Alexander MacLaren :: Last Beatitude of the Ascended Christ (Revelation 22:14)

Last Beatitude of the Ascended Christ

'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. — Revelation 22:14.

1. The Revised Version reads: 'Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the Tree of Life.'

   That may seem a very large change to make, from 'keep His commandments,' to 'wash their robes,' but in the Greek it is only a change of three letters in one word, one in the next, and two in the third. And the two phrases, written, look so like each other, that a scribe, hasty, or for the moment careless, might very easily mistake the one for the other. There can be no doubt whatever that the reading in the Revised Version is the correct one. Not only is it sustained by a great weight of authority, but also it is far more in accordance with the whole teaching of the New Testament than that which stands in our Authorized Version.

   'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life,' carries us back to the old law, and has no more hopeful a sound in it than the thunders of Sinai. H it were, indeed, amongst Christ's last words to us, it would be a most sad instance of His 'building again the things He had destroyed.' It is relegating us to the dreary old round of trying to earn Heaven by doing good deeds; and I might almost say it is 'making the Cross of Christ of none effect.' The fact that that corrupt reading came so soon into the Church and has held its ground so long, is to me a very singular proof of the difficulty which men have always had in keeping themselves up to the level of the grand central Gospel truth: 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy, He saved us.'

   'Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right to the Tree of Life,' has the clear ring of the New Testament music about it, and is in full accord with the whole type of doctrine that runs through this book; and is not unworthy to be almost the last word that the lips of the Incarnate Wisdom spoke to men from Heaven. So then, taking that point of view, I wish to look with you at three things that come plainly out of these words: — First, that principle that if men are clean it is because they are cleansed; 'Blessed are they that wash their robes.' Secondly, It is the cleansed who have unrestrained access to the source of life. And lastly, It is the cleansed who pass into the society of the city. Now, let me deal with these three things: —

   First, If we are clean it is because we have been made so. The first beatitude that Jesus Christ spoke from the mountain was, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' The last beatitude that He speaks from Heaven is, 'Blessed are they that wash their robes' And the act commended in the last is but the outcome of the spirit extolled in the first. For they who are poor in spirit are such as know themselves to be sinful men; and those who know themselves to be sinful men are they who will cleanse their robes in the blood of Jesus Christ.

   I need not remind you, I suppose, how continually this symbol of the robe is used in Scripture as an expression for moral character. This Book of the Apocalypse is saturated through and through with Jewish implications and allusions, and there can be no doubt whatever that in this metaphor of the cleansing of the robes there is an allusion to that vision that the Apocalyptic seer of the Old Covenant, the prophet Zechariah, had when he saw the high priest standing before the altar clad in foul raiment, and the word came forth, 'Take away the filthy garments from him.' Nor need I do more than remind you how the same metaphor is often on the lips of our Lord Himself, notably in the story of the man that had not on the wedding garment, and in the touching and beautiful incident in the parable of the Prodigal Son, where the exuberance of the father's love bids them cast the best robe round the rags and the leanness of his long-lost boy. Nor need I remind you how Paul catches up the metaphor, and is continually referring to an investing and a divesting — the putting on and the putting off of the new and the old man. In this same Book of the Apocalypse we see, gleaming all through it, the white robes of the purified soul: 'They walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.' 'I beheld a great multitude, whom no man could number, who had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

   And so there are gathered up into these last words, all these allusions and memories, thick and clustering, when Christ speaks from Heaven and says, 'Blessed are they that wash their robes.'

   Well then, I suppose we may say roughly, in our more modern phraseology, that the robe thus so frequently spoken of in Scripture answers substantially to what we call character. It is not exactly the man —and yet it is the mare It is the self — and yet it is a kind of projection and making visible of the self, the vesture which is cast round 'the hidden man of the heart.'

   This mysterious robe,which answers nearly to what we mean by character, is made by the wearer.

   That is a solemn thought. Every one of us carries about with him a mystical loom, and we are always weaving — weave, weave, weaving — this robe which we wear, every thought a thread of the warp, every action a thread of the weft. We weave it as the spider does its web, out of its own entrails, if I might so say. We weave it, and we dye it, and we cut it, and we stitch it, and then we put it an and wear it, and it sticks to us. Like a snail that crawls about your garden patches, and makes its shell by a process of secretion from out of its own substance, so you and I are making that mysterious, solemn thing that we call character, moment by moment. It is our own self, modified by our actions. Character is the precipitate from the stream of conduct which, like the Nile Delta, gradually rises solid and firm above the parent river and confines its flow.

