'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,' say two
texts. 'Circumcision availeth nothing, and uncircumcision availeth
nothing,' says the other. It neither is anything nor does anything.
Did Paul say that because circumcision was a Jewish rite? No. As I
believe, he said it because it was _a rite_; and because he had
learned that the one thing needful was spiritual character, and that
no external ceremonial of any sort could produce that. I think we are
perfectly warranted in taking this principle of my text, and in
extending it beyond the limits of the Jewish rite about which Paul
was speaking. For if you remember, he speaks about baptism, in the
first chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in a precisely
similar tone and for precisely the same reason, when he says, in
effect, 'I baptized Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stephanas,
and I think these are all. I am not quite sure. I do not keep any
kind of record of such things; God did not send me to baptize, He
sent me to preach the Gospel.'
The thing that produced the spiritual result was not the rite, but
the truth, and therefore he felt that his function was to preach the
truth and leave the rite to be administered by others. Therefore we
can extend the principle here to all externalisms of worship, in all
forms, in all churches, and say that in comparison with the
essentials of an inward Christianity they are nothing and they do
nothing.
They have their value. As long as we are here on earth, living in the
flesh, we must have outward forms and symbolical rites. It is in
Heaven that the seer 'saw no temple.' Our sense-bound nature
requires, and thankfully avails itself of, the help of external rites
and ceremonials to lift us up towards the Object of our devotion. A
man prays all the better if he bow his head, shut his eyes, and bend
his knees. Forms do help us to the realisation of the realities, and
the truths which they express and embody. Music may waft our souls to
the heavens, and pictures may stir deep thoughts. That is the simple
principle on which the value of all external aids to devotion
depends. They may be helps towards the appreciation of divine truth,
and to the suffusing of the heart with devout emotions which may lead
to building up a holy character.
There is a worth, therefore--an auxiliary and subordinate worth--in
these things, and in that respect they are _not_ nothing, nor do
they 'avail nothing.' But then all external rites tend to usurp more
than belongs to them, and in our weakness we are apt to cleave to
them, and instead of using them as means to lift us higher, to stay
in them, and as a great many of us do, to mistake the mere
gratification of taste and the excitement of the sensibilities for
worship. A bit of stained glass may be glowing with angel-forms and
pictured saints, but it always keeps some of the light out, and it
always hinders us from seeing through it. And all external worship
and form have so strong a tendency to usurp more than belongs to
them, and to drag us down to their own level, even whilst we think
that we are praying, that I believe the wisest man will try to pare
down the externals of his worship to the lowest possible point. If
there be as much body as will keep a soul in, as much form as will
embody the spirit, that is all that we want. What is more is
dangerous.
All form in worship is like fire, it is a good servant but it is a
bad master, and it needs to be kept very rigidly in subordination, or
else the spirituality of Christian worship vanishes before men know;
and they are left with their dead forms which are only
evils--crutches that make people limp by the very act of using them.
Now, my dear friends, when that has happened, when men begin to say,
as the people in Paul's time were saying about circumcision, and as
people are saying in this day about Christian rites, that they are
necessary, then it is needful to take up Paul's ground and to say,
'No! they are nothing!' They are useful in a certain place, but if
you make them obligatory, if you make them essential, if you say that
grace is miraculously conveyed through them, then it is needful that
we should raise a strong note of protestation, and declare their
absolute nullity for the highest purpose, that of making that
spiritual character which alone is essential.
And I believe that this strange recrudescence--to use a modern
word--of ceremonialism and aesthetic worship which we see all round
about us, not only in the ranks of the Episcopal Church, but amongst
Nonconformists, who are sighing for a less bare service, and here and
there are turning their chapels into concert-rooms, and instead of
preaching the Gospel are having 'Services of Song' and the like--that
all this makes it as needful to-day as ever it was to say to men:
'Forms are not worship. Rites may crush the spirit. Men may yield to
the sensuous impressions which they produce, and be lapped in an
atmosphere of aesthetic emotion, without any real devotion.'
Such externals are only worth anything if they make us grasp more
firmly with our understandings and feel more profoundly with our
hearts, the great truths of the Gospel. If they do that, they help;
if they are not doing that, they hinder, and are to be fought
against. And so we have again to proclaim to-day, as Paul did,
'Circumcision is nothing,' 'but the keeping of the commandments of
God.'
