Sixth Sunday after Trinity
July 11, 1858
“Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom.”—Matthew xvi. 24-28.
Last Sunday I endeavoured to show you that we might arrive at a true idea of the purpose and effects of the Lord’s Supper, if we began with considering that it shows or declares the Lord’s death till He come. I foresaw an objection to this statement, a very practical objection, one which would be felt by many who could not present it clearly to others or to themselves. “Do we not frequent Christ’s Table for the sake of our own souls? Is it not said, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you? Does not the minister, as he gives the elements, speak to each man of his body and soul, of Christ having died for him? Supposing it be a duty to declare Christ to men, does not this language point out an entirely different duty, one which has reference to ourselves, to our own personal salvation? Does it not indicate a belief that the death which we may, in a certain sense, acknowledge to be for all men, is in its highest, indeed, in its only worthy or important, sense, for him who can appropriate it, who can say, ‘I have proofs and signs within me which the majority have not, that I belong to Christ’?”
My brethren, there is so much of what I believe to be profoundly Christian and true, so much of what I believe to be essentially anti-Christian and false, mixed in the thoughts and feelings which give rise to those questions, that I dare not attempt, by any art of mine, to distinguish the one from the other. But they have been distinguished by the divinest skill. Our Lord Himself has undertaken the office—His own proper office—of dividing the wheat in them from the chaff. No one will doubt that some of the words I have just read to you set forth, as strongly as words can set forth, the preciousness of the soul, and the worthlessness of the whole world in comparison with it. They are the words to which every preacher refers who wishes to enforce this reflection upon his hearers. But he must not, I conceive, for the sake of pressing a certain argument, still less for the sake of finding a convenient motto to a sermon, divide sentences which Christ has joined together, and which evidently illustrate each other. He must be especially jealous of himself, if he is tempted to that course by the notion that he should perhaps weaken the effect of his own exhortations if he suffered another part of his Master’s exhortation to be heard. The least suspicion of such a motive should make him tremble for his honesty and faithfulness, and should lead him earnestly to meditate on the whole discourse.
For none of us can boast that he may not yield to this temptation, seeing that our translators, excellent men as they were, have certainly yielded to it in their rendering of this passage. They knew that the word which they called “life” in the 25th verse, was the same word which they called “soul” in the 26th. They were afraid to say, that if a man loses his soul he shall save it; that sounded dangerous doctrine. They were afraid to diminish the force of the tremendous inquiry, “What is a man profited if he gain the whole world,” by reducing “soul” into “life.” So they took a course which, when one thinks with Whose words they were occupied, must be called not one of cowardly compromise, but of desperate hardihood. They destroyed the coherency of the passage; they dared to make Him who spake as never man spake, play with words as the juggling rhetoricians of the earth play with them. It is a solemn warning of a peril to which we are all exposed, the peril of thinking we are wiser than God, and better able to guard His truth than He is.
I. There can be no doubt that the first verse of the passage contains the subject of it. St. Peter had made his confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That confession had drawn forth the divinest benediction and promise on the disciple who uttered it and on the Church. “From that time forth began Jesus to shew to His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and must suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” Those who knew that He was the Son of the living God, were also to know by what acts He would establish his Sonship. But Peter, to whom the one truth had been revealed, “not by flesh and blood, but by the Father in Heaven,” was trusting flesh and blood about the other. “He took Jesus, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee. But He turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence to me, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.” No soft language was possible here. He who was to open the kingdom of heaven to men, could not open it if he did not understand that the King was to endure the sharpness of death. The latter speech annulled the former. From a glorious witness of Christ, he became His adversary. A notable example and foreshadowing of changes as sudden that were to take place in after-ages of the Church; to take place from the same causes. Later ministers of Christ, like St. Peter, would be puffed up with vanity because they had received a divine testimony to the truth of words which they had spoken under the force of a divine conviction. Later ministers would trust their intellects to draw conclusions as to what must be, from the discovery that had been made to them of what is; and so they, too, would rebuke Christ for His own words, and would receive in their consciences a withering rebuke from Him.
But our Lord was not content with announcing that His own sacrifice was necessary to the fulfilment of His character as a son. He had come to be the first-born of many brethren: He had come that they might be adopted into His family, and might bear the tokens of adoption. Therefore, He said unto the disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. The force of the words deny himself was to be learnt from Him; it could be learnt only from Him. He had habitually, in every word, in every act, said, “I can do nothing of my own self. The Son doeth what he seeth the Father do. The words that I speak are not of myself. The Father doeth the works.” From the day of His temptation, when He refused to prove Himself the Son of God by doing any work to support Himself, or to make His power manifest, or to take possession of His kingdom,—from that day forwards to His death, He was practising this self-denial, and so was revealing the Father to men. The Cross was the gathering up of all that previous sacrifice. It was the consummate surrender of Himself to the Will of His Father; it expressed the meaning of His life. And having proved this to be the true life of man,—the law of human life,—he called upon men to enter into it with Him. No one could follow Him on any other terms; each one might follow Him and claim his place as a son of God upon these terms. Self-denial was not to be an occasional act; it is the ground of man’s existence, for it is the ground of His; the Cross was to be taken up each day, not as a meritorious service, but as submission to a law which it was monstrous to violate.
