A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Understanding the Scriptures

F >> Francis McConnell >> Understanding the Scriptures




The power of the Bible over men centers around the teaching that the
cross not only reveals God as morally bound to redeem men, but that it
also shows us the divine aim in redemption. Men are to be redeemed by
seeking for forgiveness in the name of the moral life set on high by the
cross, but the repentant soul is to show its sincerity by devotion to
the task and spirit of cross-bearing. The aim of the cross is to bring
men together into a fellowship of the cross, in a fellowship of
suffering for the sake of the moral triumph to be won at the end. We are
accustomed to think of suffering as implying the possibility of joy. The
man who can feel keen sorrow can feel keen joy; they who have the power
to weep have also the power to laugh. In the final kingdom the weeping
shall be turned into joy. But, according to the Scriptures, it is not
necessary for the disciples to wait until the consummation before
entering into the joy of their Lord. There is an entrance to the divine
mind through bearing the cross. Those who desired to learn of Christ as
true disciples were expected to take up the cross and carry it daily.
The Master also declared that the disciples were to think of themselves
as blessed when they endured persecution for righteousness' sake, for
men had persecuted the prophets in all ages. The implication is that
knowledge of and sympathy with the prophets came out of cross-bearing
like that of the prophets. To use a simple illustration: a student of
the careers of the leaders of any reform might gather a mass of
information about the reformers in an outside kind of fashion, as by the
study of books, or by visits to the scenes of their struggles. Such a
student, however, could not master the inner spirit of a reformer's life
until he himself had battled for some cause at risk to himself. So the
man who seeks to bear the cross of Christ is on the path to sympathetic
inner knowledge of the spirit of Christ. In our second chapter we called
attention to the truth that approach to knowledge of God is through the
doing of the will of God. Doing of the will, according to Jesus, means
much more than just a round of good deeds. It means carrying the burdens
which are inevitable in cross-bearing. There is good reason for
believing that the very highest step in spiritual learning is taken only
through the willingness to bear the cross. In our modern educational
systems we lay varying degrees of stress upon the importance of
different methods of acquiring knowledge. There is at the bottom of the
scale the method of mastering the instruction of the teacher by
attention and reflection. There is, next, the method of learning through
one's own experiment--through using microscope or telescope or textbook
for oneself. There are, further, the social aids to the quickening of
the mind as groups of students study and discuss together. But the
deepest knowledge comes as the student feels his sympathy and feeling
involved. If he must pay himself out for the acquisition of the truth,
or if he must defend his conclusions at great cost to himself, this
experience which involves the feeling involves also the sharpening of
the intellect. The eyes of the soul are opened to the subtler
intuitions. Thus it is in the revelations of the divine purpose in the
Scriptures. It is hard to make out how anybody can hope to master a
revelation of a cross-bearing God without himself being a cross-bearer.
In the New Testament narratives of Passion Week the Master is reported
as winning his surest convictions of the presence of God and of the
victory of his truth at the very instant when he entered into the
extreme depths of suffering. In the after days it was when the saints
faced stoning that they saw the heavens opening; it was the apostle who
had suffered hardships almost too numerous to mention who got the most
positive conviction of the reward which awaited him. In the school of
Christ the very heaviest stress must fall upon the indispensability of
cross-bearing as a means to understanding.

Not only does the biblical revelation see in the cross of Christ the
culminating manifestation of the character of God, and of the purpose of
God in redemption, but it also shows to us the divine method in helping
men. We have spoken of those who dwell upon the Master's nonresistance
as a model of passivity in the presence of evil. The example of Christ
when thus treated is in danger of being misinterpreted. The Christ of
the cross was passive so far as physical force was concerned; but he was
never more intensely active in the higher ranges of his faculties--in
self-control and in alertness to the finer whisperings of the spirit.
The Christ's non-resistance to the physical might of evil is not to be
interpreted as acquiescence on the part of the Divine toward the ravages
of evil, but, rather, as the divine method of thwarting evil by allowing
it to reveal itself. No amount of preaching about the nature of evil can
equal in eloquence the self-revelations of that nature as it works
itself out into expression. While in a degree the self-revelation of
evil put forth against Christ was unique, yet we must remember that the
sins which put Christ to death are just those commonest in all time.
Judas was disappointed. He carried spite no more tenaciously than the
ordinary heart is capable of treasuring it. Caiaphas desired simply to
hold his own position and preserve the peace of his nation. Very likely
the type of opinion in the midst of which Caiaphas moved would have
pronounced that he rendered a disagreeable, but nevertheless necessary
patriotic service in his condemnation of Christ. Pilate too meant well,
but was afraid of the crowd. His friends may have commended his
administrative wisdom in allowing the people to have their own way. It
was the play of just such ordinary forces of sin against an
extraordinary holiness that made it impossible for the mightiest
revelation ever vouchsafed to man to work through the earthly activity
of Jesus for more than a few months. The Scripture does not have much to
do with abstract sins; with concrete sins of men as we actually find
them, it has much to do.

