The Good News of God eBook

My friends, I trust that you have not so learned Christ.  And if you have, it is from no teaching of your Bible, of your Catechism, or your Prayer-book; and, I say boldly, from no teaching of mine.  The Church bids you say, Yes; I have a human nature in me; and what nature is that but the nature which the Son of God took on himself, and redeemed, and justified it, and glorified it, sitting for ever now in his human nature at the right hand of God, the Son of man who is in heaven?  Yes, I am a man; and what is it to be a man, but to be the image and glory of God?  What is it to be a man?  To belong to that race whose Head is the co-equal and co-eternal Son of God.  True, it is not enough to have only a human nature which may sin, will sin, must sin, if left to itself a moment.  But you have, unless the Holy Spirit has left you, and your baptism is of none effect, more than human nature in you:  you have divine grace—­that supernatural grace and Spirit of God by which man stood in Paradise, and by neglecting which he fell.

Obey that Spirit; from him comes every right judgment of your minds, every good desire of your hearts, every thought and feeling in you which raises you up, instead of dragging you down; which bids you do your duty, and live the life of God and Christ, instead of living the mere death-in-life of selfish pleasure and covetousness.  Obey that Spirit, and be men:  men indeed, that you may not come to shame in the day when Christ the Son of Man shall take account of you, how you have used your manhood, body, soul, and spirit.

SERMON XXIV.  THE CHARITY OF GOD

(Quinquagesima Sunday.)

Luke xviii. 31, 32, 33.

All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.  For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:  and they shall scourge him and put him to death; and the third day he shall rise again.

This is a solemn text, a solemn Gospel; but it is not its solemnity which I wish to speak of this morning, but this—­What has it to do with the Epistle, and with the Collect?  The Epistle speaks of Charity; the Collect bids us pray for the Holy Spirit of Charity.  What have they to do with the Gospel?

Let me try to show you.

The Epistle speaks of God’s eternal charity.  The Gospel tells us how that eternal charity was revealed, and shown plainly in flesh and blood on earth, in the life and death of Jesus Christ our Lord.

But you may ask, How does the Epistle talk of God’s charity?  It bids men be charitable; but the name of God is never mentioned in it.  Not so, my friends.  Look again at the Epistle, and you will see one word which shows us that this charity, which St. Paul says we must have, is God’s charity.

For, he says, Charity never faileth; that though prophecies shall fail, tongues cease, knowledge vanish away, charity shall never fail.  Now, if a thing never fail, it must be eternal.  And if it be eternal, it must be in God.  For, as I have reminded you before about other things, the Athanasian Creed tells us (and never was truer or wiser word written) there is but one eternal.