The Glory and Deliverance of the Animal Nature

“Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”—Romans viii. 23.

That the passage which has been chosen for the Epistle to-day is a magnificent one, few probably would deny. The complaint we are likely to make of it is that it is too magnificent; that it transports us out of the highway of ordinary existence into an atmosphere which scarcely any one but a Saint or Apostle can be expected to breathe. We are inclined to ask for a divinity more level to our wants and sins; we need, we think, not grand anticipations of a future for mankind and for the earth, but some help in combating the petty temptations of each day.

Such are likely to be the first impressions which we receive from St. Paul’s words. If we look at them again, we perceive that the man who wrote them must have been more, not less, conversant than we are with the sufferings which common men are experiencing. He had certainly shut himself in no cloister. He had taken no pains to banish those images which might disturb the evenness of his temper or the serenity of his devotion. He has the sense of an incubus sitting heavily upon himself and upon the Universe. What he hears arising from all creation is not an hosanna of rapture, but a groan for deliverance. Evidently this groan is not some general, vague aspiration after a possible felicity. It comes from the sense of actual misery; it is composed of the separate cries of millions of beings of his own flesh and blood. And whatever else may call forth their cries—whatever deep, unsatisfied yearnings may be in them—it is evident that physical anguish is, in the Apostle’s judgment, a main cause and justification of them. Men’s bodies are subject to a torment and bondage in which they cannot acquiesce; a redemption from this bondage is that which he believes they want,—which he encourages them to hope for.

May it not, then, be an utter mistake that we need some other circumstances than those in which we find ourselves to realize the force of the sentences we have been reading? May not the clearest, fullest interpretation of them be found in our daily walks? May not the streets of London tell us more about the sense of them than all the folios of commentators?

I. There is, indeed, one word in the text—and on that word all the rest depend—which St. Paul himself must explain to us, before we consider what illustration it gains from ordinary experience. He tells the Roman Church that he and they were waiting for their adoption, or their full recognition as sons of God. He had said that the message he was delivering to the world was a message concerning One Who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection of the dead. He had been showing in all the succeeding passages of the letter how the announcement of such a Person was a Gospel to mankind—to the Gentile as much as to the Jew. He had shown how unable the one was to do what his conscience bade him do, to be what his conscience told him he was meant to be; how the written law of the other only discovered to him more clearly the same inability, made him aware of a deeper sin; how God, sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and condemning sin in the flesh, had done that for men which they could never do for themselves; how He had justified one part of the race as much as the other, by raising His Son from the dead, Who had taken the nature of all; how He had given them His Spirit, that they might call Him their Father, and that they might live new and free lives, willing and doing the things which He was working in them to will and to do.

This is the doctrine of all his Epistles. It is not more characteristic of that to the Romans than of that to the Galatians or the Ephesians or the Colossians. It is the doctrine which lies at the foundation of the Christian Church throughout the world. So far as there has been such a Church at all, so far there has been a proclamation to men that God has claimed them, without respect of race or previous circumstances, as His children in His only-begotten Son; so far there has gone forth an exhortation to them that they would not refuse this dignity; that they would take up their position as spiritual beings, redeemed by the Father of their spirits out of the service of false gods, of visible things, of their own lusts,—consecrated and devoted to His service, which is freedom. And I think we shall find that any message which is less than this, or which takes another form than this, has been powerless to satisfy the necessities of human beings, and has produced no permanent moral effect upon them. If we use all arguments of fear, all arts of rhetoric, to convince beggars or princes that they ought to take care of their souls, a few may be startled out of a sleep to which they will return again. But the more part will feel that you are setting them upon a task which they cannot perform; that you are bidding them think about a mysterious something in them which is itself that which thinks; that you are bidding them forget the real earth for the sake of a heaven which they can only dream of. But if, throwing aside these metaphysics about the soul, we will recur to the old and simple scriptural phraseology—the phraseology of the hearth and the home—if we will bear witness to men of a Father Who has sent the elder Brother of the household to bring them into it, to restore them to the place of sons and daughters, to endow them with the highest rights of children,—if we will condescend to this venerable mode of speech,—we shall find, I believe, that it is not obsolete, that many may despise it in England, as many despised it in Italy or Asia Minor; but that it has a power which time and place have not affected, that it can bring forth as clear a response from the peasant and mechanic of the nineteenth century, as from the peasant and mechanic of the first. The strength is in the tidings themselves, not in the person who delivers them. No gifts which St. Paul or any Apostle possessed could have overcome the palpable evidence which, in his age, seemed to confute his doctrine respecting the glory that Christ had conferred on our race. If we deal as honestly as he did with that evidence,—if we are as resolute as he was not to suppress any facts which lead men to think basely and despairing of themselves,—we shall find that there is a witness mightier than human for our words, as there was for his.

