MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 15:13
The divine antidote against despair.—It is difficult to lead a truly religious life. This arises from our proneness to evil and from the influences working to draw us away from the path of rectitude. There are great forces against us; but, rightly considered, there are mightier forces engaged on our behalf. This text is in itself a shield of protection. An apostle prays. A God of hope encourages. The power of the Holy Ghost is engaged. The essentials of the Christian life are being developed to establish in that hope which is the crown and guarantee of safety and of ultimate triumph.
I. The apostle prays.—Spiritual earnestness is characteristic of all his supplications. He prays for moral advancement. Too oft we pray for worldly good, and not to be filled with joy and peace in believing. We pray thus, if prayer be the real expression of our hearts. The apostle’s prayer was intercessory. We need to know more truly the blessing of intercessory prayer. It would remove our selfishness, make us possess more of the diffusive spirit of Christianity, enlist our sympathies on behalf of the erring, prevent us being so censorious, tend to make us love the brethren, and cause us to dwell together in Christian unity.
II. A God of hope encourages.—There are divine agents working for the expansion of Christian hope—the God of hope and the power of the Holy Ghost. How appropriate the term when we remember the apostle’s object to inspire with hope! God is not the subject but the object of hope. Hope is the faculty or grace exercised by the creature who cannot see the future. God sees the future, and has no need to overcome the cloud of the present by drawing from the future the light of hope. God, as the object of hope, is a reason for gratitude. Nature and philosophy may teach a dread abstraction, and may thus induce a desire for atheism. Revelation declares a God of hope. There is hope in the fulness of the divine promises, in the pages of the sacred record, in the cross of our Saviour, and by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is the gracious province of the divine Spirit to work in and upon the human spirit, so that it may abound in hope. There is not often a superabundance of hope; it is too rare a possession. Abound in hope. How excellent the nature that abounds in hope!
III. The essentials of the Christian life are being developed.—Faith, peace, and joy are essential elements of the Christian character. These are to be increased, and then there follows the enlargement of hope. A man filled with joy and peace has no room for despair. Peace and joy constitute the favourable sphere in which hope may abound. Peace, joy, and hope do not spring from a desire, however earnest, after righteousness. A longing after the harmony with the eternal law of moral order will fill us with despair as we feel that we are incapable of satisfying the soul’s infinite longings. Peace, joy, and hope come to the soul in and through believing. The truth of this cannot be tested by any scientific method, but it is affirmed by experience.
IV. The blessed processes employed for the attainment of a great result.—The blessed processes are both external and internal, both human and divine, and all spiritual. All intercessory prayers are external to the objects of such petitions. Paul prays; the Mediator intercedes. The divine Spirit is external to the human spirit, and works in external spheres, even when that divine Spirit has put itself into blessed union with the human spirit. The divine Spirit is filling. When the divine Spirit fills the human spirit, then it fills with joy and peace. The very presence of the Spirit is joy and peace, for the Holy Ghost is a peaceful and joyful Spirit. All are moving towards the blessed result—superabundance of hope.
V. The result reacts beneficially on the processes.—Abundance of hope strengthens faith, deepens peace, enlarges joy. Beneficial reactions are to be expected in Christian processes; while maleficent reactions too often occur in other spheres. Do evil, and evil rebounds. Work in material spheres, and though the work be legitimate, harm and damage may recoil. Do good, and good beyond our doing accrues. Work in moral spheres, and though the work be imperfect, there will be a beneficial reaction beyond the measure of our efforts. Seek for more faith; cultivate peace; enlarge joy. Then hope will abound. And abounding hope will sweetly nourish all graces, like the prospering sunlight of heaven. The apostle abounded in hope in darkest scenes; and why may not we? The heathen wept amid the ruins, but the apostle could sing amid the ruins of worldly hopes; and why may not we?
Romans 15:13. Religion and pleasure.—It is a remarkable fact that St. Paul, whose record was so stormy, can rejoice. Sketch his chequered life. Yet he speaks of the joy of faith even while the chains about his wrists are clanking. He is a happy Christian, praising God in spite of his uncomfortable quarters and his perilous position. The secret of this? That he weighed consequences before experience: the sufferings of the present not worthy of comparison with the glory that should follow.
I. St. Paul sought to teach men that religion is a thing of joy.—The general notion among the worldly runs in the opposite direction. Some say of St. Paul that his exultation was due to his natural temperament, to the atmosphere of controversy and opposition, which he dearly loved. But thousands of others have believed that religion is the groundwork of the world’s joy. Sceptics and others say that they have joy—deep, solemn, self-respecting, abiding—in looking into the heavens and nature as mysteries, the delight coming from the endeavour to solve them. But the fact is indisputable that their joy is marred by this—that shutting out God they shut out all hope and encouragement.