   The next step that I ask you to take is one that I know some of you do not like to take, and it is this: All the robes are foul. I do not say all are equally splashed, I do not say all are equally thickly spotted with the flesh. I do not wish to talk dogmas, I wish to talk experience; and I appeal to your own consciences, with this plain question, that every man and woman amongst us can answer if they like — Is it true or is it not, that the robe is all dashed with mud caught on the foul ways, with stains in some of us of rioting and banqueting and revelry and drunkenness; sins of the flesh that have left their mark upon the flesh; but with all of us grey and foul as compared with the whiteness of His robe who sits above us there?

   Ah! would that I could bring to all hearts that are listening to me now, whether the hearts of professing Christians or no, that consciousness more deeply than we have ever had it, of how full of impurity and corruption our characters are. I do not charge you with crimes; I do not charge you with guilt in the world's eyes, but, if we seriously ponder over our past, have we not lived, some of us habitually, all of us far too often, as if there were no God at all, or as if we had nothing to do with Him? and is not that godlessness practical Atheism, the fountain of all foulness from which black brooks flow into our lives, and stain our robes?

   The next step is, The foul robe can be cleansed. My text does not go any further in a statement of the method, but it rests upon the great words of this Book of the Revelation, which I have already quoted for another purpose, in which we read 'they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.' And the same writer, in his Epistle, has the same paradox, which seems to have been, to him, a favourite way of putting the central Gospel truth: 'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin.' John saw the paradox, and saw that the paradox helped to illustrate the great truth that he was trying to proclaim, that the red blood whitened the black robe, and that in its full tide there was a limpid river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the Cross of Christ.

   Guilt can be pardoned, character can be sanctified. Guilt can be pardoned! Men say: 'No! We live in a universe of inexorable laws; "What a man soweth that he must also reap." If he has done wrong he must inherit the consequences.'

   But the question whether guilt can be pardoned or not has only to do very remotely with consequences. The question is not whether we live in a universe of inexorable laws, but whether there is anything in the universe but the laws; for forgiveness is a personal act, and has only to do secondarily and remotely with the consequences of a man's doings. So that, if we believe in a personal God,and believe that He has got any kind of living relation to men at all, we can believe — blessed be His name! — in the doctrine of forgiveness; and leave the inexorable laws full scope to work, according as His wisdom and His mercy may provide. For the heart of the Christian doctrine of pardon does not touch those laws, but the heart of it is this: 'O Lord! Thou wast angry with me, but Thine anger is turned away, Thou hast comforted me!' So guilt may he pardoned.

   Character may he sanctified and elevated. Why nots if you can Bring a sufficiently strong new force to bear upon it? And you can Bring such a force, in the blessed thought of Christ's death for me, and in the gift of His love. There is such a force in the thought that He has given Himself for our sin. There is such a force in the Spirit of Christ given to us through His death to cleanse us by His presence in our hearts. And so I nay, the blood of Jesus Christ, the power of His sacrifice and Gross, cleanses from all sin, both in the sense of taking away all my guilt, and in the sense of changing my character into something loftier and nobler and purer.

   Men and women! Do you believe that? If you do not, why do you not? If you do, are you trusting to what you believe, and living the life that befits the confidence?

   One word more. The washing of your robes has to be done By you. 'Blessed are they that wash their robes.' On one hand is all the fulness of cleansing, on the other is the heap of dirty rags that will not Be cleansed by you sitting there and looking at them. You must bring the two into contact. How? By the magic band that unites strength and weakness, purity and foulness, the Saviour and the penitent; the magic band of simple affiance, and trust and submission of myself to the cleansing power of His death and of His life.

   Only remember, 'Blessed are they that are washing,' as the Greek might read. Not once and for all, but a continuous process, a blessed process running on all through a man's life.

   These are the conditions as they come from Christ's own lips, in almost the last words that human ears, either in fact or in vision, heard Him utter.

   These are the conditions under which noble life, and at last Heaven, are possible for men, namely, that their foul characters shall be cleansed, and that continuously, by daily recurrence and recourse to the Fountain opened in His sacrifice and death.

   Friends, you may know much of 'the beauty and nobleness of Christianity, you may know much of the tenderness and purity of Christ, but if you have not apprehended Him in this character, there is an inner sanctuary yet to be trod, of which your feet know nothing, and the sweetest sweetness of all you have not yet tasted, for it is His forgiving love and cleansing power that most deeply manifest His Divine affection and bind us to Himself.

2. The second thought that I would suggest is that these cleansed ones, and by implication these only, have unrestrained access to the source of life: 'Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right "to the Tree of Life."' That, of course, carries us back to the old mysterious narrative at the beginning of the Book of Genesis.

