Bible Commentaries

The Spirit of Christ

Romans 8:9

It must, then, be of infinite consequence to find out as nearly and completely as we may what that Spirit is. The sentence is marked by a striking tone of finality. It is a sentence complete in itself; it would seem to hold an entire Bible. It has upon the reader the effect of having seen the standard by which all life and thought must be judged—not a standard in the sense of one of many, but the standard, the only standard; if a man fail there it is of no consequence where he may succeed. This should make us solemn. There need not be any self-discussion as to who are Christians and who are not. Every man can now determine for himself whether he is a Christian. The words are explicit; they are few in number; they go straight to the mark; they are none other than these—"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." But many men have the name of Christ. Some men have gone so far as to call nations by the name Divine,—by what authority who can tell? But there have been men of imagination ardent and aggressive enough to call a nation Christian. It was a bold definition. The assumptions involved in that appellation are infinite. Is it possible to misuse, misapply, the name of Christ? Ought that name to be attached to anything that is not of the quality of the thing that is named? Ought the word Christ, or Christian, or any other of its forms to be lightly and almost indiscriminately applied? These are searching questions; they do not admit of off-hand treatment. Who is a Christian—or a Christ"s—one? The answer is given:—"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his"; therefore, if any man have the Spirit of Christ he is Christ"s. Many men have an avowed preference for the doctrines of Christ; they are theoretically orthodox men; they hate persons who differ from them; if they do not go to the extremity of hatred, they linger around the intermediate point of prejudice with a strong inclination towards positive dislike: is that in the text? Not a word of it. There are men who would not for the universe multiplied by ten be Unitarians: but they can be many things which are peculiar, and not always wholesome, and sometimes they must hurt Jesus Christ, whom they have crowned in words and crucified in deeds, whom they worship in attitude and betray in action.

Let us go straight to the inquiry, What is the Spirit of Christ? Many mistakes have been made about the heart or spirit or disposition of the Son of God. We hear much that is merely sentimental. Men not only undeify but dehumanise the Son of God when they speak about him in a merely sentimental manner. We cannot make progress with the extension of the kingdom of Christ unless we have a right conception of the King himself. Who would hesitate in describing the Spirit of Christ to speak of Jesus, Son of Mary, Son of Romans 8:1,—without which there can be no Bible. We begin so frequently at the wrong point, taking up a flower as if it were a thing in itself, caging a bird as if it were a solitary angel, which had first fallen into our keeping, and was to be looked upon as a specimen of an infinite number of other angels, not yet caught. How foolish we are! How in our definition of terms we miss the meaning. He misses the meaning of love who omits the element of righteousness.

What was the Spirit of Christ? Was it not marked by moral sublimity? Was there ever a head like Christ"s? Was there ever a heart like Christ"s? Jesus Christ did not need to read philosophy, because he was himself the wisdom of God. He needed not to invent a theory, to fit a certain flow and sequence of facts; for he was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the line that belted with right of proprietorship all facts, all histories, all actions. How righteous he was! Many speak of Christ's love who never speak of Christ's righteousness: yet the righteousness of Christ was as much part of the Spirit of Christ as was the love which he bore in his heart and which he proved on the Cross. Said Romans 8:34

Always wait for the second and better thought. Never interrupt any speaker, especially a speaker of established reputation, but let him quietly and perfectly finish what he has to say; then you can make your remarks. "It is Christ that died." Why are we always dwelling on the death? Is that all that happens? The Apostle brightens, his voice rises, his figure enlarges as if in spiritual dignity, as he exclaims, Died? nay, that were the first thought, the initial stage; the real thing is that he has risen again: the rising is the upper thought, the death is the lower. You will find this to be the case all through and through the divinest life. We are never allowed to stop more than a comma at the word "death." The universe was not made to die: there is no death in the purpose of God: he made man immortal. What difficulty can any one have in declaring the immortality of the soul? No other idea ever entered into the purpose of God. It it be possible for man to commit spiritual suicide, that is another matter; but judged, from the Divine standpoint, when God made man in his own image and likeness he did not make him the creature of a day, but a heir of the ages numberless, a citizen of the city of light. The word "die" must come in, the garden must permit a grave to be dug in its heart, but it can grow flowers all over it. "It is Christ that died, yea rather,"—it is a rising cadence, an inflection upwards—"that is risen again." That is the Christian creed; that is Christian music; that is the very gospel of the heart of God.

