Lecture XIV. The Eternal Life of the Kingdom of Heaven

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.—St. LUKE x, 25-28.

THERE is no one of the Apostles who dwells so much upon this commandment as St. John. He dwells upon it in that character. He does not speak of love to God or our neighbour as raising us above commandments. It is His commandment—the commandment that we should love. In this commandment, he says, there is life; it carries with it the power of fulfilling it, because it proceeds from the Almighty Father—because it comes to us through Him who has fulfilled it.

(1.) The passage which immediately follows that at which I paused last Sunday, tells us something of the discipline by which St. John was led to these conclusions. We fancy him of a particularly gentle, tender nature. He is exhibited to us in the Gospels in quite another aspect. ‘Master,’ he says, ‘we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.’ He had taken up the place of a fierce partisan of Christ. When his Master had told them that they must receive little children in His ‘Name if they received Him, there was a pricking in the Apostle’s conscience. That sentence had nothing, apparently, to do with his prohibition. But it struck him that one was not quite in harmony with the other. Perhaps if they were to receive children in Christ’s name, they need not have rebuked this man for using Christ’s name. His suspicion was well founded, His Master’s answer condemned that act of judgment, and a series of similar acts which should be done in the ages to come. ’Forbid him not; for he that is not against us is for us.’

The son of Zebedee was not cured by this admonition. The next story exhibits him again as the fierce fanatical partisan, pleading, as fanatics in all times have pleaded, the precedents of Scripture for their own designs. St. Luke seems to mark the crisis as an important one. Jesus had steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. He intimates that He was going there for the last time; at least I know not what other signification we can put upon the singular expression, ‘When the time was come that he should be received up.’ It certainly seems as if all the discourses and acts which are recorded between this verse and the 28th verse of the nineteenth chapter, occurred in this journey to Jerusalem. Be that as it may, He was entering into a village of the Samaritans, and the inhabitants seeing whither He was bound, refused to receive Him. Which, when ‘His disciples James and John saw, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?’ What could be a more venerable example? What could be more applicable? Had they not conversed with Moses and Elias on the mount of Transfiguration? Had not Moses and Elias done homage to their Master? Why might He not put forth powers as great as theirs? Why not, indeed! And what, then, are the great powers? John and James could have no doubt. Powers of destruction, of course. To call down fire upon a city, what can be so wonderful as that? They thought so. Churchmen have thought so in all times since. Very much they have grieved that they could not do like Elijah. Very often they have tried, or feigned, to do, exactly like him. Our Lord vindicated the real object of those acts which were done in the old time, by shewing forth clearly and brightly what was the object of His acts. The deeds of all Prophets, if they were ever so terrible, were witnesses against destructive Gods, for the living God, the Creator. His true Image, His perfect Son, came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save. So He did His Father’s will. Whoever has any other purpose than that, be he Saint, Apostle, what he may, is not doing God’s will, but a will opposed to God’s. By such lessons, hard to be taken in, needing often to be repeated, very humbling to his self-conceit, disagreeable to that nature which we have flattered so much and which he does not flatter at all, St. John was converted not into a weak sentimental enemy of all that is strong and stern, but into a resolute assertor of the doctrines, ‘Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer;’ ‘If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar’

(2.) The verses which follow to the end of the chapter I will not leave without notice, because it is more honest to say that I do not clearly understand them. The first sentence was evidently addressed to an over-confident disciple, who had not counted the cost of his intention and needed to be told what it might involve; the second, to one who was finding plausible excuses for not doing what he yet thought he was bound to do; the third, to one who was inclining to withdraw from a work on which he had already entered. So much we can easily perceive; and if we believe that the same Searcher of hearts who discovered the false zeal or false excuses of those men is detecting ours, is bringing them home to our consciences, we shall draw the best possible lesson from the narrative. But I do not pretend to know the precise signification of the words, ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ I am only sure that they did not mean anything which was at variance with the mind of Him who denounced the Pharisees for setting aside God’s commandment, ‘Honour thy father and mother,’ by their tradition. I am only sure that those who attribute any such sense to our Lord’s words are perverting the New Testament as the two Apostles perverted the Old, the example of the Son of Man as they perverted the example of Elijah.

(3.) But there is one remark which is suggested by all these words of our Lord. He speaks to His disciples as one who has authority to tell them where they shall go, and what they shall do. He speaks as one who has called them to be the ministers in a divine kingdom; only in that sense to be the preachers of a doctrine. I must speak to weariness of this characteristic of the Gospel history, because we are so apt to forget it, and because a long familiarity with the phrase, ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ blinds us to its great significance. Give it the force it had in St. Luke’s mind, and the passage which follows respecting the mission of the seventy, whom the Lord sent into every city and village whither He Himself should come, will all bear the impress of a royal discourse. The commands resemble those which were given to the Apostles. St. Luke evidently dwells upon them not so much for any peculiarities in the directions themselves, as because they signified that there were other ministers besides the twelve, who were ordained by Christ Himself to preach the Kingdom of Heaven and to exercise the powers of it. St. Luke looked upon the kingdom as at hand then, which he was proclaiming as established in the ascended Lord, He felt that his own office was good for nothing if he were not as much sent forth by the Son of Man as any one of the twelve. He is speaking of One who would be the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; of a kingdom which was to have no end. Whilst, then, he repeated these commands which were specially adapted to the wants of men who were going only amidst the sheep of the House of Israel; he will have felt that the same voice, issuing commands as real, as binding, would go forth through all lands; that all who should presume to preach in Christ’s name in any time or country, must listen to that voice, must try to learn from it the message which men were to receive, and how the message should be delivered.

