“Basic Christianity, Part 23" by Romans
Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
Youtube Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLht9vu74i0
We are continuing in our Series, “Basic Christianity.” Tonight, we are going to continue the aspect of the sub-set focus of the past several Installments: “one another.” But, tonight, I am going to speak about that focus where the concept but not the words “one another” are both applied, and not applied in Scripture. The Body of Christ on earth, today, is splintered and divided and sub-divided into hundreds of denominations alienated from each other. This dissension and discord is condemned in God's Word. They are the divide-and-conquer tactics which the enemy has successfully used from the earliest days of the Church.
I would like to tell you a story that I heard several years ago, and that I found for this Discussion on the website, “vvdailypress.com.” While Gandhi was a practicing Hindu, Christianity intrigued him. In his reading of the Gospels, Gandhi was impressed by Jesus whom Christians worshiped and followed. He wanted to know more about this Jesus that Christians referred to as “the Christ, the Messiah.” One Sunday morning Gandhi decided that he would visit one of the Christian churches in Calcutta...”
The website did not include a detail in the story as I first heard it. As I recall, Gandi was a lawyer. There was a Church near his law office. He would see the members as they went into and came out of that Church, and he was intrigued by the joy and fellowship and love they had for each other. He had never seen anything like that before. He didn't know what it was that they had, but he was drawn to it, and wanted to be a part of it. Without even realizing that they were being watched, they were being the lights of the world Jesus spoke of in His Sermon on the Mount.
Finally, one evening as their Meeting was starting, Gandi decided he was going to go there, and experience it first hand. The website continues, “Upon seeking entrance to the church sanctuary, he was stopped at the door by the ushers. He was told he was not welcome, nor would he be permitted to attend this particular church as it was for high-caste Indians and whites only. He was neither high caste, nor was he white.
Because of the rejection, the Mahatma turned his back on Christianity. With this act, Gandhi rejected the Christian faith, never again to consider the claims of Christ. He was turned off by the sin of segregation that was practiced by the church. It was due to this experience that Gandhi later declared, “I’d be a Christian if it were not for the Christians.′”
When I first heard the story, one of the ushers who blocked Gandi's way at the entrance of the Church said to him, “You need to be out there with your own kind”! “You own kind...” Did neither usher never hear or read our Creator's words in Genesis 1:26? “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:” Are we not ~ all of us... every man, woman and child ~ human kind, including not only every high-caste Indian and white, but also every Hindu of a lower caste in India, and everywhere else on the planet I might add.
Do we, as believers, fully understand and fully accept the Biblical declaration that there is neither Jew nor Greek in God's eyes, while we continue to draw boundary lines that cannot be crossed by those whom we deem undesirable, and not welcome to be a part of the Family and Kingdom of God? Jesus commissioned His disciples, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations...” (Matthew 28:19). And the Apostles and Missionaries have done that from the beginning. But what have we, as individual Christians and individual Congregations done in our response to our Lord's color-blind, culture-blind and status-blind Great Commission?
The Apostle Paul wrote, referring to Jesus: “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father...
Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:14-22).
Of this Matthew Henry writes, “We have now come to the last part of the chapter, which contains an account of the great and mighty privileges that converted Jews and Gentiles both receive from Christ. The apostle here shows that those who were in a state of enmity are reconciled. Between the Jews and the Gentiles there had been a great enmity; so there is between God and every unregenerate man. Now Jesus Christ is our peace, (see Ephesians 2:14).
He made peace by the sacrifice of himself; and came to reconcile, 1. Jews and Gentiles to each other. He made both one, by reconciling these two divisions of men, who were wont to malign, to hate, and to reproach each other before. He broke down the middle wall of partition, the ceremonial law, that made the great feud, and was the badge of the Jews' peculiarity, called the partition-wall by way of allusion to the partition in the temple, which separated the court of the Gentiles from that into which the Jews only had liberty to enter.
Thus he abolished in his flesh the enmity, (in Ephesians 2:15). By his sufferings in the flesh, to take away the binding power of the ceremonial law (so removing that cause of enmity and distance between them), which is here called the law of commandments contained in ordinances, because it enjoined a multitude of external rites and ceremonies, and consisted of many institutions and appointments about the outward parts of divine worship. The legal ceremonies were abrogated by Christ, having their accomplishment in him.
