The word “now” is to me the most prominent word in the text, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.
” They who love religion love a present thing. The Christian who really seeks salvation will never be happy unless he can say, “Now am I a child of God.” That word “now” which is the sinners warning is to the Christian his greatest delight.
I. I shall commence by endeavouring to show that religion must be a thing of the present, because the present has such intimate connections with the future. We are told in Scripture that this life is a seed time, and the future is the harvest, “He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap life everlasting.” But again, this life is always said in Scripture to be a preparation for the life to come. “Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.” This life is as the vestibule of the king’s court, we must put our shoes from off our feet; we must wash our garments and make ourselves ready to enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb. How are we saved? All through Scripture we are told we are saved by faith, except in one passage, wherein it is said, we are saved by hope. Now note how certain it is that religion must be a present thing if we are saved by faith, because faith anal hope cannot live in another world. “What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?”
II. In the second place, as I have shown the connection between the present and the future, let me use another illustration to show the importance of a present salvation. Salvation is a thing which brings present blessings. “Unto them which are saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” He does not say to them who shall be saved, but to them which are saved. We know too that justification is a present blessing--“there is therefore now no condemnation.” Adoption is a present blessing, for it says, “Now are we the sons of God,” we know also that sanctification is a present blessing, for the apostle addresses himself to “the saints who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called.” All the blessings of the new covenant are spoken of in the present tense, because with the exception of eternal glory in heaven, they are all to be enjoyed here. A man may know in this life, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he is accepted in Christ Jesus. Yet I am inclined to think that the worldly man most of all objects to present religion because he does not like its duties. Men will not direct a single eye to religion, because it curtails license and entails duties. And this, I think, proves that religion is a present thing, because the duties of religion cannot be practised in another world, they must be practised here. Now, what are the duties of religion? hi the first place, here are its active duties, which a man should do between manand man, to walk soberly and righteously and uprightly in the midst of an evil generation. Lightly as some people speak about morality, there is no true religion where there is no morality. You have hard struggles to pass through life. Sometimes you have been driven to a great extremity, and whether you would succeed or not seemed to hang upon a thread. Has not your religion been a joy to you in your difficulties? Has it not calmed your minds? When you have been fretted and troubled about worldly things, have you not found in a pleasant thing to enter your closet, and shut to the door, and tell your Father in secret all your cares? And oh, ye that are rich, cannot you bear the same testimony, if you have loved the blaster? What had all your riches been to you without a Saviour? I fear that there are a great many of you who will say, “Well, I care nothing at all about religion; it is for no avail to me!” No, and it is very probable that you will not care about it until it shall be too late to care. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Sonship the foreshadowing of heaven
In every true economy of life there is a concealed side. This fact grows partly out of the nature of the case, and is partly a dictate of wisdom. This fact of concealment, and these two reasons for it, are both apparent in God’s dealing with men. Divine revelation is the exposed side of a Divine economy which reaches back into darkness. Some things God could not tell us, because we could not understand them. Other things are equally hidden, because He does not see fit to reveal them. God does not ignore nor for bid men’s natural curiosity to know what is hidden. In many cases, indeed, He uses it in the interest of wider knowledge. The advancement of knowledge would come to a stop if all men were simply content to accept the unknown as unknowable. At the same time He does set a limit to human knowledge in certain directions: but in all such cases God puts His revelation in such a relation to what is unknown, as to quiet the restlessness of the curious and searching spirit when it reaches the limit of knowledge. He assures us concerning what He does not reveal by what He does reveal. He gives us certain foreshadowings of our future in our present. First, the concealment. What we are to be hereafter is not yet manifested. Christ reveals the fact of immortality but tells us little or nothing about the outward conditions of immortality. A Christian must frankly accept this ignorance. By the terms of his Christian covenant he engages to walk by faith and not by sight. Still, there is revelation as well as concealment. It doth not yet appear, but we know something. And as we study what is revealed to us, we begin to see that the concealment and ignorance which wait on this subject are not arbitrary, but are in the interest of our knowledge on another side, and are intended to direct our researches into another and more profitable channel. “It doth not yet appear”--not where we shall be, or in what circumstances we shall be--but “it doth not appear what we shall be”: only we know that we shall be like God. That is the great, the only point which concerns us as respects the future life. To be like God will be heaven. To be unlike God will be perdition. Character creates its own environment. On this side we know something of the heavenly world. We know the moral laws which govern it, for they are essentially the same laws which the gospel applies here. We know the moral sentiments which pervade heaven. They are the very sentiments which the gospel is seeking to foster in us here. We know that holiness which is urged upon us here is the character of God; and that where a holy God reigns the atmosphere must be one of holiness: that if God is love, love must pervade heavens that if God is truth, truth must pervade heaven. Now, all this, you see, must exert a tremendous power upon the present life, viewed as a prelude and preparation for the life to come. If that future life is to have its essence in character and not in circumstance, it follows that character and not circumstance is the great thing here. The apostle strikes directly into this track of thought. In the first place he states the fact of concealment. Down between our speculations and dreams and the eternal reality falls an impenetrable veil. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” But he goes on to say, “You are on the right road to knowing. You are on the right road to becoming. Now are you children of God: that fact enfolds all that is to come. It is a matter of character here as in heaven. The true goal of your striving is likeness to God.” Essentially we shall not be other there than here. The difference will be in degree, in maturity of development. We are children of God here, we shall be children of God there. Why, then, with all this promise, does it not appear what we shall be? Look at the promise itself and you will see the answer. The essence of the promise is, we shall be like God. Understand, not equal to God, but like God, as the finite, under the highest possible conditions, can be like the infinite. The reason for this likeness to God is given. We shall see Him as He is. This gives us the reason why it doth not yet appear what we shall be. We do not see Him as He is. We cannot so see Him here, any more than a child, in the weakness of infancy and the ignorance and perverseness of childhood can understand and appreciate the mind and character of a noble father. We cannot know what it is to be like God, because we cannot see Him as He is, and never shall, until He shall be manifested as pure spirit to purified spirits freed from the trammels of the flesh. And you will further notice the truth which the text assumes, that likeness to God comes through vision of God. We assimilate to that which we habitually contemplate, and especially so when we contemplate lovingly and enthusiastically. Thus we come to the last point of our text--the practical duty growing out of this mixed condition of ignorance and promise. For if the promise is to be fulfilled in likeness to God, if that, in short, is to constitute our heaven, and if that promise is enfolded in our present relation as children of God, then we have in that fact both a consolation and an exhortation to duty. You shall win the best of heaven by getting the best there is out of your position and relation as a child of God here. This is the logic of the gospel. Only God can purify the heart, but He enlists our service in purifying the life. In the same breath Paul tells us that God worketh in us to will and to work for His own pleasure, and bids us carry out our own salvation. Everyone that hath this hope in God is purified by the Holy Spirit, yet our text says “purifieth himself.” Personal devotion calls out personal effort. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)
The glory of Divine sonship
I. The present glory of this sonship is great. The life of God in the soul is intrinsically great. Holiness and love are the principal elements of character embodied in the life of a believer; these constitute his dignity--his present glorious inheritance.