We have amongst us teachers of the finest spiritual quality, who are addressing us in some such words as these:—Why do you always dwell upon the death of Christ? In your sacrament you always set forth the Lord's death: why do you not forget the idea of death, and pass to the upper thought, and dwell in holy rapture, in sacred, grateful triumph, upon the resurrection of the Lord? The appeal is beautiful, tender, but incomplete. The resurrection implies death: the pinnacle implies the foundation; the pinnacle is only the foundation gone up higher. When we celebrate resurrection we cannot forget death; without the death there could have been no resurrection; without the Cross there could have been no crown; so that we are really dwelling upon the resurrection whilst we are dwelling upon the death, seeing that the death is not the death of a man, but the death of one who made himself equal with God. When such a Man dies he rises again. Christian thought therefore is not single but composite. When the Christian says "Christ died," he says in effect, "yea rather, that is risen again." Besides, when we take the Lord's Supper we do not memorialise the Lord's death; you have omitted part of the statement which you began to quote: we show forth the Lord's death "till he come." Do not omit the three closing words; they make the death beautiful: they abolish death.

This would appear to be so simple that everybody would at once acknowledge it. Its simplicity has often been mistaken, and because of the simplicity men have allowed themselves to fall into obvious and superficial error. This is the key to much beside itself. A right realisation of the second or upper thought makes the kingdom of heaven a new empire to the most enraptured soul. There are minds that instantly fasten upon effects; such minds are apt to lose all the teaching of causes. There are minds marked by great rapidity of action. Their characteristic is impatience; hence they have no pity upon the preacher who waits for the slow and the timid, saying to the prancing horses, Wait, here is a sick man, and we must not leave him behind. That is the great preacher. He will not allow a little child to be dropped out on the road. He is not one of those charioteers who drive on, fall out who or what may. He says, I am bound to take you all with me: wait, here is a lame man, and we must tarry for his salvation. What a pity it is congregations will not allow the preacher to conduct the service! How much they lose when they criticise his method of doing things,—not knowing that his, if he be a true man born to do the work, is the great pastoral heart, the great shepherdly solicitude; not one of your impatient men that always want to be foaming at the mouth, but one of your great men-women, father-mothers, that say, Wait until we have taken up the very least and the very lamest of the flock. It we carry out this idea we shall get a new standing-point and recover much of our own comfort and somewhat of our most venerable and trustworthy orthodoxy. Let us see.

The preaching of to-day very largely consists in declaring that love is the crowning grace. There are those who, in proclaiming that sweet doctrine, become almost impatient, indeed, almost contemptuous, when they speak about faith and even hope. Their cry is: Love abideth for ever; love is the consummation; he who has love has God, for God is love. Is this untrue? It is not untrue, but it is incomplete. You cannot have the resurrection without the death, and you cannot have love without faith. Love is not gush, unregulated emotion, a mere foam of the soul, white for a moment and then blackened in extinction. Love, if it is to abide for ever, must have faith for one wing and hope for the other. We are constantly reading the doctrine that not creeds, not theologies, not catechisms, but love is the great thing. So it is. Why are you so contemptuous about faith and theology, and reasoned statement regarding the kingdom of God? We say, the roof is the thing. So it is: but what does it rest upon? Persons who thus announce the supremacy of love may sometimes be led into the fallacy that love is all. It is easier to put the roof on after the walls are up, than it would be to put it on before the walls are built. That latter attempt might be unsuccessful. There may be clever men who can fix roofs upon nothing, but I have never employed them; I have no intention of inquiring concerning their method of working. So that when creatures declare that love is the thing, not creed, or theology, or metaphysics, or eloquence, or prophecy, I answer in one sentence, You are perfectly right; the Apostle himself says the same thing in more ardent and eloquent language, but he also by his whole process and course of teaching shows that love is the blossom and faith is the root. What would you say concerning a man who, delicately and gratefully touching a flower, should say, This is the thing: we do not want your root and your stem. Very well; take up the root, burn the stem: now where is your flower?

