‘Life’: ‘Mercy’

Some few more phrases of the opening address of 2 Tim. i, the Epistle ask for our reverent notice, I, 2.

i. St. Paul has announced himself as the ‘apostle According to of Christ Jesus, through the will of God,’ that will ape ebeamc which marked him, spared him, called him, ‘ put him into ministry.’ And he is this, ‘according to the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus.’ That is to say, his apostleship ‘runs on the lines’ of that great promise. It was given with a view to it, given in order to carry it out. God, ‘by His prophets, in the Holy Scriptures’ (Rom. i. 2), had promised of old a wonderful reversal of man’s death, his first death and his second death alike, in ‘Him that was to come.’ Then arrived the promised Prince of Life. And having lived, and died, and risen, He must needs be preached. So, eminently among others, this man, Saul of Tarsus, was transfigured from a blasphemer into a preacher, on purpose that ‘the promise of the life’ might take effect.

ii. ‘The life which is in Christ Jesus.’ Here is The Life. one out of several great summary designations of the Gospel. We have others of the same order. Sometimes it is ‘the Cross’; sometimes ‘the Spirit ’ — notably in 2 Cor. iii. 6, where the word stands in antithetical contrast to the Law, and denotes the

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In Christ
Jesus.

Gospel as the revelation of our capacity, by the pentecostal Gift, to meet and to do God’s will, ‘written in our hearts.’ And here the Gospel is ‘the Life,’ a word glorious in its simplicity and its depth, summing up all the wealth of blessings into one radiant thought.

For indeed ‘the Life’ does thus gather them all up into their end and issue. What is it, ultimately, which was to be given to us through Incarnation, Atonement, Pentecost? It is the Life eternal. It is that wonderful thing, the highest life, which means immeasurably more than even an indestructible existence, for it speaks of the springing and flowing for ever in man of those blissful forces which he was created in God’s image to bear and to employ for ever. It means the possession and fruition of what man can be when he is spiritually ‘joined to the Lord’ (1 Cor. vi. 17); of the eternal Life, when he ‘knows’ (Joh. xvii. 3), as happy spirits know, ‘the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.’ ‘The Life’ — this is what it means. Germinating here, bursting from its vernal bud into its summer flower hereafter, it is nothing less than this — — man immortally one with God in Christ, moving and rejoicing with His living and life-giving love, seeing Him, knowing Him, and for ever tasting the perfect and royal freedom of ‘serving Him day and night,’ even as the limb in its pure health finds its strength and pleasure in acting out the purpose of the head.

ili, And this Life is ‘a Christ Jesus’ — and nowhere else. He is its sphere, its fsecret; nay,

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‘Life’: ‘Mercy’

He is it: — ‘ Christ which is our Life’ (Col. iii. 3). 2 Tim. i. ‘He that hath the Son, hath the Life’ (1 Joh. v. 1, 2. 12), and he alone.

Wonderful phrase, as written down here from the lips of St. Paul! Around the man who thus spoke of ‘the promise of the Life’ the last shadows of the valley of death were closing, and the noise of that cold Jordan which our mortal nature fears could be heard through them, near at hand. It did not matter! This man ‘knew the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He had sent.’ So he could look up from the shades around him and could see, above him, the living Star of the eternal morning, ‘the LIFE that is in Christ Jesus.’ Let us in our turn, living and dying, recollect that, in ‘that same Jesus,’ that same life, deathless as the heaven from whence it comes, is ours. ‘He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die’ (Joh. xi. 26).

iv. ‘Grace, mercy, peace, from God the Father Mercy. and Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Here I do not try to comment on the whole sacred greeting; on ‘grace,’ the loving favour of the covenant Lord; on ‘peace,’ the sweet fruition of it in the soul; nor on that Source of both, Twofold yet One, the Father and the Christ. We only note now the word, embedded between these more familiar others — ‘mercy.’ So placed, it is peculiar to these two Epistles to Timothy ;! it is characteristic of just these last messages of St. Paul. And is it not significant as such? The great life is drawing to its end. The

1 In Tit. i. 4 it should be omitted from the Greek text. saint looks forward, and sees, without one misgiving, the coming glory (iv. 8). But he also looks back, and sees the infinite forbearance which has dealt with him. And he looks upward, and then inward, with the solemn insight of the dying, and sees more than ever his own unworthiness in the dawning radiance of his Lord. And thus, the nearer he draws to the assured bliss, the more he knows, for himself and his beloved one, and the more he needs must say, that grace and peace, as the gift of God to sinners of the earth, exist only because of an immeasurable mercy.