Biblical Illustrator Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God. The Study. I. THE CHARACTER OF PAUL.1. There were two things the apostle knew confidently.(1) That he was "not meet to be called an apostle." The same humility should mark us. Our humility, however, must not weaken faith or enfeeble energy. For —(2) Paul was an apostle. We are not "meet" to be saved, but we should never doubt our salvation when the Word of God assures us. 2. The strength and nobleness of Paul's character was based on the confidence that he was "called of God" to be and to do the work of an apostle. A little thing will not make us lose heart in our work if we believe we are "called of God." II. THE CHARACTER OF THE CORINTHIANS. 1. They also were "called of God" "to be saints" — i.e., separated to God. They were not self-called, to be and to do what they liked. They were called of God to be like God, and to do His will; to be separated from their former selves. 2. They had been called out of a society —(1) Where the Greeks sought for "wisdom" and the Jews for "signs."(2) That was morally corrupt. 3. The character given them by God should inspire them with jealous care against —(1) The admission into the Church of the elements of Corinthian society.(2) Religious bigotry and intolerance — the spirit of the Jew. They were but a part of the Church. III. THE BENEDICTION. Grace is essentially an element of "peace." Its great dispensation was heralded in by "peace on earth." "Sinai" and "peace" were not known; but "Calvary" and "peace" are one. They who build on anything but "grace" will not know "peace." The Church, too, will be characterised by "peace" in the measure of the "grace" in the heart of its members. The peace-breaker is never a man "full of grace." (The Study.) 1. An apostle means "one sent," a missionary to teach the truth committed to him; and the authority of this apostolic mission St. Paul substantiates in ver. 1, for it was questioned. In the firm conviction of his call by the will of God lay all his power. No man felt more strongly his own insignificance, but more deeply did he feel that he was God's messenger. Imagine that conception dawning on him in the midst of his despondency, and his joyful boldness against the slander of his enemies, and the doubtfulness of his friends is natural. This should be our strength. Called to be a politician, a tradesman, a physician. Why should not each and all of us feel that? But we get rid of it by saying that God called the apostles, but does not speak to us. But observe the modesty of the apostolic claim. He did not wish that his people should receive his truth because he, the apostle, had said it, but because it was truth. 2. St. Paul's joining with himself "brother" Sosthenes is another proof of his desire to avoid lording it over God's heritage. If Sosthenes be he of Acts 18., what a conqueror St. Paul, or rather Christianity, had become. Like the apostle, Sosthenes now built up the faith which once he destroyed. II. THE PERSONS ADDRESSED. 1. "The Church," which, according to the derivation of the word, means the House of God. It is that body of men in whom the Spirit of God dwells, and who exist on earth for the purpose of exhibiting the Divine life, to penetrate and purify the world. It has an existence continuous throughout the ages, not on the principles of hereditary succession or of human election, but on the principle of spiritual similarity of character, just as the seed of Abraham are the inheritors of his faith. 2. There is, however, a Church visible and invisible; the latter consists of those spiritual persons who fulfil the notion of the ideal Church; the former embraces within it all who profess Christianity, whether they be proper or improper members of its body. Of the invisible Church St. Paul speaks as "called to be saints," "temples of the Holy Ghost." Of the visible as "carnal, and walking as men," and when he reproves their errors Christ too speaks of the same in the parables of the draw-net and the tares. To illustrate the abstract conception of a river is that of a stream of pure water, but the actual river is the Rhine or the Thames, muddy and discoloured. So of the Church. Abstractedly and invisibly it is a kingdom of God in which no evil is; in the concrete, and actually, it is the Church of Corinth, Rome, or England, tainted with impurity; and yet just as the muddied Rhone is really the Rhone, and not mud and Rhone, so there are not two churches, the Church of Corinth and the false church within it, but one visible Church in which the invisible lies concealed (cf. the parable of the Vine). 3. But beyond the limits of the visible is there no true Church? Are Plato, Socrates, Marcus Antoninus, and such as they, to be reckoned by us as lost? Surely not. The Church exists for the purpose of educating souls for heaven; but goodness is goodness, find it where we may. A vineyard exists for the purpose of nurturing vines, but he would be a strange vine-dresser who denied the reality of grapes because they had ripened under a less genial soil, and beyond the precincts of the vineyard. 4. The visible Church of which the Church of Corinth formed a part existed to exhibit what humanity should be to represent the Life Divine in(l) Self-devotion. They were "sanctified in Jesus Christ." When ecclesiastical dignity makes godliness a means of gain, or when priestcraft exercises lordship over God's heritage, then it is falsifying its mission.(2) Sanctity. The Corinthian converts came out of a factious and extremely corrupt society, and carried into the Church the savour of their old life, for the wine-skin will long retain the flavour of the wine. We find immorality existing, old philosophy colouring Christianity, the insolence of wealth at the Lord's Supper, and spiritual gifts exhibited for ostentation. Such was the Church of Corinth, the Early Church so boasted of by some! Nevertheless all are "called to be saints," and their mission is to put down all evil.(3) Universality: "With all who, in every place," &c. The Corinthian Church was only a part of the Church universal as a river is of the sea. Paul would not permit, it to think of itself as more spiritual or as possessing higher dignity than the Church at Jerusalem or Thessalonica. There is no centre of unity but Christ: We boast of our advantages over Dissenters and Romanists. Whereas the same God and the same Christ is "theirs and ours."(4) Unity. Christ was the Saviour of all, and His Spirit bound all together into a living and invisible unity. Each in their several ways contributed to fill up the same building on the same Foundation; each in their various ways were distinct members of Christ's body, performing different offices, yet knit into one under the same Head; and the very variety produced a more perfect and abiding unity. III. THE BENEDICTION: "Grace and peace," &c. The heathen commenced their letters with the salutation, "Health!" There is a life of the flesh, and there is a life of the spirit — a truer, more real, and higher life, and above and beyond all things the apostle wished them this. He wished them neither "health" nor "happiness," but "grace and peace," &c. And nosy comes the question, What is the use of this benediction? How could grace and peace be given as a blessing to those who rejected grace, and not believing fell no peace? Its validity depended on its reception by the hearts to whom it was addressed. If they received it they became in fact what they had been by right all along. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) The praise here bestowed, though not greater than that with which other Epistles are opened, is remarkable as being addressed to a Church which is thought deserving of severe censures. But it is to be observed — 1. That the praise there bestowed on faith and holiness is here almost confined to gifts such as knowledge and wisdom, which were obviously not incompatible with the moral degradation into which some of the members of the Church had fallen. And it is in accordance with the apostle's method to seize, in the first instance, on some point of sympathy and congratulation, not merely from a prudential policy, but from natural courtesy and generosity. 2. That this apostolic practice is an exemplification of the general rule, according to which Scripture presents strongly the ideal of the whole without describing the defects and sins of the parts. The visible society of Christians was to the apostles, in spite of its many imperfections, the representation of Messiah's kingdom. And then, although the Christian congregation in each city or country was distinct from the heathen community in which it was situated, it was, as it were, the Christian representative of that community. A Christian of Corinth or Ephesus might travel backwards and forwards from one to the other; but however great were the disorders of the one or the excellences of the other, there was no call upon him to exchange communions unless he actually ceased to reside in Corinth or Ephesus. The supposed duty of gaining proselytes from Christian communities different from our own, and the consequent division of Churches by any other than their local and national designations, are ideas alien from the apostolic age. "Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna," was a maxim of apostolical, no less than of Grecian wisdom. No Church of later ages has presented a more striking example of corruption or laxity than was exhibited at Corinth, yet the apostle does not call on his converts to desert their city or their community; and he himself steadily fixes his view on the better and the redeeming side. (Dean Stanley.) I. THE WRITER — "Paul, an Apostle," &c. 1. An apostle is one sent, as Christ was sent by the Father (1 John 17:18). It was therefore an office no one could take to himself, nor was it promotion from previous service. This explains one of Paul's most prominent characteristics: the combination of humility and authority. He is "not worthy to be called an apostle," yet he never hesitates to assert his claim to be listened to as the ambassador of Christ. And this is for us all the source of humility and confidence. It is altogether a new strength with which a man is inspired when he knows that God calls him to do this or that. 2. What share in the letter Sosthenes had we cannot say. He may have written it, and he may have suggested a point here and there. Paul did not stay to inquire whether Sosthenes was qualified to be the author of a canonical book; but knowing the authoritative position he had held among the Jews of Corinth, he naturally conjoins his name with his own. II. THE PERSONS TO WHOM THIS LETTER IS ADDRESSED (ver. 2). 1. With them are joined "all that in every place," &c. And therefore we may gather that Paul would have defined the Church as those who "call upon the name of Jesus Christ." This implies trust in Him, and acknowledgment of Him as supreme Lord. It is this which brings men together as a Christian Church. 2. But at once we are confronted with the difficulty that many persons who call upon the name of the Lord do so with no conviction of their need, and with no real dependence upon Christ or allegiance to Him. Hence the distinction between the Church visible, which consists of all who nominally belong to the Christian community, and the Church invisible. Where the visible Church is its members can be counted, its property estimated, its history written. But of the invisible Church no man can fully write the history, or name the members, or appraise its properties, gifts, and service. 3. From the earliest times it has been said that the true Church must be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. That is true if the Church invisible be meant. But it is not true of the Church visible. Paul here gives us four notes which must always be found in the true Church.(1) It is composed of consecrated people. The word "sanctify" means that which is set apart to holy uses. The New Testament word for Church, ecclesia, a society "called out," shows that it exists not for common purposes, but to witness for God and Christ and to maintain before men the ideal life realised in Christ.(2) Its members are called to be "saints." This Church was in danger of forgetting this. One of its members had been guilty of immorality; and of him Paul says, "Put away from among yourselves that wicked person." Even with sinners of a less flagrant sort, no communion was to be held. No doubt there is risk and difficulty in administering this law. The graver hidden sin may be overlooked, the more obvious transgression be punished. But the duty of the Church to maintain its sanctity is undeniable, and those whose function it is to watch over the purity of the Church would be saved from all doubtful action were the individual members alive to the necessity of holy living.(3) It is to be found not in one country or age, in this or that Church, whether it assume the title of "Catholic" or national, but is composed of "all that in every place," &c. No visible Church can claim to be catholic on the ground of its being co-extensive with Christendom. Catholicity is not a matter of more or less; it cannot be determined by a majority. No Church which does not claim to contain the whole of Christ's people without exception can claim to be catholic.(4) The Lord of all the Churches is one Lord; in this allegiance they centre, and by it are held together in a true unity. Plainly this note can belong only to the Church invisible. It is doubtful whether a visible unity is desirable. Considering what human nature is and how liable men are to be imposed upon by what is large, it is probably quite as conducive to the spiritual well-being of the Church that she is broken up into parts. Outward divisions would sink into insignificance, and be no more bewailed than the division of an army into regiments, were there the real unity which springs from true allegiance to the common Lord and zeal for the common cause rather than for the interests of our own particular Church. And Christian people are beginning to see how much more important are those points on which the whole Church is agreed than those which split the Church into sects. 4. Paul, with his usual courtesy and tact, begins with a hearty acknowledgment of the distinctive excellences of the Corinthian Church (vers. 4-6).(1) Paul was one of those large-natured men who rejoice more in the prosperity of others than in any private good fortune. Paul's joy was to see the testimony he had borne to Christ's goodness and power confirmed by the new energies and capacities in those who believed his testimony. The gifts of the Corinthian Christians made it manifest that the Divine presence and power proclaimed by Paul were real. And it is the new life of believers now which most strongly confirms the testimony regarding the risen Christ.(2) It is somewhat ominous that the incorruptible honesty of Paul can only acknowledge their possession of "gifts," not of those fine Christian graces which distinguished others. But the grace of God must always adjust itself to the nature of the recipient. The Greek nature was lacking in seriousness and moral robustness; but for many centuries it had been trained to excel in intellectual and oratorical displays. These natural gifts were quickened and directed by grace. Each race has its own contribution to make to complete the full-grown Christian manhood.(a) Paul thanked God for their gift of utterance. Perhaps had he lived now he might have had a word to say in praise of silence. There is more than a risk nowadays that talk takes the place of thought and action. But this utterance was a great gift. In no other language could Christian ideas have found such adequate and beautiful expression. And in this Paul saw promise of a rapid and effective propagation of the gospel. Legitimately may we hope for the Church when she so apprehends her own wealth in Christ as to be stirred to invite all the world to share with her.(b) But utterance is well backed by knowledge. Often has the determination to satisfy the intellect with Christian truth been reprehended as idle and even wicked. The faith which accepted testimony was a gift of God, but so also was the knowledge which sought to recommend the contents of this testimony to the human mind.(3) But however rich in endowments the Corinthians must be made to feel that no endowment can dispense with the necessity of conflict with sin. Richly endowed men are often most exposed to temptation, and feel more keenly than others the real hazard of human life. Paul therefore assigns as the reason of his assurance that they will be blameless in the day of Christ, that "God is faithful," &c. God calls us with a purpose in view, and is faithful to that purpose. He calls us to the fellowship of Christ that we may learn of Him and become suitable agents to carry out the whole will of Christ. (M. Dods, D. D.) 1. The ground of ministerial authority. 2. The motive to ministerial usefulness. (J. Lyth, D. D.) He is — 1. The messenger of Christ. 2. Divinely called. 3. Set apart by the will of God as indicated by His Providence. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
And Sosthenes our brother. I. WHO WAS SOSTHENES?1. After Paul began work at Corinth, Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, was converted; and that Paul considered his a notable case is proved by the fact that he personally baptized him. But as Paul was compelled to leave the synagogue, it is probable that Crispus would also have to leave; and the fact that Sosthenes is afterwards mentioned as chief ruler implies that Crispus was deposed. Paul continued his lectures next door to the synagogue, and its success would naturally enrage Sosthenes, who was doubtless the head of the conspiracy which led Paul before Gallio. We know the result. The Jews had risen in insurrection; it was now the turn of the Greeks, who made Sosthenes the special object of their attack. 2. That the Sosthenes of the text is the same as he of Acts 18, seems likely.(1) It is probable that if converted he would leave Corinth. His conversion would create deeper resentment than that of Crispus, for he had been not only chief ruler of the synagogue, but the persecutor of the new religion.(2) If Crispus had to leave Corinth he would naturally take a deep interest in the Church there, as we do in the home of our first birth and of our second.(3) Paul would surely regard Sosthenes with special interest. He had himself been a bitter persecutor. And if he had to flee from Corinth it is natural that he should have clung to Paul and Paul to him.(4) Paul would pray and strive for his conversion. After his acquittal Paul "tarried yet a good while" at Corinth, and would deeply regret the onslaught on Sosthenes, some of whose assaulters, if not Corinthians, were doubtless attached to Paul, which would lead to an expression of regret on the part of the apostle. And who can tell what such an apology would lead to? Perhaps Paul would, during the interview, refer to his own conversion, and lead his listener to see in it a reflection of his own case. And then, Paul would see in Sosthenes one who was so like what he had been.(5) Unless this Sosthenes is he of Acts 18. it is difficult to understand why Paul should have here introduced his name, which is not found elsewhere; but if the two are the same nothing is more natural. II. THE LESSONS. 1. How wonderful in its operations is the grace of God! Here is a man the very last one would expect to become a Christian. 2. Do not be hopeless over any case. Sosthenes was in office, and officials are always difficult to move, and the indignities he suffered would exasperate him against Christianity. 3. Cherish a forgiving spirit. How fully Paul forgave his enemy and admitted him into his friendship. 4. Cultivate kindly feelings towards the Christian friends with whom we have been or are associated. The first Christians Sosthenes knew were at Corinth. At first he hated them, but afterwards he loved them as he had never loved friends before; but the brotherliness was on both sides. (A. Scott.) The term, ἐκκλήσια (church), formed of the two words "out of" and "to call," denotes in ordinary Greek language an assembly of citizens called out of their dwellings by an official summons (cf. Acts 19:41). Applied to the religious domain in the New Testament, the word preserves essentially the same meaning. Here, too, there is a summoner — God, who calls sinners to salvation by the preaching of the gospel (Galatians 1:6). There are the summoned — sinners, called to faith thenceforth to form the new society of which Christ is the Head. The complement "of God" indicates at once Him who has summoned the assembly, and Him to whom it belongs. The term, "the Church of God," thus corresponds to the Old Testament phrase, "the congregation of the Lord"; but there is this difference, that the latter was recruited by way of filiation, while in the new covenant the Church is formed and recruited by the personal adherence of faith. (Prof. Godet.) Threefold sanctification (Jude 1, text, and 1 Peter 1:2): — Mark the union of the three Divine Persons in all their gracious acts. How unwise all those who make preferences in the Persons of the Trinity. In their love, and in the actions which flow from it, they are one. Specially is this in the case of sanctification. This being the case, what value God must set upon holiness! God could as soon cease to be as cease to be holy, and sooner renounce the sovereignty of the world than tolerate anything unholy. Sanctification means — I. SETTING APART — the taking of something which might legitimately have been put to ordinary uses for God's service alone. 1. E.g., in Exodus 13:2 God claimed the firstborn of men and cattle. The tribe of Levi was set apart to be the representatives of the firstborn. In Genesis 2:3, God set apart for His own service what had been an ordinary portion of time before. So Leviticus 27:14 was meant as a direction to devout Jews, who intended that the produce of the field or the occupation of the house should be wholly given to God. So in Exodus 29:44 we read that God said, "I will sanctify the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar." To the same effect are the sanctification of the altar, instruments, and vessels (Numbers 7:1), the setting apart of Eleazer to keep the ark (1 Samuel 7:1), and the establishment of cities of refuge (Joshua 20:7). This Old Testament use of the word explains John 10:26. Immaculately conceived and preserved from all stain of evil, Christ needed no sanctifying work within Him. All that is here intended is that He was set apart (John 17:19). You understand now the text in Jude. God the Father has specially set apart His people. 2. What suggestive and solemn thoughts are here.(1) If we are sanctified by God we ought never to be used for any purpose but for Him. Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price. "But must we not work and earn our own bread?" Yes! but still as "serving the Lord." If any man say, "I have an occupation in which I cannot serve the Lord," leave it, you have no right in it; but there is no lawful calling in which you will not be able to say, "I do all to the glory of God." The Christian is no more a common man than was the altar a common place. It is as great a sacrilege for Christians to live to the world as it would have been for the Jews to use the holy fire for their own kitchen.(2) It was a crime which brought destruction upon Babylon when Belshazzar had brought forth the cups of the Lord, the goodly spoil of the temple at Jerusalem." Just as the sacred vessel touched the sacrilegious lip, a hand was seen mysteriously writing out his doom. Oh, take heed, ye that profess to be sanctified by the blood of the covenant, that you reckon it not to be an unholy thing. See to it that ye make not your bodies which ye profess to be set apart to God's service, slaves of sin. If you and I are tempted to sin, we must reply, "No, let another man do that, but I cannot; I am God's man." When Antiochus Epiphanes offered a sow on the altar, his awful death might have been easily foretold. Oh! how many there are who make a high profession, who have offered unclean flesh upon the altars of God; have made religion a stalking-horse to their own emolument. II. That the thing set apart for holy uses is TO BE REGARDED, TREATED, AND DECLARED HOLY. 1. E.g., in Isaiah 8:13, it is said, "Sanctify the Lord of Hosts, Himself." Now the Lord does not need to be set apart for holy uses, nor to be purified, for He is holiness itself. When Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10.) put strange fire on the altar, and the fire of the Lord consumed them, the reason was — "I will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me"; by which He meant that He would be treated as a most Holy Being with whom such liberties were not to be taken (see also Numbers 10:12, and "hallowed be Thy name" in the Lord's Prayer). 2. Have we not some light here concerning our second text — "Sanctified in Christ Jesus" ? In Christ Jesus the saints are regarded by God as being holy, and treated as such, i.e., are justified. A holy God cannot have dealings with unholy men; but He views us, not in ourselves, but in our federal Head, the Second Adam. We may boldly enter into the Holiest, where no unholy thing may come, because God views us as holy in Christ Jesus. We now come to — III. ACTUALLY TO PURIFY OR MAKE HOLY. 1. In Exodus 19:10-12 sanctification consisted in certain outward deeds by which they were put into a cleanly state and their souls were brought into reverential awe. In Joshua 3., when Israel were about to pass the Jordan, they were to prepare themselves to be beholders of a scene so august. Men in the old times were sprinkled with blood, and thus sanctified from defilement and considered to be pure in the sight of God. This is the sense in which we view our third text, "Sanctification through the Spirit," the sense in which it is generally understood. 2. Sanctification begins in regeneration, and is carried on in two ways — by mortification, whereby the lusts of the flesh are subdued, and vivification, by which the life which God has put within us is made to spring up into everlasting life. This is carried on every day in what we call perseverance, and it comes to perfection in "glory." Now this work, though we commonly speak of it as being the work of the Spirit, is quite as much the work of Christ. There are two agents: one is the worker who works this sanctification effectually — that is the Spirit; and the other, the agent, the efficacious means by which the Spirit works this sanctification is — Jesus Christ and His most precious blood. There is a garment which needs to be washed. Here is a person to wash it, and there is a bath in which it is to be washed — the Person is the Holy Spirit, but the bath is the precious blood of Christ. 3. The Spirit of God as the Author of sanctification employs a visible agent. "Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth." How important then that the truth should be preached. 4. In another sense we are sanctified through Christ Jesus, because it is His blood and the water which flowed from His side in which the Spirit washes our heart from the defilement and propensity of sin (Ephesians 5:25). There is no being sanctified by the law; the Spirit does not use legal precepts to sanctify us. No; just as when Marah's waters were bitter, Moses had a tree cast in, and they were sweet, so the Spirit of God, finding our natures bitter, takes the tree of Calvary, casts it into the stream, and everything is made pure. He finds us lepers, and to make us clean He dips the hyssop of faith in the precious blood, and sprinkles it upon us and we are clean. The blood of Christ not merely makes satisfaction for sin, but works the death of sin. The blood appears before God and He is well pleased; it falls on us — lusts wither, and old corruptions feel the death-stroke. 5. Just as the Spirit only works through the truth, so the blood of Christ only works through faith. Our faith lays hold on the atonement, sees Jesus suffering on the tree, and says, "I vow revenge against the sins which nailed Him there"; and thus His precious blood works in us a detestation of all sin. (C. H. Spurgeon.) I. IT IS GOD'S — but to distinguish it from the heathen ἐκκλησίαι — a name never used in profane Greek to denote a religious assembly — but to distinguish it from the κόσμος, which is the antagonist of the kingdom and out of which the Church is called. Though the name ecclesia was borrowed from the clubs or associations of the time, the apostle discovers in it a Christian idea — that of separation from the world. To say that the Church is an ecclesia is to say it is God's. II. As a result of its being an ecclesia, the Church is SANCTIFIED (cf. John 17:16-19). The primary meaning is consecration. The Christian enters into the place hitherto occupied by the Jewish Church. But consecration in its Christian form resolves itself into holiness. Christ takes possession of every morality and raises it into spirituality. All goodness becomes a religion, binding the soul to God. "In" means that believers are not only sanctified "through the offering of Christ" (Hebrews 10:10), but also continue holy in virtue of union with Christ (cf. Romans 15:16). III. It consists of men "CALLED TO BE SAINTS." They are saints by reason of a Divine call from without as well as of a Divine operation from within (cf. Romans 1:6; Leviticus 23:2). The notion of saintship is in Scripture inseparable from that of being reckoned, of being allotted a place by God. (Principal Edwards.)
Grace be unto you, and peace. Grace is favour, and peace its fruits. The former includes all that is comprehended in the love of God as exercised towards sinners; and the latter all the benefits which flow from that love. All good, therefore, whether providential or spiritual, whether temporal or eternal, is comprehended in these terms — justification, adoption, and sanctification, with all the benefits which either accompany or flow from them. These infinite blessings suppose an infinite source; and as they are sought no less from Christ than from God the Father, Christ must be a Divine person. It is to be remarked that God is called our Father, and Christ our Lord. God as God has not only created us, but renewed and adopted us. God in Christ has redeemed us. He is our owner and sovereign, to whom our allegiance is immediately due; who reigns in and rules over us, defending us from all His and our enemies. This is the peculiar form which piety assumes under the gospel. All Christians regard God as their Father and Christ as their Lord. His person they love, His voice they obey, and in His protection they trust.(C. Hodge, D. D.) Trust God and thy soul shall no longer be like "the sea that cannot rest," full of turbulent wishes, full of passionate desires that come to nothing, full of endless meanings, like the homeless ocean that is ever working, and never flings up any product of its work but foam and broken weeds; but thine heart shall become still, like some land-locked lake, where no winds or tempests ruffle, and on its calm surface there shall be mirrored the clear shining of the unclouded blue, and the perpetual light of the sun that never goes down. The vessel in which we are passing over the sea of life is always driven by contrary winds till the Lord embarks. (J. Pulsford.) Observe — I. THE BLESSING WE ANNOUNCE. 1. Grace and peace. 2. Needed by all. 3. Offered to all. II. THEIR SOURCE. 1. God. 2. Our Father. 3. Through Christ. 4. Hence the supply is inexhaustible. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I thank my God... for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ. I. THE GRACE THEY HAD RECEIVED.1. Freely given. 2. Richly supplied. 3. Amply confirmed. II. THE HOPE THEY ANTICIPATED. They waited confidently for — 1. The coming of Christ. 2. Their final justification. 3. Everlasting fellowship with Him. (J. Lyth, D. D.) I. THE APOSTOLIC CONGRATULATION. "I thank my God," &c. 1. In the heart of St. Paul, the unselfishness of Christianity had turned this world into a perpetual feast. If we want to know what his life was, turn to 2 Corinthians 11.; yet it was filled with the blessedness which arises from the abilities to enjoy the blessings of others as though they were our own. Personally we get very little in this world; and if we are to mourn that we never had a whole kid to ourselves "to make merry with," life will become desolate indeed. Only by saying, "It is meet we should rejoice and be glad" with our brethren, can life be a blessing. Thus the apostle, in all his weariness and persecutions, was nevertheless always rejoicing with his Churches. 2. Here he rejoices over three gifts to the Corinthians —(1) That of utterance. To Paul a blessing was nothing unless it could be imparted to others. Knowing a truth is one thing, being able to express it is another, and to dare to express it another. "Utterance" implies both power and courage. A truth hidden is unproductive. And therefore the power of utterance becomes, by the grace of God, a faculty divine.(2) But there may be utterance without knowledge. St. Paul desired utterance in order to speak out something in him. With many persons utterance is only verbiage. Let us seek, not merely to have utterance, but to have something worthy of uttering. Be sure you speak that you do know, and nothing else.(3) The attitude of expectation (ver. 7), as though that were the best gift of all.(a) We are to look for a Church of the future — not of the past, nor of the present. The coming of Christ includes the perfect state of human society, and here — Christ coming to us, not our going to Him. And we are to be looking forward to this; not busying ourselves in dreams about, and mournings after, the past, nor complacently praising the present, but thankful to God for what we have, feeling that the past was necessary, and, still dissatisfied with our. selves, hoping something better yet, both for God's Church and world.(b) It, implies a humble expecting state; not dogmatising, not dreading, but simply waiting. The kingdom of God is within us; but the kingdom of God developed will be as the lightning, sudden and universal. 3. Note the ground of hope for the continuance and successful issue of those blessings. Not on any stability of human goodness, but the character of God (ver. 9). Had not Saul once had the Spirit? Had not Judas once had gifts? Who, then, could say that the Corinthians might not make shipwreck of their faith? The apostle answers this, not by counting on their faithfulness to God, but on God's faithfulness to them. Of course, this doctrine may be misused. We may rest upon it too much, and so become unwatchful and supine; but, nevertheless, it is a most precious truth, and without it I cannot understand how any man dares go forth to his work in the morning, or at evening lay his head on his pillow to sleep. II. THE APOSTLE'S WARNING AND REPROOF. 1. Parties had arisen in Corinth.(1) That which called itself by the name of Paul. Now the teaching of this apostle differed from that of the others in the prominence which it gave to certain truths — justification by faith, the salvability of the Gentiles, and Christian liberty. Some of the Corinthians exaggerated all this, and said, "This is the truth and nothing else": accordingly they made the doctrine of justification by faith an excuse for licentiousness, and the doctrine of Christian liberty a cloak of maliciousness.(2) That which named itself after Apollos, the difference between whom and Paul seems to be not so much a difference of views as in the mode of stating those views; the eloquence of St. Paul was rough and burning, that of Apollos was more refined and polished.(3) That called by the name of Cephas, between whom and Paul there was this difference — that whereas the Spirit of God had detached Paul from Judaism by a sudden shock, in the heart of Peter Christianity had been slowly developed; he had known Jesus first as the Son of Man, and afterwards as the Son of God. It was long before he realised God's purpose of love to the Gentiles. Therefore all the Jewish converts preferred to follow him.(4) That calling itself by the name of Christ, who doubtless prided themselves on their spirituality and inward light, and looked down with contempt on those who professed to follow the opinion of any human teacher. Perhaps they ignored apostolic teaching altogether, and proclaimed the doctrine of direct communion with God without the aid of ministry or ordinances. 2. The guilt of these partisans did not lie in holding views differing from each other; the guilt of schism is when each party, instead of expressing fully its own truth, denies that others are in the truth at all. Nothing eats out the heart and life of religion more than party spirit. Christianity is love; party spirit is the death of love. Christianity is union amidst variety of views; party spirit is disunion. In these days of party spirit, be it urged solemnly on our hearts that we "love one another." Accuracy of view is worth little in comparison with warmth of heart. It is easy to love such as agree with us. Let us learn to love those who differ from us. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) two blessed states of mind: — I. EXEMPLARY GRATITUDE. "I thank my God always on your behalf." The gratitude here was — 1. Unselfish. "On your behalf." It is right and well to praise God for what He has done for us, but it is a nobler thing to praise Him for what He has done for others. No man rightly appreciates a blessing who does not desire others to participate in it. The sublimity of a landscape is more than doubly enjoyed when one or more stand by your side to share your admiration. 2. For spiritual good. "For the grace of God."(1) That grace which "enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge" — two splendid gifts where they are inspired by the "grace of God" and properly related. "Utterance" apart from "knowledge" is worthless and pernicious, volubilities of vice, garrulousness of social evils. "Knowledge" is of no value to others, unless it has effective "utterance." Knowledge with a powerful oratory will move the world; it has shivered dynasties, converted millions, and created churches.(2) That grace which confirmed in their experience the testimony of Christ. What higher gift than this — a personal realisation of Christianity?(3) That grace which inspired them with a practical hope of the appearance of Christ. 3. An habitual state of mind. "I thank God always." It was not an occasional sentiment. It was a settled attitude of heart. II. PRECIOUS CONFIDENCE. 1. In Christ perfecting character. "Who shall also confirm you unto the end." So perfecting it that it shall be "blameless." All moral imperfections removed. 2. In His appearing again. The day when He will appear is the day of days for humanity. 3. In His granting them companionship. "Unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ the Lord." "Where I am there ye shall be also." (D. Thomas D. D.) Paul uses here two expressions, elsewhere placed in the same close connection (see Romans 12:6; 1 Peter 4:10), "grace" (χάρις) and "gift" — not δῶρον or its cognate words (which might include every natural blessing common to heathen and Christian), but χάρισμα, the spiritual blessing connected with and flowing from God's "grace." Note that — I. BOTH ARE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION. 1. True, "grace" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and God is proclaimed to be "gracious," but this rarely. It is in the New Testament that we have complete revelation of this, and first have the frequent phrase "the grace of God." 2. And this because "grace... came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17; Titus 2:11). So in the text. God's fullest, freest favour to a sinful world, made possible by the sacrifice of Christ, made manifest by His life and ministry, and made over to His disciples as an abiding possession in the outpouring of the Spirit. 3. The "gifts" of God are thus —(1) The heritage of the Christian Church, which is the special sphere of the Holy Spirit's operations (2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:22).(2) Distributed to believers by Him as being God (chap. 1 Corinthians 12:4, 11).(3) The outcome of the Divine grace of our Christian calling (Romans 12:6), and argue the possession of that grace (1 Peter 4:10). II. BOTH ARE TO BE USED BY US. 1. "Grace" looks chiefly to the side of personal sanctification. St. Paul beseeches his converts not to "receive the grace of God in vain" (2 Corinthians 6:1), shows how he himself had been changed from a chief of sinners "by the grace of God" (1 Corinthians 15:10), and thanks God that they had been partakers of the same blessing (text and 1 Corinthians 6:11). 2. "Gifts" look chiefly to the side of Church edification. They are to be used for others (1 Peter 4:10). Some have more, and some less; some have one, and some others. In our text St. Paul mentions two, "utterance" (or perhaps the expounding of "doctrine" — λόγος) and "knowledge" of spiritual things. In chap. 12. he shows how this Church was "enriched" by an abundance (see vers. 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, 28). 3. As every truehearted Christian has received both grace and some spiritual gift or gifts, we should be careful to use both aright. (1) (2) 4. The grace and gifts of God may be neglected or misused. Illustrate by the parable of the ten pounds for "grace," and of the ten talents for "gifts." III. BOTH POINT FORWARD TO THE END SET BEFORE US. 1. Sanctification is in order to that "holiness without which no m an shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14); to that being "like Him," that we may "see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2). 2. Christian work is not an end, but the means to an end, even preparedness for the second coming of Christ. 3. This second advent — and not death — is the one great end set forth in the New Testament as the goal of the Christian's hopes and efforts. So our text.Conclusion: Let this subject lead to — 1. Thankfulness for the grace of God manifest in the progress of His work amongst us. 2. Humility in the recognition of our spiritual gifts as of His grace alone. 3. Earnestness in the fulfilling our obligation of "ministering the same one to another." 4. Singleness of purpose in looking towards the end of God's work in us and by us — the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (T. H. Barnett.)
1. An enlightened mind. 2. A waiting spirit. II. SECURES — 1. The continued preservation of believers. 2. Their ultimate acceptance.Application: 1. Be thankful if you are partakers of this grace. 2. Be careful to walk worthy of it. 3. Remember in whom is all your strength. (C. Simeon, M. A.)
I. II. III. (J. Willcox.)
II. THE SOURCE OF ALL SPIRITUAL GIFTS. "Enriched by Him in all utterance and in all knowledge" (ver. 5); "So that ye come behind in no gift" (ver. 7); "Who shall also confirm you unto the end" (ver. 8); "That ye be unreprovable" (R. V.).Thus: Gifts of — 1. Preaching. 2. Hearing. 3. Miracles (1 Corinthians 12:4). 4. Per. severance. 5. Holiness — Are all traced to Him as the Author. III. THE SUBJECT OF APOSTOLIC PREACHING. "The testimony of Christ" means the witness given concerning Christ. Christ is the Alpha and Omega of all true preaching. Christ in all His work and offices, especially "Christ as crucified." IV. THE OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN EXPECTATION (vers. 7, 8). We look for Him in faith, and hope, and love. His coming will be a revealing of His glory, and of our judgment. May we be "unreprovable" in His sight. (Clerical World.)
1. Poor in time. If not enriched, poor in eternity. 2. "Poor" in utterance, because poor in knowledge. His language impious, foolish, idle, &c. 3. "Poor," though possessing earthly wealth. "Carry nothing out." 4. "Poor," because without Him, "without whom nothing is strong." II. MAN ENRICHED BY GRACE (Revelation 3:18). Birthright restored. Inheritance secured. "If children, then heirs." 1. "Rich" in utterance — "all utterance" — because rich in "all knowledge." Holy, loving, grateful words. Prayer and praise. 2. "Rich," though possessing little of this world's wealth. "Having nothing, yet," &c. 3. "Rich," because "in Christ," "in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." "Unsearchable riches." Enriched by Him. All of Christ, "who for our sakes became poor that we... might be made rich." (J. Cornford.)
(1) (2) (3) (4) 1. The best way to secure true honours is to make our lives conform to Christian principles. 2. The ideas of inspiration will more largely and more permanently enrich the intellect than draughts drawn from other reservoirs of wisdom. All others are receiving reservoirs: the Bible is a fountain source. 3. The man whose business is conducted on a Christian basis will most certainly be rich in the best sense of the word. No one is rich who is not rich in contentment and in good works. 4. We are enabled in God to believe in and assert our immortality. 5. In Him we have a wealth of spirituality which is ever-increasing. It is unaffected by the grave. Lack we any good thing, we ask and receive. All things are ours. If such to us is the enriching power of God on earth, how much more enriching will that power be in the world to come! (N. Schenk, D. D.)
2. Christ has enriched the world's moral life. Fatal weakness of human moralists. Lacked authority. Christ spake with authority. His teachings not opinions, but living rule of life and conduct. Christ's teachings have changed the world's moral life. Most important.(1) The Fatherhood of God. New meaning given to Old Testament simile, "Like as a father," &c.(2) The brotherhood of man. Strong and wise to help the weak and ignorant. "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."(3) Necessity of moral change to fit men for the kingdom of heaven.(4) Life and immortality brought to light. Christ alone speaks here with authority. "In My Father's house are many mansions." 3. Christ has enriched the world's social life. Truths which enrich the world's thought and moral life bound to tell upon its social life. Living power in true and noble thoughts to leaven character. Truth subjective in its influence upon the mind; objective in character and influence upon others. Christian thought can mould a nation's life. (1) (2) (Methodist Times.)
(Chas. Gore, M. A.)
(H. E. Channing, D. D.)
(Principal Edwards.)
I. THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS. When He was brought before Pilate the interrogatory was, What was His mission? The response was that He had a kingdom, not of this world, and consequently He must be a King. His was the kingdom of truth; and the weapons of His warfare were not carnal, but spiritual. He came into the world that He might bear witness to the truth. The Pharisees charged Him with witnessing for Himself. The response was not a denial of the facts, but a reaffirmation that He should be the light of the world and bear witness to the truth. When John, in his exile, began to see the revelations of God, he declared that Jesus was the faithful Witness: that He was the Prince of the kings of the earth. Whether, therefore, we view Him in prophecy or in history, or in the revelation which He made of Himself to His servants, we see that His mission was to be that of Witness. II. JESUS HAVING GIVEN HIS EVIDENCE FOR TRUTH, IT NOW REMAINS FOR EVERY RELIEVER TO CONFIRM THAT WITNESS TO THE WORLD IN HIS LIFE BY WORDS AND DEEDS. The world does not believe in the Son of God. The Pharisees told Him that His witness was not true. He, on the other hand, when He had laid claim to being the witness for the truth, speaking as never man spake, working with the mighty power of God, turns round upon His followers, and says unto them, "Ye shall be My witnesses." The idea here evidently is that Jesus, having once deposed, they must stand forth to confirm Him before the world. He is, so to speak, the main witness in court. The effort is to break Him down when He claims to be the King of the truth. His word has been spoken, and now His people are rendering their evidence; it is passing silently to the jury, and the verdict is rapidly being made up, either for or against the Son of God. Men must receive Him. This they will do when they see His disciples corroborating in their lives the witness He made for the truth. This corroborating witness of the Church is borne in these ways: we do for God, or we bear for Him, or we suffer for Him. The world pays a special tribute to Christian ethics when it says, Your creed is a good one, but your life is not up to it. We may print religious literature and scatter it over the land, but the world will not read books — it is too busy, too restless, too eager; but it will read you, and it will receive or reject the claims of the religion of Christ in proportion as it finds in everyday life the record which believers are there making, the witness they are giving. (R. K. Smoot, D. D.)
(Prof. Godet.)
(R. Bickersteth.)
II. THE MODE OF SO PREPARING FOR THE COMING OR MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST JESUS, THAT IT SHALL BE, NOT THE APPREHENSION OF IMPENDING EVIL, BUT' THE EXPECTANCY OF CERTAIN AND ENDURING GOOD. The apostle speaks of God "confirming these Corinthians unto the end." Confirming them, you will ask, in what? The reference is to the fourth verse, in which St. Paul speaks, first, of the producing cause, in which alone preparation had commenced or could commence, even the "grace which had been given through Jesus Christ"; and afterwards of the effect which had been produced thereby — "that they were enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge"; in which utterance, being the declaration of a good confession — and in which knowledge, being that which is to life eternal — he desires that through the same grace, and by the same power, they may he confirmed. III. THE CONSEQUENCE OF BEING THUS PREPARED BY GRACE AND CONFIRMED OF GOD UNTO THE END: viz., that we shall be found blameless in the day of Jesus Christ. This word "blameless" is strictly a forensic term, applicable to the trial of the soul in the high court of heaven, and by God, the Judge of all. Whatever may be the discoveries of the last day, or to whomsoever made, of one thing we are certain, beyond all fear of a contingency, "there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." (T. Dale, M. A.)
2. Waiting is very hard work, far harder than doing. Waiting too for uncertainties, and better times which may never come; "hoping against hope," with that "hope deferred which maketh the heart sick," is one of the hardest of the tasks which we have to do. Waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ is also hard work, because of the sin which is in us and around us, but it is not hopeless or doubtful. "In due time we shall reap if we faint not." 3. How may we best wait for this? 4. Though we are waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus, He is in a sense always with us. 5. We must wait for our Lord's coming with our armour girded on and in the front of the battle. (H. J. W. Buxton, M. A.)
I. A FIRM CONVICTION THAT CHRIST WILL COME. In any other state of mind the term "waiting" would be inapplicable. And, indeed, the second coming of Christ forms a part of the deliberate and cherished creed of every true disciple. It is not a mere speculation indulged in because it is agreeable; a conjecture suggested by appearances, and adhered to as being probable and useful; the result of a process of reasoning, liable to errors and doubts; it is a point of settled belief, which the Christian maintains because it is founded on the testimony of Him who is equally omniscient and true. It is the subject of a Divine prediction, of a Divine promise, of a Divine assurance; and therefore we cannot withhold our full assent to it without impeaching the absolute perfection of that absolutely perfect Being by whom it has been attested. And remember that it is not set down merely as one of a multitude of events which will happen, but as a constituent portion of that scheme which the Son of God undertook to execute as the Redeemer of sinful men. Christ was "once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them who look for Him Christ will appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation." II. THAT THIS EVENT IS THE SUBJECT OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND CONTEMPLATION. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, seeing it is so true and so important in His regard? Were it a merely probable circumstance, a fact of little interest, or nothing more than a dry abstract truth, the mind of the Christian could not entertain it with much cordiality, or look forward to the period of its being realised with any intensity of feeling. But how differently must he be affected towards it, when he considers its indubitable certainty — the touching concerns which it involves — the various attractions which it presents in its every aspect — and the bearing which it has on all that he now is, and all that he is to be for ever! III. A DILIGENT AND FAITHFUL PREPARATION FOR IT. Unless we had this preparation, we could not with any propriety be said to wait for Christ's coming, because, if unprepared for His coming, it would be an event to be feared and deprecated. Christ will come for two purposes: to reward His people and to punish His enemies. But if we are among the number of His enemies, then, when He comes, we must suffer the condemnation which He has threatened against all those who have refused or neglected to become what He required them to be. Those who wait for His coming, and are prepared for that event, are — 1. Believers. Relying on Christ in the exercise of a true faith, we may wait for His coming, because His merit, appropriated by that faith, has cancelled our guilt, the prevalence of which would have made His coming terrible, and has obtained for us a title to the celestial kingdom, which we never could have entered through any doings or deservings of our own. 2. Saints — holy persons. When Christ comes it is to conduct His people to their reward. But how can He take us into His Father's house, if our principles and dispositions and habits are all in irreconcilable hostility to the exercises and enjoyments of that blessed abode? Nothing that defileth can enter into the New Jerusalem. IV. A DECIDED AND ARDENT DESIRE FOR IT. The feeling is dictated by all our present experience, and by all our future prospects. There are evils from which that event alone can emancipate us, and there are enjoyments to which that event alone can introduce us. And if it be a right thing to wish for deliverance from the one, and for the attainment of the other, then it is right to wish for the second advent of Christ, because that is identified with both advantages. 1. Here you are subject to disease — to its pain, and its languishing, and its mortal issue. But when your Saviour comes He will put upon you the crown of life, and you shall neither sicken, nor suffer, nor die any more. 2. Here your reputation may be wounded from ignorance, envy, prejudice, or malevolence. But when your Saviour comes He will place you among those whom God hath justified, and whom no man can condemn — in whose society calumny cannot reach you, and reproach cannot hurt you. 3. Here you may have to struggle with the numerous ills and hardships of poverty. But when your Saviour comes you shall have no wants which He will not supply with inexhaustible abundance. 4. Here your cherished friends may betray you when you are most confiding, and those who were dear to you as your own soul may be torn from your embrace by the relentless hand of death. But when your Saviour comes He will wind up this scene of trial, and will take you where ingratitude and treachery and dissolution shall be unknown. 5. Here you have the plague of sin to trouble and torment you. But when your Saviour comes He will place you where you shall be beyond the reach of temptation, and beyond the fear and the capacity of transgressing. 6. Here your eye and your heart are often pained by the sight of abounding iniquity. But when your Saviour comes He will conduct you into a region as pure as it is happy. 7. Here your best services and highest attainments are mixed with much imperfection and weakness. But when your Saviour comes He will make you "perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 8. Here all your enjoyments, however exquisite, multiplied, and prolonged, are but mingled at the best, and soon over. But when your Saviour comes He will impart to you a happiness immortal as the souls that are to enjoy it — as the uncreated source from which it is to flow. 9. Here it is a trial to your patience that the Cross of Christ should be such a rock of offence, and that He who bore its agony and its shame should be despised and rejected of men. But when your Saviour comes His enemies will be destroyed, the numberless trophies of His humiliation and His blood will be assembled to honour Him, and all the hosts of heaven will unite with all the redeemed from the earth, to ascribe to Him the blessing, and dominion, which He had so richly won. V. THE EXERCISE OF PATIENCE AND RESIGNATION. Submission to the Divine arrangements is a necessary part of the Christian character, and particularly in this regard. You should wait for Christ's second coming with patience, because — 1. The period of that coming is fixed by God's appointment. It is a part of the plan which He has formed for your salvation. It originates in the same mercy which prompted Him to give up His Son to suffering and to death for you. And does not every view of the Divine perfections constrain you to acquiesce in all that has been fixed as to the second coming, as well as in all that took place with regard to the first coming of Christ? 2. It is conducive to your own improvement and advantage. The present is a scene of preparation for the future. Every temptation that you successfully resist; every obligation that you faithfully fulfil; every trial to which you patiently submit; every step that you advance in the career of godliness and virtue; every victory that you achieve over the devil, the world, and the flesh, by that faith and patience which characterisc the saints of God upon earth, will put a loftier note in your song of praise, and add another gem to your crown of righteousness and glory in heaven. Seeing, then, that your continual stay here is conducive to your everlasting benefit, let not your souls be cast down, and let not their desires for deliverance overstep the limits of devout resignation to the will of Him who has arranged your lot in this world with a view to your destiny beyond it, and whose redeeming mercy will lead Him to make all things work together for your good. 3. It is for the advantage of your brethren and fellow men. This was one of Paul's motives, when amidst his longings to depart and to be with Christ, he was still contented to remain where the great Head of the Church had ordained him to labour. "Nevertheless," said he, "to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." (A. Thomson, D. D.)
