which a modern reader almost instinctively makes. Peace with God is the
first and deepest need of the sinful soul, but it is not the sum-total
of salvation. It would, indeed, be received in vain, if the soul did not
on the basis of it proceed to build up the new life in new purity and
power. The failure to do this is, unhappily, only too common. There is
no mechanical guarantee for the fruits of the Spirit; no assurance, such
as would make this appeal unnecessary, that every man who has received
the word of reconciliation will also walk in newness of life. But if an
evangelical profession, and an immoral life, are the ugliest combination
of which human nature is capable, the force of this appeal ought to be
felt by the weakest and the worst. "The Son of God loved me, and gave
Himself for me": can any of us hide that word in his heart, and live on
as if it meant nothing at all?
Paul emphasises his appeal to the Corinthians by a striking quotation
from an ancient prophet (Isa. xlix. 8): "At an acceptable time did I
hearken unto thee, And in a day of salvation did I succour thee"; and
he points it by the joyful exclamation: "Behold, now is the
acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." The passage in
Isaiah refers to the servant of Jehovah, and some scholars would
insist that even in the quotation a primary application must be made
to Christ. The ambassadors of the Gospel represent _His_ interest
(chap. v. 20); this verse is, as it were, the answer to _His_ prayer:
"Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son." In answering the Son, the
Father introduces the era of grace for all who are, or shall be,
Christ's: behold, now is the time in which God shows us favour; now is
the day on which He saves us. This is rather scholastic than
apostolic, and it is far more probable that St. Paul borrows the
prophet's words, as he often does, because they suit him, without
thinking of their original application. What is striking in the
passage, and characteristic both of the writer and of the New
Testament, is the union of urgency and triumph in the tone. "Now" does
certainly mean "now or never"; but more prominently still it means "in
a time so favoured as this: in a time so graced with opportunity." The
best illustration of it is the saying of Jesus to the Apostles:
"Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.
For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have
desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and
to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them." _Now_,
that we live under the reign of grace; _now_, when God's redeeming
love, omnipotent to save, shines on us from the Cross; _now_, that the
last days have come, and the Judge is at the door, let us with all
seriousness, and all joy, work out our own salvation, lest we make the
grace of God of no effect.
St. Paul is as careful himself as he would have the Corinthians to
be. He does not wish them to receive the Gospel in vain, and he takes
pains that it shall not be frustrated through any fault of his:
"working together with God we intreat you ... giving no occasion of
stumbling in anything, that our ministration be not blamed." It is
almost implied in a sentence like this that there are people who will
be glad of an excuse not to listen to the Gospel, or not to take it
seriously, and that they will look for such an excuse in the conduct
of its ministers. Anything in the minister to which objection can be
raised will be used as a shield against the Gospel. It does not matter
that in nine cases out of ten this plea for declining the grace of God
is impudent hypocrisy; it is one which the non-Christian should never
have. If it is not the chief end of the evangelist to give no occasion
of stumbling, it is one of his chief rules. This is a matter on which
Jesus lays great stress. The severest words He ever spoke were spoken
against those whose conduct made faith hard and unbelief easy. Of
course they were spoken to all, but they have special application to
those who are so directly identified with the Gospel as its ministers.
It is to them men naturally look for the proof of what grace does. If
its reception has been in vain in them; if they have not learned the
spirit of their message; if their pride, or indolence, or avarice, or
ill-nature, provoke the anger or contempt of those to whom they
preach,--then their ministration is blamed, and the shadow of that
censure falls upon their message. The grace of God which has to be
proclaimed through human lips, and to attest itself by its power over
human lives, might seem to be put in this way to too great hazard in
the world; but it has God behind it, or rather it is itself God at
work in His ministers as their humility and fidelity allow Him; and
in spite of the occasions of stumbling for which there is no excuse,
God is always able to make grace prevail. Through the faults of its
ministers, nay, sometimes even with those faults as a foil, men see
how good and how strong that grace is.
It is not easy to comment on the glowing passage (vv. 4-10) in which
St. Paul expands this sober habit of giving no occasion of stumbling
in anything into a description of his apostolic ministry. Logically,
its value is obvious enough. He means the Corinthians to feel that if
they turn away from the Gospel which he has preached to them they are
passing censure lightly on a life of unparalleled devotion and power.
He commends himself to them, as God's servants ought always to do,[55]
by the life which he leads in the exercise of his ministry; and to
reject his Gospel is to condemn his life as worthless or misspent.
