'All that in every place call upon the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.'--1 COR. i. 2.
There are some difficulties, with which I need not trouble you, about
both the translation and the connection of these words. One thing is
quite clear, that in them the Apostle associates the church at
Corinth with the whole mass of Christian believers in the world. The
question may arise whether he does so in the sense that he addresses
his letter both to the church at Corinth and to the whole of the
churches, and so makes it a catholic epistle. That is extremely
unlikely, considering how all but entirely this letter is taken up
with dealing with the especial conditions of the Corinthian church.
Rather I should suppose that he is simply intending to remind 'the
Church of God at Corinth ... sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints,' that they are in real, living union with the whole body of
believers. Just as the water in a little land-locked bay, connected
with the sea by some narrow strait like that at Corinth, is yet part
of the whole ocean that rolls round the world, so that little
community of Christians had its living bond of union with all the
brethren in every place that called upon the name of Jesus Christ.
Whichever view on that detail of interpretation be taken, this
phrase, as a designation of Christians, is worth considering. It is
one of many expressions found in the New Testament as names for them,
some of which have now dropped out of general use, while some are
still retained. It is singular that the name of 'Christian,' which
has all but superseded all others, was originally invented as a jeer
by sarcastic wits at Antioch, and never appears in the New Testament,
as a name by which believers called themselves. Important lessons are
taught by these names, such as disciples, believers, brethren,
saints, those of the way, and so on, each of which embodies some
characteristic of a follower of Jesus. So this appellation in the
text, 'those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,' may
yield not unimportant lessons if it be carefully weighed, and to some
of these I would ask your attention now.
I. First, it gives us a glimpse into the worship of the primitive
Church.
To 'call on the name of the Lord' is an expression that comes
straight out of the Old Testament. It means there distinctly
adoration and invocation, and it means precisely these things when it
is referred to Jesus Christ.
We find in the Acts of the Apostles that the very first sermon that
was preached at Pentecost by Peter all turns upon this phrase. He
quotes the Old Testament saying, 'Whosoever shall call on the name of
the Lord shall be saved,' and then goes on to prove that 'the Lord,'
the 'calling on whose Name' is salvation, is Jesus Christ; and winds
up with 'Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that
God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ.'
Again we find that Ananias of Damascus, when Jesus Christ appeared to
him and told him to go to Paul and lay his hands upon him, shrank
from the perilous task because Paul had been sent to 'bind them that
call upon the name of the Lord,' and to persecute them. We find the
same phrase recurring in other connections, so that, on the whole, we
may take the expression as a recognised designation of Christians.
This was their characteristic, that they prayed to Jesus Christ. The
very first word, so far as we know, that Paul ever heard from a
Christian was, 'Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.' He heard that cry of
calm faith which, when he heard it, would sound to him as horrible
blasphemy from Stephen's dying lips. How little he dreamed that he
himself was soon to cry to the same Jesus, 'Lord, what wilt thou have
me to do?' and was in after-days to beseech Him thrice for
deliverance, and to be answered by sufficient grace. How little he
dreamed that, when his own martyrdom was near, he too would look to
Jesus as Lord and righteous Judge, from whose hands all who loved His
appearing should receive their crown! Nor only Paul directs desires
and adoration to Jesus as Lord; the last words of Scripture are a cry
to Him as Lord to come quickly, and an invocation of His 'grace' on
all believing souls.
Prayer to Christ from the very beginning of the Christian Church was,
then, the characteristic of believers, and He to whom they prayed,
thus, from the beginning, was recognised by them as being a Divine
Person, God manifest in the flesh.
The object of their worship, then, was known by the people among whom
they lived. Singing hymns to Christus as a god is nearly all that the
Roman proconsul in his well-known letter could find to tell his
master of their worship. They were the worshippers--not merely the
disciples--of one Christ. That was their peculiar distinction. Among
the worshippers of the false gods they stood erect; before Him, and
Him only, they bowed. In Corinth there was the polluted worship of
Aphrodite and of Zeus. These men called not on the name of these
lustful and stained deities, but on the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And everybody knew whom they worshipped, and understood whose
men they were. Is that true about us? Do we Christian men so
habitually cultivate the remembrance of Jesus Christ, and are we so
continually in the habit of invoking His aid, and of contemplating
His blessed perfections and sufficiency, that every one who knew us
would recognise us as meant by those who call on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ?
If this be the proper designation of Christian people, alas! alas!
for so many of the professing Christians of this day, whom neither
bystanders nor themselves would think of as included in such a name!
