We have been reminded of the high position to which we have been called in having been invited to the possibility and prospect of being made equal to the angels. Such a prospect is the highest possible to the human imagination. It is the highest possible in the nature of things. To those unacquainted with the grounds on which it rests, it is nothing more than an idle dream. How far it is in truth from being such, you very well know. It is no mere conception of a poetic imagination, though containing within itself all and more than such an imagination could picture as desirable. It is no utopian ideal, though coming up to and going beyond the utmost excellence that could possibly be associated with such an ideal. It is a sober matter of fact, commended to our judgment and faith by many evidences and considerations which enable us emphatically to endorse Peter’s statement that we have not followed cunningly-devised fables.
NOT ALL CHOSEN
But there is another side to the question which it will be profitable for a moment to look at. It is the side associated with the thought that must have presented itself more than once to every thoughtful mind, namely, “Can it be that all the people we know in connection with the profession of the truth are destined to become equal with the angels?” We are able to obtain for this enquiry a positive Scriptural answer. We have the Lord’s authority for a decided “No.” He tells us in many ways that it is not every one that is called that will be chosen. He plainly makes us understand by various forms of teaching that only a selection will be made from among those who profess His name; and the matter that ought to constantly engage our attention is, the principle upon which the selection will be made. As to this also, we need never be in any manner of doubt. The reason why He will choose some, and not choose others, has been stated by Him with a plainness that is almost considered childish by the wise of our generation. It is for us to discern and conform to this reason, remembering that the Lord has said, “Except a man receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no case enter therein.” He has told us that it is not sufficient to know about Him; that many in the day of decision will say to him, “Have we not preached in thy name?” to whom he will say, “I never knew you.”
To what then, besides the knowledge of him, must we attain? We get the answer by considering the various indications scattered about in the apostolic writings. Here is one: Paul says, in Hebrew 3:6, that we are the house of Christ, “if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” We can all understand this. The least gifted among us knows what it is to be “confident” and to “rejoice.” To be confident about a thing is to be sure. He wants us to be sure about the hope; to banish all doubt. This is reasonable. To lack certainty is to dishonour him. Even men refuse friendship to men when doubt is harboured with regard to declared intentions; how much more essential to acceptance with God in Christ is it that we fully believe that what He has promised He will perform. You know the declaration that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). But perhaps you say “It is my nature to doubt; I cannot be confident; and if I cannot help it why should I be rejected?”
Well, there is an answer. There are things which no man doubts, whatever be his nature, provided only that he be properly informed. No man doubts that Queen Victoria reigns in England [1], and that London is on the banks of the Thames. If a man could be found doubting these facts, it would be because of ignorance which would scarcely be considered an excuse. Uncertainty is an effect. It is the result either of ignorance or forgetfulness. Now for a man to be ignorant or forgetful in relation to the hope, he must be neglectful of the means of knowledge and memory God has given us. God has given us abundant reason for confidence in giving us the Scriptures, and the many confirmations with which those Scriptures are accompanied. Now, if we neglect the Scriptures, are we not responsible for the effect that will spring from this neglect? Are we not chargeable with the uncertainty of faith that will arise? Is it not reasonable that Paul should ask, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was afterwards spoken unto us by them that heard him?” It is certain that we cannot escape if we are guilty of this folly. Consequently, the course of wisdom is evident, how narrow-minded or vulgar soever it may be considered by the “polite.” Let us not neglect, but give a daily attention to the Bible. There is no need of excess: but a daily place it ought to have.
Do not be too much taken up with temporal things. Be taken up enough with them, of course. There is no need to advocate attention to temporal things. They are sure to be attended to: the only danger connected with them is the danger of attending to them too much, and not too little. And there is little danger of attending to spiritual things too much: the danger is of attending to them too little. The situation of things on this point is very well indicated by the fact that while there are many hundreds of entreaties in the Bible to attend to wisdom, there is only one caution against going too far in this direction (Ecc. 7:16).
There may be a possibility of going to extremes of devotedness to God’s great salvation, but the liability is as one to a thousand. The need of exertion lies all in the opposite direction. Do not devote the energies of your life to the attainment of a present result. Labour not to be rich. Lay not up treasure upon earth. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Jesus makes this a reason why we should not pile treasure now. We must all allow the reason to be good and true. We must all admit that wherever what we treasure is laid, there our hearts will be. It is a universal and inevitable rule. If we lay up treasure in the present order of things, our hearts will be bound up with the present order of things, and, consequently, our sympathies will be weakened for the purpose of God to do away with the present order of things and establish a new order. Let our treasure be laid up in heaven. This is Christ’s advice, and he has told us how to do it. Whatever we give to God is laid up in heaven; and we give to God when we give to the poor or to the furtherance of His truth among men. The man who appropriates and lays up all for his own use, Jesus speaks of a man “who layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God” (Luke 12:21).
