Part 2
cent Americans we are. But then, you see, we have to interpret the history books in our own way. And so of course we accept the proposition that the Declaration of Independence was adopted at Philadelphia, but we interpret that to mean that it was adopted at San Francisco." And then finally the examination turns (though still in the sphere of history) to the department of history that concerns the Christian religion. "What do you think happened," I am asked, "after Jesus was laid in that tomb near Jerusalem about nineteen hundred years ago?" To that question also I have a very definite answer. "I will tell you what I think happened," I say; "He was laid in the tomb, and then the third day He arose again from the dead." At this point the surprise of my modern friend reaches its height. The idea of a professor in a theological seminary actually believing that the body of a dead man really emerged from the grave! "Everyone," he tells me, "has abandoned that answer to the question long ago." "But," I say, "my friend, this is very serious; that answer stands in the Apostles' Creed as well as at the centre of the New Testament; do you not accept the Apostles' Creed?" "Oh, yes," says my modern friend, "of course I accept the Apostles' Creed; do we not say it every Sunday in church?—or, if we do not say it, we sing it—of course, I accept the Apostles' Creed. But then, do you not see, every generation has a right to interpret the creed in its own way. And so now of course we accept the proposition that 'the third day He arose again from the dead,' but we interpret that to mean, 'The third day He did not rise again from the dead.' "
In view of this modern art of "interpretation," one may almost wonder whether the lofty human gift of speech has not become entirely useless. If everything that I say can be "interpreted" to mean its exact opposite, what is the use of saying anything at all? I do not know when the great revival of religion will come. But one thing is perfectly clear. When it does come, the whole elaborate art of
"interpretation" will be brushed aside, and there will be a return, as there was at the Reformation of the sixteenth century, to plain common sense and common honesty.
Such are the general conditions of any great spiritual advance—the conditions which may be expected to appeal to friends and foes of Christianity alike. The latter condition, in particular, is not a matter that concerns merely specifically Christian ethics; outsiders can get the point as well as we. The Freeman, of New York, can hardly be accused of being a "fundamentalist" organ. Yet in a recent issue I read the following very sensible words:
We cannot help wondering why some of the clergy and laity who are being denounced by the "fundamentalists" should appear so anxious to parry the accusation of heresy which their opponents urge against them. Heretics they certainly are, whether the standard of judgment be a formal creed to which they have subscribed or the timehonoured views of Christian faith and practice with which they are assumed, quite justly, to be in agreement. Whatever else Christianity may or may not be, it is surely not a scheme of salvation by indirection and avoidance; why, then, try to dodge the issue? Men do not, apparently, very much hesitate to call themselves heretics in politics or education or literature or conventional morals; and a goodly number may be found who have broken openly with their old associations, and as openly gone about forming new ones; why not welcome the charge of heresy in religion and bear it as a mark of spiritual and intellectual courage, as it once was borne? There might be some martyrs, and martyrdom, we dare say, is disagreeable; but even that fate would be more honourable than the attempt to argue the words out of an instrument, or the seal off a bond.
To that in the main I can certainly subscribe. Only I do not believe that the martyrdom, which is the price of honesty, will be very serious. It must never be forgotten that in this issue in the church we are dealing with purely voluntary organizations; and we are dealing (in the Presbyterian Church at least) with the requirements, not for the church membership, but for the holding of office. No man is required to enter the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. If he is not in agreement with the faith for the propagation of which the church (in accordance with its constitution) plainly exists, he can enter into some other organization of his own. And in doing so he will have the world very largely with him. There will be some obvious disadvantages, but they will be overbalanced by the advantage of honesty. The full personal respect, even of opponents, will be regained, and the whole discussion will be lifted to a loftier plane.
Tolerance on the part of the state, and its corollary, the right of individuals to associate themselves for the propagation of any creed which they may honestly hold, no matter how foolish it may seem to others—these are the general conditions of any spiritual advance.
But for a revival of the Christian religion, the Christian man knows that there are other and more specific conditions. With them we have now hardly time to deal. But it is hoped that every function of the church may serve in some sort to impress them on the worshipers' minds. One thing now needs to be said. In leaving the way open for a revival of the Christian religion we ought not to set up false antitheses; we ought not to say, as many are saying, that instead of controversy we favor prayer. As a matter of fact, what is needed is not prayer alone and not controversy alone, but prayer and controversy both—a controversy in which a Christian is impelled to engage when he rises from his knees. Indeed, in these days, true Christian prayer is quite impossible without bold witnessing for the
truth. Never was it more abundantly plain that our Lord came not to bring peace, but a sword. It is quite useless to do what many are doing; it is quite useless to read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, while, at the same time, in the face of opposition we are ashamed of Christ. The plain fact is, disguised though it be by the use of traditional language, that two mutually exclusive religions are contending for the control of the Church today. One is the great redemptive religion known as Christianity; the other is the naturalistic or agnostic Modernism, essentially the same, I suppose, as the religion of the Positivists or of Professor Ellwood, which is opposed, not at one point, but at every point, to the Christian faith. A separation between the two is the crying need of the hour; that separation alone can bring Christian unity. That does not mean that we are without sympathy for those who differ from us with regard to this great concern of the soul; on the contrary, many of us, in the years of struggle, have faced only too clearly the possibility that we, too, might be forced to go with the current of the age and relinquish the Christian faith. We are certainly not without admiration for the many high qualities of that type of thought and life which the nondoctrinal religion of the present day, at its best, is able to show. But we are also not without admiration for Socrates and Plato; yet Christian they certainly were not. Christianity is a peculiar type of life which is founded upon a distinctive message; and where it loses its sense of its separateness it ceases to exist.
Christian prayer and Christian piety, we believe, are based only upon faithfulness to the Christian message and to Him who is the substance of it. We are grieved, therefore, when those who in the councils of the church have just (though we hope unwittingly) denied their Lord, think that they have made all well by reading the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians before the assembled church. The apostle who wrote that chapter would have been surprised
indeed to discover that Christian love is being set in opposition to "the truth of the gospel." Very different is the deeper love that is only a response of the love of God in the cross of Jesus Christ.