Further, the connection here shows that the divine worship of Christ
was universal among the churches. There was no 'place' where it was
not practised, no community calling itself a church to whom He was
not the Lord to be invoked and adored. This witness to the early and
universal recognition in the Christian communities of the divinity of
our Lord is borne by an undisputedly genuine epistle of Paul's. It is
one of the four which the most thorough-going destructive criticism
accepts as genuine. It was written before the Gospels, and is a voice
from the earlier period of Paul's apostleship. Hence the importance
of its attestation to this fact that all Christians everywhere, both
Jewish, who had been trained in strict monotheism, and Gentile, who
had burned incense at many a foul shrine, were perfectly joined
together in this, that in all their need they called on the name of
Jesus Christ as Lord and brought to Him, as divine, adoration not to
be rendered to any creatures. From the day of Pentecost onwards, a
Christian was not merely a disciple, a follower, or an admirer, but a
worshipper of Christ, the Lord.
II. We may see here an unfolding of the all-sufficiency of Jesus
Christ.
Note that solemn accumulation, in the language of my text, of all the
designations by which He is called, sometimes separately and
sometimes unitedly, the name of 'our Lord Jesus Christ.' We never
find that full title given to Him in Scripture except when the
writer's mind is labouring to express the manifoldness and
completeness of our Lord's relations to men, and the largeness and
sufficiency of the blessings which He brings. In this context I find
in the first nine or ten verses of this chapter, so full is the
Apostle of the thoughts of the greatness and wonderfulness of his
dear Lord on whose name he calls, that six or seven times he employs
this solemn, full designation.
Now, if we look at the various elements of this great name we shall
get various aspects of the way in which calling on Christ is the
strength of our souls.
'Call on the name of--the Lord.' That is the Old Testament Jehovah.
There is no mistaking nor denying, if we candidly consider the
evidence of the New Testament writings, that, when we read of Jesus
Christ as 'Lord,' in the vast majority of cases, the title is not a
mere designation of human authority, but is an attribution to Him of
divine nature and dignity. We have, then, to ascribe to Him, and to
call on Him as possessing, all which that great and incommunicable
Name certified and sealed to the Jewish Church as their possession
in their God. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is our Lord of the
New. He whose being is eternal, underived, self-sufficing,
self-determining, knowing no variation, no diminution, no age, He
who is because He is and that He is, dwells in His fulness in our
Saviour. To worship Him is not to divert worship from the one God,
nor is it to have other gods besides Him. Christianity is as much
monotheistic as Judaism was, and the law of its worship is the old
law--Him only shalt thou serve. It is the divine will that all men
should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.
But what is it to call on the name of Jesus? That name implies all
the sweetness of His manhood. He is our Brother. The name 'Jesus' is
one that many a Jewish boy bore in our Lord's own time and before it;
though, afterwards, of course, abhorrence on the part of the Jew and
reverence on the part of the Christian caused it almost entirely to
disappear. But at the time when He bore it it was as undistinguished
a name as Simeon, or Judas, or any other of His followers' names. To
call upon the name of Jesus means to realise and bring near to
ourselves, for our consolation and encouragement, for our strength
and peace, the blessed thought of His manhood, so really and closely
knit to ours; to grasp the blessedness of the thought that He knows
our frame because He Himself has worn it, and understands and pities
our weakness, being Himself a man. To Him whom we adore as Lord we
draw near in tenderer, but not less humble and prostrate, adoration
as our brother when we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, and thus
embrace as harmonious, and not contradictory, both the divinity of
the Lord and the humanity of Jesus.
To call on the name of Christ is to embrace in our faith and to
beseech the exercise on our behalf of all which Jesus is as the
Messiah, anointed by God with the fulness of the Spirit. As such He
is the climax, and therefore the close of all revelation, who is the
long-expected fruition of the desire of weary hearts, the fulfilment,
and therefore the abolition, of sacrifice and temple and priesthood
and prophecy and all that witnessed for Him ere He came. We further
call on the name of Christ the Anointed, on whom the whole fulness of
the Divine Spirit dwelt in order that, calling upon Him, that fulness
may in its measure be granted to us.
So the name of the Lord Jesus Christ brings to view the divine, the
human, the Messiah, the anointed Lord of the Spirit, and Giver of the
divine life. To call on His name is to be blessed, to be made pure
and strong, joyous and immortal. 'The name of the Lord is a strong
tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.' Call on His name
in the day of trouble and ye shall be heard and helped.