The Wonders of Redemption

“I have ben crucified with Christ; vet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” — Gal. ii. 20.

What shall we do with this passage? How shall we approach it i Shall we come to it as guests or as controversialists as suppliants or as combatants? The fiercest action at Waterloo was fought round about a farm, where the fruits were ripening in the orchard, and the fields were mellowing for the harvest. The farmstead was treated as a battle-field, and the ploughshares were beaten into swords, and the pruning hooks were converted into spears, and the blowing corn was trampled in the gory clay. And here, too, is a farmstead, and the fruit hangs ripe upon the branches, and the corn is yellow for the harvest. How then? Shall we make it a sort of Waterloo, or shall we walk with our Lord in the garden ‘* at the cool of the day “? I would approach it as a guest and not as a soldier. I come to feast and not to fight. I would sit down under the shadow,’’ and His fruit shall be sweet unto my taste.” Behind the familiar words of my text there are tremendous experiences, the secrets of which lead us into the innermost sanctuary of the hallowed love and grace of God. And therefore I say I would rather sing the song of the harvest-home than the song of any victor whose ecclesiastical enemy lies prone upon the bloody field. Survey the field! “Yllfio loved me and gave Himself for me,” There we have the passion of redemption. ‘’ I am crucified with Christy yet I live,” There we have the mystery of re-creation. ‘’I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,” There we have the secret of appropriation. Such is this Scriptural farmstead in whose over-flowing fields and barns it is our privilege to make our home.

Here, then, is the passion of redemption, “The Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” But at once notice an obtrusion which so many of our modern thinkers seem to resent. ‘’ Who loved me.” That is neurotic, and we prefer the philosophic. It is sentimental, and we prefer the mental. The light is too glaring, too sensational, too perfervid, too sunny, and we prefer the cooler and less exciting radiance of the moon. ‘’ Who loved me.” The emotions are stealing into the mind, like a moist Alpine mist rising from the vale, and mixing itself with the light of common day, and many moderns resent the combination. They regard the ministry of emotion as deflecting the judgment; they prefer desiccated light, dry light, light which is absolutely proof against the invasion of sentiment and tears.

And so there are two processes at work. First, there is the de-sentimentalising of the religious life. We shy at sentiment as we should shy at known poison. We are loud in proclaiming the perils of an emotional religion, and we are busy draining away the emotion and leaving the religion hard and dry. And because we de-sentimentalise there is a correlative process, and we de-personalise. Personal love is transformed into diffused energy, the ministering angels become established laws, delicate intimacies are regarded as the interaction of psychic forces, the personal pronouns become abstract nouns, the personal movement in the verb becomes a mere current of the cosmos in which the sacredness of individuality is entirely lost. Here is a contrast which I will present to you as indicating this particular peril of our time. On the one hand, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name there am I in the midst of them.” And on the other hand, The psychic forces are ubiquitous and communion is established by pure volition.’’

