible and devotional books, with meditation and endeavour to make their own by faith the life that is hid with Christ in God. Their fathers before them for nearly two thousand years used similar methods. Have we outgrown them? Are these amongst the old-fashioned ways which we style “early Victorian,” and, confident in our maturity, are prepared to leave behind us? The Bible—is it read, known, loved, thought and prayed and wrestled over till its deepest religious teaching is afresh assimilated? The chief interest excited concerning it to-day is aroused by criticism, which in some directions is doing excellent service. But the Bible is essentially a book of religion, not a collection of literary documents. There is a time and a place for examination into the details of its composition, but it is as food for the hidden man of the heart that it is all-important, and it is a question whether the coming generation in any stratum of society knows the Bible well or appreciates its value for the world. Every Christian prays; but how? One who would know the hidden world of prayer must be a familiar denizen of it; hasty and occasional visits will teach him nothing. Whilst Sir Oliver Lodge is urging the power in the spiritual world of filial communion and those aspirations and petitions which “exert an influence far beyond their conscious range,” some Christians, who ought to know better, plead that work is worship, and that social reform is of more importance than “pietistic communings.” These things, therefore, ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 1 [Note: W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, 301.]

The lowland road is pleasant and the upper road is steep,

The lowland air is windless and its rivers sing of sleep;

When all the kine are gathered and all the pastures mowed,

One should go home at evening along the lowland road.

When stalwart knees bend inward and strong-thewed shoulders tire,

When a man has wrought his utmost and followed his desire,

When he has starved and feasted and borne a heavy load,

How good to come at evening along the lowland road.

But if the white peaks beckon, if one be left to scale,

A man should seek the mountains and shun the lowland vale;

His heart will feel their prompting, and answer to the goad,

And tho’ the hour be evening, he’ll take the upper road.

When all earth’s fruits are gathered on silent field and garth,

When song is at the winepress and mirth is at the hearth,

There is another harvest whose seed we have not sowed—

You’ll find the orchards of the Lord upon the upper road.

I’m going by the upper road, for that still holds the sun;

I’m climbing thro’ Night’s pastures, where starry rivers run;

If you should think to seek me in my old dark abode,

You’ll find this writing on the door—“He’s on the Upper Road.”

3. Setting the mind on things above is conducive to the right discharge of duty and the right endurance of trial. The mind accustomed to Divine contemplation looks at things not on their earthward but on their heavenward side; or rather—may we say?—looks at the things of earth from a heavenly point of view. Duty thus is seen not simply as something that has to be done, a task that has to be performed, but as the will of the heavenly Father, which it is an honour and a privilege to His servants to be called to do. Affliction is seen to be light because it is looked at, not as among things seen and temporal, but in its relation to those things which are unseen and eternal. Thus, the man who has his “conversation in heaven,” who is occupied with spiritual realities, whose treasure is in heaven, and whose heart is there also, has a power in him for the discharge of duty which the world cannot understand, and a support under trial which the world can neither give nor take away.

Christian prayer is earnest and believing, but it asks for blessings in accordance with the will of the Father. It means good, not harm, for our neighbours as for ourselves; it means bringing ourselves into harmony with the laws of health and right living; it means using to the utmost all the strength and energy that God has put into our hands to bring about the result that we pray for. We cannot pray for food and expect the ravens to bring it to us, like one misguided man whom I met some years ago. He excused himself from work and lived on charity or the small earnings of his wife, on the plea that the Bible commands us to take no thought for the morrow. Prayer means not the halting of effort, but its spur. We cannot ask for peace, and give way at the first provocation to ill-temper and irritability. We cannot pray for unselfishness, and refuse the opportunity to practise it. We cannot pray for success, and expect to achieve it without work. Prayer gives us the assurance that behind our effort is infinite strength, but that effort must measure the best that we have of will, energy, and intelligence. We must bring the inspiration of our ideals into daily living. 1 [Note: S. Fallows, Health and Happiness, 12.]

We doubt the word that tells us: Ask,

And ye shall have your prayer;

We turn our thoughts as to a task,

With will constrained and rare.

And yet we have; these scanty prayers

Yield gold without alloy:

O God, but he that trusts and dares

Must have a boundless joy! 2 [Note: George MacDonald, “Organ Songs” (Poetical Works, ii. 292).]

The Hidden Life

Literature

Alexander (W. L.), Sermons, 309.

Beecher (H. W.), Sermons, 2nd Ser., 508.

Cook (F. C.), Church Doctrine and the Spiritual Life, 53.

Davison (W. T.), The Indwelling Spirit, 297.

Dearden (H. W.), Parochial Sermons, 75.

Findlay (G. G.), The Things Above, 1.

Gladden (W.), Where does the Sky Begin? 208.

Grimley (H. N.), Tremadoc Sermons, 1.

Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 80.

Houchin (J. W.), The Vision of God, 149.

