“Basic Christianity, Part 27” by Romans
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We are continuing in our Series, “Basic Christianity.” There are many facets of Basic Christianity. We have already completed 26 Installments in the Series, and I feel as if we have just begun to scratch the surface of the Topic. Last week, week reviewed and examined Walking in Light. Tonight, we are going to review and examine our walking in Truth, as a facet of Basic Christianity.
For our first “hit” tonight, I would like us to take a look at Psalm 26:3: “For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.
Albert Barnes says of this: “Psalms 26:3
For thy loving-kindness is before mine eyes - Thy favor or friendship is constantly before me, in the sense that it is the object of my desire. I wish to secure it; I long to know whether I have sufficient evidence that it is mine. This is a reason why he desires that God would search him. The favor or the friendship of God was an object of intense desire with him. He had evidence upon which he relied, and which seemed to him to be satisfactory, that God was his friend.
But the object was so great, the matter was so important, the danger of self-deception was so imminent, that he did not dare to trust his own judgment, and he prayed that God would search him. The thought here is, that it was a steady purpose of his life to secure the favor of God. His eye was never turned from this. It was always before Him.
And I have walked in thy truth - I have embraced the truth; I have regulated my life by the truth. This is the first thing to which he refers. He was certain that this had been his aim. One of the first characteristics of piety is a desire to know what is true, and to live in accordance with the truth.
The psalmist was conscious that he had “arrived” at this, and that he had endeavored to make it a ruling principle in his conduct. Whether he had done this, or whether he had deceived himself in the matter, was what he now wished to submit to the all-searching eye of God.”
Next, still in the Book of Psalms, let's go to Psalms 86:11: “Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name.”
The Sermon Bible tells us of this, “In the expressions "teach," "fear," "walk," we have religion presented to us in the three aspects of knowledge, feeling, and conduct; in other words, religion in the head, in the heart, and in the feet. Religion affects the whole circle of man’s activity.
As knowledge, it illumines his intellect or guides his thinking in relation to those matters of which religion takes cognisance; as feeling, it awakens right promptings within him in relation to those matters; as conduct, it furnishes rules for his doing.
I. Religion as a matter of knowledge, a process of instruction. "Teach me Thy way, O Lord." (1) The Teacher: "the Lord." Religious illumination comes from God, the Father of lights. He graciously assumes the character of Teacher to men in the way of salvation. To this end He has provided for them a great lesson-book, none other than the Bible. When we read this book, we sit, in effect, like Mary of old, at the feet of the Divine Teacher to learn "His way."
(2) The learner: man. Man displays the first essential of a true learner: a keen desire for his lesson. The scholar casts himself at the feet of his Divine Teacher, and entreats to be taught. Meekness and fear—that is, docility and reverence—are qualities in the pupil which unlock the secrets of the Divine heart.
II. Religion in the heart, or religion as a matter of feeling. Religion here has made its way from the head into the heart; from the light of knowledge it has become the warmth of emotion. The particular emotion into which the knowledge develops is fear. (1) This is not fear in the sense of terror or dismay, but love. It is heart-fear, not conscience-fear. It is the child-disposition, sweet, trustful, and penetrated with holy, subduing reverence.
(2) The condition of its development. The essential condition of this beautiful disposition is a heart at peace with all its passions, in thorough harmony with God.
III. Religion in the life, or as a matter of conduct. Divine truth is first light in relation to men; this truth or light received into the hearts of men becomes converted into love; and this love becomes a mighty propelling force, impelling them irresistibly along the line of truth and righteousness.” ---- ------ --A. J. Parry, Phases of Christian Truth, p. 158.
Psalms 86:11: This prayer begins with a general request, and then points it to a particular object: "Unite my heart"—make it one; and for what?—"to fear Thy name." I. "Unite my heart." Who that knows the fickleness and inconsistency of the human character, of his own character, will not join in this prayer? Anything is better for a man than a distracted, unharmonised, inconsistent character.
To spend precious time in counteracting and crossing out ourselves is more than any of us can afford in this short life, in which so much is to be done. One very prevailing form of this inconsistency is a trifling, wavering, inconstant spirit, the standing idle in the marketplace of the world of a man who has not yet found his vineyard to work in, or who, having found it, is weary of the work. It is very often incident to youth and inexperience.
With the young especially one of the first conditions of unity of heart is a humble and conscientious adoption of opinions. Do not entangle yourselves, in the battle before you, with armour which you have not proved. Better defence to you will be the simple sling and stone of one conviction tried by your own experience than all the panoply of Saul.