Well, is not all this very thin, and attended by infinite peril? We all recognise the dangers of an emotional piety, but there are almost equally great dangers in a piety from which emotion is entirely banished. A perfectly dry eye is blind, and a per-/ fectly dry religion has no sight. We always have the clearest vision when there’s moisture in the air, and a wise personal sentiment has its appointed place in the vision of God, and in the creation of a fruitful intercourse between the soul and Him. The personal and the emotional have had their prominent ministry in the lives of all conspicuous saints. It is certainly true of Paul; the sentence in my text is typical of many more. “Who loved me and gave Himself for me!” “Weigh diligently,” says Martin Luther, “every word of Paul, and especially mark well his pronouns... wherein also there is ever some vehemency and power.” And it is all equally true of Luther himself. Take his great commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and you will find that although it is so martial in its mood, and so severely and consistently polemical, yet the personal emphasis is rarely absent, and the emotions are frequently stirred like the brimming fulness of the spring tides. Even Calvin himself becomes emotional, and a tender sentiment lies upon his thought, like the dews upon the open moors, when he contemplates the wonders of redeeming grace. If we have ever been tempted to think of Calvin as hard and dry and rigid, more a herbalist than a gardener, with the scheme of his thought stretching over his life like a rainless sky, a man devoid of sentiment and incapable of tears — if such has been our thought of Calvin, let us accompany him through the Epistle to the Ephesians, and we shall discover how the merely theological becomes the devotional, how the severely controversial becomes the worshipful, how argument breaks into rapture, and how restrained emotion bursts its dykes, and the man’s adoration becomes moist with grateful tears. It is all equally true of another man, nearer to our own time, who is not eclipsed even when set in the radiant succession of Calvin and Luther and Paul. There is nothing more characteristic of Spurgeon than the personal emphasis, the daring use of the pronouns, and the rich, full sentiment that ever plays about his contemplations of the grace and love of bis Lord. The greatest wonder in the two worlds of heaven and earth he says is this, that” He loved me, and gave Himself for me!’’ It rings like marriage bells in the heart! Not all the harps of heaven can sound out sweeter music than this, when the Holy Spirit speaks it to my soul, The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me, ‘’ That is the grateful sentiment of a strong man, and these are all strong men, giants along the pilgrim way, and they never attempt to denude their piety of emotion or to de-personalise their religious life. They are great in the use of the pronouns, and great in the flow of tender yearning and desire, and their reason is all the more masculine, and their will is all the more massive because they do not deny the native rights of the heart. And all I wish to add is this, let us beware lest, in a healthy recoil from a wishy-washy sentimentalism, which pays little homage to the reason, we too ‘^ enter into life maimed,’’ by adopting a desiccated rationalism, which dries up the very sap of piety, and drains away that fine emotion which is absolutely requisite to the finer issues of our faith.

‘Now turn to the apostle’s personal glorying in the ministry of redemption. “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.’’ And what was the purpose of the Lord’s redemption? Humanity lay in a dire and awful bondage. There was the fearful appetite for sin. There was the relentless claim of violated law. There was the nemesis of guilt. There was the power of the devil. There was the clutch of superstition. And there was death and the fear of death. That was the bondage. And the Lover loved the bondslave, and the glorious crusade of the Lover was by love to bring “deliverance to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” “He loved,” Just there a false sentiment is born. Now love is holy. At the very heart of infinite love is incorruptible holiness, and in that innermost holiness lie the purpose and promise of our redemption. ‘’ O give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness! “But it is just here that false sentiment is born — that mawkish, effeminate, relaxing sentiment from which strong men recoil. There is a sentimentalism which bows before no shrine of virgin flame, and its morals are always lackadaisical, and its scheme of redemption is always cheap. It conceives love as a pretty rainbow, and not as” a rainbow roimd about the throne.” It gathers a handful of flowers on the lower slopes of the mountains, but never ranges above the snow-line, amid the awe-inspiring, breath-gripping solitudes of the eternal snows. Yes, that is the obtrusive contrast between sentiment and sentimentalism. Sentimentalism is born among the flowers: a noble sentiment is born among the snows. Sentimentalism is born among graces: sentiment is born amid grace. Sentimentalism moves easily among kindnesses: sentiment moves wonderingly amid holiness. And therefore, I say, sentimentalism is inherently mawkish, while true sentiment is inherently austere. Sentimentalism takes liberties, while ‘’ the fear of the Lord is clean.’’ When, therefore, I hear the evangel, ^’ He loved me,” I know that the glorious ministry is born of holiness: love is holiness in exercise, it is holiness in gracious movement, it is “a river of water of life proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb.” Our Lover is holy, and holv is His love. ‘^ He loved me!” — the unholy and the unclean.

