When Christ who is our life shall appear then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.
Christ our life
What is meant by life? The word is very comprehensive, and includes--
1. Appropriate activity.
2. Happiness. The life here intended is
(1) not natural life;
(2) not intellectual life;
(3) but spiritual and eternal life. Christ is our life in that He is--
I. Its author.
1. He saves us from death.
(1) By His atonement which satisfies the law.
(2) By delivering us from the power of Satan.
2. He is the author of inward spiritual life. Because--
(1) He procures for us the gift of the life-giving Spirit. He has redeemed us in order that He might receive the promise of the Spirit.
(2) He not only merits, but imparts the gift of the Holy Spirit.
II. Its object.
1. The exercises in which Christian life consists terminate on Him.
2. The happiness involved consists in fellowship with Him. He is our life as He is our joy, portion, inheritance.
III. Its end. It is Christ for us to live. While others live for themselves--some for their country, some for mankind--the believer lives for Christ. It is the great design of his life to promote Christ’s glory and advance His kingdom. Inferences:
1. Test of character. The difference between the true and nominal Christian lies here. The one seeks and regards Christ as His life only as He delivers from death; the other as the end and object of life.
2. The true way to grow in grace, or to get life, is to come to Christ.
3. The happiness and duty of thus making Christ our life. (C. Hodge, D. D.)
Christ our life
1. Life is seen around us striking out in tender beauty in the tiny flower which opens its delicate bosom to the light of the sun, or developing into majesty and grandeur in the giants of the forest--this is vegetable life.
2. Life is seen breaking out in the songs of birds, and displayed in the movements of the lower creatures and in the manifold activities of men--this is animal life.
3. Life is seen in the speculations of the philosopher, the research of the historian, the musings of the poet, and the contrivances of the architect and mechanician--this is intellectual life.
4. Life is seen in that hatred to sin, those yearnings after holiness, those graces of faith, hope, etc., the anticipation for heaven which characterize the true Christian--this is spiritual life, To Christ all these may be traced, but Paul is here speaking of the last.
I. Christ on the cross is the source of our life. Spiritual life is no new principle; it was bestowed by Christ as the Almighty Creator. But here we have to view Christ not as the Lord of life, but the victim of death. What an amazing contrast. Yet by the latter He brought life and immortality to light. From this His life flows out to those dead in sin.
II. Christ in the heart is the essence of our life. He not only procures, but is our life. “I am the life.” When we receive life we receive Him. The faith which saves embraces not an abstraction, a truth, but a Person. Many are satisfied with knowing about Christ--the Christian has vital union with Him.
III. Christ in his ordinances is the support of our life. All life requires sustenance. A flower that receives no rain or sunshine withers. God has appointed means for the nourishment of our life.
1. Secret prayer. What is this? An interview with a Person, not the mere utterance of desire breathed into the vacant air; growing intimacy with Christ; the soaring of the soul into the atmosphere of love and joy which makes the pulse of life beat more firmly. “The Christian’s vital breath,” etc.
2. The Sabbath, and its opportunities for sustained intercourse with Christ in sanctuary services (Psa_63:2). The want of profit in these arises from not seeking God in them. Those who find Him receive augmentation of life.
3. The Lord’s Supper, in which Christ brings Himself specially near, and to realize Him in it is to receive out of His fulness grace for grace.
IV. Christ on earth is the pattern of our life. All life has some outward manifestation. Every grace embodies itself in act. “Work of faith,” etc. God has given us a rule in His Word after which we should conform ourselves. But He has taught us also by example. In Christ’s lowly condition He has taught us not to be ashamed of our poverty. As a workman He ennobled trade. The sorrowful may be comforted by thinking of the Man of sorrows. What an example we have in Him of self-sacrifice, love, forgiveness, courage, etc. The closer we study His life the more we shall be assimilated to it as Moses was to the glory of God (2Co_3:18).
V. Christ in heaven is the consummation of our life. Here we have but grace, glory lies beyond. His presence in glory is a pledge that we shall share it. The bonds of union will be drawn closer. “For ever with the Lord,” etc. Conclusion:There is no true life but in Christ. Let us beware lest Christ’s lamentation, “Ye will not come unto Me,” etc., be over us. (W. Steele, M. A.)
