‘THE LIGHT OF LIFE’
‘The light of life.’
‘Light’ and ‘life’ are words which have a strange connection everywhere. Even in the natural world, there must be ‘light’ if there would be ‘life.’ And if you take away ‘light’ out of ‘life,’ it is a poor thing to live. And so it is in a man’s inner and truer being. There is no ‘light’ without ‘life’; and there is no ‘life’ without ‘light.’ And the one fountain, from which both are eternally flowing on together, is the Lord Jesus Christ. We will look at them, then, in their distinctness, that we may understand them in their union.
I. Life.—As God calls ‘life,’ all ‘life’ is in Christ. Therefore Christ says, ‘I am the life’—‘I am come that they might have life.’ But how? In Christ as ‘the God’ in heaven, or in Christ as ‘the man’ born in the manger? Undoubtedly in ‘the man.’ Christ does not originate ‘life’—He receives it—He receives it as a Son. ‘For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.’ How does the ‘life’ which Christ took become the ‘life’ of any particular believer; or, which is the same thing, of all believers connectedly, i.e. of the Church?
(a) By an act of union; every man who loves his Lord and Saviour, undergoes a secret, mystic process, which cannot be told in language, nor followed in a thought; but by which he is actually joined to the Lord Jesus Christ.
(b) Do you ask, how that union is formed and increased? Read the sixth chapter of John. By an inward process, like eating food. The soul receives Christ into himself, feeds on Him by thoughts and affections, assimilates Him—makes Him one with all his parts and feelings, carries Him in his life-blood. The Holy Communion is the chief type and the greatest channel of that uniting process.
II. Passing from ‘life,’ let us look at ‘light.’—We are all endeavouring to throw ‘lights’ upon the surface around. With some, we are like meteors—sudden, rushing, short. With some, they play like the variegated hues that close a summer’s day—capricious, fanciful, superficial. With some we are vapour ‘lights,’ that lure with dangerous lustre, on and on, to ways of emptiness, to despair, to darkness, and to destruction! But ‘light’ indeed, is that which is ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles,’ that is our portion of the promise; but to the Jews something more, light resplendent, ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of Thy people Israel.’ Now take away the figure, and ‘light’ is two things.
(a) It is clearness of perception, and,
(b) It is joy of feeling.