II. The text leaves no room for the false ideal of gloomy sainthood.—One of the greatest injustices that can be done to the Christian cause is to take as one’s ideal Christian the melancholy, wasted saint who frowns on everything but the Bible or hymn-book—the grim, gloomy creatures, extreme Puritans, who frown on laughter and lightheartedness. They do not truly reflect the religion Jesus set up among men. Nothing in Christianity to refute Solomon’s saying, “To everything there is a season”; but we may make one exception there—namely, no time for the gospel of gloom. Reading between the lines of religion, you come upon the philosophy of right things in right places; but everywhere in religion you find the word “cheerfulness.”
1. To be cheerful is a duty which you owe to God. He has placed you in a beautiful world with power to enjoy it. If you go complaining and wearing a gloomy face, it is a constant denial that God has done all things to make you happy.
2. To be cheerful is a duty you owe to your neighbour. By being cheerful you contribute to the happiness of those around you. We are so constituted that we are always affected by our associates and associations.
3. Cheerfulness a duty you owe to yourself. Life is what we make it.
III. Religion is pleasurable, notwithstanding the element of discipline.—Discipline an absolute necessity, otherwise many would carry their pleasures into licence. Religion has its pleasure; but it draws a necessary line somewhere. It will not tolerate forgetfulness of God and duty, laxity of service, questionable fraternity with the world that opposes God.
IV. No real pleasure apart from religion.—Some say the world would be just as happy without Christ’s religion as with it. History gives this the lie. Were the pagans a happy race? Were the Greeks with their full pantheon happy? Think of the picture of the Christless world! Suicide resorted to and praised as a means of escape from misery. It is false to impute gloom to Christianity. Rightly interpreted, it does not sanction a single doctrine or utter a precept which is meant to extinguish one happy impulse or dim one innocent delight. “What it does is to warn us against seeking and following the lowest and most shortlived pleasures as a final end.” Since all that “makes life tolerable and society possible” is due to Christ’s religion, it is but another step to say that it is only through that religion that there can by any possibility be any real joy and peace.
V. The false representations have done great mischief.—Some have held aloof, refusing the yoke of Christ, and have lost much abiding peace. The joy and peace of religion consist in an enlarged view of life, a wider conception of the duties demanded of it, a real comfort in the day of sorrow: these have been lost to many because of misrepresentation. It is something to lose companionship of a Saviour ready to meet our sinfulness and purge it—one ready to meet our feebleness, especially since we are made up of needs.—Albert Lee.
Romans 15:13. God has no unfulfilled desires.—Jesus Christ exercised His ministry amongst the Jews, and chose His apostles from the same people. The far larger proportion of primitive Christians were Jews; but the full and final commission to His disciples was to “preach the gospel to every creature.” It was necessary that Christ should be of some nation: He came unto the Jews to fulfil the prophecies concerning Him, and to establish the new covenant, for which the old was a preparation. The new covenant was for the benefit of all, according to the prediction of Isaiah: “There shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and His rest shall be glorious.” Thus is He set forth as the hope, or the object of hope, for all people. His ministers are sent for this purpose—to lead men to Him, that they may be induced to hope in Him and through Him. There is no exception or exclusion, except that which individuals themselves unwisely make. “I, if I be lifted up from the earth,” Christ said, “will draw all men unto Me.” The attraction of His love produces hope. The divine Being is not called a God of hope because He has unfulfilled desires; for He is possessed of all things, and has the universe under His control. The very perfection of His nature must be a source of happiness, and excludes the hope so necessary to men, and without which energy would be dissipated and purposes made vain. Hope implies that there is some good not yet in possession, but in God are “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” But God is the giver of all that is worth having: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” To Him rational beings must look, in Him must trust. On Him we are dependent, and even “the power to get wealth” is received from Him. He permits evil. Why? It is not for us to say; but often what appears so is not so absolutely. He “out of seeming evil still educeth good.” He is called “the God of hope” in view of the fact that our state morally is desperate, and that no power less than His can deliver us from it and put us in a condition acceptable to Himself. His good-will towards us is so great as to be incomprehensible. For acceptance in the Beloved, for spiritual renewal, and for life eternal we are to hope in Him. He is not like the fabled deities of old, pleased to execute vengeance; He delights in mercy, “showing it to thousands of them that love Him.” But He does not show mercy to penitents that they may continue in sin: “He that confesseth and forsaketh it shall find mercy.” It is desirable and possible to abound in hope, even in the most troublesome events of life. Sometimes it may be dimmed or clouded through “manifold temptations,” when a resort to the very Source of hope becomes especially necessary. How many have been sustained by hope in the most fearful difficulties! Take only one example. Carlyle says; “John Knox had a sore fight for existence, wrestling with principalities in defeat, contention, lifelong struggle, rowing as a galley-slave, wandering in exile. A sore fight, but he won it. ‘Have you hope?’ he was asked in his last moments, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, pointed upward with it, and so died.” The God of hope makes His servants to abound in hope through His gracious Spirit by filling them with the joy of forgiveness, giving them His abiding presence, and strengthening the desire to “purify themselves, even as He is pure.” From Him too cometh a sweet and sacred peace, which is diffused through the whole spiritual nature—a “peace which passeth all understanding.” This peace cannot exist where sin reigns, and the conscience is not sprinkled as with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The peace that abideth and flourisheth comes through believing, not merely through consenting to certain truths, or accepting revelation as from God, but through “believing with the heart unto righteousness.” “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.”