S. Christ meeting the Prince of this world
CHRIST MEETING THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD
“Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world Cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so do I. Arise, let us go hence.” - John 14:30-31 THE Lord would have the world to know that what he does at this crisis is done, not in deference to any right or power which the prince of this world has in him, or over him; but from love to the Father, and in obedience to the Father’s commandment. For it is a crisis; the supreme crisis of his earthly life. The active work of that life is over. His public ministry has been solemnly closed: “Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.” It was his last word to the people: “These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them” (John 12:35-36). He taught no more publicly. His public ministry is over. The time for more private communion with his chosen apostles is also all but spent. “Hereafter I will not talk much even with you.” What remains is the passion; the passive endurance of appointed suffering. In that terrible trial he might seem to be the victim of hostile principalities: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). But it is not so; “for now,” in that very hour, “shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). He cometh indeed; but he cometh only to be cast out. He has nothing in me. I am the servant of the Father only. Let all the world of created intelligences know that what I do is done from love to the Father, and in obedience to the Father’s commandment. The prince of this world comes. He comes at this critical hour to look after his interests; the interests which the fall has given him in the history and destiny of the race which he has seduced. He comes to urge the accusation which he is ever bringing against the guilty children of men at the bar of the righteous Judge. He comes to assert his title as the potentate to whom the rebels against the throne of the Most High have become subject. But he comes to one who sets at naught his accusation, and disowns his rule; whom therefore he cannot touch. He has nothing in me. Can he charge with guilt the Holy One of God? Can he claim the Son of God as his captive or slave? I have indeed a bloody baptism to be baptized with, a bitter cup to drink! Not, however, because the prince of this world has anything in me, though he comes to me; but to make the world know that I love the Father, and that, as the Father has given commandment, so I do.
Let us consider, in reference to this position, first Christ, and then the Christian.
Part First
Contemplate Christ in this position. As representing mankind - sinners, guilty, under a just doom of death; subjects, in rebellion against righteous authority; he meets, faces, and confronts, two antagonistic authorities or powers; on the one hand, that of the prince of this world; on the other hand, that of the Father, He defies the one, he owns the other. He defies the prince of this world in the very points in which he owns the Father. I love the Father, and as he gives me commandment so I do. He therefore has something, everything, in me; I am his. If he has anything to allege against me, I bow to his charge. If he has anything to require of me, I acknowledge his right. But if the prince of this world accuses, I defy his malice. If he asks obedience, I defy his might.
I. The prince of this world comes as an accuser. That is his character from the beginning; his very name. He is the Devil, the maligner, the calumniator. He is Satan, the adversary, the libeller. In that character he is seen in Zechariah’s vision (Zechariah 3:1) “standing before the angel of the Lord, at the right hand of the high priest, to resist him” - to be his adversary (marg.); evidently as an accuser; to expose the filthy garments with which the high priest is clothed. It is Joshua, or Jesus, who is the high priest thus charged. The case is tried first here, on earth, in the tribunals of the world, whose prince he is. And how does he fare? Jesus stood before two earthly courts, in both of which the prince of this world had enough of influence, and could reckon upon ministers enough to do his pleasure. The Jewish priests and elders met in solemn conclave; the Sanhedrim, which in these days the prince of this world might claim as his own - a very synagogue of Satan. The judges were on his side, and there was no lack of unscrupulous witnesses. But the charge of blasphemy, even in so partial a court, broke down. Consistent testimony could not be found. In default of evidence the accuser is fain to get sentence passed upon a wilful and violent misconstruction by the judges of the prisoner’s pleading; - “he hath spoken blasphemy.” The prince of this world carries the suit into another court, even more properly his own - the court of Pilate. And craftily shifting his ground, instead of the charge of blasphemy, which a Gentile judge would have laughed to scorn, he substitutes that of sedition, or treason against Caesar, to which Caesar’s deputy cannot but give heed. Even there again, however, the accuser is baffled. “I find no fault in this man,” is the unwelcome sentence of the unbiassed Roman. And then, when, in defiance of law and justice, the Holy One, is executed as a criminal, and when the dying thief testifies, “This man hath done nothing amiss;” adding the prayer, “Lord, remember me;” and when the relenting centurion glorifies God, saying, “Truly this was a