Misread Passages of Scriptures

PREFACE

The accompanying Sermons on "Misread Passages of Scripture" form part of a series which the author projected, but which through ill health he has been unable to complete. He sends them forth in this imperfect form, in compliance with the wish of the publishers; and in the belief too that the topics of some of them will not be without interest, in the conflict of thought on theological subjects which waxes rather than wanes year by year.

The reader will see that much space has not been occupied with critical discussions; nor has the author gone out of his way to correct the English version of the Scriptures. He appreciates fully the value of critical inquiries; but it is wonderful how the sense of leading passages of the Bible gets moulded, apart from, and even in defiance of, critical considerations, by the bias of the various theological schools. Each school makes, if not its own version of the Bible, its own interpretation of the leading passages; and tradition plays an important part in the Protestant as well as in the Roman Church. The text being accepted, each party makes its own version of it, and widely different senses are extracted from the same words. Hence it happens that important passages of Scripture have certain ideas associated with them in the popular mind, which, if they are erroneous, are not to be corrected by a simple announcement, on competent critical authority, of the true rendering of the text.

The author of this little volume believes that there are some very popular but very detrimental misapprehensions, not of the true reading only, but of the true bearing of many important passages; and he offers this slight contribution towards a true understanding of them in the earnest hope that it may stimulate some so to search the Scriptures as to find in them not the confirmation of cherished dogmas, far less stones for the slings of theological war, but the Word of Eternal Life.

Clapham,

New Year's Day, 1869.

I.

THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST

"My kingdom is not of this world." – John xviii. 36.

Perhaps there is no passage of Scripture more constantly misunderstood than these simple words; and certainly there is no misunderstanding of Scripture which has exercised a more detrimental influence on the life and development of the church. The whole passage contains the very marrow of the doctrine of Christ concerning His kingdom. It is the basis of its constitution. To this, its subjects have rightly looked in all ages for instruction as to its fundamental spirit, principles, and aims. Words more solemn, more pregnant, were never spoken in this world, in this universe, than these. They were spoken at the very crisis of universal destinies. They form the dividing line between the two eternities. From eternity all things had been working towards that hour – the consummation of the incarnation; and to eternity the influence of that hour would go forth, remoulding, regenerating all the worlds. Beyond any words that have ever been spoken, these words are worthy of intense and reverent attention. They are the words with which the Son of God passed on to the cross, that He might pass up to the throne.

The two kings stood there in presence. The representative of the king of this world, who wielded all its force and guided all its movements, the man who had but to nod and the whole civilized world trembled and obeyed; and a King, the elements of whose kingship few could discern, who wielded a strange power and produced a deep impression that He had a right to rule over men, but who wore no signs of royalty and laid no claim to the possession of this world's thrones. Nay, a kingdom had been forced on Him, and He escaped as from a deadly danger from the homage of His subjects, while He spake to them such searching spiritual words that they conceived a great dread of His kingly commands and claims. He bade them begin to rule themselves when they were dreaming of a splendid rule over the gentiles; and He turned inwards on the inner obliquity, foulness, and deformity, those eyes which were watching eagerly for the signs of an approaching advent of a glorious, celestial imperator to the world. Jesus looked on Pilate's kingship, and fathomed it perfectly. He knew from whence the power sprang, and by what springs it was fed, which seated Pilate's master on the world's imperial throne. Pilate found the royalty of Jesus unfathomable; none of his worldly experiences helped him to understand it. Art Thou a king then, poor, worn, tear-stained Outcast, forsaken of every subject, of every friend, in the hour of Thy bitter need? And yet the nascent smile of scorn was checked by something which cast a spell even on that worn-out profligate's heart. That lonely wasted Man there had that about Him which made the representative of the world's master afraid. It seemed mere idle talk to a man like Pilate: "a kingdom not of this world;" "witnessing to truth;" "disciples of the truth: " it was all childish to the trained intellect of this experienced ruler; and yet there seemed to be some power beyond the grasp of his intellect, which something within him recognised, and which might create and rule a kingdom after a fashion which till then had never even crossed his dreams. But to him the mystery remained insoluble. He wrote a title to which his instinct gave a reality that his intellect denied, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." And here in this passage we have the Lord's own declaration of the constitution and aims of His kingdom; the kingdom which, from that hour, has been the ruling element in the history of this world, and, as we learn from the Apocalypse, of all the worlds of the great universe of God. And men persistently misread it as they misread Him, and employ His words as they employed His works, to frustrate the purpose for which He entered into the world.

Let us see how the misunderstanding of these words arose.

