"The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
it not."
John i. 5.
OF all the thoughts which rise in the mind when contemplating the sojourn
of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth, none perhaps is more affecting and
subduing than the obscurity which attended it. I do not mean His obscure
condition, in the sense of its being humble; but the obscurity in which
He was shrouded, and the secrecy which He observed. This characteristic
of His first Advent is referred to very frequently in Scripture, as in
the text, "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
it not;" and is in contrast with what is foretold about His second Advent.
Then "every eye shall see Him;" which implies that all shall recognize
Him; whereas, when He came for the first time, though many saw Him, few
indeed discerned Him. It had been prophesied, "When we shall see Him there
is no beauty that we should desire Him;" and at the very end of his ministry,
He said to one of His twelve chosen friends, "Have I been so long time
with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip?" [Isai. liii. 2; John
xiv. 9.]
I propose to set before you one or two thoughts which arise from this
very solemn circumstance, and which may, through God’s blessing, be profitable.
1. And first, let us review some of the circumstances which marked His
sojourn when on earth.
His condescension in coming down from heaven, in leaving His Father’s
glory and taking flesh, is so far beyond power of words or thought, that
one might consider at first sight that it mattered little whether He came
as a prince or a beggar. And yet after all, it is much more wonderful
that He came in low estate, for this reason; because it might have been
thought beforehand, that, though He condescended to come on earth, yet
He would not submit to be overlooked and despised: now the rich are not
despised by the world, and the poor are. If He had come as a great prince
or noble, the world without knowing a whit more that He was God, yet would
at least have looked up to Him and honoured Him, as being a prince; but
when He came in a low estate, He took upon him one additional humiliation,
contempt,—being contemned, scorned, rudely passed by, roughly profaned
by His creatures.
What were the actual circumstances of His coming? His Mother is a poor
woman; she comes to Bethlehem to be taxed, travelling, when her choice
would have been to remain at home. She finds there is no room in the inn;
she is obliged to betake herself to a stable; she brings forth her firstborn
Son, and lays Him in a manger. That little babe, so born, so placed, is
none other than the Creator of heaven and earth, the Eternal Son of God.
Well; He was born of a poor woman, laid in a manger, brought up to a
lowly trade, that of a carpenter; and when He began to preach the Gospel
He had not a place to lay His head: lastly, He was put to death, to an
infamous and odious death, the death which criminals then suffered.
For the three last years of His life, He preached the Gospel, I say,
as we read in Scripture; but He did not begin to do so till He was thirty
years old. For the first thirty years of His life, He seems to have lived,
just as a poor man would live now. Day after day, season after season,
winter and summer, one year and then another, passed on, as might happen
to any of us. He passed from being a babe in arms to being a child, and
then He became a boy, and so He grew up "like a tender plant," increasing
in wisdom and stature; and then He seems to have followed the trade of
Joseph, His reputed father; going on in an ordinary way without any great
occurrence, till He was thirty years old. How very wonderful is all this!
that He should live here, doing nothing great, so long; living here, as
if for the sake of living; not preaching, or collecting disciples, or apparently
in any way furthering the cause which brought Him down from heaven. Doubtless
there were deep and wise reasons in God’s counsels for His going on so
long in obscurity; I only mean, that we do not know them.
And it is remarkable that those who were about Him, seem to have treated
Him as one of their equals. His brethren, that is, His near relations,
His cousins, did not believe in him. And it is very observable, too, that
when He began to preach and a multitude collected, we are told, "When His
friends heard of it they went out to lay hold on Him; for they said, He
is beside himself." [Mark iii. 21.] They treated Him as we might be disposed,
and rightly, to treat any ordinary person now, who began to preach in the
streets. I say "rightly," because such persons generally preach a new
Gospel, and therefore must be wrong. Also, they preach without being sent,
and against authority; all which is wrong too. Accordingly we are often
tempted to say that such people are "beside themselves," or mad, and not
unjustly. It is often charitable to say so, for it is better to be mad
than to be disobedient. Well, what we should say of such persons, this
is what our Lord’s friends said of Him. They had lived so long with Him,
and yet did not know Him; did not understand what He was. They saw nothing
to mark a difference between Him and them. He was dressed as others, He
ate and drank as others, He came in and went out, and spoke, and walked,
and slept, as others. He was in all respects a man, except that He did
not sin; and this great difference the many would not detect, because none
of us understands those who are much better than himself: so that Christ,
the sinless Son of God, might be living close to us, and we not discover
it.
