_CHRISTIAN CONDUCT THE ISSUE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH_
ROMANS xii. 1-8
Again we may conjecture a pause, a long pause and deliberate, in the
work of Paul and Tertius. We have reached the end, generally speaking,
of the dogmatic and so to speak oracular contents of the Epistle. We
have listened to the great argument of Righteousness, Sanctification,
and final Redemption. We have followed the exposition of the
mysterious unbelief and the destined restoration of the chosen nation;
a theme which we can see, as we look back on the perspective of the
whole Epistle, to have a deep and suggestive connexion with what went
before it; for the experience of Israel, in relation to the sovereign
will and grace of God, is full of light thrown upon the experience of
the soul. Now in order comes the bright sequel of this mighty
antecedent, this complex but harmonious mass of spiritual facts and
historical illustrations of the will and ways of the Eternal. The
voice of St Paul is heard again; and he comes full upon the Lord's
message of duty, conduct, character.
As out of some cleft in the face of the rocky hills rolls the full
pure stream born in their depths, and runs under the sun and sky
through green meadows and beside the thirsty homes of men, so
here from the inmost mysteries of grace comes the message of
all-comprehensive holy duty. The Christian, filled with the knowledge
of an eternal love, is told how not to dream, but to serve, with all
the mercies of God for his motive.
This is indeed in the manner of the New Testament; this vital sequence
of duty and doctrine; the divine Truths first, and then and therefore
the blessed Life. To take only St Paul's writings, the Ephesian and
Colossian Epistles are each, practically, bisected by a line which has
eternal facts before it and present duties, done in the light and
power of them, after it. But the whole Book of God, in its texture all
over, shews the same phenomenon. Someone has remarked with homely
force that in the Bible everywhere, if only we dig deep enough, we
find "_Do right_" at the bottom. And we may add that everywhere also
we have only to dig one degree deeper to find that the precept is
rooted in eternal underlying facts of divine truth and love.
Scripture, that is to say, its Lord and Author, does not give us the
terrible gift of a precept isolated and in a vacuum. It supports its
commandments on a base of cogent motive; and it fills the man who is
to keep them with the power of a living Presence in him; this we have
seen at large in the pages of the Epistle already traversed. But then,
on the other hand, the Lord of Scripture does not leave the motive and
the Presence without the articulate precept. Rather, because they are
supplied and assured to the believer, it spreads out all the more
amply and minutely a moral directory before his eyes. It tells him, as
a man who now rests on God and loves Him, and in whom God dwells, not
only in general that he is to "walk and please God" but in particular
"_how_" to do it (1 Thess. iv. 1). It takes his life in detail, and
applies the will of the Lord to it. It speaks to him in explicit terms
about moral purity, in the name of the Holy One; about patience and
kindness, in the name of redeeming Love; about family duties, in the
name of the Father and of the Son; about civic duties, in the name of
the King Eternal. And the whole outline and all the details thus
become to the believer things not only of duty but of possibility, of
hope, of the strong interest given by the thought that thus and thus
the beloved Master would have us use His divine gift of life. Nothing
is more wonderfully free, from one point of view, than love and
spiritual power. But if the love is indeed given by God and directed
towards Him in Christ, the man who loves cannot possibly wish to be
his own law, and to spend his soul's power upon his own ideas or
preferences. His joy and his conscious aim must be to do, in detail,
the will of the Lord who is now so dear to him; and therefore, in
detail, to know it.
