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Let me begin by saying what I would like to attempt to do in the two talks that are committed to me this weekend. Tonight I wish to base my remarks primarily on the Acts of the Apostles from chapter nine onwards, as the brochure says. But there is a little history behind that brochure. When I originally was asked to this conference, I was to have given, uh, two important talks, the one on the Friday night and another on Saturday.
But then, through various circumstances, we were able to have Dr. Darling, and it was only right that he should be given important talk number one. Pondering upon my duties led me to think that Dr. Wenham could do the other important talk better than I could, and at my urging, your secretary graciously gave way to my, uh, uh, please and asked Dr. Wenham to come. And I'm sure that you will all agree that that has been much to the enrichment of the conference. So that leaves me now with some of my, some of my thunder stolen, and some of the ground already covered that I had thought to cover.
And therefore, by your leave, I shall extend my talk tonight beyond the confines of Acts chapter nine and ten in order to take things a little bit further from what we have already reached, and thus not to repeat ourselves endlessly, but at least to add a minute crumb here and there. Then tomorrow, God willing, I want to spend that talk talking about some of the symbolism of the Old Testament. Today it has been evident, as last night, that, uh, whatever particular proportion we hold about the practical and the symbolic significance of the Old Testament laws, there is a great deal of symbolism in them.
And if, uh, we follow our two speakers hitherto in deciding that most of it is symbolic, we shall have to say, like Saint Paul says in a slightly different context, well then what serveth the law? If it's all symbolic, what is it symbolic of? And how do you go about deciding what is the meaning of the symbolism without, um, falling into gross fancifulness and arbitrary extremes. Obviously, if the Old Testament, in much part of it, is symbolic, we have to take our symbolism seriously.
Now, all the learned here present will be used to using their intellects, as you wouldn't be present. This is a medical conference. And we rightly use our, uh, our in- intellect in the things of God and get out our theological systems. We all do it, some better than others. But God, our maker, who knows that we're not just intellects but also imaginations. Has given us a great deal of symbolism, that it might help us grasp the things of God by the use of our imagination, as well as grasping them by the use of our intellect.
And if we neglect our symbolism, we are neglecting one great avenue in the approach to the knowledge and understanding of God. So tomorrow, very briefly, I shall be attempting to say a few things about Old Testament symbolism and how we can use it and what kind of lessons we might deduce therefore. But tonight, I want to carry on with the theme that we've been having, the question of the clean and the unclean, the holy and the common, and the difference in attitude to these things that Christianity has as distinct from Judaism.
Now you will know that Luke, in his book The Acts of the Apostles, has devoted the whole of his third section of that book to a relation, a relating of the problems that arose in early Christianity and in their evangelism, directly as a result of the concept of holiness with which the apostles had grown up. And how, when they confronted the problems that the Jewish concept of holiness had for them in their evangelization, the Holy Spirit led them to a somewhat different concept of the ways of holiness from which they had been brought up in Judaism.
Luke, I say, devotes the whole of his third section to the very practical problem, because it is the fact that our concept of holiness will affect our attitude to evangelization, or can do. And therefore, by your leave, I begin there, and if you have a Bible, you may care to notice how Luke in fact begins this third section of the Acts of the Apostles, wherein he is going to discuss the problems of holiness. It begins in chapter nine and verse thirty two.
And it came to pass, as Peter went throughout all parts, he came down to the saints which dwelt at Lydda. And as usual, the Holy Spirit knocks the nail on the head, puts the key by the door, or if I may mix my metaverse, he tells you what he's going to talk about straight away, the moment he begins. Peter came down to visit, not the believers, nor the Christians, nor the disciples. He came down to visit the saints. And who on earth are saints? And what are saints when you meet one? What exactly is a saint?
I presume that Luke isn't just being polite, like we sometimes are, and refer to our dear fellow believers as the saints. Ah, hard to see. Uh, Luke is using the term deliberately. Saints, what are saints? And please may I ask, are these Jewish saints or Christian saints? And do saints come in different sorts and sizes and types? Is there a difference between the Jewish saint and the Christian saint? For the moment, Luke doesn't tell us. He came down to visit the saints, he says, whether Jewish or Christian, not yet, uh, uh, uh, told. So we may have a look at the kind of things that are said about these saints.
