Preached at Eversley, 4th Sunday after Trinity, July 10, 1870.
“I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”—Romans viii. 18.
The Epistle which we have just heard is very wonderful. It sounds more wonderful to me every time I read it. There are words and thoughts in it which baffle me; they point to things which I can hardly conceive of, or ask for, and yet I am sure that it is all true—and what is more, I am sure that it is written for all of us who are here to-day. To us—not to some very wise people, not to some great saints—are these words about suffering and glory, about groans and redemption, addressed. Our Father in heaven speaks them to us, and He has given all of us the power of understanding them.
What do you think the apostle meant by the sufferings of this present time? He meant the pains which he saw men and women suffering wherever he travelled. He dwelt in a different country from ours; he spoke a different language from ours. But men suffered in his country, and in his time, as they do here in this year 1870. They had palsies in their limbs, they had fevers, they tossed on sick beds; they often felt as if their bodies were a torment to them of which they should like to be rid. Then they had pains in their minds like ours; they lost dear friends; they had hard words spoken about them; sometimes those whom they trusted most proved false to them. And they had deeper cause for groaning still. They knew that they had done wrong. There was a voice which said to each of them ‘Thou hast sinned.’ It was with them, then, as it is with us. St. Paul speaks of all these sufferings; he knew them all. He knew the pains of body; he knew the pain of losing friends and being hardly spoken of—even of being cruelly treated by those whom he loved, and to whom he had done good. He knew most of all the pain of hearing a word saying in his heart, ‘Thou hast sinned; thou hast rebelled against the righteous and true God.’
It was just this pain—the worst of all—which led him to cry for a deliverer or redeemer. He had thought very well of himself; he had fancied he was very zealous for God. Then it was shown him that he was doing just the thing which God would not have him do; that he was fierce and cruel, while God was full of mercy and love. How was that? He must have yielded himself to a bad spirit; the bad spirit must have got the mastery over him. Who could deliver him from this tyrant? It was shown him that the Son of God was not far from him; that He could break the yoke of the Evil Spirit; that He could give him His own gracious and good Spirit. Was that discovery for him only? No, when this Spirit began to work in him he felt that he was to go forth into all lands with these tidings—“God in Christ has reconciled the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;” and these, ‘God hath sent forth His Son, born of a woman, that they might receive the adoption of sons; and because you are sons, He hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, that you may call Him “Father,”’ and these, ‘He has delivered us from the powers of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.’
I have said that he who was sent with this message to men was not more free from sufferings than they were; few men ever suffered so much, and he found that it was good for him to suffer. In former days he had been inclined to think himself different from other men, and better than other men. Now, he rejoiced to know that he was one with them, for that was what his Master had been. Jesus Christ, as it is written, “took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.” And again, ‘He tasted death for all men.’ Now if St. Paul had said, ‘I am not of the same flesh and blood with these poor men and women about me, I have a better lot than theirs,’ that would have been like saying, ‘The Lord Jesus Christ is not my Lord and my brother; His Father is not my Father.’ But when he said within himself, ‘What misery there is in the world! how men, and not only men but all creatures, are groaning under the burden of death,’ then he gave thanks that the Son of God had borne this burden, that He had given His flesh and blood for the life of the world. When he believed in Christ, he could enter into the sufferings of men; he could feel with them as he had never felt before. And yet he could see a hope and a promise in their groans. They were, as he says in the Epistle, travailing pangs; they were the anguish of death, but they were leading on to a glorious birth.