2. I say that Christ, the sinless Son of God, might be living now in
the world as our next door neighbour, and perhaps we not find it out. And
this is a thought that should be dwelt on. I do not mean to say that there
are not a number of persons, who we could be sure were not Christ; of course,
no persons who lead bad and irreligious lives. But there are a number of
persons who are in no sense irreligious, or open to serious blame, who
are very much like each other at first sight, yet in God’s eyes are very
different. I mean the great mass of what are called respectable men, who
vary very much: some are merely decent and outwardly correct persons, and
have no great sense of religion, do not deny themselves, have no ardent
love of God, but love the world; and, whereas their interest lies in being
regular and orderly, or they have no strong passions, or have early got
into the way of being regular, and their habits are formed accordingly,
they are what they are, decent and correct, but very little more. But there
are others who look just the same to the world, who in their hearts are
very different; they make no great show, they go on in the same quiet ordinary
way as the others, but really they are training to be saints in Heaven.
They do all they can to change themselves, to become like God, to obey
God, to discipline themselves, to renounce the world; but they do it in
secret, both because God tells them so to do, and because they do not like
it to be known. Moreover, there are a number of others between these two
with more or less of worldliness and more or less of faith. Yet they all
look about the same, to common eyes, because true religion is a hidden
life in the heart; and though it cannot exist without deeds, yet these
are for the most part secret deeds, secret charities, secret prayers, secret
self-denials, secret struggles, secret victories.
Of course in proportion as persons are brought out into public life,
they will be seen and scrutinized, and (in a certain sense) known more;
but I am talking of the ordinary condition of people in private life, such
as our Saviour was for thirty years; and these look very like each other.
And there are so many of them, that unless we get very near them, we cannot
see any distinction between one and another; we have no means to do so,
and it is no business of ours. And yet, though we have no right to judge
others, but must leave this to God, it is very certain that a really holy
man, a true saint, though he looks like other men, still has a sort of
secret power in him to attract others to him who are like-minded, and to
influence all who have any thing in them like him. And thus it often becomes
a test, whether we are like-minded with the Saints of God, whether they
have influence over us. And though we have no means of knowing at the time
who are God’s own Saints, yet after all is over we have; and then on looking
back on what is past, perhaps after they are dead and gone, if we knew
them, we may ask ourselves what power they had over us, whether they attracted
us, influenced us, humbled us, whether they made our hearts burn within
us. Alas! too often we shall find that we were close to them for a long
time, had means of knowing them, and knew them not; and that is a heavy
condemnation on us, indeed. Now this was singularly exemplified in our
Saviour’s history, by how much He was so very holy. The holier a man is,
the less he is understood by men of the world. All who have any spark of
living faith will understand him in a measure, and the holier he is, they
will, for the most part, be attracted the more; but those who serve the
world will be blind to him, or scorn and dislike him, the holier he is.
This, I say, happened to our Lord. He was All-holy, but "the light shined
in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." His near relations
did not believe in Him. And if this was really so, and for the reason I
have said, it surely becomes a question whether we should have understood
Him better than they: whether though he had been our next door neighbour,
or one of our family, we should have distinguished Him from any one else,
who was correct and quiet in his deportment; or rather, whether we should
not, though we respected Him, (alas, what a word! what language towards
the Most High God!) yet even if we went as far as this, whether we should
not have thought Him strange, eccentric, extravagant, and fanciful. Much
less should we have detected any sparks of that glory which He had with
the Father before the world was, and which was merely hidden not quenched
by His earthly tabernacle. This, truly, is a very awful thought; because
if He were near us for any long time, and we did not see any thing wonderful
in Him, we might take it as a clear proof that we were not His, for "His
sheep know His voice, and follow Him;" we might take it as a clear proof
that we should not know Him, or admire His greatness, or adore His glory,
or love His excellency, if we were admitted to His presence in heaven.
