The passage: May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
This is the last verse of the book I have been speaking to you about for some months; it is the last verse of the whole Bible. If we consider it, we may find that the entire message of the Apocalypse, and of the Bible, is gathered up in it.
I. When you hear the word Grace spoken in a pulpit, you immediately assume it has a technical meaning, and you cast aside — or try to — the associations you have with it in ordinary life. My friends, do not make that effort; it is not wise, it defeats itself, and it robs us of the deep, particular value the word carries in its Scriptural use. Allow yourselves to think freely of whatever has struck you as most graceful in daily life or in art. Do not leave out what is most exquisite in outward form and its movement; do not forget what you have called grace in animals or in some lifeless object. You will feel — you cannot help feeling — that whatever you admired on the outside is determined by something within. There may be grace in stone, but only because it bears witness to life. You speak of grace lingering on a corpse’s face; you mean it still carries the impress of the living being you knew and loved. So you are always led back from looks and actions to something they point to. You are sure the grace that appears in them really is in what you cannot see — in the person who looks and acts.
Reflect on these simple observations, and they will help you, better than any exact definitions, to grasp how outward visible signs may signify an inward spiritual grace. And will they not carry you a step further? At first the grace you delight in strikes you as something belonging to the person you attribute it to. You notice the contrast between the grace of one person and the ungracefulness of another. You are inclined to call the latter common or vulgar, the former special or exceptional. There is much excuse for that judgment; to reverse it seems a glaring paradox. And yet ask yourselves whether you are not doing an injustice to those you most admire when you try to set them apart from the rest of humanity. Is it not a human grace you recognize in them? If you could not call it that, would it not lose half its charm and sweetness? So far as it is a departure from the human standard — so far as it is merely individual — is it not imperfect, is it not less gracious? When you call grace rare or uncommon, don’t you really mean that few are free from those small affectations and self-wills that spoil their human proportion, that create a certain irregularity and disturbance?
There is, it is true, a flat, dreary sameness, an absence of all distinctive, strong, marked qualities, which most of us find more disagreeable than even excess or distortion. But you do not call that sameness grace; it is the opposite of grace, for it is an approach to death. You want the fullness of life; you would like to see every energy in its perfect play; you long for a harmony that comes from all the energies working together. Anything short of that you feel is a defect. Yet you do not expect it — you do not even wish for it — in any single one of your fellow men. You feel each person has some qualities another lacks, some powers uppermost in him that in his neighbors are subordinate, and meant to be subordinate. The best people are not those who try to be everything and do everything; there is an obvious awkwardness, presumption, and disappointment in such attempts. Those who commend themselves to you most are those who seem to understand most clearly what their own work is, who devote themselves to it, who best appreciate other men’s abilities and callings, and most gladly make use of their help and service.
We see, then, how inevitably the idea of grace in shape and movement joins itself to the idea of moral grace, grace of character. But there is another use of the word, at least as common and obvious. We speak of grace as something granted by a superior to an inferior; we connect it with royal condescension. We are aware that these two senses cannot really be separated. A favor, we say, is painful, not pleasant, if it is given ungraciously — that is, if it is done under constraint, if it does not express the mind and purpose of the one it comes from. Suppose it is merely a favor to some particular person, given out of liking for one rather than another; we condemn it as immoral and refuse to call it grace. An unrighteous king, we are sure, cannot be a gracious king. His pardons and his rewards are alike governed by accident or by some outside influence; both are equally harmful to those who receive them and to society at large.
If you try to imagine a perfectly gracious government, you would picture one whose effect is to produce in its subjects the very quality that first existed in the ruler. You would think he had failed in his aim if he scattered ever so many blessings around, unless those blessings somehow tended to raise the minds and characters of those who received them. You are looking for a power that always addresses itself to the man in you, and in everyone who has a man’s form and face; a power that keeps down and overcomes whatever is contrary to this. Now see whether the Scriptural idea of a kingdom of grace does not reconcile and fulfill what you have been trying to express in various broken phrases. See whether, instead of being hard and technical, it is not more comprehensive and more practical than our ordinary speech. When we are told we are brought under a reign or law of grace, what is meant? Are we not taught that a real Ruler, in whom all grace dwells, has taken us under His rule so that He may act on us to make us gracious? Are we not taught that He rules not only the outside of our lives but our thoughts, desires, and hopes — the very springs of our life? Are we not taught He is seeking to shape these into conformity with His own character and will, so that our outward acts, words, and looks may express what is gracious and not what is ugly and base? Are we not taught that He works upon our wills to make them obedient and to make them free? When St. Paul says we are moved out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, is it not a kingdom of this kind he means? And does he not command us to believe that it is under this kingdom that we are living?