My friends—it is easy for any of us to talk about the troubles and sorrows that men pass through in body and mind and spirit. But we shall only sympathise with them, as St. Paul did, when we have his faith and his hope. And the troubles and sorrow remain, whether I take heed of them or not. I look into any poor man’s cottage, and I know that pain and death have been there, and will be there. I look into any prince’s palace, and I know that pain and death have been there, and will be there. The face of the oldest and of the youngest testify ‘they will be with us.’ The animals feel them as well as men; and the trees and the flowers, though they do not suffer pain, yet wither and die, so that we have all clear proof that St. Paul is right in half of what he tells us. But is it true that Death is the lord of any man or woman or child; of any beast or any insect; of any tree or flower? No. Death did not make them; and He who did make them, He who gave them life, He by whom their life has been renewed every hour, He has proved that He is stronger than Death. When I say ‘I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, our Lord, who was crucified, dead and buried, who rose again from the dead,’ I say, ‘Not death, but the conqueror of death, is my master; not death, but He that destroyed death—the Prince of Life.’ I say all things have been shown to be His; all His enemies will be put under His feet. I declare then—you and I have declared to-day—that we claim for ourselves that redemption which St. Paul says all God’s creation is waiting for and expecting; that glory with which he says the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared. When we say Christ is our Saviour, or our Redeemer, we mean that He has died and risen again to deliver our bodies from their slavery as well as our spirits. Our spirits have fallen under the power of sin; our bodies have fallen under the power of death. Christ, our true king, has shown that He is mightier than both; that He is the deliverer from both. And if I turn to Him as the deliverer out of my slavery to sin, if I say to the Evil Spirit ‘Thou art not my lord at all, Christ has claimed me as His servant and his brother,’ then I shall be able to say to death also ‘I defy thee;’ thou hast had power to rack this body of mine which is so curiously and wonderfully made; the breath will go out of it, as it went out of the body of the Lord Jesus; my dead body will be put into the grave, as His was; what is dust will return to dust; but He will take care of the life which He has given me. I can commit that to Him. I know He will accomplish the purpose for which He came upon earth and submitted to death. I know He will not leave any part of His work unfinished. That is the ground for St. Paul’s language about the redemption of the body. We all groan together; we say men, women, children—all God’s creatures—are under the burden of death. We who have felt the power of God’s Spirit in our spirit, do not groan less than others. We wait for the deliverer of these bodies from their aches and torments; we wait for the day when Christ shall set them free from the bondage of death; when He shall make them like His glorious body. And as we hope for ourselves, so we hope for all those creatures who not for their own fault have been made subject to misery and death, who are not sinful as we have been. We hope that the curse of death shall be taken off the whole of this beautiful earth, that wherever there has been woe and death, there shall be the triumph of peace and life.
He hoped this because he believed that Jesus Christ, the crucified, had ascended on high in the glory of His Father. He hoped it because he believed that His glory is to fill the earth. Just as the sun rises out of the night, and brings every thing that had been hidden and dark into light, so he believed that Christ, the true Lord of all, would be manifested, and that His light would enter into every dark corner of the earth, that nothing would be hidden from it. That is the glory with which he thinks the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared. It was not some glory of his own. He had desired such glory once; when he began to trust in Christ he gave up the thought of it. Then it was His glory which he desired to behold hereafter, which he desired that all should behold. For he welcomed it as the common glory, the glory that had risen upon all men as well as upon him; the glory which had been coming forth through all man’s own darkness; the glory that must at last shine out fully, and which nothing should quench.
Now, I said before, and I say again, that these words are quite beyond me, that there is a height and depth and breadth in them which I cannot measure. I said before, and I say again, I believe them to be all true, and I think that there are ways by which every one of you may find them out to be true. The chief way is this. Suppose any of us has fallen into some evil habit—suppose a man has become a drunkard, or has taken a great spite against any of his neighbours, or is often giving way to bad temper, or feels very indifferent about the good of the people around him—he says, ‘I cannot get out of this bad custom; it is too strong for me.’ He is right; it is too strong for him. He has a master over him who will not let him go, but this master is not too strong for Christ. Christ, when upon earth, set men free from such masters: He is not less mighty now. Call upon Him as a Redeemer from this evil spirit. Ask that the good Spirit may come and dwell with you, and take possession of you, and then you will begin to understand what the sufferings of the body and the mind are for; you will find that they have been your schoolmasters to bring you to Christ the Deliverer. Then you will all say, ‘Surely He who has broken my bands asunder is the king and Lord of the whole earth. Surely it must be His will and His Father’s will that all His creatures should be brought out of the bondage of corruption. Surely it is His glory that we are all to long for and hope for. There must be a day when that glory shall appear, and all flesh shall see it, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.’