THAT YOUR JOY MAY BE FULL.
* These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might abide in you, and that your joy might be fulL '—John xv. 11.
ABIDING fully in Christ is a life of exquisite and overflowing happiness. As Christ gets more complete possession of the soul, it enters into the joy of its Lord. His own joy, the joy of heaven, becomes its own, and that in full measure, and as an ever-abiding portion. Just as joy on earth is everywhere connected with the vine and its fruit, so joy is an essential characteristic of the life of the believer who fully abides in Christ, the heavenly Vine.
We all know the value of joy. It alone is the proof that what we have really satisfies the heart. As long as duty, or self-interest, or other motives influence me, men cannot know what the object of my pursuit or possession is really worth to me. But when it gives me joy, and they see me delight in it, they know that to me at least it is a treasure. Hence there is nothing so attractive as joy, no preaching so persuasive as the sight of hearts made glad. Just this makes gladness such a mighty element in the Christian character: there is no proof of the reality of God's love and the blessing He bestows, which men so soon feel the force of, as when the joy of God overcomes all the trials of life. And for the Christian's own welfare, joy is no less indispensable: the joy of the Lord is his strength; confidence, and courage, and patience find their inspiration in joy. With a heart full of joy no work can weary, and no burden can depress; God Himself is strength and song.
Let us hear what the Saviour says of the joy of abiding in Him. He promises us Bis own joy: 'My joy.' As the whole parable refers to the life His disciples should have in Him when ascended to heaven, the joy is that of His resurrection life. This is clear from those other words of His (John xvi. 22): 'I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from you.' It was only with the resurrection and its glory that the power of the never-changing life began, and only in it that the never-ceasing joy could have its rise. With it was fulfilled the word: 'Therefore thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.' The day of His crowning was the day of the gladness of His heart. That joy of His was the joy of a work^ fully and for ever completed, the joy of the Father's bosom regained, and the joy of souls redeemed. These are the elements of His joy; of them the abiding in Him makes us partakers. The believer shares so fully His victory and His perfect redemption that his faith can without ceasing sing the conqueror's song: ^Thanks be to God, who always causeth me to triumph.' As the fruit of this, there is the joy of the undisturbed dwelling in the light of the Father's love, — not a cloud to intervene if the abiding be unbroken. And then, with this joy in the love of the Father, as a love received, the joy of the love of souls, as love going out and rejoicing over the lost. Abiding in Christ, penetrating into the very depths of His life and heart, seeking for the most perfect oneness, these the three streams of His joy flow into our hearts. Whether we look backward and see the work He has done, or upward and see the reward He has in the Father's love that passeth knowledge, or forward in the continual accessions of joy as sinners are brought home. His joy is ours. With our feet on Calvary, our eyes on the Father's countenance, and our hands helping sinners home, we have His joy as our own.
And then He speaks of this joy as aUding^ — a joy that is never to cease or to be interrupted for a moment: *That my joy might abide in you.' *Your joy no man taketh from you.' This is what many Christians cannot understand. Their view of the Christian life is that it is a succession of changes, now joy and now sorrow. And they appeal to the experi-
4 ences of a man like the Apostle Paul, as a proof of *4^ how much there may be of weeping, and sorrow, and sufEering. They have not noticed how just Paul gives the strongest evidence as to this unceasing joy. He understood the paradox of the Christian life as the combination at one and the same moment of all the bitterness of earth and all the joy of heaven. 'As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing:^ these precious golden words teach us how the joy of Christ can overrule the sorrow of the world, can make us sing while we weep, and can maintain in the heart, even when cast down by disappointment or difficulties, a deep consciousness of a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. There is but one condition: */ will see you agam, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from you.' The presence of Jesus, distinctly manifested, cannot but give joy. Abiding in Him consciously, how can the soul but rejoice and be glad? Even when weeping for the sins and the souls of others, there is the fountain of gladness springing up in the faith of His power and love to save.