I. LEAVES US IN A STATE MORE SUITABLE AND MORE PROFITABLE THAN EITHER ABSOLUTE IGNORANCE OR PERFECT KNOWLEDGE. 1. It awakens feelings which the former would fail to excite, and which — 2. The latter would quench as they arose. II. IT IS SPECIALLY ADAPTED TO KEEP ALIVE EXPECTATION, BY BRINGING EMPHATICALLY BEFORE US THE PERPETUAL POSSIBILITY OF AN IMMEDIATE MANIFESTATION. It keeps us in a state of — 1. Lively hope; 2. Watchfulness; 3. Humility; 4. Fidelity; 5. Earnest inquiry after truth; 6. Reverence and dread. (W. A. Butler, M. A.)
I. "CONFIRM THEM UNTO THE END" (ver. 8). "All is well that ends well." The "end" of the Christian will confirm the wisdom of his choosing such an "end." Hence "the end of a thing is better than the beginning." The world calls him a "fool"; the day of Christ will "confirm" his wisdom. The world calls him ignoble; the day of Christ will "confirm" his pretensions to greatness and glory. The world calls him poor; the "day of Christ" will "confirm" his claims to an "inheritance incorruptible," &c. We are now "confirming the testimony of Christ," and proving Him true (ver. 6). In "that day" Christ will confirm our testimony, and prove us true. It will be the manifestation of the sons of God. II. MAKE THEM BLAMELESS. Then all imperfections will end. Sin's damp mists will no longer rise to obscure the moral heavens. Lessons: 1. Encouragement to the faithful worker. 2. Confidence. Do circumstances look discouraging in your labours of love? Do long-looked-for wants tarry? Do the desired clouds refuse to break in blessings on the parched heart? Have faith. The blessing will come, though it tarry, "for God is faithful," &c. (ver. 9). He will keep His promises, &c. 3. Stimulus. "The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ" will be a revelation of unrecognised or undeveloped" "gifts." Therefore "come behind in no gift," &c. When that day dawns, the grand confirmation service will be held — "confirming" the good and the bad alike. (The Study.)
1. You should make it your business to study the whole of God's Word, and, as far as you are able, to compare and combine its contents; and. you must not accustom yourselves to dwell on the particular parts of it to the exclusion of other portions which require an equal degree of consideration and deference. 2. You will learn from those statements of the scriptural doctrine which have been laid before you, the folly and presumption of relying on God's goodness, and the grace and promises of Christ, without the exercise, on your own part, of religious labour and spiritual industry. 3. Whatever measure of religious industry you may exert, whatever progress you may make in the improvement of your souls and the reformation of your hearts and habits, still remember that you owe everything to God; that you are yourselves inclined to evil, and that it is your bounden duty to refer back all holy desires, good counsels, and just works to the Author and Giver of all goodness. (Bp. Bethel.)
1. In faith, holiness, love. 2. Unto the end. II. HOW IS IT EFFECTED? 1. By Christ. 2. Through the means of grace. III. WHY IS IT SO NECESSARY? 1. That ye may be blameless. 2. In the day of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. SOME OF THE DANGERS OF THE CHURCH NOW. 1. The restless spirit of the age. This is the result of various causes.(1) The spread of education. Men are taught to cultivate their heads at the price of their hearts.(2) The growth of cheap literature. The fact is, some of us in these days are getting too clever. We have got a few drops of learning, and we fancy that we can pour the whole ocean of knowledge into our poor little bottle. True education makes us humble, because it shows us our ignorance. What are the doubters and the unbelievers going to give you in exchange for what they rob you of? They can take away the Saviour, and only leave you your sins. They may scoff you out of believing in the resurrection. But can they laugh you out of believing in death? 2. A constant desire for something new, and, if possible, sensational. And, above all, these people want a religion made easy. They have no objection to being saved provided that the process is quick and cheap. They turn away from the thought of self-denial, &c.; they must be made good all at once. Beware of this mushroom religion; the best fruit is not that which ripens most quickly, and the best Christian certainly does not come to maturity all in a moment. The Persian fable tells us how a gourd wound itself round a lofty palm-tree, and in a few weeks climbed to its very top. The gourd asked the palm-tree its age, and the tree answered, "An hundred years." Then the gourd answered boastingly that it had grown as tall as the palm in fewer days than the tree could count years. "True," answered the palm-tree, "every summer has a gourd climbed round me, as proud as thou art, and as short-lived as thou wilt be." 3. This is a specially busy age. Every walk of life is crowded, and competition is most keen. Now there is great danger in all this to a man's spiritual life, if he has not God with him in his work. He will become selfish and unscrupulous. II. THE MEANS BY WHICH CHRIST WILL CONFIRM YOU UNTO THE END. (H. J. W. Buxton, M. A.)
(Canon Evans.)
II. PRIESTLY. I might call it sacrificial. The word used in such places as Ephesians 1:4 is the same as that in 1 Peter 1:19, "the Lamb without blemish, and without spot." This unblemishedness has special reference to our fitness for worship and service. III. PERSONAL (Philippians 2:15; 1 Thessalonians 3:13). We are forgiven and delivered from wrath that we may be personally holy; holy in heart and life; saved from sin, conformed to Christ. Holiness is to be everywhere in and about the man. If, then, you call yourself a Christian, consider how much is expected from you. Consider — 1. Your names. They are "saint," "Christian," "redeemed from among men," "follower of the Lamb." Do not these call you to blamelessness? 2. Your designations. You are the lights of the world, the salt of the earth; pilgrims, strangers, virgins, cross-bearers, kings and priests; a temple, a habitation of God. 3. Your calling. You are called to glory, honour, and immortality. 4. Your hopes. 5. Your companionships. They are all heavenly and pure. Old friendships are severed, and new ones formed. If you are Christians, then, be consistent. Be Christians out and out; Christians every hour, in every part, and in every matter. Beware of half-hearted discipleship. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
I. IT IS WELL THAT WE HAVE SOMETHING SURE, FOR TALK AS WE WILL OF THE FIDELITY OF MAN AND WOMAN, THERE IS MUCH TO SAY ALSO OF THEIR INFIDELITY. 1. Who can say — in friendship, in love — what a week, a month, a year may not bring forth? In the very strength of human affection lies its frailty. And it is in hours when this is realised, when we seem to toss upon a shifting sea in sailing over human love, that we turn to the everlasting firmness of God's fidelity. 2. But even more than in others do we recognise this faithlessness in ourselves. How often are we only faithful because we are ashamed to be otherwise, and how often have we betrayed that which was given us to keep? We look into our own hearts and know how slight and fluttering, how changeable we have often been, how we even enjoyed our change. What wonder, then, if we turn from the weakness of our own fidelity to seek a centre for it and a power of it in the unalterable strength of the faithfulness of God, and cry, "Faithful Master of fidelity, enter into my life and make it all fidelity." II. What answer does God give us to that? Not that we should at first expect. WE HAVE FLED FROM MAN TO GOD, GOD SENDS US BACK TO MAN. If a man find not fidelity in his brother whom he hath seen, how can he find fidelity in God whom he hath not seen? We have been looking on the unfaithfulness we have found in man. Nothing can be worse for us. He bids us search for faithfulness, and we shall find it. 1. In the hearts of those that love us. And the moment our whole position is thus changed, and we look on a new side of facts, we remember all the uncomplaining patience of long love that mother and father, wife and sister, have bestowed on us. We recollect that there are friends who have never failed us, to doubt whom would be a crime. 2. With this new light we look within our own hearts, and we are conscious that we have been true to many. Surprised, we ask ourselves, What is this faithfulness in the midst of unfaithfulness, this stability in human nature that accompanies instability? Oh! it is what we searched for, it is what we fled away from man to find. It is the fidelity of God Himself that moves and lives within His children. The kingdom of God is among you. III. HAVING LEARNT THAT LESSON, WE LEARN FROM IT — 1. To love and honour men much more. We are not so ready to impute unfaithfulness, and we are kinder and more gracious, and being so, we find that men and women are more faithful to us, for we have lost the evil and unpleasant qualities which made people tire of our love. By believing in faithfulness we make it grow. Then our power of creating faithfulness has a reflex action on our own faithfulness. That which we cause to grow in others, grows by that very effort in ourselves. 2. An ideal of God's fidelity. The beauty of human fidelity forces us to aspire to a more beautiful fidelity, the real leads us onwards to the ideal. IV. Still an ideal remains always somewhat in the vague. But to our wonderful comfort THE FIDELITY OF GOD IS REALISED IN HUMANITY, IN CHRIST, THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. "He who hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He who hath seen the human faithfulness of Christ hath seen the Divine faithfulness of God. 1. His faithfulness was faithfulness to duty. At twelve years of age it was clearly conceived. "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" For eighteen years He brooded on His duty, and at thirty it was accepted, and never let go. The imperative of His later saying, "I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day," was said with the same fervour as it had been said by the joyful enthusiasm of the boy; and when the supreme hour of life came He could say, "It is finished." What? tits Father's business! 2. That is the outward aspect of Christ's faithfulness to duty; its inner aspect was Eternal Truth. He had a few clear, dominant conceptions on which His whole life was built. To these ideas — such as the universal Fatherhood of God, the union of the Divine and human, the existence of a spiritual kingdom, and the necessity of man being a believer in these things, and being made at one with God through Him — Christ's whole inner life was faithful. He could say, with absolute truthfulness, feeling that His whole inner life had been faithful to them throughout: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should hear witness unto the Truth." This was Christ's fidelity, the image of God's. V. BUT WHAT DUTY CAN GOD BE SAID TO HAVE TO WHICH HE IS FAITHFUL? There can be no duty imposed on Him from without, else there were another greater than Himself. But there can be an imperative within His own nature which is to Him that which duty was to Christ and to us. 1. With regard to us, that duty is the duty of a Father to His children. By that imperative of Fatherhood He can never cease to care for us, watch over us, educate us, and finally perfect us. 2. That is the outward form. But the central idea of which it is the form, and to which in His own inner life He is for ever faithful, is this: "I am the eternal spiritual All. I give Myself forth in all that thinks, and loves, and acts, and is." That being such, it is inconceivable that He should ever be unfaithful to His thought, for that thought is His own realisation of Himself, and were He unfaithful to it, God were unfaithful to God, which is absurd. To this idea, then, and to all the duties it brings with it, God is absolutely faithful; He cannot be otherwise. "I am," He says, "because I am." Conclusion: That is our security. We have arrived at the conception of it through Christ, through our own humanity taken up into and filled with divinity. And once we have grasped it, it transfigures life and gives us a rock to stand on amid the shifting sands of our own feeling, amid the wavering of human faithfulness. The foundation of God standeth sure. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.)
1. His power (Psalm 146:6). This enables Him, without the possibility of failure, to accomplish all His promises and threatenings. Honest men may be prevented keeping their word by unexpected difficulties; but the designs of the Almighty cannot be frustrated (Matthew 19:26; Genesis 18:14; Romans 4:20, 21; 2 Timothy 1:12). 2. His holiness; without it, indeed, He could not be holy (Psalm 92:15; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18; Numbers 23:19). Well might the Psalmist say, "God hath spoken in His holiness: I will rejoice" (Psalm 60:6), for the holiness of God is a pledge of His faithfulness. 3. His unchangeableness. Angels have changed, and become devils; man is changed, and become a rebel; but God changes not (Malachi 3:6). Men frequently change their minds, sometimes from good to evil, at other times from evil to good; their second thoughts are best: but God's thoughts can neither be improved nor depraved (James 1:17). The promises and vows of men (like Jephthah's and Herod's) are sometimes unlawful or incautiously made, so that "there may be more honour in the breach than in the observance of them." Not so the engagements of Heaven (Job 23. 13, 14). 4. His wisdom. Among men, the non-performance of promises is frequently occasioned by circumstances which human prudence could not foresee; and therefore good men should not make promises hastily, and never without reference to St. James's caution (James 4:15). But no provisions are necessary when God makes a promise. No difficulties, no disappointments, can occur to Him; His instruments are always at hand, and shall all subserve His holy designs. 5. His mercy, love, and goodness (Psalm 138:2). His love inclines Him to make the promise, and His veracity induces Him to fulfil it. II. OUR CONFIDENCE IN IT IS CONFIRMED by the following facts. 1. The promises are made in and to Christ, as the Head of His Church; and faithfulness to Him, as well as to us, insures their fulfilment (2 Corinthians 1:20; Titus 1:2; Ephesians 1:6). 2. God has confirmed His promise by an oath (Genesis 22:16; Hebrews 6:13, 17, 18). 3. The experience of the people of God in all ages.(1) The first promise (Genesis 3:15) has bees fulfilled (1 John 3:8; Galatians 4:5). Remember that there is nothing like distance of time in the mind of God between the promise and the fulfilment (2 Peter 3:8), and hence some events are spoken of in the prophets as present, or even as past, which are yet to come.(2) Was the universal flood threatened, and Noah with his family to be secured? The event corresponded with the threatening, though one hundred and twenty years intervened.(3) Was Abraham, when one hundred, and childless, to have a vast posterity? Every Jew we see is a witness that the promise has been fulfilled.(4) So with the deliverance of Israel, &c. Conclusion: 1. Learn the unreasonableness and sinfulness of unbelief (1 John 5:10). 2. Let God be honoured in His faithfulness by a suitable confidence in it. 3. Let us, in our humble measure, try to imitate God in this His glorious attribute (Ephesians 5:1). (G. Burder.)
I. HOW GOD DEALS WITH YOU, IN SO CALLING YOU AS TO UNITE YOU TO HIS SON. Faithfully throughout. He is faithful — 1. In discovering to you your case. 2. In commending to you His Son. 3. In presenting Christ to you, in free gift, as yours. 4. In not repenting of His call. II. THE END OF THIS CALLING. You are united to His Son, and to such an effect as to have all things in common. 1. Common interests. The interests which Christ has as — (1) (2) 2. A common character. 3. A common history. With respect to — (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (R. Candlish, D. D.)
1. Its Divine origin. The text says, "God called you" — does not your experience prove the same? We thought that we had had no other call than that which came through our Bibles, good books, &c. But did we not read the same books years before? but they never touched a chord in our hearts; therefore we conclude that that time it must have been the finger of God. We had been called scores of times before, but we always turned a deaf ear. But when this particular call came, we threw down our sword and said, "Great God, I yield!" 2. Its graciousness. What was there in you to suggest a motive why God should call you? Some of you were drunkards, profane, injurious. John Bradford, when he saw a cartful of men going off to Tyburn to be hanged, said, "There goes John Bradford but for the grace of God." A good Scotchman called to see Rowland Hill, and without saying a word, sat still for some five minutes, looking into his face. At last Rowland asked him what engaged his attention. Said he, "I was looking at the lines of your face." "Well, what do you make out of em?" "Why," said he, "that if the grace of God hadn't been in you, you would have been the biggest rascal living." 3. The privileges it brings. (1) (2) (3) (4) II. TO WHAT END DID GOD CALL YOU? That you might have fellowship with Christ. Now the word "koinonia" is not to be interpreted here as a society, but as the result of society; i.e., fellowship lies in mutual and identical interests. A man and his wife have fellowship with each other, in that which is common to both and enjoyed in communion accordingly. Now when we were called to Christ we became one with Him, so that everything Christ had became ours. This was the act of faith. Now we have fellowship to Christ. 1. In His loves. He loves saints, sinners, the world, and pants to see it transformed into the garden of the Lord. What He loves we love, and what He hates we abhor. 2. In His desires. He desires to see multitudes saved, the glory of God, that the saints may be with Him where He is — we desire the same. 3. In His sufferings. We do not die a bloody death; yet many have done so, and there are millions ready to do so. But when He is reproached we have learned to bear His reproach too. Some few drops of His cup we drink, and it has been given to some more than to others to "fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake, which is the Church." 4. In His joys. Is He happy? We are happy to think Christ is happy. 5. In His riches. If He has riches in pardoning, supporting, instructing, illuminating, sanctifying, preserving, or perfecting Christians, they are all ours. Is His blood precious, His righteousness complete, His merits sweet? They are mine. Has He power in intercession, has He wisdom, righteousness — has He anything? It is mine. 6. In His glory. There is not a crown He wears but we have part of it; nay, there is not a gem that sparkles in His crowns but it sparkles for us as well as for Him. For us the golden streets, the chariot, the crowding angels; the shout of "Hallelujah! for Thou wast slain," &c., the second advent with all its splendours, universal reign of Christ, the day of judgment. III. ALL THIS LEADS US TO PERCEIVE OUR SECURITY. Saints must be saved — 1. Because God has called them. "The gifts and culling of God are without repentance," Because — 2. God has called them into fellowship with Christ, and that fellowship, if God be faithful, must be complete. You have shared His sufferings, His faithfulness secures the rest. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
2. Divine fellowship is often spoken of in the Scriptures. In the New Testament it is naturally most familiar, for there God has come nearest to man, and therefore man may come nigh unto Him. This is the gospel message that, "made nigh by the blood of Christ" there is, for all, "boldness to enter into the holiest." "No one cometh unto the Father but by Me." Between God and men there is but the one Mediator. Fellowship with God must needs be first of all the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ. 3. But what is this high privilege? Ordinarily the term suggests the interchange of sympathy and thought, or association in acts of Christian worship and participation in common joys and sorrows. The word itself has a meaning which, in its application to ordinary affairs, is very definite and clear. The sons of Zebedee are twice spoken of as "partners" of Simon. Without any violence, therefore, we may read: "The partnership of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord" (cf. Hebrews 3:14). In this busy life, partnerships are common; but never in human commerce did men look upon one like this. Suppose a firm utterly and hopelessly ruined. A wealthy man asks to be admitted as partner. As honest men, the bankrupts must needs protest that the offerer knows not what he is doing. Then comes the reply that all is known, that wealth is available more than sufficient to meet all the need, and that practical wisdom also whereby the ruin may be reconstructed on a safe and enduring basis. Yet this, and more than all this, is in the gospel. A ruined race may scan the present, or peer as they will into the dark future. Sin hath wrought shame and death. Yet now, in the midst of the utter wreck, there stands One who offers much, as He offers life — who giveth all, as He gives Himself. This is true for each and for all, without respect of persons, and without limitation of gift. 4. What has this communion brought to the Saviour Himself? The answer is soon given. He took upon Himself our nature, "the likeness of sinful flesh." He shared to the utmost its weakness, weariness, pain, and death. One burden He shared not; for Himself hath borne it all. "By Himself" He "purged our sins." Beyond this He had nothing. Joy became His, "the joy that was set before Him," that of presenting "faultless before the presence of His glory" the redeemed sons of men. Glory has been given to Him, but it is the glory of "power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life." And these things He hath "received of the Father," and not from mankind. 5. But let us turn to the other side, the relation of man to this fellowship. In the commercial world, partnerships are not all alike. Modern society, under the pressure of altered circumstances, has invented the contrivance of "limited liability." But in olden times when any man entered a firm he took in with him all that he possessed. Thenceforth none of the things which he had could, in presence of the common need, be called his own. From such a partnership the young ruler recoiled: "Sell that thou hast," &c. Into such a partnership the early Christians gladly entered, for they "had all things common." Into such a partnership are we called — one of unlimited liability. Entire consecration is the first requirement. "Ye are not your own." "Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Christ will have all, or nothing. On this essential condition, the partnership is open to every man. He came "to call sinners to repentance," and, when sinners come, they are accepted just as they are. No man may bring less than his all to the fellowship of Christ; but no man can bring more. So the trembling servant comes with his burden of conscious liability. His all is a debt of ten thousand talents; but the Saviour admits him to the partnership. The poor wasteful and wasted wanderer comes, with rags and shame as his only contribution, but he meets with no denial. Penitent, needy soul! Lay thy gift thyself, whatever thou hast been, whatever thou art — lay it all upon the altar. It is His will, it is His command; therefore, for once, obey. The gift is accepted, for He hath promised. For "God is faithful, by whom" thou hast been called unto this fellowship. 6. Once admitted, "all things are yours." In earthly partnerships, though there may be unlimited liability, there is only a limited supply. It cannot be that every partner shall have power to draw as he may upon the common resources. The banking account is strictly guarded; and the available funds are doled out to each and to all, not according to need, but according to legal claim. For sinful men, all this is blessedly otherwise. The treasury of grace is the fulness of God. There is "enough for all, enough for each, enough for evermore!" "But all He hath for mine I claim." 7. If, now, we would learn something of the wealth which we share with and in Christ Jesus, we may read His own words (John 17:22, 23). The glory of Christ is the possession of His people. That glory consists in what He is, and what He has; the riches of life and the gifts of love. (G. W. Olver, B. A.)
1. The grounds of this fellowship are —(1) The Divine acceptance of Christ's work.(2) "The consequent Divine grant to Christ of all the power and gifts of salvation for the benefit of all who should become co-partners with Himself. 2. Its terms or conditions — entire self-surrender. Faith receives Christ "as He is presented in the gospel," i.e., in all His relations. To Christ as a Saviour trust is reliance, as a Teacher trust is teachableness, as a Ruler it is obedience, as a Leader following, as a King homage, as a Man sympathy, as God worship. Let there be no mistake here. Many put their trust in Christ as a Saviour, but not as a King; as man, not as God. They will take all He has to give, but give nothing in return, or if anything their money, but Hot themselves. But Christ seeks not yours, but you. He requires not large capital, knowledge, skill, art, &c., although He will receive them when offered; what He does require is your whole affection and unlimited trust. 3. Its prospects. Our position is that of partners — in spiritual life, brotherhood and service; but not on equal terms. We take nothing into the concern but weakness and poverty. Without Him we can do nothing, but with Him we shall jointly realise God's ideal of humanity. Military or commercial companies have often proposed to themselves the conquest of the world; this society has the same object, and will achieve it, only in a nobler sense. II. GOD HAS CALLED US INTO THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SON. In the invitations of the gospel God is calling men to become co-partners with Christ; but mere invitation does not come up to the full meaning of the term, and our hearts must say what that full meaning is. The heart makes God the author of its whole salvation. "By the grace of God I am what I am." That grace makes all the difference between a stranger to and a partner with Christ. III. EVERYTHING MUST DEPEND ON THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. This fellowship from first to last is His creation; on Him it depends to render it a failure or a success. 1. Therefore our confidence rests immediately on God. In worldly affairs men usually contemplate success through natural laws and material properties. Farmers trust to the virtues of the seed, &c., merchants to the winds and waves, warriors to the spirit of their troops; but even in such cases a devout spirit will recognise the presence of God in all secondary causes, and make Him at least the basis of its hope. But in this great co-partnership we have no interventions to distract our faith. We go right to God at once. 2. We rest upon the most Godlike thing in God — His faithfulness, which supports the universe. Our fellowship with Christ is thus placed beyond the possibility of failure in God. No storm can shatter our bark, no blight destroy our harvests, for God is faithful. And what a stimulus to endeavour we have in this! Because God is so faithful to me I will be faithful to Him. Consequently the fellowship of Christ becomes to us the one permanent interest in this uncertain world. There is no possibility of bankruptcy; we cannot be outbidden or undersold; for ours is the capital of God's unsearchable Fiches. His name is pledged to every acceptance in which cur safety is involved, and so long as His throne shall stand our safety and glory is assured. (Prof. J. M. Charlton.)
II. THE DESIGN Of this call of God is, that all who obey it may for ever have "fellowship" or communion with His Son our Saviour, Communion signifies joint participation in anything, good or bad. Here all is good. God calls the believer — 1. To communion with His Son, in His miraculous formation in the womb. The Spirit creates believers anew "in Christ Jesus unto good works." 2. In His purity from sin. The Spirit keeps our new nature from sin. 3. In growth in grace. The Spirit brings "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 4. In fitness for every duty. The Spirit anointed Him, and He anoints the believer. 5. In working miracles. The Spirit enables the believer to conquer Satan, sin, the world, death, and hell. 6. In comfort. The Spirit comforted Him, and He comforts real believers. 7. In death. 8. In the state of the dead. The Spirit preserved His holy body that it saw no corruption. The Spirit will keep the bodies of believers "still united to Christ, till the resurrection." 9. In the resurrection. The Spirit raised Him up; and the same Spirit will raise up the believer. 10. In glory. The Spirit glorified our Lord; and He will also glorify the true believer. (Jas. Kidd, D. D.)
I. PARTNERSHIP WITH HIM IN WHAT HE WAS. He was crucified, He died, was buried, rose again. In all these we have part. II. PARTNERSHIP WITH HIM IN WHAT HE IS. He has not only risen, but He has ascended. We share His present dignity; for we are said to be seated with Him in heavenly places, and are treated by God as such. We share His offices; we are prophets, priests, and kings; heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ Jesus. III. PARTNERSHIP WITH HIM IN WHAT HE SHALL BE. Much of His glory is yet in reserve; for now we see not yet all things put under Him. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
1. In confession. 2. In spirit. 3. In object. II. HOW IT IS ENFORCED — by the name of Christ, implying — 1. His will. 2. His authority. 3. His claims on our love and obedience. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. God has given them an infallible rule of faith. His Word contains a complete system of Divine truth. That being the case, there is a plain propriety in His requiring them to believe that it is a complete system, and also to believe all the particular truths which compose the system. 2. That rule of faith is sufficiently plain and intelligible to every capacity. All who are capable of knowing that they are the creatures of God are equally capable of knowing what He has required them to believe concerning Himself, their own character, their present situation, and their future state. II. THE OBJECTIONS WHICH HAVE BEEN URGED AGAINST THIS UNPALATABLE DOCTRINE. 1. The great and visible diversity in the intellectual powers and external circumstances of Christians. But unity of sentiment does not require equality of knowledge. As one star differs from another star, so angels will differ from saints, and saints from each other in glory. But their difference in knowledge will not create any diversity of opinions respecting the same subjects. Saints will agree with angels so far as their knowledge extends; but so far as it fails, they will wait for further light. 2. The wide difference in the education of Christians. But since they have the Word of God in their hands, it is in their power to bring their own opinions and those of their instructors to an infallible standard, and to decide for themselves what they ought to believe or to disbelieve. 3. The right of private judgment. It is readily granted that every Christian has a right to collect evidence, and after that, to judge according to the evidence. But. he has no right to examine and judge under the influence of prejudice, and form his opinion contrary to reason and Scripture. 4. That in Romans 14. the apostle allows Christians to differ in their religious sentiments, and only exhorts them to view their difference with a candid and charitable eye. But this only applies to the Mosaic rites, which were things indifferent, and which might be observed or neglected under a sense of duty. But he reminds them that they must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, where their opinions as well as actions would be either approved or condemned. III. THE TRUTHS WHICH NATURALLY FLOW FROM THE SUBJECT. If God does require Christians to believe alike upon religious subjects, then — 1. It is not a matter of indifference what religious sentiments they embrace. 2. They have contracted a great deal of guilt from age to age by embracing and propagating error. 3. Christians who are united in the belief of the truth have a right to blame those who think differently from them upon religious subjects. 4. There appears to be no propriety in attempting to unite them in affection, without uniting them in sentiment. 5. It seriously concerns all who acknowledge the truth and divinity of the gospel to use every proper method to become entirely united in sentiment.(1) For this purpose, therefore, let them freely and candidly examine the various points in which they mutually differ.(2) There are various considerations which urge Christians to cultivate a sentimental union among themselves.(a) It will directly tend to unite them in affection. We find that those who agree in art or science commonly feel a mutual attachment arising from their concurrence in opinion. And a unity of faith never fails to produce a mutual esteem and affection among Christians.(b) The sure word of prophecy predicts the future peace and harmony of the Church as resulting from the knowledge of the truth.(c) By uniting in sentiment, Christians will remove one of the strongest prejudices of unbelievers against the Bible.(d) They will strengthen and animate one another in promoting the cause of Christ. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
I. WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF PARTY DIVISIONS? 1. The ultimate cause lies, I believe, in a radical misapprehension of the nature of truth. God's truth is infinite. Man's mind is finite. It is in the nature of things impossible that we with our limited capacities should comprehend the whole of truth. All that we can do is to grasp some fragments, here a little and there a little: truth indeed sufficient for our personal necessities, if we seek aright in faith and patience, but immeasurably falling short of the reality. Our views of truth are therefore partial, disjointed; and it is inevitable that men with minds differently trained should apprehend different parts and different aspects of the truth. This variety is not of itself an evil. Far from it. Such different views are complementary, not antagonistic. As God's truth was revealed to man "in many parts and in many fashions," so only in "many parts and in many fashions" can it be grasped and interpreted by man. Only as the ages roll on, and each generation contributes its share towards the final result, are we slowly learning the grandeur of the gospel. Differences are not to be ignored or dissembled, but frankly acknowledged: "combination in diversity," it has been said, is the characteristic feature of the Church of Christ, and it must be the characteristic feature of every organisation which truly represents that Church. Combination in diversity is a characteristic feature of Holy Scripture. It needs the records of four Evangelists to give a true portraiture of the Son of Man in His earthly ministry. We are not to regard one as more faithful than another, not to take any one as in itself complete, but to find in the harmony of all the true delineation of that perfection which we can only realise by contemplating it in its several parts. St. Paul and St. James, St. Peter and St. John, each offer to us different aspects of the truth; one is the apostle of faith, another of works; one of hope, another of love; but if they have each some special grace or duty upon which they insist, it is not to the neglect or exclusion of other graces and duties: nor are we to pit them one against the other. 2. Thus we see that various schools of thought are necessary for the full representation of truth. They supply, moreover, "that antagonism of influences which is the only real security for continued progress." But schools of thought are painfully liable to degenerate into parties. We naturally and rightly concentrate our attention upon that fragment of truth which we have realised for ourselves to be true and precious: gradually we grow to think that this is the whole of truth. We divide the swelling river of truth into a thousand paltry runlets, and each cries, Come drink at my stream, for it, and it alone, is pure and uncontaminated. Well for us, then, if the water of life is not evaporated and lost amid the sands of the barren desert of strife. 3. For the next step is easy. We affirm that because others see not with our eyes, they are enveloped in the mists of dangerous error; resistance to their tenets becomes a duty, and in the fierceness of controversy charity is forgotten, and the party contentions of the Christian Church become a spectacle that provokes the scornful laugh of devils and moves our angelic watchers to tears. The absence of humility, the strength of self-will, the spirit that desires victory rather than truth, all contribute to the direful result, and the imperfection of our knowledge is perverted by our sinful folly into the source of incalculable mischief to ourselves and those around us. 4. Especially in days of revival of religious life is there danger of party contentions. Conviction is intense, enthusiasm unbounded, old truths are resuscitated, new truths apprehended, and each individual cherishes his own discovery, and proclaims it as the one vital element of truth to the exclusion of others in reality no less important. 5. The use of party phraseology, too, tends to accentuate the difference between various schools of thought. "By this means over and above all the real differences of opinion which exist, a fresh cause of separation is introduced among those who would perhaps be found, if their respective statements were candidly explained, to have in these tenets no real ground for disunion." 6. Extremes beget extremes: if one set of men form themselves into an exclusive party, with narrow views and aims, the almost certain consequence is that those who are of the opposite way of thinking will form a party to resist them. But it is a faithless expedient. "Through strife, and not by strife, the Church of God has passed upon her way." II. WHAT ARE THE EVILS ARISING FROM PARTY DIVISIONS? 1. Party spirit causes the decay of spiritual life: for love is the breath of life, and where love is not, life must wither and die. But how can the gentle breezes of love co-exist with the fierce burning blasts of the sirocco of controversy? As each party circle moreover ceases to hold communion with its neighbours, and feeds more exclusively upon its own limited truths, there is peril that even these will grow to be lifeless, and become petrified into hard unmeaning formulas. Not loss of knowledge and narrowness of sympathy alone, but even death, may be the consequence of isolation. 2. Party spirit is a grievous hindrance to the growth of God's kingdom. This it is which breeds distrust between the clergy and the laity, and opens that gap which we are sometimes told is daily widening. When shall we learn that the kingdom of God does not consist in a phraseology, but in "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" ? 3. Party spirit is a waste of strength. 4. Party divisions are a stumbling-block to weak ,believers. What are we to think when we see men whose personal characters are equally estimable denouncing one another with unmitigated bitterness? 5. Party divisions are a laughing-stock to unbelievers. "See how these Christians love one another," is the scornful taunt. And thus we lose that testimony of an united Church which was the ideal contemplated by our Lord. III. WHAT ARE THE REMEDIES FOR PARTY DIVISIONS? 1. The fundamental bond of religious unity is this: "Ye are Christ's." Not primarily in outward organisation, however valuable, not in creeds, however necessary, but in living union with our Head. 2. Another remedy is to be found in the frank recognition that in the Church of Christ variety is not only not wrong, but natural and necessary; because the views of any one individual or group of individuals can be at best but partial embodiments of the whole truth. When we maintain that our partial view is the complete and only true one, it is as if the dwellers in the valleys round some mighty mountain, a Mont Blanc or a Matterhorn, should meet and compare their ideas of its size and form: and because these ideas do not tally, and the outlines of its slopes and peaks and precipices are differently described by each, should forthwith deny the identity of the object of their argument; or impeach the veracity of their neighbours, and part with angry and embittered feelings. 3. A candid and patient examination of the views of those who differ from us will do much to moderate party spirit. Men of undeniable honesty, conscientiousness, zeal, holiness, differ from us. Why is this? They cannot be entirely in the wrong. No holy life is based entirely upon false premises. No system rests altogether upon a lie. 4. Once more, a remedy for divisions is to be found in practical co-operation wherever possible. 5. If controversy should unfortunately be unavoidable, as it may be on some occasions, and for some individuals, we must take heed that it is conducted with calm sobriety, temperate reason, and with the desire of truth, not success. But it is a perilous resource: far healthier for us if we can abstain from entangling ourselves in it. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee." (A. F. Kirkpatrick, M. A.)
I. CONTRARY TO THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. Christ here by His servant — 1. Exhorts to unity in (1) (2) (3) 2. Condemns all disunion. II. INCOMPATIBLE WITH OUR OBLIGATIONS TO CHRIST. Divisions — 1. Arise from sinful attachment to persons, interests, or opinions. 2. Divide the body of Christ. 3. Transfer the honour due to Him to another. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
(W. Baxendale.)
I. THE COMPELLATION, "Brethren." 1. A kindly compellation, whereby he endeavours to insinuate himself into their affections; for it is hard for faithful ministers to get people's affections kept where once divisions enter. 2. An argument for unity: he minds them that they are brethren; and it is a shameful thing for brethren to fall out by the ears (Genesis 13:8; Genesis 45:24). II. THE OBSECRATION, "I beseech you, by the name," &c. Paul turns a petitioner for the Church's peace, and begs of them, as he did of the jailor (Acts 16:28), that they would do themselves no harm, but lay by the sword of contention; and that it might have the more weight, he interposeth the name of Christ. It is as much as if he had said — 1. As ye have any regard to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, who hath so often enjoined unity and brotherly love to His followers, beware of divisions. 2. As ye love the Lord Jesus, as ye tender His honour and glory, let there be no divisions among you; for the name of Christ sadly suffers by your contentions. III. THE MATTER OF HIS EXHORTATION. 1. He exhorts them to unity of principles, "that ye all speak the same thing"; for now some were crying one thing, some another, like that confused multitude (Acts 21:34), till some of them came at length to deny the resurrection (chap. 1 Corinthians 15.). 2. He dehorts them from schisms, which properly signifies a cutting in a solid body, as in the cleaving of wood. Thus the one Church of Corinth was rent into divers factions, some following one, some following another; therefore says the apostle, "Is Christ divided?" Where will you get a Christ to head your different and divided party? Through these divisions, it would seem, from 1 Corinthians 11:33, they had separate communions, they would not tarry for one another. The apostle also taxeth their divisions as carnal (1 Corinthians 3:3), where the word "divisions" properly signifies separate standing, where one party stand upon one side, and another party on another side — such dissension, wherein one separate one from another. 3. He exhorts them to amend what was amiss already among them in that matter, to be perfectly joined together, in opposition to their contentions and divisions. The word in the original is very emphatic, and signifies —(1) To restore disjointed members into their proper places again (Galatians 6:1). It is a metaphor from chirurgeons setting members or joints again.(2) To establish in the state to which a person or thing is restored; and so it denotes a firm union betwixt the members of that Church as a body, and withal he adds here the bonds of this union, the same mind, that is, the same heart, will, and affections, as the word mind is taken (Romans 7:25), and the same judgment or opinion anent matters; if the last cannot be got, yet the first may. IV. FROM THE WORDS WE DRAW THESE FOLLOWING DOCTRINES: 1. That schism is an evil incident to the Churches while in this world. 2. That professors ought to beware of it, as they tender the authority and honour of our Lord Jesus Christ. 3. Where schism enters into a Church, there will be great heats, people contradicting one another in matters of religion. 4. That however hard it be, yet it is possible to get a rent Church healed. 5. That it is the duty of all Church members to endeavour the unity of the Church, and the cure of schisms; and particularly, it is the duty of disjointed members to take their own places in the body again. 6. That schisms, as they are grievous to all the sons of peace, so they are in a special manner heavy and afflicting to faithful ministers of the gospel of peace. (T. Boston, D. D.)
II. HOW THEY SHOULD BE REPRESSED. 1. Not by seeking the triumph of one party over the other, or by the absolute sacrifice of private opinion. 2. But by exalting these points in which all agree, and cultivating one mind and spirit. III. WHY THEY SHOULD BE REPRESSED — for the sake of Christ. 1. His body is one and undivided. 2. He was crucified for us. 3. We are baptized into His name. 4. None other has any claim upon us. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. Those who held by Paul himself. They owed to him their salvation; and having experienced the efficacy of his gospel, they thought that there was no other efficacious mode of presenting Christ to men. So probably they fell into the mistake of all mere partisans, and became more Pauline than Paul, and were in danger of becoming more Pauline than Christian. 2. Those who were grouped round Apollos, who watered what Paul had planted. He fitted the gospel into their previous knowledge, and showed them its relations to other faiths, and opened up its ethical wealth and bearing on life. His teaching was not opposed to Paul's, but supplementary of it; and 1 Corinthians 16:12 shows that there was no jealousy between the two men. 3. Those who gloried in the name of Cephas, the apostle of the circumcision, whose name was used in opposition to Paul's as representing the original group of apostles who adhered to the Jewish law. Extreme Judaizers would find in this party a fruitful soil. 4. That which named itself "of Christ." From 2 Corinthians 10:7-12:18, it would appear that this party was led by men who prided themselves on their Hebrew descent (1 Corinthians 11:22), and on having learned their Christianity from Christ Himself (1 Corinthians 10:7). They claimed to be apostles of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:13) and "ministers of righteousness" (1 Corinthians 11:15); but as they taught "another Jesus," "another spirit," "another gospel" (1 Corinthians 11:4), Paul does not hesitate to denounce them as false apostles. II. THE APOSTLE HEARS OF THESE PARTIES WITH DISMAY. What, then, would he think of the state of the Church now? There was as yet in Corinth no outward disruption; and indeed Paul does not seem to contemplate as possible that the members of the one body of Christ should refuse to worship their common Lord in fellowship with one another. 1. The evils attaching to such a condition of things may no doubt be unduly magnified; but the mischief done by disunion should not be ignored. The Church was intended to be the grand uniter of the race; but instead of this, the Church has alienated friends; and men who will do business and dine together, will not worship together. Had the kingdom of Christ been visibly one, it would have been without a rival in the world. But instead of this the strength of the Church has been frittered away in civil strife. The world looks on and laughs while it sees the Church divided over petty differences while it ought to be assailing vice, ungodliness, and ignorance. And yet schism is thought no sin. 2. Now that the Church is broken into pieces, the first step towards unity is to recognise that there may be real union without unity of external organisation. The human race is one; but this unity admits of numberless diversities. So the Church may be truly one in the sense intended by our Lord, one in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, though there continue to be various divisions and sects. As amidst all diversities of government and customs it is the duty of States to maintain their common brotherhood and abstain from tyranny and war, so it is the duty of Churches, however separate in form of government, to maintain and exhibit their unity. 3. There may be real union without unity in creed. This unity is desirable; and Paul entreats his readers to be of one mind.(1) True, the Church has gained much by difference of opinion. Were all men to be agreed there might be a danger of truth becoming lifeless for want of the stimulus, and doctrine has been ascertained and developed in answer to error.(2) But as a visitation of cholera may result in cleanliness, but no one desires that cholera may come; and as opposition in Parliament is an acknowledged service to the country, yet each party desires that its sentiments become universal; so, too, notwithstanding every good result which may flow from diversity of opinion regarding Divine truth, agreement is what all should aim at.(3) But what truths Me to be made terms of communion? The answer is, the Church of Christ is formed of those who are trusting to Him as the power of God unto salvation. He is in communion with all who thus trust Him, whether their knowledge be great or small; and we cannot refuse to communicate with those with whom He is in communion. No doctrinal error, therefore, which does not subvert personal faith in Christ should be allowed to separate Churches. Paul was contemplating Christ, and not a creed, as the centre of the Church's unity, when he exclaimed, "is Christ divided?" In all Christians and all Churches the one Christ is the life of each. And it is monstrous that those who are virtually united to one Person and quickened by one Spirit should in no way recognise their unity. It is with something akin to horror that Paul goes on to ask, "Was Paul crucified for you?" He implies that only on the death of Christ can the Church be founded. Take away that and the personal connection of the believer with the crucified Redeemer, and you take away the Church. III. From this casual expression of Paul we see HIS HABITUAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHRIST. 1. He was never slow to affirm the indebtedness of the young Christian Churches to himself: he was their father, but he was not their saviour. Not for one moment did he suppose that he could occupy towards men the position Christ occupied. Between his work and Christ's an impassable gulf was fixed. And that which gave Christ this special place and claim was His crucifixion. Paul does not say, Was Paul your teacher in religion, and did he lead your thoughts to God? did Paul by his life show you the beauty of self-sacrifice and holiness? but "Was Paul crucified for you?" 2. It was not, however, the mere fact of His dying which gave Christ this place, and which claims the regard and trust of all men. Paul had really given his life for men; but Paul knew that in Christ's death there was a significance his own could never have. It was net only human buy Divine self-sacrifice that was there manifested. Through this death sinners find way back to God and assurance of salvation. 3. This unique work, then — what have we made of it? Paul found his true life and his true self in it. It filled his mind, his heart, his life. This man, formed on the noblest and largest type, found room in Christ alone for the fullest development and exercise of his powers. Is it not plain that if we neglect the connection with Christ which Paul found so fruitful we are doing ourselves the greatest injustice, and preferring a narrow prison-house to liberty and life? (M. Dods, D. D.)
1. The first duty of the apostle was to lose himself entirely in the cause he preached. The most important details or forms were so insignificant in comparison that Paul spoke of them as though he had no concern with them. How often in later ages have the means and institutions of the Church taken the place of the end! Antiquity, novelty, a phrase, a ceremony, a vestment, each has in turn overbalanced the one main object for which, confessedly, all lower objects are inculcated. To all these cases the apostle's answer applies, "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." 2. The sin of the Corinthians consisted not in the mere adoption of eminent names, but in the party spirit which attaches more importance to them than to the great cause which all good men have in common. Even the sacred name of Christ may thus be desecrated; and as the apostle rebukes those who said, "I am of Christ," no less than those who said "I am of Paul," &c., so our Lord refused to take the title of "good" (Luke 18:19), and "baptized not, but His disciples" (John 4:2). If the holiest Name can thus be made a party watchword, if Christianity itself can thus be turned to the purposes of a faction, much more may any of its subordinate manifestations. The character of our Lord is distinguished from all others by the fact that it rises far above any local or temporary influences, and also that it has, for the most part, escaped, even in thought, from any association with them. So the character of the apostle, although in a lower measure, vindicates itself in this passage from any identification with the party which called itself after his name; and is a true example of the possibility of performing a great work, and labouring earnestly for great truths, without losing sight of the common ground of Christianity, or becoming the centre of a factious and worldly spirit. 3. It is by catching a glimpse of the wild dissentions which raged around the apostolic writings that we can best appreciate the unity and response of those writings themselves: it is by seeing how completely the dissentions have been obliterated, that we can best understand how marked was the difference between their results and those of analogous divisions in other history. We know how the names of and , of Francis and Dominic, of Luther and Calvin, have continued as the rallying point of rival schools; but the schools of Paul and Apollos and Cephas, which once waged so bitter a warfare against each other, were extinguished almost before ecclesiastical history had begun. Partly this arose from the nature of the case. The apostles could not have become founders of systems, even if they would. Their power was not their own, but another's. "What had they that they had not received?" If once they claimed an independent authority their authority was gone. Great philosophers, conquerors, heresiarchs leave their names even in spite of themselves. But such the apostles could not be without ceasing to be what they were; and the total extinction of the parties which were called after them is in fact a testimony to the Divinity of their mission. And it is difficult not to believe that in the great work of reconciliation of which the outward volume of the Sacred Canon is the chief monument, they were themselves not merely passive instruments, but active agents; that a lesson is still to be derived from the record they have left of their own resistance to the claims of the factions which vainly endeavoured to divide what God had joined together. (Dean Stanley.)
