'Of whom I am chief.' Now, if we set what we know of the character of
Saul of Tarsus before he was a Christian by the side of that of many who
have won a bad supremacy in wickedness, the words seem entirely strange
and exaggerated. But, as I have often had to say, the principle of the
Apostle's estimate is to be found in his belief that, not the outward
manifestation of evil in specific acts of immorality, or flagrant
breaches of commandment, but the inward principle from which the deeds
flowed, is the measure of a man's criminality, and that, according to
the uniform teaching of Scripture, the very root of sin, and that which
is common to all the things that the world's conscience and ordinary
morality designate as wrong, is to be found here, that self has become
the centre, the aim, and the law instead of God. 'This is the
condemnation,' said Paul's Master--_not_ that men have done so-and-so
and so-and-so, but--'that light is come into the world, and men love
darkness.' That is the root of evil. 'When the Comforter is come,' said
Paul's Master, 'He will convince the world of sin.' Because they have
broken the commandments? Because they have been lustful, ambitious,
passionate, murderous, profligate, and so on? No! 'Because they believe
not in Me.'
The common root of all sin is alienation of heart and will from God. And
it is by the root, and not by the black clusters of poisonous berries
that have come from it, that men are to be judged. Here is the
mother-tincture. You may colour it in different ways, and you may
flavour it with different essences, and you will get a whole
_pharmacopoeia_ of poisons out of it. But the mother-poison of them
all is this, that men turn away from the light, which is God; and for
you and me is God in Christ.
So this man, looking back from the to-day of his present devotion and
love to the yesterdays of his hostility, avails himself indeed of the
palliation, 'I did it ignorantly, in unbelief,' but yet is smitten with
the consciousness that whilst as touching the righteousness that is of
the law he was blameless, his attitude to that incarnate love was such
as now, he thinks, stamps him as the worst of men.
Brethren, _there_ is the standard by which we have to try ourselves. If
we get down below the mere surface of acts, and think, not of what we
do, but of what we are, we shall then, at any rate, have in our hands
the means by which we can truly estimate ourselves.
But what have we to say about that word 'chief'? Is not that
exaggeration? Well, yes and no. For every man ought to know the weak and
evil places of his own heart better than he does those of any besides.
And if he does so know them, he will understand that the ordinary
classification of sin, according to the apparent blackness of the deed,
is very superficial and misleading. Obviously, the worst of acts need
not be done by the worst of men, and it does not at all follow that the
man who does the awful deed stands out from his fellows in the same bad
pre-eminence in which his deed stands out from theirs.
Take a concrete case. Go into the slums of Manchester, and take some of
the people there, battered almost out of the semblance of humanity, and
all crusted over and leprous with foul-smelling evils that you and I
never come within a thousand miles of thinking it possible that we
should do. Did you ever think that it is quite possible that the worst
harlot, thief, drunkard, profligate in your back streets may be more
innocent in their profligacy than you are in your respectability; and
that we may even come to this paradox, that the worse the act, as a
rule, the less guilty the doer? It is not such a paradox as it looks,
because, on the one hand, the presence of temptation, and, on the other
hand, the absence of light, make all the difference. And these people,
who could not have been anything else, are innocent in degradation as
compared with you, with all your education and culture, and
opportunities of going straight, and knowledge of Christ and His love.
The little transgressions that you do are far greater than the gross
ones that they do. 'But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford,'
said the old preacher, when he saw a man going to the scaffold. And you
and I, if we know ourselves, will not think that we have an instance of
exaggeration, but only of the object nearest seeming the largest, when
Paul said 'Of whom I am chief.'
Only go and look for your sin in the way they look for Guy Fawkes at the
House of Commons before the session. Take a dark lantern, and go down
into the cellars. And If you do not find something there that will take
all the conceit out of you, it must be because you are very
short-sighted, or phenomenally self-complacent.
What does it matter though there be vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius,
and bright houses nestling at its base, and beauty lying all around like
the dream of a god, if, when a man cranes his neck over the top of the
crater, he sees that that cone, so graceful on the outside, is seething
with fire and sulphur? Let us look down into the crater of our own
hearts, and what we see there may well make us feel as Paul did when he
said, 'Of whom I am chief.'
Now, such an estimate is perfectly consistent with a clear recognition
of any good that may be in the character and manifest in life. For the
same Paul who says, 'Of whom I am chief,' says, in the almost
contemporaneous letter sent to the same person, 'I have fought a good
fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith'; and he is the
same man who asserted, 'In nothing am I behind the very chiefest
apostles, though I be nothing.' The true Christian estimate of one's own
evil and sin does not in the least interfere with the recognition of
what God strengthens one to do, or of the progress which, by God's
grace, may have been made in holiness and righteousness. The two things
may lie side by side with perfect harmony, and ought to do so, in every
Christian heart.
But notice one more point. The Apostle does not say 'I _was_,' but 'I
_am_ chief.' What! A man who could say, in another connection, 'If any
man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature; old things are passed
away'--the man who could say, in another connection, 'I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I
live by the faith of the Son of God'--does he also say, 'I _am_ chief'?
Is he speaking about his present? Are old sins bound round a man's neck
for evermore? If they be, what is the meaning of the Gospel that Jesus
Christ redeems us from our sins? Well, he means this. No lapse of time,
nor any gift of divine pardon, nor any subsequent advancement in
holiness and righteousness, can alter the fact that I, the very same I
that am now rejoicing in God's salvation, am the man that did all these
things; and, in a very profound sense, they remain mine through all
eternity. I may be a forgiven sinner, and a cleansed sinner, and a
sanctified sinner, but I _am_ a sinner--not I _was_. The imperishable
connection between a man and his past, which may be so tragical, and,
thank God, may be so blessed, even in the case of remembered and
confessed sin, is solemnly hinted at in the words before us. We carry
with us ever the fact of past transgression, and no forgiveness, nor any
future 'perfecting of holiness in the fear' and by the grace 'of the
Lord' can alter that fact. Therefore, let us beware lest we bring upon
our souls any more of the stains which, though they be in a blessed and
sufficient sense blotted out, do yet leave the marks where they have
fallen for ever.