   Although it does not bear very closely upon my present subject, I cannot help pausing to point out one thing, how remarkable and how beautiful it is that the last page of the Revelation should come Bending round to touch the first page of Genesis. The history of man began with angels with frowning faces and flaming swords barring the way to the Tree of Life. It ends here with the guard of Cherubim withdrawn; or rather, perhaps, sheathing their swords and becoming guides to the no longer forbidden fruit, instead of being its guards. That is the Bible's grand symbolical way of saying that all between — the sin, the misery, the death — is a parenthesis. God's purpose is not going to be thwarted, and the end of His majestic march through human history is to be men's access to the Tree of Life from which, for the dreary ages — that are but as a moment in the great eternities — they were barred out by their sin.

   However, that is not the point that I meant to say a word about. The Tree of Life stands as the symbol here of an external source of life. I take 'life' to be used here in what I believe to be its predominant New Testament meaning, not bare continuance in existence, but a full, blessed perfection and activity of all the faculties and possibilities of the man, which this very Apostle himself identifies with the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. And that life, says John, has an external source in Heaven as on earth.

   There is an old Christian legend, absurd as a legend, beautiful as a parable, that the Cross on which Christ was crucified was made out of the wood of the Tree of Life. It is true in idea, for He and His work will be the source of all life, for earth and for Heaven, whether of body, soul, or spirit. They that wash their robes have the right of unrestrained access to Him in whose presence, in that loftier state, no impurity can live.

   I need not dwell upon the thought that is involved here, of how, whilst on earth and in the beginnings of the Christian career, life is the basis of righteousness: in that higher world, in a very profound sense, righteousness is the condition of fuller life.

   The Tree of Life, according to some of the old Rabbinical legends, lifted its branches, by an indwelling motion, high above impure hands that were stretched to touch them, and until our hands are cleansed through faith in Jesus Christ, its richest fruit hangs unreachable, golden, above our heads.

   Oh! brother, the fulness of the life of Heaven is only granted to them who, drawing near Jesus Christ by faith on earth, have thereby cleansed themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.

3. Finally, those who are cleansed, and they only, have entrance into the society of the city.

   There again we have a whole series of Old and New Testament metaphors gathered together. In the old world the whole power and splendour of great kingdoms were gathered in their capitals, Babylon and Nineveh in the past, Rome in the present. To John the forces of evil were all concentrated in that city on the Severn Hills. To him the antagonistic forces which were the hope of the world were all concentrated in the real ideal city which he expected to come down from Heaven — the new Jerusalem. And he and his brother who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was — trained substantially in the same school — have taught us the same lesson that our picture of the future is not to be of a solitary or self- regarding Heaven, but of 'a city which hath foundations.'

   Genesis began with a garden, man's sin sent him out of the garden. God, out of evil, evolves good, and for the lost garden comes the better thing, the found city. 'Then comes the statelier Eden back to man.' For surely it is better that men should live in the activities of the city than in the sweetness and indolence of the garden; and manifold and miserable as are the sins and the sorrows of great cities, the opprobria of our modern so-called civilization, yet still the aggregation of great masses of mere for worthy objects generates a form of character, and sets loose energies and activities which no other kind of life could have produced.

   And so I believe a great step in progress Is set forth when we read of the final condition of mankind as being their assembling in the city of God.

   And surely there, amidst the solemn troops and sweet societies, the long- loved, long-lost will be found again. I cannot believe that, like the Virgin and Joseph, we shall have to go wandering up and down the streets of Jerusalem when we get there, looking for our dear ones. 'Wist ye not that I should be in the Father's house?' We shall know where to find them.

   'We shall clasp them again,
   And with God be the rest.'

   The city is the emblem of security and of permanence. No more shall life be as a desert march, with changes which only bring sorrow, and yet a dreary monotony amidst them all. We shall dwell amid abiding realities, ourselves fixed in unchanging but ever- growing completeness and peace. The tents shall be done with, we shall inhabit the solid mansions of the city which hath foundations, and shall wonderingly exclaim, as our unaccustomed eyes gaze on their indestructible strength, 'What manner of stones and what buildings are here!' — and not one stone of these shall ever be thrown down.

   Dear friends! the sum of all my poor words now is the earner beseeching of every one of you to bring all your foulness to Christ, who alone can make you clean. 'Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before Me, saith the Lord.' 'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' Submit yourselves, I pray you, to its purifying power, by humble faith. Them you will have the true possession of the true life today, and will be citizens of the city of God, even while in this far- off dependency of that great metropolis. And when the moment comes for you to leave this prison-house, an angel 'mighty and beauteous, though his face be hid,' shall come to you, as once of old to the sleeping Apostle. His touch shall wake you, and lead you, scarce knowing where you are or what is happening, from the sleep of life, past the first and second ward, and through the iron gate that leadeth unto the city.

   Smoothly it will turn on its hinges, opening to you of its own accord, and then you will come to yourself and know of a surety that the Lord hath sent His angel, and that he has led you into the home of your heart, the city of God, which they enter as its fitting inhabitants who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb.