A Transfigured Life.
First regarding the inner experiences. Without doubt the first result experienced will be a new sense of peace: a glad, quiet stillness of spirit which nothing seems able to disturb. The heart will be filled with a peace still as the stars, calm as the night, deep as the sea, fragrant as the flowers.
How many thousands of lips have lovingly lingered over those sweet strong words: "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your heart and thought in Christ Jesus." It is God's peace. It acts as an armed guard drawn up around heart and thoughts to keep unrest out. It is too subtle for intellectual analysis, but it steals into and steadies the heart. You cannot understand it but you can feel it. You cannot get hold of it with your head, but you can with your heart. You do not get it. It gets you. You need not understand in order to experience. Blessed are they that have not understood and yet have yielded and experienced.
"Peace beginning to be
Deep as the sleep of the sea
When the stars their faces glass
In its blue tranquillity:
Hearts of men upon earth
That rested not from their birth
To rest, as the wild waters rest,
With the colors of heaven on their breast."
With that will come a new intense longing to do the Master's will; to please Him. As the days come and go this will come to be the master-passion of this new life. It will drive one with a new purpose and zest to studying the one book which tells His will. That book becomes literally the book of books to the Spirit-dominated man.
With that will come a new desire to talk with this new Master, who talks to you in His word, and is ever at your side sympathetically listening. His book reveals Himself. And better acquaintance with Him will draw you oftener aside for a quiet talk. The pleasure of praying will grow by leaps and bounds. Nothing so inspires to prayer as reverent listening to His voice. Frequent use of the ears will result in more frequent use of the voice in prayer and praise. And more: Prayer will come to be a part of service. Intercession will become the life mission.
But I must be frank enough to tell you of another result, which is as sure to come as these—there will be conflict. You will be tempted more than ever. Temptations will come with the subtlety of a snake; with the rush of a storm; with the unexpected swiftness of a lightning flash. You see the act of surrender to Jesus is a notice of fight to another. You have changed masters, and the discarded master does not let go easily. He is a trained, toughened fighter. You will think that you never had so many temptations, so strong, so subtle, so trying, so unexpected. But listen—there will be victory! Truth goes in pairs. You will be tempted. The devil will attend to that. That is one truth. Its companion truth is this: you will be victorious over temptation as the new Master has sway. Your new Master will attend to that. Great and cunning and strong is the tempter. Do not underrate him. But greater is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. He got the victory at every turn during those thirty-three years, and will get it for you as many years and turns as shall make out the span of your life. Your one business will be to let Him have full control.
Still another result, of the surprising sort, will be a new feeling about sin. There will be an increased and increasing sensitiveness to sin. It will seem so hateful whether coarse or cultured. You will shrink from contact with it. There will also be a growing sense of the sinfulness of that old heart of yours, even while you may be having constant victory over temptation. Then, too, there will grow up a yearning, oh! such a heart-yearning as cannot be told in words, to be pure, really pure in heart.
A seventh result will be an intense desire to get others to know your wonderful Master. A desire so strong, gripping you so tremendously, that all thought of sacrifice will sink out of sight in its achievement. He is such a Master! so loving, so kind, so wondrous! And so many do not know Him: have wrong ideas about Him. If they only knew Him—that surely would settle it. And probably these two—the desire to please Him, and the desire to get others to know Him will take the mastery of your ambition and life.
The All-Inclusive Passion.
[21] Rom. v: 5.
But all of these and much more is included in one of Paul's packed phrases which may be read, "the love of God hath flooded our hearts through the Holy Spirit given unto us."[21] The all-inclusive result is love. That marvelous tender passion—the love of God—heightless, depthless, shoreless, shall flood our hearts, making us as gentle and tender-hearted and self-sacrificing and gracious as He. Every phase of life will become a phase of love. Peace is love resting. Bible study is love reading its lover's letters. Prayer is love keeping tryst. Conflict with sin is love jealously fighting for its Lover. Hatred of sin is love shrinking from that which separates from its lover. Sympathy is love tenderly feeling. Enthusiasm is love burning. Hope is love expecting. Patience is love waiting. Faithfulness is love sticking fast. Humility is love taking its true place. Modesty is love keeping out of sight. Soul-winning is love pleading.
[22] Gal. v: 22-23.
