Unlike Paul, I Was Ashamed of the Gospel of Christ

Ll roads led to Rome in Paul’s day. But Paul’s own apostolic road had not as yet led him to Rome. He had long intended to go to Rome. Years ago he had laid his plans for that, saying; ‘ After I have been up to Jerusalem, I must see Rome also.’ In those days everybody said that they must see Rome also. But Paul’s great desire was not to see the great sights of Rome, nor to meet with the great men of Rome. Paul was so ‘ separated ’ to the Gospel of God that he had no interest in Rome nor in any other place on the face of the earth: no interest but the supreme and the all-absorbing interest of an apostle of Jesus Christ. Hear himself on all that. ‘ God is my witness, that without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers. Making request, if by any means, now at length I might have a prosperous journey to come to you. For, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.’

Now what was it that led Paul to say that? Why did the apostle express himself in that exact way? Why did he use that peculiar expression and say that he was not ashamed to come to Rome and to preach in Rome the Gospel of Christ?

Well, if we would enter aright into Paul’s mind when he says that, we must go back, as well as we can, to the Rome of Paul’s day: and we must do our best to call up before ourselves Paul’s exact circumstances. For Rome was Rome. All the kingdoms of this world met in Rome; all the kingdoms of this world, with all their wealth, and all their power; with all their wisdom, and all their learning; with all their most refined enjoyments, and with all their most revolting self-indulgences. All these things were concentrated and accumulated in Rome in those days. And then it was by that time the reign of Nero, when all these things were at their very worst and their very wickedest. It was to the Rome of Nero, then, that Paul was proposing to come; Paul, the most refined and the most blameless of men by nature and by upbringing; and now the saintliest of men by conversion and grace. And moreover he was proposing to come to Rome to preach Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ, whose very name was to the Jews an insufferable scandal, to the Greeks the uttermost of foolishness, and to the Romans, as often as they heard it, a great jest and a great byword. Paul was coming, the poorest, and the most persecuted of men to the mightiest and proudest city on earth, and he was coming as an ambassador of Christ crucified. He was coming to demand the surrender and the submission and the obedience of all men to the Crucified: all men from the Emperor on the throne down to the most degraded slave in the city. All that was before Paul’s mind when, with full deliberation, he wrote to the few Christian believers in Rome and said to them that he was not ashamed to come on that errand, even to Rome, where Satan’s seat was.

‘ It is impossible,’ says Spurgeon, ‘ for any of us

to tell what it must have cost the Apostle to pen the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.’ Now it is well to have that said for once, and said, too, in that strong and arresting way. For without its first fearful chapter, all the rest of Paul’s magnificent Epistle would have been an edifice without

j a foundation. But for the sweeping and unanswerable indictment of the first and second chapters, the rest of the Epistle to the Romans might have been taken as the vain dream of a Hebrew prophet born out of due time, and beside himself with his fantastic Messianic visions. But with that unanswerable indictment and that tremendous denunciation, the rest of the Epistle comes to the right reader as the very Gospel of God Himself: as the very best and the very fittest message that heaven at its very best could send down to earth at its very worst.

Now, mutatis mutandis it is the very same with the preaching of the Gospel in our own day. If a Pauline preacher in our own day would preach to all men’s hearts the all-forgiving grace of God he must first bring home to all men’s consciences the all-condemning law of God. If he would offer aright the gift of God he must first charge home the wages of sin. Ay, and that not in a large and general and rhetorical way; but in a close and a personal and a home-coming way. He must, himself, increasingly experience and then increasingly preach the inwardness of sin, and the depth of sin, and the malignity of sin, and the spirituality of sin; and all that in a way that neither the common man on the street, nor the wise man of this world, knows anything about. And all that makes the office of the true Gospel preacher of our day so difficult to him at all times, and so full of shame and pain to him at some times. The open pollutions of Rome are swept away out of sight in our civilised day. But the depraved heart of man is still the same: of the wicked hearts of all men there is no difference, no difference at all, unless it is that all men’s hearts have become more deceitful to their owners in our day, and thus so much the more dangerous. And to have to preach and press home on his hearers all that in our day is enough to make the boldest preacher among us somewhat ashamed, even when he knows that he is commissioned from above and is fortified from within. A Gospel preacher in our day had need to have his feet planted immovably on the law of God: and, at the same time, planted experimentally and unchallengeably on his own soul. Otherwise, he will be tempted to tune his pulpit to please a race of hearers who have not yet learned the first principles of the spiritual life.