Christ our life
“What think ye of Christ?” The proper answer is the text. It is not said merely that He lives in us, or that we live by Him or through Him, but that He is our life. Let us apply this--
I. To the Christian’s relative life:justification.
1. We are all dead in law. The soul destitute of the favour of God is dead. There remains only the execution of the sentence to complete our misery.
2. In this state Christ finds us and undertakes to be our life. One of the first questions of an awakened soul is, “How shall a man be just with God?” The gospel replies, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” There was such merit in His cross that God, though just, becomes a Saviour. It is not by the works of the law or repentance, but by the atonement laid hold of by faith that we legally live. But this only justifies us instrumentally; Christ through it meritoriously. Whatever view the Scriptures take of it--release from curse, deliverance from wrath, remission of penalty, acceptance with God--Christ is always the author.
II. To the Christian’s actual life:sanctification.
1. Our death in sin is not only a death in law, but a proper alienation from the life of God. Before we can be restored to communion with God a life of purity must be imparted. Of this Christ is the cause, His Spirit the agent, His word the instrument, His example the model. The outcome of all which is that as He was so are we in the world.
2. But Christ is our life not only as it respects the way in which we are made holy, but as it respects holiness in detail. He is
(1) the life of all Christian graces.
(a) Faith which gives life to good works, holy tempers, joyful affections; but faith is looking to an object; that object is Christ. It is receiving a gift; that gift is Christ.
(b) Hope. Our anchor is cast within the vail, and is sure and steadfast; but if Christ had not entered first our attempts to cast it had been in vain.
(c) Love. Christ is its object, purifier, director.
(2) The life of all Christian duties. They are inspired by Him and directed to His glory.
(3) The life of Christian ordinances. These will be wells without water if He be absent--sacraments, prayers, thanksgiving, preaching.
III. The Christian’s future life.
1. Of resurrection.
(1) As His power is the agent to effect it.
(2) Because His raised body will be its model.
(3) Inasmuch as His appearance the second time will be its signal.
2. Of glory.
(1) It is His to assign to each saint his proper place and occupation in heaven.
(2) His presence mainly constitutes the bliss of heaven.
(3) The degrees of heavenly glory will be regulated by the degrees of our nearness and intimacy to Christ. Conclusion:
1. The subject addresses itself most powerfully to the hearers of the gospel. Preachers labour in vain, hearers listen in vain, if there be no communication of life.
2. To earnest seekers of salvation the subject affords much encouragement. You want pardon, purity, strength, hope. Secure Christ for your life and you will have all.
3. Let Christians learn to be grateful, consistent, useful. (Jabez Bunting, D. D.)
Christ our life
No thoughtful man can be satisfied with a mere worldly life--continued existence, a round of selfish pursuits, and sensual delights which deaden the finest instincts.
I. The vital principle that is recognized. The relation between Christ and His people is vital. Christ is not merely the source and support of their life, but is it. There can be no life--physical, mental, or spiritual--apart from the action of the Divine mind. A- sculptor may carve a most life-like figure, but he cannot impart the vital principle.
1. This life is spiritual in its nature. TheChristian is surrounded by material things, and resides in a material body; but his spiritual life is distinct. Christ creates and controls it. It is the life of faith, hope, love.
2. It is eternal in its duration. It does not prevent physical dissolution, but survives it. Christ has given us the fullest assurance of our immortality? It is part of the Divine life; therefore age cannot enfeeble its powers, disease cannot impair its beauty, and death cannot terminate its existence.
3. What is your life? Are you living togratify the lowest or highest instincts of your nature? If the former your life is not worth living.
II. The splendid spectacle that is predicted.
1. The manner of Christ’s appearing “in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” It is a splendid sight to witness a military review, to see the glittering swords, serried ranks, waving banners, to hear the clattering drums, martial strains, triumphant shout. But no earthly scene is worth comparing with the grandeur and solemnity of the second coming of Christ. Millions were ignorant of His first advent; all shall see His second.
2. Its purpose.
(1) To be glorified. Once He appeared in weakness and humiliation; then in power and majesty.
(2) To glorify us.
3. Its time. Unknown, and to attempt to settle it is to trifle with God’s Word. When it comes it will be sudden and unexpected.
III. The glorious hope that is awakened. From the cradle to the grave our life is inspired by hope. The Christian hope is--
1. That one day we shall be with Christ. There are earthly companionships for which the heart sighs. Our affections cling to those we love. The believer clings to Christ who is the object of all his hope and desire.