By taking these out of the way, he formed one church of believers, whether they had been Jews or Gentiles. Thus he made in himself of twain one new man. He framed both these parties into one new society, or body of God's people, uniting them to himself as their common head, they being renewed by the Holy Ghost, and now concurring in a new way of gospel worship, so making peace between these two parties, who were so much at variance before.
2. There is an enmity between God and sinners, whether Jews and Gentiles; and Christ came to slay that enmity, and to reconcile them both to God, (see Ephesians 2:16). Sin breeds a quarrel between God and men. Christ came to take up the quarrel, and to bring it to an end, by reconciling both Jew and Gentile, now collected and gathered into one body, to a provoked and an offended God: and this by the cross, or by the sacrifice of himself upon the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. . He, being slain or sacrificed, slew the enmity that there was between God and poor sinners. The apostle proceeds to illustrate the great advantages which both parties gain by the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ( in Ephesians 2:17). Christ, who purchased peace on the cross, came, partly in his own person, as to the Jews, who are here said to have been nigh, and partly in his apostles, whom he commissioned to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, who are said to have been afar off, in the sense that has been given before. And preached peace, or published the terms of reconciliation with God and of eternal life. Note here, When the messengers of Christ deliver his truths, it is in effect the same as if he did it immediately himself. He is said to preach by them, insomuch that he who receiveth them receiveth him, and he who despiseth them (acting by virtue of his commission, and delivering his message) despiseth and rejecteth Christ himself. Now the effect of this peace is the free access which both Jews and Gentiles have unto God (see Ephesians 2:18). : For through him, in his name and by virtue of his mediation, we both have access or admission into the presence of God, who has become the common reconciled Father of both: the throne of grace is erected for us to come to, and liberty of approach to that throne is allowed us. Our access is by the Holy Spirit. Christ purchased for us leave to come to God, and the Spirit gives us a heart to come and strength to come, even grace to serve God acceptably. Observe, We draw nigh to God, through Jesus Christ, by the help of the Spirit. The Ephesians, upon their conversion, having such an access to God, as well as the Jews, and by the same Spirit, the apostle tells them, Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, (see Ephesians 2:19). This he mentions by way of opposition to what he had observed of them in their heathenism: they were now no longer aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and no longer what the Jews were wont to account all the nations of the earth besides themselves (namely, strangers to God), but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, that is, members of the church of Christ, and having a right to all the privileges of it. Observe here, The church is compared to a city, and every converted sinner is free of it. It is also compared to a house, and every converted sinner is one of the domestics, one of the family, a servant and a child in God's house. In (see Ephesians 2:20) the church is compared to a building. The apostles and prophets are the foundation of that building.
They may be so called in a secondary sense, Christ himself being the primary foundation; but we are rather to understand it of the doctrine delivered by the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New. It follows, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. In him both Jews and Gentiles meet, and constitute one church; and Christ supports the building by his strength. . In whom all the building, fitly framed together, etc., (in Ephesians 2:21). All believers, of whom it consists, being united to Christ by faith, and among themselves by Christian charity, grow unto a holy temple, become a sacred society, in which there is much communion between God and his people, as in the temple, they worshipping and serving him, he manifesting himself unto them, they offering up spiritual sacrifices to God and he dispensing his blessings and favours to them.
Thus the building, for the nature of it, is a temple, a holy temple; for the church is the place which God hath chosen to put his name there, and it becomes such a temple by grace and strength derived from himself - in the Lord. The universal church being built upon Christ as the foundation-stone, and united in Christ as the corner-stone, comes at length to be glorified in him as the top-stone. : In whom you also are built together, etc., (Ephesians 2:22). Observe... every true believer is a living temple, is a habitation of God through the Spirit. God dwells in all believers now, they having become the temple of God through the operations of the blessed Spirit, and his dwelling with them now is an earnest of their dwelling together with him to eternity.”
Did you notice the terms that Matthew Henry applied to members of the Body of Christ in his Commentary published in 1711? Peace? Reconciliation? He wrote of Jesus that “He framed both these parties into one new society...” We are, he wrote, “no more strangers and foreigners,” we are a ~ one ~ building, “fitly framed together,” and “united to Christ by faith, and among themselves by Christian charity.” I ask you, “Is that the status quo of the Christian Church, today?” Are we fitly framed together? Is there peace? Is there reconciliation?