3. And here we are brought to another most serious thought, which I
will touch upon. We are very apt to wish we had been born in the days of
Christ, and in this way we excuse our misconduct, when conscience reproaches
us. We say, that had we had the advantage of being with Christ, we should
have had stronger motives, stronger restraints against sin. I answer, that
so far from our sinful habits being reformed by the presence of Christ,
the chance is, that those same habits would have hindered us from recognizing
Him. We should not have known He was present; and if He had even told us
who He was, we should not have believed Him. Nay, had we seen His miracles
(incredible as it may seem), even they would not have made any lasting
impression on us. Without going into this subject, consider only the possibility
of Christ being close to us, even though He did no miracle, and our not
knowing it; yet I believe this literally would have been the case with
most men. But enough on this subject. What I am coming to is this: I wish
you to observe what a fearful light this casts upon our prospects in the
next world. We think heaven must be a place of happiness to us, if we do
but get there; but the great probability is, if we can judge by what goes
on here below, that a bad man, if brought to heaven, would not know He
was in heaven;—I do not go to the further question whether, on the contrary,
the very fact of his being in heaven with all his unholiness upon him,
would not be a literal torment to him, and light up the fires of hell within
him. This indeed would be a most dreadful way of finding out where he was.
But let us suppose a lighter case: let us suppose he could remain in heaven
unblasted, yet it would seem that at least he would not know that he was
there. He would see nothing wonderful there. Could men come nearer to God
than when they seized Him, struck Him, spit on Him, hurried Him along,
stripped him, stretched out His limbs upon the cross, nailed Him to it,
raised it up, stood gazing on Him, jeered Him, gave Him vinegar, looked
close whether He was dead, and then pierced Him with a spear? O dreadful
thought, that the nearest approaches man has made to God upon earth have
been in blasphemy! Whether of the two came closer to Him, St. Thomas, who
was allowed to reach forth his hand and reverently touch His wounds, and
St. John, who rested on His bosom, or the brutal soldiers who profaned
Him limb by limb, and tortured Him nerve by nerve? The Blessed Virgin,
indeed, came closer still to Him; and we, if we be true believers, still
closer, who have Him really, though spiritually, within us; but this is
another, an inward sort of approach. Of those who approached Him externally,
they came nearest, who knew nothing about it. So it is with sinners: they
would walk close to the throne of God; they would stupidly gaze at it;
they would touch it; they would meddle with the holiest things; they would
go on intruding and prying, not meaning any thing wrong by it, but with
a sort of brute curiosity, till the avenging lightnings destroyed them;—all
because they have no senses to guide them in the matter. Our bodily
senses tell us of the approach of good or evil on earth. By sound, by scent,
by feeling we know what is happening to us. We know when we are exposing
ourselves to the weather, when we are exerting ourselves too much. We have
warnings, and feel we must not neglect them. Now, sinners have no spiritual
senses; they can presage nothing; they do not know what is going to happen
the next moment to them. So they go fearlessly further and further among
precipices, till on a sudden they fall, or are smitten and perish. Miserable
beings! and this is what sin does for immortal souls; that they should
be like the cattle which are slaughtered at the shambles, yet touch and
smell the very weapons which are to destroy them!
4. But you may say, how does this concern us? Christ is not here; we
cannot thus or in any less way insult His Majesty. Are we so sure of this?
Certainly we cannot commit such open blasphemy; but it is another matter
whether we cannot commit as great. For often sins are greater which are
less startling; insults more bitter, which are not so loud; and evils deeper,
which are more subtle. Do we not recollect a very awful passage? "Whosoever
speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever
speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him." [Matt.
xii. 32.] Now, I am not deciding whether or not this denunciation can be
fulfilled in the case of Christians now, though when we recollect that
we are at present under the ministration of that very Spirit
of whom our Saviour speaks, this is a very serious question; but I quote
it to show that there may be sins greater even than insult and injury offered
to Christ’s Person, though we should think that impossible, and though
they could not be so flagrant or open. With this thought let it be considered:—
First, that Christ is still on earth. He said expressly that He would
come again. The Holy Ghost’s coming is so really His coming, that we might
as well say that He was not here in the days of His flesh, when He was
visibly in this world, as deny that He is here now, when He is here by
His Divine Spirit. This indeed is a mystery, how God the Son and God the
Holy Ghost, two Persons, can be one, how He can be in the Spirit and the
Spirit in Him; but so it is.