II. The future glory of this sonship is the greatest. The model is Christ in His enthroned majesty and splendour. “Behold” the omnipotence of this love. For whom was it displayed? Angels? No, but for rebellious, ruined man--man scathed by sin, and an enemy to his Maker. (J. H. Hill.)
The possessions and prospects of believers
I. Here is true unity. “Now are we the sons of God.” This makes a true Catholic Church. There may be diversity in the family features--nay, if there be intellectual life there must be; but withal there will be likeness in the King’s sons, in all the wide extent of the Great Father’s household.
II. Here is true fellowship. This, at all events, is the ideal. Till the world lasts there will be men of the logical temperament of St. Paul, the mystical temperament of St. John, the practical, sagacious temperament of St. James; but there should be true fellowship for all that: “Sons of God” swallows up all minor difficulties, all theoretical diversities.
III. Here is true resemblance. It is not a mere question of condition, but of character. All the lines of the Gospel are laid along the lines of life.
IV. Here is future prospect. “It doth not yet appear.” No, the time has not yet come. The cradle is not the place for judging of countenance or character in the perfect sense. The condition of the development is time. Like a tree made strong by storms, so life means contradiction, hindrance, temptation. We are waiting, as our text says, to appear. Like an unblossomed flower, the glory is hidden yet. (W. M. Statham, M. A.)
The present condition and future prospects of believers
I. What we now are--sons of God.
1. We were restored to the forfeited honour of the sons of God by “being begotten again by the Father; and born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We became the sons of God, not by natural generation, nor in virtue of any inherent power or tendency, nor in consequence of any endeavour on the part of others, but by the agency of His Spirit.
2. We may know it by the faith we exercise, if it leads us to entire dependence on Christ, and to the utmost diligence in duty. We may know it by the repentance we have experienced, if it has been heartfelt, arising from a true sense of sin, and resulting in its entire renunciations. We may know it by the feelings we cherish toward our brethren in Christ, if we love them sincerely. We may know it by the state of our affections toward God, if they are set on “those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.”
3. We, indeed, may be of no account among men.
II. What we expect to become.
1. The confidence with which we may expect future happiness: “We know we shall be like Him.” Though we are not favoured with such evidence as John enjoyed, we have all that is necessary to sustain our hope in the reality of that blessedness which God has in reserve for His children. The number and minuteness of these predictions, which have received accomplishment in the history of Jesus and the Church; the sublime nature of the doctrines of the gospel; the holy tendency of its principles; the pure morality of its precepts; the circumstances in which it was first promulgated, and the success which has attended its ministrations, convince us of the truth of that record, which reveals to us life and immortality.
2. The peculiar nature of the happiness of heaven, “We shall be like Him.” It must satisfy the most enlarged desires of the immortal soul to be assimilated to Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Our minds, like His, shall be gloriously constituted, for, vigorous and pure, they shall be fitted for the noble pursuits and sublime contemplations of the heavens. Our character, like His, shall be glorious, for, freed from all taint of impurity, we shall be arrayed in the robe of His righteousness. Our stations, like His, shall be glorious, for we shall be near to that throne on which He sits at the right hand of His Father. Our happiness, like His, shall be glorious, for we shall possess all we can desire or be able to enjoy.
3. The means by which this assimilation to Christ shall be produced, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” As the earth owes all that diversity of light and shade with which it is adorned, and all that variety of flower and luxuriance of fruit with which it is beautified and enriched to the agency of the sun; so shall the redeemed in heaven derive all their beauty, and all their blessedness, from the presence of Him who sits upon the throne.
4. The time when the felicity of the sons of God shall be consummated, “When He shall appear.”
5. The inconceivable greatness of this future happiness, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” (W. Welsh.)
The present and the future of Christian life
I. That which is positively known: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.”
1. A man may know himself a Christian, as he knows himself a living soul--by personal consciousness. The fact of his conversion is the starting point in his religious history; and the incidents of Christian experience are the indications of his progress in the Divine life.
2. And, beyond the personal evidence arising from the exercise of faith in the soul, there is the witness of the Spirit in our hearts.
II. That which is imperfectly understood. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.”
1. One thing, however, is quite sure. We shall not remain as we are. The very process of animal life is fraught with decay.
