Under the bright spring skies of Sunday morning, March 21, a crowd of 8,000 stood before the twin-towered brick facade of Brown’s A.M.E. Chapel in Selma, Alabama. On the steps, an ecumenical service was in progress, the prelude to a historic fifty-mile march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery.

“Those of us who are Negroes don’t have much because of the system,” said Dr. Martin Luther King. “We don’t have much education and some of us don’t know how to make our nouns and verbs agree. But thank God we have our bodies, our feet, and our souls. We want to present our bodies and feet so the world will know the truth as we see it. We’ll march with great love for America, because we have a great faith in democracy.”

Shortly before one o’clock on the fifth day, the marchers, who had come from the grounds of St. Jude’s Church and Hospital in Montgomery, now numbering some 25,000, were massed before the white capitol, from the classic dome of which the state and Confederate flags were flying, the U. S. flag being on a separate staff in a corner of the grounds. It was a symbolic picture—the orderly assembly of demonstrators headed by the 300 who for fifty miles had presented their bodies and feet for the cause of freedom, and the capitol, representing the power structure of segregation. In purpose and dramatic context, it was a decisive civil rights demonstration.

At the close of a 2½-hour program, King spoke with moving eloquence. “We stand,” he said, “with the conviction that segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama.… We’re on the move now and no burning churches will deter us.”

At four o’clock the assembly was over. A committee of twenty Alabama residents whose names had been approved by acclamation went to the capitol to present their petition but were told that the Governor’s office was closed. On the committee was the Rev. Joseph W. Ellwanger, a white Lutheran minister from Birmingham, and a white student from the University of Alabama. Governor Wallace made a statement that the committee was unacceptable because of the character of some of its members.

The Selma-to-Montgomery march was executed with the permission of a federal judge and under the protective escort of National Guardsmen mobilized by President Johnson. It began at 12:40 P.M. Sunday, on the same street where two weeks before a group of some 500 marchers were attacked by police, an event which aroused the conscience of millions. This time they crossed the bridge spanning the muddy Alabama without incident.

It was a varied multitude—young and old, white and black, educated and uneducated, a few beatnik types, and ministers in clerical garb. As they moved out of the city, most of the crowd turned back, the federal court order having limited the core participants to 300. All but about twenty in the actual line of march were Negroes from Alabama. Precedence was given those who had faced police violence.

So the march continued. Some in the line carried American and U. N. flags. The overall spirit was cheerful; disaffection was not noticeable and the torrential rains on the third day elevated, rather than depressed, morale.

Among those in line was a one-legged young man on crutches, two nuns, a number of clergymen, and numerous women and children. During the nightly encampments much of the hard work such as setting up tents and latrines was done by fifty students from San Francisco Theological Seminary accompanied by their president, Dr. Theodore Gill.

The group developed a warm feeling of friendship and unity. Meetings were held at the campsite in the evenings, and occasional hymns added a devotional tone.

A Negro Methodist minister said that the march represented the American melting pot. He saw it as an expression of concern for constitutional rights. The ultimate solution, he declared, lies in the grace of God. He recognized the historic manifestation of grace at the Cross, yet felt it was being silently proclaimed at the march.

A young engineer from Philadelphia, a graduate of Columbia University, said bluntly that he had no faith and didn’t care whether God or Christ ever existed, but that he left his wife and children to take part because of the issue of justice.

A young dropout from Queens College, New York, also professed no religious faith. “I’m here,” he said, “because I don’t like to see people stepped on.”

A member of the militant Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from Fort Collins, Colorado, declared that he wants to be “where there’s action.”

From Los Angeles came an actor-producer who said that his involvement built up until one morning he looked at his wife and children in his comfortable home and decided that he had to be in Alabama. “There comes a time,” he said, “when benefit performances are not enough.”

The Rev. Robert G. Long was there as a representative of his synod and of the Presbytery of Chicago, Richard Jackman, a leader in a New York labor union local, called himself a “Presbyterian socialist” and saw the marchers as an “elect group.” Lee G. David, general secretary of the National Baptist Deacons Convention of America, asserted that all segments of the country were represented.

A number of theological conservatives participated in the march. Among them were several Christian Reformed ministers, including the Rev. Gordon D. Negen of the Manhattan Christian Reformed Church of Harlem; the Rev. Raymond Opperwall of Ridgewood, New Jersey; and the Rev. James A. Bonnema of South Windsor, Connecticut. These men viewed participation as an expression of their Calvinist heritage.

Another evangelical and Calvinist was James White, a Negro middler at Westminster Theological Seminary. For him the march was an essential part of his theological outlook. Still another evangelical marcher was Bruce Crapuchette, a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, who came with a letter from Dr. David Hubbard, Fuller president.

From Seattle came the minister of music and the minister to students at the strongly evangelical University Presbyterian Church where Dr. Robert Munger is pastor. Both men said they gained “great respect for King’s leadership.”

Present also were Missouri Synod Lutherans and representatives of the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church. Their placard lead: “Lutherans care because Christ cares.”

Among Pentecostal participants was Dr. J. Harry Fought, pastor of Danforth Gospel Temple in Toronto. Fought, executive secretary of the newly formed Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said he was present to let people know that the evangelical conscience is sensitive to the issue of human dignity.

The extent of evangelical involvement is believed to have been without precedent in the current civil rights movement. Never before have conservative Protestants identified themselves so demonstratively with the Negro struggle for liberty.

The unifying factor in the midst of the theological and social diversity was clearly the constitutional issue—protest against abridgement of the right to vote and peaceable assembly to petition the government for redress of grievances.

The motivation and convictions of the marchers are one side of the event. The other side is the conviction and emotion felt by many people in the South. Just as the police brutality stirred world-wide emotion, so Judge Frank Johnson’s court order and President Lyndon Johnson’s speech before Congress greatly consolidated support of Alabama Governor George Wallace, whom large numbers of citizens consider a man of integrity and principle.

Yet Alabama Attorney General Richmond M. Flowers differs with Wallace on a number of points, including the Communist issue. Flowers has said that there is “no evidence of Communism in the civil rights movement.”

According to much Southern opinion, the march has set back the cause of racial relations and intensified bitterness. Alabama and the Deep South are seen as victims of gross injustice through biased reporting. There is also widespread public concern about reports of flagrant immorality among certain demonstrators.

Ministers in Alabama almost unanimously deplored the participation in the demonstrations of their fellow clergymen from outside the state. A leading Selma pastor, told by a visiting minister friend, “I feel relaxed and at peace after this demonstration.” replied, “Yes, but I have to live with the tension here.” Some contend that it takes at least as much moral courage for a pastor in the Deep South to maintain a moderate position as it does for his brother in the North to speak out.

Underneath the anxiety, there is genuine concern on the part of devoted Southern ministers and others for the constitutional questions. There is also abhorrence of police brutality and a realization that the paternalistic system of the South must ultimately go. A continuing spiritual concern is the bitterness which finds expression, for example, in yellow cars with black-lettered slogans, “I hate nigger-lovers,” “Tough luck, Reeb,” and in six time bombs set to go off in Birmingham. On quite another level was the barring from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma of a group of white Episcopal clergymen accompanied by a Negro colleague, this despite the rule added last fall to the canons of the Episcopal Church stating that no one shall be denied fellowship or administration of the sacraments by reason of nationality, color, or ethnic origin. Most shocking was the murder by a sniper of Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a Detroit civil rights worker and the mother of five children, who was driving back to Selma with a Negro boy.

The Alabama countryside through which the march passed is beginning to show the bright promise of spring. And the human condition is likewise capable of renewal. The march was a memorable witness to justice and human dignity. Through it, constitutional rights have been reaffirmed and Alabama and the nation have again been confronted, for all the world to see, with the inescapable responsibility for consistent application to Negroes of the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. Great problems remain, but a new page of history has been turned.

The Nazi Crime Dilemma

Should West Germany extend beyond May 8 its statute of limitations on Nazi crimes? A vote taken on March 10 indicated that a majority of the West German Parliament was in favor of removing the present legal cut-off date for bringing Nazi criminals to justice.

Thus it appeared that the only remaining decision was whether the constitution should be altered to change the number of years in the term, or whether the years in the case of the Nazi crimes should be counted from the day of West Germany’s restoration rather than from the day of capitulation. On March 25, the lower house voted a five-year extension based on the argument that prosecutions did not start until the end of the Allied regime in 1949.

A third possibility has been brought up by Professor Karl Jaspers of Basel, Switzerland. He suggests taking the murder of nations out of the category of “normal” murder and creating a new law for a new crime that would never come under a statute of limitations.

The issue with regard to the Nazis is primarily their responsibility for the deaths of an estimated six million Jews.

Some feel that the Nazi crimes were unique and must never fall under any statute of limitations. To them it would seem unbearable if after May 8 Nazi criminals were allowed to circulate freely in West Germany.

Others, not less condemning the cruelty of the Nazi crimes, nevertheless esteem the inviolability of law and of the constitution so highly that they feel it unalterable under any circumstances. They regard a retroactive change of the statute of limitations a precarious deviation from the principle of a constitutional state, the very point at which the Nazis themselves transgressed, creating “special laws” to meet what they regarded as the need of the day.