II. If we assume this as the starting-point of the discourse, we are prepared for the general announcement in the following verse: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” I quite admit that there is a difficulty in the word ψυχή which the study even of the most accomplished philosophers might not remove, nay, which might not be altogether removed by the study of the New Testament. The translators, supposing they had mastered the Greek speculations on the subject, might still remain in doubt whether the name denoted the life which animals have in common with men; or the intellectual life in contradistinction to the animal life; or that consciousness of personal existence and personal identity which, being simple and indivisible, cannot, the sages say, undergo the dissolution to which composite things are liable. And they might well have recollected that the word is not a favourite, either in the Gospels or Epistles; that it occurs seldom, and that the cognate adjective is used by St. Paul in a somewhat disparaging sense, as opposed to spiritual. Had they therefore adhered consistently to the word “life” or to the word “soul,” we could have had no fault to find with them. But they could not surely read the previous verse,—they could not refer to the parallel passage in St. Luke,—without perceiving that, whatever may be the technical signification of ψυχή, either in profane or sacred literature, it is used by our Lord as equivalent to Self. Whatever is included in Self is denoted by it here. Call it Life if you will, but then it must be the entire life of the man, so far as he is an individual; it must mean, whatever distinguishes him from his fellows. This is what will be lost by those who would save it; this is what will be found by those who are content to lose it.
The words “for my sake,” in the opinion of some, qualify the sentence. “Give up your life,” it has been supposed to mean, “for Christ’s sake, then He will save your soul.” The martyrs of the first ages acted, we are sometimes told, upon this calculation. They abandoned what they knew could only last for a few years, that they might obtain a future and permanent treasure. There may be expressions in the letters and exhortations of some of them, which suggest such a thought; they may have even used language at the scaffold or the stake upon which we can put this interpretation. But take their acts as the commentary upon their discourses; receive their devotions as a part, and the most authoritative part, of their discourses; make some allowances for the false colouring which may be thrown over one or the other by the eye of a cold spectator, who has not caught any of their inspiration; and I think it will be evident enough that they gave their bodies to be burnt or crucified, because they had first given up their whole selves to Christ. If they were not ready, like the Master, to pour out their souls as well as their bodies to death, they confessed this as a weakness and a sin, as a want of full participation in His sacrifice. Till this reluctance was taken from them, there would still be a shrinking from the Cross; possibly to it, more than to any other cause, we may ascribe the recantations and compromises of those who failed in the last hour.
I am not even as willing as some are, to think that the eagerness of men in the Middle Ages to become soldiers of the Cross, was owing chiefly to the notion that they might avert the future punishment of their crimes by incurring the present risk of death for the sake of Christ. I admit that that motive did intrude itself, and was turned to shameful account by priests and popes, who supposed that sinful men were capable of no other. And I beseech those who in this day would invoke the same selfish instincts for the sake of rousing men to the acts which they deem religious, earnestly to consider whether they may not be abetting the immorality which they say, and say with the best possible evidence, that the sacerdotal artifices of those days fearfully promoted. But the brave and true deeds which mingled with that immorality cannot have had the same origin as the evil which defiled them. They came, I think, from a sense in men’s hearts, that a common Saviour and Lord, to Whom they might give up body and soul, in Whose purity and righteousness they might hide their own dark selves, Who had gone into death and the grave for the sake of saints and sinners, would not refuse any who desired to claim a share in His Cross and Sepulchre. Such a belief, amidst whatever confusions, under whatever sensual forms, dwelt deep in the hearts of many whom we look upon from our serene heights with pity and scorn. Would to God that it might take possession of us! Would to God that we might learn, through any discipline, the right, the privilege, the necessity, of losing ourselves,—not a part of ourselves, but the whole,—for the sake of Christ,—that His human sympathies might drive out our self-seeking, that the Divine nature of the second Adam might destroy in us the sordid nature of the first Adam!