2. Another thing is equally certain; and that is, that we shall still exist.
3. But amidst all the information which God has given us on that subject, we know not the mode of our future existence, nor even its locality. How we shall see without these eyes, hear without these ears, and converse without these organs of speech, we cannot tell. Probably we shall be all intelligence, and find, to our surprise, that the senses on which we laid so great a stress, and considered so essential to our intellectual being, were but so many loopholes in our prison house of clay, through which we could sometimes catch a glimpse of surrounding objects, but by means of which we could distinguish nothing perfectly.
III. That which is confidently anticipated. (D. E. Ford.)
Now sons, though sufferers
I. The sons of God are specially loved of God.
II. The sons of God are born again of God. “Of His own will begat He us by the word of His truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.” So that the character of the disciples of Christ is a special Divine workmanship. It matters little what civilisation may be in a country, or what it may do. Every man needs regeneration.
III. The sons of God, as such, are brethren of Jesus Christ.
IV. The sons of God are related to all the unfallen and redeemed of the offspring of God. Paul makes very much of this, and I suppose that if our hearts were right we should make very much of this.
V. The sons of God are heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, heirs to the noblest rank and title, and heirs to boundless wealth. The reason that God does not give us more of every kind of good now, is that we need the discipline of want. And until the discipline of suffering and of want has accomplished its end we have not the capacity to use the treasures and the riches which God waits to put at our disposal, and which He will put at our disposal so soon as we are educated and ready.
VI. The sons of God are being educated by God. Suitable habits are being formed, so that when they become lords of the inheritance which is in reserve for them, they shall appear to have been so educated as to be thoroughly fit for all the duties, and responsibilities, and honours, and joys of that position.
VII. The sons of God have access to God. (S. Martin.)
It doth not yet appear what we shall be--
Of the happiness of good men in the future state
I. The present obscurity of our future state, as to the particular circumstances of that happiness which good men shall enjoy in another world. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” If one should come from a strange country, never known before, and should only tell us, in general, that it was a most delightful place, and the inhabitants a brave, and generous, and wealthy people, under the government of a wise and great king, ruling by excellent laws; and that the particular delights and advantages of it were not to be imagined by anything he knew in our own country. If we gave credit to the person that brought this relation, it would create in us a great admiration of the country described to us, and a mighty concern to see it, and live in it. But it would be a vain curiosity to reason and conjecture about the particular conveniences of it; because it would be impossible, by any discourse, to arrive at the certain knowledge of any more, than he who knew it, was pleased to tell us. This is the case as to our heavenly country.
II. Thus much we know of it in general, that it shall consist in the blessed vision of God. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but when He shall appear, we shall see Him as He is.”
1. What is meant by seeing God. As to see the king includes the court, and all the glorious circumstances of his attendance: so to see God, does take in all that glory, and joy, and happiness, which flows from His presence.
2. What is here meant by seeing God as He is: we shall see Him as He is.
(1) Our perfect knowledge of Him. Not that we are to imagine that when we come to heaven, our understanding can or shall be raised to such a pitch as to be able perfectly to comprehend the infinite nature and perfections of God. But our knowledge shall be advanced to such degrees of perfection as a finite and created understanding is capable of.
(a) We shall then have an immediate knowledge of God, that which the Scripture calls seeing Him “face to face”; not at a distance, as we do now by faith: not by reflection, as we do now see Him in the creatures.
(b) We shall have a far clearer knowledge of God than we have now in this life (1Co_13:12). We see Him now many times as He is not; that is, we are liable to false and mistaken conceptions of Him.
(c) We shall then, likewise, have a certain knowledge of God, free from all doubts concerning Him (1Co_13:12). As God now knows us, so shall we then know Him, as to the truth and certainty of our knowledge.
(2) To see God “as He is,” does imply our perfect enjoyment of Him. It can be no mean thing, which the infinite wisdom, and goodness, and power of God hath designed for the final reward of those who love Him, and of those whom He loves.
3. The fitness of this metaphor, to express to us the happiness of our future state.
(1) Sight is the noblest and most excellent of all our senses; and therefore the flame of the eye is the most curious of all other parts of the body, and the dearest to us, and that which we preserve with the greatest tenderness. It is the most comprehensive sense, hath the largest sphere, takes in the most objects, and discerns them at the greatest distance. It can in a moment pass from earth to heaven, and survey innumerable objects. It is the most pure, and spiritual, and quickest in its operations, and approacheth nearest to the nature of a spiritual faculty.
(2) The primary and proper object of this sense is the most delightful trod of the most spiritual nature of any corporeal thing, and that is light (Pro_15:30; Ecc_11:7). It is the purest and most spiritual of all corporeal things, and therefore God chooseth to represent Himself by it: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
III. Wherein our likeness and conformity to God shall consist.
1. In the immortality of our nature. In this mortal state we are not capable of that happiness which consists in the vision of God; that is, in the perfect knowledge and perpetual enjoyment of Him. The imperfection of our state, and the weakness of our faculties, cannot bear the sight of so glorious and resplendent an object, as the Divine nature and perfections are; we cannot see God and live.
2. In the purity of our souls. In this world every good man does “mortify his earthly Dud corrupt affections,” and in some measure “bring them into obedience and subjection to the law of God.” But still there are some relics of sin, some spots and imperfections in the holiness of the best men. But upon our entrance into the other world we shall quite “put off the old man with the affections and lusts thereof”; we shall be perfectly “delivered from this body of sin and death,” and, together with this mortal nature, part with all the remainders of sin and corruption which cleave to this mortal state.