1. By the peculiarities of human nature in general. 2. National differences. 3. Personal differences. 4. Attachment to individuals, as in the text. II. THEIR UNITY still possible, there should be — 1. One language, one mind. 2. One judgment on fundamental principle. 3. Especially one faith in the crucified Jesus. 4. And one baptism into His name. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. In the disputes of the Jewish and Gentile Christians. 2. Hence one was of Peter and another of Paul — those of Christ and of Apollos appear to have been modifications of these. II. WHO WERE THE PROMOTERS OF THEM? 1. Not Paul or Peter, &c. 2. Not the peaceably disposed, or those who loved Christ above all things. 3. But — (1) (2) (3) III. WHAT WAS THE EFFECT? 1. Christ was divided. 2. His claims forgotten. 3. Some human idol exalted in His place. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. THE MISCHIEFS THAT ARISE FROM THIS PRACTICE. 1. Dissention betwixt ministers. As the Grecians (Acts 6:1) murmured against Abe Hebrews, so ministers feel aggrieved that people pass them by unregarded. Perchance the matter may fly so high as it did betwixt Moses and Aaron (Numbers 12:2). It will anger not only Saul, a mere carnal man, but even those that have degrees of grace to say, "He hath converted his thousands, but such an one his ten thousands." 2. Dissension amongst people. Like the women that pleaded before Solomon (1 Kings 3:22), they contend "The living minister is mine; he that hath spirit and activity: but the dead minister is thine; he cometh not to the quick, he toucheth not the conscience." "Nay," saith the other, "my minister is the living minister, and thine is the dead one. Thy pastor is full of the fire, of ill tempered and undiscreet zeal; 'but the Lord was not in the fire': whilst my minister is like to a 'still voice'; staunching the bleeding-hearted penitent, and dropping the oil of the gospel into the wounded conscience." 3. Rejoicing to wicked men, to whose ears our discords are the sweetest harmony. Let not the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot fall out, whilst the Canaanites are yet in the land. 4. Great dishonour to God Himself. Here is such looking on the ambassador that there is no notice taken of the king. II. TO PREVENT THESE MISCHIEFS, BOTH PASTORS AND PEOPLE MUST LEND THEIR HELPING HANDS. 1. I begin with the pastors.(1) Those who have the thickest audiences.(a) Let them not pride themselves with the bubble of popular applause, often as carelessly gotten as undeservedly lost. Have we not seen those who have preferred lungs before brains, and sounding of a voice before soundness of matter? Let princes count the credit of their kingdoms to consist in the multitude of their subjects: far be it from a preacher to glory when his congregation swells by the consumption of the audience of his neighbour.(b) Let them discourage immoderate admiration. When St. John would have worshipped the angel, "See thou do it not," saith he: "worship God." Know thou who lovest to glut thyself with people's applause, it shall prove at the last pricks in thy eyes and thorns in thy side — because sacrilegiously thou hast robbed God of His honour.(c) Let them labour also to ingratiate every deserving pastor with his own congregation. It was the boon Saul begged of Samuel, "Honour me before my people." And surely it is but reason we should seek to grace the shepherd in the presence of his flock.(2) I come now to neglected ministers, whilst others, perchance less deserving, are more frequented. Never fret thyself, if others be preferred before thee. They have their time; they are crescents in their waxing, fall seas in their flowing: envy not at their prosperity. Thy turn of honour may come next. One told a Grecian statist who had excellently deserved of his city, that the city had chosen four-and-twenty officers, and yet left him out. "I am glad," said he, "the city affords twenty-four abler than myself." And let us practise St. Paul's precept, "by honour and dishonour, by good report and disreport," and say with David, "Lord, here I am; do with Thy servant as Thou pleasest." 2. By this time, methinks, I hear the people saying, as the soldiers to John Baptist, "But what shall we do?"(1) Ever preserve a reverent esteem of the minister whom God hath placed over thee. For, if a sparrow lighteth not on the ground without God's especial providence, surely no minister is bestowed in any parish without a more peculiar disposing; and surely their own pastor is best acquainted with their diseases, and therefore best knoweth to apply spiritual physic thereunto. And as God's Word hath a general blessing on every place, so more particularly is it blessed to parishioners from the mouth of their lawful minister. Let not therefore the stranger, who makes a feast of set purpose to entertain new guests, be preferred before thy own minister, who keeps a constant table, feeding his own family. Wherefore let all the Ephesians confine themselves to their Timothy; Cretians to their Titus; every congregation to their proper pastor. As for those whose necessary occasions do command their absence from their flocks, let them see to it that they provide worthy substitates.(2) Let them not make odious comparisons betwixt ministers of eminent parts. It is said of both Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:5) and Josiah (2 Kings 23. 25) that there were none like them. The Holy Spirit prefers neither for better, but concludes both for best; and so amongst ministers, when each differs from others, all may be excellent in their kinds. As, in comparing several handsome persons, one surpasseth for beauty of face; a second, for a well-proportioned body; a third, for comeliness of carriage: so may it be betwixt several pastors. One's excellency may consist in the unsnarling of a known controversy; another, in plain expounding of Scripture; one, the best Boanerges; another, the best Barnabas: our judgments may be best informed by one, our affections moved by a second, our lives reformed by a third. Grant some in parts far inferior to others: was not Abishai a worthy captain, though he attained not to the honour of the first three? And may not many be serviceable in the Church, though not in the first rank?(3) Entertain this for a certain truth, that the efficacy of God's Word depends not on the parts of the minister, but on God's blessing, on His ordinance. (T. Fuller, D. D.)
1. Stand upon the common foundations of Christ. 2. Busy themselves to save souls and not to make proselytes. 3. Esteem, love, and help each other. 4. Exhibit a holy emulation in exalting Christ. II. WHEN ARE THEY WRONG? 1. When they exalt party names and differences above Christ. 2. When they are slavishly attached to their party, and make it the great object of their zeal. 3. When they note and despise others and exclude them from their fellowship. 4. When they seek to glorify their party above all others. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
(Canon Evans.)
2. His offices. 3. His salvation. 4. His Church. (W. W. Wythe.)
II. Such being the origin and nature of most religious differences, it will next be in order to inquire ON WHAT GROUNDS THEY CAN BE REGARDED AS A REASON OR OCCASION FOR SCEPTICAL, CYNICAL, OR DESPONDING THOUGHTS. In the first place, do they afford us any reason or pretext for denying the trustworthiness or competency of the human faculties? Certainly not. Could we be induced to regard the object under precisely the same lights and aspects, we should doubtless see it alike; and better still, could we be induced to regard the object under all lights and aspects, we should doubtless not only see it alike, but see it as it is. Accordingly, the differences among Christians are not to be construed into evidence of the incompetency of the human faculties in themselves considered, but only of their partial application. When we begin our inquiries respecting any subject, we must begin, of course, by looking at it on one side: our views must be partial at first; hut it does not follow that they must always continue so. What, indeed, is progress in any inquiry but the gradual enlargement of our views? And hence the acknowledged fact, that thought and study, and a more generous culture, tend to dissolve differences and bring men together. To those, therefore, who think to find arguments for scepticism or despair in the divisions of Christians, and who are ready to pronounce the partial views which prevail as worthless, and mutually destructive of each other, the answer is plain. First, even the most partial of these views are worth a great deal; for they are partial views of an all-important truth, and as such contain much that is enduring and eternal. Again, as the error of these views grows mainly out of their being partial, it is one which must be expected to pertain to the first stages of every inquiry, but gradually disappear as the inquiry goes on. Finally, though the time may never come on earth when the multitude of partial views will be lost in a single all-comprehensive view, still this knowing "in part," and the trials and responsibilities which pertain to such a condition, may be essential to the discipline which is to fit us for that world, where "that which is in part shall be done away." Admitting all this, however, I ask, then, what there is in controversy — I do not say to condemn, for, considering how they are often conducted, there is enough in them, Heaven knows, to condemn, but to excuse in lookers-on either indifference or unbelief? Certainly of themselves they do not argue indifference or unbelief, but the contrary. An age of controversy is pre-eminently an age of faith; a man is not likely to dispute earnestly unless he believes in something, and attaches importance to it. Besides, how is it in other things? Name, if you can, a single interesting subject of inquiry which has not given occasion to controversy. The world is as much divided and estranged on scientific and political and philanthropic questions as on religious questions. But do men hence infer that there is no such thing as truth in any of these matters, or that we have no faculties to discover it? God forbid! Obviously, therefore, it cannot be controversy, as such, that is objected to in this connection, but something peculiar to religious controversy. First, it is said that controversy is well enough where it really has the effect to help forward the truth, or to diffuse and establish it; but in religion it does neither, leaving every question just where it found it. I reply, that even if this were so, it would not be to the purpose: it would follow, indeed, that controversy is of no use in religion, and ought to be avoided; but it would not follow that religion itself is of no use, or that controversy has made it of less use or less certain. But the whole statement is erroneous. Who has yet to learn the invaluable services of discussion and controversy in settling the laws of evidence on which the genuineness and authenticity of the Sacred Books depend, and the laws of interpretation by which their import is determined? To discussion and controversy we also owe it, that the Christian doctrines generally have been unfolded, cleared up, and re-stated. Again, religious controversy is objected to because of its asperities and spirit of denunciation, which on such a subject are peculiarly odious, creating in some minds an invincible disgust for religion itself. That religious controversy, even among Christians, sometimes assumes the character here given to it, I confess; but it is easy to see that it is not because Christians are Christians, but because Christians are men, having the weaknesses and imperfections of men. Once more. A vague notion exists, I believe, in some minds that the honour of God is somehow compromised by the disgraceful altercations to which Christianity has given birth. The fact that He does not interfere to suppress them creates a feeling of uneasiness and distrust, as if the revelation were not in reality from Him. Such persons would do well to remember that God gives us truth, as He gives us everything else, not to our acceptance, but to our acquisition. Even the truths of revelation are expected to do us as much good by exercising our fairness of mind, and our love of truth, in the acceptance and interpretation of His Word, as by the light they give. To the question, then, Which among the various partial and discordant views you are to adopt, this is my answer — Adopt your own; hold fast your own. Allowing others to have their views, be faithful and just to your own view; endeavouring, of course, to enlarge it from day to day, but adhering to it, meanwhile, and reverencing it, as one view at least of truth, and of that side of truth which is turned towards you, and which, therefore, you must be presumed to be most concerned to know. Above all, remember that, though we are divided, Christ is not. (J. Walker, D. D.)
II. THE TRUTH INVOLVED IN THE QUESTION. 1. Some one had been crucified for them. That was a fact which none of their divisions could pretend to deny. But who was this crucified One? Was it Paul? No! It was the Master, not the servant. And Christ was crucified for us! He had no guilt of His own to suffer for. The poor thief at His side made this acknowledgment, and prophecy had explained it 700 years before — "He was wounded for our transgressions," &c. 2. And this was the most memorable fact in His history. To talk about the blood of Christ offends certain people's taste, and is out of keeping with their theology. But what is the theology of the Bible? The tabernacle and the temple ran with blood; for "without shedding of blood there was no remission of sin." So in the New Testament we read that our Lord "took the cup," and said, "This is My blood," &c. And Peter reminded his fellow-believers, "Ye were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ," and John wrote, "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin." And the reason of all this is clearly given. Sin is a thing which a just and holy Ruler of the universe cannot pass by. It must be punished — if not in us, in another in our stead. And the grand message of the gospel is, that God has laid on Christ the iniquity of us all — so that "in Him we have redemption through His blood," &c. Now if this be so, the most memorable thing in the history of Christ is — that He "was crucified for us!" 3. Such clearly is Paul's teaching. Talk too much of the blood of Christ? (1 Corinthians 2:2). The theme distasteful and offensive? (Galatians 6:14; cf. 1 Corinthians 8:23). III. THE FORCE OF THE QUESTION. What claim have I upon you compared with that of Christ? Notice the delicacy of the apostle's mind, He might have asked the same with regard to Peter or Apollos. 1. Paul had some claim upon them, for it was he who first brought the gospel to them. And what Corinthian believer but was bound to bless the apostle's name? And don't you sometimes bless it, English believer? Have you not felt that the Apostle Paul has been one of your best friends? 2. But now I hear him saying, "Don't talk of me — talk of nay Master. What claims have I upon you compared with His? It was not I that was your Substitute — I needed a substitute as much as you. You Corinthians talk of me and of Apollos as useful preachers. Who are we but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. 'We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord,'" &c. And so you Englishmen talk of me as one whom you are bound to revere and love. But look up immensely higher! up, where angels bow before a Lamb as it had been slain! There's your best Friend! Give Him your deepest reverence, your warmest love! "Was Paul crucified for you?" 3. The text is suitable, by way of warning, to these days when the tendency is to mingle Christ up with other famous teachers. And doubtless each of them has taught the world what had previously been forgotten. But can any Christian put them on a level with our Lord? I shudder at the thought! "Is Christ divided?" Is there one Saviour for the Chinese, and another for the Indian, and another for the Arab? Was Confucius crucified for sinners? — or Buddha? — or Mahommed? Nay, brethren! Stand fast in the faith. "There is none other name," &c. "Other foundation can no man lay." (F. Tucker, B. A.)
I. SUGGESTS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DEBT WHICH CHRISTIANS OWE TO CHRIST AND THAT WHICH THEY OWE TO THE MOST FAVOURED OF HIS SERVANTS. 1. It was no slight debt which the Corinthians owed to the apostle — their conversion, their Church, their knowledge about subjects of the highest interest to man; his nature, God's nature and relations, and the eternal future. It was a debt which could never be repaid. But the apostle suggests its utter relative insignificance by his question, "Was Paul crucified for you?" 2. Not that St. Paul had taught the Corinthians the faith of Christ without suffering (1 Thessalonians 2:2; Acts 18:5, 6, 12-17). But all such sufferings had differed in kind from that which was glanced at by the question, "Was Paul crucified for you?" 3. His relation to Christ was altogether unlike that which existed between pupils and their Master, e.g., between and . To St. Paul Christ was not merely the author of Christianity, but its subject and its substance. St. Paul was not indeed crucified; he was beheaded some years later, as a martyr for Christ. But excepting the testimony which he thus bore to the truth he preached, his death was without results to the world. He was beheaded for no one. And had he been crucified at Corinth, the sin of no single Corinthian would have been washed away by his blood. Do, teach, or suffer what he might, he was but a disciple. II. TELLS US WHAT IT WAS IN THE WORK OF CHRIST WHICH HAD THE FIRST CLAIM ON THE GRATITUDE OF CHRISTIANS. 1. Not His miracles. They were designed, no doubt, to make faith in His Divine mission natural and easy. They were more: frequently works of mercy than of power. They were acted parables. But others also have worked miracles. And the miracles of Christ have not touched the heart of the world more than His words. 2. Not His teaching. Certainly no human speech will ever say more to the conscience than did the Sermon on the Mount, or more to the heart than did the discourse in the supper-room. Yet He Himself implies that what He did would have greater claims on man than what He said. 3. Nor His triumph over death at His resurrection. Certainly that was the supreme certificate of His Divine mission. But the claim of the Resurrection upon our gratitude is so great, because it is intimately bound up with the tragedy which had preceded it. 4. But His Cross (vers. 23, 24; 1 Corinthians 2:2; Galatians 6:14), on which He reminds us of our utter misery and helplessness until we are aided by His redeeming might (John 15:13; 1 Peter 2:24; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Revelation 1:5; Romans 3:25; Ephesians 1:7; 2 Corinthians 5:18-20; Hebrews 2:17). To expand, connect, explain, justify these aspects of His atoning death is no doubt a labour of vast proportions. But in their simple form they meet every child who reads the New Testament, and they explain the hold of Christ crucified on the Christian heart. And we understand the pathos and the strength of the appeal, "Was Paul crucified for you?" III. ENABLES US TO MEASURE THE TRUE WORTH OF EFFORTS FOR IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF MANKIND. 1. We may well thank God that He has put it into so many hearts to support institutions and enterprises so rich in their practical benevolence. But when it is hinted that efforts of this kind satisfy all the needs of man, we are obliged to hesitate. The needs of the soul are at least as real as those of the body. The pain of the conscience is at least as torturing as that of the nerves. The invisible world is not less to be provided for than the world of sense and time. We are sometimes almost pressed, in view of the exaggerated claims of a secular philanthropy, to ask whether this or that benevolent person was crucified for the poor or the suffering. 2. In like manner, when Renan tells that we should all be much better if we would give increased time and thought to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, we naturally listen. That Marcus Aurelius was marked by eminent excellences must be frankly granted. But literary infidelity has done this man a wrong by the very excesses of his panegyric. For we cannot but ask whether his characteristic virtue was more than a social luxury; whether it had the slightest effect upon the degraded multitudes who lived close to his palace; whether it prevented him selecting as his colleague a worthless trifler, or from bequeathing his responsibilities to a profligate buffoon; whether it even suggested a scruple respecting his cruel persecutions of Christians. These are questions which history may be left to answer. And her judgment would make another question only more grotesque than profane — "Was Marcus Aurelius crucified for you?" 3. Yes; only One ever was crucified out of love to sinners, and with a will and power to save them. The faith which St. Paul preached protects society against dangers which are inseparable from human progress at certain stages. For this faith in Christ crucified addresses itself to each of those poles of society, which, when left to the ordinary selfish impulses of human nature, tend to become antagonistic. To the wealthy and the noble the figure of the crucified Saviour is a perpetual preacher of self-sacrifice for the sake of the poor and needy; and to the poor it is no less a perpetual lesson of the beauty, the majesty of entire resignation. Thus does the truth which is at the very heart of the Christian creed contribute most powerfully to the coherence and well-being of society; and we live in days when society is not able to dispense with its assistance. (Canon Liddon.)
(Prof. Beet.)
I. THE VALVE AND BLESSEDNESS OF THE SACRAMENTS. 1. They are authoritative signs and symbols. There is very much contained in this idea; e.g., in some parts of the country it is the custom to give and receive a ring in token of betrothal; but that is very different from the marriage-ring. It is neither authoritative, nor has it the sanction of the Church. It would have been perfectly possible for man to have invented another symbol of the truth conveyed in baptism, and then it would not have been authoritative, and consequently it would have been weak and useless. 2. They serve as the epitomes of Christian truth. Antinomianism had crept into the Roman Church. Paul meets this by an appeal to baptism (Romans 6:1-4). And again, in reference to the Lord's Supper, in the Church of Corinth that sacrament had become a feast of gluttony and a signal of division. This error he endeavours to correct by reference to the institution of the Supper itself: "The bread which we break, is it not the Communion of the body of Christ?" The single loaf, broken into many fragments, contains within it the symbolical truth, that the Church of Christ is one. Here, in the text, St. Paul makes the same appeal: he appeals to baptism against sectarianism, and so long as we retain it, it is an everlasting protest against every one who breaks the unity of the Church. II. THE PECULIAR MEANING OF THE SACRAMENT. There are those who believe and teach that men are born into the world children of the devil, and who hold that the instrument for their conversion into God's children is baptism; and believe that there is given to the ministers of the Church the power of conveying in that sacrament the Holy Spirit, who effects this wondrous change. If a minister really believes he has this power, then it is only with fear and trembling that he should approach the font. But if this view be true, then the apostle thanked God that he had not regenerated any, that he had not conveyed the Spirit of God to any one but Crispus and Gaius, and the household of Stephanas. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
II. IT MADE THE AGENCY OF GOD ESSENTIAL IN CAUSING THE CROSS OF CHRIST TO HAVE SAVING POWER. 1. Paul gives the reason of man its proper place in the apprehension of the truth, and the truth so apprehended its proper place as connected with regeneration; but he never teaches that the truth alone, however fully understood, will secure salvation. Being saved is not an intellectual process only, even though the sacrifice of Christ be the truth considered. Only when made the power of God through the attending influence of the Holy Ghost does it save. 2. Paul's preaching insisted that this Divine agency can render the weak —(1) Able to appropriate the gospel in its saving power. The pride of high station and marked ability would not avail, but the humility of confessed unworthiness and dependence upon him who would attract God's favour and incline its possessor to accept the Saviour He has provided. Hence, the poor, the ignorant, the wicked, the child, will find no barriers around the Cross when they turn toward it for help.(2) Useful in throwing over opposition and causing the gospel to triumph (ver. 27, &c.). III. IT DECLARED THAT THE RESULT OF THE GOSPEL'S PROPER PRESENTATION MUST BE THAT GOD, AND NOT MEN, WILL HAVE ALL THE GLORY (vers. 29, 31). Conclusion: Paul's preaching declares — 1. That true salvation is the penitent and trustful acceptance of the crucified Christ. 2. That true religion is loyalty to God. (J. Exells, D. D.)
I. THE OFFICE OF THE PREACHER AROSE WITH THE SAVIOUR. There were instructors previously. The prophets were much more teachers than predictors. The Rabbis when Christ was upon earth were teachers. Christ's method of teaching was utterly different. Outwardly it was the same — He went from place to place, He taught sitting, &c.; but the interior contents of His teaching were very different. Christ spake "with authority"; so does every man who speaks from the roots and fundamental elements of truth. II. PREACHING IS TEACHING IN A VITALISING WAY ETHICAL TRUTHS — truths which ally men to God and to each other. They must be taught so as to breathe the life of Him who teaches. They must carry personal power. III. IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT THAT THIS FUNCTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH HAS CEASED EVEN IN LIBERALLY EDUCATED AND CULTIVATED SECTIONS OF SOCIETY. Let us look closely and ask, Is the function of the preacher temporary? Will it ever pass away? There is one element belonging distinctively to the preacher which will for ever give him a place and function which can never change: the bringing of the truth home to men in a living form. In the light of this observe the genius and the sphere of preaching — 1. From this sphere are excluded largely the higher forms of theological speculation, for it is not possible to bring these home to men in a living way. His distinctive business is to deal with those truths which he can take into his consciousness, and, having given to these a personal expression from himself, send them forth living truths. His proper sphere is ethical truth. That which men most need to know is how to love God and man perfectly. This is his whole duty. To teach this duty is the sphere of the preacher. 2. This includes every condition of mankind. 3. From this it appears that no man is a true preacher whose chief business is the organisation of worship, the conduct of Church affairs, or mere pastoral administration. The true preacher is the utterer of truth. 4. Then as no man can represent in himself every form of the human mind, or have a full conception of all truth, the preacher must necessarily be a partialist. The robin sings as a robin, bluebirds as bluebirds. One man has large power of imagination, another overflowing emotion, &c. All are fragmentary preachers. No man was ever built large enough to preach the whole of God. 5. Pride, vanity, and unspiritual life will effectually prevent the preacher becoming personally, experimentally, a presentation of the truth to the people. (H. W. Beecher.)
II. THE SECRET OF THE POWER OF PREACHING. 1. It conveys far better than any other vehicle the affirmation of the whole man — his whole nature, his whole experience — to the matter which he desires to communicate. 2. It brings into play all the affinities, sympathies, and affections of the being, and is therefore a most powerful instrument in arriving at the truth. 3. So much is true of all preaching. But in the preaching of the gospel there is a source of special power — the principle of representation — the power and right to speak to men in the name of God. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)
2. In the prosecution of his work Paul met with three classes, each of which treated his message in a peculiar fashion. The Jew and the Greek, without trying the gospel on themselves, rejected it — the one for its lack of power and the other for its lack of wisdom; but the third class, acting on the only true philosophical principle of proving the matter by personal experiment, found in it both the power of God and the wisdom of God. Nowadays it is sturdily insisted on that nothing shall be received save that which rests on the basis of observation and experiment, but that is all the gospel asks; and here we see that those who reject it are those who refuse to put it to the test. Which of the two classes is the more scientific? The Baconian philosophers should not hesitate as to the reply. Christ crucified is — I. "THE POWER OF GOD." 1. Yes, but this power is not physical like the might of an army; nor material, like that which is connected with a development of matter; nor mechanical, as derived from any sort of mechanism, but dynamical, as exerted by spirit upon spirit. It is "power unto salvation." It is not therefore to be tested by material gauges, as one measures the pressure on a steam-boiler, or estimates the horse-power of an engine. We are to look for its operation in the human heart. Its trophics are in character, and its results are in life.(1) Take it in the case of an individual, and the transformation wrought on such men as Paul, and , and John Newton, may well illustrate its reality and efficacy.(2) Take it in the case of communities, and Christianity has either implanted or stimulated regard for the personality of the weakest and the poorest; respect for women; the absolute duty of each member of the fortunate classes to raise the unfortunate; humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and even the brute; unceasing opposition to all forms of cruelty; the duty of personal purity; the sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance. 2. But are we quite sure that it is "the power of God"? Yes, for there are only two spiritual powers in the world — that of evil and that of good. Very evidently, therefore, a result like that of the conversion of a man, and the revolution of society, from evil to good, must be traced up to God. Man cannot do it for himself, for as water cannot rise above its level, so the soul cannot change its nature by its own efforts. And what one man cannot do for himself, the aggregate of men cannot do for the race. They had four thousand years given to them in which to make the experiment, and here (ver. 21) is the result. II. "THE WISDOM OF GOD." 1. Wisdom is manifested in the choice of such means as are best adapted to the production of the end. The problem to be solved in the salvation of men is, "How shall a sinner be forgiven without weakening the sanctions of morality and giving encouragement to evil?" Now the race vainly wrestled with that for four millenniums; but the despair of humanity is the opportunity of God, for in "Christ crucified" we are shown "a just God and a Saviour." 2. Wisdom is seen in the securing of different ends by one and the same means. So salvation is not merely forgiveness; it is also regeneration and growth in holiness. Its highest result is character, and the renovation of that is produced by the Holy Ghost. Now the dispensation of the Holy Spirit would have been impossible save for the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross; while, again, the love of Christ, as manifested in His sacrifice on the Cross, is the great means used by the Spirit for the regeneration and sanctification of the believer. Conclusion: From all this four inferences follow. If Christ crucified is the power of God unto salvation, then — 1. Any sinner may be saved through faith in Him. 2. There is no other way of salvation. 3. When men are saved through this means the whole glory of their salvation is due to God. 4. If we would see such results from our preaching as those which followed Paul's, we must preach the same gospel, "Christ crucified." This is the gospel for our age, because it is the gospel for all the ages. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
II. But DOES THE WORLD NEED SUCH A MESSAGE? Can we not get along fairly well without it? That is the very question which Paul discussed in Romans 1. What does the world need? Righteousness. That secured and the millennium would be there. But the one thing most needed is the thing most difficult to create and promote. It cannot be said that there has been any lack of earnest attempts. Confucius, Sakya-Muni, Zoroaster, and Socrates, tried to supply the want. But the multitudes were deaf to their appeal; and Rome at the zenith of her culture was but a "veneered brutality." And mightily endowed as Judiasm was it failed to achieve even its own reformation. The men who boasted in the law trampled upon it every day. A mightier hand than that of Socrates, or of Moses, was needed to save the world. A more than human hand, though nerved by an inspired heart, must smite the ranks of evil. III. But granting that the world needs just the help which the gospel declares has been brought to it. "WILL EVEN THIS SECURE THE DESIRED RESULT? To this we can only answer, first, if it does not then God is clearly and hopelessly defeated, for a greater than Christ cannot, come to the rescue; and second, if Christ be what the gospel affirms Him to be, the triumph of righteousness is a foregone conclusion. Hence the tone of victory in the New Testament is always in the present tense. "Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory." "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." This is our highest assurance. It receives impressive confirmation in the historical triumphs of Christianity. Its moral conquest of the civilisations of Rome and Greece are unquestioned. Its restraining and reorganising energy during the Middle Ages is freely admitted. Its profound and salutary influence upon modern life is beyond cavil; but there is a more direct and living proof of its power. Hundreds among you can bear testimony to the grace of salvation in Jesus Christ. What the gospel has done for you it can do for all. (A. J. F. Behrends, D. D.)
II. THERE IS IN MAN A TENDENCY, not So widespread, but nobler than the vulgar bent to superstition — AFTER INTELLECTUAL SATISFACTION AND AN EXHAUSTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH. 1. No sooner had Christianity appeared than this appetite seized upon it, questioned it, thought to find in it what it had failed to find elsewhere. Generalising, again, Paul termed this the Greek habit of mind. "The Greek," he says, "searches after philosophy"; but it is as little exclusively Greek as the bias to superstition is exclusively Jewish. In our day it is no less profound, unsuitable, or eager than it ever was. Men claim that it shall be as systematic, exhaustive, and demonstrable as a science; that it shall help to answer the unanswered problems of existence; that it shall abjure all pretensions to be supernatural; that every one of its facts be found explicable on natural grounds; and that its boasted virtue to save shall prove as intelligible as the action of any other truth upon human minds. 2. Follow out this conception of Christianity to its issues, and what have you? Not a genuine revelation from heaven; not the advent of a Divine power to save; but simply some very beautiful and elevating truths, discerned first by a certain Jew of Palestine and by him added to the world's treasure-house of thought, yet competing with many discoveries of more modern times. Is it not to some such appraisement of the gospel that a great deal of modern discussion among the learned is tending? Nay, is there not a way of preaching and defending the gospel — such a way as Paul avoided in speculative Corinth — which actually invites men to rate its value as low as this among the rival systems of human wisdom? 3. Against such a misconception of the essence of the gospel, what is St. Paul's protest? It is true, he seems to say, the gospel is a rational word, and not a magical rite. It is spoken truth, and it acts, like truth, through the misunderstandings of men. But, for all that, it is not a philosophy. With abstract truth it has little to do; but it proclaims Jesus the Messiah, and proclaims Him as crucified for the sins of men. Its real character is this — it is a, testimony from God which we are not called upon to discuss so much as to credit. It is in this, accordingly, that its power lies. For power it unquestionably possesses. Only not the mere power of wisdom, but the quiet personal power of the Speaker's authority and the Speaker's love. Speculate about this and it may seem in your sagacious eyes folly. But cease to criticise and be humble enough to believe it, to surrender yourself to Him who speaks; then it will prove itself to be Divinely wise and strong in your experience. It will work in you as no human wisdom works; it will save you as no intellectual system saves. 4. On this side also I think a faithful Church needs just now to speak out in clear tones. It is not the first time in the history of our faith that the gospel has been like to lose its characteristic spirit by evaporation. Treat it as you treat an ordinary system of thought, and you end (as Paul feared to end) by making the Cross of Christ "of none effect." You miss its very essence as a gospel. For what makes it to be a gospel? Just this, that it is God's own record of His peculiar way of having mercy upon sinners. It is a plain, practical, personal appeal from our reconciling Father to each wandered soul among us; or it is nothing. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)
I. THE STYLE OF PREACHING HE HAD ADOPTED WHILE WITH THEM 1. His time in Corinth, he assures them, had been spent, not in propagating a system of truth which might have been identified with his name, but in presenting the Cross of Christ. In approaching them he had necessarily weighed in his own mind the comparative merits of various modes of presenting the gospel, and he well knew that a new philosophy clothed in elegant language was likely to secure a number of disciples. And it was quite in Paul's power to present the gospel as a philosophy; but he "determined not to know anything among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." 2. Paul then deliberately trusted to the bare statement of facts and not to any theory about these facts. In preaching to audiences with whom the facts are familiar, it is perfectly justifiable to draw inferences from them and to theorise about them. Paul himself spoke "wisdom among them that were perfect." But what is to be noted is that for doing the work proper to the gospel, for making men Christians, it is not theory or explanation, but fact, that is effective. It is the presentation of Christ as He is presented in the Gospels which stands in the first rank of efficiency as a means of evangelising the world. The actor does not instruct his audience how they should be affected by the play; he so presents the scene that they instinctively smile or find their eyes fill. Those onlookers at the crucifixion who beat their breasts were not told that they should feel compunction; it was enough that they saw the Crucified. So it is always; it is the direct vision of the Cross, and not anything which is said about it, which is most effective in producing penitence and faith. 3. The very fact that it was a Person, not a system of philosophy, that Paul proclaimed Was sufficient proof that he was not anxious to become the founder of a school or the head of a party. And that which permanently distinguishes Christianity from all philosophies is that it presents to men, not a system of truth to be understood, but a Person to be relied upon. Christianity is for all men and not for the select, highly educated few; and it depends therefore not on exceptional ability to see truth, but on the universal human emotions of love and trust. II. WHY HE HAD ADOPTED THIS STYLE. 1. Because God had changed His method (ver. 21).(1) Even the wisest of the Greeks had attained only to inadequate and indefinite views of God. To pass even from Plato to the Gospel of John is to pass from darkness to light. Plato philosophises, and a few souls seem for a moment to see things more clearly; Peter preaches, and three thousand souls spring to life.(2) That which, in point of fact, has made God known is the Cross of Christ. No doubt it must have seemed mere lunacy to summon the seeker after God away from the high speculations of Plato to a human form gibbeted on a malefactor's cross. None knew better than Paul the infamy attaching to that cursed death, but he knew also its power (vers. 22-24). As proof that God was in their midst the Jews required a demonstration of physical power. Even at the last it would have satisfied them had Christ stepped down from the Cross. The Cross seemed to them a confession of weakness, and was a stumbling-block they could not get over. And yet in it was the whole power of God for the salvation of the world. For the power of God that is required to draw men to Himself is not power to alter the course of rivers or change the site of mountains, but power to sympathise, to sacrifice self, to give all for the needs of His creatures. It is this love of God that overpowers men and makes it impossible for them to resist Him. 2. Paul appeals to the elements of which the Church was actually composed.(1) It is plain, he says, that it is not by anything generally esteemed among men that you hold your place in the Church (ver. 26). It is not men who by their wisdom find out God and by their nobility of character commend themselves to Him; but it is God who calls men, and the very absence of wisdom and possessions makes men readier to listen to His call (vers. 27-29). It is all God's doing now; it is "of Him are ye in Christ Jesus." Human wisdom had its opportunity and accomplished little; God now by the foolishness of the Cross lifts the despised, &c., to a far higher position than the wise and noble can attain by their might and their wisdom.(2) Paul thus justifies this method by its results. The Cross may seem a most unlikely weapon with which to accomplish great things, but it is God who uses it, and that makes the difference. Hence the emphasis throughout this passage on the agency of God. But for this reason also all ground of boasting is removed from those who are within the Christian Church.(3) In Paul's day this argument from the general poverty and insignificance of the members of the Christian Church was readily drawn. Things are changed now; and the Church is filled with the wise, the powerful, the noble. But Paul's main proposition remains: whoever is in Christ Jesus is so, not through any wisdom or power of his own, but because God has chosen and called him. And the practical result remains. Let the Christian, while he rejoices in his position, be humble. 3. Paul avers that had he used "enticing words of man's wisdom" the hearers might have been unduly influenced by the mere guise in which the gospel was presented and too little influenced by the essence of it. He feared to adorn the simple tale lest the attention of his audience might be diverted from the substance of his message. He was resolved that their faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Here again things have changed since Paul's day. The assailants of Christianity have put it on its defence, and its apologists have been compelled to show that it is in harmony with the soundest philosophy. It was inevitable that this should be done; but Paul considered that the only sound and trustworthy faith was produced by direct personal contact with the Cross. And this remains for ever true. (M. Dods, D. D.)
II. HIS PARAMOUNT WORK. 1. Not to baptize, much less busy himself with a thousand other things. 2. But to preach the gospel. III. HIS PRESCRIBED METHODS. 1. Not with wisdom of words. 2. But simply, plainly, pointedly. IV. HIS MOTIVE. 1. That nothing might hinder. 2. But everything promote the effect of the Cross of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
1. The Cross fulfilled the first promise; it was the "good thing" of which the sacrifices were a shadow; it was the event toward which the course of all events had tended. 2. The Cross cast a long, deep shadow upon the Holy Land; its peculiar people; its priesthood, temple, and ritual; a night-of-death shadow to cover a time of change in which old things would pass away and all things become new. 3. The Cross shed light into the darkness of the world, and indicated those stirrings of the Divine mercy which terminated in the proclamation of salvation to the world. As matter of history, since the Cross of Christ has begun to take effect, it has caused religious systems hoary with age, and rooted by ten thousand fibres in the hearts of the people to be laid aside as worn-out garments. It has spread civilisation over many nations; it has been a key to unlock the treasures of all useful knowledge; it has elevated art, widened commerce, removed the fetters from the slave; it has founded hospitals and schools, checked the harsh government of rulers, quelled the anarchy of subjects, restored woman to her primitive position, imparted peace and joy to the home, exalted nations, and is now both the light and leaven of the world. The Cross of Christ alone saves. II. PAUL SPEAKS OF THE CROSS BEING "MADE OF NONE EFFECT." 1. To make the sun of none effect would send our world back to chaos, but this ruin would be — 2. Small compared with negativing the Cross of Christ. And Paul tells us that if he had exhibited the Cross with "wisdom of words," it would have been powerless in his hands. He cannot mean intelligible and acceptable words; for without such the Cross could not be manifested at all. By "wisdom of words" is meant the artifices of rhetoric, &c. If the Cross were a jewel to be hoarded and hid I would make its bed in wool; but as it is a gem to be used let me see it as it is. If the Cross were an inferior gem I might add to its worth and beauty by the setting; but as its value is beyond price, let its surroundings be as simple as possible. The question is not, however, one of taste, but of utility. Shall we mingle with our daily bread that which will deprive us of its nutritive effect? 3. The Cross is made of none effect when —(1) It is made identical with the crucifix, as though the Cross were nothing more than His crucifixion. The crucifix to the vulgar eye puts exclusively forward the bodily sufferings of Christ, and its effect is to bring us into sympathy with them. This is the effect of painting, poetry, and music, when employed upon the same subject. But the Cross of Christ is not an example of suffering merely, but the "Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world."(2) False doctrine and speculation concerning it are taught. The effect of the Atonement is in itself, not in its philosophy. And if the attempt at explanation fail, and the philosophy be false, I exhibit a cross framed by my own vain imagination. Then, what have I done? I have led men from living waters to the appearance of a fountain in shining sand.(3) It is exhibited without a personal recognition of its claims. That which you say about it will not be believed unless it appears important. and true, and it cannot appear real and momentous except as exhibited in faith. Faith begets faith.(4) Its requirements are multiplied and complicated. It saith, "Come to Me"; "Look to Me"; "Believe in Me." If we surround it with a long and difficult creed; if we clothe it with an elaborate ritual; if we plant it in the shrine of a particular ecclesiastical polity, and require men to come to it, by these we make it of none effect.(5) There is lack of faith in its power. It is impotent in the hand of an unbeliever. Our faith does not affect the value and efficacy of the Cross in the eye of God; but it does in the eye of man.(6) When it is used for objects foreign to itself. Ecclesiastics have used it to satisfy their ungodly ambition; political rulers as an engine of government; private individuals as a, spy in a camp uses the password, and prejudice has been raised against it.Conclusion: 1. What is the effect of the Cross of Christ upon yourselves?(1) Child of Christian parents, you have been directed to it ever since your eyes opened to see. Other things have had effect. The scenes of your early life; the books you have read; the companions with whom you associated, &c. And what has been the effect of the Cross of Christ? It has repelled you or attracted you. Repelled you! The magnet of the eternal mercy repelled you!(2) Pupil of a Christian school!(3) Hearer of Christian preaching and possessor of Holy Scripture, unless you are saved by it you will be damned by it. Christian brethren, what is its daily effect upon your hearts and lives? Are you crucified with Christ? Is its effect to captivate your heart; to command your energies; to sanctify your life? 2. What is the effect of the Cross in your hands? We more than fear that Christians and Churches of Christ have done much to make the Cross of Christ of none effect. (S. Martin.)
1. As a revealer. All true theological doctrine and ethical science come to us through the Cross. It is the moral light of the world. 2. As an educator. The Cross is to the human soul what the vernal sunbeam is to the seed; it penetrates, warms, quickens, and brings all its latent powers out to perfection. 3. As a deliverer. The Cross bears a pen to cancel the sentence, a balm to heal the wound, a weapon to break the fettering chain. Such, and infinitely more, is the Cross. What would human life be without it? A voyage without a compass, chart, or star. II. THE GREATEST EVIL IN THE WORLD. Making this Cross of "none effect," i.e., so far as its grand mission is concerned. Some effect it must have; it will deepen the damnation where it does not save. "We are unto God a sweet savour," &c. This tremendous evil is — 1. Painfully manifest. Intellectually, socially, politically, it has confessedly done wonders for mankind; but morally, how little! How little genuine holiness, disinterested philanthropy, self-sacrificing devotion to truth and God, Christliness of life! 2. Easily explained. The apostle indicates one way, viz., by "wisdom of words," i.e., gorgeous rhetoric. The Church has done it by(1) Its theologies. In its name it has propounded dogmas that have clashed with reason and outraged conscience.(2) Its polity. It has sanctioned wars, established hierarchies, which have fattened on the ignorance and poverty of the people.(3) Its spirit. The spirit of the Cross is self-sacrificing love, the spirit of the Church has been to a great extent that of selfishness, greed, ambition, and oppression. Malrepresentation of Christ by the Church is the instrument that has made the Cross of "none effect." 3. Terribly criminal. It is wonderful that man has the power thus to pervert Divine institutions and blessings; but such power he has. He forges metals into weapons for murder, he turns breadcorn into liquids to damn the reason and the souls of men. A greater crime you cannot conceive. Were you to turf, all bread into poison, make the flowing rivers pestiferous, quench the light of the sun, mantle the stars in sackcloth, you would not penetrate an evil half so enormous as that of making the Cross of Christ of "none effect." Conclusion: 1. What is the spiritual influence of the Cross on us? Has it crucified unto us the world? 2. What are we doing with the Cross? Are we abusing it or rightly employing it? (D. Thomas, D. D.)
(Principal . Edwards.)