(4.) Nor can I think that St. Luke anticipated any less effect, or any different effect, from the proclamation in one time than in another. There would be always those to whom the news of a Kingdom of Heaven would be the best news conceivable, just what they had been waiting and wanting to hear. There would be always those to whom it would be indifferent or incredible. There would be always those who would refuse it, because they regarded the universe as the subjects of that kingdom which Christ’s Kingdom was to overthrow. The Apostles and the seventy disciples were to heal sickness and cast out evil spirits. They were to act as deliverers; they were to be witnesses of God as the Deliverer from bodily sufferings, and from the worst evils, which degrade and destroy the spirit. The mind of the Jewish people—the mind of the Jewish rulers especially—was more and more beginning to regard God as the Destroyer, not as the Deliverer; to think that bodily evils were signs of His disposition towards His creatures; to think that here and hereafter He would use these bodily calamities, not as instruments of raising them out of their moral and spiritual misery, but as instruments by which He would avenge it and perpetuate it.

This habit of belief, or unbelief, prevailed among men who counted it their highest glory to possess commandments, the first of which told them that they should worship no God but the Deliverer from bondage—to possess Scriptures which proclaimed Him in every line to be the God of Salvation.

I have just told you how our Lord rebuked those Apostles who would have called down fire from heaven to destroy a village of the Samaritans. How, then, are we to explain those denunciations of the cities of Galilee which occur in the midst of the charge to the seventy disciples?—‘Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.’ How, I ask, are these words consistent with those—‘The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save?’ If the message of the seventy was, as the words of St. Luke shew that it was, a message concerning a God who was not destroying men’s lives but saving them,—and if the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum turned away from that message because they worshipped a God who was not a Saviour, but a Destroyer,—the fulfilment to the very letter of this prophecy would surely confirm, and not annul, the language which was addressed to John and James. They were sharing the evil notions of their countrymen; they would see whither those evil notions were leading a land which God had called out to be a blessing to all lands. It refused to be such a blessing; it had become a curse to all lands. It spoke of a God who wished to curse all lands. The judgment which it had anticipated for the rest of the world was coming upon it; the darkest, the most terrible judgment that can come upon any nation or city of men—the judgment of being permitted to have its own way; the judgment of being left to fight against the Will which is to do only good; the judgment of suffering the exclusion to which it has consigned all but itself. That judgment the cities of Palestine would have to undergo in a sense in which the corrupt heathen cities of Tyre and Sidon had not undergone it, and would not undergo it. Our Lord, who knew what was in man, testified that if Tyre and Sidon had heard what Chorazin and Bethsaida were hearing, they would have repented long ago. My friends, how many sentences which we have passed in our wisdom upon the heathen world, even upon the darkest parts of it, are reversed by that sentence! How many hopes are awakened by it, that even the worst inhabitants of that world shall hear the Voice which must sound through the whole creation—that they shall turn to it and live!

(5.) ‘And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.’ A warrant for joy, surely, for those men, and for the successors of those men, in all times to come, if they see physical evil and moral evil giving way before the name of Christ—if they feel that even their weak words bear witness of Him that sent them, in whom all power dwells in earth and in heaven. But yet the sense of power—even of such power—is dangerous. It passes soon into the feeling, ‘In Thy name we can do something;’ the delight in saving power soon mingles with the lust to use destructive power. ‘Lord, the devils are subject to us,’ has meant, in the dialects of Christendom, ‘Lord, we can excommunicate, we can consign men to evil spirits, as enemies of Thee.’ Wherefore Jesus said to them, in the full foresight of the final triumph of good over evil, ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.’ Then, because men were to be fellow-workers with Him in winning that triumph, because men in all different ages would receive strength from Him, in one way or another, to overcome the powers of nature and deliver the world from its tormentors, He added, ‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’ But, He added, finally, ‘Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.’ An exhortation which cannot signify, as we sometimes take it to signify, ‘Rejoice that you are secure of going to heaven, from which other people will be rejected.’ Those who were sent to preach the Kingdom of Heaven would have felt such language utterly incongruous with their mission. They must have understood Him to say, ‘Rejoice that you are chosen to do a heavenly work, to be heralds of the Father in heaven to His children. Rejoice that you have your names in the roll of those who did in the generations of old, who shall in the generations to come, testify for light against darkness, for heaven against hell.’

