Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians Part 1

Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians.

by Alexander Maclaren.

THE WITNESS OF THE RESURRECTION

'Declared to be the Son of G.o.d with power, ... by the resurrection of the dead.'--ROMANS i. 4 (R.V.).

It is a great mistake to treat Paul's writings, and especially this Epistle, as mere theology. They are the transcript of his life's experience. As has been well said, the gospel of Paul is an interpretation of the significance of the life and work of Jesus based upon the revelation to him of Jesus as the risen Christ. He believed that he had seen Jesus on the road to Damascus, and it was that appearance which revolutionised his life, turned him from a persecutor into a disciple, and united him with the Apostles as ordained to be a witness with them of the Resurrection. To them all the Resurrection of Jesus was first of all a historical fact appreciated chiefly in its bearing on Him. By degrees they discerned that so transcendent a fact bore in itself a revelation of what would become the experience of all His followers beyond the grave, and a symbol of the present life possible for them. All three of these aspects are plainly declared in Paul's writings. In our text it is chiefly the first which is made prominent. All that distinguishes Christianity; and makes it worth believing, or mighty, is inseparably connected with the Resurrection.

I. The Resurrection of Christ declares His Sonship.

Resurrection and Ascension are inseparably connected. Jesus does not rise to share again in the ills and weariness of humanity. Risen, 'He dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.' 'He died unto sin once'; and His risen humanity had nothing in it on which physical death could lay hold. That He should from some secluded dimple on Olivet ascend before the gazing disciples until the bright cloud, which was the symbol of the Divine Presence, received Him out of their sight, was but the end of the process which began unseen in morning twilight. He laid aside the garments of the grave and pa.s.sed out of the sepulchre which was made sure by the great stone rolled against its mouth. The grand avowal of faith in His Resurrection loses meaning, unless it is completed as Paul completed his 'yea rather that was raised from the dead,' with the triumphant 'who is at the right hand of G.o.d.' Both are supernatural, and the Virgin Birth corresponds at the beginning to the supernatural Resurrection and Ascension at the close. Both such an entrance into the world and such a departure from it, proclaim at once His true humanity, and that 'this is the Son of G.o.d.'

Still further, the Resurrection is G.o.d's solemn 'Amen' to the tremendous claims which Christ had made. The fact of His Resurrection, indeed, would not declare His divinity; but the Resurrection of One who had spoken such words does. If the Cross and a nameless grave had been the end, what a _reductio ad absurdum_ that would have been to the claims of Jesus to have ever been with the Father and to be doing always the things that pleased Him. The Resurrection is G.o.d's last and loudest proclamation, 'This is My beloved Son: hear ye Him.' The Psalmist of old had learned to trust that his sonship and consecration to the Father made it impossible that that Father should leave his soul in Sheol, or suffer one who was knit to Him by such sacred bonds to see corruption; and the unique Sonship and perfect self-consecration of Jesus went down into the grave in the a.s.sured confidence, as He Himself declared, that the third day He would rise again. The old alternative seems to retain all its sharp points: Either Christ rose again from the dead, or His claims are a series of blasphemous arrogances and His character irremediably stained.

But we may also remember that Scripture not only represents Christ's Resurrection as a divine act but also as the act of Christ's own power. In His earthly life He a.s.serted that His relation both to physical death and to resurrection was an entirely unique one. 'I have power,' said He, 'to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again'; and yet, even in this tremendous instance of self-a.s.sertion, He remains the obedient Son, for He goes on to say, 'This commandment have I received of My Father.' If these claims are just, then it is vain to stumble at the miracles which Jesus did in His earthly life. If He could strip it off and resume it, then obviously it was not a life like other men's. The whole phenomenon is supernatural, and we shall not be in the true position to understand and appreciate it and Him until, like the doubting Thomas, we fall at the feet of the risen Son, and breathe out loyalty and worship in that rapturous exclamation, 'My Lord and my G.o.d.'