1. Aims only at the intellect, not at the heart. 2. Gives no satisfaction on the main point — religion. 3. Deals with philosophical speculations which injure rather than edify. II. RHETORICAL PREACHING. 1. Which proceeds not from a zeal for the truth, but from a desire to please. 2. This unworthy mode of dealing with Divine truth robs the Cross of its effect, because it diverts the attention from the truth to the speaker and distracts the heart — because it excites a craving for merely intellectual gratification — because the impression produced is referred to the ability of the preacher and not to the truth itself. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. Simple in its facts. 2. Humiliating in its doctrines. 3. Startling in its announcements. II. THE RESULT. 1. Foolishness to them that perish. 2. The power of God unto them that are saved. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. Veils the truth which ought to be set forth in the clearest possible manner. 2. Explains the gospel away. It is possible to refine a doctrine till the very soul of it is gone. Under pretence of winning the cultured intellects of the age, it has gradually landed us in a denial of those first principles for which the martyrs died. 3. Is frequently used with the intent of making the gospel appear more beautiful. They would paint the rose and enamel the lily, add whiteness to the snow and brightness to the sun. With their wretched candles they would help us to see the stars. To adorn the Cross is to dishonour it, One of the old masters found that certain vases which he had depicted upon the sacramental table attracted more notice than the Lord Himself, and therefore he struck them out at once: let us do the same whenever anything of ours withdraws the mind from Jesus. 4. Is employed to augment the power of the gospel. Paul says it makes it of none effect (see 1 Corinthians 2:4, 5). Having cleared our way of the wisdom of words, we now come to the word of wisdom. I. "THE WORD OF THE CROSS" (R. V.).This is exactly what the gospel is. From which I gather that the Cross — 1. Has one uniform teaching. There are not two gospels any more than there are two Gods: there are not two atonements any more than there are two Saviours (1 Corinthians 3:11; Galatians 1:8, 9). 2. Is one word in contradistinction from many other words which are constantly being uttered. Christ's voice from the Cross is, "Look unto Me and be ye saved"; but another voice cries aloud, "This do and thou shalt live." The doctrine of salvation by works, or feelings, is not the word of the Cross. Much less is the word of ceremonialism and priestcraft. 3. Should be allowed to speak for itself. It cries, let us hear this word of the Cross, for in effect my text says, "Let the Cross speak for itself."(1) God must be just. The Cross thunders more terribly than Sinai against sin. If God smites the perfect One who bears our sin, how will He smite the guilty one who rejects His love?(2) God loves men, and delights in mercy. God commendeth His love to us, &c.(3) The one sacrifice is accepted and the atonement is complete. "God was in Christ," &c.(4) Come and welcome! "Whosoever will," &c. II. THE WORD OF ITS DESPISERS. 1. They call the doctrine of the atonement "foolishness."(1) "Because," say they, "see how the common people take it up. Why, the very children are able to believe it." But are the well-known facts of nature foolishness because they are open to all? Is it quite certain that all the wisdom in the world dwells with the superfine gentlemen who sneer at everything and take in a Review? I wish that their culture had taught them modesty.(2) Because this doctrine of the Cross is not the offspring of reason, but the gift of revelation. All the thinkers of the ages continued to think, but they never invented a plan of salvation. As a thought it originated with the Infinite Mind, and could have originated nowhere else. It is God telling men something which they could not else have known, and this suits not the profound thinkers, who must needs excogitare everything.(3) Because anything which proves a man to be a fool will at once strike men as being very foolish. Our conscience is dull, and therefore we retaliate upon those who tell us unpleasant truth.(4) Because it treats on subjects for which we have no care. If I were able to show how to make unlimited profit, all the world would 'listen; but when the sermon is only about the Word of God, and eternity, and the soul, and the blood of Jesus — most people turn on their heel. They call the gospel foolishness because they look after the main chance, and care more for the body than for the soul.(5) Because they regard all the truths with which it deals as insignificant trifles. 2. These gentlemen —(1) Are not qualified to form a judgment upon the subject. A blind man is no judge of colours, a deaf man of sound, and a man who has never been quickened into spiritual life of spiritual things.(2) Are proofs of their own folly and of the sad results of unbelief. Paul says that such men are perishing. What a calamity! Men who are not living to God are missing the end of their being, and like deserted houses are falling into ruin. Yonder is a tree: around its trunk the ivy has twisted itself, grasping it like a huge python, and crushing it in its folds. Multitudes have about them sins and errors that are eating out their life — they are perishing. Those that believe not in Jesus are drifting towards an immortality of misery; and yet while they perish, they condemn the means of rescue. Fancy drowning mariners mocking at the life. boat! Imagine a diseased man ridiculing the only remedy! III. THE WORD OF THOSE WHO BELIEVE. What do they say of the Cross? They call it power, the power of God. 1. The phenomenon of conversion is a fact. Men and women are totally changed, and the whole manner of their life is altered. The word of the Cross has delivered us from —(1) The love of sin: no sin is now our master. We fall into sin, but we mourn over it, and hate the sin, and hate ourselves for committing it.(2) From the dread which once held us in bondage, and made us tremble before our Father and our Friend. But now we love Him and delight in Him.(3) From the power of Satan.(4) From self and from the world, and from all things that would enthral us. We are saved. We feel that heaven is born within us — born by the word of the Cross through the Spirit. 2. The power with which God created and sustains the world is no greater than the power with which He made us new men in Christ, and by which He sustains His people under trial; and even the raising of the dead will be no greater display of it than the raising of dead souls out of their spiritual graves. Conclusion: Believe in the power of the Cross for the conversion of those around you. Do not say of any man that he cannot be saved. The blood of Jesus is omnipotent. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
1. There is a class gradually losing sensibility — contracting fresh guilt, &c. They are not damned at once. 2. There is a class gradually being saved. Salvation in its fullest extent is not an instantaneous thing, as some suppose. II. TO THE ONE CLASS THE GOSPEL IS FOOLISHNESS, TO THE OTHER THE POWER OF GOD. 1. It is foolishness to them that are perishing, because it has no meaning, no reality. 2. It is a Divine power to them that are being saved. Enlightening, renovating, purifying, ennobling. The power of God stands in contrust with mere human philosophy and eloquence. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
II. ITS DISPENSATION — by preaching. III. ITS RECEPTION — 1. To them that believe not, both the subject and the means are foolishness, because they humble human pride, discountenance merit, oppose the wisdom of this world. 2. To them that believe it is the power of God in the conscience, the heart, the life. IV. THE ISSUE — those perish — these are saved. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. The apostle did not so preach the gospel as to conceal the Cross. This has sometimes been done. The Roman Catholic missionaries that went out to the East held back the fact that the great Saviour had died in ignominy upon the Cross, and told their hearers only of those facts concerning Him which had a glorious appearance, such as His resurrection and ascension. And the first disciples may have sympathised in such a feeling. The Cross tended to attach dishonour to Christ and to His gospel. But the apostles did not do so; they told the whole story. 2. The crucifixion supplied, and was the whole origin of, the great topics which their preaching of the gospel contained. It would have been nothing for Paul to have preached the resurrection, &c., if he had not preached His death. These facts have no evangelical glory or meaning if you separate them from the Cross. Take away the Cross, and you take away the very life and soul of the gospel itself. II. THIS GOSPEL IS PERVERTED. 1. By those who say that it derives its power not so much from the death of Christ, but mainly from His life. Now I do not mean to depreciate the life of Christ, which was superlatively grand and striking in all respects. But the presenting to the world of a life of virtue will not in any degree be influential in its regeneration, and as for presenting an aspect of the benignity of God this is infinitely exceeded in the death of Christ. What Paul preached was not Christ's life, but Christ's death. 2. By those who say that the death of Christ has an influence, but that it is not an atonement. What is it then? It is a "way of speaking"! To this I would say —(1) If God tells us about an atonement, and there really is none, that is not truth.(2) Unless the Atonement be a fact it cannot be a power. III. THE GOSPEL IS A POWER IN THAT IT PRESENTS A SET OF TOPICS AND CONSIDERATIONS INTENDED TO WORK UPON MEN'S HEARTS AND CONSCIENCES. If the atoning death of Christ be a fact — 1. What a fact must sin itself be! He is God making a vast provision by the humiliating death of His own Son for the expiation of the sin of the world. What a proof it is of the lost state of man! 2. What a fact is God's justice! The sinner says, "Well, I have sinned, but God is merciful." Well, now, come again with me to the Cross. See a dying Saviour; there is God's vengeance against man's representative. 3. How great the love of God to a rebellious world. See to what an expense He has gone to save you. 4. What a fact is the foundation of a sinner's hope. None need despair; whosoever believeth in Him shall be saved. 5. What a fact is a believer's obligation to devotedness and love. If we have been bought at such a price, we are no more our own, but our Purchaser's. 6. What a fact is the guarantee of a believer's faith! "He that spared not His own Son," &c.Conclusion: 1. How wonderful it is that God should be pleased thus to deal with men! 2. What a thought it is for ungodly men that there is a Divine power in the gospel, and that in it God puts forth all His powers of persuasion. 3. And it is for us to remember that the gospel is a power for all the exigencies of the Christian life. (J. H. Hinton, M. A.)
I. I desire, first, to look at THE TWO CONTRASTED CONDITIONS, "perishing" and "being saved." We shall best understand the force of the darker of these two terms if we first ask what is the force of the brighter and more radiant. If we understand what the apostle means by "saving" and "salvation," we shall understand, also, what he means by "perishing." If, then, we turn for a moment to Scripture analogy and teaching, we find that well-worn word "salvation" starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It is used for both being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the gospel narratives of our Lord's miracles. It involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and his deliverance and security. The sickness of soul and the perils that threaten life flow from the central fact of sin. And salvation consists, negatively, in the sweeping away of all these, .whether the sin itself, or the fatal facility with which we yield to it, or the desolation and perversion which it brings into all the faculties and susceptibilities or the perversion of relation to God, and the consequent evils, here and hereafter, which throng around the evil-doer. The sick man is healed, and the man in peril is set in safety. But, besides that, there is a great deal more. The cure is incomplete till the full tide of health follows convalescence. When God saves He does not only bar up the iron gate through which the hosts of evil rush out upon the defenceless soul, but He flings wide the golden gate through which the glad troops of blessings and of graces flock around the delivered spirit, and enrich it with all joys and with all beauties. So the positive side of salvation is the investiture of the saved man with throbbing health through all his veins, and the strength that comes from a Divine life. It is the bestowal upon the delivered man of everything that he needs for blessedness and for duty. This, then, being the one side, what about the other? If salvation be the cure of the sickness, perishing is the fatal end of the unchecked disease. If salvation be the deliverance from the outstretched claws of the harpy evils that crowd about the trembling soul, then perishing is the fixing of their poisoned talons into their prey, and their rending of it into fragments. II. Now note, secondly, THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF BOTH MEMBERS OF THE ALTERNATIVE. All states of heart or mind tend to increase, by the very fact of continuance. Look, then, at this thought of the process by which these two conditions become more and more confirmed and complete. Salvation is a progressive thing. In the New Testament we have that great idea looked at from three points of view. Sometimes it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past in the case of every believing soul — "Ye have been saved" is said more than once. Sometimes it is spoken of as being accomplished in the present — "Ye are saved" is said more than once. And sometimes it is relegated to the future — "Now is your salvation nearer than when ye believed," and the like. But there are a number of New Testament passages which coincide with this text in regarding salvation as, not the work of any one moment, but as a continuous operation running through life. As, for instance, "The Lord added to the Church daily those that were being saved." By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are being sanctified. So the process of being saved is going on as long as a Christian man lives in this world. Ah I that notion of a progressive salvation, at work in all true Christians, has all but faded away out of the beliefs, as it has all but disappeared from the experience, of hosts of you that call yourselves Christ's followers, and are not a bit further on than you were ten years ago; are no more healed of your corruptions (perhaps less, for relapses are dangerous) than you were then. Growing Christians — may I venture to say? — are not the majority of professing Christians. And, on the other side, as certainly, there is progressive deterioration and approximation to disintegration and ruin. I am sure that there are people in this place this morning who were far better, and far happier, when they were poor and young, and could still thrill with generous emotion and tremble at the Word of God, than they are to-day. Now, notice, the apostle treats these two classes as covering the whole ground of the hearers of the Word, and as alternatives. If not in the one class, we are in the other. If you are not more saved, you arc less saved. Further, note what a light such considerations as these, that salvation and perishing are vital processes — "going on all the time" — throw upon the future. Clearly the two processes are incomplete here. You get the direction of the line, but not its natural termination. And thus a heaven and a hell are demanded by the phenomena of growing goodness and of growing badness which we see round about us. III. And now, lastly, notice THE DETERMINING ATTITUDE TO THE CROSS WHICH SETTLES THE CLASS TO WHICH WE BELONG. So there are two thoughts suggested which sound as if they were illogically combined, but which yet are both true. It is true that men perish, or are saved, because the Cross is to them respectively "foolishness," or "the power of God." And the other thing is true, that the Cross is to them "foolishness," or "the power of God," because respectively they are perishing or being saved. That is not putting the cart before the horse, but both aspects of the truth are true. If you see nothing in Jesus Christ, and His death for us all, except "foolishness," something unfit to do you any good, and unnecessary to be taken into account in your lives, that is the condemnation of your eyes, and not of the thing you look at. It a man, gazing on the sun at twelve o'clock on a June day, says to me, "It is not bright," the only thing I have to say to him is, "Friend, you had better go to an oculist." And if to us the Cross is "foolishness," it is because already a process of "perishing" has gone so far that it has attacked our capacity of recognising the wisdom and love of God when we see it. But, on the other hand, if we clasp that Cross in simple trust, we find that it is the power which saves us out of all sins, sorrows, and dangers, and "shall save us," at last, "into His heavenly kingdom." That message leaves no man exactly as it found him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
1. By the irrational character of the central fact of the gospel (vers. 18-25). 2. By the mode of gaining members to, and the composition of the Church (vers. 26-31). 3. By the attitude taken in the midst of them by the preacher of the gospel. (Prof. Godet, D. D.)
I. THE MEANS — the simple preaching of the Cross — which — 1. Is foolishness to the wise. 2. Yet triumphs over human wisdom. 3. Effects what the wisdom of this world has failed to do. 4. And in spite of the opposition of the Jew and the philosophy of the Greek demonstrates Christ the wisdom and the power of God. II. THE AGENTS — "not many wise, not many noble are called." 1. God has chosen the most unlikely instrumentalities. 2. And made them successful through Christ. 3. That no flesh might glory in His presence. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
II. IN THEM THAT ARE SAVED — because it conquers their opposition — and becomes in them the power of God and the wisdom of God. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
(Voltaire.)
1. Presumptuous in its attempts. 2. Proud in its assumptions. 3. Unsatisfactory in its conclusions. II. ITS DESTRUCTION — effected — 1. By time. 2. By revelation. 3. By the Divine Spirit. 4. By the appearing of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. It often blunders in its theories. 2. Always in relation to Divine things. 3. Generally leads to practical error. II. IT HAS UTTERLY FAILED TO REGENERATE THE WORLD. Instead of mending it it has made worse — witness the philosophy of the Greeks and the "age of reason." III. IT IS FULLY EXPOSED BY CHRISTIANITY, which — 1. Succeeds where it fails. 2. Triumphs over it. 3. Will ultimately destroy it. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. THE INFERENCE DRAWN FROM THE EFFECTS OF THE GOSPEL UPON THOSE WHO HAD RECEIVED IT. 1. It had accomplished that which the wisdom of the world had failed to do (vers. 20, 21). The wise, the scribe, the disputer, include respectively the thinker, the writer, and the speaker. Thought and its two mediums of expression were the great agents in the world's education, and had succeeded in creating a literature which remains unparalleled. But what had they done towards the regeneration of mankind? Nothing. "Where is the wise?" &c. In the world of philosophy, of poetry, of art, I can see their work; but in the realm of the spiritual they have left the world as they found it. God turns the tables upon those boastful wise ones. They call His plan "foolishness," but its effectiveness proves the folly to be with them. And Christianity is not alone in its frustration of the predictions of the wise. When Fulton constructed a steamship to cross the Atlantic they cried, "There goes Fulton's Folly." Subsequent history has, however, proved them to be the fools, and Fulton the wise man. So when Christianity was starting on its grand voyage, laden with salvation to a sin-afflicted world, the wise called it "foolishness." But how strangely has history proved their own infatuated folly. 2. This glorious result the gospel achieved whilst disregarding men's preconceived notions and prejudices (vers. 22-24). The Jews and the Greeks had their own theories of what ought to be the character of any religious message that might be addressed to them. The Jew, from the standpoint of his expectation of an all-conquering political Messiah, heralded by supernatural marvels, looked for a sign. The Greek, from his standpoint of intellectual culture, sought for wisdom. Of these, however, the apostle took no cognisance, but interpreting correctly the spirit of Christianity, boldly preached "Christ crucified." There is something sublimely unique and grand in this attitude. Other religions seek to accommodate themselves to the thoughts and ways of those whom they seek to win. II. But notwithstanding its bold defiance of cherished preferences, THE GOSPEL, BEING THE POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD, supplied in their highest form the very things which its rejectors desiderated. 1. It was the "power," i.e., the miracle "of God" corresponding with the "sign" which the Jews sought. The ordinary operations of nature, though the expressions of His power, yet are never called the "power of God." But the gospel is such a transcendent revelation of God's love, such an extraordinary interruption of the ordinary course of dealing with sin, that it may well be called a miracle; and its moral effects upon those who come within the scope of its influence are so wonderful, as to render it a moral miracle far beyond any physical miracle. 2. It is "the wisdom of God." Wisdom to the Greek meant learning and knowledge, but mostly only ingenuity in the use of dialectics. But that which is deserving of the name is "the use of the best means for attaining the best ends." And the Cross proposes the best end within the entire scope of Divine benevolence to conceive of deliverance from sin, and forms the best means for attaining it. III. THE GOSPEL EXERTED SUCH POWER ON THE CONSCIENCES OF MEN BECAUSE IT WAS DIVINE. If it be foolishness, still it is the foolishness of God; and the foolishness of "God must be wiser than men. If it be weakness, still it is the weakness of God; and the weakness of God must be stronger than men. Thus is the success of the gospel assured by the simple fact of its relation to God. IV. THE THOUGHTS FORMING THE BURDEN OF THE ARGUMENT. 1. The comparative value of the Cross and human culture in the moral regeneration of men. The apostle shows that it is not a question of degree of efficacy, but of absolute failure in the one case, and of transcendent success in the other. Culture has its mission, and a most important one in its own proper sphere. But the human heart, with its sin and guilt, has needs which the highest culture cannot meet in the remotest degree. The moral history of those communities that have attained to the highest degree of cultivation testifies most unmistakably to this. The only remedy for sin is Christ crucified. The faith of some still is, that "the sweetness of light," of intellectual discipline and refinement, will dissipate the gross moral darkness in which men lie. A little of any of the salts of sodium introduced into the flame of a gas lamp gives that flame the power of imparting to every coloured object a greenish yellow tint; but any black in that object remains still black. The sodium flame has no power of affecting this sombre hue. Just so is it with education in relation to sin. 2. The simple method of preaching as against the rhetorical. The apostle sets against the "wisdom of words," so esteemed by the Corinthians, his own customary "plainness of speech." He seems peculiarly apprehensive lest anything should stand between the truth and the conscience it is intended to influence. The more the mind is charmed by the style of the message, the less likely it is that the conscience will be pricked by its truth. Religion is so much a thing of the heart, that its truths come into the soul much more through spiritual insight and quickened sympathy than by logical processes. At one of the Westminster Industrial Exhibitions a workman exhibited two beautiful metal violins. The highest prize, however, was not awarded to him, for the reason that the instrument made of such material did not realise the purpose of a violin. The superior metal looked pretty, but the coarser material gave forth by far the sweeter sound. So high scholarly attainments may produce sermons, but they will, like the metal violin, fail in their purpose, while the discourses of the less polished preacher give forth music, often more capable of touching the heart. The cultured genius of Milton produced "Paradise Lost," but the uncultured mother-wit of Bunyan produced "The Pilgrim's Progress." The refined acumen of Butler produced the "Analysis," but it was the untutored fervour of Whitefield aroused the heart of England from its spiritual torpor. (J. A. Parry.)
1. What have they not attempted? 2. What have they not promised? 3. What have they achieved? 4. How are they brought to nought? (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. CHALLENGED BY THE GOSPEL. The apostle here challenges the wise men of the world to accomplish the end which the gospel had in view. That end was the impartation to men of the saving knowledge of God. Where, unaided, had it ever succeeded in accomplishing this? Who amongst the wise will come forward to give one single instance. II. CONFOUNDED BY THE GOSPEL. "Hath not God made foolish?" &c. 1. By doing what philosophy could not. "The world by wisdom knew not God." Though the pages of nature lay open to the eye, with God's signature in every line, man failed to discover Him (see Romans 1.). 2. By doing, by the simplest instrumentality, what philosophy could not do. The proclamation of the history of Jesus of Nazareth, and that by a few simple men regarded as the off-scouring of all things, did the work. Hath not God in this way "made foolish the wisdom of this world?" III. SUPERSEDED BY THE GOSPEL. "It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." The preaching is not foolish in itself, only in the estimation of the would-be wise men. The great want of men is salvation — the restoration of the soul to the knowledge, the likeness, the fellowship of God. This want philosophy cannot supply, but the gospel does. It has done so, it is doing so, and it will continue to do so. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
(Dr. Howard Duffield.)
(Coleridge.)
1. Every element of society here burst, as the whirlwind breaks on the giant of the forest, upon his whole intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature. In no city of the ancient paganism was the spirit of the world stronger. The grand families of the Bacchiadae, and even the descendants of the later dynasties of Cypselus and Periander, with their humanising ancestral recollections, had all perished by the sword of Mummius. A century later the discerning eye of Julius Caesar fixed on Corinth as the site of a colony; and it grew up marked by the unelastic hardness of the old soldier, and the elated baseness of the children of slaves. But, planted where it was, it could not but grow rich and prosperous. New Corinth gathered to itself the traders of the world, who multiplied at once its wickedness and its wealth. Many causes combined to promote the demoralisation of such a society. The wholesome lessons of ordinary labour were untaught within it. The barren soil of the Isthmus discouraged agriculture. Manufacture it had none. Trade, stained deeply by all the pollutions of heathendom, was everything in Corinth. Men met there to grow rich by all means, or to spend their acquired wealth in the most unrestrained sensuality. Religion amongst other powers ministered to their exaltation and amusement. The disputers of this world would speculate on Egyptian mysteries, mock at Jewish superstitions, trifle with Greek mythology, and be learned in Roman auguries. Each man took to himself his share of this distinction, and so believing himself wise, he in very deed became a fool. Into such a society the apostle cast himself with the doctrine of the Cross of Christ. 2. If the meeting moved to its lowest deep his mighty spirit, not less disturbing was it to every existing element of Corinthian society: not greater — if the sinewy arm of their fancied progenitor had cast one of their own hills into the blue waves which slept around their isthmus — not greater would have been the tumult of those riven waves, than was the shock to the moral stagnation of their sensual life by the casting in amongst them of the. marvellous doctrine which the apostle preached. We may mark its effects in the brief record of the Acts, and yet more in the two Epistles. In them we may trace the intense sharpness of the gospel conflict with the schismatic habits bred of a fierce democracy, with the gross sensuality of heathen voluptuaries, with the speculating temper of a false and unreal philosophy, with the cold scorn of abundant wealth which shut the rich and noble out of the heavenly election. II. BUT WE MAY DISCERN THROUGHOUT THE CONFLICT AS THE FOUNDATION AND PROTECTING BARRIER OF ALL, OTHER FORMS OF EVIL, A SELF-ELATING PRIDE. 1. With this the apostle not darkly connects an outbreak within the new community of more than Gentile licentiousness; whilst everywhere outside the Church he speaks of it as the most insurmountable hindrance to the reception of the truth. "Where?" — looking round upon the gathered company with the saddened gaze of that discerning eye — he asks, "is the wise?" &c. Not one, he intimates, has listened to the gospel call. 2. It is not difficult to see why he thus treated this spirit of pride as his master antagonist. It was not merely because he ever remembered the guilty consequences of his own Jewish haughtiness, or because every circumstance of his own conversion was ever before his eyes; but it was pre-eminently a thorough insight into man's nature, and of the relations to it of the gospel which he preached. 3. For that nature does, indeed, bear its witness to the absolute need of humility as a prerequisite to all true learning. He who would learn the common truths of a business or an art, must, if that learning is to be successful, submit to take this posture of humility. As the truths to be mastered become more difficult of discovery, the need of humility increases. Upon almost every matter, some bias, preconception, assumption, troubles the course of discovery; and it needs a great humility of spirit to lay these down, and follow patiently the unlooked-for course. Yet without doing so progress is almost impossible. The history of philosophical discovery strikingly illustrates all this. Of old, man had gazed into the mystery of nature round him, and sought to impose upon it as laws the guesses of his own, often impatient, intellect. He came to it an unhumbled reasoner, and he learned nothing from it. Science was not, until man consented humbly to abandon theories, to be content to accumulate facts, and to let those facts teach him by degrees their often darkly intimated lesson. One of the greatest advancers of physiological knowledge in this land has been known to make ten thousand dissections whilst, setting experiment after experiment aside without gaining the clue he wanted, he followed fact after fact with humble conscientiousness, until at last the revelation which he longed for gladdened his heart. The greatest English discoverer of mathematical science records that he differed from others only in the greater largeness of his patience. Beyond, moreover, the humility of the mere waiting there must be humility in seeing old prepossessions swept away. No physician over forty, when Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, ever received the new-found truth. The sacrifice of old opinions was too severe a trial of the humility of the learner. 4. But if in these comparatively cold and colourless inquiries humility must prepare the learner's mind, how vastly greater must be the need of it to him who would receive in their simplicity the secrets of moral and spiritual truth; for against these are arrayed not merely foregone intellectual conclusions, and the impatience which the spirit feels at their removal, and its weary shrinking from the labour of a troublesome and passionless inquiry, but also the restless and impetuous forces of the appetites and particular affections which resent the imposition of a new law of restraint, which is absolutely inconsistent with their habitual or uncontradicted enjoyments. Then the gospel required of men, who proudly deemed themselves the traditional possessors of that wonderful mythology which genius, art, language, scenery, and climate had conspired to make so beautiful, to cast it all aside; to receive, from what they deemed dull Jewish hands, a teaching which trampled on all these wonderful creations of the natural imagination; which, moreover, was not only exclusive, but unspeakably real; which claimed the whole man, his body and mind, his soul and spirit; which was not to be speculated on or disputed about, but was to be lived; which revealed to him such depths of corruption, guilt, and helplessness within himself, that he was altogether hopeless of pardon, unless the Eternal Son had died for him; and powerless for any good, unless the Blessed Spirit breathed into him the breath of a new life. Surely, then, we may see why in rich, self-exalted, trading, sensual Corinth, the preaching of that blessed gospel, in which was all the power of God, must have been "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." III. THE APPLICATION OF ALL THIS TO OURSELVES IS A MOST DIRECT ONE. We, too, must be converted and become as little children, or we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven; and there is much within us and around us leading us to resist the call. The trial is indeed largely various to men of different tempers, but to every one it is real, urgent, inevitable. To one the humiliation lies in the receiving simply the dogmas of the faith as the truth of God, instead of treating them as intellectual playthings, and so dissolving their reality in the fleeting colours of passing speculations, or developing from some supposed internal consciousness their supplements, or corrections, or substitutes. To another the trial is the curbing the appetites of the body and the particular affections of the mind by the law of the new kingdom. To another it is the yielding up the life to the one will of God. To another the receiving in its simplicity the atonement wrought for us by our Master's death, and craving meekly for the inpouring of His Spirit. To another it is the being led along, as the apostle speaks, with such lowly things as outward rules and institutions, whether it be of the Church or the particular society into which God's providence has cast us. How real is this trial, how inevitable are its issues!Conclusion: 1. Seek from God a special gift of His regenerating Spirit, a special sign of predestination unto life. 2. Set ever before your eyes the pattern of our Lord's humility. If the pathway be hard, His steps have trodden it. 3. Keep watch over thine heart with diligence and wisdom. Beware of the many wiles of the proud deceiving spirit. Seek to be, not to seem humble, No pride is deadlier in its working than the pride of being humble. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
2. And now let me ask, What is the pre-eminent virtue according to our adversaries, of learning and speculation? The votaries of these powers profess, while they have their accomplishments in refining taste and furnishing elegant occupation for leisure hours, that their chief mission is to raise the standard of life — to encourage its struggles against vice, and indolence, and want; to refine and multiply its fiery motions; to increase personal worth, and fit the entire community for great things. I agree with that. But here I differ from them. The wisdom which would make the human mind, thus cultivated, the ultimate authority on all moral questions, and make the training of the human faculties the source of moral power — has been stultified by God because it has universally failed. In endeavouring to cure the sickness of humanity the wisdom of man has not touched the roots of the disease. It has salved the surface, but never probed the wound. 3. If man were a mere animal we might look for a type of the family which has been formed under the most favourable conditions, and try to spread those conditions abroad. But man is not an animal. I grant that where climate is kind, and territorial selection happy, the tribe becomes a people, and the people a mighty nation. But I deny that this progress necessarily means the distinctive greatness of man. If I look at the Pyramids of Egypt, or the Colosseum at Rome, I see an impressive image of greatness. But, then, greatness itself is really the ascendency of moral intelligence — intelligence that grows righteousness. The wisdom of the world in its higher moods confesses this. But where is the people amongst whom the wisdom of the world has grown to righteousness? I confess that anything more sickly than the history of civilisation — as it is called — I cannot imagine. I visited Italy not long ago and I studied in its noble and pathetic remains the wisdom of Rome. In that city the man who wrote my text spent two years of his life. He was a man of taste, and he saw its beautiful palaces, its exquisite provision for the artificial productions of luxury, its triumphal arches, its amphitheatres, and he read its literature and saw its great men; and this was his opinion of its philosophy, and his analysis of it. "Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit," &c., and the deeds that philosophy dared not rebuke, and was utterly helpless to arrest, are darkly shadowed forth in another verse, "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, for it is a shame to speak of those things that are done of them in secret." He writes with a large and grateful appreciation of good wherever he may find it. He says, "Whatsoever things are true," &c. Oh! ponder the moral condition of Rome when Paul was there — there, where the accomplishments of men — where the wisdom of the world in every department in which that wisdom is concerned — had exhausted its resources, morality was not to be found (see Romans 1.). 4. At all costs the folly, the wickedness of the atheistic spirit must be made flagrant. And they were made flagrant. The atheistic spirit in the interests of humanity has been from the beginning a universal and an unqualified failure. It has done nothing for humanity; it has left behind it nothing but disaster. It has befooled the worshipper, betrayed the legislator, ruined the people, and but for the fact that God has put a testimony into your very mind to controvert this atheism — a testimony which sceptical habits long continued cannot subdue, which the most violent lusts cannot intimidate, a testimony confirmed by nature around us, and by the striking providence of God — but for that, I believe that the race would have perished outright. The man who impugns my verdict is bound to point out, if he can, in the vast wilderness upon which atheism has been working all these ages past — to point out one single acre reclaimed from the desert and made to blossom like the rose. 5. The apostle cries out with pardonable triumph, "Where is the wise?" And we may take up the parable, and ask where are they? Where are the problems which they say they have made their own? I will tell you.(1) The problem of the degeneracy of the race and how to arrest it. I wish them well over that.(2) The problem of bringing back the departed manhood of the savage tribes. Let them do their best with that.(3) The problem of invigorating and cleansing the nations of the earth — the stagnant nations of China and India — the problem of providing an adequate supply of knowledge, sympathy, and heart to meet the necessities of the race. These are their problems. They are a long time sitting down before them. Where are the wise to-day? They ought to be in the field if they are sincere. But they do not like the field. They are at home, writing, disputing, criticising! They were doing it in Paul's day: they are doing it to-day. It is their vocation! 6. What is the doctrine of the Cross doing to-day? Changing the world. I was thinking the other day whether I could find out one single force acting for the benefit of the human race that had not its origin from the Cross. I cannot find one. Who discovered the interior world of Africa? Missionaries. Who solved the problem of preaching liberty to the women of India? Missionaries and their wives. Who first brought into modern geography the hidden ]ands and rivers of China — unsealed for inspection the scholarship and opened for the enrichment of commerce the greatest empire of the East? Missionaries. Who first dared the cannibal regions, and converted wolves into a nation? Missionaries. To come nearer home. Who are those in Europe who are now lifting up their voices against war, that horrible perversion of the intellect and of the soul of man? Who are devoting their means and influence against vice in the high places and low, and against the infliction of wrong upon the defenceless? Who are those whose example of righteousness and purity and gentleness conforms with their own spirit the legislation of governments and the sentiments of society? The followers of the Nazarene. (E. E. Jenkins, LL. D.)
1. The wisdom of God is revealed in the universe, in man and in history — revealed but hidden. Wise men have endeavoured to construct a philosophy of the universe, and to reach God by reaching His thought as it underlies the universal order. They have not succeeded. In our times the endeavour to master the laws of Nature has achieved a brilliant success; but this is science, not philosophy. Philosophy attempts to discover what lies behind and above all the laws. It asks whence and where the universe came, and is not satisfied with learning its present structure or its history. It attempts to reduce all things to unity — to determine the relation of man to all things, to verify the certainty of the real value of human knowledge, and to discover the truth about destiny. If it had been successful it would have reached the thought of God, and so, in a measure, God Himself. 2. But Paul declares that in this great adventure human wisdom had failed; God, in His wisdom, remained unknown to the wisest. The task of philosophy had proved to be beyond human strength. School after school had risen in Greece, and the supreme question remained unsolved. There was a feeling of exhaustion, and there was a last desperate attempt to reach the object by means of transcendent speculation, ascetic mortification and ecstasy. But Neo-Platonism failed, and ancient philosophy sank in complete exhaustion. 3. The Corinthians, many of them, were seeking God in the old way; and when Paul came, they expected him to satisfy their desire for wisdom and explain everything. When he spoke of Christ, and of His death as a propitiation, they passed at once with a certain impatience from the fact, and wanted some new and deeper speculation about sin, some discussion about the nature of eternal life; some account of the reason why the death of Christ should be connected with these great things. Paul refused to listen to their demands. God had not given him a philosophy to make known to men of intellectual activity, but a series of facts within the reach of the least intelligent. They said, Let us know the philosophy of your message. No, said Paul, for you I have only the fact. You say it explains nothing, and that it is a foolish thing. Granted; but seeing that the world, in its wisdom, knew not God in His wisdom — III. IT WAS GOD'S GOOD PLEASURE THROUGH THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE PREACHING TO SAVE THEM THAT BELIEVED. Paul does not mean to say that it pleases God to save men by foolish preaching. There is nothing to save men in intellectual feebleness and folly. This Epistle on the very next page says, "We speak wisdom among the perfect." When a man has received the Divine life, and that life has reached a certain maturity, he is capable of moving into regions of thought even sublimer than those which are familiar to the loftiest philosophy, and in the light of the Spirit of God the thought of God becomes known to him. But at first, while he is dealing with those who have not yet received Christ, Paul will not theorise or philosophise. It is not the theory that holds the planets in their orbits, but the force which the theory attempts to explain. And if that force ceased to act you might have the most perfect understanding of the theory, but you would all fly off into space. Here are the facts — this is Paul's position — resting on the testimony of the apostles; facts which have witnessed their own reality to millions of hearts. The Eternal Son of God became man, died for the sins of men, rose again, and has not forsaken the world that He came to save. How do we know? Why, age after age men have spoken to Him and He has answered; they have brought to Him the burden of guilt, and at the touch of His hand the burden has gone. Weak, in the presence of duty, they have appealed to Him for strength and have become strong. That was the foolishness of Paul's preaching, and this has proved to age after age wiser than all the wisdom of man, for through this men have actually found God, and through this they have actually been able to translate the will of God into life and conduct. The Incarnation is the basis of a philosophy of the universe, the death of Christ for sin contains a philosophy of human nature; and of the Divine order of the moral universe, the resurrection of Christ contributes new elements to the philosophy of human life. Yes; on these great facts a majestic philosophy may rest; but between the facts and our philosophy there is a difference as wide as between all other facts and our theories about them; and if you must be persuaded to receive the facts by the theories that are constructed in relation to them, your faith, to use Paul's words, will stand in the wisdom of man, and mot in the power of God. We must begin with the facts and pass to the philosophy. (R. W. Dale, D. D.)
1. Because they are most of the world in regard of their number. 2. Most in the world in regard of their interest. 3. Most in regard of their affections.The third is, what is meant by wisdom, "the world by wisdom"; surely that is the wisdom of the world, as the other was the wisdom of God. Well, but what now do ye call that here in this place? We may reduce it to two branches, either first of all, the wisdom of parts and natural wit and sagacity; or secondly, the wisdom of study and industry, learning and philosophy; their wisdom which consisted in knowledge of natural things. First, they knew Him confusedly, but not distinctly; they knew Him in the general, but not in reference to the right person. Secondly, they knew God imperfectly, and according to some weak and slender apprehensions which they had of Him in their minds, but they knew Him not in the latitude of those excellences which are to be found in Him. Thirdly, they knew God notionally, and in the speculation; they had some apprehensions of Him in their Understanding. But they did not know Him practically and in the effects, so as this knowledge had any influence upon their hearts for the ordering of their lives and conversations. Fourthly, they knew God essentially, as considered in His own nature, but they knew Him not dispensatively and representatively, as exhibited in Christ. I come now in the next place to the proposition itself thus explained as it lies in the text, that "in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God," which affords us this observation, as the moral of all, that the greatest wits of the, world having no more but the common light of nature, are oftentimes exceedingly to seek in the spiritual and saving knowledge of God. And I shall endeavour to make it good by a threefold consideration, and that founded upon the words of the text. First, the insufficiency of the medium, and that is the glory of God shining forth in the creatures, which is here called the wisdom of God. This of itself is insufficient to the producing of such a kind of knowledge as this is. There is not the least spire of grass, but it presents a god to our thoughts, much more the whole body of the creation. This does exhibit God a great deal more fully. But yet God as He is laid open in the gospel, and as He is made known in the preaching of the Word, this the creature does 'not show, nor is able to do it. Secondly, from the weakness of the faculty, the world by wisdom knew not God; that is, by its own wisdom, and that wisdom which is within the compass of itself, so it knew Him not. The wisdom of the world is insufficient alone of itself to bring any people to the saving knowledge of God: this is clear out of sundry places of Scripture (Matthew 16:17). So that we see how men may much abound in worldly wisdom, and yet fall short of evangelical knowledge. First, because this mystery of the gospel is a thing which is merely dependent upon the will and counsel of God Himself. Again it is said to be hid in God (Ephesians 3:9), that is, in the secret of His own purpose and eternal counsel. Secondly, as it is hid in God, so it is also hid. by God; and that of purpose, oftentimes, from those which are otherwise the wisest men in the world (Matthew 11:25). Thirdly, the world by the strength of natural wisdom is not able to know God in Christ, in regard of the disproportion betwixt the faculty and the object, the knowledge of Christ being of a far different and contrary nature and condition hereunto. We know that no faculty can act beyond its own sphere, nor reach an object which is above itself. As bodily eyes cannot see spiritual substances, no more can wit and natural sagacity be able to reach the knowledge of God in Christ, which is an object transcendent unto it. The improvement of this point to ourselves is not (as some would make it to be) from hence to cast a reproach and disparagement upon wit and human learning. There is a threefold disparagement especially which we do justly cast upon human learning and the wisdom of the world. First, comparative and exclusive, we do disparage it and diminish from it so. Human learning, if we compare it with Divine, and worldly wisdom with the wisdom from above; here it is as good as nothing (Philippians 3:8). Secondly, we do disparage human wisdom, as a ground. or argument of pride and boasting and carnal confidence. Thirdly, and more principally to our present purpose, we do disparage human wisdom in reference to such an effect as this, which is to bring those that have it to the saving knowledge of God in Christ. Here the wisdom of the world is too weak, and of small or no effect; it cannot do this. Go to now, let us see then in what sense we do disparage this wisdom of the world; namely, as in another case we seem likewise to disparage good works; this is not simply considered in themselves, but in order to justification and merit. The third is, from the perverseness of the subjects; namely, those persons in which this wisdom was, they did not do their duty to this purpose as they should, and from hence it comes to pass oftentimes that they are as they are. The world by wisdom might have known Him more than they did, if they had given themselves to it. But there was a manifold obstruction upon them, which is a great hindrance hereunto. At first, their non-attendancy, that they did mot heed nor apply their minds to these things. A scholar that looks off his book will never learn his letters, let them be written or printed before him in never so fair and elegant a character. Secondly, it proceeds from idleness and want of taking some pains with ourselves to dive into these things. A scholar must not only read but study, that will improve in any knowledge. A third obstruction to this knowledge is pride and scornfulness of spirit, because men think themselves too good to be taught or learn anything. Well, to close up all now with a brief word of application, let us consider what does result from these truths for our own use. And first let us here take notice of the corrupt nature which is in man, to be abased and humbled for it. Secondly, seeing the world by wisdom knew not God, let us then labour to find somewhat more in us than worldly wisdom. Thirdly, let those who know God and have this worldly wisdom, see what cause they have to bless God and to acknowledge His goodness to them. And again, for those who desire this wisdom, let them learn hence to veil and cover the other, and lay it down in order to the other, where it makes any opposition and resistance. Yet to conclude, let me add one thing more, and that is this, that though human wit does not give grace of itself, yet it does sometimes forward the means of grace, and accordingly is to be improved by us; as the star occasionally led the wise men to Christ. Again, though parts make us not good at first, yet when we are good they are good helps to make us better and more useful in the exercise of piety; and so likewise are we conscionably to use them. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)
1. Exhibited in ignorance of God. 2. Occasioned by wisdom. 3. The conformity with the wisdom of God. II. THE SUCCESS OF THE GOSPEL. Though the scorn of man it is — 1. The salvation of believers. 2. The pleasure of God. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
I. A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD NOT REACHED BY MAN'S WISDOM. Consider — 1. The admissions of the wisest men of old. The lament of Plato was that it was so hard to discover the Father of the universe, and he never seems to have reached the conception of God as a self-conscious, living, personal Being. deemed it the greatest happiness to know the will of the gods; but how this knowledge was to be obtained he could not say; perhaps by a resort to divination. 2. The low morality of heathenism at its brightest periods. Vices tolerated which now are reprobated. The mythologies are disgraceful. All this shows practical ignorance of God. 3. The assertions of modern philosophy — that it has dislodged theology from its lofty pedestal, and made it only a curious speculation. The world by wisdom now knows not God, nor seems likely to. It refuses the appointed organ of knowledge, and resembles a man attempting to learn the meaning of sounds by the eye instead of the ear. II. GOD'S REMEDY FOR MAN'S IGNORANCE IS FOOLISHNESS IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD. The remedy is "preaching," including the thing preached and the act of preaching. This preaching is to the wisdom of man foolishness, for — 1. It simply states facts, not theories and reasonings. The apostles came simply to "bear witness" to Christ. 2. It states facts likely to excite contempt. The Jew didn't want a suffering Messiah; the Greek could not understand a crucified God, 3. It makes salvation depend on faith, not on wisdom. "To save them that believe." III. THE CONSPICUOUS MANIFESTATION AFFORDED OF THE WISDOM OF GOD. Wisdom is discoverable — 1. In the whole plan, in that man was first taught his weakness. A wise teacher lets his pupil flounder a little that he may learn a lesson of humility. So the centuries before Christ are a standing rebuke to man, reminding him of his impotence. Hence no flesh can "glory in the presence of God." The saint cannot, for all he knows was taught him; the preacher cannot, since the "treasure" does not depend on the "earthen vessel" for its value; the facts he has to deliver are successful not from his eloquence, or thought, or exposition. 2. In the plan of proclamation, in that it enables all Christians to be preachers. He has only to testify what he has seen, tasted, and felt. 3. In making salvation depend on faith, in that it makes salvation possible to all. (S. R. Aldridge, B. A.)
1. Alienated. 2. Guilty. 3. Depraved. 4. Miserable. II. ITS HELPLESSNESS — unalleviated by — 1. Philosophy. 2. Art. 3. Legislation. 4. Religious systems — infidelity. III. ITS BELIEF — by the foolishness of preaching — exemplified. in — 1. The preacher. 2. The subject. 3. The condition. 4. The result. (J. Burnet.)
1. In delaying the revelation of the gospel. 2. In affording man ample opportunity to test the insufficiency of reason. 3. And by his worldly wisdom to work out his own misery. II. HIS PLEASURE. 1. In the discovery of His mercy. 2. In its free dispensation by the foolishness of preaching — to all that believe. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. It "knew not God." It was in no barbarous age that the apostle bore this testimony; but in the evening of the Augustan age, when man's intellect had been developed to the utmost. It was not on the Arab's tent, nor the Indian's wigwam, that these words were inscribed; but it was on the polished marbles of Athens and on the proud walls of imperial Rome. And not only was it of that particular age he spoke; but he seems to look back to the very earliest ages, "After that," &c. After four thousand years had rolled by, looking back to the place where science was born and cradled, to Egypt with its reptile gods, to Babylon where science was nourished and cherished, and whither the Grecian sages went to light their lamps. 2. It was in a perishing condition. Men would not have needed to be saved if they were not lost. II. THE METHOD OF BELIEF WHICH GOD PROVIDED. "It pleased God." Here is something in which the Lord delighted. And what was it that "pleased God"? It was that which man despised. Beware how you say a word against preaching, and extol or depreciate it in favour of sacraments. But what is this preaching? Heralding, the calling of the rebel to submission, the exhibition of the lawful Sovereign, the proclamation of mercy from the "King of kings," &c. And what is the substance of this preaching? Christ, in all the glories of His person; in all the sufficiency of His offices, and in all the riches of His grace. But this is not all. There is peculiar character in this preaching, by the foolishness of preaching the apostle means its simplicity. It is possible so to preach Christ and His gospel as to strip it of its power. Conceal it in the tangled web of human sophistry; garnish it with the flowers of human eloquence; obscure it with the dusky mantle of antiquity; dress it up in the gorgeous dish; and what do you? You destroy its hidden power. You may attract the eye of man from the precious pearl to the gorgeous setting of it; and what do you then? It is "an uncertain sound" which the trumpet gives, and none will "prepare them for the battle." It is only plain, affectionate, scriptural declarations of God's truth, unreserved, full, free, from the heart, and in the power and demonstration of the Spirit, that can save them that believe. III. THE RESULT OF THE APPLICATION OF THIS REMEDY. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save — whom? all the world? every creature? No; "them that, believe." The effect of early evangelising efforts at best what is it? "And it came to pass, that some believed, and some believed not." It was nearly three centuries before the civilised world became Christian. But in all cases preaching did "save them that believed"; and there is the important truth to fix the mind upon. Look at the converts; whether they were in Jewry, or in Corinth, or in Athens; wherever it might be the effect which followed the preaching of the gospel was the same. "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God," &c. Lions became lambs; licentious men pure; impious men became pious. These were the effects which uniformly followed in them that believed. (Dean Close.)
II. THE GOSPEL IS A FULL DEVELOPMENT OF THE METHOD OF SALVATION. "It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." Thus, the gospel is not only a revelation of the scheme of salvation, but also an instrument of its accomplishment in the believer (Romans 1:16). III. THE GOSPEL IS A GLORIOUS DISPLAY OF INFINITE WISDOM. "In the wisdom of God," &c. The Divine Being always acts according to infinite wisdom and eternal truth. In the dispensation of grace, the Lord has proposed the best possible ends, and accomplishes them by the best possible means. It is not only a display of the wisdom of God, but is the medium of all Christian knowledge. IV. THE GOSPEL IS A CLEAR MANIFESTATION OF DIVINE BENEVOLENCE AND LOVE. "It pleased God," &c. V. THE GOSPEL ENJOINS FAITH AS AN ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE OF SALVATION. "It pleased God to save them that believe." (Sketches of Sermon.)
I. THE DOMAIN OF SENSE. The present age is one in which sense knowledge is unduly exalted. This arises partly from the vast advancement of physical science, and partly from the development of commerce which leaves small time or inclination for the study of spiritual things. 1. But sense knowledge is —(1) Exceedingly limited. We know very little indeed from direct experience; information for the most part is based upon testimony. Even in science the great mass have neither time, means, nor capacity to conduct experiments, and thus to verify the theories they so boldly advocate. We must always believe much more than we can know.(2) Often deceptive. The state of our minds always gives colouring to eternal things. We see in nature just what we bring to nature the capacity for seeing. The same scenery produces very different effects upon different minds, and upon the same mind at different times.(3) Never extends beyond the surface of things. Behind the domain of our experience there lies a whole world of things which we can never cognize with any organ of sense. 2. Christianity is based upon as much sense knowledge as will suffice to prove its truth. Christ's resurrection is the greatest fact in history; and at the first its appeal was made directly to the senses. To us it is a matter of testimony; but the testimony is irresistible. If, like the Jew, therefore, we would demand a sign, it is forthcoming. II. THE PROVINCE OF REASON. 1. This province is also very limited. A correct process of ratiocination by no means ensures the accuracy of the conclusion arrived at, for the premises may be incorrect. Butler has well remarked, that "the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, with which we are obliged to take up in the daily course of life, is scarcely to be expressed." Reason, of herself, is incompetent to inform man of some of the most important facts which appear to lie completely in her own domain. She cannot describe the essence either of matter or of mind. The freedom of the will she has proved herself utterly incompetent to deal with. Reason is by no means perfect in her own domain, for —(1) The knowledge on which the process is based is often too limited.(2) The instruments that are employed are very defective. 2. Man is not left to the guidance of reason alone. Impulse, enthusiasm, feeling, passion, love, and faith are independent of reason, and often lead to higher results. 3. Christianity is supported by reason as far as their powers coincide. The evidences of the Divine authority of Christ's religion are conclusive if judged of by reason. Those, therefore, who seek after philosophy, like the Greeks, can find it here. 4. Many Christian truths are higher than reason, but not opposed to it. Christianity leads into a region where reason cannot follow. There are mysteries in religion, as there are also in nature. Man is surrounded by mystery, and is himself the greatest mystery of all. And mystery deepens as knowledge increases. III. THE REGION OF FAITH. This belongs peculiarly to religion. Here we can discuss the conscience, the soul, and man's relation to God. Reason might discover the existence of Deity, but it could never tell us of His relationship, to man. Modern science puts God, when it admits Him, at the end of the universe. Revelation places Him at the beginning. Scientific men do not hesitate again to proclaim the unknown God, thus taking us back two thousand years in history. There is a tendency in this age to decry faith, yet society could not exist a week without it. Christ is described as — 1. The wisdom of God. Everything seen in His light is clear. By Him we read the riddle of the universe. The purpose of God in creation is seen in Him, and nowhere else. 2. The power of God. His influence on the ages is greater than that of all other systems combined. And He alone can save the soul. 3. Christ is the "wisdom of God and the power of God" only to those who believe. They become one with Him, and receive out of the fulness of His grace. (G. Sexton, LL. D.)