IV. The necessary connexion between our likeness and conformity to God, and our sight and enjoyment of Him. “We know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
1. Likeness to God in the immortality of our nature is necessary to make us capable of the happiness of the next life; which consists in the blessed and perpetual vision and enjoyment of God.
2. Our likeness to God in the purity of our souls is necessary to make us capable of the blessed sight and enjoyment of Him in the next life.
(1) It is necessary, as a condition of the thing to be performed on our part, before we can expect that God should make good the promise of eternal life and happiness to us.
(2) We cannot possibly love God, nor take delight in Him, unless we be like Him in the temper and disposition of our minds. (Abp. Tillotson.)
Future state of Christians
I. The character of the children of God. It is this filial spirit which forms all the beautiful and amiable traits in the Christian character.
1. It disposes the children of God to love Him with an ardent and supreme affection.
2. It disposes them to love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and to believe in Him alone for salvation.
3. It unites all the children of God to one another.
4. It is a spirit of grace and of supplication.
5. It disposes His children to obey all His commands.
II. What they do not know concerning themselves in a future state.
1. They are wholly unacquainted with the means by which they shall perceive either material or spiritual objects, after they have lost their bodily senses.
2. It is no less dark and mysterious how they will converse with one another, and with the heavenly hosts, after they leave these mortal bodies.
3. They must remain totally ignorant in this life, how they shall arrive in heaven, and how they shall move from place to place after they arrive there.
III. What the children of God do know concerning themselves in a future state.
1. They do now know where they shall be hereafter.
2. They know in this world what manner of persons they shall be in the next.
3. They know that when they shall leave this present evil world, they shall be completely blessed.
Lessons:
1. It appears from what has been said, that all the knowledge which Christians have of themselves in a future state, they wholly derive from Divine revelation.
2. We may learn from what has been said, why some Christians die in so much light and joy, and some in so much darkness and distress.
3. Christians may and ought to infer, from what has been said, the great importance of making their calling and election sure.
4. The preceding observations leave us no room be doubt, that death is always a happy event to the children of God.
5. This subject affords a source of great consolation to those who have been bereaved of near and dear Christian friends. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Our ignorance and our knowledge of the future state
I. Our ignorance. We do not suppose that God has designedly kept back from mankind clear and full intimations of the characteristics of future happiness; on the contrary, revelation is abundant in its discoveries. Parable and image are exhausted with the effort to make that portrait worthy the original; and, probably we do not, for the most part allow our knowledge to keep pace with God’s revelation of the future. But when you come to the point of what we ourselves shall be, we frankly admit that we have but scanty information. It is just that mystery, for coping with which we possess no faculties. Yea, and from this our ignorance of what a spiritual body shall be, arises an ignorance just as total of a vast portion of the occupations of believers.
II. Our knowledge. “We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.” There would be no difficulty in bringing forward other portions of Scripture to corroborate this statement. It is, for example, expressly declared by St. Paul, that Christ “shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.” But St. John, you observe, subjoins a reason for the resemblance, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” We can hardly venture to suppose that the excitement of desire, and the consequent offering up of prayer will constitute the connection, as they do a present connection, between seeing Christ and resembling Christ. We must rather own, that whatever the future connection, it will altogether differ from the present. It is to a suffering and humiliated Christ that we become like now; it shall be to an exalted and glorified Christ that we are made like hereafter. The work wrought in us whilst on earth is conformity to Christ in His humiliation--the work wrought in us when we start up at the resurrection shall be conformity to Christ in His exaltation. The apostle declares that we “shall see Christ as He is.” We ask you whether, with the most vigorous actings of faith, it can be ever said of us that we “see Christ as He is”? No, the gaze that we cast on Christ here must be a gaze upon Christ as Christ was, more truly than a gaze upon Christ as Christ is. We look upon Jesus as delivered for our sins, and raised again for our justification. We look towards Christ as lifted up like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, as presenting in His office of Intercessor the merits of His atonement in our behalf. Even those who obtain a night of Christ as Intercessor, do not strictly see Christ as Christ is. They see Him as perpetuating His crucifixion. So that, sift the matter as closely as you will, whilst on earth we see Christ as He was rather than Christ as He is--and in exact agreement with this sight of Christ is the likeness we acquire. But when in place of travelling back I would spring forward, when I would contemplate the majesty of a Being administering the business of the universe, and drawing in from every spot an infinite source of revenue, teeming with honour, and flashing with glory--oh! shall I not be forced to confess myself amazed at the very outset of the daring endeavour? Shall I not be compelled to fall back from the scrutiny of what Christ is, to repose more and more on a survey of what Christ was, thankful for present knowledge, hopeful of future?(H. Melvill, B. D.)
The unrevealed future of the sons of God
The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: “Now are we the sons of God, and” (not “but”) “it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” A man may say: Ah! now are we, we shall be--we shall be--nothing!” John does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will always be So.
I. The fact, of sonship makes us quite sure of the future. It seems to me that the strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two--first, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and, second, that a man here can pray and trust and love God, and feel that he is His child. “We are the children of God now”--and if we are children now, we shall be grown up some time. Childhood leads to maturity. And not only the fact of our sonship avails to assure us of immortal life, but also the very form which our religious experience takes points in the same direction. “The child is father of the man”; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the existence of another state where all that is here in the germ shall be fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us. There is a great deal in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, which is like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked “Not wanted on the voyage.” These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God I have got much in me that is “not wanted on the voyage,” and the more I grow into His likeness the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round about me in proportion as I am brought into harmony with the things beyond.
