“What shall I do to
inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25).
The question was framed
by a professional theologian to test the orthodoxy of the great Rabbi of
Nazareth. Evidently it was rumored that the new Teacher was telling the people
of a short road to heaven.
The answer given was
clear:eternal life is the reward and goal of a perfect life on earth—perfect
love to God and man.
This being so, no one but a
Pharisee or a fool could dream of inheriting eternal life. The practical
question that concerns every one of us is whether God has provided a way by
which men who are not perfect, but sinful, can be saved. The answer to
this question is hidden in the parable by which the Lord silenced his
interrogator’s quibble, “Who is my neighbor?”
Here is the story from
Luke 10:30-35:A traveler on the downward road to the city of the curse
(Jericho) fell among thieves, who robbed and wounded him and flung him down,
half dead, by the wayside. First, a priest came that way, and then a Levite,
who looked at him and passed on. Why a priest and a Levite? Did the Lord intend
to throw contempt upon religion and the law? That is quite incredible. No, but
He wished to teach what, even after 19 centuries of Christianity, not one
person in a thousand seems to know, that law and religion can do nothing for a
ruined and dead sinner. A sinner needs a Saviour, and so the Lord brings
the Samaritan upon the scene.
But why a Samaritan? Just
because “Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans” (John 4:9). Except as a
last resource, no Jew would accept deliverance from such a quarter. Sin not
only spells danger and death to the sinner, but it alienates the heart from
God. Nothing but a sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness will lead him
to throw himself, with abject self-renunciation, at the feet of Christ.
It is not that man by
nature is necessarily vicious or immoral. It is chiefly in the spiritual sphere
that the effects of the Eden Fall declare themselves. Under human teaching the
Fall becomes an adequate excuse for a sinful life. But the Word of God declares
that men are “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). Although “those who are in the flesh
cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8), they can lead clean, honest, and honorable lives.
The “cannot” is not in the moral, but in the spiritual sphere. For “the
mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of
God” (Rom. 8:7,8).
This affords a clue to
the essential character of sin. In the lowest classes of the community sin is
but another word for crime. At a higher level in the social scale it is
regarded as equivalent to vice. In a still higher sphere the element of impiety
is taken into account. But all this is arbitrary and false. Crime, vice,
and impiety are unquestionably sinful; but yet the most upright, moral, and
religious of men may be the greatest of sinners upon earth.
Why state this
hypothetically? It is a fact; witness the life and character of Saul of
Tarsus. Were the record not accredited by Paul the inspired apostle, we might
well refuse to believe that such blamelessness, piety, and zeal were ever
attained by mortal man. Why then does the apostle call himself the chief of
sinners? In the presence of those to whom he was well known, he could say, “I
have lived before God in all good conscience until this day” (Acts 23:1). With
reference to his past life, he could write, “As touching the righteousness
which is in the law, found blameless” (Phil. 3:6).
Was this an outburst of
wild exaggeration of the kind to which pious folk of an hysterical turn are
addicted? No, it was the sober acknowledgment of the well-known principle that
privilege increases responsibility and deepens guilt.
According to the
“humanity gospel,” which is today supplanting the Gospel of Christ in so many
pulpits, Paul was a model saint. In the judgment of God he was a model sinner.
Just because he had, as judged by men, attained preeminence in saintship,
divine grace taught him to own his preeminence in sin. With all his zeal for
God and fancied godliness, he awoke to find that he was a blasphemer. And what
a blasphemer! Who would care a straw what a Jerusalem mob thought of the Rabbi
of Nazareth? But who would not be influenced by the opinion of Gamaliel’s great
disciple?
An infidel has said that
“Thou shalt not steal” is merely the language of the hog in the clover to warn
off the hogs outside the fence. And this reproach attaches to all mere human
conceptions of sin. Men judge of sin by its results and their estimate of its
results is colored by their own interests. But all such conceptions of sin are
inadequate. Definitions are rare in Scripture, but sin is there defined for us.
It may show itself in transgression, or in failing to come up to a standard.
But essentially it is lawlessness. This means, not transgression of law, nor
absence of law, but revolt against law—in a word, self-will. This is the very
essence of sin. The perfect life was the life of Him who never did His own
will, but only and always the will of God. All that is short of this, or
different from this, is characterized as sin.