And there follows a story about a man called Aeneas. He has a Greek name. That doesn't necessarily mean that he was a Greek. He could have been a Jew, because Jews have long since been in the habit of taking Greek names. Anyway, he has a Greek name, Aeneas. He, incidentally, had been a paralyzed man for eight years and had done nothing except lie on his bed and eat and drink, presumably. He hadn't even made his bed, poor man, couldn't. When eventually he was healed, the Bible tells us that Peter told him to get up and make his bed. And when the people in the district saw a man making his bed, do you know many of them turned to the Lord?
Wasn't bad going that. Perhaps if a few more gentlemen made their own beds, a good many more would turn to the Lord. And whether he was a saint before he started making his own bed, or only became a saint after he made his own bed, I don't know that we are told explicitly, but if more saints made more beds, and if sainthood took the practical turn of pulling your weight in the home and being prepared to do humble chores and all such things as that, a lot more people might be impressed by our sainthood than if our sainthood merely expresses itself in singing hymns in cathedrals.
The, the other case that is noticed, the little story, is the story of Dorcas. The first, you see, is a story of a man, and the second is a story of a woman. And as so often in scripture, where the man isn't much good, the woman shines eminently. And if Aeneas hadn't done a stroke of work these eight years because, poor man, he was paralyzed, Dorcas, by contrast, had been full of good works that she did. Good old Dorcas. What a saint she was. Full of good works. And of course, it is the fact that Jewish concepts of sainthood, when they kept on the straight lines and didn't get lost in the quagmire of legalism, Jewish concept of sainthood was very much a practical s- concept of being full of good works, visiting the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, giving alms, and thus and thus and thus.
It is true that the Pharisaic concept of sainthood led them to tithe, mint, and rue with extreme scrupulosity and forget love and justice, uh, and become very critical and lacking of com- in compassion. But true, healthy Jewish sainthood was full of good works, and Dorcas is a prime example. We must be careful, incidentally, if I may dish out a few exhortations in passing, though this is not meant to be a session of exhortation. Uh, we must be careful, mustn't we, how we evangelicals preach the gospel.
If we say too many times over in a row that all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags, people might conceivably get the notion into their heads that God doesn't like righteousnesses. If we say without a proper explanation that salvation is not by works, people might get the idea that God couldn't care whether you do good works or not. That would be quite false, wouldn't it, wouldn't it? The aim and object of our gospel is in great part to produce saints, and saints of the sort that are full of good works, as Doth of was.
It is the fact that salvation is not by works, but it is a common faith that true salvation leads to true sainthood, and therefore, by definition, to good works. Then what can Jesus Christ add to these people, Aeneas and Dorcas, that Judaism couldn't give them? Well, to take Aeneas first. Judaism's law could tell the man that he ought to be full of good works. The poor man couldn't. He was paralyzed. It is a fact that Christ was able physically to cure such people.
But perhaps the story may serve us also as an illustration that Christ is able to give us the power to do good works, and not just to issue the command that we ought to do good work. Christ can deliver us from our spiritual paralysis. And how he does it, it is not to our purpose now for the moment to consider. Secondly, with Dorcas, what can Christ offer a woman of that sort in this particular context? An exceedingly saintly woman, full of good works, which she did. Well, Christ can offer this, you'll see.
The woman, full of good works though she was, died. And that, you say, was the end of that. But not with Christ. For he sent Peter along, and in the name of Jesus Christ, Peter raised Dorcas from the dead. A little foretaste at one level of that far greater resurrection that shall come at the Lord's coming. So that the fact and doctrine of the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead is now seen to bear directly on the question of sainthood.