Paul wrote to the Ephesians that Christ, “hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.” I submit that believers have been, from the earliest days of the Church, busy rebuilding that wall of partition. And, having been born into the world when the Body of Christ was already splintered and fractured, and to the approval and satisfaction of Church “leaders,” we have wrongly joined them in accepting this unacceptable status quo. We are not many members in many bodies! But that is the declaration of the status quo.
The wall rebuilding project started when virtually the entire membership of the Church, including the Apostles, still resided in Jerusalem. The Apostles had not even gone out into the world, yet, to spread the Gospel. And we read, “And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration” (Acts 6:1). This initial wall resulted in the establishment of the Office of Deacon, ordained to insure that widows would not be fed smaller portions because they were not natural-born Hebrews. The "us and them" ethic. The "Divide and Conquer" ethic!
Solomon wrote in Proverbs 18:11: “The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit.” This is a problem that existed in the early days of the Church, and still exists, today. There are walls, some literal and some visible, and some figurative and invisible but just as real, affecting how the rich regards and treats the poor. This attitude of superiority exists not only in the minds of the rich, but also in the minds of the rest of society on behalf of the rich. And this happens both in and out of the Church.
Jesus' half-brother James recognized and addressed this problem existing in his day when he wrote, “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man...” (James 2:1-6a, ESV)
What would James have written if he were aware of the experience Gandi had? He was not even directed to a place to sit on the floor. He was barred from coming in. Every copy of every Bible of every member of the Church that Gandi attempted to visit contained these words that James wrote 2,000 years earlier. I won't say all, but I would be willing to say most of the members of that Church at some point had read or heard those words that James defined as “evil thoughts.” But they did not individually or collectively internalize, much less heed and obey James' words.
I have wondered, Did the ushers who physically blocked Gandi's way do so based on their own personal prejudice, or were they following the specific guidelines of the pastor of the Church? I cannot and will not say. Even though I am personally appalled at what they did, I would still like to think that they were acting on their own misguided ideas about who was worthy to be saved, or who was worthy to fellowship or even visit this Congregation, as opposed to following the official policies of the leadership of that Church.
If their behavior did come from the top down, what was their motivation? Did they know, or at the very least believe, that they knew that the high caste and white members of their Church would not want to have to “lower themselves” and fellowship with or even acknowledge a member of the lower caste? Was there a fear at the top that if lower caste Hindus were allowed to attend, or “God forbid” become members, that white and high caste members would simply leave, and attend where this sort of thing was not tolerated? I do not know. I only know that what Gandi experienced is not only Biblically indefensible, it is condemned in both the Old and New Testaments.
Why is there leadership in the Church? Who has determined what they do and why? Paul answers this for us: Referring to Jesus, he wrote. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ...
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:11-16).
There are those words, again: “unity,” and our being “fitly framed together” and the members of the Church being “edified in love.” That is the job description of the ministry of the Church. The role of an usher is to direct a member or a visitor to an available seat, and not to physically bar his way, and insult him and show him the door. But we don't need to be a minister or an usher to have or act on such thoughts which James calls those who do, “judges with evil thoughts,” who dishonor the poor, or someone who doesn't look like us, or dress like us, or speak like us.
Albert Barnes writes of this attitude, “There has been considerable difference of opinion respecting this passage, yet the sense seems not to be difficult. There are two ideas in it: one is, that they showed by this conduct that they took it upon themselves to be judges, to pronounce on the character of men who were strangers, and on their claims to respect (Compare Matthew 7:1 which says, “Judge not that ye be not judged”);
the other is, that in doing this, they were not guided by just rules, but that they did it under the influence of improper “thoughts.” They did it not from benevolence; not from a desire to do justice to all according to their moral character; but from that improper feeling which leads us to show honor to men on account of their external appearance, rather than their real worth. The wrong in the case was in their presuming to “judge” these strangers at all, as they practically did by making this distinction, and then by doing it under the influence of such an unjust rule of judgment.
The sense is, that we have no right to form a decisive judgment of men on their first appearance, as we do when we treat one with respect and the other not; and that when we make up our opinion in regard to them, it should be by some other means of judging than the question whether they can wear gold rings, and dress well, or not. Beza and Doddridge render this, “ye become judges who reason ill.”