I. WHEREIN DOES THE "FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING" CONSIST? 1. God chooses and uses the simplest means to save men, which human philosophers would have scorned. It is the proclamation of a message. God's plan is, first of all, to tell men the good news of a free, full salvation. After they have believed and accepted the gift of God, they are to be taught more fully the whole range of Christ's commands. But, at the beginning, it is only pointing to the Lamb of God, and crying, Behold! 2. God takes the most humble and unlettered believers as His heralds. 3. God makes no heavy demands on the souls to whom the gospel comes. It is only "Hear, believe, confess." Salvation is thus put within reach of all — even the feeblest mind and greatest sinner (Romans 10.). II. IN EMPLOYING THIS METHOD — 1. God discarded the aid of all human wisdom in saving men: "Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" Not a feature of His redemptive plan was borrowed from the philosophies of men. The utter failure of human philosophy is one of the marked facts of history. It culminated in Pantheism, Atheism, Materialism, Rationalism, Agnosticism, or in a refined selfishness, like Stoicism and Epieureanism. God not only discarded, but contradicted, the teachings of man's philosophy.(1) He presented Divine thoughts far above the thoughts of man; mysteries above comprehension, though not above apprehension; things too high and lofty for human wisdom to grasp, and which the natural man could not receive.(2) He dared to present paradoxes, apparent contradictions, irreconcilable by man's philosophy, such as the union of two natures in one person in the God-man; the union of three persons in one God; the doctrines of Divine sovereignty and human free-agency, an unchangeable God and yet prevailing prayer, &c.(3) The whole philosophy of redemption, of sin and its desert, the law and its demands, salvation by vicarious suffering, &c., is above the reason of man to devise, or even explore. Into it even the angels desire to look. 2. God discarded all human merit. The gospel not only humbles the proud intellect, but the prouder heart. A free salvation is the "offence of the Cross?' III. IN ALL THIS THE WISDOM OF GOD APPEARS. For — 1. God makes it possible for all sinners to be saved. Whoever can sin can understand salvation. All philosophies were addressed to an elect few: witness s few disciples, and , with his exoteric and esoteric schools. 2. God makes possible for all believers to be preachers of the gospel and winners of souls. 3. God abolishes invidious distinctions between sinners and believers. All are on a level, as guilty, condemned, and helpless; all on a level, as saved by grace without works. 4. God presents a faith so grandly superior to all human teaching that there is no risk of confounding it with man's philosophy, or mistaking it for a human invention. 5. God reserves to Himself all the glory. Man has no ground for boasting or self-complacency, &c. 6. God teaches men implicit submission and obedience. (A. T. Pierson, D. D.)
1. It makes us afraid to displease God. 2. It makes us courageous for God. 3. It makes us love the children of God. 4. It quite changes and alters our converse from evil to good. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)
I. THE APPARENT FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING. 1. How inadequate is the means itself to accomplish much! How little has human eloquence been able in other fields to achieve? True; once an orator's audience, wrought up by his invective, exclaimed, "Let us march against our foe!" But that effect soon passed away. And in the ordinary intercourse of mankind; look at the effect of mere persuasion, when it comes in collision with men's passions, interests, and tastes. 2. But the inadequacy of the instrumentality will be still more apparent when we remember that the first preachers of the gospel were not highly gifted, and had no advantage of rank, or influence. They were unlettered fishermen, who had no excellency of speech; and taking the mass of ministers in all ages, how few have had any pretensions to transcendant powers of persuasion! 3. But if we pass on to regard the grand theme of preaching the foolishness of preaching will be still more obvious. The Cross of Christ has ever been to the Jew a stumbling-block and to the Greek foolishness. 4. And yet more will the foolishness of preaching strike us if we regard how contrary to the natural bias is that effect at which preaching aims. It aims at getting men to "deny themselves," to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts; to live for eternity and not for time. II. ITS REAL WISDOM AND EXCELLENCY. 1. It is an ordinance of Almighty God. Judaism was propagated by ceremonies and types; false religions have usually been propagated by the sword; but it is the preeminent peculiarity of the religion of Jesus, that by the simple appeal of truth to the conscience and the heart, it has its potency and its triumph. Omniscience could only devise, and infinite grace must have prompted the best of all machinery. 2. It is the ministration of the Spirit of God. We are under the dispensation of the Spirit, and the Spirit communicates Himself mainly and most frequently through preaching. 3. The theme at which the Jews stumbled, and which the Greeks esteemed foolishness is to them that are called "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." 4. It is attended with great and gracious results. Why are we not gathered, as our forefathers were, under the oak-tree, to go through our dark orgies of impiety and blood? Why have we the arts, and sciences, and literature, and all that marks out a civilised people? These are the external triumphs of Christianity. But they are nothing compared with its internal, its everlasting triumphs. What multitudes has it made to pass from death to life, from darkness to light, from the bondage of Satan, to the glorious liberty of the Son of God.Conclusion: If, on the one hand, preaching appears so foolish, and, on the other, it is so wise and powerful — 1. Do not fall into the false notion of the day, that education is to be the grand regenerator of mankind. 2. How faulty must many of you be when you go to hear the preaching of the Word much as the world goes to the theatre; when you go to hear the words of man instead of the Word of God. 3. How much does it behove the Christians of this country to multiply that machinery which is God's great ordinance, to promote that righteousness which exalteth a nation. (Canon Stowell.)
I. The preaching of the gospel has contributed in a remarkable degree TO IMPROVE THE INTELLECTUAL CAPACITIES OF HUMAN NATURE, AND TO DISSEMINATE, THROUGH A WIDER SPHERE, THE PRINCIPLES OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. It threw into the circulation of human thought a new stock of most interesting principles — principles well established themselves, fruitful in important consequences, and fitted to exercise all the higher faculties of the understanding. It trained a numerous order of men, and forced them, by the very nature of their employment, to cultivate their intellectual talents, to cherish habits of regular thought, and to study the most effectual method of elucidating and confirming the doctrines which they taught. This order of men it mingled with the mass of the people, and placed them in a situation, where their example and instructions could not fail to draw forth and improve the reasoning powers of their hearers. This institution furnishes, besides — II. A RICH INEXHAUSTIBLE TREASURE OF CONSOLATION TO EVERY INDIVIDUAL WHO EMPLOYS IT WITH PROPER DISPOSITIONS. Numerous are the evils to which we are subjected in the course of our earthly pilgrimage. In the sanctuary of God we see the plan of Providence unveiled, and, through the ministry of the Word, discover order and beauty rising from the darkness. The train of thought which is there presented to us, and rendered habitual by its frequent recurrence, has a direct and powerful tendency to calm the agitations of a troubled heart, and to re-establish our confidence in God. We there learn that God is good to all; that, through Christ, He is reconcilable even to the guilty; that His government of the universe is free from defect; that the apparent disorder around us is essential to the nature of our probationary state, and productive of good; that even afflictions are frequently messengers of His love. But the doctrines which the preaching of the gospel preserves, and diffuses through all orders of the people, tend not only to enlighten the understandings of men and to alleviate the ills of life. They are also — III. POWERFUL MEANS OF OUR MORAL IMPROVEMENT. The system of duty which the gospel contains is most perfect in itself, and most wisely adapted to the exigencies of human nature. It reaches to the thoughts and intents of the heart; it prescribes with a minuteness and accuracy which leaves no room for misconception, the conduct proper for all the situations in which we may be called to act; and it enforces its precepts by motives the most awful and the most interesting which can operate on the mind. (James Finlayson, D. D.)
1. Historically. As an historical fact it is the most — (1) (2) (3) 2. Theologically —(1) It unfolds the Divine, and is a mighty expression of God's idea, government, and heart. 3. Morally. It is fraught with suggestion the most — (1) (2) (3) II. AS ASSOCIATED WITH POPULAR OPINION. It had not sufficient of the gorgeous philosophical ritualism for the speculative and pedantic Greek, nor sufficient of the gorgeous religious ritualism for the sensuous and bigoted Jew. And now to millions it is nothing. To the sceptic it is a fable; to the formalist a creed or a ceremony. III. AS ASSOCIATED WITH CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS. "But unto them that are called," &c. The Christian sees the highest wisdom in a system which, in saving a sinner — 1. Manifests the righteousness of an insulted sovereign. 2. Augments the influence of moral government. 3. Maintains intact all the principles of moral freedom. 4. Develops, strengthens, and perfects all the powers of the soul. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
1. Think of Paul in Corinth.(1) The city was full of Jews, base sometimes, and poor, doing meanest work; rich sometimes, and able to play as it profited him most.(2) There, too, was the Greek, argumentative in his very commerce, and beating out all questions connected with the principles and profits of trade.(3) There, too, was the Roman, thinking the world had been made to be conquered, and he the conqueror of the world.(4) And Paul preached, and the Jew hated and despised; the Greek smiled in his large disdain; the Roman tolerated in his proud indifference; and you might have seen him some evening stealing along the quay, the mean-looking little Hebrew, who still could not be conquered, but resolved that his gospel should conquer men, finding entrance by a main stair to a meaner upper room, where the slave set free for an hour by his master, or the wharfinger escaping from loading and unloading his ship, or, the porter seeking relief from his weary burden by day, met with their small offerings to hear the preacher, great, in spite of his meanness, in dignity and in power. Had Peter gone to Corinth, Peter would have preached and hardly known, and less cared, how people thought and what they felt; but the keen, creative spirit of Paul could insert itself into the brain of the Roman, and look through his eyes; into the intellect of the Greek, and judge with his cynicism; into the imagination of the Hebrew, and feel with his heart, dream with his fancy. 2. Here you have the reminiscence of the older time, and that reminiscence comes out in three series of antitheses.(1) There are three typical persons — the Jew, the Greek, the Christian.(2) The three typical persons have three characteristic quests. The Jew requires a sign, the Greek wisdom, the Christian preaches Christ.(3) There are three typical attitudes of the one subject. Christ is to the Jew a stumbling-block, to the Greek foolishness, to the Christian the power and the wisdom of God. What the Jew demanded was a vision of power; what the Greek sought was a source of wisdom; what the Christian found `was power and wisdom in one. Look, then, at these three persons, with their characteristic quests and attitudes. They are old, they are new; they belong to nineteen centuries distant, they live to-day. I. THE JEW. Illustrious was his ancestry, and he could feel that he was in the face of people that were of yesterday and of earth, while he was of eternity and of God. His founder was Abraham, friend of God, greatest of faithful men; his lawgiver was Moses, author of a law straight come from God. The literature of Greece and Rome was of the earth; his was a book God made. Nay, they worshipped idols; he worshipped the one Creator. And so, proud man was the Jew, proudest for this reason — he owned God rather than God owned him. He so owned God, that he determined the very terms on which God was to be held and known by other men. And so he said, when he stood before the new gospel, "Show me a sign": but by the very terms no miracle was possible. The Jew said, "I am God's great work; a greater than I is not in the world: I am the sign; show me a greater." 2. Ah, Jew! if thou hadst been able to see the Christ, thou hadst seen a greater. Think of Him; child He is of thine own proud race, yet lowly in heart, giving rest unto the soul, Thou hast cause for pride, O Jew! yet greater still for humiliation. Out of thy loins He sprung; yet for Him thou only hadst the Cross. See how He "broke His birth's invidious bar"; see how, breaking it, He became no local, narrow Jew, but Son of Man, yet Son of God. See how, through Him, God became the new Being for man — Father. He stands manifest God, witness to this — that man's sin is God's sorrow, man's saving God's suffering. From millions the cry has risen for the Father. Out of heaven the Father stoops to seek the sons. Here, through His Son, he comes to create a great family of God, and a Greek and Jew become brothers; Roman forgets empire and Hindoo colour; male ceases to be man, female ceases to be woman — all become one in Christ. Miracle ye claim and seek, O Jew! to you a miracle I bring! II. THE GREEK. 1. He, too, had his illustrious ancestry. He made this great discovery: freedom, manhood through freedom. Read the inscriptions of Assyrian kings that tell you how they vanquished empires, but tell you not of the armies they lost and the armies they destroyed without pity or regret. Read the records of Egyptian monuments, and they will tell how a great king, to preserve his very dust, builds a mighty pyramid, throwing thousands of men away in the building of it. The Greek, in creating a free state, created the very idea of manhood. Man free is man reasonable, ordered, a social, joyous, complete life. He, too, discovered for all time art and beauty. Take those colossal figures standing by the Nile — cold, impassive; take those great Assyrian monarchs — massive, insensible to pity, sensible only of power; or look at the Hindoo, with his god — many-headed, many-armed, many-breasted, hideous symbol of a race without beauty; take the Greek discovering the human form is Divine. Can you tell hew much the good man owes to the race that discovered beauty in men? Look at poetry. Pithy speech for deepest emotion. Think, too, what philosophy means — the passion for the true, the search for the good. We owe that to the Greek; but when you spoke to him of Christ, he turned away and said, "Where is the wisdom? He is a barbarian, and uses speech that cannot with grace or truth be called language. Think of Him, too, as your later artist pictured Him, crowned with thorns. We love the gracious and we love the great; we love not this." 2. But, O Greek! hast thou thought of the meaning of that Christ? You love freedom — you made it; but see how you bind man still in passion that makes him a very slave. This Christ can take the man bound in the bondage of sin, make him a free man who loves the law of God and loves to obey it, and make him a citizen of an eternal kingdom. You made art; hut think of the beauty that is in Christ — how radiant the goodness that makes Him alone "the altogether lovely." He creates the rarer art of holy being, of holy living. You think your poetry is great; but, see, He has made all time, all the universe — nay, the very eternity itself, poetical. Has He not filled every life that is lived with poetic meaning, by bringing Deity into humanity, by lifting humanity into Deity. And is it thy wisdom, O Greek! that thou lovest? See, then, in this Christ is the great mystery of being — God that made the world, the end to which God made it, the means by which He is to reach His end, the glorious method by which the scattered and multitudinous creatures who have estranged themselves from Him may yet, through holy concord, and beautiful love, and perfect devotion, be brought into a saved society in Him. O Greek! in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge; in Him thou hast all things. III. THE CHRISTIAN. It is said, "If thou wouldst know a poet, go and live in the poet's land." So, if you would know Christ, make your appeal to Christian experience. Two things are in Him — power, casual, creative; wisdom, adaptive, constructive. Christ brings to the re-making of men power that can take the lost and re-make it until it becomes the holiest; wisdom to take what He has re-made, and shape, develop, guide it, until its early promise becomes richest performance. There is power in Christ, for He is able to save to the uttermost; there is wisdom in Christ, for Christ can sanctify what He has saved. Now you are face to face with the evil and the need of men; what other way can you cure it? You may call to your aid philosophy. Philosophy will make a select and cultured class, scornful of the multitude, and growing cynical through the sense of its own pre-eminence. Call in social theory, that argues that new conditions must be created that men may be made happy and. perfect. You may invoke the Act of Parliament; and yet all these together fail to do that which Christ has achieved. (A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.)
2. It describes the crucified Jesus as the power and wisdom of God. 3. It pronounces all this, which seems to men to be folly and weakness, to be wiser and stronger than all the wisdom and power of the world. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. The ostentatious. 2. The miraculous. II. THE GENTILE LOVE FOR — 1. The intellectual. 2. The aesthetic. III. IN BOTH THE PRIDE that will not submit to the simplicity of faith. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. THE GREAT HINDRANCES OF THE GOSPEL IN APOSTOLIC TIMES. 1. Jewish prejudice. 2. Gentile philosophy. II. THESE ARE GENERAL TYPES OF HUMAN ERROR — e.g., Pharisaism and Sadduceeism; Epicureanism and Stoicism; Ritualism and Rationalism; self-righteousness and self-conceit. III. THEIR UTTER INCOMPATIBILITY WITH THE GOSPEL. 1. The gospel requires humility; these are the offspring of pride. 2. The gospel insists on faith. These demand demonstration. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
II. ITS DIFFICULTIES. 1. Jewish prejudice. 2. Gentile wisdom. III. ITS TRIUMPHS IN THEM WHICH ARE CALLED, 1. Christ the power of God — (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) 2. Christ the power of God in — (1) (2) (3) (4) (J. Lyth, D. D.)
(Thomas Horton, D. D.)
I. THE GOSPEL CANNOT BE A SYSTEM OF FORCE. It must be one of motive. II. LOVE CANNOT BE TRANSFERRED AT WILL FROM ONE OBJECT TO ANOTHER. God must become man to secure man's affection. III. HATE IN THE HUMAN HEART CAN ONLY BE CONQUERED AND OVERCOME BY MANIFESTED SELF-DENYING LOVE. God's first work is to teach men their sinfulness and need of salvation. Without faith it is impossible to please God. There is no other avenue to the human heart than that which God has tried. IV. THE DUTIES AND PROHIBITIONS OF THE GOSPEL ARE DEMANDED BY OUR NATURES. Social scientists admit this. Prayer, praise, worship, are as necessary to soul-growth as food, exercise, and rest for bodily powers. V. THE REWARDS AND PENALTIES OF THE GOSPEL ARE IN ACCORDANCE WITH NATURE, with reason, with those principles upon which we act in daily life. This wisdom of God is perfectly adapted to man's wants, and meets man's necessities. (Bp. Fellowes.)
1. The Person declared in his ministry. Christ, not the patriarchs, prophets, &c. Men of renown in history must not supplant Jesus. 2. The atonement proclaimed in his ministry. We have to speak to the masses — not science, philosophy, &c., but a crucified Lord. II. THE GREAT DIFFICULTIES IN PAUL'S MINISTRY. 1. The superstition of the Jews. They spurned the gospel because it appealed to their spiritual nature. They did not want a suffering Messiah. If we are seeking signs, we are superstitious. We are rejecting the tidings of "Christ crucified." 2. The scepticism of the Greeks. A crucified Christ appeared to them a fable. Many in spirit are still doing the same. III. THE DIVINE CHARACTER OF PAUL'S MINISTRY. 1. The universality of the gospel. The glorious gospel is for all mankind. 2. The powerfulness of the gospel. The death of the Cross is the greatest manifestation of the power of God. 3. The knowledge of the gospel. Christ displays God's highest wisdom. None can instruct us aright but Christ, and we shall never learn the wisdom of God unless we sit at the foot of the Cross.Conclusion: 1. There is no other way of salvation but what is revealed in the gospel of a crucified Saviour. 2. May we never be of the class who reject and despise God's method of redemption. 3. Between the conflict of power and wisdom, Christ is the living embodiment of the greatest force in the world. 4. We must believe the gospel before we can experience its saving influence. (A. Buckley.)
1. Declare the nature of His death. 2. Exhibit its benefits. 3. Persuade men to seek an interest in it. II. ITS RECEPTION. 1. Some reject it with contempt. 2. Some receive it with respect and advantage. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. The dignity of Him who suffered. 2. His humiliation. 3. His willingness. 4. The shamefulness of His death. 5. The intensity of His sufferings. His death was lingering, not sudden. He suffered from men, from devils, from God. II. SOME REASONS FOR HIS SO PREACHING. There were — 1. Personal reasons. A dispensation was committed unto him. St. Paul preached thus because he was commanded. "Woe is unto me," &c. 2. Doctrinal reasons. He preached Christ crucified because by the Cross —(I) God's wrath is appeased. God was willing to be appeased; but God's justice could not be appeased except by the death of Christ.(2) God's law is silenced. For every breach of its commands the law thunders forth against us, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." But Christ has undergone all the curses of the broken law in our behalf. "He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." "There is now no condemnation," &c.(3) Our guilt is removed. If God's law, which we have broken, has been satisfied by Christ, then must necessarily follow the removal of our guilt.(4) The devil's power is subdued.(5) Holiness is promoted Dr. Chalmers tells us that, so long as he preached only moral duties, he saw no results of his labours. All the vehemence of his powerful oratory had not the weight of a feather in making the drunkard sober, and the unchaste man clean. But when he began to preach the atonement, he saw in rich abundance the precious fruits of holiness; and so John Berridge tells us that for six years he preached morality to his parishioners at Stapleford till there was hardly a moral man left in the parish; but when he was taught by God's Spirit to lift up Christ, the people came flocking to the sanctuary in deep concern about their souls.(6) Heaven is opened.Conclusion: We hence see the duty of ministers, viz., to walk in the steps of Paul. 1. He was emphatically a preacher. We, too, who are ministers, should aim to be preachers. Our Lord's commission ran, "Go ye into all the world and preach." "Christ sent me," says Paul, "not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." Others, uninspired men, have said the same. Latimer said, "Take away preaching, take away salvation." St. affirms, "My whole priesthood is to teach and preach the gospel. This is my sacrifice." 2. But what are we to preach? Christ crucified. The preach Christ, but only as a bright example, not as a vacarious sacrifice. But we, like St. Paul, preach Christ crucified, because we know that this is the only preaching which God the Holy Ghost will honour. As Cecil says, "A philosopher may philosophise his hearers, but the preaching of Christ will alone convert them. Men may preach Christ ignorantly, blunderingly, absurdly, yet God will give that preaching efficacy, because He is determined to magnify His own ordinance." (C. Clayton, M. A.)
II. ITS MANNER They exhibited the Cross of Christ — 1. As the end of the law for righteousness. 2. As the only foundation of a secure hope of acceptance with God. 3. As the only legitimate object of a Christian's glory. 4. As the most powerful incentive to obedience.Conclusion: Let me ask — 1. What think you of Christ? 2. What influence has the subject had on you? (J. Hooper.)
1. The dignity of our Saviour's person as the true Messiah of God. 2. The perfection of His atonement. Having laid the foundation in His Divinity, this naturally followed. 3. The plenitude of His redemption. Christ died for all men, and we are therefore enabled to offer salvation to every man. This is a blessing which leads to all others. II. THE RECEPTION WHICH THIS DOCTRINE MET WITH. 1. "To the Jews it was a stumbling-block." 2. To the Greeks it was foolishness. 3. "Unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." These perfections are admirably discovered if we consider —(1) The method that God took to make known to the lapsed posterity of man His merciful designs.(2) The men whom God selected to carry the message of salvation to the world.(3) The easy terms which the Lord hath fixed upon in order to be benefited by the redemption.(4) The great effects which have been produced by this doctrine. (E. Oakes.)
1. The Divinity of His person. 2. The perfection of His atonement. 3. The variety of His offices. 4. The blessings of His redemption. 5. The universality of His government. II. THE DIVERSITY OF THE EFFECTS WHICH ATTEND THE PUBLICATION OF THIS GOSPEL. 1. To the Jews it was a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; "to them that are called" —(1) The wisdom of God. This wisdom is displayed in —(a) The wonderful method by which the difficulties were removed which stood in the way of the restoration of fallen man.(b) The perfect adaptation of the means which it. supplies for the attainment of human salvation. First, the sacrifice of Christ. Second, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.(c) Its direct tendency to counteract one of the most evident manifestations of human depravity — viz., pride.(d) In the selection of the instruments who were ordained to propagate it.(e) The period appointed for its proclamation.(f) The facility of those terms on which the benefits are conferred.(2) The power of God is displayed in —(a) The various acts by which the stupendous scheme was accomplished.(b) The Divine influence which attended the publication of this doctrine.(c) The triumphant progress which the gospel has made against every opposition.(d) Its influence on man's present and eternal destinies. (J. Bowers.)
2. When we set our modern pulpit alongside that of apostolic men there is a pretty wide divergence. Theirs was simple, direct, historic; built itself up on a few facts which clung around a central Person. Ours is elaborate, discursive, theoretical. To some extent such difference is not only natural, but proper. For the apostles were missionary preachers, addressing men to whom everything was new. We who minister among a people moulded by the truths which we preach must traverse an ampler field and cannot decline to use what the Christian past has brought to illustrate or confirm the old message. In accessory helps the pulpit grows yearly richer; yet through this very embarrassing wealth, the preacher is in danger of being beguiled too far from his appointed work. I. THE GREAT PULPIT THEME. 1. The gospel offers itself as a plan of restoration; and opens with an event which lifts the scheme above parallel — the descent into our race of God Himself. At no other point does creation touch Divinity in such strange fellowship. 2. If we estimate the singular moment of this fact we shall not wonder to find the whole course both of nature and of providence looking towards it.(1) Thus there were laid in the constitution of nature materials for that rich symbolism which in the light of Holy Scripture it is our business to read. When, e.g., the light diffused through space received a home for us in the sun, there seems to have been present to the thought of God the ultimate gathering up of His omnipresent glory in Christ as the spiritual light of the world. And when, under laws of organic life in animal or plant, many parts were knit together and sustained in corporate action by a force undiscoverable, resident in one part, yet penetrating the whole, He meant to foreshadow the mysterious conjunction of believing souls into one, even Jesus, through the life-giving Spirit who proceedeth from Him.(2) So also with providence. Those strangely diverging lines which history traces have a reassembling point in the advent of Jesus Christ. To prepare the nations for it in the fulness of time, and to work out its fruits since, must be the key for the intricate movements of providence in all time. 3. If the Christian scheme of salvation through incarnate God is thus the world's centre of gravity, then its own centre of gravity is the Cross. Modern thought is strong because it recognises the Incarnation; but it is weak because it fails to see the necessary issue of the Advent in the Cross. The event of Golgotha came to complete and to explain the event of Bethlehem. Christ took our nature in order to redeem our souls; was born that He might die. Thus we reach the heart of Christianity. That is a nerveless gospel which glozes over the fact of atonement with vague phrases; that which ignores or denies it is another gospel altogether. 4. But on these facts what is the message which rests? Not merely that the man Jesus was actually the Son of God and become one of our own race; nor that He many centuries ago suffered generously, and for our sakes died; but that the God-Man, who did once at Jerusalem cancel guilt and win deliverance, is here, and able, therefore, to save all who trust Him. He has a pardon which He won as man, yet bestows as God. This acting Christ with His direct access to and contact with men, we must preach. We preach a Christ who, because He was crucified once, is dead no more; but is even now and always breathing power and life into human hearts; and from this central power of Christ to give the Holy Ghost as the fruit of His bitter tree, there branch spiritual works manifold as the miracles of His earthly ministry. II. THE CONSIDERATIONS WHICH OUGHT TO REGULATE ITS DELIVERY FROM EVERY PULPIT. Pentecost gave tongues to the disciples. That was the birthday of preaching. The new message brought new utterance; and times of religious awakening have been signalised by a fresh development of preaching gifts. So it was at the revival of the thirteenth century, of the fifteenth, of the eighteenth. What, then, is this novel voice which Christ's gospel has found for itself? 1. As to matter, nothing which is quite foreign can be admitted, and everything which is cognate has a right to be here only in so far as it can serve the preacher's main drift, and illustrate or commend his message. This is no rule of narrow exclusion; for there is hardly a department of human thought or knowledge out of connection with Jesus Christ. But the rule is of constant value nevertheless. What ponderous piles of sacred learning have sometimes buried the simple message! What wire-spun theological niceties have perplexed the hearer! The gospel has been more often discussed than preached. Nothing has any right to be in a sermon except because it contributes to the clearness and effect of the message about Christ. 2. As to the form of the message, it must be in the main declarative. If true to its nature it cannot be anything else. It admits, indeed, of embodiment in a creed; it has given to philosophy its richest, deepest principles; before it there goes out the only law of ethics: yet these are none of them the gospel. In its naked essence it is a salvation offered in the person of a Saviour. As such it is to be published. This declarative form implies two subordinate elements. We found wrapped up in the object of preaching two things, a person and a fact. Now these should give to preaching at once a historical and a personal complexion. That Christianity is rooted in the past, and had a birthplace which ties it to one spot of history. All that concerns the life of Christ, with its foreshadowings, its self-manifestations, and each recorded step which conducted to the achievement of redemption — must be prominent in the Christian pulpit. Yet the historical is to be blended with the personal element; and that ministry is best which leads straight to the living helping Saviour. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)
(Thomas Horton, D. D.)
I. To preach HIS DOCTRINES. If I say that Newton is taught in our universities, I mean his doctrines are taught; and to preach Christ crucified is to preach His doctrines (Acts 15:21). For example, the world says, Resent an injury; Christ says, Forgive your enemies. If, therefore, we preach forgiveness, are we not thereby preaching Christ, even though no distinct mention may be made of His Divinity, or of the doctrine of the Atonement? The world says, Indulge your inclinations; Christ says, Be pure in the last recesses of your mind. He, then, who lives a pure life is teaching Christ, even though he may not on every occasion name Him. In the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Epistle of St. James, there is not one word respecting the Atonement; hut if we work out the truths contained in them we preach Christ. II. Preaching TRUTH IN CONNECTION WITH A PERSON; it is not merely purity, but the Pure One; not merely goodness, but the Good One, that we worship. Observe the advantages of this mode of preaching. 1. It makes religion practical. 2. It gives us something to adore, for we can adore a person, but we cannot adore principles. III. Preaching SURRENDER TO THE WILL OF GOD. St. Paul would not preach Christ the conqueror, but Christ the crucified, Christ the humble. You may know a man when once you know what it is he worships. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
(Principal Edwards.)
I. A GOSPEL REJECTED. 1. By the Jew. A respectable man the Jew was in his day; all formal religion was concentrated in his person. To him the fact that Jesus was the carpenter of Nazareth was proof positive that He was not the Messiah. He bow to the Nazarine! Accordingly, he turned a deaf ear to Paul. Farewell, old Jew. Alas! that Christ who was thy stumbling block shall be thy Judge. But I am going to find out the Jew here. You, too, have a religion which you love — so far as the outside goes. When I tell you that all your going to the house of God, your singing and praying, all pass for nothing if your heart is not right with God, the Cross becomes a stumbling block. Another specimen of the Jew is thoroughly orthodox; he thinks nothing of forms and ceremonies. Here, up in this dark attic of the head, his religion has taken up its abode; he has a best parlour down in his heart, but his religion never goes there. He has money in there, worldliness, self-love, pride; and accordingly when once you begin to strike home, and let him see what he is by nature, and what he must become by grace, the man cannot stand that. 2. By the Greek. He is a person of quite a different exterior to the Jew. He does not care for the forms of religion. He appreciates eloquence; He admires a smart saying; he likes to read the last new book; and to him the gospel is foolishness. He is thoroughly wise. Ask him anything, and he knows it. If you are a Mahomedan he will hear you very patiently. But if you talk to him of Christ, "Stop your cant," he says, "I don't want to hear anything about that." This Greek gentleman believes all philosophy except the true one; he studies all wisdom except the wisdom of God. Once when I saw him, he told me he did not believe in any religion at all; and that it was best to live as nature dictated. Another time he spoke welt of all religions, and believed they were all right in their place; and that if a man were sincere, he would be all right at last. I told him I did not think so, and he said I was a bigot. Another time I discussed with him a little about faith. He said, "Right; that is true Protestant doctrine." But presently I hinted something about free grace; but that was to him foolishness. Ah, wise man, thy wisdom will stand thee here, but what wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan? II. THE GOSPEL TRIUMPHANT. "Unto us who are called" &c. Yonder man rejects the gospel, despises grace, and laughs at it as a delusion. Here is another who laughed at it too; but God brought him to his knees. The Jew and the Greek shall never depopulate heaven. The choirs of glory shall not lose a single songster by all the opposition of Jews and Greeks. John Bunyan says, "The hen has two calls, the common cluck, which she gives hourly, and the special one which she means for her little chickens." So there is a general call to every man; the other is the children's call. You know how the bell sounds over the workshop to call the men to work — that is a general call. The father goes to the door and calls out, "John, it is dinner-time!" — that is the special call. The call which saves, is like that of Jesus, when He said, "Mary," and she said unto Him, "Rabboni"; when He said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" and "Zaccheus, come down." I cannot give the special call; God alone can give it, and I leave it with Him. III. THE GOSPEL ADMIRED; unto us who are called of God, it is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. This must be a matter of pure experience. If you are called of God this morning, you will know it. I do not understand how a man can be killed and then made alive again and not know it. 1. The gospel is to the true believer a thing of power. What is it that makes the young man devote himself as a missionary to the cause of God? What is it that constrains yonder minister, in the midst of the cholera, to stand by the bed of one who has that dire disease? And what emboldens that timid female to go through that den of thieves? It is the power of the gospel. But I behold another scene. A martyr is hurried to the stake; the flame is lighted up. What makes him stand unmoved in the flames? The power of the Cross. Behold another scene. There is no crowd there; it is a silent room. There is a poor pallet, and a young girl lying on it, her face blanched by consumption. Joan of Are was not half so mighty as that girl. Hear her sing: "Jesus! lover of my soul," &c., as she shuts her eye on earth, and opens it in heaven. What enables her to die like that? The power of Jesus crucified. 2. To a believer the gospel is the perfection of wisdom, and if it appear not so to the ungodly, it is because of the perversion of their judgment. It has been the custom to talk of infidels as men of great intellect. But this is a mistake; for the gospel is the sum of wisdom; a treasure-house of truth. Our meditation upon it enlarges the mind. It confers wisdom on its students. A man who is a lover of the truth, as it is in Jesus, is in a right place to follow with advantage any other branch of science. Once when I read books, I put all my knowledge together in confusion; but ever since I put Christ in the centre, each science has revolved round it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I. "THE JEWS REQUIRE A SIGN, AND THE GREEKS SEEK AFTER WISDOM." "Jews and Greeks." These are not names of the past. The world still divides itself thus in its moral aspects. 1. The Jews require a sign. Two thoughts were ever clashing in the Jewish mind. The earlier splendours of their national history, and their present bondage and shame. The restorer of the kingdom of Israel was the national description of the expected deliverer; but when they saw that the only empire Christ cared for was over the hearts and consciences of men — that there was no chance of a national restoration, they turned from Him. But He knew how little earth would be helped by the establishment of such a society as the Jews were dreaming of. There is many a man in a popular tumult who will throw up his cap and shout "Liberty!" whose notion of liberty is the grossest licentiousness or the sternest tyranny. And many a Jew would attend a triumphal progress, and rend the air with Hosannas, who, when he heard of an inward moral reformation as the first act of obedience, would change his cry to "Crucify Him!" I take the Jewish "seeking for a sign" as the representative of that seeking for an outward regeneration of society which has lived in the hearts of the men of this world in all ages. Socialism is its most modern manifestation. The hope that if society were rearranged, property redivided, and a fair start given to all, man would be blessed. "The difficulty lies not there," say the preachers of the gospel: "your hearts need the cure, not your circumstances." The Jews "sought a sign," a hint even, that Jesus was anything like what their fancies pictured; and when He gave no sign but His shameful Cross, they shouted, "Better Caesar than He." And the world is full of sign-seekers. Men looking for redemption, but misconceiving utterly its nature. French republics, New Jerusalems, all mean the same thing. Men expect that God will begin from without instead of from within. 2. The Greeks seek after wisdom. The Greeks represent those who try by searching to find out God. Greek intellect was hopelessly baffled in the search. Blank atheism was the result of it in all the philosophic schools. An altar to the unknown God kept up the memory of the effort in the mind of the populace; but every thinker on earth had been brought, in the absence of revelation, to the bewildered question of Pilate "What is truth?" Some said, "There is such a thing, but man can have no hope of finding it." Some said, "Tush! there is no such thing in the universe at all." That a tale of a crucified man in an obscure and dishonoured country should be what they had been fruitlessly seeking for ages was an insult to their understandings. In them was the same radical indisposition to accept a gospel which demanded an inward and spiritual change. It was only after long battles that intellect, with broken wing, fell bleeding on the bosom of revelation, and healed her wounds and renewed her life at the once hated symbol of the Cross. But intellect is essentially restless. In every age the battle is renewed, and has to be fought out with varying success. And in this age the wisdom-seekers are rampant, proclaiming that not from God, but from man must be asked the question, "What must I do?" — that our own nature, honestly treated, will supply all that is needful; that the Cross is an insult to the wisdom and benignity of the Father; that Jesus is the first of men — an admirable pattern, but that they dream who say, "He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Far easier, far pleasanter to the eye is it, to seek after wisdom than to seek after holiness. II. WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED. Read Romans 3:21; Romans 5:1-11; Romans 6:3-11; Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 2:9-18; Hebrews 4:14-16; 1 Corinthians 15:45-57. In Christ crucified the following facts are set forth as the gospel — 1. The love of the Father in the sacrifice of the Son. Philip had a much deeper meaning than he was perhaps conscious of when he said, "Show us the Father." None of the gods of heathendom contented heathendom, for they could not show the Father, they did not know what fatherhood meant; but those men had a mighty gospel who could say, "God so loved the world," &c. We tell you not what God ought to be or do, or may be expected to do, but what God has done. "Behold Christ Jesus and Him crucified!" There God unveils His character — reveals His heart. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." Jew seeking after a sign, Greek groping after wisdom, turn hither — "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us." Is this truth folly or wisdom? Is it weakness or power? Is life worth less to the man who knows that the Father loveth him, or is it worth more? And the world, is it better or worse for the belief that God loves it, and will, by love's sure purpose, redeem it to Himself? Get that belief into the heart of the world, your dream is fulfilled — your golden age is restored! 2. The redemption wrought by the work of the Son. The picture of humanity which God beholds is that of bondsmen, bound to an alien and usurping power. The evidence of this condition, it meets us everywhere. Sin had entered into the world, sin had mastered it; God entered into it to break the bonds of sin and restore the world to itself and to Him. Is it nothing that the preachers of this gospel should cry to souls hopeless of victory, Liberty! a man has conquered, a man has lived free from sin; a man whose spirit can so chain your spirit by its living attraction as to ensure to you the victory too? The public justice of the universe is satisfied, its law illustrated and magnified, and the sinner, conscience-stricken, but beginning to cherish the hope of restoration, is satisfied that a God of holiness, of justice, will still be honoured, while he, the guilty, is saved! Men laughed, and called it folly; but hell trembled, Satan cowered, for they understood the attraction of the Cross. Satan's Conqueror cried out, "It is finished," and committed to such hands as Paul's the standard of the Cross, who cried, "I preach Christ crucified," &c. 3. The glory won by the suffering and Cross of Jesus, which is to illumine heaven eternally (Philippians 2:6-11). The sun is the centre of the world of nature; the Cross, of the world of spirit. But here is a strange contradiction. The sun is the most glorious object in creation, it fills all heaven with its splendour; but the Cross is to all men naturally an object of dread and aversion, and is associated with shame, agony, and death. But just as the sun has for ages proved itself the centre of our world of nature, the Cross has proved itself the centre of the world of spirit, has chained the most mighty and onward spirits to its orbit (Revelation 5:6-10). Here, mark you, is the most splendid picture of heaven which is anywhere painted; yet this must mean that the Cross, far from fading from sight when the veil falls over earth's sad history, remains the object of interest, the centre of attraction through eternity. That this must be so will appear to us if we consider — 1. The Cross must remain for ever the manifestation of the depth, the tenderness, the mightiness of the love of God. 2. While the Cross shall be to the saints for ever the bond of fellowship with their risen and glorified Lord, the Lord Himself, while He remembers the Cross as the instrument of His agony, beholds it as the fountain of glory and of bliss. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)
1. The light. 2. The hope. 3. The law of the world. II. ITS OFFENSIVENESS. 1. A stumbling block. 2. Foolishness. III. ITS TRIUMPHS — in them that believe. 1. The power of God. 2. The wisdom of God. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. A WORD OF POSITION — "But." 1. It is not everybody that does this; others have other things to do. 2. The "but" seems to suggest opposition, viz., the contentions which prevailed at Corinth. What are we to do when we find people quarrelling? If we are wise we shall let them alone, and say through it all, "But we preach Christ crucified." I have known a Church divided into as many divisions as there were members, and there has come a warm-hearted Christian man who has just preached Christ crucified, and somehow before they knew it the members melted into one. 3. The "but" seems to me, however, to have reference to the very wise people to whom the Cross was foolishness. They were "abreast of the times," they "kept pace with progress," so they preached Christ so improved that it was no longer the gospel, but "another gospel." I like Paul's grand way of teaching the Gnostics, or the knowers; he joined the "know-nothings," for he says, "I determined not to know anything among you save Christ and Him crucified." "Let these Gnostics preach what they like, but we preach Christ crucified." 4. We know some brethren whose religion consists always in mending the religion of others. You may be preaching niceties of doctrine, of theories, of prophecy, &c., while what is wanted is the cure for the souls of men who are perishing for lack of knowledge, and the knowledge that they want is wrapped up in these two words, "Christ crucified." 5. And had Paul been here he would have made some remark about the superstitions of this age, for there be some that seem to think God is best honoured by buildings of gorgeous architecture, and by sumptuous services. Our friend has built a reredos, has decorated a holy table, has prepared the chancel, and thinks he has brought back mediaeval Christianity; but we preach Christ crucified. II. A WORD OF PERSONALITY — "We." Why do we do it? Because — 1. He saved us. We cannot help preaching this, because every day it is the rest and refuge, the joy and the delight of our souls. 2. He inspires us. We preach Christ crucified, because years ago He laid His hand upon us, and said, "Go, preach My gospel." 3. It seems the masterpiece of God. Heaven and earth are full of His majesty, and both in nature and providence we learn to adore the ever-present and eternal One. But in Immanuel, God with us, there is most of God. 4. We are fools, as the enemy says.(1) Any fool can say that which is uppermost; and truly, brethren, I am myself a great fool in that respect, for uppermost with me is Christ crucified.(2) Fools can always say what they are told. They are not great at invention. There are some that carry with them a touchstone, by which they judge inspiration itself — their inner consciousness, and the general tone of public opinion. Paul, of course, did not know much about that, because he was "crucified to the world," and the world to him, and he did not care much about public opinion.(3) Fools generally talk when they are wonder-struck, and we confess that we have been astounded at the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.(4) Fools can generally speak if they are forced, and we do confess that that is exactly one point that accounts for our folly. "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." We cannot take any credit when we preach Christ crucified, because it lies within us like fire, and we cannot help but speak of it.(5) And surely men may speak when there is a great danger. If there were a house on fire, and a poor soul needed to be delivered, I do not suppose that before a man wheeled the fire-escape up to a window you would stop him to see whether he could pass an examination at Oxford. And so we must be permitted while men are perishing to preach to them that alone which will save them — namely, Christ crucified.(6) We are determined, as any other sensible fools would do, to stop by what we know till we learn something better. In the State of Massachusetts there was a resolution passed that the State should be guided and governed by the laws of God till they had time to make some better; and we have determined that we will preach Christ crucified till we find something better. III. A WORD OF ACTION "We preach," or proclaim as heralds. We are trumpeters for Christ, we go before Him to prepare His way. Hence, some have said the preacher ought to preach principally the second Advent. Undoubtedly; but first he should be able to say, "we preach Christ crucified," not "we preach Christ glorified." Because to preach means to proclaim, therefore we proclaim Christ as King. Submit yourselves unto Him. It is not a matter of choice with you. It is not "Will you elect some king?" but "He is King; submit to Him." Neither are we called upon to adorn Christ crucified. I think we are getting into great mistakes about sermons sometimes. Gild gold, and lay your colours on the lily, but let Christ alone, and if you cannot do anything but just tell simply the story of the love of God in providing an atonement, do tell it and leave those fine words at home. IV. THE TWO LAST WORDS — "Christ crucified." 1. Preach all of Christ. When Paul says, "We preach Christ crucified," he seems to me to say, "We preach the most objectionable part of Christ." I like a Christian man that preaches all he believes. "Now, Paul, this is very unwise of you. There is a Jewish gentleman, a man of large means; if we could get him into the Church he might very likely build a chapel, and you preached Christ. And then there was a Greek gentleman. Now, why did you not preach Christ in His glory, or say little about Him? We cannot expect to get these Jewish and Greek friends converted to us, if we will stiffly remain by the old orthodoxy. The whole current of thought leads you to believe that there is a great deal in Mahomedanism and Brahminism, and it is a great pity to push these distinctive points so very far." I fancy I hear anybody saying that to Paul! Did we come here to please men? I charge you never needlessly offend anybody; but if the truth offend anybody, let them be offended; for it is much better to offend all the world than to offend your Master. 2. As we preach all of Christ, so this is all. But we have some other doctrines. Yes; but they are all relating to this. When you have said that, you have said everything. 3. We preach Him as all. That is all. If you are converted, all your salvation lies in Christ crucified. "Oh, but I want a new heart." Go to Him for it. "Oh, but I want to feel my need." He gives you this, as well as all the rest. 4. We will all preach Christ. "But we are not all ministers," saith one. I hope you all preach Christ, you that are not ministers. A minister once said, "Now all of you must teach Jesus, and try to bring others to Christ; you must all tell what you know." There was a black man in the gallery called out, "Dat will I do." But his minister stopped, for Sam was the most ignorant member of the Church, and he said, "Sam, I do not mean you; because you do not know more than your A B C." "Dat's right, sar," said he; "dere be some niggers don't know A B C — Sam teach them dat." You young converts that do not know much about Christ, you know something other sinners do not know. Go and tell that, and each bit you get go and tell them. You will learn it all the better by teaching it yourself. 5. We preach Christ crucified to all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
II. WE PREACH CHRIST — Paul habitually called the attention of his hearers to a Person. "We preach Christ": Christ as He was, the one perfect and finished offering for human sin: Christ as He is, the Mediator between God and man; Christ as He will be, the Judge of every creature. In adopting such a course the apostles followed the Master Himself. Christ preached Christ. "I say," "I am," "I do," "I will": how often did these words fall from His lips! No prophet dared to speak as He spoke. The power of this Christian ministry is in the presentation, not simply of great truths, but of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. III. WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED. Because — 1. Christ crucified reveals God. "Hereby perceive we the love of God." Write the biography of Columbus and say nothing of America, speak of Caxton and be silent about printing, allude to Wyckliffe and ignore the Reformation, then may we preach Christ and forget Christ crucified. 2. Christ crucified restores man. So Paul found. He spoke from experience. A North-American Indian was asked the means by which he and his brethren became Christians. The answer was: "A preacher came once, and desiring to instruct us, began by proving that there was a God. On which we said to him, 'Well! and dost thou think that we are ignorant of that? Now go again whence thou earnest.' Another preacher appeared and said, 'Ye must not steal, ye must not lie,' &c. We answered him, 'Dost thou think that we do not know that? Go and learn it first thyself, and teach the people that thou belongest to not to do these things.' Some time after this, Christian Henry, one of the brethren, came to me in my hut, and sat down by me and said: 'I come to thee in the name of the Lord of heaven and earth. He acquaints thee that He would gladly save thee, and rescue thee from the miserable state in which thou liest. To this end He became Man, hath given His life for mankind, and shed His blood for them!' Upon this he lay down on a board in my hut, and fell asleep, being fatigued with his journey. I thought what manner of man is this? There he lies and sleeps so sweetly. I might kill him immediately, and throw him out into the forest, and who would care for it? But he is unconcerned. However, I could not get rid of his words; and though I went to sleep I dreamed of the blood which Christ had shed for us. Thus, through the grace of God, the awakening among us took place." What a lesson to all Christian workers! Behold the secret of power. Christ crucified is the world's hope. (T. R. Stevenson.)
