The Cross and the Ages to Come
‘Through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His Cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens. — Colossians, i. 20.
0 consideration of these words can be satisfactory which does not recognize that they are part of a greater whole. The Colossian letter was written with the express purpose of correcting prevailing error. It is both interesting and instructive to note in passing that the erroneous teachers are not named, neither is the heresy stated. Paul was too wise to give gratuitous advertisement to the teaching or the teachers.
If there are differences of opinion concerning the errors which he wished to correct, we are certainly in no doubt concerning the truth which he set forth. The subject of the Colossian letter is pre-emi-THE CROSS AND
nently that of the glories of the Christ in His relation to His Church. Its supreme word concerning Christ is, “It was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him shall all the fulness dwell.” The supreme word concerning the Church is, “In Him ye are made full.” It is the letter of the pleroma, a word which cannot be translated without losing something in the process; although, if our word fulness be permitted its simplest and sublimest significance, it conveys the true idea.
The letter then, is the result of the conviction of the Apostle that a true understanding of the fact of the fulness of Christ, as it constitutes the fulness of the Church, will correct all false philosophies.
The passage, of which the words we are about to consider form a part, consists of one of the most remarkable declarations of the New Testament concerning the greatness of the Person of Christ, and the greatness of His work. These are both dealt with in their relation to God, to creation, and to the Church.
The greatness of His Person is set forth, first in His relation to God, in the words.
“The Image of the invisible God”; secondly, in His relation to creation, in the words, “The Firstborn of all creation.... In Him all things consist”; thirdly, in His relation to His Chnrch, in the words, “He is the Head of the Body, the Church.... the Firstborn from the dead.”
The teaching concerning the greatness of His work is inseparably connected with that concerning the greatness of His Person. In regard to His work as Revealer of God, “It was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.” In regard to His work with relation to that creation of which He is at once the Source and Sustenance, His mission is expressed in the words, “To reconcile all things unto Himself.” Finally, His work concerning the Church, of which He is the Head, is expressed in the declaration, “You, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works, yet now hath He reconciled.”
Thus it will be seen that these two threefold statements answer each other. Let us make that still more evident by stating them as three twofold statements.
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The greatness of Christ’s Person in relation to God is that He is “the Image of the invisible God.” The greatness of His work in relation to God is seen in the fact that “it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.”
The greatness of His Person in relation to creation is that He is “the Firstborn of all creation and in Him all things consist.” The greatness of His work in relation to that creation is expressed in the words, “To reconcile all things unto Himself whether things upon the earth, or
things in the heavens.”
The greatness of His Person in relation to the Church is that “He is the Head of the Body, the Church.” The greatness of His work in relation to the Church is that of the reconciliation of individuals, in order that they may he built into tho Church.
The fulness of the Person creates the fulness of the work. The immeasurable glory of the Christ as He is, creates the immeasurable grace of the Christ as to what He is able to do in the centre, and to the ultimate circumfercence, of the universe of God.
The special message of the particular words selected for our present meditation is that God; through Christ the Image of God, the Firstborn of creation, the Head of the Church; by the blood of His Cross, does reconcile, not merely individual souls, but ‘ ‘ all things .... whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.” I am perfectly conscious of the stupendousness of the theme. It is that of the ultimate meaning of the Cross. We shall endeavour to consider its teaching concerning the sphere of the reconciliation, the nature of the reconciliation, and the supply of the reconciliation.
The sphere of the reconciliation is declared in the words, “all things... .things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.” When describing the glory of Christ in creation, the Apostle declared, “In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth,” but when he speaks of reconciliation, he uses the opposite order,
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“things upon the earth things in the
heavens.” The creative order was that of the heavens first, and then of the earth. The reconciling order is that of the earth first, and then of the heavens. It is not for ns now to enter upon any discussion as to whether this planet of ours is indeed, as Dr. Wallace has suggested, the centre of the created universe. It is perfectly certain that there are far-stretching reaches of creation about which we know nothing. It is enough for us at the moment to recognize the fact that, for the purpose of our apprehension of the meaning of life, we are compelled to deal with the universe as circling about the earth on which we live. That may not be the ultimate truth. I do not know. Recognizing this necessity, the Apostle shows that the reconciliation begins here, and then affects all the heavens. That which demands reconciliation is here, but that which is here has exerted its influence to the uttermost bound of the creation of God.