II. While on this matter, it seems in the course of our subject to put in a warning against two mistaken lines of conduct which we see around us: (1) a listless apathy to the formation and expression of opinion; a carrying out of an idea that a man may be consistent by being nothing. It is not thus that we pray that our hearts may be united. Better even be inconsistent among the energies of life than faultless, because motionless, in the slumbers of death.
(2) The other alternative is that of cherishing an artificial consistency, for mere consistency’s sake. It is lamentable to see men punctiliously upholding an accredited opinion which we have reason to know they do not themselves hold. It is by such men and such lives that mighty systems of wrong have grown up under the semblance of right; it is in spite of such men that the God of truth has broken these systems to pieces one after another, and has strewn the history of His world with the wrecks of these fair-seeming fabrics.
III. "Unite my heart to fear Thy name." If we would be consistent men, God must be first in everything. (1) If this is so, the first consequence will be that our motives will be consistent. The fear of God will abide as a purifying influence in the very centre of our springs of action, His eye ever looking on us, His benefits ever constraining us.
(2) Union of the heart in God’s fear will save us from grievous or fatal inconsistency in opinion. He whose heart is united to fear his God, though not exempt from other men’s failings, is saved from other men’s recklessness, and has a tenderer and a safer conscience in the matter of forming and holding opinion.” H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. iii., p. 256.
Matthew Henry adds to this: “For the operations of God's grace in him, [David] prays that God would give him, (1.) An understanding heart, that he would inform and instruct him concerning his duty: “Teach me thy way, O Lord! the way that thou hast appointed me to walk in; when I am in doubt concerning it, make it plain to me what I should do; let me hear the voice saying, This is the way,” (see Isaiah 30:21).
IV. David was well taught in the things of God, and yet was sensible he needed further instruction, and many a time could not trust his own judgment: Teach me thy way; I will walk in thy truth. One would think it should be, Teach me thy truth, and I will walk in thy way; but it comes all to one; it is the way of truth that God teaches and that we must choose to walk in, (see Psalm 119:30). Christ is the way and the truth, and we must both learn Christ and walk in him.
We cannot walk in God's way and truth unless he teach us; and, if we expect he should teach us, we must resolve to be governed by his teachings. (2.) An upright heart: “Unite my heart to fear thy name. Make me sincere in religion. A hypocrite has a double heart; let mine be single and entire for God, not divided between him and the world, not straggling from him.
Our hearts are apt to wander and hang loose; their powers and faculties wander after a thousand foreign things; we have therefore need of God's grace to unite them, that we may serve God with all that is within us, and all little enough to be employed in his service. “Let my heart be fixed for God, and firm and faithful to him, and fervent in serving him; that is a united heart.”
Next, in the New Testament, I would like to zero in on an example of, not only a brother in the faith, but a leader in the Church was found to not be walking in, or according to, the Truth. I will let the Apostle Paul set the stage: “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.
For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation [hypocrisy]” (Galatians 2:1-13).
Paul continues in verse 14: “But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?”
Of this the Expositor's Bible tells us, “The conference at Jerusalem [in Acts 15] issued in the formal recognition by the Primitive Church of Gentile Christianity, and of Paul’s plenary [or, comprehensive] Apostleship. And it brought Paul into brotherly relations with the three great leaders of Jewish Christianity. But this fellowship was not to continue undisturbed. The same cause was still at work which had compelled the Apostle to go up to Jerusalem, taking Titus with him.
The leaven of Pharisaic legalism remained in the Church. Indeed, as time went on and the national fanaticism grew more violent, this spirit of intolerance became increasingly bitter and active. The address of James to Paul on the occasion of his last visit to the Holy City, shows that the Church of Jerusalem was at this time in a state of the most sensitive jealousy in regard to the Law, and that the legalistic prejudices always existing in it had gained a strength with which it was difficult to cope...
But for the present the Judaising faction had received a check. It does not appear that the party ever again insisted on circumcision as a thing essential to salvation for the Gentiles. The utterances of Peter and James at the Council, and the circular addressed there from to the Gentile Churches, rendered this impossible. The Legalists made a change of front; and adopted a subtler and seemingly more moderate policy.
They now preached circumcision as the prerogative of the Jew within the Church, and as a counsel of, perfection for the Gentile believer in Christ... A new situation suddenly presents itself to the eyes of the Apostle on his return from his second missionary journey. He is compelled to throw himself into the struggle, and in doing so to formulate in all its rigour his principle of the abolishment of the Law."