BEWARE!
We must, therefore, beware of the sophistry by which men think they have done enough, when they provide for themselves and their own families. It is part of well-doing to make this provision: but there is another part, which is more acceptable, because more difficult and more godlike: viz., to provide for the poor and the gospel, according to the ability God hath given us. This is a hard saying for the children of the flesh: but it is the doctrine of the first-born of the children of the spirit: and time will yet show it the wisest doctrine. Even now, there is a reward. The man who acts out this policy of Christ finds his confidence growing stronger, day by day, instead of reaping the experience of the penurious man who is apt to find his faith getting thinner and weaker as time advances, until at last he wonders if he has any faith at all, or worse still, makes shipwreck of it altogether, and is again entangled and overcome of the world, after having once escaped its bondage. Solomon speaks of the faith of the righteous shining brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. This is the result of persevering attention and obedience. The confidence of the hope increases as time advances, until the heart settles into the condition of Abraham who, against hope, believed in hope: that what God had promised He would certainly, in due time, perform.
This state of confidence in the heart of saints gives pleasure to God and to Christ. It is a ground of acceptance with them. But there is not only the confidence but the rejoicing of the hope. We must not forget this part. It is a necessary part. God requires it of our hands. I think we will say it is reasonable that He should if we but reflect. Suppose it is the case of our own children: we promise them something good on conditions: they fulfil the conditions in part, but are not greatly concerned whether they get what we promise or not. They show indifference. They are not glad. Should we not in such a state of things feel disinclined to bestow what we proposed? How different in the other case. How interested we are to give when we see our children building upon our promise, and anticipating with gladness its fulfilment. Of course there is a difference between mortal parents and God: still we are in His image: and the Scriptures give us to understand that, though in much higher measure, He works upon similar principles.
REJOICING IN SALVATION
Surely it is the natural outcome of the confidence in His promises that we should rejoice in them. What could be so calculated to make a person glad as the prospect of what God has promised to those who believe and obey Him? If we rejoice not, it must be because our faith is weakened by what Jesus calls “the lust of other things.” What those other things are, we know: because we have all had experience of them and know how easily they kill confidence and joy in the things of the Spirit. We must be on our guard against them. Some people seem to think we don’t require to take care. Such people sooner or later become the best examples of the need of taking care. Their interest in the purpose of God and the things of the Spirit, and the work of Christ becomes so weak that they are a drag on every true servant of Christ. Their faith is so uncertain that they never refresh a fellow traveller by rejoicing in the hope: but are all the time rather in the condition of having to be persuaded by argument there is a hope. For this state God holds a man responsible, because it is the result of causes in his control. It is the result of his attending very little to what God requires at his hand, and attending very much to matters in which his own pleasure merely is engaged. He neglects the Bible; he neglects God in prayer, in service, and in meeting; he neglects God’s friends. He attends much to business, much to professional study, much to light reading, and much to worldly friends: the result is, his heart is drawn away, and he grows dead. He serves himself much, and others little, and God not at all. Can we wonder at his sinking into such a state of barrenness and paralysis in relation to all God’s affairs?
Let us repudiate the policy that leads to such results. Let us “hold fast” to everything that keeps us in God’s company, and we shall thus hold fast the rejoicing as well as the confidence of the hope, steadfast unto the end. Not that we shall never know sorrow or gloom. On the contrary, the joy the truth gives us has its obverse side. The burden of mortal nature, and the evil state of the world in all its aspects, will unitedly operate to cast us down—not rarely. Still these are accidental and transient. They are but as the dullness of a cloud-covered sky. They do not blot out the sun. They do not alter the fundamental verities of the ages and the universe.
All things are on our side if we are in harmony with God. Our sadness is but for a moment, and on the surface. We have no reason but mechanical and short-lived reasons for being sad. The state and the time we live in overbear the perceptions of the understanding yes, sometimes, because of our weakness. But we can blow the clouds away, often, with a rally. We can ask with David, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance.” We discover by such introspections that there is no cause for sadness, and that our glooms are due to the weakness of the hour, for which we are not responsible. How much better to be thus than in the state that calls for the contrary question. If David said “Why am I sad?” James asks others, why they are glad. He tells them to let their laughter be turned to mourning, and their joy to heaviness, and to be afflicted and mourn and weep (Jas. 4:9), and these too, recollect, were brethren by profession—men who had a status among the brotherhood, and were in good odour with many whom, nevertheless, James describes as “sinners” and double-minded men, and whose sinfulness Paul defines as a walk after the flesh and minding earthly things.