But, you will say, he also speaks of a kingdom of darkness. Was he describing only the kingdom the heathen dwell in? May not we be dwelling in it? My friends, do we not know we may? Have we not dwelt in it continually? Are we not liable at every moment to fall into it? For what is this kingdom of darkness but the kingdom of our own selfish, solitary natures? What is it but a world in which we see nothing but ourselves, and images of ourselves, in the heaven above and the earth beneath? We sometimes call it the state of the natural man — the man wrapped up in himself, apart from his fellows, apart from God. Scripture more often calls it the state of death, because all life consists in going out of ourselves, in receiving influences from earth and heaven, in having fellowship with earth and heaven. That state of nature, or of death, is always around us. Every man ought to know that if he were left to himself for one instant he would plunge into it and be lost. But every man ought also to know that he is not left to himself for a single instant — that a gracious kingdom surrounds him, that gracious powers have been acting on him from his birth onward, that there is about him an unspeakable Gentleness, Goodness, and Forgiveness; that it is striving to make him gentle, forgiving, and good; that he may yield to it and be governed and reconciled by it, just as he may rebel against it and live far from it. Oh, I beg you, never think that what Scripture calls the regenerate or gracious state is a strange, irregular condition meant only for a few, from which mankind is shut out! The gracious state is the human state; the selfish, deathly state is the inhuman one. It is the state we choose for ourselves when we throw off the easy yoke and the light burden. It is the state we sink into because we will not claim our human rights, because we prefer chains to freedom.
- And so we come to the next words of the text, which give the necessary explanation of the first: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are very apt to boil this name down to some poor equivalent. We say we live under a Christian dispensation, that we are within the reach of Christian influences, and so on. All such language is good if we translate it back into the honest, simple language of Scripture and interpret it by that; it is very bad if we shrink the Scriptural language down into it. The Christian dispensation is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, or it is nothing. Christian influences, or the means of grace, are the gracious powers that come from Him, or they are nothing. And just as we are fond of reducing a person to an abstraction, so even when we speak of Him as a person we are apt to take only part of His name, not the whole of it — dividing or confusing what Scripture presents as both distinct and one.
First, the Bible tells us to think of Our Lord. We are to remember we are under One who has shown Himself, in the highest and fullest sense, the Lord of Man — Lord not merely of the outward arrangement of our lives but of our very selves, our hearts and inmost parts. We are to recall that He knows us as we are, knows each one’s character, temperament, and makeup; knows our outward circumstances; knows our relations to one another. We are to recall that all these have been ordered and arranged by Him — that we and they were not made once and then set loose to manage as best we could without Him, but are under His eye and oversight every hour and moment. We are to remember that although each man has a right to say, and ought to say, “He is my Lord,” yet “our Lord” is the better, the inspired expression; it contains the other within itself, and reminds each man that he is not alone in the world, and that the care taken over him does not interfere with the care taken over any of his fellow men. It would not be universal care if it were not individual; it would not be individual if it were not universal. Does that word our seem to imply a tenderness inconsistent with judgment and scrutiny? Brothers, no real tenderness can exist apart from judgment and scrutiny. We need the precious and the vile separated within each of us. All society requires that same separation. He who is our Lord must be our Judge. But,
Secondly, He is our Lord Jesus. That name recalls His life and work on earth. It brings before us the Child at Bethlehem, the Boy in the Temple, Him who went about doing good, the Deliverer of men’s bodies from their diseases. It reminds us of Him who spoke on the Mount, who taught in parables, who sat with the disciples at the Passover Feast, of the agony in the garden, of the death on the Cross. In all these acts, words, and sufferings, Jesus — the Saviour, the Son of Man — was showing Himself. In all these He was displaying that perfect grace which can only appear in humiliation and sacrifice. In all these He was giving Himself up, contending with the Spirit of selfishness, redeeming our nature from its tyranny. Often, in contemplating His perfect human grace, men have been inclined to forget where it came from — to think of the Son as separate from the Father, forgetting that the glory of His life and work was precisely this: that He refused ever to separate Himself from the Father, that He did nothing without the Father.
Thirdly, the Apostles always speak of Him as the Lord Jesus Christ. They force us to remember that He was anointed by the Father; that the voice from Heaven declared Him the only-begotten Son; that the Spirit of the Father came down on Him; that in the might of that Spirit He wrestled with the evil spirit; that in the might of that Spirit He preached the Gospel to the poor, broke the bonds of those whom the evil spirit had bound, delivered the victims of death, gave Himself up to death, rose from the dead, and ascended on high. They describe the Christ as coming into the world to baptize with the Holy Spirit. They connect the Christ in Heaven with the Father’s promise that was fulfilled to His children on earth. They speak of His triumph as complete when He could send out His disciples to preach to all nations that God in Christ had reconciled the world to Himself, that He had given His Spirit to dwell with men and rule their hearts and tongues, so that they might be sealed with the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, the one God blessed forever.