But it ought never to be forgotten that the author of any true revival is the Spirit of God. We ought to welcome certain conditions—we ought to welcome, I think, the controversy which has at least destroyed our complacency and turned our minds from trivialities to consider the foundations of our faith. We ought to carry on the controversy without thought of personal advantage and without the desire to get the better of an opponent in an argument. If we are animated by low motives, God will hardly honor our witness; but, on the other hand, He will not honor a witness that is false, no matter how high the motives of it may be. We certainly ought to carry on the controversy in love—love, even for those who are our opponents with regard to this great concern of the soul. We certainly cannot, it is true, without hypocrisy and unfaithfulness, pray with those who are adherents of a different religion from ours, whether they be in the visible church or outside of it; power does not come when we bow in the house of Rimmon. But though we cannot pray with our opponents, we certainly ought to pray for them with all our hearts. But it is all, in itself, without avail. God Himself must determine when the gospel will again be brought to light. And who can say how soon He will put forth His power to save? The gospel of the cross displays a wonderful power of recuperation. It seems sometimes to be buried forever, as in the religion of the Middle Ages, but then it bursts forth anew and sets the world aflame.
At present we are inarticulate; we know the riches of the gospel; we wonder at those who have it already at hand and yet are content instead with the weak and beggarly elements. When will God raise up the man of His choice to give His message powerfully to the world?
We cannot say. But the truth is not dead, and God has not deserted His church. Behind all the darkness and perplexity of the present time we can discern, on the basis of the promises of God, the dawn of a better day. There may come a time, sooner than we can tell, when again we can cry in the church, as every redeemed soul cries even now: "The old things are passed away; behold they are become new."
The Letter and the Spirit
"The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6)
THIS is perhaps the most frequently misused utterance in the Bible. It is true, it has in this respect much competition. Many phrases in the New Testament are being used today to mean almost their exact opposite, as for example when the words, "God in Christ," and the like, are made to be the expression of the vague pantheism so popular just now, or as when the entire gospel of redemption is regarded as a mere symbol of an optimistic view of man against which that doctrine was in reality a stupendous protest. One is reminded constantly at the present time of the way in which the Gnostics of the second century used Pauline texts to support their thoroughly un-Pauline systems. The historical method of study, in America at least, is very generally being abandoned; and the New
Testament writers are being made to say anything that twentiethcentury readers could have wished to say.
This abandonment of scientific historical method, which appears in particularly crass form in Professor Goodspeed's translation of the great Pauline passages regarding justification, is a peculiar phenomenon, since it is practised just by those who are most contemptuous of anything that smacks of the past. If there is anything in which modern scholarship has prided itself, it is the method of interpretation which distinguishes sharply what we should have said from what an ancient writer actually did say. Like other things which modern men delight to honor, that method has a long name applied to it—it is called "grammatico-historical exegesis." That is a long name for a very simple thing; it simply means that, in interpreting an ancient author, we ought to divest ourselves so far as possible of our own habits of thought and look upon the world for a moment with the ancient author's eyes. The question whether, after we have done that, we shall accept as true what the ancient author says is quite a distinct question. And so when it comes to Paul, there have been many excellent expositions of his letters by men who hardly believe a word of what he says. There are two ways of being a good interpreter of Paul: one way is to be yourself in sympathy with Paul and hold the same opinions as his; the other way is to care so little about his teaching for yourself that you are able to present it as it is without testing it by your own likes or dislikes. But the attempt to find in Paul a type of religion diametrically opposite to his is of course the ruin of exegesis. So it is when Paul is being treated as though he were an adherent of that non-redemptive, optimistic religion of humanity which is so popular today.
"The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life"—these words are constantly being used to justify all kinds of crassly un-Pauline
notions. They are being interpreted, in particular, as indicating that Paul took the law of God with a grain of salt, or as though he meant that the Old Testament were not true throughout, but that one should get just the general religious teaching of it and be content with that. Such an interpretation involves a complete abandonment of historical method. Do not think that the rejection of it is any mark of "conservatism" in theology or the like; the great radicals are fully agreed with us in their representation of Paul's attitude toward the truth of the Scriptures. They hold that Paul accepted the Scriptures as true, though they believe that he was wrong in doing so; we hold that he accepted the Scriptures as true and was right in doing so: but both of us are fully agreed in holding that Paul did accept the Scriptures as true. We differ about the value of his teaching; but we agree at this point about what his teaching was.
Paul is not in this verse contrasting the spirit of the law with the letter of the law; he certainly does not mean that the law of Moses was not literally valid. On the contrary, he plainly believed that the ceremonial requirements of the law were just as divine as what we should call the "moral" requirements; they were commands which God issued to His people and which His people were required to obey. Only, Paul believed that those ceremonial commands were intended by God to be temporary; they were intended to be preparatory to the coming of Christ.
It does not follow that, because a command was later abrogated or supplemented by God, therefore it had never been a command of God at all. If your father tells you to chop up the wood that is in the woodpile, that does not mean that you are to continue to chop wood to the end of time. You are not disobeying your father if you quit when the job is done. So God commanded His people to be separate from other nations. In New Testament times that middle wall of
partition was broken down. But that did not mean that the previous command had not under the old dispensation been valid. The truth is that the historic and progressive character of God's command is at this point ignored just by those who make most of the idea of progress.