II. The Resurrection interprets Christ's Death.

There is no more striking contrast than that between the absolute non-receptivity of the disciples in regard to all Christ's plain teachings about His death and their clear perception after Pentecost of the mighty power that lay in it. The very fact that they continued disciples at all, and that there continued to be such a community as the Church, demands their belief in the Resurrection as the only cause which can account for it. If He did not rise from the dead, and if His followers did not know that He did so by the plainest teachings of common-sense, they ought to have scattered, and borne in isolated hearts the bitter memories of disappointed hopes; for if He lay in a nameless grave, and they were not sure that He was risen from the dead, His death would have been a conclusive showing up of the falsity of His claims. In it there would have been no atoning power, no triumph over sin. If the death of Christ were not followed by His Resurrection and Ascension, the whole fabric of Christianity falls to pieces. As the Apostle puts it in his great chapter on resurrection, 'Ye are yet in your sins.' The forgiveness which the Gospel holds forth to men does not depend on the mercy of G.o.d or on the mere penitence of man, but upon the offering of the one sacrifice for sins in His death, which is justified by His Resurrection as being accepted by G.o.d. If we cannot triumphantly proclaim 'Christ is risen indeed,' we have nothing worth preaching.

We are told now that the ethics of Christianity are its vital centre, which will stand out more plainly when purified from these mystical doctrines of a Death as the sin-offering for the world, and a Resurrection as the great token that that offering avails. Paul did not think so. To him the morality of the Gospel was all deduced from the life of Christ the Son of G.o.d as our Example, and from His death for us which touches men's hearts and makes obedience to Him our joyful answer to what He has done for us. Christianity is a new thing in the world, not as moral teaching, but as moral power to obey that teaching, and that depends on the Cross interpreted by the Resurrection. If we have only a dead Christ, we have not a living Christianity.

III. Resurrection points onwards to Christ's coming again.

Paul at Athens declared in the hearing of supercilious Greek philosophers, that the Jesus, whom he proclaimed to them, was 'the Man whom G.o.d had ordained to judge the world in righteousness,' and that 'He had given a.s.surance thereof unto all men, in that He raised Him from the dead.' The Resurrection was the beginning of the process which, from the human point of view, culminated in the Ascension.

Beyond the Ascension stretches the supernatural life of the glorified Son of G.o.d. Olivet cannot be the end, and the words of the two men in white apparel who stood amongst the little group of the upward gazing friends, remain as the hope of the Church: 'This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' That great a.s.surance implies a visible corporeal return locally defined, and having for its purpose to complete the work which Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, each advanced a stage. The Resurrection is the corner-stone of the whole Christian faith. It seals the truths that Jesus is the Son of G.o.d with power, that He died for us, that He has ascended on high to prepare a place for us, that He will come again and take us to Himself. If we, by faith in Him, take for ours the women's greeting on that Easter morning, 'The Lord hath risen indeed,' He will come to us with His own greeting, 'Peace be unto you.'

PRIVILEGE AND OBLIGATION

'To all that be in Rome, beloved of G.o.d, called to be saints.'--ROMANS i. 7.

This is the address of the Epistle. The first thing to be noticed about it, by way of introduction, is the universality of this designation of Christians. Paul had never been in Rome, and knew very little about the religious stature of the converts there. But he has no hesitation in declaring that they are all 'beloved of G.o.d' and 'saints.' There were plenty of imperfect Christians amongst them; many things to rebuke; much deadness, coldness, inconsistency, and yet none of these in the slightest degree interfered with the application of these great designations to them. So, then, 'beloved of G.o.d' and 'saints' are not distinctions of cla.s.ses within the pale of Christianity, but belong to the whole community, and to each member of the body.

The next thing to note, I think, is how these two great terms, 'beloved of G.o.d' and 'saints,' cover almost the whole ground of the Christian life. They are connected with each other very closely, as I shall have occasion to show presently, but in the meantime it may be sufficient to mark how the one carries us deep into the heart of G.o.d and the other extends over the whole ground of our relation to Him.

The one is a statement of a universal prerogative, the other an enforcement of a universal obligation. Let us look, then, at these two points, the universal privilege and the universal obligation of the Christian life.

I. The universal privilege of the Christian life.

'Beloved of G.o.d.' Now we are so familiar with the juxtaposition of the two ideas, 'love' and 'G.o.d,' that we cease to feel the wonderfulness of their union. But until Jesus Christ had done His work no man believed that the two thoughts could be brought together.

Does G.o.d love any one? We think the question too plain to need to be put, and the answer instinctive. But it is not by any means instinctive, and the fact is that until Christ answered it for us, the world stood dumb before the question that its own heart raised, and when tortured spirits asked, 'Is there care in heaven, and is there love?' there was 'no voice, nor answer, nor any that regarded.'