II. Sonship leaves us ignorant of much in the future. “We are the sons of God, and,” just because we are, “it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.” John would simply say to us, “There has never been set forth before men’s eyes in this earthly life of ours an example, or an instance, of what the sons of God are to be in another state of being.” And so because men have never had the instance before them they do not know much about that state. In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus Christ. But the risen Christ is not the glorified Christ. The chrysalis’s dreams about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a man’s imagination of what a future life will be. So let us feel two things--let us be thankful that we do not know, for the ignorance is a sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to nourish imagination and hope.
III. Our sonship flings an all-penetrating beam of light on that future, in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness. “We know that when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Future life
Thereis nothing in the actual condition of mankind, or in the method of God’s dispensations towards them, more surprising than the fact that, while the very constitution of the mind impels it to survey the future with intense solicitude, futurity itself is hidden by a veil which can neither be penetrated nor withdrawn. We have only to look back upon our progress hitherto, to see experimental evidence, which we at least must own to be conclusive, that, in hiding from us that which was before us, God has dealt with us, not as an austere master, but a tender parent, knowing well how His children can endure, and, in the exercise of that omniscience, determining not only how much they shall actually suffer, but how much of what they are to suffer shall be known to them before their day of visitation comes. But this part of God’s providential government, though eminently merciful, is not designed exclusively to spare men a part of the suffering which sin has caused. It has a higher end. By the partial disclosure and concealment of futurity, continually acting on the native disposition to pry into it, the soul is still led onward, kept in an attitude of expectation, and in spite of its native disposition to look downward, to go backward, or to lie stagnant, is perpetually stimulated to look up, to exert itself, and make advances in the right direction. In making us rational, in giving us the power of comparison and judgment, and in teaching us by the constitution of our nature to infer effect from cause and cause from effect, God has rendered us incapable of looking at the present or remembering the past, without at the same time or as a necessary consequence anticipating that which is to come, and to a great extent with perfect accuracy, so that all the knowledge of the future which is needed for the ordinary purposes of human life is amply provided and infallibly secured; while, far beyond the limits of this ordinary foresight, He has granted to some gifted minds a keener vision. Nor is this all, for even with respect to things which neither ordinary reasoning from analogy, nor extraordinary powers of forecast can avail to bring within the reach of human prescience, God has Himself been pleased to make them known by special revelation. If anything is certain it is this, that they who do escape perdition, and by faith in the omnipotence of graze pursue this upward course, shall still continue to ascend without cessation, rising higher, growing better, and becoming more and more like God throughout eternity. This vagueness and uncertainty, although at first sight it may seem to be a serious disadvantage, is nevertheless not without important and beneficent effects upon the subjects of salvation. It may seem, indeed, that as a means of arousing the attention, an indefinite assurance of transcendent blessedness hereafter is less likely to be efficacious than a distinct and vivid exhibition of the elements which are to constitute that blessedness; but let it be remembered that no possible amount, and no conceivable array of such particulars, would have the least effect in originating serious reflection or desire in the unconverted heart. This can be wrought by nothing short of a Divine power, and when it is thus wrought, when the thoughts and the affections are once turned in the right direction, the less detailed and more indefinite description of the glory which is yet to be experienced seems often best adapted to excite and stimulate the soul, and lead it onwards, by still presenting something that is yet to be discovered or attained, and thus experimentally accustoming the soul to act upon the vital principle of its newborn nature, forgetting that which is behind, and reaching forth to that which is before. The same thing may be said of the indefinite manner in which the doom of the impenitent and unbelieving is set forth in Scripture. In this, as in the corresponding case before described, if the mind is awakened, such details are needless, and if not awakened, they are unavailing. But is it, can it be, a fact, that rational, spiritual beings, Godlike in their origin, and made for immortality, with faculties susceptible of endless elevation and enlargement, and activity, can hesitate to choose life rather than death, and good in preference to evil? Because you now wish to repent, and to believe, and to be saved hereafter, you imagine yourselves safe in your impenitence, and unbelief, and condemnation. Why, the very disposition which is now made the pretext for procrastination may forsake you. The respect you now feel for the truth, for God’s law, for the gospel, may be changed into a cold indifference, contemptuous incredulity, or malignant hatred. The faint gleams of conviction which occasionally light up the habitual darkness of the mind may be extinguished. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)
Heaven
It is often asked, if the great object of the gospel be to fit us for heaven, why is not a fuller revelation of its joys made to us? In the first place, were the future life fully laid open to us, its brightness would throw the present state into utter eclipse, and make our earthly pilgrimage irksome and grievous. The natural shrinking from an unknown condition of being sustains an interest in the present life in the hearts of those best fitted to die, while, when that unknown state is at hand, their confidence in the Divine mercy enables them to enter upon it without doubt or fear. Again, the representations of heaven in the Bible are such as to adapt the inspired record to the needs of all classes of minds. We doubt not that the life of heaven is spiritual. We expect there pleasures, not of sense, but of soul. But the gospel was first preached, and is still preached every year, to multitudes who occupy the lowest plane of intelligence and culture. It goes to them in their coarseness and degradation; and in that state how could they take in a picture of spiritual joy? Their conceptions of heaven grow with their characters. As they increase in spirituality it becomes less a place and more a state. It represents to them at every stage the highest point that they have reached, the utmost of blessedness that they can apprehend. To pass to another topic, I would ask, Would not any detailed description of the life to come raise more questions than it answered--excite more curiosity than it gratified? I love to think of it as infinitely diversified, as, though the same, yet different to every soul. I believe that every direction which the mind can take, every bent which the character can assume under the guidance of religion, reaches out into eternity. If this be the case, how could the whole be written out in a volume? Or, had some portions of this blessed life been revealed, and some threads of our earthly existence shown us as they are woven into the web of eternity, it could only have awakened doubt and despondency in those minds on whose favourite departments of thought and duty no light from heaven was shed. But while for these reasons a specific revelation with regard to the heavenly life was not to be expected, does not the very idea of immortality include the answers to many of the questions which we might ask the most anxiously? If we are the same beings there as here, we must carry with us the tastes, affections, and habits of thinking and feeling, with which we depart this life, and those of them which can find scope for exercise and space for growth in heaven must unfold and ripen there. In addition to what has been said, I would suggest that much may have been left unrevealed with regard to heaven in order to furnish room for the highest exercise of the imagination. It seems to me that the Scriptural representations of the life to come are precisely adapted to make fancy the handmaid of devotion. There may be yet another reason why we have so little detailed information with regard to heaven. There is no doubt much which we could not know--for which human speech furnishes no words. Language is the daughter of experience. It can give the blind no idea of colours, or the deaf of sounds. Now there can be no doubt that in the future life our mode of being, of perception, of recognition, of communication, will be essentially different from what it is here, and perhaps so different that nothing within our earthly experience could furnish terms for its description. But, with all our ignorance, we have full assurance on one point, and that the most essential to our present improvement and happiness. “When God shall appear,” shall draw near the soul in death and judgment, “we shall be like Him.” And if like Him, like Jesus, His express image, whose heart is all laid open to us, whose traits of spiritual beauty and excellence are within our clear view. To be like Christ--need we know, could we ask more? (A. P. Peabody.)
