‘Not to Me Only’

Anp not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. A.V.

Aye, and not only to me, but also to all who have set their love on His Appearing.

Ir is recorded in the history of the later stages of 2 Tim. iv. the European Reformation, about the year 1627, 8.

when the papal and imperial authorities co-operated A Martyr’s with tremendous severity to extirpate the Evangelical meneny: confessors in the Austrian dominions, that a Bohemian nobleman, Wenceslaus of Budowa, was brought to execution for his faith. Before he laid down his

head for the sword the Jesuit ecclesiastics made a

last effort to win him back to the Roman obedience.

He raised his eyes and said, as he put the intruders

aside, ‘I have finished my course; henceforth there

is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.’ ‘Ah,’ responded the fathers, ‘those words were true for

the Apostle, not for thee.’ ‘Nay,’ he rejoined, ‘you

forget what follows; Not to me only, but unto all

them also that love His appearing.’

It was a noble application of the profound general principle given in the words here before us. We noticed in our last chapter that the Apostle looked onward to his rest and to his crown not as an Apostle but as a Christian, that is to say as a man who had,

2 Tim. iv. by grace, lived out the fact that he was the Lord’s. 8.

Gradations
in Glory.

He was about to taste the peace of the heavenly — Paradise and, on another and yet more radiant day, to

receive the crown of glory, not because he had filled —

a supreme pastoral office — for Iscariot was an Apostle; nor because he had been inspired to see into the unseen and the future — for Balaam was a Prophet; but because he had been a true member of the Christ of God. Therefore for every other member of that Head the like bright prospect stood assured. It was assured for Wenceslaus of Budowa, found faithful to the end. It is assured for you, dear reader, and — let me dare to write the words — for me, found simply, in the grace of God, faithful to the end.

Not for a moment are we to infer that you and I, or even a death-suffering Wenceslaus, will receive a crown, a victor-wreath, indistinguishable from that ofa St.Paul. The deepest reason of things witnesses surely for differences of greatness and glory in the final bliss. And our Lord’s parable, with its ‘five cities’ and its ‘ten’ (Luke xix. 17, 19), looks the same way. When the endless heaven and its conditions open at last to the view of the Blessed, they will assuredly find there not only the richest and largest variety as regards personal individuality, celestial character in infinitely varied developements; they will find gradations too. Angels have gradation, and find it no limit to their bliss; and the glorified human saints will not be the less ‘equal to the angels’ (Luke xx. 36) for having greater and smaller in their happy ranks; orders and degrees, carrying into eternity the varying impress of the preparatory life of time. Most true; yet also all such differences will be ‘Not to me only’

toned and harmonized all the while into one glorious

community by their equal relation to their one beloved 8

Lord. The pre-requisite to every crown will have been pardon and life in Him, love to Him, service for His dear sake. Paul, Wenceslaus, you, I, so you and I in the grace of God attain ‘that world,’ as by His grace we dare to say we will, are to be as different as possible in other respects before the throne; but all the glorified will be alike in this — that they are there because Christ redeemed and saved them, because they gave themselves to Him, because they are all Yet Community also,

related to Him for ever. Those planetary fires willindeed ‘differ in glory.’ But they will all eternally drink in the effulgence of their Sun, and move around Hi in one concentric everlasting life.

Beautifully distinctive is the special note of Love of His relation to Christ which St. Paul gives us here; Appearing.

‘Not only to me but also to all who have set their love’ (so I interpret the Greek perfect participle) ‘on His Appearing.’ At the root of the matter, their love has been ‘set upon’ Himself. They are conditioned as saints by their having found in Jesus ‘all their salvation and all their desire’ (2 Sam. xxiii. 5); by a personal satisfaction in Him, by a personal surrender, in that deep love, to Him. But this comes out upon the radiant surface in the form of the ‘love of His Appearing.’ For that ‘ Appearing’ brings with it the swmmum bonwm of all their love of Him and joy in Him. It means not only that they, the Bride, will see the Bridegroom as He is, but that Hr will taste His own supreme gladness, ‘as the Bridegroom rejoiceth over the Bride’ (Isai. lxii. 5).