Will they venture to do that when they are reminded of what it is, and
when they feel that it is all this for them? No right-minded man will,
without provocation, speak about himself, but Paul is doubly
protected. He is challenged, by the threatened desertion from the
Gospel of some, at least, of the Corinthians; and it is not so much of
himself he speaks, as of the ministers of Christ; not so much on his
own behalf, as on behalf of the Gospel. The fountains of the great
deep are broken up within him as he thinks of what is at issue; he is
in all straits, as he begins, and can speak only in unconnected words,
one at a time; but before he stops he has won his liberty, and pours
out his soul without restraint.
It is needless to comment on each of the eight-and-twenty separate
phrases in which St. Paul characterises his life as a minister of the
Gospel. But there are what might be called breathing-places, if not
logical pauses, in the outburst of feeling, and these, as it happens,
coincide with the introduction of new aspects of his work. (1) At
first he depicts exclusively, and in single words, its passive side.
Christ had shown him at his conversion how great things he must suffer
for His name's sake (Acts ix. 16), and here is his own confirmation of
the Lord's word: he has ministered "in much patience--in afflictions,
in necessities, in distresses; in stripes, in imprisonments, in
tumults"--where the enmity of men was conspicuous; "in labours, in
watchings, in fastings"--freely exacted by his own devotion. These
nine words are all, in a manner, subordinated to "much patience"; his
brave endurance was abundantly shown in every variety of pain and
distress. (2) At ver. 6 he makes a new start, and now it is not the
passive and physical aspect of his work that is in view, but the
active and spiritual. All that weight of suffering did not extinguish
in him the virtues of the new life, or the special gifts of the
Christian minister. He wrought, he reminds them, "in purity, in
knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love
unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God." The precise
import of some of these expressions may be doubtful, but this is of
less consequence than the general tenor of the whole, which is
unmistakable. Probably some of the terms, strictly taken, would cross
each other. Thus the Holy Spirit and the power of God, if we compare
such passages as 1 Cor. ii. 4, 1 Thess. i. 5, are very nearly akin.
The same remark would apply to "knowledge," and to "the word of
truth," if the latter refers, as I cannot but think it does,[56] to
the Gospel. "Purity" is naturally taken in the widest sense, and
"undissembled love" is peculiarly appropriate when we think of the
feelings with which some of the Corinthians regarded Paul. But the
main thing to notice is how the "much endurance," which, to a
superficial observer, is the most conspicuous characteristic of the
Apostle's ministry, is balanced by a great manifestation of spiritual
force from within. Of all men in the world he was the weakest to look
at, the most battered, burdened, and depressed, yet no one else had in
him such a fountain as he of the most powerful and gracious life. And
then (3) after another pause, marked this time by a slight change in
the construction (from ἐν to διὰ), he goes on to enlarge upon the
whole conditions under which his ministry is fulfilled, and especially
on the extraordinary contrasts which are reconciled in it. We commend
ourselves in our work he says, "by the armour of righteousness on the
right hand and the left, by glory and dishonour, by evil report and
good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet coming to
be well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not
killed; as sorrowing, yet ever rejoicing; as poor, yet making many
rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." Here again it
is not the details that are important, but the whole, and yet the
details require notice. The armour of righteousness is that which
righteousness supplies, or it may even be that which righteousness is:
Paul's character equips him right and left; it is both spear and
shield, and makes him competent either for attack or defence. Without
righteousness, in this sense of integrity, he could not commend
himself in his work as a minister of God.[57] But not only does his
real character commend him; his reputation does the same service,
however various that reputation may be. Through honour and dishonour,
through evil report and good report--through the truth that is told
about him, and through the lies--through the esteem of his friends,
the malignity of his enemies, the contempt of strangers--the same man
comes out, in the same character, devoted always in the same spirit to
the same calling. It is indeed his very devotion which produces these
opposite estimates, and hence, inconsistent as they are, they agree in
recommending him as a servant of God. Some said "He is beside
himself," and others would have plucked out their eyes for his sake,
yet both these extremely opposite attitudes were produced by the very
same thing--the passionate earnestness with which he served Christ in
the Gospel. There are good scholars who think that the clauses
beginning "as deceivers, and true," are the Apostle's own commentary
on "through evil report and good report"; in other words, that in
these clauses he is giving samples of the way in which he was spoken
of, to his honour or dishonour, and glorying that honour and dishonour
alike only guaranteed more thoroughly his claim to be a minister of
God. This might suit the first two pairs of contrasts ("as deceivers,
and true; as unknown, and gaining recognition"), but it does not suit
the next ("as dying, and behold we live"), in which, as in those that
follow, the Apostle is not repeating what was said by others, but
speaking for himself, and stating truth equally on both sides of the
account. After the first pair, there is no "dishonour," or "evil
report," in any of the states which he contrasts with each other:
though opposites, they have each their truth, and the power and beauty
of the passage, and of the life which it describes, lie simply in
this, that both _are_ true, and that through all such contrasts St.
