By Rev. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale, Skye.
IN this chapter we find that after Paul arrived in Rome as a prisoner he called together the chief of the Jews, and showed them that “for the hope of Israel” he was a prisoner. Though nothing had been reported to them concerning Paul, either by letters from Judaea, or by any who came from there to Rome, yet they heard so much, by adverse criticism, of the doctrines which Paul preached that they concluded that those who held these doctrines were every where spoken against. In briefly drawing attention to the words of our text I would notice particularly three things. I. Those referred to. II. How they are here described. III. That this description is wrong.
I. Those referred to.
It may be noticed, first of all, that it is wrong to speak of them as a “sect.” The word here translated “sect” is the same word that is elsewhere translated “heresy.” The only way in which the word could be applied to the Christian Church is when it is looked upon from the viewpoint of Jewish traditions and Jewish prejudice, but viewing it from the standpoint of the Scriptures, the word can be applied with far more truth to the Church of the Jews, for they had, as the Lord Himself points out, made void the law of God by their own traditions.
Those described here as a sect can be identified with the Church of God in the Old Testament Scriptures. They hold the doctrine found there, that the Saviour of sinners, with kingly power, was to bruise the head of the devil, and that in the conflict his own humanity was to be bruised (Genesis iii. 15). His prophetical office is acknowledged by them and in this also they have the authority of the Old Testament Scriptures for Moses says. “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken” (Deut. xviii. 15). With no less clearness do they hold the Old Testament doctrine of the priestly office of Christ. In reading the fifty-third chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah one would think that the prophet was sitting on Mount Calvary when the debt was paid to Justice and when principalities and powers were spoiled and made a show of openly. Paul himself acknowledges “that after the manner which they (the Jews) call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets” (Acts xxiv. 14). The Lord Himself, in the days of His flesh, asserts that the Scriptures cannot be broken, and in His final sufferings we find on more than one occasion things taking place which might appear small and insignificant in the eyes of the world, but they took place in order that the Scriptures be not broken. The types and shadows of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the New, and therefore these types and shadows which are but “childish things” are laid aside never again to be taken up, and supplant the pure, simple worship of the New Testament Church.
That many have endeavoured to bring in these types and shadows has caused a great deal of trouble in the professing church, and always those who will not agree with such innovators are classed as a sect that every where is spoken against. Such cleaving to the practice and doctrine of the primitive Christian Church and opposition to innovations, has been found in every age, and God has blessed Scotland with a large number of these people in every age since the Reformation. Our own Church has inherited this double honour of cleaving fast to the worship, doctrine and practice of the New Testament Church, and being in a position where it appears to be every where spoken against. Thus it can claim to be in the direct line of succession to the Christian Church as known to the Apostles, and also, as known to the enemies of the Church.
II. We may now in the second place notice how they are here described. They are said to be every where spoken against.
In the days of the Apostles and to the present day the Church is spoken against. The Jews had been looking for the Messiah but when He came they would not receive Him. They had views of His coming which were not based on the Old Testament Scriptures, and because His coming did not harmonise with these views they would have none of Him. They asserted that He had a devil, and that He was a deceiver of the people, and when they came to Pilate’s Judgment Seat they spoke against Him, saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” “He came unto His own, and His own received him not” (John i. 11). In the same way they speak against His followers, as was very evident in the case of Paul. Much as he was favoured by the Jews in the days of his ignorance, when he began to preach Christ they cried, “Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live” (Acts xxii. 22). Thus Christ can say with reference to the treatment He got, and is still getting from the Jews, in His members on earth, “My people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me” (Psalm lxxxi. 11).
Passing over the loud cry of the heathen against God’s witnesses from Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen in Ephesus to the modern followers of Mahomet, Budda, and Confucius, we come to the Church of Rome. This Church, while claiming to be Christian herself, speaks against true Christianity, and has put far more of the Lord’s witnesses to death than even Pagan Rome did, or all the heathens put together. In vesting the Headship of the Church in a mere man, offering up the blasphemous sacrifice of the Mass, worshipping saints and images, offering prayers for the dead, inventing Purgatory, refusing to give the Scriptures to the common people in their own language, and a whole host of other things, she proves herself to be an apostate church and her Head the Anti-Christ “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming” (II. Thess. ii. 8). He is represented as he “whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.” Since its rise the Papacy has fulminated with Papal bulls against the Lord’s witnesses and in word and deed has spoken against true Christianity. Even by the name “Catholic Church” which she has arrogated to herself she has denominated all who differ from her a sect and a heresy, and not only speaks against them, but requires an oath of her cardinals to persecute them to the death.
