'Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like
men, be strong. 14. Let all your things be done
with charity.'--1 COR. xvi. 13, 14.
There is a singular contrast between the first four of these
exhortations and the last. The former ring sharp and short like
pistol-shots; the last is of gentler mould. The former sound like the
word of command shouted from an officer along the ranks; and there is
a military metaphor running all through them. The foe threatens to
advance; let the guards keep their eyes open. He comes nearer;
prepare for the charge, stand firm in your ranks. The battle is
joined; 'quit you like men'--strike a man's stroke--'be strong.'
And then all the apparatus of warfare is put away out of sight, and
the captain's word of command is softened into the Christian
teacher's exhortation: 'Let all your deeds be done in charity.' For
love is better than fighting, and is stronger than swords. And yet,
although there is a contrast here, there is also a sequence and
connection. No doubt these exhortations, which are Paul's last word
to that Corinthian Church on whom he had lavished in turn the
treasures of his manifold eloquence, indignation, argumentation, and
tenderness, reflected the deficiencies of the people to whom he was
speaking. They were schismatic and factious to the very core, and so
they needed the exhortation to be left last in their ears, as it
were, that everything should be done in love. They were ill-grounded
in regard to the very fundamental doctrines of the faith, as all
Paul's argumentation about the resurrection proves, and so they
needed to be bidden to 'stand fast in the faith.' Their slothful
carelessness as to the discipline of the Christian life, and their
consequent feebleness of grasp of the Christian verities, made them
loose-braced and weak in all respects, and incapacitated them for
vigorous warfare. Thus, we see a picture in these injunctions of the
sort of community that Paul had to deal with in Corinth, which yet he
called a Church of saints, and for which he loved and laboured. Let
me then run over and try to bring out the importance and mutual
connection of what I may call this drill-book for the Christian
warfare, which is the Christian life.
'Watch ye.' That means one of two things certainly, probably
both--Keep awake, and keep your eyes open. Our Lord used the same
metaphor, you remember, very frequently, but with a special
significance. On His lips it generally referred to the attitude of
expectation of His coming in judgment. Paul uses sometimes the figure
with the same application, but here, distinctly, it has another. As I
said, there is the military idea underlying it. What will become of
an army if the sentries go to sleep? And what chance will a Christian
man have of doing his _devoir_ against his enemy, unless he
keeps himself awake, and keeps himself alert? Watchfulness, in the
sense of always having eyes open for the possible rush down upon us
of temptation and evil, is no small part of the discipline and the
duty of the Christian life. One part of that watchfulness consists in
exercising a very rigid and a very constant and comprehensive
scrutiny of our motives. For there is no way by which evil creeps
upon us so unobserved, as when it slips in at the back door of a
specious motive. Many a man contents himself with the avoidance of
actual evil actions, and lets any kind of motives come in and out of
his mind unexamined. It is all right to look after our _doings_, but
'as a man _thinketh_ in his heart, so is he.' The good or the evil of
anything that I do is determined wholly by the motive with which I do
it. And we are a great deal too apt to palm off deceptions on
ourselves to make sure that our motives are right, unless we give
them a very careful and minute scrutiny. One side of this
watchfulness, then, is a habitual inspection of our motives and
reasons for action. 'What am I doing this for?' is a question that
would stop dead an enormous proportion of our activity, as if you had
turned the steam off from an engine. If you will use a very fine
sieve through which to strain your motives, you will go a long way to
keeping your actions right. We should establish a rigid examination
for applicants for entrance, and make quite sure that each that
presents itself is not a wolf in sheep's clothing. Make them all
bring out their passports. Let every vessel that comes into your
harbour remain isolated from all communication with the shore, until
the health officer has been on board and given a clean bill. 'Watch
ye,' for yonder, away in the dark, in the shadow of the trees, the
black masses of the enemy are gathered, and a midnight attack is but
too likely to bring a bloody awakening to a camp full of sleepers.
My text goes on to bring the enemy nearer and nearer and nearer.
'Watch ye'--and if, not unnoticed, they come down on you, 'stand fast
in the faith.' There will be no keeping our ranks, or keeping our
feet--or at least, it is not nearly so likely that there will
be--unless there has been the preceding watchfulness. If the first
command has not been obeyed, there is small chance of the second's
being so. If there has not been any watchfulness, it is not at all
likely that there will be much steadfastness. Just as with a man
going along a crowded pavement, a little touch from a passer-by will
throw him off his balance, whereas if he had known it was coming, and
had adjusted his poise rightly, he would have stood against thrice as
violent a shock, so, in order that we may stand fast, we must watch.
A sudden assault will be a great deal less formidable when it is a
foreseen assault.