This conception of the world at once lifts it, and our theme, into highest dignity and vastest importance. If we can but grasp it, it will deliver us from all mean thinking about our own lives, about our own sin, and about our own redemption.
It is evident that the apostolic phrase, “things upon the earth,” does not include man. He is first, and to him the Apostle returns presently. Tbe phrase, as used in this statement, is equivalent to that of Jesus in His commission, “the whole creation,” a phrase which this same writer made use of in bis letter to the Romans. The sphere of reconciliation then is first that of the “things upon the earth.”
That is not however the phrase which arrests and almost startles us so much as the one which follows it, “things in the heavens.” This all-inclusive and comprehensive term has reference first to angels, those unfallen intelligences described elsewhere as “thrones, dominions, principalities, powers.” These are all in some way included in the reconciliation which Christ wrought by His Cross.
This conception is a most remarkable recognition of the cosmic unity of the universe. Man is seen at the centre. Below him are all created things — things of the
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eartE, Beyond him are the far-reaching realms which he is utterly incapable of perfectly understanding during the period of his earth-life. At the centre of everything Paul sees the Cross, and declares that by that Cross God reconciles all things unto Himself.
And yet the phrase, “things in the heavens,” takes us one awful step further. The sphere of reconciliation is not only man, not merely the things of the earth beneath him, not alone the created things of the heavens above him; it is that of the very Being of God. Let us remember the words of the Psalmist:
Mercy and truth are met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Omitting for a single moment the declaration that these have met and kissed, let them be considered in separation. They all exist in the nature of God; mercy and truth, righteousness and peace. If we may reverently think of God as apart from the mystery of evil, we at once recognize the perfect harmony of these things. Mercy, which does not mean the pity that excuses, but the tenderness that bends over in love; truth, wMcli is integrity and uprightness, that which is stable and builds; righteousness, which is a straight line without deviation; peace, which is absolute safety, — all these co-exist in the nature of God.
The introduction into the universe of the principle of sin necessarily breaks up the harmony of these, and there is created the necessity for reconciliation within the very Being of God. God is a God of truth. In His universe a being violates truth. How is it possible for Him to bend in tenderness and love over such a one, whose action threatens the stability of the universe? God is the God of righteousness — that is, of that which cannot deviate from absolute rectitude. The introduction into the presence of essential Righteousness of that which contradicts it must make peace impossible. It is not by the caprice of a God Who is a despot, but because of the necessity of the essential facts of His Being, that the moment sin existed in the universe there was need for reconciliation, if mercy and truth are to meet together, or righteousness and peace are to kiss each other.
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This consideration of the suggested sphere of reconciliation leads ns immediately to our second line of consideration — that, namely, of the nature of reconciliation, which is expressed in the words, “unto Himself,” or more literally, “with reference to Himself.” Here again we begin on the lowest level, ‘ ‘ things upon the earth.”
What is the nature of the reconciliation which is necessary to the restoration of order! Fallen man misrepresents God, and so misgoverns nature. The result is chaos instead of cosmos, disorder instead of order. The only reconciliation which is worth while is the vanishing of chaos and the establishing of cosmos, the setting up of order in the place of disorder; or, in the words of the great prayer which Jesus taught His disciples, the supreme necessity is that His name should be hallowed, His kingdom should come. His will should be done on earth as in heaven. The reconciliation of things on earth is that of their restoration to the government of God, and the consequent restoration of a perfect order tlirouglioiit the world, of raan, and of all beneath him in the scale of being; the healing of the wound, the closing of the breach, the gathering together into one of all things that have been scattered.