Let us take deep note of this characteristic of Scripture, its
minuteness of precept, in connexion with its revelation of spiritual
blessing. If in any sense we are called to be teachers of others, let
us carry out the example. Richard Cecil, wise and pregnant counsellor
in Christ, says that if he had to choose between preaching precepts
and preaching privileges, he would preach privileges; because the
privileges of the true Gospel tend in their nature to suggest and
stimulate right action, while the precepts taken alone do not reveal
the wealth of divine life and power. But Cecil, like his great
contemporaries of the Evangelical Revival, constantly and diligently
preached as a fact both privilege and precept; opening with energetic
hands the revealed fulness of Christ, and then and therefore teaching
"them which had believed through grace" not only the idea of duty, but
its details. Thomas Scott, at Olney, devoted his week-night "lecture"
in the parish church, almost exclusively, to instructions in daily
Christian life. Assuming that his hearers "knew Christ" in personal
reality, he told them how to be Christians in the home, in the shop,
in the farm; how to be consistent with their regenerate life as
parents, children, servants, masters, neighbours, subjects. There have
been times, perhaps, when such didactic preaching has been too little
used in the Church. But the men who, under God, in the last century
and the early years of this century, revived the message of Christ
Crucified and Risen as all in all for our salvation, were eminently
diligent in teaching Christian morals. At the present day, in many
quarters of our Christendom, there is a remarkable revival of the
desire to apply saving truth to common life, and to keep the Christian
always mindful that he not only has heaven in prospect, but is to
travel to it, every step, in the path of practical and watchful
holiness. This is a sign of divine mercy in the Church. This is
profoundly Scriptural.
Meanwhile, God forbid that such "teaching how to live" should ever be
given, by parent, pastor, schoolmaster, friend, where it does not
first pass through the teacher's own soul into his own life. Alas for
us if we shew ever so convincingly, and even ever so winningly, the
bond between salvation and holiness, and do not "walk accurately"
(Eph. v. 15) ourselves, in the details of our walk.
As we actually approach the rules of holiness now before us, let us
once more recollect what we have seen all along in the Epistle, that
holiness is the aim and issue of the entire Gospel. It is indeed an
"evidence of life," infinitely weighty in the enquiry whether a man
knows God indeed and is on the way to His heaven. But it is much more;
it is the expression of life; it is the form and action in which life
is intended to come out. In our orchards (to use again a parable we
have used already) the golden apples are evidences of the tree's
species, and of its life. But a wooden label could tell us the
species, and leaves can tell the life. The fruit is more than label or
leaf; it is the thing for which the tree is there. We who believe are
"chosen" and "ordained" to "bring forth fruit" (John xv. 16), fruit
much and lasting. The eternal Master walks in His garden for the very
purpose of seeing if the trees bear. And the fruit He looks for is no
visionary thing; it is a life of holy serviceableness to Him and to
our fellows, in His Name.
But now we draw near again and listen:
[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =I exhort you therefore, brethren, by means of the
compassions of God;= using as my logic and my fulcrum this "depth of
riches" we have explored; this wonderful Redemption, with its
sovereignty, its mercy, its acceptance, its holiness, its glory; this
overruling of even sin and rebellion, in Gentile and in Jew, into
occasions for salvation; these compassionate indications in the nearer
and the eternal future of golden days yet to come;--=I exhort you
therefore to present,= to give over, =your bodies as a sacrifice,= an
altar-offering, =living, holy, well-pleasing, unto God; for this
(ἥτις) is your rational devotion (λατρεία).= That is to say, it
is the "_devotion_," the _cultus_, the worship-service, which is done
by the reason, the mind, the thought and will, of the man who has
found God in Christ. The Greek term, _latreia_, is tinged with
associations of ritual and temple; but it is taken here, and qualified
by its adjective, on purpose to be lifted, as in paradox, into the
region of the soul. The robes and incense of the visible sanctuary are
here out of sight; the individual believer is at once priest,
sacrifice, and altar; he immolates himself to the Lord,--living, yet
no longer to himself.
But observe the pregnant collocation here of "_the body_" with "_the
reason_." "_Give over your bodies_"; not now your spirit, your
intelligence, your sentiments, your aspirations, but "_your bodies_,"
to your Lord. Is this an anti-climax? Have we retreated from the
higher to the lower, in coming from the contemplation of sovereign
grace and the eternal glory to that of the physical frame of man? No
more than the Lord Jesus did, when He walked down from the hill of
Transfiguration to the crowd below, and to the sins and miseries it
presented. He came from the scene of glory to serve men in its abiding
inner light. And even He, in the days of His flesh, served men,
ordinarily, only through His sacred body; walking to them with His
feet; touching them with His hands; meeting their eyes with His;
speaking with His lips the words that were spirit and life. As with
Him so with us. It is only through the body, practically, that we can
"serve our generation by the will of God." Not without the body but
through it the spirit must tell on the embodied spirits around us. We
look, we speak, we hear, we write, we nurse, we travel, by means of
these material servants of the will, our living limbs. Without the
body, where should we be, as to other men? And therefore, without the
surrender of the body, where are we, as to other men, from the point
of view of the will of God?
