The Misery of Limiting Our Hope in Christ

“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”—1 Corinthians xv. 19.

These words have been a cause of much distress to humble and devout readers. They have felt that their hope in Christ made this life joyful to them. It caused the earth to look bright; it threw a beauty and glory over all human faces. Nature and art, the commonest things and the rarest, the past and present as much as the future, were illuminated by it. They have not owed their serenity or their gladness to outward circumstances, or to a specially genial temperament. Many of them have won the gift through keen bodily suffering; not a few have accepted it as a gift, feeling a natural inclination to despondency. No doubt the very name hope implies a looking forward. But they do not find that the expectation points chiefly to departure from the earth. Least of all do they find that the mere thought of a change in their position constitutes their blessedness. “Lo, I am with you always;” “My peace I give unto you;”—there, they say, is the secret of it.

Certainly they have a right to claim St. Paul in general as the witness and highest authority for their persuasion. “All things are yours,” he said to these very Corinthians, “whether life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours: and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” “Rejoice,” he says to the Philippians, “and again I say, rejoice.” He speaks of himself as “rejoicing in tribulation.” When a prisoner he lifted his gyved hands to Agrippa, and wished that he and Festus and Bernice and all who heard him “were both almost and altogether such as he was, except those bonds.” Was then that so terrible an exception, that he regarded the worshippers of false gods, and his own countrymen with their hateful strifes and hypocrisies,—Nero, with the guilt and horror of a mother’s murder on his conscience,—less miserable, as far as this life went, than he was?

Does any one who knows anything of St. Paul’s life and words believe this? Those very bonds, when they had been more closely riveted than they were at Cæsarea, became a cause of exultation to him, because through them Christ’s name was made known in the palace and city of Rome. He counted, not some future promised felicity, but his office as an Apostle of the Gentiles,—that office which caused him to be the offscouring of all things,—the highest privilege ever bestowed upon a mortal. That the other nations might know they were fellow-heirs and of the same body with his countrymen, he cheerfully suffered the loss of all things; to save those countrymen from the ruin which was overhanging them, he would have been willing to be accursed. Is this a man who was likely to say, “I am utterly miserable here; but I can endure my lot, for I shall be well paid hereafter”?

But if that is not the meaning of the words, what is it? What hidden, cabalistical sense can we find for them to subvert the natural one? I believe, brethren, the simplest sense is the best. I believe we have put one into them, which is derived from our own artificial notions, and is as entirely at variance with the immediate context as it is with the general teaching of the Apostle.

The Corinthians had heard him say, “We are risen with Christ.” A party of them had built on these words, or on some such words, the conclusion that a spiritual resurrection, which they possessed already, was all that Christ had procured for them. They thought they were following their teacher, when they discarded the idea of a future resurrection of the body altogether. St. Paul enters into a full examination of this theory. He shows them that they were turning the half-truth which they thought they had seized, not to the destruction of the other half merely, but of itself. If they were not to rise in their bodies, Christ their Lord had not risen in His body. The very ground of the spiritual resurrection, of which they boasted, was their union with Him. God had justified them in Him. The new doctrine, in effect, disclaimed this relation between them and Him. It left them a set of poor, separated, unredeemed, unjustified creatures; or as he expressed it much more fully, “yet in their sins.”

I. Having pressed this argument, and exhibited it in various lights, he goes on, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” It was very miserable to believe such a contradiction as this would be. Christ had broken through the barriers of death, had brought the visible and the invisible world into one, and had scattered the darkness which covered the grave and the world beyond. Those who said, “The resurrection only concerns us here,” established this separation again. They divided the present from the future. After talking of a great deliverer who had conquered death and all the great enemies of man, they treated Death as to all intents and purposes the ultimate ruler, Life as shut up within threescore years and ten of conflict. No men could be so continually tormented with a feeling of being deceived,—yes, deceived by God Himself, with promises which had no performance,—as those who grafted this notion upon their Christian belief.

