James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
1 Corinthians 1:23
THE MISSION AND MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH
‘We preach Christ crucified.’
It is of the last importance to the Church’s mission that her message never vary, but be the same identically with the message entrusted to her from the first, and taught to apostles and evangelists by the enlightening Spirit. We have in the text the keynote of that message, struck by the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
1. We preach ‘Christ.’—One of the most remarkable features in Christ’s own preaching was His assertion of Himself. He preached, as no other ever did, Himself. ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life’; ‘I am the Bread of Life’; ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me’; ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ We see in this a striking evidence of Christ’s Divine authority; but we see an intimation also given to those who thereafter should speak in His name as to the character of their message; it was to be an echo of His own, they were to be ambassadors coming with all authority in Christ’s name, and telling those to whom they came of a living Saviour, a living Teacher, a living Guide, a living Friend, and a living King, a Person invisible indeed to the eye of sense, but no mere abstraction or fond ideal, present in the world, claiming through His ambassadors the personal trust and love of all His children—a trust and a love leading to such response as that given by the Apostle, than whom none knew better or more happily the power of his own preaching. ‘I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.’
II. But our compendium of theology is not exhausted.—We preach, writes St. Paul, ‘Christ crucified’; Christ and a fact concerning Christ. ‘Crucified’—now the fact of Christ’s crucifixion is not stated here as one of the most important incidents in His career—but it is selected as the one fact which coupled with the Redeemer’s name shall comprise the theme of the Christian message. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ stands alone in the world’s history as a fact of momentous significance; it is full of doctrine. The Cross is the staff of that banner of infinite love which floats over a fallen world. If Christ be the centre of Christianity, the Cross is the centre of Christian dogma. If Christ be Christianity, the Cross is the Gospel. The mission of Jesus Christ was to bring sinful man to God, to bridge the gulf which sin had opened between the fallen children and their loving Father. Forgiveness of sins and peace with God and with conscience are the blessings which the Gospel proclaims to all who ponder the mystery of evil and know the plague of their own hearts; blessings pregnant with every other blessing of the Christian life. In imparting these blessings the Cross was ordained to be the instrument, the magnet of attraction for the sinner, the bridge by which he should pass over the chasm that severed him from God. Hence is the Cross bound up with all Christian teaching and theology.
III. There are two dangers against which we need to be equally on our guard.
(a) The one, by a too exclusive attention to doctrines to leave Christ out of His own Gospel.
(b) The other, to preach the historical Christ or the mystical Christ while His offices and work as they are set forth in Scripture and the creeds are overlooked.
Neither of these dangers should be overlooked, for they menace the growth and success of the Church of Christ, as well as the life and peace of individual souls. They call for the utmost vigilance on the part of all who labour for the advancement of the cause of Christ and the progress of His Kingdom.
—Bishop W. Walsh.
Illustration
‘It was at the Cross that the mercy and truth of God met together, that His righteousness and peace embraced one another, so that He could be just and yet the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus. It was on the Cross that the one great sacrifice for sins for ever was offered up. It was by the Cross that Jesus passed to His resurrection triumph over death and Hades. It was by the Cross that Jesus won His right to ascend His mediatorial throne, to sit at the right hand of the Father as the representative of redeemed humanity, and to pour down upon His Church the gifts of the eternal spirit. It was from the Cross pre-eminently that Jesus preached the doctrine of self-sacrifice and self-surrender which is of the essence of His teaching. At once an altar, a throne, and a teacher’s chair, the Cross gathers round itself every important doctrine of the Christian faith. God’s eternal purposes, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Atonement, the Mediatorial reign, the gifts of the Eternal Spirit, the present blessedness, the future glory of the Church, together with the deepest moral and spiritual lessons man can learn, all hang with the Redeemer on that tree of shame, and are all involved in that one word “crucified” as we apply it to Jesus Christ.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE POWER OF THE CROSS
There are five accounts of the Crucifixion in the New Testament: one in each Gospel, and the fifth in 1 St. Peter 2:21–25 The great painter, Rubens, has been criticised for his picture of the Crucifixion because he represents Golgotha as a garden of flowers. But surely Rubens was right, for the Holy Gospel tells us that in the place where Christ was crucified was a garden.
I. The sweetest, fairest flowers bloom beneath the Cross.—Faith, Hope, Love, all grow near the Cross. How many kind and loving hearts we have known, and if we asked them where they learned their kindness and their love, they would say they learned it all at the Cross.
II. The whole of the New Testament is signed with the sign of the Cross.—‘What need is there to say that the Cross of Christ is the great overshadowing theme of each of the four Gospels, all previous narrative being but a long approach and avenue to this? We seem to see the figure of each evangelist bent down from dawn to dusk, like a burdened conscientious gleaner in the awful harvest field of the Cross of Calvary. Nothing is said of His unique youth, nothing is left unsaid of His precious death and burial. The four evangelists, like four immortal artists, seem intent, as under a sacred vow, on giving every detail with infinite fidelity.’
III. Whenever there has been a great revival of real religion it has been ‘Christ crucified’ that has converted the sinner and restored the backslider and uplifted the believer.
—Rev. F. Harper.
Illustrations
(1) ‘One morning Dr. A. Whyte had been reading about the Cross, and he stooped down and whispered to his little boy of four years old who was at his knee: “Do you know what a cross is, my boy?” “Oh, yes, father,” was the reply; “it’s just the thing we climb on when we go to heaven.” Dr. Whyte was delighted. “Ah, my little boy,” he continued, “when you are as old a sinner as your father you’ll know experimentally the truth of your words.” ’
(2) ‘Daniel Rowlands, the great Welsh evangelist, first knew the power of the Gospel as he was one Sunday reading the Litany in the old Llangeitho Church. “When he was engaged one Sunday morning in reading the Church service, his mind was more than usually occupied with the prayers: an unexpected overwhelming force came upon his soul as he was praying in those most melting and evangelical words, “By Thine Agony and bloody Sweat, by Thy Cross and Passion, by Thy precious Death and Burial, by Thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Ghost.” As he uttered these words, a sudden amazing power seized his whole frame, and no sooner did it seize on him than it ran instantly, like an electrifying shock, through all the people in the church, so that many of them fell down on the ground they had been standing on in a large mass together, there being no pews in the church. His heart melted with love, amazement, and thanksgiving; similar feelings were immediately excited in all the people under this powerful impulse. Oh how did the dying love of Christ affect them all: they mourned and wept as they looked unto the Lamb of God suffering for their sins.” ’