East Germany has made much of the West German dilemma. They have kept back much of the incriminating evidence against the Nazis so that they might have an issue after May 8. Moreover, they are now propagating the line that West Germany, having suddenly become tired of anti-Nazi processes, is planning, under “obvious influence of former Nazi leaders,” to forget about Nazi crimes. East German leaders conceal from their people the fact that the statute of limitations was laid down some fifteen years ago and that the West German government had asked all nations to help to assemble incriminating evidence so that guilty persons still living in West Germany could be brought to trial before the deadline.

The following sermon was preached by the Rev. J. R. W. Stott in All Souls Church, London, England.

The language is clear and forceful. The development is logical. The structure is clearly apparent. Each of the main points is an elaboration of one of the “subtle insinuations” in the devil’s approach. The sermon honors the written Word of God, and speaks to youth and adults alike. The sermonic thrust which one feels throughout is, “My soul, be on thy guard.”—Charles W. Koller.

Text: The serpent said to the woman, “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”—(Genesis 3:4, 5, RSV).

Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God will deliver us from evil, that is, from the evil one. I wonder how far our oft-repeated prayer is answered. I wonder too if the comparatively low degree of deliverance which we enjoy is due partly to the fact that the devil is not only evil but extremely subtle, as is plain in Genesis chapter 3.

There is no need to be offended or embarrassed by some of the details of the history of man’s fall. None of us would want to dogmatize about, for example, the precise nature or identity of the serpent or of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whatever the serpent was, it is clear that it was a tool or an embodiment of that arch-deceiver, the devil, who is twice called in the Revelation “that old serpent.” It is also clear that “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is so called not because the fruit had mysterious properties that could impart moral perception but because the tree was itself the subject of God’s only commandment, so that in obeying the commandment (and abstaining from the fruit) Adam and Eve knew or experienced good, while in disobeying the commandment (and eating the fruit) they knew or experienced evil.

My concern today in the history of the Fall is not with the serpent or the tree but with the extreme subtlety of the devil, who contrived to deceive Adam and Eve into disobedience and thus caused them to fall from the original state of joyful innocence in which they had been created into sin, shame, sorrow, and death. This is the great value of the story. Satan is still subtle and serpentine. Jesus called him “a liar and the father of lies.” Paul wrote both of “the wiles of the devil” and of his ability to transform himself into “an angel of light.” Neither his nature nor his strategy has changed. He continues to deceive men and women by his lies and entice them into sin. A study of his subtlety will help us to be on our guard.

Let me refresh your memory. In Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17, God commanded man saying “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Here were three things. First, a permission to eat freely of every tree. Second, a prohibition to eat from one tree. Third, a penalty for disobedience. It is important to keep these things in mind. There was an ample permission, a single prohibition, and a clear penalty. Adam and Eve knew precisely what they might do, what they might not do, and what would happen if they disobeyed.

Now Satan comes in his wily wickedness and whispers: “Yea, hath God said …?” He invites Eve to question what she had never before questioned, to look at this word of God (its permission, its prohibition, and its penalty), to examine it, to subject it to scrutiny and criticism, to ask herself what God was asking and why he should ask it, whether he meant it, and whether he had any right to ask it anyway. We need to consider carefully what the Evil One was insinuating about God’s Word.

I. He Denied God’s Truthfulness

God had said (2:17) “You shall die.” The devil said (3:4) “You will not die.” This was a clear contradiction. I hope we are sure in our own minds that it was the devil who was lying and not God. God made death the penalty for sin, and he meant it. When Adam and Eve sinned, they did die, and that in two senses.

1. Their souls died. Until the Fall they ate freely of the trees of the garden, and one of these trees was the Tree of Life. Now eating of the Tree of Life is a symbol of enjoying eternal life, which is fellowship with God. But when Adam and Eve sinned, they were driven from the garden; and at the east end of the garden God placed cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life. Exactly. They forfeited the Tree of Life of which they had previously eaten. They were banished from the garden and from God. They died, spiritually.

2. Their bodies became mortal. Physical death is the result of man’s sin. Scripture teaches that “through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin” (Rom. 5:12). Thus, after the Fall, God said to Adam: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (3:19). God created man’s body, not to die or to decay, but rather to be translated without tasting death, like Enoch and Elijah, like Jesus at the Transfiguration, and like those who will be alive when Christ comes and who, without dying, will be “changed.” But man’s sin brought mortality into his body.

Of this God had clearly warned Adam and Eve. But the devil denied the truthfulness of God. Having deceived Adam and Eve into believing him about the penalty for sin, he could easily get them to disobey God’s prohibition.

This is exactly the devil’s tactic today. Nothing could be clearer in the Word of God (in the law of the prophets, in the teaching of Jesus and his apostles) than the insistence that God is holy and hates sin, that he cannot and will not come to terms with it, that his wrath rests upon it—that is, that he is implacably antagonistic to it—and that one day his judgment will fall upon it, to the eternal ruin of impenitent unbelievers. For instance, “unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish”; “the wages of sin is death”; “they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God”; “nothing unclean shall ever enter in.” Yet on all hands (inside the Church as well as outside) we hear the devil’s whisper, “You shall not surely die.” Sometimes it takes the form of the doctrine of universalism (the belief that ultimately all men and women will be saved), or of a denial of the wrath of God, judgment to come, or the existence of hell. Sometimes it is a distortion of the Gospel of forgiveness, as if God forgives all sinners indiscriminately. But behind these ideas is to be found the same primeval Satanic lie, “You will not surely die.” I must say to you with the Apostle Paul, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these sins the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience.” God and sin are as irreconcilable as light and darkness.

In olden days our country was a God fearing nation. Its citizens lived in healthy anticipation of the judgment day. They believed what God has said, namely, that one day we must give an account of ourselves before God. And this simple truth had a profound effect upon their daily lives. Nowadays, however, men pooh-pooh the doctrine of judgment as old-fashioned theology. There is little doubt that one of the causes of the moral and spiritual landslide of our generation is that we have listened too much to the devil’s lie, “You will not surely die.”

II. He Denied God’s Goodness

The devil continued: “For God knows that when you eat … your eyes will be opened.…” You see what the Evil One here dares to assert. It is as if he says: “Not only will disobedience bring no penalty (‘you will not die’), but it will bring you positive blessing (‘your eyes will be opened’). God knows this, and that is why he has forbidden you to eat the fruit. Eve, God is deliberately denying you the wisdom you would get if you ate. He is seeking not your welfare, but your impoverishment. He wants to keep you in ignorance. Eat, Eve. You will not die! On the contrary, you will live! Your eyes will be opened.”

The subtlety of this is that what the devil said was true in words but false in fact. Their eyes were opened to know good and evil, but not in the way in which God knows good and evil. God knows evil objectively; he has no personal experience of it. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, came to know evil experimentally, by tasting its bitterness and becoming defiled by it. This kind of knowledge of good and evil, gained by disobedience, was not desirable (as the devil suggested) but the very reverse. The devil said they would get a blessing; they actually got a curse.

In all this, it is important to note that the devil conveniently ignored the ample permission that God had given them to eat freely of every tree of the garden but one. Actually, God’s provision for Adam and Eve was perfect. They lacked nothing in the Garden of Eden. God knew that their happiness lay in enjoying what he had permitted and abstaining from what he had forbidden. His permission and his prohibition both issued from his sheer goodness and love.

But Satan twisted this. He made the permitted things seem unsatisfying, the prohibited things desirable. In this he denied the goodness of God, and Eve believed him. She thought that the fruit was “desirable to make one wise” (3:6). She believed that the devil was kinder in offering her the fruit than God was in forbidding it to her. She found too late that her disobedience brought her not gain (as the devil had promised) but irreparable loss (as God had said). She experienced evil, judgment, and death.

Still today the devil seeks to make sin attractive. His whole business is to make God’s permitted things seem tame and his prohibited things seem pleasant. He not only denies that sin brings death and judgment; he asserts that it brings positive blessing. He coats his pill with the sweetest sugar and allures us with the “pleasures of sin.” He insinuates that God is an ogre who wants to cramp our style. Many people are hindered from embracing the Gospel because they believe the devil’s lie that what God permits is insipid, and that true satisfaction is found only in what God forbids.

The devil even persuades cultured people to play his game. Have you never heard an adult say this kind of thing to young people: “Too many restrictions and inhibitions are bad for you. Express yourself freely. You can’t remain an innocent, sheltered child all your life. A little fling is necessary for your maturity. It will make a man of you, my boy.” This is the devil’s game. It is to doubt the goodness of God, and to deny that in permitting certain things and prohibiting others, God was acting in perfect love and wisdom. We need to be clear that true happiness lies in the enjoyment of God’s permitted things and in the avoidance of God’s forbidden things. The path of disobedience is the path of death.

III. He Denied God’s ‘Otherness’

The devil said: “You will be like God” (3:5). He tempted Eve with the possibility of becoming like God. In this diabolical suggestion the essence of sin is laid bare. The fundamental way in which man is unlike God is that God is man’s Creator and Lord. Man is under the authority of God, dependent on him as Creator and subordinate to him as Lord. It is this against which Eve finally rebelled. The devil seemed to whisper to her: “Why not be like God, Eve? Why should you continue in this humiliating position of subordination to him? Why should you grovel any longer in obedience? Claim equality with God! Make a bid for independence! Break loose from this tyranny! Be your own mistress, the captain of your own destiny!”