The "troublers" in this instance were "certain from James." Like the "false brethren" who appeared at Antioch three years before they came from the mother Church, over which James presided. The Judaising teachers at Corinth [who claimed that Gentiles had to be circumcized and observe all the Law of Moses] had their "commendatory letters," derived assuredly from the same quarter.
In all likelihood, their confederates in Galatia brought similar credentials. We have already seen that the authority of the Primitive Church was the chief weapon used by Paul’s adversaries. These letters of commendation were part of the machinery of the anti-Pauline agitation. How the Judaisers obtained these credentials, and in what precise relation they stood to James, we can only conjecture.
The withdrawal of Peter and the other Jews at Antioch from the table of the Gentiles virtually "compelled" the latter "to Judaise." Not that the Jewish Apostle had this intention in his mind. He was made the tool of designing men. By "separating himself" he virtually said to every uncircumcised brother, "Stand by thyself, I am holier than thou." Legal conformity on the part of the Gentiles was made the condition of their communion with Jewish Christians ~ a demand simply fatal to Christianity.
To admit that the Israelite by virtue of his legal observances stood in a higher position than "sinners of the Gentiles," was to stultify the doctrine of the cross, to make Christ’s death a gratuitous sacrifice. Peter’s error, pushed to its logical consequences, involved the overthrow of the Gospel. This the Gentile['s] Apostle saw at a glance. The situation was one of imminent danger. Paul needed all his wisdom, and all his courage and promptitude to meet it.
The Jews['s] Apostle present conduct was an act of "dissimulation." He was belying his known convictions, publicly expressed and acted on for years. Paul’s challenge assumes that his fellow-Apostle is acting insincerely. And this assumption is explained by the account furnished in the Acts of the Apostles respecting Peter’s earlier relations with Gentile Christianity (in Acts 10:1-48 with Cornelius).
Peter’s lapse is quite intelligible. No man who figures in the New Testament is better known to us. Honest, impulsive, ready of speech, full of contagious enthusiasm, brave as a lion, firm as a rock against open enemies, he possessed in a high degree the qualities which mark out a leader of men. He was of the stuff of which Christ makes his missionary heroes. But there was a strain of weakness in Peter’s nature. He was pliable. He was too much at the mercy of surroundings.
His denial of Jesus set this native fault in a light terribly vivid and humiliating. It was an act of "dissimulation." In his soul there was a fervent love to Christ. His zeal had brought him to the place of danger. But for the moment he was alone. Public opinion was all against him. A panic fear seized his brave heart. He forgot himself; he denied the Master whom he loved more than life. His courage had failed; never his faith.
And yet, after all this lapse of time, and in the midst of so glorious a career, the old, miserable weakness betrays him once more. How admonitory is the lesson! The sore long since healed over, the infirmity of nature out of which we seemed to have been completely trained, may yet break out again, to our shame and undoing. Had Peter for a moment forgotten the sorrowful warning of Gethsemane? Be it ours to "watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation."
We have reason to believe that, if Peter rashly erred, he freely acknowledged his error, and honoured his reprover. Both the Epistles that bear his name, in different ways, testify to the high value which their author set upon the teaching of "our beloved brother Paul." Tradition places the two men at Rome side by side in their last days; as though even in their death these glorious Apostles should not be divided, despite the attempts of faction and mistrust to separate them.
Few incidents exhibit more Strongly than this the grievous consequences that may ensue from a seemingly trivial moral error. It looked a little thing that Peter should prefer to take his meals away from Gentile company. And yet, as Paul tells him, his withdrawal was a virtual rejection of the Gospel, and imperilled the most vital interests of Christianity.
By this act, [Peter] gave a handle to the adversaries of the Church which they have used for generations and for ages afterwards. The dispute which it occasioned could never be forgotten. In the second century it still drew down on Paul the bitter reproaches of the Judaising faction. And in our own day the rationalistic critics have been able to turn it to marvellous account.
Let it be granted that Peter in yielding to the "certain from James" followed his genuine convictions and the tradition of Jewish Christianity, and we see at once how deep a gulf lay between Paul and the Primitive Church. All that Paul argues in the subsequent discussion only tends, in this case, to make the breach more visible. This false step of Peter is the thing that chiefly lends a colour to the theory in question, with all the far-reaching consequences touching the origin and import of Christianity, which it involves...