And this His own joy abiding with us. He wants to be full Of the full joy our Saviour spoke thrice on the last night. Once here in the Parable of the Vine: ^ Tliese things have I spohen unto you that your joy might he full j^ and every deeper insight into the wonderful blessedness of being the branch of such a Vine confirms His Word. Then He connects it
{John XVI. 24) with our prayers being answered: 'Ask and ye shall i^eceive^ that your joy may be full. ' To the spiritual mind, answered prayer is not only a means of obtaining certain blessings, but something infinitely higher. It is a token of our fellowship with the Father and the Son in heaven, of their delight in us, and our having been admitted and having had a voice in that wondrous interchange of love in which the Father and the Son hold counsel, and decide the daily guidance of the children on earth. To a soul abiding in Christ, that longs for manifestations of His love, and that understands to take an answer to prayer in its true spiritual value, as a response from the throne to all its utterances of love and trust, the joy which it brings is truly unutterable. The word is found true: *Ask and ye shall receive, and your joy shall be full.' And then the Saviour says, in His high-priestly prayer to the Father {Johii xvii. 18)^ ' Tliese things I speak ^ that they might have my ]oy fulfilled in themselves.' It is the sight of the great High Priest entering the Father's presence for us, ever living to pray and carry on His blessed work in the power of an endless life, that removes every possible cause of fear or doubt, and gives us the assurance and experience of a perfect salvation. Let the believer who seeks, according to the teaching of John xv., to possess the full joy of abiding in Christ, and according to John xvi., the full joy of prevailing prayer, press forward to John xvii. Let him there listen to those wondrous words of intercession spoken, that his joy might be full. Let him, as he listens to those words, learn the love that even now pleads for him in heaven without ceasing, the glorious objects for which it is pleading, and which through its all-prevailing pleading are hourly being realized, and Christ's joy will be fulfilled in him.
Christ's own joy, abiding joy, fulness of joy,— such is the portion of the believer who abides in Christ. Why, 0 why is it that this joy has so little power to attract? The reason simply is: Men, yea, even God's children, do not believe in it. Instead of the abiding in Christ being looked upon as the happiest life that ever can be led, it is regarded as a life of self-denial and of sadness. They forget that the selfdenial and the sadness are owing to the not abiding, and that to those who once yield themselves unreservedly to abide in Christ as a bright and blessed life, their faith comes true, — the joy of the Lord is theirs. The difSculties all arise from the want of the full surrender to a full abiding.
Child of God, who seekest to abide in Christ, remember what the Lord says. At the close of the Parable of the Vine He adds these precious words: ' These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might abide in you, and that your joy might be full.'
Claim the joy as part of the branch life, — not the first or chief part, but as the blessed proof of the sufficiency of Christ to satisfy every need of the soul. Be happy. Cultivate gladness. If there are times when it comes of itself, and the heart feels the unutterable joy of the Saviour's presence, praise God for it, and seek to maintain it. If at other times feelings are dull, and the experience of the joy not such as thou couldest wish it, still praise God for the life of unutterable blessedness to tvhich thou hast been redeemed. In this, too, the word holds good: 'According to your faith be it unto you.' As thou claimest all the other gifts in Jesus, even claim this one too, — not for thine own sake, but for His and the Father's glory. 'My joy m you;' 'that 77iy joy msLj abide in you;' 'my joy fulfilled in themselves,' — these are Jesus' own words. It is impossible to take Him wholly and heartily, and not to get His joy too. Therefore, 'Eejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, Eejoice.'
AND IN LOVE TO THE BRETHREN.
' This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. ' — John xv. 12.
^T IKE AS the Father loved me, even so I have -Li loved you; like as I have loved you, even so love ye one another.' God became man; Divine love began to run in the channel of a human heart; it becomes the love of man to man. The love that fills heaven and eternity is ever to be daily seen here in the life of earth and of time.
'This is my commandment,' the Saviour says, *that ye love one another, as I have loved you.' He sometimes spoke of commandments, but the love, which is the fulfilling of the law, is the all-including one, and therefore is called His commandment — the new commandment. It is to be the great evidence of the reality of the New Covenant, of the power of the new life revealed in Jesus Christ. It is to be the one convincing and indisputable token of discipleship: 'Hereby shall all men hnow that ye are my disciples;' *That they may be one in us, that the ivorld may helieve;^ *That they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me.' To the believer seeking perfect fellowship with Christ, the keeping of this com-^ mandment is at once the blessed proof that he is abiding in Him, and the path to a fuller and more perfect union.
Let us try and understand how this is so. We know that God is love, and that Christ came to reveal this, not as a doctrine but as a life. His life, in its wonderful self-abasement and self-sacrifice, was, above everything, the embodiment of Divine love, the showing forth to men, in such human manifestations as they could understand, how God loves. In His love to the unworthy and the ungrateful, in His humbling Himself to walk among men as a servant, in His giving Himself up to death. He simply lived and acted out the life of the Divine love which was in the heart of God. He lived and died to show us the love of the Father.
And now, just as Christ was to show forth God's love, believers are to show forth to the world the love of Christ. They are to prove to men that Christ loves them, and in loving fills them with a love that is not of earth. They, iy living and iy loving just as He did^ are to be perpetual witnesses to the love that gave itself to die. He loved so that even the Jews cried out, as at Bethany, * Behold how He loved!' Christians are to live so that men are compelled to say, 'See how these Christians love one another/ In their daily intercourse with each other, Christians are made a spectacle to God, and to angels, and to men; and in the Christ-likeness of their love to each other, are to prove what manner of spirit they are of. Amid all diversity of character or of creed, of language or of station, they are to prove that love has made them members of one body, and of each other, and has taught them each to forget and sacrifice self for the sake of the other. Their life of love is the chief evidence of Christianity, the proof to the world that God sent Christ, and that He has shed abroad in them the same love with which He loved Him. Of all the evidences of Christianity, this is the mightiest and most convincing.
