Bible Commentaries

Chapter92

Prayer

Almighty God, may we, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, be counted worthy at the last to take part in the song of Moses and the Lamb. We have hope that this shall be Acts 26:1-32

1. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for thyself. Then Paul stretched forth the hand, and answered for himself:

2. I think myself happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused of the Jews:

3. Especially because I know thee to be expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews: wherefore I beseech thee to hear me patiently.

4. My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews;

5. Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

6. And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers;

7. Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews.

8. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?

9. I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

10. Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.

11. And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities.

12. Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests,

13. At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.

14. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

15. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.

16. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee,

17. Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,

18. To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

19. Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:

20. But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Juda, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.

21. For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me.

22. Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come:

23. That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.

24. And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

25. But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.

26. For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner.

27. King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest.

28. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.

29. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I Acts 26:1-32

(Continued)

Paul uses an expression which is full of significance in regard to all speakers:—"I think myself happy." Now we shall hear him! You do not hear any man until he is happy. Speaking under constraint, you get a wrong idea and measure of the Acts 26:15-18

15. I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.

16. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in which I will appear unto thee;

17. Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,

18. To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Christianity Self-Attested

If you had a writing given to you copied and asserted to be a speech made long ago by your father, what would you do with it if you were desirous to ascertain its authenticity? The first reading of it would settle your mind. Knowing your father—his sentiments, his mode of expression, the peculiarity of style which made the speech what it was—you would be able to say instantly whether the speech was authentic or fabricated. We ought by this time to know enough of Jesus Christ's manner to be able to say whether any speech purporting to have been delivered by him was actually ever spoken by his lips. His style cannot be counterfeited; it will break down at some point, will any attempt to reproduce that inimitable eloquence. The words may be well chosen, the simulation may be quite a work of genius; but there will be something wanting—an accent, a touch, a breathing peculiarly his own. It is intensely interesting to have handed to us what purports to have been a speech made by Jesus Christ after his ascension. Here is a speech reported by a man who never saw Jesus Christ in the flesh, or communed with him, or was received into his fellowship. Had Saul been a daily attendant upon the ministry of Jesus Christ, he might, to some extent, have imitated his style with considerable skill; but even that circumstance was wanting in this case. We shall see what change death has made upon our Master, and resurrection and coronation. Is this the Jesus whom we have known so well? I think it can be shown that we have in this little speech a recapitulation of the four Gospels. On this speech might be founded a powerful argument for the inspiration of the Christian Scriptures. This is the New Testament in miniature; this is a condensed form of the Gospel revelation. If Paul is right here, he may be right in other places. He cannot be allowed to pass off this speech flippantly or incidentally: we will detain him here and cross-examine him, and turn over his witness page by page and examine it line by line, and if he is strong at this point, it will be so much in his favour.

What says Jesus Christ? "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose." Here I recall the words which made the first ministers: "Follow me." None was with him; no presence was allowed to turn that singular into a plural. He is as personal as ever, as unaccompanied as before; as grand in solitude, as majestic in completeness.

"I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make—" Here I remember the charming word, "I will make you fishers of men." The word is the same: Jesus Christ is still Maker, Creator. That word, O Saul of Tarsus! was well chosen, that word "make." It is a king's word; it is a Divine term. It goes back to origins and sources, to beginnings and springs; there is a marvellous original power in it. The speaker does not propose to modify, adapt, add to, rearrange: "I will make," I will create. So far I can identify the Master in the quotation of the servant.

"To make thee a minister"—that is a new word—"and a witness"—that is an old word. "Ye are," said Jesus Christ, "witnesses of these things."

Proceed still further: "a witness both of these things which thou hast seen." Why, that is the old method; that is exactly the answer which he returned to the inquiring Baptist: "Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see." We speak as eye-witnesses; we are not quoters from authors of an ancient date, we are witnesses of "things which we have seen." This is the power of Gospel speech. It is an incarnation: a man who speaks affirms in his own name and in his own person; he is a witness of things which he himself has seen.