[23] 1 Cor. xiii.
[24] Luke vi: 35. R. V., margin.
Love is revolutionary. It radically changes us, and revolutionizes our spirit toward all others. Love is democratic. It ruthlessly levels all class distinctions. Love is intensely practical. It is always hunting something to do. Paul lays great stress on this outer practical side. Do you remember his "fruit of the Spirit"?[22] It is an analysis of love. While the first three—"love, joy, peace"—are emotions within, the remaining six are outward toward others. Notice, "long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness," and then the climax is reached in the last—"self-control." And in his great love passage in the first Corinthian epistle,[23] he picks out four of these last six, and shows further just what he means by love in its practical working in the life. "Long-suffering" is repeated, and so is "kindness" or "goodness." "Faithfulness" is reproduced in "never faileth." Then "self-control" receives the emphasis of an eight-fold repetition of "nots." Listen:—"Envieth not," "boasteth not," "not puffed up," "not unseemly," "seeketh not (even) her own," "is not provoked," "taketh not account of evil" (in trying to help others, like Jesus' word "despairing of no man"[24]), "rejoiceth not in unrighteousness" (that is when the unrighteous is punished, but instead feels sorry for him). What tremendous power of self-mastery in those "nots"! Then the positive side is brought out in four "alls"; two of them—the first and last—passive qualities, "beareth all things," "endureth all things." And in between, two active "hopeth all things," "believeth all things." The passive qualities doing sentinel duty on both sides of the active. These passive traits are intensely active in their passivity. There is a busy time under the surface of those "nots" and "alls." What a wealth of underlying power they reveal! Sometimes folks think it sentimental to talk of love. Probably it is of some stuff that shuffles along under that name. But when the Holy Spirit talks about it, and fills our hearts with it there is seen to be an intensely practical passion at work.
Love is not only the finest fruit, but it is the final test of a christian life. How many splendid men of God have seemed to lack here. What a giant of faith and strength Elijah was. Such intense indignation over sin! Such fearless denunciation! What tremendous faith gripping the very heavens! What marvelous power in prayer. Yet listen to him criticising the faithful remnant whom God lovingly defends against his aspersions. There seems a serious lack there. God seems to understand his need. He asks him to slip down to Horeb for a new vision of his Master. And then He revealed Himself not in whirlwind nor earthquake nor lightning. He doubtless felt at home among these tempestuous outbreaks. They suit his temper. But something startlingly new came to him in that exquisite "sound of gentle stillness," hushing, awing, mellowing, giving a new conception of the dominant heart of his God. Some of us might well drop things, and take a run down to Horeb.
I know an earnest scholarly minister with strong personality, and fearless in his preaching against sin, but who seems to lack this spirit of love. He is so cuttingly critical at times. The other ministers of his town whom he might easily lead, shy off from him. There is no magnetism in the edge of a razor. His critical spirit can be felt when his lips are shut. I recall a woman, earnest, winsome when she chooses to be, an intelligent Bible student, keen-scented for error, a generous giver, but what a sharp edge her tongue has. One is afraid to get close lest it may cut.
When the Holy Spirit takes possession there is love, aye, more, a flood of love. Have you ever seen a flood? I remember one in the Schuylkill during my boyhood days and how it impressed me. Those who live along the valley of that treacherous mountain stream, the Ohio, know something of the power of a flood. How the waters come rushing down, cutting out new channels, washing down rubbish, tearing valuable property from its moorings, ruling the valley autocratically while men stand back entirely helpless.
Would you care to have a flood-tide of love flush the channelways of your life like that? It would clean out something you have preferred keeping. It would with quiet, ruthless strength, tear some prized possessions from their moorings and send them adrift down stream and out. Its high waters would put out some of the fires on the lower levels. Better think a bit before opening the sluice-ways for that flood. But ah! it will sweeten and make fragrant. It will cut new channels, and broaden and deepen old ones. And what a harvest will follow in its wake. Floods are apt to do peculiar things. So does this one. It washes out the friction-grit from between the wheels. It does not dull the edge of the tongue, but washes the bitter out of the mouth, and the green out of the eye. It leaves one deaf and blind in some matters, but much keener-sighted and quicker-eared in others. Strange flood that! Would that we all knew more of it.