‘For though I preach the Gospel, I
have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is
unto me, if I preach not the Gospel! 17. For if I do this thing
willingly, I have a reward.’—1 COR. ix. 16, 17.
The original reference of these
words is to the Apostle's principle and practice of not receiving for his
support money from the churches. Gifts he did accept; pay he did not. The
exposition of his reason is interesting, ingenuous, and chivalrous. He
strongly asserts his right, even while he as strongly declares that he
will waive it. The reason for his waiving it is that he desires to have
somewhat in his service beyond the strict line of his duty. His preaching
itself, with all its toils and miseries, was but part of his day's work,
which he was bidden to do, and for doing which he deserved no thanks nor
praise. But he would like to have a little bit of glad service over and
above what he is ordered to do, that, as he ingenuously says, he may have
‘somewhat to boast of.’
In this exposition of motives we
have two great principles actuating the Apostle—one, his profound sense of
obligation, and the other his desire, if it might be, to do more than he
was bound to do, because he loved his work so much. And though he is
speaking here as an apostle, and his example is not to be unconditionally
transferred to us, yet I think that the motives which actuated his conduct
are capable of unconditional application to ourselves.
There are three things here. There
is the obligation of speech, there is the penalty of silence, and there is
the glad obedience which transcends obligation.
I. First, mark the obligation of
speech.
No doubt the Apostle had, in a
special sense, a ‘necessity laid upon’ him, which was first laid upon him
on that road to Damascus, and repeated many a time in his life. But though
he differs from us in the direct supernatural commission which was given
to him, in the width of the sphere in which he had to work, and in the
splendour of the gifts which were entrusted to his stewardship, he does
not differ from us in the reality of the obligation which was laid upon
him. Every Christian man is as truly bound as was Paul to preach the
Gospel. The commission does not depend upon apostolic dignity. Jesus
Christ, when He said, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to
every creature,’ was not speaking to the eleven, but to all generations of
His Church. And whilst there are many other motives on which we may rest
the Christian duty of propagating the Christian faith, I think that we
shall be all the better if we bottom it upon this, the distinct and
definite commandment of Jesus Christ, the grip of which encloses all who
for themselves have found that the Lord is gracious.
For that commandment is permanent.
It is exactly contemporaneous with the duration of the promise which is
appended to it, and whosoever suns himself in the light of the latter is
bound by the precept of the former. ‘Lo! I am with you alway, even to the
end of the world,’ defines the duration of the promise, and it defines
also the duration of the duty. Nay, even the promise is made conditional
upon the discharge of the duty enjoined. For it is to the Church ‘going
into all the world, and preaching the Gospel to every creature,’ that the
promise of an abiding presence is made.
Let us remember, too, that, just
because this commission is given to the whole Church, it is binding on
every individual member of the Church. There is a very common fallacy, not
confined to this subject, but extending over the whole field of Christian
duty, by which things that are obligatory on the community are shuffled
off the shoulders of the individual. But we have to remember that the
whole Church is nothing more than the sum total of all its members, and
that nothing is incumbent upon it which is not in their measure incumbent
upon each of them. Whatsoever Christ says to all, He says to each, and the
community has no duties which you and I have not.
Of course, there are diversities of
forms of obedience to this commandment; of course, the restrictions of
locality and the other obligations of life, come in to modify it; and it
is not every man's duty to wander over the whole world doing this work.
But the direct work of communicating to others who know it not the
sweetness and the power of Jesus Christ belongs to every Christian man.
You cannot buy yourselves out of the ranks, as they used to be able to do
out of the militia, by paying for a substitute. Both forms of service are
obligatory upon each of us. We all, if we know anything of Christ and His
love and His power, are bound, by the fact that we do know it, to tell it
to those whom we can reach. You have all got congregations if you would
look for them. There is not a Christian man or woman in this world who has
not somebody that he or she can speak to more efficiently than anybody
else can. You have your friends, your relations, the people with whom you
are brought into daily contact, if you have no wider congregations. You
cannot all stand up and preach in the sense in which I do so. But this is
not the meaning of the word in the New Testament. It does not imply a
pulpit, nor a set discourse, nor a gathered multitude; it simply implies a
herald's task of proclaiming. Everybody who has found Jesus Christ can
say, ‘I have found the Messiah,’ and everybody who knows Him can say,
‘Come and hear, and I will tell what the Lord hath done for my soul.’
Since you can do it you are bound to do it; and if you are one of ‘the
dumb dogs, lying down and loving to slumber,’ of whom there are such
crowds paralysing the energies and weakening the witness of every Church
upon earth, then you are criminally and suicidally oblivious of an
obligation which is a joy and a privilege as much as a duty.
Oh, brethren! I do want to lay on
the consciences of all you Christian people this, that nothing can absolve
you from the obligation of personal, direct speech to some one of Christ
and His salvation. Unless you can say, ‘I have not refrained my lips, O
Lord! Thou knowest,’ there frowns over against you an unfulfilled duty,
the neglect of which is laming your spiritual activity, and drying up the
sources of your spiritual strength.
But, then, besides this direct
effort, there are the other indirect methods in which this commandment can
be discharged, by sympathy and help of all sorts, about which I need say
no more here.
Jesus Christ's ideal of His
Church was an active propaganda, an army in which there were no
non-combatants, even although some of the combatants might be detailed to
remain in the camp and look after the stuff, and others of them might be
in the forefront of the battle. But is that ideal ever fulfilled in any of
our churches? How many amongst us there are who do absolutely nothing in
the shape of Christian work! Some of us seem to think that the voluntary
principle on which our Nonconformist churches are largely organised means,
‘I do not need to do anything unless I like. Inclination is the guide of
duty, and if I do not care to take any active part in the work of our
church, nobody has anything to say.’ No man can force me, but if Jesus
Christ says to me, ‘Go!’ and I say, ‘I had rather not,’ Jesus Christ and I
have to settle accounts between us. The less
men
control, the more stringent ought to be the control of Christ. And if the
principle of Christian obedience is a willing heart, then the duty of a
Christian is to see that the heart is willing.
A stringent obligation, not to be
shuffled off by any of the excuses that we make, is laid upon us all. It
makes very short work of a number of excuses. There is a great deal in the
tone of this generation which tends to chill the missionary spirit. We
know more about the heathen world, and familiarity diminishes horror. We
have taken up, many of us, milder and more merciful ideas about the
condition of those who die without knowing the name of Jesus Christ. We
have taken to the study of comparative religion as a science, forgetting
sometimes that the thing that we are studying as a science is spreading a
dark cloud of ignorance and apathy over millions of men. And all these
reasons somewhat sap the strength and cool the fervour of a good many
Christian people nowadays. Jesus Christ's commandment remains just as it
was.
Then some of us say, ‘I prefer
working at home!’ Well, if you are doing all that you can there, and
really are enthusiastically devoted to one phase of Christian service, the
great principle of division of labour comes in to warrant your not
entering upon other fields which others cultivate. But unless you are thus
casting all your energies into the work which you say that you prefer,
there is no reason in it why you should do nothing in the other direction.
Jesus Christ still says, ‘Go ye into all the world.’
Then some of you say, ‘Well, I do
not much believe in your missionary societies. There is a great deal of
waste of money about them. A number of things there are that one does not
approve of. I have heard stories about missionaries being very idle, very
luxurious, and taking too much pay, and doing too little work.’ Well, be
it so! Very probably it is partly true; though I do not know that the
people whose testimony is so willingly accepted, to the detriment of our
brethren in foreign lands, are precisely the kind of people that should
talk much about self-sacrifice and luxurious living, or whose estimate of
Christian work is to be relied upon. I fancy many of them, if they walked
about the streets of an English town, would have a somewhat similar report
to give, as they have when they walk about the streets of an Indian one.