Huntingdon (F. D.), Sermons for the People, 310.

Kelman (J.), Ephemera Eternitatis, 266.

Mackintosh (H. R.), Life on God’s Plan, 143.

Russell (A.), The Light that Lighteth every Man, 248.

Smith (W. C.), Sermons, 216.

Wilberforce (B.), The Secret of a Quiet Mind, 103.

Wilson (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Clifton College Chapel, 41.

Christian Age, xlvi. 402 (Abbott).

Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 166 (Scott); lxii. 2 (Henson).

Church of England Pulpit, xlvii. 181 (Carpenter).

Churchman’s Pulpit: St. Matthias, xiv. 298 (Burgon).

Expositor, 3rd Ser., iii. 434 (Maclaren).

Verse 16

The Indwelling Word

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.— Colossians 3:16.

We used to read when we were children about the magician’s wand which was waved over the hill-side, and the hill-side opened and disclosed caves full of treasures. Here is a text which might open before us as regards the origin of character and life just such a wealth of unsuspected treasure; or, rather, it might be like that hard rock from which, smitten by Moses at the command of God, there trickled, then poured, then gushed, and then flowed like a river, water which satisfied the thirst of rebellious and murmuring Israel for many a long day.

1. The passage from which the text is taken contains one of the noblest ethical exhortations in the New Testament. The subject of the Epistle is Christ. From first to last it is “Christological” in the fullest sense of the term. It is addressed to those who profess to have accepted Christ; it asserts what that profession must involve. In a very true sense the doctrine or philosophy of the Christian life, which St. Paul is convinced is the true philosophy of humanity, is summed up in one word, the word “Christ.” St. Paul seems to say: “You tell me you have accepted Christ, you profess to believe in Christ; you must therefore realize what this profession means, for it is only when you are filled with, and inspired by, an adequate conception of the doctrine of Christ that you can lead, and that you can induce others to lead, a truly Christian life.” For St. Paul knew that the life of every man and of every society must inevitably be the expression of some individual and social philosophy. If there is one book in the New Testament which more than another asserts that it does matter what we believe, and that life and conduct, both individual and social, are ultimately ruled by ideas and convictions, it is this Epistle to the Colossians.

2. Now the Apostle seeks to set forth the true idea of the Christ, as against the false conceptions that were current. He knows that the true conception of the personal Christ is expressed in the Jesus of the Gospels. In the Gospels we study His life, His work, His teaching, His atoning death, His glorious resurrection and ascension, which are all steps in the one process termed by St. John His “glorification.” In the Gospels we learn the principles which inspired Him, and of the power with which God endowed Him, for “He was raised by the glory of the Father.” At once, so urges the Apostle, follows the inevitable conclusion; the whole human race must walk (for it has received the power to walk) in newness of life.

3. But how are Christian believers to be adequately equipped to present Christ to those outside? You are, says the Apostle, members of a body with mutual obligations, but also with obligations or responsibilities to the world outside you. For the discharge of these obligations, which is of the nature of a continuous service, you must have an equipment. That equipment must satisfy two conditions. The equipment itself is the “word of the Christ,” and the first condition is that this “word”—the whole Gospel, the whole body of Messianic truth—dwell in you richly. You must be richly endowed with its contents and its meaning; your relation to it must be that of men who have made themselves masters of a rich possession, who have so thoroughly assimilated this knowledge that it has become part of themselves. This is the first condition. The second is to remember that towards this wealth you have a stewardship, whose exercise and discharge must be characterized by skill. There must be the skill which comes from intimate knowledge, coupled with constant careful practice, but which also assumes the possession and use of an intimate knowledge of the conditions and needs of those towards whom you are stewards. We must remember that knowledge is only one factor in skill. The word presumes the idea of art as well as that of science. So this practical skill is an essential part of your equipment, namely, the skill which comes from daily discipline and exercise in the use as well as in the acquisition of knowledge.

It is ideas that rule. It is ideas that influence and change the conduct both of the individual and of society. History is full of proofs of this. And “the word of the Christ” embodies the ideas of the Christ, the ideas which Jesus of Nazareth brought into the world, or upon which He laid special stress. A modern writer on sociology has shown that in lands where the doctrine of the Incarnation has either never been accepted, or where belief in it has been lost, there we find an inadequate conception both of the worth and of the possibilities of man, and that this inadequate conception has resulted in slavery, in regardlessness of the value of human life, in unnecessary human suffering, in the degradation of woman, and generally in the debasement of humanity. 1 [Note: W. E. Chadwick.]