Progress of manhood
There is enough of progress and development in our present existence to justify the belief that man, living in God and loving Him, shall pass on to capacities, services, and enjoyments of which he can have now only the most imperfect conception. Look at the little child in his mother’s arms: its eyes beautiful but vacant, or just sharpening into attention and wonder; its head at all points of the compass in five minutes. Now look at that man who, with eye of fire and voice of thunder, binds an army together, and rules the will of a hundred thousand men with a word: the little, comely, helpless infant has grown into that mighty soldier, whose look is equal to a hundred swords, whose voice is equal to a cannonade. Who could have predicted such a man from such a child? Say, then, to every child, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be”; we must wait; we must live and work in the spirit of hope; this child, or that, may move the world to God and heaven! Look at the child beginning his letters and forming words of one syllable. See him hesitating between C and G, not exactly knowing which is which, and being utterly confounded because he is not sure whether the word to should have two o’s or one! Now look at the student shut up in the museum deciphering and arranging the most learned and difficult writings in all literature, vindicating his criticism in the face of an enlightened continent. The two are one. The little puzzled learner has grown into the accomplished and authoritative scholar. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be!” If we follow on to know the Lord and do His will, our strength shall be equal to our day, and we shall be to ourselves a continual surprise, and to the dignity of life a constant witness, and a memorial not to be gainsaid. Fancy a child born under the most corrupting and discouraging circumstances: parents immoral; poverty, desolation, discomfort of every kind, the characteristics of the house. No reverence, no chivalry, no pretence even of religious form; to be born under such circumstances is surely to be doomed to a continual depravity, wickedness, and despair. Yet even there the Spirit of the Lord may mightily operate, and out of that pestilent chaos may order come, and music, and beautiful utilities. This has been done; it is being done now; it is the daily Christian miracle; it constrains us by glad compulsion to exclaim, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It is the joy of the Christian missionary to be able to point to villages once the scene of cannibalism, and of wickedness of every name, where there was no conscience, no law, no mercy, no honour, and to show you houses of Christian prayer, and to point out men who were cannibals singing Christian psalms and crying like children under the pathos of Christian appeals. What wonder, then, if within view of transformations so vital and astounding, we exclaim with thankful and hopeful surprise, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be”!(J. Parker, D. D.)
Our imperfect knowledge of the future
If a child had been born, and spent all his life in the Mammoth Cave, how impossible would it be for him to comprehend the upper world! Parents might tell him of its life, its light, its beauty, and its sounds of joy; they might heap up the sands into mounds, and try to show him by stalactites how grass, flowers, and trees grow out of the ground; till at length, with laborious thinking, the child would fancy he had gained a true idea of the unknown land: and yet, though he longed to behold it, when it came that he was to go forth, it would be with regret for the familiar crystals and rock-hewn rooms, and the quiet that reigned therein. But when he came up some May morning, with ten thousand birds singing in the trees, and the heavens bright and blue, and full of sunlight, and the wind blowing softly through the young leaves, all aglitter with dew, and the landscape stretching away green and beautiful to the horizon, with what rapture would he gaze about him, and see how poor were all the fancyings and interpretations which were made within the cave of the things which grew and lived without! and how he would wonder that he could ever have regretted to leave the silence and dreary darkness of his old abode! So, when we emerge from this cave of earth into that land where spring growths are, and where is eternal summer, how shall we wonder that we could have clung so fondly to this dark and barren life! (H. W. Beecher.)
Love’s ultimate intentions
It is not merely for what we are today that our Father loves us so. It is for what He means to make us when we have done with mortality and sin. See that tiny boy in his cradle, over whom his parents watch with such doting fondness. Say, over and above the instinctive fondness of parents for their children, are there not big hopes that gather round that little one’s head? It is not merely because of what he is today that his parents love him so, but because of what he is to be when he becomes a man, filling some place of honour in this busy world. Ah! and so it is with the love of God. It is not merely because of what we are now, in our frailty and weakness, that our Father loves us thus, but because of what He means to make us when He has received us home and has divested us of this dull mortality, and has crowned us with His own ineffable glory!(C. Clemance, D. D.)
Our knowledge of heaven small
Oh! when we meet in heaven, we shall see now little we knew about it on earth. (G. Payson.)
But we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is--
The eternal future clear only in Christ
The apostle admits that there is obscurity hanging over much of our eternal future.