Now this is sin. Every sin is a variation on this theme. It is an unwillingness to let God be God. It is a refusal to acknowledge his “otherness”, his transcendence over us as our Creator and Lord. It is to rebel against his authority, to kick over the traces, and to claim a freedom, an independence, that we can never have.

Thus sin is rebellion against God and his Word: a denial of his truthfulness, his goodness, and his “otherness.”

How shall we resist the blandishments of the devil? Perhaps I could answer by two illustrations. First, how do children learn to obey their parents? The answer seems to be by a three-fold recognition: first that their parents have a God-given authority to which they must submit; next that they love their children and desire their welfare in every rule and regulation they make; and lastly that they mean what they say when they threaten punishment. As a second illustration, let me ask how discipline may be maintained in a youth club. I believe the answer is the same. The club members have to recognize that the leaders have a right to make rules, that these rules are for the good of the members, and that the penalties will be strictly enforced.

It is the same with God. We shall learn obedience to God only if we turn a deaf ear to the devil’s lies. We need constantly to remind ourselves, first, that God’s threatened penalties are true; secondly, that his purpose in the prohibition of sin is wholly good and loving; and thirdly, that God is God, our Creator and our Lord, who has a right to issue commands, expect obedience, and threaten penalties.

So, when the tempter comes to us and whispers in our ear, “Yea, hath God said?,” we know what to reply. We must say to him: “Yes, God has said it. Moreover, the word of God is true; therefore I believe it. The word of God is loving; I trust it. And the word of God is sovereign; I will obey it. Get thee hence, Satan.”

A church member who had visited a distant city for a weekend was telling his pastor about the church he had attended. “The preacher was an excellent workman with a pleasing manner and an easy flow of language. The sermon was flawlessly delivered, with interesting historical allusions and poetical quotations. But throughout the sermon I found myself asking, ‘so what?’ And when the sermon was finished, my question was still unanswered. At no time did I feel myself involved, rebuked, or challenged to any kind of response. In short, I did not feel that I had gotten my money’s worth.”

Eloquence and flashes of brilliance do not make a sermon. Nothing can compensate for the want of sermonic thrust. A discourse that makes no moral or spiritual appeal to the hearer, that does not look toward some form of response in terms of belief or commitment, is not truly a sermon. A biblical exposition, however carefully wrought out, becomes a sermon only when application is made to the hearer, and when some moral or spiritual demand is either expressed or implied. For instruction and inspiration, the modern preacher will do well to study the inspired messages recorded in the Bible.

In those powerful farewell addresses of Moses, recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, we feel the heartbeat of a great preacher. He had once referred to himself as a man “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exod. 4:10); but he had that eloquence which is of the heart, coupled with a mighty sermonic thrust: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deut. 30:19).

Joshua showed rare wisdom in setting up that farewell preaching service at Shechem, a place alive with sacred memories that would speak to the hearts of his backslidden people. And what was the conclusion—the sermonic thrust—that brought such an overwhelming response? “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.… As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).

And how did Jesus conclude that marvelous Sermon on the Mount? “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.… And every one that … doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand …” (Matt. 7:24, 26).

The earthly life of Jesus was undergirded from beginning to end with a profound consciousness of purpose. He had come “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), not merely to lead religious discussions and provoke thought. And when he delivered that farewell message before his ascension, he made his meaning crystal clear: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations … baptizing them … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you …” (Matt. 28:19, 20).

This called for a powerful sermonic thrust on the part of the apostles. Primarily, they were sent to “make disciples.” A disciple is a “willing learner,” with his heart and mind open to receive further instruction.

Obviously, it would be futile to attempt to teach “all things whatsoever” to persons who had not responded to the primary thrust of the gospel message, and had not opened their hearts as “willing learners.” The apostles understood the Great Commission. Their aim was not merely to deliver discourses that would be interesting, beautiful, and instructive, but to move men to decision.

John wrote his Gospel with one clear aim: “that ye might believe …” (John 20:31). Paul’s messages are interspersed with a sermonic application, “now therefore.…” And we may be sure also that anyone who heard the discourses of John or Paul or the other apostles did not go away asking, “So what?”

After the experience of salvation, the believer—the “disciple”—is ready to be taught the “things that accompany salvation” (Heb. 6:9). Now the preacher may properly aim at consecration, indoctrination, inspiration, comfort, strengthening, conviction, or action; but there must be no ambiguity. The sermonic thrust, whether expressed or implied, must carry the answer to the question that should never have to be articulated by the hearer: “So what?”

Our Easter issue begins with an inspirational and evangelistic message prepared by Associate Editor Harold Lindsell for the annual sunrise service in the Rose Bowl. The meaning of the Resurrection, says Dr. Lindsell, is that God has triumphed in history, that there is forgiveness of sins, and that there is hope in this world. Editor Carl F. H. Henry is scheduled for the Easter dawn message at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

Co-Editor Frank E. Gaebelein reports from Alabama on the historic and controversial struggle for Negro voting privileges.

The decline of decency imperils wide reaches of modern culture and life. We are headed for doom unless pervasive immorality is arrested. The prevalent notion that birth control techniques are the best answer to sex passions collapses before the high percentage of unwed mothers who are nurses, teachers, and college students. No enthusiasm for a great American society can gainsay the deterioration of sex standards, the rise in venereal disease, the multiplication of illegitimate births.

Yet those who plot the statistics of immorality should not be permitted to obscure certain facts. America has not sunk to the depravity of the pagan world that existed before revealed religion registered its impact upon society—not yet, happily. In this regard it is well to keep one eye on the world of religion and the other on sex ideals. In ancient Egypt the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who was considered to be divine, married his own daughter. In ancient Greece sacred prostitution was accepted as a feature of pagan religious life. Modern America has not plummeted to the depths of the ancient world, but there is much reason for concern. The nightclub songstress has taken to “gospel” songs, and Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night television program periodically turns religion into entertainment. Some very vocal clergymen proclaim a “new morality” (really the old immorality) that inverts biblical claims in the realm of sex and marriage: almost every week some sensationalist tells his congregation that agape is self-justifying, and all other norms are inferior to it—in other words, nothing can be sexually out of bounds for two people who love each other. Openings like these may release flood waters that will deluge even the churches with erotic tendencies and neo-paganize the life of love.

But the rising tide of indignation and concern also signals a moment of methodological danger for all who plot a remedial alternative. We should not rely mainly on programs that promote purity by destroying freedom. Legislative compulsion may provide penalties for infractions and restrain a sick society from iniquity momentarily, but no society will long survive whose citizens lack heart to abstain from evil; apart from the will to decency not even the best laws will keep men from destroying themselves. While legal restraints are proper and necessary, those who share the faith in revealed religion will fail both the Church and the world if this is all we have to offer. Reliance only on coercion, moreover, is particularly perilous at a time when totalitarian tyrants regard the state as the ultimate source and sanction of approved social morality. When government becomes the defender of private morality it easily becomes the definer of private morality also. Two bills proposed in the present Congress call for the establishment of a presidentially appointed commission which would provide a coordinating center for the reflection of all related apprehensions and concerns and explore methods of combatting and suppressing obscene literature.

The biggest contribution the clergy can make—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—is to reaffirm the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and to remind our wayward generation of the criterion by which God proposes to judge its sexual delinquency. In relation to the tide of obscene literature in our time, the churches should remind modern man of the inner meaning of the divine command as Jesus of Nazareth expressed it in the Sermon on the Mount: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” The warning is doubly appropriate in view of the photographic cult of feminine nakedness supported by the magazine traffic in our day. At his first coming, Jesus Christ drove the money-changers out of the temple; in the final judgment will he not consign publishers and peddlers of sex temptation and their wares to the stenching refuse pits of Gehenna?

The laity in our churches also have a major contribution to make in these times. If one marriage in five or six ends in divorce, it is high time our generation heard from the four in five marriages that stick. It is time our generation heard the neglected facts—suppressed by the prurient literature of our times—that love that observes the limits of truth and righteousness is more enduring and more satisfying than illicit counterfeits. Let those who know the joys of virtue in sex become vocal about its rewards, to the shame of those who suggest that morality is antiquated and that wife-swapping is more desirable than the maintenance of monogamous marriage.

What we specially need in this day of mass media and mass communication is a creative literature that dips into the restless revolt of our times. Let Christians emphasize the truth that biblical morality is not outdated. What we champion is a society ruled by love in the noblest sense, not one ruled by lust and license. Let us take the initiative for whatsoever things are right and pure by throwing our weight fully behind the creation of a decent literature and not simply against the proliferation of indecent literature. Assuredly there are some who, with tongue in cheek, suggest that the Bible itself contains indecent passages, and who quite forget that, in its exposure of human depravity, Scripture judges man’s lapses in the light of an absolute standard of morality. When distributors of indecent literature begin displaying and promoting the Bible alongside the rot that now clutters many magazine store shelves, it will be time enough to credit such critics of the Bible with sincerity. The creation of an evangelical literature that grapples with the concerns of love and sex as thoroughly as with the issues of life and death remains a profound need of our generation, and only the Church, and not the world, can hope to meet this need. It will be little credit to us if we exterminate the dens of darkness and nowhere light a path of hope.

