Bible Commentaries

Apostolic Rights

1 Corinthians 9:15

We should have thought there was nothing worse than death. The Apostle Paul says in effect, It is not in the slightest degree necessary that any man should live, but it is infinitely needful that every man should be good, honest, upright, useful. How foolishly, then, we have reasoned upon this matter! We have gone so far sometimes as to say, My daily bread depends upon it! The Apostle Paul says, What do you want with daily bread? that is of no consequence; it is not at all necessary that you should live, in the body, live upon daily bread: it were better for you to die; better far, than that you should make a fool of yourself in the sight of God; than that you should kill your soul; than that you should be an empty heart, without moral riches, without spiritual confidence, without beneficent nobleness. This is quite a Christian tone; no one else ever used that argument with the same measure, direction, and purpose of force. Others have had their attention called to thoughts that lay in that direction, but it required a Christian, who had been a long time with Christ on the Cross, to say, that it is not at all necessary that any 1 Corinthians 9:19 :—"For though I be free from all men, yet I have made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more:" unless you make yourselves the servants of others you cannot help them. You cannot help the east end from the west end; you cannot be doing things from a fine sanctum of elegance, that shall tell upon the remotest fibres and trembling issues and agonies of downright necessity, poverty, or pain; you must go and be one of the people; you must live their life, and speak their language, not as an acquired dialect, but as your mother tongue. When the greatest of all slave missionaries went to preach the Gospel to bondsmen he sold himself as a slave. He became a slave that he might save the slaves. He did not preach during the dinner-hour outside the cotton plantation, he went into the plantation itself, stooped himself down to his work, and whispered his Gospel to anybody that would listen to him. Men who do this do not need to produce testimonials, certificates, reluctantly written by somebody who cannot be found. Let your work speak for you; let the miracles wrought by your own genius of love attest your heavenly descent: the palm be his who wins it. Do not ask where a man came from, or by what qualification or authority he ministers: ask, what is the harvest grown under his care? and if it be golden wheat, say, This only could come forth from him who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.

Here, then, we have Paul's way of treating death. He always despised it. When the people came to him upon one occasion and told him that if he went on a certain course bonds and imprisonment awaited him, he said, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." When the people said, They will bind thee, and the chains are heavy, and the dungeon is cold and dark, he said, "I am willing not to be bound only, but to die for the Lord Jesus." A man who talked so made noble history. He is not to be laughed down by persons who have never sacrificed one solitary enjoyment that they might help some other soul to live. This is the influence that tells upon society in the coming and going of the ages; and Paul would be the first to tell you that the influence was not his, it was an influence derived. He says, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." In another prayer, he will exclaim, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." When you praise the Apostle Paul know ye that the anthem is due not to the servant but to the Lord, the living Eternal Christ.

Let young men adopt this as their motto:—It is better for me to die, than that any man should make my glorifying, in truth, and honour, and goodness, void. You may have a struggle, but you will have a great victory at the end. I have less and less faith in people who get up in the morning without having done anything, and begin to cut down what other men have sown. I like the man who has won every mouthful of bread he eats; I have confidence in the man who tackles life bravely, who had early and tremendous struggles, but who came up with Divine courage every time he was called for; I have faith in the men who have rich, large, noble experience of the realities of things. I know not that I could give to young men a motto nobler than this, when interpreted in the spirit of Christ:—It is better for me to die than that any man should make my glorying in Christ, truth, love, pureness, and beneficence, void. Hold your lives loosely, so far as your mere earthly enjoyment is concerned; look upon your present life as a mere puff of smoke blown away by the wind, so far as duty is implicated; and respond to the obligations of reason; and thus find your life, not in your meat, but in your Christian service. I have seen life in all its phases, I know it altogether; I know its deprivations and its enjoyments; I know its desolations and its popularity, I know what men are. Looking at life out of Christ, it is a mystery, a tragedy, a perplexity infinite: looking at life in Christ, it is a pain, a wonder, an apocalypse; but over it there steals, with the quietness of sunrise, the blessed assurance that to be in Christ and to do Christ's work in Christ's spirit makes life the seed, whose fruit is immortality.

Prayer

Almighty God, it hath pleased thee to make our days but a handful, may we know the number thereof, and turn our hearts unto wisdom. We arc to-day like grass in the field, and tomorrow we are cut down, and there is none abiding. The trees outlive us; we go to our own place, and are known no more upon the earth. What is there beyond? What is thy purpose concerning our life? Surely thou art training us for heaven, for larger service, for nobler stature and capacity of being. We believe this, because we have learned it in the school of Christ; this is the meaning of Bethlehem, and this is the meaning of Golgotha: we will not believe that thou dost crush us and extinguish us, we will believe in immortality. Lord, help us by the power of Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit so to do. We love the Saviour, and where he is there we shall be also. Did he not say, If it were not so I would have told you? We live upon his word, we stand upon the rock of Christ's assurance; we are confident that we shall say, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? and that by the power of the Cross, earth shall be but the beginning of heaven. In this confidence may we do our duty, and bear our burdens, and fulfil the responsibilities of the day; out of this will come patience, tender, considerate, and heroic; yea, out of this shall come such fulness and richness of manhood that we shall not only be without fear ourselves, we shall be the ministers of courage and hope unto others. We leave ourselves always wholly in thine hands, thou Father of us all. Thou knowest the way that we take, when thou hast tried us thou wilt bring us forth as gold. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, yea, he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth, that his sonship may be decided and established. Help us to accept all the deprivations and enjoyments of life as specially sent of God for the training, the culture, and the immortality of blessing promised to our souls. We would not live incidentally, superficially, despairingly; we would live as those to whom heaven is a blessed, it may be an imminent, reality. Save us from all meanness, low-ness of thought, selfishness of motive and of purpose; and to this end may we know the power of the sufferings of Christ when he died upon the Cross. Amen.