"My kingdom is not of this world: " literally "not from," originally "out of" this world. A clear understanding of the full force of this will give us the clue to the interpretation of our Lord's words. There is an old sense of the preposition "of," which closely corresponds with the full sense of the word employed in the Greek, expressing "out of," "springing from." But "of," like other words and other things, in the course of time has got weakened by the wear and tear of life; and the sense "belonging to," "connected with," is its natural suggestion to modern ears; whereby the sense of our Lord's words has been grievously weakened too. Did the Lord mean to say, "My kingdom has nothing to do with the institutions and arrangements of the worldly life of men: you need not fear any rivalry, delegate of Caesar; My kingdom is in a quite different sphere, and will keep there, without touching yours: it only has to do with men as spiritual beings, with a view to their final destiny in the eternal state: keep to your secular province, and we shall never cross or clash: the two spheres are quite separate, and nothing but mischief can come of their commerce: I leave you to rule; leave Me to teach, unfettered by conditions; for I aim at no influence on earth, My one object is to persuade men to live a life separate from this world, as much detached as possible from its interests and pursuits, that they may enter into My heavenly kingdom when death releases them, and where the sphere will be all My own"? Was this His meaning? or did He mean to say, "My kingdom is not out of this world; it comes down into this world from on high: this world is, like man, made of the dust of the earth, 'of the earth, earthy,' except some spirit breathe into it from the higher world – then it lives: My kingdom comes to the kingdoms of this world, the interests, aims, pursuits, and common life of men, like this breath of Divine inspiration: without it they all languish and must perish; with it they live: it is a descent of heavenly truth, heavenly love, heavenly life, into the sphere of the earthly, to make it live anew; the earth languishes for My kingdom, for without Me it dies: leave Me free to fulfil My mission, not because this world is nothing to Me, and My kingdom will not trouble itself with its affairs, but because My truth, My life, My love are needful to the life of this world as vital air to the body; because all business, all domestic life, all friendship, all society, all government, all thought, all art, all learning are waiting, are panting, for the living baptism which I bring. I am not of the world, My kingdom is not of the world, in the springs of its influence; it is essentially of heaven, and from heaven: but it seeks the world as the sphere of its influence, the field of its conquest, the realm of its rule. With yearning desire, eagerly as man yearns for fellowship, a friend for the brother of his spirit, the bridegroom for the bride, I seek and claim this world as My own"?

Here are the two ideas of the meaning of these words of our Lord set fairly against each other. The number of those who would deliberately adopt and justify the former is happily growing less year by year. Were we caring only for formal misunderstandings of important passages of Scripture in these discourses, it would be hardly worth while to discuss seriously a perversion which is vanishing with the changed aspects of the times. But the spirit, the savour, of an error continues long to work after it has been formally exploded; and we discuss this passage in this present discourse under the strong conviction that the false view which we have described above continues to tincture very deeply our theology, our preaching, and our social ideas and habits, even in those who would utterly repudiate the formal idea of the Lord's kingdom on which it rests.

Some of the results of this misconception of the true nature of the kingdom have been as follow: —

1. The idea has been widely entertained that the aim of the Lord has been, not to save the world, but to save a chosen few out of the world, leaving calmly the great mass to go to wreck. The favourite notion has been that the Lord's disciples have been in all ages, and still will be, an isolated band, like Israel in Egypt; hating the world around them, hated by it, and waiting only the happy opportunity, the hour of deliverance, to pass out of it triumphant, and leave it to perish by the strokes of the Lord's avenging hand. This idea, that the Church is a little band of chosen ones in the midst of a hostile and reprobate world, is a very favourite one with the disciples in all ages; and it is nourished by the tone in which the apostles wrote and spoke to the few poor men and women who were to begin the work of restoration, and who needed to be upborne against tremendous pressure by the assurance of the special and personal intervention of the God of heaven on behalf of the little company whom He loved. They needed a strong support against a world which was bent on destroying them as it had destroyed their Lord; and so the apostle wrote, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." "Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." That the disciples have been the few in all ages is alas only too palpable to those whose sight pierces no farther than Elijah's, and who cannot fathom the secret things which are unveiled to the eye of God. But it is a dark heresy to believe that the Lord meant that His own should be the few in all ages, and that the rescue of an election from the impending ruin can satisfy the heart of Him who cried, as the hour of His anguish drew nigh, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."

2. Closely associated with this is the notion that all which belongs to the earthly life of men has a certain taint of evil upon it, is corrupt and corrupting in its very nature; so that if a disciple touches it he must touch it like pitch, cautiously, and expect contamination with all his care. That if he must enter into the world's activities, buy, sell, and get gain, marry and give in marriage, rule households and take part in the government of states, he must do it under protest and under the spur of a sharp necessity, and is bound to long anxiously for the time when the need of all this will be over, and he will be free to meditate on Divine things and to praise through eternity. If Christ's kingdom be not of this world, he argues, then all which is of this world, politics, literature, art, society, trade cannot be of Christ's kingdom; and His subjects, hampered by these evil cares for a time, must be ever looking forward eagerly to the day when they will be freed from them for ever. And this is the meaning which is constantly veiled under the phrase, "the coming of the Lord Jesus," and expressed in the prayer, "Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly."