So there is a true sense in which, while the surrender of the will is
all important and primary from one point of view, the surrender of the
body, the "giving over" of the body, to be the implement of God's will
in us, is all-important, is crucial, from another. For many a
Christian life it is the most needful of all things to remember this;
it is the oblivion, or the mere half-recollection, of this which keeps
that life an almost neutral thing as to witness and service for the
Lord.
[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =And do not grow[207] conformed to this world,=
this _æon_ (αἰών), the course and state of things in this scene of
sin and death; do not play "the worldling," assuming a guise
(σχῆμα) which in itself is fleeting, and which for you, members of
Christ, must also be hollow; =but grow transfigured,= living out a
lasting and genuine change of tone and conduct, in which the figure
(μορφὴ) is only the congenial expression of the essence[208]--=by
the renewal of your mind,= by using as an implement in the holy
process that divine light which has cleared your intelligence of the
mists of self-love, and taught you to see as with new eyes "the
splendour of the will of God"; =so as that you test,= discerning as by
a spiritual touchstone, =what is the will of God, the good, and
acceptable, and perfect (will).=
Such was to be the method, and such the issue, in this development of
the surrendered life. All is divine in origin and secret. The eternal
"compassions," and the sovereign work of the renewing and illuminating
Spirit, are supposed before the believer can move one step. On the
other hand the believer, in the full conscious action of his renewed
"intelligence," is to ponder the call to seek "transfiguration" in a
life of unworldly love, and to attain it in detail by using the new
insight of a regenerated heart. He is to look, with the eyes of the
soul, straight through every mist of self-will to the now beloved Will
of God, as his deliberate choice, seen to be welcome, seen to be
perfect, not because all is understood, but because the man is
joyfully surrendered to the all-trusted Master. Thus he is to move
along the path of an ever brightening transfiguration; at once
open-eyed, and in the dark; seeing the Lord, and so with a sure
instinct gravitating to His will, yet content to let the mists of the
unknown always hang over the next step but one.
It is a process, not a crisis; "_grow_ transfigured." The origin of
the process, the liberation of the movement, is, at least in idea, as
critical as possible; "_Give over your bodies_." That precept is
conveyed, in its Greek form (παραστῆσαι, aorist), so as to suggest
precisely the thought of a critical surrender. The Roman Christian,
and his English younger brother, are called here, as they were above
(vi. 13, 19), to a transaction with the Lord quite definite, whether
or no the like has taken place before, or shall be done again. They
are called, as if once for all, to look their Lord in the face, and to
clasp His gifts in their hands, and then to put themselves and His
gifts altogether into _His_ hands, for perpetual use and service. So,
from the side of his conscious experience, the Christian is called to
a "hallowing of himself" decisive, crucial, instantaneous. But its
outcome is to be a perpetual progression, a growth, not so much "into"
grace as "_in_" it (2 Pet. iii. 18), in which the surrender in purpose
becomes a long series of deepening surrenders in habit and action, and
a larger discovery of self, and of the Lord, and of His will, takes
effect in the "shining" of the transfigured life "more and more, unto
the perfect day" (Prov. iv. 18).
Let us not distort this truth of progression, and its correlative
truth of the Christian's abiding imperfection. Let us not profane it
into an excuse for a life which at the best is stationary, and must
almost certainly be retrograde, because not intent upon a genuine
advance. Let us not withhold "_our bodies_" from the sacred surrender
here enjoined upon us, and yet expect to realize somehow, at some
vague date, a "_transfiguration, by the renewal of our mind_." We
shall be indeed disappointed of that hope. But let us be at once
stimulated and sobered by the spiritual facts. As we are "yielded to
the Lord," in sober reality, we are in His mercy "liberated for
growth." But the growth is to come, among other ways, by the diligent
application of "the renewal of our mind" to the details of His blessed
Will.
