Faith in Christ the Savior: Power
DAILY READINGS
As we saw in the last week's study, Christian faith has always
centered around the person of Jesus himself. This week let us consider
some testimonies from the New Testament as to the meaning and effect
of this definitely Christian faith.
Eleventh Week, First Day
It must be clear to any observing mind that the world does not suffer
from lack of faith. There is faith in plenty; everybody is exercising
it on some object. In the Bible we read of folk who "trust in vanity"
(Isa. 59:4), who "trust in lying words" (Jer. 7:4), or "in the
abundance of riches" (Psalm 52:7); and the Master exclaims over the
difficulty which those who "trust in riches" have when they try to
enter the Kingdom of God (Mark 10:24). Faith, then, is a necessary
faculty of the soul: the power by which we commit ourselves to any
object that wins our devotion and commands our allegiance. No man
avoids its use, and men differ only in the objects toward which their
faith is directed. Of all the tragedies caused by the misuse of human
powers, none is more frequent and disastrous than the ruin that
follows the misuse of faith. With this necessary and powerful faculty
in our possession, capable of use on things high or low, to what
determination can a man more reasonably set himself than this?--_since
I must and do use faith on something, I will choose the highest_. It
is with such a rational and worthy choice that the Christian turns to
Jesus. He is the best we know; we will direct our faith toward him.
This does not mean that in the end our faith does not rest on God; it
does, for Jesus is the Way, the Door, as he said, and faith in him
moves up through him to the One who sent him. As Paul put it, "Such
confidence have we through Christ to God-ward" (II Cor. 3:4). But
faith in Jesus is the most vivid, true, and compelling way we have of
committing ourselves to the highest and best we know. In the light of
this truth, we can understand why John calls such faith the supreme
"work" which God demands of us.
=Work not for the food which perisheth, but for the food which
abideth unto eternal life, which the Son of man shall give unto you:
for him the Father, even God, hath sealed. They said therefore unto
him, What must we do, that we may work the works of God? Jesus
answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe
on him whom he hath sent.--John 6:27-29.=
_Gracious Father! Thou hast revealed Thyself gloriously in Jesus
Christ, the Son of Thy love. In Him we have found Thee, or rather,
are found of Thee. By His life, by His words and deeds, by His trials
and sufferings, we are cleansed from sin and rise into holiness. For
in Him Thou hast made disclosure of Thine inmost being and art
drawing us into fellowship with Thy life. As we stand beneath His
Cross, or pass with Him into the Garden of His Agony, it is Thy heart
that we see unveiled, it is the passion of Thy love yearning over the
sinful, the wandering, seeking that it may save them. No man hath
seen Thee at any time, but out from the unknown has come the Son of
Man to declare Thee. And now we know Thy name. When we call Thee
Father, the mysteries of existence are not so terrible, our burdens
weigh less heavily upon us, our sorrows are touched with joy. Thy Son
has brought the comfort that we need, the comfort of knowing that in
all our afflictions Thou art afflicted, that in Thy grief our lesser
griefs are all contained. Let the light which shines in His face,
shine into our hearts, to give us the knowledge of Thy glory, to
scatter the darkness of fear, of wrong, of remorse, of foreboding,
and to constrain our lives to finer issues of peace and power and
spiritual service. And this prayer we offer in Christ's name.
Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Eleventh Week, Second Day
The New Testament clearly reveals the experience that _forgiveness_
comes in answer to such self-committing faith in Christ as we spoke of
yesterday.
=And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at
meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that even
forgiveth sins? And he said unto the woman, Thy faith hath saved
thee; go in peace.--Luke 7:48-50.=
In popular thought forgiveness is often shallowly conceived. It is
thought to be an easy agreement to forget offense, a good-natured
waving aside of injuries committed as though the evil done were of no
consequence. But forgiveness is really a most profound and searching
experience; and it takes two persons, each sacrificially desirous of
achieving it, before it can be perfected. In the pardoner, the passion
for saviorhood must submerge all disgust at the sin in love for the
sinner; and in the pardoned, desire for a new life must create
sacrificial willingness to hate and forsake the evil and humbly accept
a new chance. It follows, therefore, that no one can forgive another,
no matter how willing he may be to do so, unless the recipient fulfils
the conditions that make pardon possible. Forgiveness is a mutual
operation; no forgetting or good will on the part of one person is
forgiveness at all; and the attitude in the forgiven man that makes
the reception of pardon possible is negatively penitence and
positively faith. Any experience of human forgiveness reveals that the
offender must detest his sin and turn from it in trust and
self-commitment to claim the mercy and choose the ideals of the one
whom he has wronged. That God in Christ is willing to forgive is the
Christian Gospel; and if we go unforgiven it is for lack of faith.
That is the hand which grasps the proffered pardon.
_Almighty God, whose salvation is ever nigh to them that seek Thee,
we think of our little lives, of their wayward ways, and we remember
Thee and are troubled. Our days pass from us and we are heated with
strifes, and troubled and restless, with mean temptations and
fugitive desires. We spend our years in much carelessness, and too
seldom do we think of the greatness of our trust and the wonder and
mystery of our being. We are vexed with vain dreams and trivial
desires. We live our days immersed in petty passions. We strain after
poor uncertainties. We pursue the shadows of this passing life and
continually are we visited by our own self-contempt and bitterness.
We have known the better and have chosen the worse. We have felt the
glory and power of a higher life and yet have surrendered to ignoble
temptations and to satisfactions that end with the hour._
_Almighty Father, of Thy goodness do Thou save our lives, so smitten
with passion, from the failure and misery that else must come to us.