And because love is holy, love is inconceivably sensitive. The unhallowed is the insensitive, for sin is ever the minister of benumbment. Yes, the unclean makes the moral powers numb, and after every sin the sensitiveness is dulled, and life’s responsiveness impaired. The gradient of purity is also the gradient of feeling: they advance or retrograde with equal steps. And therefore it is impossible for us to realise, even remotely, the sensitiveness of holiness, and therefore, again, our Saviour’s sorrows are inconceivable. “’ ^Yas ever sorrow like unto my sorrow? “‘’ He trod the winepress alone.” Holy love is infinitely sensitive, and “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

And because holy love is sensitive, holy love is redemptive. Holiness is ever positive and aggressive, seeking by its own “consuming fire ‘’ to burn the hateful germs of sin. We may test our growth in holiness, not by our cloistered recoil from uncleanness, but by our positive action upon it. Holiness is not secretive, exclusive, but sanative and redemptive. It takes live coals from its altar-fires wherewith to purge the lips of the defiled. A negative holiness is as monstrous as a square circle, or a heatless fire. ‘’ He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, and ye shall be...’^ Which just means this: holy love shall be an eager servant in the ministry of a positive redemption. And so “He loved me,” He saw me in my low estate, and in His holiness He sought my holiness and my everlasting peace.

“He loved me, and He gave Himself for me,” For holy, sensitive, redemptive love must of necessity be sacrificial. It is the very genius of holiness to be superlative, and in its sacrificial ministry it sacrifices self. ‘’ He gave Himself for me! ‘’ Will my readers wonder if I say that John Calvin, in his marvellous exposition of this epistle, devotes only half-a-dozen lines to an attempted interpretation of this phrase? And what is the reason? Why, this. That the great theologian lays down his pen in glorious, but overwhelming and impotent bewilderment! “No words,” he says, ‘’ can properly express what this means; for who can find language to declare the excellency of the Son of Grod? “And so, I say, he just lays downs his pen, and contemplates the glory in speechless wonder!” He gave Himself for me! ‘’ He endued Himself with the robe of flesh, He entered the house of bondage, He took upon Him the form of a bondslave that He might set the bondslave free. He walked the pilgrim path of limitation, the path of sorrow and temptation; face to face He met the devil, face to face He met ‘* the terror feared of man,’’ becoming ‘* obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” ‘” He gave Himself for me! “And in that holy sacrifice of love the holy law of God received perfect obedience, the violated law of Grod received a holy satisfaction, the sovereignty of the devil was smitten and overthrown, boastful death lost its sting, and the omnivorous grave its victory! “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” And He did it all, did it all! “Wilt thou bring thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy chastity, thy purity, thy works, thy merits?” He did it all! Says Luther, *’ Paul had nothing in his mouth but Christ.’’

“Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.”

“He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Such is the passion of redemption.

Now let me pass to the secret of appropriation. “That life which I now live I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,” And so the virtues of the love-sacrifice are to become mine by faith for by faith I become incorporated with the triumphant Lord. Yes, but what is faith? It is not the deliberate blinding of the judgment. It is not tremulous movement in a small, fusty room, in which the casement window is studiously kept shuttered, and in which we make a pious vow never to open the lattice, and let in the morning light and air. low is faith the dethronement of the reason, and the coronation of caprice? It is not “the shutting of the eyes,” and ‘’ the opening of the mouth,’’ in unillumined expectation. Faith is reasonable dealing in reasonable things. Faith is in the science of religion what experiment is in the science of matter. Faith is reasonable experiment with the glorious hypotheses of Christ. We begin with hypotheses, we discover truth. But in the Christian religion all the hypotheses centre round about the Saviour Himself, and therefore personal faith is personal dealing with Christ, faith is trust, experiment is communion, exploration is by consecration, knowledge is by homage; we lose our life and we find it again in our Lord. Faith, therefore, is not finally mental, or emotional, but volitional. Faith is ultimately an act of the will: it is the personal surrender of the life to the governance of the Saviourhood of Christ. It is the human side of the marriage-covenant between the Lamb and the Lamb’s bride. Faith is the human end of the ministry which establishes union between the soul and its Lord. ‘’ We are justified by faith,” ‘’ That life which I now live I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me,” Such is the secret of appropriation.