Then notice with what remarkable fairness and boldness and breadth
the Apostle here adds that other clause: 'and uncircumcision is
nothing.' It is a very hard thing for a man whose life has been spent
in fighting against an error, not to exaggerate the value of his
protest. It is a very hard thing for a man who has been delivered
from the dependence upon forms, not to fancy that his formlessness is
what the other people think that their forms are. The Puritan who
does not believe that a man can be a good man because he is a
Ritualist or a Roman Catholic, is committing the very same error as
the Ritualist or the Roman Catholic who does not believe that the
Puritan can be a Christian unless he has been 'christened.' The two
people are exactly the same, only the one has hold of the stick at
one end, and the other at the other. There may be as much idolatry in
superstitious reliance upon the bare worship as in the advocacy of
the ornate; and many a Nonconformist who fancies that he has 'never
bowed the knee to Baal' is as true an idol-worshipper in his
superstitious abhorrence of the ritualism that he sees in other
communities, as are the men who trust in it the most.
It is a large attainment in Christian character to be able to say
with Paul, 'Circumcision is nothing, and my own favourite point of
uncircumcision is nothing either. Neither the one side nor the other
touches the essentials.'
II. Now let us look at the threefold variety of the designation of
these essentials here.
In our first text from the Epistle to the Corinthians we read,
'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the
keeping of the commandments of God.' If we finished the sentence it
would be, 'but the keeping of the commandments of God is everything.'
And by that 'keeping the commandments,' of course, the Apostle does
not mean merely external obedience. He means something far deeper
than that, which I put into this plain word, that the one essential
of a Christian life is the conformity of the will with God's--not
the external obedience merely, but the entire surrender and the
submission of my will to the will of my Father in Heaven. That is the
all-important thing; that is what God wants; that is the end of all
rites and ceremonies; that is the end of all revelation and of all
utterances of the divine heart. The Bible, Christ's mission, His
passion and death, the gift of His Divine Spirit, and every part of
the divine dealings in providence, all converge upon this one aim and
goal. For this purpose the Father worketh hitherto, and Christ works,
that man's will may yield and bow itself wholly and happily and
lovingly to the great infinite will of the Father in heaven.
Brethren! that is the perfection of a man's nature, when his will
fits on to God's like one of Euclid's triangles superimposed upon
another, and line for line coincides. When his will allows a free
passage to the will of God, without resistance or deflection, as
light travels through transparent glass; when his will responds to
the touch of God's finger upon the keys, like the telegraphic needle
to the operator's hand, then man has attained all that God and
religion can do for him, all that his nature is capable of; and far
beneath his feet may be the ladders of ceremonies and forms and
outward acts, by which he climbed to that serene and blessed height,
'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the
keeping of God's commandments is everything.'
That submission of will is the sum and the test of your Christianity.
Your Christianity does not consist only in a mere something which you
call faith in Jesus Christ. It does not consist in emotions, however
deep and blessed and genuine they may be. It does not consist in the
acceptance of a creed. All these are means to an end. They are meant
to drive the wheel of life, to build up character, to make your
deepest wish to be, 'Father! not my will, but Thine, be done.' In the
measure in which that is your heart's desire, and not one
hair's-breadth further, have you a right to call yourself a
Christian.
But, then, I can fancy a man saying: 'It is all very well to talk
about bowing the will in this fashion; how can I do that?' Well, let
us take our second text--the third in the order of their
occurrence--'For neither circumcision is anything, nor
uncircumcision, but a new creature.' That is to say, if we are ever
to keep the will of God we must be made over again. Ay! we must! Our
own consciences tell us that; the history of all the efforts that
ever we have made--and I suppose all of us have made some now and
then, more or less earnest and more or less persistent--tells us that
there needs to be a stronger hand than ours to come into the fight if
it is ever to be won by us. There is nothing more heartless and more
impotent than to preach, 'Bow your wills to God, and then you will be
happy; bow your wills to God, and then you will be good.' If that is
all the preacher has to say, his powerless words will but provoke the
answer, 'We cannot. Tell the leopard to change his spots, or the
Ethiopian his skin, as soon as tell a man to reduce this revolted
kingdom within him to obedience, and to bow his will to the will of
God. We cannot do it.' But, brethren, in that word, 'a new creature,'
lies a promise from God; for a creature implies a creator. 'It is He
that hath made us, and not we ourselves.' The very heart of what
Christ has to offer us is the gift of His own life to dwell in our
hearts, and by its mighty energy to make us free from the law of sin
and death which binds our wills. We may have our spirits moulded into
His likeness, and new tastes, and new desires, and new capacities
infused into us, so as that we shall not be left with our own poor
powers to try and force ourselves into obedience to God's will, but
that submission and holiness and love that keeps the commandments of
God, will spring up in our renewed spirits as their natural product
and growth. Oh! you men and women who have been honestly trying, half
your lifetime, to make yourselves what you know God wants you to be,
and who are obliged to confess that you have failed, hearken to the
message: 'If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things
are passed away.' The one thing needful is keeping the commandments
of God, and the only way by which we can keep the commandments of God
is that we should be formed again into the likeness of Him of whom
alone it is true that 'He did always the things that pleased' God.