But be that as it may, does that indictment draw a wet sponge across the
commandment of Jesus Christ? or can you chisel out of the stones of Sinai
one of the words written there, by reason of the imperfections of those
who are seeking to obey them? Surely not! Christ still says, ‘Go ye into
all the world!’
I sometimes venture to think that
the day will come when the condition of being received into, and retained
in, the communion of a Christian church will be obedience to that
commandment. Why, even bees have the sense at a given time of the year to
turn the drones out of the hives, and sting them to death. I do not
recommend the last part of the process, but I am not sure but that it
would be a benefit to us all, both to those ejected and to those retained,
that we should get rid of that added weight that clogs every organised
community in this and other lands—the dead weight of idlers who say that
they are Christ's disciples. Whether it is a condition of church
membership or not, sure I am that it is a condition of fellowship with
Jesus Christ, and a condition, therefore, of health in the Christian life,
that it should be a life of active obedience to this plain, imperative,
permanent, and universal command.
II. Secondly, a word as to the
penalty of silence.
‘Woe is me if I preach not the
Gospel.’ I suppose Paul is thinking mainly of a future issue, but not
exclusively of that. At all events, let me point you, in a word or two, to
the plain penalties of silence here, and to the awful penalties of silence
hereafter.
‘Woe is me if I preach not the
Gospel.’ If you are a dumb and idle professor of Christ's truth, depend
upon it that your dumb idleness will rob you of much communion with Jesus
Christ. There are many Christians who would be ever so much happier, more
joyous, and more assured Christians if they would go and talk about Christ
to other people. Because they have locked up God's word in their hearts it
melts away unknown, and they lose more than they suspect of the sweetness
and buoyancy and assured confidence that might mark them, for no other
reason than because they seek to keep their morsel to themselves. Like
that mist that lies white and dull over the ground on a winter's morning,
which will be blown away with the least puff of fresh air, there lie
doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds, over many a Christian heart,
shutting out the sun from the earth, and a little whiff of wholesome
activity in Christ's cause would clear them all away, and the sun would
shine down upon men again. If you want to be a happy Christian, work for
Jesus Christ. I do not lay that down as a specific by itself. There are
other things to be taken in conjunction with it, but yet it remains true
that the woe of a languid Christianity attaches to the men who, being
professing Christians, are silent when they should speak, and idle when
they should work.
There is, further, the woe of the
loss of sympathies, and the gain of all the discomforts and miseries of a
self-absorbed life. And there is, further, the woe of the loss of one of
the best ways of confirming one's own faith in the truth—viz. that of
seeking to impart it to others. If you want to learn a thing, teach it. If
you want to grasp the principles of any science, try to explain it to
somebody who does not understand it. If you want to know where, in these
days of jangling and controversy, the true, vital centre of the Gospel is,
and what is the essential part of the revelation of God, go and tell
sinful men about Jesus Christ who died for them; and you will find out
that it is the Cross, and Him who died thereon, as dying for the world,
that is the power which can move men's hearts. And so you will cleave with
a closer grasp, in days of difficulty and unsettlement, to that which is
able to bring light into darkness and to harmonise the discord of a
troubled and sinful soul. And, further, there is the woe of having none
that can look to you and say, ‘I owe myself to thee.’ Oh, brethren! there
is no greater joy accessible to a man than that of feeling that through
his poor words Christ has entered into a brother's heart. And you are
throwing away all this because you shut your mouths and neglect the plain
commandment of your Lord.
Ay! but that is not all. There
is a future to be taken into account, and I think that Christian people do
far too little realise the solemn truth that it is not all the same
then
whether a man has kept his Master's commandments or neglected them. I
believe that whilst a very imperfect faith saves a man, there is such a
thing as being ‘saved, yet so as through fire,’ and that there is such a
thing as having ‘an abundant entrance ministered unto us into the
everlasting kingdom.’ He whose life has been very slightly influenced by
Christian principle, and who has neglected plain, imperative duties, will
not stand on the same level of blessedness as the man who has more
completely yielded himself in life to the constraining power of Christ's
love, and has sought to keep all His commandments.
Heaven is not a dead level. Every
man there will receive as much blessedness as he is capable of, but
capacities will vary, and the principal factor in determining the
capacity, which capacity determines the blessedness, will be the
thoroughness of obedience to all the ordinances of Christ in the course of
the life upon earth. So, though we know, and therefore dare say, little
about that future, I do beseech you to take this to heart, that he who
there can stand before God, and say, ‘Behold! I and the children whom God
hath given me’ will wear a crown brighter than the starless ones of those
who saved themselves, and have brought none with them.
‘Some on boards, and some on broken
pieces of the ship, they all came safe to land.’ But the place where they
stand depends on their Christian life, and of that Christian life one main
element is obedience to the commandment which makes them the apostles and
missionaries of their Lord.
III. Lastly, note the glad obedience
which transcends the limits of obligation.
‘If I do this thing willingly I have
a reward.’ Paul desired to bring a little more than was required, in token
of his love to his Master, and of his thankful acceptance of the
obligation. The artist who loves his work will put more work into his
picture than is absolutely needed, and will linger over it, lavishing
diligence and care upon it, because he is in love with his task. The
servant who seeks to do as little as he can scrape through with without
rebuke is actuated by no high motives. The trader who barely puts as much
into the scale as will balance the weight in the other is grudging in his
dealings; but he who, with liberal hand, gives ‘shaken down, pressed
together, and running over’ measure, gives because he delights in the
giving.
And so it is in the Christian life.
There are many of us whose question seems to be, ‘How little can I get off
with? how much can I retain?’—many of us whose effort is to find out how
much of the world is consistent with the profession of Christianity, and
to find the minimum of effort, of love, of service, of gifts which may
free us from obligation.
And what does that mean? It means
that we are slaves. It means that if we durst we would give nothing, and
do nothing. And what does that mean? It means that we do not care for the
Lord, and have no joy in our work. And what does that mean? It means that
our work deserves no praise, and will get no reward. If we love Christ we
shall be anxious, if it were possible, to do more than He commands us, in
token of our loyalty to the King, and of our delight in the service. Of
course, in the highest view, nothing can be more than necessary. Of course
He has the right to all our work; but yet there are heights of Christian
consecration and self-sacrifice which a man will not be blamed if he has
not climbed, and will be praised if he has. What we want, if I might
venture to say so, is extravagance of service. Judas may say, ‘To what
purpose is this waste?’ but Jesus will say, He ‘hath wrought a good work
on Me,’ and the fragrance of the ointment will smell sweet through the
centuries.
So, dear brethren, the upshot of the
whole thing is, Do not let us do our Christian work reluctantly, else it
is only slave's work, and there is no blessing in it, and no reward will
come to us from it. Do not let us ask, ‘How little may I do?’ but ‘How
much can I do?’ Thus, asking, we shall not offer as burnt offering to the
Lord that which doth cost us nothing. On His part He has given the
commandment as a sign of His love. The stewardship is a token that He
trusts us, the duty is an honour, the burden is a grace. On our parts let
us seek for the joy of service which is not contented with the bare amount
of the tribute that is demanded, but gives something over, if it were
possible, because of our love to Him. They who thus give to Jesus Christ
their all of love and effort and service will receive it all back a
hundredfold, for the Master is not going to be in debt to any of His
servants, and He says to them all, ‘I will repay it, howbeit I say not
unto thee how thou owest unto Me even thine own self besides.’
‘For though I be free from all
men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the
more. 20. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the
Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might
gain them that are under the law; 21. To them that are without law, as
without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to
Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. 22. To the weak
became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to
all men, that I might by all means save some. 23. And this I do for the
gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.’—1 COR. ix.
