Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 3.13 → restored 4.62
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I am deeply sensible of the flattery you do me in asking me to come and deliver yet a third series of lectures here. I find it a pleasure, of course, to speak about things that lie very near my heart. And it is also always rewarding to see others fired with the same enthusiasm for the subject that one delights in. I enjoy it too because it is not all a give on my side, particularly in the discussions that have taken place over the refreshments after the lectures, I have in past years found a great stimulus, a challenge to my way of putting things, an insistence that in these and other matters I rethink some details, and I do thank you for the opportunity of that experience again.
I feel in that way flattered that you have asked that we return to what you did in the first year, and that is to come into a smaller party so that we shall not be unduly distracted by the social necessities that were upon us last year in the great throng, and have more time to think together on the implications o- o- of the subjects of the lectures. Let me then, without further ado, um, map out for you what I hope to, uh, uh, uh, do in this series of talks. My aim will be to reexamine the person and the character of Jesus Christ as we find it in the historical documents.
Now, put just boldly like that, perhaps it seems that I am merely going to repeat what has been done a thousand million times before. So allow me, if you will, an analogy to show why I think this is so desperately important. Some few years ago, when liberal theolo- theologians and agnostics were pressing hard their contention that the figure of Jesus Christ that we find in our gospels was, uh, not real, but simply an invention of the early Christians, there appeared a brilliant book by a certain Otto Borchardt.
Borchardt's thesis was exceedingly simple, but very effective. It was simply this: the figure of Jesus Christ in the four gospels cannot be the invention of the early church, but is most certainly true to history. For this simple reason, that no Jew would have invented the figure, even if he could. And that for the reason that the figure of Jesus Christ that we find in the Gospels runs completely counter to all the main ideas that the Jews held of their coming Messiah.
They expected, for instance, someone who would come and lead the nation in a fierce warfare against their enemies, Rome, and bring the nation once more to political freedom. They found in Jesus Christ someone who was not willing to take the sword, and so far from disputing the reign of the Romans, deliberately submitted to execution at their hands. That disgusted them. They were expecting a someone who would deal with their economic and social problems. They found a someone who seemed largely to neglect that and deal with their spiritual and their moral problems.
They expected somebody who would grapple with the nation as a nation and its national politics. They found someone who forever was insistent on the importance of the individual and the problems of the individual's heart. And so did Borchardt develop his thesis that no Jew would have, even if he could have, invented the figure of Jesus Christ as we find it in the Gospels. On similar grounds, Borchardt pointed out how that, uh, Jesus Christ of the Gospels could not have been the invention of a Greek, nor yet of a Roman.
But my interest tonight in his thesis is simply this, that it is a remarkable thing... that the Jews found Jesus Christ so different from what they would have expected their Messiah to be. Because they frankly founded their ideas on what he would, of what he would be, on the Old Testament. It therefore creates a problem immediately. How is it that when men founded their idea of what Messiah would be on the Bible, that when he came, they found him so utterly and shatteringly different? How did it happen?
Was it because Jesus Christ was different, in fact, from what the Bible said he was going to be? The answer, of course, is plainly no. And though the Christians came eventually to see this, the New Testament does record the utter amazement of men when they were taken by a risen Lord and referred back to the Old Testament, and they had pointed out to them passage after passage after passage in the Old Testament that described exactly what Jesus Christ was and did, and yet which, by some mysterious method, they had completely overlooked.
From all that, I take a salutary lesson. I suppose if we would claim to know anything about anybody, about any prominent figure in the world, in past or present, most of us would probably imagine that we have a very clear notion of who Jesus Christ was and exactly what he stood for. But if the Jews could have been so mistaken, although they had founded their ideas as they thought upon the Bible, oughtn't we to be humble enough, gentlemen, to consider whether we too might not be mistaken? It might possibly be, after all, might it not, that the figure we have in our minds of Jesus Christ and what he stood for is compounded largely of ideas we culled from the Sunday school, ideas taken from a sermon here, from a sermon there.
The general notions that float about in the popular, uh, press. And that, while they may be in part true, they are not necessarily founded on any serious scrutiny of the historical records. It could be that we are as far away from what the real historical Jesus was, as were those early people in their expectations. At any rate, it can do no harm. It stands to do a considerable amount of good.
If we take time from the busyness of life now and again to go back to our original sources and to examine whether our view and our em- our idea and figure of Jesus Christ that we have in our minds is indeed true to the original facts. I therefore propose to proceed by taking some of the popular conceptions that one finds in men's minds and on their lips, and to examine them one by one. And tonight I want to take that popular conception of Jesus Christ that portrays him as the ideal philanthropist and the social reformer.