But it was the Cross of Christ that was the peculiar and the crowning shame of the Gospel of Christ in Paul’s day. To us the cross has become a fashionable ornament and an envied decoration. We wear crosses of gold and silver on our dresses at our feasts and at our dances. We erect crosses at our waysides and we ritualistically bow down before them as we pass them. We display far-shining crosses of copper and brass on the towers of our churches and our chapels and our schools. We cannot make too much of the cross in our day. And we must not be too severe on such wearers and worshippers of the cross as these. For it was Paul alone of all the apostles even, who had penetrated to the very heart, and root, and innermost meaning of the Cross of Christ. With his magnificent and unparalleled power of philosophical and theological thought, and then with all that thought experimentally tested and’ verified every hour of every day in his own great soul, Paul at last became the one and unapproached apostle of the cross. The shame of the cross some¬ times quite overcame even the pillar-apostles of Jerusalem themselves, but never Paul. And thus it was that when the very best of the Twelve were somewhat cowed and abashed and ashamed of the full and perfect preaching of the cross, Paul goes away alone, travelling from Jerusalem to Rome, and from Rome to Athens, and from Athens to Corinth, determined to know nothing anywhere but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And there is surely a great lesson in all that for all our preachers and all our people to this day. For there is an inwardness, and there is an absolute¬ ness, and there is an abidingness, and there is an exclusiveness in the Cross of Christ, that is neither easily preached, nor easily believed, nor easily practised. To keep our own hearts shut up to the cross, and that not only at our first conversion, but to the end of our best sanctification, and to preach the cross always and to every one as the one and the alone ground of peace with God amid all the ups and downs of the spiritual life: that staggers many, and offends many, and it becomes, sometimes, a cause of shame and pain even to those who have succeeded Paul best in his revelation of Christ that God made to him, and who have also succeeded him best in his experience of all that.

‘ The cross! it takes our guilt away!

It holds the fainting spirit up;

It cheers with hope the gloomy day,

And sweetens every bitter cup.

It makes the coward spirit brave,

And nerves the feel)le arm for fight;

It takes the terror from the grave.

And gilds the bed of death with light.

The balm of life, the cure of woe;

The measure and the pledge of love;

The sinner’s refuge here below.

The angel’s theme in heaven above.’

That is Paul’s gospel of the cross and set to music so that we may sing it with grace in our hearts to

Him who died on the cross for all these ends and issues to us.

Now, my brethren, you will go to so-called Christian churches, both in town and country, where you would never discover that Paul’s Epistle to the Romans had ever been written, and where you will never be put to shame with such old-fashioned doctrines as the imputed righteousness of Christ of which Paul is full. Christ’s suretyship, and His substitution, and His finished work are not known in those churches. The imputation of your sin to the Lamb of God, and the imputation of His righteousness to you; no such offensive things are ever uttered there. Speak for yourselves, my brethren; speak for yourselves and make your choice. As for me, the longer I live — the longer I really live — these things, and the things they re¬ present, are becoming every day more and more necessary and more and more precious to me. I know quite well, and I fully accept, that all these words of the Holy Ghost and of Paul and of evangelical theology are all but so many earthly words ‘ thrown out ’ toward heavenly things. Thrown out toward transactions far too tremendous even for the words which the Holy Ghost teaches. All these terms, the strongest, the boldest, and the most realistic come far short of fully describing and fully comprehending the tremendous truth of the atonement, and the correspondingly glorious truths of imputation and justification. Yes, they are strong meat, for they were prepared at first by a strong man: first for himself, and then for all those who need them and will accept them. God knows, they are not too strong meat for some of us! Give some of us still stronger meat, and we will eat nothing else all our days. Even as our Lord said about the too strong meat He offered to the Jews: ‘ Murmur not among yourselves,’ He said. ‘ For except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’ But, from that time, many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Many, but not all. Not you, nor I. For, neither our Lord to the Jews, nor Paul to the Romans, nor Luther, nor Calvin, nor Hooker, nor Owen, nor the Wesleys, nor the Haldanes, nor Chalmers, nor Spurgeon are one whit too strong for some of us. Some of us would take still stronger meat if we could anywhere get it. Nor Chalmers. For than Thomas Chalmers there is no more conclusive proof, and no more telling illustration, of the truths I am now attempting to utter. For years after he was an ordained parish minister Chalmers was downright ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; and he was continually made angry and intolerant as often as he met with it. Some of his godly people would have some of the great evangelical classics on their tables. When he was out among his people, he would see Baxter’s Samis’’ Rest in one house, and Rutherford’s Letters, in another house, and Newton’s Cardiplionia in another house, and Romaine’s Life of Faith, and Walk of Faith, and Triumph of Faith in another house, till in his bitter anger at such books he went ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST 73