—Dr. Burrows, Ashtabula, New York.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 15:13
Paul’s cheerfulness in affliction.—What can be more free and buoyant, with all their variety, than his writings? Brilliant, broken, impetuous as the mountain torrent freshly filled, never smooth and calm but on the eve of some bold leap, never vehement but to fill some receptacle of dearest peace, they present everywhere the image of a vigorous joy. Beneath the forms of their theosophic reasonings, and their hints of deep philosophy, there may be heard a secret lyric strain of glorious praise, bursting at times into open utterance, and asking others to join the chorus.… His life was a battle from which, in intervals of the good fight, his words arose as the song of victory.—Albert Lee.
The world without Christ.—“Their hearts became surcharged with every element of vileness,—with impurity in its most abysmal degradations, with hatred alike in its meanest and its most virulent developments, with insolence culminating in the deliberate search for fresh forms of evil, with cruelty and falsity in their most repulsive features. And the last crime of all, beyond which crime itself could go no further, was the awfully defiant attitude of moral evil, which led them, while they were fully aware of God’s sentence of death pronounced on willing guilt, not only to incur it themselves, but with a devilish delight in human depravity and human ruin to take a positive pleasure in those who practise the same.” The moral emptiness and desolation of the ancient world is evident to all eyes. It had no moral and spiritual purpose by which to solve the problems that are vital to the very existence of the State. The upbuilding of political life with all its earnestness and struggle and end avour was over. Many things sank into the mere shows and semblances of realities; and, in truth, this was the case with the assemblies of the people, the senate, and the high officers of religion and the State. Everything was sacrificed to appetite, enjoyment, and play. Because heathenism had no goal beyond the grave, it had no worthy purpose and aim on this side of it.—Seidel.
Going without religion.—I fear that when we indulge ourselves in the amusement of going without a religion, we are not perhaps aware how much we are sustained at present by an enormous mass all about us of religious feeling and religious conviction; so that, whatever it may be safe for us to think, for us who have had great advantages and have been brought up in such a way that a certain moral direction has been given to our character, I do not know what would become of the less favoured classes of mankind if they undertook to play the same game. The worst kind of religion is no religion at all; and these men who are living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the “amusement of going without religion,” may be thankful that they live in lands where the gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men who but for Christianity might long ago have eaten their carcases like the South Sea islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of sceptioism, which had hurled the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of the Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children, unspoiled and unpolluted—a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, manhood respected, woman honoured, and human life held in due regard—when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundations, and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for (sceptics) to move thither, and then ventilate their views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope, and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life eternal, which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.—James Russell Lowell.
The joy of believing.—Some, because religion has been shamefully misrepresented, have stood afar off, dreading to take upon themselves the yoke of Christ. They may well consider that the joy and peace of religion consist in an enlarged view of life, a wider conception of the duties demanded of it, a real comfort in the day of affliction, a real light in the hour of darkness. There is to the Christian all the joy that is worth the name. There is a Saviour ready to meet our sinfulness, ready to purge it; there is a God willing to meet our feebleness, helping those who are weak in faith, compassed about with difficulties and infirmities, men and women made up of needs. There is surely joy and peace in believing and realising this. But what joy for the man who will meet his own needs? Dares he to defy the help of One who is mighty, and from whom all real good proceeds?—never once to have a whisper of encouragement, nor a word of sympathy, nor one kindly touch of help; no great Master on whom to cast the heavy burdens of care; no one to whom to turn and say, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter-up of my head”; no God to be a refuge and strength, a present help in the dark days of trouble! Verily, they have failing hearts who seek for pleasure at other hands than those of the crucified One!—Albert Lee.