The Great Attainment
Worthy to stand before the Son of man.” — Luke xxi. 36.
There is all through the Bible as there is all through the best and most earnest thought and life of men the vision of a great attainment. That man, the individual man and the universal man, is what he is only in preparation for something far vaster and more perfect that he is to be, — this is the practical doctrine of all earnest and religious men. It appears in all religions. It appears in all the earnest life which will not call itself religious — this doctrine of the great attainment, this belief and the lofty something which it is possible for man to become, although no man, purely man, has become it yet. What would the world be without that belief? How the hearts of men have fed on it and lived by it! It has kept them from despair and been their light in darkness, the soul of their life-long struggle.
In the religion of Christ the doctine of the great attainment puts on its full glory and takes its central place. Always there is something which humanity in general and which this man and that man by himself is struggling to become. It is not wholly clear.
It cannot be because no man has reached it and measured it and brought back the report. No report which the man who had reached it could bring back would be intelligible to those who were still far away from the completeness of which they were told. But dimly as it has been known, its real existence has been the central truth of Christianity.
And the Christian teachings have viewed this great attainment from many sides and have given to it many names. Sometimes they have simply called it “being perfect,” sometimes they have seemed anxious to bind it more closely to Christ and represent that it was only attainable in Him. And then they have used such phrases as this which Jesus uses in our text, the phrase of which I want to speak to you this morning.
Jesus bids his disciples to watch and pray so that they “may be accounted worthy to escape all these things which are to come to pass,” and “to stand before the Son of man.” He has been telling his disciples of wonderful things which are to come. “Signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring. Men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” The great result and consummation of all the mighty changes which are to take place in the earth is to be “the coming of the Son of man.” And then Jesus looks his disciples in the face and says, “Watch and pray that ye may be counted worthy to stand before this Son of man.”
As I look at these great words and try to understand them, I think there are three questions which we want to ask and answer:
1. Who is the Son of man who is to come?
2. What is meant by His coming?
3. What is it to stand before Him when He
comes?
Let me say something upon each one of these questions.
I. Who is the Son of man? There cannot be a doubt in the mind of any one who stands there in the Jewish temple, and hears these words spoken by Jesus, that He who speaks is speaking of Himself. He is the Son of man. But the words have a history. In the Old Testament there are certain passages in which all men are called the sons of man. The Scripture never shrinks from that broad truth, though it is always ready to go beyond it and declare that there are certain men to whom the sacred name peculiarly belongs. David says freely, “Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the Son of man that thou so regardest him?” There every man is a “son of man.” But by and by, in a more restricted way, we find the name given peculiarly to men who are representative men, to men in whom the qualities and functions of all men seem to be especially embodied. Thus it is given to the prophets, those men among men, who spoke for all humanity to God and to whom God spoke for all humanity. Eighty times the prophet Ezekiel is addressed by God under this title, “Son of man.” Then next the name was taken up and used for one of the titles of the Messiah, that mysterious, everexpected utterance of God in human life which never left the Hebrew’s mind. “Behold one like the Son of man,” says Daniel, “came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the ancient of days.” Everywhere in the Old Testament the “Son of man” tends to become the expression of manhood in its highest representative, where it comes nearest to, where it touches upon divinity. All the while as this divine identity of manhood comes forth into utterance, the truest manhood is finding its expression, and it is this truest humanity made truest by being most deeply filled and fired with divinity, this it is which wherever it is found is called the Son of man.
No wonder then that when the New Testament opens, and the Incarnation comes, the old words should be taken up by the Incarnate Son of God and used by Him as one of His favorite descriptions of Himself. He uses the words of Himself, but others do not use them of Him. No one but Jesus Himself ever calls Jesus the Son of man. It is the declaration of His own consciousness that because His nature was the human nature inhabited and inspired by the divine, because of that fact, it was supremely the human nature. He was the truest man whose feet had ever trodden on the earth. Because He knew Himself the Son of God, He loved to call Himself the Son of man.
Are there not, then, two answers to our question, Who is the Son of man? The Son of man is Jesus Christ. The Son of man is the complete, the representative, the ideal humanity. And yet these answers are not two but one. The Son of man is the complete ideal humanity set forth in Jesus Christ. It is the struggle of all human life recognized as reaching its great attainment in Him in whom the human life has touched and joined itself to the divine. Children heard the name and caught something of its meaning as, looking into His gracious face who blessed them, they caught sight of the goal of their humanity far, far away. Young men felt their human souls stirred by His life as by a bugle-call. Men in this middle tumult of their active years felt His presence as the element which brought them intelligence and peace. The Son of man, — the world has loved the name and Him who bore it because it answered the conviction of its own heart that somewhere there was a perfect man, and that the perfect man was the true man!
