THE CENTRAL FACT OF THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL

Taranaki Daily News, 5 February 1921, Page 12

THE CENTRAL FACT OF THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL

"Christ died for our sins.” —I. Cor., XV. 3, (By Rev. A. H. Collins.) The Christ of history is the fact of history. We know, beyond all reasonable challenge, that such a one as “Jesus of Nazareth” lived. The story of “those sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue,” is told by the evangelists with artless simplicity and fullness of detail which carry conviction to Christian hearts. The Christian faith did not create Jesus Christ; it was He 'who created the Christian faith. We have the fourfold record of His words and deeds; we have His public and private discourses; His miracles, His prayers, His life and death. We have more than this. Christianity exists. The church abides. “The name of Christ is not so much written as it is ploughed into the history of the woyld.” His influence grows with the flight of the years. His fascinating personality holds the world spellbound. Tie hds lifted Empires off their hinges and turned the moral currents of the world. Athens and Rome have adopted Him; the barbarians have fallen at His feet; Rationalism dare not Vaze at Him save on its knees; His beauty is eternal. The very chronology of the world bears witness to His advent, and to deny “the Jesus of history” is to cast doubt on all historic records. The fact that William the. Conqueror landed on the shores of Great Britain

is supported by no bettor evidence than that which w|iich witnesses to our Lord’s nativity. The fact that Socrates drank the deadly hemlock cup at the liands of the Athenians is not better authenticated than fact that Jesus died on “the green hill far away.” Jesus lived and died. These are the basic facts of the Christian gospel.

But these historic facts do not exhaust the meaning of the sacred records. No one can read the Gospels, and the Epistles, and escape the impression that the death of Jesus Christ holds a unique place: it is the central and determinative doctrine of the New Testament. Read the story of any other great figure that crosses the stage of history, and you will find that the biographer's object is not to tell how his hero died, but how he lived. The chief stress is laid on his birth, education, and activities, while the story of his death is dismissed in a few lines, or perhaps omitted altogether. In the'case of our Lord this order is completely reversed. The evangelists paint the picture of a faultless example, an inimitable teacher, a faithful friend, but when you lay the record down, it is with the conviction that these are not the main facts. Jesus Christ is more than an example, teacher or friend. He holds some unique relation to the human race, and the evangelists’ purpose is not to tell how Jesus Christ lived, or how He died, but why He died.

The same is true of the great Epistles. In the Gospels you have the facts; in the Epistles you have the doctrine; and these are related as root and fruit. “Christ died for our sins,” “He was delivered up for our transgressions,” “In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” “We have redemption through His blood,’ ’these are the great sayings which receive first place, and the most gracious emphasis. It was on this great, central, formative truth, the Apostles rested their own salvation, and it was on the preaching of this truth they relied for the salvation of the world. You may say the Apostles were mistaken. You may say they idealised the character of Jesus and raised His figure to sublime heights of heroism and divinity. You may say that they read into His words meanings Hg never intended them to bear, and that tley attribuated to His death a moral significance He did not claim; that just as rivers are tinged by the soil through which they flow, so Christanity has been tinted and Greek philosophy. But unless we say the Apostles were not only mistaken" but dishonest men. we must confess that the death of Christ for the sins of tlie world was central, formative, regnant, in the faith and hope of the Apostles. “Christ died for our sins,” was the red ripe heart of their gospel. This first epistle of the Corinthians is one of the four great Pauline letters, the genuineness of which has never been questioned. Canon Liddmi, one of the most cautious and conservative of men, said it was as certain Saint Paul wrote this letter as that Sir Walter Scott wrote. “Waverley.” The most scholarly opponents of Christianity admit that in this epistle we have the very words of. Saint Paul himself This letter was written during the life-time of many who were eye-witnesses of the Crucifixion. In other words, the epistle was in the hands of the Church within thirty years of the death of Christ. Less time has elapsed between the death of our Lord and the publication of this letter than, has passed sinse some of you left the Home-land for New Zealand. That is to say, we have in our text an authentic statement of the early church’s faith in the death of Christ, and the purpose of that death. Saint Paul says, “Christ died,” and that “Christ died for our sin,” and he said this to men and women who knew Christ in the days of His flesh, heard Him preach,- and saw Him “throned upon the awful tree,”., and would have corrected Him had He needed correction. That these eye-witnesses of the Crucifixion did not challenge the Apostle’s facts, or the use he made of the facts, is strong presumptive evidence that in fact and deduction Saint Paul was justified in saying “Christ died for bill sins.” ... But this passage is