Jesus and His apostles were conscious of standing at the threshold of a new age—a new age which was to be ushered in, or had been ushered in, by an event. If they regarded requirements of the ceremonial law as no longer valid, or if they supplemented even the "moral" law, as it is set forth in the Old Testament, by higher commands, that means not that they recognized a general right of man as man to take God's law with a grain of salt, but that they had a tremendous consciousness of special divine authority as those who were to usher in a new dispensation of God. When Jesus contrasted with what had been said to men of old time His own tremendous "But I say unto you," that does not mean at all that He held a modern low view of the truth of the Old Testament Scripture or a modern subjective notion of law as merely imposed for convenience by man upon himself; but it involves a tremendous assertion of His own unique divine authority—His authority to change what had been intended for one dispensation into what was intended for another. Jesus claimed the right to legislate for the kingdom of God. But that claim is altogether misunderstood and vilified if it is extended to man as man. In reality it involves not a mere assertion of the rights of man as man but a stupendous assertion of Jesus' rights as the Son of God. And so it is also with the authority of the apostles. That authority did not belong to them, as Jesus' authority had belonged to Him, in their own right; they could never have set over against God's law, any "But I say unto you" of their own, as Jesus had done. But they did possess an authority delegated to them by Jesus, and in the plentitude of that apostolic authority they wrote.
Thus if Paul for his converts rejected circumcision and the ceremonial law, that does not mean at all that he was merely following the "spirit" of the Old Testament law as distinguished from its "letter"—the distinction is modern and un-Pauline—but it means that the great redeeming act of Christ's death to which the old dispensation had been preparatory and toward which the ceremonial law had looked—that that great act according to Paul had now been accomplished and a new and higher dispensation had been ushered in. The period of childhood was over, and the period of evangelical freedom had come.
But in our verse, Paul is not thinking specially of the ceremonial law at all. The law of which he speaks is the whole law of God, and he is thinking of it specially in its highest moral aspects in which it is valid beyond the end of time. The contrast between letter and Spirit is not a contrast between one aspect of the law and another aspect, but it is a contrast between the whole law of God on the one side and something that is not law at all on the other. Paul is not contrasting the letter of law with the spirit of the law, but he is contrasting the law of God with the Spirit of God.
The law, Paul means, is, as law, external; it is God's holy will to which we must conform. But it contains in itself no promise of its fulfillment; it is one thing to have the law written, and quite another thing to have it obeyed; in fact, because of the sinfulness of our hearts, because of the power of the flesh, the recognition of God's law only makes sin take on the definite form of transgression, it only makes sin more exceeding sinful. The law of God was written on tables of stone or on the rolls of the Old Testament books, but it was quite a different thing to get it written in the hearts and lives of the people.
So it is today. The text is of very wide application. The law of God is "letter": it is a thing written external to the hearts and lives of men. It is written in the Old Testament; it is written in the Sermon on the Mount; it is written in the stupendous command of love for God and one's neighbor; it is written in whatever way we become conscious of the commands of God. Do not think that such an extension of the text involves the anti-historical modernizing which we have just denounced; on the contrary it is amply justified by the Epistles of Paul themselves. "When the Gentiles," Paul says, "which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves" (Rom. 2:14). The Old Testament law is just a clear, authentic expression of a law of God under which all men stand.
And that law, according to Paul, issues a dreadful, majestic sentence of eternal death. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." Not the hearer of the law is justified, but the doer of it. And alas, none are doers; all have sinned. The law of God is holy and just and good; it is inexorable, and we have fallen under its just condemnation.
That is at bottom what Paul means by "The letter killeth." He does not mean that attention to pedantic details shrivels and deadens the soul. No doubt that is true, within certain spheres; it is a useful thought. But it is trivial indeed compared with what Paul means. Something far more majestic, far more terrible, is meant by the Pauline phrase. The letter that Paul means is the dreadful handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and the death with which it kills is the eternal death of those who are forever separated from God.
But that is not all of the text. The letter killeth, Paul says, but the Spirit maketh alive. There is no doubt about what he means by "the
Spirit." He does not mean the spirit of the law as contrasted with the letter; he certainly does not mean the lax interpretation of God's commands which is dictated by human lust or pride; he certainly does not mean the spirit of man. No real student of Paul has doubted, so far as I know, but that he means the Spirit of God. God's law brings eternal death because of sin; but God's Spirit, shed abroad in the heart, brings life. The thing that is written killeth, but the Holy Spirit in the heart gives life.
The contrast runs all through the New Testament. Hopelessness under the law is described in the seventh chapter of Romans. "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But this hopelessness is transcended by the gospel. "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord … For the law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The law's sentence of condemnation was borne for us by Christ who suffered in our stead; the handwriting of ordinances which was against us—the dreadful "letter" of which Paul speaks in our text— was nailed to the Cross. We have a fresh start in the path of God. And the Spirit of God enters into our hearts in the work of God's grace. The New Testament deals with this work gloriously from beginning to end. This giving of life of which Paul speaks in our text, is the new birth, the new creation; it is Christ who liveth in us. Here is the fulfillment of the great prophecy of Jeremiah: "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts" (Jer. 31:33). The law is no longer for the Christian a command which it is for him by his own strength to obey, but its requirements are fulfilled through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. There is the glorious freedom of the gospel. The gospel does not abrogate God's law, but it makes men love it with all their hearts.
How is it with you, my friends? The law of God stands over against you; you have offended against it in thought, word and deed; its majestic "letter" pronounces a sentence of death against your sin. Will you attain a specious security by ignoring God's law, and by taking refuge in an easy law of your own devising? Or shall the Lord Jesus as He is offered to you in the gospel wipe out the sentence of condemnation that was against you, and shall the Holy Spirit write God's law in your heart, and make you a doer of the law and not a hearer only? So, and so only, will the text be applied to you: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."
VII
The Brotherhood in Christ
"For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye are all one man in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26–28 A.R.V.)
WHAT are the really great moments of history? Our first impulse, in answering this question, might be to enumerate the great battles, the days when cities were captured or empires won. But it is doubtful whether we should be correct. There are other events even more important than these. The really great moments of history are the
moments which mark the first enunciation of great ideas. Ideas, after all, are the great conquerors; they cross the best-dug trenches; they cut the most intricate barbed wire; they move armies like puppets; they build empires and pull them down.