I

The Word of Christ

1. What are we to understand by the “word of Christ”? You might, perhaps, interpret it to mean the recorded utterances of Christ that are found in the Gospels. In that case the “word of Christ” would be the same thing as the “words of Christ.” You might understand it as meaning the New Testament, because there you have not only the record of Christ’s uttered words, but also the explanation of His work and His person and His life given by His own Apostles. You might understand it as meaning the whole of the Bible, because in some sense here the Lord Jesus Christ is for us the centre; to Him all the early books point, and from Him all the later books lead on and forward. But the “word of Christ” does not consist merely in words written upon parchment, or in any number of words printed in a book. When St. Paul said, “Let the word of Christ abide in you,” he did not mean, “Let the book abide in you.” His words are spirit, and they are life. As poetry has been defined to be the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, so the word of Christ is the quintessence of all sacred utterance. All that it tells us concerning Himself is mind and heart. It is the book because through the book so largely comes our knowledge of Him. But it is the voice of Him who speaks through the book only to those faithful souls who come to catch His accents; and St. Paul says, “When you hear Him speak after that fashion take His word into the innermost recesses of your soul, let it dwell there, and fashion your whole character.”

At this time I wrote, on a lovely morning in April: “ ‘The Breath of Life’ seems to be in the air. On our ride Signor (G. F. Watts) begins to search for the unfound word which Professor Max Müller calls ‘The Self,’ but from which it is difficult to divest the ‘Myself’ that has so long been associated with it. ‘The Word,’ ‘The Life,’ ‘The Fire of Life,’ the ‘I Am,’ Matthew Arnold’s ‘Tendency that maketh for Righteousness,’ even our own word ‘God,’ seemed to him to contain but a fraction of what the word should convey. He tells me that he is conscious of this Presence—seeks after it and knows that in every great effort of the human mind, from Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Wordsworth, in the poetic philosophy of India and in all sacred books of the East, there is to be found a consciousness of the Presence. ‘In those Parthenon fragments, in all great art, I hear the organ tone; in my own work I am always trying for it. Yes,’ he added, answering something I had said, ‘religion is nothing unless it is the music that runs through all life, from the least thing that we can do to the greatest. After all there is very little to be said; we know we have to desire to live well, to love goodness and to aspire after it, that is for God: to live in love towards all, and to do rightly towards all, that is for man. There is only one great mystery—the Creator. We can never return to the early ideas of Him as a kind white-bearded old man. If I were ever to make a symbol of the Deity, it would be as a great vesture into which everything that exists is woven.’ ” 1 [Note: Mrs. Watts, in George Frederic Watts, ii. 244.]

(1) There is now in the world, and especially in Christendom, something Christian that never came through the Scriptures—something that has come down through the ages by what may be called the tradition of souls, unwritten and almost unspoken. Jesus Christ, by His living presence in this world, and by His spoken word, generated and set in motion a spiritual force that has never died, and never will. But the rule of this force is in the Scriptures. Its explanation is the Scripture. It is not so much a tradition that could be expressed in any human language as a living influence that flows on, and must flow as long as the world lasts. But that general influence is not what, in the ordinary and intelligible sense, we can call “the word of Christ.” This is, manifestly, something which is to be apprehended by our intelligence, to be kept in our memory; which is to operate, through the understanding, upon the affections, and the conscience, and the will; which is to shape the habits and rule the life.

Some inscriptions are written in antiquated letters, in quaint and curious characters, or even in dead and obsolete tongues. But you never paint a finger-post with Saxon letters or German characters; you draw them broad and square, so that he who runs may read it in his most familiar alphabet. And Christ’s Word is not only the path but the finger-post, inscribed so broad and clear in the world’s vernacular that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need make no mistake. 1 [Note: J. Hamilton, Works, vi. 24.]

The sacred word, so fraught with use,

Is bright with beauty too,

Oft startling us like blooms profuse

Upon a sudden view.

But more amazing than the bloom

Which all the trees bestuds,

See, peering from the leafy gloom,

A hundred thousand buds.

O, bud for ever, glorious tree,

O, ever blossom thus;

So shall thy good fruits plenteously

Hang ripening for us. 2 [Note: T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet, 20.]

(2) The literal word of Christ is one of the most wonderful things that ever has been in the world. All at once, up in Galilee, a silent man—for He was then known only as a man—began to speak. Not from Roman rostrum, not in terms of Greek philosophy, not as a Jewish Rabbi with Targum and Cabala at hand, but simply and naturally to simple and ordinary men wherever they could be got together—in village synagogue, on the seashore, among the boats and nets, on the road, on the hill-sides—and as He spake, the words seemed literally to root themselves in the hearts of some of the hearers. There were many who heard and idly wondered and straightway forgot; there were some who heard and hated what they heard, because it seemed to make against their own power and influence. But others caught the word like living seed, and gave it living soil within them, where it grew and soon became the power of their whole life. But so it was, amid friends, and foes, and crowds of thoughtless, indifferent people, the Speaker continued to speak; and as He spake the word grew and multiplied and became increasingly a living spiritual force in the life of the whole nation.