Proceed further: "and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." That opens a wide field of possible revelation. So it does. That is exactly what Jesus Christ did in the days of his flesh. Said he to his disciples: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." Jesus Christ did not put down a full stop, saying, "This is the end." There is no end to the meaning of revelation. There is no end to the literature of the alphabet. The letters are but six-and-twenty in number, and no man attempts to add another letter to the alphabet; but into how many forms, through how many permutations, may these letters be thrown or passed! It is the same with the New Testament: the alphabet is here, the beginning of Christian thought, life, purpose, power; who can tell into what phases this alphabetic symbol may be passed? Observe, nothing is added to the revelation; there is no invention of a merely human kind admitted into this great outlook. However large the book, it is all in the alphabet; however magnificent the unfoldment of the truth by human eloquence, the truth itself is the distinct and direct gift of God alone.

Proceed now to the seventeeth verse: "Delivering them from the people, and from the Gentiles." Surely that is new. What occasion is there to deliver a preacher "from the people, and from the Gentiles"? Here is the Lord's own speech: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.... Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." Truly this seventeenth verse was spoken in the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. It is a marvellous thing if this was invented. It is impossible, considering Saul's antecedents and Saul's religious prejudices, that he could have invented a speech so perfect, not only in the letter—which might have been a mere trick of eloquence—but so spiritual in the penetration and sympathy. So far, I see it every whit as a reproduction of the matter and manner with which long study has made us so familiar.

The eighteenth verse is a summary of all that Jesus began both to do and to say. The miracles and the Gospels are all in this eighteenth verse. For example: "To open their eyes." That is what Jesus Christ was always doing. He could never be at rest in the presence of the blind; instantaneously he felt the near presence of the blind man. When did he ever leave the blind man in darkness? Again and again he said, "According to your faith be it unto you." He opened the eyes of one that was born blind; he opened the eyes of the blind beggar who called to him from the wayside. Jesus Christ will not have any blind followers. This reference, of course, is not to the opening of the physical eyes, but to the opening of the mental vision. Still it is in exquisite harmony with the whole purpose and method of the Saviour: he will give light, more light; in him is no darkness at all, and from us he will drive away every cloud and shadow.

"To turn them from darkness to light." When did he ever turn men from light to darkness? Never. Whenever he visited a town, the inhabitants were startled by an access of intellectual lustre; sometimes they were dazzled, sometimes distressed—they were always surprised. Things appeared so much larger to them after he had touched them; old thoughts stood up in new meanings when he breathed them; the law itself became a kind of gospel when he repronounced its awful words. Enlargement is a characteristic of the incoming of Christ.

"And from the power of Satan unto God." When did he ever reverse that process? He came to bruise the head of the serpent; he came to destroy him who had the power of death. He was the continual enemy of the devil: his first battle was with the devil in the wilderness, and his last battle was with the devil on the Cross. He would turn men to God, give them new ideas concerning the origin of things. He would ennoble all thought, enlarge all life, glorify all destiny by associating the whole with the name and sovereignty of the Living God.

Go further, "that they may receive forgiveness of sins." That is his very word: " Acts 26:16-18

16. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;

17. Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,

18. To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Christian Ministry Defined

This is the kind of ministry which Jesus Christ wishes to establish in the earth. I will stake everything upon it that is dear to Christian faith and hope. No other statement is needed; no explanation is possible. The only competent exposition of these words can be found in their repetition. Say them over and over again in every tone possible to the heart, and you will find the result a complete knowledge of Christ's meaning. I am prepared to maintain that this conception of the Christian ministry proves the deity of Jesus Christ, for the reason that it is such a conception as never entered into the uninspired mind, and, in particular, never could have entered into a mind constituted as was the intellectual nature of Saul of Tarsus. Reading those three verses is like roaming in a vineyard on an autumn afternoon. This is the Lord's planting. Every syllable bursts out with new wine. If men would ask you what the Christian ministry aims at, point them to the twenty-sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth verses. That is the answer. Let us note the particulars just as they occur, without inventing an order of our own.