This love of Christ's disciples to each other occupies a central position between their love to God and to all men. Of their love to God, whom they cannot see, it is the test. The love to one unseen may so easily be a mere sentiment, or even an imagination; in the intercourse with God's children, love to God is really called into exercise, and shows itself in deeds that the Father accepts as done to Himself. So alone can it be proved to be true. The love to the brethren is the flower and fruit of the root, unseen in the heart, of love to God. And this fruit again becomes the seed of love to all men: intercourse with each other is the school in which believers are trained and strengthened to love their fellow-men, who are yet out of Christ, not simply with the liking that rests on points of agreement, but with the holy love that takes hold of the unworthiest, and bears with the most disagreeable for Jesus' sake. It is love to each other as disciples that is ever put in the foreground as the link between love to God alone and to men in general.
In Christ's intercourse with His disciples this brotherly love finds the law of its conduct. As it studies His forgiveness and forbearance towards His friends, with the seven times seven as its only measure, — as it looks to His unwearied patience and His infinite humility,— as it sees the meekness and lowliness with which He seeks to win for Himself a place as their servant, wholly devoted to their interests,— it accepts with gladness His command, ^Ye should do as I have done' {John xlii, 15). Following His example, each lives not for Himself but for the other. The law of kindness is on the tongue, for love has vowed that never shall one unkind word cross its lips. It refuses not only to speak, but even to hear or to think evil; of the name and character of the fellow-Christian it is more jealous than of its own. My own good name I may leave to the Father; my brother's my Father has entrusted to me. In gentleness and loving-kindness, in courtesy and generosity, in self-sacrifice and beneficence, in its life of blessing and of beauty, the
Divine love, which has been shed abroad in the believer's heart, shines out as it shone in the life of Jesus.
Christian! what say you of this your glorious calling to love like Christ? Does not your heart bound at the thought of the unspeakable privilege of thus showing forth the likeness of the Eternal Love? Or are you rather ready to sigh at the thought of the inaccessible height of perfection to which you are thus called to climb? Brother, sigh not at what is in very deed the highest token of the Father's love, that He has called us to be like Christ in our love, just as He was like the Father in His love. Understand that He who gave the command in such close connection with His teaching about the Vine and the abiding in Him, gave us in that the assurance that we have only to abide in Him to be able to love like Him. Accept the command as a new motive to a more full abiding in Christ. Eegard the abiding in Him more than ever as an abiding in His love; rooted and grounded daily in a love that passeth knowledge, you receive of its fulness, and learn to love. With Christ abiding in you, the Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in your heart, and you love the brethren, the most trying and unlovable, with a love that is not your own, but the love of Christ in you. And the command about your love to the brethren is changed from a burden into a joy, if you but keep it linked, as Je- siis linked it, to the command about His love to you: 'Abide in my love; love one another, as I have loved you.'
'This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.' Is not this now some of the much fruit that Jesus has promised we shall bear, — in very deed a cluster of the grapes of Eshcol, with which we can prove to others that the land of promise is indeed a good land? Let us try in all simplicity and honesty to go out to our home to translate the language of high faith and heavenly enthusiasm into the plain prose of daily conduct, so that all men can understand it. Let our temper be under the rule of the love of Jesus: He can not alone curb it, — He can make us gentle and patient. Let the vow, that not an unkind word of others shall ever be heard from our lips, be laid trustingly at His feet. Let the gentleness that refuses to take offence, that is always ready to excuse, to think and hope the best, mark our intercourse with all. Let the love that seeketh not itself, but ever is ready to wash others' feet, or even to give its life for them, be our aim as we abide in Jesus. Let our life be one of self-sacrifice, always studying the welfare of others, finding our highest joy in blessing others. And let us, in studying the Divine art of doing good, yield ourselves as obedient learners to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. By His grace, the most commonplace life can be transfigured with the brightness of a heavenly beauty, as the infinite love of the Divine nature shines out through our frail humanity. Fellow-Christian, let us praise God! We are called to love as Jesus loves, as God loves.
Abide in my love, and love as I have loved. Bless God, it is possible. The new holy nature we have, and which grows ever stronger as it abides in Christ the Vine, can love as He did. Every discovery of the evil of the old nature, every longing desire to obey the command of our Lord, every experience of the power and the blessedness of loving with Jesus' love, will urge us to accept with fresh faith the blessed injunctions: * Abide in me, and I in you;' 'Abide in my love.'