God has given only two perfect things to this lost world. One of them is the incarnate Word, which is the Lord Jesus Christ; the other is the written Word, which is the Holy Scripture. There is a Divine element and a human element in both. 1 [Note: James H. Brookes.]

Art, literature, philosophy, theology, statesmanship, science, civilization have made colossal strides forward, but Jesus stands just where He stood two thousand years ago, and the world is still at His feet. Why is it? The Gospel is an old story, the preacher’s sermon is an old message, religion is an old song, and yet the heart of the race stops to listen, and ever and anon some soul, mantling with the light of Calvary’s glory, rises up to confess that the old song has brought the new life. Christ is the same because Christ is the best. There is no progress beyond Him. He is all the heart longs for. 2 [Note: J. I. Vance, Royal Manhood, 243.]

We are told that Christ spoke to men as one that had authority—not an authority like that of the Scribes and Pharisees, which is given from without, but an authority which flowed naturally from the absolute conviction of the truth of His own words. Of this too we might find imperfect examples within our own experience. For when a man is possessed with a truth and feels that he has a mission to utter it, he becomes a power in the world. So Christ, having received the truth from His Father, brought it down to men. The opinions of the world, the customs of society, the traditions of Churches—they too had an authority, but it was of another sort. They did not come immediately from God; they did not find a witness in the better mind and conscience of man—they were the words of an age and country, and might be even unmeaning or absurd in some other age or country. But the words of Christ were eternal and unchangeable; as long as human nature lasts, while the world stands—these and these alone shall never pass away. 3 [Note: B. Jowett.]

Give me the Word—the Word!

Leave me, I pray, with the Word, and the Spirit alone:

Thus shall the Way, and the Truth be made known;

Thus all the depths of my soul with the life shall be stirred.

Who but Himself could tell,

Save in dead words, such a story as this that I learn

Straight from the wonderful pages that burn

Still with the light that sometime on the Mystery fell,

When He revealed His Son,

Chosen to manifest God, in unspeakable love

Linking our lives with His own life above,

Making them one, as Himself and the Father are One—

Spirit and flesh in Him—

God, the Creator, and man, whom He formed from the dust,

Meeting in Christ whom, receiving, I trust,

Seeing the Life that to wisdom and reason is dim.

Give me the Word, I say!

Let me go into its depths for the treasure I seek;

Let me be still, that the Spirit may speak,

Filling the gloom of my soul with His marvellous ray.

Give me the Word—the Word!

Leave me, I pray, with the Word and the Spirit to be:

Let the one Life flow unhindered through me;

Let the glad song of His joy in the silence be heard. 1 [Note: E. H. Divall, A Believer’s Songs, 97.]

2. Let us look at some of the chief characteristics of the word.

(1) Its simplicity and wisdom.—Who that has ever really studied the words of Christ can help being struck by these characteristic features? The truths He teaches are wise and deep; they provide food for thought for men in all ages. And yet the words which convey them are so simple that he who runs may read. In a word, the teaching of Jesus is like the sea that has shallows in which a little child can wade safely, and unfathomable depths whose bottom no lead can ever touch.

Simplicity and wisdom—that is a combination which is not always, or even generally, found in teachers. Wise men are very often hard to understand when they try to teach others, and deep truths seem to be almost inseparable from difficult words and intricate sentences. Now and again, but very rarely, we come across a teacher who is head and shoulders above his fellows. And if we investigate we shall invariably find that the secret of his superiority is that he has the gift of simplicity as well as of wisdom, and so is enabled to impart to others the knowledge he has acquired and the truths he has grasped.

The excellence of Holy Scripture does not arise from a laboured and far-fetched elocution, but from a surprising mixture of simplicity and majesty, which is a double character, so difficult to be united that it is seldom to be met with in compositions merely human. 1 [Note: Newman.]

The teaching of Christ is simple, but it is the simple which is always the hardest to understand; for complexity like mechanism may be puzzling, but it is never profound—patience can always unravel it; it is a compound and can readily be reduced to its elements; but simplicity is, as it were, an element in itself, and is profound with the profundity of deep clear water. The complex may be a riddle, but the simple is a mystery. The apprehension of Christ’s profound simplicity is the reward only of long and complex spiritual struggle—except, of course, in the case of those happy ones who come into it at birth as into an inheritance. It is the simplicity which can only come of experience—or genius. 2 [Note: Richard Le Gallienne, The Religion of a Literary Man, 68.]

If we compare the talk of great men and women “who will cause this age to be remembered,” one element is to be found in them all—a certain directness, simplicity, and vivid reality; a gift for reaching their hearers at once, giving straight from themselves, and not in reflections from other minds; sunshine, in short, not moonshine. Perhaps something of this may be due to the habit of self-respect and self-reliance which success and strength of purpose naturally create. Many uncelebrated people have the grace of convincing simplicity, but I have never met a really great man without it. As one thinks of it one recognizes that a great man is greater than we are, because his aim (consciously or unconsciously) is juster, his strength stronger and less strained; his right is more right than ours, his certainty more certain; he shows us the best of that which concerns him, and the best of ourselves too in that which concerns us in his work or his teaching. 3 [Note: Lady Thackeray Ritchie, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning, 73.]