Be with us in our hours of self-communion, and inspire us with good
purpose and service to Thee. Be with us when heart and flesh faint,
and there seems no help or safety near us. Be with us when we are
carried into the dry and lonely places, seeking a rest that is not in
them. Sustain us, we beseech Thee, under the burden of our many
errors and failures. From the confused aims and purposes of our lives
may there be brought forth, by the aid of Thy Spirit, and the
teaching and discipline of life, lives constant and assured in
service and obedience to Thee. Amen._--John Hunter.
Eleventh Week, Third Day
It is clear in the New Testament that all the _free movements of
divine help_ depend on the presence of man's faith. Words like these
are continually on the lips of Jesus: "Be of good cheer; thy faith
hath made thee whole" (Matt. 9:22); "According to your faith be it
done unto you" (Matt. 9:29); "Great is thy faith: be it done unto thee
even as thou wilt" (Matt. 15:28). Human life as a whole confirms the
truth which such words suggest: _Man's faith is always the limit of
his blessing; he never obtains more than he believes in._ Men live in
a world of unappropriated truth and unused power; and the blessings of
truth and power can be reached only by ventures of faith. Even
electricity withholds its service from a man who, like Abdul Hamid,
has not faith enough to try. In personal relationships this fact
becomes even more clear. Whatever gifts of good will may be waiting in
the heart of any man, we are shut out from them forever, unless we
have the grace of faith in the man and open-hearted self-commitment to
him. As the Christian Gospel sees man's case, the central tragedy lies
here: that God in Christ is willing to do so much more in and for and
through us than we have faith enough to let him do. Our unbelief is
not a matter of theoretical concern alone; it practically disables
God, it handicaps his operation in the world, it is an "evil heart of
unbelief, in falling away from the living God" (Heb. 3:12). The
divine will is forced to wait upon the lagging faith of man. How often
the Master exclaimed, "O ye of little faith!" (Matt. 6:30; 8:26). And
the reason for his lament was eminently practical.
=And coming into his own country he taught them in their synagogue,
insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man
this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son?
is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph,
and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?
Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in
him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save
in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty
works there because of their unbelief.--Matt. 13:54-58.=
_Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we desire to come to Thee in all
humility and sincerity. We are sinful; pardon Thou us. We are
ignorant; enlighten Thou our darkness. We are weak; inspire us with
strength. In these times of doubt, uncertainty, and trial, may we
ever feel conscious of Thine everlasting light. Soul of our soul!
Inmost Light of truth! Manifest Thyself unto us amid all shadows.
Guide us in faith, hope, and love, until the perfect day shall dawn,
and we shall know as we are known._
_Almighty God, teach us, we pray Thee, by blessed experience, to
apprehend what was meant of old when Jesus Christ was called the
power of God unto salvation, for we stand in need of salvation from
sin, from doubt, from weakness, from craven fear; we cannot save
ourselves; we are creatures of a day, short-sighted, and too often
driven about by every wind of passion and opinion. We need to be
stayed upon a higher strength. We need to lay hold of Thee. Manifest
Thyself unto us, our Father, as the Saviour of our souls, and deliver
us from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the
children of God. Amen._--John Hunter.
Eleventh Week, Fourth Day
Not only is man's power to appropriate the divine blessing dependent
on faith; in the experience of the New Testament man's power of
achievement has the same source.
=Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we
cast it out? And he saith unto them, Because of your little faith:
for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place;
and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.--Matt.
17:19, 20.=
Mountains are symbols of difficulty, and the Master's affirmation here
that faith alone can remove them is clearly confirmed in human
experience. It may seem at times as though faith, compared with the
obstacles, were like a minute mustard seed before the ranges of
Lebanon, but faith can overcome even that disproportion in size. Great
leaders always must have such confidence. Listen to Mazzini: "The
people lack faith ... the faith that arouses the multitudes, faith in
their own destiny, in their own mission, and in the mission of the
epoch; the faith that combats and prays; the faith that enlightens and
bids men advance fearlessly in the ways of God and humanity, with the
sword of the people in their hand, the religion of the people in their
heart, and the future of the people in their soul." In any great
movement for human good, the ultimate and deciding question always is:
How many people can be found who have faith enough to believe in the
cause and its triumph? When enough folk have faith, any campaign for
human welfare can be won. Without faith men "collapse into a yielding
mass of plaintiveness and fear"; with faith they move mountains. And
when men have faith in Christ as God's Revealor--faith, not formal and
abstract, but real and vital--they begin to feel about the word
"impossible" as Mirabeau did, "Never mention to me again that
blockhead of a word!"
_O God, our Father, our souls are made sick by the sight of hunger
and want and nakedness; of little children bearing on their bent
backs the burden of the world's work; of motherhood drawn under the
grinding wheels of modern industry; and of overburdened manhood, with
empty hands, stumbling and falling._
_Help us to understand that it is not Thy purpose to do away with
life's struggle, but that Thou desirest us to make the conditions of
that struggle just and its results fair._
_Enable us to know that we may bring this to pass only through love
and sympathy and understanding; only as we realize that all are alike
Thy children--the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the
fortunate and the unfortunate. And so, our Father, give us an
ever-truer sense of human sisterhood; that with patience and
steadfastness we may do our part in ending the injustice that is in
the land, so that all may rejoice in the fruits of their toil and be
glad in Thy sunshine._
_Keep us in hope and courage even amid the vastness of the
undertaking and the slowness of the progress, and sustain us with the
knowledge that our times are in Thy hand. Amen._--Helen Ring Robinson.
Eleventh Week, Fifth Day
Faith in Christ has always been consummated, in the experience to
which the New Testament introduces us, in an inward transformation of
life.
