Taken, with editing, from Brooks’ Works, vol 3. Last month’s article spoke of preaching Christ zealously and boldly, painstakingly and frequently.
Ephesians 3:8. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ.
[7.] As they are to preach Christ painfully, so they are to preach Christ as examples, “being examples to the flock” (1 Pet 5:3). They must preach Christ in their lives as well as in doctrine. Ministers must not be like the drugs that physicians say are hot in the mouth and cold in operation, hot in the pulpit and cold and careless in their lives and conversations. They must say, as Gideon said to his soldiers: “Look on me and do likewise” (Jdg 7:17). “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Mt 5:16). They are called “angels” and “stars” because they should shine in righteousness and holiness.
What Caesar once said of his wife, that it was not enough for her to be without fault, but she should be without all suspicion of fault, may well be applied to ministers. Of all men in the world, they should be most free from the very appearance of evil. The lives of ministers often convince more strongly than their words; their tongues may persuade, but their lives command.
“Do not talk of a good life,” said the heathen, “but let your life speak.” God appointed that both the weights and measures of the sanctuary should be twice as large as those of the commonwealth of Israel, to show that He expects much more of those that wait on Him in the sanctuary than He does of others. Ministers should be like musk among linen, which casts a fragrant smell; or like that box of spikenard which, being broken open, filled the house with its odour.
Gregory says of Athanasius that his life was a continual sermon, wooing men to Christ. Aristotle requires this in an orator, that he must be a good man; how much more then should God’s orators be good and gracious? When Eli’s sons were wicked, the people abhorred the offering of the Lord (1 Sam 2:17); and what renders the things of God so contemptuous and odious in the eyes of many people in this nation as the ignorance, looseness, profaneness and baseness of those that dispense them? Unholy ministers pull down instead of building up. O the souls that their lives destroy! By their loose lives, they lead their flocks to hell, where they themselves must lie lowest.
Two leading figures in the Church of the early Christian centuries.
A painter, who was blamed by a cardinal for putting too much red on the faces of Peter and Paul, tartly replied that he painted them so, as blushing at the lives of those men who styled themselves their successors. Ah how do the lewd and wicked lives of many who are called ministers make others blush!
Salvian relates how the heathen reproached some Christians who, by their ungodly lives, made the gospel of Christ a reproach. “Where”, said they, “is that good law which they believe? Where are those rules of godliness which they learn? They read the holy Gospel, and yet are unclean; they hear the apostles’ writings and yet are drunk; they follow Christ and yet disobey Christ; they possess a holy law, and yet lead impure lives.” As this is very applicable to many professing Christians in those days, so it is applicable to many preachers also.
A writer of the fifth century AD.
I have read of a scandalous minister that was struck at the heart, and converted in reading those words: Thou . . . which teacheſt another, teacheſt thou not thyſelf?” (Rom 2:21). If this treatise should fall into any such hand, O that it might have the same effect! Wicked ministers do more hurt by their lives than they do good by their doctrine.