Think of the facts of life; think of the facts of nature. Think of sorrows and miseries and pains, and sins, and wasted lives and storms, and tempests, and diseases, and convulsions; and let us feel how true the grim saying is, that

'Nature, red in tooth and claw, With rapine, shrieks against the creed'

that G.o.d is love.

And think of what the world has worshipped, and of all the varieties of monstrosity, not the less monstrous because sometimes beautiful, before which men have bowed. Cruel, l.u.s.tful, rapacious, capricious, selfish, indifferent deities they have adored. And then, 'G.o.d hath established,' proved, demonstrated 'His love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.'

Oh, brethren, do not let us kick down the ladder by which we have climbed; or, in the name of a loving G.o.d, put away the Christian teaching which has begotten the conception in humanity of a G.o.d that loves. There are men to-day who would never have come within sight of that sunlight truth, even as a glimmering star, away down upon the horizon, if it had not been for the Gospel; and who now turn round upon that very Gospel which has given them the conception, and accuse it of narrow and hard thoughts of the love of G.o.d.

One of the Scripture truths against which the a.s.sailant often turns his sharpest weapons is that which is involved in my text, the Scripture answer to the other question, 'Does not G.o.d love all?' Yes!

yes! a thousand times, yes! But there is another question, Does the love of G.o.d, to all, make His special designation of Christian men as His beloved the least unlikely? Surely there is no kind of contradiction between the broadest proclamation of the universality of the love of G.o.d and Paul's decisive declaration that, in a very deep and real manner, they who are in Christ are the beloved of G.o.d.

Surely special affection is not in its nature, inconsistent with universal beneficence and benevolence. Surely it is no exaltation, but rather a degradation of the conception of the divine love, if we proclaim its utter indifference to men's characters. Surely you are not honouring G.o.d when you say, 'It is all the same to Him whether a man loves Him and serves Him, or lifts himself up in rebellion against Him, and makes himself his own centre, and earth his aim and his all.' Surely to imagine a G.o.d who not only makes His sun to shine and His rains and dews to fall on the unthankful and the evil, that He may draw them to love Him, but who also is conceived as taking the sinful creature who yet cleaves to his sins to His heart, as He does the penitent soul that longs for His image to be produced in it, is to blaspheme, and not to honour the love, the universal love of G.o.d.

G.o.d forbid that any words that ever drop from my lips should seem to cast the smallest shadow of doubt on that great truth, 'G.o.d so loved the world that He gave His Son!' But G.o.d forbid, equally, that any words of mine should seem to favour the, to me, repellent idea that the infinite love of G.o.d disregards the character of the man on whom it falls. There are manifestations of that loving heart which any man can receive; and each man gets as much of the love of G.o.d as it is possible to pour upon him. But granite rock does not drink in the dew as a flower does; and the nature of the man on whom G.o.d's love falls determines how much, and what manner of its manifestations shall pa.s.s into his true possession, and what shall remain without.

So, on the whole, we have to answer the questions, 'Does G.o.d love any? Does not G.o.d love all? Does G.o.d specially love some?' with the one monosyllable, 'Yes.'

And so, dear brethren, let us learn the path by which we can pa.s.s into that blessed community of those on whom the fullness and sweetness and tenderest tenderness of the Father's heart will fall.

'If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him.' Myths tell us that the light which, at the beginning, had been diffused through a nebulous ma.s.s, was next gathered into a sun. So the universal love of G.o.d is concentrated in Jesus Christ; and if we have Him we have it; and if we have faith we have Him, and can say, 'Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

II. Then, secondly, mark the universal obligation of the Christian life.

'Called to be saints,' says my text. Now you will observe that the two little words 'to be' are inserted here as a supplement. They may be correct enough, but they are open to the possibility of misunderstanding, as if the saintship, to which all Christian people are 'called' was something future, and not realised at the moment.

Now, in the context, the Apostle employs the same form of expression with regard to himself in a clause which illuminates the meaning of my text. 'Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ' says he, in the first verse, 'called to be an Apostle' or, more correctly, 'a called Apostle.' The apostleship coincided in time with the call, was contemporaneous with that which was its cause. And if Paul was an Apostle since he was called, saints are saints since _they_ are called. 'The beloved of G.o.d' are 'the called saints.'

