'But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent
beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds
should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in
Christ.'--2 COR. xi. 3.
The Revised Version, amongst other alterations, reads, 'the simplicity
that is _towards_ Christ.'
The inaccurate rendering of the Authorised Version is responsible for a
mistake in the meaning of these words, which has done much harm. They
have been supposed to describe a quality or characteristic belonging to
Christ or the Gospel; and, so construed, they have sometimes been made
the watchword of narrowness and of intellectual indolence. 'Give us the
simple Gospel' has been the cry of people who have thought themselves to
be evangelical when they were only lazy, and the consequence has been
that preachers have been expected to reiterate commonplaces, which have
made both them and their hearers listless, and to sink the educational
for the evangelistic aspect of the Christian teacher's function.
It is quite true that the Gospel is simple, but it is also true that it
is deep, and they will best appreciate its simplicity who have most
honestly endeavoured to fathom its depth. When we let our little
sounding lines out, and find that they do not reach the bottom, we begin
to wonder even more at the transparency of the clear abyss. It is not
simplicity _in_ Christ, but _towards_ Christ of which the Apostle is
speaking; not a quality in Him, but a quality in _us_ towards Him. I
wish, then, to turn to the two thoughts that these words suggest. First
and chiefly, the attitude towards Christ which befits our relation to
Him; and, secondly and briefly, the solicitude for its maintenance.
I. First, then, look at the attitude towards Christ which befits the
Christian relation to Him.
The word 'simplicity' has had a touch of contempt associated with it. It
is a somewhat doubtful compliment to say of a man that he is
'simple-minded.' All noble words which describe great qualities get
oxidised by exposure to the atmosphere, and rust comes over them, as
indeed all good things tend to become deteriorated in time and by use.
But the notion of the word is really a very noble and lofty one. To be
'without a fold,' which is the meaning of the Greek word and of its
equivalent 'simplicity,' is, in one aspect, to be transparently honest
and true, and in another to be out and out of a piece. There is no
underside of the cloth, doubled up beneath the upper which shows, and
running in the opposite direction; but all tends in one way. A man with
no under-currents, no by-ends, who is down to the very roots what he
looks, and all whose being is knit together and hurled in one direction,
without reservation or back-drawing, that is the 'simple' man whom the
Apostle means. Such simplicity is the truest wisdom; such simplicity of
devotion to Jesus Christ is the only attitude of heart and mind which
corresponds to the facts of our relation to Him. That relation is set
forth in the context by a very sweet and tender image, in the true line
of scriptural teaching, which in many a place speaks of the Bride and
Bridegroom, and which on its last page shows us the Lamb's wife
descending from Heaven to meet her husband. The state of devout souls
and of the community of such here on earth is that of betrothal. Their
state in heaven is that of marriage. Very beautiful it is to see how
this fiery Paul, like the ascetic John, who never knew the sacred joys
of that state, lays hold of the thought of the Bridegroom and the Bride,
and of his individual relation to both as indicating the duties of the
Church and the solicitude of the Apostle. He says that he has been the
intermediary who, according to Oriental custom, arranged the
preliminaries of the marriage, and brought the bride to the bridegroom,
and, as the friend of the latter, standing by rejoices greatly to hear
the bridegroom's voice, and is solicitous mainly that in the tremulous
heart of the betrothed there should be no admixture of other loves, but
a whole-hearted devotion, an exclusive affection, and an absolute
obedience. 'I have espoused you,' says he, 'to one husband that I may
present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest . . . your mind
should be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards Him.'
Now that metaphor carries in its implication all that anybody can say
about the exclusiveness, the depth, the purity, the all-pervasiveness of
the dependent love which should knit us to Jesus Christ. The same
thought of whole-hearted, single, absolute devotion is conveyed by
other Scripture metaphors, the _slave_ and the _soldier_ of Christ. But
all that is repellent or harsh in these is softened and glorified when
we contemplate it in the light of the metaphor of my text.
So I might leave it to do its own work, but I may perhaps be allowed to
follow out the thought in one or two directions.
The attitude, then, which corresponds to our relation to Jesus Christ is
that, first, of a faith which looks to Him exclusively as the source of
salvation and of light. The specific danger which was alarming Paul, in
reference to that little community of Christians in Corinth, was one
which, in its particular form, is long since dead and buried. But the
principles which underlay it, the tendencies to which it appealed, and
the perils which alarmed Paul for the Corinthian Church, are perennial.