=I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself up for me.--Gal. 2:20.=
Such conversion of life is the normal result of a vital fellowship
whose bond is faith. For one thing, a man at once begins to care a
great deal more about his own quality when he believes in Christ and
in Christ's love. "What a King stoops to pick up from the mire cannot
be a brass farthing, but must be a pearl of great price." To be loved
by anyone is to enter into a new estimate of one's possible value; to
be loved by God in Christ is to come into an experience where our
possible value makes us alike ashamed of what we are and jubilant over
what we may become. We begin saying with Irenæus, "Jesus Christ became
what we are that he might make us what he is." And then, faith,
ripening into fellowship, opening the life sensitively to the
influence of the friend, issues in a character infused by the friend's
character. He lives in us. Such transformation of life does not happen
in a moment; it requires more than instantaneous exposure to take the
Lord's picture on a human heart; but time-exposure will do it, and
"Christ in us" be alike our hope of glory and our secret of influence.
_O Father Eternal, we thank Thee for the new and living way into Thy
presence made for us in Christ; the way of trust, sincerity, and
sacrifice. Beneath His cross we would take our stand, in communion
with His Spirit would we pray, in fellowship with the whole Church of
Christ we would seek to know Thy mind and will._
_We desire to know all the fulness of Christ, to appropriate His
unsearchable riches, to feed on His humanity whereby Thou hast become
to us the bread of our inmost souls and the wine of life, to become
partakers of Thy nature, share Thy glory, and become one with Thee
through Him._
_Give unto us fellowship with His sufferings and insight into the
mystery of His cross, so that we may be indeed crucified with Him, be
raised to newness of life, and be hidden with Christ in Thee._
_We desire to make thankful offering of ourselves as members of the
body of Christ; in union with all the members may we obey our unseen
Head, so that the Body may be undivided, and Thy love, and healing
power, and very Self may be incarnate on the earth in one Holy
Universal Church. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
Eleventh Week, Sixth Day
With faith in Christ so seen as the secret of divine forgiveness and
assistance, of achieving power and inward transformation, there can be
little surprise at the solicitude which the New Testament shows
concerning the disciples' faith. We find this urgent interest in Paul:
=Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be
left behind at Athens alone; and sent Timothy, our brother and God's
minister in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort
you concerning your faith; ... night and day praying exceedingly that
we may see your face, and may perfect that which is lacking in your
faith.--I Thess. 3:1, 2, 10.=
=We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, even as
it is meet, for that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the love of
each one of you all toward one another aboundeth.--II Thess. 1:3.=
And one of the most appealing revelations of Jesus' habit in prayer
concerns his supplication for Peter's faith.
=Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift
you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail
not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy
brethren.--Luke 22:31, 32.=
In all such passages one feels at once that faith is used as Paul uses
it in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians--a comrade and ally
of hope and love. It is not a matter of dogma and does not move in the
realm of opinion, although ideas of the first magnitude may be
involved in it. It is primarily a bond of divine fellowship, which at
once keeps the life receptive to all that God would do for the man and
moves the man to do all that he should for God. If that fails, even
Peter would fall in ruins, and the expression is none too strong, when
in I Timothy the failure of such vital faith is described as a
"shipwreck" (I Tim. 1:19). But when by faith the consciousness of God
has grown clear, and alliance with him is so real that we stop arguing
about it and begin counting on it in daily living, the increment of
power and confidence and stability which a man may win is quite
incalculable.
_O Thou plenteous Source of every good and perfect gift, shed abroad
the cheering light of Thy seven-fold grace over our hearts. Yea,
Spirit of love and gentleness, we most humbly implore Thy assistance.
Thou knowest our faults, our failings, our necessities, the dulness
of our understanding, the waywardness of our affections, the
perverseness of our will. When, therefore, we neglect to practice
what we know, visit us, we beseech Thee, with Thy grace, enlighten
our minds, rectify our desires, correct our wanderings, and pardon
our omissions, so that by Thy guidance we may be preserved from
making shipwreck of faith, and keep a good conscience, and may at
length be landed safe in the haven of eternal rest; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen._--Anselm, 1033.
Eleventh Week, Seventh Day
Some who gladly acknowledge the surprising results which faith can
work in life, do not see any great importance in the object to which
faith attaches itself. They say that faith is merely a psychological
attitude, and that faith in one thing does as well as faith in
another. Folk are healed, they point out, by all kinds of faith,
whether directed toward fetishes, or saints' relics, or metaphysical
theories, or God himself. It is the faith, they say, and not the
object, which does the work. There is a modicum of truth in this.
Faith, by its very power to organize man's faculties and give them
definite set and drive, is itself a master force, and if a man has no
interest beyond the achievement of some immediate end, like conquering
nervous qualms or getting strength for a special task, he may achieve
that end by believing in almost anything, provided he believes hard
enough. _But to believe in some things may debauch the intelligence
and lower the moral standards, even while it achieves a practical
end._ To win power for a business task by believing in a palm-reader's
predictions is entirely possible, but it is a poor bargain; a man
sells out his intelligence for cash. The object in which a man
believes does make an immense difference in the effect of his faith on
his _mind_ and _character_. An African savage may gain courage for an
ordeal by believing in his fetish--but how immeasurable is the abyss
between the meaning of that faith for the whole of life and the
meaning of a Christian's faith in God! We have no business, for the
sake of immediate gain, to allow our faith to rest in anything lower
than the highest.
=Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance
incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in
heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith
unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye
greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have
been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith,
being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by
fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation
of Jesus Christ: whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye
see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable
and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the
salvation of your souls.--I Peter 1:3-9.=
_Gracious Father of our spirits, in the stillness of this worship may
we grow more sure of Thee, who art often closest to us when we feel
Thou hast forsaken us. The toil and thought of daily life leave us
little time to think of Thee; but may the silence of this holy place
make us aware that though we may forget Thee, Thou dost never forget
us. Perhaps we have grown careless in contact with common things,
duty has lost its high solemnities, the altar fires have gone
untended, Thy light within our minds has been distrusted or ignored.
