JEW AND GREEK
‘To the Jew first, and also to the Greek.’
The Jew and the Greek were respectively the loftiest and the noblest exponents of the races and religions of the East and the West. St. Paul shows the fitness of the gospel to meet and to satisfy the needs and requirements of nationalities so widely different as these.
I. The gospel finds a centre of union between them, and that centre is Christ, for it welds all the nations and peoples of the earth together in one great Church. To reconcile such opposing forces might appear to transcend human thought, and its supreme difficulty to banish it to the region of ideas and ideals which can never be realised. But the gospel of Christ aims at nothing less. St. Paul was, perhaps, the first to be convinced that such a reconciliation was possible, and that it was being brought about. It was contained in our Saviour’s words, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ And experience had already proved that the gospel of the Crucified was the magnet which drew men nearer to each other as it drew them alike to ‘Him Who died for all.’
II. Consider the attitude of the Jew and of the Greek towards the gospel, as the Apostle describes it in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. ‘Christ crucified,’ he says, ‘is to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness.’ But the gospel availed to overcome these radical antagonisms, and it is an encouragement now when we meet with the same spirit of opposition to know that it can also be surmounted. These types of mind may hinder men from receiving the gospel altogether, or they may mar their reception of it in its fullness and simplicity.
(a) There is the character of which the Jew is a type, the self-righteous, the Pharisaic. Such as have it possess a high standard of right and duty, in accordance with which they strive to live, but the measure of their attainment they ascribe chiefly to their own efforts. They have no strong feeling that they need the grace of God, which, therefore, they do not seek by earnest prayer. To them, as to the Jew, Christ crucified is the stumbling-block.
(b) The Greek, i.e. the representative of that great and gifted people, regarded the preaching of the Cross as ‘foolishness.’ How, he would say, can men bring themselves to worship a crucified Jew? The entire Christian economy seemed to him preposterous. He treated it with scorn and ridicule. It ran counter to all his ideals; it set forth strange doctrines concerning human nature. Atonement by sacrifice seemed to him a discredited and obsolete superstition. He regarded such as held it with a mixture of pity and contempt. To the Christian of that age it was no small trial to be regarded in this way by the wise and learned of this world. If he did not quail before their scorn, he was in danger of keeping too much in the background those doctrines of the Christian revelation which were most likely to excite opposition. We must not forget that there are still persons to whom the preaching of the Cross is foolishness. They cannot reconcile it with views which they have formed respecting the character of God, and of any revelation which professes to come from Him.
III. We must not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, however narrow-minded and fanatical we may seem when we declare that there is no salvation in any other. When men oppose us herein, we should seek in meekness to instruct them, if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth.
—Rev. F. K. Aglionby.