It is a very common idea. And for its part, it's an idea that you can build up on apparently very sound foundations. Doesn't the Bible say that Jesus Christ went about doing good? Wasn't his aim to help his fellow men? Doesn't the Bible say that his particular form of doing good took the form of healing men of their physical complaints? Bringing peace to tortured neurotic minds? Feeding the hungry of his day? And what is that if it's not the picture of a sincere ideal reformer?
A man moved with a tremendous compassion for his fellow men and giving himself selflessly in the cause of their greater comfort and enjoyment. And of course, the Bible does say so. And then runs his teach- runs this viewpoint. Consider his teaching. Didn't Jesus Christ lay it down as his main platform and his program that men ought to learn that supremely simple lesson, how to love one another? Wasn't that the burden of his message? That they ought to forget all these ugly disputes that divide men, religious controversies, social and class distinctions, national prejudices.
Didn't he teach us that we are all God's children? And wasn't the essence of his teaching just simplicity itself? If only we could wake up to the fact that we are all brothers in one family, and God is our Father, then the world would find its paradise. And wasn't he somewhat patient of theology? Somewhat impatient of religiosity? I mean, isn't it recorded that when the Pharisees tried to lay down a lot of relig- religious regulations, such as keeping the Sabbath, he poo-pooed the whole lot of it and said, look here, God doesn't care about religion.
All God cares about is that you are merciful to your employees, that you have compassion for the down and out, that you will extend a brotherly welcome to the man of a different color. God can't, can't, uh, care two hands about your theology. In a word, according to this conception, Jesus Christ was a philanthropist, was a social reformer, and was, above all other things, eminently practical in his good works. Let that be established, and there follow some very, eh, far-reaching implications.
Indeed, they who feel this most strongly, who conceive Jesus Christ after this fashion, they build, uh, their beliefs into a platform from which, not infrequently, they fire their major cannons into the middle of the church. Their complaint is that the church has utterly misread her Lord. That the church's business ought to be to continue his mission of feeding the hungry. The famine in India, the famine in so many places, this ought to be the church's major concern. That the church's first and foremost concern, together with that, ought to be the healing of the sick.
That this is true Christianity. The church's major concern ought to be in racialism, seeking to knock down the barriers and bring men together. Whereas they will say the church has done the very opposite. The church has got itself away into a corner and got itself all mixed up with theological doctrines and disputes. Instead of being concerned with the social good of the nation at large, it has concentrated men's minds on the individual soul and his personal salvation, and has made a lot of introverts, people purely concerned about the salvation of their little souls and winning a place in some fantastic heaven, instead of being really concerned about loving their brother man and improving the slums and increasing the goodwill among the nations.
And worse than that, they say the church, so intent on its, uh, theological niceties. Instead of being concerned to feed the Indian's body, has opened his mouth and forced down his throat theological dogmas that do him no good whatsoever, and in the end lead to bitter strifes, even as the Christian church itself appears to be divided by theological controversy. And very often, as a final battery from this direction, they will quote you that famous parable that our Lord spoke about the sheep and the goats.
You will remember it, of course. How that our Lord said that when he returned again in power and great glory at the final judgment, he's going to gather the nations together and decide their destiny. And their destiny, uh, according to the parable, is going to be concerned simply with this criterion. Did you visit the sick in hospital? Were you a prison visitor? Did you clothe the naked? Did you feed the hungry? This they say, isn't it? Isn't this what Christ taught? He shall say, now you blessed, come to my heaven because you visited me in prison and clothed me when I was naked and, uh, fed me when I was hungry.
Now such good works deserve a heaven as a reward. Come into my heaven. And he shall say to the others, now you didn't do anything of the sort. You didn't engage in social work at all, did you? You didn't feed the hungry. You didn't clothe the naked. You didn't visit the prisons. You were only concerned about your little personal soul, weren't you? Well, I'm afraid you must go to the other place. There are, they say, in the end, according to Christ, what matters, save only this, a man's social interest in the betterment, betterment of his fellow. Such, I submit to you, is not altogether an exaggerated account of some men's modern ideas of what Jesus Christ stood for and what his church should stand for still.
Now let's come and examine, uh, this figure in the light of the historical records. Is this indeed what Jesus Christ stood for and what he's saying still? We may have felt a little concern in the back of our minds, right from the very beginning, perhaps. About the truth of this figure, although indeed it is supported by, apparently supported by so much scripture. By some rather down to earth observations.