What then is the reconciliation that is necessary in the heavens? Peter declared in his letter that “angels desire to look into” the things of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. “Look into” is the translation of a strong word which means to peer into, to examine carefully. Bending over the world, the angels saw sin and suffering culminating in the experience of Christ. We must ever think of the angels as finite, of all these unseen principalities and powers as limited. We must remember that while loyal to the government of God, and serving Him with perfect satisfaction, they nevertheless watch the processes without perfect foreknowledge of the issues. It is impossible to remember this without recognizing the fact that their looking into these things is of the nature of inquiry. I am not suggesting that there was even incipient re-THE CEOSS AND
bellion in the high places. There was surely an expectation that there would be some explanation of the mystery of that which they necessarily recognized as a rupture in the nature of God, resulting from the presence of sin in the universe. Angels needed an answer to such inquiry.
Again reverently we take a further step. Reconciliation, in order to completeness, must be such that in the Being of God there shall be possible the continued activity of mercy and truth, of righteousness and peace, so that violence is done to neither.
All this leads us finally to the consideration of the supply of the reconciliation which is revealed in the words, “Peace through the blood of His Cross.” The Gnostic teachers were suggesting the necessity for the intermediation of angels. They were declaring the need for ascetic practices, urging voluntary humility and even the worship of angels. Paul, recognizing the necessity for reconciliation, not merely as between man and God, but throughout the imiverse, in the heavens as well as the earth, declares that it is provided in the “blood of His Cross.”
In this connection it is necessary to repeat a warning and utter a solemn protest against the idea that when we speak of the Cross we refer only to a Roman gibbet, and to the death of a Man thereon. H He of the Cross were Man only, then all this writing of the Apostle is not only foolish, but vile dreaming, mirage, and nightmare, a delusion and a snare. On the other hand, if He of the Cross be the Image of the Invisible God, the original Creator and Sustainer, the Firstborn out of the mystery of death into life, then in the presence of His Cross I begin to tremble, and yet to believe the declaration that through that Cross He reconciles all things unto Himself upon the earth and in the heavens.
Through that Cross there is first the reconciliation of things upon the earth. This is established first by the creation of peace with God in the case of man, and then in the peace of God throughout the order over which redeemed man reigns. The process is a slow one as mortals count
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time. The travail is an agony, the conflict is unto death, but the victory is assured; and that victory is the reconciliation of all things upon the earth, first of man to God, and then of the whole creation to man in that peace of God which issues from the establishment of His throne, and the right relation thereto of all the kingdom.
Through that Cross also there is the reconciliation of things in the heavens. We call to mind again the picture of angels desiring to look into these things. As they did so, they became conscious of the profoundest depth of the mystery in the hour when Jesus died. It was the mystery of which we spoke in our first study, that of the death of a pure and sinless, and therefore, deathless Being. Personally, I can have no doubt about the literal accuracy of the Bible story that in the hour of that death the sun was darkened. My wonder sometimes is that it ever shone again. The angels saw in the mystery a revelation. They knew the Person Whom they saw die, and recognized that the death of the Christ must have some profound significance in the economy of God. Through the death of the Lord they beheld man reconciled to God. They saw the salvation provided for the smner ia his loosing from his sms. They saw the resultant co-operation of the saints as, conformed to His dymg, they came to living knowledge of Himself, shared the power of His Resurrection, and entered into the fellowship of His sufferings. They saw these saints bearing through to lower reaches of God’s creation the renewing forces which had remade their own lives.
