First Sunday in Lent

“For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.”—1 Philippians iii. 20, 21.

St. Paul had just been speaking of some members of the Church whose god was their belly, who minded earthly things. It is a plausible opinion, that in the passage I have just read he intended to contrast with their state of mind his own and that of the persons who strove to imitate him, as he imitated Christ. Our translators probably adopted that notion, or they would scarcely have rendered πολίτευμα by “conversation.” That word had undoubtedly a more extensive signification in the seventeenth century than it has in ours,—it included the whole course and habit of life, and had no special reference to intercourse through the tongue. But it never can have denoted what a word derived from City and Citizen does most naturally denote, a condition and privilege which belonged to certain men, whether they made use of it or forgot it.

That natural sense, I apprehend, St. Paul gives to the expression here. He does not contrast his heavenly temper with the earthly temper of those concerning whom he speaks with so much sorrow. But he blames them for that temper, because he and they had both alike a divine πολίτευμα, because a state had been claimed for them, and of right belonged to them, and was implied in their acts, with which such a temper was wholly at variance. The opposition is not between them and him; it is between them and themselves. It is not again (as we sometimes state it) between them and their professions; as if they boasted of a high citizenship, when in fact they were only metics or aliens. They had too low, not too high an appreciation of their status and of their rights. They would be raised above their grovelling tendencies, yes, and above the conceit which no doubt accompanied these tendencies,—if they could once really understand what they were; what honours and estates were legally theirs, only waiting to be claimed; under what title these honours and estates were to be held.

Still the words in the Heavens stand out in manifest contrast to the earthly things in the former sentence. Have then the translators committed another and far graver mistake than the one to which I have alluded? Should they have supplied a future tense instead of a present? Should they have made St. Paul say, “Our Citizenship will be, not is, in the Heavens”? Here, I think, every reasonable person, every person the least conversant with the writings of St. Paul, or even with the common sense of language, will allow that they were right. They must have destroyed the meaning of the passage, all the moral effect of it, if they had been tempted to make this change. The men who minded earthly things might have answered with great justice, “We are upon the earth; we must have actual good things; we cannot take up with possibilities. You may be content with shadows if you will. Give us that which is substantial, even if it is to last for ever so short a time.” They would have spoken so, and I believe St. Paul would have been estopped by his own most familiar language, still more by his own deepest convictions, from answering them. All his exhortations to men were to leave the fantastic and hold fast to the real. All his life was spent in setting forth to others and to himself a present Saviour, Who could set them free from a present bondage, Who could sustain them under the pressure of an immediate death. And that part of this passage which obviously and unquestionably points to a future manifestation of this Saviour—to a complete redemption from bondage—would, I believe, be quite as much emptied of its signification as the rest, if St. Paul’s readers fancied that they had not now, but only were to have hereafter, a citizenship in the Heavens.

But how can such a thought as this ever be brought within the range of men’s ordinary conceptions? How can it ever become a practical thought for you and me? Perhaps we had better consider for a moment how it became such a one for him who gave this expression to it. St. Paul was a Roman citizen; we have proofs that he valued the privilege. It stood him in good stead more than once. When he asked himself what it meant—why it had been so dearly prized by the old families of the great city—how Italians, how distant provincials had become partakers of it—how it had associated itself with dominion over the world—what answer can he have found? Will it have been this? “It has been won by men such as these I see in the palace of Nero, whose whole soul is set upon animal enjoyments, who care for neither the past nor the future, whose god is their belly, whose eyes are always upon this earth. Did Rome grow up under their fostering care? Has Roman citizenship become precious and mighty because they boast of it? Is not its power and splendour due to men of just the opposite character to these,—men who could cast aside and scorn the things in which they delight,—men who held fast the reverence for ancestors which they have lost—men who believed in some invisible protector of their land whom these have forgotten or exchanged for a visible idol, or the horrible phantom of a fatal tyrant ready at any moment to crush them? Were not the true citizens, to whom Rome owned its rise, different from the false citizens who were hastening its downfall, in this—that they minded earthly things less, that they had a dream, however confused a dream, of a citizenship in the Heavens?”