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:14-16). As Jesus spoke to His disciples, all of whom were Jewish, who do you suppose constituted the “other sheep” of whom Jesus spoke?
Alexander MacClaren wrote in regard to this: “Other Sheep:” There were many strange and bitter lessons in this discourse for the false shepherds, the Pharisees, to whom it was first spoken. But there was not one which would jar more upon their minds, and as they fancied, on their sacredest convictions, than this, that God’s flock was wider than God’s fold. Our Lord distinctly recognises Judaism with its middle wall of partition as a divine institution, and then as distinctly carries His gaze beyond it. To His hearers ‘this fold,’ their own national polity, held all the flock.
Without were dogs, a doleful land, where ‘the wild beasts of the desert met with the wild beasts of the islands.’ And now this new Teacher, not content with declaring them hirelings, and Himself the only true Shepherd of Israel, breaks down the hedges and speaks of Himself as the Shepherd of men. No wonder that they said, ‘He hath a devil and is mad.’
During His earthly life our Lord, as we know, confined His own personal ministry for the most part to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel. Not exclusively so, for He made at least one journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, teaching and healing; a Syro-Phoenician woman held His feet, and received her request; and one of His miracles, of feeding the multitude, was wrought for hungry Gentiles.
But while His work was in Israel, it was for mankind; and while ‘this fold,’ generally speaking, circumscribed His toils, it did not confine His love nor His thoughts. More than once world-wide declarations and promises broke from His lips, even before the final universal commission, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature.’ ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ ‘I am the Light of the world,’ and not merely the light to Israel.
These and other similar sayings give us His lofty consciousness that He has received ‘the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.’ Parallel with them in substance are the words before us, which, for our present purpose, we may regard as containing lessons from our Lord Himself of how He looked and would have us look on the heathen world, on His work and ours, and on the certain issues of both.
I. We have here Christ teaching us how to think of the heathen world. Observe that His words are not a declaration that all mankind are His sheep. The previous verses have distinctly defined a class of men as possessing the name, and the succeeding ones reiterate the definition, and with equal distinctness exclude another class. ‘Ye believe not, because ye are not My sheep as I said unto you.’
His sheep are they who know Him and are known of Him. Between Him and them there is a communion of love, a union of life, and a consequent reciprocal knowledge, which transcends the closest intimacies of earthly life, and finds its only analogue in that deep and mysterious oneness which subsists between the Father, who alone knoweth the Son, and the only begotten Son, who being ever in the bosom of the Father, alone knoweth Him and revealeth Him to us. ‘I know My sheep and am known of Mine; as the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father. .
They hear My voice and follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life.’ Such are the characteristics of that relation between Christ and men by which they become His sheep. It is such souls as these whom our Lord beholds in the wasteful wilderness. He is speaking not of a relation which all men bear to Him by virtue of their creation, but of one which they bear to Him who believe in His name. That's what makes them His sheep!
Now this interpretation of the words does by no means contradict, but rather presupposes and rests upon the truth that all mankind come within the love of the divine heart, that He died for all, that all may be the subjects of His mediatorial kingdom, recipients of the offered mercy of God in Christ, and committed to the stewardship of the missionary Church. Resting upon these truths, the words of our text advance a step further and contemplate those who ‘shall hereafter believe on Me.’
Whether they be few or many is not the matter in hand. Whether at any future time they shall include all the dwellers upon earth is not the matter in hand. That every soul of man is included in the adaptation and intention and offer of the Gospel is not the matter in hand. But this is the matter in hand, that Jesus Christ in that moment of lofty elevation when He looked onwards to giving His life for the sheep, looked outwards also, far afield, and saw in every nation and people souls that He knew were His, and would one day know Him, and be led by Him ‘in green pastures and beside still waters.’
But where or what were they when He spoke? He does not mean that already they had heard His voice and were
following His steps, and knew His love, and had received eternal life at His hand. This He cannot mean, for the plain reason that He goes on to speak of His ‘bringing’ them and of their ‘hearing,’ a work yet to be done. It can only be, then, that He speaks of them thus in the fullness of that divine knowledge which ‘calls things that are not as though they were.’ It is then a prophetic word which He speaks here.
We have only to think of the condition of the civilised heathendom of Christ’s own day to feel the force of our text in its primary application. While the work of salvation was being prepared for the world in the life and death of our Lord, the world was being prepared for the tidings of salvation. Everywhere men were losing their faith in their idols, and longing for some deliverer. Some had become weary of the hollowness of philosophical speculation, like Pilate, asking ‘What is truth?’