If sainthood is a thing that leads to good works, then the resurrection comes alongside and says to us, yes, and mark you, be you always abounding in the work of the Lord because your labor is not in vain in the Lord. And why isn't it in vain in the Lord? Because, says Saint Paul, there is to be a resurrection. And because there is a resurrection, wherefore be always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
So that the resurrection of Christ adds a tremendous power and rationality behind our sainthood. There is going to be a resurrection. And what we do now by way of good works in the course and fulfillment of our sainthood has eternal significance. And because that is so, and told us to be so in plain, straightforward language, you will permit me, perhaps, this little conceit to remind you of the kind of situation that confronted dear old Dorcas when she woke out of her sleep of death on that morning when Peter came and raised her from the dead.
She had been full of good works while she lived. And she died. Peter came, and in the name of Christ, he raised her from the dead. And as he took her out to the room, there were all the ladies waiting, and they he showed her the work that Dorcas had done, the clothes she had made while she had yet been alive. Oh, that. Fancy suddenly waking up out of a sleep like that, and there were the things that you'd knitted, uh, for the social welfare. And there was Saint Peter examining them.
I guarantee you'll have said, ladies, oh, I hope I didn't drop a stitch. You know, I said that was only for the people down in the slums. It wouldn't matter how I did that particular dress. But here is Saint Peter examining the same. And it may remind us that one day we shall wake out of sleep if we have died at the command of the Lord Jesus. Pray God there'll be a few people around showing him the garments me- we made. Here on earth, in the course and expression of our sainthood. When the Blessed Lord examines the garments, so to speak, let's hope there are not too many stitches that have been dropped.
Our work has eternal significance because there is a resurrection. So with these two stories to begin with, Luke is now emphasizing that, as in Judaism, sainthood had as one of its marks positive good works. Not merely negative abstention from things unclean, not merely negative abstaining from cheating people, not merely negative abstaining from things unclean. sainthood in Judaism was also a very positive thing and full of good work.
The very term saint in English has become to be a rather a ghost-like term, isn't it? You don't often wonder whether it's a compliment if so and so says so and so he else is a saint. Lacks a little blood, it's more like a ghost or something. Whereas the Jewish concept of sainthood in its fullness is a very positive thing and full of good work. These stories remind us of you that in Christianity too, true sainthood will express itself, among other things, in positive good work. It's not all negative, abstaining from things unclean, abstaining from things that are wrong.
It does have its positive dimension. With that little order, Luke comes to his main meal, and that's the story of Peter's being sent to Cornelia. And now is raised a very big problem that stood in the way of the spread of the Christian gospel. While as the gospel was being preached merely to Jews, the problem didn't arise. But when Christianity began to go out to Gentiles, there arose a very big problem, a very big barrier in the way, and it was the Jewish concept of sainthood.
It was embarrassing, if you like, so to think. Imagine, had it happened, Cornelius meeting with Peter in the street. It didn't happen that way, mercifully. But imagine that Cornelius had met Peter in the street. Ah, you're Peter, I believe, sir. Yes. Um, look, I wonder if you'd come home to dinner with me. Oh, thank you very much, but no, uh, uh, uh, my, I think my wife is making dinner at the moment. Oh. Well, come to dinner tomorrow then. Well, no, I, I'm not free to.
Oh. Well, I wanted to talk to you about, uh, your Christian gospel. You know, how man can be right with God. All right, says Peter, talk to me here on the street, if you wouldn't mind. There's a rather lot of people around. Yes. Oh. Um, why not come home to dinner? Well, come next Friday then. You can't have anything on that night. Well, no, I haven't. Well, come then. No, sorry, I can't. Why not? I'm a saint. You're a saint.
Well, am I not a saint? No, you're not a saint, Cornelius. Oh, I see. But you are a saint. Yes, I'm a saint. Well, that's disappointing. I thought you would have come home and we could have had a nice talk about your Christian gospel, you see, over dinner. I see. Tell me one thing, Peter. You know that chap called Caiaphas? Is he a saint? Well, yes, he's a saint. You'll go to dinner with him? Yes. What is he? That's odd. Well, if Clark is a saint, I don't know if I want to be one, Peter. You can see the kind of difficulties that would arise in people's thinking, wouldn't you? If Jews, without further lessons from Christ, had tried to go out and evangelize Gentiles.