to his pulpit next Sabbath and denounced them with a heat and with a hatred that only Chalmers could command. But as Christ met Saul of Tarsus r at the gate of Damascus, so did He meet the parish minister of Kilman’y in his sickroom. Bereavement after bereavement were sent to Chalmers; death after death knocked at his door; and when all that did not suffice, the minister himself was laid down on what looked to him like his deathbed, as it almost was. Till he was born again on that almost deathbed. And till he came out of his sickroom a new man and a new minister. And one of the first proofs of the great change that had come to him was this: the humble and noble soul that he was, as soon as he was able to ascend his pulpit stair again one of the first things he did was to take back all his ignorant and disgraceful language about those evangelical authors who had been meat and drink to his spiritually-minded people all the early years of his unregenerate ministry. And then Dr. Hanna lets us see Chalmers all his after days reading and recommending and distributing the very doctrinal and evangelical and experimental authors he had formerly denounced and driven out of his people’s houses. I have been going through Chalmers’ great biography again, and I have been thanking God every day for Chalmers and for his Paul-like life.

By far and away the ablest man in Scotland of that day, Thomas Chalmers will ever live a far-shining illustration of this text of Paul, his great forerunner and favourite apostle: ‘ I am no longer ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; and it is all that to me. For, therein, is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.’’

There is just time to touch for a moment on two other occasions of shame that the preachers of the Gospel have sometimes to face and to overcome. And let Luther describe those two occasions to us. He was wont to be terribly put out when he had a very simple Gospel sermon in his mind and when he saw Philip Melanchthon and Justus Jones, the two great scholars, coming into the church. But at that hour of temptation Luther at once set the last day and the great white throne before his eyes, after which he went on to deliver the message he had prepared for the working men and the serving women and the ’prentice boys. And he had his reward immediately. For after the service was over who should come round to the vestry but both Philip and Justus, who would both declare solemnly that that was the best sermon they had ever heard from the lips of their friend, and that God Himself had spoken to their proud hearts that morning. Very good. But then, when Luther went home to his dinner, so puffed up was he with Philip’s praise that his tongue would run away with him in his table-talk so that he would scarcely be able to finish his dinner for shame and remorse at himself; his conversation and all his conduct were so unlike his sermon. And all the week, watch and pray as he would, his life so ill-adorned his doctrine that they could scarcely get him to face his pulpit next Sabbath. John Bunyan, who governed his tongue far better than Luther did, felt the same shame on many a Sabbath morning. ‘ Often, when I have been about to preach, and that upon some smart and searching portion of the word, I have found the tempter suggesting silence to me, and saying: What! will you have the boldness to preach that! That of which you are yourself so guilty! No; do not preach on that subject to-day. Or, if you do, mince it down somewhat. You know who is to be in the church to-day. But, I thank God, I never once consented to these suggestions of Satan. Let me die, said I, rather than water down the word of God!’ Jacob Behmen also, Luther’s greatest disciple, has the very same thing: ‘ Leave all these things alone, my sinful and ashamed heart would say to me. Leave malice alone, and envy, and hatred, and lack of brotherly love. For you are the fullest of all men of all these wicked things. Hold your peace, then, about all these wicked things. So I have often said to myself, till the truth of God would burn in my bones, and till I was compelled to speak out against all these things of which I my¬ self am the most guilty.’

But now, after all that, don’t you see, my friends, how all that shame and pain at them¬ selves only made Paul and Luther and Behmen and Bunyan to cling and cleave all the more to Jesus Christ, as made of God to them, in all such circumstances, their wisdom, and their righteousness, and their sanctification, and their redemption, and, indeed, all that the New Testament and evangelical doctrine proclaims and preaches Him to be? Till all those men went back to their family worship every night, and to their public worship every Sabbath morning, saying: ‘ Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. But, forgetting the things that are behind, I press to¬ ward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the know¬ ledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord! I ashamed of the Gospel of Christ Impossible! Absolutely im¬ possible! ’