Luminescence, Volume 2. C. K. Barrett
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never looked more unfair than it did at Calvary, and Calvary is the focal point of God’s mercy.
Though waves and storms go o’er my head,Though strength, and health, and friends be gone,Though joys be withered all and dead,Though every comfort be withdrawn,On this my steadfast soul relies,Father, Thy mercy never dies. (J. A. Rothe, translated into English by J. Wesley, 1740)
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“I BELIEVE”—Romans 10.8–10
[Preached twenty-two times from 7/9/44 at Bondgate Darlington to 2/10/85 at Cassop]
It is some little time since I have attempted a series of sermons and I am proposing to do so again now, beginning this morning and continuing on for the next four Sunday mornings. I hope to preach on five of the cardinal words in the Creed. I wish we knew it better than we do and used it more. You know well enough I’m a fairly good Methodist, and I would not barter Charles Wesley’s hymns for anything in Christendom, but I must confess a certain amount of envy of those Christians who recite the Creed (in one form or another) in their services. Some people don’t like the Creeds, I love them. And that is not because I’ve had the privilege of teaching the history of the Creeds for three years at Cambridge. It is because the Creeds are the battle song of the Church. The Creeds are very inadequately used when I read them in the Greek or Latin with a small group of persons inside college walls. I should like to march along the High Row with a great crowd of people singing the Creed. That would be something like a proper use of the Creeds. For those Creeds are the succinct statement of the facts upon which our Christian life vests.
However, enough of generalities. I propose tonight simply to deal with the fundamental words “I believe.” I make no apology for continually returning to the theme of faith. It is the most fundamental and also the most misunderstood thing in Christianity, and the old Reformation watchword, “by faith alone,” words which in these days we badly need to recover, and which, God be praised, some of our Church leaders are recovering. What may we learn of faith from St. Paul?
WITH THE HEART A PERSON BELIEVES UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS
There are a number of things to be said here. Firstly, faith is a thing of the heart. Let that not be misunderstood. In the Bible, as in most ancient literature, the heart does not mean quite what it means to us. In our conventional language one thinks with the head and feels with the heart. Roughly speaking the ancients put these things a step lower—so a person thinks with his heart (“as a person thinks in his heart, so he is”). The thought of the heart really means the disposition of the whole person. And this leads us to the important fact that in the field of Christian faith (as in a great deal else), thinking and feeling ought not to be separated. A faith that is purely intellectual is stunted and unfruitful. A faith that is mere feeling is flabby and spineless. Neither is an adequate Christian faith. There are some of you, I am sure, to whom I ought to say ‘Put more thought into your faith. Don’t be afraid to do so, and it will be all the better for you and for others.’
I recently came across in Charles Kingsley’s Life a tale of an incident at Bonn.7 There were two processions of peasants, who had marched to the top of Peter’s mountain. One was composed of vinedressers who were intending to return thanks for sunshine and to pray for its continuance. The others from a corn district were wanting the drought to cease, and the rain to fall. Each were eager to get possession of the shrine of St. Peter’s chapel before the other, to secure the saints good offices, so they come to blows with fists and sticks. A little more thought with our faith would not merely be useful to us, but would also rectify our relations with our neighbors.
It is equally a problem that there are some of you, to whom I ought to say, “put more feeling into your faith.” Probably I ought to say that to myself, for if there is anyone scared of emotion, it is I. I avoid it, I suppose, due to nature and training. “Safety First” a Cambridge watchword.
I think, the Wrangler said, it’s white,Still, it’s important to be right,So while fresh evidence we lack,It might seem safer to say black.
That is not a bad maxim for scholarship, but it won’t do for the whole of life. A person who lives on thought only, is starving part of himself. He is like a would-be athlete who spends all his time doing push-ups so he will have shoulders like a buffalo, but keeps a pair of spindly legs.
But there is a great deal yet to say. So far I might have been talking merely about an attitude to life, and stressing the importance of not neglecting any side of our nature. This is no doubt true, and it is not Christian faith. This is, as Paul tells us, directed towards a very definite Christian fact. “If they shall believe in their hearts that God raised Christ from the dead.” Here is the root of Christian faith in more senses than one. See what it is that Paul picks out here. It is not any particular deed or saying of Jesus himself. The central faith is that God raised him from the dead, the life and death of Jesus was the central context of God’s action, of the divine invasion of human life. Faith therefore means the relating of ourselves, of our whole selves, thought, feeling and will, to God in Christ. Faith is the incredible bridge which spans the gulf between God and a human being. Faith lays hold of Christ who is God and man.
Faith then is our relation with God, not so much our hold on God as his hold on us. As such (let us work this out) it does involve thought. It involves everyone in thought, according to their capacity for thought. You must think about Christ. You must think about God. You must think about life to find out its purpose in relation to God.
Similarly, it involved feeling. Suppose you do think in faith about Christ; you remember that he died for you, that you have again, and again, and again sinned against him. Do you not feel it? If Wordsworth will say about the prospect of the city of London “Dull would he be of soul who could pass by, a sight so touching in its majesty”8 then I say dull indeed would be the Christian soul who could survey the wondrous Cross and be content to catalog it in the card index in his brain.
And it involves will, all the practical activities of life, for as Paul says, “a person believes unto righteousness.” This too is a relation, a right relation with God, but it is worked out in the practical affairs of life. Thinking and feeling that stop short of this remind me of the nursery rhyme about the centipede.
The centipede was happy quite,Until the toad in fun,Said ‘Why which leg comes after which?Which worked him up to such a pitch He lay distracted in a ditch,Considering how to run.9
With the heart a person believes, believes in the living Christ and the end of that faith is righteousness. Faith is an affair of the heart, it means being right with God, and it has the most practical of consequences. Secondly, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
WITH THE MOUTH CONFESSION IS MADE UNTO SALVATION
Faith is an affair of the heart, of the whole moral life of a person. It comes out in righteousness, in the conformity of the whole life to the will of God. It comes out also in speech. It is emphatically a thing not to be concealed, to be hushed up. It is (as Ignatius said more than eighteen centuries ago) a thing for sharing. I hope no one will misunderstand this. It is not a plea that we should ram religion down people’s throats, that we should continually (or ever) be making priggish assertions of our own particular beliefs. The trouble is that the most vocal people are not those who really believe in God, but in fact those who believe in themselves and conceal the fact under a veneer of Christian language. The noisiest people are not by any means the best and most faithful Christians.
Do you remember how Coriolanus greets his wife Virgilia in Shakespeare’s play? “My gracious silence,” he calls her. There is good advice in that, for more than the ladies too. He means that his wife’s silent greeting to him means more than all the cheers that meet him as a victorious general. I have known very many Christians who have deserved that title. By their silence they have done so much for Christ and more, than we noisy people who stand in the pulpits. If you are one of Christ’s “gracious silences” don’t by any means