And now the gospel in God's good wisdom and purpose had got to spread from Judaism out to Gentiles. It would demand a new concept of sainthood. At least a new idea of the means and methods of sainthood. And Peter then is taught this lesson. A sheet comes down from heaven, full of creepy crawly things, and the voice says, rise, Peter, slay and eat. And Peter objects most firmly. No, Lord, he said, no such unclean things have ever been through my mouth.
Now, please notice that when Peter said that, God didn't reply, don't be silly, Peter. That's a lot of narrow-minded stuff, that was, if ever you heard any. All that prohibition and taboos on eating. Have a, have an insect, Peter, they're lovely, man. All that old-fashioned stuff is nonsense. No, God didn't reply like that. Well, the Old Testament teaches us it was God who had laid down those laws. And that reminds us that if they are symbolic, nevertheless they are important. We cannot dismiss them as though they were mere narrow-mindedness, false ideas thought up in the childhood of religion.
They were God-given laws. With a special, uh, purpose to teach Israel in the days of Israel's infancy. I might borrow a term from Saint Paul. He refers to the time when the Jews were under the law as the time of their babyhood, the time of their infancy. Now in Christ they are to move on to spiritual adulthood. And therefore laws and rules and regulations that were proper to infancy will no longer be proper to adulthood. But they were God-given laws at the time.
What God did say to Peter when Peter objected to eating these things was to say three times over, what God now declares to be clean, don't you call that common? A change had come. God had now cleansed it in the sense of calling it clean, pronouncing it to be clean. When God pronounces it to be clean, it is all right for Peter to eat it. The lesson then was at the level of the dietary laws of Israel. But Peter soon observed that the lesson was in the form of a parable.
That seems to come down on the side of those that say it was a parable anyway. For being given a lesson about eating creepy crawly things, uh, unclean animals and whatnot, and that God has cleaned them, Peter instinctively applies it to his relation as a Jew with Gentiles. You see the point? The dietary law, and now its abrogation, was understood by Peter as a parable about his attitude, not just to Gentile food, but to Gentile people. So that when he walks into Cornelius's house, he explains to Cornelius, God has shown me not that I should not call your food unclean, God has shown me that I shouldn't call any man common or unclean.
Interesting, isn't it? The food law Peter takes as a kind of a parable of his attitude to people. At this juncture, I suggest we should take seriously the fact that two terms are used and not just one. It may help us to thread our way through the maze of this complicated problem. God has showed me that I should not call any man common or unclean. It is my submission that those two concepts are not one and the same, they are slightly different concepts.
There is the concept first of something that is holy. The opposite of holy is common. There is the concept of what is clean, the opposite of that is unclean. The two things are not necessarily the same. The first lesson was, therefore, what God has cleansed, don't you call it common? Here we are thinking of something that is consecrated to God as distinct from something that is common.
In Judaism, to take an example, of the seven days of the week, one was holy. It was consecrated to God. Six were common. Didn't mean six were sinful. Six were just common for anybody's old youth. Or, again, we might say the difference between Israel and the nations was that Israel were an holy nation. That is, they were consecrated to God in a special sense. The rest were common. If the Jews were holy because they were specially consecrated, that didn't mean the others were automatically sinful.
It did mean that the others were automatically common. Everybody was common until God, out of the common herd, chose some to be specially consecrated and set apart to him. And what God is teaching Saint Peter now is... that God is no longer going to count one nation out of all nations at the physical level, special. God has cleansed all or counted all clean, therefore all are equal in his sight. Israel is no longer to have that special position automatically.
You see, even those in Israel that lived rather second rate lives were still part of the holy nation, because the nation qua nation was set aside to God. Cornelius was a Gentile, and hitherto, though he was a God-fearing man, he belonged to the group common. The Roman nation had not been specially set aside for God. Now that was going. That distinction was to be, uh, done away with, and what God has, uh, counted, uh, clean, don't you call it common anymore. Now there is no difference between Jew and Greek, and the same Lord over all is rich to all that call upon him, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
There is also the other distinction between clean and unclean. Not quite the same, it doesn't overlap completely with the first distinction. And, uh, of course, Gentiles were, many of them, unclean. They were unclean according to Israel's ceremonial laws, but they were also fearfully unclean according to Israel's moral laws. And they were also, many of them, not all of them, fearfully unclean according to Israel's spiritual laws. They weren't all automatically thus.