The Scriptures make it very clear that there is something which
satisfies God himself in the work of redemption. God acts out of moral
obligation, out of self-respect, out of love. But he acts always in
respect for men as free moral beings. The cross appeals to the free
spirit of men to behold the nature of evil, and to flee from that evil
toward their redeeming God. If the redemption is to be a moral
redemption, the last detail of the method must be moral. The power of
the Almighty must not be used to break down freedom of men. It would be
theoretically possible for an almighty power to bring to bear such
pressures upon human wills as to crush them, but the strongest
representation of the power of God in the New Testament does not go to
the length of hinting at interference with the freedom of men. Men are
to be saved as free men or not at all. We might conceivably imagine the
Almighty as granting such indubitable vision of the material rewards of
righteousness and the material loss of unrighteousness as would
irresistibly draw masses of a certain grade of men into the Kingdom
without a morally free consent to righteousness. Or we might conceive of
the Almighty as so weighing this or that factor of environment as to
diminish almost to the vanishing point the free choice of men. This kind
of compulsion would not be moral. The only compulsions of the cross are
those of a moral God splendidly attractive on his own account.

It will have occurred to some readers by this time that we have said
very little about the love of God in our discussion of the Scriptures,
whereas that love is the outstanding feature of the biblical revelation.
Our reply is that we have been trying to be true to the impression made
by the Scriptures as to the kind of love which we must think of as
expressing the deepest fact in God's life. We would not in the least
minimize the truth that love is the last word of the scriptural
revelation; but in our modern life we are apt to get away from the
quality of the love revealed in the Bible. The love of the cross is
built upon the righteousness which runs through the Sacred Book from the
beginning to the end. A god of indifferent moral quality might love. The
old Greek gods had favorites upon whom they lavished their affections. A
god might be conceived of as an amiable and well-wishing father,
foolishly indulgent toward his children. The love of the New Testament,
however, is the love of a Father who dares to appeal to the children to
make heroic response; and who shows his own love for them in the lengths
to which he will go for them. Moral love will go the full length of
heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help believing that it is the quality
of God's love, rather than the mere fact of that love, which is the
explanation of the power of the biblical teaching.

A friend of mine many years ago wrote a book which he called The Hero
God. The publishers objected to the title because they saw in it a touch
of sensationalism. No title, however, could have more adequately set
forth the biblical God. God is the hero of the Bible. His heroism
appears in growing revelation from the beginning. It shows itself
superbly in his willingness to bear the burdens of mankind and in the
appeals which he makes for response from men. The picture is of a God
who dares to believe in men and who dares to call on them for the
extremes of self-sacrificing devotion, not to himself as an arbitrary
Person, but to himself as the center of the moral life which is above
all other life worth while. It is open to anyone to object that this
biblical picture does not necessarily hold good for God; but it is
hardly possible to object that the picture is not biblical. The picture
stands in its own right and makes its own appeal. The only way to test
it in life is to yield to its appeal.