II. WAS MOST VILE AND SHAMEFUL. Never by the Romans legally inflicted upon freemen, but only upon slaves. There is in man's nature an abhorrency of disgraceful abuse no less strong than are the little antipathies to pain. Whence it is not marvellous that as a transcendently good man, Christ was affected by those occurrences so mightily, according to that ejaculation in the Greek liturgies — "By Thy unknown sufferings, O Christ, have mercy on us." III. HAD IN IT SOME PARTICULAR ADVANTAGES CONDUCING TO THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF OUR LORD'S PRINCIPAL DESIGN. 1. Its being very notorious and lasting a competent time. For if He had been privately made away, or suddenly despatched, no such great notice would have been taken of it, nor would it have been so fully proved to the confirmation of our faith and conviction of infidelity; nor would His excellent deportment under such affliction have so illustriously shone forth; wherefore Divine providence did so manage, that as the course of His life, so also the manner of His death should be most conspicuous and remarkable. 2. By this kind of suffering the nature of that kingdom which He intended to erect was evidently signified — a kingdom purely spiritual, consisting in she government of men's hearts. No other kingdom could He be presumed to design, who submitted to this way of suffering. 3. By such a death God's special providence was discovered, and His glory illustrated in the propagation of the gospel. Thereby "the excellency" of Divine power and wisdom was much glorified: by so impotent and improbable means, accomplishing so great effects. 4. This kind of suffering to the devout fathers did seem in many ways significant, or full of instructive and admonitive emblems.(1) His posture on the Cross might represent unto us that large and comprehensive charity which He bare in His heart toward us, stretching forth His arms of kindness, pity, and mercy, with them, as it were, to embrace the world.(2) His ascent to the Cross might set forth His discharging that high office of universal High Priest for all ages and all people, the Cross being an altar. IV. CORRESPONDED TO THE PROPHECIES AND TYPES FORESHADOWING IT. V. AS APPLICABLE TO OUR PRACTICE. No contemplation is more efficacious towards the sanctification of our hearts and lives than this; for what good affection may not the meditation on it kindle? what virtue may it not breed and cherish in us? (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (I. Barrow, D. D.)
I. ITS SIMPLICITY. 1. It was characteristic of the Jews to demand signs or portents. The especial sign which they sought was that of some manifestation of the Shekinah to encompass the Messiah. But the tendency was more general: it was the craving for the marvellous which still characterises Oriental nations, which appears in the licence of Arabian invention and credulity, and which among the Jews reached its highest pitch in the extravagant fictions of Rabbinical writers. The proverb "Credat Judaeus" shows the character which they had obtained amongst the Romans for readiness to accept the wildest absurdities; and this disposition to seek for signs is expressly commended in the Mishna. To a certain extent this tendency is met by the gospel miracles (John 2:11; Acts 2:22). Yet on the whole it was discouraged (Matthew 16:4; John 4:48). And what is thus intimated in the Gospels is here followed out by the apostle. In answer to the demand for signs, he produced the least dazzling, the least miraculous part of Christ's career. The more ample we suppose the evidence for the Gospel miracles, or the more portentous their nature, so much more striking is the testimony of Christ and His apostles to the truth that it is not on them that the main structure is to be built. 2. This simplicity was also a rebuke to the intellectual demands of the Greek. The subtlety of discussion which had appeared in the numerous schools of Greek speculation, and which appeared afterwards in the theological divisions of the fourth and fifth centuries, needed not now, as in the time of Socrates, to be put down by a truer philosophy, but by something which should give men fact instead of speculation, flesh and blood instead of words and theories. Such a new starting point was provided by the apostle's constant representation of the crucifixion. Its outward form was familiar to them; it was for them now to discover its inward application to themselves. II. ITS HUMILIATION. In order to enter into the force of this, we must picture a state of feeling which, in part from the effect produced on the world by this very passage and the spirit which it describes, is entirely removed from our present experience. Not only is the outward symbol of the Cross glorified in our eyes by the truth of the religion which it represents, but the very fact of the connection between Christianity and humiliation is one of the proofs of its Divine excellence. But at its first propagation, as now in parts of the world external to Christendom, it was far otherwise. The crucifixion was and is a "scandal" to the Jews as a dishonour to the Messiah. Christ has been called by them in derision "Toldi," "the man who was hanged"; and Christians, "the servants of him who was hanged." And in the Koran, the supposed ignominy of the crucifixion is evaded by the story that the Jews, in a judicial blindness, crucified Judas instead of Christ, who ascended from their hands into heaven. The same objection was felt by the educated Greeks and Romans; encumbered as Christianity then was in their eyes with associations so low. Nothing shows the confidence of the apostle more strongly than the prominence he gives to a teaching so unpopular. Philippians 2:5-8 contains the prophecy of the triumph of Christianity not only in spite, but by means of this great obstacle. And now the Cross is enshrined in our most famous works of art, in our greatest historical recollections, in our deepest feelings of devotion. The society which consisted almost exclusively in the first instance of the lower orders, has now embraced within it all the civilisation of the world. (Dean Stanley.)
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
I. THE JEWS REQUIRED A SIGN; a sign from heaven; a sign of God's power. Thunder and earthquakes, armies of angels, taking vengeance on the heathen; these were the signs of Christ which they expected. And all that St. Paul gave them was a sign of Christ's weakness. Then said the Jews — This is no Christ for us. Then answered St. Paul — Weak? I tell you that what seems to you weakness is the very power of God. Weak, shamed, despised, dying, He is still Conqueror; and He will at last draw all men to Himself. What seems to you weakness is the very power of God;" the power of suffering all things, that He may do good: and that that will conquer the world, when riches and glory, and armies, aye, the very thunder and the earthquake, have failed utterly. II. THE GREEKS SOUGHT AFTER WISDOM. They expected Paul to argue with them on cunning points of philosophy; and all he gave them seemed mere foolishness. He could have argued with these Greeks, for he was a great scholar and a true philosopher, but he would not. What you need, and what they need, is not philosophy, but a new heart and a right spirit. Then know this, that God so loved you that He condescended to become man, and to give Himself up to death, even the death of the Cross, that He might save you from your sins. And to that, those proud Greeks answered — The cross? Tell your tale to slaves, not to us. To give Himself up to the death of the cross is foolishness, and not the wisdom which we want. Then answered St. Paul, True, the cross is a slave's and a wretch's death; and therefore slaves and wretches will hear me, though you will not (vers. 26-31). You Greeks, with all your philosophy, have been trying for hundreds of years to find out the laws of heaven and earth, and to set the world right by them; and you have not done it. You have not even set your own hearts and lives right. But what your seeming wisdom cannot do, the seeming foolishness of Christ on His Cross will do. That what seems to you foolishness is the very wisdom of God. Know, that when all your arguments and philosophies have failed to teach men what they ought to do, one earnest, penitent look at Christ upon His Cross will teach them. And out of them shall spring that Church of Christ, which shall reign over all the world, when you and your philosophies have crumbled into dust. Conclusion: 1. Let us learn —(1) That self-sacrificing love which Christ showed on His Cross is stronger than all pomp and might, all armies, riches, governments; aye, that it is the very power of God, by which all things consist, which holds together heaven and earth and all there is therein.(2) That that love is wiser than all arguments, doctrines, philosophies, whether they be true or false. 2. Do you wish to be powerful? Then look at Christ upon His Cross; at what seems to men His weakness; and learn from Him how to be strong. Do you wish to be wise? Then look at Christ upon the Cross; and at what seemed to men His folly; and learn from Him how to be wise. For sooner or later, I hope and trust, you will find that true which St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say, That all the learning in the world had never taught.him so much as the sight of Christ upon the Cross. (G. Kingsley, M. A.)
(T. Horton, D. D.)
I. THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST WAS JUDICIAL. So His enemies professed to regard it. But they were not consistent in their accusations, and the sentence of Pilate has not been confirmed by man's sense of justice. And yet justice was maintained in His death; and this maintenance of justice commends and endears His death to indebted followers. He was cut off, but not for Himself. But how can the sinless justly suffer for the sinful? As a matter of fact the effects of iniquity often fall upon the blameless. But is substitution so utterly excluded from our own forensic proceedings, that the very idea of it should be scoffed at? An established mode of punishment is by fine, but fines are often paid by proxy. If a culprit were languishing in a dungeon from inability to pay the sum demanded, and a friend paid it for him, the feeling would not be that righteousness had been outraged, but that law had been upheld while generosity was manifested and misery relieved. The clear doctrine of Scripture is that Christ's sufferings were sacrificial (Hebrews 9:26). Here is a pathway for pardon in which justice itself shines resplendent, and is more honoured in clemency than by countless retributions. Here is a road for the sinful ascending to heaven, yet such as to discourage sin and render it infinitely detestable. And if such be the character and influence of the Saviour's suffering, is not Christ crucified "the power of God and the wisdom of God"? II. THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST WAS ACCOMPANIED WITH MANIFESTATIONS OF HIS DIGNITY. Certainly His abasement was profound. And yet all this humiliation was suitable to dignity. His was that dignity that was often attacked, but never impaired: a dignity which appears, like a majestic edifice or sublime promontory seen at night, more vast and imposing for the gloom with which it is surrounded. And we never find the Son in circumstances of special abasement without some accompanying seal or token of Paternal acknowledgment and favour. Note the attendant circumstances of His birth, baptism, death, &c. III. THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST, IN ITS SPIRIT AND OBJECTS, INFINITELY TRANSCENDS ALL OTHER EXHIBITIONS OF MORAL EXCELLENCE AND GLORY. View it — 1. In relation to the Sufferer. What filial obedience when He said, "The cup that My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it?" What fulfilment of righteousness when He met the claims of a broken law, and, contemplating it in all its magnitude, could say in expiring, "It is finished." What friendship to sinners when He died for them to gain them admission into His glory. 2. In relation to our race. In this respect it is the grand manifestation of God's love to man (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9). 3. In relation to its effects. Who can dispute their prodigious influence? They have visibly changed the aspect of the world. See the power of this love manifested in the apostle of the Gentiles. And this was but a single instance illustrative of countless multitudes. (D. King, LL. D.)
1. The power of God.(1) From all eternity. "All things were made by Him," &c.(2) But when He came to earth He gave abundant proofs of His power in His miracles and resurrection.(3) He is the power of God now, for "He sitteth at the right hand of God." He hath the reins of Providence in His hands, and is the Sovereign Head of the Church, the Lord of heaven, and death, and hell. 2. The wisdom of God.(1) The great things that He did before all worlds were proofs of His wisdom. He planned the way of salvation; He built the heavens. Mark the world, and see all its multitudinous proofs of the wisdom of God.(2) And when He became man He gave proofs enough of wisdom. In childhood He astonished the doctors by His questions; and in manhood He confounded Pharisee, Sadducee, and Herodian. And when He paralysed those who came to take Him by His incomparable words.(3) And now that He is our Advocate before the throne, now that the reins of government are in His hands, we have abundant proofs that He is the wisdom of God. II. IN HIS GOSPEL. That gospel is — 1. A thing of Divine power.(1) How could it have been established if it had not in itself intrinsic might? By whom was it spread? By learned doctors, fierce warriors? No, by fishermen, untaught, unlettered. How did they spread it? By their swords? No, but by their simple words. But what was this gospel? Was it a thing palatable to human nature? No, it was a gospel of morality most strict, it was a gospel with delights entirely spiritual. And yet it spread. Why? Because it has in it the power of God.(2) How has it been maintained? No easy path has the gospel had. The good bark of the Church has had to plough her way through seas of blood. But "the blood of the martyrs" has been "the seed of the Church." It has been like the herb camomile, the more it is trodden on the more it grows.(3) I do not wonder that the Church has outlived persecution, so much as I wonder she has outlived the unfaithfulness of her professed teachers. From the days of Diotrephes to the latter times men of all sorts have come into her ranks and done all they could to turn her aside. And, even now, when I mark the supineness of many; when I see the want of unction and prayerfulness, she must have the power of God within her, or else she would have been destroyed.(4) There are not a few of you who would be ready to bear me witness that I speak the truth. There are some who were drunkards, &c., and now you are here, as different as light from darkness. 2. The wisdom of God. The intellects of Locke and Newton submitted to receive the truth of inspiration. What a vast amount of literature must be lost if the gospel be not true. No book was ever so suggestive as the Bible. III. IN THE HEART. 1. The power of God — (1) (2) (3) 2. The wisdom of God. If you want to be a thoroughly learned man the best place to begin is to begin at the Bible, to begin at Christ. But wisdom is not knowledge, but the right use of knowledge; and Christ's gospel helps us by teaching us the right use of knowledge. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I. THE WORLD AT LARGE. 1. The wisdom of God is seen in —(1) The exceeding excellence of its results. When it appeared the spiritual condition of mankind was deplorable. Among the Gentiles all knowledge of the true God seemed to have fled, and among the Jews the light of revelation was hid by thick clouds of prejudice and ignorance. It seemed the midnight of the world, but when this darkness was at its worst the Sun of Righteousness arose. Before it ancient superstitions yielded up their sway, the stiff formalisms of a shadowy economy gave place to living spiritual realities; old traditions grew decrepid, religion came back to be a dweller in man's heart, the reign of vice became smitten as with a dead palsy, the bonds of society were re-knit and made firmer than ever, philosophy, instead of pandering to man's passions, became the minister of his virtues, poetry dipped her sparkling cup in the river of the water of life, art bathed herself in the light of heaven; so that over the whole field of human interests there spread an influence which proclaims the surpassing wisdom of Him by whom the whole had been purposed and performed.(2) The simplicity of the means employed. A few poor, illiterate men went forth to convert the race — to tell the world that their Master was incarnate Deity, that He had died for the world's sins, and had gone up into heaven, and that through Him there was free remission of sin and eternal felicity to all who would come unto God through Him. This was all. No glare of worldly power; no resources of worldly learning; no artifices of carnal rhetoric; no courting the favour or the assistance of the great or wise.(3) The suitableness and adaptation of these means to the end in view. The design was not to establish Christianity by any means.(a) If fraud or force, e.g., be used on its behalf, an injury and not a benefit is conferred upon it; for, being a religion of truth and love, it would be self-contradictory to suppose it capable of being aided either by falsehood or tyranny.(b) As its aim is to regulate man's whole being by spiritual principles and motives it can only interfere with this to mix up its appeals with anything which addresses itself to man's carnal and earthly nature.(c) As its great design is to erect in man's soul an undivided empire for God, it is necessary that he shall be made to feel that it is not on the ground of eloquence or science, but on the ground of God's word to him that his hopes of pardon and grace must rest.(d) Who, then, does not see in the means employed an agency most wisely adapted to attain this end and no other? Had the apostles come working no miracles, the proof of their Divine commission would have been defective; had they wrought miracles more frequently, they would have incurred the risk of attaching to them a multitude who were attracted by their power, but had no real love for their doctrine. Had they been men of splendid abilities, they might have rested so much upon these as to hide from the people the purely Divine character of their doctrine and mission. Had they put themselves under the protection or sought to advance their cause by the resources of human power, the empire which they would have founded would not have rested simply on the basis of inherent worth of the doctrine they taught. 2. The power of God is seen in the obstacles it has overcome. These obstacles were of a kind which might well have discouraged any but men who felt that they were sustained by Omnipotence. When we think how hard it is to effect even a slight reform in some long established and corrupt system; how interest, fashion, and prejudice, and even sometimes the better feelings of our nature rise up against any attempts to displace time-honoured errors or usages: we may well admire the boldness of the apostles who went forth to overthrow all the religions that then enjoyed the homage of the race. And when we consider their fewness, illiteracy, and poverty, the unpretending character of their machinery and the repulsiveness to human pride of their doctrines; when we see all the learning, wealth, and power of the world forbidding their progress; when we see the kindling of the fires of persecution; and when we see how to meet all this they had no weapons but words, we may well stand in wonder at the courage which led the apostles of Christ to descend into the arena to do battle in His cause. But they knew perfectly what they were about. They knew that however humble the instrument, he becomes irresistible when the agent is the Almighty (vers. 27, 28). II. UPON INDIVIDUALS. 1. Here is a man who was once afar from God, resting on His righteous displeasure. Behold him now! He has been brought nigh to God; he has found the pardon of all his sin; and he waits but the summons of the Judge to enter His presence with a good hope of a triumphant acquittal at His bar. How transcendent the change in that man's condition and character and prospects! And how simply has it all been brought about — by the mere reception and realisation of the truth concerning Christ and Him crucified! And in spite of what tremendous obstacles has this been achieved — obstacles from old habits of evil, and the strong tide of custom and fashion, and the incessant assaults of him who goeth about seeking whom he may deceive and destroy! Who can refuse to see in such things a supernatural agency? 2. In judging of this subject we should not forget that the redemption of the sinner is the raising of him to a higher state of being and of blessedness than that from which Adam fell. By the work of the gospel on his soul man is brought nearer to God; he is placed under higher motives to love and serve God; and he draws from the Divine favour restored a depth of joy which those who have never lost that favour cannot reach. How wonderful is this! Who can refuse to behold here the working of Him whose attribute it is "from seeming evil" to be "still educing good" — of Him who is "excellent in counsel" as well as "wonderful in working"? (W. L. Alexander, D. D.)
I. THAT ASPECT OF REPULSIVENESS AND FOLLY WHICH THE GOSPEL HAS IN EVERY AGE PRESENTED TO THE GREATER PORTION OF MANKIND. The attestations demanded for the establishment of a new religious system must obviously vary with the condition of those to whom they are presented. The greatest force of argument may be expended in vain if it comport not, in its form and bearing, with our habitudes of thought. There are two comprehensive classes into which human minds may, with reference to this design, be advantageously divided: such as are susceptible of being wrought on through the medium of external objects, and such as are affected chiefly by the force of abstract reason. Now, to these great classes there are specific forms of proof respectively adapted. There is the evidence we are accustomed to denominate external, consisting of accrediting signals and actual events — and that also which we call internal, namely, the reasonableness, congruity, utility, and moral fitness of systems, considered in themselves. Neither of these should be wanting in a religion that assumes to be Divine. The demand, therefore, referred to by the apostle, if made with intelligence and candour, could not have been disregarded. It was natural, and could not be wrong, that they should call, in the one case, for a sign, to show that an institute, in all its parts so singular, had truly the impress of divinity; and in the other for the manifestations of celestial wisdom, to evince that what was alleged to be revelation was beyond the reach of artifice and the power of falsehood. Their fault lay only in this. It was with perverted sentiments and obstinate preconceptions this demand was accompanied. Yet both these forms of evidence were amply and unitedly supplied. They who, with a mind open to conviction, had beheld the Saviour's miracles, were awed by the revelation of His power. "We know," said they, "that Thou art a Teacher sent from God; for no man can do those miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him." They who had listened candidly to His discourses were astonished at the discoveries of His superhuman wisdom, exclaiming, "Never man spake like this man." In different instances, indeed, it would appear that each of these kinds of evidence alternately prevailed. It was probably the healing of the impotent man, rather than the preaching of Paul, which constrained the multitude at Lystra to exclaim, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men." Yet in ordinary cases the internal evidence was inseparably linked with the external, and an answer equally provided for the satisfaction, or the silencing, whether of those who demanded a sign, or of those who sought after wisdom. Let us observe, further, the force of the term here employed to describe the method adopted in their publication of the gospel — "We preach" — proclaim, announce, in the manner of a herald, Him who was crucified at Jerusalem. We require of all men allegiance in His name; and, denouncing all rival pretensions, ascribe to Him an absolute dominion. We present these claims, not as subjects of debate, but of testimony. Our appeal is less to reason than to conscience, and more to the actual subjugation of the soul than either. And yet, as if the meanness of His outward circumstances had not been sufficiently opposed to all Jewish expectations, it was emphatically as "the Crucified" that they proclaimed Him. However easily they might have cast this fact into comparative obscurity, by dwelling on His inflexible constancy, His unparalleled benevolence, His heroic self-devotement, His resurrection; yet, disdaining all such evasions, they exultingly pointed to His crucifixion, now as a sacrifice, now as a triumph, and thus appeared to invite the united scorn and hatred of mankind. It is not easy adequately to conceive what amount of impulsive and imperious conviction must have been required, in that earlier age, to proclaim in this manner, as the Christ, one that had been crucified. To avow that belief, in the face of universal contempt, to defend it when its bare annunciation would seem an outrage on the very name of reason, must have demanded, I do not say a grandeur of moral heroism, but a strength and fixedness of persuasion, such as the world has rarely witnessed. But such as the gospel appeared to the Jews and Greeks of the first ages, such is still essentially its aspect, when viewed in its primitive and unsophisticated character, to multitudes in every country. They hate or they despise it for the same reasons. It presents to some of them a cause of offence and irritation; to others one of ridicule or proud neglect. There are the superstitious, who loathe its simplicity, and the speculative, who repel its practical requirements. As to the one class, it is too spiritual for their reliance on external ordinances, and far too humbling to flatter or confirm their self-dependence. As to the other, it is originally derived from a source unknown to all their wisdom, established by proofs not apprehensible by their investigations and experiments, and enforced by sanctions destructive of their vaunted freedom, recommended by inducements which appeal not to reason, but to faith. They may both conspire to acknowledge somewhat which they call by its name, but ,which has as little either of its native features, or its inherent energy. Elsewhere, though its doctrines are professed, its spirit is evaporated. In opposition, therefore, to all such attempts to modify or to disguise its character, we fearlessly allege the conduct of the first disciples. For it should never be forgotten that such as was the strength of their conviction, such, too, must have been the fulness of that proof by which it was sustained; and thus the measure of their confidence is the measure also of the credibility of the whole frame and fabric of the gospel. Thus, what was evidence to them will become, in a twofold manner, evidence to us; while we see, not only the belief in which it issued, but that actual and living character which belief, thus generated, was found in practice to create. Nor was their confidence misplaced. The gospel proved itself equal to every emergency, and adapted to every design. By this consideration we are led to examine — II. THOSE TRANSCENDENT MANIFESTATIONS OF THE DIVINE POWER AND WISDOM WITH WHICH THE GOSPEL HAS BEEN EVER SEEN TO BE ACCOMPANIED, BY ALL WHO HAVE RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD ITS PRINCIPLES, OR IMBIBED ITS SPIRIT. Let us endeavour, therefore, to form definite conceptions of the sense wherein the apostle intends to characterise the excellency of the gospel, when he calls it "the power of God and the wisdom of God." It is plain that there are two acceptations chiefly, wherein this statement may be understood, either as denoting that that gospel, and the great events which it makes known, constitute an eminent manifestation of God's power and wisdom, or else that they are an instrument by which His power and wisdom are eminently found to operate. According as we determine on the one or the other of these applications, the great mediatorial scheme will be naturally brought into comparison with different portions of the Divine workmanship, to which it will be seen to possess different, though not incongruous, affinities; and the analogy of which to itself may aid us more precisely to apprehend, and more impressively to feel its import. If we select the former, the labour of human redemption will demand to be compared with those manifestations of the Creator's agency presented in the structure of the physical universe, or else with those more exalted essences formed by His word out of nothing, angels and the spirits of men. If the latter, then we shall be taught to compare the doctrine of redemption, in its practical effects, with the inexhaustible energies of nature, and its numberless and nameless influences, in quickening, renewing, beautifying that wondrous frame, whether of sentient or material things, with which we are surrounded. By the one, our attention is directed to the work and process of redemption; by the other, to the tidings which proclaim it. It is the Saviour Himself on the Cross that, in the one, shines forth with all the glory of omnipotence, bearing the burdens of a guilty world; and in the other, it is His gospel, realising, through the grace of His Spirit, the sublime purpose of its renovation. Perhaps it is not necessary wholly to separate these references, or to decide so rigorously between them, as that either should be excluded in the observations that follow. If we think of the design which was effected and the objects attained upon the Cross, how jarring claims were readjusted in the Divine administration, how infernal principalities were overthrown, and evils were decisively suppressed; if we advert to the honour which was thus insured to the great Ruler, and the benefit acquired to His dominions, to the progress of His righteousness and mercy; if we see the curse that had blasted the earth, now arrested, we are ready to take up the language of the text in its first and simplest application, and to speak of the crucifixion of Messiah as the last and greatest of those wonders which are for ever revealed in the wisdom and the power of God. Or, if we examine the actual effects flowing from the proclamation of the gospel, and permanently signalising it as an instrument for the renewal of mankind, we shall be equally prepared to adopt, though in another sense, the sentiment before us. We speak not of its efficiency to ameliorate men's secular condition. Our present reference is to consequences of a higher character; it is to those spiritual transformations, of which the gospel has ever, from the first ages, been everywhere productive. For the altars of: heathenism sank not alone; but the strongholds of sin within the soul were equally demolished. The night of falsehood was dissipated, and the phantoms of error" fled. The slumber of conscience was broken. The captivity of the affections was unloosed, and the imprisoned soul was invited to cast away her chains. The world was renewed around her. With the utmost justice, therefore, not less than with the utmost magnificence, may this doctrine of redemption be described under the appellations here employed; and it is not without reason that so eminent a place-is assigned it, when the apostle calls it by the names of those two great attributes which stand foremost in the array of the Divine perfections — wisdom and power. And it must be so; for without consummate wisdom a being of unlimited power would be most inapt to the control of numberless free and accountable agents; but without power equal to His intelligence, a being of infinite wisdom, baffled by His own designs, and lost in the immensity of His own purposes, would be supremely and infinitely miserable. Their combination in equal measure, therefore, as it is inseparable from His nature, is required alike in order to His rectitude and His felicity. Each has its own sphere of action, and each its standard of independent excellence, It is power which brings out of nothing; wisdom which arrays and beautifies. Power is the source of elements; wisdom, of affinities; power, of innate forces and undirected energies; wisdom, of useful adaptation s and beneficial results. Power might create a chaos; wisdom must fabricate a world. His power finds its witnesses in the lightning and the whirlwind; His wisdom, in those delicate and just proportions which fit the most destructive of elements to sustain and nourish life. Perhaps it is power which most astonishes us in the productions of nature; wisdom, which excites our greatest admiration in the disposals of providence; but the union of both, which we behold, with the sublimest ravishment, in the mystery of redemption. It is a high and sovereign exercise of power to pardon sin, but an arrangement of profoundest wisdom to make that pardon consistent with the honour of the Lawgiver, and the security of His dominion. Power might rescue; wisdom would redeem. We behold almighty power raising up from amongst the nations the ancestry of the Messiah, preserving His lineage unbroken through so many ages, and fulfilling, by continued miracle, what had once been uttered by an unalterable decree: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and to Him shall the gathering of the people be." But we discern not less of wisdom, so ordering all things by the cooperation of natural causes, that, when the long-looked-for Messiah actually came, the state, both of the world and of His own people, should be such as to insure His rejection, and to issue even in His death; and yet to make the consequences of His ministry the most extensively effectual, causing their tidings to spread and their influence to be experienced with the greatest speed and certainty, over every land. How illustriously is the agency of omnipotence revealed, when at length, though lifted up upon a Cross, He becomes the Conqueror of death, the Spoiler of the grave, the Deliverer of captive souls, and the Emancipator of an enslaved world! And yet, conspicuous as are these discoveries, the features of unerring and awful wisdom are at least equally discernible. It is the part of such wisdom to attain the greatest ends without profuse or ineffective expenditure; to restrain the premature disclosure of its objects; to provide, infallibly, against emergent occasions and contingent events; to neutralise opposition and hindrance; or to convert opponent forces into auxiliaries and useful allies; and thus to secure its results, in manner exempt from complication or embarrassment, as well as from ostentatious or unmeaning display. Now, in each of these is revealed "the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God," in the process of redeeming mercy. We select but one further discovery of the union of these attributes as exhibited in the gospel, viz., in the practical effect of all upon the hearts and conduct of men. When God had created the matter of the globe, and was about to put the stupendous mass first into motion, there remained one problem as yet unresolved, on which its welfare and permanency were essentially dependent. It was this: What was that specific direction in which an impulse might be given which should originate, by the same act, those complicated yet inseparable movements which insure the perpetuity of its place in the general system, and the regularity of those changes which are demanded for its own immediate service? Here, then, was an occasion for the combined and equal manifestation both of power and wisdom. Neither could accomplish the purpose, separately from its fellow. Hence followed the sweet interchange of day and night, the grateful vicissitude of seasons, the admirable diversity of climate, soil, and temperature, the perpetual freshness of the air and ocean, the inexhaustible plenitude of life, its constant renovation, and its numberless diversity. All was secured in a moment, but destined to continue, without interruption or rest, until the same hand should interpose to stay its progress or to change its course. Such is the analogous phenomenon, but presented on a sublimer scale and in connection with more awful elements, in the world, not of matter, but mind, and in relation, not to the physical events of nature, but the destiny of the imperishable soul. The problem here was to determine what was that mighty impulse which, in one act, should combine all that was essential to its separate happiness with all that was necessary to the order of the moral universe; what that mysterious movement which, once impressed upon it, should for ever continue unexpended, securing the completeness of its nature, together with the perpetuity of its relations; how the energy of duty could be united with the calm of dependence; rectitude of action, with simplicity of trust; quenchless aspirations, with unresisting submission; the consciousness of perfect liberty, with the necessity of unceasing obedience. That impulse could be imparted only through the agency of love. All was effected by the Cross. And oh! what marvellous transformations attest the greatness of that one and all-commanding impulse! What beneficial consequences are insured through the whole compass of our spiritual existence! What rich and happy productions spring up together, to reveal both its energy and its design! Hence it is that love derives her flame, adoration her incense, gratitude her song, hope her fairest visions, fear her most purifying terrors, humility and patience their most permanent motives and firmest support. Reason here finds the loftiest inquiry, contemplation the sublimest object, memory the sweetest recollections. And thus the power of the Cross prevails to sanctify the whole character both of thought and action; just as the same sap which supplies the root with moisture becomes verdure in the foliage, fragrance and beauty in the flower. Sin is hence made, not so much to be shunned because it is dangerous as to be hated because it is unholy; while the performance of duty is secured rather by its congeniality with the tendencies of a renewed nature, than by its mere connection with the acquisition of happiness. And the manner in which these results are wrought out is one equally applicable to every order of intellect and every condition of society. Besides, the just and practical belief of these truths is far from being limited by the boundaries of their strictly intellectual revelation. They operate to save and purify, not because they are rational or beautiful, but because they are Divine; being in harmony with our whole spiritual nature, and proceeding from the same hand which has fashioned the constitution of our being. Many a voyager is therefore guided by these lights from heaven, by whom the wonders of their mechanism were never penetrated; and their "sweet influences" are often realised where their mystic glories are unknown. And now behold it in its not less wonderful effects upon our social affinities and conduct, and on the relation of the individual to the good of the whole. To soften barbarian ferocity, to refine the habits of the civilised, to strengthen the bands of human sympathy, and to entwine more firmly the links of universal brotherhood; these are the methods by which it insures an unrestricted diffusion, and an ever-widening control. Let us now attempt to deduce and apply to practical purposes. III. THE REFLECTIONS WHICH THIS REVIEW IS, IN BOTH ITS PORTIONS, FITTED TO SUPPLY. 1. It cannot, I think, be doubted that a sanguine calculator, judging from the rapidity and number of the first triumphs of the gospel, would have expected, before this period, its far more wide and unobstructed diffusion. "Such," he might say, "were its effects when it began to be proclaimed among the nations. Why have those effects in so large a measure disappeared? But the calculation would be made in ignorance both of the gospel and of human nature. Behold what it is really accomplishing wherever it is faithfully and simply preached. Or let its results be estimated in their more essential character. The experience of twenty centuries has borne uniform testimony to this truth, that no other apparatus is adapted to the momentous work of human renovation; and that even where this is employed its efficacy depends, to a very large extent, on its application being unencumbered and alone. 2. It is natural to inquire, Has the Church been at all times duly considerate of the method in which only it might anticipate prosperity, in its efforts for the diffusion of the gospel, and how it might legitimately commend it to approbation and confidence? As a matter of Divine revelation, we should surely present it without addition or retrenchment. Even in its external accompaniments and the circumstances attendant on its ministration, we should preserve the same subordination of all things to the discovery of its native greatness. The stateliness of sumptuous buildings, and the splendours of a gorgeous ritual, are little in harmony with the religion of the Cross. The effulgent beauty of the gospel requires not, and its majesty forbids, such enhancements. 3. We cannot but admire the method adopted by the first advocates of Christianity to secure the diffusion of their principles, and thus learn in what manner to pursue the same object for ourselves. They presented them, as we have seen, with the directness of an unwavering and solemn proclamation. Must man be wooed into acquiescence, or enticed into belief, when it is not speculative principles, but stupendous facts, on which his redemption is suspended? Or must the gate of life be set open with the pomp of ceremony and the voice of music, before the outcast will condescend to enter it, though the avenger of blood is behind him and the sword of justice is already flaming and unsheathed? Besides, if we are to judge what might have been the result of such accommodation by its effect in modern times, the expedient is one presenting little claim to have been employed at such a period, or by instructors so prepared. 4. How powerful is the inducement, and how plain the directory, to seek for ourselves an interest in the blessings of this great salvation! If it be the production of such wisdom and power our hope can never be disappointed. 5. What a test is supplied in this description to ascertain whether we have truly received the spirit of the gospel! If it be adjusted by infinite wisdom and armed with infinite power, then what should have been its effects, and what have they actually been? Has it conquered our vices, eradicated our evil propensities, humbled our presumption? Again, is it unresisted and absolute? Is one evil not supplanted by another, but all, increasingly, by this new element of good? Is the effect of Christian principle consistent and uniform? Does it pervade our total conduct and impart its character to all our actions? If not, what is our religion but a whited sepulchre, beautiful without, but full of death within? Let us never, then, rest satisfied with dubious or inoperative principles. 6. We are taught how to count on the future progress and final triumphs of the gospel. Thus organised and thus sustained, it might appear to guarantee even its own perpetuity. What need have we to shrink because of the ravings of blasphemy, the surmises of false wisdom, the sorceries of perverted genius, the sneers of wit, the antipathies of taste, the caprice of passion, the assaults of unbelief? Has not the gospel already encountered enemies at least as formidable? Finally, we cannot fail to be reminded how great must be the glory wherein all shall issue. What the consummation when this scene of wonders shall be perfectly unfolded! (R. S. McAll, D. D.)
2. To save sinners. 3. To subdue sin and Satan. 4. To establish His kingdom. 5. To remove the curse and make all new. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. It would seem to follow from the infinitude of His creatively-efficient power and the immensity of His nature that He must be impassible. Besides, He is spirit only, and what we call force cannot touch Him. 2. But after all there must be some kind of passibleness in God, else there could be no genuine character in Him. A cast-iron Deity could not command our love and reverence. The beauty of God is that He feels appropriately toward everything; that He feels badness as badness, and goodness as goodness — pained by one, pleased by the other. A very large share of all the virtues have, in fact, an element of passibility in them, and without that element they could not exist. Indeed, greatness of character culminates in the right proportion and co-ordination of these passive elements. And God is great as being great in feeling. 3. We raise a distinction between what we call the active and the passive virtues. If I impart a charity, that is my active virtue; if I receive an insult without wishing to revenge it, that is my passive virtue. And without this in its varieties we should be only no-characters, dry logs of wood instead of Christian men. Or, if we kept on acting still, we should only be active machines; for what better is the active giving of a charity if there be no fellow-feeling or pitying passion with it to make it a charity? Now God must have these passive virtues as truly as men. How, then, shall we conceive Him to have them when He is, in fact, impassible? The salvation is here; God, being physically impassible, is yet morally passible, i.e., He is a Being whose very perfection it is that He feels the moral significance of things. Be can feel ingratitude when He cannot feel a blow. He can loathe impurity when He cannot be injured by any assault. He is pleased and gratified by acts of sacrifice when He could not be comforted or enriched by benevolence. A thermometer is not more exactly and delicately passive to heat than He is to the merit and demerit of all actions. This, accordingly, is the representation given of Him in the Scriptures. Thus He is blessed according to the merit and beauty of whatever is done that is right. He smelled a sweet savour in Noah's sacrifice. He has pleasure in them that hope in His mercy. He is tender to the obedient, pitying them that fear Him as a father pitieth his children. On the other hand, by how many pains of feeling does He suffer in His relation to scenes of human wrong. The sighing of the prisoner comes before Him to command His sympathy. In all the afflictions of His people He is afflicted Himself. And, in the same manner, He is said to be exercised by all manner of unpleasant sentiments in relation to all manner of evil doings; sore displeased, wroth, &c. 4. But this painful feeling in regard to evil — what is this but to assume the unhappiness, or, at least, the diminished happiness of God? How, then, shall we save His infinite blessedness? By just dropping out our calculations of arithmetic and looking at facts. It seems to be good arithmetic that, if any subtraction is made from God's infinite happiness, He cannot be infinitely happy. No, on the contrary, He may even be the more blessed because f the subtraction, for to see that He feels rightly towards evil, despite of the pain suffered from it, to know that He is pouring the fulness of His love upon it, to be studying now, in conscious sacrifice, a saving mercy — out of this springs up a joy deeper than the pain, and, by a fixed law of holy compensation, the sea of His blessedness is kept continually full. All moral natures exist under this law of compensation. To receive evil rightly is to master it, to be rightly pained by it is to be kept in sovereign joy. II. Thus far I have spoken of God's passive virtue, principally as concerned in feeling towards what is moral just according to its quality. But THERE IS A MORAL PASSIVITY VASTLY HIGHER AND REACHING FURTHER, VIZ., A PASSIVITY OF MERCY OR SACRIFICE. 1. In this a good or perfect being not only feels toward good or evil according to what it is, but willingly endures evil, to make it what it is not — to recover and heal it. No extraordinary purity is necessary to make any one sensible of disgust in the contemplation of what is vile, but to submit one's ease to the endurance of wickedness, in order to recover and subdue it, requires what is far more difficult. 2. Just here, then, we begin to open upon the true meaning of "Christ the power of God." There is no so great power even among men as that which conquers evil by enduring evil. Just here evil becomes insupportable to itself. It can argue against everything but suffering patience: this disarms it. All its fire is spent. Christ crucified is the power of God, because He shows God in self-sacrifice, because He brings out and makes historical in the world God's passive virtue. By this it is that He opens our human feeling, bad and blind as it is, pouring Himself into its deepest recesses and bathing it with His cleansing, new-creating influence. There is the highest efficiency in it for it is moral power, not physical force. Hence it is that so much is said of Christ as a new-discovered power — the power of God unto salvation: the Son of God with power; the power of Christ. The power is conceived to be such that Christ is really our new Creator. We are His workmanship created unto good works. 3. But how does it appear that so great efficacy is added to the known character of God by the life and death of Christ? Was not everything shown to us in His death explicitly revealed in the Old Testament? God was represented there as being duly affected by all evil according to its true nature; displeased, abhorrent, &c. But to have these things ascribed formally to God is one thing, and a very different to have them lived and acted historically in the world. Perfections that are set before us in mere epithets have little significance; but perfections lived and acted before the senses, under social conditions, have quite another grade of meaning. And if this be true respecting God's mere passivities of sensibility to right and wrong, how much truer is it when we speak of Him in sacrifice. No such impression or conception of God was ever drawn out, as a truth positive, from any of the epithets we have cited. And nature gives it no complexion of evidence. We could almost as soon look for sacrifice in a steam-engine as in nature. How necessary, original, powerful, then, is the God of sacrifice — He that endures evil and takes it as a burden to bear — when we see Him struggling under the load. Somewhere there is a wondrous power hid in the Cross! And the suffering is physical — a suffering under force. III. IF, THEN, GOD IS PHYSICALLY IMPASSIBLE, HOW DOES IT APPEAR THAT HE IS ANY WAY EXPRESSED IN THE PASSION OF CHRIST? how does the passion present Him as in sacrifice? 1. By the physical impassibility of God is not meant that He cannot suffer by consent or self-subjection, but only that He cannot be subjected involuntarily. To deny His liberty to exist under assumed conditions whenever there are any sufficient reasons for so doing might even be a greater infringement of His power than to maintain His natural passibility. 2. We can clearly enough see that there is no difficulty in the Passion of Christ which does not also exist in the Incarnation itself. How can the Infinite Being God exist under finite conditions? How (for that is only another form of the same question) can the Impassible suffer? And yet it would be a most severe assumption to say that God cannot, to express Himself and forward His negotiation with sin, subject Himself, in some way mysteriously qualified, to just these impossible conditions. 3. Be this all as it may, there are ways of knowing that are shorter and wiser than the processes of the head. In this Passion of Jesus it must be enough that I look on the travail of a Divine feeling, and behold the spectacle of God in sacrifice. This I see and nothing less. He is visibly not a man. I feel a divinity in Him. He floods me with a sense of God, such as I receive not from all God's works and worlds beside. And when I stand by His Cross I want no logical endorsement; enough that I can see the heart of God, and in all this wondrous Passion know Him as enduring the contradiction of sinners. Why should I debate the matter in my heart when I have the God of sacrifice in my heart? He that endures me so, subdues me, and I yield.O Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world! what Thou didst bear in Thy blessed hands and feet I cannot bear. Take it all away. Hide me in the depths of Thy suffering love. Conclusion: 1. Here let us learn to conceive more fitly the greatness of God. His greatness culminates in sacrifice. If He were only wise, omnipotent, eternal, just; even that would present Him as an object worthy of profoundest reverence, but in the Passion of Jesus He is more. There His power is force; here it is sacrifice. There He astonishes the eye; here He touches and transforms the heart. The God of mere amplitude will do to amuse the fancy of the ingenious — the God of sacrifice only can approve Himself to a sinner. 2. And here it is that our gospel comes to be so great a power. It is not, on one hand, the power of omnipotence falling in secretly regenerative blows. Neither is it, on the other, any mere appeal of gratitude drawing the soul to God by the consideration of what He has done. No; this wonderful power is God in sacrifice. This is the power that has new-created and sent home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls. 3. And you that have known this dawning of the Lord, what a certification have you in this sacrifice of God's sympathy! How intensely personal He is to you! Go to Him in your every trouble. When the loads of conscious sin are heaviest on yon, and you seem even to be sinking in its mires, address Him as the God of sacrifice. Have it also as your lesson, that you yourself will be most in power when readiest in the enduring of evil; that you will bear fruit and be strong, not by your force, not by your address, not by your words, but only when you are with Christ in sacrifice. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
1. The idea of Duty. In the moral mystery of the Passion we see this special characteristic in the Representative Man. He perfectly subordinated every sinless desire of ease, or wish for deliverance, to the fulfilment of the infinite claim of duty, though it drove Him to His death. 2. The idea of Love. I am assured in the gloom of the Passion that "God is Love." And this force of the Passion has strength to attract the soul to the Redeemer with infinite desire. Love implies generosity of service; "loved me, gave Himself for me," rouses the generous answer "love for love." Now this is a spiritual power of the Passion drawing and enabling me to love God. 3. The idea of Holiness. Thus we name that perfect loveliness which is the sum of the moral glory of God. Now to the creature there is a possibility of the grasp and apprehension of the heavenly beauty. The fact was seen in Jesus crucified, and by the infinite merits of the Passion is guaranteed to man a share in the grace, in the life of the Man of men. Jesus crucified is the source, the promise of this power. II. IN THE CROSS THERE IS DIVINE POWER. 1. I have watched the wild waves of an Atlantic storm. The wind was screaming to a pitch of tempest, the clouds rolled mass on mass of inky blackness, only relieved by a glow of vivid fire. The waves towered high, then sank again in restless mountains and unstable valleys of seething sea. A splendid spectacle! the spectacle of nature in exercise of unrestrained tremendous power! 2. I have watched the great engines in Chicago pumping up with steady unabated beat their three hundred million gallons hour by hour from the central depths of Michigan, for the use of that strangest city of the New World. 3. I have started turning into the Scuola di San Rocco at Venice, brought suddenly face to face with that grand and pathetic picture of the Crucified, displayed there these centuries in living colour from the genius of Tintoretto. 4. Nature, Mechanical Invention, Art — each show the mystery of power. But the power that consoles the sunken spirit, kindles the heart's best affections, changes and invigorates the stern or failing will, and transforms the corrupted soul to the likeness of the Divine ideal — a power moral, spiritual, supernatural — that is the greatest of all. Ah! that is found in the Crucified; it becomes the possession of the creature by union with Christ. III. IN THE CROSS IS THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION. 1. What is it to be saved? Is it to make a satisfactory investment in insurance against final punishment, when here in our mortal pilgrimage we have, so to speak, "taken our fling," and passion and ambition have had their unrestricted play? Certainly not.(1) It is to be placed habitually on a higher platform of thought, and to be awakened to a sincerity of manly and abiding sorrow for aught in our motives or actions unworthy or wrong.(2) It is to have that light of the heart, that strength of the will, that eager purity of the affections, by the force of which we breast the waves of sorrow, sustain ourselves with meekness under the strain of success, and in the darkest hours, as in the brightest moments, do not fail in unselfishness and truth.(3) It is to rise out of the ruts of convention; it is to strangle the treachery of self; it is to have the clear eye and spiritual understanding of the inhabitant of eternity; to be advancing in fitness to play our part as citizens of that blessed commonwealth which is quickly coming — "the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness."(4) In one word, it is to have the heart of a man, as his Creator conceived him, pure, tender, and loving; it is with that heart to love God supremely, perfectly; and in God to lose self in love for others — that is to be saved! 2. Can this be ours? Thou hast answered, "It can," O my Jesus! my Redeemer! The lesson of it comes from the Crucified; its power, its possibility from the precious blood. (Canon Knox-Little.)