There were Gentiles like Cornelius, who had abandoned his idolatry, and in that sense was no longer committing spiritual uncleanness by worshiping idols. And therefore, Peter was now being taught that he was not to call all anybody automatically either common or unclean. He might therefore go and eat with Cornelius without himself being thereby cut off from the worship of God. That is, therefore, the great lesson that Peter now learns, half of it.
But just let me interject here a digression, if I may. Because if we are not careful in our thinking about these things, we might conceivably become unbalanced. We have talked yesterday and today, quite rightly, about our Lord's remark and our Lord's attitude that our Lord cancelled the food laws. This he said, pronouncing all things to be clean by way of food. That shouldn't make us think that our Lord automatically said that Gentiles were beautifully sweet and wholesome.
Uncleanness still remains, and as we shall presently see from Acts, there is a very real sense in which the Bible will go on calling people unclean. And in which we as believers will have regretfully enough to have to say that certain people are unclean. And there are plenty of statements in the epistles that warn us Christians not to touch things unclean. Because if at the ceremonial level, food laws and such like things have passed, if it is true that now all nations stand on an equal footing before God, and Jews are not specially holy, leaving the rest common, while that is true, both Jew and Gentile can be guilty of uncleannesses in the form of moral uncleanness, and more seriously still, both Jew and Gentile can be seriously at fault in being guilty of spiritual uncleanness.
We must be careful, therefore, not to take this statement, what God has cleansed, call thou not common or unclean, as meaning that now all men, the wide world through, are regarded as clean in God's sight in every sense of the term. That is not true. Let me therefore digress to press home that lesson. We have had quoted, and rightly quoted, our Lord's words when he refuted the Pharisees. And he pronounced his lessons, it's not what goes, uh, into a man that defiles him, but what comes out of a man defiles him. All this business about washing your hands before meat and this, that, and the other, and special foods and this, that, and the other, that's going, says Christ, for actually it's not what goes into you defiles you, it's what comes out of you defiles you, thereby abolishing the old food laws of the Old Testament.
And the very next story, the very next story, told us by Saint Matthew, is as follows. Our Lord went up into the parts of Phoenicia, Assyria, and there came out a Canaanite woman saying, Lord, my daughter is grievously tormented by a devil, heal her. And our Lord took no notice. So she cried again and further, and our Lord took no notice. Till the apostles came along, as they were wont to do when our Lord was mistaken, and they felt they knew better. And suggested he might do better if he gave the woman what she want and sent her away, because she's making a bit of a shindig, they said.
So the woman cried again, and our Lord said, I'm sorry. But you see, eh, I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel. It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs. Say, I thought our Lord was past that kind of thing. What, what is all this distinction? Oh, but you, you need, as the gospel writers are constantly doing, you need to hold things in the balance. No, in one sense he wasn't past it and didn't intend to be. She was a Gentile. And I remind you what Saint Paul reminds you of too, that you were Gentiles once.
Don't you forget it. Wherefore remember, he says, that you once upon a time were absolutely dirty old Gentiles, of what you were, dogs. Walking in those abominations that are common to Gentiles, both of the mind and of the body. You were actually dirty. Filthy might be a good term to use. As well as being strangers from the covenants of promise, you were Gentile gods. And when this good Syrophoenician woman, if she was a good woman, came to Christ, at first he wouldn't listen to her.
He had to face the reality she was a Gentile without God, without hope, without claim on God. Secondly, she was the victim of unclean practices. Her daughter had an unclean demon. Christ didn't say, now we're going to take no notice of all that kind of stuff, and I'm prepared to accept just anybody, Jew or Gentile or anybody. They're all nice and wholesome and sweet. That's nonsense. They weren't nice and wholesome and sweet. Ah, but then the story goes on in a delightful fashion, doesn't it? When our Lord says, it is not meet to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs, then the Gentile woman said, yes, that's perfectly true, Lord, I am a Gentile and I am a dog.