2. And then our second question follows — What is meant by the coming of the Son of man? Here is the world, this theatre of life. Upon its stage come men and generations. In itself it is nothing but a scene for action. The action of man which goes on upon it gives it its dignity and meaning. Man has been coming and going in all the acts of the long drama. And now see what is meant by the tidings which sound through the air and make the whole creation start and tremble with expectancy. “The Son of man is coming!” it declares. “The Son of man!” That is the perfect man, the very manifested soul and essence of humanity, man full of divine influences, showing forth the divine nature that is in Himself, This higher man, this perfect man, this Son of man is coming.
Again I pause a moment just to think what a significant meaning there is in the phrase “The Son of man” as representing the flower and perfection of humanity. The son always is the flower of the father’s life. The son draws forth into himself the essence of the father’s being. The father looks into the bright face of his eager, fresh-hearted son and says, “There is myself without the base things which have fastened themselves to myself, without my habits, my prejudices, my hatred, and my doubts. There is my pure self. There is what God made me to be.” A million disillusionings will not forbid the father of to-day to look in his boy’s face and see there the flower and perfection of himself. The son of any man is that man showing himself his real belonging to a higher life. And just exactly so the Son of man in general is man in general showing himself, his intrinsic divinity, his real belonging to God!
We all believe in human progress. Let us ask ourselves whether there is a more beautiful or a more intelligible description of the progress which we all anticipate than, understood as I have tried thus to define it, is the expression, “The coming of the Son of man.” It declares at once that the advance and improvement of the world is to have its source and soul in the condition of its human inhabitant. Not in the clearing of its forests and the unfolding of its subterranean treasures and the exploring of its icy fastnesses and the redeeming of its arid plains, not in the bridging of its rivers and the great flights of ships like flocks of birds across its oceans; not in these, nor in any material victories like these, does the real progress of the world consist. Only in the coming of the perfect man, only in the Son of man, the true human outcome of all the generations of humanity, leaving all that is corrupt and base and bad and therefore unhuman behind, bringing forth into clear utterance and power all the intrinsic Godlikeness of humanity — only in that, only so, in the coming of the Son of man, is the perfection of the world to come.
Let us give wings to our imagination for a moment and picture to ourselves how, in one or two of the departments of life, this coming of the Son of man is needed; and the need is felt more perhaps to-day than ever with a hopeful expectation. Look at government. What is the meaning of the Democratic impulse which everywhere is taking possession of the nations? It is the conviction that in the government of man by man lies the true salvation of the world. The government of man by man! Not by this man or that man, the choice of chance, the accident of birth, not with any reasonable presumption uttering the better nature of the men he rules, but the government of man and man, of the coarser, ruder, more brutal body of a nature by its finer soul, by its best men, set up to rule not because they are intrinsically different from the nature which they govern, but because they are its true self! This is the meaning of Republican institutions. This is the coming of the Son of man in the world’s politics.
And look at learning. There are two great demands with regard to learning which, I suppose, we can all hear wandering about, now louder and now fainter, but never dying out, in the halls of our colleges and in the conferences of the men who talk about education to-day. One is the demand that learning should be useful; the other is the demand that learning should be free — that is, not arbitrarily confined to any chosen caste. It must be useful, and it must be free. Not as the ornament or luxury of a favored few must those truths of the universe be monopolized. Almost as if a few men had dug all the coin which the earth contains to build great statues for their palaces, or gathered in all the forests off of all the hills to keep their vast halls warm, so does it seem now to the world when it is told of how in other days wisdom and knowledge were assumed to be the appropriate possession of a learned class and not the rightful possession of all men. Very vaguely, very basely, very narrowly, the usefulness of knowledge no doubt often is conceived — but the idea is there. It is the human idea; man, all men, in contrast to the natural world on one hand and to the interests of a few chosen men upon the other; knowledge, the servant and the food of man, of all men — that is the idea of modern education. The progress of that idea marks the coming of the Son of man in the world of learning.
And then, again, look at our social life, at all which man has to do with fellow-man. I dare not undertake to compare the present with the past. One so easily seems to become enthusiastic and optimistic when he ventures to say how much purer, how much loftier, how much more unselfish the relations of men with one another, taken at large throughout the world, are in our generation than they have ever been in any generation before this. But let us simply think how in every age the best minds, the best souls have always come to one deep certainty about mankind — the certainty that only in unselfishness, only in forgetfulness of themselves and service of their brethren, could men come to their own best completion. That is a wonderful conviction for all the best souls in all ages to have reached. It involves certain great convictions. It involves this conviction certainly — that the world’s completion is to come about, not by the completeness of the single soul, but by a broad elevation of the whole life of mankind, in ministering to which each single soul will gain its own best completeness, yet not as an end but as a means. What is that but the coming of the Son of man in social life? When there the Son of man shall have come; when in our homes and churches and communities there shall have come forth, out of the turmoil and confusion of our imperfect living, the perfect pattern of humanity, the true social self of man, what shall we see? Ah! there have been, there are now, glimpses of it which are clear enough to let us answer the question. We shall see — when the Son of man, when the perfect man shall have come in our social life — we shall see such an unselfish and intelligent devotion of each man to the good of each and all as shall make him forget himself, and in his self-forgetfulness shall win for him the best and noblest character; each losing himself in unselfishness to find himself in the unconscious growth of his consecrated manhood, so that, as the result of all, the great self of society and the subordinate selfs of which this great self of society is made up are all complete in mutual ministries, — this is the coming of the Son of man in social life.