Paul can prove himself the same loyal minister of the reconciliation.
Each pair of opposites might furnish by itself a subject for
discourse, but what we are rather concerned with is the impression
produced by the whole. In their variety they give us a vivid idea of
the range of St. Paul's experiences; in the regularity with which he
puts the higher last, and in the climax with which he concludes, they
show the victorious spirit with which he confronted all that various
life. An ordinary Christian--an ordinary minister of the Gospel--may
well feel, as he reads, that his own life is by comparison empty and
commonplace. There is not that terrible pressure on him from without;
there is not that irrepressible fountain of grace within; there is not
that triumphant spirit which can subdue all the world contains--honour
and dishonour, evil report and good report--and make it pay tribute to
the Gospel, and to himself as a Gospel minister. Yet the world has
still all possible experiences ready for those who give themselves to
the service of God with the wholeheartedness of Paul: it will show
them its best and its worst; its reverence, affection, and praise; its
hatred, its indifference, its scorn. And it is in the facing of all
such experiences by God's ministers that the ministry receives its
highest attestation: they are enabled to turn all to profit; in
ignominy and in honour alike they are made more than conquerors
through Him who loved them. St. Paul's plea rises involuntarily into
a pæan; he begins, as we saw, with the embarrassed tone of a man who
wishes to persuade others that he has taken sincere pains not to
frustrate his work by faults he could have avoided--"giving no
occasion of stumbling in anything, that the ministry be not blamed";
but he is carried higher and higher, as the tide of feeling rises
within him, till it sets him beyond the reach of blame or praise--at
Christ's right hand, where all things are his. Here is a signal
fulfilment of that word of the Lord: "I am come that they might have
life, and might have it more abundantly." Who could have it more
abundantly, more triumphantly strong through all its vicissitudes,
than the man who dictated these lines?
The passage closes with an appeal in which Paul descends from this
supreme height to the most direct and affectionate address. He names his
readers by name: "Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians;[58] our
heart is enlarged." He means that he has treated them with the utmost
frankness and cordiality. With strangers we use reserve; we do not let
ourselves go, nor indulge in any effusion of heart. But he has not made
strangers of them; he has relieved his overcharged heart before them,
and he has established a new claim on their confidence in doing so. "Ye
are not straitened in us," he writes; that is, "The awkwardness and
constraint of which you are conscious in your relations with me are not
due to anything on my side; my heart has been made wide, and you have
plenty of room in it. But you are straitened in your own affections. It
is _your_ hearts that are narrow: cramped and confined with unworthy
suspicions, and with the feeling that you have done me a wrong which you
are not quite prepared to rectify. Overcome these ungenerous thoughts at
once. Give me a recompense in kind for my treatment of you. I have
opened my heart wide, to you and for you; open your hearts as freely, to
me and for me. I am your father in Christ, and I have a right to this
from my children."
When we take this passage as a whole, in its original bearings, one
thing is plain: that want of love and confidence between the minister
of the Gospel and those to whom he ministers has great power to
frustrate the grace of God. There may have been a real revival under
the minister's preaching--a real reception of the grace which he
proclaims--but all will be in vain if mutual confidence fails. If he
gives occasion of stumbling in something, and the ministry is blamed;
or if malice and falsehood sow the seeds of dissension between him and
his brethren, the grand condition of an effective ministry is gone.
"Beloved, let us love one another," if we do not wish the virtue of
the Cross to be of no effect in us.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Observe that it is ὡς Θεοῦ διάκονοι, not διακόνους.
[56] Some, because of the want of the article, make it equivalent to
"veracity."
[57] Beet, however, takes it in the technical sense: justification by
faith is the preacher's sword and shield.
[58] _Rara et præsentissima appellatio_ (Bengel).
XVIII
_NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM_
"Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have
righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with
darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion
hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple
of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as
God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be
their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore
Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
And touch no unclean thing;
And I will receive you,
And will be to you a Father,
And ye shall be to Me sons and daughters,
saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved,
let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God."--2 COR. vi. 14-vii. 1
(R.V.).
This is one of the most peculiar passages in the New Testament. Even a
careless reader must feel that there is something abrupt and unexpected
in it; it jolts the mind as a stone on the road does a carriage wheel.
Paul has been begging the Corinthians to treat him with the same love
and confidence which he has always shown to them, and he urges this
claim upon them up to ver. 13. Then comes this passage about the
relation of Christians to the world. Then again, at chap. vii. 2--"Open
your hearts to us; we wronged no man, we corrupted no man, we took
advantage of no man"--he returns to the old subject without the least
mark of transition. If everything were omitted from chap. vi. 14 to
chap. vii. 1 inclusive, the continuity both of thought and feeling would
be much more striking. This consideration alone has induced many
scholars to believe that these verses do not occupy their original
place. The ingenious suggestion has been made that they are a fragment
of the letter to which the Apostle refers in the First Epistle (chap. v.