And it will come, in its true development, only in the line of holy
humbleness. To exalt oneself, even in the spiritual life, is not to
grow; it is to wither. So the Apostle goes on:
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For I say, through the grace that has been given
me,= "_the grace_" of power for apostolic admonition, =to every one
who is among you, not to be high-minded beyond what his mind should
be, but to be minded toward sober-mindedness, as to each God
distributed faith's measure.= That is to say, let the individual
never, in himself, forget his brethren, and the mutual relation of
each to all in Christ. Let him never make himself the centre, or think
of his personal salvation as if it could really be taken alone. The
Lord, the sovereign Giver of faith, the Almighty Bringer of souls into
acceptance and union with Christ by faith, has given thy faith to
thee, and thy brother's faith to him; and why? That the individual
gifts, the bounty of the One Giver, might join the individuals not
only to the Giver but to one another, as recipients of riches many yet
one, and which are to be spent in service one yet many. The One Lord
distributes the one faith-power into many hearts, "_measuring_" it out
to each, so that the many, individually believing in the One, may not
collide and contend, but lovingly cooperate in a manifold service, the
issue of their "like precious faith" (2 Pet. i. 2) conditioned by the
variety of their lives. So comes in that pregnant parable of the Body,
found only in the writings of St Paul, and in four only of his
Epistles, but so stated there as to take a place for ever in the
foreground of Christian truth. We have it here in the Romans, and in
larger detail in the contemporary 1 Corinthians (xii. 12-27). We have
it finally and fully in the later Epistolary Group, of the first Roman
Captivity--in Ephesians and Colossians. There the supreme point in the
whole picture, the glorious HEAD, and His relation to the Limb and to
the Body, comes out in all its greatness, while in these earlier
passages it appears only incidentally.[209] But each presentation, the
earlier and the later, is alike true to its purpose. When St Paul
wrote to the Asiatics, he was in presence of errors which beclouded
the living splendour of the Head. When he wrote to the Romans, he was
concerned rather with the interdependence of the limbs, in the
practice of Christian social life.
We have spoken of "_the parable_ of the Body." But is the word
"parable" adequate? "What if earth be but the shadow of heaven?" What
if our physical frame, the soul's house and vehicle, be only the
feebler counterpart of that great Organism in which the exalted Christ
unites and animates His saints? That union is no mere aggregation, no
mere alliance of so many men under the presidency of an invisible
Leader. It is a thing of life. Each to the living Head, and so each to
all His members, we are joined in that wonderful connexion with a
tenacity, and with a relation, genuine, strong, and close as the
eternal life can make it. The living, breathing man, multifold yet
one, is but the reflection, as it were, of "Christ Mystical," the true
Body with its heavenly Head.
[Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For just as in one body we have many limbs, but
all the limbs have not the same function,= [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =so we,
the many, are one body in Christ,= in our personal union with Him,
=but in detail (τὸ δὲ καθεῖς), limbs of one another,= coherent and
related not as neighbours merely but as complementary parts in the whole.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But having endowments (χαρίσματα)--according to
the grace that was given to us--differing, be it prophecy,= inspired
utterance, a power from above, yet mysteriously conditioned (1 Cor.
xiv. 32) by the judgment and will of the utterer, =let it follow the
proportion of the= man's =faith,= let it be true to his entire
dependence on the revealed Christ, not left at the mercy of his mere
emotions, or as it were played upon by alien unseen powers;
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =be it active service (διακονία),= let the man
be =in his service,= wholly given to it, not turning aside to covet
his brother's more mystic gift; =be it the teacher,= let him likewise
be =in his teaching,= whole-hearted in his allotted work, free from
ambitious outlooks from it; [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =be it the exhorter,=
let him be =in his exhortation; the distributer= of his means, for
God, =with open-handedness; the superintendent,= of Church, or of
home, =with earnestness; the pitier,= (large and unofficial
designation!) =with gladness,= doubling his gifts and works of mercy
by the hallowed brightness of a heart set free from the aims of self,
and therefore wholly at the service of the needing.