Lord, with the children’s wisdom make us wise;

For to simplicity Thou dost reveal

The way unto Thyself, and dost unseal

The mysteries that baffle learning’s eyes.

We crave the knowledge that for ever lies

Deeper than words. It is enough to feel

Thy presence ever bringing hopes that heal,

Light that can lead, and love that satisfies.

Thy silence hath more meaning than our speech;

And so, beyond our wordy strife and vain,

By sorrowing and gladness, loss and gain,

Bring us into Thy quietness, and teach

Those deep simplicities that mock the brain,

Yet lie within the heart’s most easy reach. 1 [Note: P. C. Ainsworth, Poems and Sonnets, 77.]

(2) Its preciousness and power.—Some words are dead logs and others are living truths; some words are like living creatures that have hands and feet; there are some words which, as you listen to them, make the blood move fast and the pulse beat rapidly, and you want to go forth then and there to do something worth doing; they are words that have life about them. Such words are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, for they are spirit and they are life. That means that if they dwell in us they minister to our life. Man does not live by bread alone, although he is perpetually trying to persuade himself that he does. What is it that we live by in the life of the spirit? Some of us have in our reading experienced the keen joy of coming across a new lifegiving thought; it is like the joy of an astronomer who, watching the skies, finds new planets come within his ken. We are like a discoverer looking out on the great Pacific ocean of truth, and in a moment there opens before us a world of truth, as by a single flash of insight. But there are no words that will do this for us like the living Word of Christ.

I have been greatly cheered by assurances which have recently reached me again and again of the blessing which God has caused to rest on my ministry in past years, and of the light and strength which, through God’s grace, some are finding in my books; but I seem to have a great deal to say that I have never said yet, and I want to say it. How wonderful the gospel of Christ is! I have been thinking about it and preaching about it for more than forty years, and yet there seem to be vast provinces of truth in it which I am only just beginning to explore. 1 [Note: R. W. Dale, Life, 631.]

In the Green Room at Dresden, where for centuries the Saxon princes have gathered their gems and treasures until they have become worth millions of pounds, may be seen a silver egg, a present to one of the Saxon queens, which when you touch a spring opens and reveals a golden yolk. Within this is hid a chicken, whose wing when pressed also flies open, disclosing a splendid gold crown, studded with jewels. Nor is this all; another secret spring being touched, hidden in the centre is found a magnificent diamond ring. So it is with every truth and promise of God’s word—a treasure within a treasure; and all to enrich and bless us. 2 [Note: Principal Holliday.]

To all men’s hearts the words of Christ find a way when they are rightly considered. For no one will say that to hate is better than to love, darkness better than light, impurity than holiness, falsehood better than truth. And it may very likely be the case that when all the endless books and tomes of scholastic divinity, ancient and modern, shall have ceased to interest mankind, the words of Christ, and these alone, shall prevail. 3 [Note: B. Jowett.]

(3) Its gracious accent.—When a person speaks there is not only the thing he says, but the tone in which he says it. There is a dry and flippant tone which withers the sincerity out of the kindest words, and there is a full-hearted tone which will fill the most common words with a melting magic. And so there is not only Christ’s Word, but Christ’s way of speaking it. “The Word dwelt among us full of grace and truth.” What Jesus spoke was truth, the way He spoke was gracious, so gracious that all men marvelled hearing the words which proceeded out of His mouth. Christ’s tone was gracious. He spoke the truth, but He spoke the truth in love. Even when moved with indignation at hypocrisy and hardness of heart, there was love enough to make His anger far more awful, that absence of bitterness when goodness frowns on guilt—the wrath of the Lamb.

A chemist may analyse the wine of Lebanon, and he may tell you that it contains so many salts and alkalies; and you may combine all these, you may mix them in the just proportions; but chemistry will never create what the vintage yielded. To make the wine of Lebanon needs Lebanon itself—the mountain with its gushing heart and aromatic springs. A theologian may analyse the Christian doctrine. He may tell you how many truths and tenets this Bible contains; and you may combine them all. You may put the sound words together and make a system of them, but that system, however orthodox, so long as it abides alone, is not the Word of Christ. It needs Christ’s own mind, His loving heart and benignant spirit, to reproduce the truth as it is in Jesus. It needs the Evangelic truth and the Evangelic tone to go together. They are essential to one another, and it is Gospel only when they are combined. 1 [Note: J. Hamilton, Works, vi. 40.]

He whom God sent into the world, to be the Light of the world, and Head of the whole Church, and the perfect example of true religion and virtue, for the imitation of all—the Shepherd whom the whole flock shall follow wherever He goes—even the Lord Jesus Christ, was a person who was remarkably of a tender and affectionate heart; and His virtue was expressed very much in the exercise of holy affections. 2 [Note: Jonathan Edwards.]