The real problem of our age, as in every other age, is sinful man’s lack of mind and heart for the truth. Laws that are passed without public enthusiasm are winked at even when they dare not be repealed. Whether our concern is juvenile delinquency and crime or sexual delinquency, the basic problem is not that men and women possess no insight whatever into right and wrong, but that they lack the will to do what they know to be right. Even the ancient pagan world into which Christianity came was not wholly without the light of conscience, but it lacked moral devotion even to its paltry standards. And the Apostle Paul knew that neither he nor the early Christians could keep the revealed moral law of God simply by self-effort. His anguished question and his exultant cry in the letter to the Romans should be priority reading in our generation: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.… The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities …” (Rom. 7:24, 25, 8:26). It is redemptive religion that renews human nature, that lifts men to a higher level of ethical motivation, that prompts men not simply to shy from wrong because it is legally prohibited but to do the right out of love for God. If ever the Church was called to a virile theology of evangelism and conversion, this is that time.

Yet those who do not know the grace of God need law, as indeed do all men in this life. Civil government will always be needed in a society of sinful and imperfect men. The promotion of just laws is a special responsibility of the people of God. In urging laws to halt the trend toward indecency we are on sure ground insofar as our concern is to protect human rights from the infringements of those who violate them—to protect minors against public sale of obscene literature and citizens against unsolicited pay-on-examination mailings of indecent literature. But if we propose a paternalistic ground for government intervention whenever the license of madmen sets up a clamor for controls, we may be sharpening a two-edged sword of the state by a precedent that someday may threaten the freedom of good men and not simply, as we now propose, the license of bad men. There are indeed things that can and must be done by law, but let us not put the state into the business of legislating ecclesiastical morality as the means of registering the Church’s impact upon society. There are areas of social pressure that we are also fully free to pursue. Let us ask whether publishers, distributors, and magazine store operators approve these products for their own teen-agers, whether their neighbors find their own living rooms cluttered with the muck that is displayed on the public counters.

In summary, it is more important to encourage positive alternatives than to deplore negative trends. We must promote decent literature, not merely proscribe indecent litter. We must laud the lasting glory of righteousness and purity over the temporary tingle of the smutty and profane. We must remind our twilight generation that wherever love is loosed from God’s light and law, man’s life soon lurches to lowness and littleness, and loses its lodestar and luster. What men and women no longer remember is that the erosion of these values is the diminution of the self. Formerly the non-Christian who was no saint at least knew himself to be a sinner; his modern counterpart seems sometimes even to forget that he is a man. His world of spiritual and moral response has shriveled to the point where virtually the only infinity he knows is the infinity of sex. The days of old Pompeii are swiftly coming upon us again. We are breeding a generation of sex giants with mustard-seed spirits, and those who read the signs of the times hear the roar of Vesuvius readying its terrible judgment upon our sex-debauched society.

What godly men and women can do now, let them do quickly—but let them do more than erect high fences of prevention. Let them channel wide rivers of life to a doomed generation.

Academic Freedom And Doctrinal Commitment

In recent years several well-known denominational divinity schools have run into theological difficulties at the faculty level. In each instance these difficulties have involved departure from the doctrinal commitments of the institution, and in each instance the specter of the infringement of academic liberty has been raised.

The problem of academic liberty in relation to theological statements of faith is not new. The real difficulty is how to resolve the tension inherent in such situations. In 1960 the American Association of Theological Schools adopted a splendid statement on academic freedom and tenure that says in part: “An institution which has a confessional or doctrinal standard may expect that its faculty subscribe to that standard.… So long as the teacher remains within the accepted constitutional and confessional standard of his school he should be free to teach, carry on research, and to publish.…”

It is therefore clear that (1) academic freedom does not include the right to subvert an institution by changing its theological position; (2) professors who cannot honestly teach within the framework of the confessions they sign should be ethically sensitive and resign their posts; (3) professors who no longer adhere to a confession and fail to resign voluntarily should be relieved of their responsibilities.

Christ And The Gospel

It is a cardinal agreement of all theological schools today that the New Testament proclaims Jesus Christ. While affirming that Jesus the Christ must be personally received as Saviour and Lord, the New Testament nowhere presents a man of Galilee with messianic aspirations, a historical figure who subsequently “became” the Christ. Any reconstructed “Jesus of history” that merely details his “beliefs” about God and man obscures this biblical portrait. The apostolic preaching in the Gospels does not reveal a not-yet-interpreted Jesus. What we do find in the Nazarene’s progressive self-manifestation to his contemporaries is a not-yet-acknowledged Redeemer who urges his hearers to decision. The historical Jesus “behind the Gospels” is the God-man whose true messianic identity becomes an open secret.

All the New Testament writings are by believers, who simultaneously bring us in touch with the historical Jesus and recognize him as the Christ. Throughout the apostolic writings we find a correlated emphasis on the finished work of the earthly Jesus and the ascended Christ’s continuing work. Only the whole Christ—pre-existent, incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended, and attested by the Spirit—is the Saviour and Lord of the Gospels. Always the apostles make this larger claim in depicting the true historical Jesus. So tremendously did the experience of the risen Jesus influence their recollection of the earthly Jesus that the apostles everywhere present historical data and evangelical proclamation in indissoluble unity. The New Testament gives no mere recital of past events, but rather confesses the crucified and reigning Lord who is even now present with his Church and who calls men everywhere to repentance.

Evangelical scholarship acknowledges this Easter-perspective of the New Testament witness. It emphasizes as well that the biblical presentation of the history of Jesus is neither a fictitious reflex nor an imaginative reconstruction of the Church’s faith in him. The faith of the evangelists does not render the Jesus-picture of the Gospels unhistorical. The biblical record preserves the indispensable historical grounding of Christian revelation and faith.

The gospel record, moreover, authenticates itself to historical reason. Only when historical judgment is warped by arbitrary notions of the “admissability” of events does Jesus’ historical reality become unsure, or the reliability of the New Testament portrait of him become unclear. We need not wholly scorn Ethelbert Stauffer’s contention that objective historical criticism, on the basis of extraneous sources independent of the apostolic reports, can confirm and clarify the gospel portraits. Heilsgeschichte and Universalsgeschichte do not entirely lack a point of contact. The religious, social, cultural, and political situation of the first century sheds light upon circumstances surrounding Jesus’ life and ministry. We are free, of course, to dispute Stauffer’s notion that thereby we recover Jesus “as he actually was” in distinction from the Jesus of apostolic proclamation. Yet the danger lies not in the reliance of Stauffer’s method on scientific historical research but in the accommodation of such research to arbitrary dogmas about history.

Many historians are addicted to the controlling idea that biblical history must and can be wholly explained by factors immanent in the historical process. This bias restricts Christianity in advance to the stream of general religious and cultural development and automatically excludes the very possibility of special divine intervention in the world, of once-for-all supernatural revelation, and of unique divine incarnation in Jesus Christ. In order to assign historical, sociological, and psychological factors their due role in the study of biblical history, one need not prejudge the evidence so arbitrarily.

Our possession of historical documents by those who knew Jesus best is now indisputable; eyewitness accounts are an integral aspect of the apostolic proclamation. And in its purpose to unveil Jesus as the Christ, the historical narration presupposes the historical revelation. New Testament literature does not construct the case for the deity of Jesus Christ; rather, the apostolic writings mirror the life, deeds, and words of the incarnate Lord. As Joachim Jeremias notes, “If … we occupy ourselves with the historical Jesus, the result is always the same: we find ourselves in the presence of God Himself.” It is untrue to scripturally documented history to locate an awareness of Jesus’ messianic role only in the faith of his followers. As Oscar Cullmann contends, and rightly so, no one can assuredly possess authentic Christian faith unless he first accepts the historical fact that Jesus of Nazareth believed himself to be the Messiah. The true starting point of all Christological thought is Jesus’ self-consciousness. The faith of the apostles is not the starting point of Christology as Bultmann and his disciples would have us believe; rather, it is Christ the incarnate God who is the starting point of the faith of the apostles.

The Awakening Of National Conscience

The widespread determination that voting rights must not be denied to eligible citizens of any race shows that a sense of justice is deeply imbedded in the American character. There is no cause for pride, because it has taken so inexcusably long for public conscience to be aroused. It is nevertheless encouraging that all over the nation people are insisting that freedom everywhere become a reality for their Negro fellow citizens. It is undeniable that in some areas there has been, and continues to be, a calculated determination to keep Negroes from voting. Public accommodation rights also have been grudgingly acknowledged, and only under pressure.

In his special message to Congress, President Johnson reflected the accumulated force of America’s awakening conscience and put the issue in a national rather than a sectional perspective. He was right in insisting that the promise of equality be fully kept, and in demanding prompt rectification of long-standing wrongs. He stressed the importance of judicial process and also sounded a timely warning against the abuse of free speech and free assembly.