As we withdraw awhile from all without, may we find Thee anew within,
until thought grows reverent again, all work is hallowed, and faith
reconsecrates all common things as sacraments of love._
_If pride of thought and careless speculation have made us doubtful
of Thee, recover for us the simplicity that understands Thou art
never surer than when we doubt Thee, that through all failures of
faith Thou becomest clearer, and so makest the light that once we
walked by seem but darkness. Help us then to rest our faith on the
knowledge of our imperfection, our consciousness of ignorance, our
sense of sin, and see in them shadows cast by the light of Thy
drawing near._
_If Thy purposes have crossed our own and Thy will has broken ours,
enable us to trust the wisdom of Thy perfect love and find Thy will
to be our peace._
_So lead us back to meet Thee where we may have missed Thee.
Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I
The forgiveness which the Gospel offers--reinstating a man in the
personal relationships against which he sinned, and giving him another
chance--opens opportunity, but by itself it does not furnish power.
The saviorhood of Christ, however, so far from failing at this crucial
point, makes here its chief claim to preeminence. However one may
explain it, the normal quality of a genuine Christian life is moral
energy. The Gospel not alone to Paul, but to all generations of
Christ's disciples, had been "God's saving power for everyone who has
faith" (Rom. 1:16).[8]
Faith always supplies moral dynamic. Emerson's challenge, "They can
conquer who believe they can," is easily verified in daily life. In
practical business, in social reform, in personal character, no more
common or fatal barrier to success exists than disbelief in
possibilities. While some who think they can when they cannot, prove
the rule by its exception, we are sure in advance that one who
believes he cannot, has lost his battle before it has begun. Granted a
task worth doing, sufficient strength for its accomplishment, and
motives in plenty to make success desirable, and one insinuating enemy
can spoil the enterprise. Let the subtle fear that the task is
impossible obsess the thought, paralyze the nerve, and no hope is
left. Like chlorine gas, such fear defeats us before we have begun to
fight and fills our trenches with asphyxiated powers.
Anyone who is to be a savior to mankind, therefore, must be able to
make men say, "I can." That Christ has had that influence on men is
the commonplace of Christian biography from the beginning until now.
"In him who strengthens me I am able for anything" (Phil. 4:13)[9] is
a word of Paul's which the best Christian experience confirms. It does
not mean that men can do what they will, overriding all obstacles to
chosen goals; it means that they are aware of resources in reserve, of
power around them and in them, so that they are not afraid of anything
which they may face. If a duty ought to be done, they are confident
that they can do it; if a trouble must be borne, they are assured that
they can bear it.
This buoyant faith is more than a grace of temperament. In Paul's
case, for example, it was not due to rugged health, for that he
lacked; it was not the easy optimism of some happiness cult, for he
was a persecuted man, bearing in his body "the marks of the Lord
Jesus"; and such a note of assured resource as we just have quoted did
not come from the hopefulness of fortunate circumstance, but from a
prison where he wore a chain. Paul himself is certain that his sense
of power springs from discipleship to Jesus. And when one turns to the
gospels, he sees that whenever the Master had opportunity to exert to
the full his influence on men, some such result as here appears in
Paul is evident. A contagious personality always enlarges the sense of
possibilities and powers in other men. A man, leaving Trinity Church,
where he had heard Phillips Brooks, exclaimed, "He always makes me
feel so strong." It was said that one could not stand for a moment
with Edmund Burke under an archway, to let a shower pass by, without
emerging a greater man. Each one of us knows folk who so impress him.
We go into their presence, weak, self-pitiful; when we come out, the
horizons are broader, the possibilities have enlarged, there is more
in us than we had suspected, we are convinced that we _can_.
To a degree that escapes our estimation Jesus exerted that influence
on men. Napoleon said that he made his generals out of mud. Out of
what, then, did the Master make his apostles? At the beginning, Peter,
for example, is protesting, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord," and Jesus is bending over him, saying: Come after me, and I
will make you a fisher of men; if you will, you can. After months of
influence, Peter, still shamed and weak, is pleading his love against
his deed, and Jesus is saying: Feed my sheep; feed my lambs; if you
will, you can. In Jesus' relationship with his disciple, a great
personality stands over a lesser one, by life and word insistently
saying, _You can_, until power is vitally transmitted, and in the
vacillating, vehement Simon there emerges rock-like, stable Peter.
Throughout the Christian centuries nothing has been more typical than
this of the Master's influence on men. He has come to innumerable
sodden lives, held slaves to tyrannous sin, saying in the hopelessness
of bondage, "I cannot," and he has touched them with his contagious
confidence, until they rose into freedom, saying, "By the help of God,
I can!" He has come into social situations, where ancient evils, long
entrenched and seemingly invincible, withstood the assault of
reformation, and he has put inexhaustible resource into his people,
until they said with an old reformer, "Impossible? If that is all that
is the matter, let us go ahead!" He has come to his Church, reluctant
to undertake a world-wide mission, staggered by the task's magnitude,
and he has made men pray with _life_ and not alone with lip, "Thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Wherever
the influence of Christ vitally has come, the horizons of possibility
have widened and the sense of power grown inexhaustible.
_Such influence is of the very essence of saviorhood and the attitude
that appropriates it is saving faith._ When John B. Gough, desperately
enmeshed in habit, faces the Christian Gospel of release one easily
may trace his changing response. Dubious at first, he wants to
believe it but he does not dare. He wishes it were true, but the whole
logic of his situation, his long habit, his spoiled reputation, his
weakened will, argue against the possibility. As Augustine said about
his lust, "The worse that I knew so well had more power over me than
the better that I knew not." Still, a note of authority in the Gospel,
as though spoken by one whose power to perform is equal to the thing
he promises, arrests Gough's mind, captures his imagination, awakens
his spirit's deep desire, until at last the Master's call, "You can,"
is answered by the human cry, "I will," and the man moves out into new
possibilities, new powers, and increasing liberty. That _is_
salvation. It is no formal status decreed by legal enactment, as
though a judge technically acquitted a prisoner. It is new life,
inward liberation from old habits, apprehensions, anxieties, and
fears. It lifts horizons, consumes impossibilities, and at the center
of life sets the stirring conviction that what ought to be done can be
done.