We shall in the remainder of this chapter trace the general course of Paul’s reproof, proposing in the following chapter to deal more fully with its doctrinal contents. 1. In the first place, Paul taxes the Jewish Apostle with insincerity and unfaithfulness toward the gospel. "I saw," he says, "that they were not holding a straight course, according to the truth of the gospel." It is a moral, not a doctrinal aberration, that Paul lays at the door of Cephas and Barnabas.
They did not hold a different creed from himself; they were disloyal to the common creed. They swerved from the path of rectitude in which they had walked hitherto. They had regard no longer to "the truth of the gospel "- the supreme consideration of the servant of Christ-but to the favour of men, to the public opinion of Jerusalem.
"What will be said of us there?" they whispered to each other, "if these messengers Of James report that we are discarding the sacred customs, and making no difference between Jew and Gentile? We shall alienate our Judean brethren. We shall bring a scandal on the Christian cause in the eyes of Judaism."
This withdrawal of the Jews from the common fellowship at Antioch was a public matter. It was an injury to the whole Gentile-Christian community. If the reproof was to be salutary, it must be equally public and explicit. The offence was notorious. Every one deplored it, except those who shared it, or profited by it. Cephas "stood condemned."
"The truth of the gospel" was again in jeopardy. Once more Paul’s intervention foiled the attempts of the Judaisers and saved Gentile liberties. And this time he stood quite alone. Even the faithful Barnabas deserted him. But what mattered that, if Christ and truth were on his side? " Solitary amid the circle of opposing or dissembling Jews, Paul "withstood" the chief of the Apostles of Jesus "to the face." He rebuked him "before them all."
2. Peter’s conduct is reproved by Paul in the light of their common knowledge of salvation in Christ. Paul is not content with pointing out the inconsistency of his brother Apostle. He must probe the matter to the bottom. He will bring Peter’s delinquency to the touchstone of the Gospel, in its fundamental principles.
So he passes in Galatians 2:15 from the outward to the inward, from the circumstances of Peter’s conduct to the inner world of spiritual consciousness, in which his offence finds its deeper condemnation. "You and I," he goes on to say, "not Gentile sinners, but men of Jewish birth-yet for all that, knowing that there is no justification for man in works of law, only through faith in Christ ~ we too put our faith in Christ, in order to be justified by faith in Him, not by works of law; for as Scripture taught us, in that way no flesh will be justified."
Finally, we will see that to walk in the Truth is to do the Truth: We read in 1 John 1:6: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:”
Of this Albert Barnes writes, “If we say that we have fellowship with him - If we reckon ourselves among his friends, or, in other words, if we profess to be like him: for a profession of religion involves the idea of having fellowship with God, and he who professes that should be like him.
And walk in darkness - Live in sin and error. To “walk in darkness” now commonly denotes to be in doubt about our religious state, in contradistinction from living in the enjoyment of religion. That is not, however, probably the whole idea here.
The leading thought is, that if we live in sin, it is a proof that our profession of religion is false. Desirable as it is to have the comforts of religion, yet it is not always true that they who do not are not true Christians, nor is it true by any means that they intend to deceive the world.
We lie - We are false professors; we are deceived if we think that we can have fellowship with God, and yet live in the practice of sin. As God is pure, so must we be, if we would be his friends. This does not mean necessarily that they meant to deceive, but that there was an irreconcilable contradiction between a life of sin and fellowship with God.
And do not the truth - Do not act truly. The profession is a false one. To do the truth is to act in accordance with truth; and the expression here means that such an one could not be a Christian. And yet how many there are who are living in known sin who profess to be Christians! How many whose minds are dark on the whole subject of religion, who have never known anything of the real peace and joy which it imparts, who nevertheless entertain the belief that they are the friends of God...
They trust in a name, in forms, in conformity to external rites, and have never known anything of the internal peace and purity which religion imparts, and in fact have never had any true fellowship with that God who is light, and in whom there is no darkness at all. Religion is light; religion is peace, purity, joy;
and though there are cases where for a time a true Christian may be left to darkness, and have no spiritual joy, and be in doubt about his salvation, yet still it is a great truth, that unless we know by personal experience what it is to walk habitually in the light, to have the comforts of religion, and to experience in our own souls the influences which make the heart pure, and which bring us into conformity to the God who is light, we can have no true religion. All else is but a name, which will not avail us on the final day.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Basic Christianity, Part 27.”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on March 30th, 2020.
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