19-23.
Paul speaks much of himself, but he
is not an egotist. When he says, ‘I do so and so,’ it is a gracious way of
enjoining the same conduct on his readers. He will lay no burden on them
which he does not himself carry. The leader who can say ‘Come’ is not
likely to want followers. So, in this section, the Apostle is really
enjoining on the Corinthians the conduct which he declares is his own.
The great principle incumbent on all
Christians, with a view to the salvation of others, is to go as far as one
can without untruthfulness in the direction of finding points of
resemblance and contact with those to whom we would commend the Gospel.
There is a base counterfeit of this apostolic example, which slurs over
distinctive beliefs, and weakly tries to please everybody by differing
from nobody. That trimming to catch all winds never gains any. Mr.
Facing-both-ways is not a powerful evangelist. The motive of becoming all
things to all men must be plainly disinterested, and the assimilation must
have love for the souls concerned and eagerness to bring the truth to
them, and them to the truth, legibly stamped upon it, or it will be
regarded, and rightly so, as mere cowardice or dishonesty. And there must
be no stretching the assimilation to the length of either concealing truth
or fraternising in evil. Love to my neighbour can never lead to my joining
him in wrongdoing.
But, while the limits of this
assumption of the colour of our surroundings are plainly marked, there is
ample space within these for the exercise of this eminently Christian
grace. We must get near people if we would help them. Especially must we
identify ourselves with them in sympathy, and seek to multiply points of
assimilation, if we would draw them to Jesus Christ. He Himself had to
become man that He might gain men, and His servants have to do likewise,
in their degree. The old story of the Christian teacher who voluntarily
became a slave, that he might tell of Christ to slaves, has in spirit to
be repeated by us all.
We can do no good by standing aloof
on a height and flinging down the Gospel to the people below. They must
feel that we enter into their circumstances, prejudices, ways of thinking,
and the like, if our words are to have power. That is true about all
Christian teachers, whether of old or young. You must be a boy among boys,
and try to show that you enter into the boy's nature, or you may lecture
till doomsday and do no good.
Paul instances three cases in which
he had acted, and still continued to do so, on this principle. He was a
Jew, but after his conversion he had to ‘become a Jew’ by a distinct act;
that is, he had receded so far from his old self, that he, if he had had
only himself to think of, would have given up all Jewish observances. But
he felt it his duty to conciliate prejudice as far as he could, and so,
though he would have fought to the death rather than given countenance to
the belief that circumcision was necessary, he had no scruple about
circumcising Timothy; and, though he believed that for Christians the
whole ancient ritual was abolished, he was quite willing, if it would
smooth away the prejudices of the ‘many thousands of Jews who believed,’
to show, by his participation in the temple worship, that he ‘walked
orderly, keeping the law.’ If he was told ‘You must,’ his answer could
only be ‘I will not’; but if it was a question of conciliating, he was
ready to go all lengths for that.
The category which he names next is
not composed of different persons from the first, but of the same persons
regarded from a somewhat different point of view. ‘Them that are under the
law’ describes Jews, not by their race, but by their religion; and Paul
was willing to take his place among them, as we have just observed. But he
will not do that so as to be misunderstood, wherefore he protests that in
doing so he is voluntarily abridging his freedom for a specific purpose.
He is not ‘under the law’; for the very pith of his view of the
Christian's position is that he has nothing to do with that Mosaic law in
any of its parts, because Christ has made him free.
The second class to whom in his wide
sympathies he is able to assimilate himself, is the opposite of the
former—the Gentiles who are ‘without law.’ He did not preach on Mars’ Hill
as he did in the synagogues. The many-sided Gospel had aspects fitted for
the Gentiles who had never heard of Moses, and the many-sided Apostle had
links of likeness to the Greek and the barbarian. But here, too, his
assimilation of himself to those whom he seeks to win is voluntary;
wherefore he protests that he is not without law, though he recognises no
longer the obligations of Moses’ law, for he is ‘under [or, rather, “in”]
law to Christ.’
‘The weak’ are those too scrupulous-conscienced
Christians of whom he has been speaking in chapter viii. and whose narrow
views he exhorted stronger brethren to respect, and to refrain from doing
what they could do without harming their own consciences, lest by doing it
they should induce a brother to do the same, whose conscience would prick
him for it. That is a lesson needed to-day as much as, or more than, in
Paul's time, for the widely different degrees of culture and diversities
of condition, training, and associations among Christians now necessarily
result in very diverse views of Christian conduct in many matters. The
grand principle laid down here should guide us all, both in regard to
fellow-Christians and others. Make yourself as like them as you honestly
can; restrict yourself of allowable acts, in deference to even narrow
prejudices; but let the motive of your assimilating yourself to others be
clearly their highest good, that you may ‘gain’ them, not for yourself but
for your Master.
Verse 23 lays down Paul's ruling
principle, which both impelled him to become all things to all men, with a
view to their salvation, as he has been saying, and urged him to effort
and self-discipline, with a view to his own, as he goes on to say. ‘For
the Gospel's sake’ seems to point backward; ‘that I may be a joint
partaker thereof points forward. We have not only to preach the Gospel to
others, but to live on it and be saved by it ourselves.
‘So run, that ye may obtain.’—1
COR. ix. 24.
‘So
run.’ Does that mean ‘Run so that ye obtain?’ Most people, I suppose,
superficially reading the words, attach that significance to them, but the
‘so’ here carries a much greater weight of meaning than that. It is a word
of comparison. The Apostle would have the Corinthians recall the picture
which he has been putting before them—a picture of a scene that was very
familiar to them; for, as most of us know, one of the most important of
the Grecian games was celebrated at intervals in the immediate
neighbourhood of Corinth. Many of the Corinthian converts had, no doubt,
seen, or even taken part in them. The previous portion of the verse in
which our text occurs appeals to the Corinthians’ familiar knowledge of
the arena and the competitors, ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race
run all, but one receiveth the prize?’ He would have them picture the
eager racers, with every muscle strained, and the one victor starting to
the front; and then he says, ‘Look at that panting conqueror. That is how
you should run.
So
run—‘meaning thereby not, ‘Run so that you may obtain the prize,’ but ‘Run
so’ as the victor does, ‘in order that you may obtain.’ So, then, this
victor is to be a lesson to us, and we are to take a leaf out of his book.
Let us see what he teaches us.
I. The first thing is, the utmost
tension and energy and strenuous effort.
It is very remarkable that Paul
should pick out these Grecian games as containing for Christian people any
lesson, for they were honeycombed, through and through, with idolatry and
all sorts of immorality, so that no Jew ventured to go near them, and it
was part of the discipline of the early Christian Church that professing
Christians should have nothing to do with them in any shape.
And yet here, as in many other parts
of his letters, Paul takes these foul things as patterns for Christians.
‘There is a soul of goodness in things evil, if we would observantly
distil it out.’ It is very much as if English preachers were to refer
their people to a racecourse, and say, ‘Even there you may pick out
lessons, and learn something of the way in which Christian people ought to
live.’
On the same principle the New
Testament deals with that diabolical business of fighting. It is taken as
an emblem for the Christian soldier, because, with all its devilishness,
there is in it this, at least, that men give themselves up absolutely to
the will of their commander, and are ready to fling away their lives if he
lifts his finger. That at least is grand and noble, and to be imitated on
a higher plane.
In like manner Paul takes these poor
racers as teaching us a lesson. Though the thing be all full of sin, we
can get one valuable thought out of it, and it is this—If people would
work half as hard to gain the highest object that a man can set before
him, as hundreds of people are ready to do in order to gain trivial and
paltry objects, there would be fewer stunted and half-dead Christians
amongst us. ‘That is the way to run,’ says Paul, ‘if you want to obtain.’