But St. Paul, besides being a Roman citizen, was an Israelite, a child of Abraham. When he considered what this citizenship signified, did not similar facts present themselves to him, only in far greater clearness—only so as to throw light upon the others? He saw in every city whither Jews had scattered themselves—he saw in Jerusalem—men vain of their origin, clinging to the traditions of their fathers, but, in the fullest sense of the word, minding earthly things,—set upon gain, money-getters by profession and in heart, men who made this pursuit the key to the interpretation of their divine records, who unconsciously read “Mammon” wherever they found “Jehovah.” Were these like the men whom those records spoke of? Very like indeed those whom prophets denounced because they forgot the Everlasting Covenant—because their hearts were set upon their covetousness—because they were drawing down God’s wrath upon the land—because they were hastening the destruction of the city. Very like these; and therefore just the reverse of all those heroes who had done great deeds upon the earth, who had proved themselves fit to live upon the earth by the mastery they had had over it. These emphatically did not mind earthly things; these believed that they were citizens of a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker was God: these lived and died in that faith. They had their citizenship in the Heavens while they were upon earth; they could hope to understand more what was implied in it, and what numbers besides themselves were inheritors of it after their eyes were closed upon earth.

This was St. Paul’s education respecting the nature of citizenship; this was his preparation for believing that there was a city in which Jews and Romans, Greeks and Barbarians had equal privileges, and that that city must be in the Heavens; and that that city was, on that very account, one of which the gates were never shut day nor night to the inhabitants of earth if they chose to enter into them. In other words, he discovered that there is a human society—a society for men as men—and that the foundation of this society must be spiritual; that men become members of it, not because they have bodies, but because they have spirits; that they become free of it because the Father of Spirits has declared in His Son Jesus Christ that He is their Father, and that therefore they are brethren. He mourned therefore that men having such an origin and such a patrimony, should regard themselves merely as sons of earth, and should live as if their fellowship with each other depended upon earthly accidents, and not upon that relation in which they all stood to the unseen world. So far as they did that, He was sure that their intercourse with each other would be capricious, liable to continual interruptions—not of any depth or fruitfulness while it lasted—not sufficient to overcome the gravitation in each of them to grovelling, animal, separate indulgences—not going beyond the reciprocation of good-natured words or acts, and the pleasant excitement of vanity. And, on the contrary, just so far as any traced the attraction which they felt for each other to a higher and diviner attraction; just so far as they believed the bonds of friendship to be as little fortuitous, or merely formed by self-will, as the bonds of what we call natural relationships; just so far as both were referred to God’s eternal Love and to the relationship which there is between us and Him,—just so far he was certain that their associations would be genuine and permanent, surviving circumstances, surviving death.

To say, brethren, “Our conversation is in the Heavens,” would be a bold thing for most of us. If we ventured to use such language, I think our consciences would sting us with many terrible remembrances. There would come to us thoughts of solitary hours, when we might have been conversing with the most exalting, beautiful objects, and when we have been possessed with miserable speculations about ourselves, about the judgment people formed of us, imaginary honours we might attain, or imaginary foes we might encounter, or imaginary injuries we might have to bear. There would come to us thoughts of social hours, when we had the opportunity of receiving wisdom or learning gentleness from lips that are silent and from eyes that are closed,—thoughts how these hours were spoiled by carelessness and selfishness. There would come thoughts of hours when with our lips we were drawing nigh to God, and there was no converse with Him in our hearts. But when we say, “Our citizenship is in the Heavens,” then need we no such faltering of the tongue, no such timidity in the spirit within. That confession belongs to Lent; that is declaring God to be true and us to be liars; that is affirming, “He has not made our lives to be insincere in solitude or in society, our friendships to be poor in quality and to be shorter than the existence which they glorify. All that is fragile and transitory belongs to us; we have failed to recognize the stamp of His eternity which He has assuredly put upon us and upon all our human attachments. We sever by our sin and unbelief links which He has fastened. Our noise has disturbed the quiet deep of memory which His Spirit broods over. But His blessed order stands firm, however little we abide in it. The affinities in the world of human beings, like the affinities in the natural world, have all been constituted by Him, are all maintained by Him. The unity between the different parts of the frame in each man is not so mysterious as the unity between the different members of the body politic. The latter is certainly indestructible, whatever may happen to the former. And this, because our polity is in the Heavens. We are made one in Christ.”