not alone. It is one of many in which the same -truth is affirmed. Whatever may be the interpretation of the fact, there can be no question that the death of Jesus Christ, and salvation through that death, wfis thc'staple article of the Apostle's ministry, Ins sole hope, the never-failing spring of his strength and joy. He preached it to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Galatians; he -proclaimed it in Ephesus, Phillipi, Colosse, and Thessalonica. It was central and basic. It colored his conception of the Gospel, his doctrine of sin, of righteousness, and the judgment to come. It was, for him, the supreme motive to holiness of life, and it was the fountain of his missionary ardour. His letters arc crimson in all i their pages, and what is true of Saint Paul is true also of Saint Peter. Saint James, and Saint- John. The Apostles, in perfect unison, In absolutely unbroken harmony, declare that the death of Jesus Christ', 'and the forgiveness of sins, are related as root and fruit are related. ■Ye are not redeemed with corruptible things as of silver and gold! but with the precious blood of Clifist. that is the wil.ocsß of' Saint Peter. “Herein is love not that wo loved God, but that He loved us. and gave Illa Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” Thai Is the witness of Saini John. These Apostles differed In many ways. Their mental Mid klieii- w«r*l outlook were

poles asunder, but they are at one in saying “Christ died, for our sins.” *^o/that, when we apeak of the atoning death of Christ as central and vital, we are not dealing with a doctrine grafted on the primitive Christianity; we are dealing with something which is of the very pith and marrow of the Gospel—something which marks it off from every other faith, and is more inspiring than them all. “Christ died for our sins.” That places Jesus Christ apart from every other death, and brings His-cross into close, mysterious, solemn relation to us all; a relation that rebukes and shames and slays our sins. “Christ died for our sins.” There, in a few simple, Saxon words, we hape the Apostles’ explanation of the Savious’s cross and passion. Plainer ‘statement of fact transcendent could not be, and without such explanation, Christ’s death remains an inscrutable mystery, a mystery of great and unrelieved darkness* Nor are we left to the teaching of the Apostles and the faith of the early Church. .We have the words of the Master Himself. He spoke of His death, not as the termination of His, life, but as the crown and glory of His life. By the act of dying He would accomplish the sublime purpose of His life. He always spoke of that death as lying within His own power; it was His own voluntary act; He foresaw and predicted it; His whole attitude towards the cross makes it plain that it was unique in its eternal significance.

But there is another and a more personal aspect of this doctrine. God is “not the God of the dead, but of the living.” He did not cease to speak to men with the close of the N.T. canon. He is in the world to-day. (Christian experience no less than the four gospels, reveal His presence and echo His voiced God by His spirit has immediate’and direct access to the human soul. The death of Christ as the ground of pardon, authenticates itself to Christian experience. This doctrine mot the paganism of the ancient world in deadly* conflict, and mastered it; it converted fierce races of barbarians; it laid the foundations of modern Europe; it gave, the martyrs their fortitude, it inspired the great evangelical revival, it came like the breath of spring to churches sunken in i formality and worldliness; it created modern missions. Nothing moves the heart like the Crt)ss of Christ, nothing heals the mdlady of souls-like the balm which bowed from the’Saviour’s wounded side. Yes, and let me~say, as one of the rooted convictions of my life, that any explanations of the death of Christ which makes it seem remote, shadowy and unreal, impairs the strength of the gospel, dims its divine glory, and weakens the waning force of the Christian life. You cannot deny that “Christ died for our sins,” without cutting the nerve of missions. When the Empress Helena was searching for th true Cross, she dug in the soil of Jerusalem, and found three crosses buried there. Then the question arose, which of the three was the true cross; and to decide the question, a corpse was laid on dbe of them, and there was no life or motion; but when the same dead form was laid on another cross, the dead sprang to life. That is fancy, this is fact; the spiritually dead are quickened and made alive by contact with the Cross of Jesus Christ. Let John Bunyan speak to your hearts: “I saw that‘ just as Christian e'ame to the Cross his burden loosened and fell oj into the sepulchre, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad und lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He hath given rest by Tlis sorrow and life by His death.” “My theology.’’ said dying Spurgeon, “my theology is four words: Jesus diedgtfor me. I do not say this is all T should preach, if I were raised up again; but it is enough to die upon. Jesus died for me.” To the witness of Christ 1 and His Apostles is added the verification of sixty generations of Christian experience that “Christ died for our sins.”