Without Christ
Without Christ.” — Ephes. ii. 12. “In Christ.” — 2 Cor. xii. 2.
THOUGH out of harmony with the subsequent headings, let us, in order to give intensity to the lights of the inspired picture, begin with the one deep shadow — the contrasted truth, which is made by the Apostle to occupy the background.
Awful record, surely, in the pages of every human diary (Paul himself knew the entry once, with its dismal lettering), — “At that time ye were without Christ.” Travellers amid blinding snow and rush of avalanche; — beyond sight of home or hospice; — vessels tossed, unpiloted, and rudderless, in the thick darkness; — planets wandering in ever more devious orbits from their great central sun; — “Without Christ!”
This is not the place, nor is it needful, to enlarge on that great crisis in the Apostle’s history with which every reader is so familiar, when, “as he journeyed towards Damascus,” the Persecutor was
A arrested; when he who fell to the ground a fiery zealot and bigot Pharisee, rose a meek disciple of the Crucified Jesus — wondering, trembling, believing, rejoicing! — the vulture changed into the dove, the lion into the lamb. Ambrose may well speak of the conversion of Paul as “the most glorious deed of Christ the King, next to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” “Grace came, omnipotent grace; and the rampart of that great soul fell like the walls of Jericho; the impregnable city was carried, and all its ample magazines were redeemed for the service of the Lord.”^ It was more than this. That crisis of mighty surrender was the hour when the glorious union we are to ponder in this Volume was consummated; — when “In Christ” rang first in his ear “the melodies of its everlasting chime.” The reality is best described in words which will demand special consideration in subsequent pages. “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ; and be found in Him” (Phil. iii. 7-9).
There was much, doubtless, that made Paul’s experience at that memorable moment distinctive and exceptional. It was not, in his case, as in that of
1 Blunt.
many, with whom “conversion” implies a sudden and startling transition from a life of vice and sin, — the dispersion of darkness from hearts beclouded for years with the repulsive shadows of gross moral debasement. Nor, on the other hand, was it the rare transformation of a scheming impostor (a whited sepulchre), — one who had lived the life of a pretender, — the moral sense vitiated and depraved by hollow hypocritical semblances. No. He sallied forth on that mission from the northern Gate of Jerusalem, — a valorous champion for what he had long deemed the truth; — the consciousness of honest purpose and religious fervour, — “Love of right and scorn of wrong,” — though in a distorted form, pulsating in his heart. It is only to repeat the best-known facts in Sacred Story — that in addition to brilliant natural gifts and acquired culture, he had, up to that time, been the most rigid of ceremonialists. No Pharisee had tithed his mint and cummin with more exactitude than he. With scrupulous adherence to the letter of Judaism he had abstained from its forbidden meats and drinks, obeyed its required fastings and lustrations, regarded with pride the pomp of its solemn feasts and the pageantry of its time-honoured ritual; reverenced its often meaningless traditions, and finally imbibed its fanatic intolerance. “I verily thought,” said he, “with myself, that I oupht” (it was a false sense of stern duty and obligation) “to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts xxvi. 9). And more than all, he was the possessor of a rare catalogue of virtues, and of so-called ‘spiritual attainments, He could point to a life unstained by impure or ignoble deed — what the world would have called “a splendid righteousness.” “If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Phil. iii. 4-6).
And yet, though it may appear at first sight contradictory, — despite of this array of personal and hereditary merit, we might, did our subject demand it, further trace on no mere hypothetical grounds, a course of mental and moral preparation for that culminating event in his history: — the pangs and struggles of a vehement yet intensely earnest nature. Even in his apparently most defiant mood, he felt the ground he was resolutely defending to be gradually yielding, like a sinking morass, beneath his feet. May we not well believe there were unsatisfied yearnings of his great, truth-loving soul, for something beyond mechanical ritual — hard formula — fluent shibboleth; — that he was approaching, at least, that point, graphically described by a master - hand in speaking of another: — when “doubt has eaten out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenaut which it half feels now to have become a Phantasm.”^ Among other influences acting upon a susceptible spirit like his, the memories and impressions of the first martyr’s death could not surely be readily effaced. He could have been no mere passive spectator of that scene in the Hall Gazith: the angel-like countenance: — the prayer of forgiveness: — the gentle * sleep.’ “The Church,” says Augustine, •” owes Paul to the prayer of Stephen.” And along with the indelible impressions derived from that death, lessons of similar power and cogency must have been gathered from the lives of Stephen’s associates, — the hated disciples of the cross and the Crucified. The radiant face of the Protomartyr was again and again seen by him reflected in the character and conduct of the followers of Jesus. That surely could be no myth which produced such heroic devotion, such unflinching faith, such calm submission, such holy joy: — “a peace” — to use his own subsequent language — “which passeth all understanding.”^ All honour, nevertheless, to the man (and the more honour just because of these honest scruples) who could thus brace himself to the moral heroism, of
Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero Worship,” p. 113.