III. Then we shall feel with quite another force the two awful inquiries in the next verse: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? And what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Few of us have so high an ambition as that which this text speaks of; at least, few of us think that we have. We do not want to gain the whole world. We only want some little portion of it; a very little, we suppose, would satisfy us. We have set our minds upon some special end, such as money or reputation, or on some general end, which we describe as success or happiness. In finding these, we expect to find ourselves. The soul which thirsts for them will take its ease and be merry when it has got them. But it is hard work to get them; much must be given up before the prize is won. What must be given up? Our Lord says, the very thing which we are seeking to save or to find. The soul must be given up. For the sake of the money, the reputation, the success, the happiness, the man must part with himself. Does He mean, “The soul must be lost hereafter? It must perish in another world”? Oh, brethren, does He not mean something more fearful still than that; something which makes that fear real and definite, apart from which it would be very vague, and might be easily put away? Does He not tell us that the soul is lost here? Does He not lead us to recollect what we have seen, what we do see continually? Look at the pleasure-hunter, the gold-hunter, the fame-hunter. It is all the same. The thing sought for is won, or almost won. But where is the winner? Alas! the price has been paid beforehand. The debtor’s person was responsible. The life which was to be enjoyed when all was acquired, has gone in the acquisition.
And so the first question answers itself, “What is the man profited if he gain the whole world and lose himself,” or “his own soul”? Nothing depends on the quantity of the good which is realized. No amount added to the gold, the pleasure, the fame, can make the slightest difference. The man has devoted himself, sacrificed himself; what is the world to him? Oh! look at the jaded, helpless, hopeless faces which are set before us, in any authentic, recognized picture of a great day of self-seeking enjoyment; look at the worn-out, miserable, anxious faces in any picture of those who have spent their existence in self-seeking business; and there read the true sermon on our Lord’s words. I do not speak of the day after the pleasure. I speak of the day itself. I do not speak of the failures which cast money-getters from their thrones. I would confine myself to the time when the world worships them. Meditate on that; and then on the words, “He that saveth his life shall lose it.”
But there is another question, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” We sometimes fancy, I suspect, that this sentence is only a repetition of the former. We sometimes read it as if it were written, “What shall a man get in exchange for his soul?” But our Lord does not speak unnecessary words, or words in a perverted sense. I apprehend that the question, “What can I give in exchange for my soul?” is one which we have all at times asked. “I do not wish to give my whole self to pleasure or to money. It is, no doubt, my main pursuit, my chief end. But I fully expect to reserve something from that occupation; some energies, some conscience, some affection, some hope.” It will not do; the divinity I have chosen will not be served on such conditions. There can be no bargaining. “Thyself, thyself,” he says, “I must have. Nothing less than that. Nothing but that.” So again, when a man has perceived that there is another Being to Whom he owes homage, One Whose nature is altogether different from that which he has been worshipping in his heart, he considers with himself: “I must have offended Him. How can I pacify Him? What will He accept? My soul is another’s. But what can I give in exchange for my soul? Calves of a year old? Rivers of oil? The first-born of my body?” All experiments are made; none succeed. This God, He claims thyself. Nothing else will satisfy Him. “My son, give me thy heart. If not that, I care for nothing else.”
IV. But what relation is there between this sentence and the next? “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His Angels, and then shall He reward every man according to his works.”
The relation between the sentences arises from the relation between the man who is spoken of in the first, and the Son of Man, Who is the subject of the other. The self-seeker has been separating himself from his kind—from his race,—or has only been using the members of it as instruments for obtaining his own ends. He has forgotten the Man, the Son of Man, the bond of the whole race, Who has given Himself a Sacrifice for all the members of it. The man who has given up himself has done so for Christ’s sake; because he believes in a Son of Man, because he knows that he is not a separate creature, because he does not wish in death or life to be divided from Him Who died for all and Who lives for all.
It is clear that out of these opposite states of mind the most opposite acts must proceed. Not as if either class laid down for itself a certain scheme of conduct. Not as if the one were deliberately neglectful of all duties and charities, and the other were minutely and scrupulously observant of them. But the spirit of self-seeking, when it obtains the mastery over any human being, of course moulds his thoughts and his deeds; the Spirit of the Son of Man of course moulds the thoughts and acts of each human being who submits to His government. Therefore, when it is said that the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father and of the Angels, and shall reward every man according to his works, we understand that one of these principles, and each act that has issued from it, will be shown to be eternally false, and the other eternally true; that Christ will prove before the Universe that He accounts the lowest of those creatures, whom the self-seekers have despised or only regarded as their tools, whom the self-deniers have honoured, as His brethren; and that whatever has been done to any one of them has been done to Him.