3. Then further there is the notion that it is only in a very partial sense that we can talk of Christ's kingdom here, that it belongs essentially to the future and eternal state, and can only be fully comprehended by him who can separate it in thought from all the blemishes and accidents of time, and behold it, pure from the defilement and degradation of the earthly (that is the human) in this world, in its glorious Divine form in eternity.

And surely there is a great truth here. The perfect image of it, as Plato said of the polity of which he dreamed, abides only in the heavens; and we need to refresh both courage and hope, when we see the blots and fractures of the kingdom here, by contemplating the pure form of it which abides in the heavens with God. But dreams and contemplations will never bring it down from the heavens; it is here, or nowhere. It is this earthly image which is to be translated into that heavenly likeness; and if we would be near to and like the King, we must follow Him into the very heart of the world's business and throngs, not that we may seek His chosen there and rescue them from the world, but that we may rescue the world from all that makes it other than Christ's kingdom, by driving out of it "everything that defileth, or worketh abomination, or maketh a lie," and thus purify its atmosphere, cleanse the ducts and channels of its life, invigorate its energy, and consecrate its activity, till it grows like its ideal in heaven.

And what has been the history of the kingdom? Since the first hour of its establishment, perpetual intervention in an action upon the worldly affairs of men. It is literally true that Dean Milman's history of Latin Christianity is the completest history of the Western European world during the middle ages, extant in our language. And why? Because during the middle ages, and until now, the Church has been the backbone of human society. All man's dearest interests and hopes have gathered around the kingdom; over its destinies, and under its banners, all man's deadliest battles have been fought. "Yes!" it may be answered; "but this is just the corruption of the kingdom; because it mixed itself with worldly affairs, and suffered worldly men to administer it, it became the centre and pivot of all the movements of human society." But this state of things was at any rate the confession that the men of this world could not get on without the kingdom, that when it was once revealed it inevitably tended to gather around itself all the vital activity of the world. Since Christ appeared, men have felt everywhere that they must place themselves and their concerns in some kind of vital relation to the Church. And this has been the key to the public life of Christendom; in fact it has made Christendom in opposition to heathendom, as the province of all the most cultivated and progressive races of mankind. The forms of relation which men created were no doubt worldly enough; but the sense that they needed the relation, and must find it to live out a true man's life was not worldly, but true, noble, and Divine. The Church from the very hour of the ascension of its Head, began to act on human society as incomparably the most powerful influence extant in the world. It literally re-made society from the very foundations. Far from contenting itself with mastering the will of individual subjects, and wooing them away from the pursuits and interests of the world around them, it entered the homes of men, and cast out the harpy passions which had befouled them; it gave marriage new sacredness, parents new authority and new responsibility, and children new grounds of obedience to their sires. It entered the market and established just weights and balances, honest word, and loyal trust. Theft could be no virtue, and lying no graceful accomplishment, where it established its reign. It entered states, and changed tyrants into kings, serfs into subjects, slaves into freemen, nobles into guardians, pastors, and captains of industry to the poor. That very Rome which doomed the King to a malefactor's death, it entered as a conqueror, and it broke that proud empire to fragments. The time came when Rome could live no longer in the moral atmosphere which it created; and then it summoned purer, nobler, hardier races to occupy the homes and to till the fields which Rome had depopulated and destroyed. It introduced its laws into every code in Christendom. King Alfred begins his statute book by reciting the laws of the kingdom of God.1 In truth it has penetrated and permeated every vein and fibre of human society, and it has made it all anew. There is literally nothing with which you in this nineteenth century can concern yourself, – trade, literature, politics, science, art, government, social and domestic life, human rights, human duties, human powers, human fears, aspirations, hopes and joys, – there is not one element of our complex social and political life which is not what it is, because eighteen centuries ago the Lord Jesus witnessed this good confession before Pilate "Thou sayest that which I am, a king." From the world it has asked nothing, taken nothing, but its reverence and love: of the world in that sense it has never been. But in the world, and through the world, the stream of its heavenly virtue and life has wandered, and the wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. It has sought studiously to mix itself up with all the relations and interests of mankind; it has a word about them all, it has a law for them all; the weight in the pedlar's bag, the sceptre of the monarch on the throne, are alike under its rule and cognisance, for it claims man as man to be its subject. It says that man was made to be the subject of this kingdom, and all man's life is the true domain of its sway. It looks upon this worldly life of ours – our life as men of this world – as the most solemn, most sacred thing in this universe; God's school of culture of the beings who are to fill His heavenly kingdom through eternity. It cannot spare one relation of men, one art, one industry, one field of activity, one interest, one joy, one hope, one love, from its domain of empire. The whole man, the whole world, in the wholeness of its life, it claims absolutely; and it aims to present the whole man and his whole life, body, soul, and spirit, perfect before the presence of His glory at last. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

And now let me ask your attention to some principles which are suggested by a true understanding of this statement of our Lord.

