The ability to keep silent is not a virtue that all of us always possess. Though we may not be trained as public speakers, we have no difficulty in talking when given the right circumstances. But what we say is not always helpful to us or to others. Thus the Bible speaks again and again about loose tongues and sharp words. On the other hand, the Bible also indicates again and again the times when something should be said. Indeed, the Bible is itself a testimony that those who live in fellowship with God have something to say.
Consider some critical periods in the Old Testament. God called Abraham to come apart and be the beginning of the covenant relation established with him and his people and through them with all people. Abraham’s family was hardly settled in Palestine before forced to go to Egypt. After long years of slavery there was the Exodus and establishment in the Land of Promise. God’s chosen people became a nation. But this nation, through which all nations were to be blessed, was itself torn apart by internal strife, spiritually smothered by pagan enticements, threatened with conquest by powerful neighbors. This was the period of great prophets, men who were called to speak for God, to summon the people to repentance and warn them of impending judgment; men like Amos, who said, “The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?… You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.… I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.… Take away from me the noise of your songs.… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Or consider the New Testament. The nation of God’s people was gone, but the covenant of God’s love remained. And so in the fullness of time a star appeared and a Child was born. God became incarnate. God came into human flesh. Never did there live one like Jesus Christ. People were touched, lives were changed. Some became full disciples. But after a time Christ left the earth. Was the heavenly vision gone, the day of new hope over?
Those whose lives had been touched said, No. It was not the end, only the beginning. And they had something to say. They taught and preached Christ the crucified and resurrected Saviour, and when people asked, “What shall we do?,” the answer came back: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” When religious leaders who were not believers ordered them not to teach or speak in the name of Jesus, these Christians responded, like Peter and John, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
Nor are the testimonies of the Bible given only in times of critical pressure. The Psalms are the expressions of people who lived in fellowship with God and had something to say about his majesty and wonder, his goodness and love. Or take the man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. Christ came along one day and told him to take up his pallet and walk. The healed man’s friends argued about his carrying his pallet on the sabbath day, but he replied, “The man who healed me said to me, ‘Take up your pallet, and walk.’ ” Or turn through the Pauline Epistles. Again and again this man whose conversion began on the Damascus road had something to say—“Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Yes, when one lives in fellowship with God he has something to say. We Christians have something to say today.
For one thing, we have something to say in times of trouble. This is true of times of national danger. If the prophet Isaiah had been living in our nation during the past months, surely his message would have been no different from that delivered to his own people in the eighth century B.C. and recorded in the book of the Bible which bears his name. The situations are different: the people of Judah faced chariots and spears, not missiles and nuclear warheads. But God’s chosen people were also faced with the ominous threat of a powerful pagan force—Assyria—that sought to conquer the world.
As the prophet Isaiah spoke to his people he urged them not to give way to the atheism of fear and panic. He called them to view the situation in the framework of the rulership of God, who was the God of all nations. Assyria could not raise an arm except within this framework. God’s people needed to see the impending judgment of God upon them and to heed the call to repentance and recommitment. Herein was their destiny to be determined. This word is always to be said in times of national danger. And it can be said only by those who live in fellowship with God.
We Christians, then, have something to say. We not only share the concerns of fellow citizens over physical safety, preservation of national boundaries, and the exercise of freedom: we have other concerns and deeper insights. We know that our play as a nation is ultimately not with Mr. Khrushchev or any other would-be rulers of the world. They are not to be taken lightly, but they and we live only in the providence of God. He is our security and our judgment.
Our Personal Experiences
This same emphasis applies to our personal experiences. The fact that we are Christians does not mean that God will always protect us from trouble or make life easy. This is what some of us want. We want our lives as Christians to be quiet and safe journeys, free from accidents and trouble. But it is not so. As long as the earth groans in travail; as long as godless forces are at work; indeed, until God’s redemptive purposes are fulfilled and Christ comes again, there will be conflicts, suffering, trouble, tragedy. But this is not all. The New Testament does not promise escape, but it is filled with promises that we can live through troubles confidently and victoriously. For these experiences are not our masters. They do not determine our fate. They are not our security. We live in and for God, and “in everything God works for good with those who love him.…” Yes, we have something to say in time of trouble; and as we say it in our living as well as with our words, life will be different.
