'The power of God unto salvation.' There was in the background of the
Apostle's mind a kind of tacit reference to the antithetical power
that he was going up to meet, the power of Rome, and we may trace
that in the words of my text. Rome, as I have said, was the
embodiment of physical force, with no great faith in ideas. And over
against this carnal might Paul lifts the undissembled weakness of the
Cross, and declares that it is stronger than man, 'the power of God
unto salvation.' Rome is high in force; Athens is higher; the Cross
is highest of all, and it comes shrouded in weakness having a poor
Man hanging dying there. That is a strange embodiment of divine
power. Yes, and because so strange, it is so touching, and so
conquering. The power that is draped in weakness is power indeed.
Though Rome's power did make for righteousness sometimes, yet its
stream of tendency was on the whole a power to destruction and
grasped the nations of the earth as some rude hand might do rich
clusters of grapes and squeeze them into a formless mass. The tramp
of the legionary meant death, and it was true in many respects of
them what was afterwards said of later invaders of Europe, that where
their horses' hoofs had once stamped no grass ever grew. Over against
this terrific engine of destruction Paul lifts up the meek forces of
love which have for their sole object the salvation of man.
Then we come to another of the keywords about which it is very
needful that people should have deeper and wider notions than they
often seem to cherish. What is salvation? Negatively, the removal and
sweeping away of all evil, physical and moral, as the schools speak.
Positively, the inclusion of all good for every part of the composite
nature of a man which the man can receive and which God can bestow.
And that is the task that the Gospel sets to itself. Now, I need not
remind you how, for the execution of such a purpose, it is plain that
something else than man's power is absolutely essential. It is only
God who can alter my relation to His government. It is only God who
can trammel up the inward consequences of my sins and prevent them
from scourging me. It is only God who can bestow upon my death a new
life, which shall grow up into righteousness and beauty,
caught of, and kindred to, His own. But if this be the aim of the
Gospel, then its diagnosis of man's sickness is a very much graver
one than that which finds favour amongst so many of us now. Salvation
is a bigger word than any of the little gospels that we hear
clamouring round about us are able to utter. It means something a
great deal more than either social or intellectual, or still more,
material or political betterment of man's condition. The disease lies
so deep, and so great are the destruction and loss partly
experienced, and still more awfully impending over every soul of us,
that something else than tinkering at the outsides, or dealing, as
self-culture does, with man's understanding or, as social gospels do,
with man's economical and civic condition, should be brought to bear.
Dear brethren, especially you Christian ministers, preach a social
Christianity by all means, an applied Christianity, for there does
lie in the Gospel of Jesus Christ a key to all the problems that
afflict our social condition. But be sure first that there is a
Christianity before you talk about applying it. And remember that the
process of salvation begins in the deep heart of the individual and
transforms him first and foremost. The power is 'to every one that
believeth.' It is power in its most universal sweep. Rome's Empire
was wellnigh ubiquitous, but, blessed be God, the dove of Christ
flies farther than the Roman eagle with beak and claw ready for
rapine, and wherever there are men here is a Gospel for them. The
limitation is no limitation of its universality. It is no limitation
of the claim of a medicine to be a panacea that it will only do good
to the man who swallows it. And that is the only limitation of which
the Gospel is susceptible, for we have all the same deep needs, the
same longings; we are fed by the same bread, we are nourished by the
same draughts of water, we breathe the same air, we have the same
sins, and, thanks be to God, we have the same Saviour. 'The power of
God unto salvation to every one that believeth.'
Now before I pass from this part of my subject there is only one
thing more that I want to say, and that is, that you cannot apply
that glowing language about 'the power of God unto salvation' to
anything but the Gospel that Paul preached. Forms of Christianity
which have lost the significance of the Incarnation and Death of
Jesus Christ, and which have struck out or obscured the central facts
with which I have been dealing, are not, never were, and, I may
presumptuously venture to say, never will be, forces of large account
in this world. Here is a clock, beautiful, chased on the back, with a
very artistic dial-plate, and works modelled according to the most
approved fashion, but, somehow or other, the thing won't go. Perhaps
the mainspring is broken. And so it is only the Gospel, as Paul
expounds it and expands it in this Epistle, that is 'the power of God
unto salvation.' Dear brethren, in the course of a sermon like this,
of course, one must lay himself open to the charge of dogmatising.
That cannot be helped under the conditions of my space. But let me
say as my own solemn conviction--I know that that is not worth much
to you, but it is my justification for speaking in such a
fashion--let me say as my solemn conviction that you may as well take
the keystone out of an arch, with nothing to hold the other stones
together or keep them from toppling in hideous ruin on your
unfortunate head, as take the doctrine that Paul summed up in that
one word out of your conception of Christianity and expect it to
work. And be sure of this, that there is only one Name that lords it
over the demons of afflicted humanity, and that if a man goes and
tries to eject them with any less potent charm than Paul's Gospel,
they will turn upon him with 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who
are you?'