The Bible says indeed that Jesus Christ fed the poor and the hungry. The Bible says he did it twice. The Bible says he had miraculous powers and was able to do- produce bread to feed them. But then, twice? Only twice? Come, come, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. If you had any compassion at all for your contemporary men and women, many of whom were obliged to pull their belts very tight in the winter, for food was never over plentiful.
Was twice all that you could do? If you put alongside that the number of sermons Christ preached, you will find that his sermons were far more numerous than his feedings. There was that famous occasion when a day long he had been healing the sick, so says the ancient record, and as a result, the people poured around him in the evening and brought their sick to the door and clamored to be healed of their diseases. Next morning, when our Lord rose up early, he went out into the desert.
But very soon the crowds were thronging around him again, bringing their sick and and seeking him, appealing to his compassion to do something for them and their misery. And then what? The record says that he turned his back on them and said, sorry, but that's not my first business. I must go to the other cities. What for? To heal there? No, indeed not. I cannot stay, he said, for I must preach the gospel to the other cities, for that's why I came forth.
How does that square with our, a figure who considered his prime job social reform or social alleviation? But of course, the, perhaps the most crucial bit of evidence in all this discussion is that famous occasion that followed the actual feeding of the multitude that the gospel writers record. Our Lord had fed five thousand people, so the story goes, and they were so enamored with this new figure that had arisen as somebody that could come along and so easily solve their economic needs, that they came rushing forward in a great mob to make him king.
And we read that when he saw they were come to make him king, he retired and deliberately refused to be made king of any such people. Why so? Hear his own explanation of the affairs as it is recorded. To the crowds that sought him the next day, clamoring to make him king and for him to feed them again, he said this: Gentlemen, he said, you seek me, but you are seeking me for utterly the wrong reason.
You seek me not because you saw a sign that I did yesterday. You seek me because you were filled with my loaves and fishes, and that's all. And to put it bluntly, gentlemen, he said, I'm not prepared to have you on those terms. That's that thing I did yesterday in feeding the crowd, he said, was meant, after all, to be a sign. It was to convey a message. It was meant, in a word, he said, gentlemen, to lead you to consider the bread that endureth. But all you are concerned about is loaves and fishes that will fill your stomachs, gentlemen.
And you haven't the gumption, or else the willingness, to see that the gift of physical food, good in itself, of course, was merely meant to lead you to receive a far bigger gift. But if all your interest is merely what I can provide in the way of food to fill your stomachs, then sorry, gentlemen, but I'm not interested. Labor not, said he, so I should advise you. Labor not for meat that perisheth, but for meat that endureth. A sign, he said it was, and just let's consider a moment what that sign was really saying.
Those people came that day to that field where our Lord did the miracle, and they had a meal that, um, was unique amongst all the meals they'd ever had. They found it immensely satisfying. For the hand that reached them the loaf and the fish was the hand of God incarnate. The wonder was not in the loaf or in the fish, nor was the glory of the thing in the miracle, miraculous mechanism that provided them.
The whole glory of the operation was this, that God incarnate was handing men his man his daily bread. They weren't interested in the hand that offered them the bread. They had eyes to see, just bread and fish. There are men today who live like that. They eat their bread and their cornflakes and their beef steaks on the same principle, glad enough to have them, but supremely indifferent as to whether there is any hand that hands them the cornflakes and the fish.
So being, they are worse than pigs themselves. For a pig soon learns that there is a hand that offers him his swill. And at the noise of the footfall that brings the pail, the pig will squeak out his recognition, even if thereafter he has no time for the farmer, but only for the swill. We live in a generation when men are content to take their mouthfuls constantly, supremely indifferent as to whether there is any hand giving them the gift. Indeed, some of them, have they not, have invented a theory o- of physical science that there is no hand, that our daily bread and butter and all that we count dear in life is, after all, the result of one colossal accident, meaningless and senseless.
In so doing, they rob life of its chiefest glory and its profoundest satisfaction. For what is a gift without the giver? How different it is if, on the one hand, you buy yourself a Parker fifty one for Christmas, and on the other, if someone you love dearly gave you that Parker fifty one for Christmas. Or allow me another analogy.