Look at the contrast that he
hints at, between the prize that stirs these racers’ energies into such
tremendous operation and the prize which Christians profess to be
pursuing. ‘They do it to obtain a corruptible crown’—a twist of pine
branch out of the neighbouring grove, worth half-a-farthing, and a little
passing glory not worth much more. They do it to obtain a corruptible
crown; we do
not
do it, though we professedly have an incorruptible one as our aim and
object. If we contrast the relative values of the objects that men pursue
so eagerly, and the objects of the Christian course, surely we ought to be
smitten down with penitent consciousness of our own unworthiness, if not
of our own hypocrisy.
It is not even there that the
lesson stops, because we Christian people may be patterns and rebukes to
ourselves. For, on the one side of our nature we show what we can do when
we are really in earnest about getting something; and on the other side we
show with how little work we can be contented, when, at bottom, we do not
much care whether we get the prize or not. If you and I really believed
that that crown of glory which Paul speaks about might be ours, and would
be all sufficing for us if it were ours, as truly as we believe that money
is a good thing, there would not be such a difference between the way in
which we clutch at the one and the apathy which scarcely cares to put out
a hand for the other. The things that are seen and temporal do get the
larger portion of the energies and thoughts of the average Christian man,
and the things that are unseen and eternal get only what is left.
Sometimes ninety per cent. of the water of a stream is taken away to drive
a milldam or do work, and only ten per cent. can be spared to trickle down
the half-dry channel and do nothing but reflect the bright sun and help
the little flowers and the grass to grow. So, the larger portion of most
lives goes to drive the mill-wheels, and there is very little left, in the
case of many of us, in order to help us towards God, and bring us closer
into communion with our Lord. ‘Run’ for the crown as eagerly as you ‘run’
for your incomes, or for anything that you really, in your deepest
desires, want. Take yourselves for your own patterns and your own rebukes.
Your own lives may show you how you
can
love, hope, work, and deny yourselves when you have sufficient inducement,
and their flame should put to shame their frost, for the warmth is
directed towards trifles and the coldness towards the crown. If you would
run for the incorruptible prize of effort in the fashion in which others
and yourselves run for the corruptible, your whole lives would be changed.
Why! if Christian people in general really took half—half? ay! a tenth
part of—the honest, persistent pains to improve their Christian character,
and become more like Jesus Christ, which a violinist will take to master
his instrument, there would be a new life for most of our Christian
communities. Hours and hours of patient practice are not too much for the
one; how many moments do we give to the other? ‘So run, that ye obtain.’
II. The victorious runner sets
Christians an example of rigid self-control.
Every man that is striving for
the mastery is ‘temperate in all things.’ The discipline for runners and
athletes was rigid. They had ten months of spare diet—no wine—hard
gymnastic exercises every day, until not an ounce of superfluous flesh was
upon their muscles, before they were allowed to run in the arena. And,
says Paul, that is the example for us. They practise this rigid discipline
and abstinence by way of preparation for the race, and after it was run
they might dispense with the training. You and I have to practise rigid
abstinence as part of the race, as a continuous necessity.
They
did not abstain only from bad things, they did not only avoid criminal
acts of sensuous indulgence; but they abstained from many perfectly
legitimate things. So for us it is not enough to say, ‘I draw the line
there, at this or that vice, and I will have nothing to do with these.’
You will never make a growing Christian if abstinence from palpable sins
only is your standard. You must ‘lay aside’ every sin, of course, but also
‘every
weight’
Many things are ‘weights’ that are not ‘sins’; and if we are to run fast
we must run light, and if we are to do any good in this world we have to
live by rigid control and abstain from much that is perfectly legitimate,
because, if we do not, we shall fail in accomplishing the highest purposes
for which we are here. Not only in regard to the gross sensual indulgences
which these men had to avoid, but in regard to a great deal of the
outgoings of our interests and our hearts, we have to apply the knife very
closely and cut to the quick, if we would have leisure and sympathy and
affection left for loftier objects. It is a very easy thing to be a
Christian in one aspect, inasmuch as a Christian at bottom is a man that
is trusting to Jesus Christ, and that is not hard to do. It is a very hard
thing to be a Christian in another aspect, because a real Christian is a
man who, by reason of his trusting Jesus Christ, has set his heel upon the
neck of the animal that is in him, and keeps the flesh well down, and not
only the flesh, but the desires of the mind as well as of the flesh, and
subordinates them all to the one aim of pleasing Him. ‘No man that warreth
entangleth himself with the affairs of this life’ if his object is to
please Him that has called him to be a soldier. Unless we cut off a great
many of the thorns, so to speak, by which things catch hold of us as we
pass them, we shall not make much advance in the Christian life. Rigid
self-control and abstinence from else legitimate things that draw us away
from Him are needful, if we are so to run as the poor heathen racer
teaches us.
III. The last grace that is
suggested here, the last leaf to take out of these racers’ book, is
definiteness and concentration of aim.
‘I, therefore,’ says the Apostle,
‘so run not as uncertainly.’ If the runner is now heading that way and now
this, making all manner of loops upon his path, of course he will be left
hopelessly in the rear. It is the old fable of the Grecian mythology
transplanted into Christian soil. The runner who turned aside to pick up
the golden apple was disappointed of his hopes of the radiant fair. The
ship, at the helm of which is a steersman who has either a feeble hand or
does not understand his business, and which therefore keeps yawing from
side to side, with the bows pointing now this way and now that, is not
holding a course that will make the harbour first in the race. The people
that to-day are marching with their faces towards Zion, and to-morrow
making a loop-line to the world, will be a long time before they reach
their terminus. I believe there are few things more lacking in the average
Christian life of to-day than resolute, conscious concentration upon an
aim which is clearly and always before us. Do you know what you are aiming
at? That is the first question. Have you a distinct theory of life's
purpose that you can put into half a dozen words, or have you not? In the
one case, there is some chance of attaining your object; in the other one,
none. Alas! we find many Christian people who do not set before
themselves, with emphasis and constancy, as their aim the doing of God's
will, and so sometimes they do it, when it happens to be easy, and
sometimes, when temptations are strong, they do not. It needs a strong
hand on the tiller to keep it steady when the wind is blowing in puffs and
gusts, and sometimes the sail bellies full and sometimes it is almost
empty. The various strengths of the temptations that blow us out of our
course are such that we shall never keep a straight line of direction,
which is the shortest line, and the only one on which we shall ‘obtain,’
unless we know very distinctly where we want to go, and have a good strong
will that has learned to say ‘No!’ when the temptations come. ‘Whom resist
steadfast in the faith.’ ‘I therefore so run, not as uncertainly,’ taking
one course one day and another the next.
Now, that definite aim is one that
can be equally pursued in all varieties of life. ‘This one thing I do’
said one who did about as many things as most people, but the different
kinds of things that Paul did were all, at bottom, one thing. And we, in
all the varieties of our circumstances, may keep this one clear aim before
us, and whether it be in this way or in that, we may be equally and at all
times seeking the better country, and bending all circumstances and all
duty to make us more like our Master and bring us closer to Him.
The Psalmist did not offer an
impossible prayer when he said: ‘One thing have I desired of the Lord,
that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His
temple.’ Was David in ‘the house of the Lord’ when he was with his sheep
in the wilderness, and when he was in Saul's palace, and when he was
living with wild beasts in dens and caves of the earth, and when he was a
fugitive, hunted like a partridge upon the mountains? Was he always in the
Lord's house? Yes! At any rate he could be. All that we do may be doing
His will, and over a life, crowded with varying circumstances and yet
simplified and made blessed by unvarying obedience, we may write, ‘This
one thing I do.’
