Galatians 6:14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me… I. THE NATURE OF HIS GLORYING. And the word itself is for most of us, at first thought, of evil odour and association. For where men and women have been given to boast and glory, it has ordinarily been assumed to be the outworking of personal pride or the dictate of personal vanity, a pretension to greatness or an aping of superiority that most men and moralists have resented as offensive and loved to discipline with contempt and humiliation. Now, I do not deny that there is a kind (I will not say a degree) of that self-appreciation, right and proper, not to be repressed in ourselves or censured in our neighbours; but in practice about one of the best safeguards in young or old, for nobility and purity of character. A man should always have so high an opinion of his own honour that he would not stoop to dishonour; and so good an estimate of his own worth that he will scorn to degrade himself by a mean or vulgar or discreditable action. But that opinion we all have a right to form of ourselves, simply as men, apart from any circumstances peculiar to us personally. Now, that is what we call the self-conscious type of glorying, which you know is very common, and is not by any means an insignificant force and factor in society, and among the ordinary working motives of men. And there are at least two natural checks to it which we must mention, though only incidentally and on our path to higher truths. First, consider the inconceivable littleness of the very best that you or I can be or do, compared with the immensities around us, in which we are less than a speck upon the mountain. "What impression do I make in Europe?" inquired a petty chief in the centre of Africa, from a daring traveller who visited his hut. Surrounded by barbaric honours, he little thought that two hundred miles away they had never heard his name. But, again, remember that what distinguishing qualities may be yours admit of two interpretations. Either you may regard them as lifting you up to superior honour, in which case of course you glory; or you may think of them as burdening you with unusual responsibility, which aspect of the matter can surely only work humility. For if God Almighty has given you peculiar endowments of mind or property, or appointed you a place where in some measure you will be the light and leader of men, ah! my friend, let others think it a glorious thing to be the pilot of a vessel amid the cruel rocks and breakers, where the safety of five hundred lives may depend upon your skill; or the captain of an army, where the destruction of tens of thousands may result from one trivial blunder. But for you, if in society you are in any sense a pilot or a captain, to strut in conscious self-appreciation, is to show yourself unworthy of the trust, incapable of realizing the responsibility, and self-condemned of moral inferiority before the eye of men. God forbid that in aught pertaining to myself I should glory. However, I find there is a saving clause in our text — "Save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" — which redeems the matter of glorying from unqualified condemnation. Glorying, when selfish or in the least tainted with selfishness, is contemptible; when it is unselfish, it may simply be sublime. To take a simple example. Have you never known some leal-hearted old nurse, for instance, who in the days of her infancy attended some little boy for pay, and gave him besides a true affection that could not be rewarded by the gold she got then or ever for her services. He grew up in her hands, and passed out to a brilliant career at school, in college, and in the world. Those old affectionate eyes followed his bright course day by day. He was no child of hers. He was never likely to lift her from her lowly station. She had no claim or hope to share his renown. But every hour his name was on her lips; every paper was searched with eager hope to find some mention of his praise; and when it comes on to the hour of her sickness and pain and death (I am not imagining a story), the message from the far-away place of his fame will strengthen her heart for the last struggle, and the thought that he will come to follow her hearse forecasts a brightness on her grave. The old creature unselfishly glories in him who was her charge, and that boasting is not despicable, but humanly beautiful and even grand. So, who does not know that "the poor swearing soldier" may come so to glory in his country's flag, and his regiment's honour, and his captain's renown, that he will step forward to be shot down into the ditch, that unpraised and unnoticed there his body may support the feet of gallant comrades on their way to victory. His glorying is unselfish, and for that reason not despicable, but sublime. And I am deeply convinced, brethren, that no life of yours or mine can ever be so fine and potent as it is capable of becoming, so long as it contents itself by merely restraining this Galatian vanity, and does not go on to replace it by apostolic enthusiasm. In other words, to make the best of our lives, they must be utterly consecrated to some cause outside themselves. II. We pass on to consider THE BASIS OR SUBJECT OF THE APOSTLE'S GLORYING. "I glory in nothing but a cross." But this paradox, though at the time a" stumbling-block" and "foolishness," is by no means a permanent difficulty of the gospel. For often and often throughout the course of history you find things that visibly were weak and contemptible transfigured by splendid principles behind them into a glory that has burned their image on the minds of men for ever. A simple example will serve. One of the notable traditions of the world is that of the gallant burgher of Flensburg, who, on his way to have his battle-wounds dressed, paused, with Sidney's very exclamation, "Thy need is greater than mine," to empty the contents of his own flask into the lips of a dying enemy. But perhaps you have heard how, when his noble offer of help was replied to only by a desperate wound