What would you think of a girl who wore on her left hand an engagement ring, beautifully studded with diamonds, and you came along and you saw her fingering this in the manner that they do, and letting the light play upon the diamonds, and you said a lovely ring, isn't it? Beautiful. Beautiful indeed. Where did you get it? And then presently you said, and may I ask who the young man is? And she replied, young man, what do you mean? The young man that, uh, is interested in you and gave you the ring. Oh, she said, I have no time for that kind of stuff at all. Well, but you said come, come.
Uh, it's an engagement ring, isn't it? Well, yes, but I don't, I don't believe that sloppy stuff. You see, uh, I know a young man did give me that ring, but I'm not interested in that. What I'm interested in is how beautiful the ring is. The thing is so ludicrous that we cannot imagine it happening. But if it ever did happen, wouldn't it be grossly pathetic? For engagement rings have oh so little significance, unless there be a someone behind who gave them, and in the giving was proposing the closest of human relationships.
Jesus Christ was saying that day, those loaves and fishes, what were they? And what was it after all, the exhibition of divine mechanics when I multiplied them, what were they? Utterly insignificant unless they were this. The hand of God gesturing his love to you and asking you through his gifts to accept him the giver, calling you thereby into a deep and personal relationship with him, to take the gifts, to have no interest in the giver.
That is such a perversion, that is such a tragedy, that our Lord stoutly refused to have anything to do with it. Sorry, gentlemen, he said, but if all you are interested in are fish and loaves, then goodbye. I'm not that kind of social reformer. And we notice that the early apostles consistently adopt the same attitude, do they not? If I might peg down this examination to yet another historical document, Luke's history that, uh, recounts the early events of the early church.
We find there an illuminating incident when Peter and John were going up to the temple to pray, and on the temple doorstep they found a man who had been lame from his mother's womb. The man was placed there, uh, to collect what alms the religious people were, uh, disposed to give him. They thought it was a good place to put the man, for on occasions when people go to church, are they not more than ordinarily sort of sympathetic to their n- uh, need to give something to the poor? Peter came up and had no money in his pocket to give and told the man so, much to his disappointment, but then proceeded in the name and power of Christ to grant the man healing and deliverance from his in- inhibiting paralysis.
The core crowd, of course, came running. This is great news. And as they grew- drew around Peter, excited at the possibilities, and each man thinking what one of his relatives he would bring, if this new miracle wonder could help, if this faith healer could do anything. Peter took the opportunity to make an exceeding telling point, said he, gentlemen, this is a very strange thing. You come running around now, don't you, because in the name of Jesus, I have cured this man of his physical illness. It wasn't it but a few days ago, gentlemen, when you stood in this selfsame city and cried your heads off and had no time for Jesus of Nazareth?
You will take his social benefit. You are not interested in the salvation he offers. In fact, gentlemen, he said, to put it bluntly, you murdered, did you not? The very Prince of Life. A curious thing. That men will take the social benefits the church can give, but not are not are not really interested in the Prince of Life. This is our Lord's contention. He reminded the devil, so we are told, in the temptation, you'll see, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall men live.
And if we have no interest, no real personal interest in that God, nor any personal interest in his son, who is the Prince of Life. We may fill our stomachs as full as we care with sardines, and inject our veins with all sorts of drugs, and we shall not permanently live. What was it then that our Lord was saying that day? What was he saying was so immeasurably more important than social improvement, than relief of hunger?
What was this so immeasurably more glorious gift? Let us come back and think again about the conversation that is recorded. Labor not, said our Lord, for meat that perisheth, but rather for meat that endureth. Haven't you eyes to see, gentlemen, he said, that all things material, however pleasant, however enjoyable in themselves, are but temporary? The flesh profiteth nothing. It is the Spirit that quickeneth.
What said he, if you shall see the Son of Man ascend back where he was before? In other words, this physical world is not the only world, nor is it the most important world. The more important world is the spiritual world. And what then, gentlemen? What if you've been merely interested in my fish, my loaves of bread? What will you do when I go back to that spiritual realm? What will you yourselves do when, in spite of fish and bread, the grave claims you.
Gentlemen, he said, I urge you to abandon that narrow-minded view of things that can only see life in terms of bread and fish. In those temporary human relations and business projects that surround us in this temporary world. Abandon that narrow view. It is so narrow that if you leave it narrow like that, it will become perilous in the extreme. Lay hold, gentlemen, said he, the rather of eternal life.