That is, in Hebrew terminology, I am unclean. I'm one of those unclean animals. Dogs, even if they were darling little puppies, you know, the English, if not the Irish, have tried to get round the force of this verse by saying, ah, he didn't mean horrible old mongrel dogs. He meant nice little darling puppy dogs, you know, where you could scratch their backs and feel quite all right to have them in your dining room. But the ancients weren't thus sentimental about dogs, puppies, or grown up, uh, bitches. They were all unclean. A Jew would have ever called another Jew a dog, or not even a puppy, unless he was going to insult him. When the Lord used the term little dog, it wasn't a compliment, nor a term of endearment.
Saying she was a gentile and unclean. Not only unclean, spiritually unclean, and not just ceremonially unclean. However, did she get the blessing she asked for this way round? She took her place as a Gentile dog. Yes, I'm a dog, she says. But Lord, your grace is so wonderful that the meat on your table given primarily to the children is so plentiful, I'm sure a crumb or two would fall off off the table down here under the table to us Gentiles. And our Lord responded to her, hey. Now, I come back from my digression.
When God said to Peter, you are not to call anybody common, because now I don't regard those distinctions between Jew and Gentile anymore. Don't call them common. Peter also learned that he wasn't to call any man common or unclean, in this sense, ceremonially unclean. And so he was prepared to go and drink coffee, or whatever it was he drank, with, uh, Cornelius in his house, and eat a meal with him for the purposes of preaching the gospel. That does not mean that God already regarded Cornelius as being spiritually clean. How did Cornelius become spiritually clean?
Saint Peter will tell us, as he rehearses this and other things in chapter fifteen of the Acts of the Apostles. God has put no difference between them Gentiles, those Gentiles, and us Jews, cleansing their hearts by faith. There are various levels, therefore, of this matter of cleansing. While we are going from Judaism to Christianity and seeing at the ceremonial level the distinctions are done away with, and at the question of their special privilege, the distinctions are done away between Jew and Gentile.
We must hang on to the fact that those other things about which God complained about Gentiles, their spiritual and moral uncleanliness, they remain, and they will only be put away by the effect of the gospel in the hearts of those who believe. Let us follow that story to its end. Peter, when he came to Cornelius's house, and then subsequently, as he explained himself to his fellow elders in Jerusalem, gives us, of course, the key to true Christian holiness.
To Cornelius, he preached Christ. And being a very sensible man, Peter didn't walk into Cornelius's house and say, Cornelius, do you know your good works are as filthy rags, old boy? I'm glad he didn't, because had he had done that, Cornelius would have felt very perplexed and might even have dared to say, well, Peter, that's very curious because I had had an angel here the other day, and the angel said that my works had come up before God as a memorial. Now, good works don't, uh, gain us salvation. On the other hand, it is true that in Israel at a certain time, they got into such a shocking state that even their righteousnesses were like filthy rags.
I leave you to imagine what their unrighteousnesses were like. But he was a Gentile full of good works, doing the best he knew to please God. And the angel didn't say, I'm sorry, you've been trying to please God, old boy, but your righteousnesses are as filthy rags. No, the angel said to Cornelius, your righteousness has come up before God's memorial. Showing God the attitude of the man's heart. He wanted to please God, best he knew how. Still needed to be saved, though. God sent some Peter to tell him words whereby he might be saved. So Peter very wisely began, you are interested in good works, Cornelius, that's marvelous.
I can tell you somebody you would be interested in, his name is Jesus of Nazareth. You know, he was full of good works that he did. He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. Marvelous good works, full of good works he was. Well, said Cornelius, where is he now? Well, you see, we Jews murdered him. You Jews murdered him? This man that you say was full of good works. Yes, we Jews murdered him. We're a bad lot, we Jews. Cornelius, old boy, are you really any better? Aren't you a sinner too? That was the tack upon which Peter came into Cornelius's house.