The Sacred Infancy teaches us tenderness; the Passion tenderness; the Blessed Sacrament tenderness; the Sacred Heart tenderness. But look at the common life of Jesus among men, and you will see more clearly what this tenderness is like. There is first the tenderness of our Lord’s outward deportment. The narrative of Palm Sunday is an instance of it. Also His way with His disciples, His way with sinners, and His way with those in affliction or grief who threw themselves in His road. He quenched not the smoking flax nor broke the bruised reed. This was a complete picture of Him. There was tenderness in His very looks, as when He looked on the rich young man and loved Him: and St. Peter was converted by a look. His whole conversation was imbued with tenderness. The tone of His parables, the absence of terrors in His sermons, the abyss of forgiveness which His teaching opens out, all exemplify this. He is no less tender in His answer to questions, as when He was accused of being possessed, and when He was struck on the face. His very reprimands were steeped in tenderness; witness the woman taken in adultery, James and John, and the Samaritan, and Judas; nor was His zeal less tender, as was evidenced when He rebuked the brothers who would fain have called down fire from heaven upon the Samaritan villagers, and also by the sweet meekness of His divine indignation when He cleared the Temple. Now if our Lord is our model, and if His spirit is ours, it is plain that a Christian-like tenderness must make a deep impression upon our spiritual life; and indeed give it its principal tone and character. Without tenderness we can never have that spirit of generosity in which we must serve God. 1 [Note: F. W. Faber.]

II

Our Appropriation of the Word

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you.” The word “dwell” means more than a temporary lodging. You are said to dwell in the house you inhabit; it becomes your home; you feel at ease in it; you are at liberty in it; you are welcome in it; you do as you like in it; you have authority in it. That is what is meant here. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you.” He does not say—“visit you; come to you occasionally; reside for a time with you.” No, but “inhabit, reside continually; have a home in you; be welcome to you; be at ease in you; have authority in you; do as it likes with you; regulate and dispose and arrange everything in you.”

St. Paul regards the word as an inhabitant of the soul’s chamber, so that without it the Christian character would be like a human body without a face, like a face without an eye, like one of those gaunt, untenanted dwellings that you see sometimes staring you in the face, and giving no signs of happy occupancy; it needs men and women to dwell in it to give it shape and character. He says, “Let the word of Christ be in your heart of hearts as that which will clothe and form and fashion and give significance and character to your life. Let it abide in you richly in all wisdom.”

A human life without the indwelling word of God is as empty as a landscape without human beings in it. All true landscape, whether simple or exalted, depends primarily for its interest on connexion with humanity, or with spiritual powers. Banish your heroes and nymphs from the classical landscape—its laurel shades will move you no more. Show that the dark clefts of the most romantic mountain are uninhabited and untraversed; it will cease to be romantic. Fields without shepherds and without fairies will have no gaiety in their green, nor will the noblest masses of ground or colours of cloud arrest or raise your thoughts, if the earth has no life to sustain, and the heaven none to refresh. 1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, v. (Works, vii. 255).]

1. Let the word of Christ dwell in the memory.—Let it dwell in the memory, for there is the place where we should plant the seed. As the seed goes into the soil of the earth and the soil of the earth does not understand it; so the seed of the truth of Christ goes into our memory, and our memory does not understand it. But it strikes its living roots down into our thoughts, and by and by we are lifted—transfigured into the likeness of Jesus Christ. The morning, the springtime of life, is the time to sow the memory with the truth of Christ. In the springtime, when the soil is moist and warm, it takes in the seed and gives back quickly; but in the summer, after the July sun has exhausted the moisture, the seed perishes; and, if scattered over the beaten track, it is wasted. So, the time to pack the memory with the truth of Christ is in youth, before the hot sun of middle age has exhausted the soil of its ambition, thought, and imagination; before the impress of the busy world has come upon the soul.

John Ruskin, that master writer of English prose, says that when he was a boy his mother compelled him to memorize chapter after chapter of the Old Testament, particularly the Psalms, and chapter after chapter of the New Testament; and now whatever John Ruskin has written is filled with quotations from the Bible. As you can taste the June clover in the sweet country butter, so you can taste the Bible in the writings of John Ruskin. 2 [Note: O. P. Gifford.]

It has been remarked by those who have had wide opportunities for observation that memory is a most important part of the basis of intellectual pre-eminence. The information we can gather regarding the early training of James Kidd bears out this high estimate that is taken of the function of memory in mental and moral development. When he was a mere child he not only read, but was able to repeat without book, the greater part of the Gospel of John. Every day his mother gave him his portion, causing him to commit to memory the passage that was read, and putting questions to him to induce him to ponder and digest what he had acquired, so that the truth entered into his growing intelligence, and was not a mere mechanical appropriation. When he was an old man, Dr. Kidd often spoke with grateful emotion of the gracious wisdom of his mother in being at such pains so to present Jesus Christ to his mind as to beget in him reverence and love that hallowed the springs of his life. 1 [Note: Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 5.]