righteous man;” the prince of this world is forced to feel, that though he cometh to Christ as an accuser, he has nothing in him. But Jesus stands before a higher tribunal than any human judgment-seat. He is at the bar of the holy and righteous God, and even there the prince of this world would, if it were possible, stand against him as an adversary, an accuser. Against himself personally he can have nothing to say. He cannot gainsay the voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But the Lord bears our sin in his own body on the cross! “He is made sin for us!” Well! and what then? what of that? Has the prince of this world on that account anything in him? Has he any authority or any power to deal with our Surety? to charge him with our criminality, or lay upon him our doom? Was it at his bidding; was it to please him that Jesus, our Jesus, consented to take our iniquities as his own, and so suffer for us, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God?” Was it not for his love to the Father, and in obedience to the Father’s commandment? The Father’s right to deal with him as standing in the room of guilty sinners, - and of me the chief of sinners, - my Saviour willingly acknowledges. The prince of this world can assert no such right. He can enforce no such substitution. This is a vital point. It touches the essence of the great doctrine of the atonement. The Lord Jesus, when he gave his life a ransom for many, gave it, not to the prince of this world, but to God only, who alone could require, who alone could accept, the ransom. To conceive otherwise of the redemption purchased by Christ, is to make it a redemption from the dominion of Satan by the Son’s voluntary offering of himself in our stead to Satan. It is to glorify Satan, not God. No doubt, the prince of this world has acquired dominion over us. He has led us captive. And having seduced us, he is our accuser; accusing us of the very sin into which he has seduced us; urging against us the sentence of condemnation. So he tries to keep us helplessly bound in the fetters of conscious guilt. From all that thraldom our Lord delivers us; but not surely by giving himself an offering to the prince of this world. He has no title to demand satisfaction, as if the world, or as if we, were lawfully his. He cannot stipulate for any conditions, or any price of our release; nor will our Deliverer so far acknowledge his interest, as to appease him with any ransom. When the Lord Jesus, therefore, appears at the bar of heaven’s righteous judgment, laden with the burden, covered with the foul robe, of your guilt, the Father alone has to do with him. The prince of this world has nothing in him. To all that the Father inflicts he willingly submits. The chastisement, the wrath of the Father, he willingly bears. To the Father he presents himself, even when the Father’s word is: “Awake, sword, against my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow.” “Lo! I come, to do thy will, God.” With the prince of this world he deals very differently; not as his victim, but as his conqueror; that we also may deal with him as conquerors. On the cross “he spoiled principalities and powers, making a show of them openly.” And this is his crowning triumph over them and their head, that just because on the cross he is still loving the Father, and as the Father gave him commandment, so doing; on that very account, when the prince of this world came, he has nothing in him. Is not this your confidence, poor soul? Is not this your emancipation from Satan’s bondage? When the willing Surety took your place, and submitted to the treatment which you deserved, the prince of this world could lay nothing to his charge. He could find no fault in him, either personally or as your substitute, in his character or in his finished work. He had no hold over him. That precious life was not forfeited to him. No! a thousand times no! But Jesus loved the Father; and the Father, out of his great love to the world, - to you, - had given him a commandment to “finish transgression, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in an everlasting righteousness;” and he would have all to know and believe, that because he loves the Father, who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but obtain everlasting life,” therefore, as the Father has given him commandment, so he does. What say you to this, sinner? Is it not good news to you?
II. The prince of this world comes, not only as an accuser, but as a ruler and lord, claiming dominion over all the world. In that character he came to Christ at first. In his first interview, in the temptation of the wilderness, he speaks as the prince of this world. He makes princely demands. He gives princely pledges. A divine stranger, as it seems, sets foot on what he has been wont to regard as his own proper domain. Will this new man, this second Adam, the Son of God, do him homage, as the first Adam and all his seed have done? Will he fall down and worship this world’s prince, for the sake of this world as his prize? The tempter is cast out. He departs for a season. But he comes again. Flattery has failed; severity may succeed. He musters his hosts; summoning his legions from hell, prompting his agents on earth. For one dark hour of agony he is permitted to assail the soul of the wondrous sufferer, and so to overpower him as to wring from his body the bloody sweat, and from his all but broken heart the prayer of anguish: “Father, if it be possible, let the cup pass!”
