Scripture Readings: John 1:1-18. Also 1st John 1.
Texts: “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” “That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” “And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” John 1:4-5 and 9 and 16.
Salvation is positive and active, the result of life; not negative or quiescent, the result of death which is an end to all activity. Salvation is the result of the life of God manifest in Jesus Christ. He said, “I have come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly.” “He that hath the Son hath life, he that hath not the Son hath not life.” It is true this life of God in Christ, this saving life, was poured out completely, even unto death on Calvary’s cross, but the source of salvation is the given life, —given that it might be imparted and received.
Theology says that salvation is something that changes God before He will change and save man. The Lord says, “I am the Lord, I change not. With me there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever.” “He loved us with a great and everlasting love even when we were dead in trespasses and sin.” You notice the Bible calls sin death, so that when we are sinners, we are dead in sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. Then death cannot save us by conquering death, only life can conquer death. Life in the end, is not only to conquer death but also to annihilate it. “There shall be no more death.” “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Before death can be destroyed sin and separation from God, which produce death, must first be no more.
“In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” Life was light; and Life is light. Light enables us to see physically. Externally this is so, even though we do not know what light we are do know it is the external medium which enables us to see. What enables us to see internally? O, you say, it is the eye. The Saviour recognized this truth when He said, “The light of the body is the eye.” But there is a truth back of that. We could not see if the eye were perfect, but the optic nerve was divided or paralysed, so you can now understand that it is with the brain we see, the eye itself is only the organ of seeing, even as light is the medium of seeing. Let us go another step. Suppose the light is all right, the eye is all right, the optic nerve and the brain perfect, but there is no life or life is even for an instant suspended in its action, we could not see, feel, hear, smell or taste, so after all it is this mysterious something called life that is the light of the body and by it only are we conscious. And this is the Life of God for “He is the fountain of life.” “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
It is the same in the spiritual as in the physical realm. God created the worlds, —created us through Christ by the life of God manifested through Christ and this is manifest on both planes. The beginning of the new creation is divinely imparted light. God said, “Let there be light and there was light.” “Even so He hath shined into our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are told to anoint our spiritual eyes with the eye salve of His Spirit that we may see. It is only through Christ in us that we can see, feel, taste, and hear spiritual things and become conscious of the spiritual realm. And it is only by His strengthening us by His might that we can desire or do them. So completely is the new life a New Creation and so entirely of God. “He is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” “Of his fulness have we all received, and grace for grace.” Grace is unmerited favour. God has given all men this unmerited favour in giving Christ to save the world and having done this He continues to impart through Him Grace yet more complete.
But do all men know they have some of this divine life and light? No, most of them have only glimmerings of spiritual consciousness, and like struggling dreams in the night these are obscured by their own selfishness, and so the scripture says, “The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” The original word “comprehendeth” means to receive fully, and that is why He keeps giving us grace for grace “That Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we being rooted and grounded in life and love may be able to comprehend what is the length and breadth and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
O, the wonder, and pathos of it, this constantly outpouring flood tide of the love life of God, ever misunderstood, maligned, spit upon and crucified, yet ever trying to manifest itself in all the spiritual beauty of the world. It is like the constant life and death struggle of plant life, the good and beautiful ones are ever being crowded to death by persistent and noxious weeds, and in His garden and in His harvest field we find these tares, but “an enemy hath done this.” We also see this in Christ’s life on earth in the Temple Ecclesiastics who had no concept of the Spiritual beauty of Christ’s life that shone upon them. Even His disciples only partly comprehended this Life. Why can we not identify ourselves with men as Paul says, “Henceforth I will know no man after the flesh.” He was determined to see the struggling spiritual life in all and such a life worth living, working for, and dying for. Let us henceforth serve Him through men who need our love instead of to serve him in empty forms and ceremonies and creeds.
Another beautiful illustration is that of a growing plant. We cannot change the form of it, it will grow in its own way, and will burst all artificial barriers, and appear in the most unexpected places. It is so with the Life of Christ. The spirit goeth whither it listeth. You cannot confine it within creedal or denominational barriers, and it will create its own forms. Not long since in a meeting of ministers a paper was read on the “Comparative Value of Religions.” And the ideas expressed kept Christianity down to an institutionalized form. Most of it was hazy, no definite concepts presented, and I said to them, there is good in all religions because there is good in all men. There is good in all men simply because there is Christ in all men, at least a struggling, crucified Christ seeking to express himself in the soul of every man. Often the good is in the people instead of the religion, oftentimes in the people in spite of the religion. If, as is often the case, the religion has degenerated until it is wholly of the flesh, then the good is only in the people and in them in spite of their religion.
Wherever there is salvation in any man or among any people it is because Christ is there. The thought seemed to illuminate every mind as a light from above. Why had they not seen this before? Because the Christianity in their minds had been compared with a creed, their own, so that it made a barrier to be overcome before they could see the Life and Light from above. The Christianity of my text transcends all religions; it is a spiritual, divine thing existing in embryo in all men and seeking through the new birth to express itself fully in all our hearts.
Christ was “not ashamed to call us brethren.” And the all-important thing is to “comprehend this Light,” which is in the heart of every man.
“O Love, O Life, our faith and sight,
Thy presence maketh one;
As through transfigured clouds of white
We trace the noon-day sun.
We faintly hear, we dimly see,
In differing phrase we pray;
But dim or clear, we own in Thee,
The Light, the Truth, the Way.”
— Whittier.
George E. Fifield
There is the worship of God through the motive of love; and the worship of the devil, through motives of fear."
— George E. Fifield in the Sermon Love Versus Fear
Nothing is clearer than that the Bible teaches that a separation of true Christianity from the false, so-called Christianity will take place prior to Christ’s return to this earth. Some people believe this separation will take place over the day that will be observed as the Sabbath; and, so they go about devoting almost their entire effort to getting people to observe the right day, and necessarily paying little attention to getting people to experience the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath, since they have not had that experience themselves. In other words, they put the sign before the experience signified, just as the later Jews did with the sign of circumcision, and just the opposite from the way in which, it is clearly stated, God gave circumcision to Abraham. This inevitably puts the Sabbath into the Old Covenant, just as the Jews put circumcision there, and teaches the people to seek their righteousness through obedience, instead of seeking to be made righteous by the divine indwelling, so they can truly and spiritually obey.