03.05. LESSON 5

LESSON 5 When Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by Roman con­spirators, his friend Mark Antony, bent on revenge, made an oration over the body to citizens in the market place of Rome. As the climax of his politic eulogy, he uncovered the mutilated corpse and feelingly spoke in vivid detail of the many wounds, suffered by Caesar as their benefactor. Ac­cording to his design, the citizens were aroused to frenzy for vengeance on the conspirators. Does not this illustrate Christ’s strategy of emptying and humbling himself even unto death with pierced and dis­figured body? Can you think of anything more profoundly moving than the mangled, bloody body of your best friend who died trying to help you? What a wrench the very thought gives you! Remember Christ did not have to come to earth at all; nor die after he came. And might he not have died in the friendly home at Bethany? Or in any other way he chose? Nay. Only the cross could give him power to subdue and save men. When men are tempted to question the power of the cross, let them read Paul’s, “We preach Christ crucified . . . the power of God, and the wisdom of God,” to the Corin­thians, over whom the power of Grecian rhetoric and philosophy had cast a spell. Or let them try to imagine what the world was before Christ died, or what it would be today if he had never died. Cannot men learn that they at least owe it to themselves to give the cross of Christ a trial by faith, and see what happens. “There is. . wonder­working pow’r in the blood.” As Antony correctly foresaw Roman reaction to Caesar’s wounds, so Christ by his cruel, vicarious death purposes to kindle men to fiery enthusiasm for him. Wherein lies the fault that not more Christians are so enkindled? Paul was. In gratitude all should be constrained to love, stoop, suffer, serve, and save lest men go unsaved and Christ be disap­pointed. This is God’s ideal character as fulfilled in Christ, which none can ever attain apart from him.

“Your Own Salvation”

According to the book of Acts, Luke helped Paul plant the church at Philippi, and apparently remained a few years. Paul also revisited Philippi a few times before he wrote Philippians. For a few years before the book was written, however, neither Paul nor Luke had been in the city. In the book the church appears somewhat depressed. Paul affectionately reminds them of their obedience when he was with them that he may more effectively exhort: “Now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Php 2:12). With all this in view, the conviction that the church was suffering from having depended too much on human help, and that in the absence of Paul and Luke it was taking its opportunities and obligations too lightly, is almost unavoid­able. That the church lacked unity and some of the members were quarreling among themselves would lower its efficien­cy, elders included, and discourage their planning, work­ing, disciplining, praying, paying, and suffering as they should. When personal grievances must be reconciled or difficult decisions made or intricate problems solved in a church, it is always easy to rely too much on noted preach­ers and teachers. It is God’s will, and therefore to the best interests of a congregation, that congregational mat­ters be handled from within.

Paul wants them to realize that their connection with God is so close and personal that his or Luke’s presence, however desirable and seemingly useful, is not necessary; that when opportunities or difficulties arise in the congre­gation, since his absence throws them more directly upon God, they should with trembling earnestness and anxiety, lest they fail in duty, assume, not shirk, their responsibili­ties. He is saying to Philippi what he had already written Corinth: “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” He expects them to feel their direct rela­tionship to God, and that “Each man must bear his own burden” (Galatians 6:5), of opportunity, responsibility, and accountability. To realize that we must account to God individually for what we indifferently fail to learn, to do, and to become is a mighty inducement and encouragement to move us to work out our “own salvation with fear and trembling.”

God Works in Christians

Paul has told the Philippians that God will continue the good work he began in them (Php 1:6). In this supplementary verse, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trem­bling; for it is God that worketh in you,” he puts side by side the divine and the human works of redemption that they may realize how vital their part in this joint work, which God makes possible but not easy for either himself or them, really is. Co-laborers with God! Who would not trem­ble!

What Paul uses to stir Christians to vehement earnest­ness, theologians again have turned into a battlefield for theorizers. No theory has ever been advanced that explains the apparent contradiction between God’s predestination and man’s freedom, yet Paul here, and Peter on Pentecost, preach both, not to puzzle men, but to make them humble and earnest. This verse, addressed to Christians, teaches them that they can do nothing toward their sanctification without God, for God first works in what they work out. God works primarily, therefore they can work secondarily. “Apart from me ye cap do nothing,” said Christ. On the other hand, God does nothing without the willing coopera­tion of Christians. However, their work can never super­sede or make superfluous God’s perpetual workings.

QUESTIONS

1.    Why did Christ choose to die by crucifixion rather than by some less painful and shameful form of death?

2.    How does the funeral of Julius Caesar illustrate the strategy of Christ’s death?

3.    What does Paul’s statement that “We preach Christ crucified . . . the power of God, and the wisdom of God” mean?

4.    Why are men, even some Christian men, so indifferent to Christ’s vicarious sufferings?

5.    In what sense do men work out their own salvation?

6.    How is it that men can neither save themselves nor be saved without, or in despite of, themselves?

7.    Did either Peter or his audience on Pentecost understand intellectually how men who slew Christ “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23) could ye be murderers?

8.    Explain the statement that “Congregational matters should be handled from within.”

9.    Are Christians accountable to God for truth they do not try to learn, for duty they neglect to do, and for failure to grow?