Romans 14

Romans 14:1

CREED NOT TO CHURCH Romans 14:1OUR Christian ears are often put to pain by reports of missionaries in certain heathen lands touching the treatment accorded to the weak among the natives. The cruel murder of children of the weaker sex; the criminal exposure to destruction of the sickly; the diseased and the deformed, and the heartless neglect of the decrepit aged are to us evidences of the lowest heathenism. We not only revolt from such deeds, but we hate the heathenism that permits and approves it. And yet, I am led to question sometimes, if in our churches we do not commit spiritual infanticide in our forgetfulness of the injunction of this text, “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye”? We like to have lusty children in the church—children of large faith from the first—and we are slow to accept weaklings into the households of our religious life.It shall be my effort to show that according to God’s Word, creed is not the determining condition of church-membership; that the soul that is weak in the faith ought to be received into the organized body of baptized believers, in spite of its weakness, and made to feel especially welcome because of its weakness. And yet, I will not plead for a lower tone in church life, but for a higher instead. IS AN TO CHURCH- I use the word with its weight in it. I mean by “conversion” all the experience passed through, all the change undergone, all the interests involved in turning away from the love and service of Satan to the love and service of the Saviour. Such a radical change is essential to church-membership. Our best reason approves that necessity. What is a church? The best definition yet known is that very ancient one: “A church is an organized body of baptized believers”, and according to the root idea of the New Testament word, they are “the called-out” people—the people who have quit the world to answer God’s call. The word itself, therefore, argues that all church-men should be converted men. The man should be changed before he enters the church, as the church is not a charmed circle that has power to change those who come into it, but is a circle sacred to the uses of those whom Christ has changed, and called out of the lower, worldly life.The term “penitentiary”, in its earlier uses, meant a place for penitents. But it became the custom to put into penitentiaries all classes of criminals, and so far perverted them from their original intention that they are nothing now but prisons.

An old warden of the Ohio institution used to speak of “the State Impenitentiary”, “because,” said he, “we seldom turn out any penitents”. Everybody ought to know that it doesn’t change the character of a man for good just to throw a wall about him and have him live in an enclosure of law and order, even though the wall be ecclesiastical, and the law and order Christian.That revelation makes conversion a condition of church-membership, seems also clear.

Even Nicodemus—the teacher of Israel—was not encouraged to become a professed disciple, and was distinctly given to understand that he could not enter the kingdom until he should experience that wondrous change. Other conditions are futile and meaningless while that one is wanting.What does baptism avail when administered to the unconverted? What does a perfect familiarity with the catechism, or a word for word knowledge of the creed, amount to in his case whose heart is in rebellion against God? Mr. Spurgeon was brought up on catechisms and creeds, but his eyes were holden, and his soul distressed until he heard that primitive, pale Methodist preacher, who, seeing the young man enter the chapel at Colchester, fixed his eyes upon him and said, “Young man, you are in trouble; you will never get out of it unless you look to Christ.” Then raising his hands, as only a primitive Methodist minister could do, he cried aloud, “Look! Look!

Look!” Before that hour the boy Spurgeon had been waiting to do fifty things, but when he found Christ at hand, his heart changed, the further steps into the church were few, and but for opposition would have been easy.Conversion is not the only essential to church-membership, but evangelical Christians agree that it is an absolute condition, and easily the most important one. To require of applicants for church-membership that they be converted is not to meet them with a formidable creed.

It is only asking them to come into the church after Christ has come into them. But in one sense it suggests creed, and ought. There is no Christianity without some phase of creed.CREED IS A FACTOR IN “As he thinketh in his heart so is he”. Paul never enjoined upon the Roman converts to receive a man with no faith, or any kind of a faith. Paul understood perfectly certain great principles of Christian conduct that are eternally patent.Paul knew that a man’s belief was the basis of his conduct. Weak faith never begets strong moral or spiritual behavior, and a false faith begets only irregularities and immoralities.

Every man’s conduct is an index of his conception of God. If he believes God to be indifferent to our behavior, indisposed to hold us accountable for evil deeds; an indulgent Judge who winks at evil and half sympathizes with its commission, his conduct will correspond to that conception.Why is it that so many men behave so badly, disturbing the social order, violating law, defying justice, and damning their own souls and the souls of their fellows?

Is it not, in great part, a consequence of what they believe about the mayor? If the conniving Mayor was impeached from office for his collusion with the wicked, his compromise at lawlessness, his friendship for the criminal classes, and a clean, moral, law-abiding and law-enforcing man was raised to the mayoralty, how differently the dangerous citizen would deport himself. He would say, “It won’t do now to run a gambling den wide open and rob one’s fellows under the eaves of the City Hall. It won’t do now to keep my blind pig loose in the alley. It won’t do now to go on the public street and entice men from the shadow of a policeman into the shades of death and hell. I’ve got to walk straight or else the authorities will make me smart.” The same reasoning applies to the view men take of the Chief Officer of the universe.

How often have I heard two of the chief robbers of a certain Building and Loan Association scout the idea that “God is angry with the wicked every day”; or that He will call men to strict account for the deeds done in the body. That Association went robbed and bankrupt.

One objection to socialism is this: Its morals are as loose as its religious views are liberal. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he”. Belief is the basis of conduct!Better then admit to church-membership the weakest faith, if only it conforms, so far as it goes, to God’s Word, than to have the man of most pronounced convictions enter, if he brings his views from another source. Mr. Beecher said, “It makes some difference what a man believes about charts. Suppose the ship-master should say, ‘Here are three fathoms of water, and here are two, and here is one, but I do not believe it. I know that my ship draws sixteen feet of water, but I believe that I can run it over a twelve foot bar’.