Still, the Lord says, the prince of this world has nothing in me. He may be this world’s prince, but he is not mine. I owe him no allegiance; nor can he, nor any minister of his, have any power against me, except it be given him from above. I give no heed to his suggestions or to his threats. It is not his will that I do, but the will of him who sent me; and, if that will appoint a cross, better far a cross from the Father than a hundred crowns from the prince of this world. Is not this also your confidence, poor soul? Is it not thus that you can stay yourself on the Righteous One? Here is your righteousness, the righteousness on the ground of which you, a guilty sinner, are justified, acquitted, accepted. It is Christ, Christ loving the Father, and as the Father gave him commandment, so doing. His doing is his passion, his suffering, his dying. But it is doing still. In one view it is passive righteousness; his endurance of the cross. But it is active righteousness as well. It is the crowning instance of his obedience; that obedience unto death for which God “has highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Yes! he is “the Lord our righteousness.” We are righteous in him. “Of God are we in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us righteousness.”
Part Second
Consider now, not Christ, but the Christian. You, believer, occupy the very position which he occupied. To you, as to him, the prince of this world cometh; and in his double character, - as your accuser, and as claiming to be your lord.
I. He comes to accuse. He does not so come at first. He may not be so coming now. He does not reprove your sins now. He palliates them, and pleads in their excuse, calling them by smooth names, cloaking them under plausible disguises; and, in an hour of seriousness or alarm, he has many an opiate wherewith to minister to an uneasy soul. But he will not be always thus kind, furnishing you with a shield and shelter against the upbraidings of a wounded spirit, and the sharp arrows of an angry God. He is like his minions and ministers on earth, the sinners who entice you. When they have enticed you, they may keep up the farce for a time; they may flatter and fondle you while you please them: but when you begin to reap the fruit of what they have sowed; when lassitude, and self-reproach, and weariness of soul, and sickness of heart, are consuming you, miserable comforters are they all; they are the first to cast a stone at you. The prince of this world, while you follow his course, may give you no hint of the hour of reckoning at hand; but when that hour comes, he will be there. For what end? to take your part, and plead in palliation of your guilt? Ah! no. When he meets you in the agony of conviction, in the hour of death, it will not be to whisper in your ear hollow promises of peace, and vain assurances of safety; but to drive you, if he can, to utter despair of God’s mercy. For, if by any means he can keep you away from God, by false peace now, or false fear then, he gains his end.
But, in this matter of your being chargeable with guilt, let the Father alone deal with you, as having something in you. Fall into his hands. His way of dealing with you may be sharp; but it is true, and tender, and loving. It is the reverse of that of the prince of this world. It is not flattery first and then fierce revenge; but kind faithfulness all through, bringing solid peace. He who spared not his only begotten Son, will not indeed, in the like crisis, spare you. He will make it terrible to you, as it was terrible, in his agony, to your surety. But submit yourself in and with Christ to the Father, in trusting, loving obedience. Let the Spirit shut you up into Christ, and work in you that intimate personal oneness with Christ which carries in it communion with him in what he did out of love to the Father, and as the Father gave him commandment. Let his willing endurance of the Father’s righteous sentence of death for sin become yours. Be ye crucified with Christ. Be ye partakers in his passion; in his cross. Let the Father search, and judge, and condemn you. That sets you free from every other accuser. For now, if any other being than the Father whom you love, and whose commandment in this matter you own, or if all other beings together, come against you as adversaries; you know how to meet them all. To your own master you stand. With the Father alone you have to do. The prince of this world has nothing in you. It is a very small thing that you should be judged of man’s judgment upon earth. It is a very small thing even that the accuser of the brethren should accuse you day and night before the throne on high. The Father himself, seated on the throne, has already judged you; he has already sentenced you; and his sentence none may impeach. It has already taken effect. The case is ended. You may challenge, therefore, all the powers of the world and its prince, to come, leagued in a covenant of envy, to do their worst, to try their utmost, if they can shake the rock of sure acceptance on which you stand. Sins they may discover in you, numerous enough and aggravated enough. Charges, many charges, they may urge against you. But the Father has been beforehand with your enemies, who are his own. All the sins which they discover have been already set out before him. All the charges which they bring have been already dealt with and disposed of by him. You acknowledge all the guilt which they can point out, and more, infinitely more. You feel, and are content to feel, its bitterness and its curse; not, however, out of deference to any right which they have in you or over you; but because you love the Father, and as the Father has given you commandment, so you do. Yes; it is in loving obedience to the Father that you now consent to be tried, and judged, and sentenced, in and with Jesus. More helplessly guilty than the prince of this world could represent you, still you cast yourself into the arms of Jesus. You and Jesus are one. The Spirit, working faith in you, makes you and keeps you one; and therefore, if the prince of this world comes now to accuse you, you are not careful to answer him. You make your appeal to Jesus, and say, - Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me.