Christians who are accustomed lightly to assert that they are saved
need specially to take this truth to heart. Some speak as though
salvation were a technicality and they sing about it,
"'Tis done, the great transaction's done."
To many such, were candor courteous, one would wish to say: Saved?
Saved from what? You are habitually anxious. Your life is continually
vexed with little fears and apprehensions. When trouble comes, you are
sure that you cannot stand it; when tasks present themselves, you are
certain that you cannot perform them. You have pet self-indulgences,
from major sins to little meannesses; you know that they are wrong;
but when suggestion comes that you surrender them, you are sure that
you have not the strength. When causes, plainly Christian, on whose
successful issue man's weal depends, appeal to you for help, you
weaken every enterprise by your disheartenment. Saved from _what_? Not
from fear, timidity, selfishness, and stagnation! And if you say,
Saved from Hell--what is Hell but the final subjugation of the soul to
such sins as you now are cherishing? The words of Jesus are promises
of saviorhood from real and present evils: "Be not _anxious_" (Matt.
6:34); "Go, _sin_ no more" (John 8:11); "_Fear_ not, little flock"
(Luke 12:32). When one, by faith, turns his face homeward from such
destroyers of life, he begins to be saved; but only as he lives by
faith in fellowship with the Divine and so achieves progressive
victory, does he keep on being saved. _The heart of salvation is
victorious power._
II
Not all men feel the need of the power which comes from discipleship
to Christ. They live content without such increment of strength as
Christians find in faith. Their power is equal to their tasks because
their tasks are levelled to their power. One cannot understand,
therefore, what the Saviorhood of Christ has meant to men, unless he
sees how Christ has created the need of the very power he furnishes.
He has done this, in part, _by awakening the desire for an ascending
life_. Men do not naturally want to believe in possibilities too
great and taxing; it always is easier to leave undisturbed the
_status quo_. Even changing one's residence is difficult. Though
one may move to a better house, yet to decide to move, to break old
relationships, to tear up and refit the furnishings, and to adjust
oneself to new associations mean stress and strain. So men come to be
at home with habits; they are comfortably accustomed to timidity and
self-indulgence. Release into a new life does not lure as privilege;
it repels as hardship. Some sins, indeed, are followed by remorse, but
others, grown habitual, bring a sense of well-being and content. We
like ourselves; we do not want a better life; we are unwilling to pay
its cost. Our sins are no bed of nettles, but a lotus land of decent
ease. Were we candidly to speak to them, we should say, O Sin, you are
a comfortable friend! When most we want forbidden fruit you suggest
excuses. You side happily with our inclinations and save us from the
struggle that high duty costs and the sacrifice of striving for the
best. Among the blessings of our lives, we count you not the least, O
decent, comfortable, self-indulgent Sin!
Idlers thus drift listlessly and refuse a voyage with a purpose and a
goal; youths living by low standards, look on Christlike character as
beyond their interest and possibility; undedicated men find excuse for
holding back devotion to great causes in the world--we shelter
ourselves from aspiration and enterprise behind our faithlessness.
Into such a situation Christ repeatedly has come, bringing a vision of
what life ought to be, too imperative to be neglected, too
challenging to be denied. Men have been shaken out of their content;
the true color of their lives has been revealed against his white
background, the meanness of their plans against the wide ranges of his
purpose. From seeing him they have gone back to be content in their
old habits, but in vain. Can one who has seen a home be happy in a
hovel? Ranke, the historian, says, "More guiltless and more powerful,
more exalted and more holy, has naught ever been on earth than his
conduct, his life, and his death. The human race knows nothing that
could be brought even afar off into comparison with it." So he has
been the disturber of man's ignoble self-content, and to say that we
believe in him means that, no longer able to endure the thing we are,
we go on pilgrimage toward the thing he is. Faith means that we decide
to _move_. This first essential work of saviorhood Christ has wrought,
and when men start to follow him, they feel the need of power.
For another thing, Christ has created a thirst for the power he
furnishes by _revealing the quality of character in the possession
of which salvation ultimately consists_. At the beginning of the
ethical development whether of the individual or of the race, goodness
is defined in terms of prohibitions. There are many things which men
ought _not_ to do; they walk embarrassed in the presence of their
duty like courtiers before an exacting prince. How negative and
repelling such goodness is! As another exclaims: "They do not break
the Sabbath themselves, but no one who has to spend it with them likes
to see the dreadful day come round. They do not swear themselves, but
they make all who know them want to. They are just as good as trying
not to be bad can make them."
Discerning spirits, therefore, turn to goodness positively conceived.
"Thou shalt not" becomes "Thou shalt"; duty consists of rules to be
kept, precepts to be observed, principles to be applied, and we go out
to do good deeds to men. But whoever seriously tries to do deeds
really good, faces a need of moral elevation, as much beyond the
outward act of good as that surpasses the observance of prohibitions.
_Good deeds are not a matter of will alone, but of spiritual quality._
Let the wind blow to fan the faces of the sick, but if it discover
that it is laden with disease, what shall it do? To blow this way or
that may be within volition's power, but not to _cleanse_ oneself. The
task of character reaches inward, beyond the things we do or refrain
from doing to the man we are. Goodness is something more than girding
up the loins, blowing upon the hands, and setting to the work of being
dutiful. It springs from the spirit's depths; it is tinctured with the
spirit's quality; and deeds are never really better than the soul
whose utterances they are. From "Thou shalt not do" to "Thou shalt do"
and from "Thou shalt do" to "Thou shalt be," man's flying goal of
goodness moves. And this ideal in Christ has been incarnate, visible,
imperative. He _was_ right in the inner quality and flavor of his
life; and to be like him involves a pure and powerful personality.