He feared that these Judaising teachers, who dogged his heels all his
life long, and whose one aim seemed to be to build upon his foundation
and to overthrow his building, should find their way into this church
and wreck it. The keenness of the polemic, in this and in the contextual
chapters, shows how real and imminent the danger was. Now what they did
was to tell people that Jesus Christ had a partner in His saving work.
They said that obedience to the Jewish law, ceremonial and other, was a
condition of salvation, along with trust in Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
And because they thus shared out the work of salvation between Jesus
Christ and something else, Paul thundered and lightened at them all his
life, and, as he tells us in this context, regarded them as preaching
another Jesus, another spirit, and another gospel. That particular error
is long dead and buried.
But is there nothing else that has come into its place? Has this old
foe not got a new face, and does not it live amongst us as really as it
lived then? I think it does; whether in the form of the grosser kind of
sacramentarianism and ecclesiasticism which sticks sacraments and a
church in front of the Cross, or in the form of the definite denial that
Jesus Christ's death on the Cross is the one means of salvation, or
simply in the form of the coarse, common wish to have a finger in the
pie and a share in the work of saving oneself, as a drowning man will
sometimes half drown his rescuer by trying to use his own limbs. These
tendencies that Paul fought, and which he feared would corrupt the
Corinthians from their simple and exclusive reliance on Christ, and
Christ alone, as the ground and author of their salvation, are perennial
in human nature, and we have to be on our guard for ever and for ever
against them. Whether they come in organised, systematic, doctrinal
form, or whether they are simply the rising in our own hearts of the old
Adam of pride and self-trust, they equally destroy the whole work of
Christ, because they infringe upon its solitariness and uniqueness. It
is not Christ and anything else. Men are not saved by a syndicate. It is
Jesus Christ alone, and 'beside Him there is no Saviour.' You go into a
Turkish mosque and see the roof held up by a forest of slim pillars. You
go into a cathedral chapter-house and see one strong support in the
centre that bears the whole roof. The one is an emblem of the Christless
multiplicity of vain supports, the other of the solitary strength and
eternal sufficiency of the one Pillar on which the whole weight of a
world's salvation rests, and which lightly bears it triumphantly aloft.
'I fear lest your minds be corrupted from the simplicity' of a
reasonable faith directed towards Christ.
And in like manner He is the sole light and teacher of men as to God,
themselves, their duty, their destinies and prospects. He, and He alone,
brings these things to light. His word, whether it comes from His lips
or from the deeds which are part of His revelation, or from the voice of
the Spirit which takes of His and speaks to the ages through His
apostles, should be 'the end of all strife.' What He says, and all that
He says, and nothing else than what He says, is the creed of the
Christian. He, and He only, is 'the light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.' In this day of babblements and confusions, let
us listen for the voice of Christ and accept all which comes from Him,
and let the language of our deepest hearts be, 'Lord, to whom shall we
go? Thou only hast the words of eternal life.'
Again, our relation to Jesus Christ demands exclusive love to Him.
'Demands' is an ugly word to bracket with love. We might say, and
perhaps more truly, permits or privileges. It is the joy of the
betrothed that her duty is to love, and to keep her heart clear from all
competing affections. But it is none the less her duty because it is her
joy. What Christ is to you, if you are a Christian, and what He longs to
be to us all, whether we are Christians or not, is of such a character
as that the only fitting attitude of our hearts to Him in response is
that of exclusive affection. I do not mean that we are to love nothing
but Him, but I mean that we are to love all things else in Him, and
that, if any creature so delays or deflects our love as that either it
does not pass, by means of the creature, into the presence of the
Christ, or is turned away from the Christ by the creature, then we have
fallen beneath the sweet level of our lofty privilege, and have won for
ourselves the misery due to distracted and idolatrous hearts. Love to
one who has done what He has done for us is in its very nature
exclusive, and its exclusiveness is all-pervasive exclusiveness. The
centre diamond makes the little stones set round it all the more
lustrous. We must love Jesus Christ all in all or not at all. Divided
love incurs the condemnation that falls heavily upon the head of the
faithless bride.
Dear friends, the conception of the essence of religion as being love is
no relaxation, but an increase, of its stringent requirements. The more
we think of that sweet bond as being the true union of the soul with
God, who is its only rest and home, the more reasonable and imperative
will appear the old commandment, 'Thou shalt love Him with all thy
heart, and soul, and strength, and mind.'
