For when Jesus, the Lord, and King, and Head of mankind, died and rose again, He took away the sin of the world. He was the true Passover, the Lamb without spot, slain, as the scripture tells us, for the sins of the whole world. In the Jews’ Passover, when the angel saw the lamb’s blood on the door of the house, he passed by, and spared everyone in it. So now. The blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, is upon us; and for His sake, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But the Lord rose again this day. And when He, the Lord, the King, and Head of all men, rose, all men rose in Him. “As in Adam all die,” says St. Paul, “even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Baptism is a sign of that to us, as the going through the Red Sea, and being baptized to Moses in it, was to the Jews. The passing of the Red Sea said to the Jews: “You have passed now out of your old miserable state of slavery into freedom. The sins which you committed there are blotted out. You are taken into covenant with God. You are now God’s people, and nothing can lose you this love and care, except your own sins, your own unfaithfulness to Him, your own wilful falling back into the slavish and brutal state from which He has delivered you.”
And just so, baptism says to us: “Your sins are forgiven you. You are taken into covenant with God. You are God’s people, God’s family. You must forget and cast away the old Adam, the old slavish and savage pattern of man, which your Lord died to abolish, the guilt of which He bore for you on His cross; and you must rise to the new Adam, the new pattern of man, which is created after God in righteousness and true holiness, which the Lord showed forth in His life, and death, and rising again. For now God looks on you not as a guilty and condemned race of beings, but as a redeemed race, His children, for the sake of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. You have a right to believe that, as human beings, you are dead with Christ to the old Adam, the old sinful, brutal pattern of man.” Baptism is the sign of it to you. Every child, let it or its parents be who they may, is freely baptized as a sign that all that old pattern of man is washed away, that they can and must have nothing to do with it hence-forward, that it is dead and buried, and they must flee from it and forget it, as they would a corpse.
And the Lord’s Supper also is a sign to us that, as human beings, we are risen with Christ, to a new life. A new life is our birthright. We have a right to live a new life. We have a duty to live a new life. We have a power, if we will, to live a new life; such a life as we never could live if we were left to ourselves; a noble, just, godly, manful, Christlike, Godlike life, bred and nourished in us by the Spirit of Christ. That is our right; for we belong to Him who lived that life Himself, and bought us our share in it with His own death and resurrection. That is our duty; for if we share the Lord’s blessings, it can only be in order that we may become like the Lord. Do you fancy that He died to leave us all no better than we are? His death would have had very little effect if that was all. No, says St. Paul; if you have a share in Christ, prove that you believe in your own share by becoming like Christ. You belong to His kingdom, and you must live as His subjects. He has bought for you a new and eternal life, and you must use that life. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above.” . . . And what are they? Love, peace, gentleness, mercy, pity, truth, faithfulness, justice, patience, courage, order, industry, duty, obedience. . . . All, in short, which is like Jesus Christ. For these are heavenly things. These are above, where Christ sits at God’s right hand. These are the likeness of God. That is God’s character. Let it be your character likewise.
But again; if it is our right and our duty to be like that, it is also in our power. God would not have commanded us to be, what He had not given us the power to be. He would not have told us to seek those things which are above, if He had not intended us to find them. Wherefore it is written: “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; for if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
This is the meaning of that text; namely, that God will give us the power of living this new and risen life, which we are bound to live. This is one of the gifts for men, which the scripture tells us that Christ received when He rose from the dead, and ascended up on high. This is one of the powers of which He spoke, when after His resurrection He said, “That all power was given to Him in heaven and earth.” The Lord’s Supper is at once a sign of who will give us that gift, and a sign that He will indeed give it us. The Lord’s Supper is the pledge and token to us that we all have a share in the likeness of Christ, the true pattern of man; and that if we come and claim our share, He will surely bestow it on us. He will renew, and change, and purify our hearts and characters in us, day by day, into the likeness of Himself. He who is the eternal life of men will nourish us, body, soul, and spirit, with that everlasting life of His, even as our bodies are nourished by that bread and wine. And if you ask me how? When you can tell me why a wheat grain cannot produce an oak, or an acorn a wheat plant; when you can tell me why our bodies are, each of them, the very same bodies which they were ten years ago, though every atom of flesh, and blood, and bone in them has been changed; when, in short, you, or any other living man, can tell me the meaning of those three words, body, life, and growth, then it will be time to ask that question. In the meantime let us believe that He who does such wonders in the life and growth of every blade of grass, can and will do far greater wonders for the life and growth of us, immortal beings, made in His own likeness, redeemed by His blood, and so believe, and thank, and obey, and wait till another and a nobler life to understand. And if we never understand at all—what matter, provided the thing be true?
XXXIV.
CHRISTMAS-DAY.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be on His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Father of an Everlasting age, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice henceforth even forever.—Isaiah ix. 6, 7.
In the time when the prophet Isaiah wrote this prophecy, everything round him was exactly opposite to his words. The king of Judæa, the prophet’s country, was not reigning in righteousness. He was an unrighteous and wicked governor. The princes and great men were not ruling in judgment. They were unjust and covetous; they took bribes, and sold justice for money. They were oppressors, grinding down the poor, and defrauding those below them. So that the weak, and poor, and needy had no one to right them, no one to take their part. There was no man to feel for them, and defend them, and be a hiding-place and a covert for them from their cruel tyrants; no man to comfort and refresh them as rivers of water refresh a dry place, or the shadow of a great rock comforts the sunburnt traveller in the weary deserts.