II. The question how this condition of sonship to God is consistent with the bitter sorrow which men are called to endure could be answered, without hesitation, by those who believed the Son of God to be the man of sorrows. In the light of Christ’s passion all suffering became transfigured. It was the filial token. To be exempted from it was perilous. “If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons,” became the Christian maxim. And strange as that maxim sounded, the conscience of mankind ratified it. The undisciplined did not learn the secret of their parentage; those who smarted under the scourge discovered by slow degrees what hand was guiding it.

But St. Paul had no wish that if they made this discovery they should be contented with it. He did not intend that they should hug pain and sickness, because a deep truth might be learnt from them. He admits them in themselves to be discords and anomalies in creation. He could not bear to contemplate it, if he were not sure that they were no parts of its original order; and that not being parts of it, they were to cease. The revelation of the Son of God in weakness and pain and death, had vindicated the title of sons of God for creatures enduring weakness, pain, and death. The Revelation of the Son of God in the glory of His Father would reveal them in the glory for which they had been created.

III. “I reckon,” he says, ”that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” We might suppose him to mean “I reckon, that no sufferings which I am undergoing for the sake of Christ and His Gospel, are worthy to be compared with the rewards which God will bestow on me hereafter.” But he does not say this. The words, taken in connection with those which follow, have an altogether different force. The sufferings of the present time are not those of the Apostle Paul, but of the creature Man on earth,—of the whole creation, of which man is the head. He is a partaker in those sufferings; he claims a right to partake in them. To be excluded from them would be to be excluded from human sympathy, from fellowship with the Son of Man, the great Sufferer; from that to which the sufferings are leading. For they are leading, he declares, to an issue. They are travail-pangs; they are prophetic of a second and nobler birth. Turn whithersoever he will, he is met by the sounds and proofs of anguish. The keen sense of it is in himself. So far from being exempt from it, he knows more of it than almost any. The blessing that has been bestowed upon him—what he calls the firstfruits of the Spirit—is the possession of a clearer, stronger hope than others, a hope grounded upon a Revelation of God. That hope is not a hope for himself, but for his kind. That Revelation is a Revelation of God’s purpose, not concerning him, not concerning a few believers in Christ who are gathered about him; but concerning that whole travailing world in which he is a dweller.

IV. “For the creature,” he continues, “was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him Who subjected the same.” Here is the Apostle’s explanation of the puzzle which has tormented men ever since physical evil and moral evil entered into the Universe, that was made perfectly good. “That the guilty will be punished,” this, we have said, “is reasonable,—in this our consciences acquiesce. But there is a part of Creation which is involuntary, which can by no possibility be charged with guilt. And yet this also endures misery,—is subject to death. What does that mean? How can that be just?” The authorized mode of dealing with the subject is to plead ignorance; to say that men cannot estimate what is righteous in God; to say that His justice may be quite different from ours. St. Paul does not adopt this method. He could not adopt it without setting at naught the argument of his Epistle. For the object of it has been to show that God has made known His Righteousness to man,—that man has no righteousness of his own; that he obtains righteousness by trusting in the righteous God. The Apostle’s method, therefore, is the very opposite of this. He feels the difficulty which other men feel. He must find a refuge from it for himself, as well as for them. And this is the refuge. He confesses that the Creation has been made subject to vanity; that is the phrase, a very fitting phrase, I apprehend, to express the apparent frustration of the end for which it has been called into existence, the feebleness, failure, mortality which has manifestly passed upon it. He frankly admits the distinction between voluntary creatures and involuntary. He declares that the bondage which the mere animal undergoes is not its own fault. He does not shrink from attributing to it a Divine origin. But in doing so he affirms two mighty propositions. First, that the innocent, involuntary creature is made the victim of vanity and death for the sake of that higher being whose will has gone astray; who has broken loose from that will which he was created to serve. Secondly, that this subjection is temporary, that it contains the promise of a future emancipation, when the end for which it was ordained has been accomplished. “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him Who subjected the same in hope, because (or that) the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Which language I dare not limit by any poor beggarly interpretations of mine. It may mean immeasurably more than I can think. But less than this it cannot mean; that all the sufferings to which the earth and those that inhabit it are liable, are permitted and designed for the education of those who bear the nature which the Son of God bore; that the redemption of the will, the restoration of those whose state is that of God’s children to their true position and inheritance, was that which He sought by His death and resurrection; that this is the highest and grandest of all results, which no force—which only the mightiest Love—can achieve; that no trial or suffering which contributes to this end is, in the judgment of the All-good and the All-wise, excessive or wasted,—not even the sufferings and death of the innocent, the Holy One; but that this end being attained, the Son of God having won His final victory, the sons of God having through Him triumphed over the moral evil which has separated them from God and degraded them into animals, while they yet could never attain the unconsciousness of animals;—all the forms of physical evil will also be overcome; the involuntary creation will be delivered from its fetters and its shame; the whole regenerated world, in its primal order and harmony, will offer up its sacrifices, through its High-priest and Restorer, to His Father.

