“The Life was manifested.”—1 John 1:2.
THIS word “life” was one which the Son of God took up when here, and held it forth, in many forms, and under many figures. He speaks of himself as “the Life,” as the bread of life, as the water of life, as the light of life. All that life can mean or embody is deposited in him, personified in him, dispensed by him. All that God calls life is in him. The fulness of the eternal life is contained in this divine Vessel, this heavenly wellspring; for in him we have the well of water springing up into everlasting life. He is the eternal Life; he is the Prince of life; he is the tree of life; he is the living stone, and the living way.
Surely there is no lack of life for us. But what if it be all untasted by us? What if it be rejected and despised? Here is life for you; but is it in you? Here is life come down to earth; but has it quickened you? Here is life knocking at the door of death; have you admitted it, or has it knocked in vain? For, as it was with the world at large, so is it with individual souls. It is the death that is in each that attracts the heavenly life; not some lurking remains of life, nor the possession, however slender, of some goodness, but the entire absence of both life and goodness. It is to the dead that the life comes; it is to the unloveable that the love comes; it is to the lost that the salvation comes. That which qualifies us for life, for healing, for riches, for deliverance, is our death, our sickness, our poverty, and our bondage.
The Life has been manifested! The Christ has come. For us the Word took flesh. For us he fought the great battle with death, and won the eternal victory; passing through death that he might destroy death, and convey to us the everlasting life. Never before was life so fully embodied, and revealed, and made accessible. Never before was death so terribly manifested. The two extremities of being were exhibited in him; all that God calls life, which is the highest and fullest form of being, and all that God calls death, which is its lowest and emptiest. Never had life seemed so real, and so glorious, as when the Life was manifested; never had death seemed so real, and so awful, as when the Prince of Life died. Yet this death is our life, for, only through death, could life reach us and fill us. Life died, that death might live. Immortality went down into the tomb, to bring up thence for us immortality and incorruption. Thus death became the destroyer of death, and the grave the spoiler of the grave.
Life for the dead! This is our message to the sons of men. This is our gospel; a gospel for the dead, not for the living. It is the gospel of the “manifested life.”
You say, perhaps, that it is just your state of death that makes this no gospel to you. Your consciousness of death leads to despondency; and you say, Were I not so dead, I should not despair. Ah! were you not so dead you would not need the life, and would present fewer attractions, as well as fewer necessities, to the living One; there would be less in you to call out the life. You seem to be searching for some sparks of life within you, to attract the life from above. But in so doing you are repelling the very life that you are seeking. You are mistaking the real attraction to the life, and substituting one of your own. You act on man’s maxim, “Like draws to like,” instead of upon God’s, “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound;” “He hath concluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.”
The truth is, you did not know how complete was the death in which you lay. You thought there was a little life remaining, and that remnant was your hope; but now that you have become conscious of your total death, that hope has left you. It is well; for it was a false hope, as all hope must ever be, that is founded upon the good, and not on the evil that is in you. But now that this vain confidence has perished, and the last prop of self-righteousness been struck from under you, are you so foolish as to despair? Despair, when hope, true hope, is dawning? Despair, when the only thing that repelled the Life has been taken from you? It is not your death that repels the Life; it is your fancying that you are not dead! Know what you are; truly dead; and the repulsion ceases, the attraction begins. I am too dead to be quickened, you say. Nay, you are not. The Life goes down to the lowest depths of death, and there is no region of the soul’s dark tomb to which this Life cannot reach, or into which it has not already entered. The danger lies, not in your being too dead, but in your not knowing how thoroughly dead you are. So long as there is the unconsciousness of death, there is a barrier, a nonconducting medium between you and the Life. The Holy Spirit, in revealing to you your true condition of utter death, is throwing down that barrier, and substituting a conducting for a non-conducting medium, that the Life, long shut out, not by the death, but by your refusal to acknowledge that death, may pour in, in its glad fulness, to all the regions of your being; transforming corruption into incorruption, and death into life.
“Ye will not come to me that ye might have life,” said this Life, when manifested here. And what do these words mean, but just this, “Ye will not acknowledge the death that is in yourselves, and the life that is in me.” This acknowledgment, this two-fold recognition of the death and the Life, would at once bring you into contact with the living One.
“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” Yes; he lives; he gives life; nay, he is Life, the Life, the Life that was manifested. All this fulness of manifested life is for the sinner,—for you! Recognise him as the Life, and straightway his fulness passes over to you; and because he lives you live also.
“This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” His Son is the “manifested life,” the “resurrection and the life” and “he that hath the Son hath life.” What say you to this manifested life? Is it nothing to you, or is it all? What have you found in it? What have you extracted from it? Have you read in it the love of God? Have you obtained from it the life of your soul; the supply of your eternal need? Or are you still as much in want of life as if the Life had never been manifested, as if the Word had never been made flesh, as if the Son of God had never come?
But the manifestation of this Life is not yet over. The Life has, as it were, retired for a season, and gone within the veil; but this same Jesus, who came the first time, as the Life, shall come, as such, the second time also; and that day of his manifestation shall be the day of ours as well. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear (lit., ‘be manifested,’) then shall ye also appear (be manifested) with him in glory;” for that is “the day of the manifestation of the sons of God.” The resurrection of the just is the great day of his revelation, and of ours. Then shall we know the “power of his resurrection,” the resurrection of him who is “the resurrection and the life;” for all the fulness of “the Life” shall not be known, till he comes to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe. The “resurrection unto life” shall be the completion of the great manifestation. As his first coming was its alpha, or beginning, so shall his second coming be its omega, or end. For he comes as the living One, to die no more! He comes to give his church the full benefit of the manifested life. He comes to avenge us of death, to spoil the grave, and to bring up to light his long-buried jewels.
And which of us has not some tie to the tomb? something which makes us long to be avenged of death? I do not mean merely the mortality of these vile bodies, in which death and life are at daily warfare. I mean the dear ones that death has torn from us, and the grave devoured; a parent, a child, a brother, a sister, a beloved friend. The last enemy came to them, and we were powerless. He struck, and we could not ward off the blow. We grudged him his triumph, yet we could not resist. He carried off his prize, our precious ones, in spite of us, before our eyes. But ever since, oh how we have longed for the day of vengeance, when the spoiler shall be spoiled, the grave rifled, and death swallowed up of life. For life, not death, must triumph in the end. The Life is hastening bade to us from the heaven where it now is, at the Father’s right hand; and at its return the reign of death is over. Life shall be manifested in a way, and to an extent, unknown before. Expelling death alike from soul and body; emptying the grave of each fragment of mortality; glorifying the church with the robe of incorruption and beauty; overflowing creation with its blessed waters; it shall bring to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory;” it shall realise the long-predicted triumph, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death; oh death, I will be thy plagues; oh grave, I will be thy destruction; repentance shall be hid from mine eyes” (Hosea 13:14).
