1 Corinthians 9:20-23

COMPREHENSIVE CHRISTIANITY

‘Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; … and this I do for the Gospel’s sake.’

1 Corinthians 9:20

While never sacrificing for an instant truth or principle, yet, so far as truth and principle admitted it, St. Paul wore the guise and spoke in the accents of the persons whom he addressed.

I. The comprehensive character of Christianity may be seen—

(a) In its documents. The history of our Lord is, of course, the foundation of Christianity. Yet this history has been transmitted to us, not by one, but by four distinct authors, who evidently write from four distinct points of view and address distinct classes of readers. Are such differences merely a matter of curiosity? If God had desired to teach a Christian minister in the most emphatic manner that he should study the age, the characters, the society with which he has to deal, how could He have done it otherwise?

(b) In the precepts of the Gospel. They bear the same stamp of comprehensiveness. How broadly they are stated, and with an obvious avoidance of those particulars which might limit and restrain the application of them!

(c) In the great doctrines of the Gospel. The Fatherhood of God in Christ; the Incarnation, whereby the Eternal Son has condescended to the level of our sympathies, and enters into brotherhood with the whole human family; the blessed sacrifice of the Cross, meeting those guilty fears of conscience which lurk in the dark cavern of every human bosom; the gift of the Spirit meeting that weakness of the will which every man experiences in the path of duty; the brotherhood of men in Christ’s Church, and the resurrection in incorruption of that body whose infirmities so weigh down the spirit; these are evidently doctrines whose import is as wide as the race of mankind, and which correspond to the instincts of the human heart, in whatever climate, or under whatever outward garb, it beats.

II. How should this character of the Gospel determine the conduct of clergy in setting it forth?—In the first place, it is vain to hope to revive any type of Christianity which has obviously had its day, done its work, and passed away. But to pass from negative to positive counsels, what are the chief religious characteristics and requirements of our day? and in what form must the Christian minister attempt to meet them?

(a) It is an age of superficial knowledge on the subject of religion. The Christian minister must not content himself with a few Sunday platitudes; he must endeavour to make himself a man of erudition as opposed to flimsy knowledge, and a man of thought as opposed to superficiality.

(b) Our Lord bids us bring forth out of our treasury things new and old—old in the substance which must always abide, new in the form which ever changes with time and the manners of men. But mark the emphatic words, ‘His treasury.’ It is not from any repository of truth external to ourselves; it is not from the Fathers, it is not from the Prayer Book, it is not from the Holy Scriptures themselves, except as all these are appropriated by us and made the nourishment of our own spiritual life, that we are to bring forth a portion to feed the flock of God which is among us. Every truth which we are to dole out to our people must first have been wrought into our inner man by prayer, by the discipline of affliction and self-denial; and it may be by many a sore struggle upon our knees against besetting sins. No amount of learning in a Christian minister can for a moment compensate for the absence of an experimental religion.

—Dean Goulburn.

Illustration

‘St. Matthew gives us the Hebrew view of Christ, and is large, therefore, in his allusions to the Old Testament, and in his references to prophecy. St. Mark—a Roman, perhaps, by birth—(at all events, this view seems much more probable than that which identifies him with the John Mark of the Acts) gives us the same story, cast into a Roman mould of thought. He employs Latin words cast in a Grecised form, and adopts throughout a compressed style with the copiousness of vivid detail, which, according to the excellent remark of a modern writer, much reminds us of Cæsar’s commentaries. St. Luke, evidently a Greek proselyte, and known from Scripture itself as the associate of St. Paul, writes, like the two former evangelists, in accordance with his circumstances and position. He opens his narrative in the style of the classical historians, and his language is notoriously purer than that of the other evangelists. St. John, finally, is the evangelist of devout contemplation. He addresses himself particularly to readers of a speculative rather than an historical cast, portraying more the mind that was in Christ than the incidents of his career.’