So this great utterance of Paul contains in small compass much of the subsequent history of the human race. "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female"—what an immense driving force has been exerted by these truly pregnant words! The idea of a human brotherhood in comparison with which the distinctions of social condition, of race, and even the distinction between the sexes would sink into insignificance—what a great moment it was when this idea was first given classical expression by the Apostle Paul! We are not ashamed to say so even at the present day—even at a time when racial hatred runs high and the opposition of class to class, everywhere at work, has in some places, as in Russia broken forth in orgies of blood. The words of Paul have certainly not come to full fruition; but forgotten they have never been even in the darkest and most warlike hours. They have not conquered the world, but at least they have not left the world at rest. And without them mankind would be in despair. We live in the midst of hatred and war and rumors of war but amid all the confusion of the age we comfort ourselves with the hope of the time when "there can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free."
The ideal of a universal human brotherhood is one of the underlying forces in the life of men. And that ideal is indissolubly connected with the Christian religion. But why is it that the ideal is so far from realization; why is it that there has seemed rather to be a terrible retrogression from it in the past few years? Perhaps the reason may be that the Christian idea has been misunderstood and another idea
substituted for it. True Christianity has power; but perhaps it may turn out that what men call the Christian idea of the brotherhood of man is not Christian at all.
Certainly the idea of the brotherhood of man is not in itself specifically or exclusively Christian. The Stoics of the time of Paul had apparently risen to the height of such an idea. The slaves, regarded by Aristotle as chattels, had come to be regarded, by a few noble souls, as members of a great human family. It was the noble conception of the brotherhood of man as man.
But was the Christian conception the same as this? It is often assumed to have been the same; it is often assumed that Christianity involved the discovery of an already existent human brotherhood. And there is an element of truth in the assumption. Our Lord did teach that every man, whether Jew or Gentile—and by implication, whether Christian or non-Christian—is our neighbor if he be in need. The apostles acted on the principle. The Apostle Paul, for example, had an intense passion for helping just especially those who had not been won to Christ. Nevertheless the conception of Christianity as consisting in the rediscovery of a universal and already existing human brotherhood misses the true centre of the Christian gospel. Christianity did indeed reaffirm the element of truth in the idea of the brotherhood of man; but the significant thing is that the reaffirmation is at best a mere starting point and not the substance of Christian teaching. I do not believe that in the whole New Testament you will find the word "brother" once used to designate the relation in which man stands to man as man; in the New Testament the word "brother" is used to mean not "fellow-man" but "fellow-Christian". The Christian religion reaffirms, indeed, the truth in the Stoic idea of a universal human brotherhood; on one occasion Paul quoted a Stoic poet in support of the solidarity of the human race: "For in him we
live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." Such things are important; the universal relation in which all men stand to one another because they have all been created by the one God—that is implied in everything that the Bible says. But though it is the necessary presupposition of the gospel, it is not the gospel itself. Christianity reaffirms the universal brotherhood of man, but it is Christianity because it proclaims a far tenderer and more intimate brotherhood of those who are in Christ.
Let us consider for a moment or two that brotherhood as it is set forth in our text.
In the first place, this Christian brotherhood is produced not by a mere direct relation between its members, but primarily by a common relation in which they all stand toward God. "For ye are all sons of God," says Paul. That is one point at which we often diverge nowadays from the New Testament. We are now inclined to make man the centre of our thoughts; in the New Testament the centre is always found in God. So according to the New Testament we are brothers one to another only because we are all sons of God.
"For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus." So, unquestionably, as an examination of usage in the Greek New Testament shows, the words ought to be read. Not, "Ye are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus;" but "Ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus." We are sons of God not in our own right, but only because we are in Christ. Christ is the Son of God; if we are united to Him, if He is our great representative, we are sons of God in Him.
And we become sons of God, in this high Christian sense, not through our natural birth into the world, but through faith. Sonship
toward God, like brotherhood between man and man, is not in the New Testament taken as a matter of course, but is put as something to be obtained. That is where the poignancy of apostolic teaching was to be found. We are too much inclined to assume nowadays that men are already sons of God; we are too much inclined to assume that all is well with their souls. The consequence is that they are not apt to be much interested in what we have to say. But the apostles were convinced of the desperate need of the world, of the dreadful separation between humanity and the righteous God. The gospel of Christ was the divinely appointed means by which men were to be brought in from the cold world of sin into the warmth and joy of God's house. When men listened to the message of Christ's grace and received in faith the gift which it announced to them, then and then only did they become sons of God. So it is also today, my friends. The gospel has not lost its power, but, alas, we are too well satisfied with the world and with sin. God grant that our satisfaction may be broken down, if we are not now in Christ; God grant that we may accept Christ's gift in faith and so may be no longer aliens and strangers but "sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus."
"For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ." Here the entrance into Christ and so into sonship toward God, which has just been said to be accomplished through faith, is declared to be enacted by baptism. Baptism seems here to be said to accomplish just what in the previous verse is said to be accomplished by faith. The apparent contradiction—if it be even apparent—leads to the true conception of what baptism is. Baptism, according to the New Testament, is primarily an outward sign of an inner change. It is more than a mere sign, since God has chosen to make this sign, together with the Lord's Supper, a special channel for the gracious power of His Spirit; but primarily it is a sign. To use a modern word (much overworked today, it is true) baptism "visualizes" faith. It
"signifies and seals our engrafting into Christ and our engagement to be the Lord's"
"All you who have been baptized into Christ—have come by baptism into such a relation to Christ, that you can be said to be in Him—have put on Christ." It is certainly a bold figure of speech. The Christian, says Paul, has clothed himself with Christ, has put on Christ as a garment. In the Old Testament in several passages, one is said to clothe one's self with some virtue or quality—for example, in the One Hundred and Thirty-second Psalm: "Let the priests be clothed with righteousness." But here it is no one virtue with which Christians are said to be clothed, but with the whole glorious Person of Christ. It is a stupendous utterance. When one looks upon Christians, does one see just so many copies of Christ? To do so, alas, requires the eye of faith; too often Christians exhibit a life far short of the life of Him with whom they have been clothed. And in the Epistle to the Romans Paul has to urge his readers to do just what here is said to have been done already at baptism. There the readers are urged to "put on" the Lord Jesus Christ; here they are said to have put on already the Lord Jesus Christ when they were baptized into Him. In Romans Paul is thinking of the realization of this supreme relation to the Saviour in the hard battle of life in this world; here in Galatians he is thinking of the relationship as it exists in principle and in the sight of God. However it may be in the sight of men, when God looks upon Christians what He sees is not their own unworthiness and sinfulness but the glorious Person of Christ their representative and advocate and Saviour.
