HOMESICKNESS after heaven does not spring in every heart from the same urge.
There are those who long after heaven, because they have become too old for this world. The world no longer interests them, and they no longer interest the world. If they were still in the full strength of life, which formerly was their glory, they would have no thought of death. But now that their strength is broken, and the stem bruised, the thought comes to them with increasing clearness, that in heaven things will be better than here.
Another is not yet old, but many things went against him. By bitter losses and grievous sorrow wound upon wound was inflicted in his heart, and those wounds continue to bleed. Time does not heal them. Everything on earth became so empty to him. All his loved ones have preceded him to heaven. With respect to them he feels already now, in thought, more at home above, than here below.
With a few, not many, this homesickness after heaven has a nobler impulse. They love Jesus. Not merely love as every Christian loves Him, Who went into death for us, but to such a degree, that they “rejoice in Him, though not seeing Him, with an unspeakable joy.” Not sentimentally, but in a holy and tender way. Tender, because in Jesus they have access to the Father. And because, as the hart thirsts after the water brooks, so does their soul thirst after the living God. These are the souls, such as, alas, are rarely found, who are filled with an overflowing love for the Eternal Being.
So we could go on. With some the homesickness after the country above is indeed a drawing toward the Fatherland, that Father-house where they would be at home. Others burn with desire after a more glorious estate, than was their portion here. There are those, who have so bitterly wept on earth, and still weep, by reason of the endless sorrow that overwhelmed them; children of misfortune as the world calls them; who now long for the moment when the last tear shall be wiped from their eye.
Oh, do not let us deceive ourselves and the church of God. They who cherish real homesickness after heaven, and with the apostle have a desire to depart to-day rather than to-morrow, are thinly sown, even among the faithful; and even among those, who really know this homesickness, the urge which drives them, is still so seldom of the “finest gold.”
We do not deny, that in every motive which we have mentioned, there is something that has the right to be heard. Almost every one of them is justified in Scripture. But yet, if it will be well with the soul, thirsting after the living God must become the strongest urge, and what is like unto this: the fervent, ardent longing of soul, at last to break with sin forever, and altogether to die unto sin.
St. Paul calls this: To be delivered from the body of this death. Christ Himself describes this to the church in Sardis as a being “clothed with white raiment” (Rev. 3, 5).
But to know this longing of soul, like a strong, irresistible dynamic, hatred of Satan, hatred of sin, must inwardly rage and war in the heart.
OUR death is no payment for sin; but a dying unto sin.
Here God’s child remains until his death a victim of sin.
A confusing thought to our thinking and confessing, and a painful reality to our conscience.
O, it sounds so enchantingly glorious when it says: “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Rom. 6, 2). Or likewise: “Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin (i.e., the essence of sin) might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6, 6). Or finally: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; and he can no more sin, because the seed of God remaineth in him” (1 John 3, 9).
But with all this sin continues to dwell in us. Every time again we feel the inclination to sin arise in us. And every evening anew we have to confess our sins before our God.
There have been people, even preachers, who have said: “I have overcome. For more than ten years I have done no more sin. One can be really holy already here on earth.” But bitter was the disillusionment in most cases. How miserably was more than one of those who said so, presently surprised by gross sin!
Read and reread how even an apostle like Paul bemoaned his own condition of soul: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, which brings me into captivity to the law of sin.” And that same John, who, overcoming so gloriously wrote, that whosoever is born of God can no more sin, did not he also write: “If we say, that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us?”
Alas, we have no need of a witness, we ourselves know it well. Also among God’s children sin remains a power, before which so frequently they succumb. True, it is no more the old dominion of sin. In the strict sense they no more serve sin. They have sorrow of soul on account of their sin. It is to them a shameful stain upon their garment.
Also they laugh Satan in the face, as often as they draw themselves into the center of their faith, and feel themselves hidden in Christ. However it may storm round about them, and storm in their life, and storm in their heart, in the end they lie anchored to their grace-given assurance of faith.
But in actual life, in their daily existence of soul, in their deliberations and inclinations and deeds and words, they continue to stumble; and what Paul exclaimed: “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death,” with them also comes at times so touchingly deep from the heart.
And when this frame of mind continues in them, when that ardent desire arises in them not merely now and then, at times, but becomes a continuous, abiding, over-dominating longing, a heartfelt homesickness and an ardent thirsting of soul in them,—then also dying comes to stand before them in another form, and the sense becomes alive in them, that that dying alone can become the means to them, of dying unto sin.
BUT before it comes so far, with most people there must, O, so much be changed in their heart.
Listen to the conversations. A plan is proposed. It meets with approval. O, yes, that plan might do. If it might be permissible, it would be splendid. But no, I will not consent to it. I will not do it. I will have no part in it. Because it is not lawful.
Thus really the will to do is there. One feels strongly inclined towards it. There is a vague desire that the commandment, which forbids it, might not exist. One would like to be free, and be permitted to sin. But he refrains from fear. He does not do it because it is not allowed. One would do it, but he will not consciously and with premeditation go against God.
And so he kept himself standing. One did not succumb in the temptation. One overcame. But yet, the inward inclination was there, and hatred of sin, because it is sin, was not there yet.
And this is the dreadfulness, the poignancy of it. That fascination, which much that is sinful, still exerts upon our heart.
More still.
We overcame … yet … in most cases only when the opinion of the brethren carried us. When there was mention of a sin, which among the brethren in general was disapproved. When it concerned a wrong, that might be discovered. When there was mention of something sensual, something worldly, of something noticeable.
But how is it, when no one would notice it, save God alone? When it concerns a sin of our pride, of our self-conceit, of our ambition, of our lust of power. In brief, a sin, which is generally not counted among the “immoral,” though our soul well knows, that Satan never sins otherwise than through just such sins as these, and yet is cast off most dreadfully by God.
We think so often, that we leave something undone for God’s sake, while in fact we leave it undone for people’s sake.
But even then, when you do not do a thing for God’s sake, it is often rather leaving a thing undone because it is so terrible to fall into the hands of the living God, than because you love God, and carry in yourself something of that hatred wherewith God Himself hates sin.
And yet, he who would crave for and long after dying to sin, and after being clothed in the white raiment, must in his heart stand opposed to sin itself. He must shun sin as a pestilence, that menaces him with death, as a poisonous serpent that winds itself around his soul, as an evil power that aims to overcome him.
In sin he must see his mortal enemy, the roaring lion that goes about to devour him.
As one approaches a person sick with a contagious disease, with fear in the heart, of being oneself infected, so he must be aware of the touch of the sin of the world on his soul.
Never again: “I am inclined toward it, but it is forbidden.” But always: “O God, sin is approaching again, save, redeem, protect thy servant.”
And when in spite of this sin always knocks again at the door of our heart, and we always feel: “So it shall go until our death,” yes, then, at length there rises in our heart that exalted, that holy longing of soul to die, not merely because it shall be the entrance upon everlasting life. but even better still, because then forever, down to the deepest part of our life, we shall die unto sin.