9): the sentiment, and to some extent even the words, favour this
conjecture. But as there is no external authority for any conjecture
whatever, and no variation in the text, such suggestions can never
become conclusive. It is always possible that, on reading over his
letter, the Apostle himself may have inserted a paragraph breaking to
some extent the closeness of the original connexion. If there is nothing
in the contents of the section inconsistent with his mind, the breach of
continuity is not enough to discredit it.
Some, however, have gone further than this. They have pointed to the
strange formulæ of quotation--"as God said," "saith the Lord," "saith
the Lord Almighty"--as unlike Paul. Even the main idea of the
passage--"touch not any unclean thing"--is asserted to be at variance
with his principles. A narrow Jewish Christian might, it is said, have
expressed this shrinking from what is unclean, in the sense of being
associated with idolatry, but not the great Apostle of liberty. At all
events he would have taken care, in giving such an advice under
special circumstances, to safeguard the principle of freedom. And,
finally, an argument is drawn from language. The only point at which
it is even plausible is that which touches upon the use of the terms
"flesh" and "spirit" in chap. vii. 1. Schmiedel, who has an admirable
excursus on the whole question, decides that this, and this only, is
certainly un-Pauline. It is certainly unusual in Paul, but I do not
think we can say more. The "rigour and vigour" with which Paul's use
of these terms is investigated seems to me largely misplaced. They did
undoubtedly tend to become technical in his mind, but words so
universally and so vaguely used could never become simply technical.
If any contemporary of Paul could have written, "Let us cleanse
ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit," then Paul himself
could have written it. Language offers the same latitudes and
liberties to everybody, and one could not imagine a subject which
tempted less to technicality than the one urged in these verses.
Whatever the explanation of their apparently irrelevant insertion
here, I can see nothing in them alien to Paul. Puritanism is certainly
more akin to the Old Testament than to the New, and that may explain
the instinctiveness with which the writer seems to turn to the law and
the prophets, and the abundance of his quotations; but though "all
things are lawful" to the Christian, Puritanism has a place in the New
Testament too. There is no conception of "holiness" into which the
idea of "separation" does not enter; and though the balance of
elements may vary in the New Testament as compared with the Old, none
can be wanting. From this point of view we can best examine the
meaning and application of the passage. If a connexion is craved, the
best, I think, is that furnished by a combination of Calvin and Meyer.
_Quasi recuperata auctoritate_, says Calvin, _liberius jam eos
objurgat_: this supplies a link of feeling between vv. 13 and 14. A
link of thought is supplied if we consider with Meyer that
inattention to the rule of life here laid down was a notable cause of
receiving the grace of God in vain (ver. 1).[59] Let us notice (1) the
moral demand of the passage; (2) the assumption on which it rests; (3)
the Divine promise which inspires its observance.
(1) The moral demand is first put in the negative form: "Be not
unequally yoked with unbelievers." The peculiar word ἑτεροζυγοῦντες
("unequally yoked") has a cognate form in Lev. xix. 19, in the law
which forbids the breeding of hybrid animals. God has established a
good physical order in the world, and it is not to be confounded and
disfigured by the mixing of species. It is that law (or perhaps
another form of it in Deut. xxii. 10, forbidding an Israelite to
plough with an ox and an ass under the same yoke) that is applied in
an ethical sense in this passage. There is a wholesome moral order in
the world also, and it is not to be confused by the association of its
different kinds. The common application of this text to the marriage
of Christians and non-Christians is legitimate, but too narrow. The
text prohibits every kind of union in which the separate character and
interest of the Christian lose anything of their distinctiveness and
integrity. This is brought out more strongly in the free quotation
from Isa. lii. 11 in ver. 17: "Come out from among them, and be
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not anything unclean." These words
were originally addressed to the priests who, on the redemption of
Israel from Babylon, were to carry the sacred temple vessels back to
Jerusalem. But we must remember that, though they are Old Testament
words, they are quoted by a New Testament writer, who inevitably puts
his own meaning into them. "The unclean thing" which no Christian is
to touch is not to be taken in a precise Levitical sense; it covers,
and I have no doubt was intended by the writer to cover, all that it
suggests to any simple Christian mind now. We are to have no
compromising connexion with anything in the world which is alien to
God. Let us be as loving and conciliatory as we please, but as long as
the world is what it is, the Christian life can only maintain itself
in it in an attitude of protest. There always will be things and
people to whom the Christian has to say No!