Therefore it is that the dream which each man dreams, that he is the centre of the world, and that he can refer all its movements to himself, is so monstrous and ridiculous. Therefore it is that no affection or friendship which ever existed between men can have its origin in mere choice. Therefore it is that any one who will own his friendships to be derived from Christ, and to have their fulfilment in Him, may have them restored to him. Each of us may have the youth of old loves renewed. Years of famine, during which the canker-worm of selfishness has been preying on his heart, may be followed by years of plenty, in which he shall find that there are inexhaustible stores in the treasury of God’s love, if we only seek them from Him, and not from the earth or from ourselves.

When we give the Apostle’s words this signification, you will feel that they must concern us as much as they did the Philippians; that by their very nature they can have no local or temporary application; that it is for our humiliation, not for our pride, to accept them in all their fulness. If we did accept them in their fulness, what a meaning they would give to the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ! That is saying to us all: “Because you are hard-worked, warring citizens of earth, encompassed with all its infirmities, beset with its temptations, doomed to its death, therefore may you claim your citizenship in the Heavens. For One Who is ascended into the Heavens had an actual body, and offered it on the Cross, and raised it from the dead, and carried it to God’s right hand. In Him you are united to your fighting brethren on earth, to the generations of old, to every man who has passed out of your circle into the nearer presence of God. In Him you may confess all your cold, hard, selfish acts, your forgetfulness of holy influences, and cherished resolutions, and noble aims.” The confession will bring forgiveness, and freedom, and new life. For it is the Will of God that we should cast off the burden of past neglects and sins, of self-reproaches and shame, of loves unrequited and duties unfulfilled. It is His Will that we should believe constantly and daily that He does regard us, not as poor separated creatures such as we have taken ourselves to be, but as a body united in Christ, justified in Him, presented by Him as a pure and holy sacrifice. It is His Will that we shall go forth quickened to every work which is before us, with the assurance that the whole family of God and each member of it is working with us and cheering us on, and that the veil which divides us from them will one day be withdrawn. For if our citizenship is in Heaven; if our denial of that truth has made our lives here bewildered and inconsistent; if this slavery to earthly things renders us incapable of understanding earthly things, or of discharging rightly the obligations which our intercourse with earthly things lays upon us then assuredly we have a right to expect a day when laws shall be asserted and anomalies swept away, when we shall see ourselves and all the creatures of God as they are in His sight, not as they have appeared to us through the mists of our lower world.