1. The first step of the soul into another state of being is a mystery. The existence of the soul separate from the body, and from all material organs, is incomprehensible.
2. The place of our future life is obscure. How there can be relation to place without a body we do not know, and even when the body is restored, we cannot tell the locality of the resurrection world.
3. The outward manner of our final existence is also uncertain. Whether we may possess merely our present faculties, enlarged and strengthened, as a child’s mind expands into a man’s, or whether new faculties of perception may not be made to spring forth, as if sight were given a blind man, we find it impossible to affirm.
4. Many of the modes of thought and feeling, in that life to come, perplex us. Truth must forever continue truth, and goodness eternally commend itself to the soul, else our training for the future life would be valueless, and our confidence in the reality of things shaken. But there may be large modifications, through the extension and elevation of our thoughts. We shall see the same spiritual objects, but from other positions, and with higher powers of judging. How far this may affect our views we cannot say.
5. It would be unsatisfactory enough if this were all that could be said and done. But the apostle puts this dark background upon the canvas, that he may set in relief a central scene and figure--Christ and our relation to Him. It matters little, the apostle says, what may be our ignorance about other things, what doubts may agitate us, what darkness lie on the edge of our horizon, if we can abide in the centre with this great Enlightener. He casts His illumination upon our future destiny as well as upon our present duty.
I. The first thing promised is the manifestation of Christ--“Christ shall appear.” It is not merely that Christ shall be seen, but seen as never before.
1. The first thought of the apostle was no doubt the human nature of Christ as appearing again to the eyes of His friends. He left with that nature, and promised so to return--“I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice.” His first disciples are not to be the only favoured men who ever saw Christ after the flesh. They will regain the view they lost, and we, if we are of them who love His appearing, shall share it with them. The likeness of sinful flesh will be removed--the marred visage and form of suffering,--but the look that turned on Peter--the face that rejoiced in that hour when He said, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth”--the hands that blessed the children--these shall remain, with all the soul of pity that was in them, and the beating heart which went forth through them. The only difference will be that they shall appear. In this world they were hidden, seen only by the few, seen obscurely, realised feebly; but when He is made manifest they shall be the centre and the sunlight of a ransomed world, the heritage of an innumerable company, and yet each one, as if by himself, shall have His view of, and portion in, the true human fellowship of the Son of God.
2. In the manifestation of Christ the apostle must have thought also of His Divine nature. His first appearance in this nature was dim and over cast, both for the sake of the weak vision of fallen humanity, and because suffering and sacrifice were necessary for the work He had to perform. Before He could raise, He needed to redeem. When He became man “He emptied Himself” of His Divinity, as far as this was possible--gathered the attributes of the Infinite within the limits of the finite, and shut up the rays of His uncreated glory in the likeness of sinful flesh. When He shall appear there may be expected a clear manifestation of the Divine nature through the human. The glory that He had with the Father before the world was shall be resumed, and, if we may venture to say it, raised, for the glory of the Divine shall have added to it the grace of the human. The majesty, the power and wisdom which belong to Him as the Son of God shall go forth unrestrained, in union with the tenderness and sympathy which fill His heart as the Son of Man.
II. The second thing promised at the appearance of Christ is a full vision on our part--“we shall see Him as He is.”
1. There must certainly be a change in our material frame before we can sustain the view of Christ’s exalted humanity. When men are brought to see Him as He is, the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory would crush them to the dust, without that change which will make their bodies incorruptible and glorious as His own.
2. With this change on the body, there must be a corresponding one upon the soul, before there can be the full vision of Christ. If we were allowed to conjecture, we might suppose that this education is part of the history of souls in the separate state. The body can rise at once to its highest perfection, but the law of spirit is that of advance by slow degrees. It is consolatory, also, to think that the great day shall not startle the blessed dead, if we may so speak of them, with affright. It shall dawn to them as the summer sun dawns. But however the preparation takes place, we may be confident that the soul’s vision will be at last perfectly fitted to its object--“Christ as He is.” It will be a vision free from all sin in the soul. This will make it free from error, and from the doubt which has pain with it. It will be free from partiality--from that fruitful source of misconception and division, taking a portion of Christ and His truth for the whole. It will be a vision intense and vivid, not coldly outlined by the understanding, but veined and coloured by the heart--a sight in which the soul goes out to rejoice with a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. And it will be a vision close and intimate. They shall gain their knowledge of God and Christ by quicker processes and shorter paths than here we do.
III. The third thing promised is complete assimilation to Christ--“we shall be like Him.” It is the perfect view of Christ which gives perfect likeness to Him. To look on one we love brings a measure of similitude, and looking on Christ, even here, however dimly we may see Him, produces a degree of likeness. But it is when Christ appears that the last great step is taken. However pure and happy may be the state of separate spirits, the Scripture teaches us that it is incomplete, and that they, as well as the whole creation, “wait for the manifestation of the sons of God.”
1. Taking the order hitherto observed, we may think first of our material frame. It will be made like to Christ’s glorious body. This assures us that we shall have eternal relations to God’s material universe. It fixes a central home for our nature--we shall be where Christ is. It makes us feel that there will be a fitness in our frame for our future dwelling place. All that world forms itself into a harmony with Christ, and when we are like Him we shall be in harmony with it. When the material frame is made like Christ’s, it indicates to us something not only of the forms of the future life, but of its active employments. The body in this present world serves two great purposes. It lets in God’s external creation, with all its lessons of knowledge, upon the soul; and it gives the soul power to go forth and imprint upon God’s creation its own thoughts and volitions. When the Bible assures us that a body shall still be associated with man’s soul, it leads us to infer that God’s material universe will be open to him in all its teachings; and that he will be able to impress it in some way with the marks of his own mind and will. Only it will be after a higher manner. The lordship of man over creation, which was granted him at first, will be heightened when it is restored through Christ (Heb_2:7).