(6.) We cannot be mistaken about the nature of this joy, for it is written, ’In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. This was the joy of Christ, the joy of Him whom we call the Man of Sorrows—a joy coming out at that moment in some unwonted radiance of countenance, but really pervading His spirit at all times, sustaining it in all anguish; the joy of a Son in doing a Father’s will, in giving up His own; the joy of a Son in seeing that will revealing itself silently, gradually, not to those who would boast of it as their own, but to the ignorant and the feeble who would cast themselves upon it to illumine in them that which was dark, to raise and support that in them which was low; that so God’s ways might be justified to the universe, that good and only good might be shewn to come from Him, men’s works to be good so far as they are His works.

(7.) Most fitly do the words, which he spoke privately to His disciples, follow that wonderful thanksgiving—‘Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.’ The poor fishermen had that revelation of the Father which kings and prophets longed for. They had entered upon this great inheritance; they were to call other men, babes like themselves, to share in the inheritance.

(8.) A lawyer came in to give them some help in understanding the nature and the worth of this inheritance. He stood up and tempted Christ, saying, ‘Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ Eternal life! Yes, that must be the highest of all gifts. How could it be earned? What sacrifices could be costly enough to win it? Had not Jesus some special rules for obtaining it? No, apparently none. He refers the lawyer to his own books. What is written there? The student and interpreter of the Scriptures considers. Some very remarkable words occur to his mind in the Book of Deuteronomy, words about loving the Lord God with all the heart and soul and strength, words about loving one’s neighbour as oneself. Perhaps those were the words in the Law which Jesus meant. Perhaps the lawyer had heard that He often referred to those words. Yes, the quotation was an apposite. He had found out the way to eternal life. ‘This do, and thou shalt live.’ Had he done this, then? The question was a painful one to the lawyer’s conscience. There was a way out of it. The law did not define the neighbour—who is he?

(9.) You know what story was the answer to this question. We call it the story of the Good Samaritan. We could not, perhaps, give it a better name. But why was the Samaritan good? Did his country give him some advantage over the Levite and the priest?

Did his faith? Did something specially blessed in his own individual nature? If his goodness could be referred to any one of these causes, he was no example to the Jew—the lawyer could not be fairly bidden to go and do likewise.’ No! But that commandment which the lawyer found in the Book of Deuteronomy ——that law of loving the neighbour as himself—had been written in the heart of the Samaritan. He confessed that he was bound by it. Therefore he took account of the man who was by the wayside, though he had come from Jerusalem to Jericho, though he was of an alien and hostile race, though those of his own race did not esteem him their neighbour. Therefore he sat him upon his own beast; therefore he poured oil and wine into his wounds; therefore he took care of him. He made no pretence to exalted virtue; he did not ask for any reward. He did the things which a voice within him bade him do. He yielded to a law, but it was a law of love, a law of liberty, and in that law there was life.

The lesson is keen and pointed; it strikes its roots deeply; they spread themselves far. The Samaritan heretic obeys the divine law in its largest sense; the strict Jew breaks it in its most limited and narrow sense. But it is a law to one as much as the other. The notion of love or charity as self-indulgence, as the mere following of a kindly impulse, is as foreign to the New Testament as to the Old. God commands,—Man only obeys; this is equally the doctrine of both. But from what God does the command come? How is it to be obeyed? Christ shews forth in Himself what God is from whom the command comes—how it is to be obeyed. The Son does what the Father wills to be done. All the acts of the Son are acts of willing self-sacrifice—acts of service to mankind.

These are the acts by which He pays homage to His Father, in which He reveals His Father. To be moulded into conformity with His will, to have the Spirit of the Father and the Son who alone can mould us—this is the blessing of all blessings. This is that which prophets and kings longed for. To have this gift is the privilege of all, for Christ has died and risen and ascended; to accept it and live under the law of love—this is what we shall find to be the true, the eternal life, when we have been stripped of all our own pretensions, when we are content to receive all things from the Son of Man. This life is not a reward for keeping the commandment. In keeping the commandment you will possess it, you will enjoy it. If we did love God with all our hearts and soul and strength and mind, if we did love our neighbour as ourselves, we should have the divine, perfect life, the life of the eternal God. We should want nothing more, we could have nothing more. Oh, my friends, let us think of this as we kneel at God’s altar to-day. The infinite eternal charity of which the Epistle has spoken to us,¹ is all gathered up in the sacrifice which Christ made for the world, The eternal life is shewn forth in His death. We are permitted, we are invited, to partake of that Sacrifice, to eat the flesh and blood. We are permitted then, we are invited, to lay hold of eternal life. We do lay hold of it if we obey those commandments which the Samaritan, who had so little of our light, obeyed when he treated his enemy, the Jew, as his brother. For then we confess that a God of charity rules us and rules the universe; then we ask Him to forgive us all our breaches of charity, and to fill us with His charity, since we have none of our own.