_THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY IN ITS THEME, METHODS AND AIM._
"Whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in
all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ;
whereunto I labour also, striving according to His working, which
worketh in me mightily,"--COL. i. 28, 29 (Rev. Ver.).
The false teachers at Colossae had a great deal to say about a higher
wisdom reserved for the initiated. They apparently treated the Apostolic
teaching as trivial rudiments, which might be good for the vulgar crowd,
but were known by the possessors of this higher truth to be only a veil
for it. They had their initiated class, to whom their mysteries were
entrusted in whispers.
Such absurdities excited Paul's special abhorrence. His whole soul
rejoiced in a gospel for all men. He had broken with Judaism on the very
ground that it sought to enforce a ceremonial exclusiveness, and
demanded circumcision and ritual observances along with faith. That was,
in Paul's estimate, to destroy the gospel. These Eastern dreamers at
Colossae were trying to enforce an intellectual exclusiveness quite as
much opposed to the gospel. Paul fights with all his might against that
error. Its presence in the Church colours this context, where he uses
the very phrases of the false teachers in order to assert the great
principles which he opposes to their teaching. "Mystery," "perfect" or
initiated, "wisdom,"--these are the key-words of the system which he is
combating; and here he presses them into the service of the principle
that the gospel is for all men, and the most recondite secrets of its
deepest truth the property of every single soul that wills to receive
them. Yes, he says in effect, we have mysteries. We have our initiated.
We have wisdom. But we have no whispered teachings, confined to a little
coterie; we have no inner chamber closed to the many. We are not
muttering hierophants, cautiously revealing a little to a few, and
fooling the rest with ceremonies and words. Our whole business is to
tell out as fully and loudly as we can what we know of Christ, to tell
to _every_ man _all_ the wisdom that we have learned. We fling open the
inmost sanctuary, and invite all the crowd to enter.
This is the general scope of the words before us which state the object
and methods of the Apostle's work; partly in order to point the contrast
with those other teachers, and partly in order to prepare the way, by
this personal reference, for his subsequent exhortations.
I. We have here the Apostle's own statement of what he conceived his
life work to be.
"Whom we proclaim." All three words are emphatic. "Whom," not what--a
person, not a system; we "proclaim," not we argue or dissertate about.
"We" preach--the Apostle associates himself with all his brethren, puts
himself in line with them, points to the unanimity of their
testimony--"whether it were they or I, so we preach." We have all one
message, a common type of doctrine.
So then--the Christian teacher's theme is not to be a theory or a
system, but a living Person. One peculiarity of Christianity is that you
cannot take its message, and put aside Christ, the speaker of the
message, as you may do with all men's teachings. Some people say: "We
take the great moral and religious truths which Jesus declared. They are
the all-important parts of His work. We can disentangle them from any
further connection with Him. It matters comparatively little who first
spoke them." But that will not do. His person is inextricably
intertwined with His teaching, for a very large part of His teaching is
exclusively concerned with, and all of it centres in, Himself. He is not
only true, but He is the truth. His message is, not only what He said
with His lips about God and man, but also what He said about Himself,
and what He did in His life, death, and resurrection. You may take
Buddha's sayings, if you can make sure that they are his, and find much
that is beautiful and true in them, whatever you may think of him; you
may appreciate the teaching of Confucius, though you know nothing about
him but that he said so and so; but you cannot do thus with Jesus. Our
Christianity takes its whole colour from what we think of Him. If we
think of Him as less than this chapter has been setting Him forth as
being, we shall scarcely feel that _He_ should be the preacher's theme;
but if He is to us what He was to this Apostle, the sole Revealer of
God, the Centre and Lord of creation, the Fountain of life to all which
lives, the Reconciler of men with God by the blood of His cross, then
the one message which a man may be thankful to spend his life in
proclaiming will be, Behold the Lamb! Let who will preach abstractions,
the true Christian minister has to preach the person and the
office--Jesus the Christ.