2. That one day we shall participate in Christ’s glory. What that glory is no mind can conceive. Can the seed understand the sweetness and beauty of the flower? the stone the form and grace of the statue? Here God’s children are often poor and unknown. By and by Christ will recognize, honour, crown them. The poet’s fame is brief, the soldier’s glory uncertain, the king’s crown perishable, but the Christian’s triumph certain and eternal. (J. T. Woodhouse.)
Christ our life
Yet to appear.
I. Christ is our life.
1. This is John’s way of talking. “In Him was life,” etc.
(1) Christ is the source of our life. “As the Father raiseth up the dead,” etc. Jesus is our Alpha as well as Omega. We should have been dead in sin if it had not been said, “You hath He quickened.” He gives us the living water, which is in us a well springing up into everlasting life.
(2) Its substance. There is much mystery in the new nature, but none as to what is its life. Penetrate the believer’s heart and you will find Christ’s love throbbing there; penetrate his brain and you will find Christ to be its central thought.
(3) Its sustenance. He is the living bread which came down from heaven.
(4) Its solace. His loving kindness is better than life.
(5) Its object. As speeds the ship towards the port, the arrow to its goal, so flies the Christian towards the perfecting of His fellowship with Christ. As the soldier fights for his captain and is crowned in his captain’s victory, so the Christian. “To me to live is Christ.”
(6) Its exemplar. The Christian has the portrait of Christ before him as the artist has the Greek sculptures. If he wants to study life, he studies from Christ. Husbands and wives truly knit together grow somewhat like each other in expression, if not in feature, and the heart in near fellowship with Jesus must grow like Him. Grace is the light, our loving heart the sensitive plate, Jesus the object who fills the lens of the soul, and soon a heavenly photograph of His character is produced--similarity of spirit, temper, motive, action.
2. What is true concerning our spiritual life now is equally true of our spiritual life in heaven.
3. This life of Christ marks our dignity. Kings cannot claim it as such. Talk of their blue blood and pedigree, here is something more.
4. This accounts for Christian holiness. How can a man remain in sin if Christ is his life?
5. See how secure the Christian is. Unless Christ dies he cannot die.
II. Christ is hidden, so, therefore, is our life.
1. TO the unspiritual Christ is as though He did not exist. The worldling can neither see, taste, nor handle Him. Yet unseen as He is He is in heaven, full of joy, pleading before the throne, reigning, and having fellowship with His saints every where.
2. The servant is as his Lord, and is treated accordingly.
III. Christ will one day appear and we with him.
1. How?
(1) In person.
(2) With great splendour.
2. When? No one knows, and it is impertinent to inquire. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ our life and our hope
There are two things in daily life which exert a great influence over men--fear and hope. A man will work hard through fear that want may come or through hope of bettering his condition. God appeals to both to awaken conscience and stir up the heart to diligence. “Flee from the wrath to come.” “Lay hold on eternal life.” “Mortify,” etc. (verses 5, 6, and text).
I. Christ our life. Many are Christ’s glorious titles, but none more precious than this. Christ is our life inasmuch as He negatively delivers from death. But He does much more. In a positive sense He is our life.
1. In bringing spiritual and eternal life to the soul dead in sin. There is no life without light. When God said, “Let there be light,” life soon came. So “in Him was light, and the light was the life of men.” We cannot believe Christ till we know Him; when we know Him we believe, and by faith comes life. “This is life eternal,” etc.
2. In being the indwelling life of the soul. An infidel once said to a negro, “How can God dwell in man and man in God?” “How can fire be in iron and iron in fire? When the bar is in the furnace,” was the reply. “In Christ.” “Christ in you.”
3. Through the soul’s going out to Him for spiritual life and blessing. Plants stretch towards the light. If they are closed in a dark house, and there be a chink through which the light shines, they will stretch in that direction. Where there is spiritual life it will move towards Christ in faith and love.
4. In being the strength of our life. Herein lies alone our power for good against evil. It is no easy thing to live the Christian life; and forms afford little help against temptation and for duty. The old man must be thrown off and the new man put on, and Christ only is sufficient for that and just as we are strong in Christ shall we be able to discharge the duties here laid down.
II. Christ our hope.
1. The present position of the Christian is good:his prospect is equally good. Hence not only Christ crucified, but Christ coming was the subject of apostolic Leaching. Christ’s first coming was the desire of all nations; His second the grand hope of the Church.