And so we come to the last of these great texts: 'In Christ Jesus,
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith
which worketh by love.' That is to say, if we are to be made over
again, we must have faith in Christ Jesus. We have got to the root
now, so far as we are concerned. We must keep the commandments of
God; if we are to keep the commandments we must be made over again,
and if our hearts ask how can we receive that new creating power into
our lives, the answer is, by 'faith which worketh by love.'
Paul did not believe that external rites could make men partakers of
a new nature, but he believed that if a man would trust in Jesus
Christ, the life of that Christ would flow into his opened heart, and
a new spirit and nature would be born in him. And, therefore, his
triple requirements come all down to this one, so far as we are
concerned, as the beginning and the condition of the other two.
'Neither circumcision does anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith
which worketh by love,' does everything. He that trusts Christ opens
his heart to Christ, who comes with His new-creating Spirit, and
makes us willing in the day of His power to keep His commandments.
But faith leads us to obedience in yet another fashion, than this
opening of the door of the heart for the entrance of the new-creating
Spirit. It leads to it in the manner which is expressed by the words
of our text, 'worketh by love.' Faith shows itself living, because it
leads us to love, and through love it produces its effects upon
conduct.
Two things are implied in this designation of faith. If you trust
Christ you will love Him. That is plain enough. And you will not love
Him unless you trust Him. Though it lies wide of my present purpose,
let us take this lesson in passing. You cannot work yourself up into
a spasm or paroxysm of religious emotion and love by resolution or by
effort. All that you can do is to go and look at the Master and get
near Him, and that will warm you up. You can love if you trust. Your
trust will make you love; unless you trust you will never love Him.
The second thing implied is, that if you love you will obey. That is
plain enough. The keeping of the commandments will be easy where
there is love in the heart. The will will bow where there is love in
the heart. Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron
obstinacy of a creature's will. The will cannot be driven. Strike it
with violence and it stiffens; touch it gently and it yields. If you
try to put an iron collar upon the will, like the demoniac in the
Gospels, the touch of the apparent restraint drives it into fury, and
it breaks the bands asunder. Fasten it with the silken leash of love,
and a 'little child' can lead it. So faith works by love, because
whom we trust we shall love, and whom we love we shall obey.
Therefore we have got to the root now, and nothing is needful but an
operative faith, out of which will come all the blessed possession of
a transforming Spirit, and all sublimities and noblenesses of an
obedient and submissive will.
My brother! Paul and James shake hands here. There is a 'faith' so
called, which does not work. It is dead! Let me beseech you, none of
you to rely upon what you choose to call your faith in Jesus Christ,
but examine it. Does it do anything? Does it help you to be like Him?
Does it open your hearts for His Spirit to come in? Does it fill them
with love to that Master, a love which proves itself by obedience?
Plain questions, questions that any man can answer; questions that go
to the root of the whole matter. If your faith does that, it is
genuine; if it does not, it is not.
And do not trust either to forms, or to your freedom from forms. They
will not save your souls, they will not make you more Christ-like.
They will not help you to pardon, purity, holiness, blessedness. In
these respects neither if we have them are we the better, nor if we
have them not are we the worse. If you are trusting to Christ, and by
that faith are having your hearts moulded and made over again into
all holy obedience, then you have all that you need. Unless you have,
though you partook of all Christian rites, though you believed all
Christian truth, though you fought against superstitious reliance on
forms, you have not the one thing needful, for 'in Christ Jesus
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith
which worketh by love.'