In government, in learning, in society, the coming of the Son of man is the standing forth, suddenly or slowly, of the perfect man, from the midst of all the fermentations and corruptions, the mistakes and the delays, the sins and sufferings, of human history.
“A glorious picture!” you say. “The dream of all the ages. The hope of all philanthropic and poetic souls ever since the world began!” But then you hesitate. You turn back to the pages of your Bible with a troubled air. “What has all this to do with Christ?” you say. “I thought He was the Son of man. I thought that some day riding upon the glory of the eastern sunrise or issuing from the splendor of the evening sky, Jesus, the Jesus who went years ago into the heaven which stooped over the Mount of Olives to receive Him, was coming in the clouds of heaven with hosts of angels for His company. This is what I have been looking for, and now you promise me the gradual improvement of mankind. Is it not an awful disappointment? Is not the vision all faded and colorless when you thus read it down into the platitudes of the platform orator of human progress?”
I know the feeling which such words express. I know how eagerly we cling to the picture of the opened sky, so eagerly that often we are in danger of not thinking what it must mean upon the earth for Christ to come. But the spirit that is in such a protest we must never lose. God forbid that we should ever come to think of human nature as a great system, with its own power of development within itself, just working out its own perfection. God forbid that we should forget for a moment that it is only by touching the fire of God that the fiery life of man can burn. Man is capable of greatness only because he is God’s child. Man becomes great only as his childhood to God becomes a living fact. Man and God, child and Father, must meet. They do meet in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, and here is the truth about the matter, the vision which our eyes are looking for in the heavens, and the new improved life which our souls are longing for in the government, the learning, and the social life of the world, belong together. They are not two and different; they are one and the same. I do not know — who does know, and who can know? — what the actual visible phenomenon will be — what glories of the opened heavens, what gathering of the angelic hosts, — but this I am sure of, that there is no perfection of humanity possible which shall not be the entrance into and the occupation of humanity by Jesus Christ, the bringing of the Son of man to be the real spirit and standard of this earth! When that regenerated life, that perfect humanity in government, in learning, and in life shall come, it will be Christ that comes, — Christ the completion of humanity in its union with divinity, Christ the life of men because Himself the true man, — Christ who came once to show man what man in God was, and who is coming again to make that manhood in God the standard of the world, the only recognized judge and pattern, to which men shall offer their lives for its approval.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! — that is the cry of all earnest hearts. Come, and make the perfect man, the divine man, be counted the only true man. The world waits, every good cause lingers, expecting the coming of the Son of man.
3. And so, if we understand at all what is meant by the coming of the Son of man, then we are ready for our third question — What is it to “stand before Him.” Must not our answer be, to” stand before the Son of man” is to have such a character, to live such a life, that when His asserted and established dominion comes, those lives and characters shall blend with it, help it, and be helped by it, and not be swept away as something hostile or useless, something which has no further place or right now that the complete condition of the world has come.
Suppose to-day the Son of man should come in government. That meant, as we saw, the recognition and establishment of the true principle of government. Government exists solely for the good of the governed, and its success lies in the expression, the development, the education to self-government of the men it rules. Let government be set upon that basis, let that great first truth pour in like a flood on all the nations of the earth, and what will be the result? All that is in harmony with that idea will stand before it; all that is in contradiction to it will go down before it. All the inhuman thoughts of government, all conceptions of government as existing for the benefit of the governors, all selfish or corrupt politics must be swept away. They cannot stand. But all true thoughts of government, all unselfish, devoted, human thoughts will blend with this true revelation of what government ought to be. They will say, “This is what we have been guessing at and waiting for.” They will gather up their courage and anticipate success. This is the way in which they will “stand before the Son of man.”
The same is true of learning. Let the Son of man come in our schools and colleges, and there are some of our scholars who must disappear as dust before the wind; and there are other scholars who will stand before Him and know themselves in Him with a delightful reassuring knowledge. If you have dared to think of knowledge simply as personal luxury, if you have let yourself, the more you knew, be separated all the more from your fellow-men and not be drawn the closer to them, that must be all exposed. All pedantry, all pride of learning must disappear. The selfishness, the baseness of such learning must be swept away. If you have studied morally and humanly, if as a student you have been ever more and more a man, seeing ever goodness beyond truth, seeing always something for humanity to be as always the purpose of what humanity can know, then, however much you may have gone astray and made mistakes, yet when the Son of man comes and says, “I am the truth. This is life eternal to know me,” then you shall stand before Him. The substance of all honest and unselfish thought and study shall ultimately be taken up by the great stream of truth, and shall not perish, but shall live in it forever.
