1 Corinthians 1:11-13

THE UNIVERSAL CHRIST

‘There are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided?’

1 Corinthians 1:11

The one hope of our nation lies in the faithful allegiance to the living Christ. This is a lesson which He Himself inculcated again and again—that all His people must live in His Divine love—as the branch lives by the sap of the trunk, and as the members of the body live by the beating of the heart. And in nineteen centuries of the Christian era all that the human mind has ever known of best and of greatest has been derived from Him. I see no dangers to Christianity except such as arise from the errors of Christians. But, though Christianity can never be finally overthrown, it may be temporarily overthrown. It may suffer a collapse, disastrous, indeed, to those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth.

I. If we would uphold the cause of Christ we must learn humbly to study for ourselves His own words and His own clear will.—We must take our ideas from Him, and not from the fuglemen of our party. It is quite possible to mistake and to misunderstand Him grievously, even as His own Apostles did. They faithfully record for us their failures. Christ was too large, too Divine, too loving, too universal, too eternal, for their finite souls. If even the Apostles misunderstood Him, do you think there is now no danger that we, who too often suffer so little with Him, do so little for Him, listen so little in solitude to His still small voice—do you think that there is no danger that we should misunderstand Him?

II. The Lord Christ is the universal Christ; the Christ not of one party, but of all; not of one Church, but of all; not of one race, but of all; not of one Christian, but of all. The fatal tendency of Christians is to monopolise Christ, to talk and to act as though Christ were divided, as though they alone could speak of Him with infallible knowledge. It is a deadly error, the daughter of selfishness, the mother of bigotry, strife, and persecution, the source of continual weakness, the disintegration of Christianity into wrangling and squabbling sects. It springs from the stronghold of Satan, disguised as an angel of light. When these Corinthians, the most conceited and self-asserting of all St. Paul’s converts, said, ‘I am of Christ,’ they meant to throw at every other Christian the taunt, ‘You are not of Christ.’ And how often do we hear Christians talk as though Christ were theirs and no one else’s! as though all except themselves were all quite wrong and mistaken. No man, no sect, no church, has a right itself to claim Christ, or His forgiveness, or the merits of His redeeming love as its special and peculiar, still less its exclusive, possession.

III. Why was St. Paul so indignant with those Christians who described themselves, ‘I am of Christ’?—Why did he think them sufficiently rebuked by the question, ‘Is Christ divided’? It is for this reason, that with all the selfishness of the religious mind they were trying to set up a Christian party of unchristian men. They were turning orthodoxy into the factiousness which is expressed in the New Testament by the word translated ‘heresy’; they were trying to emblazon the Name of Christ on the ignoble banner of a party instead of on the glorious Semper eadem of the universal Church. They were narrowing the Divine universality of Christ, as though they were the oracles, and orthodoxy should die with them, and the angels had never sung, ‘Peace on earth, and good will towards men.’ Two men went into the Temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, the other a publican, and which did Christ rebuke? In true Christianity there is nothing of this pettiness or ignorant individualism. Christianity is as universal as our Christ, and he who lives or talks or writes as though it were other than this, whatever may be his pretensions, however loudly he may reiterate, ‘Lord, Lord,’ has neither learnt the most elementary of Christ’s lessons, which is the lesson of Christian love, nor acquired the sweetest of the virtues which He inculcated, which is a humble and a childlike mind. Therefore, let not Christ be a Christ claimed exclusively by our sect or claimed solely by ourselves. Let Him indeed be the Lord, the Christ of us individually. He it is Who, amidst the noise and jostling of the world, is our one Friend in all our faithlessness, the One to forgive in all our sinning.

IV. As a plain practical conclusion, I would say, while with contrite hearts and scarce uplifted eyes we may say in our own solitude of trust, ‘I hope that I am of Christ, if only He will pardon the very best of what I am,’ let us be wary of saying in an arrogant and exclusive sense, ‘I am Christ’s.’ Let us be wary of that miserable spirit which degrades the grandeur of Christianity. We are not the only sound or the only orthodox persons. All from whom we differ are neither so deep in darkness nor so flooded with error as our conceit fancies. You cannot ruin Christianity more thoroughly than by stamping it with bigotry and hatred. You have no right to brand with heresy every difference between your brother’s creed and your own. There is only one heresy which verges on the pardonable, which is—hatred. Wouldst thou be a Christian? Then lay aside the rags of self-righteousness, and thy badges of party, thy envy and bitterness and strife. Ceremonial observances are not religion. Multiplied services are not religion. Long prayers are not religion. Orthodoxy of creed is not religion. These are but parts of religion—elements of religion. To this or that man they may seem as religion, but ‘to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world’—that is religion. Righteousness and peace and joy in believing—that is religion, and to do the things which Christ says—that is religion, and all the charities which bind man to man and that blend the nations of the world—these are religion; and this is religion, to love God with all our hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves; and this is religion, to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.

—Dean Farrar.

Illustration

‘Our condition is full of anomalies; we deprecate divisions; we hold our episcopal government as the best, and wonder why it is not so received. We try a theory which shall explain the success of the Gospel with the fact of our unhappy divisions. But as to the fruits, we are perplexed by what we see. A man goes to an island where the population are lepers; he stays with them, serves them, gives them hope in that lowest depth of trouble. He takes the disease; that was sure beforehand. He will die; that, too, is true. He asks only that others may be sent out to help them; this one is a Roman Catholic priest. In a Fijian island missionaries have extirpated cannibalism. There is fear of a relapse; victims are prepared. A woman crosses the strait, persuades, rebukes in her Master’s Name; brings back safe in her boat the lives of the victims and her own life. That was a Wesleyan. Another went to the Dark Continent, where the task of this century lies; was prostrated with fever, came home with zeal unquenched, went out again, and perished by the sword; that martyr was an Anglican Bishop. We do not feel able to discuss their relative positions in the Church of God, nor where error lies. Such grand actions stir the blood and moisten the eyes, and dispose us to praise Grid for His goodness. May He spread the infection of that holy courage!’