What effect, think you, had that working out into visibility of the passion and power of the love of God upon the watching angels? It was for them a new unveiling of God. In that Cross they saw Him as they had never seen Him. The essential Light of Deity shone whiter, for holiness was vindicated as never before. The essential Love of Deity shone redder, for compassion was manifested more perfectly. The essential Life of Deity was realized more fully, for all its values were revealed more absolutely. I can imagine that, as the Lord Jesus Christ died, and all the issues of His dying were revealed to them, angels
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borrowed the song of the Psalmist, and chanted to the measure of their own perfect music:
Mercy and tmth are met together;
Kighteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Reverently we come to the last fact in our consideration of this supply of reconciliation. Over two himdred years ago John Leland, a Baptist minister of Massachusetts, preached a sermon which he entitled “The Jarrings of Heaven Reconciled by the Blood of the Cross,” in which he attempted to set forth a picture of the high courts of heaven and of the conflict within the very nature of God as the result of the presence of sin in the universe. The sermon may accurately be described as highly imaginative, but that is not a condemnation. There are matters so high that we can never hope to reach them save by the exercise of imagination.
We speak of law and love, of truth and grace, of justice and mercy, and so long as sin does not exist, there is no controversy between any of these. If there be no sin, law and love are never out of harmony with each other; truth and grace go ever hand in hand; justice and mercy sing a common anthem. If the law be broken, what is love to do? If truth be violated, how can grace operate? In the presence of crime, how can justice and mercy meet? This is the problem of problems. It is not a problem as between God and man. It is not a problem as between God and the angels. It is a problem between God and Himself. It is answered in the Cross. “God was in Christ,” from eternity, in the days of human manifestation, and surely also in the hour of the Cross. Thus, by the way of all the suffering consequent upon the conflict wdthin His own nature. He found the way of reconciliation. By suffering wrought out into human history, and in the sight of all the ages through the Cross, He demonstrated that love meets law as it suffers, and fulfils it; grace satisfies the demand of truth by meeting all the issues of its violating; and mercy can operate upon the basis of justice, not because God has smitten and afflicted other than Himself, but because, in a mystery which baffles and bruises the intellect as it at-THE CEOSS AND
tempts to encompass it, God has gathered the whole into His own heart, and suffered to reconcile all things unto Himself.
Thus, as Christ is the Centre, Source, and Goal of the universe. His Cross is the centre, source and goal of reconciliation. The Ephesian letter is the complement of the Colossian. In that the Apostle teaches that through the Church the wisdom of God is to be manifested to principalities and powers in the heavenly places. Christ and His ransomed people are to exercise a ministry beyond that of to-day, which is initial and preparatory, through all the coming ages. That ministry is to be that of an unveiling of the profoundest thing in the heart of God: the love which, operating through self abandonment and sacrifice, ransomed, redeemed, and remade lost humanity. The angels will hear the music of love as they have never heard it, as the ransomed sing, ‘‘the old, old story of Jesus and His love.’’ Sons of the morning are they, unfallen intelligences, who have never known the misery of sin, or its pollution; but they must hush their high anthems while the ransomed sing:
He loved us, and gave Himself for us.
Thus for all the universe and for the ultimate ages ever proceeding in beauty from the Being of God, the Cross will abide the supreme revelation of God, through which all creation will come to an understanding of His holiness and His love, the deepest and truest things of His Being.
“What a theme for imagination, which nevertheless, is utterly incapable of encompassing all the glorious truth. We dream of the birth of ceaseless ages, of new creations, springing like fresh mornings from His wisdom and His might; and as in unfailing procession they appear, Christ and His ransomed Church will sing to them the song of redemption, and while they know the might and majesty of God in the wonder of their life, they will only come to a true apprehension of His heart as we tell them that He loved us, and “loosed us from our sins by His blood.”
In the Cross of Christ I glory,
Towering oer the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.
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If by that Cross all things in the heavens are to be reconciled, and infinite peace is to follow, I dare trust it, notwithstanding all my sin and all my weakness. By the way of that Cross I am reconciled to God, and through it I find rest, infinite, eternal, undying. At last my rest shall be rest with the whole creation, for the cosmic order will be restored through the mystery of God’s suffering as revealed in the Cross.