And so of social life. Christ comes to-morrow and regenerates society. Diviner purposes, diviner spirits, fill its life. A purer manhood, a purer womanhood, issues out of its confusion. Every man feels the change. But will not different men feel it differently? One man says, “It is all over with me now “; another man lifts up his head and sees close at hand the fulfilment of his dearest hopes. The man who has lived on the degradation of society, what chance is there for him now that society is purified? Where will his dishonesty, his selfishness, his impurity have any chance? The coming of the Son of man, the setting up of the standard and promise of the perfect man, has been his ruin. But the earnest, the pure, the souls eager for goodness in themselves and in the world, they are at once awake, alive, and full of hope. Look how they gather round this Son of man and “stand before” Him. See how they come! Each with his poor, pathetic little piece of struggle which has looked so hopeless while he was fighting it out in his own obscure corner of the world, — see how each comes and sets his bit of solitary struggle deep into the great victory of Christ, and knows that he has his true part in Christ’s fulfilment of the human life, the complete establishment of God’s idea of man.
I think that there can hardly be any thought of life more encouraging and ennobling than this. A young man labors on alone at some task which he is sure that it is good for him to do. He works in silence; men do not notice him, or if they notice him they despise him. Perhaps a few simple souls love him and praise him, and their love and praise make him seem all the more insignificant and ridiculous in the eyes of the world, whose standards he totally fails to meet. He works on, quiet, patient, cheerful, happy. He can hardly give you a clear account of why he goes on working at his lonely task, but it is almost as if he felt sure that the great spirits of good were with him. He has no word of reproach for misconception or of complaint for hardship. He is perfectly patient, busy, happy. And then some day the world makes a distinct step forward. It turns suddenly a corner which it has been long approaching, and there, advancing down the road towards it, is a new, a higher type of human life. It is a loftier attainment of humanity coming in to occupy the world. It is a coming of the Son of man. And then this quiet worker lifts up his head and a light comes in his eyes, and he calmly goes and takes this stranger by the hand. He goes and “stands before the Son of man,” and he is “counted worthy to stand” there. The Son of man turns and looks at him and knows him, and without a question takes him for his ally and his friend.
Is not our question answered? “To be worthy to stand before the Son of man” is to be living such lives that if a greater day should dawn, a nobler, purer life be opened on the world, a new demand be made on our humanity, we should be ready for it. We may be hoping for it or despairing of it. We may seem even now to hear the footfall of the comer or we may, after a hundred disappointments, have grown desperate and said, “No, He will never come.” That does not matter. To be living such lives that if He did come we should go to Him and take our places by His side sure that that was where we belonged, so we are “worthy to stand before the Son of man.”
In a deep sense, as it concerns the highest things, every soul is worthy of that of which it is capable. A soul that is capable of being forgiven is worthy of being forgiven. A soul that is capable of going to heaven is worthy of going to heaven. So to be worthy of standing before the Son of man is to be capable of standing before Him; it is to have such a nature, it is to live such a life that when we see Him we shall know that our place is by His side and shall go up to the judgment of His presence without a fear.
Again I find myself wondering whether I do not melt away into abstractions that which the Bible likes to keep in such clear, personal distinctness. We talk about the coming of standards of higher living, of a new and more glorious type of human life; the Bible talks of the coming of the Son of man. We sigh and cry for purer government, for more spiritual learning, for more unselfish social life; the New Testament with its last verse sends throbbing out through the ages its passionate appeal, “Even so, come. Lord Jesus!” I would fain hope that our study of this morning has opened somewhat to us the depths of reasonable meaning which are included in that cry to Christ and have enabled us to hear in it all the great cry of humanity for a better life, of which the world is full. But as we close let it become very personal, let it have all the intensity and warmth of personality. A thousand things the poor world wants, but it wants only one Person, only one Saviour. In Him, in Jesus, all that it really needs must come to it. Peace instead of war, unselfishness instead of selfishness, hope instead of fear, holiness instead of wickedness, — all of these must come when Christ comes to be the world’s king. And He is surely coming. The world has been given to Him by His Father, and shall certainly be His. Oh, may we be such men that when He comes we may gather up our lives, which have tried to obey Him even when they saw Him very dimly, and go and stand before Him — worthy to stand there because we are able to stand there by His grace. With that readiness in us we can patiently wait His time, for the soul that is ready to welcome Christ and live with Him at His coming has welcomed Him and is living with Him already.