Lecture XXV · Stedfastness in the Lord

THE division into chapters has not been very happily made here. The ‘ therefore’ which introduces the verse before us, shows plainly that the injunction, ‘ Stand fast in the Lord,’ is closely connected with what precedes, as the practical application. It would consequently have been better had this verse, at least, been attached to the 3rd chapter. Again, the 2nd and 3rd verses appear to be a kind of appendix to the first, applying the general rule there given to a special case. With them ends the important section of the Epistle which began with the 2nd verse of the 3rd chapter, and which is, in its nature, something of an episode, or digression. In the 4th verse, the apostle returns to the point he had reached in the 1st verse of the previous chapter, and reiterates the precept there given. With this reiteration the 4th chapter would most naturally have begun.

‘ Therefore’ has been held by some to point back over the whole of the episodical section of which I have spoken. In this case, the apostle’s meaning would be,—‘You are exposed, on the one hand, to the influence of some active and plausible teachers, who would have you substitute entirely, or partially, faith in ritual and your own works for faith in — Christ,—on the other hand, to that of persons who tell you that, because we are saved through faith in Christ alone, a2 holy life is a matter of no account. See to it, therefore, that — ee ye stand fast in the Lord,”—maintaining, by prayer and firm resistance to self-righteousness, a spirit of absolute childlike dependence on Him; and proving that you are in Him, and understand the nature of His salvation and of saving faith, by living a godly life.’ This reference to both parts of the previous discussion would, I think, have been the most natural, but for the word ‘so,’—‘ So stand fast in the Lord.’ This particle seems to connect the injunction specially with the immediately preceding verses, and thus with the second part of the discussion ; for the force of the ‘so’ is, apparently, ‘as becomes persons who are citizens of heaven, and entertain such: glorious hopes.’ Whilst the apostle, therefore, glances, no doubt, at the whole ground occupied in his previous observations, yet, in enjoining the Philippians to ‘stand fast in the Lord,’ the thought of Ao/iness is mainly in his mind. ‘See to it that, through thoughtfulness, and vigilance, and prayer, your character be such as, with growing clearness, to evince spiritual union with the Lord.’

The union between Christ and His people, to which the phrase ‘in the Lord’ points, and which is the spring of all the Christian’s joys and hopes, is of a twofold character, legal and spiritual. By His Father’s appointment, and His own ineffable love, Jesus was so identified, as it were, with those He came to save, as to be treated, not according to His deserts, but theirs,— wounded and bruised, subjected to grief and to death, in their room; whilst they are so identified with Him, as to be treated, not according to their own deserts, but to His,— introduced, for His sake, into glory, and honour, and eternal life. This legal union is the fundamental blessing of the Christian salvation. All the others rest upon it. The spiritual union is what may be described as the community of spiritual life —of thought, and affection, and enjoyment—existing between Christ and believers. This is produced by the influence of the Holy Spirit, through the operation on our souls of that same faith of the gospel by which, according to God’s ap-

pointment, we enter actually into the legal relation of union to our Saviour—or, in other words, are justified. Christ’s mind and heart are unfolded in His word; and, by the constitution of our moral nature, become our mind and heart, in proportion as we understand and believe the word. The believer, in so far as he is a believer, has the same views and the same desires as his Lord. ‘He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.’ ‘If any man be in Christ,’ says the apostle in — another place, ‘he is a new creature.’ The meaning of his exhortation in the verse now before us then, I apprehend, is, ‘Let the fact that you are new creatures be so indisputable as to prove that you are in Christ,—let the flower bloom so beautifully as to leave no room for doubt regarding the existence and healthy vigour of the unseen root.’

How the life of Christ in a true believer, through the spiritual union, will reveal itself, the candid reader of Scripture can be in no doubt. The new man feels himself sweetly constrained to ‘cease to do evil,’ and to ‘learn to do well.’ He is impelled by the mercies of God to ‘ present his body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God;’ feeling this to be ‘reasonable — service,’ and that anything else, on the part of a being like man, who has a body, and lives an outward life, would be an insult to the Father of our spirits and the Former of our bodies. He is no longer ‘conformed to this world,’ but ‘transformed by the renewing of his mind.’ He loves his fellow-men, and cares for them with an interest which regards eternity as well as time. Honour and manliness, courtesy and gentleness, in all his dealings, reveal a heart made generous and tender through the knowledge of the love of Christ. His life, in all its relations, is regulated by reverence and affection for his Saviour; so that he is a legible ‘ epistle of Christ,’ — telling ail around who do not wilfully close their eyes, of the grace and power of his Lord. By such a life as this—a holy ~ Christlike life, at home and with strangers, in business and in — recreation, with servants and with superiors—a man is shown —