Whoever sets that task ahead knows that he cannot strut proudly into
it. Like Alice entering Wonderland he must grow very small before he
can grow large. The Christ who has power to give has revealed the need
of it.
Not only by the intensifying of the ideal, but by its extension, has
Christ created thirst for divine help. In youth the problem of
character concerns personal habits. Our untamed strength must be
broken to the harness, and the snaffle bit be used upon our wayward
powers. We justly fear our sins and in their triumph we see the wreck
of individual prospects and the ruin of our families' hopes. Our
concern centers about ourselves, and its crux is self-mastery. But
when in maturity, somewhat "at leisure from ourselves" in settled
habits, we no longer fear our own ruin nor think it probable, goodness
extends its meaning. To play our part in man's advancement, to live,
work, sacrifice, and if need be die for causes on which our children's
hopes depend, becomes our ideal. As boys in spring-time when the ice
is melting see from a hill-top the swirling flood that overflows the
plain, and know that somewhere underneath the unfamiliar and
tumultuous rapids the main channel runs, from which the floods have
broken, to which in time they must return, so in a generation when
man's life has broken its banks in fury we still believe that the main
course of the divine purpose is not forever lost. To believe that, and
in the strength of it to toil for the ends God seeks, becomes to
awakened spirits the essential soul of goodness.
When such meanings enter into his ideal, a man runs straight upon the
need of God. For we may make our contribution to the cause of man's
good upon the earth and our children may make theirs, but if this
world is a spiritual Sahara, never meant for character and social
weal, and against the dead set of the desert's power we are building
oases here with our unaided fingers, then the issue of our work stands
in no doubt. The Sahara will pile its burning sands about us and hurl
its blistering winds across us, and we and our works together come to
naught. By as much, then, as a man really cares about democracy and
liberty and social equity, about human brotherhood and Christian
civilization, by so much he needs God, who gathers up the scattered
contributions of his children and builds them into victory. A man
alone may keep the decalogue, but alone he cannot save the world. Who
dreams of that wants power. And Christ has made men dream of that,
believe in that with passionate certainty, until "Thy Kingdom come" is
the daily prayer of multitudes. To no human strength can such prayer
be offered; we are not adequate to an eternal, universal task. Again
Christ has brought us to the need of power, and his people call him
Savior, because the need which he creates he also satisfies.
In one of the tidal rivers near New York, the building of a bridge was
interrupted by a derelict sunk in the river's bottom. Divers put
chains about the obstacle and all day long the engineer directed the
maneuvering of tugs as they puffed and pulled in vain endeavor to
dislodge the hulk. Then a young student, fresh from the technical
school, asked for the privilege of trying, and from the vexed,
impatient chief obtained his wish. "What will _you_ do it with?"
the engineer enquired. "The flat-boats in which we brought the granite
from Vermont," the young man answered. So when the tide was out, the
flat boats were fastened to the derelict. The Atlantic began to come
in; its mighty shoulders underneath the boats lifted--lifted until the
derelict had to come. The youth had harnessed infinite energy to his
task. To the consciousness of such resource in the spiritual world
Christ has introduced his people. They have meant not formula but
fact, not technicality but experience, when they have called him
Savior.
III
This consciousness of power has come in part from Christ's revelation
of God the Father. Whoever has sinned against his friend or unkindly
wronged a child knows what sin does to personal relationships. How
swift a change comes over a son's thought of his father when the son
has sinned! The wrong may have been done secretly so that his sire
does not know, and the boy alone on earth is conscious of it. But for
all that the filial relationship has lost its glory. Before the sin,
the son was happy with his father near; they were companions,
confidants, and to the boy fatherhood was very beautiful. Now, he is
most unhappy with his father near; the father's eyes like a
detective's pierce him through, the face like a judge's waits sternly
to condemn. He is looking at his father through the dark glasses of
his sin, and they distort his vision. When one considers the gods whom
men have worshiped, approaching them by bloody altar-stairs, offering
their first-born to assuage wrath or win from apathy to favor, he
sees, extended to a racial scale, our boyhood's tragedy. _Mankind has
been looking at the Father through its ignorance and sin and it has
seen him beclouded and awry._ Christ changed all that. By what he
taught, by what he was, by what he suffered he has said to man, so
that man increasingly has believed it--You are wrong about God. He
does not stand aloof--careless or vindictive; he is not as he looks to
you through the twisted lenses of your evil. He loves you. He _cares_
beyond your power to understand, and all my compassion but reveals in
time what is eternally in him. He is pledged to the victory of
goodness in you and in the world, and you have not used all your power
until you have used his, for that, too, is yours.
From that day the fight against sin has been a new thing, and men have
gone into it with battle-cries they never used before--"_God_ was
in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (II Cor. 5:19);
"_God_ commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8); "If _God_ is for us,
who is against us?" (Rom. 8:31).
This access of power has come in part from Christ's revelation of
_man_. When a jewel is taken from darkness into sunlight, there is a
two-fold revealing. The sunlight is disclosed in new glory, for it
never seemed so beautiful before as it appears breaking in splendor
through the jewel's heart. And there is a revelation of the jewel.
