SERMON 3
“The Life was manifested.”—1 John 1:2.
“LIKE draws to like,” is man’s maxim, and man’s principle of action. The things that resemble, attract each other; the things that differ, repel. Love attracts love; the loving and the loveable knit themselves together. Life attracts life; and the living cleave to the living. Things congenial discover their mutual congenialities, and find their way to each other, as by some magnetic virtue; things uncongenial keep far asunder. Life and death have no brotherhood; and what communion has light with darkness?
Such is the law of earth! Such is the action of human hearts; such the extent of the circle, within which, even at their widest stretch, they revolve; such the measure of the depths to which their loves and sympathies can descend. Likeness, and fitness, and worthiness, are necessary elements in all earthly affinities.
But such is not the heavenly law. The principle of divine action, the regulating power of the infinite heart above, is the reverse of this. The law of race or principle on which God’s actings of free-love proceed, is what man would call the law of unfitness, and unworthiness, and unlikeness.
Well for us that it is so! What would have been our hope, had it been otherwise?
In God’s dealings with man, it is the unlike that we see uniting. What more unlike than God and the sinner? yet they have come together! What more dissimilar than heaven and earth? yet they have come together! The mutual attraction has been the mutual unlikeness. Want of resemblance has been the knitting bond. The evil has drawn out the good; the darkness has attracted the light; the unrighteousness has awakened the righteousness: the death has brought down the life; the grave has called up resurrection. Where sin has abounded, grace has abounded much more.
The Life has been manifested! This is our gospel. It is not, “the Life is,” but “the Life” has come forth from its eternal mystery; “the Life” has been MANIFESTED; so as to be seen, and heard, and handled. In the Word was life; nay, the Word was the Life. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). The “light of the world” is the Word made flesh, the manifested life of God. The Life was manifested, and we beheld his glory,—the glory as of the only-begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. In the light we have the life, and in the life we have the light.
The Life has been manifested! But what has drawn it out? What has given it opportunity to come forth? Death! It is not life that has attracted life; nor light that has given occasion for the outshining of light. No; but death and darkness; utter death, absolute darkness.
Thus God, the God of all grace, has spoken out, and revealed to us the breadth and length of his infinite love. Thus we learn the true meaning and discover the essence of that grace which has been proclaimed to us by the lips, and embodied in the person of the incarnate Son. It is the total unlikeness between the lover and the loved one that brings out the real nature of grace. Love to the unloveable and unloving is its very essence. Apart from this it has no meaning, no reality, no suitableness.
Introduce one element of resemblance, one fragment or feature of loveableness, and grace is gone. It was the manifestation of death on earth that called forth this manifestation of life from heaven. Man’s utter death has drawn out the fulness of the life of God. The entrance of death was the signal for the entrance of life. Life, in its boundless fulness, seemed on the watch to enter in and take possession of earth. But it could not do so till death had come. As it needs darkness to bring out the glory of the starry heavens, so it needed death to shew forth the life,—life such as had not been possessed before, nor could be, by man unfallen, or upon a sinless earth. Hence the deep significance of the Lord’s words, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Thus and then the Life entered! Not like a monarch, to take possession of a fitting palace; but like a physician, to take possession of an hospital; like spring, coming to take possession of a wintry earth; like day-spring, coming to take possession of the darkened skies. What an entrance! Not invited by kindred life, still lingering among men; but uninvited, nay, repelled. It is the absence of life here that is the cause of its manifestation from on high. The reign of death is the herald of the reign of life, as midnight is the herald of the morn.
A manifestation such as this, in heaven, where all is life, would not have seemed so marvellous; for man’s rule is, “like draws to like.” But it is passing wonderful that it should have been here, in the land of death. Yet this is only the more like that God from whom the manifestation came. For his thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways ours. His love is not our love, nor his pity ours. As he sends his rain and his sunshine, just where they are needed, and when they are needed, and because they are needed, not because they are there already; so is it with his grace and its revelation; with life and its manifestation. That grace and life came to us simply because we needed them, and because God needed sin and death like ours, for the display of his fulness. He needs midnight that he may say, “Let there be light;” he needs the storm that he may say, “Peace, be still;” he needs the creature’s emptiness for the display of the Creator’s strength; he needs the sinner’s evil to furnish a sphere for the forthcoming of the good in himself, which, but for this, had been pent up and hidden. He allows man to fall that he may shew how he can love and lift up the fallen. He lets Eden become a wilderness, that he may shew how he can make the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. So he takes the dried-up well, and fills it; he takes the broken harp, and draws out from it the full compass of his heavenly music; he takes the quenched star, and lights it up into a more resplendent and everlasting sun.
It was the blind man that was the object of attraction to the Son of God; and Jesus needed him as truly as he needed Jesus. The tomb of Lazarus was to Him more attractive than the house of Lazarus; for at the house he was the receiver, at the tomb he was the giver. The leper drew near to him, and he to the leper, as by some mutual fitness, by some irresistible necessity; he needing the leper, and the leper needing him. The publican and he were daily meeting, finding each other out, attracted by their mutual need; the righteous and the unrighteous recognising, in each other, an object exactly suited to that which they severally possessed. The sick one and the healer had a link between them which no other knew, and with which a stranger could not intermeddle. It was the lost one that attracted the seeker; the lost sheep that made the shepherd’s journey a necessity; the lost piece of silver that made the woman light her candle; and the lost son that brought the father to the door, to watch, in longing love, for the wanderer’s return.
The Life was manifested! And we have seen it! Life in the realms of the dead; light in the land of darkness; God manifest in flesh;—this is what our eyes have seen. Yes; and these things are written for us, that our joy may be full; for in that life is love.
Go to Bethlehem; look into yon cradle; what is that? It is the manifested Life.
Climb the hills of Galilee, and enter Nazareth; see yon boy, so like, yet so unlike all others; he is the manifested Life.
Pass over Olivet, and visit Bethany; stand by yon tomb, where a dead man has lain four days; hear the voice which in a moment empties the grave, and recalls the dead; what is that? It is the manifested Life.
Look at Golgotha; mark yon cross. Is it death, or is it life? It is both. It is death conquering life, and life overcoming death. The manifested Life is yonder; nay, in that very death there is the fullest manifestation of life.
Look once more at yon empty grave, from which the stone has been rolled away. Who is it that early in the morning, while it is yet dark, comes forth from its rocky gloom? It is the manifested Life; the risen Son of God; the Resurrection and the Life; he who says, “I am he who liveth and was dead.” Yes; at the cradle, and the cross, and the tomb, the Life has been manifested!
Blessed manifestation for us, the dead in sin! The life has come; and because he lives, we live also; for he that has the Son has life.