ἊΨ x, to be ‘in Christ.’ It is true that the most spiritually-minded Christian, so long as he is on earth, will fall far short of perfectly exhibiting the Christian character; but no man who does not earnestly and prayerfully aim at exhibiting it perfectly, has any right to believe himself to be ‘in Christ.’ And, the nearer the approach made, the clearer and more comforting always is the evidence. ‘Stand fast in the Lord,’ then, dear brethren. Let no temptation attract you—let no persecution daunt you—from that consistent beauty and energy of godliness by which faith approves itself sincere.

Strong arguments in support of the apostle’s injunction are found in the statements he has made in the verses immediately ‘ preceding,—to which he directs attention by his ‘ therefore’ and ‘so.’ ‘Seeing that, as Christians, your position is one of such dignity, and your hopes are so lofty,—stand fast in the Lord with the energy and persistency beseeming persons who regard themselves as citizens of heaven, and look for their Saviour to introduce them into the full blessedness and glory of His kingdom.’ The citizenship of heaven carries responsibility with it. A member of an illustrious community may reasonably be expected to guard the honour of the community, —to increase the respect felt for it, if this be in his power, and, at least, to abstain from everything which will reflect discredit upon it. A nobleman, even if he be in spirit a mean man, is strongly bound by his position to what the traditions of his class call honourable conduct. When a native of Great _ Britain, or of any other country distinguished by Christian Civilisation, travels in a foreign land, he should feel—and, in innumerable instances, no doubt, does feel—that the reputation of his country is, to some extent, in his keeping; and the sense of this will co-operate with other influences to restrain him from what is mean or cruel. Now the citizens of heaven have the most illustrious dignity which can be enjoyed by any creature; and this dignity has been bestowed upon them, not from any desert on their part, but simply through the kindness of their King. Ardent gratitude for His goodness, then, dear brethren, should certainly lead us to be vigilant in regard to our character, that thus glory may accrue to Him. The men of the world, the strangers to Christ, know that we claim to hold close relations with heaven. Let them be compelled to acknowledge that there is in us a purity and nobleness of sentiment and life, such as mere earthly influences are insufficient to produce. The life of every Christian should be like the fragrant breeze which, in tropical waters, tells the mariner, while still far out at sea, that the land from which it comes is a land of pleasant forests and gardens, where ‘the spices flow forth.’ It should testify, truthfully and clearly, of the sweetness and grace of heaven.

The apostle has drawn particular attention to the fact that Christians expect the Saviour, at His appearing, to change the ‘bodies of their humiliation’—the bodies in which, at the present, fleshly lusts exert such power, and which are subject to pain, and disease, and death,—and to make them like the.body in which His own mediatorial glory manifests itself. This expectation should give a deep sense of responsibility for our treatment of the body, as an instrument of our moral nature. My body is not loosely or temporarily connected with me. As I am an embodied thinking being now, so I shall be an embodied thinking being throughout eternity. The lips, then, which are to sing the high praises of our King above,—the limbs which are to be employed in serving Him day and night in His temple,—dare we use these as the instruments © of frivolity or vice? ‘ What, know ye not that your body is the ~ temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you,—which ye have of God; and ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price? Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which ‘

regarding their present position, and such expectations regarding their future, as the apostle here speaks of, are intelliare God’s.’ There can be no doubt that, in all by whom such views -