It is only on the basis of this bold intensity with which Paul conceives the intimate relation of believers to Christ that the apostle presents his ideal of solidarity among men: "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and
female." It is a great mistake to take that ideal as a matter of course; it is a great mistake to think that it can be realized simply by contemplation of life as we find it. At least that was not Paul's method, Paul's method was to seek the attainment of this ideal of solidarity of man with man not by the contemplation of human relations as they are but only by the stupendous work of the Spirit of God by which men were brought into a common union with Christ. In the world these distinctions of man from man still persist in all their divisions and destructive power, but in Christ they are done away.
"There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye are all one person in Christ Jesus." The Authorized Version says, "Ye are all one in Christ Jesus." But the true text is "Ye are all one person." The Person that is referred to is Christ. Christ is the only Person who really counts in the supreme relation to God. No matter what our position on earth may be, no matter what our social or racial relationships, we stand before God not by virtue of those relationships but because we are, if we be Christians, in Christ.
These words of Paul, if they stood alone, might be taken in a mystical or pantheizing sense, as though the Christian ideal were the loss of separate personality of the believer by emerging in the life of Christ. But such an interpretation would be radically false. The apostle Paul was certainly not a mystic, he believed it is true in the direct communion of the soul with God; in that broad, popular sense of the word he was mystical. But that usage is misleading; and in the true sense of the word Paul was no mystic. He did not say that the Christians are identical with Christ; the relation of the believer with his Lord is according to the Apostle always the relation of one person to another Person. It is a relation not of mystical submerging but of
personal love. Yet the relation, though not destructive of separate personality, is far more intimate than any relationship known between man and man upon the earth. The Christian is so closely united to Christ that he can be said to be "in Christ"; he has put on Christ as a garment; and the whole body of Christians is one Person, so far as the supreme relation to God is concerned, because it is represented by the one Person Jesus Christ.
Such is the Christian ideal of brotherhood. It is not a brotherhood of man as man, but a brotherhood of the redeemed who are in Christ. Yet there is absolutely nothing narrow about this ideal. Brotherhood in this highest sense is restricted, indeed, to Christians, and if it is to mean anything there must be sharp separation between those who are Christians and those who are not. The household of faith is to be sharply distinguished from the world. But there is nothing narrow about that distinction; for the door of the household of faith is open wide, and all without exception are invited to come in. Christ died to open that door, and the chief business of God's children is to bring others through it into the brotherhood of the redeemed. The great trouble is not that we love those who are not Christians too much, but rather that we do not love them enough. If we really loved them, we should not be content with the relationship to them involved in the comparatively cold brotherhood of man, but we should long passionately, and by the preaching of the gospel we should make constant and earnest endeavor, to bring them in with us into the full intimacy of the household of God.
VIII
The Claims of Love
"And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good; but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying" (Mark 14:3– 8).
THIS incident delivers the Christian world from a crushing tyranny. There are many others forms of tyranny from which the Christian man is set free—the tyranny of guilt, the tyranny of the power of sin, the tyranny of fate. The tyranny from which this incident sets us free is different from these; yet it is a crushing bondage all the same. In these words to the woman at Bethany our Lord sets us free from the oppressive tyranny of the efficiency expert.
"Might it not have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor?" Certainly it might. The price of the ointment amounted to the wage of a laborer for three hundred days; there were many poor people in Jerusalem who could well have used such a sum. Yet the precious box was emptied upon the head of Jesus
as He sat at table in Simon's house, and the poor were allowed to remain in want. The slightest calculation might have led the woman to act differently, but the point of the narrative is that she did not calculate at all. All that she saw was Jesus—the whole rest of the world was forgotten. There sat her dear Saviour and Lord, and her heart was full of reverence and love. What place was there for exact calculations as to the best use of funds, what place for aught save gratitude and honor for Him who was her only hope for time and for eternity? Little did she care for the cold criticism of the disciples; broken was the flask and the room filled with the lavish fragrance of the ointment. Calculation and efficiency were conquered by the might of love.
Do you think that we can learn anything in these days from that woman's act? Our Lord thought that we could. "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached," he said, "throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." "For a memorial of her"—yes, and also for an example to us. In these days of cold efficiency we need to learn the claims of love.
We need to learn the claims of love, first, in our own individual lives. Even service, no matter how efficient and how diligent it may be, cannot take the place of the deep affection of the heart. I am not forgetting those texts of Scripture where service is celebrated in the loftiest terms. "Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Certainly service is necessary to religion; but do you think that service is all that is necessary? I think not, my friends. I think that you will find if you read your Bible with sympathy and care
that even service is comparatively useless unless it comes from the heart; true service is not a substitute for love, but the expression of love. "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing."
The love spoken of in the New Testament is not merely love of the brethren, but it is also love of Christ. We are sometimes inclined to ignore that fact; we are sometimes inclined to quote one text and not to quote also another text that God gave us as the supplement of the first. We are sometimes inclined to quote the words of Jesus in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew—"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me"—and to neglect the gracious words that have been read today. We are sometimes tempted to think that Christ is only a collective name for the totality of those who need our help; we lose sight of the central fact that He is a living Person. And in doing so we miss the centre and core of the Christian life.
The error can be avoided if we attend to the words of Jesus in the passage read today. If we are tempted to think that the service of the poor is all that there is in the service of Christ, if we are tempted to make of Christ a mere collective name and not an individual Person, then we should have recourse ever anew to this incident of the anointing at Bethany.
