^ S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 146.
2 The Life of R. IF. Dale, 654. » J. I. Vance, Tendency, 213,
I JOHN III. t 573
tion did not obtain this honour, this rank did not belong to them under the old era. This is a new title, a new dignity. They were servants, not children. Our Saviour marked the transition when He said to Hit:, disciples : " Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends." A closer relationship had begun, A new honour had been achieved. This is one of those things that the Old Testament saints did not receive, so that " they without us should not be made perfect." The Scriptures also intimate that this rank, this status, is different from, and in some sense higher than, the status of the angels themselves. The relation of Jesus Christ to man is unique. " He laid hold not of angels, but of the seed of Abraham." When He became manifested. He became manifested as the Son of man. And so man has entered into a unique relationship to Jesus Christ, and through Him to God, a relation closer, more intimate, higher, than the relations sustained to God and His Son even by the angelic hosts themselves. Now it necessarily follows from this that the unbeliever has neither part nor lot in such a title, such a distinction, such an honour as is here involved.
^ Corregio stood before a grand painting, enraptured ; and as he gazed, grasping the sublime conception, amazed at the wondrous execution and colouring of the picture, he exclaimed, " Thank God ! I, too, am a painter." So, when a Christian looks steadily at what it is to be children of our Father, with sublime thrills of joy he can say, " Thank God ! I, too, am a child of the Lord God Almighty." ^
4. Christ's Sonship is the true type of ours. No doubt the only-begotten Son occupies a unique place. He is by nature what we become by grace. But on that account we can look up to Him, and see in Him our true ideal. Not once does He call any one father but God, while He hardly ever calls God by any other name. Nothing is more impressive than the filial consciousness of Christ. It sounds so natural on His lips. Even as a boy, the very first words of His that have come vibrating down to us through the ages have this filial ring in them : " How is it that ye sought me ? wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house ? " Men noticed that He was eaten up with zeal for His Father's house. It was His meat and drink to do His Father's will.
1 G. C. Baldwin. JAS.-JUDE — 18
274 THE LOVE THAT CONFERS SONSHIP
Every now and again we overhear an interchange of confidences and mutual understandings with His Father. Now it is a remark in a prayer, an aside : " I know that thou hcarest me always " ; or an "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." Thus we might go on quoting word after word till the very cross is reached and He breathes His latest breath, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." "What does it all say but this ? The true filial spirit is one in which there is perfect understanding with God, from which all misgiving as to God's will and purpose is banished. For Him misgiving never existed. For us it was there begotten of our own misjudgment of God through listening to the lies of the tempter. But it has disappeared when we become sons with the assurance of His forgiveness and good will guaranteed by the Cross of Christ. Now the attitude of the soul to God should be that of unfaltering trust, and constant anxiety to perceive and anticipate God's will, gladly to accept it, and delightedly to fulfil it. It should be the reproduction of the example set in Jesus Christ, for, as Sabatier truly says, "Men are Christian exactly in proportion as the filial piety of Jesus is reproduced in them."
^ All that we see in the Divine manhood of Jesus — such evident facts as the sense of the Father's affection, the constancy of fellowship with Him, the knowledge of Him which comes in spontaneous movements of the heart, and shows itself in simple loyalty and unerring reading of His will — is the revelation of what is meant when we too are called children of God. We are very far from the realization of this ; we are only little children, very imperfectly acquainted as yet either with Him or with the possibilities of our own sonship; children learning very slov/ly, and with much waywardness and indifference, what are our privileges and His claims. But we are children of God, as the cry, Abba, Father ! bears witness. We make the child's appeal to His tenderness ; we feel the child's shame when we wrong His confidence. In our penitence we say, " I will arise and go to my Father " ; our submission is the utterance, " Father, thy will be done." And our final hope is no other than conformity to the image of Christ : " It doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him." Christ will be the first-born among many brethren.^