But we shall not keep this one aim
clear before our eyes, unless we habituate ourselves to the contemplation
of the end. The runner, according to Paul's vivid picture in another of
his letters, forgets the things that are behind, and stretches out towards
the things that are before. And just as a man runs with his body inclining
forward, and his eager hand nearer the prize than his body, and his
eyesight and his heart travelling ahead of them both to grasp it, so if we
want to live with the one worthy aim for ours, and to put all our effort
and faith into what deserves it all—the Christian race—we must bring clear
before us continually, or at least with the utmost frequency, the prize of
our high calling, the crown of righteousness. Then we shall run so that we
may, at the last, be able to finish our course with joy, and dying to hope
with all humility that there is laid up for us a crown of righteousness.
‘They do it to obtain a
corruptible crown, but we are incorruptible.’—1 COR. ix. 25.
One of the most famous of the Greek
athletic festivals was held close by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath
from the neighbouring sacred grove. The painful abstinence and training of
ten months, and the fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for their result a
twist of green leaves, that withered in a week, and a little fading fame
that was worth scarcely more, and lasted scarcely longer. The struggle and
the discipline were noble; the end was contemptible. And so it is with all
lives whose aims are lower than the highest. They are greater in the
powers they put forth than in the objects they compass, and the question,
‘What is it for?’ is like a douche of cold water from the cart that lays
the clouds of dust in the ways.
So, says Paul, praising the effort
and contemning the prize, ‘They do it to obtain a corruptible crown.’ And
yet there was a soul of goodness in this evil thing. Though these
festivals were indissolubly intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with
much sensuous evil, yet he deals with them as he does with war and with
slavery; points to the disguised nobility that lay beneath the
hideousness, and holds up even these low things as a pattern for Christian
men.
But I do not mean here to speak so
much about the general bearing of this text as rather to deal with its
designation of the aim and reward of Christian energy, that ‘incorruptible
crown’ of which my text speaks. And in doing so I desire to take into
account likewise other places in Scripture in which the same metaphor
occurs.
I. The crown.
Let me recall the other places where
the same metaphor is employed. We find the Apostle, in the immediate
prospect of death, rising into a calm rapture in which imprisonment and
martyrdom lose their terrors, as he thinks of the ‘crown of righteousness’
which the Lord will give to him. The Epistle of James, again, assures the
man who endures temptation that ‘the Lord will give him the crown of life
which He has promised to all them that love Him.’ The Lord Himself from
heaven repeats that promise to the persecuted Church at Smyrna: ‘Be thou
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.’ The elders
cast their crowns before the feet of Him that sitteth upon the throne. The
Apostle Peter, in his letter, stimulates the elders upon earth to faithful
discharge of their duty, by the hope that thereby they shall ‘receive a
crown of righteousness that fadeth not away.’ So all these instances taken
together with this of my text enable us to gather two or three lessons.
It is extremely unlikely that all
these instances of the occurrence of the emblem carry with them reference,
such as that in my text, to the prize at the athletic festivals. For Peter
and James, intense Jews as they were, had probably never seen, and
possibly never heard of, the struggles at the Isthmus and at Olympus and
elsewhere. The Book of the Revelation draws its metaphors almost
exclusively from the circle of Jewish practices and things. So that we
have to look in other directions than the arena or the racecourse to
explain these other uses of the image. It is also extremely unlikely that
in these other passages the reference is to a crown as the emblem of
sovereignty, for that idea is expressed, as a rule, by another word in
Scripture, which we have Anglicised as ‘diadem.’ The ‘crown’ in all these
passages is a garland twisted out of some growth of the field. In ancient
usage roses were twined for revellers; pine-shoots or olive branches for
the victors in the games; while the laurel was ‘the meed of mighty
conquerors’; and plaited oak leaves were laid upon the brows of citizens
who had deserved well of their country, and myrtle sprays crowned the fair
locks of the bride.
And thus in these directions, and
not towards the wrestling ground or the throne of the monarch, must we
look for the ideas suggested by the emblem.
Now, if we gather together all these
various uses of the word, there emerge two broad ideas, that the ‘crown’
which is the Christian's aim symbolises a state of triumphant repose and
of festal enjoyment. There are other aspects of that great and dim future
which correspond to other necessities of our nature, and I suppose some
harm has been done and some misconceptions have been induced, and some
unreality imported into the idea of the Christian future, by the too
exclusive prominence given to these two ideas—victorious rest after the
struggle, and abundant satisfaction of all desires. That future is other
and more than a festival; it is other and more than repose. There are
larger fields there for the operation of powers that have been trained and
evolved here. The faithfulness of the steward is exchanged, according to
Christ's great words, for the authority of the ruler over many cities. But
still, do we not all know enough of the worry and turbulence and strained
effort of the conflict here below, to feel that to some of our deepest and
not ignoble needs and desires that image appeals? The helmet that pressed
upon the brow even whilst it protected the brain, and wore away the hair
even whilst it was a defence, is lifted off, and on unruffled locks the
garland is intertwined that speaks victory and befits a festival. One of
the old prophets puts the same metaphor in words imperfectly represented
by the English translation, when he promises ‘a crown’ or a garland ‘for
ashes’—instead of the symbol of mourning, strewed grey and gritty upon the
dishevelled hair of the weepers, flowers twined into a wreath—‘the oil of
joy for mourning,’ and the festival ‘garment of praise’ to dress the once
heavy spirit. So the satisfaction of all desires, the accompaniments of a
feast, in abundance, rejoicing and companionship, and conclusive conquest
over all foes, are promised us in this great symbol.
But let us look at the passages
separately, and we shall find that they present the one thought with
differences, and that if we combine these, as in a stereoscope, the
picture gains solidity.
The crown is described in three
ways. It is the crown of ‘life,’ of ‘glory’ and of ‘righteousness.’ And I
venture to think that these three epithets describe the material, so to
speak, of which the wreath is composed. The everlasting flower of life,
the radiant blossoms of glory, the white flower of righteousness; these
are its components.
I need not enlarge upon them, nor
will your time allow that I should. Here we have the promise of life, that
fuller life which men want, ‘the life of which our veins are scant,’ even
in the fullest tide and heyday of earthly existence. The promise sets that
future over against the present, as if then first should men know what it
means to live: so buoyant, elastic, unwearied shall be their energies, so
manifold the new outlets for activity, and the new inlets for the
surrounding glory and beauty; so incorruptible and glorious shall be their
new being. Here we live a living death; there we shall live indeed; and
that will be the crown, not only in regard to physical, but in regard to
spiritual, powers and consciousness.
But remember that all this full tide
of life is Christ's gift. There is no such thing as natural immortality;
there is no such thing as independent life. All Being, from the lowest
creature up to the loftiest created spirit, exists by one law, the
continual impartation to it of life from the fountain of life, according
to its capacities. And unless Jesus Christ, all through the eternal ages
of the future, imparted to the happy souls that sit garlanded at His board
the life by which they live, the wreaths would wither on their brows, and
the brows would melt away, and dissolve from beneath the wreaths. ‘I will
give him a crown of life.’
It is a crown of ‘glory,’ and that
means a lustrousness of character imparted by radiation and reflection
from the central light of the glory of God. ‘Then shall the righteous
blaze out like the sun in the Kingdom of My Father.’ Our eyes are dim, but
we can at least divine the far-off flashing of that great light, and may
ponder upon what hidden depths and miracles of transformed perfectness and
unimagined lustre wait for us, dark and limited as we are here, in the
assurance that we all shall be changed into the ‘likeness of the body of
His glory.’
It is a crown of ‘righteousness.’