To preach Christ is to set forth the person, the facts of His life and
death, and to accompany these with that explanation which turns them
from being merely a biography into a gospel. So much of "theory" must go
with the "facts," or they will be no more a gospel than the story of
another life would be. The Apostle's own statement of "the gospel which
he preached" distinctly lays down what is needed--"how that Jesus Christ
died." That is biography, and to say that and stop there is not to
preach Christ; but add, "For our sins, according to the Scriptures, and
that He was raised again the third day,"--preach _that_, the fact and
its meaning and power, and you will preach Christ.
Of course there is a narrower and a wider sense of this expression.
There is the initial teaching, which brings to a soul, who has never
seen it before, the knowledge of a Saviour, whose Cross is the
propitiation for sin; and there is the fuller teaching, which opens out
the manifold bearings of that message in every region of moral and
religious thought. I do not plead for any narrow construction of the
words. They have been sorely abused, by being made the battle-cry for
bitter bigotry and a hard system of abstract theology, as unlike what
Paul means by "Christ" as any cobwebs of Gnostic heresy could be.
Legitimate outgrowths of the Christian ministry have been checked in
their name. They have been used as a cramping iron, as a shibboleth, as
a stone to fling at honest and especially at young preachers. They have
been made a pillow for laziness. So that the very sound of the words
suggests to some ears, because of their use in some mouths, ignorant
narrowness.
But for all that, they are a standard of duty for all workers for God,
which it is not difficult to apply, if the will to do so be present, and
they are a touch-stone to try the spirits, whether they be of God. A
ministry of which the Christ who lived and died for us is manifestly the
centre to which all converges and from which all is viewed, may sweep a
wide circumference, and include many themes. The requirement bars out no
province of thought or experience, nor does it condemn the preacher to a
parrot-like repetition of elementary truths, or a narrow round of
commonplace. It does demand that all themes shall lead up to Christ, and
all teaching point to Him; that He shall be ever present in all the
preacher's words, a diffused even when not a directly perceptible
presence; and that His name, like some deep tone on an organ, shall be
heard sounding on through all the ripple and change of the higher notes.
Preaching Christ does not exclude any theme, but prescribes the bearing
and purpose of all; and the widest compass and richest variety are not
only possible but obligatory for him who would in any worthy sense take
this for the motto of his ministry, "I determined not to know anything
among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified."
But these words give us not only the theme but something of the manner
of the Apostle's activity. "We _proclaim_." The word is emphatic in its
form, meaning _to tell out_, and representing the proclamation as full,
clear, earnest. "We are no muttering mystery-mongers. From full lungs
and in a voice to make people hear, we shout aloud our message. We do
not take a man into a corner, and whisper secrets into his ear; we cry
in the streets, and our message is for 'every man.'"
And the word not only implies the plain, loud earnestness of the
speaker, but also that what he speaks is a _message_, that he is not a
speaker of his own words or thoughts, but of what has been told him to
tell. His gospel is a good message, and a messenger's virtue is to say
exactly what he has been told, and to say it in such a way that the
people to whom he has to carry it cannot but hear and understand it.
This connection of the Christian minister's office contrasts on the one
hand with the priestly theory. Paul had known in Judaism a religion of
which the altar was the centre, and the official function of the
"minister" was to sacrifice. But now he has come to see that "the one
sacrifice for sins for ever" leaves no room for a sacrificing priest in
that Church of which the centre is the Cross. We sorely need that lesson
to be drilled into the minds of men to-day, when such a strange
resurrection of priestism has taken place, and good, earnest men, whose
devotion cannot be questioned, are looking on preaching as a very
subordinate part of their work. For three centuries there has not been
so much need as now to fight against the notion of a priesthood in the
Church, and to urge this as the true definition of the minister's
office: "we preach," not "we sacrifice," not "we _do_" anything; "we
preach," not "we work miracles at any altar, or impart grace by any
rites," but by manifestation of the truth discharge our office and
spread the blessings of Christ.
This conception contrasts on the other hand, with the false teachers'
style of speech, which finds its parallel in much modern talk. Their
business was to argue and refine and speculate, to spin inferences and
cobwebby conclusions. They sat in a lecturer's chair; we stand in a
preacher's pulpit. The Christian minister has not to deal in such wares;
he has a message to proclaim, and if he allows the "philosopher" in him
to overpower the "herald," and substitutes his thoughts about the
message, or his arguments in favour of the message, for the message
itself, he abdicates his highest office and neglects his most important
function.