Again we must, meantime, pass over what the Episcopal Church did in our native land during the Covenanting period in speaking by persecution against God’s faithful witnesses, and turn our attention to how things are among Presbyterians in our own day. It is to be regretted that many who profess the Presbyterian form of church government are among those who speak against true religion and a firm adherence to the Word of God. In the larger Presbyterian Church in Scotland “those things which are most surely believed among us” are spoken against. Men have ceased to believe in the inspiration and infallibility of Holy Scripture and thus have drifted away from the old moorings. The Bible, according to their view abounds in error, the Confession of Faith is out of date and sets forth persecuting principles, and, therefore, the Standards had to be revised. These same people who are so ready to see intolerant and persecuting principles in the Confession of Faith have no scruples against being intolerant to such as differ from their views. They are referred to as ignorant and bigoted, and the most un-Christian believing the Virgin Birth of Christ to be a fact, and holding the absolute than the doctrines of the Bible. In other words they are thus spoken against for believing in the Bible as a whole, holding the doctrine of the Fall of Man, Redemption by Christ, Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, believing the Virgin Birth of Christ to be a fact, and holding the absolute sufficiency of Holy Scripture as the only rule of faith and manners.
Not only is this sin to be laid at the door of the larger Presbyterian Church in Scotland but it can also be found among the smaller denominations. Infidelity and Arminianism gained a footing in the once glorious Free Church of Scotland, and through an Act of its Supreme Court, constitutionally passed, the Constitution itself was altered so that she ceased to be the Free Church except in name. It was then that the Free Presbyterian Church took up a separate position in order to adhere to an entire Bible, and to the Constitution of the Free Church as set up at the Disruption, and hand down to generations to come the whole of that legacy bequeathed to us by our fathers. It was only seven years after this that an anti-union minority in the Declaratory Act Free Church set themselves up as the heirs of the Free Church of the Disruption. They looked with no friendly eye on the Free Presbyterian Church, and in the public statements of some of its leaders it was referred to as a schismatical body which was only a “new creation” that had no past, and that certainly would have no future. This anti-unionist body which is known as the Free Church of Scotland has exerted itself to speak every where against those who raised a testimony on behalf of God’s truth in Scotland when all others forsook it, and who consistently adhere to that testimony to the present day.
Individual sinners of every description speak against adherence to a Scriptural testimony. From the most cultured and outwardly moral unregenerate person to the most abandoned profligate they hate a Scriptural creed and a practice according to it. Being under the dominion and power of that carnal mind, whose character is that it is enmity against God, they cannot do anything but hate the Word of God, and those who adhere to it. In order to cover their own enmity towards true religion they affect to be broad-minded and tolerant, though in practice they are very intolerant of such as faithfully rebuke them for their sins. They may not be able in our day to pursue such with fire and sword, with boot and thumbscrews, or crop off their ears and make them stand in the pillory till exhausted nature is no longer sensible of physical pain, but like Jeremiah’s persecutors they smite them with the tongue. They will not scruple to raise and circulate a scandal against them or endeavour to make them appear to be persons of no consequence. Thus, wherever a careless and indifferent sinner can open his mouth, there is a place where true piety and a Scriptural Church is spoken against.
Time would fail one to enumerate all the places where these are spoken against but it is a matter for solemn consideration that this so-called sect is also spoken against in Hell. This should be solemnly and seriously considered by those who speak against it on earth. They are at one with the powers of darkness in their view of a church which endeavours, in the midst of many troubles within and without, to adhere faithfully to the Word of God, and to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” and they jointly put their hatred of it into practice in proportion to the ability of each. It was in consideration of the fact that it would be spoken against in Hell that the Saviour directed His disciples to the Rock on which He was to build His Church, assuring them that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. The nearer a church is in its creed, constitution and practice to the Apostolic Church the more that the depths of Hell will be moved against it, and that moving of the depths of Hell is reflected in the persecutions, efforts on the part of churches of lesser orthodoxy at elimination by an incorporating union, and the back biting and sneers of these when their efforts are frustrated. Satan accepts integrity as a challenge to his kingdom and power, and will exercise all his craft and marshal all his hosts against any individual or church where it is found. However, the comfort of such is that it is written, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper: and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn” (Isaiah liv. 17).
III. The third thing that falls to be considered is that the description here given of the Church of God is wrong. It is a description given of it by its enemies, but, nevertheless, a description which the Lord’s true people are ready in their times of despondency to apply to it. For the confusion of the one and the consolation of the other it ought to be remembered that there are places where it is not spoken against.