II. But this was not all. St. Paul had a right to tell the Corinthians that no men in any age had acquiesced in a conclusion so miserable as that which they, in their pride of Christian enlightenment, were embracing. They were teaching that Christ had come to confound and set at nought the dim hopes of all nations. No doubt their visions of the future were often very dark. Some would have gladly parted with them altogether; it seemed so likely that their outward evils, still more that their conscience-pangs, would be aggravated when they had passed the boundary of time. But there were glimpses of hope in the midst of these forebodings. When the sense of present misery was very acute, there was a prophecy, arising in some minds almost to a conviction that the other side of death might offer a compensation. When the sense of the unrighteousness of human rulers was overwhelming, there was a witness in the heart that there must be One higher than they, and that He might have the dominion there if not here. Those who felt that this unrighteousness was not merely in those who governed, but in themselves, and yet who were certain that they did not love it and would be gladly freed from it, set their minds upon a true and permanent, though as yet unknown Substance, with which they might come into fellowship when their relations with that which had been evidently transitory and fallacious were dissolved. However these anticipations had expressed themselves, however they had been clouded, sensualized, mixed with that which was utterly at variance with them, every popular belief in the world, and most of the experiments to escape from the perplexities of popular beliefs, had testified of their existence. They had the clearest tokens of being necessary, not to certain localities or races, but to mankind. To suppose them away, is to reconstruct the world upon a different principle from that on which history shows that God has constructed it.

Had not St. Paul aright to say then, “If we are not to look forward with hope into the future world, if we possess all that Christ came to give us, He has taken from us something which He has not taken from any others, even the most miserable of His creatures. That which has never been altogether a blank to them, in which there have been some bright Elysian spots, has become entirely a blank to us. We are men, and therefore we must have a belief in immortality. But we are Christians, believers in a risen Lord and Saviour, and therefore all that lies beyond the grave is to be a mere void of which we know nothing, and which assuredly we shall fill up, as all men have done heretofore, with pictures of our imagination, most of them very gloomy pictures indeed”?

III. I foresee, however, that it may be said, “If you give this force to the words, you must adhere more strictly still to the letter of them. You talk of all men having some hope of a future mingled with their fears of it. But the Apostle speaks of a hope in Christ. What could such a hope have to do with dreams of Greeks or Goths respecting an Elysium or a Walhalla? Whether they lived after the coming of our Lord, or before, makes no difference: being heathens, they certainly could not hope in Him.”

Brethren, I have not the least wish to evade this objection. I allow that if we take the Apostle’s language as it stands, we must attribute the hope in Christ not only to himself and to the Corinthians, but to those with whom he compares himself and them. And I think every other passage in his writings warrants us in supposing that it was no carelessness or haste which led him to adopt this form of expression, that he would not have accounted for it as a grammatical or rhetorical figure of speech. The principle, as I have often endeavoured to show you, which underlies all his teaching, and which exhibits itself nowhere more clearly than in this epistle to the Corinthians, is that the relation of Christ to man is that which explains all the facts of the Gospel; that when He took flesh and dwelt among men, He declared himself to be that King, that Son of God, that Cornerstone of Humanity, of Whom all nations had been dreaming, Whom they had been conceiving under different forms, Whose manifestation in His own true and proper nature all had been desiring. If this be so, I cannot imagine how he could describe any hope which had ever been entertained by any human being, except as a hope in Christ. Like every good gift, the Apostle must have considered it as coming from Christ; like every wish that was right and not evil, as tending towards Him. The phrase “hope in Christ” is very comprehensive. It clears away many difficulties. When we enter into the force of it, we understand how men in different latitudes, with all outward circumstances drawing them diverse ways, could cherish the same expectation. There was one common centre from which all were diverging in search of the most contradictory objects, yet to which they were continually recalled; which was drawing them to itself; which each was secretly confessing and bearing witness of, when furthest from it. The gods whom Greeks or Goths worshipped, so far as they were framed out of their own fancies or out of the objects of nature, could have kindled no hopes in them, only a vague, inconceivable dread. Whatever hope they had, came from a secret source, a hidden root. It was the acknowledgment that man himself in his inmost being is related to the Son of God, is meant to be partaker of His life, His immortality. The Apostle then might truly say, that if the Corinthians who professed to believe that Jesus was the Christ, made His appearance and His work upon earth an excuse for not looking beyond the earth,—for not regarding Him as the Ruler of all worlds, as the same yesterday and to-day and for ever,—they had parted with some of the hope in Christ which their heathen brethren possessed.

