The Self-Drawn Portrait of the Apostle Paul. (10)
Posted by Marvin Pagkanlungan on Tuesday, June 3, 2014
by Charles H. Welch
#10. Separate Features: Self-denying Love.
“Here we see . . . . . that self-denying love which ‘will eat no flesh while the world standeth lest he make his brother to offend’.” (Conybeare and Howson).
When, as dispensations change, gifts and graces pass away, Faith, Hope and Love remain. When the ages have reached their goal, faith and hope will find their fullest expression in love, which abides. Love is an all-pervading essence, too great, too manifold, too diverse, for the mind of man to grasp on this side of resurrection. In the Scriptures love is spoken of in terms of its outgoings rather than of its essence. One phase will be seen as faith, another as joy, yet another as righteousness. A man may have love for the Lord, for His Word, for His people, but, during this life, it may still be crippled, half fledged or baffled. The self-denying element of Christian love is that which is here brought before us. Paul expressed this quality in a remarkable way. He refrained from enjoying the highest liberties and fullest rights that the gospel of grace had brought him.
To you and to me, the question of whether we shall or shall not eat this or that is of little consequence. Years of bondage, ages of tradition, veneration of one’s elders, regard for the sanctity of Moses and his law, respect for the interpreters of that law, a fear of the damnation that followed the overstepping of its prohibitions (as expressed, for example, in the eating of certain prohibited foods), have never held us in check. To yield a point to the foolish scruples of a weak saints is easy. We do so with a good-humoured smile, and the matter is ended. Not so with Paul. As a Hebrew, as an Israelite, as a Pharisee, as a zealot for tradition, the question of clean and unclean meats was a vital one. It touched his nation’s peculiar sanctity. It involved his place in the covenant of the God of his fathers. Nothing but a miracle could have delivered Saul, the Hebrew, from the slavery of such scruples, and nothing but a miracle could have turned him into Paul the Champion of Liberty. Again and again, in Galatians, in Corinthians, in Colossians, Paul strikes the note of freedom. The observance of days; the question of meat offered to idols; the question as to whether such meat had been killed according to the rules of the Rabbis; from all such legal observances Paul stood gloriously free. And yet—and yet—he who was free; he who fought, as no one since has fought, for the perpetuation of that freedom to the Gentiles; he, the one whose boast it was that all things were now lawful, it is he that willingly circumscribes his blood-bought liberties. It is he who does not enter into all the opening avenues of freedom. He remembers that he had been set free by self-denying love, the love of Christ.
“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not according to love. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died . . . . . it is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Rom. xiv. 13-15, 21).
Again in I Corinthians the Apostle writes:--
“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake, for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof . . . . . but if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other . . . . . not seeking mine own profit” (I Cor. x. 23-33).
How strange that the apostle of freedom should be the one to plead for self-imposed restrictions! He who knew that all things were lawful, voluntarily refrained from exercising his privileges. Yet it is not strange to those who have glimpsed the lodestar that ever drew the Apostle on. “The love of Christ constraineth me”, he said, and if love, then it must at times “deny itself” to justify itself. For love not only gives, but gives itself. It not only gives, but “spares not”.
Here, then, is another feature in the portrait of the man sent by the Lord to the Gentiles.
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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 33, page 144).
----------------------------
#10. Separate Features: Self-denying Love.
“Here we see . . . . . that self-denying love which ‘will eat no flesh while the world standeth lest he make his brother to offend’.” (Conybeare and Howson).
When, as dispensations change, gifts and graces pass away, Faith, Hope and Love remain. When the ages have reached their goal, faith and hope will find their fullest expression in love, which abides. Love is an all-pervading essence, too great, too manifold, too diverse, for the mind of man to grasp on this side of resurrection. In the Scriptures love is spoken of in terms of its outgoings rather than of its essence. One phase will be seen as faith, another as joy, yet another as righteousness. A man may have love for the Lord, for His Word, for His people, but, during this life, it may still be crippled, half fledged or baffled. The self-denying element of Christian love is that which is here brought before us. Paul expressed this quality in a remarkable way. He refrained from enjoying the highest liberties and fullest rights that the gospel of grace had brought him.
To you and to me, the question of whether we shall or shall not eat this or that is of little consequence. Years of bondage, ages of tradition, veneration of one’s elders, regard for the sanctity of Moses and his law, respect for the interpreters of that law, a fear of the damnation that followed the overstepping of its prohibitions (as expressed, for example, in the eating of certain prohibited foods), have never held us in check. To yield a point to the foolish scruples of a weak saints is easy. We do so with a good-humoured smile, and the matter is ended. Not so with Paul. As a Hebrew, as an Israelite, as a Pharisee, as a zealot for tradition, the question of clean and unclean meats was a vital one. It touched his nation’s peculiar sanctity. It involved his place in the covenant of the God of his fathers. Nothing but a miracle could have delivered Saul, the Hebrew, from the slavery of such scruples, and nothing but a miracle could have turned him into Paul the Champion of Liberty. Again and again, in Galatians, in Corinthians, in Colossians, Paul strikes the note of freedom. The observance of days; the question of meat offered to idols; the question as to whether such meat had been killed according to the rules of the Rabbis; from all such legal observances Paul stood gloriously free. And yet—and yet—he who was free; he who fought, as no one since has fought, for the perpetuation of that freedom to the Gentiles; he, the one whose boast it was that all things were now lawful, it is he that willingly circumscribes his blood-bought liberties. It is he who does not enter into all the opening avenues of freedom. He remembers that he had been set free by self-denying love, the love of Christ.
“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not according to love. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died . . . . . it is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak” (Rom. xiv. 13-15, 21).
Again in I Corinthians the Apostle writes:--
“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake, for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof . . . . . but if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other . . . . . not seeking mine own profit” (I Cor. x. 23-33).
How strange that the apostle of freedom should be the one to plead for self-imposed restrictions! He who knew that all things were lawful, voluntarily refrained from exercising his privileges. Yet it is not strange to those who have glimpsed the lodestar that ever drew the Apostle on. “The love of Christ constraineth me”, he said, and if love, then it must at times “deny itself” to justify itself. For love not only gives, but gives itself. It not only gives, but “spares not”.
Here, then, is another feature in the portrait of the man sent by the Lord to the Gentiles.
-------------------------------
(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 33, page 144).
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