CONCLUSION. THE NEW MAN AND THE ETERNAL LIFE. (COL. iii. 10). WE have thus gone through the series of our Lord's reiterated Amens, each of which has opened some further truth distinctive of the New Man and his eternal life. I would in conclusion sum up the teaching thus brought before us. For God, in giving us His Son, has given us this life. And just in proportion as we receive the Son is His life revealed in us. And though at this day, more perhaps than ever, when earthly advantage is so keenly sought, he who chooses this life of Christ, does it at the risk of being cast into the fiery furnace of the world's scorn, as a poor feeble fool and mystic dreamer, there is yet a seed to whom God's kingdom is a present joy, and the life of Christ the one unfailing reality. For such I gather up the distinctive features of this life, that we may more fully see our calling in Jesus Christ our Lord. But first a word as to the connection of these Amens with Christ's own life. Christ Himself is the fulfilment of them all. In them we have as doctrines the self-same truths which come before us as facts in the life of Jesus Christ. These reiterated Amens describe the working of the life of God in flesh and blood. and Christ is the life of God in flesh and blood. But our Lord calls attention to these truths by words, lest our blindness should not see the facts as they are set before us in Himself under the veil of His flesh. For indeed Christianity is Christ, and Christ is Christianity. He is the Word made flesh. Therefore He is the fulfilment of every true word which ever was or shall be spoken. He is the fulfilment of the law. He is the fulfilment of the prophets. He is the fulfilment of all those hopes and traditions of the ancient heathen world, which were dim unconscious prophecies of Him that was to come. He is the substance and fulfilment also of every good thing which outward nature sets before our eyes, for nature also is a sacramental word. He is the bread, the vine, the water, and the rock, and the way, and the husband, and the tree of life, and the first-fruits, and the morning star, and the sun, and the kinsman-redeemer, and the prophet, and the priest, and the physician. For He is the fulfilment of His own words. Fallen man may say one thing and do another. The New Man is and must be what He speaks. So in reply to the question, "Who art thou?" He answers, “I am that which I speak from the beginning; "1 for what He said was what He was: His life was the perfect expression and fulfilment of His own teaching. And so, if only He lives in us, His words, even though we know it not, will be fulfilled in us, because His life is the fulfilment of His doctrine. For what is the Gospel but the manifestation of the New Life which is formed in man by the reception of the Word and Spirit of the Lord. What does it tell us but that a New Man has been brought forth out of our 1 S. John viii. 25. divided nature, in whom the breach is healed, because God has come to dwell in man, that man through death may dwell in God. Is this the mere tradition of something which only once happened, in a far off country, eighteen hundred years ago, or is it the glad tidings of a fact which is through grace for ever true, that by the coming of the Word of God an eternal life is formed in man, even a "new man," ""Christ in us, the hope of glory," who bears the cross, that man may die to his old life, and rises again, that man may live in God for ever. All this was first accomplished for us in Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the First-born Son, first out of life,3 first out of death; and in and by Him, by His life and death, the work was wrought for us, for in Him God is one with man, and man is one with God. But the work wrought for us in Jesus Christ is the sign and pledge of the self-same work, which God has ever been working, and still works in man by His Spirit. In His thirty years we have all the stages of the one eternal life, as it may be and has been brought forth in human nature. His infancy shows us the eternal life as it was known in Patriarchal days; His youth, the same life as it grew throughout the Jewish dispensation; His baptism opens our Christian position, how through a mystic death heaven opens, and man passes into a spiritual world, and the Spirit descends, and the Father's voice is heard, acknowledging man on earth to be His son. Lastly, Christ's death and resurrection show how man is made for ever one with God, not merely filled with His fulness here, but brought out of the limitations of the fall to be king of kings and lord of lords. Christ's 2 Col. i. 27; iii. 10; Gal. iv. 19. Col. i. 15, 16, 17. • Col. i. 18. life reveals it all. In Him God's purpose is declared for ever. But to share with Him in all this, He must be formed and grow in us. Then we too shall know something of all these same stages: a time, in infancy, without law: a time, in youth, when, though heirs, like Israel of old, we are under tutors and governors: then the time when heaven opens, and we come to death and resurrection. "The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun."5 At each stage the New Man is son of God. These reiterated Amens, even as Christ's life for us, only call attention to some of the marks or stages of the appointed way. Let us then briefly recapitulate this teaching. First, the New Man's home is heaven. Heaven, shut to the fallen old man, is reopened to the New. So we are first assured that man shall see again his longlost home, and angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.6 But how can these things be? Only by a heavenly birth; for the only way into any world is by a birth into it. To enter heaven therefore man must be re-born. A new life must be received, even the life of heaven; for so only can we live in heaven. And this new life comes through Him who gives Himself to be our life, even the Son of Man who is in heaven, who comes to earth that as many as receive Him may become the sons of God, and by the same way which He has gone for us, "born of water and of the Spirit," that is through death to present nature, and through the quickening of the Holy Ghost, may return with Him from earth to heaven, from death to life for evermore. But what kind of life is this eternal life? • Chap. i. 51. Chap. iii. 3-15. 5 Eccl. i. 9. It is a life of rest, the sabbath of the Lord, because the New Man does nothing, and can do nothing, from himself, but only what the Father doeth. Therefore, instead of bringing death into the world, he rather quickens and gives life; instead of being judged, like the old man, he is ordained to judge others. And both by quickening and by judging he fulfils the Father's will, which is to overcome the curse, and to give to others the rest which they have lost through their own self-will. Is then this life self-supported? No. It lives by heavenly bread, even by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man who is in heaven; living by Him, as the branch upon the vine, and as the vine upon its root, by the continual communication and reception of the life which through the Son flows ever from the Father.9 10 8 Then this life is also light; and its light frees man from the bonds which darkness ever lays upon him. It comes indeed into our darkness, but it breaks its chains. If we keep the word, we shall soon know. And then, if we know the truth, the truth will make us free. The Son, because He makes us sons, shall make us free indeed. This leads to the opening of the divine nature which through grace is ours. For the New Man is a son of God. In Him the Creator and the creature are indissolubly one; for by the coming of the eternal Son into our nature the fulness of the Godhead has dwelt in man, and the manhood has been taken into God. God has become man, that man may say, "I am." The Son of Man is very God." Then, because God is love, this life must go forth to serve Chap. v. 19-29. 10 Chap. viii. 31–36. |