2 See Neander in loc: also Olshausen, on what he calls “the psychological changes in the mind of Paul.” “In his heart there might be a violent struggle, and he might have to fight against the truth forcing itself upon his mind, a state which, though not outwardly apparent, yet internally would prepare the way for the designs of God in reference to him.” — Vol. iv. p. 459.
relinquishing the cherished dream and aspiration of toiling years; — who could drill through layer on layer uf the superincumbent strata of ancestral pride, and prejudice, and boasted spiritual prerogative, till he reached the sure foundation in the living Rock of Ages.
To enter, however, with any fulness on this and cognate considerations, would divert us from our purpose in this Volume: these topics, moreover, having been amply treated by skilled mental analysts, both in this country and Germany. Enough to say, that despite of a wide diversity of experience alike in antecedent and accompaniment, — that scene on the road to Damascus — (as a “calling out of darkness into marvellous light,” ) is, in its main essential feature, re-enacted in the case of each individual who has been ‘’ translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son “(Col. i. 13); and who, with the inner eye supernaturally opened and the aching heart-throbs stilled, has risen from the ground to which, in a figurative sense, he has been stricken, — “a man in Christ” (2 Cor. xii. 2).
“Who art Thou, Lord?” is the exclamation of such an arrested one. The imagery unfolded in the apocalyptic vision of a later year (Rev. iii. 20), was that of the same Saviour, “His head filled with dew, and His locks with the drops of the night,” — standing at the deserted door of the human heart, — a door choked with tangled brier and weed and thorn, a melancholy ruin. But the divine allegory, in the present and other repeated references of St. Paul, is reversed. It rather is that of the soul in its rags and wretchedness, imploring admission within the gates of the Great Living Refuge. Nor is the pleading in vain. Instead of spurning the suppliant away, the welcome is given, “Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, wherefore standest thou WITHOUT?” From that moment, to change the metaphor, the wounded, weary, fluttering dove, folding its wings, sinks into the clefts of the Rock. From that moment, all the false opiates and anodynes used to quiet the spasms of the spiritual nature, are flung for ever away. The whole being thrills with a new vitality and joy. It is the great Eureka of Life — “I found Him whom my soul loveth” (Sol. Song iii. 4). From that moment, the key-note of the Gospel is struck and never ceases to vibrate — “God is IN Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Cor. v. 19). In a word, a living, vital union is formed between the Believer and his Lord. “To make m Himself of twain, one new man, so making jpeace” (Eph. ii. 15).
“In Him was life,” says St. John (i. 4), as in turn he pens his sacred remembrances in distant Ephesus; — catching up the same blessed truth, and appropriating, so to speak, the monogram of his “companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ:” — “AVe are IN Him that is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ” (i John v. 20).
“How do I know Thee? “said Augustine;” I do not know Thee as Thou art in Thyself, but as Thou art to me, and that not without Thee but m Thee,” “The life which I now live,” says Luther, “is but the X mask of life under which lives another, viz., Christ, who is my true life.” “A saving interest in Christ” was the favourite stereotyped phrase of the divines of the seventeenth century, expressive alike of the soul’s highest aspirations and loftiest spiritual attainments. The earnest words of a reliable modern scholar may be taken as the echo of the best voices of Christendom in the present as in the past. “Remember, I pray you, that on being in Christ, — on being yet within the sphere of His attracting and redeeming love, all depends. The question of all questions is. Are we in any sense in Christ?” “The life hid with Christ in God” — this is what I earnestly crave after; — a life which, in the midst of outward change, can remain immovable; ever strengthening, enlarging, and deepening; a life which may gradually mould and fashion all things to itself. In fact, the beginning of that transformation by which the mortal is to be clothed with immortality.^
“Ye were without Christ” (Eph. ii. 12); “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus” (i Cor. i. 30).
Alienated from the life of God “(Eph. iv. 1 8) “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Eph. ii. 13).
* Bishop Ellicott’s “Destiny of the Creature,” p. 99. 2 “Memorials of a Quiet Life,” ii. 240.
What a transition do these two sets of contrasted verses imply! equivalent to the transference from the gloom of deepest midnight into the noontide splendour of perfect day. May it be ours joyfully to appropriate the assertion, and to follow faithfully the subsequent exhortation, “The darkness is past, and the true Light now shineth” (i John ii. 8). “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light IN the Lord: walk as children of light” (Eph. v. 8).