I need only observe, further, that the word 'called' here does not mean 'named' or 'designated' but 'summoned.' It describes not the name by which Christian men are known, but the thing which they are invited, summoned, 'called' by G.o.d to be. It is their vocation, not their designation. Now, then, I need not, I suppose, remind you that 'saint' and 'holy' convey precisely the same idea: the one expressing it in a word of Teutonic, and the other in one of cla.s.sic derivation.

We notice that the true idea of this universal holiness which, _ipso facto_, belongs to all Christian people, is consecration to G.o.d. In the old days temple, altars, sacrifices, sacrificial vessels, persons such as priests, periods like Sabbaths and feasts, were called 'holy.' The common idea running through all these uses of the word is _belonging to G.o.d_, and that is the root notion of the New Testament 'saint' a man who is G.o.d's. G.o.d has claimed us for Himself when He gave us Jesus Christ. We respond to the claim when we accept Christ.

Henceforth we are not our own, but 'consecrated'--that is, 'saints.'

Now the next step is purity, which is the ordinary idea of sanct.i.ty.

Purity will follow consecration, and would not be worth much without it, even if it was possible to be attained. Now, look what a far deeper and n.o.bler idea of the service and conditions of moral goodness this derivation of it from surrender to G.o.d gives, than does a G.o.d-ignoring morality which talks and talks about acts and dispositions, and never goes down to the root of the whole matter; and how much n.o.bler it is than a shallow religion which in like manner is ever straining after acts of righteousness, and forgets that in order to be right there must be prior surrender to G.o.d. Get a man to yield himself up to G.o.d and no fear about the righteousness.

Virtue, goodness, purity, righteousness, all these synonyms express very n.o.ble things; but deep down below them all lies the New Testament idea of holiness, consecration of myself to G.o.d, which is the parent of them all.

And then the next thing to remind you of is that this consecration is to be applied all through a man's nature. Yielding yourselves to G.o.d is the talismanic secret of all righteousness, as I have said; and every part of our complex, manifold being is capable of such consecration. I hallow my heart if its love twines round His heart. I hallow my thoughts if I take His truth for my guide, and ever seek to be led thereby in practice and in belief. I hallow my will when it bows and says, 'Speak, Lord! Thy servant heareth!' I hallow my senses when I use them as from Him, with recognition of Him and for Him. In fact, there are two ways of living in the world; and, narrow as it sounds, I venture to say there are only two. Either G.o.d is my centre, and that is holiness; or self is my centre, in more or less subtle forms, and that is sin.

Then the next step is that this consecration, which will issue in all purity, and will cover the whole ground of a human life, is only possible when we have drunk in the blessed thought 'beloved of G.o.d.'

My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of His giving of Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannot argue a man into loving G.o.d, any more than you can hammer a rosebud open. If you do you spoil its petals. But He can love us into loving Him, and the sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it, and it will grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike in its measure and according to its nature. So a G.o.d who has only claims upon us will never be a G.o.d to whom we yield ourselves. A G.o.d who has love for us will be a G.o.d to whom it is blessed that we should be consecrated, and so saints.

Then, still further, this consecration, thus built upon the reception of the divine love, and influencing our whole nature, and leading to all purity, is a universal characteristic of Christians. There is no faith which does not lead to surrender. There is no aristocracy in the Christian Church which deserves to have the family name given especially to it. 'Saint' this, and 'Saint' that, and 'Saint' the other--these t.i.tles cannot be used without darkening the truth that this honour and obligation of being saints belong equally to all that love Jesus Christ. All the men whom thus G.o.d has drawn to Himself, by His love in His Son, they are all, if I may so say, objectively holy; they belong to G.o.d. But consecration may be cultivated, and must be cultivated and increased. There is a solemn obligation laid upon every one of us who call ourselves Christians, to be saints, in the sense that we have consciously yielded up our whole lives to Him; and are trying, body, soul, and spirit, 'to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.'

Paul's letter, addressed to the 'beloved in G.o.d,' the 'called saints'

that are in Rome, found its way to the people for whom it was meant.

If a letter so addressed were dropped in our streets, do you think anybody would bring it to you, or to any Christian society as a whole, recognising that we were the people for whom it was meant? The world has taunted us often enough with the name of saints; and laughed at the profession which they thought was included in the word. Would that their taunts had been undeserved, and that it were not true that 'saints' in the Church sometimes means less than 'good men' out of the Church! 'Seeing that we have these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit; perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.'

PAUL'S LONGING[1]