Does it make no difference what he believes? It makes all the difference between shipwreck and safety.” So, if any man wishes to stand before his fellows and tell them that it makes very little difference what a man believes, if only he is sincere, he may do it, but a minister should not be a party to such deception.Keeping that in mind, we pass to the special plea of this text.CHURCH- LOOKS TO THE OF RATHER THAN TO THE AND OF CREEDSThese Christians at Rome were about to despise that fact.

Certain men who had well-defined views on the question of abstinence from meats, were ready to reject the application for membership, among them, of those who did not see the matter eye to eye. Paul wrote this text to teach them that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17). He taught that admission to membership could ask only the rudiments of true religion. “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye”. There are a good many people who need to have that lesson impressed afresh. There are denominations that are more solicitous to have their catechisms and their confessions familiarly known, than they are to find the applicant for membership convinced of Jesus’ saving power and love.Mr. Spurgeon tells of a little girl who came before his board of deacons on one occasion and was questioned concerning her faith.

She was timid and seldom made any answer, and when she did speak she stumbled in her replies and created the impression of a profound ignorance of what the brethren considered fundamentals of a Christian faith. At last they told her gently that they hardly thought she understood enough about Christianity to come into the church, and she had best wait.

She arose to leave, but halting at the door she looked at the board a moment, and then burst into tears, saying, “I don’t care if I couldn’t tell it; I know I love Him.” The grand pastor said, “Brethren, that knowledge is more important to church-membership than any possible familiarity with formulas of faith”, and they called her back and voted unanimously to recommend her to the church.There are individuals, also, who need to reflect upon the fact that the weakest spiritual infant is yet a rightful member of God’s household. The world has in it not a few people who have come into the kingdom by special routes, and through wonderful experiences, and they expect all others to come by the same way. In a former pastorate we had a certain woman in our church whose little daughter came to me and told me she loved Jesus and wanted to unite with the church, but her mother objected. I went to see the mother and found she was a very religious spirit, and was very solicitous to have this daughter a Christian, but didn’t think her converted as yet. I asked her if the child loved Christ. “Ah, yes!” she replied, “her love is wonderful, and she asks Christ to help her in everything.” Then I inquired why she—the mother— questioned the child’s conversion, to which she replied, “Why, she has never had any wonderful experience. The night I was converted the stars shone with the brightness of the sun and a beauty indescribable, and all nature seemed to know that God had accepted me as His child.”It may be a good thing to have a brilliant conversion, but it is better to start out into the Christian life crying, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief”, and grow from that beggarly beginning into a fuller consciousness of God’s love and power, than to have a conversion so wonderful that it changed the face of nature and became the hour of all hours in life, the climax of all experience, the glorious hour that threw a shadow on all succeeding hours, and set one singing that doleful verse,“Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of Jesus and His Word?” Do you have some faith in Christ? Do you find in your heart a little genuine love for the gracious Lord? Would it be a joy to begin obeying Him? Then don’t let men or devils keep you out of the church, since to you,. Christ has made a special promise, “A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench” (Matthew 12:20).It is the very function of the church to strengthen men’s faith in God, and men’s characters in Christ. It is to the new convert what the home is to the infant.

It is the circle to teach him how to walk and talk, and think and act. It is the arena that offers opportunity and assistance to the development of all growing powers.Not long since we heard of a young man who said to one of our members, “I want to join your church; I think that the very best way to get into a good social circle.” We sent word to him that he misunderstood the church, and that knowing his motive we could not encourage his purpose.

But if that same one had come saying, “I haven’t much faith, but I prize what I have, and I want to cultivate it by Christian association; I want to root myself more firmly by Christian fellowship; I want to grow in grace and develop a full, round character in Christ,” the church doors should have swung wide, saying, “You are welcome, my brother, and we are ready to baptize you.”The church is a hospital for the lame who need nursing into health. The church is a school for the ignorant who thirst for a larger knowledge of God and His Word. The church is God’s workhouse wherein growing souls come to the standard of the perfect man in Christ Jesus by the sweet exercise of service. If a man brings some faith, and some love, and some spirit of obedience into this circle of sunshine, it must flower and fruit if the man is in earnest and the church is a worthy one. His after brilliance or usefulness depends not so much upon his inherent power, as upon the touch of Christ’s transforming hand. He has taken many a poor fragment of a man, and so set him into new environments and filled him with a new spirit, that he shone like another John. The truth is, Christ’s Church is not a collection of superior specimens after the flesh, or even the mind, for that matter,“For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; “And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: “That no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). The moral beauty and strength and grace of the Christian brotherhood is not due to the superior natural talents of the men and women that make it up, but to the transforming’ effect of Christ’s hand upon the souls that serve Him.Macaulay relates that a poor apprentice picked up the pieces of stained glass that his master had thrown aside as worthless, and wrought them into a window that won more admiration than the renowned artist’s work. The cathedral builders seeing it, rejected the master’s work and accepted the one of the poor apprentice instead.Some one referring to that has said, “The wisdom of this world made its painted window of the wise, the learned and the righteous, but the peasant Galilean became the architect of a new society. He rejected the noble and the wise, and taking up the fallen sons of men He has set them like diamonds to sparkle forever in the diadem of His glory.”