V. I dare not omit the last verse in this great discourse, though it may not seem essential to my purpose, since our Lord introduces it with so much solemnity: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” I do not see how we can give to that announcement any other meaning than the one which is ordinarily given to it. There were some—St. John at least must have been present—who would stay on earth till the downfall of the city and temple over which Jesus had wept, till those who had rejected Him were scattered through the earth. But why should these events, in themselves so sad and portentous, be signs that the Kingdom of the Son of Man was come? I apprehend, because the ground on which the Jews withstood the preaching of our Lord and of His Apostles was precisely this, that He appeared not only as the Heir of David, but as the Son of Man; that people of all nations were claimed as children of God in Him, along with those who boasted they were children of Abraham; that His death was shown forth as the death for mankind. The downfall of the exclusive nation was therefore an authentic testimony that a Kingdom was established, which, however little the rulers of the earth might confess it, however little its nature might be understood by those who nominally belonged to it, could have no meaner title than this, “the Kingdom of the Son of Man.”
VI. To that Kingdom we, my brethren, belong. When we are received into it by Baptism we renounce our private, individual, selfish life; we claim, as St. Paul says, to die with Christ, to be buried with Christ; we affirm that there is no life but the life of the Son of Man; we ask, for ourselves and for our children, that we may be quickened with that life. That first Sacrament, then, is framed upon our Lord’s universal and everlasting maxim, “He that saveth his life,” his own separate life, “shall lose it; he that loseth his life for My sake, shall find it.” In that Sacrament we declare that there is a common death for all men, a common life for all men; for ourselves and for our households, we say that we will have no other.
The words, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,” are a repetition and enforcement of that maxim for those who are engaged in the hard battle of the world. They remind us of the daily, hourly temptation to be seeking a life of our own, to be forgetting that we are bound by the eternal law of God, by the unchangeable conditions of our own being, to our fellows, and to their Father and ours, in the Well-beloved Son. These words remind us that the selfish life is in truth no life at all, but death; that to choose it is to choose death. They remind us that we are not bound to choose it; that in doing so we are renouncing our true human state; we are trying to cast off bonds which are actually holding us; we are resisting God’s Spirit. They remind us that the common life is still with us; that the Son of Man is still the same; that His flesh and His blood were really given for the life of the world; that our spirits groan for that life, groan to be delivered from the death into which they have fallen through self-pleasing and self-seeking.
VII. When, then, a man hears the invitation to the Lord’s Supper,—when he is bidden to eat the common bread and drink the common wine,—what should be his thoughts? Should they be these: “Here is a way of saving myself; here is a privilege granted to me because I am better than others; here is an opportunity of putting myself in a higher condition than others?” Or should they be these: “I have lost myself by trying to save myself; I have been asserting special privileges on some ground of special fortune or special merit. And the fortune and the merit have vanished, I know not what is become of them. I have been trying to lift myself above other men. Oh, God! that I might at last be permitted to be one of them, to feel with them, to suffer with them! And here is the message that I may have this great and wonderful gift. Christ bids my spirit partake of the flesh and blood which He shed for the world, as my body partakes of the bread and wine. It is what I need. It takes away the selfish glory which I have coveted; it invests me with the human glory which I have renounced. It bids me cast away that weight of cares about my body and my soul which have become intolerable; it bids me throw myself upon that sacrificing love which provides for all and for each, which seeks to make me its minister to others, which can never bless me so much as by forming me after its own likeness.”
Yes! it is about losing ourselves that we are to think; the finding we leave to Christ. It is, indeed, necessary to remember that what we lose we shall find, lest we should fall into pantheistic dreams about an absorption of all personal life and distinctness into the great Whole or into the Divine Nature. No such notions will torment us, or at least will overcome us, while we believe in a Son of Man, Who gave His soul and body to death; but Who brought out of death both His body and soul; Who ascended with both to the right hand of His Father. While we celebrate the sacrifice of His death, while we thank Him that we are made in the likeness of that death, we may look forward to a time when we shall be made in the likeness of His resurrection. No one precious energy or affection which He has bestowed can be meant to perish. Our personal being is safe when we entrust it to Him. We do not enter into the fulness of His sacrifice if we are considering how we may save our bodies or our souls. But when we have resigned ourselves to Him, His minister may say to us in His name, “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee because thou art a man,—the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee because thou art a man, preserve thy body and soul unto eternal life.”
If there has been a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction made for the sins of the whole world, we may trust that the Father who has accepted that sacrifice will draw our spirits, however sunken they may be in evil, to His Son; that He will at last draw all men to Him. If there has been no such sacrifice for the world,—if men may dare to speak of it as a sacrifice nominally for all, really for a very few,—then we have nothing to feed upon; then no Son of Man has come, no Son of Man will come; then there is no power which can raise us out of the pit of selfishness; then prayers, offerings, all the machinery of religious worship, will only plunge us more deeply into it; then there is no Eternal Life, for that is the fruition of the Divine Love; but there is an Eternal Death, for that is communion with the Spirit of Selfishness, that is subjection to him.