James Nisbet Commentary - Romans 8:17 - 8:17

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James Nisbet Commentary - Romans 8:17 - 8:17


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HEIRS OF GOD

‘Heirs of God.’

Rom_8:17

Plainly an heir is one who has some future property coming to him—a property which he will come to, and which no one can take from him. It is his for certain. But it is in the future, and as yet he is not in the enjoyment of it. There are many ways in which the heir to a fortune may never come to his fortune.

I. He may make away with it beforehand, squandering it during the time of his minority.—This is one way in which we see many a fine fortune wasted. The case of Esau is a case in point. How many Esaus will there be?

II. He may break the covenant.—Or, again, the will may have had conditions attached to it, saying that the heir should come to the property if he did so-and-so, or abstained from doing it. No one could take away the property from him; but he can break the conditions, so that when he comes of age there is nothing for him to come to—only the vexatious, bitter feeling that he has, of his own choice, voluntarily broken the terms of the will by which he was made heir to the property which he can look at but never enjoy. So with the Christian. Our Catechism teaches us that there is such a thing as the baptismal covenant. Now a covenant means an agreement or a bargain. And the baptismal covenant is that which sets forth to us the conditions on which the christened child shall come hereafter to the inheritance which is then sealed to him. No one can say that he is ignorant of the conditions of his heavenly inheritance, for they are the very first things which every Christian child is taught. The worst of it is that so many of us grow up without attending to them, and so the words lose their force, like all words do which we hear often without obeying them. But this is our fault, and in the world to come we shall have to confess that it has been our own carelessness, and that alone, which has led us to think little of the conditions of our inheritance.

III. He may lose his life.—Or a person may be heir to a property, but he may never live to enjoy it. And this leads us to the most dreadful thought of all that are connected with our heavenly inheritance. Our inheritance is a spiritual one. Our coming of age is in the world to come. The life which we commence in our baptism is a spiritual life. What if that spiritual life should die out utterly, even before this life is over? Then for us there is no hope. There may be such a thing as being spiritually dead even while we live. It may be that a man may so utterly brutify himself—that he may give himself up so utterly to sin and evil—that the spiritual nature may be as good as dead, so that there is nothing in him which can inherit the Kingdom of God.

IV. Spiritual minors.—There is yet one more thought which this word heir brings before us. When a man makes a will, and leaves an estate to an heir, an estate which the child is not to come to before he is of age, he provides that the child shall be sustained during his minority. It is so again with us. God does not leave us to all the dangers of this world without giving us the food and sustenance necessary to keep up our spiritual life until our minority is over; neither does He leave us without that education in things spiritual which is necessary to prepare us for our future inheritance. What is our minority? All through this life we are spiritually minors. We are unable to provide for ourselves, and God provides for us. We cannot provide our own spiritual sustenance any more than an untaught child could provide its own living. We cannot teach ourselves any more than a young pupil could be his own tutor or his own guardian. And so this is what God gives us His Holy Spirit for—the Spirit of Wisdom and Knowledge, the Spirit of Counsel and true Godliness—to train and teach us and to educate us until, when our minority is over, we are fit for the spiritual inheritance we are to enter upon in God’s own world hereafter.



SUFFERING THE PRELUDE TO GLORY

‘If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.’

Rom_8:17

These words had a special meaning and application for the days of the Apostles. But they have a meaning for ourselves too. We have need of help as much as the people of the Early Church, though not exactly in the same ways, and we can get our help in remembering the unseen, as they did.

How shall we learn to be quiet and content knowing that if we suffer then we shall be glorified? Let us turn to the help.

I. The help of Christ. Of course our first and greatest help is in the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.—As we remember His life and sufferings, and as we claim our membership with Him, we learn His love and power, and help comes. This is a very familiar thought, some know its truth well. But, after all, this too is a matter of faith, and faith is not always strong; faith does not always seem able to lay hold on these things.

Let me speak to you of another way of help, perhaps not quite so much thought of, a way in which we may strengthen even faith itself.

II. The help of our own past experiences.—Now, it is quite true that we have not had the experiences of St. Paul. We have never been blessed with the vision of heaven. We have never been made happy by a sense of the presence of angels, and the holy beings of the unseen world.

But yet we may have had experiences which have helped us, and from which we may now draw courage, strength, and hope.

(a) First in the matter of pain. Think of some one who has suffered much and endeavoured to bear the pain well. He has not said much about it, but has rather tried to be silent.

(b) So also with poverty. It may bring with it a great sense of loss. If all has been borne quietly, making the best of what there was, submitting to the will of God when a thing could not be done, waiting in hope of better times to come, may not the man, the real man, be the better and the stronger for it?

(c) Very much the same may be said of sorrow. Murmuring, fretting, temptations, even doubts of God, may easily make sorrow much harder to bear. The man who will not let these things be found in him, who keeps his sorrow to himself, not going about asking sympathy from all he meets; the man who recognises the many little things that may come, that do come, in the way of comfort, that show that God has not forgotten, has not left him alone, and is grateful for them; does not such a man become stronger in self-restraint and faith in God?

(d) Or think of temptation. To any self-respecting man, any man of honour, much more to any man who knows what his life should be before God, temptation is a real suffering. But if he watches against it, if he overcomes it, and though he may be very near falling, yet is able to say, ‘No, I did not do it, I am thankful to say’; is not such an one a better man for it? Does it not add something to his life?

(e) The same thing is true of persecution. If a true man is persecuted for doing what is right he gains a firmer hold on the right itself. He studies it more, and so becomes more sure of his duty to uphold it, to stand by it, and so if need be to suffer for it.

We may find that far more than we knew at the time, the life of Christ has been our life, and that we have power, and have gained something in that to which we hope to come, ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’ and think what will it be when we are perfected! Think what will be the glory when the suffering is ended!

Bishop E. W. Osborne.