Dull and unillumined in the dark, it is lustrous when the sun
enlightens it. So Christ brought us an unveiling of the Father; the
Divine never had seemed so wonderful as when it poured in glory
through his purity and love. And he brought as well a new revelation
of man. Our human nature, bedimmed by sin and lusterless, he in his
own person took up into the light, and lifting it where all mankind
could see he cried--This _is_ human nature--man as God intended him to
be--no slave of fate and dupe of sin, but a free man and a victor. And
from that day the war on sin has had new spirit in it, and battle
cries that presage triumph have grown familiar on the fighters' lips:
"Now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we
shall be" (I John 3:2); "Till we all attain unto the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13);
"His precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may
become partakers of the divine nature" (II Pet. 1:4).
IV
Christ's double revelation of God and man, however, has had its vital
impact of power on life in what Christians have always called _the
experience of the Spirit_. When the New Testament speaks its
characteristic word about the Spirit, it means the conscious presence
of the living God in the hearts of men, and that is the very essence
of religion. The first Christians did not know God in one way only;
they knew him in three ways. So one man might know Beethoven the
composer and be an authority upon his works; another might know
Beethoven the performer and delight in his playing; and another might
know Beethoven the man and rejoice in his friendship--but no one could
know the whole of Beethoven until he knew him all three ways. The New
Testament Christians came thus to God. He was the Father, Creator of
all; he was the Character, revealed in Jesus; but as well he was the
Spiritual Presence in their lives, their sustenance and power. "The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Spirit" (II Cor. 13:14)--such was their experience of the
Divine. It was not dogma; it was _life_. God was Creator, Character,
and Comforter.
Christian experience is in continual danger of drifting from this
vital center. In our age especially, we are prone to find God at the
end of an argument and to leave him there. We have been compelled by
militant agnosticism to put our apologetic armies on the defensive.
Finding it impossible to hold the respect of men's intelligence
without reasonable arguments in the faith's behalf, we have had to
draw such inferences from the nature of the material universe, from
the necessities of human thought, the demands of human conscience, and
the progress of moral evolution in history, that materialism should be
made, what indeed it is, a discredited affair. But God so arrived at,
by way of reason, is an external matter. He is an hypothesis to
explain the universe. "He sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers before him." Granted the
incalculable value in such faith, putting unity into history and
purpose into life--it is not religion and it never can be. _Religion
begins when the God outwardly argued is inwardly experienced._
Religion begins when we cease using the tricky and unstable aeroplane
of speculation to seek Him among the clouds, and retreat into the
fertile places of our own spirits where the living water rises, as
Jesus said. God outside of us is a theory; God inside of us becomes a
fact. God outside of us is an hypothesis; God inside of us is an
experience. God the Father is the possibility of salvation; God the
Spirit is actuality of life, joy, peace, and saving power. God the
transcendent may do for philosophy, but he is not enough for religion.
Without this completion of the Gospel, Christ's saviorhood does not
reach inward to our need. For lacking it, we stand before the Master
with the same admiration that a man who is no painter feels when he
sees a Raphael. He knows the work is sublime, but he is not proposing
to reproduce it. He is conquered by its beauty, but he knows no
possibility of its imitation. If, however, there were a spirit of
Raphael that could lay hold upon a man's life and transform him to the
master's skill and power, then his admiration would become inwardly
effective. _It takes the spirit of Raphael to do Raphael's work._ If
this gospel of an indwelling dynamic is not coupled with our
admiration for Jesus, we are like a student practicing the fingering
of the Hallelujah Chorus on an organ from which the power has been
shut off. With what accuracy his fingers travel the keys, who can
tell? Once Handel's soul, on fire with the passion of harmony, burned
itself into that composition. He wrote it upon his knees. But with
whatever agility the student's fingers follow the notes, no Hallelujah
Chorus comes from his organ to praise God and move men. So the record
of this matchless character handed to us in the gospels, like notes of
music meant to be played again, is but our despair, if we must attempt
its reproduction on a powerless organ. Our admiration for it is
external and ineffectual. We fall thereby into a static religion of
creed; we have no dynamic religion of progress and hope. This then is
the glorious message, where the Christian Gospel reaches its climax,
and which alone puts fullest meaning into Jesus' perfect life: _the
Spirit of God in Jesus made his quality; that same Spirit is
underground in our lives, striving to well up in characters like his,
until we live, yet not we, but Christ lives in us_.
Any spring day may serve to illustrate this faith. Where does the
restlessness in nature have its source? Every tree, in discontent,
hastens to make buds into leaves, and every blade of grass is
tremulous with impatient life. No tree, however, is a sufficient
explanation of its own haste and dissatisfaction; no flower has in
itself the secrets of its eager growth. The spirit of life is abroad,
and crowding itself everywhere on old, dead forms, is making them
bloom again. Explain then, the moral restlessness of our hearts in
other wise! We do ill, and are distraught with remorse until we repent
and make reparation. We attain money or talents, and are chased day
and night by the urgent call to their spiritual dedication. We conform
ourselves to decency and still hear a call for goodness beyond all
earthly need. We succeed as the world calls it, and we know that it is
failure; we fail as the world sees it, and our hearts sing for joy
because we know that we have succeeded. Everywhere we are confronted
with a pulsing life that longs to get itself expressed in us. We
cannot get away from God. He is not far, he is here. This Spirit, for
whom there is no better name than the Spirit of Jesus, is our
continual companion. We are locked in an enforced fellowship with him.
There is no friend with whom we deal more directly and continually
than with him. Every time we open an inspiring book and devoutly study
it, this Spirit is pleading for entrance. Every time we pray he stands
at the door and knocks. Every time some child in need, or some great
cause demanding sacrifice, lays claim on us, this Spirit is crying to
be let in. Men's hunger for food, their love for family and friends,
are not more direct, concrete, immediate experiences than our dealings
with this Spirit of the Lord. He is not only God the Father; he is
God the Spirit, striving to dwell in us and work through us.
