But the young man picked up the crucifix he wore and said, “He did this for me, what less can I do for Him?”
That is the picture; the crucifix is a picture. It may be nothing more than a picture. The reality behind the picture, Paul experienced when he spoke of always carrying around the dying and killing of the Lord Jesus. But I must move on to the second thing. Paul knew the Gospel is—for all. Therefore, it must be shared. Hence the curious behavior which is put before us in our passage in 1 Corinthians. “To the Jew I became as if I were a Jew, like those who are bound to the Law, but to those who were not bound to it, I became as if I had never heard of it.” Why? “If only I might gain some of them, gain some for the Gospel, gain them for Christ.” Do not underestimate what this meant for Paul. Here is a man brought up in the strictest understanding of the Judaism, a Pharisee among Pharisees, striving to keep every prohibition with the strictest scrupulousness. Only a shattering revolution could make him change his ways. But he did change them in order to go and be at home in a non-Jewish environment, so as to win the Gentiles for Christ.
But this was not the end of the story. Having achieved this revolution, the thought came to him, there are many of my own fellow countrymen, my brothers, outside the realm of the Gospel. I must pray for them, but I must also do more than that. When opportunity is there, I must go back to the old paths, pick up again still more faithfully the old customs I have so painfully discarded. F. W. H. Meyers makes Paul say, and it is fair enough, “O to save those, to provide for their saving.” It was perhaps harder not to perish but to go on living in this strange, homeless way. Looked on by Gentiles as a stranger, by Jews as traitor, at home only with God, and more or less in the society God was calling into being.
For here is another point. The Gospel is for all; therefore, it unites all and all must come to love one another. Hence the care for all the churches that Paul took upon himself, and his anxiety when converts failed to live in unity and godly love. The theory of it was clear; in Christ there can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be neither male nor female. But in practice it did not have the effect of making all Christians identical with one another; perhaps it was not intended to have this effect, but Paul could never be content with gathering Christians into the fold, as an evangelist, without caring for them as a pastor.
I have spent long, perhaps too long, on what is after all history, though history is determinative for Christians still. The upshot of it all can be put in a sentence or two. Paul was a man created by the Gospel, the Good News of what God had done for him, for all humankind, in Jesus Christ. It was this which made him what he was, it was this that led him to do what he did. What about today? What about ourselves? If we are to be New Testament Christians, we shall still be people created and determined by the Gospel.
PEOPLE CREATED AND DETERMINED BY THE GOSPEL
What is that going to mean in the particular practical circumstances that we have in mind tonight? I propose to say four things about it. What we Christians in the Church all owe to the world is the Gospel. This is the distinctive gift that the Church has in its power to give or to withhold. I am not saying that Christians should not be concerned about economics, politics, sociology and the like, or that the Gospel has no contribution to make to these things. But there are plenty of politicians and all too few evangelists committed to the task of taking into the weary, suffering world the good news of great joy that Jesus Christ into the world—and this is the impression we give?
Anyone reading the papers in the last week or so might get the impression of the Church that the Roman Catholics have a pope, and the Anglicans do not, and that they cannot agree whether or not this is a good thing, and of course the Methodists aren’t doing anything in particular anyway. Now we know this is an important matter, whatever the right answer may be. But I am asking the question what the world sees and hears and knows of us. Does the world think of us as people possessed by a passion for God, people whose strength is the joy of the Lord, people with a revolutionary message that is able to make all things new? Everyone owes his neighbors the wisest advice, the most practical help that he can give him, but we owe the world the Gospel.
I have not come to this service to speak against Christian unity, but I grow more and more convinced that the world would take more notice of a band of people, still bearing their old labels, but sure of their message and proclaiming it with joy and confidence, than of a monotonous monolithic united structure. That brings me to the second thing.
What we all owe to one another is the Gospel. We are, all of us in our different churches, ministers to one another, and our ministry, our service is the Gospel. We still tend, after all these years of ecumenical activity, to think in terms of the contributions our different traditions can make, and these of course are real and important, but none of them can compare in importance with what we all already have—the Good News of God in Christ. True, we all have our different insights into the meaning of the Gospel, and I for one know how much I have learnt and still have to learn from Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics and a host of others. But behind the insights and the different ways of expressing truth, is the truth itself, and it is this we owe to one another.
Let me be practical about this. When I am oppressed by the burden of sin, what I need is not the best available theology of forgiveness. What I need is forgiveness itself, to be forgiven. When I am unable to see my way forward, to cope with the problems of life and death, I do not need a great piece of moral theology, what I need is the power of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When I am struggling with sorrow and suffering, anxiety and fear, what I need is not a theodicy, but someone who will show me how to cast my cares on God. What we owe to one another is what we owe to the world—the Gospel.
Third, behind the debt we owe to the world and to one another is the debt of gratitude we owe to God. This is the spring of all we do. Some of you may have heard me quote before now the great Heidelberg Catechism with its third section on thankfulness out of which all Christian living flows. “Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, renews us also by his Holy Spirit after his own image, that with our whole life we may show ourselves thankful to God for his blessing, and that he may be glorified through us, then also that we also may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof, and by our godly walk win our neighbors also to Christ.” Because we are so grateful to God for making known to us the Gospel of his Son, we make it known to the world. Because we are so grateful to God for ministering to our needs, we minister to our brothers and sisters’ needs.
The fourth and last thing is this. There is one point where all this argument can break down. Do I know not only with my theological intellect but for myself this Gospel which is God’s power unto salvation? If I do not, it is no good talking about gratitude for it, about proclaiming it to the world, about giving it to one another. And it may be that this is where the church today, all the churches, has to begin, not with “How may we unite our organizations?” But do we, where we are, know the Gospel? We might even find we prayed effectively for unity if we prayed together for a renewal and rediscovery of the Gospel.
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12. Editor’s Note: The sermons in this particular notebook were all written in the late 1970s while I was present in Durham to hear him on various Sundays. It is interesting that they were written in cursive (as are all his sermons) in light blue ink which over time faded. Thus, with this sermon and the others in this notebook, he took the time to write over the same words in darker, black ink where the words had faded too much. Note that he didn’t cross things out, he simply rewrote the same words again, carefully tracing over the old words. There are several other notebooks from this period that have the same problem of fading ink. This sometimes makes it difficult to puzzle out this word or that, but I have done my best.
“THE LORD’S SUPPER—AND OURS”—1 Corinthians 11.20–21
[Preached twenty-two times from 3/26/59 at South Shields