Such were the Magi who were led by their starry science to His cradle, and went back to the depths of the Eastern lands with a better light than had guided them thither. Such were not a few of the early Christian converts, who had long been seeking hopelessly for goodly pearls, and had so been learning to know the worth of the One when it was offered to them.
There were men who had been long sickening with despair amidst the rottenness of decaying mythologies and corrupting morals, and longing for some breath from heaven to blow health to themselves and to the world, and had so been learning to welcome ‘the rushing mighty wind’ when it came in power. There were simple souls, without as well as within the chosen people, waiting for the Consolation, though they knew not whence it was to come.
There were many who had already learned to believe that ‘salvation is of the Jews,’ though they had still to learn that salvation is in Jesus. Such were that Aethiopian statesman who was poring over Isaiah when Philip joined him, the Roman centurion at Caesarea whose prayers and alms came up with acceptance before God... {They} were in Christ’s eyes the advance guard and first scattered harbingers of the flocks who should come flying for refuge to Him lifted on the Cross.
The whole world showed that the fullness of time had come; and the history of the early years of the Church reveals in how many souls the process of preparation had been silently going on. It was like the flush of early spring, when all the buds that had been maturing and swelling in the cold, burst, and the tender flowers that had been reaching upwards to the surface in all the hard winter laugh out in beauty, and a green veil covers all the hedges at the first flash of the April sun.
Not only these were in our Lord’s thoughts when He saw His sheep in heathen lands. There were many who had no such previous preparation, but were plunged in all the darkness, nor knew that it was dark. Not only those wearied of idolatry, and dissatisfied with creeds outworn, but the barbarous people of Illyricum, the profligates of Corinth, hard rude men like the jailer at Philippi, and many more were before His penetrating eye. He who sees beneath the surface, and beyond the present, beholds His sheep where men can only see wolves. He sees an Apostle in the blaspheming Saul.
And the sheep whom He sees while He speaks are not only the men of that generation. These mighty words are world-wide and world-lasting. The whole of the ages are in His mind. All nations are gathered before His prophetic vision, even as they shall one day be gathered before His judgment throne, and in all the countless mass His hand touches and His love clasps those who to the very end of time shall come to His call with loving faith, shall follow His steps with glad obedience.
Thus does Christ look out upon the world that lay beyond the fold. I cannot stay to do more than refer in passing to the spirit which the words of our text breathe. There is the lofty consciousness that He is the Leader and Guide, the Friend and Helper of all, that He stands solitary in His power to bless. There is the full confidence that the earth is His to its uttermost border. There is the clear vision of the sorrowful condition of these heathen people, without a shepherd and without a fold, wandering on every high mountain and dying in every thirsty land where there is no water.
There are the tenderest pity and yearning love for them in their extremity. There is the clear assurance that they will come and be blessed in Him. I pass by all the other thoughts, which naturally found themselves on these words, in order to urge the one which is most appropriate to our present engagement. Let us, dear brethren, take Christ as our pattern in our contemplations of the heathen world. He has set us the example of an outgoing look directed far beyond the limits of the existing churches, far beyond the point of present achievement.
For us the whole world is the possession of our Lord, who has died to redeem us. By us the whole ought to be contemplated with that same spirit of prophetic confidence which filled Him when He said, ‘Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.’ To press onwards, ‘forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those which are before,’ is the only fitting attitude for Christian men, either in regard to the gradual purifying of their own characters, or in regard to the gradual winning of the world for Christ.”
Why does 11am on Sunday morning still begin the most segregated hour in our week? How well do we, regardless of our race or our nationality or our socio-economic status, recognize, as Jesus did, that He has sheep of another fold? They are sheep of other colors and cultures that don't look like us, dress like us, talk like us. We don't have to have to endure long overland journeys, or board merchant ships, and cross the high seas as Paul did to reach them for Christ.
They are all around us. And sometimes God calls them, and they come to the doors of our lives, or the front doors of our Churches. And if they do come, however they appear, how will your Congregation receive them? How will each of us, as members of that Congregation, receive them? One day we will each be called upon to answer for the choices we make...
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Basic Christianity, Part 23.”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on March 3rd, 2020.
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