1. Christianity is the only historical religion. Buddhism, Brahminism, and Mahomedanism have a history, but Christianity alone is founded upon a history. It could not have arisen anywhere else than where it did. It was the outgrowth of Judaism, and the realisation of the Messianic idea. Christianity is historical, too, because it is founded upon the history of Jesus. You cannot separate Christianity from Christ. Its doctrines are simply the interpretation of Christ's history. 2. There was a preparation everywhere for the spread of Christianity, if it could prove its truth. The civilised world was then under the rule of Rome. The old religions were losing their hold, so there was a disposition to listen to a new religious claimant. There was also peace throughout the empire. There was in providence "the fulness of time." But these favouring circumstances would not have availed if the Christian preachers could not have vindicated the truth of the history on which it rested. 3. While Christianity had strong passions, selfish interests and prejudices to overcome, it had yet, in man's moral and spiritual necessities, wants which it professed to meet. And now, let us proceed to consider the conflicts which Christianity had to wage, and in which it showed its power and attested its truth. I. THE CONFLICT WITH A CORRUPT JUDAISM. With the Judaism of Moses and the prophets Christianity could have no conflict. "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets," &c. 1. But that a contest with contemporary Judaism was inevitable will be seen in the study of its leading features. Note —(1) The prevalent view as to the character and mission of the Messiah. The Messiah was the hope of the Jews. But they misread the prophecies; and they invested Him with a worldly dignity which was never claimed for Him.(2) It did not enter into their minds that there would be any material change in their worship under the Messiah. There were still, they believed, to be the priests, the temple, and its imposing ritual.(3) The Jews had long been God's peculiar people; and they believed that they would still continue to be so. 2. When the Messiah came, where, they asked, was His kingly splendour? Where was the national restoration His coming was to bring? But the apostles taught the kingship of Jesus; that salvation was only by believing in Him; that the sacrificial worship was to cease; that salvation was for Gentiles as well as Jews. How would you expect this religion to be received by the Jews? Just as we find it was received, with a contempt and hatred which soon took form in a bitter persecution. But in spite of the whole power of the hierarchy, and the prejudices and persecutions of the people, Christianity did root itself in Jerusalem. The bitter opposition encountered here was met wherever the apostles found Jews. But by and by the new faith conquered; the Church supplanted the synagogue. II. THE CONFLICT WITH PHILOSOPHY TO THE GENTILE WORLD. When Christ came, the literary activity in the Roman empire was great; and in the main centres of population there were schools, or colleges, which were crowded with students. 1. Let us look, then, at the teaching of these schools, and we shall see what Christianity had to encounter. The Stoics, while holding that God was the soul of the world, were yet virtually pantheists. In morals, they were distinguished by their austerity. They considered that a man had reached perfection when he was indifferent alike to pleasure and pain. The Epicureans, on the contrary, were practically atheistic. Having nothing either to hope or fear from death, they set themselves to extract from this world all its pleasure. Their maxim was: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 2. Now where was the likelihood of Christianity commending itself to Stoic or Epicurean, if beneath its doctrine there had not been the solid ground of incontestable fact? The idea of Greek philosophers accepting a Jew as their teacher, and a crucified Jew as their Saviour! Nor were they more conciliated when they had a fuller exposition of Christian truth and duty, and came to see how much was demanded of them in the crucifixion of all the lusts of the flesh. And Paul was not blind to this. But Christianity triumphed. The philosophers could not controvert its facts; and humbling though its teaching was to their pride, and opposed to their passions, it yet won its way. And before many years went by, some of the ablest and most cultured of them were found among the defenders of Christianity. III. THE CONFLICT WITH PAGAN RELIGIONS. 1. These were in doctrine and worship directly opposed to Christianity. The heathen were surrounded with gods, and their whole public and private life was interwoven with the service of these gods. The old pagan religion had entwined itself round the entire man. And then the ceremonial of heathen worship was most imposing. It had its magnificent temples. Moreover, this old religion was patronised and upheld by the State. 2. Now the very claim of Christianity was fitted to arouse the votaries of this idolatry against it. It declared that there is no god but the God who is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Here it would tolerate no compromise, would allow of no divided homage. And then Christianity had neither splendid temple, nor imposing service. It came recommended neither by the worldly greatness of its founder, nor that of its apostles. It demanded an entire revolution of their life, a revolution which could only have the effect of impoverishing tens of thousands who were fattening on the revenues of idolatry. Had the gospel history not been true, no attempt could have been more hopeless than to overthrow the old idolatry. But mighty although the forces opposed to Christianity were, yet it overthrew them. IV. THE CONFLICT WITH THE LICENTIOUS SPIRIT OF THE AGE. Under the old pagan religions, a man might be held to be religious without being moral. But under Christ morality is a part of religion. Christianity threw its light on the evil of sin, disclosed its awful doom, and called on men as they valued their eternal peace to yield to that Divine Saviour who had died for them and risen again, and in simple faith to give their hearts to be ruled by Him, to be made holy by Him. It was no cheap attachment which it sought. Now, could the apostles ever have gained converts from the degraded masses if they had not been able to show them that the gospel history was true; and if the people had not felt that there was that in it which spake as nothing else had done to their conscience and their heart? Conclusion: 1. The success of Christianity in the face of these forces is thus a conclusive proof that it is from God. But that that conclusion may be confirmed, we must look at the rapidity with which Christianity spread. Hardly had the third century closed, when the Emperor Maximinus — one of the bitterest enemies — was constrained to say, in one of his edicts, that almost all "had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new sect." 2. And what has been its history since? A chequered but most instructive one. Other religions, like those of Buddhism and Mahomedanism, have risen and spread widely; but they have shown that they have no reviving power. Wherever they have decayed, they have never been restored. But Christianity has in it a power of revival which causes it to send forth new branches. Yes, while the old religions are dead or dying, Christianity is living and extending. 3. And this progress is precisely what was predicted. When a reformer, who is inflamed with enthusiasm, begins his work, he usually anticipates a speedy triumph. But Jesus buoyed up His people with no such hopes. He told them that they would have tribulation in the world, but assured them that ultimately His kingdom would triumph. And the result has been in accordance with the prophecy. (A. Oliver, B. A.)
2. In His incarnation. 3. In His mediation. 4. In His exaltation. 5. In the application of the gospel. 6. In its glorious results. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. An infinite satisfaction was required, consequently. there was but one nature that could present it. And here is that foundation on which the Divinity of Jesus rests. 2. But another nature was requisite for suffering; for Deity, abstractly considered, cannot suffer. And not only was suffering required, but human suffering; the penalty attached to the transgression of the law was suited to a human nature. But it was necessary that this human nature should be pure. A "holy thing" was required: the lamb was to be without blemish and without spot. 3. It was, moreover, necessary that these two natures should be constituted one person; and the union of the two natures was as perfect as the infinite wisdom of God required; for there was no change or confusion of the natures. The Deity, with all its ineffable glory was not deteriorated by its union with humanity. I know that there is wisdom displayed in every evolution of the Divine character; and great as it was to make man, it was greater to make God-man. II. IN THE GLORIOUS RESULTS OF HIS ATONEMENT. 1. The consummation of God's great purpose to redeem man. The great redeeming plan commenced with the Father, who "so loved the world," &c. And here is the difficulty — God is an infinitely righteous Being. God saw the fearful havoc which sin had wrought, and how was He to repair it? Justice required the execution of the penalty. There were but two modes of proceeding. The wisdom of God might have been displayed in destruction. But, oh, how much more illustriously does His wisdom shine in the recovery of maul 2. The manifestation of the Divine attributes in their perfect and harmonised glory. Here you behold justice, truth, goodness, love; but they are altogether. When did we ever behold such a spectacle? The attributes of the Divine Being had been displayed in angelic history — all His amiable attributes, in reference to those who kept their first estate, and all His fearful attributes in the history of those who rebelled; but there were two separate and distinct theatres for these revelations. Nor does the human history furnish a parallel. The path of providence has occasionally exhibited one attribute and then another. Sometimes justice, as in the deluge, or in the overthrow of the cities of the plain; sometimes truth, as in the emancipation of the Hebrews; at one time, stern justice, and then at another, smiling mercy; but it was reserved for the gospel to exhibit them in combined and harmonious lustre; and when Jesus came to redeem our world, all God's attributes came rejoicingly with Him: "Justice and mercy met together — righteousness and peace embraced each other." 3. The triumphant manner in which our Lord conquered His enemies. Christ met Satan in His own way — the Cross was Satan's own weapon. But by that very Cross was the illustrious seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head, and destroying the powers of darkness; and it was by the Cross that Christ spoiled and triumphed over principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, and held them up to angelic scorn. 4. The firmer establishment of the Divine government. The Divine government is a government of motive, and all other kinds of government are coercive and irrational. Was there ever such a revelation of God's love as that which beamed on the Cross? And does not love beget love? Where much is forgiven, much is loved; and such a view of God attaches all spirits to Him. III. IN THE PRACTICAL DISPENSATION OF HIS GOSPEL. The Church, you know, is the theatre by which the wisdom of God is made known to principalities and powers. Angels are our fellow-students, and what do they see? First of all the agents — poor Galileans, with nothing to offer to the learned, nothing to the commercial man, nothing to the politician. If the first preachers of the gospel had been invested with all the attractive learning of the schools, the most splendid truths of the gospel would have been obscured by human greatness; but the less there was of man, the more there was of God. And do you not perceive how strikingly the wisdom of God is manifested in the adaptation of the discoveries of Himself to our conceptions? There sits a poor fatherless child, there a poor widow, yonder a desolate orphan; and the gospel proffers them all that consolation which God only can impart. But, besides this, there is the accompanying influence. To the mere eye of philosophy this is nothing; but a poor man comes in, and he gazes, and there is nothing to strike him; but by and by the scales fall from his eyes, by and by a new influence comes over the heart, and he exclaims, "God is in this place, and I knew it not!" Witness the poor publican, smiting on his breast, groaning out the sinner's only plea, "God be merciful to me a sinner" (T. Lessey.)
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
2. By the expression, "the wisdom of God," thus applied to Christ, is not merely meant that He is infinitely wise. Suppose we have an able architect, and a goodly palace built by him, into which he has thrown his whole genius; we say of himself, he is skilful, but we say of his work, there is his skill, there is the outward personification of all that is in him, and without which you could not have known what is in him. Of other buildings erected by him we may say there is some skill; but only of his masterpiece should we say that it is the skill or the wisdom of the man. So with the poet and his magnum opus. Thus it is with regard to Christ. In the works of creation God has displayed fragments of His wisdom: but in Christ He has summed up and put forth the whole of it. 3. Wisdom is one of the last things which we are in the habit of connecting with the name of Christ. We connect with it salvation, pardon, life, righteousness, love. Yet it is wisdom that God so especially associates with Christ. "He, of God, is made unto us wisdom." "In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." When God looks at Him, that which He especially sees in Him is wisdom. 4. The subject is a very wide one; we take up here only that section of it which relates to the person of the Christ.(1) In this there are two parts — the Divine and the human; and these, both in themselves and in their union, distinction, adjustment, co-operation, harmony, make up that glorious Person. The whole Creator is in Him, and the whole creature is in Him; yet both retaining the properties distinct and unchanged by the union. In man is seen God; in God is seen man. All that is glorious in the Godhead, and all that is excellent in manhood, is gathered into one person, and fully exhibited in Him. By this union these two parts are revealed to each other; heaven is revealed to earth, and earth is revealed to heaven.(2) It seems to be union only at a single point; for it is with one body and one soul that the Godhead is united. But that single point is enough; that one link unites the natures. In order to moor a ship we do not require a thousand cables, each fastened to a separate plank or spar; one strong cable, fixed at one point, makes fast the whole, and connects the entire vessel with its anchor.(3) Nor was it with one particular stage of our being that this union was formed; but with all; from the first moment of conception in the womb to death and the grave. Had the Son of God united Himself with manhood in its maturity, there would have been no union and no sympathy with the different stages of human life and growth. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
II. THAT UPON HIS BEING ENLIGHTENED WITH THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD AND OF HIS DUTY, HE MUST NECESSARILY BE IMPRESSED WITH A DEEP SENSE OF HIS OWN DEPRAVITY AND GUILT. III. THAT HE HAS A CONSCIOUSNESS OF MORAL OBLIGATION, AND IDEAS OF MORAL EXCELLENCE, WHICH EXPERIENCE TELLS HIM HE CANNOT BY HIS OWN EFFORTS FULFIL AND REALISE. IV. THAT HE IS SUBJECTED TO MANY AFFLICTIONS, FOR WHICH, UPON THE PRINCIPLES OF REASON, HE CANNOT ACCOUNT, NOR DISCOVER TO WHAT GOOD PURPOSE THEY TEND. V. THAT ALTHOUGH HE FEELS BOTH PRESAGES OF, AND DESIRES AFTER A FUTURE STATE OF BEING, YET, FROM THE LIGHT OF NATURE, HE NEITHER DERIVES ASSURANCE OF ITS EXISTENCE, NOR ANY CERTAIN INFORMATION CONCERNING IT. (John Kemp.)
1. Objectively. As He alone is the object about which all true wisdom is conversant (Colossians 2:3). Wisdom is either Divine or human, the wisdom of God or of men. He is the wisdom of God, as the power of God (chap. 1 Corinthians 1:24), because the Divine power and the Divine wisdom were never so manifest in anything that ever He did as they were in Christ, that is, in the great work of our redemption by Him. All His works are made in wisdom (Psalm 104:24; Proverbs 3:19). He governs the world in wisdom, wisely ordering all events to the great end of His own glory and His people's good. But above all, in our redemption by Christ. In Ephesians 3:10 it is called the manifold wisdom of God, such as angels wonder at. He alone is the object of all our true wisdom. There are other things about which wisdom is conversant, but none like Christ (1 Corinthians 2:2; Philippians 3:7, 8). 2. Effectively, as He is the author and finisher of all that in us which is true wisdom. Now, that is grace; grace is true wisdom, and nothing else is so. How is it said He is made unto us of God wisdom? (1) (2) II. THE PRACTICAL INFERENCES. If Christ be made wisdom to those that are in Him, and only to those, then — 1. They that are not in Him are not wise. Nabal is their name, and folly is with them. Christless people are fools. I prove it by three arguments:(1) They choose like fools. Is he not a fool, that when a pebble is offered to him by one and a pearl by another chooses the pebble and refuses the pearl? Was not Esau a fool in parting with his birthright for a mess of pottage?(2) They count like fools. They count themselves wise, and religious people a company of fools, when themselves are the fools, and the religious wise (John 7:48, 49; Luke 18:10). They count upon time to come as their own, and presume accordingly; when, alas! it is not so. They count upon going to heaven when they die, but are miserably mistaken.(3). They carry it like fools. The carriage of a fool is vain and frothy; there is no seriousness in him. He carries it like a fool that hugs his worst enemy to his bosom, and turns his back upon his best friend; and doth not the sinner so? 2. They that are sensible of their want of wisdom, and would be wise, may learn hence whither to go, and what to do, that they may attain it. The way is to apply thyself to the blessed Jesus, who is made unto us of God wisdom. And plead this text — Lord, art Thou not made unto us of God wisdom? What need is there of this plea? Universal need, every day, in everything. They that have most have need of more.(1) We cannot carry it as we should in any relation without wisdom, neither as superiors, inferiors, nor equals. What need have magistrates of wisdom (Psalm 2:9)! A conviction of this made Solomon ask as he did (1 Kings 3:7-10). Ministers arc in the same situation (Colossians 1:28). What a plague are foolish shepherds (Zechariah 11:15). So are masters of families, husbands, wives, parents.(2) Nor can we carry it as we should, in any condition, without wisdom. If we prosper and thrive in the world, there is need of wisdom, to manage it so that we be not ensnared, not destroyed by it. If in affliction it is necessary, that we may keep the mean between fainting and despising.(3) Nor can we carry it as we should in any duty to be done to God or man without wisdom. If we pray, we need wisdom that we do not ask amiss.(4) Nor can we carry it as we should in any difficult case that lies before us, nor tell how to determine for the best, without wisdom (Ecclesiastes 10:10). 3. Here is matter of unspeakable comfort to all true believers, that Jesus Christ is made wisdom, that is, as some interpret it, that all that infinite wisdom that is in Him as God, and all that infused wisdom which He had as God-man wherein He grew (Luke 2:52), is all made over to us, to be employed for our good.Apply it —(1) To our particular, private affairs, especially in the great turns of our lives. If thou art in Christ, He will order them for thee, and He will order them wisely (Ephesians 1:11), according to the counsel of His will. Therefore submit to His disposals quietly, patiently; of choice, cheerfully; wisdom would have it so.(2) To the public affairs of the Church and nation. (Philip Henry.)
II. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
2. The expression stirs some feeling of mystery. More is suggested than the understanding clearly grasps. But there is something here that is plain enough to common sense, and, to earnest moods at least, very welcome. How many weeks will any of us be able to live without coming to some spot where it will be felt as a rational comfort to believe that all our way was ordered for us by Him who sees the end from the beginning? If there is a "calling," there is one who calls, and who when calling has a right to be heard. It follows that there is one object in existence so pre-eminent that to accomplish that is to fulfil the great purpose of our being, and to fail of that is to miss the chief end. It is only triflers who conceive of their life as without a plan, and have never heard the call of the Master, "Go, work to-day in My vineyard." So true is this, that it has been observed of the most efficient and commanding men in the history of the world, that they were apt to represent themselves as led on by some Power beyond themselves — a demon, a genius, a destiny, or a Deity. But the apostle refers to something higher and holier than any dreamy sentiment like this. Standing on the verities of the gospel, speaking to those that have nominally assented to it, he summons them to a more solemn and searching sense of what it requires of them: "Ye see your calling, brethren." The truth is clear; you see it. It is not of men, but of God, who calls. Christ has lived, and He asks living followers. 3. It is remarkable how perseveringly the New Testament clings to this particular conception of the Christian relation. Disciples are said to be "the called of Jesus," "called out of darkness into marvellous light," "called unto liberty," "called to peace," "called to eternal life," "called" first, to be afterwards "justified and glorified," "called to inherit a blessing," "called in one body" and "one hope," "called by God's grace" to "holiness," to "His kingdom and glory," with "a holy calling," "a heavenly calling." The apostles are "called" from one place, work, suffering, joy, to another. To "walk worthy of the vocation" is made the business of a careful conscience. To make our "calling and election sure" is the victory of our warfare. The promise that subdues all anxiety as to the result is "Faithful is He which calleth you." Notice the prominent teachings of this language. I. THAT THE BUSINESS OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE IS SOMETHING SPECIAL — a "calling" by itself, to be distinguished from all other occupations. A Christian character springs from its own root, grows by its own laws, and bears its own peculiar fruit. It must have a beginning, which the New Testament everywhere speaks of as being born into a new life. Then there must be a growing into greater strength and goodness, without end. Here, therefore, is a new principle of conduct. It is a Divine calling. Paul speaks as if no pursuit were to be thought of in comparison with it. II. THAT THIS IDEA OF A "CALLING" INDIVIDUALISES NOT ONLY THE CHRISTIAN OBLIGATION, BUT THE CHRISTIAN PERSON. Paul had no conception of a social Christianity apart from the personal righteousness of the men that make up society. It is your calling. It is quite vain for us to congratulate each other on a state of general integrity and order if we tolerate depravity in ourselves or the class to which we belong. If we have a community here of a thousand people, in which we want to see the Christian graces flourishing, our only way is to go to work and turn one and another of the thousand into a Christian person, each beginning with himself. How weary and indignant God must be at hearing the Pharisaic praises of a Christian religion, legislation, literature, country, from speakers and writers who allow Christianity to conquer no one of their propensities to pleasure or to pride! The vocation is an individual matter. Ye see it, each for himself. The work is for each. "Repent," "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," "Take up the cross and come after Me," are for each. "Ye see your calling." III. THAT, NOTWITHSTANDING ALL THIS, CHRIST'S TRUTH IS A MATTER, NOT OF PARTIAL, BUT OF UNIVERSAL APPLICATION. The Christian spirit, revelation, privilege, and promises are not meant for a class of men culled out arbitrarily here and there; not for a few persons of special constitutional proclivities or whose circumstances happen to predispose them for a spiritual plane of being, making it easy for them to reach it. The Bible makes no such exceptions. "Whosoever will." Nor is the Christian calling a whit the less universal and impartial for the reason that it is special, requiring a personal consecration. On the contrary, its speciality is the very ground of its universality. The more definite, important, and searching you make the Christian command to be, the more will the principles of its righteousness send their pressure into every department of life, and the spirit of its charity diffuse its fragrance into every nook and corner of the household of humanity. If there were any variations excusing men from this calling, they might be expected to exist either in their nature, their place, or their time. Yet how far these things are from constituting an apology for disregarding the duty of a disciple! 1. Take the inequalities of intellectual equipment. There is not much likelihood of men's seeking a release from taking up the Christian work and cross on a plea of mental infirmity. More probably the plea of exemption will arise in the opposite quarter, and be a pretence of gifts or a culture superior to the need of faith, independent of the humiliating doctrines of the Crucified (vers. 20-24). 2. Take the excuse of unfavourable outward fortunes. What are those fortunes? Poverty and hardship? Unto the poor the gospel was first preached, and in every age it is with them that its simple and consoling truths have found their most cordial and fruitful reception. Wealth and station? But unto whom much is given, of them shall much be required. Or is it the busy and contented state of pecuniary mediocrity or a competency? Yet that is the very state which, of all others, a wise man is represented as praying for, and which common sense would pronounce most favourable to a useful and healthy piety. Indeed, the whole honest spirit of our religion disallows the evasive notion that any position can liberate the child of God from loving his Maker, serving his Saviour, and living in godly charity with his fellow-men. 3. The changing aspects of the times are just as powerless to acquit any single conscience of its accountability for a Christian walk and conversation. Principles do not change with periods. The Christ of whom it is written that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is not subject to fluctuation, either in the measure of His affection or in His demands for allegiance.Conclusion: Ye see your calling — 1. Families. On every domestic sanctuary Christ lays She law of a consecrated and holy economy. Set thy house in order; for these earthly tabernacles are to be dissolved. And while they last they take in no calm, no abiding light, save through invisible windows that open upward into the unshadowed and undivided heaven. 2. Parents. To exercise your trust you will have to feel that the Christian character of every child committed to your charge is immeasurably the most urgent interest of your parental office. 3. Men of action. "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you." (Bp. Huntington.)
I. IS OF GOD. Supreme, authoritative, irreversible. The call of wisdom and love. "Faithful is He that calleth you." II. HIS GLORIOUS, COMPREHENSIVE BLESSINGS. Called out of darkness into marvellous light — "unto liberty," "to peace," "to eternal life," to "holiness," to "His kingdom and glory." It is "a heavenly calling," "a holy calling." III. IS TO SPECIAL, DISTINCTIVE MODE OF LIVING. IV. IS INTENSELY PERSONAL. V. INCLUDES THE WHOLE MAN IN ALL HIS RELATIONS IN LIFE. (Homiletic Monthly.)
1. Undeniable. 2. Lamentable. 3. Worthy of consideration. II. THE REASON. Not that God despises human wisdom, &c. — it is His gift — but that these gifts are perverted — 1. By pride, in judging the things of God which are beyond human understanding. 2. By unbelief which rejects salvation. 3. By moral blindness occasioning self-sufficiency and independence. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
2. Now, here is a statement which has been often taken as if it were doctrinal, though it is, in fact, historical, with mischievous results; for if these classes are always to be reckoned unchristian and unbelieving —(1) Thoughtful men of all classes would, on that account alone, hesitate to embrace the gospel. If Christianity were only fit for the mob, its prospects would be poor, especially as the education of the people will not suffer from having now been made a national affair.(2) It would be a misfortune for the world if what we call civilisation advances. Each generation more nearly than its predecessor approaches to the condition of the privileged classes of society — the wise, the mighty, the noble. 3. On the other hand, consider the text as historical, and it is plain enough. We still sometimes hear explanations given of how it is that the learned and the great and the noble are not Christians, but —(1) These explanations account for what is not the fact, for there are as many Christians among cultivated and aristocratic people as in any other class; and —(2) These explanations, as a rule, would not account for the fact, if it were one. It is nonsense, e.g., to say that wise men in their conceit reject Christianity because it is simple or because it is supernatural; for there is more conceit, not with those who have some knowledge, but with those who have none. 4. Now if we glance at Corinth, it is easy to understand why the classes specified were more reluctant than others to embrace Christianity. I. As regards THE "WISE MEN AFTER THE FLESH." 1. By these the apostle did not mean the great sages of antiquity. It would certainly not be anything to boast of if we had to suppose that Christianity rejected them or they it; for one could wish that the majority of Christians had attained to as lofty, as enlightened ideas as some in the golden age of Greek wisdom entertained and taught. But we have to do here with the men of a degenerate time — smatterers, would-be wise men, pretenders to universal knowledge, which is often largest and loudest where ignorance and frivolity divide between them the empire of the human mind. 2. Nor were they thinkers of our modern type.(1) The principles according to which our scientific men conduct their inquiries are modern discoveries. Our wise men try to discover the facts of nature, life, and history, and construct their theories according to the facts. But exactly the reverse was the common way of the wise men here spoken of.(2) Our modern thinkers are seekers after truth, and they are as likely to discover the truth of Christianity as other people, if not more so. These ancient wise men, on the other hand, were rather like our ignorant and superstitious masses, who take a side without candid inquiry, and are resolute to defend their side just because it is theirs.(3) Our literary and scientific men, as far as they are faithful to their vocation, inquire each man for and by himself, and own no allegiance to a party or a master, but to truth alone. But these ancient wise men, as leaders or adherents of their school, enjoyed what credit and influence they had, and were jealous of new opinions, as possibly inimical to their authority and its repute. II. As regards THE MIGHTY AND THE NOBLE. 1. When Christianity was new it had all the disadvantages of novelty.(1) So it most repelled those who had least to gain and most to lose by any change. These, of course, were the privileged classes here mentioned.(2) Remember, too, that the changes which Christianity threatened were the most violent, and therefore the most distasteful possible to these classes. They were free, and a great part of the community were their slaves. It is now a maxim — thanks to Christianity — that property has its duties as well as its rights. But that maxim had no existence then.(3) Then it was not some magnate of their own lofty order, or even of their own race, who told those lords of many to become the servants of all; it was a company of artisans, fishermen, slaves, foreigners.(4) Then consider that the gospel was gospel in those days. It was a plain, straightforward declaration of the truth that God is love, and man's true life is love; that to be selfish is to be damned, to love is to be saved. 2. The gospel has no longer these disadvantages. When sons of nobles are ill-paid clergymen, and sovereigns and statesmen are gratuitous defenders of the faith, there is nothing to hinder the great and noble, any more than the poor and lowly, from professing Christianity. And, as regards the practice of Christianity, the case is not different. The mighty and the noble, as a matter of course, now accept, along with their honours and their privileges, a host of duties, public and social, which are enjoined rather by public opinion than by law. So much are things changed, property now has not only duties as well as rights, but has fewer rights than duties, and there are at least as many of these classes as of any other who exhibit the true spirit of Christianity in lives of faith towards God and charity towards men. (J. Service, D. D.)
2. Should, however, the correctness of the present version be maintained, we still deny that it was written to warn us against the acquisition of human learning, for the use and abuse of knowledge are not identical, and the text thus understood could only apply to the Greeks, who preferred their wisdom to revelation, and to the Jews, who, having misinterpreted their Scriptures, required a sign to confirm that misinterpretation. The passage which was intended to apply to such as these can never be quoted to condemn that which only becomes reprehensible when it is not made subservient to the religion of our Lord. This is a conclusion worthy your attention, inasmuch as, if disproved, it would tend to cause the pious scholar to throw aside all the aids he might derive from history, criticism, and science in explaining and defending the oracles of God. That such a course would prove a serious detriment to religion the records of our race abundantly testify. Where ignorance has prevailed, there infidelity or superstition has abounded, whilst in the train of knowledge more accurate conceptions of the Deity and of social duties have ever followed. When Christianity was spreading many of the wise, indeed, rejected it, but the more obstinate were found among those whose prejudices in favour of their ancient faith remained unshaken, because their minds had not been trained by knowledge to estimate the value of those doctrines propounded for their acceptance. Note, then — I. THE ADVANTAGES OF KNOWLEDGE TO RELIGION. 1. The annals of the Reformation speak an unmistakable language in favour of human acquirements. 2. It is from the arsenal of knowledge that the most formidable weapons have been taken wherewith to resist the assaults of infidelity. 3. The benefits of a knowledge of science, history, &c., to the missionary are simply incalculable. 4. The cultivation of learning greatly conduces to a right understanding of the Bible. II. THE OPPOSITION TO KNOWLEDGE commenced in primitive times. Whilst and Clement recommended the study of literature, declaimed against it as the source of those heresies which disturbed the peace of the Church. Because philosophers had erred philosophy was condemned; and yet, in defiance of the experience which has proved that there is no necessary connection between philosophy and infidelity, in spite of the fact that Newton and Bacon and Pascal and Boyle have submitted their powerful minds to the teaching of the gospel, the same objection and the same plea is boldly advanced. III. THE ABUSES TO WHICH IT IS LIABLE. 1. Prior to the promulgation of the gospel (though there then existed minds as powerful as any which have since adorned the pages of history) the grossest immorality prevailed amongst the wise ones of the earth. Hence we deduce the fact that by itself "the wisdom of the world" now, as then, is unable to reform the morals of mankind. "The world by wisdom knew not God"; and the writings of infidels have confirmed the assertion of our apostle. 2. Knowledge is fatally abused when Scripture is wrested from its obvious meaning in order to make it coincide with some cherished theory or to advance some favourite doctrine. Suppose that by an induction of facts we arrive at a conclusion opposed to a certain portion of the Bible, our duty is to extend our observation till we obtain a result in accordance with that indicated in the Word of God. (D. H. Cotes, LL. B.)
I. THE ELECTOR Some men are saved and some men are not saved. How is this difference caused? The reason why any sink to hell is their sin, and only their sin. But how is it that others are saved? The text answers the question three times — "God hath chosen." This will be clear if we consider — 1. The facts. God elected fallen man, but not the fallen angels; Abraham, the Jews, David, &c. God is a king. Men may set up a constitutional monarchy, and they are right in so doing; but if you could find a being who was perfection itself, an absolute form of government would be undeniably the best. The absolute position of God as king demands that, especially in the work of salvation, His will should be the great determining force. 2. The figures —(1) Salvation consists in part of an adoption. Who is to have authority in this matter? The children of wrath? Surely not. It must be God who chooses His own children.(2) The Church, again, is called —(a) A building. With whom does the architecture rest? With the building? Do the stones select themselves? No; the Architect alone disposes of His chosen materials according to His own will.(b) Christ's bride. Would any man here agree to have any person forced upon him as his bride? II. THE ELECTION ITSELF. Now observe — 1. How strange is the choice He makes. "He hath not chosen many wise," &c. If man had received the power of choosing, these are just the persons who would have been selected. "But God hath chosen," &c. If man had governed the selection, these are the very persons who would have been left out. 2. It is directly contrary to human choice. Man chooses those who would be most helpful to him; God chooses those to whom He can be the most helpful. We select those who may give us the best return; God frequently selects those who most need His aid. We select those who are most deserving; He selects those who are least deserving, that so His choice may be more clearly seen to be an act of grace and not of merit. 3. It is very gracious. It is gracious even in its exclusion. It does not say, "Not any," it only says, "Not many"; so that the great are not altogether shut out. Grace is proclaimed to the prince, and in heaven there are those who on earth wore coronets and prayed. 4. It is very encouraging. Some of us cannot boast of any pedigree; we have no great learning, we have no wealth, but He has been pleased to choose just such foolish, despised creatures as ourselves. III. THE ELECTED. They are described — 1. Negatively.(1) "Not many wise men after the flesh." God has chosen truly wise men, but the sophoi — the men who pretend to wisdom, the cunning, the metaphysical, the rabbis, the doctors, the men who look down with profound scorn upon the illiterate and call them idiots, these are not chosen in any great number. Strange, is it not? and yet a good reason is given. If they were chosen, why then they would say, "Ah! how much the gospel owes to us! How our wisdom helps it!"(2) "Not many mighty." And you see why — because the mighty might have said, "Christianity spreads because of the good temper of our swords and the strength of our arm." We can all understand the progress of Mahommedanism during its first three centuries.(3) "Not many noble," for nobility might have been thought to stamp the gospel with its prestige. 2. Positively. "God hath chosen" —(1) "The foolish things"; as if the Lord's chosen were not by nature good enough to be called men, but were only "things."(2) "The weak things" — not merely weak men, but the world thought them weak things." "Ah!" said Caesar in the ball, if he said anything at all about it, "Who is King Jesus? A poor wretch who was hanged upon a tree I Who is this Paul? A tent-maker! Who are his followers? A few despised women who meet him at the water-side."(3) "The base things" — things without a father, things which cannot trace their descent.(4) "Things that are despised," sneered at, persecuted, hunted about, or treated with what is worse, with the indifference which is worse than scorn.(5) "Things that are not" hath God chosen. Nothings, nonentities. IV. THE REASONS FOR THE ELECTION. 1. The immediate reason.(1) "To confound the wise." For one wise man to confound another wise man is remarkable; for a wise man to confound a foolish man is very easy; but for a foolish man to confound a wise man — ah! this is the finger of God.(2) "To confound the mighty." "Oh!" said Caesar, "we will soon root up this Christianity; off with their heads." The different governors hastened one after another of the disciples to death, but the more they persecuted them the more they multiplied. All the swords of the legionaries which had put to rout the armies of all nations, and had overcome the invincible Gaul and the savage Briton, could not withstand the feebleness of Christianity, for the weakness of God is mightier than men.(3) "To bring to nought the things that are." What were they in the apostle's days? Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Diana. Here comes Paul with "There is no God but God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent." He represents "the things that are not." So contemptible is the heresy of Christianity that if a list were made out of contemporary religions of different countries Christianity would have been left out. But where are Jupiter, &c., now? What was true in Paul's day is true to-day. Existing superstitions, though attacked by those who are things that are not, shall yet cease to be, and the truth as it is in Jesus, and the pure simple faith backed by the Spirit of God, shall bring to nought the things that are. 2. The ultimate reason is "that no flesh may glory in His presence." He does not say "that no man"; no, the text is in no humour to please anybody; it says, "that no flesh." What a word! Here are Solon and Socrates, the wise men. God points at them with His finger and calls them "flesh." There is Caesar, with his imperial purple; how the Praetorian guards shout, "Great is the Emperor! long may he live! Flesh," saith God's Word. Here are men whose sires were of royal lineage. "Flesh," says God. "That no flesh may glory in His presence." God puts this stamp upon us all, that we are nothing but flesh, and He chooses the poorest, the most foolish, and the weakest flesh, that all the other flesh that is only flesh and only grass may see that God pours contempt on it, and will have no flesh glory in His presence. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
(H. Townley.)
I. THE UNFAVOURABLE CONDITION IN WHICH THE GOSPEL FOUND THEM, AND HOW IT MADE THEM THE SUBJECTS OF ITS POWER. The apostle divides society into two classes — 1. The one consisting of the wise, the mighty, and the well-born — the man of thought, the man of action, and the man of leisure. These three he further describes as those who "are" (ver. 28) — those who are deemed somebody, the recognised of the world; those for whose sole interest all things are deemed to exist — what would now be termed "society." 2. The other class consists of the foolish, the weak, and the base, or despised, &c. Those forming this class are further described as those which "are not." They were those who had no status, and were ignored by the world as things utterly beneath notice. Of this class were the bulk of the Corinthian believers. "For ye see your calling." Thus it will be seen that the gospel chose as the subjects of its gracious operations(l) Those whom the so-called wise, mighty, and noble utterly neglected, those who in the estimation of the world "are not."(2) Those who were incapable of helping themselves. Supposing they had been able to help themselves, society's neglect of them would not have mattered so much. Their utter helplessness is indicated by the descriptive epithets. But to such as these came the gospel. This proves its truly benevolent character, and sets it in direct contrast to the world's ways and methods. The spirit of this world is always to give where it sees the prospect of a return. The ancient gods always bestowed their favours upon those who brought to their altars the costliest sacrifices. The world follows the example of its gods. But it is the glory of the gospel that it seeks out the foolish, the weak, the base, and despised (Matthew 11:4, 5). It was a new thing in the world to supply a gospel to the poor. A gospel preached to the poor must be something more than human. God alone can afford such grace as this. II. ITS EFFECTS UPON ITS SUBJECTS FAR TRANSCENDS THE WORLD'S HIGHEST GOOD AND MOST DESIRABLE POSSESSIONS. The world's highest good are wisdom, might, and nobility, i.e., culture, prowess, and rank. But the gospel bestows upon its subjects far higher things (ver. 30). 1. "Things that are not," i.e., without a status in the world, obtain one in Christ — one infinitely surpassing anything the world can boast of. 2. In Christ they are endowed with qualities far transcending the world's best gifts. Has the world wisdom, might, and nobility? The gospel —(1) Endues men with a wisdom far surpassing in worth the world's highest philosophy or culture — the wisdom that makes wise unto salvation.(2) It confers a might far surpassing in degree and nature the might of the world — the might of right.(3) It endows with a nobility far more glorious than that of blood, the nobility of holiness. Nobility gives a right of entrance into the highest society, holiness into the heavenly society. It requires blood to give the social nobility that men prize. Similarly the spiritual nobility comes of the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanseth from all sin. And by virtue of this we become endowed with rank. The blood is royal blood, and they who come under its influence become royally related — they become kings and priests to God His Father.(4) They who "are not" are redeemed. This state of "being not," i.e., of being without social status, implies a state of slavery. But He Who was made for them redemption brings them freedom from the bondage and degradation of sin, a freedom far more glorious than any social one. From being slaves of sin, and ,though still slaves of men, they become, not merely free, but sons of the heavenly King. (A. J. Parry.)
(Bp. Phillips Brooks.)
1. God has chosen feeble agencies. 2. Has by them confounded the mighty. II. THE IMPORTANCE OF IT. It shows that Christianity — 1. Regards all men alike. 2. Is independent of human help. 3. Is sustained only by the power of God. III. THE LESSON. 1. The humble should be thankful. 2. The proud humble. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
1. Infidelity writes and speaks in the stately formularies of philosophy and science. It is a "wise" thing of the world. 2. Licentiousness passes under the grand name of liberty. The vaunted religious liberty of England's population means often only power to neglect sacred ordinances. 3. Social injustice does most of its fiendish work in the name of law. 4. Selfishness goes under the taking name of prudence. 5. Bigotry, superstition, fanaticism, wear the sacred name of religion. 6. War is called glory. Could we take from sin the mantle of respectability that society has thrown over it, we should do much towards its annihilation. II. GOD IS DETERMINED TO OVERTHROW EVIL BY CONVENTIONALLY CONTEMPTIBLE MEANS. 1. Negatively. This language does not mean —(1) That the gospel is an inferior thing. The gospel is not "foolish," "weak," or "base." As a history of facts, as a system of thought, as a code of laws, it is incomparably the grandest thing within the whole range of human thought. What light it throws on man, the universe, God! What influence it has exerted, and what changes it has wrought!(2) That the men appointed as its ministers are to be inferior. This passage has been abused to support the claims of an ignorant ministry, than which few things have tended more to degrade Christianity. There are several things to show that the gospel ministry requires the highest order of mind.(a) The character of the work: "Teaching men in all wisdom."(b) The character of the system. What a system it is to learn! What mines of truth lie beneath the surface of the letter! What digging is required to reach the golden ore! Simpletons call the gospel simple, but intelligence has ever found it of all subjects the most profound and difficult. The greatest thinkers of all ages have found the work no easy task.(c) The character of society. Who exerts the most influence upon the real life of the men and women around him? The man of capacity, thought, sound judgment. If the gospel ministry is to influence men, it must be employed by men of the highest type of culture and ability.(d) The spirit of the work. Humble, charitable, forbearing, reverent. Such a spirit as this comes only from deep thought and extensive knowledge. Ignorance generates a spirit of pride, bigotry, intolerance, and irreverence.(e) The character of the apostles. Where can you find greater force of soul than Peter's, a more searching sagacity than James's, a more royal intellect than Paul's, a finer intuitional nature than John's? They were men of talent and men of thought. And more, they all understood Hebrew and Greek. We require a long college course for this, and then only very partially reach their linguistical attainments. 2. Positively. It means —(1) That the gospel was conventionally mean. It was so in the estimation of the age. The schools, religions, institutions, and great men of the day regarded it with contempt. It was a "foolish" thing to the Greek, a "weak" thing to the Jew, and a "base" and "contemptible" thing more or less to all.(2) The first ministers were conventionally mean. They were not selected from chairs of philosophy, or seats of civil power, or homes of opulence. They were fishermen. The system and its ministers, however, are merely conventionally contemptible, nothing more. But these, like many other things that erring man regard as insignificant and mean, shalt do a great work. The flake of snow is insignificant, but it is commissioned to build up a mountain that shall overwhelm widespread districts. The coral insect is insignificant, but it builds up vast islands, beautiful as paradise. The insignificant things do the work of the world. They clothe the earth with verdure, and provide subsistence for man and beast; they rear majestic forests, and provide materials for building our cities and our fleets. Even so the gospel. What work it has already done! What systems it has shattered! What towering institutions it has levelled to the dust! It has "brought to nought" a vast world of things; and so it shall proceed until all the "things that are" great in the estimation of man, but bad in themselves, are for ever brought to "nought." The little pebble shall smite the giant and send him reeling to the grave; the little stone shall shiver the colossus and scatter its particles to the winds.Conclusion: From this subject we may infer — 1. That so long as evils exist in the world great commotions are to be expected. God hath chosen this system to confound, to put to shame, and bring to nought things that are. "It will overturn, overturn, overturn," the whole system of human things. The gospel, when it first enters a soul, confounds it. When it enters a country and begins its work it is revolutionary in its action. In the first ages it confounded the Jewish Sanhedrin, and the heathen priesthood, and the Gentile philosophy. 2. That the removal of evil from the world is, under God, to be effected through man as man. The gospel is to make its way, not by men invested with political power, scientific attainments, or brilliant oratory, but by men as men, endowed with the common powers of human nature, inspired and directed by the living gospel. Let no one say he is too poor or too obscure, too destitute of artificial endowments to minister the gospel to others; all that is wanted is the common sense, the common affection, and the common speech of man. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
(B. S. Storrs, D. D.)