V. I have said that I can put no restriction upon the language of an inspired Apostle. If you ask me whether his teaching, if it be taken fully and literally, does not involve a renewal of the whole animal creation, a redemption of it from vanity and death, I should answer: It certainly appears to contain that assurance. To exclude it, is to make the construing of the passage difficult,—I think, to impoverish the sense. If there is to be a restitution of all things, such as God, Who cannot lie, promised by His holy Prophets since the world began, I cannot understand how that element should be wanting to it. And I am sure it would be greatly to the consolation of a number of humble and meek spirits, such as the Kingdom of Heaven is said to consist of, if they did not suppose that the creatures which have ministered to man’s wants and delights, have had a certain fellowship with him,—have reflected some of his qualities,—must miss for ever the perfection of their different natures,—must be shut out from the renovation of our race, though they have been so deeply affected by its degeneracy.

From these thoughts others are nearly inseparable, concerning the order and beauty of the external world. The idea of a Redemption of Nature, as consequent upon a Redemption of Man, has often dawned upon the man of Science and upon the Artist. The one has seen that the laws of the Universe can only be fully vindicated when the self-will which has set those laws at defiance has been extirpated; the other, from his deep sense of the sympathy between man and the forms which he contemplates, has been certain that such a revelation of loveliness awaits the purified vision as the highest Prophet has only guessed of. And both the man of Science and the Artist should surely rejoice that in such a manifestation the wayfarer must participate with them; that vanity and self-glorification once gone, the commonest things will appear the most wonderful; the glory will be about all and for all.

VI. The Redemption of the body which St. Paul waited for, must, I apprehend, include the removal of whatever hinders the senses from receiving clear and satisfactory impressions of the world with which they are intended to converse,—all which has made them feeble or rebellious ministers of the spirit. But there is, as I have hinted already, a more obvious force in the expression. The body is enslaved to disease and pain. They may have been caused by a more terrible slavery of the man himself to his own appetites and lusts. Or they may be traced to a multitude of circumstances, over which he has no control,—to climate, to ancestors, to education, to poverty. However they have been produced, they are the signs that Death has rights over the body, and that he will assert his rights. St. Paul says that there is another who has an elder, stronger right over it,—that Christ, by going into the grave and rising out of it, has asserted and made good His right; that He will fully exert it; that He will declare the powers of man’s body, as well as of man’s spirit, to be derived from Him,—that He will quicken that body by His Spirit.

This Redemption St. Paul felt that he was sent to proclaim to men, because he was sent to proclaim their sonship to God,—because he was to declare that this was no idle nominal title, but one which would be proved real at the appearing of Jesus Christ. And so his teaching, even when it rose most above the ordinary aspirations of men, assumed a profoundly practical character. Fully believing in this redemption, men can never succumb to what is called Fate or Necessity. They are never to confess Death as a master; they are never to give up the battle with all that leads to death. Our homage to Christ, our faith in our Divine sonship, implies that we expect a victory for the wasted, enfeebled, degraded body; that it was not made so fearfully and wonderfully for nothing; that all the powers which God has bestowed upon it He will preserve; that it shall at last be made like to the glorious body of Him Who will subdue all to Himself; that it may safely be trusted to Him on the sick-bed, on the battle-field, at the stake. So we know that those who are ministers to it in curing its diseases, or in attempting to ward them off, are ministers of Jesus Christ, and are testifying by deeds, not words, for the work which He came upon earth and has ascended on high to accomplish.

VII. I end with this lesson from the Epistle, because I have wished you to think more of its application to daily life than of its sublimity; or rather to think that the sublimest teaching may be the most homely, that the grandest expectations of the future may most cheer us for the toils and sufferings of the present. Our expectations of the future divide us from the present when they are selfish. We are less fit to endure common griefs, to alleviate the griefs of others, when we are desiring blessings which our fellow-men will not share. Nothing can brace us so much to painful effort, to continual patience, as the hope of a revelation of the Universal Deliverer, of an Emancipator of the whole Creation.