01-Peace With God
I. PEACE WITH GOD.
2Co 5:18. “God hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.”
I CAN only allow myself a very few words of introduction, in commencing the course of Sermons which by the kindness of your Vicar I have been invited to preach in this Church. You know, I think, that my subjects are to be certain leading features of the state or condition into which it has pleased God to call us. By giving our attention to these in the order in which I have arranged them, and in their several aspects towards God and towards men, I hope that we may be led, God helping us, into a surer knowledge of our Christian privileges and duties. I desire that we should throughout bear in mind that both privileges and duties rest alike upon the calling of God. “All things are of God;” let this be the general motto or text of my course. What we know of God is just so much as it pleases him to reveal of himself; and he has revealed himself in calling us. That is why St Paul corrected himself when he had said “after that we have known God;” adding, “or rather, have been known by God.” Our true attitude towards God is wholly a responsive one; he calls, we listen, and look, and answer. Those who thus hear the voice of God, let it speak to them in whatever way it will, begin to know something of God, at the same time that they are learning really to understand themselves. And now I hasten to bring before you my first topic, Peace with God; by which I mean, the peace which God has made between himself and us.
This, as you know, is the Scriptural and Apostolic account of peace with God. It originates with God; it is he who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. To declare this, was the office of Apostles and Evangelists. And I think we shall understand better what their Gospel still continues to proclaim, if we first make an effort to think of their message as coming new and fresh to men who have not heard it before. In the Apostolic age, the Gospel had this genuine novelty; and therefore the original language concerning the Gospel, which we read in the history and the letters of the Apostles, assumes for the most part that its work is being newly done and its first impression produced. Let us trace then the working of the Gospel when it is “good news,” news as well as good; when it is brought as a light to those who have hitherto been sitting in darkness.
You may think of heathens, or men who have not heard of Jesus Christ, in any age of the world in the first century or in the nineteenth. There is no great difference between one age and another in respect of the essential qualities and conditions of human nature.
Suppose the Evangelist to present himself to such persons as a stranger. He lets it be known at once that he speaks in the name of God. Whatever his audience may be, he may always count upon some sort of acknowledgment of God in their hearts. There is that in the universal heart of man, yes, I say it confidently, not forgetting the absurdities of idolatry, or the blindness of the lowest savages, or the scepticism which prides itself on being in the forefront of civilization, which is ready at once to confess a just Power, ruling above, to whom men owe reverence. When a serious and forcible appeal to such a Power has elicited this acknowledgment, it will probably awaken at the same time two conflicting feelings. The thought of Supreme Righteousness can never be wholly unwelcome to men; it may stir up a lively hope and joy in their souls. But it will also make them conscious of the wrong that is in them.
Supreme Righteousness cannot appear friendly to human unrighteousness. So it is a matter of course that some sense of fear and estrangement should be awakened in all men who hear of a just God. “ How can he regard me? “ says the voice of conscience in the sinner. “ He must be my enemy. This stranger comes to tell me of one who may probably take vengeance upon me.” The Evangelist, we will suppose, goes on to speak of God as gracious. He knows there is need to overcome the repugnance to the thought of God created by the consciousness of wrong-doing. He assures his hearers that the God of heaven and earth is not a vengeful Destroyer; he points to proofs of his beneficence and of his longsuffering. His hearers listen not unmoved, not without some degree of assent. But the sinner in each man says, “What can there be in common between me and this good and gracious Being? It is impossible that he should look with any satisfaction on me; nor is it a pleasure to me to dwell in thought on him.
I wish to follow my own ways, and to be let alone.
I should like to forget this gracious Lord of heaven, and to escape out of his sight. Still, he may be powerful, and I may not be too insignificant for his notice; if I can learn any means by which I might ward off his hostile purpose, it will be safer to try to propitiate him.” The Evangelist never says that such apprehensions are idle. He never tells the sinner that he is sure to go unpunished. It is not his commission to proclaim that God does not care about men and their doings. He affirms earnestly that God is grieved by sin, and will punish it. But he is still more earnest in conveying the announcement which he is charged to deliver. He takes for granted that his hearers are sinners, alienated from God by their sins. It is no wonder to him that they do not like to retain God in their thoughts. But he brings them overtures of reconciliation from God himself.