I have a room whereinto no one enters

Save I myself alone:

There sits a blessed memory on a throne,

There my life centres.

While winter comes and goes—oh tedious comer!—

And while its nip-wind blows;

While bloom the bloodless lily and warm rose

Of lavish summer.

If any should force entrance he might see there

One buried yet not dead,

Before whose face I no more bow my head

Or bend my knee there;

But often in my worn life’s autumn weather

I watch there with clear eyes,

And think how it will be in Paradise

When we’re together. 2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 334.]

2. Let the word of Christ dwell in the imagination.—Memory combined with imagination is a very marvellous power, but alone it is of very little use. A man’s memory may be packed with great principles, but they are of no use to him, because they have not entered into his life through faith. But what is faith? It is trust in a person; dependence upon the word of the person. But it is more than that; it is the imagining power of the soul. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for; it is the evidence of things not seen.” Let the word of Christ dwell in your imagination. Brood over it. Give yourself to it until all doubt, all mists of obscurity pass away. Rise with it to the heavenlies where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

I had a hot march to Blonay among the vines, and between their dead stone walls; once or twice I flagged a little, and began to think it tiresome; then I put my mind into the scene, instead of suffering the body only to make report of it; and looked at it with the possession-taking grasp of the imagination—the true one; it gilded all the dead walls, and I felt a charm in every vine tendril that hung over them. It required an effort to maintain the feeling: it was poetry while it lasted, and I felt that it was only while under it that one could draw, or invent, or give glory to, any part of such a landscape. I repeated “I am in Switzerland” over and over again, till the name brought back the true group of associations, and I felt I had a soul, like my boy’s soul, once again. I have not insisted enough on this source of all great contemplative art. The whole scene without it was but sticks and stones and steep dusty road. 1 [Note: Ruskin, in E. T. Cook’s Life of John Ruskin, i. 246.]

3. Let the word of Christ dwell in the affections.—Pascal said faith must be imbued with feeling or else it will always be vacillating. Of how much modern scepticism have you not there the explanation! A man does not feel deeply his faith, else he would not wave to and fro and be shaken by every wind of doctrine. The word of Christ will not dwell in a man’s mind unless it dwells in a man’s heart; it will not give the intellect contact with truth unless it graciously sways the currents of his feelings. There are some scents which are as exquisite as the breath of spring, but they are faint and evanescent, you hardly discern them in the air before they are gone; there are others that cling to us and yet never pall. So it is with sounds; there are some tunes that cling to us, that we cannot banish, and that we would not banish if we could.

I remember reading, in a book about travels in South America, about the water-vine. A traveller may be going about not knowing how to quench his thirst, but if he sees one of these plants growing his difficulties are at an end, for he has only to sever the stem and a stream of fresh cold water flows forth to quench the thirst. The reason is the plant is full of sap. The character is full of sap if the word of Christ really dwells in a man’s heart. 2 [Note: W. T. Davison.]

Jesus’ idea lifts Christianity above the plane of arid discussion and places it in the region of poetry, where the emotions have full play and Faith is vision. Theology becomes the explanation of the fellowship between the soul and Jesus. Regeneration is the entrance into His life, Justification the partaking of His Cross, Sanctification the transformation into His character, Death the coming of the Lord, Heaven His unveiled Face. Doctrines will be but moods of the Christ-consciousness; parables of the Christ-life. Suffering will be the baptism of Jesus and the drinking of His cup, and if every saint has not the stigmata on his hands and feet, he will at least, like Simon the Cyrenian, have the mark of the Cross upon his shoulder. And service will be the personal tribute to Jesus, whom we shall recognize under any disguise. 1 [Note: John Watson, The Mind of the Master.]

4. Let the word of Christ dwell richly in the will.—Character lies pre-eminently in the sphere of the will. He who would achieve much in the moral life must be capable of mighty endeavours. The place of will in influence is hardly less obvious. Only he who can set his goal and steadily and firmly pursue it can hope to count greatly with others.

The Great Teacher has said “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” It is Christ’s will that every power God has given to man shall find its full employ. It is His will that we shall have life and that we shall have it more abundantly. It is the Spirit of Power within, energizing with our spirit—the human will in its highest action. The mystery of that union of the Divine will with the human will none can ever explain. But the mystery is no greater than that of the human will energizing from the centre to the circumference of our entire being. Striving to harmonize your will with the will of God, you will learn to make the best use of this greatest and grandest of your unused powers. 2 [Note: S. Fallows, Health and Happiness, 148.]

