THE world, in apostolic times, was not so very different from the world of today that we shall fail in learning some practical lessons by regarding it. Well, indeed, would it be if the Christianity of apostolic times and that accepted in ours were more alike!
We will glance at the three parts of the world as they existed in the early days of the Church into which Scripture divides mankind—" the Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God" (1 Cor. 10:32) with the object of obtaining some profit for ourselves in these latter days.
The Jews were the people of God. To them He had entrusted the care of His Word, and the sacred writings were preserved by them with the most jealous zeal. The words, the very letters, of the inspired Scriptures were all counted and noted, so that it was almost impossible for an error to creep into the handiwork of those who copied them. God had given also to the Jews a system of religion and of public worship, and the service of the Temple, where all ceremonies and sacrifices, as enjoined in the law, were most precisely performed. The letter of the word of God and the worship of God were held in the highest veneration. But together with this, there were prevalent in Judaism," the commandments of men," and " the tradition of the elders," and these were esteemed to such an extent that the authority of God's Word over the souls of men was nullified. (Matt. 15:6; Mark 7:9).
The teachers of religion had effected this evil; it was they who had gradually substituted the authority of tradition for that of the Scriptures, and these teachers had so pushed themselves forward that they stood between the people and God.
Could we see the Jerusalem of those old days, we should witness a. strange regard for the letter of God's Word, a great observance of religion, and we should be profoundly impressed by the magnificent ceremonial and the service of the Temple. Indeed, unless divinely taught, we should suppose the religious life as most worthy of Jehovah. But so far away from God were the hearts of those religious teachers that the publicans and the harlots went into the kingdom of heaven before them (Matt. 21:31).
The bitterest enemies of Christ, the most determined to cast out of the earth the Sent One of God the Father, were these scribes and Pharisees and priests of Israel. Judaism had developed, by the cunning of human tradition, into a religion that neither required nor tolerated the Son of God, of whom Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms all spake!
This awful fact should be a warning to professing Christians, for it is quite possible to boast in the possession of the Scriptures ; to be orthodox, and yet to live and die without Christ. It is quite possible to be oneself part of a Christless Christianity.
In speaking of the Gentile—the pagan part of the world—we occupy ourselves with the Roman Empire. The sun of old Rome shone in his brightest splendor in the time of which we are speaking; philosophy, arts, and civilization, were at their noon-day glory. The mind of man was never more mighty, nor were his powers more magnificent. It was indeed the day of progress. But together with man's noble intellectual exaltation, was to be seen his vile moral debasement. The gods of the pagans were chiefly demons, or vices deified; crimes of the vilest kind were perpetrated with unblushing activity, and intellectual, civilized man had degraded himself to a level impossible to be reached by the beasts that perish.
The people who had the scriptures of truth had veiled the truth from their eyes by their own traditions; proud and self-satisfied, they felt not their sin, and knew not their need of the Savior, they "received Him not" (John The pagan world, by arts and sciences and by triumphs in war, had learned neither the holiness of God nor the sinfulness of man, it "knew not" (ver. 10) its Creator.
The Jews were expecting the coming of the Messiah at the time of His birth, and the heathen world seemed dissatisfied with its hopes, but the Jew and the Gentile joined hands to crucify the Christ. Whatever the expectations of the one, or the cravings of the other, both united to nail to the cross the only One who can give peace and rest to the human heart and conscience.
We will now turn our eye to a small company assembled in Jerusalem, which is unrecognized by the Jew, unknown by the Gentile. It is that of the disciples of the crucified Jesus. They know He is in heaven, for some of them saw Him ascend thither from the Mount of Olives. This company is waiting together in Jerusalem at the Lord's bidding, until they shall be endued with power from on high.
The Lord had told them He would send the Comforter to them, and had expressly bidden them know that so long as He was here on earth the Holy Ghost could not come. And at the appointed time, on the day of Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit comes to them from heaven and fills each one with Himself. He comes as a mighty and rushing wind and as a cloven tongue of fire, emblems of His irresistible and unquenchable force. This company is the Church of God.
The Jew held aloof from the Gentile, righteously abhorred his idols and his morals, while in the eyes of the Roman, Judaism was but one of the many religions whose peoples had been conquered by Rome's legions. What would be the attitude of the Church of God towards Jew and Gentile? To the Church of primitive Christianity, paganism, root and branch, was utterly abhorrent. But the Church could look with a pitying eye upon the heathen, for Christ its Head, in heaven, had died to save not Jews only, but the world ; moreover, He had bidden His apostles go out into all the world, making disciples of all nations. The Church of God, so long as it was guided and energized by the Holy Spirit, could but be separate from paganism in all its forms; indeed, it is enough for us to breathe the name of the Holy Spirit to feel that such must be the case. The ruin of Israel in former generations had been idolatry, and alliances with the heathen ever ended in the corruption and slavery of the people of God. How much more would this be the case with the Church. Against paganism, therefore, it must wage spiritual war, and any sort of alliance with it would be but the corruption of the Church and its eventual slavery.