Here, in one of the most unforgettable, characteristic words that Jesus ever uttered, our Lord actually contrasts the service of the poor with the service of Him. "Ye have the poor with you always," he said, "and whensoever ye will ye may do them good; but me ye have not always." We have not Jesus always with us in the sense in which the woman had Him with her at Bethany; we cannot pour any precious
ointment upon His head. But in a higher better sense we have Him with us still. And surely we must not neglect the privilege of communion with Him.
Certainly I am not advocating neglect of external service. Without that it is quite impossible that we should be true disciples of Jesus. It is a poor and untrue religion which leaves the hungry in distress. But we shall perform such service all the better if we take time also to commune with Jesus Himself. Do you think that the Christian life is concerned only with philanthropy; do you think that activity in social service is all that our Lord desires? Oh no, my friends. Those things are absolutely necessary to the Christian, but they are not all that is necessary. If we are true Christians, we shall not neglect those things; but we shall also take time to go into our closet and close the door; and there, with the world shut out, with even our service forgotten for the moment, we shall think no longer of what we do but of what our Saviour has done, and we shall pour out upon Him, with an abandon like that of the woman at Bethany, our gratitude and love and praise.
What did Jesus say about that woman? We have reviewed part of what He said. But the most important part is yet untouched. "She hath done what she could," said Jesus: "she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying." There is the centre of the incident, and the centre here as well as elsewhere is found at Calvary. The woman probably did not know about our Lord's approaching death, but Jesus knew; and, in a word of beauty unsurpassed, he placed that woman's act at the beginning of the long series of acts of love and gratitude in which Christians throughout the centuries have celebrated the Cross. Jesus did not go to Jerusalem to bring about a revolution or a reformation; he went there to die for the sins of the world; and when the woman, forgetting all calculations, forgetting
the cold criticism of those who stood by, poured out the precious ointment upon His head, He took it as the response of the human heart to His redeeming love. "She is come aforehand to anoint by body to the burying." "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her."
Let us take the example to our hearts; let us not be so engrossed in our service that we forget our Saviour's love; let us not forget to pour out upon Him, in the secret place of prayer, the vials of our gratitude and praise. The woman anointed Him aforehand for the burial; we look back upon His completed work in which He loved us and gave Himself for us. Let us not through overmuch serving forget the better part; let us rather bring service forth from the contemplation of the Cross.
"O dearly, dearly has He loved
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do."
Calculation in its place is good; but away with calculation if it hinders love!
But we need to recognize the claims of love not only in our own individual lives, but also in the collective work of the Church. The Church to which I belong—and it is the same with other similar bodies—has come to be a powerful organization. It carries on the most varied work in all parts of the world; it conducts a great publication agency, and a great chain of book shops with a huge
volume of business; it maintains many scores of hospitals and colleges and institutes of all sorts at home and abroad; one can scarcely embrace in a single view all of its vast and varied service. Certainly such an enterprise cannot be conducted without business organization; and I certainly am not advocating any diminution of efficiency. I am not even advocating for the moment any particular changes in the form of the organization. I do indeed believe that the organization of the Church is becoming dangerously overcentralized. The Church, it seems to me, is falling into somewhat the same error as the State—the State with its vast bureaus at Washington which, I am constrained to believe, with their discouragement of local initiative, their materialistic paternalism, are sucking the life-blood of the people. But such questions cannot be discussed now; they are matters of personal opinion in the preacher. What is clear, at any rate, is that any organization, however good, is a menace if it becomes an end in itself and if it ceases to subserve the end which justifies its existence. And that danger of forgetting the end in the means, I am convinced, is menacing very seriously the life of the Church of today. Yet there are hopeful signs of a change.
Some years ago the Church seemed to me to be interested in nothing in the world except money. Great spiritual questions were shunted aside; the councils of the churches discussed methods of preaching, but seemed to be totally unwilling to attend at all to the question what it is that is to be preached.
But since that time there has come, in some quarters at least, a striking change. The churches a few years ago discussed money and questions of organization but now they are discussing, to some extent at least, the basis of the Christian faith. There are many who deprecate the change; there are many who deprecate the discussion; there are many who say: "Let the constructive work of the Church go
on irrespective of doctrinal differences." But of course that begs the whole question. The question is just exactly what the constructive work of the Church is. According to the Bible, the constructive work of the Church is found in the propagation of a message—call it a doctrine if you will—a message in which Jesus is offered as the Saviour of men. If the Church is propagating that message, well and good; then we are interested in having it as well organized as it possibly can be; but if it is not propagating that message, then we care little whether it is well organized or not. One cannot possibly avoid the basic question what it is that the Church is in the world to do. A church that does not stop to examine itself, that does not stop ever and again to examine the basis of its life, is in danger of death.
A great movement, it seems to me, is now going forward in many churches—a reaction against machinery, a recourse to what is central, and particularly a return to the Cross of Christ. Some men stand coldly aside; they are deterred by obvious imperfections in the leaders of the movement; they refuse to be shaken out of the even tenor of the way into which they are fallen. It sounds so strange sometimes—this word of the Cross! There is much opposition to the movement. But pray God that it may make its way! It is very pleasant to discuss merely ways and means and business methods and keep dangerous doctrinal questions in the background. Great, truly, in our day is the offense of the Cross. But there are those whose hearts have been touched. The dear Lord died for them upon the cross, and even amid all the machinery of ecclesiastical business they cannot forget what He has done. The bystanders murmur at their unconventional acts; the bystanders talk of efficiency and of "constructive work." But what says the Lord Himself? There, my friends, is the real question. He commended the woman at Bethany, despite her inefficiency and her waste, when she proclaimed His death afore. Perhaps He may commend you, if, in our day, despite sins and imperfections, yet out
of a heart overflowing with love, you seek amid committees and machinery and boards to put back into its rightful place the wondrous Cross of Jesus our dear Saviour and Lord.
The Living Saviour
"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people" (Matt. 4:23).
