Consolation in Christ
If there be therefore any consolation IN Christ.” — Phil. ii. i.
THIS is the very strongest way the Apostle has of asserting that there are many and abundant consolations IN Christ. Yea,
“everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.”
The form in which the expression is cast, is in accordance with similar phraseology he employs in unfolding other truths of vital moment. As, e.g., in
I am aware that the word translated ‘consolation’ (7ropdfc7;(rij) in our English version, has by some been rendered rather “exhortation” (see Lightfoot and Eadie in loco). It is susceptible of either meaning. “The words,” says the latter of these commentators, “are taken by some to denote the sphere of this irapaKXrjffis; by others, to point to its source. In the one case the meaning is, “if in Christ there be any exhortation;” in the other,” if there be any consolation felt,” or “if ye have any consolation through union with Christ.” ...” Examples of both meanings are so numerous, that they need not be quoted. The meanings are allied in this way, that the exhortation is often intended to impart comfort or results in it “(pp. 83, 84). “We have retained the rendering in our A.V. which is supported by Chrysostom, Theodoret, Calvin, Grotius, and jothers.
CONSOLATION IN CHRIST. in
I st Corinthians xv., where the conditional particle “if” is introduced, again and again, in a series of propositions, — not in the way of insinuating doubt, but rather of imparting emphasis to his argument.
These consolations, let it be specially noted, are represented by him as being found in Christ and Christianity. “God, at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. i. i). But, among these Seers, Isaiah stands out almost alone as the prophet of ’ consolation,’ with his “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” (Isa. xl. i). While, even in his case, all his choicest clusters of solace are gathered, not from Judaism, but from “the Plant of Renown” — “the Branch out of the stem of Jesse.” His brightest constellations of promise shine in the future firmament, of whose glories he was the evangelical Interpreter. Into the lips of the yet distant Messiah he puts the glowing words — “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isa. lxi. I -3). In a well-known picture, the great ri2 IN CHRISTO.
artist, with the audacity of genius, seeks to reflect this noble utterance of the prophet, and to delineate on canvas the sublimest of Gospel verities, with the title of * Christ the Consoler.* Judaism, I repeat, was not the religion of consolation. By it, affliction, in its varied forms, was regarded as purely retributive, — the proof and token of the Divine displeasure. Judaism extorted the reproachful wail from the wddow of Zarephath, as she addressed the man of God, terror-stricken and heart-broken in the presence of death — “Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” (i Kings xvii. 18). “I am the man,” was the exclamation of the plaintive prophet of Judah, “who have seen affliction by the rod of His wrath” (Lam. iii. i). “Such” (was the cruel verdict of “miserable comforters” as they pointed to the degraded Prince of the East on his bed of sackcloth and ashes) — “Such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God” (Job xviii. 21).
Christ, and Christianity, came, with their grander revelations, to show that the sorrows and trials of life are not penal, but disciplinary, — pledges of divine love. The cypress is interweaved with the palm of victory. In the words of an eloquent writer, in speaking of the mission of afflictions — “They are not the forecastings of a coming storm, but the distillings of a mercy- cloud sailing athwart the azure sky of a soul IN Christ,”
*The Consolations in Christ,’ constitute a theme far too wide to be embraced in a few brief sentences.
Though by no means more prominent or valuable than others that might be named, let me select two, suggested by the sentence in the Intercessory Prayer of the Great Consoler — “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one” (John xvii. 2 3): the Father revealed in the Son, and the Son revealed in the experience of His people.
The first of these consolations is the revelation made by Christ and in Christ of the Father.
The fundamental question of all theology — of all religion — is. Who is God? What is the nature of that august, invisible Being, who sways the sceptre of universal empire; — in whose presence I live now, and to whom I have the instinctive feeling (even were that not otherwise countersigned by His inspired, authoritative Message) that I shall at last be accountable? Is He the awful God of the Pagan mythology, enthroned in Olympian thunders and tempests with a temble reserve of power; all loveless, unsympathetic; unknowable and unknown? Especially do these thoughts press for solution in times of trial; seasons of sudden and appalling bereavement; when the lights of life are suddenly dimmed or eclipsed — the staff mysteriously removed — the rod cruelly broken. “Tell me,” is the cry of the smitten one in such hours of piteous desolation —” Tell me about this Great Sovereign who holds the balance of life and death iii
His hand, who has come forth from the inscrutable recesses of His own Being, and touched me to the quick.” “Tell me Thy name,” was the request that burst in trembling terror from the lips even of a child of the covenant, as he confronted a mysterious Presence at the brook Jabbok (Gen. xxxii. 29). What was the recorded answer to that very query? We may listen to it as given in the night of a more mysterious agony by the same adorable One, who in Angel-form had wrestled with the Patriarch — “I have manifested T/iT/ Name unto the men whom Thou hast given Me out of the world” (John xvii. 6). Set in the true antitypical Rock- cleft, we listen to the proclamation of the Divine name. But, glorious as was the revelation to Moses of Jehovah, as “the Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious,” it is a more gracious, more loving revelation still: “My Father, and your Failier; My God, and your God” (John xx. 1 7). Nay, “He that hath seen Me,” said Jesus on that same night of the betrayal, “hath seen the Father” (John xiv. 9). ‘I am the visible image and embodiment of the Invisible God.” And tell Me,’ we may imagine Him asking, ‘How have I been seen? ‘It is “full of grace and truth;” — receiving the penitent, welcoming the pi:odigal, giving bread to the hungry and health to the diseased, rest of soul and body to the weary and heavy-laden, weeping over the loved and lost, putting music into the lips of the bereaved and broken-hearted, forgiving renegade disciple and blaspheming murderer, and taking as companion to heaven that expiring felon. “Say unto the cities of Judah, * Behold (in Me) 7/our God’” (Isa. xl. 9).