"But rise, and stand upon thy feet" Here is the typical manliness of the Christian ministry. A noble challenge this! We do not want crawling men, fawning, crouching, disabled men, but men who can stand up and show their stature and their force. The Christian minister, realising Jesus Christ's conception of the ministry, does not apologise for his existence, does not account for himself as one of the units of mankind, does not beg a corner on which to spend his dying life: he stands upon his feet, a man every whit—bold, courageous, well-defined; a figure, a force, a factor not to be ignored. A beautiful incidental instance this of the quality of the ministry. Jesus did not speak to Saul as he lay down in the dust, a smitten and blighted thing, crushed with a new burden of light: he would speak to him, as it were, on equal terms, face to face. He is the Man Christ Jesus. He will not send frightened things about his messages and errands—blind, blighted things that cannot tell their tale—he will have the Acts 26:18

To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Vital Ministry

Words fail to express my personal appreciation of this magnificent charge. This is the New Testament. Everything is in the eighteenth verse. No man ever invented that verse: it is a house not made with hands. I pause before it as before an object of infinite sublimity. Should any one ask, "What does Christianity want to do in the world?" point the inquirer to the twenty sixth chapter of the Acts 26:18. Write them at the head of every sermon; write them in gold, brightened with diamonds, around every pulpit. This is what our Lord Christ wants to do. Is it worth doing? Would the world be the better for the doing of it? Is it worth my while—your while—to take up this programme? Let us examine it in detail, and then we shall know the fulness and the value of the Divine reply.

Picture the scene. A strong man is thrown down—a man capable of all but inveterate prejudice, invincible in will, cultivated in mind; a man of rare intellectual penetration and great moral sternness. Bidden to stand up, he receives a charge from an invisible speaker. I will not stop at the mystery of the invisibleness until I have mastered the moral purpose of the words that were spoken. We may spend so much time over the invisibleness as to overlook or neglect the beneficence. Let us stand at the point best fitted to our reason and our whole faculty, and then advance into the transcendental and the infinite. What does the invisible speaker want this man to do? To go to the Gentiles, the heathen peoples of the world. What does he want this man to do when he reaches the far-off lands? Everything depends upon this revelation. First, "to open their eyes." My confidence is already turned towards this speaker. He is not the inventor of a superstition. Any religion that proposes to open our eyes is presumptively a true religion. Superstition says, "Keep your eyes closed; put a hood over your reason; do not make any inquiries; take my report of everything, and be contented and satisfied with it." That is superstition. Christianity says to every man, "Stand up, I will open thine eyes; thou shalt see the bigness of the universe, the reality of things, the magnificence of life, the solemnity of destiny. Stand up, I will make a luminous man of you; thou shalt have sight—faculty of criticism; thou shalt have a large estate, a glorious appeal to the eye." Christianity, then, does not seek to befool me; Christianity does not want to envelop me in darkness, to shut me up in some prison,—priest-guarded, priest-locked, roofed in with superstition, wound round with darkness. Verily not. There are no blind Christians. In proportion as they are blind, they have not received the benefit of Christ. The Christian is a wide-awake man—all reason, all life. If any had supposed him to be a dotard, a superstitious fanatic, they have misunderstood the faith, if they have not misinterpreted the man. A rationalist? That is what I am! If any man outside Christ's great revelation propose to be a rationalist, I call him a false man—a thief. He has stolen a livery that does not belong to his court; he wears a crest he has purloined. I claim that Christianity is rationalism because it opens the eyes. Marvellous is that expression! Do not suppose you understand it in a moment. It has in it a whole firmament of light and possibility, education, growth, development. This is a daily process in our education—namely: seeing things more clearly, with a happier and more satisfactory distinctness, noting their relations, proportions, interdependences, and final issues. Christ has no blind followers. If any man want to follow Christ, he must first have his eyes opened. That was Christ's way in the days of his flesh. He did not say to blind men by the wayside, "Grope your way after me, and we may see about your vision by-and-by." No; he stopped, gave eyes to the blind, and then passed on. Christians are not blind men, but men whose eyes have been divinely opened. Is it worth my while giving up what strength I may have, or faculty, to open men's eyes? Why, there is no mission so sublime! It is almost like creating a man to give him sight. The man blesses you with a grateful, overflowing heart; he says he owes the universe to you, as the instrument of God: for before it was a great night, now it is a sun-lit, glowing day. The greatest gift of man to man is the gift of idea, thought, new vision, the enlargement of the critical, judicial, and appreciative faculty. To open the eyes is to give wealth. The poet cannot give me the acres of my lord, but he can give me the landscape that belongs to the poorest of the children of men.

