Or, suppose the case of deep adversity—suppose the Christian stripped, like Job, of great honours and possessions at a single stroke; betrayed and sold like Joseph, even by brethren, into bondage and exile; or lying like Lazarus at the gate of the rich man, diseased in body, and suing for the crumbs from off his table; or suppose him, as St. Paul himself, in peril of foes, and even doubtful of friends; in weariness and painfulness oft, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. These last were exactly the circumstances under which the very text was indited by the apostle himself: he saw, what you may see, that trials like these, when tempered by the presence of the God he loved, were good, not, I would say, in proportion to their weight, but according to the patience which they exercised, the faith they strengthened, the experience of divine support they afforded, the hope they brightened, the crown they were preparing; yea, the exceeding and eternal weight of glory which they must eventually be working out. The apostle had “heard of the patience of Job,” and had “seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” The trials of Joseph had even led that servant of God, by degrees of painful progress, to the honour of a prince, and a chain of gold. The “evil things” of Lazarus—good they might have been called—had led him to still higher honours, and had prepared him to be carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. Every individual circumstance of this nature, as it passed in review before the apostle in the text, had led irresistibly to the conclusion he so strongly expresses. Could he distrust the same arm, disbelieve the same promises; or rather saying with David—“Our fathers trusted in thee, and were delivered,” would he not add—I will trust as they did; I will be “in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?” Let me feel only the “profit, that I may be partaker of his holiness;” and then, “though no affliction for the present is joyous, but grievous,” it shall surely hereafter yield the peaceable fruit of true righteousness; and “all things,” adversity itself, “shall work together for my good.”
Temptation, verily, shall be among the “things working together for good to them that love God.” Such indeed is our state of trial upon earth, that every successive arrival at our doors comes to us in some shape or other of temptation to sin. But take the strongest and most pressing incitements to the corruptions of the heart, and the evil of our nature. Even of these must it not be said, that the temptation, and the tempter himself, may be turned into a worker for good, when that promise is brought forward, and brought home to the heart, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it?” Another apostle had a like meaning when he said, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” Every enemy opposed to the Christian warrior affords him fresh opportunity for a sure victory in the strength of Christ. Every obstacle in his path is that which faith regards as a trial prepared for his soul; but hope and joy carry him over, to the glory of his sovereign Upholder. In evil company, which he seeks not, his courage is honourably put to the test, and abides it; amidst a world of licentiousness and excess, which he desires not to approach, he still trusts, through grace, that he shall not be found wanting. In a season of provocation his meekness is tried, and it prevails; and in the moment of fear, and the threats of alarm, “his heart standeth fast, trusting in the Lord;” “nay, in all these things he is more than conqueror through him that loved him.”
If his very sins are in one sense his shame, and the source of his bitter tears and saddest recollections, still those tears and recollections shall prove among the workers for his good, if they lead him more closely to the throne of mercy, and to the fountain of eternal strength. If any experiences of past weakness make him more watchful, sober, and diligent for the future—if they direct him to the vulnerable points in his armour, to the “sin that easily besets him”—if, in the very moment of his conscious frailty and heart-overwhelming struggle, he is enabled to exclaim, “Rejoice not over me, O mine enemy; though I fall I shall arise; though I sit in darkness the Lord shall be a light unto me:” then shall he know that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”
I conclude with a single word of remark on the expression in the text, “We know that all things work together for good.” It expresses the personal experience of the Christian. It answers to a similar expression of the same apostle to the Philippians—“I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ.” But to whom is this knowledge vouchsafed? To whom is it a safe and a sure conviction—an “earnest expectation and hope,” so “that in nothing we shall be ashamed?” Truly, to those only who “love God”—to those who are “the called according to his purpose.” His purpose is our sanctification, and that we should be “conformed to the image of his Son.” To such truly, to such only does that blessing apply, so frequently indeed, and but too rashly, appropriated by many others, “All is for the best.”
Let the careless rather tremble, those as yet not effectually called into the gospel vineyard, at such an appropriation of the text. To them it may be only a savour of death unto death, a deadly security, a hope that “maketh ashamed, because the love of God is not yet shed abroad in their hearts.”
Gain rather in prayer, in secret meditation and much retirement from the presence and the love of this world, the true love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then being first transformed yourself, you will be enabled, by a divine power, to transform everything around you; you will receive all things as from the hand of the Father whom you love, the Benefactor and Friend whom you wish and aim to serve. Your willing and noble obedience to him will render, then, prosperity a new advantage to you by awakening your gratitude, and adversity a blessing, by exercising and perfecting your patience. You will have a fence around you, an armour of divine temper to fortify you in the presence of every temptation, and to turn the very weapons of your adversaries into your own instruments of victory, the trophies of your triumph. Sin will have its struggles within you, but will not gain dominion over you, while every deviation from God’s righteous will is mourned in secret, and restored through grace; and while it brings you the more urgently and constantly to the foot of the cross, where hung the Saviour whom you love, whose favour and forgiveness you implore; and you shall be enabled to close the volume of your experience in the concluding words of the chapter, and with the apostle himself: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is Christ Jesus our Lord.”
THE GLORY OF THE SAVIOUR’S TRANSFIGURATION.[Y]
“And was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.”
There never existed in this world a person in whose life there was a greater variety of incident than in the life of Jesus. He passed through scenes of the most peculiar and diversified description, to which we can find no parallel in the history of man, the effect of which no ordinary mind could have borne. These were, in general, connected with that lowliness and debasement to which he submitted for the benefit of our sinful race; but occasionally, as at his birth, his baptism, and transfiguration, there burst forth some bright rays of glory from behind the dark cloud of his humanity, which proved his possession of a nature that was divine.