It is not spoken against in Heaven. Faithfulness to the Word of God and a patient waiting for Him are precious in His sight. In connection with the seven churches of Asia we read of only two against which He has nothing to say, that is, the Church of Smyrna and the Church of Philadelphia, and to each of these He gives great and precious promises as tokens of encouragement and in order to incite them to perseverance. To the Church of Smyrna He says, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. ii. 10). To the Church of Philadelphia He says, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. iii. 10). These churches had tribulations and poverty; they were the objects of the blasphemy of men who were professing religion, and even the devil was permitted to cast some of them into prison, but they were rich in faith and the good works which are the fruits of it, but God was to make their enemies worship before their feet and to know that He had loved them. Thus He places upon them the broad seal of Heaven’s approval, making it of little consequence though they should be spoken against on earth and in Hell. From this we have every reason to believe that every branch of the visible church which will remain faithful to the Word of God and to a Scriptural testimony are approved by Him and as long as they shall continue to do so that they shall never be spoken against in Heaven. In the case of the other five churches of Asia we have ample instances of unfaithfulness, some in a greater degree than others, and as they were in their own day spoken against in Heaven so are those who, in our day, have inherited their unfaithfulness.
Again, this faithful but despised remnant is not spoken against in the Bible. The Jews in Rome when they addressed the words of our text to Paul shows that they were strangely blinded to what had been revealed in their own Scriptures. The Saviour Himself could say to their kinsmen in Judaea, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John v. 39). If the Jews of Rome had followed this advice they would have seen that the Old Testament set before them in types and shadows much that was to be fulfilled, and this ought to have led them to see that what they despised as a sect or heresy was none other but the Church of God as it appeared after the coming of the great Anti-type in whom all the types and shadows were set aside. Thus while the Jews gloried in the letter of the Old Testament Scriptures the much-despised Christians had the spirit as well as the letter of these Scriptures. It is somewhat different in our day. Those who speak against and sneer at orthodoxy do not abide even by the letter of the Scriptures, but profess to have a wisdom which is superior to the Scriptures. Higher Critics and all who join with them speak of their “assured results,” and endeavour to undermine faith in the Bible as the Word of God, while those who adhere to the whole Bible have the testimony of God Himself that they have the only rule which He has given to direct them how to glorify God and enjoy Him. As a Church we have often been referred to as Pharisaic and schismatic but those who have cast these names at us have never been able to prove from the Word of God that we have been either. In fact they have invariably shunned to take their stand on the Bible in this connection, and when pressed to do so have at times resorted to interpretations of the Scriptures which have gravely reflected on their scholarship as well as on their Christianity. Thus we can claim that, in taking up a separate position and maintaining that position until we can meet with a Church with which we can consistently unite, the Bible does not speak against us, but on the other hand lends all its authority to the position we have taken up. “Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing” (II. Cor. vi. 17).
In the consciences of the Lord’s true people we are not spoken against. A true child of God may be left so far under the power of an uninformed judgment as to speak against us, but let any such consider our position and our history as a Church with an unbiased mind, and let his conscience be enlightened by the Word of God, and whether he is a follower of the Church of Scotland, the Free Church or any other denomination, his conscience will speak with no uncertain sound and proclaim that God is among us. This was the case in 1893 when godly men and women came to the parting of the ways. Those who came out were leaving behind them in the Declaratory Act Church ministers to whom they were attached, and who, in not a few cases, were the instruments under God in bringing them from darkness to light, they were also leaving behind brethren and sisters with whom they had sweet fellowship going to the courts of God’s house, but to remain with them now would not satisfy their consciences, therefore, they went out at the call of God Himself, and here alone their enlightened consciences could find satisfaction, and they have proved that though their prospects were uncertain from the human viewpoint there was nothing but certainty from the viewpoint of the promises of God, which are yea and Amen in Christ Jesus. Those who have entered into the labour of these men and women, and who are true Free Presbyterians with an intelligent grasp of our position as a Church, are fully satisfied in their consciences that they are where they should be, and that to resile one hair-breadth from that position would be a sin which would put an intolerable burden on their consciences. “For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor” (Gal. ii. 18).
Some among ourselves may have been disposed, on account of our despised position, to look upon us as a church of no influence in the land, and may be ready to advocate union with other branches of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland in order to have more influence, and, according to their views, be more of a power for good. Such should ask themselves if they are supported in this by the Word of God and an enlightened conscience. We occupy precisely the place which God has appointed us to occupy, and until He shows us from His Word that we are not where we should be it is our duty to remain there, and be content to be referred to as a sect which “is every where spoken against.”