What legislation best secures the national interest by preserving constitutional patterns and guarantees is a question that must weigh heavily upon congressional leaders in the weeks ahead. World opinion and organized protest have reached emotional heights that must not be allowed to bring about hastily conceived federal legislation. Yet there must not be inordinate delay.

For the Church this should be a time of healing ministry when love is preached, when the Gospel that changes hearts is heard. Let the voice of reconciliation and forgiveness be heard. Should the Church be swept into a preoccupation with political reform instead, she will lose her witness where it is most needed.

Selma has now become a symbol of the struggle of two forces, and Alabama has become an emotional image. Civil rights activities have gained national and world-wide publicity. Many Southern spokesmen are indignant because universal misimpressions are created by the selection of particularly offensive target-areas.

Regrettably, thousands of citizens lack adequate knowledge and ability to vote responsibly, a situation that can lead to easy manipulation of voters. This doubtless is one penalty for the failure to prepare them for adequate citizenship. Yet it remains a fact that the most radical views can be discovered among the so-called intellectuals, and that unenlightened mass voting blocs now exist in many large cities.

Some observers find a similarity between the situation in the Congo and that in Alabama. The Belgian colonial government in the Congo was in many ways benevolent in later years, but it did not systematically prepare the Congolese for self-government nor train the people in advanced technical skills. Then came the clamor for independence. Supportive world opinion soon developed, based theoretically on the right to self-determination and complemented by emotional factors quite apart from practical reality. Belgium yielded to these demands and pulled out of the Congo, leaving a hastily established regime. The result was chaos.

Yet the mistakes of the past should not be used to perpetuate intolerable situations, nor to create new ones. It will take great political skill to give due weight to America’s highest interests during the discussion of pending legislation.

The march to Montgomery is over, but the nation has not yet seen the end of large-scale public demonstrations which now serve as complex fronts for many ambitions. Legitimacy of public assembly and public protest against glaring social injustice are not the only issues involved in mass demonstrations. Communist sympathizers exploit these activities to undermine confidence in free-world governments. Selma was not without such entanglement; the syndicated Washington columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that “there is no doubt whatever that SNCC is substantially infiltrated by beatnik left-wing revolutionaries and—worst of all—by Communists.” Political agitators exploit mobocracy to overthrow constitutional government rather than to achieve political reforms by judicial processes. Church leaders use demonstrations to identify the theologically confused and evangelistically dormant Church not only with social concern but also with specific legislative programs.

This growing reliance on mass pressures for swift change is an awesome spectacle. A recent issue of Life magazine carries pictures not only of the Alabama demonstrators but also of mobs stoning an American embassy abroad and of student uprisings on a university campus. The end of these things is not yet. Professional revolutionaries have a special interest in crises, since they furnish a context in which agitators can function as decisive masses through the mechanism of pressure to destroy government.

Yet the best alternative is surely not a reactionary policy of mere negation. America needs a new dedication to godliness and government, and under these to liberty and law. Let us convince our neighbor that we zealously cherish his human rights, and remind him also that his rights stop where ours begin.

This is the last of ten essays introducing our series on great Christian verities. These essays were excerpted from radio addresses by distinguished New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen, which were published after his death by W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company under the title, “The Christian Faith in the Modern World,” and are now being reissued in paperback.—ED.

It is admitted by historians both Christian and non-Christian that the followers of Jesus became the founders of what is known as the Christian Church because they became honestly convinced Jesus was risen from the dead. What produced that conviction?

The belief of the disciples in the resurrection, according to the New Testament, was due simply to the fact of the resurrection.

If that explanation of the belief of the first disciples in the resurrection be rejected, what shall be put into its place? The answer to that question which is commonly given is that those first disciples of Jesus became convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead because they experienced certain hallucinations, certain pathological experiences in which they thought they saw Jesus before their eyes when in reality there was nothing there. The “vision theory” means that the Christian Church is founded upon a pathological experience of certain persons in the first century of our era.

The appearances, according to the New Testament, were of a plain bodily kind. There was something mysterious about his coming and going. Yet Jesus is plainly represented as being with his disciples in body.

The advocates of the vision hypothesis hold that, contrary to the New Testament, the appearances were only of a momentary kind. Most of the advocates of this hypothesis hold that the first of the appearances took place a considerable time, perhaps weeks, after the crucifixion, in Galilee; the New Testament says that the first of the appearances took place at Jerusalem on the third day after the death of Jesus.

If the first appearances, the first of these supposed hallucinations in which the disciples thought they saw Jesus alive after his death, took place at Jerusalem and on the third day after the death, then the question arises why the tomb of Jesus was not investigated to see whether the story of the resurrection was really true—why it was not investigated by foes as well as friends. But it does seem strange even on the Galilean hypothesis that the tomb of Jesus was not investigated.

It is generally admitted by foes of our view as well as by friends that First Corinthians was really written by the Apostle Paul and that it was written at about A.D. 55. It is also generally admitted that when Paul says in this epistle that he had “received” the information that he gives in the fifteenth chapter regarding the resurrection and appearances of Jesus he means that he had received it from the early Jerusalem Church. What we have here, then, in the fifteenth chapter of this epistle, in verse eight and the following, is a precious bit of what modern historians call “primitive tradition.”

Here is what Paul says: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

When Paul mentions the burial, he means that the resurrection of Christ about which he is speaking is a bodily resurrection. The thing that was laid in the tomb in the burial was the body; and the thing that was laid in the tomb was the thing that came out of the tomb in the resurrection.

Notice also Paul’s mention of “the third day.” Those words demolish the whole edifice of the Galilean hypothesis as to the place of the appearances. They show, by the testimony of the very first disciples, that the first appearance did not take place in Galilee weeks after the crucifixion but on the third day and at Jerusalem. I know that attempts are made to evade the plain implications of these words. The first appearances, it is said, took place only weeks afterwards, but when they did take place the disciples who experienced them hit upon the notion that Jesus had risen long before and merely had not chosen to appear to them until then. But why in the world did they hit upon just the third day as the day of the resurrection if nothing in particular happened to them on that day?

Then it will be objected: that is all very well, but the trouble is that the thing we are asked to believe is really unbelievable. We are asked to believe that a dead man rose from the dead, and we have never seen a man who did that.

There is a tremendous presumption against the resurrection of any ordinary man, but when you come really to know Jesus as he is pictured to us in the Gospels you will say that whereas it is unlikely that any ordinary man should rise from the dead, in his case the presumption is exactly reversed. It is unlikely that this man should not rise. It may be said that it was impossible that he should be holden of death.—J.G.M.

MANY PEOPEL HAVE HAD a nightmare in which they found themselves unclothed in a public place. But the nightmare of the ages is reserved for those who some day will appear naked and alone in the presence of the King they have rejected.

The Bible is full of references to nakedness, sometimes actual, sometimes figurative. That the disobedience of Adam and Eve made them conscious of their nakedness in God’s presence was both symbolic and prophetic.

Many have lost sight of the clear biblical teaching that the Christian wears a robe of righteousness belonging, not to him, but to the sinless Son of God. This robe is neither bought nor earned; it is imputed by faith.

Human pride manufactures a robe of self-righteousness, the most dangerous garment a man can wear. Self-righteousness insulates man against God. It is false, futile, and foolish, because the God with whom we have to do sees through it and knows us as we really are.

Isaiah paints a realistic picture in these words: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment …” (Isa. 64:6, RSV).

Most people are familiar with the power of the X-ray to reveal what is within. But few are conscious of the all-seeing eyes of God. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is disarmingly frank: “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13, AV).

Why engage in subterfuge? God not only knows but also understands the thoughts and intents of our heart. How good that he never misjudges our actions or our motives! There are times when we are completely misunderstood by others, but with him there is perfect understanding.

The entire doctrine of righteousness is a part of the thought of the clothing of nakedness; we neglect it to our eternal loss.

In the Revelation we have described for us the conditions existing in seven churches, and we can well heed these descriptions today. Describing the affluent, satisfied, powerless church at Laodicea Jesus calls it “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17). Was he engaging in picturesque speech, or was he giving all people and all churches of all generations a warning of the danger of turning from righteousness in him to trust in their own human attainments?

Jesus goes on to counsel that church, so typical of our own day, to buy of the Master Provider “white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear” (Rev. 3:18). And our Lord warns in clear terms: “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame” (Rev. 16:15).

What is the real danger? Failure to appropriate what God has provided.

As a young man I frequently read the twenty-second chapter of Matthew feeling that the king who denounced and expelled the guest not wearing a wedding garment was hard and unjust. Later, in China, I discovered that in their own history they had the custom of the ruler’s providing his guests with garments at the door. The king in the biblical story was not unjust; it was the guest who had refused to accept the wedding garment who was at fault. How fatal it is for any man to reject the righteousness of Christ in favor of his own efforts! How utterly foolish to think that anything we can do will merit our standing in the presence of a holy God! How dangerous to explain away the imagery of the “white robes” that are given the saints in glory!

The Prophet Isaiah, who prefaced his remarks with these words, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” goes on to say, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness …” (Isa. 61:10).

The Apostle Paul furthers this thought in telling of his own personal losses (as the world counts loss) but the glorious gain of the believer: “… that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:8, 9, RSV).