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20b).
IN the synagogue at Capernaum there was a new teaching. He speaks, they said, as one having authority, and not as the scribes. There, we are sometimes led to believe, is the origin of the religion we profess. "Give us that authority, and we can banish speculation. Jesus taught a way of life; let us walk in it and leave speculation to the philosophers. Jesus seemed to have no fear of the inscrutable power that rules the world; let us simply walk in His footsteps and be equally fearless." A simple program, and one that seems full of promise! But there is one trouble with it—it does not work. The imitation of Jesus has never yet been carried out. As a mere ideal, Jesus is a failure.
A failure, first of all because of the very nature of an ideal. An ideal must of necessity be insufficient, if it be made the sole basis of life.
Even this matchless ideal is insufficient; it often leaves us without guidance. True, Jesus enunciated some very far-reaching principles; put the Sermon on the Mount into practice, do as well as hear, and society will indeed be founded on the rock. But the process of application is often very difficult. Modern life is complex. Whole departments of life seem to be neglected in the words of Jesus. What about man's relation to the state? "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's"? A pregnant saying, but surpassingly difficult to apply! Is the modern state to be treated like Cæsar? What about art? Jesus did not despise it, for He spoke the parables. But what place should it have in human life, and how is it to be related to morality and to religion? And, to come nearer home, what of the nameless, concrete problems of individual life? Study the ethical principles of Jesus all you please, and still you will often be in hopeless perplexity. As a mere ideal—let us say it bluntly—as a mere ideal, Jesus is simply insufficient. And as an ideal, He is also powerless. The ideal is one that can never be attained—because of human weakness. A strange fact, but an undoubted one; a fact of experience! When we wish to do good, evil is present with us. Sin is no mere collective name for a chance succession of wrong actions, but a mighty unitary, spiritual power of evil. In the presence of it, we are helpless; it drags us back into the mire; it obscures the blessed vision with a black pall of despair. To talk about an ideal to a man under the thralldom of sin is a cruel mockery.
As a mere ideal, Jesus is a failure. But He never was content to be a mere ideal. And none of His contemporaries thought of Him as such. True, in that synagogue at Capernaum, they did think of Him as an ideal, as an example; they marveled at His teaching. He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes. But that was not the only cause of wonder. "He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him"! From the first, Jesus appeared not merely as a teacher,
but also as a healer; He brought not merely guidance, but active help; He had not merely authority, but also power.
Jesus the great physician! The great healer of every sickness and every infirmity! The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. And this cure of bodily ills was but a sign and proof and seal of the healing of the soul. He who said, "I will, be thou clean," said also, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." Jesus the healer of souls! God knows, we need Him still. When past sins rise up to mock our best endeavors, when our strength is sapped by the power of evil, when our lives seem to be a hopeless tangle, unlike anything that was ever seen before, escape shut off on every side, regret and remorse staring us in the face whichever turn we take, a strange miserable hopeless puzzle, beyond our own comprehension and far beyond our own power to help—we need a healer. We need one who knows us better than we know ourselves, one who can untangle the snarl of our lives, who can apply a healing touch to the dreadful wounds of the soul, and set us forward in some new, strong, healthy life.
A healer—where shall we find him? A few men and women found such an one long ago in Palestine. A paralytic borne of four—"Child, thy sins are forgiven thee." A publican sitting at the receipt of custom —"They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." A demoniac among the tombs, whom they found sitting clothed and in his right mind. A sick woman, who touched His garment —"Daughter, thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." These, somehow we are sure of it, received peace. They found a healer.
But we! Where shall we find him? This Jesus of Nazareth died these nineteen hundred years ago. And there is none to take His place. Compare with Him the men of the present day, even the best of
them, and we are in despair. For the people of ancient Galilee, life's problem was easy; they needed only to push in through the crowd or be lowered through some Capernaum roof, and the long search was over. But we are separated by nineteen centuries from this One who alone could give us aid. How can we bridge the gulf of time that separates us from Jesus?
Now some people regard it as a very simple matter. "Jesus is not dead," we are told, "He lives on through His recorded words and deeds. We do not need even to believe it all; even a part is sufficient; the wonderful personality of Jesus shines out clear from the Gospel story. Jesus may still be known. Let us simply—without speculation, without theology—abandon ourselves to His spell, and He will heal us."
There is a certain plausibility about that. It may readily be admitted that Jesus lives on in the Gospel record. In that narrative, we see not merely a lifeless picture; we receive the impression of a living person. We can still share the astonishment of those who listened to the new teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. We can sympathize with the faith and devotion of the little band of disciples who would not leave Him when others were offended at the hard saying. We feel a sympathetic thrill of joy at the blessed relief which was given to men who were sick in body and mind. We can appreciate the wonderful love and compassion of Him who was sent to seek and to save that which was lost. A wonderful story indeed, not dead, but pulsating with life at every turn!
The Jesus of the Gospels is a real, a living person. But that is not the only question. We are going forward far too fast. Another question remains. Jesus lives in the Gospels. But we of the twentieth century, how may we come into vital relation to Him? There is the real
question. He died nineteen hundred years ago. The life which He now lives in the Gospels is simply the old life over and over again. And in that life we have no place; in that life we are spectators, not actors. The life which Jesus lives in the Gospels is, after all, for us but the spurious life of the stage. We sit silent in the playhouse, and watch the absorbing gospel drama of forgiveness and healing and love and courage and high endeavor. In rapt attention we follow the fortunes of those who came to Jesus laboring and heavy-laden and found rest. For a time our own troubles are forgotten. But suddenly the curtain falls, and out we go again into the cold humdrum of our own lives. Gone are the warmth and gladness of an ideal world. "In their stead a sense of real things comes doubly strong." We are no longer living over again the lives of Peter and James and John. Alas, we are living our own lives once more, with our own problems and our own misery and our own sin. And still we are seeking our own Saviour.
