the controversies of his day, and I’m not quite happy in disregarding that setting. For I am sure that if all Christians had given due attention to what St. Paul says in this place there would have been far less bickering and discord, and a great deal more charity in the Church life of the last 1900 years. But I think that this advice is not at the moment our most urgent need—especially on Young People’s Day. Therefore, we shall go at once to see what St. Paul says in this verse. Plainly, he is talking about the Kingdom of God.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
At this point I will state as clearly as I can what I want to do in this sermon. I am trying to answer the question—What is a Christian, and why be a Christian? You will see, I hope, as we go along, how clearly and decisively the text answers the questions. I want here to point out that it is an especially good thing that it speaks in terms of the Kingdom of God, and that for several reasons.
Firstly, it puts the emphasis in the right place; on God not on human beings. It is God’s kingdom not our kingdom. We live today in a world that is very definitely humankind’s world. We have seen a humanistic optimism grow into an humanistic despair. At first human beings were the crown of creation (creation without a creator) and then he was the bad child of the universe. At first we were committed to inevitable progress, then condemned to inevitable gloom, but always with humans in the middle of the pictures. That sort of imbalance has even at times invaded the Church, and we have had a human-centered Christianity. But we have finished with that now. And St. Paul never started with it.
The Christianity of the New Testament is a God-centered faith. It stood out in sharp contrast with all the people who were wrapped up in themselves and their own laws and rites. It cut its way through all the imposing erection of human organization, cleverness, and show. It turned people inside out, and upside down.
It does so still. For all of us are naturally more concerned with ourselves than with God. We do not in these days pride ourselves on the observance of the Jewish Law. But we do pride ourselves on decency, integrity, and uprightness. We make our religion consist of these attributes. But this is not New Testament Christianity. It has been said that religion is what human beings do with their solitariness, but Christian religion is not what people do with anything. It is what God does with us.
Secondly, this text speaks of God as King, and this is a much needed emphasis. It is not that other metaphors are all wrong, they are not. But what we need today is more people who will take God as King seriously. Many people will nod to him as an interesting acquaintance, showing a polite interest, a genial sympathy. But again, this is not the Christian faith. Christian faith has its center in God, and it treats him seriously as King. The Jews had a saying that Abraham made God King on earth. He had always been King in heaven, but he had never effectively been King on earth until a man arose who gave him the obedience due a King. God is only effectively King when he is given a loyal obedience. That is another reason why, in speaking of Christianity, it is a good thing to use the phrase Kingdom of God, or rule of God. Christianity means a lot else, but it certainly does mean making God King. It does mean that among all the challenging, conflicting loyalties of life one stands supreme, consistently predominant. It does mean (to use the title of a recent book) “we have our orders.”
Thirdly, The Kingdom of God reminds us that Christianity means that the supernatural that lies beyond and above the ordinary human possibilities of this world. The Kingdom of God is divine power from beyond. I remember when once, years ago, I heard a speaker define the genius of Methodism as its special otherworldliness. At the time I revolted against the idea. I didn’t want Methodism to be otherworldly. I was very interested in this world. Yet I am now quite convinced that what the speaker said was true. What the early Methodists got was something not of this world, and that is what Methodism has stood forever since.
Let me ground myself very carefully here. Methodist otherworldliness, Christian otherworldliness means very definitely life in this world, and life for this world, but it is life with motives and powers drawn from outside this world. I saw a factory the other day where all the work was done by an electric plant outside. When I was there, there was a terrific din going on; but I was told, “When you have your meeting, it will be quiet; the power will be switched off.” Christian otherworldliness means power from without bringing life, animation, purposeful existence to life inside the workaday world. So much for what this phrase Kingdom of God suggests about the meaning of Christianity. We have to go further. We are told two things about this Kingdom of God, this Christian faith. We are told what it is not, and what it is. First, the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.
NOT EATING AND DRINKING
Let us see carefully what that means. It does not mean that Christianity is not concerned about the ordinary items of daily life, like eating and drinking. Paul is talking about precisely such problems here. It does not mean that the Christian faith is a delicate spiritual piety that has no bearing on the gross necessity of animal flesh. It has.
What it does mean is this. Paul is not talking about eating and drinking in general, he is talking about laws of eating and drinking. And he says that Christianity has nothing to do with that. Now these laws were very real in Paul’s day, and so they are today with some people. I have been to tea with a good friend of mine when no tea has been made. Either we had coffee out of a thermos flask, or a cold drink. Why? Because he was a Jew, and could not work, make a fire, on the Sabbath day when I had gone to see him.
That sort of thing of course does not touch us. We boil our kettles and eat what we please (or what the shopkeepers happen to have in) on any day we like. But that does not mean that what St. Paul says is out of date. It has never been more in date than it is now. For a really dreadful number of people today are making the mistake some of St. Paul’s friends made. They think that Christianity is a set of rules and that to be a Christian means to keep all the rules. Nothing of course could be further from the truth.
“Our rules are of course different rules, but they are rules—rules of good conduct, decency. We use all sorts of names for it, but we all understand what we mean.” There is no misunderstanding of Christianity one meets more often than this, and there is probably nothing that keeps more people away from the Church. Once get the idea that Christianity is a religion of law, and the door stands wide open to all sorts of trouble. People will say (and I don’t blame them), “We don’t want to tie our hands, we don’t want the bondage of law.” They will say, “you Christians don’t keep your own rules, therefore you are all hypocrites.” They will say, “You Christians can’t agree among yourselves what is the right thing. Some of you are Tories, some of you are Socialists, some of you are pacifists, some of you are soldiers. We don’t know whom to believe.”
These are all criticisms of the Church, which you have all heard. And they are all based upon this radical misconception of the nature of Christian faith. It is faith, not law, and therefore freedom, not bondage. The Christian does not tie himself to a rigid mechanical law. He of all people is able to see above all law. It is faith, not law, therefore the end is so high, therefore the most honest and serious of Christians fall, and know that he falls, far below it. He is not a hypocrite because he is not as good as he wants to be. Rules can be kept; but the Christian walk has infinite possibilities. It is faith, not law, therefore the implications of it have to be worked out in life and cannot be reduced to a convenient casuistical code. One person differs from another in his understanding of Christ and his way; that only means that Christ is far bigger than either of them. They are like the blind men who caught hold of an elephant, and each getting hold of different parts, and thinking the part is the whole thing. Over against all this St. Paul cries out, “the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.” It has nothing to do with this fuzziness. It deals in big spiritual things, not the trivial aspects of cheap life. If the Kingdom of God is not this, then what is it? St. Paul says it is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
RIGHTEOUSNESS, PEACE, AND JOY IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
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