'The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand. 22. If
any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be
Anathema Maran-atha. 23. The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you. 24. My love be with you all
in Christ Jesus.'--1 COR. xvi. 21-24.
Terror and tenderness are strangely mingled in this parting
salutation, which was added in the great characters shaped by Paul's
own hand, to the letter written by an amanuensis. He has been
obliged, throughout the whole epistle, to assume a tone of
remonstrance abundantly mingled with irony and sarcasm and
indignation. He has had to rebuke the Corinthians for many faults,
party spirit, lax morality, toleration of foul sins, grave abuses in
their worship even at the Lord's Supper, gross errors in opinion in
the denial of the Resurrection. And in this last solemn warning he
traces all these vices to their fountainhead--the defect of love to
Jesus Christ--and warns of their fatal issue. 'Let him be Anathema.'
But he will not leave these terrible words for his last. The thunder
is followed by gentle rain, and the sun glistens on the drops; 'The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' Nor for himself will
he let the last impression be one of rebuke or even of warning. He
desires to show that his heart yearns over them all; so he gathers
them all--the partisans; the poor brother that has fallen into sin;
the lax ones who, in their misplaced tenderness, had left him in his
sin; the misguided reasoners who had struck the Resurrection out of
the articles of the Christian creed--he gathers them all into his
final salutation, and he says, 'Take and share my love--though I have
had to rebuke--amongst the whole of you.'
Is not that beautiful? And does not the juxtaposition of such
messages in this farewell go deeper than the revelation of Paul's
character? May we not see, in these terrible and tender thoughts thus
inextricably intertwined and braided together, a revelation of the
true nature both of the terror and the tenderness of the Gospel which
Paul preached? It is from that point of view that I wish to look at
them now.