There is a time for everything. This is not the time for pleasure and mirth and gladness, on the part of those whose part it is to have filled up in themselves the (remaining) measure of the sufferings of Christ (Collos. 1:24). To rejoice in the hope is admissible to any degree, but to rejoice with the world in their joy is to rejoice with a Godless joy—a joy with no God in it—a joy which is destined to burn out, and leave nothing but ashes behind.
Christ asks us to be quite sure about the hope, and to find our gladness in it. But he also asks other things at our hands. He asks us not only to be but to do. This opens out many points, but we must confine our attention to two—one positive; the other negative: one, what we ought to do, and one what we ought not to do—of both of which, there are many forms and examples in the word of Christ. We first refer to one that is of universal knowledge and fame, but that is practically disregarded almost as generally as it is known. “As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” I need stay to speak of the excellence of such a rule among men. The observance of it makes men interesting to each other and happy in themselves. The practice of the contrary rule, which is almost the universal rule—that, viz., of leaving your neighbour out of consideration—has just the contrary effect; it makes men hideous and unhappy. How good and reasonable and beautiful it is that Jesus should require this mode of action in his disciples. For what is he developing them for? That they may be a glory to God, a joy to him, a joy to each other, and a blessing to the world when they shall reign with him. How could they be any of these if they were sluggish selfish men, interested only in their own affairs?
A BROAD APPROACH
Let us look this broadly and strongly in the face. It is a commandment. We may not feel like obeying it by natural impulse; but if we set ourselves to do it because Christ has commanded it, it is wonderful how it becomes not only a habit but a pleasant habit, yielding health and satisfaction to ourselves and blessing to those with whom we may be thrown in contact. No doubt, we will often be discouraged in the attempt to carry it out. If everybody acted on it, it would be easy and delightful; but when the rule is the other way, then it seems as if your kindness came blightingly back into your own bosom, and as if there was no use in trying. But then, if we take an enlightened view of the matter, we shall see that we do not do it because there is any “use” in the matter; that is, not because we expect to reform the world by it, or even to evoke the reciprocation of it from those to whom we practice this self-denying rule. We do it simply and purely because it is Christ’s commandment, who is preparing thus for himself a band of noble men and women who will see great joy of it yet in the day of their muster in his presence, and their exaltation to that position of power in which they will have the fullest scope for acting out the noble precepts that Christ has delivered as part of the power that prepares the generation of the righteous for the promised blessedness of all families in Abraham. Do not let us forget that we must act on this rule if we are to be chosen of Christ at his coming. He has told us plainly and frequently that only if we “Do whatsoever he has commanded, are we his friends.”
The other thing I spoke of is something we are not to do. We are not to “recompense to any man evil for evil.” On the contrary we are to do good to those that who do evil to us. This is perhaps a harder rule than the other. It is a primitive instinct with all men to resent; to retaliate; to pay back, if possible, a larger evil than has been inflicted on us. And primitive instincts are hard to conquer; but conquer we must. This primitive instinct we must tie up in chains and refuse to allow it a part in our deportment or policy. As the servants of Christ, we are not at liberty to act upon it. There must be no unkind word for unkind word, or disobliging act for disobliging act, but contrariwise, blessing. Let us put all our vigour into the acts of duty and business efficiency. Don’t let it get into our resentments. Executive impulse is useful as steam in the boiler: it drives the machinery: but if you let it out, it scalds, torments and destroys. The commandment is excellent in every way we can think of it. No commandment could more effectually train us to the exercise of self-restraint. Nothing could be more calculated to tame the natural tiger: and help the higher law of kindness to get the upper hand. The result of its obedience is the development of beautiful character, well fitted for the exaltation which awaits the suffering house of Christ in the day of his glory.
Paul advised Timothy to give himself wholly to these things, that he might be a vessel filled for kingly use in the great day. We cannot receive better advice. The process may be severe for flesh and blood, but it is short if it extends to the longest natural lifetime, and its results are so transcendent and unutterably good in the day of Christ, that the tribulation of seven times increased in duration and intensity, would still be properly described in the words of Paul as “our light affliction which is but for a moment,” working out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Robert Roberts, 1884: The Christadelphian, page 251–255.
[1] This exhortation was written in 1884!