But, further, our relation to Jesus Christ is such as that nothing short
of absolute obedience to His commandment corresponds to it. There must
be the simplicity, the single-mindedness that thus obeys, obeys swiftly,
cheerfully, constantly. In all matters His command is my law, and, as
surely as I make His command my law, will He make my desire His motive.
For He Himself has said, in words that bring together our obedience to
His will and His compliance with our wishes, in a fashion that we should
not have ventured upon unless He had set us an example, 'If ye love Me,
keep My commandments. If ye ask anything in My name I will do it.' The
exclusive love that binds us, by reason of our faith in Him alone, to
that Lord ought to express itself in unhesitating, unfaltering,
unreserved, and unreluctant obedience to every word that comes from His
mouth.
These brief outlines are but the poorest attempt to draw out what the
words of my text imply. But such as they are, let us remember that they
do set forth the only proper response of the saved man to the saving
Christ. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' Anything short of a faith that
rests on Him alone, of a love that knits itself to His single,
all-sufficient heart, and of an obedience that bows the whole being to
the sweet yoke of His commandment is an unworthy answer to the Love that
died, and that lives for us all.
II. And now I have only time to glance at the solicitude for the
maintenance of this exclusive single-mindedness towards Christ.
Think of what threatens it. I say nothing about the ferment of opinion
in this day, for one man that is swept away from a thorough
whole-hearted faith by intellectual considerations, there are a dozen
from whom it is filched without their knowing it, by their own
weaknesses and the world's noises. And so it is more profitable that we
should think of the whole crowd of external duties, enjoyments,
sweetnesses, bitternesses, that solicit us, and would seek to draw us
away. Who can hear the low voice that speaks peace and wisdom when
Niagara is roaring past his ears? 'The world is too much with us, late
and soon. Buying and selling we lay waste our powers,' and break
ourselves away from our simple devotion to that dear Lord. But it is
possible that we may so carry into all the whirl the central peace, as
that we shall not be disturbed by it; and possible that 'whether we eat
or drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all to His glory,' so that we
can, even in the midst of our daily pressing avocations and cares be
keeping our hearts in the heavens, and our souls in touch with our Lord.
But it is not only things without that draw us away. Our own weaknesses
and waywardnesses, our strong senses, our passions, our desires, our
necessities, all these have a counteracting force, which needs continual
watchfulness in order to be neutralised. No man can grasp a stay, which
alone keeps him from being immersed in the waves, with uniform tenacity,
unless every now and then he tightens his muscles. And no man can keep
himself firmly grasping Jesus Christ without conscious effort directed
to bettering his hold.
If there be dangers around us, and dangers within us, the discipline
which we have to pursue in order to secure this uniform, single-hearted
devotion is plain enough. Let us be vividly conscious of the
peril--which is what some of us are not. Let us take stock of ourselves
lest creeping evil may be encroaching upon us, while we are all
unaware--which is what some of us never do. Let us clearly contemplate
the possibility of an indefinite increase in the closeness and
thoroughness of our surrender to Him--a conviction which has faded away
from the minds of many professing Christians. Above all, let us find
time or make time for the patient, habitual contemplation of the great
facts which kindle our devotion. For if you never think of Jesus Christ
and His love to you, how can you love Him back again? And if you are so
busy carrying out your own secular affairs, or pursuing your own
ambitions, or attending to your own duties, as they may seem to be, that
you have no time to think of Christ, His death, His life, His Spirit,
His yearning heart over His bride, how can it be expected that you will
have any depth of love to Him? Let us, too, wait with prayerful patience
for that Divine Spirit who will knit us more closely to our Lord.
Unless we do so, we shall get no happiness out of our religion, and it
will bring no praise to Christ or profit to ourselves. I do not know a
more miserable man than a half-and-half Christian, after the pattern of,
I was going to say, the ordinary average of professing Christians of
this generation. He has religion enough to prick and sting him, and not
enough to impel him to forsake the evil which yet he cannot comfortably
do. He has religion enough to 'inflame his conscience,' not enough to
subdue his will and heart. How many of my hearers are in that condition
it is for them to settle. If we are to be Christian men at all, let us
be it out and out. Half-and-half religion is no religion.
'One foot in sea, and one on shore;
To one thing constant never!'
That is the type of thousands of professing Christians. 'I fear lest by
any means your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is towards
Christ.'