The Pillar in God's Temple.
I. "To him that overcometh," reads the promise; and the first thing that we want to understand is what the struggle is in which the victory is to be won. It is the Saviour Christ who speaks. His voice comes out of the mystery and glory of heaven to the Church in Philadelphia; and this book, in which His words are written, stands last in the New Testament. The Gospel story is all told; the work of incarnation and redemption is all done. Jesus has gone back to His Father, and now is speaking down to men and women on the earth who are engaged there in the special struggle for which He has prepared the conditions, and to which it has been the purpose of His life and death to summon them. Let us remember that. It is a special struggle; it is not the mere human fight with pain and difficulty which every living mortal meets; it is not the wrestling for place, for knowledge, for esteem, for any of the prizes which men covet. Nay; it is not absolutely the struggle after righteousness; it is not the pure desire and determination of a man's own will; it is not to those that Christ looks down and sends His promise. He had called to a special struggle on the earth; He had bidden men struggle after goodness out of love, and gratitude, and loyalty to Him. If the motive everywhere and always is the greatest and most important part of every action, then there must always be a difference between men who are striving to do right, and not to do wrong, according to the love which sets them striving. If it is love of themselves, their struggle will be one thing; if it is love of abstract righteousness, it will be another; if it is love of Christ, it will be still another. It is to men and women in this struggle that Christ speaks, and promises them the appropriate reward which belongs to perseverance and success in that obedience of loyalty and love.
II. This, then, is the peculiar struggle in which Christ, out of heaven, gives His promise. And now the promise can be understood if we understand the struggle. The two belong together. "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out." The ideas of the pillar in a building, in a temple, are these two: incorporation and permanence. The pillar is part of the structure, and when it is once set in its place, it is to be there as long as the temple stands. How clear the picture stands before us. There is a great, bright, solemn temple, where men come to worship; its doors are ever open; its windows tempt the sky. There are many and many things which have to do with such a temple. The winds come wandering through its high arches. Perhaps the birds stray in and build their nests, and stray away again when the short summer is done. The children roam across its threshold, and play for a few moments on its shining floor. Banners and draperies are hung upon its walls a while, and then carried away. Poor men and women, with their burdens and distress, come in and say a moment's prayer, and hurry out. Stately processions pass from door to door, making a brief disturbance in its quiet air. Generation after generation comes and goes, and is forgotten, each giving its place up to another; while still the temple stands, receiving and dismissing them in turn and outliving them all. All there are transitory; all there come into the temple, and then go out again. But a day comes when the great temple needs enlargement. The plan which it embodies must be made more perfect; it is to grow to a completer self. And then they bring up to the door a column of cut stone, hewn in the quarry for this very place, fitted and fit for this place, and no other; and, bringing it in with toil, they set it solidly down as part of the growing structure, part of the expanding plan. It blends with all the other stores; it loses while it keeps its individuality; it is useless except there where it is; and yet there where it is it has a use which is peculiarly its own, and different from every other stone's. The walls are built around it; it shares the building's charges. The reverence that men do to the sacred place falls upon it; the lights of sacred festivals shine on its face. It glows in the morning sunlight, and grows dim and solemn as the dusk gathers through the great expanse. Generations pass before it in their worship. They come and go, and the new generation follows them; and still the pillar stands. The day when it was hewn and set there is forgotten, as children never think when an old patriarch, whom they see standing among them, was born. It is part of the temple where the men so long dead set it so long ago. From the day that they set it there, "it goes no more out."
III. Can we not see perfectly the meaning of the figure? There are men and women everywhere who have something to do with God. They cannot help touching and being touched by Him, and His vast purposes, and the treatment which He is giving to the world; they cross and recross the pavement of His providence; they come to Him for what they want, and He gives it to them, and they carry it away; they ask Him for bread, and they carry it off into the chambers of their own selfishness and eat it; they ask Him for power, and then go off to the battle-fields or workshops of their own selfishness and use it; they are for ever going in and out of the presence of God; they sweep through His temple like the rushing wind, or they come in like the chance worshipper, and bend a moment's knee before the altar. And then there are the other men who are struggling to escape from sin by the love of Christ. How different they are! The end of everything to them is to get to Christ, and put themselves in Him, and stay there. They do not so much want to get to Christ that they may get away from sin, as they want to get away from sin that they may get to Christ. God is to them not merely a great Helper of their plans: He is the sum of all their plans, the end of all their wishes, the Being to whom their souls say, not, "Lord, help me to do what I will," but "Lord, show me Thy will, that I may make it mine and serve myself in serving Thee." When such a soul as that comes to Christ, it is like the day when the marble column from the quarry was dragged up and set into the temple aisle. Such a soul becomes part of the great purpose of God; it can go no more out; it has no purpose or meaning outside of God; its life is hid there in the sacred aisles of God's life. If God's life grows dark, the dusk gathers around this pillar which is set in it; if God's life brightens, the pillar burns and glows. Men who behold this soul think instantly of God. They cannot picture the pillar outside of the temple; they cannot picture the soul outside of the fear, the love, the communion, the obedience, of God.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord,p. 60.
References: Revelation 3:12. J. M. Neale, Sermons in a Religious House,vol. i., p. 312; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 144.