Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
Now there is another side to this same inward necessity of which I have
been speaking, on which I must just touch. I have referred to the
impulse which flows from the possession of the Gospel. There is an
impulse which flows from that which is but another way of putting the
same thing, the union with Jesus Christ, which is the result of our
faith in the Gospel. If I am a Christian I am, in a very profound and
real sense, one with Jesus Christ, and have His Spirit for the life of
my spirit. And in the measure in which I am thus one with Him, I shall
look at things as He looks at them, and do such things as He did. If
the mind of Jesus Christ is in us 'Who for the joy that was set before
Him endured the Cross,' who 'counted not equality with God a thing to
be desired, but made Himself of no reputation,' and 'was found in
fashion as a man,' then we too shall feel that our work in the world is
not done, and our obligations to Him are not discharged, unless to the
very last particle of our power we spread His name. Brethren, if there
were no commandment at all from Christ's lips laying upon His followers
the specific duty of making His gospel known, still this inward impulse
of which I am speaking would have created all the forms of Christian
aggressiveness which we see round about us, because, if we have Christ
and His Gospel in our hearts, 'we cannot but speak the things which we
have seen and heard.'
And now turn to another aspect of this matter. There is--
II. A command which makes silence criminal.
I do not need to do more than remind you of the fact that the very last
words which our Lord has left us according to the two versions of them
which are given in the Gospel of Matthew, and the beginning of this
Book of the Acts, coincide in this. 'You are to be My witnesses to the
ends of the earth. Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to
every creature.' Did you ever think what an extraordinary thing it is
that that confident anticipation of a worldwide dominion, and of being
Himself adapted to all mankind, in every climate and in every age, and
at every stage of culture, should have been the conviction which the
departing Christ sought to stamp upon the minds of those eleven poor
men? What audacity! What tremendous confidence! What a task to which to
set them! What an unexampled belief in Himself and His work! And it is
all coming true; for the world is finding out, more and more, that
Jesus Christ is its Saviour and its King.
This commandment which is laid upon us Christian men submerges all
distinctions of race, and speech, and nationality, and culture. There
are high walls parting men off from one another. This great message and
commission, like some rising tide, rolls over them all, and obliterates
them, and flows boundless, having drowned the differences, from horizon
to horizon, east and west and south and north.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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