Here it is not a
question of acts merely, but of the mind and heart. Man’s whole nature is at
fault. Even human law recognizes this principle. In the case of ordinary crime
we take the rough and ready method of dealing with men for what they do. But
not so in crime of the highest kind. Treason consists in the hidden thought of
the heart. Overt acts of disloyalty or violence are not the crime, but merely
the evidence of the crime. The crime is the purpose of which such acts give
proof. Men cannot read the heart; they can judge of the purpose only by words
and acts. But it is not so with God. In His sight the treason of the human
heart is manifest, and no outward acts are needed to declare it.
The truest test of a man
is not conduct, but character; not what he does, but what he is. Human judgment
must, of course, be guided by a man’s acts and words. But God is not thus
limited. Man judges character by conduct; God judges conduct by character.
Therefore it is that “what is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the
sight of God” (Luke 16:15).
This brings us back to
the case of Paul. Under the influence of environment, and following his natural
bent, he took to religion as another man might take to vice. Religion was his
specialty, and the result was a splendid success. Here was the case of a man
who really did his best, and whose “best” was a record achievement. But what
was God’s judgment of it all? What was his own, when he came to look back on it
from the cross of Christ? Surveying the innumerable hosts of the sinners of
mankind, he says, “of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15). Because his
unrivaled “proficiency” in religion had raised him to the very highest pinnacle
of privilege and responsibility, this proved him to be the most wicked of men.
But “I obtained mercy,”
he adds. He was twice granted mercy, first in receiving
salvation, and next in being called to the apostleship. The mercy of his
salvation was only because “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”
(1 Timothy 1:15). He had no other plea.
The apostle Paul’s case
only illustrates the principle of divine judgment, as proclaimed by the Lord
Himself in language of awful solemnity. The most terrible doom recorded in Old
Testament history was that which engulfed the cities of the plain. Yet the Lord
declared that a still more dire doom awaited the cities which had been
specially favored by His presence and ministry on earth. The sin of Sodom we know. But what had Capernaum done? Religion flourished there. It was “exalted to
heaven” by privilege, and there is no suggestion that evil practices prevailed.
The exponents of the “humanity gospel,” now in popular favor, would have deemed
it a model community. They would tell us, moreover, that if Sodom was really
destroyed by a storm of fire and brimstone, it was Jewish ignorance which
attributed the catastrophe to their cruel Jehovah God. The kind, good Jesus of their
enlightened theology would have far different thoughts about Capernaum!
“But I say unto you,”
was the Lord’s last warning to that seemingly happy and peaceful community, “it
shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for
you” (Matt. 11:24).
What, then, we may well
ask, had Capernaum done? So far, as the record tells us, absolutely nothing.
Had there been flagrant immorality, or active hostility, the Lord would not
have made His home there; nor would it have come to be called “His own city”
(Matt. 4:13; 9:1; Mark 2:1). Had there been aggressive unbelief, the “mighty
works” which He wrought so lavishly among its people would have been
restrained. Thoroughly respectable and religious folk they evidently were. But
“they repented not”; that was all.
That such people should
be deemed guiltier than Sodom, and that the champion religionist of His own age
should rank as the greatest sinner of any age, here is an enigma that is
insoluble if we ignore the Eden Fall—the teaching of Scripture as to the
essential character of sin. It was not that these men, knowing God, rejected
Him, but that they did not know Him. “He was in the world, and the world was
made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” “But,” the record adds, “as many as
received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God.” On
receiving Him, or, in other words, on believing on His name, they were “born of
God” (John 1:10-13).
If sin were merely a
matter of wrong-doing, if it were not “in the blood,” if our very nature were
not spiritually corrupt and depraved by it, a new birth would be unnecessary. A
blind man does not see things in a wrong light; he cannot see them at all. And
man by nature is spiritually blind. He “cannot see the Kingdom of God,” much less enter it. He must be born again.
But there is more in sin
than this. It not only depraves the sinner, but it brings him under judgment.
Guilt attaches to it. Salvation, therefore, must be through redemption, and
redemption can only be by blood.
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On the cross hung the
one spotless, blessed Man, yet forsaken of God. What a fact before the world!
No wonder the sun was darkened—the central and splendid witness to God’s glory
in nature, when the Faithful and True Witness cried to His God and was not
heard. Forsaken of God! What does this mean? What part have I in the cross? One
single part—my sins! It baffles thought, that most solemn lonely hour
which stands aloof from all before or after.
J.N.
Darby