We hear many demands to-day for a "higher type of preaching," which I
would heartily echo, if only it be _preaching_; that is, the
proclamation in loud and plain utterance of the great facts of Christ's
work. But many who ask for this really want, not preaching, but
something quite different; and many, as I think, mistaken Christian
teachers are trying to play up to the requirements of the age by turning
their sermons into dissertations, philosophical or moral or aesthetic. We
need to fall back on this "we preach," and to urge that the Christian
minister is neither priest nor lecturer, but a herald, whose business is
to tell out his message, and to take good care that he tells it
faithfully. If, instead of blowing his trumpet and calling aloud his
commission, he were to deliver a discourse on acoustics and the laws of
the vibration of sonorous metal, or to prove that he had a message, and
to dilate on its evident truth or on the beauty of its phrases, he
would scarcely be doing his work. No more is the Christian minister,
unless he keeps clear before himself as the guiding star of his work
this conception of his theme and his task--_Whom we preach_--and opposes
that to the demands of an age, one half of which "require a sign," and
would again degrade him into a priest, and the other calls for "wisdom,"
and would turn him into a professor.
II. We have here the varying methods by which this one great end is
pursued. "Admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom."
There are then two main methods--"admonishing" and "teaching." The
former means "admonishing with blame," and points, as many commentators
remark, to that side of the Christian ministry which corresponds to
repentance, while the latter points to that side which corresponds to
faith. In other words, the former rebukes and warns, has to do with
conduct and the moral side of Christian truth; the latter has chiefly to
do with doctrine, and the intellectual side. In the one Christ is
proclaimed as the pattern of conduct, the "new commandment"; in the
other, as the creed of creeds, the new and perfect knowledge.
The preaching of Christ then is to be unfolded into all "warning," or
admonishing. The teaching of morality and the admonishing of the evil
and the end of sin are essential parts of preaching Christ. We claim for
the pulpit the right and the duty of applying the principles and pattern
of Christ's life to all human conduct. It is difficult to do, and is
made more so by some of the necessary conditions of our modern ministry,
for the pulpit is not the place for details; and yet moral teaching
which is confined to general principles is woefully like repeating
platitudes and firing blank cartridges. Everybody admits the general
principles, and thinks they do not apply to his specific wrong action;
and if the preacher goes beyond these toothless generalities, he is met
with the cry of "personalities." If a man preaches a sermon in which he
speaks plainly about tricks of trade or follies of fashion, somebody is
sure to say, going down the chapel steps, "Oh! ministers know nothing of
business," and somebody else to add, "It is a pity he was so personal,"
and the chorus is completed by many other voices, "He should preach
Christ, and leave secular things alone."
Well! whether a sermon of that sort be preaching Christ or not depends
on the way in which it is done. But sure I am that there is no
"preaching Christ" completely, which does not include plain speaking
about plain duties. Everything that a man can either do rightly or
wrongly belongs to the sphere of morals, and everything within the
sphere of morals belongs to Christianity and to "preaching Christ."
Nor is such preaching complete without plain warning of the end of sin,
as death here and hereafter. This is difficult, for many people like to
have the smooth side of truth always put uppermost. But the gospel has a
rough side, and is by no means a "soothing syrup" merely. There are no
rougher words about what wrongdoers come to than some of Christ's words;
and he has only given half his Master's message who hides or softens
down the grim saying, "The wages of sin is death."
But all this moral teaching must be closely connected with and built
upon Christ. Christian morality has Jesus for its perfect exemplar, His
love for its motive, and His grace for its power. Nothing is more
impotent than mere moral teaching. What is the use of perpetually saying
to people, Be good, be good? You may keep on at that for ever, and not a
soul will listen, any more than the crowds on our streets are drawn to
church by the bell's monotonous call. But if, instead of a cold ideal of
duty, as beautiful and as dead as a marble statue, we preach the Son of
man, whose life is our law incarnate; and instead of urging to purity by
motives which our own evil makes feeble, we re-echo His heart-touching
appeal, "If ye love Me, keep My commandments;" and if, instead of
mocking lame men with exhortations to walk, we point those who
despairingly cry, "Who shall deliver us from the body of this death?" to
Him who breathes His living spirit into us to set us free from sin and
death, then our preaching of morality will be "preaching the gospel" and
be "preaching Christ."