Now, it is the fact that many of us are extremely childish in our ideas when we come to think of eternal life. We hear the Bible talking about this thing, eternal life, and we imagine it's a something that happens to a man when he dies, sort of he gets an exte- extended period of existence in a lovely heaven up above somewhere. And most men vaguely hope, if they hope at all, vaguely hope, if they hope at all, that the gift of eternal life is something that God will give a man when he arrives at the gate of heaven, if he qualifies to enter. But meanwhile, of course, it doesn't do well to speculate too much on whether he's going to get it or not going to get it.
You better be concerned about running this life now, and leave the speculation as to whether God will give him eternal life until he arrives at the gate of heaven. Such, of course, is the pre-adult, the childish conception of heaven. Eternal life is something vastly different. It's not a something we begin to think about when we're on our deathbeds and about to pass over to eternity. Eternal life is a something that, if ever it's going to start, starts here in this life. Eternal life, you see, is not merely continued existence, it's a quality of life. It consists in that rich experience that is receiving Christ now in this life, of going through this life in intimate fellowship with God, in seeing now beyond the mere material and external, and already in this life laying hold of the unseen and the eternal.
The Bible is everywhere insistent that if a man fails to lay hold of eternal life in this life, it will be woefully too late to begin to think of laying hold of it in the life to come. Life in its fullness is a relationship. Now you will begin to see perhaps why Christ was so insistent about this, uh, uh, this, uh, incident that arose when he fed the multitudes. They came merely for the physical, uh, satisfaction of eating his bread and his fish.
To take it that far is good. To take it no further is to miss that eternal life, which is the chief purpose of man's creation. Why is it that we commonly show such disinclination to be interested in these spiritual and eternal things? Why is it that we find ourselves so very often cute enough in our business, in our profession, able to unravel difficulties of every kind.
And yet, when it comes to these elementary things of real life, what it means to discover the giver of life and to enter into personal relation with him and have eternal life now, we are very often such veritable beginners and apprentices, and indeed non-starters. Christ, I think, had an answer to this. The fact is, when we men come to think about God, come to think about these intimate things such as receiving eternal life and being right with God, we feel an acute embarrassment.
We feel a certain touch of anxiety. The reason is simply in the old-fashioned concept of sin. We have an instinctive feeling to admit Jesus Christ into one's life, into this deep personal relationship, is going to mean a revolution. And for some of us, a radical revolution. I was talking not so very long ago to a good man, professional man of this city. And when it dawned upon him that Jesus Christ was not asking for his patronage or support, but was offering him something more glorious, his personal friendship was asking to be allowed to come and invade his life.
His reply, his retort was, but what about the boys? We know what he meant. To do that was going to mean a revolution in his social life, in his social habits. We have an instinctive feeling that our lives are not good enough for Jesus Christ to enter anyway. And rather than be hypocrites and pretend we know anything about it, we shelve the matter to some distant eternity.
The glory about what Christ has to say in this context is that he has done something to remove the cause of this embarrassment. To remove the thing that makes it painful for us and a little anxious to think about God, to think about Christ, to think about receiving Christ. Said he, I bring you my flesh, I bring you my blood, that you may eat thereof, and so eating have eternal life. And what did he mean? He meant simply this, that he was going to shed his blood to give God an answer about our sin, to remove the wrath of God against sin, so to clear our conscience and make it possible for us, though still sinners, to enter unafraid now into this personal relationship with God.
But he said, you must eat my blood, you must drink my blood, you must eat my flesh. And he meant... simply this, that it is not enough for a man to know that Jesus Christ came and died upon a cross. If this union is to be affected, then a man must personally appropriate the gift that is offered. He must personally receive this living Lord, Jesus Christ. When a man does that, when a man wakes up for the first time to what Christ really did on that cross.
That it is possible now, as I am, so be it I come in true repentance, to walk into God's friendship and love and receive God as an inseparable friend. That I may receive, not merely in my mind, but in my very heart, the living person and power of Jesus Christ now, and find a new dimension in his friendship, then indeed does life take on a proportion and a meaning and a significance that life never had hitherto.
This is eternal life begun on earth. So are we called to come and eat. In plain, straight, practical terms, if I may be so bold to use them, we are called to be concerned about the need of our fellow man. We are concerned, called to be concerned about daily things, but our supreme concern should be this, that I have understood this offer of eternal life that Christ has come to our world to make, that I should personally try to understand what his death upon the cross has done for me, and that I should be willing with all my heart to receive him personally as Savior and Lord, and come into the personal certain knowledge here and now that I am a redeemed man, that I already have eternal life.