He calls sin their enemy; God he declares to be a Friend who is seeking to deliver them from their enemy. He assures them that while sin is and must be a barrier between them and God God himself removes the barrier by forgiveness. God is sending to them the message of a pardon which puts away their sins, and claims them as reconciled to him. But the Evangelist is not the bearer of a merely verbal forgiveness. He has the story of Jesus Christ to tell. He says that he comes in the name of the Son of God, who has lived and died in Judea. In accordance with ancient promise and expectation, God has sent his Son into the world.
Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Son of the living God. He lived amongst his countrymen, and in the closest intimacy with a chosen few, but he spoke and acted as the Son whom the Father in heaven had sent. He was the living embodiment of Divine forgiveness, seeking the lost that he might save them, shewing infinite sympathy with all who were unhappy, making common cause with the ignorant, the weak, and the helpless, trying to awaken faith in those amongst whom he taught, and then blessing with acts of healing and deliverance those who believed. But this active unwearied grace is not all that the Evangelist has to tell of in the Son of God. He adds, with wonder in his own heart springing up anew each time he tells the story, that the Son of God came to suffer and die, as well as to teach and to do good. His own countrymen, enemies in their minds through wicked works, blindly rejected his grace and sought to destroy him. Jesus went to meet their anger, not bending before it, but yielding himself willingly to all it could do against him. As he approached the death which he foresaw, the essential Divine glory revealed itself in him more and more perfectly to those who believed in him. Giving himself up with no reserve to his Father, he died, as the Son of man, the cruel death of the Cross. For the moment all hope and light seemed to perish with him. The cause of unhappy sin-laden men descended with him into the grave. But it was safe with him there, and could never again be parted from him. The Father, having given up his Son to death, raised him again from the dead. Jesus Christ rose, to live for ever at the right hand of God, not abandoning mankind, but carrying them with him to the Father. Thenceforth it is his glory to work out the Divine purpose of redemption. He has given his Spirit to be the life of all who come to the Father through him. He has commissioned those who were intimate with him on earth, and others after them, to go forth as his envoys, proclaiming everywhere the Divine reconciliation, and entreating men to receive the forgiveness of sins and to be at peace with their Father in heaven. This is the substance of the Gospel of Christ, coming as good news to ignorant and sinful men.
It is a message of peace, a declaration of pardon, a pleading offer of reconciliation; and it points to Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of man, the crucified and risen, as the Mediator the Living Peace between God and men. No one believing in him can doubt God’s grace. No one can consider him, without being drawn and won by him. In him the enmity between God and man is done away. Where any longer is place for it? The man who believes in Christ is a rebel who lays down his arms, making no conditions, urging no excuses, overwhelmed with the love and grace which seek not his, but him.
It never happened, in the Apostolic age any more than in subsequent times, that when this word of God was spoken to a multitude, it was welcomed by all who heard it. No: to many it has seemed incredible, in many the enmity has been too strong to be overcome. Sometimes it has appeared to be spoken altogether in vain. The seed might be widely scattered, but it was not sure to find the good soil in which it could take root and grow. But those who have gladly received the word have always had this experience, in proportion to their faith, that they have entered into peace. However deep their humiliation, however genuine their disgust with themselves might be, they have perceived and felt that, in Christ, God was making peace with them. The Death and Resurrection of the Son of God have been powerful to dispel all misgivings as to the insuperable nature of sin, all doubts as to God’s willing and availing acceptance of the sinner. Christ has effectually proved himself to be Peace between God and men. But we hereditary Christians are in a different position from non-Christian audiences, in Antioch or in Ephesus, in modern India or in Africa, hearing the good news concerning Christ for the first time.
There is no question for us about becoming Christians and joining the Church; we are members of the Christian Church already.
Well, brethren, the Church of Christ to which we belong is built up upon the reconciliation or atonement which the first Evangelists proclaimed to an estranged world. Men asked to be joined to the Church, because they believed that in Christ they were reconciled to God. They came into it as pardoned sinners. Each one, in becoming a member, received a washing with water which assured him that he was a forgiven man, cleansed by the unbought grace of God. From the Day of Pentecost to this day, that Sacrament of Baptism which Christ ordained has stood forth in all its simplicity, the abiding witness of the remission of sins. The Christian profession rests upon reconciliation, freely given, humbly and gratefully accepted. No one that is a baptized Christian has a right to be anything else than reconciled to God.