This gospel is also to be unfolded into "teaching." In the facts of
Christ's life and death, as we ponder them and grow up to understand
them, we get to see more and more the key to all things. For thought, as
for life, He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending. All
that we can or need know about God or man, about present duty or future
destiny, about life, death, and the beyond,--all is in Jesus Christ, and
to be drawn from Him by patient thought and by abiding in Him. The
Christian minister's business is to be ever learning and ever teaching
more and more of the "manifold wisdom" of God. He has to draw for
himself from the deep, inexhaustible fountains; he has to bear the
water, which must be fresh drawn to be pleasant or refreshing, to
thirsty lips. He must seek to present all sides of the truth, teaching
_all_ wisdom, and so escaping from his own limited mannerisms. How many
ministers' Bibles are all dog-eared and thumbed at certain texts, at
which they almost open of themselves, and are as clean in most of their
pages as on the day when they were bought!
The Christian ministry, then, in the Apostle's view, is distinctly
educational in its design. Preachers and hearers equally need to be
reminded of this. We preachers are poor scholars ourselves, and in our
work are tempted, like other people, to do most frequently what we can
do with least trouble. Besides which, we many of us know, and all
suspect, that our congregations prefer to hear what they have heard
often before, and what gives them the least trouble. We often hear the
cry for "simple preaching," by which one school intends "simple
instruction in plain, practical matters, avoiding mere dogma," and
another intends "the simple gospel," by which is meant the repetition
over and over again of the great truth, "Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved." God forbid that I should say a word
which might even seem to under-estimate the need for that proclamation
being made in its simple form, as the staple of the Christian ministry,
to all who have not welcomed it into their hearts, or to forget that,
however dimly understood, it will bring light and hope and new loves and
strengths into a soul! But the New Testament draws a distinction between
evangelists and teachers, and common sense insists that Christian people
need more than the reiteration of that message from him whom they call
their "teacher." If he is a teacher, he should teach; and he cannot do
that, if the people who listen to him suspect everything that they do
not know already, and are impatient of anything that gives them the
trouble of attending and thinking in order to learn. I fear there is
much unreality in the name, and that nothing would be more distasteful
to many of our congregations than the preacher's attempt to make it
truly descriptive of his work. Sermons should not be "quiet resting
places." Nor is it quite the ideal of Christian teaching that busy men
should come to church or chapel on a Sunday, and not be fatigued by
being made to think, but perhaps to be able to sleep for a minute or two
and pick up the thread when they wake, quite sure that they have missed
nothing of any consequence. We are meant to be teachers, as well as
evangelists, though we fulfil the function so poorly; but our hearers
often make that task more difficult by ill-concealed impatience with
sermons which try to discharge it.
Observe too the emphatic repetition of "every man" both in these two
clauses and in the following. It is Paul's protest against the
exclusiveness of the heretics, who shut out the mob from their
mysteries. An intellectual aristocracy is the proudest and most
exclusive of all. A Church built upon intellectual qualifications would
be as hard and cruel a _coterie_ as could be imagined. So there is
almost vehemence and scorn in the persistent repetition in each clause
of the obnoxious word, as if he would thrust down his antagonists'
throats the truth that his gospel has nothing to do with cliques and
sections, but belongs to the world. To it philosopher and fool are
equally welcome. Its message is to all. Brushing aside surface
diversities, it goes straight to deep-lying wants, which are the same in
all men. Below king's robe and professor's gown, and workman's jacket
and prodigal's rags, beats the same heart with the same wants, wild
longings, and weariness. Christianity knows no hopeless classes. But its
highest wisdom can be spoken to the little child and the barbarian, and
it is ready to deal with the most forlorn and foolish, knowing its own
power to "warn every man and to teach every man in all wisdom."