Next, if He is still on earth, yet is not visible (which cannot be denied),
it is plain that He keeps Himself still in the condition which He chose
in the days of His flesh. I mean, He is a hidden Saviour, and may be approached
(unless we are careful) without due reverence and fear. I say, wherever
He is (for that is a further question), still He is here, and again He
is secret; and whatever be the tokens of His Presence, still they must
be of a nature to admit of persons doubting where it is; and if they will
argue, and be sharpwitted and subtle, they may perplex themselves and others,
as the Jews did even in the days of His flesh, till He seems to them nowhere
present on earth how. And when they come to think him far away, of course
they feel it to be impossible so to insult Him as the Jews did of
old; and if nevertheless He is here, they are perchance approaching
and insulting Him, though they so feel. And this was just the case of the
Jews, for they too were ignorant what they were doing. It is probable,
then, that we can now commit at least as great blasphemy towards Him as
the Jews did first, because we are under the dispensation of that Holy
Spirit, against whom even more heinous sins can be committed; next,
because His presence now as little witnesses of itself, or is impressive
to the many, as His bodily presence formerly.
We see a further reason for this apprehension, when we consider what
the tokens of His presence now are; for they will be found to be of a nature
easily to lead men into irreverence, unless they be humble and watchful.
For instance, the Church is called "His Body:" what His material
Body was when He was visible on earth, such is the Church now. It is the
instrument of His Divine power; it is that which we must approach, to gain
good from Him; it is that which by insulting we awaken His anger. Now,
what is the Church but, as it were, a body of humiliation, almost provoking
insult and profaneness, when men do not live by faith? an earthen vessel,
far more so even than His body of flesh, for that was at least pure from
all sin, and the Church is defiled in all her members. We know that her
ministers at best are but imperfect and erring, and of like passions with
their brethren; yet of them He has said, speaking not to the Apostles merely
but to all the seventy disciples (to whom Christian ministers are in office
surely equal), "He that heareth you, heareth Me, and he that despiseth
you, despiseth Me, and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me."
Again: He has made the poor, weak, and afflicted, tokens and instruments
of His Presence; and here again, as is plain, the same temptation meets
us to neglect or profane it. What He was, such are His chosen followers
in this world; and as His obscure and defenceless state led men to insult
and ill-treat Him, so the like peculiarities, in the tokens of His Presence,
lead men to insult Him now. That such are His tokens is plain from many
passages of Scripture: for instance, He says of children, "Whoso shall
receive one such little child in My Name, receiveth Me." Again: He said
to Saul, who was persecuting His followers, "Why persecutest thou Me?"
And He forewarns us, that at the Last Day He will say to the righteous,
"I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me
drink. I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I
was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me." And
He adds, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren,
ye have done it unto Me." [Matt. xviii. 5. Acts ix. 4. Matt. xxv. 35-40.]
He observes the same connexion between Himself and His followers in His
words to the wicked. What makes this passage the more awful and apposite,
is this, which has been before now remarked, that neither righteous nor
wicked knew what they had done; even the righteous are represented
as unaware that they had approached Christ. They say, "Lord, when
saw we Thee an hungered, and fed Thee, or thirsty, and gave Thee drink?"
In every age, then, Christ is both in the world, and yet not publicly so
more than in the days of His flesh.
And a similar remark applies to His Ordinances, which are at once most
simple, yet most intimately connected with Him. St. Paul, in his First
Epistle to the Corinthians, shows both how easy and how fearful it is to
profane the Lord’s Supper, while he states how great the excess of the
Corinthians had been, yet also that it was a want of "discerning
the Lord’s Body." When He was born into the world, the world knew it not.
He was laid in a rude manger, among the cattle, but "all the Angels of
God worshipped Him." Now too He is present upon a table, homely perhaps
in make, and dishonoured in its circumstances; and faith adores, but the
world passes by.
Let us then pray Him ever to enlighten the eyes of our understanding,
that we may belong to the Heavenly Host, not to this world. As the carnal-minded
would not perceive Him even in Heaven, so the spiritual heart may approach
Him, possess Him, see Him, even upon earth.
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Copyright © 2000 by Bob Elder. All rights reserved.
Used with permission. See the Newman website:
http://www.newmanreader.org/index.html
