Christianity and Ethics: A Handbook of Christian Ethics

by Archibald B. D. Alexander

The ideal of self-realisation includes three distinct elements:

1. Life as intensity of being.—'I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'[4] 'More life and fuller' is the passion of every soul that has caught the vision and heard the call of Jesus. The supreme good consists not in suppressed vitality, but in power and freedom. Life in Christ is a full, rich existence. The doctrine of quietism and indifference to joy has no place in the ethic of Jesus. Life is manifested in inwardness of character, and not in pomp of circumstance. It consists not in what a man has, but in what he is.[5] The beatitudes, as the primary qualifications for the kingdom of God, emphasise the fundamental principle of the subordination of the material to the spiritual, and the contrast between inward and outward good.[6] Self-mastery is to extend to the inner life of man—to dominate the thoughts and words, and the very heart from which they issue. A divided life is impossible. The severest discipline, even renunciation, may be needful to secure that singleness of heart and strenuousness of aim which are for Jesus the very essence of life. 'Ye cannot serve God and mammon.'[7] In harmony with this saying is the opposition in the Johannine teaching between 'the world' and 'eternal life.'[8] The quality of life indeed depends not upon anything contingent or accidental, but upon an intense inward realisation of blessedness in Christ in comparison with which even {130} the privations and sufferings of this world are but as a shadow.[9] At the same time life is not a mere negation, not simply an escape from evil. It is a positive good, the enrichment and intensifying of the whole being by the indwelling of a new spiritual power. 'For me to live is Christ,' says St. Paul. 'This is life eternal,' says St. John, 'that they may know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.'[10]

2. Life as Expansion of Personality.—By its inherent power it grows outwards as well as inwards. The New Testament conception of life is existence in its fullest expression and fruitfulness. The ideal as presented by Christ is no anaemic state of reverie or ascetic withdrawal from human interest. It is by the elevation and consecration of the natural life, and not by its suppression, that the 'good' is to be realised. The natural life is to be transformed, and the very body presented unto God as a living sacrifice.[11] So far from Christianity being opposed to the aim of the individual to find himself in a world of larger interests, it is only in the active and progressive realisation of such a life that blessedness consists. Herein is disclosed, however, the defect of the modern ideal of culture which has been associated with the name of Goethe. In Christ's ideal self-sufficiency has no place. While rightly interpreted the 'good' of life includes everything that enriches existence and contributes to the efficiency and completeness of manhood, mere self-culture and artistic expression are apt to become perverted forms of egoism, if not subordinated to the spirit of service which alone can give to the human faculties their true function and exercise. Hence life finds its real utterance not in the isolated development of the self, but in the fullness of personal relationships. Only in response to the needs of others can a man realise his own life. In answer to the young ruler who asked a question 'concerning that which is good,' Christ replied, 'If thou wilt enter into life keep the {131} commandments'; and the particular duties He mentioned were those of the second table of the Decalogue.[11] The abundance of life which Christ offers consists in the mutual offices of love and the interchange of service. Thus self-realisation is attained only through self-surrender.[13] The self-centred life is a barren life. Not by withholding our seed but by flinging it forth freely upon the broad waters of humanity do we attain to that rich fruition which is 'life indeed.'

3. Life as Eternal Good.—Whatever may be the accurate signification of the word 'eternal,' the words 'eternal life,' regarded as the ideal of man, can mean nothing else than life at its highest, the fulfilment of all that personality has within it the potency of becoming. In one sense there is no finality in life. 'It seethes with the morrow for us more and more.' But in another sense, to say that the moral life is never attained is only a half truth. It is always being attained because it is always present as an active reality evolving its own content. In Christ we have 'eternal life' now. It is not a thing of quantity but of quality, and is therefore timeless.

'We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths,
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.'[14]

He who has entered into fellowship with God has within him now the essence of 'life eternal.'

But the conception of life derived from, and sustained by, God involves the idea of immortality. 'No work begun shall ever pause for death.'[15] To live in God is to live as long as God. The spiritual man pursues his way through conflict and achievement towards a higher and yet a higher goal, ever manifesting, yet ever seeking, the infinite that dwells in him. All knowledge and quest and endeavour, nay existence itself, would be a mockery if man had 'no forever.' Scripture corroborates the yearnings of the heart and represents life as a growing good which is to attain to ever higher reaches and fuller realisations in the world to {132} come. It is the unextinguishable faith of man that the future must crown the present. No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process.[16]

'There shall never be lost one good! What was shall live as before.'[17]

II

The foregoing discussion leads naturally to the second aspect of the highest Good, the Ideal in its social or corporate form—the kingdom of God. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an individual. As biologically man is only a member of a larger organism, so ethically he can only realise himself in a life of brotherhood and service. It is only within the kingdom of God and by recognition of its social relations that the individual can attain to his own blessedness. Viewed in the light of the mutual relation of its members the kingdom is a brotherhood in which none is ignored and all have common privileges and responsibilities; viewed in the light of its highest good it is the entire perfection of the whole—a hierarchy of interests subordinated to, and unified by, the sovereignty of the good in the person of God.[18]