So that when the fish have gone and the last crumb has disappeared, I still have life, that is life indeed, eternal life, that shall fit me for fellowship all profound with God in a day to come. And you will say, well, that may be so, but I, I was never very strong at evangelical Christianity, and what it means to receive Christ, I just do not know. And really, for the most part, I'm content to abide by what you call the social side of Christianity. After all, our Lord said in the end, didn't he? Uh, that, uh, his heaven is going to be for those that visited him in prison and did their social works.
No, sir, he didn't. Would you grant me just two more minutes to explode that unfounded theory? It is eminently perilous to try and interpret our Lord's parables outside of their context. He said, first of all, in that parable of sheep and goats, that they who would be saved at last were the people that had visited his brethren in prison. And who were his brethren? It is a notion that goes around that Christ Jesus taught that all men are brethren, by virtue of the fact that all men are God's sons.
There is not one single line in the whole of the New Testament that says so. Not a single line, anywhere. There have been and are men who wouldn't thank you to call them Christ's brethren anyway. I don't know that Mr. Cassian would want to be known as one of Christ's brethren. And certainly Caiaphas, who ordered our Lord's execution, wouldn't have been flattered if you had called him one of Christ's brethren. The New Testament everywhere indicates that by the term Christ's brethren, it does not mean men in general. It means solely those who have received this gift of eternal life that he came to offer.
They are his brethren. It is our attitude to them that will count, will be the telltale at the last. Consider the historical situation. Saul of Tarsus thought he ought to persecute the early Christians. He, for one, didn't like them. He didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah anyway, and in particular, he didn't like these early Christians who forever were harping on the need to be saved. It offended his religious sense of decorum anyway for people to get up on the street corner and tell their fellow men that they needed to be saved.
He felt so indignant about it all that he persecuted them here and there, uh, and everywhere. Until one day he was struck blind on the Damascus road, so we are told, and a voice from heaven said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, if I may ask, Lord, who are you? He recognized the voice was divine, but whoever could this voice be? It certainly wasn't that Jesus of Nazareth, was it? I am Jesus, said the voice, whom thou persecutest. For in persecuting those people, Peter and Stephen and John and James, who stood on the street corner and in your synagogues and told you insistently that you needed to be saved, Saul of Tarsus, you were persecuting me.
You didn't like to be told you needed to be saved, did you? And then the man had to decide what he was going to do. And fortunately, he stopped his persecution of those Christians. And more, he personally discovering that Jesus Christ was God's son and therefore come to be his savior, took his stand alongside of him with all those who had found in Christ a savior likewise. That is what our Lord meant by the parable.
Let me give it a modern twist, and with this I'm done. I was sitting in the snack bar in Queens the other day, engaged in very deep conversation about nothing much by one of my colleagues. I couldn't help my ears wandering, uh, further to up the common room to where three or four of my colleagues were sitting, and I heard a very interesting conversation. They were talking, apparently, about one of the college servants. And their remarks were these, you know, he used to be one of the boys, uh, but I think he's seen the light or something. He goes around with a little badge in his lapel, saved or Jesus saves or something, said one of my colleagues.
I wished I'd been near enough to join in the conversation. Can you imagine with what tone of voice they were saying it? Puzzlement? Faintly derisory? What on earth is this curious business of being saved and would make a man go around with a thing in his lapel, Jesus says. Ha. Innocent joke? Well, what would you have said if you'd been near enough to the, to those gentlemen? Would you have said, well, gentlemen, I must confess it. I don't know the man. I don't know whether he's a genuine Christian or not.
Not everyone that says Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom. And for my part, of course, I don't, uh, think it's the best taste to go around with a religious button in one's buttonhole. But if this man means genuinely what he's trying to say, humble man though he may be, and uneducated. But if this man has really found Jesus Christ as a personal savior and has entered into this experience of receiving eternal life and wants to tell his fellow men, then, gentlemen, I must let you know I stand with him, for I too have had this experience of personal salvation. This is one of Messiah's brethren, and I want you to know I take my stand with him.
Or would you have said? Well, oh, I don't know, but not for me, please. Would you have joined their smirk? Those kind of situations are with us in everyday life, but we ought to remember that the final judgment will run something like this. I was in Queen's Bar, and you didn't stand with me. And they shall say unto him, but Lord, whenever did we see you stand in Queen's Bar?
And he shall say unto them, was there not a man who had Jesus saves in his coat collar. You know, my name Jesus means savior. And you didn't stand with them or with me. But you found this business of personal salvation irrelevant and unwanted and an oddity, faintly to be derided.
And these shall go. These shall go away, said our Lord himself, self into everlasting punishment.