1. His kingdom is not of this world. It is from above, and all the springs of its power are above. The attempt to help it from beneath, to bring the strength, the riches, the honour of this world to help the Spirit who is from above in the work of the kingdom, cripples its energies, frustrates its aims, and exhausts its life. Its one power is the power of truth; "to this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth," said its Founder and King. It has absolutely no other power. "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice;" and all the efforts of men to force, tempt, or bribe mankind to support it, but silence that witness, which is all that it asks to win the world to itself.

One can understand the argument of those who support a state establishment of religion and the whole apparatus by which men seek to win for it the supremacy to which it rightfully aspires. They say, "It is of God, it is the heavenly truth, it is worthy of all that men can give to it and of all the power which man can bring to bear on the accomplishment of its work: the state does itself honour, and gives itself stability by supporting it; monarchs are never so royal as in lending to it their influence; all the world's riches are never so precious as when they are poured into its treasuries, and are employed in the promotion of its ends."

And this is no more than the simple truth. The kingdom is worthy to receive the tribute of all the monarchs, the nobles, the wise ones, the rich ones of the world: the more it has of the good-will and help of every man, from the king to the beggar, the better for the kingdom, the better for mankind. All that we say is, Let it win them. Let it win in its own way, by putting forth its own power, the nursing care of the noble, the rich, and the wise. Leave it to employ its own spiritual force to do this and all at which it aims. Lend your heart to it, your hand, your tongue, your pen, your purse, and everything else which it can command and use to win its way to human hearts. But if you bring your human authority to bear to win from your subjects and dependants an outward homage, if you endow it with dead gifts administered by the scribes and lawyers of this world, if you lend worldly pomp and power to those who claim to be its ministers, you oppress and stifle it, and destroy its power of progress in the world. It wants free air, the free air of willing obedience, loyalty, and love. Rob it of that, it dies. It is not of this world. Every gift that is wrung for it from an unwilling hand beggars it. Its riches are the gifts of free will. Mere gold, with no spirit of loving loyalty in the giver, is worse than dross to it; it cankers and eats into its life. The power which has troops of soldiers and legal tribunals behind it blights it by its very breath. All that it asks is freedom; power to do what Christ did, in the way in which He did it; power to bear witness to the truth, and weaken the long silent echoes of truth in human hearts. We have cut off its heavenly connection, and rooted it in the powers and policies of this world; and now we wonder that it languishes, and that one half the people in a Christian kingdom believe nothing of its truth and care nothing for its King. Oh! for the days of apostolic trust and simplicity, when the disciples, "continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people." Oh! for the baptism of Pentecostal fire from on high. Oh! for one of the days of the Son of Man, whom the Father sent into the world, armed with no authority but that of truth, clothed with no power but that of love. How eagerly then, eager as the thirsty earth when the sound of rain is in the sky, would men drink in the words of Him who had more faith in the power of truth to conquer hearts than in the arms of twelve legions of angels, and whose supreme trust was in the all-mastering force of a love stronger than death – a love that laid down its life that death might not for ever tyrannise over the world.

2. Make your life, your man's life in its wholeness the domain of its empire in you. Beware of a double allegiance. How earnestly and emphatically the Lord denounces it: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." Beware of yielding to Christ a part of the empire which is all His own. Beware of that fatal distinction between the man as a Christian, and the man as a citizen, the man as a man of business, which has grown out of the misunderstanding of the principle laid down by our Lord. Christian saint, Christian worshipper, Christian citizen, Christian merchant, Christian parent, be Christian wholly. Refuse to touch a thing in any department of your activity, which will not square with your Christian ideas and aims. Let your daily transactions be as freely open to Christ's inspection as to the world's honourable judgment: let it be the aim of your life at home, abroad, in the shop, the exchange, the forum, to show what the laws of Christ's kingdom can make of a life which is square with their precepts. Adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour, not by fellowship with His people only, but by winning men to worship Him by the spectacle of your diligence, your industry, your purity, your truth, your charity, gentleness, patience, faith, and hope in God; and when they learn that these are the King's gifts to you, at once the signs and the fruits of His reign, they will, like the people of old, break forth into thanksgiving, and confess joyfully that God is with you of a truth.