To this assurance the writer would give this testimony: A few months ago I became critically ill after a minor operation. Short of breath and in severe pain, I became acutely aware of the situation as my mind cleared in the coolness and relief of the oxygen tent.

From personal experience, from the activities around me, and from snatches of conversation I knew this could well be the end. One’s reaction to the Christian hope at a time like this, with all faculties acutely active, must be recorded.

There was no conscious prayer in words of petition, only a sense of utter thankfulness to God for his goodness and faithfulness. During that uncertain night the heart spoke a fervent “Thank you, Lord,” perhaps a hundred times—thanksgiving for what he had done, for what he was doing right then, and for what he would do in the future down into eternity.

It is difficult to describe the overwhelming assurance of the reality of salvation and of God’s loving presence. This cannot be compared with the preservation of life from physical danger—the ejecting of a pilot from a crippled jet and subsequent opening of a parachute, or the finding of solid rock under one’s feet in a turbulent stream, for instance.

But when the time comes when one is aware that “this may be it,” there are no words to express the joy of knowing all is well, not because of anything one ever did but because Jesus Christ did everything.

This was not a case of posing as a “good man.” It involved an overwhelming sense of my sinful acts and thoughts and of utter unworthiness. But it also involved a realization that the robe of righteousness had been provided by my Saviour, that I had accepted it by faith, and that I could stand in his holy presence with complete confidence in what he had done for me.

My life may be spared many years, or the end may come at any time; but I believe I have been spared, for one thing, to bear witness that the robe of Christ’s righteousness is available to all and covers every sin.

Paul gave assurance to the youthful Titus in these words: “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life. The saying is sure” (Titus 3:5–8a, RSV).

The clear statements of the Scriptures, the unequivocal promises of a faithful God, make it possible for us to know right now that clothed in the imputed righteousness of the Son of God who died and rose again we are completely prepared, now and for eternity.

WHEN YOU FAST

The first notice appeared on the dinner tray I was given by American Airlines. By the time the second notice appeared, on United Airlines, there were certain penetrations of my brain pan and my cybernetics began to cohere. Here is what I found on my tray on a certain Friday:

“The Holy See has granted a special dispensation from the laws of abstinence for Catholics of every Rite traveling on United Airlines. On Fridays and all other days of abstinence you may eat the meat served during your United flight. If you prefer seafood, ask the stewardess. In the future, if you desire seafood, you may make your request through Reservations.”

About all I could say to myself was “ho” and “hum.” The mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse.

Millions and millions of dollars have been invested by the Holy See, and like any good organization it is not unaware of the money that needs to be spent on public relations.

This Protestant, at least, would like to point out that, with the tremendous thrust of this mighty Vatican power, it’s a shame if a man can react only in irritation, as I did. Whether Romanists do or do not eat fish is, it seems to me, a family affair. Why do they have to drag all this out into the open?

More than that, a great many Christians do not think that this is so all-fired important. Someone has likened the Church to a great ship that constantly collects barnacles and every once in a while has to have its hull scraped. Maybe this is a little sign that the Roman church, by way of the Vatican Council, is beginning to scrape the hull.

All well and good. Good luck to them—just as long as the general public doesn’t get the idea that something really shattering and earth-shaking is taking place.

Personally I have too high respect for the Galilean to want people to think that this sort of thing is the Christian religion.

THEY’RE SICK TOO

Your strongly worded editorial, “A Time for Moral Indignation” (Mar. 12 issue), has been a long time coming.… Thank you for finally getting round to write it. Now, just what are you going to do about it in America? And what are we going to do about it in England? For we too are getting sick sexually. It’s catching.

You say “public opinion is still a powerful force for public righteousness.” But do you really believe that “public righteousness” has the moral impetus and desire to disentangle itself from the stimulus offered by impure sex? Evil stages a magnificent presentation of the sex-god that clutches very tightly on the mind. Surely we know that the Christian mind to be morally clean needs renewing and renewing and renewing. If a nation is to be cleaned up it will be no easy task especially when it is caught fast in the spawning ground of moral weakness: material prosperity. The weakness saps both the secular and the Christian of moral fiber. Getting to grips with the distributing centers that blatantly market the stuff ought to be somewhere on the Christian approach to the mess.

Don’t worry overmuch who God will use to shout to your nation—and mine—about the sordid spoiling of his gift of sex. He may use the spokesman of a secular conscience if his church is dumb. We need though to weep with sorrow that our Christian moral sense is too often lagging far behind our profession of faith.

Ulpha Vicarage

Broughton in Furness, Lancashire, England

It is time for the Church to realize that she has been engulfed in this cesspool of sex until the only morality she has left, if one may call it that, is the prohibition of sexual enjoyment before marriage, and the permission of the fullest sexual pleasure after marriage, with one wife, of course.…

A “moral indignation” which ignores our own fallen state is nothing more than that exhibited by the Pharisees who brought the fallen woman to Jesus.

Berlin Bible Church

Narrowsburg, N. Y.

GREATEST STORY RETOLD

In order for a committed Christian to have any appreciation for The Greatest Story Ever Told, he must go prepared with the realization that this film is a Hollywood production, made and presented for the usual commercial reasons. If he will bear this in mind, he may feel that Hollywood did not do too badly (see News, Feb. 26 issue).

Even the casual moviegoer knows that the Hollywood script of a story seldom approximates the book from which it is taken. The Greatest Story Ever Told remains remarkably faithful in this respect. The outline of the life of Christ is more closely related to the Book of John than to the Synoptic Gospels. Many of the scenes will delight believers. The miracles are portrayed as mediate acts of God, and not merely as misunderstanding of natural forces.… The crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of our Saviour are all sensitively portrayed, and many of the soul-winner’s favorite verses, such as John 3:16 and John 14:6, are effectively spoken in such a manner as to impress an unbelieving audience.…

On the other hand, at times the words are not spoken in scriptural context—it is rather surprising to hear Christ quote from First Corinthians 13—and Bible students will be puzzled by certain interpretations. Much of the Sermon on the Mount is given under a bridge on the first day that Jesus calls his disciples, of whom the first is Judas. The rich young ruler whose wealth cannot allow him to follow Jesus is none other than Lazarus. The motive for the betrayal by Judas Iscariot is portrayed, not as depravity or greed, but as a desire to see Jesus taken into protective custody for his own safety. In the end, Judas neither hangs himself, nor throws himself into the field of blood, but commits suicide by standing on the brazen altar in the temple and flinging himself into the hot coals.…

Enough of Christ is seen in this presentation to touch the hearts of moviegoers and to cause them to inquire further into their Bibles.

Los Angeles District Headquarters

American Board of Missions to the Jews

Hollywood, Calif.

One reservation comes to mind … as I read over Mr. Lindsell’s review of The Greatest Story Ever Told.… As long as Hollywood knows that there is Mr. Lindsell’s more or less “official” stamp on using the Bible for box-office success and sentimental thrills in the name of “religion,” they will continue to thrive on this sort of expensive junk where wealth and talent are prostituted as they are in the movie in question. Hollywood winds up with the strangest sort of friends.

Church of Our Saviour

Killington, Vt.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

The February 26 issue came as a very pleasant surprise for which I am quite grateful. As one who is not usually in agreement with the statements of faith and opinions which this periodical often contains, I was both impressed and enlightened by the four major articles on educational concerns.…

If “liberals” are often characterized as straw men of a day gone by, no less have conservatives been stereotyped in a mold of narrowness and retreat from the world which articles of this type show to be less than accurate.… You have opened the channels of communication once again with at least one reader who had been disillusioned by what seemed to be a consistent refusal on the part of conservatives to deal creatively with the complex realities of modern-day life.

Princeton, N. J.

Geraldine Doll, in “The Church and the Handicapped Child,” has raised some truly soul-searching questions regarding the Church’s interest in and responsibility toward the handicapped child. All too often the Church is apathetic or helpless simply because it just doesn’t know what to do! We good Christian people frequently would rather label its duties and obligations in this area as “a thorny problem that somebody should do something about.” We fail to realize that God expects us to respect the handicapped child’s contribution to his Kingdom. I have seen too many pathetic cases of retarded adults who never were brought to Christ.…

Principal

Milwaukee Special Lutheran School

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Milwaukee, Wis.

THE ARTS

“The Aesthetic Problem: Some Evangelical Answers” (Feb. 26 issue) deserves even wider circulation.…

The popular trend in all of the arts seems to be the “deification of the mediocre,” and in no field is this more true than in the visual arts.…

Ranchos de Taos, N. M.

It is a clarion call that must be heeded if the evangelical witness is not to be dismissed by the world as the carping of malcontents.…

Church of the Reformation

Philadelphia, Pa.

THE THREAT TO UNITED PRESBYTERIANS

Christianity Today rendered a service to United Presbyterians in the October 23, 1964, issue in printing important portions of the “Brief Contemporary Statement of Faith” to be submitted to the General Assembly in Columbus this May. Denied advance view of the text, Presbyterians have been in the dark regarding the nature of this next move to condition our church to forsake its distinctive witness in merger. Thanks to the article, “Presbyterians Draft New Confession,” the editorial, “High Time for a Confession?,” and the printing of the reproduction of the statement’s table of contents, we now know that the document will be characterized by the familiar reconciliation theology and will fit the overall pattern of all the other departures from our cherished heritage which the present Establishment is endeavoring to ram through. Thus we are enabled to see in advance of the Columbus assembly how far the neo-orthodox minority, merger-minded, would take our church down the road toward extinction.