Preaching the good works of Christ, the sinfulness of both Jew and Gentile, that Christ now risen is judge, and he is not only judge, but standard of behavior, and that through him there is forgiveness. The first plank in true holiness. When Cornelius got back to Jerusalem and his fellow apostles called him on the carpet, Peter explained the second pra- plank in true holiness. They said, Peter, whatever were you doing going into a man that is a Gentile and eating with him? Well, says Peter, it wasn't my fault. First of all, God sent me, and then, and then, my dear brethren, he said, it wasn't me, you know, I, all I did was to stand there and preach, and while I stood there and preached, I couldn't help it, brethren, he said.
God gave them his spirit. Now, that wasn't my fault, was it? You see, God went and gave them his spirit like he did on us at the first. Well, I couldn't help it, brethren, he said. You know, James is a bit tough. When you stood before James, you thought of anything you could say because James was tough. You thought of anything you could say to show you. It wasn't me, he said. God went and did it. And if God gave them his spirit, I remembered the words of the Lord that, uh, you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. If God has given them the like gift as us, I couldn't withstand God. James, my dear James, he said, I couldn't withstand God. I couldn't stop him. The two ingredients of true holiness, therefore, acknowledging our sinnesship as we stand before Christ as judge, finding forgiveness through his death, pardon in his resurrection.
And then, no longer a fence of rules and regulations, but the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower a life of holiness. This is the Christian concept and means and methods of holiness. Forgiveness through Christ, then being incorporated into the Holy Spirit. And of course, then it does another thing, doesn't it? Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I'm on safe ground when I say it, am I not? If I quote Saint Paul's explanation, in one spirit you were all baptized into one body, and all were made to drink of one spirit.
When a man comes to Christ, and by Christ he is baptized in the spirit, that puts him into the body of Christ, by in one spirit, all baptized into one body. If that is the secret of Christian holiness, then see what its implication is. You wouldn't sit at your dining room table and leave your foot outside the door, would you? Well, not normally. And if all those that have trusted Christ have been baptized into one body, it would make nonsense, wouldn't it? Normally, that they refuse to eat together, being in the one body.
It's therefore the basis and concept of Christian holiness. But before I cease, thus far there is a difference between Judaism and Christianity in its way of holiness. The old middle wall of petition is gone. Belongs to the days of Israel's infancy. There is a new principle of holiness. One, forgiveness through Christ, and two, baptism in the Holy Spirit. In the old days, when Israel were spiritual infants, God had to put a wall around them.
Many of you parents do the same things with your children. You wouldn't necessarily let your young daughter of thirteen or fourteen years loose in southern parts of London. You might even lay down the law and forbid her, straightly forbid her to go. Of course, you won't be able to carry on that technique all her life through. One of these days she'll be a grown-up woman, and that kind of prohibition won't work anymore. By the time she's a grown-up woman, you hope that she will have imbibed so much your outlook on these matters as no longer to need that wall of a prohibition and be moved by the same spirit that's moved you.
When Israel were in their infancy, God put a wall around them. Not because they were better than others, because they were just the same as others, and contact with the, with the unclean Gentiles would have ruined them. They were bad enough as it was. But it couldn't go on forever. God had to move forward to the adult stage of salvation. And that adult stage works not by putting a wall around people, but by granting them first forgiveness through Christ's death, and then baptism in his Holy Spirit, incorporation into the Holy Spirit to be the power and principle of holiness within them. And that done, they are free to send them forth into the world, into its filthiest places, if needs be.
But now, just one or two other observations, for Luke hasn't quite finished, and I ask you to permit me to go on that few minutes more. The middle wall is broken down between Jew and Gentile in this matter of holiness. That doesn't mean that there are no walls left. In chapter eleven of this same Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us how Jews came down to Antioch, and before they knew what they were doing, they were gossiping the gospel to Gentiles. Gentiles got converted. Before they knew where they were, a church was formed in Antioch, and it was formed both of Jew and Gentiles.
The middle wall of petition gone, all of them now saints in Christ, baptized into one body by the Holy Spirit. Oh yes. But in Antioch, when people came to describe this new phenomenon, they called this new thing Christians. And it was a very distinct thing. Not Jew nor Gentile so much as now Christian. And there remains a gulf between what is Christian and what is not. I mention it simply in passing because in our modern world we've had Paul Van Buren and various other types that have told us that all men are really children of God, even though they don't know it.