from the hand of him whom he was denying himself to befriend, he still persisted in his mercy; and just muttering, "Rascal, I would have given you the whole bottle, but now you shall only have the half," drained off a part himself, and with the rest still eased the thirst of his unworthy foe. The wooden bottle, pierced with an arrow, which his king, on making him a noble, gave him as his armorial bearings, was itself of no great concern. But behind that trifle, you see, there lay a deed and a principle which have lifted it among the noblest emblems of chivalry, and made it a thing in which the hero's sons might "glory," while a whisper of his deed lingered in tradition or a tinge of his blood was in the veins of men. But what are those transfiguring principles behind the symbol? Of these two principles, love and sacrifice, the Cross is the external token, and from them, for the apostle and all men, it derived its meaning and its glory. 1. Love. 2. Sacrifice. III. But now, IN WHAT SENSE WAS THE WORLD CRUCIFIED TO THE APOSTLE, AND HE TO THE WORLD, BY DEVOTION TO THE CROSS OF THE SAVIOUR? What is the meaning of this language? Well, I fancy we have all seen, in common life, something very like it; and borrowing an illustration, it may be possible to paint the truth in other colours than its own. Perhaps you have known some young neighbour of yours very fond of singing, very fond of reading, very fond of drawing and sketching, and passionately fond of society. She is now only a few years older, nothing more. But how comes it that the only songs she cares for now are simple lullabies; and all the pictures she makes are little rapid ones, to be crushed the next hour by baby fingers; and tales of half a page are her only literature? Besides, she does does not now much care for society. There is a transformation, and by that infant life given in charge to her the world that once was hers is become dead to her and she dead to the world. Is not this something akin to the great apostle's transformation? I repeat that the problem of the Christian life for you and me is likely somewhat different to what it was for this first great missionary. Him the Cross of Christ severed off entirely from the world's pleasures and business. You and me it sends back with purified motives to the world's pleasures and business. The question is, In what way should I be dead to the world, and the world dead to me? One often wonders why it is that men and women, capable of such high and varied enjoyments and with things so beautiful and good around them, are yet able on the whole to enjoy life so little, and in grasping natural good, find it become ashes in their hands; and the glory of what they coveted, when they have got it, becomes darkness to their eyes. I do not believe there are half the men of your acquaintance who have tried hard to make the most of the world, and have succeeded splendidly, who, if asked in private conference seriously, will not answer that substantial happiness rarely advanced with upward movement; and that their outward triumphs have very largely been inner disappointment. What is the meaning of that old lament on the folly of the sons of men? Is it God's way of commentary on what apparently is the sentiment of our text, namely, that every man's good consists in dying to the ordinary affairs of time? I was just thinking over these commonplace matters last night, brethren, when, looking out of my own window, I saw a dark crescent creeping over the surface of our lovely full moon; on and on it spread, till it blotted out her whole mild light, leaving her a big ashy ball hanging out from the sky, and the earth in comparative darkness. The fault of last night's eclipse is not altogether to be charged upon the beautiful moon. It was our own earth that swung itself in between her and the sun, preventing the solar rays from getting at our attendant, and then, of course, she had a natural revenge upon us, in not being able to reflect them back upon ourselves again. But the darkness of the moon was just our own shadow falling upon her surface, and blotting out her beauty. Brethren, I could not help feeling it was a symbol of what often happens in my own life and that of thousands about me. This belief of my heart never wavers, that God Almighty has made all things of which the world is composed to bless and please and gladden the lives of His dear children. His love is reflected from every one of them. But we fling upon them the shadow of our own selfishness and vices, and then, in return, they throw back upon our hearts the dark eclipse-shade of sorrow and disappointment. For instance, we win wealth: and if we got it righteously, and used it nobly and usefully, let us not talk the common cant about its powerlessness to yield a pleasure that will not cloy, and afford a true and solid satisfaction. But we get it by "shady dealing," or we use it selfishly, to the hardening of our own hearts, or cruelly, to the injury instead of the blessing of others; and is it wonderful that God's love is not reflected in the glitter of our gold, and that the light of our prosperity is darkness? How much of the eclipse of our lawful joy is the shadow of our own guilt and selfishness? But I repeat again, it is not necessary, or even probable, that your call, like that of Saul of Tarsus, is to become, as if crucified by Christ's Cross, dead to secular aims, common pleasures, and domestic comforts and attachments. Your vocation may be to live in and enjoy these for your own good and the benefit of men. And I know of no lawful business, the lowliest, that cannot be so administered as to do essential service to that gospel cause which is wide enough (if we were wide enough to understand it) to embrace all tendencies of good to the souls or the bodies of men; whose Author not merely taught the consciences, but fed the hunger of His followers, and to which every part of man is redeemed and precious. (John Irwin, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. |
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