WHAT IS BLESSEDNESS?

"And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." — Luke xv. 31, 32 (A.V.).

"And he sa'id unto him, Son (marg. Gr. Child), thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is thine. But it was meet to make merry and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again 5 and was lost, and is found." — (R.V.)

The judgment of the elder brother in the preceding section, although the context seems to compel us to regard it as Jesus' own judgment, has been challenged. There have been apologists for the elder brother. It is better, it has been urged, to be a respectable moral man than a prodigal. Better to keep the commandments, if only in the legal spirit, than to be recklessly wicked.

1. The Blessedness Refused.

We may concede that it is morally better to be sober than drunken, chaste than lustful, honest than fraudulent; and in magnifying grace we must beware of minimising morality. But over against this admission we must put three considerations suggested by the teaching of Jesus Himself. Firstly, the elder brother would have liked to make merry with his companions, although he dared not ask for the kid. If a man be sober, chaste, and honest, because he fears to be otherwise, is he moral from the religious standpoint, whatever he may be from the social? Such conformity may have a relative, but it has not an absolute, value. Secondly, this kind of morality carries with it the grave defects of conceit and censoriousness. Can we regard a man as truly a good man, if he is pleased with himself, and is ready to find fault with others? The sins of outward deed are not the only sins; from the standpoint of social utility they may be the worst; but viewed in the light of God's revelation of Himself as love is conceit or censoriousness to be lightly judged? Thirdly, Jesus at least seemed to believe that the prodigal's condition was less hopeless than the elder brother's. Note how abruptly the parable closes. We are not told what response the elder brother made to the father's tender and touching appeal. Had Jesus Himself had any hope for the Pharisees, should we not have had some hint? We know that in fact the appeal of the parable and all other appeals of Jesus were in vain. Sins such as the prodigal's bring their retribution, and sometimes lead to remorse, and even repentance. The Pharisee, because the world does not judge him, but even, it may be, admires his rectitude, does not judge himself; and so remains impenitent. The words in the thirty-first verse must be interpreted in the light of the words of verse twenty-nine. The elder brother might ever be with the father, but it was only as a servant with a servile spirit; all that the father had might be his, but he did not dare to ask for a kid. Surely the verse expresses unrealised possibility, and unused opportunity. Neither was the father's companionship enjoyed, nor were his gifts used. The elder brother, whatever he appeared to be, was in reality self-exiled from the love and the blessing of his father, waiting for him, and pleading with him. Can hell be worse than the refusal of the love of God, and the blessedness it offers? But we may gladly turn from the elder brother to dwell on the joy of the forgiving father and the forgiven son.

2. The Blessedness of Saving.

Gladness in the sinner's recovery is in accord with the nature of God. As the shepherd rejoices in the recovery of the lost sheep, and the woman in regaining her lost coin, and the human father in the return of his prodigal, so it is meet that God should rejoice in the salvation of man. It is because man has worth for God, that his recovery brings God joy; and the worth of man lies not in what man is in himself, but in what God as love wills that man should be. The man dead in sin may seem to have little worth; but God's love wills that he should be alive. Not what he is in the far country but what he may be in the father's house is the measure of his worth. About God's blessedness in saving we may ask two questions: (1) Is God's blessedness in the redeemed greater than it could have been in a world that needed no redemption? From this question we cannot escape, although we may feel the difficulty of the answer which it forces upon us. Love unto self-sacrifice in saving seems to us to have a value which love needing not to sacrifice cannot have. Answer the question how we may; of this at least we are sure, that the sorrow of God for man's sin issues in the blessedness of God in man's salvation. The Cross of Sorrow is transformed into the Crown of Blessedness. A God blessed in saving is a worthier conception even than a God blessed in His eternal perfection.

(2) But as we dwell on the bright sunshine of this thought there intrudes the dark shadow of the second question. Can that blessedness be complete unless all are saved? Must not God's sorrow for the lost lessen His joy in the found? Must not the elder brother outside take from the father's pleasure in the restored son at the banquet? To that question we cannot now give the final or adequate answer; for we walk by faith, and not by sight; we see as through a glass darkly, and not yet face to face. But surely what we know of God as revealed in Jesus Christ gives us the assurance that the blessedness of the love of self-sacrifice shall yet be complete, although we know not when or how. For faith this is enough.

3. The Blessedness of Forgiveness Gained.

But we must think also of the joy of the prodigal in his return. The contrast between the far country and the father's house, between the death and the life, the loss and the recovery, must have filled his heart with exultant gladness. Could the blessedness have been as great without that contrast? Here again the same question insistently pursues us. Is the joy of being saved greater than could be the satisfaction of not needing salvation? Be this as it may, the blessedness of the saved is not, and cannot be, entire oblivion of the past; nay, rather it is the transfiguration of the shadow of sin by the sunshine of God's forgiveness. For the sin forgiven is remembered only to magnify the grace of the forgiveness. The gratitude of man's love cannot forget the generosity of God's. The remembrance of the divine sacrifice by which salvation has come to man is the motive of the heavenly song of the redeemed. The new song they sing is: "Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation; and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth" (Rev. v. 9, 10). In the vision of the blessed in the midst of the throne there is "a Lamb as it had been slain." The sense of forgiveness is the strongest motive to holiness here, and will not fail to be a spring of blessedness hereafter. This is truly the wonder of God's world, that the darkest tragedy has issued in the most splendid triumph, that the grace of God has so vanquished the power of sin that the saved find their blessedness in the experience of their salvation.

4. The Blessedness of Forgiveness Shared.

But the joy of the saved in their own salvation is not the fullest blessedness possible; there is even a better gift. It is the joy of blessing shared by others. We may fear sometimes that our joy may be marred by the remembrance of the unsaved, and surely we could not desire to escape that loss of joy by any selfish forgetfulness. But we may leave that doubt to the love that has given us such assurance of its will to save and bless, and may allow ourselves to be carried out of the narrow bounds of our own individual good into the full current of joy inspired by the confident expectation of a redeemed world. How significant the words in the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 40), "God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect." The joy of each believer perfected in the joy of the fellowship; the joy of all the generations of faith perfected in the glorious and blessed consummation, when the world's Redeemer shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; when it shall be said, not of this or that one prodigal, but of all mankind, "Dead and now alive, lost and now found."

It was such a joy that the parable of Jesus invited the Pharisees to share; but they would not, even as the elder brother in the story would not go in. Is Jesus not to-day still inviting even men professedly Christian to an interest in the salvation of sinners, which by their indifference to the work of His grace in the world they are refusing? But those who accept His invitation, and share His solicitude for the lost, share, too, His satisfaction in their recovery. To be self-exiled from the joy of the world's salvation is hell, for it is to shut oneself out of the love of God Himself; to be self-dedicated to that joy is heaven, for it is to enter into the life of God Himself, who as love sorrows in the lost, and has joy in the saved. The one unpardonable sin is surely to refuse the grace of pardon for oneself, and to be indifferent to the conquests of that grace in the world. Love rejected brings a worse condemnation than could law disobeyed. The throne of judgment is, not on Sinai, but on Calvary.