Yes! “No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (John i. 1 8). And He hath tkus declared Him: not the myth of philosophy; not some impalpable principle or property of matter, or attribute of mind. But a living, loving Person. Not love, but the loving One: — not Omnipotence, but the Omnipotent One. Not the inscrutable inapproachable Sovereign, wielding a stern sceptre, and promulgating stern decrees; but the gracious Parent, over whose every behest and dispensation — even those most baffling to sense and sight — you can write, “Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things” (Luke xii. 30). Listen to the words of the Apostle. How he seems to delight to dwell with reiterated emphasis on the loving Name! “Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort: who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Cor. i. 2-4).
(2.) The one other “Consolation in Christ” we may now refer to, rising naturally out of the other, ia the manifestation of Himself, in the experience of His people, alike as the Surety-Eedeemer and the sympathising Friend.
Jude the Apostle put the anxious question, “Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us?” (Johnxiv. 22). The whole incarnation was an answer to that query. I may embody it, however, in the terse and apposite sentence of an old divine (Dr. South, 1633): “This happiness does Christ vouchsafe to all His, that as a Saviour He once suffered for them, and that as a Friend he always suffers with them,”
Though we have just spoken of the inferiority of the old dispensation in its code of comfort, we may, nevertheless, in illustrating this manifestation of Christ as * Consoler,’ borrow from Judaism one of its beautiful types; — that, too, from the earliest days of its economy. It is an episode in the life of the most attractive and lovable of the * Pilgrim Fathers.* Let the patriarch Joseph typically reveal the forgiveness, sympathy, and love of that Saviour he so remarkably prefigured. Look at the touching scene recorded in Genesis xlv. 15:” Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them; and after that his brethren talked with him.” How descriptive of the true Joseph, when His brethren find themselves in His presence! It is the moment of joyous reconciliation. Jesus first imparts the kiss of forgiveness. There is no possible consolation without that. Then comes the outburst of fond love (for there might be reconciliation between contending parties, without any manifestation of such affectionate solicitude). It might be a cold, unsympathetic remission of debt, or formal pardon of offence — no more. But the true “Brother born for adversity “— the Friend that sticketh closer than any brother —. lets fall the tears of tenderest love. Then note, still further, what follows —” And after that, his brethren talked with him.’’ Here we have as a natural, but touching sequence, the consolation of mutual fellowship and intercommunion between Christ and His people. The Bible is the medium of that divine communion on His part. Prayer is the medium of that hallowed fellowship on theirs.^ It reminds of the simple saying of a converted New Zealander: — “I open my Bible, God talks with me: I shut my Bible, and go to my knees, and I talk with God.” May that kiss of gracious reconciliation, and that tear of blissful sympathy, be ours. If really and truly “IN Christ,” they are so!
Reader! “while you exult in the gracious revelation of the Father, rejoice also in the loving, exalted sympathy of the Brother in your nature — the divineliuman Friend. Make the prayer of * the man in Christ’ your own — “That I may know Him,... and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil. iii. 10). He knows all the peculiarities of your trials; — every drop
* 1 am indebted for this illustratiou to a friend. in your cup, — -for He Himself drained that cup, filled, with every ingredient of sorrow. Oh, when the hour of sudden desolation cometh as a whirlwind, — when the choicest flowers of the earthly garden droop their heads, and hide their dewy tears amid withered leaves and blighted stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay, — accept all as the loving, though mysterious, means employed by Him who Himself once “suffered being tempted,” to transfer your thoughts and affections to the better Eden, where no flower is known to languish, no frost to injure, no sun to scorch; where the very tears distilled during the night-watches of earth will be transformed into dewdrops sparkling in the morning sunshine of immortality. Meanwhile, carry the cross which He has appointed; take it up in Him, and bear it for Him. Amid a present experience, it may be of clouds and darkness, be it yours to feel in the words of one of God’s tried children — “My real life is that hidden with Christ in God, which is a never-failing wellspring of delight. ... To have the gulph removed which separated me from God, to feel that union as of a branch in the Vine, makes all suffering appear light, since it is His will. Since by it we may be more closely conformed to His image who was made perfect through suffering.” ^” For as the suff’erings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ,... that as ye are partakers of
1 “Memorials of a Quiet Life,” ii. 125-26.
the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation” (2 Cor. i. 5-7).
“As ye ham teen partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye he also of the consolation” Yes. Like the aged Simeon in the Jewish temple of old, wait for “the Consolation of Israel” (Luke ii. 25). A waiting- time may be needed before “the why and the wherefore” of His dealings are made manifest. But if, like that patriarch of the dawning Gospel dispensation, you take the promised Saviour in the arms of your faith, the day will come (it may be now, it may be at death, it assuredly will be on entering the better Jerusalem Temple above), when you shall with him also, not in a ‘JyJ’unc Dimittis’ but in a glorious * Jubilate, be able to say, “Mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation!” “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam. iii. 26).
-M