III. We have here the ultimate aim of these diverse methods. "That we
may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus."
We found this same word "present" in verse 22. The remarks made there
will apply here. There the Divine purpose of Christ's great work, and
here Paul's purpose in his, are expressed alike. God's aim is Paul's aim
too. The Apostle's thoughts travel on to the great coming day, when we
shall all be manifested at the judgment seat of Christ, and preacher and
hearer, Apostle and convert, shall be gathered there. That solemn period
will test the teacher's work, and should ever be in his view as he
works. There is a real and indissoluble connection between the teacher
and his hearers, so that in some sense he is to blame if they do not
stand perfect then, and he in some sense has to present them as in his
work--the gold, silver, and precious stones which he has built on the
foundation. So each preacher should work with that end clear in view, as
Paul did. He is always toiling in the light of that great vision. One
sees him, in all his letters, looking away yonder to the horizon, where
he expects the breaking of its morning low down in the eastern sky. Ah!
how many formal pulpit and how many a languid pew would be galvanised
into intense action if only their occupants once saw burning in on them,
in their decorous deadness, the light of that great white throne! How
differently we should preach if we always felt "the terror of the Lord,"
and under its solemn influence sought to "persuade men!" How differently
we should hear if we felt we must appear before the Judge, and give
account to Him of our profitings by His word!
And the purpose which the true minister of Christ has in view is to
"present every man _perfect in Christ Jesus_." "Perfect" may be used
here with the technical signification of "initiated," but it means
absolute moral completeness. Negatively, it implies the entire removal
of all defects; positively, the complete possession of all that belongs
to human nature as God meant it to be. The Christian aim, for which the
preaching of Christ supplies ample power, is to make the whole race
possess, in fullest development, the whole circle of possible human
excellences. There is to be no one-sided growth but men are to grow like
a tree in the open, which has no barrier to hinder its symmetry, but
rises and spreads equally on all sides, with no branch broken or
twisted, no leaf worm-eaten or wind-torn, no fruit blighted or fallen,
no gap in the clouds of foliage, no bend in the straight stem,--a green
and growing completeness. This absolute completeness is attainable "in
Christ," by union with Him of that vital sort brought about by faith,
which will pour His Spirit into our spirits. The preaching of Christ is
therefore plainly the direct way to bring about this perfecting. That is
the Christian theory of the way to make perfect men.
And this absolute perfection of character is, in Paul's belief, possible
for every man, no matter what his training or natural disposition may
have been. The gospel is confident that it can change the Ethiopian's
skin, because it can change his heart, and the leopard's spots will be
altered when it "eats straw like the ox." There are no hopeless classes,
in the glad, confident view of the man who has learned Christ's power.
What a vision of the future to animate work! What an aim! What dignity,
what consecration, what enthusiasm it would give, making the trivial
great and the monotonous interesting, stirring up those who share it to
intense effort, overcoming low temptations, and giving precision to the
selection of means and use of instruments! The pressure of a great,
steady purpose consolidates and strengthens powers, which, without it,
become flaccid and feeble. We can make a piece of calico as stiff as a
board by putting it under an hydraulic press. Men with a fixed purpose
are terrible men. They crash through conventionalities like a cannon
ball. They, and they only, can persuade and arouse and impress their own
enthusiasm on the inert mass. "Behold, how great a matter a little fire
kindleth!" No Christian minister will work up to the limits of his
power, nor do much for Christ or man, unless his whole soul is mastered
by this high conception of the possibilities of his office, and unless
he is possessed with the ambition to present every man "perfect in
Christ Jesus."
IV. Note the struggle and the strength with which the Apostle reaches
toward this aim. "Whereunto I labour also, striving according to His
working, which worketh in me mightily."
As to the object, theme, and method of the Christian ministry, Paul can
speak, as he does in the previous verses, in the name of all his fellow
workers: "_We_ preach, admonishing and teaching, that we may present."
