1 Corinthians 11:2 Now I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. Keep the ordinances, or, as given in the margin, "the traditions." St. Paul had given in his ministry "ordinances" of three kinds. 1. Regulations for the government of the Church. 2. Statements concerning doctrine. 3. Statements concerning historical facts. Illustrate the use and misuse of the term "traditions." Show that the traditions of Christ, in the sense of the records preserved, in memory or in writing, of his life, ministry, miracles, death, and resurrection, are the basis on which the Church is built. Christianity is not a revealed religious system, as Mosaism was. It is the revelation, in an individual man, of that divinely human life which was God's thought when God made man in his image, but which man spoiled by the assertion of his rights of self will, and consequent separation of the Divine from the human. All Christian doctrine rests on the ideal humanity which Christ exhibited. All Christian duty is the effort to reach and express that ideal. So Christianity is strictly an historical religion; and yet the historical is only the body which manifests to us, and sets in relation with us, and permanently preserves for us, the spiritual and the mystical. Then we ought to be anxious about the adequate remembrance of and knowledge of the traditions of Christ. Show how these are attacked and defended. 1. They are the walls that keep the city. 2. They are the body which manifests the life. 3. They are the material through which alone the spiritual can be apprehended. Notice and duly impress two points. (1) The fourfold care with which the Christly traditions have been preserved for us. (2) The elaborate and precise way in which the apostolic teachings support the traditions. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. |
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