Here let me offer two counsels, - the one for warning, the other for encouragement.
1. For warning. - If you would know, or realise in your own experience the full blessedness of the position I have described; you must, in this matter of your condemnation, as guilty sinners, be truly loyal and faithful to the Father, even as the Lord Jesus himself in your place was. You must submit to be thoroughly tried and judged by the Father with respect to each and all of your sins or sinful tendencies, without exception and without reserve. Is there a single fault of temper or behaviour; is there a solitary affection of the flesh, which you cannot bear to have judicially dealt with by the righteous Father; first condemned, and then pardoned; crucified and cancelled, in Christ and his cross? Then, in respect of that one lust or iniquity, unconfessed, unforgiven, unmortified, unforsaken, the prince of this world has still something in you. You give him a hold over you which he will not readily let go. He and the world, whose prince he is, are entitled to accuse you. Their accusation has point; and, however you may make light of it now, it will one day sting you to the quick. But do as David was wont to do. When charges, even false charges, were laid to his door, he did not hastily acquit himself. He entered into the secret place of his God. He consented, he sought, to be searched and judged by the righteous Father. And not till every hidden root of bitterness was anew brought out to light, and made to die the death, did he stand upon the divine verdict of acquittal, and brave the malice of his foes. Be ye thus guileless and thus true; that yours, by the power of the Spirit, may be the triumphant challenge; “If God be for us, who can be against us?” “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?”
2. For encouragement. - Count it not strange if, as you advance in the divine life, and draw near its earthly close, the prince of this world should be ever coming with increasing malice. Taking advantage of your growing tenderness of conscience, your infirmities, and the troubles that beset you, he may more and more pitilessly assail you. He may try to persuade you that all is not right between the Father and you; that something is seriously wrong. The pitiful chastenings of fatherly love he would have you to regard as wrathful judgments. But you will accept all such experience as Jesus did. You love the Father, and as the Father gives you commandment, so you do. To whatever the Father appoints you yield, be it ever so grievous. You receive it as his appointment; for, dark as the visitation may appear, it is not sent at the instance of the prince of this world, or because any heed is given to his accusation. He has nothing in you any more than he has in Jesus. When he comes, seeking to take occasion from the Father’s sharp but salutary treatment of you, to cast doubt on your standing as accepted in the Beloved, be it yours to say: “It is Christ that died; yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
II. The prince of this world comes, not only to accuse you as guilty before God, but to claim you as subject to himself. And, as you once were his servants, he has therefore some title, as it might seem, to your service. But his title is now null and void; for, prince of this world though he be, he has no natural, no original, no legitimate right to be your prince. His right can be only a right of conquest on his part, or of consent on your part, or of both. But on neither of these grounds has he anything in you now.
