Acts 7:54 When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.… In the brotherhood of human society there is a place for advice, for persuasion, for encouragement, for gentlest reproof, for vehement remonstrance, for beseechful expostulation, for all the energy of urgent exhortation, and for rebuke. It must be confessed, however, that the place which belongs to rebuke is (if comparison may be given to the word) far more unique in its character. Whatever it may intend, it is nothing better than the merest impertinence, except under certain very definite conditions. In connection with the ill reception, ill even to fatality, given on this occasion to the vigorous rebuke of Stephen, let us take opportunity to consider - I. THE RIGHTS AND JUST GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN REBUKE. 1. All rebuke must mean the assertion of authority, and naturally presumes some footing of rightful authority. The rebuke of parent, of teacher, of master, of age, of experience, of knowledge, each rests on its own special authority. We are, therefore, justified in demanding the authority of Christian rebuke or what may claim to be such. And we may ask of what sort its authority professes to be. 2. While some may be prepared most unhesitatingly to answer these questions, others, and these the very persons most nearly affected by the answer, may refuse to defer to them or to accept their dicta. Still, this will not disprove the authority claimed for the exercise of Christian rebuke, nor put it in any other position than some other cases of disputed authority. The decision for such persons may be deferred till the dawn of eternity; and the person who exercises rebuke of this solemn sort must be prepared, and will readily acknowledge himself prepared, to await also the same date and abide its issue. 3. The authority of the man who honestly exercises Christian rebuke is of the same sort and in part of the same origin with that which bids him, for his own sake and for the sake of all others, "have no fellowship" whatsoever with evil, "but rather reprove" it is his native right, if he will but do this very thing, to war ceaselessly with evil. Reason might have been supposed equal to teaching this. Conscience certainly teaches it. The light of revelation, where it is possessed, says it, and the only thing remaining to clinch the rightful act of the person who rebukes is present in the fact (where least confessed) of the amen, uttered in some way or other by the conscience of the person justly rebuked. The honest Christian rebuke claims to rebuke that which is bane, misery, curse, to all the world; which, because it is the duty of every one to discountenance and do his best to destroy it, infers no presumptuousness in the few who do this, but does infer laches, and most criminal laches, in those who do it not. Men may doubt, disbelieve, deny the written authority of revelation, and are answerable for the consequences of doing so. But still they are held; and they are held by a bond they cannot break or rid themselves of, when, being rebuked, their conscience either honestly owns to the justice of the rebuke, or owns to it no less conclusively though in a more painful manner by a certain violent refusal of it. And it is evident that the true Christian rebuker is not to wait till such time as the person rebuked is ready to confess his faith in things to come and his apprehension of things unseen: no; he is to speak because of his own calm, firm, yet modest and tenderly compassionate apprehension of eternal verities, the things of God, of Christ, of the soul, and of eternity. No end of other responsibility lies with him who poses as the Christian rebuker; but if he be truly this, then and then first is his responsibility rightly met. So souls are quickened, and death is startled into life. So the messages of revelation are spread with their sterner significance, and the tender words of Jesus are multiplied. So hearts that have been touched themselves, and souls that own to the earnest of salvation within them, illustrate the one compassion left to them when, other means having failed and the right moment of rebuke having arrived, they utter forth the burden with which they are charged. And Stephen now spoke before men many times himself in number, and in repute and worldly estimation - many of them - far placed above himself; yet he assumes the tone and place of authority, and plainly speaks the words of authority. Moreover, the character of that authority is that which beyond a doubt is most offensive to others. It deals in censure, reflects on the motives and conduct of men, and of a long line of their ancestors as well; and yet, provided his indictment is true and not slanderous, Stephen is right. Let alone the fact that he is fired with the light and the fervent flames of the Holy Spirit, he is right on the broadest ground of humanity, on the simplest principles of Christianity, in the name of truth, and in that service so often forgotten, the kind and faithful service of fellow-man. It is by no means a frequent thing to find the man who is ready to sacrifice himself in order to say and do those things of truth which have for their present reward loss even of life to claim, but for their remoter fruit the highest benefit of mankind. 4. But lastly, none who are believers in great leading doctrines of the Christian religion, and in particular in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the force and the principle of life in that dispensation, will for a moment doubt that, in the last analysis, his authority is the beginning and the end of the rightful exercise of moral and spiritual rebuke. He finds the right for all those whom he moves in his own sovereign right. And his light, knowledge, and impulse conferred, submit to no limit except that which is self-imposed. His uncreate freedom, which so often blesses men to make them even sons of God, will yield none of its right, nor be robbed of its prerogative. When resisted, slighted, "grieved," it freely reproves through human lip; or when on the point of being "quenched" for any, it comes freely to rebuke, as now though by human lips only in words and suggestions, which "cut to the heart" men to whose heart nothing but the qualities of hardness and resistance seemed left. The rebuke of God's Spirit, albeit coming forth only from man's lips, can no more be restrained than the scathing lightning can be stopped in its mid-career. The rebuke of God's Spirit carries legitimately the credentials of its right in its might. And Christian rebuke, in the highest sense, postulates just this authority, ought to postulate it, and needs no other. II. THE ILL WORK THAT COMES OF JUST REBUKE DETERMINEDLY REFUSED. 1. It certainly does not necessarily lose aught of its power to pain. "When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart. That certainly means pain, whatever the character of the pain. 2. The character of that pain is inevitably all-malignant. It is not of the pain that, sudden and sharp, lends itself also to the salutary use of calling attention to symptoms of inmost danger. It is a foregone conclusion that it shall not have any beneficial operation of this sort, and in this sad sense too to be forewarned proves to be forearmed, namely, against what might be the best of friends. It is left to such pain to work all it can, according to its own evil pleasure, purposed in its own self, without a single redeeming feature. 3. It stirs up anger's muddiest depths. It excites anger to the turn of insanity. Anger rages first, then raves. What else is said, what less is true, when it is testified that they gnashed on him with their teeth." Anger so mastered them that it would not let them heed or even hear its own best Mentor, - "Be ye angry, and sin not." This anger is all sin. It is sin in its causelessness; it is sin in its excess; it is sin in its character of a demonstration of opposition so unequal as against one undefended man; it is sin against conscience and against that Spirit whose mightiest office is to touch livingly the conscience; it is sin in its blind, tumultuous desperation of conduct. 4. According to the intrinsic seriousness or otherwise of the individual occasion, the inevitable tendency of the determined refusal to hear rebuke is either to that stricken heart and conscience that are equivalent to moral paralysis, or to an activity equally frantic and disastrous. The revenge which rebuke, unheeded, though it be just, takes is found to vary within many degrees. Sometimes its work is slow and secret, sometimes it is even "open beforehand" in the force of its demonstrations, and these "go before to judgment." It can scarcely be otherwise now. The present instance is typical. When arrived at a certain point, human nature seems to have it in it, rapidly indeed, "to fill up the measures of its iniquities." "How much better" is reproof listened to than rebuke resented! But if instead we have resented reproof, then how much better is it to listen to rebuke, to kiss the rod that smites, and, though it smite severely, while still there is left us time to pray, "O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure!" For pain and anger in concert know no compassion, and show mercy least of all and last of all to those who court their company and soon find themselves their driven slaves. Ill is the promise of fair entrance to haven for the vessel that is tossed in storms of anger, lashed by those blasts of pain, which are the avengings of an insulted, an aggravated, and disobeyed conscience. - B. Parallel Verses KJV: When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. |
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