There was substantial unity among them. But he adds a sentence about his
own toil and conflict in doing his work. He will only speak for himself
now. The others may say what their experience has been. He has found
that he cannot do his work easily. Some people may be able to get
through it with little toil of body or agony of mind, but for himself it
has been laborious work. He has not learned to "take it easy." That
great purpose has been ever before him, and made a slave of him. "I
labour _also_"; I do not only preach, but I _toil_--as the word
literally implies--like a man tugging at an oar, and putting all his
weight into each stroke. No great work for God will be done without
physical and mental strain and effort. Perhaps there were people in
Colossae who thought that a man who had nothing to do but to preach had a
very easy life, and so the Apostle had to insist that most exhausting
work is brain work and heart work. Perhaps there were preachers and
teachers there who worked in a leisurely, dignified fashion, and took
great care always to stop a long way on the safe side of weariness; and
so he had to insist that God's work cannot be done at all in that
fashion, but has to be done "with both hands, earnestly." The "immortal
garland" is to be run for, "not without dust and heat." The racer who
takes care to slack his speed whenever he is in danger of breaking into
a perspiration will not win the prize. The Christian minister who is
afraid of putting all his strength into his work, up to the point of
weariness, will never do much good.
There must be not only toil, but conflict. He labours,
"_striving_"--that is to say, contending--with hindrances, both without
and within, which sought to mar his work. There is the struggle with
one's self, with the temptations to do high work from low motives, or to
neglect it, and to substitute routine for inspiration and mechanism for
fervour. One's own evil, one's weaknesses and fears and falsities, and
laziness and torpor and faithlessness, have all to be fought, besides
the difficulties and enemies without. In short, all good work is a
battle.
The hard strain and stress of this life of effort and conflict made this
man "Paul the aged" while he was not old in years. Such soul's agony and
travail is indispensable for all high service of Christ. How can any
true, noble Christian life be lived without continuous effort and
continual strife? Up to the last particle of our power, it is our duty
to work. As for the sleepy, languid, self-indulgent service of modern
Christians, who seem to be chiefly anxious not to overstrain themselves,
and to manage to win the race set before them without turning a hair, I
am afraid that a large deduction will have to be made from it in the day
that shall "try every man's work, of what sort it is."
So much for the struggle; now for the strength. The toil and the
conflict are to be carried on "according to His working, which worketh
in me mightily." The measure of our power then is Christ's power in us.
He whose presence makes the struggle necessary, by His presence
strengthens us for it. He will dwell in us and work in us, and even our
weakness will be lifted into joyful strength by Him. We shall be mighty
because that mighty Worker is in our spirits. We have not only His
presence beside us as an ally, but His grace within us. We may not only
have the vision of our Captain standing at our side as we front the
foe--an unseen presence to them, but inspiration and victory to us--but
we may have the consciousness of His power welling up in our spirits and
flowing, as immortal strength, into our arms. It is much to know that
Christ fights for us; it is more to know that He fights in us.
Let us take courage then for all work and conflict; and remember that if
we have not "striven according to the power"--that is, if we have not
utilised _all_ our Christ-given strength in His service--we have not
striven enough. There may be a double defect in us. We may not have
taken all the power that he Has given, and we may not have used all the
power that we have taken. Alas, for us! we have to confess both faults.
How weak we have been when Omnipotence waited to give Itself to us! How
little we have made our own of the grace that flows so abundantly past
us, catching such a small part of the broad river in our hands, and
spilling so much even of that before it reached our lips! And how little
of the power given, whether natural or spiritual, we have used for our
Lord! How many weapons have hung rusty and unused in the fight! He has
sowed much in our hearts, and reaped little. Like some unkindly soils,
we have "drunk in the rain which cometh oft upon it," and have "_not_
brought forth herbs fit for Him by whom it is dressed." Talents hid, the
Master's goods squandered, power allowed to run to waste, languid
service and half-hearted conflict, we have all to acknowledge. Let us go
to Him and confess that, "we have most unthankful been," and are
unprofitable servants indeed, coming far short of duty. Let us yield our
spirits to His influence, that He may work in us that which is pleasing
in His sight, and may encircle us with ever-growing completeness of
beauty and strength, until He "present us faultless before the presence
of His glory with exceeding joy."