"To turn them from darkness to light." That is upon the same line of thinking? Precisely: that is the Divine logic. Not to open their eyes to see the darkness as sevenfold greater than they dreamed it to be, but "to turn them from darkness to light." What superstitious religion ever proposed to increase the day? One wonders that men, hearing this to be Christ's purpose, do not stand up and say, "King of kings! Lord of lords!" They will follow any demagogue who will delude and befool them, and turn their back upon the man who wants to lead them out of darkness into light. This is the proof of the Divinity of the Christian religion. It is the religion of light; it cries, "Light! more light! cleanse the whole firmament of clouds and let all the light of God shine without interception." What a turning is this from darkness to light! The phrase may go for less than its value because of its very simplicity. The white diamond does not attract the untrained attention so much as some muddily-coloured stone quite valueless: the diamond is neglected because of the very quality which gives it value. Is there a religion in this world that even proposes to turn men from darkness to light? I accept that religion at once on that very profession. Who can measure the distance from darkness to light? This is one of the immeasurable distances finding its counterpart in the expression, "as far as the east is from the west." These are terms that transcend arithmetic. The writers would have borrowed arithmetical numbers to express their ideas but that arithmetical numbers have no relation to such stupendous distances. Darkness imprisons, darkness brings fear, darkness enfeebles, darkness contracts the mind. Jesus never said, "Take away the light; or if you light a candle, put it under a bushel." Contrariwise, he said, "I am the Light of the world," and "ye, my disciples, are the light of the world.... Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." Because Christianity fights the darkness, loves the light, calls for midday, I accept it as the fullest and strongest philosophy of life yet made known to me.

There is another turning—namely: "from the power of Satan unto God." Christianity is the upward movement of the world. "Nearer God!" is the watch-cry; "Away from the enemy; further from the destroyer; upward, out of his reach"—that is the sublime charge, that the Divine inspiration. We know what is meant by "the power of Satan"—the power that victimises us, that dupes us, that gives us promises which end ever in disappointments; the power that unmans us, takes away our crown, breaks upon our self-control, mocks our prayers, and points us to the grave as the sad end. We know that power. It never gave us any education, it never took us to school; it never offered us any new book written by genius and inspired by purity. It always said, "Avoid school, keep out of the library; turn your back upon the Church, never mind the preacher; feed yourself: drink where you can, eat what you can get hold of; obey me, and I will give you the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them"—a figure as large as the lie.

So far this is in some sense negative: "To open their eyes, turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." Now we come to what may be termed a blessing more positive: "that they may receive forgiveness of sins." No man ever invented that! Man has invented forgetfulness of sins; man has brewed certain drinks which he will give to himself in order to dull the recollection of his iniquities. But this is dew from heaven; no fingers ever moulded these translucent drops of celestial purity. Christianity makes the greatest of all offers. It will not lull me, it will not administer opiate or narcotic to me: it will fight the battle right out; it will adapt means to ends; it will bring the eternal to bear upon the temporary, the Divine upon the human, the sacrificial blood upon the human sin; and the end shall be "forgiveness." Sweet word!—infinite in its depth of meaning, infinite in its height of promise. An incredible word! That is its difficulty with me: I know my sin so well that I know it cannot be forgiven—I am speaking now within the bounds and observation and consciousness of a personal and social kind. You can throw flowers upon it; you can employ men to come with instruments of iron and throw clay and sand and rocks upon it; you can bring all the great seas of the globe and pour their infinite floods upon it; but you cannot forgive it. Christianity says to me, in this mood of dejection and despair, "You can be forgiven, and I have come to tell you how." I am touched by the sublimity of the offer. If it were possible, I would accept it; but to accept it would be to contradict all my own consciousness and all my own observation, and all the efforts of every empiric who has come to practise his nostrums upon me. Christianity replies: "I am well aware of that; this will be no compromise; my action is building upon original foundations: the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." My reply to that speech is a great flood of tears; I say, "Would God that were true, thou sweet angel!" and I look suspiciously at the radiant mother-preacher. Can it be? What is it that cleanses from all sin? "The blood of Jesus Christ." I want that to be true! O angel, radiant one—making the snow ashamed of its imperfect whiteness by the lustre of thy purity—I would thou couldst make me feel the Gospel thou hast made me hear!

Is it worth our while trying to open men's eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins? In this faith I would serve and count all other programmes mean as lies. Then will come the "inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me"—new character, new brotherhood, new riches. This is what Christianity wants to do. Fly abroad, thou mighty gospel! When this work is done, earth will be heaven.