2. His redeemed people will appear with Him.
(1) They will for ever emerge from their obscurity.
(2) They will be made glorious. The ambition of many is to shine in positions of honour; but surpassing every earthly distinction will be that of appearing with Christ. “If we suffer we shall also reign with Him,” and “be like Him” A dying soldier said to his friend, “I am going to the front.” The front is a position of danger and honour. This good soldier of Christ was going to the front to meet the last enemy, and also to receive the crown of victory. (T. West, B. A.)
Christ the life and hope of believers
Paul in the previous verse tells believers that their life is hid. “When shall it be discovered?” they might object. He here tells them.
I. Christ is our life.
1. As its author (Joh_14:6).
2. As its matter (Joh_6:48).
3. As its exerciser and actor (Joh_15:5).
4. As its strengthener and cherisher (Psa_138:3).
5. As its completer and finisher (Heb_12:2; Php_1:6). This being the case let us--
(1) Not repent of anything done, suffered, or lost for Him. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.”
(2) Highly prize the Lord Jesus. He is worthy, and consider how highly He prizes you; and a Christ highly prized will be gloriously obeyed.
II. Believers shall at last appear glorious (Jdg_15:14; 1Co_15:43-44; 1Co_15:51-55; 1Th_4:13; Mat_19:26-28). The reasons are because--
1. The day of their appearing will be the marriage day of the lamb. Mourning weeds will be put off, and glorious robes put on.
2. They shall appear as kings crowned; here they are kings elected with the crown in reversion (2Ti_4:7-8).
3. Their enemies and persecutors will seethem in their true character as God’s favoured ones.
4. Their manifestation will make much for the honour of Christ. The more glorious the body or the bride, the more glorious the head or bridegroom.
5. The wicked will then justify the goodness and mercy of God in His dealings with His people. Objections will then be answered (Job_21:15; Mal_3:14).
6. They shall be employed in glorious work (1Co_6:2-3). (T. Brooks.)
Christ the life and hope of the Church
I. Christ is our life. Our life is bound up with His. He is Source, Medium, Giver. This destroys every hope of obtaining salvation without Him. Then let the sinner trust Him alone; and let this truth fill the Christian with joy.
II. Christ is now hid.
1. He was so to the Old Testament Church, before His first coming; He is so to the New Testament Church before His second coming. There is nothing that speaks to our eyes or ears. But this is true also of God Himself.
2. But as the invisible things of God are manifested in creation, so the invisible things of Christ are made patent by the influence of His preached truth upon the mind and heart. We live “by faith not by sight.”
3. This does not interfere with His purposes of mercy. Both God and Christ can bless without discovery to the senses, and if this fact becomes a snare and an affliction to those who trust Him, it is because they seek Him by sense not by faith.
4. By this arrangement thegospel appeals to the higher elements of our nature, to those faculties which identify us with the angels; and thus it tends to lift us above the seen and temporal. It compels us to think, and should call forth gratitude.
III. Christ shall one day appear.
1. This subject is shrouded in mystery, and every speculation as to the time, etc., has been falsified; which should warn us off, and turn us to practical preparation for His coming.
2. There is a sense in which Christ appears--
(1) in proportion as His cause triumphs;
(2) to nations, that knew Him not, when they receive His gospel;
(3) to believers at conversion and every stage of the spiritual life;
(4) to dying saints;
(5) to His people in the disembodied state. But these are all different from and inferior to the manifestation at the last day.
3. His second coming is looked forward to not only by the Church on earth. Patriarchs, etc., who never saw Him on earth await it; so do glorified saints who have not forgotten the promises they learned here.
4. The purposes for which He shall appear are important in relation to--
(1) His adversaries, who shall be completely subdued.
(2) His friends, who have been aspersed and persecuted, and shall then be honoured and rewarded.
(3) Himself; for His honour will then be vindicated in the presence of the Jew, unbeliever, and denier of His Godhead.
(4) God, whose justice and mercy have been denied.
IV. His people shall appear with him in glory.
1. As Christ is hid so are His people. The angels know them (Luk_15:1-32.; Heb_1:1-14.) but not the world, and sometimes not one another; and many are hid in heaven.
2. When He appears so will they.
(1) In countless multitudes; think of the millions of infants who have been saved the conflict, and the millions of believers who have triumphed over it.
(2) In distinct individuality, as “every eyeshall see Him,” so they.