IV. But there is also another, and it seems to me a very ample justification of the Apostle’s words. He had a much deeper impression of the misery of the world around him than any person who did not believe in the Gospel could have had. It must have looked to him an immeasurably more distracted place than it could have looked to those who did not believe that God had created all to be members of one body in His Son. The different forms of devil-worship which prevailed in it must have been far more hideous than they could be to one who did not worship a God of perfect charity. The exhibition of all dark and malignant passions in human creatures, answering to those which they supposed to be working in the minds of the superior powers, was revolting to him as it could only be to one who believed that the Spirit of Christ had come among men to make them after His image. And these sights could never become mere sights to him. The wickedness and the misery were not objects which he could contemplate as one who was removed from them. They were the sins and miseries of those whose nature his Lord had taken; Paul was himself a partaker of them, he was conscious of a more inward evil than he could attribute to any of those by whom he was surrounded. There were signs which cheered him, and drew forth his deepest thankfulness that God was working in the midst of this corruption. If not, how did he come to know anything of that Lord with Whom his Jewish pride had so long caused him to strive? If not, how had Churches sprung up in cities once wholly given to idolatry? But of how few members did these Churches consist! How much of the world’s evil reproduced itself among them! What fear there was that even a more subtle form of evil than that might develop itself among them! If the theory of the Corinthians was true,—if the Apostle could think that all which Christ came to do was done when a few men were awakened out of their death of sensuality and unbelief, and rose to a new and higher life—he might well call himself of all men the most miserable. For what was there in the spectacle of these few men, however blessed in itself, to console him for the thought of the myriads alive in the world then, who had lived before, who should live hereafter? Feeling as he did their misery so much more intensely than others did, it would absolutely have crushed him if in this life only he had had hope in Christ, if he could have measured the future condition of mankind, or of the individuals who compose any age of human history, merely by anything that he saw or had yet experienced. Supposing indeed we reckon among his experiences that which was the chief of all, his experience of Christ’s love to him a sinner, there was that which might give him hope for every one of his fellow creatures. But then that hope could not be limited, as these heretical Corinthians would limit it, by this life or this world. He must suppose that love to be reigning everywhere. Its infinite, incomprehensible nature had been manifested here. Ages upon ages must be given it for its full scope, its complete operation upon those whom it had created and redeemed. If it was shrivelled and contracted into a few years, if it was confined by the benefits which it had conferred upon a few persons within a small circle, the cross of Calvary did not really exhibit the love and wisdom and power of the eternal God as the Apostle had declared that it did; Christ had not risen as the first-fruits of God’s redeemed creation; the Church was not the pledge and witness that all things in Heaven and in earth should be gathered together in its Lord. The Corinthians might be content with such a low and selfish view of Christ’s glory; if St. Paul had, he would have been of all men most miserable.

V. Those simple and true people, then, who find their belief in Christ a cause of infinite comfort to them in this life—who, in the midst of pain and desertion, feel that they have something which they would not change for all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them,—need not fancy that St. Paul sets at nought this deep conviction of their hearts. He sympathized with it on earth, he sympathizes with it now. Instead of calling upon them to think themselves of all men most miserable, he would bid them give thanks for a present King and Deliverer, for One who makes this earth, with all its confusions, a blessed place, in which they may be well content that their lines are cast, because it is full of tokens of His love and of occasions for serving Him. And if the thought should ever come into their minds, as wild and strange thoughts will come even to the honestest and truest,—“were an angel from Heaven to tell us that there is no future state for us, ought we to give up our faith in Christ?” St. Paul would have answered, “No more than you are to cease to receive warmth from the sun to-day, because you have reason to think that it will not rise on you to-morrow.” But he would have added, “If such an angel does come to you, bearing such a message, never mind what credentials he may bring, what miracles he may work. Tell him plainly that he lies. For he will contradict the message which a greater than he, the Lord of Angels, the Son of God, the Son of Man, has brought into our world. He has made yesterdays and to-days and to-morrows into one. He showed to us the Eternal Life, which was with the Father. He must reign till all things are put under His feet. And those who live in the expectation that He will, are of all men the most blessed.”