Christians may be addressed in two ways. This is one way: a teacher may dwell upon the symptoms of worldliness and corruption in them, symptoms which their neighbours can easily discern, and of which they can hardly be unconscious themselves. He may expostulate with a man, “ What are you, to claim to be a Christian, to profess to be pardoned and reconciled! Don’t you know that you are walking in the ways of carelessness and sin, with a heart too seldom turned towards God, caring for the things of this life, not setting your affections on things above? What have you to do with peace? Your Christianity is merely nominal; beware how you in any way count upon it. Your place is with the outside heathen. Until your heart be changed, you have no part or lot in the matter.” There may be too much truth in such warnings; and it may seem both faithful and wholesome to utter them plainly.
There is another way, which to some might seem less safe. This is, to urge upon Christians, not their own shortcomings, more or less grave and deplorable, but their vocation. Instead of telling them that they are not Christians and trying to prove it, the teacher might plead with them earnestly, “ You are Christians. You are washed, you have received the washing which typifies spiritual cleansing and bears witness of forgiveness; you have been called, you have been consecrated; your true condition is that of being reconciled to God, having comfort and assurance in approaching him, and walking in conformity with his will. If you call yourselves Christians, this is what Christianity is. Claim your privileges by all means. Assume that you are at peace with God through him who gave himself for you on the Cross.” This mode of address you will recognize as familiar to you in the Epistles of the New Testament. St Paul spoke in this way to the Corinthians and others. If it is objected that to become a Christian in those days required courage, involved many sacrifices and dangers, and therefore implied an earnestness of faith which we cannot count upon in an ordinary Christian now; I admit it. But it is also true beyond dispute that the little societies which St Paul so confidently addressed as elect and holy, were deformed by disbelief, by immoralities, and by disorders, which we in these days can scarcely think of as compatible with any sort of Christian profession. Amongst the Christians of the New Testament were at all events some who denied a resurrection, some who required to be warned very solemnly against fornication, some who exhibited vulgar insolence and greediness in the Communion of the Lord’s Supper. But the real justification of this mode of address is not to be sought in the character of those who are addressed, but in its own proper tendency. So far from condoning sin and carelessness, it wages a relentless war against them. It does not say to a man, “ You may be at your ease in cherishing enmity against God; “ but “What manner of person ought you to be, you who by the blood of his Son are reconciled to God! “ We cannot appeal thus to those who do not profess to be Christians; but in speaking to those who do, who have been baptized and have never cast off their Christianity, and who are to be found in Churches, may we not use their Christian calling with great force against their unfaithfulness and inconsistency?
After declaring without reserve, “ God in Christ reconciled you to himself,” it was entirely natural to St Paul to go on, with pathetic entreaty, “I beseech you, in Christ’s stead, be reconciled to God!”
God has laid the foundation; each Christian might assume it and stand upon it, the more he did so, the better; but then he had to build on it the superstructure of his conscious and progressive life.
What say you, my brethren? If the testimony, “God has reconciled you to himself,” comes home to you with any reality, does it not make you conscious with shame and self-reproach of the estrangement which too surely mars your peace with God? Will you not ask the God of all grace to purge your hearts of the dispositions which are so dishonouring and so displeasing to him? Let me say and may the Spirit of God put life and power into the words! to him that is least a Christian amongst all the Christians who hear me, “My brother, believe me, God has made peace between you and himself. Do not look for the evidences of this reconciliation in your own soul. Tainted, distracted, perverse, desponding, all this your soul may be. You know partly in your own conscience what you are, and God knows still better. But it is not in yourself that you are to look for the rounds of reconciliation. See them in Christ, see them in his words of authority, see them still more clearly in his Passion. See what an eternal fountain of pardoning love has been opened in him!
Suffer yourself to be touched and won. Break through the evil influences which keep you back from the Saviour who calls you. Know your true Friend, know your real enemies. The influences that flatter your self-will would be your ruin; God, who asks for your heart, will be your strength and salvation!” And you that have come out of estrangement into God’s peace, let me entreat to value that peace more highly and to be more thankful for it. Never suppose that it depends on your goodness or on your faith. What you have to do is not to make it but to enjoy it. It is your blessedness to live the daily life of those whom Christ calls his friends.