1 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called to the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. On this eternal, self-existent fidelity we can repose with safety. I. IT IS WELL THAT WE HAVE SOMETHING SURE, FOR TALK AS WE WILL OF THE FIDELITY OF MAN AND WOMAN, THERE IS MUCH TO SAY ALSO OF THEIR INFIDELITY. 1. Who can say — in friendship, in love — what a week, a month, a year may not bring forth? In the very strength of human affection lies its frailty. And it is in hours when this is realised, when we seem to toss upon a shifting sea in sailing over human love, that we turn to the everlasting firmness of God's fidelity. 2. But even more than in others do we recognise this faithlessness in ourselves. How often are we only faithful because we are ashamed to be otherwise, and how often have we betrayed that which was given us to keep? We look into our own hearts and know how slight and fluttering, how changeable we have often been, how we even enjoyed our change. What wonder, then, if we turn from the weakness of our own fidelity to seek a centre for it and a power of it in the unalterable strength of the faithfulness of God, and cry, "Faithful Master of fidelity, enter into my life and make it all fidelity." II. What answer does God give us to that? Not that we should at first expect. WE HAVE FLED FROM MAN TO GOD, GOD SENDS US BACK TO MAN. If a man find not fidelity in his brother whom he hath seen, how can he find fidelity in God whom he hath not seen? We have been looking on the unfaithfulness we have found in man. Nothing can be worse for us. He bids us search for faithfulness, and we shall find it. 1. In the hearts of those that love us. And the moment our whole position is thus changed, and we look on a new side of facts, we remember all the uncomplaining patience of long love that mother and father, wife and sister, have bestowed on us. We recollect that there are friends who have never failed us, to doubt whom would be a crime. 2. With this new light we look within our own hearts, and we are conscious that we have been true to many. Surprised, we ask ourselves, What is this faithfulness in the midst of unfaithfulness, this stability in human nature that accompanies instability? Oh! it is what we searched for, it is what we fled away from man to find. It is the fidelity of God Himself that moves and lives within His children. The kingdom of God is among you. III. HAVING LEARNT THAT LESSON, WE LEARN FROM IT — 1. To love and honour men much more. We are not so ready to impute unfaithfulness, and we are kinder and more gracious, and being so, we find that men and women are more faithful to us, for we have lost the evil and unpleasant qualities which made people tire of our love. By believing in faithfulness we make it grow. Then our power of creating faithfulness has a reflex action on our own faithfulness. That which we cause to grow in others, grows by that very effort in ourselves. 2. An ideal of God's fidelity. The beauty of human fidelity forces us to aspire to a more beautiful fidelity, the real leads us onwards to the ideal. IV. Still an ideal remains always somewhat in the vague. But to our wonderful comfort THE FIDELITY OF GOD IS REALISED IN HUMANITY, IN CHRIST, THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. "He who hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He who hath seen the human faithfulness of Christ hath seen the Divine faithfulness of God. 1. His faithfulness was faithfulness to duty. At twelve years of age it was clearly conceived. "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" For eighteen years He brooded on His duty, and at thirty it was accepted, and never let go. The imperative of His later saying, "I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day," was said with the same fervour as it had been said by the joyful enthusiasm of the boy; and when the supreme hour of life came He could say, "It is finished." What? tits Father's business! 2. That is the outward aspect of Christ's faithfulness to duty; its inner aspect was Eternal Truth. He had a few clear, dominant conceptions on which His whole life was built. To these ideas — such as the universal Fatherhood of God, the union of the Divine and human, the existence of a spiritual kingdom, and the necessity of man being a believer in these things, and being made at one with God through Him — Christ's whole inner life was faithful. He could say, with absolute truthfulness, feeling that His whole inner life had been faithful to them throughout: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should hear witness unto the Truth." This was Christ's fidelity, the image of God's. V. BUT WHAT DUTY CAN GOD BE SAID TO HAVE TO WHICH HE IS FAITHFUL? There can be no duty imposed on Him from without, else there were another greater than Himself. But there can be an imperative within His own nature which is to Him that which duty was to Christ and to us. 1. With regard to us, that duty is the duty of a Father to His children. By that imperative of Fatherhood He can never cease to care for us, watch over us, educate us, and finally perfect us. 2. That is the outward form. But the central idea of which it is the form, and to which in His own inner life He is for ever faithful, is this: "I am the eternal spiritual All. I give Myself forth in all that thinks, and loves, and acts, and is." That being such, it is inconceivable that He should ever be unfaithful to His thought, for that thought is His own realisation of Himself, and were He unfaithful to it, God were unfaithful to God, which is absurd. To this idea, then, and to all the duties it brings with it, God is absolutely faithful; He cannot be otherwise. "I am," He says, "because I am." Conclusion: That is our security. We have arrived at the conception of it through Christ, through our own humanity taken up into and filled with divinity. And once we have grasped it, it transfigures life and gives us a rock to stand on amid the shifting sands of our own feeling, amid the wavering of human faithfulness. The foundation of God standeth sure. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. |
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