VI. But if there is in our minds a mere selfish satisfaction with what we think we have gained by the death and resurrection of Christ,—if we are content that all things shall go on as they go on now, and that there should be no higher condition for individuals or for mankind,—then the words apply to us in all their force. We are of all men most miserable. We had better be amongst those who expected a Walhalla or a sensual Paradise. We had better be amongst those who were driven by the torments of earth to think there might be a Comforter, though they had never heard of one. We had better be amongst the wildest fanatics who have attempted to establish some polity which they have imagined, upon the ruins of all which they see. For they have a hope. They think that there is a Being somewhere who does not wish evil to go on for ever; who will not allow it to go on for ever. The Being whom we worship is not such a Being. Christ has not manifested His Will in His conflict with Evil, in His victory over it, if Christ is not to make that Will triumphant over all that opposes it, in earth and hell. The faith which we hold, instead of overcoming the world, has been overcome by it. We declare that we believe in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We really confess the Devil to be the supreme Lord.

This is a thought, brethren, which we should often bring before ourselves as we walk our streets, and as we read of what is doing in other parts of the world. Are our hopes in Christ, for those whom we see perishing in filth, in ignorance, in moral debasement, only hopes for this life? Do they depend upon the efficacy of our money, our labours, our prayers? Is the wisdom of Rulers, the godliness of Teachers, the benevolence of Societies, the purity of Churches, all which seems to us to intervene between them and utter, absolute ruin? Oh, then, surely we must be of all men most miserable! For do we not feel day by day how little there is to separate us who pass for respectable Christian people, from these outcasts? Do we not sometimes suspect that our sins are blacker than theirs? Do we not sometimes doubt whether, with their temptations, we should not have plunged into depths of evil which they have not sounded? Do we never think that when God arises to judge the earth, the stewards of His gifts to the world will have a heavier account to render in than those to whom the gifts have never been distributed; who fancied, from our report of Him, that He required much and bestowed little?

To think of all the wickedness which is crowded into the most fortunate corner of this earth; to think, for a few instants, of all the crimes which are committed in God’s name and for His honour; to think against how few great evils of the world the Church is lifting up her voice, of how many she is herself the instigatrix,—to think of this, and not to feel something very like despair and the palsy of heart and limbs which accompanies despair, is very difficult. It would be impossible, if we were not encouraged and commanded to place our hopes, not in what we are doing, not in what the Church is doing, but in what Christ has done; not in what we are, but in what He is. That hope must carry us beyond this life. When we speak of Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, of the Revelation of Christ as the Judge of quick and dead, we are transported into a region to which our measures are inapplicable. “He has overcome death; He has taken away sin; He has led captivity captive;”—what words are these! How far beyond our grasp! And yet the Apostle uses them without hesitation. Our consciences testify that if he had not used them he would not have preached the Gospel which he professed to preach. If we think that nothing is given yet; that we are merely to look for something to come, we are most miserable, for the something to come is as shadowy as that which is about us. If we think that all has been given,—that we have nothing to long for,—we are most miserable, for that which is good here becomes a lie if it is not the germ of what is to be perfectly good. But if we accept the signs and pledges of a perfect Sacrifice made once for all,—if we feed upon that and give thanks for that,—the vision of Him who died once and reigned for evermore will become brighter and clearer. Oh that the ministers and stewards of Christ’s mysteries, while they mourn over their own unfaithfulness, may yet remember that they are His mysteries, not theirs! Then they may encourage you to hope—they may dare themselves to hope in Christ, for this life and for that life which He will give more abundantly when He appears in His glory.