I. II. III. IV. (Prof. Godet.)
I. MOST VITAL. "In Christ," not merely in His school, dispensation, character, but in Himself, as branches are in the vine. He is their life. II. DIVINELY FORMED. "Of Him" — Whom? God. It is the Eternal Spirit that brings the soul into vital connection with Christ. "My Father is the Husbandman." III. BLESSEDLY PRODUCTIVE. 1. Wisdom. 2. Righteousness. 3. Sanctification. 4. Redemption, come out of this union. What transcendent blessings are these! IV. EXULTINGLY ADORING (ver. 31). It inspires the highest worship. It causes the soul to triumph to God Himself. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
1. Real. "Ye are in Christ Jesus." Not imaginary; not theoretical; not prospective. 2. Vital. Not that of a sapless branch with a decayed root; not that of a pulseless arm with a lifeless head. 3. Essential to the continuance of spiritual life. Not merely a life like Christ's, but a life that is a part of Christ's life. The temperament of Christ pervades the whole body. II. THIS CONNECTION HAS BEEN FORMED BY GOD. "Of Him." Our Lord referred to Divine operation as well as supervision when He said, "My Father is the Husbandman" (Comp. Romans 11:17-24). Union with Christ is — 1. Not natural. Our natural condition is one of separation and alienation. 2. Not affected by human agency; neither our own, nor another's. 3. Effected by Divine agency — (1) (2) III. THIS CONNECTION HAS BEEN PRODUCTIVE OF MOST ADVANTAGEOUS RESULTS TO CHRISTIANS. These, as well as the connection, are of Divine ordination. 1. Observe the progression of thought.(1) There is the truth by which the mind is arrested, instructed, convinced, strengthened, and elevated.(2) There is the work without us by virtue of which we are accepted and treated as righteous; conjoined with —(3) The work within us by virtue of which we are purified and made actually righteous.(4) There is the final deliverance from all evil; when with the redemption of the body the soul will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God; when salvation will be consummated in the glorification of all. 2. Christ is —(1) Our wisdom. He said "I am the truth." He is "the light of the world." He is that by which we are enlightened. The condition of the non-Christian is described in Ephesians 4:18, and Romans 10:3. Ignorant of our real spiritual state, Christ enlightens us respecting it. Ignorant of our relation to God, Christ reveals our alienation from Him, and invites us to be reconciled. Ignorant of what is to be done, Christ tells us what is essential. Ignorant of the way of salvation, Christ says, "I am the way," &c.(2) Our righteousness. The revelation of truth is not all we want. Christ was not only the Revealer but the Doer, not only the Teacher but the Mediator. The condition of the non-Christian is represented as one of condemnation, guilt, and rebellion. Out of this we are brought by Christ. He is our Representative; in nature and character perfect; possessing immaculate righteousness; therefore competent to appear and act for us. His life and death of obedience are accepted on our behalf, and we are accepted through Him. The rebel is pardoned; alienation is displaced by friendship; as virtually righteous he is received into God's family, a joint heir with Christ.(3) Our sanctification. The condition of the non-Christian is one of corruption and defilement. Christ will have all His followers conformed to His image. The process of sanctification is —(a) Effected by direct and indirect agency. Direct. The influence of Spirit upon spirit. "The Spirit dwelleth in you," &c. Indirect. Christian ordinances and privileges, providential circumstances, social influences; every temptation resisted, trial endured, difficulty overcome, passion quelled, habit corrected; triumph over self, steadfast opposition to evil, loss suffered for the cause of Christ; manful exhibition of godliness, true-hearted adherence to principle.(b) Invisible and indescribable. More mystery respecting the internal work of the Spirit than the external work of Christ. Facts perceived by the senses are more easily described than those perceived by consciousness.(c) Sometimes prolonged. If immediacy may be regarded as a characteristic of justification, progressiveness is characteristic of sanctification. It is the work of our lifetime.(d) Generally apparently incomplete. But we cannot unveil the spiritual world. What constitutes completeness? Enough for us to aim at her lofty attainment. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father," &c.(4) Our redemption. Reference to the final release from the bondage, dangers, and trials of humanity. The condition of the non-Christian is one of bondage to sin (2 Peter 2:19). Christ makes His people free. The liberty of the sons of God includes not only release from the condemnation of law and from the power of sin, but also from the laws and limitations of human nature; from the habits which bind us, and dispositions which enslave us; from the annoyances of earthly life; from associations with evil; from injurious influences, human and satanic. IV. THIS CONNECTION AND ITS RESULTS ARE DESIGNED TO PROMOTE THE GLORY OF GOD (vers. 29, 31). Not to glorify ourselves, but to live, in time and in eternity, to the glory of His grace, who "hath made us accepted in the Beloved." (T. T. Waterman, B. A.)
I. "WISDOM." A controversy has been carried on as to the character of real wisdom from the days of Job (Job 28:20). But his definition is the only correct one (ver. 18). 1. What is wisdom unconnected with Christ? It can elevate man's mind by leading it up the pathway of science, it can help to the study of men and manners, it may solve some of the higher problems of morality. But its best efforts are only as the light of the taper compared with the sun. It cannot bestow peace or joy in the moment of trial, or in the day of death. 2. What is wisdom connected with Christ (James 3:17)? II. "RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jeremiah 23. 6; Romans 8:33). III. "SANCTIFICATION." 1. It is necessary to distinguish between justification and sanctification. They differ essentially —(1) In their nature; the one being an alteration of his state in the sight of God, the other a change in his character before man and his conscience.(2) In their causes; the former is imputed through Christ's obedience, the latter is communicated by the Holy Spirit's influence. 2. Sanctification is a difficult work, so far as we are concerned in it.(1) Our nature is opposed to it.(2) The world generally is opposed to it.(3) Satan with all his varied instruments are opposed to it. 3. But yet it is possible and easy; for Christ is made such unto us. How is this? It is simply to have Christ enter the lists with sin in us (Philippians 4:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:23). IV. "REDEMPTION." Our present redemption is only partial. We have a privilege to come into God's presence, &c. Nevertheless the "glorious liberty of the sons of God" yet remains to be enjoyed. Then every fetter shall be knocked off. The mind no longer shall be hindered in its investigations; the heart shall be deceitful no more; the body itself shall no more be weary. (G. F. Galaher, M. A.)
1. Anointing us with His Spirit. 2. Revealing Himself in us. 3. Giving us understanding to know Him as the only way to the Father. II. OUR HIGH PRIEST TO IMPART RIGHTEOUSNESS. 1. Making atonement for us. 2. Pronouncing our absolution. 3. Constantly interceding for us at the right hand of God. III. OUR KING TO COMMUNICATE HOLINESS. 1. Pouring out His Spirit. 2. Ruling in our hearts. 3. Giving us dominion over sin. IV. OUR FINAL DELIVERER FROM ALL EVIL. (E. Fraser.)
1. Man is ignorant naturally of the way to true happiness; he has lost God, and knows not how to find Him again. For remedy of this Christ is made "wisdom" (Colossians 2:3), and He is constituted the grand Teacher of all that seek for eternal happiness. 2. Man is unrighteous, and cannot stand before a righteous God. Now, the natural man, for remedy of this, goes about to work out a righteousness of his own. But when it appears in the light of the holy law, it is nothing but as a moth-eaten garment, that cannot cover the soul before the Lord (Isaiah 64:7). For remedy of this Christ is made righteousness. He, by His obedience to the law's commands, and suffering the wrath it threatened, hath brought in everlasting righteousness, which is a large garment, able to cover all that betake themselves to it. 3. Man is unholy, unfit for communion with a holy God here or hereafter. The natural man, to help himself in this point, calls together his natural powers, and endeavours to turn the stream of his life into the channel of the law. Some prevail this way to the reformation of their outward conversation; but there is as much difference betwixt true holiness and their attainment as between a living body and an embalmed corpse. Others find all their endeavours to no purpose, and so they come to despair of sanctification, and therefore even lay the reins on the necks of their lusts (Jeremiah 2:25). But for remedy in this, Christ is made sanctification. There is a fulness of the Spirit of holiness lodged in Him, to be communicated to the unholy; and to Him God sends the unholy sinner, that out of His fulness he may receive, and grace for grace. 4. Man by the fall is become liable to many bodily infirmities and miseries, and at length must go to the grave. Nature could find no remedy for this. But man's salvation cannot be complete without a remedy; therefore Christ is made "redemption," who will give in due time deliverance to His people from misery and death (Romans 8:23). And in this sense He calls Himself "the resurrection and the life." II. ALL WHO ARE SAVED MUST BE SAVED BY VIRTUE OF UNION WITH CHRIST. As the stock is stay, strength, and sap, to the branches, so is Christ wisdom, &c., to those who are united to Him. The sap of the stock is not conveyed to branches that are not in it; neither is Christ wisdom, &c., to any but those who are in Him. He is the Saviour of His body; and we must be partakers of His salvation as members of His body. (T. Boston, D. D.)
1. An individual is taken suddenly ill in the street. Persons gather round him, administering many things for his relief; but all is in vain. A stranger draws near, examines his symptoms, and from his case administers a medicine. Immediately he is relieved, and they all cry out, "He is a doctor!" His ability to make a correct diagnosis and to prescribe the proper medicine demonstrates his professional character. 2. We are all of us sinful, and suffering, and dying. Can any one provide a relief? Men have been experimenting ever since the days of Cain; the wisest and best have utterly failed. It follows, then, that if there be a provision by which we can be saved from sin, such provision must come from God. 3. We claim that in the gospel God has made such a provision, which is very comprehensively stated in our text. God is its author, Christ is its medium or agent, and wisdom, &c., are its benefits. Christ is made unto us — I. WISDOM. 1. What is the first great need of mankind? Light; knowledge of God, of His law, of Christ, of the way of salvation, of duty and interest. 2. We have evidence of this in the general practice of Christian parents in seeking the spiritual welfare of their children, which is to impart instruction. And when our missionaries go to heathen countries, their first work is the same. And is it not a constant effort of the Church, both at home and abroad, to spread religious knowledge through the Sabbath school, the pulpit, and the religious press? 3. The gospel provides this light. Hence Jesus Christ is made unto us "wisdom," by furnishing to us —(1) The Bible. But for His mediation we should never have received it. These Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation.(2) The institutions of the Church.(3) The lives, activities, and instrumentalities, of Christian believers, who are "the light of the world."(4) The teachings of the Holy Spirit; His Divine illumination, His assistance enabling us to apprehend and understand the written Word. II. RIGHTEOUSNESS. 1. Light, in its first revealings, does not always bring comfort and hope. When we see our moral condition we discover ourselves to be lost sinners; as absolutely helpless as was a poor man once upon the rock just above the falls of Niagara. Certainly he saw and felt that if he ever regained the shore and the home of his love, it must be through some agency other than his own. And when we discover our sinfulness and helplessness, how anxiously do we inquire where help may be found! 2. Righteousness is a conformity to law. If we observe the laws of the State there is no unrighteousness in us in relation to those laws. And if we could observe the law of God, there would be no unrighteousness in us in respect to His law. It is because we have transgressed that law that we are unrighteous. 3. Being thus under condemnation, Christ rendered a perfect obedience to that law, and having thus honoured it, He submitted to its penalties in our stead. Thus Christ has wrought out a righteousness for us; He has made it possible for us to obtain the remission of our sins. 4. But if this were the extent; of the atonement, it would leave us still unrighteous in character, unconformed to the law in our motives and spirit. It was, therefore, necessary that there should be "the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost"; so that; Jesus Christ might work a real righteousness within us. 5. If the provision were to stop here it would still fail of meeting the whole case, because we are accountable to God, and our conduct subsequent to this great exercise of mercy toward us must be in conformity with the principles and spirit of His law. We consequently need the constant help of our Lord and of the Divine Spirit. 6. And even with these helps we are not able so fully to meet the claims of this law that we do not need constantly to depend upon the atonement. III. SANCTIFICATION. But the regenerate have still further spiritual needs. 1. The converted man hates sin; and when he finds it in his heart he is afflicted. To him there is nothing so lovely, so precious, as holiness. How he hungers and thirsts after it! He cannot be satisfied until he realises it, any more than a famishing man can be satisfied without; food and drink. His heart, his soul, cries out for the nature and image of God! 2. Can we realise this full salvation? Yes, for "He is able to do exceeding abundantly," &c. "The blood of Jesus Christ His son cleanseth us from all sin." When we are thus brought to bear the image of the heavenly — IV. Is there still anything further needed? Yes, we still need Christ as our REDEMPTION. To redeem is to deliver from some obligation, or embarrassment, or danger, or necessity, from which a person is unable to deliver himself. 1. We are subject to affliction, and we need the presence, and power, and comfort, of Christ to enable us to stand. 2. We have many duties to perform. Who of himself is competent to work the works of our Divine Master? None of us; but, through Christ strengthening us, we can do all things, meet all our obligations to our own souls, to our fellow-men, and to God. 3. And how about the dying hour? With the Captain of our salvation with us, we can meet death with joy, accounting it a gain. (Bp. Janes.)
I. EXPLAIN THE WORDS. Christ is made unto us — 1. Wisdom.(1) As in knowing Him we know everything that is essential, and especially God, "whom to know is life eternal." God in nature is God above us; God in providence is God beyond us; God in law is God against us; but God in Christ is God with us and for us.(2) As He is the Author of our wisdom. He opens the eyes of our understandings, and, by His Spirit, "leads us into all the truth." And the knowledge, which He imparts, is always distinguished by its influences and effects. Wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence, but the excellency of this wisdom "is that it giveth life to them that have it." 2. Righteousness. "Christ is the end of the law of righteousness, to every one that believeth." 3. Sanctification.(1) The former is a relative thing, this is a personal. The former is the change of our state, this the change of our nature; the former is a work complete at once, but the latter is gradual, and carried on through the whole of life. But then, though these are distinguishable, they are never separate.(2) But what is this "sanctification." It must be something more than mere reformation or morality. A man cannot be sanctified indeed, unless he be moral; but he may be moral, without being sanctified. Sanctification is a transformation by "the renewing" of the mind; the implantation of new principles; a separation from the Spirit and course of the world, and a deliverance from the dominion and the love of sin, and a dedication of ourselves to the service and glory of God. 4. Redemption. The resurrection is called so —(1) Because it is the effect of the Saviour's purchase; for He ransomed the bodies of His people, as well as their souls.(2) Because of the grandeur that awaits us. II. APPLY THE WORDS. If we be "made of God unto us wisdom." 1. We see the state we are all in by nature. We see that we are destitute of all these things, and that, if ever we have them, we must obtain them from another. 2. We see the value and importance of the Lord Jesus. 3. We need not wonder that He should be the subject of the whole of revelation. 4. He ought to be the theme of every minister. 5. We see the wretched and dreadful state of unbelievers. "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life," hath not "wisdom," &c. 6. What can be so worthy of our pursuit as to seek after union and communion with Him. This was the apostle's conviction — "That I may win Christ, and be found in Him." 7. We learn the happiness of all those who belong to Him — or rather to whom He belongs. (W. Jay.)
I. WISDOM 1. Wisdom chooses the best objects, and then pursues the best means of obtaining them. 2. All wisdom is from God; but there is a peculiar and superior kind of wisdom, viz., religion (Proverbs 28:28); and this St. Paul terms being "wise unto salvation," and James, "the wisdom that is from above." 3. Christ is the original fountain of wisdom. He is "wisdom" itself (Proverbs 8.; Colossians 2:3); so that whatever true wisdom is found in the world is derived from Him, even as the natural sun is the source of all the light of this world. Accordingly, we find Him, by His personal ministry, diffusing wonderful light, and when He ascended into heaven He committed this work to the Holy Spirit. "The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God"; but, by His gracious help, "they are spiritually discerned," and believers learn "the mind of Christ." 4. Other kinds of wisdom have their value; yet what do they avail? "I have spent my life," said a great scholar on his dying bed, "I have spent my life in laborious trifling! "Compared with heavenly wisdom, all literary attainments will be as a grain of sand to a mountain, or a drop of water to the ocean. II. RIGHTEOUSNESS, i.e., perfect conformity to the will of God. The word signifies that which is full weight or measure, the standard being God's holy law. And is there any man thus righteous? No; "there is not a just man upon earth"; that is, one "that doeth good, and sinneth not." Yet, without a perfect righteousness, no man can be justified. But must we, then, despair? Yes; of making ourselves righteous; but not of becoming righteous by other means, for "Christ is made unto us righteousness" (Romans 4:24). But do any suppose that we may therefore become careless about good works? Let them attend to the declaration that Christ is made unto us — III. SANCTIFICATION. 1. By this we mean the renewing of our nature in the image of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and through the mediation of Christ. 2. Sanctification differs from justification. Justification respects the state of man; sanctification respects His nature, disposition, conduct. A man may be tried for his life, and he may be acquitted; but if he have, at the same time, a mortal disease upon him, he will die. The province of a judge and a physician are very different. Justification is the act of God as a Judge; sanctification is the work of God the Spirit as the great Physician of souls; and we find both these works united in Psalm 103:3. It is also to be observed that our title to heaven is founded only on the righteousness of Christ, by which we are justified; but in sanctification consists our meetness for heaven. 3. Christ is made unto us sanctification. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) IV. REDEMPTION. If Christ be made unto us wisdom, we are delivered from the powers of darkness; if righteousness, we are redeemed from the curse of the law; if sanctification, we are delivered from the dominion of sin. In these things consists the redemption of the soul. But the "redemption of the body" seems to be intended; and this agrees with Romans 8:21. (G. Burder.)
II. I come to show WHAT THESE BLESSINGS ARE WHICH ARE HERE, THROUGH CHRIST, MADE OVER TO THE ELECT. 1. Christ is made to them "wisdom"; but wherein does true wisdom consist? Were I to ask some of you, perhaps you would say in indulging the lust of the flesh; but this is only the wisdom of brutes. Others would tell me true wisdom consisted in adding house to house; but this cannot be true wisdom, for riches often take to themselves wings, and fly away. But perhaps you despise riches and pleasure, and therefore place wisdom in the knowledge of books; but it is possible for you to tell the numbers of the stars, and call them all by their names, and yet be mere fools; learned men are not always wise. "Know thyself," was a saying of one of the wise men of Greece; this is certainly true wisdom, and this is that wisdom spoken of in the text, and which Jesus Christ is made to all elect sinners. They see the necessity of closing with a Saviour, and behold the wisdom of God in appointing Him to be a Saviour; they are also made willing to accept of salvation upon our Lord's own terms: thus Christ is made to them wisdom. 2. "Righteousness." Christ's whole personal righteousness is made over to, and accounted theirs. 3. Christ is not only made to them righteousness, but sanctification; by sanctification I do not mean a bare hypocritical attendance on outward ordinances, nor do I mean a bare outward reformation, and a few transient convictions, or a little legal sorrow; for all this an unsanctified man may have; but by sanctification I mean a total renovation of the whole man. Their understandings, which were before dark, now become light in the Lord; and their wills, before contrary to, now become one with the will of God; their affections are now set on things above; their memory is now filled with Divine things; their natural consciences are now enlightened; their members, which were before instruments of uncleanness, and of iniquity unto iniquity, are now instruments of righteousness and true holiness. But, before we enter upon the explanation and contemplation of this privilege —(1) Learn hence the great mistake of those writers and clergy who, notwithstanding they talk of sanctification and inward holiness, yet they generally make it the cause, whereas they should consider it as the effect, of our justification. For Christ's righteousness, or that which Christ has done in our stead without us, is the sole cause of our acceptance in the sight of God, and of all holiness wrought in us: to this, and not to the light within, or anything wrought within, should poor sinners seek for justification in the sight of God.(2) From hence also the Antinomians and formal hypocrites may be confuted, who talk of Christ without, but know nothing, experimentally, of a work of sanctification wrought within them. 4. Let us now go on, and take a view of the other link, or rather the end, of the believer's golden chain of privileges, "Redemption." But we must look very high; for the top of it, like Jacob's ladder, reaches heaven, where all believers will ascend, and be placed at the right hand of God. By the word redemption we are to understand, not only a complete deliverance from all evil, but also a full enjoyment of all good both in body and soul. (G. Whitfield, M. A.)
1. Its origin, "Of Him," i.e., as some think, "through Him." Are you this day united to Christ — a stone in that building of which He is both foundation and topstone — a limb of that mystical body of which He is the head? Then you did not get there of yourself. "By the grace of God I am what I am." He "hath begotten us again unto a lively hope." 2. Its dignity. Being in Christ you are of God. God's husbandry, people, children, beloved. Some have thought it a great thing to be of a prince's household; but you are of the Divine family. 3. Its essence. We have no life except as we are "in Christ Jesus." Out of Christ we abide in death. II. OUR SPIRITUAL WEALTH. Here are four things, and in the original the second and third have a peculiar connecting link. The wisdom stands alone, and the redemption, but the righteousness and sanctification have a special link, as though we should be taught that they always go together. Christ is made unto us — 1. Wisdom. The apostle had been speaking of some other wisdom which set itself up in opposition to the Cross. Now, instead of pointing to his own brain, or to the statue of Socrates or Solon, he says Christ is made of God unto us wisdom. There are those who will have it that the gospel such as was preached by Banyan, Whitefield, and Wesley, was very well for the dark times in which they lived; but that there is wanted in this intensely luminous century a more progressive theology. We are afraid that instead of bringing greater light, the advanced thinkers have made darkness worse. Christ makes us wise —(1) By His teaching. All you want to know of God, of sin, of life, of death, of eternity, &c., Christ has either personally, or by His Spirit in the Word of God, taught you. Anything that you find out for yourself over and above revelation, is folly.(2) By His example. You shall never be a fool if you follow Christ, except in the estimation of fools.(3) By His presence. Let none of us ever be so foolish as to suppose that when we have received Jesus we have occasion to blush when we are in the company of the very wisest. Carry a bold face when you confront the brazen-faced philosophy which insults your Lord. 2. Righteousness. The doctrine of imputed righteousness is firmly established in the Word of God; yet it is possible to put too much stress upon "imputed," and scarcely enough upon "righteousness." Not only is Christ's righteousness imputed to me, but it is mine actually, for Christ is mine. 3. Sanctification.(1) Because we are in Christ we have the basis of sanctification, which consists in being set apart.(2) The power by which we are sanctified comes to us by virtue of our union with Christ. The Holy Spirit who sanctifies us through the truth works in us by virtue of our union with Jesus.(3) Let Jesus always be the motive for your sanctification. Is it not a strange thing that some professors should look to Christ alone for pardon and justification, and run away to Moses when they desire sanctification? "The love of Christ constraineth us"; not fear of hell. 4. Redemption. Somebody says: "That ought to have come first; because redemption is the first blessing that we enjoy." Ay, but it is the last as well. You are not yet redeemed altogether. By price you are — but you are not yet redeemed by power. In a measure you are set free by Divine power, but there are links of the old chains yet to be snapped from off, and there is a bondage still about you from which you are ere long to be delivered. You are "waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption of the body." Conclusion: If all this be the case, then let all our glory be unto Him. What insanity it is to boast in any but in our Lord Jesus! How foolish are they who are proud of their wisdom, of their wealth, &c. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
1. By declaration. In the course of His ministrations He did not reason concerning God. "No man hath seen God at any time." Man, therefore, must darkly reason, and doubtfully infer. "The only-begotten Son, who lay in the bosom of the Father," neither acquired nor made known this knowledge in that way. "He hath declared Him." An instance of this declaratory mode of teaching we have in His conversation with the Samaritan woman (John 4:21-24). What instruction is here! What a contrast to the teachings of men! 2. By action. In His life, He was the visible image of God's purity; in His works, of God's power; in His condescending compassion, of God's yearning goodness; in the freeness of His gifts, of God's abundant grace and liberality; in His intercourse with His disciples, of God's regard for pious humble souls; in His denunciations of judgment, of God's justice; and in His death, the brightest and most awful demonstration was given of His holiness, justice, and love united. II. BY THE VIEWS WHICH HE HAS GIVEN US OF THE MORAL CONDITION OF MAN. The sinfulness, helplessness, and danger of mankind have all been acknowledged and felt; but in what new and awful views are they placed by Christ! Sin is not a trifle. See the proof of this in the sufferings of thy Saviour. It is not in man to make atonement for sin. Behold, the Victim which God appointed was both God and man. The punishment of sin is not light. If the Substitute so suffered, what must the principal suffer, should he reject his Saviour? By those sufferings justice was satisfied, and God reconciled to man; and this light is thrown upon our condition, that, sinful, helpless, and endangered as it is, we are all invited to obtain mercy. III. IN THE DISCOVERIES HE HAS MADE OF THE NATURE, EXTENT, AND POSSIBILITY OF HOLINESS. The foulest blot in creation is an unholy spirit. The brightest, the loveliest idea that can enter the human mind is that of moral order, and the purity of the heart. The nature of real holiness is explained to us by Christ. It is not a ceremonial holiness — the mistake of superstition. It is not merely a regulation of the heart and conduct — the mistake of philosophers. It is not a sentimental approval of what is fair and good — the mistake of men of imagination. It is the conversion of the heart to God; the renewal of the primitive image of God in man. The possibility of this is explained by Christ. Without hope there could be no effort. The agency exhibited by Christ in the accomplishment of our sanctification is equal to the effect. His Spirit is the sanctifier; and the whole process of our consecration to God is the mighty working of the Holy Ghost, with the means which He has appointed in order to that end. (R. Watson.)
(Prof. Beet.)
I. THE HOLINESS DERIVED FROM CHRIST. It is that disposition of heart and course of life which is conformable to God's holy law, and pleases Him. 1. True holiness is universal in respect of the commands of God (Psalm 119:6). A profane life is a sure evidence of a profane heart (Galatians 5:19, &c.). 2. True holiness is not only in external duties, but necessarily includes internal obedience of the soul to the will of God (Psalm 24:3). 3. In true holiness there is a bent, inclination, and propensity of heart to obedience. By Adam's fall the hearts of men got a wrong set (Romans 8:7; Hosea 11:7). Now, in sanctification it is bent the other way, towards God and godliness (2 Thessalonians 3:5), that as the needle in the compass, touched with a good loadstone, turns towards the north, so the heart, touched by sanctifying grace, inclines Godward and Christward. 4. As the love of God is the great comprehensive duty of holiness, love is the fulfilling of the law; so love runs through all the duties of religion, to give them the tincture of holiness (Hebrews 6:10). 5. True holiness is influenced by the command of God. The will of God is not only the rule, but the reason of a holy life (John 5:30). 6. True holiness has for its chief end the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). He that is the first cause of all goodness must needs be the last end of it. 7. Lastly, true holiness is universal as regards man.(1) Mortification is universal (Galatians 5:24). It is no true mortification where one lust is spared.(2) Vivification is universal (2 Corinthians 5:17). As when the body of Christ was raised there was life put into every member; so when the soul is raised to live the life of holiness, the image of God is repaired in all its parts, and the soul embraces the whole yoke of Christ, so far as it knows the same. So that sanctification sets a man on every known duty. II. THIS HOLINESS IS DERIVED FROM CHRIST, ACCORDING TO THE GRAND DEVICE OF INFINITE WISDOM FOR THE SANCTIFYING OF AN UNHOLY WORLD. 1. God made the first Adam holy, and all mankind was so in Him (Ecclesiastes 7:29). 2. Adam, sinning, lost the image of God, so that all mankind are naturally dead in sin. 3. Man's sanctification by himself thus being hopeless, it pleased God to constitute a Mediator, to be the head of sanctifying influences to all that should partake of them. 4. Though by the death and resurrection of Christ the sanctification of His people is infallibly insured, as the corruption of all mankind was by the fall of Adam; yet we cannot actually partake of Christ's holiness till we have a spiritual being in Him, even as we partake not of Adam's corruption till we have a natural being from him. 5. As Christ is the prime receptacle of the Spirit of holiness, as the head of all the saints; so the continual supplies of that Spirit are to be derived from Him for the saints' progress in holiness, till they come to perfection. And faith is the great mean of communication betwixt Christ and us (Acts 15:9). III. USES. 1. Of information. This lets us see —(1) The absolute necessity of holiness.(2) In vain do men attempt sanctification without coming to Christ for it.(3) Unholiness ought not to stop a sinner from coming to Christ, more than a disease ought to hinder a man to take the physician's help, or cold from taking the benefit of the fire.(4) True faith is the soul's coming to Christ for sanctification as well as justification. For faith must receive Christ as God offers Him, and He offers Him with all His salvation. Now He is made sanctification. Wherefore the soul, being willing to take Christ with all His salvation, to be sanctified, comes to Him for it. 2. Of exhortation. Come then to Christ for sanctification, and note the following motives.(1) If ye be not holy ye will never see heaven (Hebrews 12:14).(2) Ye will never attain holiness if ye come not to Christ for it.(a) While ye are out of Christ ye are under the curse; and is it possible for the cursed tree to bring forth the fruit of holiness?(b) Can ye be holy without sanctifying influences, or can ye expect that these shall be conveyed to you otherwise than through a Mediator, by His Spirit?(c) Ye have nothing wherewith to produce holiness. The most skilful musician cannot play unless his instrument be in tune. The lame man, if he were ever so willing, cannot run till he be cured. Ye are under an utter impotency, by reason of the corruption of your nature.(d) If ye will come to Christ ye shall be made holy. There is a fulness of merit and spirit in Him for sanctification. Come then to the fountain of holiness. The worst of sinners may be sanctified this way (1 Corinthians 6:11). (T. Boston, D. D.)
(John Bunyan.)
1. It is to be changed (2 Corinthians 3:18). Sanctification makes a great change; the judgment is changed, the disposition, the way, the company. 2. It is to be cured. Sin is the sickness of the soul. The only physician is our Lord Jesus Christ, raised up of God for that purpose; no hand but His can heal us. 3. It is to be cleansed. Sin is the pollution of the soul; and it is pollution in grain, such as nothing can wash us from but the fountain opened, and that fountain is Christ (Zechariah 13:1). 4. It is to be clothed. A sinful condition is a naked condition (Revelation 3:17). And what must. poor naked souls do, but come to Christ, to His shop, and here buy of Him white raiment (Revelation 3:18; Zechariah 3:3, 4). "I clothed thee also with broidered work," &c. (Ezekiel 16:10-14). Grace is rich raiment, princely, priestly, comely clothing, that waxeth not old. 5. It is to be consecrated. Sanctifying is the same with consecrating, that is, setting apart from common and profane to holy and spiritual uses, as persons, places, vessels, times, were under the Old Testament. II. HOW IS JESUS CHRIST MADE ALL THIS TO US? 1. Principally by the working of His Spirit. and grace. The Spirit of Christ is the Sanctifier. When He comes into the heart. to dwell there, He renews, and He regenerates, and He raises, and He reconciles. It is through Jesus Christ. If He had not satisfied and died, to make God friends with us, He would never have sent the Spirit, to make us friends with Him. 2. Instrumentally by the Word, "Sanctify them through Thy truth" (John 17:17). Error never sanctifies. Truth only doth that (James 1:17; Titus 1:1). The Word of truth begins, and the same carries on this good work. III. THE PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT. 1. Shall I propound one needful question to you? Are ye sanctified? is Jesus Christ made of God sanctification to you? It is a thing that may be known. There are three marks:(1) Where Christ is made to us sanctification, it is become natural to us to walk in all holy obedience to the will of God. I say natural, not to the old, but to the new, nature. Then, says one, I fear I am not sanctified. I reply, The trial is not to be made by any one single action at any one time, but by our course and way. How is it ordinarily with us? There is no man but doth something that beasts do; but is he therefore a beast? There is no beast but doth something that a man doth; but is he therefore a man?(2) Where Christ is made to us sanctification, holiness is highly prized and dearly loved, and more and more of it earnestly desired. I believe it is never otherwise among the truly sanctified.(3) Where Christ is made to us sanctification, He is owned and acknowledged as our all in all. The crown is set upon His head. To us to live is Christ. 2. I shall suppose you now propounding to me another needful question. What may I do that Christ may be made to me sanctification?(1) We must be inwardly and thoroughly convinced that there is an absolute necessity He should be so. If we mean to please God in this world. None but the sanctified are accepted of Him, He hath no pleasure but where His image is. Our sacrifices are an abomination, our prayers an abomination, otherwise. Till the tree is good the fruit cannot be good. And also, if we mean to enjoy God in the other world. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14).(2) We must apply ourselves to the Lord Jesus by faith and prayer.(3) We must attend upon the ordinances. These are the conduit pipes through which the grace of sanctification is conveyed to poor souls. 3. What must they do to whom Christ is already made sanctification?(1) They have cause to bless God for it every day, all their days (Psalm 103:1-3).(2) They must press after further degrees of sanctification, more and more. Dying to sin. Living to righteousness. (Philip Henry.)
I. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN — "made redemption"? He is made of God redemption to us; that is, God hath ordained and appointed Him from all eternity, and in the fulness of time raised Him up, and sent Him, to be the author and procurer of redemption for us; or, which is all one, to be a redeemer to us (Luke 1:68). Now to redeem is, in general, to recover those that are in bondage out of bondage, as the Jews were released by Cyrus out of their captivity in Babylon. Redemption, viz. — 1. By power; when those who kept us in bondage are conquered and overcome. 2. By exchange; when one prisoner is let go for another. 3. By price; when a sum of money is paid to buy off a prisoner, more or less, according as the quality of the prisoner is. Now this last is properly redemption, and this last is the way in which Jesus Christ hath made us free. To this purpose we are told of a covenant of redemption which was transacted from all eternity between the Father and the Son, the terms whereof were — That if the Son would come and be man and die, that dying of His should be accepted as the price or ransom of all the elect, how many soever there were. The Son accepted of this motion, did what was to be done, suffered what was to be suffered, and so became our redemption. See some footsteps of this covenant transaction in two Scriptures (Psalm 40:6-8: Isaiah 49:2, 6, 9). But — II. WHAT FIND OF REDEMPTION IS THIS? 1. Needed redemption. It is the redemption that we needed. He came to supply all our needs. Now among other needs, being in bondage, we needed one to redeem us; not only one to clothe us, being naked; to feed us, being hungry; to wash us, being filthy; to heal us, being wounded; to cure us, being sick; — but to redeem us. If He had done all this for us in our bondage, and left us still in bondage, we had been miserable notwithstanding. 2. It is a nonsuch redemption, when compared with other redemption. Whether personal, as Joseph out of prison, or Peter (Acts 12.), or Daniel out of the lions' den. Whether public, as from Egypt, from Babylon. It surpasses them all in number, way, and consequences. 3. Distinguishing redemption. It is denied to the angels that sinned. The commons are ransomed, the nobles left behind. He paid no price to redeem them. 4. It is divers, manifold redemption according to the manifold evils that we lay under. They are of three sorts — temporal, spiritual, eternal.(1) He is redemption to us from temporal evils. Such as concern the body, and the life that now is; such as sickness, death, poverty. Not that they shall not befall us, but that they shall not hurt us. The sting of them is taken out (Psalm 91:10).(2) Which is better, it is redemption to us from spiritual evils. These are worse evils than the former, because they affect the better part of us. The guilt of sin; whereby we are bound over to punishment, the fear whereof causes bondage (Hebrews 2:14). To redeem us from this, He is made righteousness to us for our justification. The filth and power of sin; whereby sin hath dominion over us, and we are perfect slaves to it, the vilest of slaves (John 8:34). To redeem us from this He is made sanctification to us.(3) There is another sort of evils yet, and those are eternal evils; and by redemption here we are especially to understand our deliverance from those. Because it is mentioned after righteousness and sanctification as a thing different from them; and because of what we find in other Scriptures, where redemption is applied to something in the other world: "Waiting for the redemption of the body" (Romans 8:23), that is, the resurrection and glorification of our bodies: compare Luke 21:28 with Ephesians 4:30, the day of redemption. 1. What those eternal evils are which redemption frees us from.(1) It frees us for ever, not only from the guilt, and filth, and power of sin, but from the very being of it also.(2) It frees us from Satan ever having any more to do with us, either as a tempter or as a tormentor. He is busy now with the saved (1 Peter 5:8), and he will be more busy hereafter with those that perish (Matthew 18:34). But where the redeemed are he comes not (Romans 16:20).(3) It frees us from all sorrow and suffering, of what kind soever, in mind or body (Revelation 21:4).(4) It frees us from all society with wicked and ungodly men, and that for ever. They are blended here, and it pleases neither (Psalm 120:5, 6). But there is a redemption coming (Matthew 25:33). 2. What there is that is positive in this redemption.(1) As soon as the redeemed die their souls immediately go to God, to the vision and fruition of Him in glory (Luke 23:43; Philippians 1:23).(2) At the resurrection, at the last day, the same soul and the same body shall come together again. Though we are not redeemed from death, we are to be from the grave (Isaiah 26:19; Hosea 13:14).(3) To all eternity there shall be a fulness of uninterrupted joy and felicity; a remaining rest; a Sabbath without a week of working days after it, perpetual, eternal. 3. I shall show how Jesus Christ is made this to us, this future redemption. He is the purchaser of it; it was bought with His blood, bought back. We had mortgaged it for an apple, and must never have retrieved it, had not He died (Ephesians 1:14). He is our forerunner in it (Hebrews 6:20). He went thither as our attorney or proxy, to take possession of the purchase in our name and stead (John 14:1, 2). It is He that Himself actually puts us into possession of it. At the resurrection it is His voice and trumpet that raises the dead; He is the resurrection. It is He Himself alone that is the sole object of all our future happiness; to be with Him, to see and enjoy Him, is our future redemption (Revelation 21:23). III. THE IMPROVEMENT. 1. Then it concerns us all, by all means, to give all diligence to make sure to ourselves our interest in this redemption. 2. If Jesus Christ be made of God this redemption to you, then, in God's name, take the comfort of it. Lift up the head and hands that hang down; "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice." 3. Then live as the redeemed of the Lord. (Philip Henry.)
(Hugh Price Hughes, M. A.)
I. GLORY ONLY IN THE LORD. Because — 1. The theme is too great to admit of another. If God fills all in all, there can be no other god; and if the glory of God be infinite, then there can be no second glory. 2. Any other object highly provokes the Most High. He has said, "My glory will I not give to another, nor My praise to graven images." Where the ark of the Lord is, Dagon must come down. God will be all, or nothing. Think of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Herod. 3. There is no other fit ground for glorying.(1) If there were some other object in which we thought we could glory, yet since it came from Him it would be idle to glory in the streams, we had better boast in the fountain-head from which the stream descends.(2) Moreover, all things in this world are fleeting, and wherefore should we glory in that which to-day is, and to-morrow will pass away? Let your glory be in that which will last as long as your own being.(3) Besides, there is nothing in this world worth glorying in, in comparison with God. He is the sun; the stars must hide their heads when He appears. Let us bless the eternal ocean of all-sufficient glory and goodness, and not turn aside to magnify our little Abanas and Pharpars. 4. When we do so we shall be in accord with the true order of the universe.(1) With creation "The heavens are telling the glory of God." "All Thy works praise Thee, O God." Creation is a temple in which every one speaks of His glory.(2) With Providence. "For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be the glory for ever."(3) With the angels. What is their song? "Glory to God in the highest."(4) With the Divine Trinity; for what does the Father do but glorify the Son? What does the Son aim at when He says, "Father, glorify Thy Son" ? It is, "that Thy Son also may glorify Thee." What does the Holy Spirit do when He takes of the things of Christ, and shows them unto us? Has not Jesus said of Him, "He shall glorify Me" ? II. GLORY HEARTILY IN THE LORD. Because of — 1. His love. Glory in —(1) Its antiquity. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love!"(2) In its wonderful benefactions.(3) In its freeness. He loved us because He would love us; not because we were lovely, but because He was love. Glory in it, therefore, all the day long, for well you may. "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." 2. His faithfulness. Whom once He loves He never leaves, but loves them to the end. 3. His holiness. "Bless the Lord, O my soul," and "All that is within me, bless" — His gracious name, is it? No. His loving name? No; but "His holy name," because the whole includes all the parts, and the holiness, or the wholeness of God is a grander thing than any one of the distinct attributes which make up His character. Glory in the holiness of God, for there is none holy as the Lord. It is this which angels glory in, for as they veil their faces, they say, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts." 4. His all-sufficiency, and the liberality with which He distributes His mercies among His chosen. In Christ Jesus is not one good thing given to us, but every good thing. Do we need to be instructed? Christ is oar wisdom. Do we need to be clothed in the sight of God with a righteousness that shall render us acceptable? Christ is our righteousness. Do we need to be purified and cleansed? Christ is our sanctification. And do we need to be set free and delivered from all bondage? Christ is our redemption. 5. The nearness and dearness of the relationship which God holds to us. The mar, who can bow his knee, and say from his heart, "Our Father," has more to glory in than the emperor of the grandest nations. Is Christ my Brother? I am ennobled by that relationship. III. GLORY IN THE LORD GROWINGLY. That is to say, we should glory in God in proportion as we learn more of Him, and receive more from Him. Glory growingly in the Lord as you know more of Him — 1. By revelation. And as you see more of Him, go and tell abroad more of Him, and let others know what a glorious God you serve. 2. By experience. Never let a special season pass without praising Him; and as answers to prayer increase, as grace is given to you in times of need, and as you see converting work going on in others glorify Him more. By and by, as time rolls on, we shall know more of the Lord, and get to be more like Him, and approach nearer to the glory itself. Beholding that glory, as in a glass, we are changed from glory to glory, as by the image of the Lord. IV. GLORY IN THE LORD PRACTICALLY. 1. By owning that you belong to Him. A man does not hide away that which he glories in. Charge a veteran with having been at Waterloo, and he will glory in it. Accuse an artist of being a Royal Academician, and he will own the charge. Abuse me for loving my wife and children, and I smile at you. Why, then, blush to be called a follower of Jesus? 2. By talking about Him on all fit occasions. We are too reticent in our piety. As the rose betrays itself by its perfume, and the glowworm by its shining, so should our glorying in the Lord discover us to all observers. A foreigner may speak English well, but he is known by his accent, and the accent of grace is quite as marked as that of nature. 3. By standing up for Him when He is opposed. If you hear the proud ones ridicule His gospel, and despise His people, put in a word for Jesus. 4. By being calm under your troubles. 5. By having a contempt for those things which others value so much. Do not be greedy after the world. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I. II. III. 1. Has given him all. 2. Redeemed all. 3. Is become his portion for ever. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
I. IN ITS OUTWARD ADMINISTRATION. This includes — 1. The humble appearance of Christ in our world. When we understand the reasons of this humble appearance of Christ, we see in it the wisdom of God; but had it been left to us beforehand, we should have assigned Him the most magnificent state. Thus did the wisdom of man pronounce. Indeed, the pride of man, showing itself in lofty pretensions to the omniscience of wisdom, was seen to be the most intrepid enemy which the religion of heaven had to encounter. It therefore was a main point in the outset to overwhelm this enemy with convictions of his own ignorance and folly and of the far superior wisdom of God. In all these proud pretensions reason aspires to a place for which it was never designed. It is not its province to penetrate the mysteries of the universe by its own ken, but to work up into judgments materials furnished by information. It is the eye, but it cannot see without, light. In no other science but that which relates to the incomprehensible God and to the interests and government of the universe, does reason attempt to build on its own independent discoveries. The anatomist does not presume to tell you how a man ought to be made, but with all submission proceeds to examine the animal system which God has exposed to his view. And why does man act so differently in this case from what he does in all others? Because in other sciences he wishes to obtain accurate knowledge; in this, relief to his conscience and fears and mortified pride. He does not like God, and wishes to modify Him after his own taste. 2. Another way in which the outward administration of the gospel took the pride of the world, was in the weakness of the instruments employed, the simplicity of their preaching, and their triumphant success. Instead of angels or Jewish doctors or Grecian philosophers, Christ chose fishermen. II. THE SAME TENDENCY APPEARS IN THE TEXTURE OF THE GOSPEL. This is noticed in our text and the preceding verse. "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord." 1. Our wisdom. Instead of ignorant and prejudiced reason, on which the wise men of the world proudly rested for the discovery of God, Christ, the great Prophet of the world, was appointed to lay open the secrets of the eternal mind, and to bring "life and immortality to light"; "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 2. Our righteousness. There is nothing to which men more strongly adhere than to the claims of their own merit. The whole texture of the gospel is fitted to put down this arrogant pretender, to annihilate the last lurking pride of man. (1) (2) (3) III. THE SAME TENDENCY OF THE GOSPEL APPEARS IN ITS APPLICATION. Christ is made of God unto us sanctification, "that, according as it is written, He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord." As the race were condemned by the law to the curse of eternal abandonment, the Spirit could not come to men without the mediation of Christ. The heathen philosophers depended on the self-determining power of the will for all their personal virtue, and on their self-Caught ethics for the reformation of the world. In opposition to all these proud aspirations, the gospel casts the world fur sanctification on the Spirit of God and the purchase of Christ. Nor is this all. In their spiritual death it finds nothing in them to aid their resurrection, and ascribes to God, not only the whole power, but a conquering power, "the working of mighty power," as great as that "which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places." Thus every part of the gospel is calculated to abase the pride of man, to break and subdue and humble the sinner, to support the rights, the claims, the government of God, and to give all the glory to Him. "Whatever light or holiness or title to salvation we possess, comes from God through the Redeemer. Whatever brings out God to view, exalts Him, abases sinners, and humbles and blesses the creation. Let us, then, see what and how much of God is revealed in the plan of salvation. In the first place, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are brought out to view in their own proper and infinitely important characters; a distinction never whispered to the universe in any of His other works. In the next place, His inflexible resolution, at all hazards, to support His moral empire over the creation, comes out; disclosing His infinite attachment to all the principles of His law and to the happiness which it subserves, and thus manifesting His holiness, justice, and benevolence. In the next place, His amazing compassion and mercy and patience and condescension and accessibleness and truth are brought to light; His power, too, in subduing the carnal heart, in restraining, bounding, and defeating all the machinations of Satan. But the wisdom elicited is that on which I wish chiefly to dwell. This wonderful plan of the Incarnation was the forming of a connecting link between finite and infinite natures, and filling up the whole chasm between God and us. He confounded the wisdom of men by the triumphs of that very weakness which provoked their contempt, and by making, in various ways, the most unpromising means lead to the most splendid success. He so shaped the gospel, that, in every part, it should be at war with pride, and touch it in every tender spot, and call into the field every arm of that foe, and exhibit it before heaven and earth in the hideous attitude of warring against all the love and authority of the gospel. He pressed into the service of His cause all the agents in the wicked world; the policy of kings, the pride of philosophers, the craft of priests, and the very ferocity of bloody persecution. He defeated all the stratagems ,of Satan and effectually bruised the serpent's head. Elect man is a gainer by his own ruin. His sin is made the occasion of higher advances in holiness; for to whom much is forgiven the same loveth much. His misery is made the occasion of his greater blessedness. And finally, the wisdom of God appears in that capital measure to vindicate His own impartiality, the appointment of the Friend and Brother of man to be his Judge. "The Father hath given Him authority to execute judgment also because He is the Son of man." Why should you think that this grandest of all the exhibitions of God will be shut up in the nut-shell of a single world? (E. D. Griffin,. D. D.). The Biblical Illustrator, Electronic Database. Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2006, 2011 by Biblesoft, Inc. 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