"_There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one
sinner that repenteth._"--LUKE XV. 10.
This is one of many sayings of our Lord which reveal His sense of the
infinite worth of the human soul, which is the central fact in His
teaching about man, and the only one with which in the present chapter
we shall be concerned. Other aspects of the truth will come into view in
the following chapter, when we come to consider Christ's teaching about
sin.
I
"The infinite worth of the human soul"--this is a discovery the glory of
which, it is no exaggeration to say, belongs wholly to Christ. It is
said that one of the most magnificent diamonds in Europe, which to-day
blazes in a king's crown, once lay for months on a stall in a piazza at
Rome labelled, "Rock-crystal, price one franc." And it was thus that for
ages the priceless jewel of the soul lay unheeded and despised of men.
Before Christ came, men honoured the rich, and the great, and the wise,
as we honour them now; but man as man was of little or no account. If
one had, or could get, a pedestal by which to lift himself above the
common crowd, he might count for something; but if he had nothing save
his own feet to stand upon, he was a mere nobody, for whom nobody cared.
We turn to the teaching of Jesus, and what a contrast! "Of how much more
value," He said, "are ye than the birds!" "How much then is a man"--not
a rich man, not a wise man, not a Pharisee, but a man--"of more value
than a sheep!" "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole
world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?" It was by thought-provoking questions such as these that
Jesus revealed His own thoughts concerning man. And, of course, when He
spoke in this way about the soul, when He said that a man might gain the
whole world, but that if the price he paid for it were his soul, he was
the loser, He was not speaking of the souls of a select few, but of the
souls of all. Every man, every woman, every little child--all were
precious in His sight. It is man as man, Christ taught, that is of worth
to God.
Consider how much is involved in the bare fact that Christ came into the
world the son of a poor mother, and lived in it a poor man. "A man's
life," He said, "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
possesseth." And the best commentary on the saying is just His own life;
for He had nothing. There is something very suggestive in Christ's use
of the little possessive pronoun "My." We know how we use the word.
Listen to the rich man in the parable: "My fruits," "my barns," "my
corn," "my goods." Now listen to Christ. He says: "My Father," "My
Church," "My friends," "My disciples"; but He never says "My house," "My
lands," "My books." The one perfect life this earth has seen was the
life of One who owned nothing, and left behind Him nothing but the
clothes He wore. And not only was Christ poor Himself, He spent His life
among the poor. "To believe that a man with £60 a year," Canon Liddon
once said, "is just as much worthy of respect as a man with £6000, you
must be seriously a Christian." You must indeed. Yet that which is for
us so hard never seems to have cost Christ a struggle. We cannot so much
as think of mere money, more or less, counting for anything in His
sight. The little artificial distinctions of society were to Him
nothing, and less than nothing. He went to be guest with a man that was
a sinner. A woman that was a harlot He suffered to wash His feet with
her tears, and to wipe them with her hair. "This man," said His enemies,
with scorn vibrant in every word, "receiveth sinners and eateth with
them." And they were right; but what they counted His deepest shame was
in reality His chiefest glory.
Now, what does all this mean but simply this, that it was for man as man
that Christ cared? Observe the difference in the point at which He and
we become interested in men. We are interested in them, for the most
part, when, by their work, or their wealth, or their fame, they have
added something to themselves; in other words, we become interested when
they become interesting. But that which gave worth to man in Christ's
eyes lay beneath all these merely adventitious circumstances of his
life, in his naked humanity, in what he was, or might be, in himself.
This is why to Him all souls were dear. We love them that love us, the
loving and the lovable; Christ loved the unloving and the unlovable. He
was named, and rightly named, "Friend of publicans and sinners." Then
were bad men of worth to Christ? They were; for, as Tennyson says, "If
there be a devil in man, there is an angel too." Christ saw the possible
angel in the actual devil. He knew that the lost might be found, and the
bad become good, and the prodigal return home; and He loved men, not
only for what they were, but for what they might be.
It would be easy to show that this high doctrine of man underlies, and
is involved in, the whole life and work and teaching of Jesus. It is
involved in the doctrine of God. Indeed, as Dr. Dale says, the Christian
doctrine of man is really a part of the Christian doctrine of God.[32]
Because God is a Father, every man is a son of God, or, rather, every
man has within him the capacity for sonship. It is involved in the
doctrine of the Incarnation; that stupendous fact reveals not only the
condescension of God but the glory and exaltation of man. If God could
become man, there must be a certain kinship between God and man; since
God has become man, our poor human nature has been thereby lifted up and
glorified. The same great doctrine is implied in the truth of Christ's
atonement. When He who knew Himself to be the eternal Son of God spoke
of His own life as the "ransom" for the forfeited lives of men, He
revealed once more how infinite is the worth of that which could be
redeemed only at such tremendous cost.
Such, then, is Christ's teaching about man. And, as I have already said,
it was a new thing in human history. Nowhere is the line which divides
the world B.C. from the world A.D. more sharply defined than here.
Before Christ came, no one dared to say, for no one believed, that the
soul of every man, and still less the soul of every woman and child, was
of worth to God, that even a slave might become a son of the Most High.
But Christ believed it, and Christ said it, and when He said it, the new
world, the world in which we live, began to be. The great difference
between ancient and modern civilizations, one eminent historian has
said, is to be found here, that while ancient civilization cared only
for the welfare of the favoured few, modern civilization seeks the
welfare of all. And when we ask further what has made the difference,
history sends us back for answer to the four Gospels and the teaching of
Jesus concerning the infinite worth of the soul of man.