All this may be summed up in one short phrase, which goes near, I believe, to express the innermost reality of the Christian religion. Christ, the Son of man, is the true self of every man. To follow Him, to be His disciple, in thought, and word, and deed, is to be oneself, to realise one’s own personality. In no other way can I attain to be myself.
Thus the Cross is the supreme revelation of the Divine Life in man. And now we shall go on to see how it brings to us, not merely the knowledge of
the Ideal, but also, what is far more, the very means whereby the Ideal may be realised in and by each one of us.
We have dealt with the Cross as illumination; we now approach its consideration as redemptive power.
V
THE GREAT RECONCILIATION
“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” 2 Cor. v. 19.
Such considerations as we have had before us, are of far more than theoretical interest. They are of all questions the most practical. Sin is not a curious object which we examine from an aloof and external standpoint. However we regard it, to whatever view of its nature we are led, it is, alas, a fact within and not merely outside our experience.
And so we are at length brought to this most personal and most urgent inquiry, What has been the result to me of my past acts of sin? I have sinned; what have been, what are, what will be the consequences?
The most hopelessly unintelligent answer is, that there are no results, no consequences. It behoves us to remember that we can never sin with impunity. This is true, even in the apparent absence of all punishment. Every act of sin is followed by two results, though probably a profounder analysis would show them to be in reality one.
(i) Whenever I sin I inflict a definite injury on myself, varying with the sinfulness of the sin; that is, with its nature and the degree of deliberation it involved. I am become a worse man; I have, in some degree, rejected and done to death the Divine in me, my true self. Every sin, in its own proper measure, is both a rejection of the Christ within, and also an act of spiritual suicide.