8. Three Rules for Preaching Christ
Thomas Brooks
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.
By way of application, let me say that this truth looks very sourly and intently on all those that preach anything rather than Christ. The Lord be merciful to them! How they have forgotten the great work about which their heads and hearts should be most exercised – namely, to bring in souls to
1Taken, with editing, from Brooks’ Works, vol 3. Last month’s article spoke of ministers preaching Christ acceptably and constantly. This is the final article in the series.
Christ and to build them up in Christ! Where do we find in all the Scripture that Christ, His prophets or apostles, did ever in their preaching meddle with the affairs of state, or things of merely civil concern? “My kingdom is not of this world”; “Who made me a judge?” says Christ.
I hope it will not be counted presumption in me if I shall propound a few rules for ministers to observe that are willing to preach Christ to poor souls. I will only put forward three.
[1.] If you would preach Christ to the people, according to the rules already mentioned, you must have Christ within you. Nothing makes a man so able to preach Christ to the people as having Christ within him. It is very noticeable that the great rabbis and scholars that do not have Christ within, they bungle the work of the Lord in preaching a crucified Jesus. Were it not for the help of [the writings of] men such as Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose and Tertullian,2 what sad, dead and pitiful work they would make! For lack of a Christ within, how little of Christ do they understand! How little of Christ do they make known, notwithstanding all their borrowed helps!
Paul had a Christ within him: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live . . . I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal 2:20). Compare this with Galatians 4:19, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you”. A Christ within makes him travail in birth. The Greek word translated, “I travail in birth”, signifies not only the travail of the woman at the birth of the child, but also the painful bearing of it before the birth. The pains of travail breed not a greater desire to see a man-child born into the world than Paul’s love bred in him, till Christ would be anew formed in them (Gal 4:19). No man did so much for the winning of souls to Christ as Paul, and no man had so much of a Christ within him as Paul.
Nothing will turn a minister’s heart to his work like a Christ within; nothing will make him so wise, so painstaking, so watchful, so careful to win souls, as a Christ within; nothing will make him hold out and hold on in the work of the Lord, in the face of all oppositions, persecutions, dangers and deaths, as a Christ within; nothing will make a man strive with sinners, and weep over sinners, and wait upon sinners for their return, as a Christ within. Those ministers who do not have a Christ within them will find no comfort, and as little success, in their preaching of Christ. Above all getting, get a Christ within, or else after all your preaching, you will yourself be a castaway.
[2.] They that would preach Christ to the people, must study more the truths and mysteries of Scripture than human histories. They must study God’s book more than all other books. The truth and antiquity of the book
2Prominent leaders in the early Christian Church.
of God finds no companion either in age or authority. No histories are comparable to the histories of the Scriptures for antiquity, preciousness, variety, brevity, perspicuity, harmony, verity.
Gregory calls the Scriptures the heart and soul of God, for in the Scriptures, as in a glass, we may see how the heart and soul of God stands towards His poor creatures. It was the glory of Apollos that he was “mighty in the Scriptures” (Acts 18:24). “Search the Scriptures” (Jn 5:39), says Christ. The Greek word signifies to search as men search for gold in mines. You must search the Scriptures, not superficially but narrowly.
The Scriptures are a great depth, wherein the choicest treasures are hid; therefore you must dig deep if you wish to find. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col 3:16). Let the word of Christ indwell you, as an engrafted word, incorporated into your souls. Let the word be so digested by you that you turn it into a part of yourselves. You must be familiarly acquainted with the Word; you must not let it pass by you as a stranger, or lodge and sojourn with you as a wayfaring man; it must continually abide with you and dwell richly in you: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof; for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim 3:16,17). No books and helps are comparable to the Bible for the completing and perfecting of a man for the work of the ministry.
What a Roman Catholic reports of their sacrament of the mass, that there are as many mysteries in it as there are drops in the sea, dust on the earth, angels in heaven, stars in the sky, atoms in the sunbeams, or sands on the sea-shore, may be truly asserted of the Word of God; no study compares to the study of the Scripture for profit and comfort. Count Anhalt, that princely preacher, was wont to say that “the whole Scriptures are the swaddling bands of the child Jesus”. He is to be found almost in every page, in every verse, in every line.3 Luther would often say that he had rather that all his books should be burned than that they should be a means to hinder people from studying of the Scripture.
[3.] Such as would preach Christ aright to the people need to dwell much upon the vanity of human doctrines. The vanity of these doctrines may be thus discovered:
First. They do not discover sin in its ugliness and filthiness as the Scriptures do. They search but to the skin, they do not reach to the heart; they do not do as the master did in Jonah’s ship, when they were in a storm.
Second. Human doctrines have no humbling power in them. They may
3“While they burned us for reading the Scriptures,” said Pierre Du Moulin, a Huguenot minister in France, “we burned with zeal to be reading them.” But where is this spirit now?
tickle you a little, but they can never humble you; they cannot cast down Satan’s strongholds; they cannot melt or break the heart of a sinner; they cannot make him cry out with the leper, “Unclean, unclean”.
Third. Human doctrines do not nourish the noble part, the soul of man. The prodigal was like to starve before he returned to his father’s house. A man may study much, labour much, and lay out much of his time and spirits on human doctrines, and yet after all be like Pharaoh’s lean kine. A man that studies human doctrines feeds only on ashes.
Fourth. Human doctrines cannot cure a wound in the conscience. The diseased woman spent all she had on physicians, but was not a penny the better. The remedy is too weak for the disease. Conscience will still lie gnawing notwithstanding all that such doctrines can do.
Fifth. Human doctrines are so far from enriching the soul that they usually impoverish the soul. They weaken the soul; they expose it to the greatest needs and to the greatest weaknesses; they play the harlot with the soul; they impoverish it and bring it to a morsel of bread. Who so poor in spiritual experiences and heavenly enjoyments as those who sit under human doctrines?
Sixth. Human doctrines make men servants to the moods and corruptions of men; they make men to be pleasers of men rather than pleasers of God; indeed they make men set up themselves and others, sometimes in the room of Christ and sometimes above Christ.
I hope these few short hints may prevail with some to fall in with this counsel, that they may preach the Lord Jesus better to the people.