Into a vital use of this relationship with the Divine, Christ opened
the way and multitudes have followed. He has taught men to find that
same resourcefulness in the spiritual world which science finds in the
physical. Every successful invention of a man like Edison involves a
twofold faith: that there is inexhaustible power in the universe and
that, with persistent patience and cooperation, there is no telling
what marvels yet may come from the employment of it. Faith is
science's flying column. It runs out into engineering, agriculture,
medicine, and refuses to limit the possibilities. Science is a
tremendous believer; it lives by faith that almost anything may yet be
done. Such a relationship Paul sustained with the Spirit. He was
confident of resources there, "exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think" (Eph. 3:20). He was a spiritual Edison, a believer in
the divine reality and power and their availability by faith in human
life.
Only such a Gospel is adequate to man's deepest need. Sin, whether its
forms be decent or obscene, cripples men's wills with the appalling
certainty that they are slaves. As a hypnotist draws imaginary circles
around his victims, across which they cannot step, so Sin, that
Svengali of the soul, whether in personal or social life, paralyzes
its dupes with disbelief in possibilities. To innumerable folk,
emprisoned by their fears and sins, Christ has been the Savior. He has
awakened that faith which, as he said, is the greatest mountain-mover
known to men. They have been "strengthened with power through his
Spirit in the inward man" (Eph. 3:16).
V
When one considers, as we have in these two chapters, what Christ has
meant in the experience of his people, little wonder can remain that
they have called him by such high names as have aroused man's
incredulity. For this Gospel of power has never been separable from
him, as though he were its historic fountain and could easily be
forgotten by those who far down-stream enjoyed the water. His
personality itself has been the inspiration of his people. At Marston
Moor, when the Puritans and Cavaliers were aligned for battle and all
was in readiness for conflict to begin, Oliver Cromwell came riding
across the plain. And the chronicler says that at the sight of him the
Puritans sent up a great victorious shout, as though their battle
already had been won. Some such effect our Lord has had on his
disciples. To explain that effect one would have to speak not so much
of his teaching as of himself--his character and purpose; nor so much
of them as of the Cross where all he taught and was came to a point of
flame that has set the world on fire. Christ was the
"nerve o'er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of the earth."
He suffered with man and for man, he uniquely embodied in his own
experience the universal law that the consequences of sin fall in part
on the one who loves the sinner and tries to save him; and in that
sacrifice his work for man was consummated, and his influence over man
confirmed. When his people have bowed before him in unutterable
devotion they have been thinking not only of what he has done for
them, but of what it cost him to do it.
Why, therefore, should we wonder that his disciples at their best have
called Jesus divine? His first followers began with no abstract ideas
of deity; they began with "the man, Christ Jesus" (I Tim. 2:5). They
had no idea at the first that he was more. His bodily and mental life
had obeyed the laws of normal human development, advancing "in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God and men" (Luke 2:52). He hungered
after his temptation, thirsted on the Cross, slept from weariness
while the boat tossed in a storm, and exhausted, sat beside the well.
Like other men he had elevated hours of great rejoicing; times when
compassion moved him to tears, as when he saw a multitude unshepherded
or, swinging round the brow of Olivet, beheld Jerusalem; and hours of
hot indignation, too, as when he found his Father's house a den of
thieves or spoke out his heart against the Pharisees. He asked
questions, and was astonished, now at the people's lack of faith,
again at the centurion's excess of it. His fellowship with God was
nourished by secret prayer, his power replenished by retreat to quiet
places for communion, and all his life was lived, his temptations
faced, his troubles borne, and his work done in a spirit of humble,
filial dependence on his Father.
Thus real and human, a sharer in their limitations, their sorrows, and
their moral trials, the first disciples saw the Master. But ever as
they lived with him, whether in physical presence or in spiritual
fellowship, he wrought in them a Savior's work. He became to them
manhood indeed, but manhood plus. He grew in their apprehension, as
though a boy had thought an ocean's inlet were a lake enclosed, and
now discovers that it is the sea itself, and all its tides the pulse
of the great deep. How should they name this greatness in their Lord?
They were not utterly without a clue, for he himself had introduced
them to the life divine. They had learned through him to say about
themselves that they were temples in which God dwelt (II Cor. 6:16),
that God abode in them (I John 4:12), that he stood ever waiting to
come in (Rev. 3:20), and that the possession of the divine nature was
the Gospel's promise (II Pet. 1:4). By what other element in their
experience could they interpret the greatness of their Lord? It might
be inadequate, but it was the best they had. They rose to understand
the divine life in him from the experience of the divine life in
themselves. "God was in Christ," they said. They never dreamed of
claiming equality with him. Like pools beside the sea, they understood
the ocean's quality from their own. There are not two kinds of
sea-water; nor, with one God, can there be two kinds of divine life.
But so understanding the sea, shall the pool claim equality with it?
Rather, the sea has deeps, tides, currents, and relationships with the
world's life that no pool can ever know. So Christ was at once their
brother and their Lord. He was real, because they interpreted his life
divine from the foregleams of God's presence in themselves. He was
adorable, because he was an ocean to their landlocked pools, and they
waited for his tides.
Only by some such road as these first disciples trod can men come to a
vital understanding of the Lord. Nothing but _experience_ can give us
a living estimate of anything; without that theory is vain. Let a man
live with the Master's manhood until it grows luminous and through it
he sees the character of God; let a man avail himself of the Master's
saviorhood until forgiven and empowered he finds the "life that is
life indeed"; let a man grow in the experience of God's presence until
he knows not only the God without but the God within; and then if he
rises to estimate his Lord, he will not hesitate to see in Jesus the
incarnate presence of the living God. After that, theology may help or
hinder him, according as it is wise and vital or cold and formal; but
with theology or not, he knows the heart of the New Testament's
attitude toward Jesus. He understands why the first Christians summed
up their faith as "believing in the Lord Jesus Christ."
[8] Moffatt's translation.
[9] Moffatt's translation.