The common characteristic of the virtues lies in a state of will—a will in harmony with the good. The harmony may indeed be far from perfect; but the more nearly it is approached, the higher is the virtue. Still further, we may be only faintly conscious of the nature of the good which is being realized in our own character. By instinct and training a man may show himself brave and his own master, without thinking much of the ends thereby achieved. Yet virtue is a state of consciousness—not mere instinct. It does not, of course, require elaborate reflection upon our own motives; far less does it involve the morbid self-examination which turns life to bitterness. Its consciousness is not a consciousness of the individual self and its struggles and weaknesses so much as a contemplation of, and firm hold on, the ideal self—the good which we approach in the very act of striving after it. From this point of view, the attitude which at once apprehends and wills the good is the root of all the virtues. This may be called the Good Will. 1 [Note: W. R. Sorley, The Moral Life, 65.]

Thou who mad’st the mighty clock

Of the great world go;

Mad’st its pendulum swing and rock,

Ceaseless to and fro;

Thou whose will doth push and draw

Every orb in heaven,

Help me move by higher law

In my spirit graven.

Like a planet let me swing—

With intention strong;

In my orbit rushing sing

Jubilant along;

Help me answer in my course

To my seasons due;

Lord of every stayless force,

Make my Willing true. 2 [Note: George MacDonald, “Violin-Songs” (Poetical Works, i. 354).]

5. Let the word of Christ dwell richly in the whole life.—The word should manifest the rich abundance of its dwelling in men by opening their minds to receive “every kind of wisdom.” Where the gospel dwells in its power in a man’s spirit, and is intelligently meditated on and studied, it will flower in principles of thought and action applicable to all subjects, and touching the whole horizon of human life. All, and more than all, the wisdom which these false teachers promised in their mysteries, is given to the babes and the simple ones who treasure the word of Christ in their hearts, and the least among them may say, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Thy testimonies are my meditation.” That gospel which the child may receive has “infinite riches in a narrow room,” and, like some tiny black seed, for all its humble form, has hidden in it the promise and potency of wondrous beauty of flower, and nourishment of fruit. Cultured and cared for in the heart where it is sown, it will unfold into all truth which a man can receive or God can give, concerning God and man, our nature, duties, hopes and destinies, the tasks of the moment, and the glories of eternity.

Is it possible that from such a life as Jesus lived so long ago, a life that was lived back in the very dust of history and that has come down to us in records which seem sometimes to be flecked with tradition and obscured with the distance in which they lived—is it possible that I should get from Him a guidance of my daily life here? Can Jesus really be my Teacher, my Guide, in the actual duties and perplexities of my daily life and lead me into the larger land in which I know He lives? Ah! the man knows very little about the everlasting identity of human nature, little of how the world in all these changeless ages is the same, who asks that—very little, also, of how in every largest truth there are all particulars and details of human life involved; little of how everything that a man is to-day, upon every moment, rests upon some eternal foundation and may be within the power of some everlasting law. The wonder of the life of Jesus is this—and you will find it so and you have found it so if you have ever taken your New Testament and tried to make it the rule of your daily life—that there is not a single action that you are called upon to do of which you need be, of which you will be, in any serious doubt for ten minutes as to what Jesus Christ, if He were here, would have you do under those circumstances and with the material upon which you are called to act. The soul that takes in Jesus’ word, the soul that through the words of Jesus enters into the very person of Jesus, the soul that knows Him as its daily presence and its daily law—it never hesitates. There is no single act of your life, there is no single dilemma in which you find yourself placed, in which the answer is not in Jesus Christ. I do not say that you will find some words in Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that will detail exactly the condition in which you find yourself placed; but I do say that if, with your human sympathies and your devoted love, you can feel the presence of that Jesus behind the words that He said, the personal perfectness, the Divine life manifested in the human life, there is not a single sin or temptation to sin that will not be convicted. There is where we rest when we claim that Jesus Christ is the Master of the world, that He opens the great richness and infinite distances of the human life, that He shows us what it is to be men. 1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Addresses, 109.]

The Indwelling Word

Literature

Binney (T.), Sermons in King’s Weigh-House Chapel, 1st Ser., 214.

Dixon (A. C.), The Person and Ministry of the Holy Spirit, 118.

Gibbons (J.), Discourses and Sermons, 97.

Gregg (J.), Sermons Preached in Trinity Church, Dublin, ii. 131.

Hamilton (J.), Works, ii. 419.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Colossians and Philemon, 320.

Nicoll (W. R.), Ten-Minute Sermons, 259.

Plumptre (E. H.), Theology and Life, 115.

Ridgeway (C. J.), The King and His Kingdom, 101.

Sadler (M. F.), Sermon Outlines, 19.

Sauter (B.), The Sunday Epistles, 88.

Christian World Pulpit, xxix. 302 (Keghead); l. 218 (Davidson); lxxi. 11 (Chadwick).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, iv. 182 (Carruthers).