We Christians also have something to say about moral righteousness. The breakdown of morality in our society has become so widespread that syndicated gossip columns have gone to preaching. Someone has said that the seriousness of some of our scandals is seen not only in the violation of moral laws but also in the fact that so many people seem unconcerned about the wrong that was done. One could go a step further and say a greater seriousness is seen in the fact that this breakdown involves so many of us who profess to be religious and who claim membership in the Church.
Now this is not to say we have no place in the Church if we make mistakes and commit sins. Such a position may be used by cynics and other outsiders as an excuse for staying away. It is precisely because we are sinners that we have the Church of Jesus Christ. But our identification with Christ means more than this. It means that something has happened and is happening to us. We are members of the Church not only because we are sinners but because God has come in Christ to save us from our sins.
More Than An Ethical System
Here we come to an overlooked but serious cause of our moral breakdown. Instead of being a personal experience with the Christ who wrought our salvation on Calvary’s cross, the Christian way is considered by too many of the people of our land as an ethical and moral system to which they will give verbal allegiance and which they will try to follow in their daily living. But this does not work.
Christ did have a lot to say about moral righteousness. There are things which are right and things which are wrong, not because we think them so but because God is God. But you and I and our fellow men are sinful, rebellious people. We are not able to do what is right. The stronger the pressure, the more difficult it becomes. We can join a hundred organizations which recognize the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, yet this will not enable us to live as we should. Only as we have a personal experience with Christ, as he lives within us and changes us into new creations, can we live righteously.
Therefore we Christians have something to say about salvation. In the recent World Mission Consultation one of the major questions considered was universalism—the belief that all people are saved. Such a concept has a sharp effect on the dynamics of a world mission program presenting Jesus Christ as the only Saviour. It also has its effect on the testimony and witness we Christians make to our next-door neighbors.
Does it make any real difference whether people believe in and give themselves to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour? The Bible says that it does, that it makes all the difference. The Bible says you and I and all other people are spiritually lost outside of God as he is revealed in Christ. The Bible says we ourselves are unable to overcome our sin, unable to create fellowship with God. The Bible says our salvation comes not as we try to obey laws and undergo religious rituals, but when the living God comes into our lives. And the Bible says that God has come to us. He has come in Christ. He alone redeems. He is our only Saviour. Yes, we have something to say about salvation; and as we say it in our living as well as with our words, life will be different.
This means, then, that as people who are redeemed in the blood of Jesus Christ we have something to say to the unredeemed culture in which we live. We are all too aware of the tensions of our society, tensions created by critical and unresolved issues in nearly every area of our life. And we who have been chosen of God to be the Body of his crucified and resurrected Son have too long been silent with our words and with our deeds. Yea, instead of being committed instruments through whom the Holy Spirit works to redeem life, we in our silence and inactivity as the Christian community have been molded by the unredeemed culture in which we live. Look, for example, at our fellowship as believers within our own denomination. Is it marked by the New Testament characteristics of the Body of Christ or by the fellowship patterns which characterize our culture? Indeed, the watchword of the day has been: Be careful! Tensions are tight! Go slow! Stay away from controversial matters! Trouble can develop!
Thus the Christian Church today has become too much an ambulance in a sin-torn world, dragging along behind the issues, picking up the wounded, making bandages—when it should be out on the front lines, facing the issues and getting hit in the face, but leading others and conquering the enemy in the name of our victorious Lord.
Hear the words of Isaiah:
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.… They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwellings shall be glorious.”
These are no idle words. This is no fairy tale. This is a Messianic passage. This is the Word of God about his redemption of life. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!
William A. Benfield, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Charleston, West Virginia, holds the degrees of Th.M., Th.D., and D.D. This article was the Sunday morning sermon delivered before the 1963 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.