So far for the passion of redemption, and the secret of appropriation: and now, thirdly, the wonders of re-creation. What are to be the issues of the union, according to the teachings of my text? First of all, there is to be a certain mortification: “I am crucified with Christ.’’ ‘’ The apostle speaketh,” says one who is greatly at home in the affairs of the heart, “of that high crucifying, whereby sin, the devil and death are crucified in Christ, and not in me... But I, believing in Christ, am by faith crucified also with Christ, so that all these things are crucified and dead unto me.” Ay, and that not fictionally, but in sober and most literal truth. One of the gifts of redemption is a certain deadness; there is a dead side to a true believer: on that side, while he believes, his senses do not operate, and he offers no response. Have I not seen it scores upon scores of times? Have I not seen a believer, who by belief has become one with Christ, and who has become dead to the old baneful world of haunting guilt? Did I not hear one say, who had revelled forty years in sin, and who had become united with the Lord, that that forty-year-old man was dead, “crucified with Christ,” and if any accusing day should shake a threatening finger at him, he would laugh in triumph, the finger was pointed at the dead, for that particular man “was crucified, dead and buried, and his life was hid with Christ in God! ‘^ And have I not seen a believer, who by belief has become one with Christ, and who has become dead to the insidious fascination of a glittering and destructive world? ‘’ Good-bye, proud world, I’m going home! ‘’ And have I not seen a believer, who by belief has become one with Christ, and who has become dead to death, and in death has exulted in ‘^ the power of an endless life.’’ Oh, yes, one of the primary gifts of grace is the gift of deadness — deadness to the threat of yesterday, deadness to the fear of to-morrow, deadness to the frown of the immediate circumstance, and deadness to majestic death itself! ‘’ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” ‘’ I have been crucified with Christ,” “1 died.”

But there are other fruits of the union which is humanly established by faith in Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ “: mortification; ‘^ yet I live “: vitalisation! ‘’ If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him!” The gift of deadness is the companion gift of vitality. “Everything shall live whither the river cometh.” Dormant powers shall be aroused and shall troop forth out of their graves, powers of holy perception, and holy desire, and holy sympathy, and holy faculty for service. And old powers shall be renewed, and they shall be like anaemic weaklings who have attained a boisterous vitality. Our powers are far from their best until they become united to Christ. I saw a bit of edelweiss the other day growing in a garden in one of our suburbs; but it had to be labelled, it was so unlike its masculine kinsman gripping the desolate precipices of the lofty Alps. Ay, you must see the edelweiss at home! And if we want to see what love really is, and will, and conscience, and chivalry, we must see them at home, in their native clime, rooted and grounded in the life and love of the eternal Lord. “In Christ shall all be made alive.”

“I have been crucified with Christ: yet I live: and yet no longer I, hut Christ .../’” So that is where we arrive. Mortification by Christ, vitalisation in Christ, the manifestation of Christ. ‘^ I live, yet no longer I.’’ What is that but the suppression of the ego? Would it not be better to say, What is that but the conversion and transfiguration of the ego, and the emergence of the Lord? “No longer I, Christ liveth in me! “The Lord who pervades the life also dominates it.” The life which I now live in the flesh “reveals His power and His glory. He takes my humble affairs and He uses them as the shrine of His own Presence, the lamp-stand for His own eternal light. The life in the home, in the market, in the school, in the senate, in the closet, in the polling-booth, — the entire circuit of that life ‘’ which I now live in the flesh,” ‘’ I live in faith! “‘’ I live, yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.” That is the Christian ideal, and that is the Christian possibility, however pitiably remote we may be from its attainment. Yes, that is the ideal, that Christ lives again in me, that my activities are the motions of my Lord; that in me He faces again the Pharisee, in me He denounces again the oppressor of ‘’ the poor and him that hath no helper,” in me He ministers again to the hungry, the paralysed, and the fever-stricken, and in me He champions again the cause of the Magdalene and the little child. ‘’ I live, yet no longer I, but Christ,” Men shall gaze upon the issues of the life, and say, “It is the Lord!” and they shall glorify our Father which Ib in heaven.