Could the Church have any alliance with the spirit of Judaism which had crucified Christ? He is the Savior, and to be of the Church in its earliest days was to repent, to submit to Christ, to believe on Him, and to be baptized; therefore to make as clean a separation from phariseeism as from paganism. In our next paper we shall see how the Church conducted itself towards Judaism.
To the Church the Lord added the saved. (Acts 2:47). He took the converts out from Judaism and paganism and placed them among His people, with and in whom was the Spirit. Of the Church Christ was the Head (Eph. 1:22; 4:15) ; it was His own purchase (Acts 20:28) ; He had loved it, and given Himself for it, and it was His care (Eph. 5:25-27); He supplied it with its needed daily spiritual nourishment and strength (Col. 2:19); the men who ruled and taught in the Church, and the evangelists, who were the means of increasing its numbers, were all Christ's own gifts to the Church (Eph. 3:7-16). Thus was the company of believers who formed the Church furnished by Christ, and truly it was a body distinct in every way from Jew and Gentile, being the habitation of God by the Spirit.
Ephesus
THE mention of Ephesus brings up thoughts of some of the most interesting and affecting facts of early Christianity.
When the truth of God had so prevailed in Ephesus that it injured the trade of the shrine-makers, they created an uproar, and gathered a crowd, which shouted for some two hours, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians." The wise town clerk, having reminded the tumultuous assembly that all men knew their city worshipped the, great goddess Diana and the image which fell down from Jupiter, adroitly added that, if the silversmiths had any cause of complaint against the Christians, the law was open to them, and so he dismissed the crowd. Here lie potent arguments in favor of the goddess and her image, and similar arguments hold for the images and relics of our own days. The voice of the people was in favor of the goddess; popular belief was in the image, and, behind all this, this religion brought much money into the city.
Now in idolatrous Ephesus the word of God grew mightily, and prevailed. There the Apostle Paul labored for some three years, going from house to house, and also publicly testifying of Christ. We have but to read his Epistle to the Ephesians to discover how the great truths of the Christian faith had entered the hearts of the church there. Moreover, from our Lord's address to that church, we find how remarkably powerful the Ephesians were in spiritual wisdom, and not only so, but how zealous they were in works for God. At the close of St. Paul's Epistle Christians are presented as soldiers for God, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, fighting for the truth in the midst of the forces of Satan—and that Satanic force was no light energy in Ephesus, the early part of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts testifies. Indeed, the Epistle to the Ephesians gives to us the highest of Christian privileges, and the greatest of Christian responsibilities, and ends with the array of Christian soldiers engaged in the most vigorous Christian warfare. In the presence of such things we might suppose that the last that would be foretold of Ephesus would be victory.
But as we read St. Paul's leave-taking of the elders of the church what do we discover? Among the sheep of Ephesus grievous wolves—men, apparently servants of Christ, but really ministers of Satan, were about to enter, not sparing the flock ; and, more sad still, St. Paul told the elders—the guides and leaders of the church—"of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them " (chap. 20:30). Havoc and division were to fall upon the church of Ephesus. Our Lord's own solemn rebuke, "I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love " (Rev. 2:4), and His warning that the candlestick of Ephesus should be removed is sadder still, showing the state of the hearts of the church to have been cold towards Christ personally. If the heart be cold towards Him everything else that is good will in time lose its goodness, and so the light will becomes darkness.
The candlestick of Ephesus has long since been removed by Christ Himself; and now we have but the ruins of the old city to remind us of the past. But the Spirit of God, who spoke through St. Paul, gives not only to that old Christian church, but to us this day, the only sure guiding star in the time of difficulty and darkness—He gives us unchangeable faithfulness, unchangeable light on which to rely "I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace." Ever does our God present the way of deliverance and of power before the soul, and we trust that we may all begin a New Year with this text upon our hearts, " I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified." (Acts 20:32.)
And as we look back upon our lifetime may we have eyes to see and hearts to discern, lest our first love to Jesus wane, or, if it has waned, to " repent, and do the first works " (Rev. 2:5), for our individual Christianity will be weak and our little light will grow dim unless our first love to Christ remain.