Though that phrase may mean the wreath that rewards righteousness, it
seems more in accordance with the other similar expressions to which I
have referred to regard it, too, as the material of which the crown is
composed. It is not enough that there should be festal gladness, not
enough that there should be calm repose, not enough that there should be
flashing glory, not enough that there should be fulness of life. To accord
with the intense moral earnestness of the Christian system there must be,
emphatically, in the Christian hope, cessation of all sin and investiture
with all purity. The word means the same thing as the ancient promise,
‘Thy people shall be all righteous.’ It means the same thing as the latest
promise of the ascended Christ, ‘They shall walk with Me in white.’ And it
sets, I was going to say, the very climax and culmination on the other
hopes, declaring that absolute, stainless, infallible righteousness which
one day shall belong to our weak and sinful spirits.
These, then, are the elements, and
on them all is stamped the signature of perpetuity. The victor's wreath is
tossed on the ashen heap, the reveller's flowers droop as he sits in the
heat of the banqueting-hall; the bride's myrtle blossom fades though she
lay it away in a safe place. The crown of life is incorruptible. It is
twined of amaranth, ever blossoming into new beauty and never fading.
II. Now look, secondly, at the
discipline by which the crown is won.
Observe, first of all, that in
more than one of the passages to which we have already referred great
emphasis is laid upon Christ as
giving
the crown. That is to say, that blessed future is not won by effort, but
is bestowed as a free gift. It is given from the hands which have procured
it, and, as I may say, twined it for us. Unless His brows had been pierced
with the crown of thorns, ours would never have worn the garland of
victory. Jesus provides the sole means, by His work, by which any man can
enter into that inheritance; and Jesus, as the righteous Judge who bestows
the rewards, which are likewise the results, of our life here, gives the
crown. It remains for ever the gift of His love. ‘The wages of sin is
death,’ but we rise above the region of retribution and desert when we
pass to the next clause—‘the gift of God is eternal life,’ and that
‘through Jesus Christ.’
Whilst, then, this must be
laid as the basis of all, there must also, with equal earnestness and
clearness, be set forth the other thought that Christ's gift has
conditions, which conditions these passages plainly set forth. In the one,
which I have read as a text, we have these conditions declared as being
twofold—protracted discipline and continuous effort. The same metaphor
employed by the same Apostle, in his last dying utterance, associates his
consciousness that he had fought the good fight and run his race, like the
pugilists and runners of the arena, with the hope that he shall receive
the crown of righteousness. James declares that it is given to the man who
endures temptation, not only in the sense of
bearing, but of so bearing as not thereby to be injured in Christian
character and growth in Christian life. Peter asserts that it is the
reward of self-denying discharge of duty. And the Lord from heaven lays
down the condition of faithfulness unto death as the necessary
pre-requisite of His gift of the crown of life. In two of the passages
there is included, though not precisely on the level of these other
requirements, the love of Him and the love of ‘His appearing,’ as the
necessary qualifications for the gift of the crown.
So, to begin with, unless a man has
such a love to Jesus Christ as that he is happy in His presence, and longs
to have Him near, as parted loving souls do; and, especially, is looking
forward to that great judicial coming, and feeling that there is no tremor
in his heart at the prospect of meeting the Judge, but an outgoing of
desire and love at the hope of seeing his Saviour and his Friend, what
right has he to expect the crown? None. And he will never get it. There is
a test for us which may well make some of us ask ourselves, Are we
Christians, then, at all?
And then, beyond that, there are all
these other conditions which I have pointed out, which may be gathered
into one—strenuous discharge of daily duty and continual effort after
following in Christ's footsteps.
This needs to be as fully and
emphatically preached as the other doctrine that eternal life is the gift
of God. All manner of mischiefs may come, and have come, from either of
these twin thoughts, wrenched apart. But let us weave them as closely
together as the stems of the flowers that make the garlands are twined,
and feel that there is a perfect consistency of both in theory, and that
there must be a continual union of both, in our belief and in our
practice. Eternal life is the gift of God, on condition of our diligence
and earnestness. It is not all the same whether you are a lazy Christian
or not. It does make an eternal difference in our condition whether here
we ‘run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.’
We have to receive the crown as a gift; we have to wrestle and run, as
contending for a prize.
III. And now, lastly, note the power
of the reward as motive for life.
Paul says roundly in our text that
the desire to obtain the incorruptible crown is a legitimate spring of
Christian action. Now, I do not need to waste your time and my own in
defending Christian morality from the fantastic objection that it is low
and selfish, because it encourages itself to efforts by the prospect of
the crown. If there are any men who are Christians—if such a contradiction
can be even stated in words—only because of what they hope to gain thereby
in another world, they will not get what they hope for; and they would not
like it if they did. I do not believe that there are any such; and sure I
am, if there are, that it is not Christianity that has made them so. But a
thought that we must not take as a supreme motive, we may rightly accept
as a subsidiary encouragement. We are not Christians unless the dominant
motive of our lives be the love of the Lord Jesus Christ; and unless we
feel a necessity, because of loving Him, to aim to be like Him. But, that
being so, who shall hinder me from quickening my flagging energies, and
stimulating my torpid faith, and encouraging my cowardice, by the thought
that yonder there remain rest, victory, the fulness of life, the flashing
of glory, and the purity of perfect righteousness? If such hopes are low
and selfish as motives, would God that more of us were obedient to such
low and selfish motives!
Now it seems to me, that this spring
of action is not as strong in the Christians of this day as it used to be,
and as it should be. You do not hear much about heaven in ordinary
preaching. I do not think it occupies a very large place in the average
Christian man's mind. We have all got such a notion nowadays of the great
good that the Gospel does in society and in the present, and some of us
have been so frightened by the nonsense that has been talked about the
‘other-worldliness’ of Christianity—as if that was a disgrace to it—that
it seems to me that the future of glory and blessedness has very largely
faded away, as a motive for Christian men's energies, like the fresco off
a neglected convent wall.
And I want to say, dear brethren,
that I believe, for my part, that we suffer terribly by the comparative
neglect into which this side of Christian truth has fallen. Do you not
think that it would make a difference to you if you really believed, and
carried always with you in your thoughts, the thrilling consciousness that
every act of the present was registered, and would tell on the far side
yonder?
We do not know much of that future,
and these days are intolerant of mere unverifiable hypotheses. But
accuracy of knowledge and definiteness of impression do not always go
together, nor is there the fulness of the one wanted for the clearness and
force of the other. Though the thread which we throw across the abyss is
very slender, it is strong enough, like the string of a boy's kite, to
bear the messengers of hope and desire that we may send up by it, and
strong enough to bear the gifts of grace that will surely come down along
it.
We cannot understand to-day unless
we look at it with eternity for a background. The landscape lacks its
explanation, until the mists lift and we see the white summits of the
Himalayas lying behind and glorifying the low sandy plain. Would your life
not be different; would not the things in it that look great be
wholesomely dwindled and yet be magnified; would not sorrow be calmed, and
life become ‘a solemn scorn of ills,’ and energies be stimulated, and all
be different, if you really ‘did it to obtain an incorruptible crown?’
Brethren, let us try to keep more
clearly before us, as solemn and blessed encouragement in our lives, these
great thoughts. The garland hangs on the goal, but ‘a man is not crowned
unless he strive according to the laws’ of the arena. The laws are two—No
man can enter for the conflict but by faith in Christ; no man can win in
the struggle but by faithful effort. So the first law is, ‘Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ,’ and the second is, ‘Hold fast that thou hast; let no
man take thy crown.’
‘All things are lawful for me, but
all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all
things edify not. 24. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
wealth. 25. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no
question for conscience sake. 26. For the earth is the Lord's, and the
fulness thereof. 27. If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast,
and ye be disposed to go, whatsoever is set before you eat, asking no
question for conscience sake. 28. But if any man say unto you, This is
offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it,
and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's and the fulness
thereof: 29. Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for why
is my liberty judged of another man's conscience? 30. For if I by grace
be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give thanks?
31. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to
the glory of God. 32. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the
Gentiles, nor to the church of God: 33. Even as I please all men in all
things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they
may be saved.’—1 COR. x. 23-33.
This passage strikingly illustrates
Paul's constant habit of solving questions as to conduct by the largest
principles. He did not keep his ‘theology’ and his ethics in separate
water-tight compartments, having no communication with each other. The
greatest truths were used to regulate the smallest duties. Like the star
that guided the Magi, they burned high in the heavens, but yet directed to
the house in Bethlehem.
The question here in hand was one
that pressed on the Corinthian Christians, and is very far away from our
experience. Idolatry had so inextricably intertwined itself with daily
life that it was hard to keep up any intercourse with non-Christians
without falling into constructive idolatry; and one very constantly
obtruding difficulty was that much of the animal food served on private
tables had been slaughtered as sacrifices or with certain sacrificial
rites. What was a Christian to do in such a case? To eat or not to eat?
Both views had their vehement supporters in the Corinthian church, and the
importance of the question is manifest from the large space devoted to it
in this letter.
In chapter viii. we have a weighty
paragraph, in which one phase of the difficulty is dealt with—the question
whether a Christian ought to attend a feast in an idol temple, where, of
course, the viands had been offered as sacrifices. But in chapter x. Paul
deals with the case in which the meat had been bought in the flesh-market,
and so was not necessarily sacrificial. Paul's manner of handling the
point is very instructive. He envelops, as it were, the practical solution
in a wrapping of large principles; verses 23, 24 precede the specific
answer, and are general principles; verses 25-30 contain the practical
answer; verses 31-33 and verse 1 of the next chapter are again general
principles, wide and imperative enough to mould all conduct, as well as to
settle the matter immediately in hand, which, important as it was at
Corinth, has become entirely uninteresting to us.
We need not spend time in
elucidating the specific directions given as to the particular question in
hand further than to note the immense gift of saving common-sense which
Paul had, and how sanely and moderately he dealt with his problem. His
advice was—‘Don't ask where the joint set before you came from. If you do
not know that it was offered, your eating of it does not commit you to
idol worship.’ No doubt there were Corinthian Christians with inflamed
consciences who did ask such questions, and rather prided themselves on
their strictness and rigidity; but Paul would have them let sleeping dogs
lie. If, however, the meat is known to have been offered to an idol, then
Paul is as rigid and strict as they are. That combination of willingness
to go as far as possible, and inflexible determination not to go one step
farther, of yieldingness wherever principle does not come in, and of iron
fixedness wherever it does, is rare indeed, but should be aimed at by all
Christians. The morality of the Gospel would make more way in the world if
its advocates always copied the ‘sweet reasonableness’ of Paul, which, as
he tells us in this passage, he learned from Jesus.
As to the wrapping of general
principles, they may all be reduced to one—the duty of limiting Christian
liberty by consideration for others. In the two verses preceding the
practical precepts, that duty is stated with reference entirely to the
obligations flowing from our relationship to others. We are all bound
together by a mystical chain of solidarity. Since every man is my
neighbour, I am bound to think of him and not only of myself in deciding
what I may do or refrain from doing. I must abstain from lawful things if,
by doing them, I should be likely to harm my neighbour's building up of a
strong character. I can, or I believe that I can, pursue some course of
conduct, engage in some enterprise, follow some line of life, without
damage to myself, either in regard to worldly position, or in regard to my
religious life. Be it so, but I have to take some one else into account.
Will my example call out imitation in others, to whom it may be harmful or
fatal to do as I can do with real or supposed impunity? If so, I am guilty
of something very like murder if I do not abstain.
‘What harm is there in betting a
shilling? I can well afford to lose it, and I can keep myself from the
feverish wish to risk more.’ Yes, and you are thereby helping to hold up
that gambling habit which is ruining thousands.
‘I can take alcohol in moderation,
and it does me no harm, and I can go to a prayer-meeting after my dinner
and temperate glass, and I am within my Christian liberty in doing so.’
Yes, and you take part thereby in the greatest curse that besets our
country, and are, by countenancing the drink habit, guilty of the blood of
souls. How any Christian man can read these two verses and not abstain
from all intoxicants is a mystery. They cut clean through all the pleas
for moderate drinking, and bring into play another set of principles which
limit liberty by regard to others’ good. Surely, if there was ever a
subject to which these words apply, it is the use of alcohol, the proved
cause of almost all the crime and poverty on both sides of the Atlantic.
To the Christians who plead their ‘liberty’ we can only say, ‘Happy is he
that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.’
The same general considerations
reappear in the verses following the specific precept, but with a
difference. The neighbour's profit is still put forth as the limiting
consideration, but it is elevated to a higher sacredness of obligation by
being set in connection with the ‘glory of God’ and the example of Christ.
‘Do all to the glory of God.’ To put the thought here into modern
English—Could you ask a blessing over a glass of spirits when you think
that, though it should do you no harm, your taking it may, as it were, tip
some weak brother over the precipice? Can you drink to God's glory when
you know that drink is slaying thousands body and soul, and that hopeless
drunkards are made by wholesale out of moderate drinkers? ‘Give no
occasion of stumbling’; do not by your example tempt others into risky
courses. And remember that ‘neighbour’ (verse 24) resolves itself into
‘Jews’ and ‘Greeks’ and the ‘Church of God’—that is, substantially to your
own race and other races—to men with whom you have affinities, and to men
with whom you have none.
A Christian man is bound to shape
his life so that no man shall be able to say of him that he was the
occasion of that one's fall. He is so bound because every man is his
neighbour. He is so bound because he is bound to live to the glory of God,
which can never be advanced by laying stumbling-blocks in the way for
feeble feet. He is so bound because, unless Christ had limited Himself
within the bound of manhood, and had sought not His own profit or
pleasure, we should have had neither life nor hope. For all these reasons,
the duty of thinking of others, and of abstaining, for their sakes, from
what one might do, is laid on all Christians. How do they discharge that
duty who will not forswear alcohol for their neighbour's sake?
‘This do in remembrance of Me.’—1
COR. xi. 24.
The account of the institution of
the Lord's Supper, contained in this context, is very much the oldest
extant narrative of that event. It dates long before any of the Gospels,
and goes up, probably, to somewhere about five and twenty years after the
Crucifixion. It presupposes a previous narrative which had been orally
delivered to the Corinthians, and, as the Apostle alleges, was derived by
him from Christ Himself. It is intended to correct corruptions in the
administration of the rite which must have taken some time to develop
themselves. And so we are carried back to a period very close indeed to
the first institution of the rite, by the words before us.
No reasonable doubt can exist, then,
that within a very few years of our Lord's death, the whole body of
Christian people believed that Jesus Christ Himself appointed the Lord's
Supper. I do not stay to dwell upon the value of a rite contemporaneous
with the fact which it commemorates, and continuously lasting throughout
the ages, as a witness of the historical veracity of the alleged fact; but
I want to fix upon this thought, that Jesus Christ, who cared very little
for rites, who came to establish a religion singularly independent of any
outward form, did establish two rites, one of them to be done once in a
Christian lifetime, one of them to be repeated with indefinite frequency,
and, as it appears, at first repeated daily by the early believers. The
reason why these two, and only these two, external ordinances were
appointed by Jesus Christ was, that, taken together, they cover the whole
ground of revealed fact, and they also cover the whole ground of Christian
experience. There is no room for any other rites, because these two, the
rite of initiation, which is baptism, and the rite of commemoration, which
is the Lord's Supper, say everything about Christianity as a revelation,
and about Christianity as a living experience.
