VII. The Universality of Confession
imperfect confession of the lips does not very often do justice to the faith of the heart.
Thus it appears to be the will and pleasure of the Lord that the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God shall build itself a way through the diversity—at the end of time to appear in all its glory. When in the future the body of Christ shall have attained the full growth, and shall have come in the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; then all the saints together shall fully understand what is the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ which surpasses all understanding, so that they may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
CHAPTER VII
The Universality of Confession Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are yours: and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's. - 1 Cor. 3:21–23.
The diversity of confession does not encroach upon its universality.
Although there are many churches, yet as Christians we altogether confess one, Holy Catholic Church, which makes its appearance in
the many and various churches of Christendom, although it may be very often in a very imperfect way.
Universal, Catholic, is the Christian confession in this sense, that it spreads itself over the whole earth, includes all true believers, is binding for all people and has significance for the whole world.
Chritianity is a world religion, destined and suitable for every nation and century, for every rank and station, for every place and time.
And the most Catholic is that church which has expressed this international and cosmopolitan character of the Christian religion in the purest way in her confession and applied it the most liberally in practice.
This universality or Catholicity of the Christian religion is directly coherent with the unity of God, which is taught in it. God is one, and there His words and works can never contradict each other. All things have their relation and system in His consciousness, in His will, in His counsel. They all exist together in the Son, who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creatures, through whom and unto whom they are all created. And this Son is at the same time the Christ; the way, the truth and the life, without and outside of whom no one can come to the Father; the only name given under Heaven, that sinners should thereby be saved; the Head of the Church, in whom the Father has made to dwell all the fullness, that He through Him, having made peace through the blood of the cross, might reconcile all things unto Himself, be it the things which are upon earth, be it the things, which are in Heaven.
Christianity is therefore the absolute religion, the only, essential, true religion. It tolerates no other religions as of almost equal worth and worthiness alongside of itself. It is, according to its nature, intolerant, even as the truth at all times is and must be intolerant with respect to the untruth. It will not even be satisfied by being the first of the religions, but it claims to be the only, true, full religion, which has absorbed and fulfilled all that is true and good in other religions. Christ is not a man alongside of others, but He is the Son of
Man, who by the resurrection was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, and received of the Father a name above every name, so that in that name every knee should bow and every tongue confess, that He is the Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.
In this unity is of necessity implied the universality of the Christian religion. While there is but one God, He is the Creator of all things.
Because there is only one Mediator between God and man, He is the Savior of the whole world. And as there is only one Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, He is the only Guide and Leader in the truth, the exclusive Teacher of the Church, the All-Sufficient
Comforter of all believers.
The Holy Scriptures proclaim this universality of Christianity in the clearest and most beautiful way. The Father loved the world and therefore sent His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In that Son God has reconciled the world unto Himself, not imputing unto her her sins.
Christ Himself came upon earth, not to condemn the world but to save her. He is the Light, the Life, the Savior of the world, a reconciliation, not alone for our sins but for the whole world. In Him, all things in Heaven and on earth are reconciled unto God and are also gathered together into one. The world, which was made by the Son, is also destined for the Son as its heir. One day all Kingdoms become our Lord's and His Christ's This great and glorious truth has been very often denied and misappreciated. In the course of centuries there have been
Christians, and they are still found, who, to be sure, ascribed unto the Gospel a certain importance or significance for the religiousmoral life, but who also limited its influence to that, and had no conception of its worth and worthiness for the natural life, for family and society and state, for science and art. Yea, many have thought that recreation was in opposition to, in enmity with creation, that grace effaced nature and that therefore, he was the best and most
Christian who withdrew from the world and shut himself up in solitude.
And advocates of infidelity have eagerly made use of this and proclaimed triumphantly that Christianity was an enemy of all culture, and therefore in every respect no longer suitable for mankind in the present day. In former centuries it may have fulfilled an excellent calling, and even today it may prove to be for this or that melancholy individual, a comfort in his sorrow; but for mankind as a whole, Christianity is antiquated and nigh unto disappearance.
Civilization, science, art, commercialism, industry, there are the gods which today go before the face of man and lead him out of the house of bondage. But the Gospel of Christ has served its purpose; His
Kingdom is not of this world and has nothing to say to this world.
Yea, the whole of religion may yet have a little right of existence in the church and closet; but upon the market of life there is no place for it. Religion has nothing to do with politics. In the schools of science, in the temples of art, in the counsel chambers of the State the Almighty is excluded. The liberation or emancipation of the world from God and godly things is prosecuted even to the end.
In this reasoning there lies a truth, which may not be denied. To be sure, Jesus came upon earth and assumed the natural life, but He assumed it, to deny it and to lay it down again at the cross. He was not married, did not pursue any occupation or profession in civil life, did not hold an office in the State. He was neither a man of science, nor practitioner of art. His whole life was a sacrifice, which consummated itself in His surrendering unto death. He came to die.
Death was the end and purpose of His life. Even as He Himself testified, that He came not to be served, but to serve and to give His soul as a ransom for many.
And thus, He did, not only for Himself; He demands of His disciples, that they shall follow Him and walk in His steps. Whosoever does not take up his cross, cannot be His disciple. Whosoever desires to save his life, shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose it for His sake, shall
find it. Whosoever loves father or mother above Him, is not worthy of Him, but whosoever forsakes all for His name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. To enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, the offending eye must be plucked out, and the offending hand and foot cut off, for it is better to enter into life maimed, than to have two hands and two feet and two eyes, and be cast into hell-fire.