2. Besides the assimilation of the material frame, we cannot forget that there will be a likeness of the spiritual nature. The source of heaven’s blessedness and power is the likeness of the soul to Christ. When He shall appear “we shall see His face, and His name shall be on our foreheads.” It shall be deeper--in our souls; and all of God’s truth and grace that can be communicated to a creature shall enter into the depth of the spiritual nature through Christ. If the active soul finds scope for work in God’s material universe, the Mary-like spirit which delights to sit at the feet of Christ and hear His word, shall have unrebuked leisure in the heavenly home. We may trust that in some way the sisters, Service and Meditation, will interchange gifts, and be perfectly at one when they reach His higher presence.
3. We have pursued the order of presenting first the human side of Christ, and then the Divine; but we trust it has been made clear that the knowledge of Christ comes to us through the soul side in ourselves. We must begin by knowing Him spiritually as the source of pardon and purity--commencing a new life within, which goes forward, strengthening and rising--a life of which heaven is not the reward, but the natural and necessary continuation. (John Ker, D. D.)
Future blessedness
I. The nature of this blessed and glorious estate--“we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” A transforming vision, or such a vision as changeth us into the likeness of God, is the true blessedness of the saints. There are three things considerable in our happiness
(1) The vision of God;
(2) A participation of His likeness;
(3) The satisfaction or delectation thence resulting.
Two of them are in the text: “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” The third is fetched from a parallel place (Psa_17:15). First, for vision that beginneth the happiness, and maketh way for all the rest--“we shall see Him as He is.” This sight is either ocular or mental.
1. Ocular; for our senses have their happiness as well as our souls, and there is a glorified eye as well as a glorified mind (Job_19:26-27). But you will say, How is this so great a privilege to the godly, since the wicked shall see Him? (Mat_26:64).
(1) That sight they have of Christ shall be but a short glimpse of His glory; for after their doom and sentence is passed, they shall be immediately banished out of His presence (Mat_25:41).
(2) They shall see Him with shame and terror, looking upon Him as to receive their just punishment (1Jn_2:28).
(3) The consideration of the object is different; the one look upon Him as their inexorable judge, the other as their merciful saviour; their interest in Him maketh Him dear to their souls.
2. Mental vision or contemplation. The angels, which have not bodies, are said to behold the face of our heavenly Father (Mat_18:10); and when we are said to see God, it is not meant of the bodily eye, for a spirit cannot be seen with bodily eyes; so He is still the invisible God (Col_1:15). And seeing face to face is opposed to knowing in part. And therefore it implieth a more complete knowledge than now we have. The mind is the noblest faculty, and must have its satisfaction. Now three things are necessary--
(1) A prepared faculty;
(2) A suitable object; and
(3) The conjunction of both these.
Now in the state of glory all these concur. The faculty is more capacious, the object is more fully represented, and the conjunction and fruition is more intimate and close than it can be elsewhere. Secondly, assimilation or transformation into the image of God and Christ.
1. What this likeness is. This was man’s first ruin, this aspiring to be like God (Gen_3:5); not in a blessed conformity, but in a cursed self-sufficiency. This was the design of the first transgression (Isa_14:14). The men of the world aspire to be like God in greatness and power, but not in goodness and holiness. We affect or usurp Divine honour, and to sit upon even ground with God. Christ came not to gratify our sin, but to make us like unto God, not equal with God.
(1) In holiness and purity; for that is the chief thing wherein God will be resembled by His creatures. We are made holy as He is holy.
(2) We are like Him in happiness and glory, that is, in a glorious condition (1Co_15:49).
(1) A relative and adherent glory, as the saints are admitted into a participation of His judicial power (1Co_6:2).
(2) Internal and inherent, viz., the glory revealed in us, put into us, Now it is revealed to us, then in us. Our ear hath received a little hereof, but then it shall be fully accomplished in our persons, in our bodies and souls.
2. How it is the fruit of vision? for so it is given as a reason, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” I answer--there is between light and likeness a circular generation, as there is in most moral things; and on the one side it may be said we shall be like Him, therefore we shall see Him as He is, and also on the other side, as in the text, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Thirdly, the third thing is satisfaction, not mentioned in the text, but implied from a parallel place; for we having the sight and presence of God, must needs be ravished with it (Psa_16:11). Our great business will be to love what we see, and our great happiness to have what we love. This will be a full, perpetual, and never failing delight to us.
II. The season when we shall enjoy this--“when He shall appear.”
1. I take it for granted that the soul before is not only in the hand of God, which all assert, but admitted into the sight and presence of the Lord, and to see His blessed face.
2. Then we have our solemn absolution from all sins (Act_3:19). And our pardon is pronounced by the judge sitting upon the throne.
3. Then shall we have glorified bodies restored unto us, wherein Christ shall be admired (2Th_1:10).
4. Then Christ will present us to God by head and poll, and give an account of all that God hath given him, that they may be introduced into their everlasting estate, not one wanting (Joh_6:40).
III. The apprehension that we should have of it for the present--“we know.”
1. It is not a bare conjecture, but a certain knowledge; it is not only we think, we hope well, but we know.
2. It is not a probable opinion, but an evident and infallible truth, as sure as if we saw it with our eyes. An unseen world is an unknown world; how can we be so sure of it? It is set before us by His precious promises who cannot lie.
3. It is not a general belief, but a particular confidence. He speaketh upon the supposition that we are God’s children. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Man’s capability of future glory and blessedness
I. That strong, unappeasable desire, that longing after a higher good than this world affo