If we are asked to account for the power of the Bible, we are at a loss
for any one single statement. The most compendious reply is the
magnetism of the love of God as revealed in Christ. This is so broad,
however, that it may not make a direct and vivid impression. We may say,
then, that one element of the magnetism of the biblical revelation is
the magnetism of the appeal to the heroic. Whatever else the Bible may
or may not be, it is not a book of soft and easy things. Breaths of the
most rigorous life blow across every page. It is made for man in that it
calls men to the service of the highest and best. The religious systems
which make the fewest and least demands upon their followers most
speedily fall away; those that call for the utmost are most likely to
meet the enthusiastic response. There is a frank honesty about the
biblical appeal which holds a charm for all men in whom there are any
sparks of real manhood. The severities of the Christian life are nowhere
disguised. Men are never lured on by false pretenses. The path is the
path of cross-bearing, and the reward is the comradeship between God and
man as they together work toward the highest goal, a comradeship which
of itself brings relief to men burdened with the mystery of the universe
and agonized by remorse over sin. This essay is quite as significant
for what it has not said as for what it has said. In our omissions we
have tried to keep clear the main outlines of scriptural revelation. We
have sought to hold fast to principles rather than to discuss details.
We have done this because we have believed that there is more value for
religious understanding in pointing out the loftier biblical peaks which
give the direction of the whole range than in tracing out pathways
through detailed passages. Moreover, we have been afraid to employ many
theoretical terms lest we blur the quick moral impressions made by the
Scripture phrasings. For example, it may be objected that our treatment
of the character of God is altogether inadequate. We have not thus far
said a word about the Trinity, for example, or about atonement. The
reason is that we believe that any theories about God must base
themselves upon the moral suggestions of the Scriptures; and our
business is with these rather than with the theories. The received
revelation concerning God would warrant us in fashioning any theory as
to the richness of his inner constitution which might even measurably
satisfy our minds. The scriptural atmosphere as to the moral life in God
must, however, be kept in the chief place in all of our theological
theories. Atonement must be interpreted chiefly in terms of ethical
steadiness if it is to build on a biblical foundation. But the instant
we use formal terms like "Trinity" and "atonement" we have taken at
least one step away from the Scriptures. Again, we have said nothing
about Divine Providence. The Bible is full of instances of providences,
but here also we have preferred to let the fundamental moral character
of the biblical God speak for itself. We may have our own belief that
there is no scriptural warrant for that separation which obtains in much
theology between the processes of God and the processes of nature. We
may admit that the Hebrew had no very systematically framed theory of
the processes of nature, but he deemed God to be in such close touch
with nature as easily to control its forces for a good end. In two
accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites we have an
apparent contradiction which is at bottom not a contradiction. In one
account God seems to cause the waters to wall up on both sides of the
Israelites in defiance of the laws of nature. In another God
accomplishes the drying of the path through the blowing of a strong east
wind. The Hebrew would not have troubled himself much with the apparent
contradiction, for he would have conceived of God as the chief factor in
either event, and of his purpose as having the right of way. There is
thus no great value in discussing specific instances as long as the care
of God for his children is the animating purpose of the entire biblical
content. So with answers to prayer--the God who is willing to go for men
to the lengths revealed in the cross will surely answer any prayer worth
answering. The essential is to lift prayer up into harmony with the
entire revealing and redeeming movement, and to conceive of it as a
fitting of the whole life into the purposes of a moral God. Certain
general requirements would always have to be met. Prayer would have
really to deal with what is best for the individual, best for those
around him, and most in harmony with the character of God himself. So,
again, with the progress of the kingdom of God on earth--the God of
whose nature the cross is the final revelation can be trusted to do the
best possible for the Kingdom here and now. Much debate about the second
coming of Christ misses the great moral principles which are the heart
of the Christian revelation and loses itself in the incidental forms in
which those principles were declared. The best preparation for the
coming of the kingdom of Christ is absorption in the principles of
Christ and in the spirit of Christ. To get away from these in our search
for external and material conditions which are the mere vehicle of the
biblical thought is not only to pursue a will-o'-the-wisp, but to injure
true spiritual progress. Jesus has given us the spiritual principles
which must control the destiny of any society here and now. In the light
of the Christ-faith revealed in the cross we must not despair of the
redemption of men by the city-full and by the nation-full, for the
greatest confidence ever placed in men is the implied trust of the cross
of Christ. The Almighty at the beginning paid an immense tribute to the
human race when he flung it out into the gale of this existence. In the
light of the cross we cannot believe that He expected the race to sink.
In the cross the Christ who revealed God's own mind showed the length he
was willing to go in confidence that men would finally turn to him with
all the powers of their lives. To throw up our hands and say that the
world is getting worse and we can do nothing without a speedy physical
return of the Christ is to overlook the spiritual forces of the cross.

We have said nothing about immortality. What the Scriptures themselves
say is largely incidental. The Master did not allow himself to be drawn
into any extended conversation about the details of a future life, but
he did give us the God of the cross. In the presence of that cross we
can profess the utmost confidence in the eternal life of the sons of
God, while at the same time acknowledging the utmost ignorance as to any
of the material conditions of the future life. It is commonly assumed
that the resurrection of Christ proves that we shall likewise rise, but
the rising of Christ does not of itself prove that others shall rise.
The cross, however--showing the extent to which the Divine is willing to
go for men--is the ground of our hope. God will not leave his loved ones
to see corruption. In a word, the cross of Christ gathers up all the
biblical truth. It is a revelation of God's own character, of his hope
for men, of the methods by which he seeks to win men, and of the ground
of our faith in a right outcome for men and for society.

We may be permitted to summarize by saying that scientific and
historical biblical study is a preparation for the knowledge of the
Scriptures; that it is exceedingly important that the student approach
with the correct preliminary point of view. The revelation of the inner
significance, however, does not dawn until there is recognition of the
need of obedience to the principles laid down in the Scriptures. And
this obedience must be broad enough to include zeal for the uplift of
our fellow men in all phases of their lives. Out of righteous living the
devoted life, we believe, will see that the greatest fact of the Bible
is God; that the greatest fact of God is Christ; that the greatest fact
of Christ is the cross.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.