1. As to the right of conquest on his part, he is indeed as a strong man armed, who did once keep his palace and his goods in peace; but has not one stronger than he come upon him, to overcome, disarm, and spoil him. The secret of his power over you lies in your being under condemnation. It is that which makes you dependent on him for such false peace as he can give you in exchange for your serving him. He has you at his mercy. In Christ the spell is broken. There is now no condemnation to you who are in Christ. You are able, therefore, and entitled, to throw off the yoke of bondage. “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”
Arise, then, ye emancipated slaves. Assert your freedom to serve the Father only. Alas! if there should still be any hesitation; any tendency still to compromise, and make terms, and gain time. I may be a prisoner in my enemy’s stronghold, and the glad tidings may reach me that my enemy is fallen. I may be assured, that if? Will, I may go forth free; that no gate of brass will hinder me, nor any rude sentinel challenge me. But the helplessness of prolonged imprisonment is upon me. I see high walls, strong gates, and gigantic foes, all around me. And I sit still and shiver, when one effort of resolution would set me at liberty. Is there any such snare in which, at this hour, the prince of this world is entangling you? Is there any step in your Christian life which you feel you ought to take, and which he is hindering you from taking? It may be the breaking off from some evil custom, the abandonment of some doubtful worldly way; or the commencement of some holy duty hitherto neglected. With how many embarrassments will the prince of this world surround you! What arguments will he bring forward to perplex you! What difficulties will he conjure up to alarm you! As if you ought not, or cannot, in present circumstances, take the step which, if you were more favourably situated, would be reasonable and right. All the while your own heart testifies, that if you would but determine to take the step, and take it at once and with prayer, all these phantoms of opposition would vanish, through the help of the grace that is sufficient for you, that strength which is made perfect in weakness. True; if you were to act thus decidedly, you might raise a commotion in the world, and provoke him who is its prince. He and they might talk, and wonder, and scoff. He might vent his rage upon you in a final struggle before letting you go. But what of that? You love the Father: and as the Father giveth you commandment, so you do. Greater is he that is for you than all they that can be against you. Be strong in your love of the Father and your doing as the Father commandeth you; you will be strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man; and so you will over come the adversary. “I can do all things, through Christ which strengtheneth me.” “When I am weak, then am I strong.”
2. And if the prince of this world comes with the plea of consent on your part, have you not an answer for him in Christ. Yes! I did consent to have the prince of this world as my prince; but it was a consent got on false pretences. Now I know the truth; and the truth has made me free! He came to encourage my evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But he misrepresented to me, and wholly calumniated and belied, the character of God. He would persuade me, and I was persuaded, that the Father was a hard master, whom I could not love, and whose commandments I could not, except under compulsion, keep. Now I see that he is love; that his law is holy, and his commandment holy, and just, and good. The accuser of the brethren would fain accuse even the Father of falsehood or fickleness; and would make me believe, and I did believe, that he might make void his own word, and I might not die. Now I perceive that in this also the prince of this world lies. I see in my Saviour’s cross, - I feel in myself as crucified with him, - that the Father is indeed the Judge of the whole earth, and cannot but execute righteous judgment. And not only in his representations of the Father, but in his promises with reference to himself and his world, he has dealt falsely with me. He held out to me large prospects in the world’s kingdom, if I would but yield to him, as the world’s prince, a very little homage. I have found that he exacts a terrible service, and rewards it with what may be sweet for the moment, but is terribly bitter in the end.
Yes! I now see the whole system of fraud and delusion by which the prince of this world once made me his willing subject. The veil has fallen from my eyes. The glare of worldly glory which attracted me is disclosed in all its rottenness. The Father shines forth in all his fulness of grace and truth, and love. Once I agreed to serve the prince of this world, for the sake of this world as my prize and portion. But I have been deceived, and I keep no terms with the deceiver. The corruption of my nature, indeed, still too strong, and my long familiarity with his works and ways, may give him still the means of harassing and vexing me; and often, too often, he may gain an advantage over me; but, so far as his right and my consent go, he has nothing in me. I am freed from his dominion. I yield him no more any voluntary service: for I love the Father; and as the Father giveth me commandment, so I do. I put off the livery of the prince of this world. I assume the badge and token of another master, the Father, my Father. His now I am. Him now I serve. To him now, by his grace, I would be found faithful even unto death.
I cannot close without adverting, in a sentence, to the Lord’s evident concern for the world at large. His desire, his design, is, not that you only, but that all the world should know what he does, and why he does it. Surely this lays upon you a strong obligation to forward, so far as you can, the accomplishment of his wish and purpose. It is not for your own sake merely, that you may be saved and may serve the Lord, that he tells of Satan’s power overthrown and of his own great work finished. He would have all men everywhere to hear the joyful sound and partake of the glad emancipation. Let your sympathy be with him. Let your trumpet sound. Let your light shine. Tell, by word and deed, by testimony, example, influence; by love and liberality; by Christ-like self-sacrifice and self-denial, and self-devotion, - be ever telling everywhere the story of the cross; making all men know how Jesus loved the Father, and how, as the Father gave him commandment, so he did.