This paragraph of eight verses lies here before us, full all along of
that deep characteristic of Gospel life, surrender for service. The
call is to a profoundly passive inward attitude, with an express view
to a richly active outward usefulness. Possessed, and knowing it, of
the compassions of God, the man is asked to give himself over to
Eternal Love for purposes of unworldly and unambitious employment in
the path chosen for him, whatever it may be. In this respect above all
others he is to be "_not conformed to this world_"--that is, he is to
make not himself but his Lord his pleasure and ambition. "_By the
renewal of his mind_" he is to view the Will of God from a point
inaccessible to the unregenerate, to the unjustified, to the man not
emancipated in Christ from the tyranny of sin. He is to see in it his
inexhaustible interest, his line of quest and hope, his ultimate and
satisfying aim; because of the practical identity of the Will and the
infinitely good and blessed Bearer of it. And this more than surrender
of his faculties, this happy and reposeful consecration of them, is to
shew its reality in one way above all others first; in a humble
estimate of self as compared with brother Christians, and a watchful
willingness to do--not another's work, but the duty that lies next.
This relative aspect of the life of self-surrender is the burthen of
this great paragraph of duty. In the following passage we shall find
precepts more in detail; but here we have what is to govern all along
the whole stream of the obedient life. The man rich in Christ is
reverently to remember others, and God's will in them, and for them.
He is to avoid the subtle temptation to intrude beyond the Master's
allotted work _for him_. He is to be slow to think, "I am richly
qualified, and could do this thing, and that, and the other, better
than the man who does it now." His chastened spiritual instinct will
rather go to criticize himself, to watch for the least deficiency in
his own doing of the task which at least to-day is his. He will "give
himself wholly to this," be it more or less attractive to him in
itself. For he works as one who has not to contrive a life as full of
success and influence as he can imagine, but to accept a life assigned
by the Lord who has first given to him Himself.
The passage itself amply implies that he is to use actively and
honestly his renewed _intelligence_. He is to look circumstances and
conditions in the face, remembering that in one way or another the
will of God is expressed in them. He is to seek to understand not his
duties only but his personal equipments for them, natural as well as
spiritual. But he is to do this as one whose "mind" is "renewed" by
his living contact and union with his redeeming King, and who has
really laid his faculties at the feet of an absolute Master, who is
the Lord of order as well as of power.
What peace, energy, and dignity comes into a life which is consciously
and deliberately thus surrendered! The highest range of duties, as man
counts highest, is thus disburthened both of its heavy anxieties and
of its temptations to a ruinous self-importance. And the lowest range,
as man counts lowest, is filled with the quiet greatness born of the
presence and will of God. In the memoirs of Mme de la Mothe Guyon much
is said of her faithful maid-servant, who was imprisoned along with
her (in a separate chamber) in the Bastille, and there died, about the
year 1700. This pious woman, deeply taught in the things of the
Spirit, and gifted with an understanding far above the common, appears
never for an hour to have coveted a more ambitious department than
that which God assigned her in His obedience. "She desired to be what
God would have her be, and to be nothing more, and nothing less. She
included time and place, as well as disposition and action. She had
not a doubt that God, who had given remarkable powers to Mme Guyon,
had called her to the great work in which she was employed. But
knowing that her beloved mistress could not go alone, but must
constantly have some female attendant, she had the conviction, equally
distinct, that she was called to be her maid-servant."[210]
A great part of the surface of Christian society would be
"transfigured" if its depth was more fully penetrated with that
spirit. And it is to that spirit that the Apostle here definitely
calls us, each and every one, not as with a "counsel of perfection"
for the few, but as the will of God for all who have found out what is
meant by His "compassions," and have caught even a glimpse of His Will
as "good, and acceptable, and perfect."
"I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do
Or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
And guided where I go."
[207] The Greek imperative is present, and indicates a process.
[208] See Trench, _N. T. Synonyms_, _s.v._ μορφή, for the pregnant
difference of the two nouns which are the distinctive elements here of
the two verbs.
[209] See 1 Cor. xii. 21: "_Can the head say_ to the feet, etc.?"
[210] Upham: _Life, etc., of Mme de la M. Guyon_, ch. I.