Nothing may be derogated from this rigid demand of the Gospel of the cross. The Gospel may be for man, it is in no single instance after man. Whosoever desires to fashion it after the spirit of the age, according to the reasonings of the day, robs it of its power, and experiences nothing but disappointment, if in this way he thinks to find an entrance for it. For, to be sure, Christ has been neither a political leader nor a civil reformer; His Gospel is not suitable to serve as a social program; the Scriptures are not a code of laws neither a handbook for art or science; the administration of the Word is not a preaching of human wisdom; the government of the church is not a domination and not an exercising of authority; the deaconry is not an institution for the solution of the problem of poverty.
For all this Christ did not come; neither for this was His Word given unto us. Christ is Savior—that is His name and His work; nothing else, nothing more but also nothing less than that. His sacrifice is a reconciliation for sins. His Gospel is a glad tiding unto salvation. His
Church is a communion of saints. Christianity is religion, not philosophy.
But that it is, then also, wholly and perfectly; the true, pure, full religion, the restoration of the right relation to God and therefore also of that to all creatures. Savior is Christ, nothing else; but that He is then also, so perfectly, that His Gospel is a power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.
And therefore He rejects no one or nothing. The rich who think to have need of nothing, He sends away empty, but the poor He fills with gifts. Upon the Pharisees who think to have sufficient in their own righteousness, He proclaims His thrice repeated: woe. But
publicans and sinners He invites to come unto Him, the sick He heals, the lame He makes to walk, the lepers He cleanses, the blind
He makes to see, the dead He raises, over the children He lifts up His hands with blessings, unto the poor He proclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and doing good and scattering blessings everywhere He goes through the whole land.
And in it all He counts nothing strange that is human. Different than John the Baptist, He came eating and drinking, so that He was even branded a glutton and a wine bibber. He was a guest at the wedding in Cana, accepted invitations to dine, forbade His disciples to fast, revealed the joy of the future salvation by the parable of a marriage feast, promised His disciples in the last night of His life, that, although He would now drink no more of the fruit of the vine with them, yet one day He should drink it anew with them in the Kingdom of the Father.
The ordinances in every rank and station of natural life are recognized and respected by Him, for He has not come to break down the works of the Father, but only those of the devil. He pays the tribute, refuses to act as judge between two brothers quarreling about an inheritance, commands to give unto Cæsar that which is his, requires submission unto those who are seated upon the seat of Moses, and forbids His disciples, even in the most trying hour, to use the sword. Never does He incite unto resistance; always and ever words of love are heard from His lips. Love your enemies; bless them who curse you; do well unto those who hate you; and pray for those who despitefully use and persecute you.
He also loves nature with a child-like joy. He enjoys her beauty and refreshes Himself in her glory. He has an open eye for the grass of the earth and the lilies of the field, for the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. Vine and fig tree, the mustard seed and the grain of wheat, grape and thorn, fig and thistle, acre and flock, fishing and commerce, are used by Him as symbols and parables in His instruction concerning things Heavenly. The whole of nature speaks
unto Him of the Father, Which is in Heaven and Who maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. And so very little does He disapprove of all luxury, that He, when Mary once anointed Him with a very choice ointment, does not complain with His disciples of the waste but accepts readily and with gratitude this very precious mark of honor.
And what silences everything—Jesus, to be sure, laid down the natural life for our sakes, but He also again assumed it and is risen from the dead. When He had borne our sins in His flesh on the tree and had thus delivered the natural life from its guilt and curse and death, then He also again accepted it as His possession, but now reborn, spiritualized, sanctified. The corporeal resurrection of Christ from the dead is the decisive proof, that Christianity does not stand in enmity to anything human or natural but that it only desires to deliver the creation of all things sinful and perfectly sanctify it unto
God.
No other is the way in which the disciples of Jesus have to walk.
Whosoever wishes to follow Jesus must, to be sure, forsake everything, but he also receives everything in return, thirty and sixty and hundredfold. Whosoever has become one plant with Him in the likeness of His death shall also be this in the likeness of His resurrection. Whosoever suffers with Him, shall also be glorified with Him, and that, not for the first time in Heaven, but already in beginning here upon earth. For whosoever believes has eternal life and is renewed from day to day. From cross to crown, through death to life—that is the way for both Jesus and His disciples. Therefore everything also returns through death unto them in the resurrection.
Having died and arisen with Christ, they live the remaining portion of their life, in the flesh, in the faith of the Son of God, who has loved them and has given Himself for them. Although crucified unto the world, they are not taken out of the world, but are protected in the world from the evil one by the Father. They remain in the calling, in which they are called. The Jew, who is converted unto the Lord, is not required to take on the foreskin, and the Greek, who comes to
faith, is not compelled to be circumcised. The servant remains a servant, although he comes to liberty in the Lord; and the free-born remains free, although he becomes a servant of Christ. The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.
All natural ordinances remain; they are not revolutionarily broken down but only recreated by the new spirit. For the Kingdom of Heaven is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy through the Holy Spirit. Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thankgiving; for it is sanctified, by the Word of God and prayer. Only, believers have to think on whatsoever things are true; whatsoever things are honest; whatsoever things are just; whatsoever things are pure; whatsoever things are lovely; whatsoever things are of good report. As for the rest everything is theirs, for they are Christ's and Christ is God's.
Thus godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. Unto him, who has sought the Kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness, all other things are added. The best Christian is the best citizen. With his confession he neither stands outside of nor in opposition to the natural life. But proudly and bravely he bears it into the world, and plants everywhere the banner of the cross. The Gospel of Christ is a good tiding of great joy for all creatures, for mind and heart, for soul and body, for family and society, for science and art. For it delivers from guilt and redeems from death. It is a power of God unto salvation for everyone that believes.