Or the point of view is changed sometimes, and we have what are called practical preachers, and their sermon is this:—Conduct is the thing we want: everything stands or falls by behaviour: what is a man's life? Is there anything wrong in such inquiry? By no means, but there is a good deal omitted from it. When we come to understand things more clearly and largely we shall see that conduct is translated belief. If conduct is a game at chance, who will praise the man who has mechanically clean hands and a good external reputation? It only so happened: there is no philosophy in it, no eternity in it: but when a man is good because his heart has been touched by Divine influences, and brought into harmony with Divine purposes; when a man's conduct is good because he has been with Jesus and learned of him, has entered into the spirit of his priesthood and accepted the purchase of his sacrifice, then his conduct is no longer his own, it is a creation and a miracle of the grace of God. We are therefore perfectly agreed with the people who say that love is the crowning grace, and that conduct is the principal thing; but we cannot allow them to substitute effects for causes, or in praising the consequences to forget the processes. Still it is Christ that died. Christ's was a resurrection; it was not a descent from heaven, it was an ascent from the earth.

It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again. There are those who are strongly opposed to our dwelling upon the death of Christ. They admonish us to dwell upon the living ministry of the everlasting Priest. They say, He is no longer in the grave: why do you speak about him as a buried Saviour? You should forget the burial and dwell upon the resurrection; Christ is now on the right hand of God pleading for us, amplifying and purifying our prayers, and making them prevalent in the heavenly sanctuary; why not, therefore, forget the dreary, ghastly past, and dwell upon the bright and beauteous present? Why this fear of the death? The resurrection did not save us; the resurrection is the corner stone of the Church, but that which creates the Church, makes it possible in human development, is the Cross of Christ, the Blood of Christ I am not yet sufficiently advanced, or sufficiently in the rear, to be ashamed of saying that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. Earnest men ought to be careful how they suspect one another or denounce one another; they should be eager for each other's welfare: for myself, therefore, I can only say that, if you take out of my gospel the death of Christ, you at the same time take out the resurrection. The one is dependent upon the other. Without the death, resurrection was impossible; resurrection without the death is a worship of the end, by simply ignoring or undervaluing the means.

Then there are others who say, Not the book, but the spirit that is in the book, the living Spirit. We do not care for the Bible as a mere book, they say; we want to be under the influence of the inspirer of the Book. Are they wrong? No; yet their statement is incomplete and is open to serious perversion. They may not mean all that their words imply to other minds, but we are bound to look, not at what we ourselves mean, but at what the words may be taken to mean by sincere and earnest but uninstructed minds. We cannot always go with our own words to explain them; so before sending them forth we should take as much care as possible that they include all the elements of a complete and useful statement. We cannot yet do without the Book. I never inquire how much of the Bible I can do without: my constant inquiry is, How much of it do I know? To what extent am I familiar with this sacred oracle? Have I got into the genius of any one book in the holy volume? Do I know the complete purpose of any writer whose works are found in the sacred canon? Have I been a perfunctory reader of the sacred canon, reading a little here and a little there? or have I mastered the Book, at least in its structure and general outline? Far be it from any one of us to denounce the doctrine that what we want is the Holy Spirit who inspired the Book: but if he inspired the Book, the Book must be of kindred quality with his own. Did he inspire the Book? We believe he did, and therefore in reading the Book we are reading himself. He who holds communion with the Book holds communion with the Spirit. My fear is that by building upon points we shall never build any large and solid structure of thought: we must not therefore be exalting love, or conduct, or the resurrection, or the Spirit, without recognising the under-truths, the basal, historical, sequential realities, on which all these glorious consummations rest their whole weight. I can imagine it very easy for young people especially to be charmed with the doctrine that love is the great crown of Christian life; I can understand how famous poets or novelists ignoring all Puritanic detail should speak to the young and the sentimental about love, and how the young and the sentimental should say, This is what we like: there is no hell here; nothing about the devil, nothing about punishment, but love, love, love—all love! That gospel will never save you. You must work your way through all the process to the result, and having done so you will not undervalue or deprecate the process, but thank God for it, because it was full of the elements of education and of discipline, of chastening and of refinement.