This is no exaggeration. What we see as imminent possibility, planned and promoted, is not only the abandonment of the Presbyterian Church’s historic social role as an inspirer of liberty and as the ecclesiastical example and spiritual morale-builder for free representative democracy in the world. Also planned is the abolition of our freedom of worship, free pulpit, parity of the clergy, importance of the laity, prime sovereignty of presbyteries, Puritan heritage of morality, and Reformed theology. Once these are abolished there will be little left to witness with and share with others in ecumenical fellowship.

There is need that opposition to this movement should not be confined to theological conservatives. Liberal evangelicals also dislike the present type of redefinition and reorganization of the church. Historically American Presbyterianism has always been a union of conservatives and evangelical liberals from our Scottish, Irish, and English Presbyterian-Puritan heritage. In the eighteenth century, when our forefathers established religious freedom and political democracy in America without religious establishment, Presbyterians under John Witherspoon joined with more liberal rationalistic deists, like Jefferson and Madison, and with more radical pietistic Baptists in the common social and political purpose of founding this nation with liberty under God and his moral law. Lately the most active theological position in the United Presbyterian Church has forsaken this heritage. The much advertised “thrilling revival of theology” has been largely an importation of Continental European neo-orthodoxy of a peculiar type. Opposed to it, by conviction, are both biblical conservatives and evangelical liberals. The latter, according to Henry P. Van Dusen, have a “profound moral concern” “from a fresh confrontation with the ethical demands and expectations of Jesus’ mind” not shared by current theology, which “has acquiesced and participated in contemporary man’s muddy moral standards and casual moral practices” (The Vindication of Liberal Theology, pp. 47 and 82).

To understand what is now happening we must review some pertinent history of the past thirty years. In 1935, when Presbyterians were finished with the J. Gresham Machen controversy which had troubled every General Assembly for years, the remaining conservatives and liberals were importuned by the moderates to bury the theological hatchet. The mood was to get on with the business of serving Christ and the Church, and to declare a moratorium on theological discussion. The conservatives and evangelical liberals acquiesced, leaving a theological vacuum into which neo-orthodoxy, posed as a mediating, middle-of-the-road position, promptly moved.

Princeton Theological Seminary, left in a shambles by the Machen battle, having lost its outstanding fundamentalist scholars, was at a low ebb. Its new president, Dr. John A. Mackay, moved in the most promising and least controversial direction. He imported continental European scholars: Joseph L. Hromadka from Czechoslovakia, Otto Piper from Germany, and Georges Barrios from France. Excellent and varied in their several ways, they had a common lack: familiarity with the British-American Puritan tradition of democracy. Hromadka went back to Prague under Communism to be the leader of Protestant adjustment to that social system.

More influential in the neo-orthodox impact of Princeton were American Barthians like Paul L. Lehmann, with students like Benjamin A. Reist of San Francisco. Elwyn A. Smith and Robert Clyde Johnson have represented the same movement at Dubuque and Pittsburgh.

Another center of neo-orthodox influence was the Department of Christian Education, where this theology was allowed to dominate the curriculum under James Smart from Canada and many other writers. So unopposed has been this neo-orthodoxy that its exponents have come to assume that it is the only Presbyterian theology, and to think it should be made official.

Only slightly modified in the new “Brief Contemporary Statement of Faith,” it is often taught in terms of universal reconciliation. From Karl Barth’s early teaching it claims that the only significant revelation of God is in his one great act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. God has already effectually reconciled the world to himself, and mankind is already forgiven, in a realized universalism. The Church’s only task is to witness to this act of God, and this must determine all its teaching, polity, and social action. In the “Nature of the Ministry Seminars” held for all ministers and many laymen throughout the church two years ago all had to read a study booklet entitled “The Church and Its Changing Ministry” by Robert Clyde Johnson, stating:

The good news is that God is already love and that we are already forgiven. This covenant fact and this finished work of God’s grace circumscribe and define our ministry.… All that must be done to procure God’s acceptance, his mercy, his love, and his forgiveness has been done in the finished work of Jesus Christ.… The world has been reconciled to God and made a new creation in his life, death and resurrection.

No need for repentance and faith that includes moral surrender and obedience! This manual also advises ministers to “study not to set a moral example” to their congregations. Many advocates of this theology have more recently also adopted Paul Tillich’s situational ethic theory, with no set moral laws, standards, or principles but freedom to adjust, if we know Christ’s love, to every set of changing circumstances. President Theodore A. Gill of San Francisco Theological Seminary says, “In theology Protestant thought is shifting from what I would call a content Christianity to a context Christianity.” The Religious News Service report observes, “By that he meant that theology is adapting itself to the times instead of applying ‘juridical’ or ‘Thou Shalt—Shalt Not’ ethics to what it encounters in society. The ethics of ‘esthetics’ now is starting to pervade religious circles, he said” (quoted in the Presbyterian Outlook, February 15, 1965, p. 3). Only one part of ethics is maintained strongly: where reconciliation is called for and is the controlling ethical principle. The table of contents of the new Statement of Faith lists under “The Church’s Ministry of Reconciliation”: “The Mission in Particulars: (A) Racial Conflict; (B) War; (C) Poverty.” No apparent emphasis upon personal morality, or liberty. Karl Barth himself has considered all social systems to be relative, with no moral preference between American democracy and Communism. Those who accept his theology are often conditioned for it by the “social adjustment” emphasis they have had in American public schools since John Dewey; they feel little opposition to the growth of socialist bureaucracy and might try under all circumstances to practice “acceptance” and “reconciliation” to “relate” to Communism.

Useful to Ecumenicity

Leading the Establishment committed to this theology and ethic is Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, graduate of Princeton and architect of proposed ecumenical union. Most people who have heard of his plan to unite Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, the United Church of Christ, and others are unaware of the greater scope of his vision. I tried to probe it at the Buffalo General Assembly in 1961. Reminding him that he was asking us to conform to the Anglican requirements of bishops and apostolic succession, I asked him if he wanted to shift the power center in the world ecumenical movement from Geneva with its representative democracy to monarchial Lambeth. He replied, “I wasn’t thinking about Lambeth. I was thinking about the Orthodox Church.” This was illuminating! He had been the negotiator for the World Council of Churches in securing the collaboration of Russian Orthodoxy. As ecclesiastical governmental machinery is of great importance to him, the prayer of our Lord, “That they all may be one,” means governmental union, in his mind. Knowing that the Orthodox churches will not merge with any other body unless it has the traditional orders of clergy: bishop, priest, and deacon, and is in the apostolic succession, and believing that the success of Christendom depends upon an ecumenical governmental merger of all Christians with the Anglican and Orthodox churches acting as the bridge between Protestantism and Catholicism, he is eager to prepare the United Presbyterian Church to participate by changing everything that stands in the way in our heritage of liberty, polity, order of worship, moral standards, or theology. He envisions the United Presbyterian Church becoming a part of the bridge structure to be built between free Protestantism and Roman papal authoritarianism, along with the Anglicans and the Orthodox, abandoning our historic anchor position on freedom’s shore. So he has planned and fostered the series of special committees bringing their reports for General Assembly approval.

Church and State

One report is already engineered through. At Des Moines in 1963 the assembly called not only for separation of church and state but also for separation of religion from democracy, denying the right of public schools to teach the existence of God, the moral law, or anything that could be called religious indoctrination. The theological rationalization was spelled out at great length, in the introduction and appendices of the report, in neo-orthodox terms: “The sole ground for the church’s critique of the state is that in Christ, God and the world are reconciled.” “Theologically the church must be aware that the sole constant in its mandate is the fact of Jesus Christ. It is to the Christ that the Church bears witness, not to a theological articulation to the place of the political order in the structure of reality. This is why the celebrated theory of natural law, so dominant in medieval Christendom, may not figure in contemporary Christianity’s discussion of the doctrine of the state.” So out went the theology of the Declaration of Independence, stressing the Creator, the first Person of the Trinity, and out went the natural moral law of Calvin’s Institutes reflected in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Because public schools could not teach Jesus Christ, and Barthianism teaches that Christ is the only revelation of God, any teaching of God from natural revelation in the schools would be worthless and must be prohibited. Not mentioned was the fact that the acceptance of the complete secularization of the state prepares the Presbyterians to unite with the Russian Orthodox without embarrassment to them in their relationship to the Communist state, as we no longer support the state in teaching, “Our fathers’ God, to Thee, Author of liberty, to Thee we sing.”

Changing the Ministry

The Special Committee on the Nature of the Ministry, having tried to brainwash the ministers and laymen of the church with seminars replete with neo-orthodox theology and with much talk of the greater ministry of the laity and the need of the clergy to identify with them by not asserting moral leadership, has come up with a curious recommendation. One original purpose in the study, suggested by the Chicago Presbytery, was to make the lay office of deacon more important. Yet the recommendation advanced by the committee is to abolish the lay office of deacon altogether and to make the new office of deacon a lower order of the ministry’, seminary-trained and ordained as non-pastoral clergymen, to engage in the multiplying bureaucratic and executive offices of the church. So we are working toward the Anglican and Orthodox orders of bishop, priest, and deacon. Gone will be our cherished, democratic parity of the clergy.