And so the latter part of St. Paul’s words is a clear and safe warrant of Hope as to that which shall be, as the former part of them was a warrant for Faith as to that which is now. “From whence,” he says, “we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” If we stood in no relation to this Lord—if He was not the Head of a body of which we are members,—if He had not come upon earth to save that body from its separations and divisions, and to make it one in Himself,—if he had not ascended into the Heavens that he might raise it above its visible, temporary bondage, and give it the eternal life which is with the Father, I do not know what this expectation could mean to any of us. To expect that a person who was born at a certain period in a village in Judæa, should come again at some uncertain period into that same part of the world, or into some other, would be a poor consolation for those who are groaning under the miseries and sins of themselves and the world, a very feeble terror to those who are causing these miseries and committing these sins. It signifies not what wonders we suppose Him to have wrought in His first advent, or what power we suppose He will possess in His second. While we regard those wonders as the peculiar incidents of a certain age, they only stand out in cold, clear contrast to all our present experiences; the conception of that future power of which we see no resemblance and feel no effects now, is altogether too vague, too much mixed with the dream that it may be exercised indulgently, or that we may find some escape from it, to overcome any great temptation which stands directly before us,—still more to move our flagging spirits for any painful duty. But to believe that He Who gave signs, when He was upon earth, of that dominion over Nature and over the wills of men, which has been His always; which He is putting forth over us who are here—over all men in every section and corner of God’s Kingdom,—shall vindicate that dominion against all which defies it, and would establish a tyranny that is hostile to it; to believe that He Who claimed us for members of a Family in heaven and earth, of which He is the Head, shall not suffer us to act for ever as if earth were separate from Heaven, and as if the death which He consecrated as a new and living way into the presence of God, were a barrier between us and those who are about His throne; to believe that this body, which he has given to each of us, shall not always hinder the exercises of our spirits, but shall be their helpful minister—shall not always cut us off from fellowship with each other—but shall bear clear and authentic witness to the necessity and the permanence of that fellowship; this is agreeable to reason, though it may be difficult to sense. This belief will prove its truth to us the more we cherish it by its influence over our lives, by the victory which it enables us to win over the earthly things that would persuade us to worship them.

It was natural for St. Paul, after rebuking those who minded earthly things, by telling them of their polity in Heaven, after pointing them to their ascended and invisible King, to express his undoubting conviction that He would change the body of our humiliation, that it might be like to the body of His glory, according to the power whereby He is able to subdue even all things to Himself. It was natural because, without such an addition, his previous words would have been incredible; if it was false, they could not have been true. If men are not spiritual beings possessing bodies—if a man is only a body into which some vital spark, some intellectual nature, something called a soul has intruded itself—then there can be no polity in Heaven, the notion is a fond dream, an outrage upon fact. But if they are spiritual beings, their bodies must suffer wrong, and degradation, and death; they must be incapable of their free and proper exercise till the Spirit has fully asserted its own proper state—till it has been united to its proper Lord. All through our pilgrimage here we are learning very slowly, amidst continual perplexities and relapses, what the true state of our spirits is, who the Lord of our spirits is, what their redemption is. The most various instruments may be necessary for this schooling. Nature may impart a portion of it; sorrow a larger portion; weakness, temptation, the sense of sin, the necessity of deliverance, far more. By the little we know of the education of others, we may judge of the method God is using with us; by the experience of those methods we may be certain that He is carrying on a work in them. But bodily humiliation, bodily suffering in general forms so large a portion of this discipline—so regular a means of bringing the spirit to feel its wings and aspire after its native freedom, that we know the Redemption of the body must be intended for a later stage of the process. These are continual prophecies of it; the very pains to which it is subject are such prophecies; the loss and decay of strength and beauty, as well as the unwonted endurance of both, and the look that remains on the corpse, are prophecies. Surely they shall be all fulfilled! Surely there is no energy which shall not have its perfect development, and which shall not bring that to pass for which it was created! Surely there is no loveliness in infancy or in manhood of which Death shall be able to say, “I have crushed it.” For He shall make it like to His glorious body. That is the declaration of St. Paul; that is the pledge of the Sacrament of Christ’s body. While we eat His flesh and drink His blood, let us say boldly, “This we will believe for others and ourselves, not because it is for our comfort or theirs, but because it is for His glory Who gave up His soul to death, and Who brought His body through Death, that Death might have no dominion over us; that we might rise above it and above earthly things, and might be inheritors of His divine and eternal life.” Yes, brethren, and there is another blessing included in this. The meaning of that grand Hymn¹ we have had to sing to-day shall be accomplished. Winds and waves, lightnings and storms and green things do even now praise the Lord! A few are privileged to understand the harmonies of Nature, to hear God’s voice in them all. How will the souls and spirits of the Righteous, when they are entirely purified in the blood of the Lamb, when their bodies are redeemed from corruption, lead those songs of the heavens! how will they teach all things to bless and magnify the Lord for ever!