Not only so, but in the simple
primitive form of the Lord's Supper there is contained a reference to the
past, the present and the future. It covers all time as well as all
revelation and all Christian experience. For the past, as the text shows
us, it is a memorial of one Person, and one fact in that Person's life.
For the present, it is the symbol of the Christian life, as that great
sixth chapter in John's gospel sets forth; and for the future, it is a
prophecy, as our Lord Himself said on that night in the upper chamber,
‘Till I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom,’ and as the Apostle
in this context says, ‘Till He come.’ It is to these three aspects of this
ordinance, as the embodiment of all essential Christian truth, and as the
embodiment of all deep Christian experience, covering the past, the
present, and the future, that I wish to turn now. I do not deal so much
with the mere words of my text as with this threefold significance of the
rite which it appoints.
I. So then, first, we have to think
of it as a memorial of the past.
‘Do this,’ is the true meaning
of the words, not ‘in remembrance of Me,’ but something far more sweet and
pathetic—‘do this for the
remembering
of Me.’ The former expression is equal to ‘Do this because you remember.’
The real meaning of the words is, ‘Do this in case you forget’; do this in
order that you may recall to memory what the slippery memory is so apt to
lose—the impression of even the sweetest sweetness, of the most loving
love, and the most self-abnegating sacrifice, which He offered for us.
There is something to me infinitely
pathetic and beautiful in looking at the words not only as the commandment
of the Lord, but as the appeal of the Friend, who wished, as we all do,
not to be utterly forgotten by those whom He cared for and loved; and who,
not only because their remembrance was their salvation, but because their
forgetfulness pained His human heart, brings to their hearts the plaintive
appeal: ‘Do not forget Me when I am gone away from you; and even if you
have no better way of remembering Me, take these poor symbols, to which I
am not too proud to entrust the care of My memory, and do this, lest you
forget Me.’
But, dear brethren, there are deeper
thoughts than this, on which I must dwell briefly. ‘In remembrance of
Me’—Jesus Christ, then, takes up an altogether unique and solitary
position here, and into the sacredest hours of devotion and the loftiest
moments of communion with God, intrudes His personality, and says, ‘When
you are most religious, remember Me; and let the highest act of your
devout life be a thought turned to Myself.’
Now, I want you to ask, is
that thought diverted from God? And if it is not, how comes it not to be?
I want you honestly to ask yourselves this question—what did
He
think about Himself who, at that moment, when all illusions were
vanishing, and life was almost at its last ebb, took the most solemn rite
of His nation and laid it solemnly aside and said: ‘A greater than Moses
is here; a greater deliverance is being wrought’: ‘Remember Me.’ Is that
insisting on His own personality, and making the remembrance of it the
very apex and shining summit of all religious aspiration—is that the work
of one about whom all that we have to say is, He was the noblest of men?
If so, then I want to know how Jesus Christ, in that upper chamber,
founding the sole continuous rite of the religion which He established,
and making its heart and centre the remembrance of His own personality,
can be cleared from the charge of diverting to Himself what belongs to God
only, and how you and I, if we obey His commands, escape the crime of
idolatry and man-worship? ‘Do this in remembrance,’—not of God—‘in
remembrance of Me,’ ‘and let memory, with all its tendrils, clasp and
cleave to My person.’ What an extraordinary demand! It is obscuring God,
unless the ‘Me’
is
God manifest in the flesh.
Then, still further, let me remind
you that in the appointment of this solitary rite as His memorial to all
generations, Jesus Christ Himself designates one part of His whole
manifestation as the part into which all its pathos, significance, and
power are concentrated. We who believe that the death of Christ is the
life of the world, are told that one formidable objection to our belief is
that Jesus Christ Himself said so little during His life about His death.
I believe His reticence upon that question is much exaggerated, but apart
altogether from that, I believe also that there was a necessity in the
order of the evolution of divine truth, for the reticence, such as it is,
because, whatsoever might be possible to Moses and Elias, on the Mount of
Transfiguration, ‘His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem,’
could not be much spoken about in the plain till it had been accomplished.
But, apart from both of these considerations, reflect, that whether He
said much about His death or not, He said something very much to the
purpose about it when He said ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’
It is not His personality only
that we are to remember. The whole of the language of the institution of
the ritual, as well as the form of the rite, and its connection with the
ancient passover, and its connection with the new covenant into connection
with which Christ Himself brings it, all point to the significance in His
eyes of His death as the Sacrifice for the world's sin. Wherefore ‘the
body’ and ‘the blood’ separately remembered, except to indicate death by
violence? Wherefore the language ‘the body
broken
for you’; ‘the blood
shed
for many for the remission of sins?’ Wherefore the association with the
Passover sacrifice? Wherefore the declaration that ‘this is the blood of
the Covenant,’ unless all tended to the one thought—His death is the
foundation of all loving relationships possible to us with God; and the
condition of the remission of sins—the Sacrifice for the whole world?’
This is the point that He desires us
to remember; this is that which He would have live for ever in our
grateful hearts.
I say nothing about the absolute
exclusion of any other purpose of this memorial rite. If it was the
mysterious thing that the superstition of later ages has made of it, how,
in the name of common-sense, does it come that not one syllable, looking
in that direction, dropped from His lips when He established it? Surely
He, in that upper chamber, knew best what He meant, and what He was doing
when He established the rite; and I, for my part, am contented to be told
that I believe in a poor, bald Zwinglianism, when I say with my Master,
that the purpose of the Lord's Supper is simply the commemoration, and
therein the proclamation, of His death. There is no magic, no mystery, no
‘sacrament’ about it. It blesses us when it makes us remember Him. It does
the same thing for us which any other means of bringing Him to mind does.
It does that through a different vehicle. A sermon does it by words, the
Communion does it by symbols. That is the difference to be found between
them. And away goes the whole fabric of superstitious Christianity, and
all its mischiefs and evils, when once you accept the simple ‘Remember.’
Christ told us what He meant by the rite when He said ‘Do this in
remembrance of Me.’
II. And now one word or two more
about the other particulars which I have suggested. The past, however
sweet and precious, is not enough for any soul to live upon. And so this
memorial rite, just because it is memorial, is a symbol for the present.
That is taught us in the great
chapter—the sixth of John's Gospel—which was spoken long before the
institution of the Lord's Supper, but expresses in words the same ideas
which it expresses by material forms. The Christ who died is the Christ
who lives, and must be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation to
Jesus Christ were only that ‘Once in the end of the ages He appeared to
put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself’; and if we had to look back
through lengthening vistas of distance and thickening folds of oblivion,
simply to a historical past, in which He was once offered, the retrospect
would not have the sweetness in it which it now has. But when we come to
this thought that the Christ who was for us is also the Christ in us, and
that He is not the Christ for us unless He is the Christ in us; and His
death will never wash away our sins unless we feed upon Him, here and now,
by faith and meditation, then the retrospect becomes blessedness. The
Christian life is not merely the remembrance of a historical Christ in the
past, but it is the present participation in a living Christ, with us now.
He is near each of us that we may
make Him the very food of our spirits. We are to live upon Him. He is to
be incorporated within us by our own act. This is no mysticism, it is a
piece of simple reality. There is no Christian life without it. The true
life of the believer is just the feeding of our souls upon Him,—our minds
accepting, meditating upon, digesting the truths which are incarnated in
Jesus; our hearts feeding upon the love which is so tender, warm,
stooping, and close; our wills feeding upon and nourished by the utterance
of His will in commandments which to know is joy and to keep is liberty;
our hopes feeding upon Him who is our Hope, and in whom they find no chaff
and husks of peradventures, but the pure wheat of ‘Verily! verily I say