The special committee to write a new Book of Common Worship has undertaken to condition the mind of the church for a new order of worship for the Lord’s Day. It has sought to recommend the celebration of Communion every Sunday, and the use of lectionaries to prescribe Scripture lessons read throughout the year. The sermon should come early in the service, immediately after the Scripture lesson, of which it should be an exposition. At the climax of the service, after the sermon, would come a long series of rote prayers of petition and intercession read in unison by the congregation, then the offering, and announcements before the benediction. So the sermon would be subordinated to the sacrament and ritual prayers, and the minister’s freedom to choose his Scripture and text taken away, curtailing the freedom of the pulpit so long prized in the Presbyterian Church, reducing the sermon to an expository homily. Prescribed read prayers would supplant the present freedom of the pastoral prayer. Conformity to Anglican and Orthodox practice is obvious. What this would do to the caliber of our ministry requires a little more imagination.

A Hierarchy of Officialdom

A Special Committee on Regional Synods and Church Administration had in its authorization a general permission to make other structural changes attendant on its original purpose. Of this it has taken full advantage. It is proposing to recommend that each presbytery have a senior, to head its influential ministerial relations committee and to act as presbytery executive; and that each large regional synod have a dean with similar administrative importance on that level. While elected by the body served, these officers would be nominated and approved from above, this administrative personnel to be controlled and supervised by a General Assembly administrative personnel board of largely rotating constituency with one permanent member, the stated clerk. Though they would be called by other names, we would then have bishops and archbishops, and modesty forbids me to guess what the stated clerk would become. The “Servant of the Servants of Christ,” no doubt! How much freedom of movement in the ministry would there be? The primacy of the presbytery and its freedom of discussion would be gone, for what a man said might be reported up higher. Accommodation of our polity to Anglican-Orthodox requirements would then be complete.

The new creed to be submitted by the Special Committee on a Brief Contemporary Statement of Faith promises to round out the whole plan, furnishing its theological rationale. We would not expect many of the statements to be greatly objectionable in themselves, but the emphases and what will be played down or omitted will be significant. For example, in this morally debauched age, there seems to be nothing in the new Brief Contemporary Statement comparable to Chapter XIX, “Of the Law of God,” in the Westminster Confession, with paragraph 5, “The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof.”

So, with this five-pronged steam-shovel scoop, our minority Establishment would lift the whole United Presbyterian edifice from its historic foundations, and deposit it, cracked and broken, in the dump-truck of demolished denominations which they envisage as the ecumenical bandwagon.

Can This Be Halted?

Some conservative and liberal United Presbyterians show signs of defeatism, fearing that this well-organized scheme cannot be stopped. But that is to overlook the real majority conviction of the United Presbyterian Church. Most of its clergy and the vast majority of its laymen are deeply apprehensive, know that something is wrong; but having been lulled by official promotion in the denominational journals, they haven’t had the information to figure it all out.

Yet when it has been challenged on clear issues the majority has shown its strength. At the Buffalo assembly in 1961, when the Establishment tried to put through an abolition of the church’s historic teaching of the moral value of abstinence from alcoholic beverages, United Presbyterians balked; and the next year, at Denver, they came back even stronger in opposition. The unmanaged assembly at Denver also refused to approve the church-and-state report, insisting upon enlarging the committee over the committee’s objections. So they hoped the report would be substantially changed, beyond just the excising of the alarming words that spelled out the demand for a completely secularized state. The neo-orthodox are still only a well-organized, articulate minority in control of the official apparatus of the church.

All conservatives, evangelical liberals, and non-neo-orthodox middle-of-the-road Presbyterians must call at once for a renewal of the theological debate of all points of view, which can be trusted to renew our church’s real consensus and make possible an expression of its true moral, social, and theological convictions. Meanwhile they must be aroused to vote down at Columbus the multiple schemes of the neo-orthodox “ecumaniac” Establishment and to prepare to renew real ecumenical progress by keeping the characteristics favorable to reunion with our Southern Presbyterian and Reformed brethren. Then we can make our distinctive contribution toward the rich variety in prospective federal union of all denominations. So our beloved Presbyterian Church may return to its historic role in social action, as exemplar and inspirer of representative democracy and liberty under God and his law throughout the world.

Dundee Presbyterian Church

Omaha, Nebraska

One of the thief characteristics of the Protestant faith as it has come to us from the Reformation has been the preaching of the Scriptures by word of mouth. I put it like this to avoid the recent tendency to think of preaching in a general sense, such as setting a good example, sharing one’s goods with those less fortunate than oneself, or worshiping through sacrament and ritual.

About two months after I came to my first parish the fire whistle blew one Sunday afternoon. Being an honorary member of the Fire Department, I immediately left the dinner table and followed the line of cars. Three boys had hit a tree trying to make a curve at 100 miles an hour. Two of the boys were sent to the hospital. The third was pinned under the dashboard of the car. He had a gaping hole in his forehead and kept crying out, “I don’t want to die!” Everyone was embarrassed and confused; all seemed to look to me for help and guidance. I tried to comfort the boy by saying, “You’re not going to die,” and ordered blankets to cover him and cardboard for the broken window to keep out the cold. The boy was extricated from the wreck and taken to the hospital. There he died. I had been a counselor, a ready leader, an efficient first-aid man. The community could be proud of its minister. Yet all the time I had realized that the boy was fatally injured and had not said one word about the Gospel; I was ashamed of it.

One might raise questions in a case like this. How could I have known the boy was going to die? Why tell a dying person he is going to die by giving him the Gospel? Had I not ministered the best that I could? Since everyone else was confused, was it not my responsibility to act as I did? These arguments sounded good that day at the wreck. But in the quietness of my study they sounded terribly weak.

As I have related this incident to a number of people, they have said in an embarrassed tone that there have been times when they too have been ashamed of the Gospel. In fact, does not this feeling prevail among many of us who have been called to proclaim the saving acts of God in Christ?

Often we hear it said, “The Church is irrelevant to our times.” We try to pretend that sin in our times is different from the sin there was when Christ walked upon this earth and when Paul preached “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Or we are told, “The language of the Bible just doesn’t speak to people today.”

Let me deal first with the question of relevance. We are in a great push for racial equality, slum clearance, and middleclass affluence. Smut and indecent movies, dope rackets, and exploitation of the poor are all around us. We talk as if all this were new and as if ancient Jerusalem had no social problems. We give the impression that our sin is unique and therefore needs a new cure. But if we believe what archaeologists say, then we must realize that Jerusalem was overcrowded and that people lived there in poverty. Our slums are, if anything, better than theirs. And immorality is far from new; Paul had to deal with it in Corinth. The difference is that we have new and more sophisticated ways (such as TV and movies) of fostering immorality. The admonition in Ephesians, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,” suggests that there was juvenile delinquency in the first century. Did they have racial problems? Well, the Jews hated the Samaritans and the Gentiles, and vice versa. And more than half the population of the Roman Empire was in some kind of slavery.

Equally groundless is the notion that the Bible doesn’t speak to our society. “ ‘Redemption,’ ‘regeneration,’ ‘justification’ are words of another age and our people can’t understand them,” some tell us. But “justification” is a legal term, and we live in a world of legal relations. “Redemption” had great meaning in the first-century days of slavery when human beings could be bought and sold, and it still has meaning today. Green, red, and yellow “redemption” stamps are a million-dollar business in our land. The radio tells us how a certain product can “regenerate” our automobile engines.

Excuses for not preaching the Gospel are futile. The real reason we fail is that we are ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. There are even times when we try to evade our preaching obligation by teaching the Gospel. But the great New Testament scholar, C. H. Dodd, says that there is greater emphasis in the New Testament on preaching than on teaching. “So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also” (Rom. 1:15). According to Dodd, the word here translated “preach” stands not for the action of the preacher but for that which he preaches, his message. This message, the Apostle tells us, is a message of power. In the first chapter of Romans the word “power” is used three times: once in verse 4, in relation to Christ as the Son of God (“… declared to be the Son of God with power …”); again in verse 16 (“I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation …”); and again in verse 20 (“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead …”). Paul states that the great power that has made the universe and raised the dead is the power of the Gospel of salvation.

In New Testament days the method of bringing this salvation to men was preaching. “… it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21). If the method was preaching, the content was the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “But we preach Christ crucified …” (1 Cor. 1:23). “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain …” (1 Cor. 15:14). And if the method was preaching and the content of that preaching was the death and resurrection of Christ, then the results were for them that believed. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12).

Though we ministers may be good sociologists, fine psychologists, wonderful scholars, respected counselors, and community leaders, let us remember that our calling demands that we be first of all preachers, proclaimers of the saving acts of God in Jesus Christ. How can we be ashamed of the Gospel?

-Burkett L. Smith, Center Evangelical United Brethren Church, Silver Lake, Indiana