Understand me therefore. In all these contentions there is an element of truth. When a man praises love he is right, when he praises conduct he is right, when he praises the Spirit of God he is right; but it is possible for him to praise all these and to do so at the expense of ignoring what they themselves imply—vitally, inevitably, and eternally imply. What would you think of a man standing on the top of a hill and saying to climbers below, What are you doing down there? The top is the thing! Here am I, look at me: what are you doing down there? You would say, The man forgets that he was once down here himself. Exactly, there you have the whole thing. We do not fly to the top, we travel to it step by step, oh, so slowly, so wearily! but if the face be set towards the top God will see that we fail not of the beautiful summit. What would you think of a man going into a school and saying to the scholars who were reading alphabets and declining nouns and conjugating verbs and so on, Boys, what is all this about? what you want is not gerund-grinding, but you want wisdom; wisdom is the thing; all these grindings and preparations and processes are nothing, the wisdom that comes of learning is the principal thing. The man is right, but he never got his own wisdom, if it be a wisdom of letters, without going through that very same dreary process. What would you think of a man who was very skilled in any art, in any craft, saying to the apprentice, You need not be doing what you are now doing; what you have to do is what I am doing; look here, a stroke and the thing is done; one movement, and beauty testifies to the skill of my action. That is all right, but practice makes perfect, according to the old saying, and an apprentice is after all not a journeyman, a beginner is not one that is at the point of finishing. We have to go through certain processes. We are told that practice makes the musician, practice makes the sculptor. I say, No, it does not. All the practice in the world would never make some of us sculptors; we should waste all the marble in all the quarries in creation and never get a face out of it. No: practice makes the musician if the musician is in the man; practice will waken the musician, call him and say, Arise! the morning is nigh; awake! the harp awaketh thee; stir thyself, for thy destiny is at hand. There practice can do wonders. A man is either a musician, from all eternity or he is not; he is either a preacher from all eternity or he is not. You cannot make a preacher. You can make a man who will read to you a very neat and almost decent little paper, but you cannot make a preacher. There is something before all this practice, and that is gift, destiny.

It is equally so with all these preachers of the upper truth. They are right, but they are incomplete. I say therefore, begin where you can: recognise the fact that men are at different points in the line of progress. This is the difficulty the preacher has for ever to contend with. He is speaking to a thousand people, two hundred of whom are at the very highest point, two hundred of whom are at the middle, and the rest are at the starting point, and they cannot get into the work; they say, Oh, how hard, how impossible! Who is sufficient for these things? And the preacher has to speak to the very highest, and those in the middle, and those at the end; and he has to speak in his own tongue, now eloquent, now encouraging; at the first solicitous, patient, longsuffering, speaking a word of godly cheer to souls that are just going to give up. Recognise the fact, therefore, that some men are in advance, some are in the midst, some are at the beginning, and if they are all in one direction they all belong to Christ. Let not the one who is on the top of the mountain discourage the climbers who are patiently toiling up. Do speak kindly to us. We would like to be as high up as you are, and we mean to be some day, but give us time. Once you were here; why, here is your very footprint—see, there is no mistake about it. Give us, therefore, the word from above. Watchman, what of the upper places? Are they very bright? How is the air in that lofty region? Is it an air of immortality? Oh, send down to me, poor struggler on the mountain-side, some kind word, some cheering message! and by-and-by, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we will clasp hands at the top, and say, It is we who began at the foot of the mountain; we are the climbers; yea rather, it is we who stand on the mountain-top—it is we who have thus become familiar with heaven.