Let us not deceive ourselves. A Jewish teacher of the first century can never satisfy the longing of our souls. Clothe him with all the art of modern research, throw upon him the warm deceptive calcium-light of modern sentimentality, and despite it all common sense will come to her rights again, and for our brief hour of self-deception will wreak upon us the revenge of hopeless disillusionment.
But, says the modern theologian, are we not, in rejecting theology, in being satisfied with the historical Jesus, merely restoring the simplicity of the primitive gospel? No, we answer, you are not, but you are not so very far wrong. You are really returning to a very primitive stage in the life of the church. But that stage is not the "Galilean springtime," for in Galilee men had a living Saviour. There was one time, and one time only, when the disciples lived, like you, merely on the memory of Jesus. When was it? It was a gloomy,
desperate time—it was the three sad days after the crucifixion. Then and then only did Jesus' disciples regard Him merely as a blessed memory: "We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel." Shall we remain forever in the gloom of those sad days, or shall we pass out from them to the warmth and joy of Pentecost?
Let us not deceive ourselves. We shall remain forever in the gloom unless we take one decisive step. We may have joy for sadness and power for weakness. But not by easy halfway measures, not by compromise with the wisdom of the world, but only by a divine radicalism, only by one stupendous act of faith. What was it that within a few days transformed that humble band of mourners, after the crucifixion of Jesus, into the spiritual conquerors of the world? History is relentlessly plain. Whatever it was, it was not the memory of Jesus' life. That was a source of sadness, not of joy. It was one thing, and one thing only: It was the message, "He is risen."
That message is despised today. Science, flushed with conquest, grown over-bold, would relegate it to the limbo of discarded fancies. Even the church would do without it. Jesus is dead, we are told, but we must treat Him as though He were alive. An heroic effort! To it have been devoted the resources of modern scholarship. But a failure! Despite it all, the power of the church, under such treatment, is slowly but steadily declining. And no wonder. False sentimentality is no conqueror. If Jesus is dead, He must be treated as dead. This question must be faced: Give Jesus up, or believe that He rose from the dead. It is not easy to believe; the resurrection can no longer be accepted as a matter of course. Against it are arrayed mighty resources of modern culture. Traditional, second-hand faith is rapidly being swept away. Faith, in this age, must be of sterner stuff. If it is retained by ignoring facts, it may be useful to the individual, but it will never conquer the world. But there is another kind of faith.
Faith that does not ignore the findings of modern science, but supplements them. Faith that sweeps away the superficial technicalities of research, and faces the persistent, underlying facts— the fact of sin; the sinless, unearthly character of Jesus; His mysterious self-consciousness; the testimony of the disciples; the empty tomb; the very origin of the Christian church; the glories of Christian experience. Attend to these facts, and you will believe in the resurrection. It is not easy to believe. And we need not regret it. An easy faith would never conquer the world. The resurrection can at least no longer be accepted as a commonplace thing. If a fact, it brings us today as never before into naked connection with the ultimate mystery. Faith is no longer easy to attain. But once attained it is doubly worth a battle.
If we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, we can have hope. A Saviour lives! But the religious problem of our lives has not yet been solved. An historical conviction of the resurrection of Jesus is not the end of faith, but only the beginning. If faith stops there, I fear it will never stand the fires of criticism. Jesus lives. But what good is it to us? We are like the inhabitants of far-off Syria. The fame of Him has gone abroad; there was a prophet in Galilee who could heal every ill of body and mind, and we are told that He still lives. But, alas, we are not with Him, and the way is far. Jesus lives. But that is not enough. He lives, and we are told that He has healing for us. But before we can be healed we must find Him.
How shall we find Him? There is the problem. You and I who sit in this house today, how shall we find that Jesus who lived and died and is declared to live again. Surely it is not so very plain. We cannot find Him in crowded houses or by the lake-shore or in desert places; we cannot be lowered through the roof into any room where He sits amid scribes and Pharisees. If we employ only our own methods of
search, we shall find ourselves on a never-ending, fruitless pilgrimage. Surely we need instruction.
And in the New Testament we find instruction, full and free. What, in a word, does the New Testament say about the way of approach to Jesus?
In the New Testament, a strange fact stares us in the face—the New Testament seems far more concerned with the death of Jesus than with the details of His life. Learned men have tried in vain to explain that curious fact; in long and weary treatises they have sought the explanation. But the explanation is really so simple that a child can understand it. The New Testament emphasizes the death of Jesus because that is what Jesus did for us. In the account of the details of Jesus' life, we are told what He did for others. That account is indeed absolutely necessary, so necessary that it is always presupposed; without it we should never have become interested in Jesus at all. But it is to us a means to an end, not an end in itself. We read in the Gospels what Jesus did for others. For one He placed His fingers in the ears, and said, "Be opened;" to another, "Arise, take up thy bed and walk;" to another, "Lazarus, come forth;" to another, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." These things are what Jesus did for others. But what will He do, or what has He done, for us? The answer of the New Testament is plain. For us, He does not say, "Arise and walk." For us, He did a greater thing; for us, He died. That mysterious thing that was wrought on Calvary, that was His work for us. The cross of Christ is a mystery. In the presence of it theology walks, after all, with but trembling, halting footsteps. Learning alone will never unlock its meaning. But to the penitent sinner, though mysterious, though full of baffling riddles, it is plain enough. On the cross Jesus dealt with our sin. Our dreadful guilt, the condemnation of God's law—it is wiped out by an act of grace. It seemed absolutely inseparable from
us; it was a burden no earthly friend could bear. But Christ is master of the innermost secrets of the moral world; with Him all things are possible; He has accomplished the impossible; He has borne our sin!
But through whom does He apply His healing touch? Through no one, save His own Spirit. Christ needs no intermediary, for He is here Himself. By His resurrection and ascension He has entered, with silent footsteps, into the lives of every one of us. He is no longer, as in Galilee, bound by limitations of time and space. "The Lord is the Spirit." We need not stir from this house; we need not even bow our heads in prayer. If we are really seekers for Him, then this moment our search is over.