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” takes in all that this Divine revelation contains. It supposes the disclosure to men of a Father who has sent His own Son to adopt them into His family. It supposes a deliverance from the tyranny of evil gods and of visible things. It supposes men recognized as endowed with spiritual capacities, created to bear the image of Him who is above them and to rule over what is below them. It supposes sacrifice established as the bond between the Divine and human nature, between the Divine and human life. It supposes the joining of men into a society whose living head is Christ and which draws all its life from Him. It supposes the gift of a Comforter to dwell with them, lift them up, and unite them to their Father in heaven and their brothers on earth. It supposes the need for a continual renewal of Divine forgiveness and Divine strength, so that men may not sink back into a worse death than the one He raised them out of, but may be witnesses for God and bring forth fruits to God. It supposes a grace suited to every special circumstance, sorrow, and temptation. It supposes distinct graces flowing from the one perfect fountain of grace, enabling each member to fill its place in the body, to do the work assigned it without intruding on another’s work, to help the rest and suffer with the rest. It supposes a continual struggle between life and death, light and darkness, grace and unruly will, the Spirit and the world, God and the devil.
- So that the Churches of Asia might throw themselves wholeheartedly into this struggle and be victorious in it, St. John says to them, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” He knew that in one sense this grace was already with them all, and would be with them all. If it had not been surrounding them even while they were heathens, there would have been no Gospel to preach to them. St. Paul could not otherwise have told the savages of Lycaonia that God was sending rains from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. He could not otherwise have prayed for the Ephesians that they might not live as the other Gentiles do, ignorant of the life of God that was in them, cut off from Him by wicked deeds. The grace was there; the whole Creation would have withered without it; men would have destroyed it. But when he wished it might be with them, he wished that they might know its power, that they might live habitually under its control and in its daily blessing. For redeemed, regenerate men to live as if they had never been redeemed, as if they were only born of the flesh, was possible and easy — every day’s experience showed how possible, how easy. To hold fast what they had received, to believe what was true, took constant effort. What would nerve them for that effort? What would keep them alert so they would not grow numb in the world’s frosts and long for sleep as numbed men long for it, and die in that sleep? “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” was the awakening, renewing energy. It was assured to them in their Baptism. When they ate the bread and drank the wine, there was a witness to its perpetual, unchangeable vitality, its power to keep and strengthen each of them in his own tasks and trials. They might receive it in their daily food. All nature testified to it. They might receive it through the ministries of father and mother, of wives and children, of friends and enemies. Crosses would be the sure pledges of it, since in the Cross it was concentrated, and from the Cross it flowed down upon men.
I said the Apostle desired this blessing for the Churches of Asia and for all the members of those Churches. It is better to speak that way. It is better to connect, as the Apostles always do, their most divine words and most astonishing assurances with the actual societies around them, with men and women they could name. So the Gospel becomes definite; so we are reminded that it is addressed to creatures of our own flesh and blood. But precisely because it is so definite — because it is meant for creatures of flesh and blood — it cannot be confined to any one region or time. If the Apostle had said, “My grace, my love be with you,” his converts and disciples might have claimed the words as belonging especially to them. But he knew no such expression could satisfy any of them. He had to soar higher in order to meet their needs. He could say nothing less than this: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” And that is the grace of the Son of Man and of the Son of God, of Him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
My friends, for the last fourteen years I have been ministering this grace to you. Looking back over those years, I see cause enough for shame and humiliation. But I want to say it solemnly, and for the last time, that I feel no sorrow or repentance for any words I have spoken to you about the absolute and eternal love of God; about the full and perfect showing of that love in the only-begotten Son; about the redemption and reconciliation which His incarnation and death, His resurrection and ascension, have accomplished for the whole world; about His presence with men and His government over them; about the Eternal Spirit, who is One with the Father and the Son, and who works in us to guide us into all truth and to make us willing subjects of that love which has proved itself mightier than death and hell. I am deeply convinced that whatever I have said on these subjects has been too narrow, not too broad; that any words I have added to the words of Scripture have narrowed their freedom and the largeness of their application; that the Creeds and the Sacraments display the eternal goodness of God, triumphing over all that opposes it in every part of the universe, with a fullness beyond anything I have ever been able to think of or imagine. I mourn and repent because I have shrunk these testimonies by my poor conception of them. I mourn over the coldness and hardness that must often have made them seem unreal to you. I mourn that I have not shown more confidence in God’s purposes toward you and toward all — more confidence that there is in each of you something that craves all good and protests against all evil. For the insincerity and heartlessness that have often kept me at a distance from those I might have helped, I ask your forgiveness, and the forgiveness of Him whose message I have marred. And so it is an infinite comfort that I may part from you not with words of mine, not with wishes of mine, but with the assurance that there is a grace which reaches deeper than all words and wishes, which can make its presence felt, which can make us gracious. I may say to you: “Friends and brothers, in the middle of your work, when you are trying to be honest and faithful and finding how hard it is; in your family circles; as English citizens; in lonely hours; when you are wrestling with temptations that only the Searcher of hearts knows; when you are trying to pray and cannot pray; when all things in heaven and earth seem unsteady; when you are crushed by memories of failure; when you look in vain for faces that once comforted you; in your trouble as in your prosperity; in the hour of death; in that day of Judgment which shall show us how closely we have been bound to one another, and what a Divine Power has been using even the feeblest instrument to draw us to itself: may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”