'Stand fast _in the faith_.' I take it that this does not mean
'the thing that we believe,' which use of the word 'faith' is the
ecclesiastical, but not the New Testament meaning. In Scripture,
faith means not the body of truths that we believe, but the act of
believing them. This further command tells us that, in addition to
our watchfulness, and as the basis of our steadfastness, confidence
in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ will enable us to keep our
feet whatever comes against us, and to hold our ground, whoever may
assault us.
But remember that it is not because I have faith that I stand fast,
but because of that in which I have faith. My feet may be well
shod--and it used to be said that a soldier's shoes were of as much
importance in the battle as his musket--my feet may be well shod, but
if they are not well planted upon firm ground I never shall be able
to stand the collision of the foe. So then, it is not my grasp of the
blessed truth, God in Christ my Friend and Helper, but it is that
truth which I grasp at, that makes me strong. Or, to put it into
other words, it is the foothold, and not the foot that holds it, that
ensures our standing firm. Only there is no steadfastness
communicated to us from the source of all stability, except by way of
our faith, which brings Christ into us. 'Watch ye; stand fast in the
faith.'
The next two words of command are very closely connected, though not
quite identical. 'Quit you like men.' Play a man's part in the
battle; strike with all the force of your muscles. But the Apostle
adds, 'be strong.' You cannot play a man's part unless you are. 'Be
strong'--the original would rather bear 'become strong.' What is the
use of telling men to '_be_ strong'? It is a waste of words, in
nine cases out of ten, to say to a weak man, 'Pluck up your courage,
and show strength.' But the Apostle uses a very uncommon word here,
at least uncommon in the New Testament, and another place where he
uses it will throw light upon what he means: 'Strengthened with might
by His Spirit in the inner man.' Then is it so vain a mockery to tell
a poor, weak creature like me to become strong, when you can point me
to the source of all strength, in that 'Spirit of power and of love
and of a sound mind'? We have only to take our weakness there to have
it stiffened into strength; as people put bits of wood into what are
called 'petrifying wells' which infiltrate into them mineral
particles, that do not turn the wood into stone, but make the wood as
strong as stone. So my manhood, with all its weakness, may have
filtered into it divine strength, which will brace me for all needful
duty, and make me 'more than conqueror through Him that loved us.'
Then, it is not mockery and cruelty, vanity and surplusage to preach
'Quit you like men; be strong, and be a man'; because if we will
observe the plain and not hard conditions, strength will come to us
according to our day, in fulfilment of the great promises: 'My grace
is sufficient for thee; and My strength is made perfect in weakness.'
And now we have done with the fighting words of command, and come to
the gentler exhortation: 'Let all your things be done in charity.'
That was a hard lesson for these Corinthians who were splitting
themselves into factions and sects, and tearing each other's eyes out
in their partisanship for various Christian teachers. But the advice
has a much wider application than to the suppression of squabbles in
Christian communities. It is the sum of all commandments of the
Christian life, if you will take love in its widest sense, in the
sense, that is, in which it is always used in Paul's writings. We cut
it into two halves, and think of it as sometimes meaning love to God,
and sometimes love to man. The two are inseparably inter-penetrated
in the New Testament writings; and so we have to interpret this
supreme commandment in the whole breadth and meaning of that great
word _Love_. And then it just comes to this, that love is the
victor in all the Christian warfare. If we love God, at any given
moment, consciously having our affection engaged with Him, and our
heart going out to Him, do you think that any evil or temptation
would have power over us? Should we not see them as they are, to be
devils in disguise? In the proportion in which I love God I conquer
all sin. And at the moment in which that great, sweet, all-satisfying
light floods into my soul, I see through the hollowness and the
shams, and detect the ugliness and the filth of the things that
otherwise would be temptations. If you desire to be conquerors in the
Christian fight, remember that the true way of conquest is, as
another Apostle says, 'Keep yourselves in the love of God.' 'Let all
your things be done in charity.'
And, further, how beautifully the Apostle here puts the great truth
that we are all apt to forget, that the strongest type of human
character is the gentlest and most loving, and that the mighty man is
not the man of intellectual or material force, such as the world
idolises, but the man who is much because he loves much. If we would
come to supreme beauty of Christian character, there must be
inseparably manifested in our lives, and lived in our hearts,
strength and love, might and gentleness. That is the perfect man,
and that was the union which was set before us, in the highest form,
in the 'Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,' whom we call our Saviour,
and whom we are bound to follow. His soldiers conquer as the Captain
of their salvation has conquered, when watchfulness and steadfastness
and courage and strength are all baptized in love and perfected
thereby.