'I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians,
both to the wise and to the unwise.'--ROMANS i. 14.
No doubt Paul is here referring to the special obligation laid upon
him by his divine call to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. He was
entrusted with the Gospel as a steward, and was therefore bound to
carry it to all sorts and conditions of men. But the principle
underlying the statement applies to all Christians. The indebtedness
referred to is no peculiarity of the Apostolic order, but attaches to
every believer. Every servant of Jesus Christ, who has received the
truth for himself, has received it as a steward, and is, as such,
indebted to God, from whom he got the trust, and to the men for whom
he got it. The only limit to the obligation is, as Paul says in the
context, 'as much as in me is.' Capacity, determined by faculties,
opportunities, and circumstances, prescribes the kind and the degree
of the work to be done in discharge of the obligation; but the
obligation is universal. We are not at liberty to choose whether we
shall do our part in spreading the name of Jesus Christ. It is a debt
that we owe to God and to men. Is that the view of duty which the
average Christian man takes? I am afraid it is not. If it were, our
treasuries would be full, and great would be the multitude of them
that preached the Word.
It is no very exalted degree of virtue to pay our debts. We do not
expect to be praised for that; and we do not consider that we are at
liberty to choose whether we shall do it or not. We are dishonest if
we do not. It is no merit in us to be honest. Would that all
Christian people applied that principle to their religion. The world
would be different, and the Church would be different, if they did.
Let me try, then, to enforce this thought of indebtedness and of
common honesty in discharging the indebtedness, which underlies these
words. Paul thought that he went a long way to pay his debts to
humanity by carrying to everybody whom he could reach the 'Name that
is above every name.'
I. Now, first, let me say that we Christians are debtors to all men
by our common manhood.
It is not the least of the gifts which Christianity has brought to
the world, that it has introduced the new thought of the brotherhood
of mankind. The very word 'humanity' is a Christian coinage, and it
was coined to express the new thought that began to throb in men's
hearts, as soon as they accepted the message that Jesus Christ came
to give, the message of the Fatherhood of God. For it is on that
belief of God's Fatherhood that the belief of man's brotherhood
rests, and on it alone can it be secured and permanently based.
Here is a Jew writing to Latins in the Greek language. The phenomenon
itself is a sign of a new order of things, of the rising of a flood
that had surged over, and in the course of ages would sap away and
dissolve, the barriers between men. The Apostle points to two of the
widest gulfs that separated men, in the words of my text. 'Greeks and
Barbarians' divides mankind, according to race and language. 'Wise
and unwise' divides them according to culture and intellectual
capacity. Both gulfs exist still, though they have been wonderfully
filled up by the influence, direct and indirect, of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. The fiercest antagonisms of race which still subsist
are felt to belong to a decaying order, and to be sure, sooner or
later, to pass away. I suppose that the gulf made by the increased
culture of modern society between civilised and the savage peoples,
and, within the limits of our own land, the gulf made by education
between the higher and the lower layers of our community--I speak not
of higher and lower in regard to wealth or station, but in regard to
intellectual acquirement and capacity--are greater than, perhaps,
they ever were in the past. But yet over the gulf a bridge is thrown,
and the gulf itself is being filled up. High above all the
superficial distinctions which separate Jew and Gentile, Greek and
Barbarian, educated and illiterate, scientific and unscientific, wise
and unwise, there stretches the great rainbow of the truth that all
are one in Christ Jesus. Fraternity without Fatherhood is a ghastly
mockery that ended a hundred years ago in the guillotine, and to-day
will end in disappointment; and it is little more than cant. But when
Christianity comes and tells us that we have one Father and one
Redeemer, then the unity of the race is secured.
And that oneness which makes us debtors to all men is shown to be
real by the fact that, beneath all superficial distinctions of
culture, race, age, or station, there are the primal necessities and
yearnings and possibilities that lie in every human soul. All men,
savage or cultivated, breathe the same air, see by the same light,
are fed by the same food and drink, have the same yearning hearts,
the same lofty aspirations that unfulfilled are torture; the same
experience of the same guilt, and, blessed be God! the same Saviour
and the same salvation.
Because, then, we are all members of the one family, every man is
bound to regard all that he possesses, and is, and can do, as
committed to him in stewardship to be imparted to his fellows. We are
not sponges to absorb, but we are pipes placed in the spring, that we
may give forth the precious water of life.
Cain is not a very good model, but his question is the world's
question, and it implies the expectation of a negative answer--'Am I
my brother's keeper?' Surely, the very language answers itself, and,
although Cain thinks that the only answer is 'No,' wisdom sees that
the only answer is 'Yes.' For if I am my brother's brother, then
surely I am my brother's keeper. We have a better example. There is
another Elder Brother who has come to give to His brethren all that
Himself possessed, and we but poorly follow our Master's pattern
unless we feel that the mystic tie which binds us in brotherhood to
every man makes us every man's debtor to the extent of our
possessions. That is the Christian truth that underlies the modern
Socialistic idea, and, whatever the form in which it is ultimately
brought into practice as the rule of mankind, the principle will
triumph one day; and we are bound, as Christian men, to hasten the
coming of its victory. We are debtors by reason of our common
humanity.