All men are Christians, they're just waiting for somebody to tell them they are. It's called the secularization of Christianity, the secularization of religion. It is perfectly unbiblical. While one middle wall of petition has been done away with, another division has come. And between those, be they Jew or Gentile, that are Christian and those that are non-Christian, there remains a very big gulf. Secondly, Acts chapter twelve tells us that at one stage, Herod put forth his hand, vexed certain members of the church by persecuting them.
Then he stretched forth his hand against Saint Peter, put him in prison. And the Jews were delighted. Ponder it a moment. Here were the religious Jews, delighted that the government, the political government, was using its political power to suppress Christianity. Is that the right thing to do? I suggest you ponder it before you answer too quickly.
For governments in Europe over many centuries have used their secular power to enforce this or that religion. And I'm not absolutely sure, but what sudden wouldn't be in the mind to do it still. Is that true holiness? To use the political power to secure your particular interpretation of religion. Is that holiness? Well, of course, it depends, doesn't it? In Israel, when Israel were God's chosen people and in their land with the king appointed by God, yes, it was the king's responsibility.
If heresy broke out in a city over there, the king and the elders were to charge the people in that city, to command them to repent of their heresy, and if they refused to repent, then the king had to get the armies out and go and destroy that city. Because Israel was a sacral state. Ah, but then Israel got set aside, and God withdrew from Israel her political power, and he gave the political power to Gentiles. I don't read anywhere that God gave to Gentile governments the right or power to control the religious beliefs of its people.
And for the Jew to call upon a Gentile to use his political power to control people's religious beliefs, I submit to you that that was a grievous mistake and not true holiness at all. And God defied Herod and brought Peter out of prison. Seems to me that that is not without its message to us in Northern Ireland. We have to think long, do we not, before we decide that it is a right and a holy thing to use Gentile political power in order to produce what our version of sainthood might be.
Oh, certain it is, but at least it happened on this occasion, that when the Jews, in order to suppress nascent Christianity, use Gentile political power to do it, and were delighted when Herod persecuted the Christians. They found it boomeranged. That same Herod got himself up on a throne and dressed up in a beautiful, nice uniform. And the people cried, the voice of a god and not the voice of a man. They had deified the state. And God smote the man with worms immediately.
It's not God's purpose that Gentile government should have the task of controlling people's religious beliefs. That is not true sainthood. It is in our modern age, I submit to you, nothing less than a caricature of true sainthood. But the notion dies hard. Many there are still that suppose that it is our job as Christians to appeal to Gentile government to support our particular religious views and to enforce them on other people.
I submit that is not true sainthood, but false sainthood. We will use Gentile power to try and control people's religious belief. We shall find in the end it will lead to a worse example of what Herod stood for, the principle of Antichrist, than Gentile political government in the end puts itself in the place of God himself and decides what people may or may not believe. Time tells me it is nearly ten past nine. My address has been read.
But I have tried to take our discussion on a little bit further. To the turnover between Judaism and Christianity in this matter of its concept of holiness. To point out that God's aims are the same, his methods have changed. To point out that there is now no longer distinction between Jew and Gentile, that the ceremonial law of purity has gone. To issue a warning that that shouldn't make us think that all distinctions between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, have gone.
But to see rather that at the moral and spiritual level they remain. And that there is still a very big difference between those that have been regenerate by God's spirit and the rest of men who are not. The modern, modern Christendom is going in the direction of one, the secularization of religion, and in the other area it is going towards syncretism. It doesn't matter what religion you are, let's join up all the religions. That, I understand, is not true holiness, but the very denial of holiness. Let the last word on that matter be with Saint Paul.
Talking of to the early Christians, he says, but gentlemen, you are to leave your pagan religions. Come out from among your pagan idolatrous religions and be separate, and don't touch that unclean thing, for pagan religion is in some part unclean. And it is not true holiness to suppose that all religions are equally nice and pleasant and clean, and there is no difference nowadays at all. There remains a very big difference between true Christianity and pagan unregenerate religion that very often is spiritually unclean and sometimes morally unclean as well.
And with that I sit down, and I thank you for your exceeding great patience.
