Year of jubilee: II. The world's redemption.
The whole Christian era is one long year of jubilee. It is "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:19). That "acceptable year," the fiftieth year in the Jewish calendar, was a year of
These, in a deeper, a spiritual sense, are the characteristics of the Christian era:
1. It is a time of spiritual emancipation. Sin is the slavery of the soul; "men are "holden with the cords of their sins" (Proverbs 5:22). They are in the bondage of selfishness, or of worldliness, or of one or other (or more than one) of the vices, or of the fear of man, or of a foolish and frivolous procrastination. To accept Jesus Christ as Saviour of the soul and Lord of the life is to be released from these spiritual fetters.
2. Social readjustment. Christianity, indeed, effects no immediate revolution in the forms of social life. It does not say to the slave, "Escape from thy master" (1 Corinthians 7:20); it does not give directions as to the way in which human relations are to be organized. But it infuses a new spirit into the minds of men; it introduces those principles of righteousness and those feelings of considerateness which silently, but most effectually, "make all things new." It drops the seed of "charity" in the soil of human nature, and behold a goodly tree springs therefrom, the leaves of which are for the healing of the social sores of all the nations.
3. Individual and national regeneration. The soul that receives Jesus Christ as its Lord, and the nation that surrenders itself to his holy and beneficent rule, make an entirely new departure in their course. So great and radical is the change which is thereby effected, that the Truth himself speaks of it as a "regeneration" (John 3:1-36). In Christ we are born again, or born from above. We enter on a new life, the life of faith, love, humility, zeal, holy service, godliness, anticipation of future blessedness.
4. Rest of soul. The rest of body enjoyed in the year of jubilee has its analogue in the rest of soul which we enjoy in the acceptable year of the Lord—rest from
5. Joy in God. In this "acceptable time" we have not only peace, but we also "joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:11). We are bidden to "rejoice in the Lord alway" (Philippians 4:4); and though there may be found in the sorrows of others as well as in our own and in the difficulties and depressions that attend us here too much of cloud and shadow to feel that it is always jubilee-time with us in our homeward journey, yet the felt presence of our Saviour, his unchanging friendship, the blessedness of doing his work, honouring his Name, and even hearing his holy will, the view of the heavenly land,—these will "put a new song into our mouth," a real gladness into our heart, the brightness and music of the "acceptable year" into our Christian life.—C.