(3) As identified with Christ. “Thine they were, and Thou hast given them Me.”
(4) In glory--free from sin and sorrow; publicly acquitted; possessed of the kingdom; body and soul happy for ever, and both like Christ. Let us hasten forward to meet this glory. (Joseph Davies.)
The Christian’s winter and summer
In winter the green tree is like the dry. Summer comes, and the living loot produces leaves and fruits. So our winter is the concealment of Christ, our summer His manifestation (verse 3). Yes, dead full surely. But dead in appearance, alive at the roots. And think of the summer burst which is to follow--when Christ, who is our life, shall appear. Lo, my covenant, dear God! I will die to myself that Thou mayest live in me. (Augustine.)
Anticipations of glory
Do you ever feel like those lions in the Zoological Gardens, restlessly walking up and down before the bars of their cage, and seeming to feel that they were never meant to be confined? Sometimes they are for thrusting their heads through the bars, and then for dashing back and tearing the back of their dungeon, or for rending up the pavement beneath them, as if they yearned for liberty. Does your soul ever want to get free from her cage? Here is an iron bar of sin, of doubt, and there is another iron bar of mistrust and infirmity. You may have seen an eagle with a chain upon its foot, standing on a reck--poor unhappy thing! it flaps its wings--looks up to the sun--wants to fly right straight ahead at it and stare the sun out of countenance--looks to the blue sky, and seems as if it could sniff the blue beyond the dusky clouds, and wants to be away; and so it tries its wings and dreams of mounting--but that chain, that cruel chain, remorselessly holds it down. Has not it often been so with you? You feel, “I am not meant to be what I am; I have a something in me which is adapted for something better and higher, and I want to mount and soar, but that chain--that dragging chain of the body of sin and death will keep me down.” Now it is to such as you that this text comes, and says to you, “Yes, your present state is not your soul’s true condition, you have a hidden life in you; that life of yours pants to get out of the bonds and fetters which control it, and it shall be delivered soon, for Christ is coming, and the same appearance that belongs to Him belongs to you. And then your day of true happiness, and joy, and peace, and everything that you are panting for, and longing for, shall certainly come too.” I wonder whether the little oak inside the acorn--for there is a whole oak there, and there are all the roots, and all the boughs, and everything inside that acorn- I wonder whether that little oak inside the acorn ever has any premonition of the summer weather that will float over it a hundred years hence, and of the mists that will hang in autumn on its sere leaves, and of the hundreds of acorns which itself will cast, every autumn, upon the earth, when it shall become in the forest a great tree. You and I are like that acorn; inside of each of us are the germs of great things. There is the tree that we are to be--I mean there is the spiritual thing we are to be, both in body and soul even now within us, and sometimes here below, in happy moments, we get some inklings of what we are to be; and then how we want to burst the shell, to get out of the acorn and to be the oak! Ay, but stop. Christ has not come, Christian, and you cannot get out of that till the time shall come for Jesus to appear, and then shall’ you appear with Him in glory. You will very soon perceive in your rainwater certain ugly little things which swim and twist about in it, always trying if they can to reach the surface and breathe through one end of their bodies. What makes these little things so lively, these innumerable little things like very small tadpoles, why are they so lively? Possibly they have an idea of what they are going to be. The day will come when all of a sudden there will come out of the case of the creature that you have had swimming about in your water, a long-legged thing with two bright gauze-like wings, which will mount into the air, and on a summer’s evening will dance in the sunlight. It is a gnat you have swimming there in one of its earliest stages. You are just like that; you are an undeveloped being; you have not your wings yet, and yet sometimes in your activity for Christ, when the strong desires of something better are upon you, you leap in foretaste of the bliss to come I do not know what I am to be, but I feel that there is a heart within me too big for these ribs to hold, I have an immortal spark which cannot have been intended to burn on this poor earth, and then to go out; it must have been meant to burn on heaven’s altar. Wait a bit, and when Christ comes you will know what you are. We are in the chrysalis state now, and those who are the liveliest worms among us grow more and more uneasy in that chrysalis state. Some are so frozen up in it that they forget the hereafter, and appear content to remain a chrysalis for ever. But others of us feel we would sooner not be than be what we now are for ever, we feel as if we must burst our bonds, and when that time of bursting shall come, when the chrysalis shall get its painted wings and mount to the land of flowers, then shall we be satisfied. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