gently and vividly cherished, these views and hopes are fitted to exert very strongly an elevating influence on the heart and life. ‘Every man that hath this hope in Christ,’ says the Apostle John, ‘ purifieth himself, even as Christ is pure.’ In the measure of its liveliness, the hope holds up before the soul a noble ideal of character. Any man who really and intelligently regards himself as a citizen of heaven, and hopes for holy blessedness—the full enjoyment of this citizenship—after death, must often have before his mind heaven, and the moral features of its inhabitants. In common life, the life of buying and selling, of strifes and frivolities, men and women naturally form low conceptions both of what they may be and of what they should be. A character of fair outward respectability, but destitute of all real nobleness—of all high and generous aims,—is very apt to appear sufficient. To all who are unregenerate, however much there may be in their spirit which is beautiful and amiable, still something far below the highest capabilities of man always does seem sufficient. But as the spear of Milton’s Ithuriel had the power, by its touch, of making evil spirits stand forth in their native blackness and uncomeliness, however skilfully they had disguised themselves as angels of light; so the Christian’s sense of his relation to heaven reveals to his heart the essential vanity and despicableness of any form of life which is alien from the will of God. The application of the touchstone question, ‘ How would such conduct answer in heaven? Howwould such conduct become one who hopes for heaven, and deems himself a citizen of heaven ?’—this shows things as they are.

The ideal of character which in this way is brought and kept before the believer, is no mere abstraction, but is embodied in his Lord. He knows that the destiny of the Christian is to be, in the fullest sense of the wonderful words, up to the highest capabilities of humanity ‘conformed to the image of God’s Son.’ His expectation is that, when the Saviour shall appear ‘to change the body of our humiliation,

that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory,’ the soul then re-united to the body will be a perfectly Christlike soul. As, through the wondrous art of the photographer, the “Ὁ light of the sun of our firmament can print an image of beauty on paper which was once but filthy rags, so the light of the glory of grace will one day imprint the image of Jesus on the hearts of all His redeemed ones,—hearts which, by nature, were ‘ deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’ Now what the ‘open vision’ of the ‘ Altogether Lovely’ will effect perfectly in that day when ‘we shall see Him as He is,’ the partial vision enjoyed in the present state accomplishes in some degree. Here, on earth, with love, and confidence, and hope, ‘beholding the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’

The belief in our being citizens of heaven through faith in - Christ Jesus, and the expectation of being with Him and like Him for ever there, are, beyond question, eminently fitted, through the blessing of the Holy Ghost, to beautify and ennoble the character. Holiness is the proper fruit of intelligent Christian hope. ‘Therefore, my brethren, so stand fast in the Lord.’

This most important injunction is sent home to the hearts of the Philippians with peculiar power by the apostle’s tender words of endearment. He begins the verse by calling them his ‘brethren dearly beloved and longed for,’ his ‘joy and crown ;’ and he ends it, lingering most touchingly on the thought of his delight in them, with the repetition of his first epithet, ‘my dearly beloved. It is as if he said, ‘ By our brotherhood in Christ—by the ardent love I have for you, and — have in many ways proved—by my joy and glorying in your Christian stedfastness and beauty hitherto—and by the hopes I have been led to cherish of rejoicing and glorying in you in — the day of Christ,—I beseech you to stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.’ You feel that pleading of this kind, falling on the ears of men who knew how true Paul was in ~ all things, could not fail to be profoundly influential.

‘My joy and crown’ exhibits a thought very familiar to the apostle. The ‘crown’ is not here the diadem of royalty, but the garland of victory. He has in his mind, as so often, the famous public athletic games of the Greeks,—which the diligent training, and the strenuous and persevering exertion, needed to gain the ‘corruptible crown’ of laurel, and the intensity of joy felt by the victors, rendered an admirable illustration of the Christian life, whether as regards the spiritual progress of the believer himself, or his work for the salvation of others. The apostle believed that he would be enabled to ‘rejoice in the day of Christ, that he had not run in vain’ as a minister of Christ. He believed that the Lord would place around his brow an unfading garland of honour, of which each soul that had been quickened, comforted, strengthened by him, would be, so to speak, a spray or leaf,—‘ for,’ says he to the Thessalonians, ‘what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? for ye are our glory and joy.’ And even xow, from his confidence in the Christian character of the Philippians, as of many of his other converts, and his vivid anticipation of their welcome by the Master on the great day, he felt them to be ‘ his joy and crown.’ In Nero’s prison, aged, worn with trouble, manacled, uncertain whether he might not soon be led forth to death by the executioner, he knew himself to be yet in truth, as a successful minister of Christ, a conqueror, wreathed with amaranth. The emperor in his palace was, in heart, weary and wretched. The prisoner was restful and happy. The glitter of the emperors power and grandeur would very soon pass away, and be asa dream. His prisoner was already invested with a glory which, recognised in this world only by those whose eyes had been opened to discern spiritual things, should yet be manifested before the universe, _—for ‘they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever,’