STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS
[This tract was published at the
beginning of the Second World War on December, 15th. 1939. Today’s impending war-action in the Middle
East, the credit crisis, the present and rapid escalation of fuel costs, the
sharp downfall in world trading and the rapid increase in crime rates: all
indicate a world of nations ‘out of joint’, and the ever seeking, at all costs,
a solution to the complex problems to finding world peace. -
Ed.]
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In
the world-storm that is now raging, when the Churches of the world find
themselves in a violent clash of opposing nations, how urgent it is that the
[*
The Guardian, Sept. 29, 1939.]
The
startling peculiarity of the Church in its nature as revealed by God, a
peculiarity which sets it for ever apart, is that it is itself a race, a nation,
a people, and therefore sundered from all other races, and nations, and
peoples. "Ye
are an elect race, a holy nation, a
people for God's own possession" (1 Pet. 2: 9). All other nations are Lo Ammi
- not My people; and the Church is the
only holy nation in the world. We enter
into the elect race by being born again into the family of God: "which in time past were no people" - they were
scattered individuals among all nations - "but now
are the people of God". Its government is not visible; its
territory is not here; its code of laws is not human; and its King is at
present a world-exile. In the words
of Chrysostom
"Since heaven has become my country, the whole
world is a place of exile; for Constantinople is no nearer
Our
relationship to all other nations at once becomes obvious. "I beseech you,"
says the Apostle, "as sojourners and
Pilgrims." The word tanslated ‘strangers’ or ‘sojourners’ means ‘foreigners’ dwellers in a foreign
land and the word rendered ‘pilgrims’ is almost our ‘tourists’, that is,
travellers bound for another country: the one means that anywhere on earth we
are not at home; the other means that in any nation we are not among our own
folk. "For they that say such things"
- namely, that they are strangers and pilgrims - "make it manifest that they are seeking after a country
of their own" (Heb. 11: 14). As Israel, separated from all nations, made
its baptismal plunge into the Red Sea, and rose to walk a lonely nation with
God; so the Church, drawn out of all tribes and peoples and nations and
tongues, goes down into the baptismal grave many nations, but
rises in new life one nation, "where there is neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond
or free" (Col.
3: 2).
The
reason for the creation of this Holy Nation is now given. "That ye may show forth the excellencies
of him who called you out of darkness into his most marvellous light: that,
wherein they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works,
which they behold, glorify God in the day of visitation." The
visible character of a Christian is a masterly reply to modem propaganda, the
most deadly intellectual weapon, of to-day. All that a
totalitarian State hears or reads is absolutely controlled; but Christian
character and life, even in a prison, is inevitably seen, and,
for those around, it is impossible to be hidden; and God is seen
in the man. The awful multiplication of spies compels
an unintended study of the Christian, and therefore the spy’s coming face to
face with God. "All the beauty of self-sacrifice that has ever irradiated a
saint, all the heroism of the martyr, all the wisdom and maturity of the
teachers, all the love and benevolence in the Church’s ranks, are but the
diamond dust, the microscopic fragments, from the solid rock of God’s infinite
perfection" (A. Maclaren, D.D.).
But
a momentously practical question now arises: what is to be our attitude to the
Government, and to the laws, of the land in which national birth has placed us?
The Apostle answers:-
"Be subject to
every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king as
supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him."
Our
submission is not necessarily approval: we submit to the ordinance for the
Lord’s sake, not necessarily for the ordinance’s sake: we desire to be winsome,
and sympathetic, and obedient wherever possible, so as to commend our Master to
the nation in which we live. Our
Lord, when about to be executed by the State, openly acknowledged that the
power of that State was ordained of God: "Thou wouldest have no power against me, except it were
given thee from above" (John
19: 2).* It
is manifest, however, that an impassable gulf yawns the moment the human ordinance clashes, in plain black and white, with
any command of God. It was Peter
himself who said:- "We
must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:
29), a decision which ultimately cost him his life, and all the
martyrs theirs. But, short of
that, the Christian - like his Lord, who never entered on a crusade against
political or racial corruption, but poured
out the truth which can alone cure it - pays the taxes, obeys the laws, ** intercedes for all in authority, and by
maintaining his saltedness saves Sodom. Under the terrible totalitarian Emperors of
his day, Tertullian
said:- "We Christians, looking up to heaven with
outspread hands, and without a prompter, because we pray from our hearts, do
intercede for all emperors, that their senates may be faithful, their people
honest, and their whole empire at peace."
[*
It is nowhere written, Christians, submit yourselves to good governments, any
more than it is written, Children, submit yourselves to good parents, or,
Servants, submit yourselves to good masters - "not
only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward"
(1 Pet. 3: 18). Grace is much more powerful in submission to
evil.]
**
In this sense we can say, "I am a Briton born,"
even as Paul cried, "I am a Roman born"
(Acts 22: 28), when he invoked the Roman law
courts (Acts 25: 11) in defence of his
character, though not in defence of his property or life. But, as Paul has himself said:- "Our citizenship is in
heaven" (Phil. 3: 20).]
So
the Apostle adds a warning that has by no means been unnecessary down the
Christian ages. "As free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of
wickedness, but as bondservants of God." The word ‘cloak’
aptly expresses some fair and attractive pretence by which we conceal some
secret evil, injurious to the State, that we are
practising. Our freedom
is God-given: "ye are bought with a price,
become not bondservants of men" (1 Cor. 7: 23): nevertheless behind our refusal of the
State’s law may lurk an unbrotherliness - the word
means anything opposite to love and charity - which does not fulfil our real
service, which is "bondservice to God". Our
sole defence against an iniquitous Government is the Most High (1 Pet. 4: 19). Martin
Luther, in his agony of spirit on the night preceding his appearance before
the Diet of Worms, prayed:- "Do Thou, my God, do Thou God, stand by me against all the
world’s wisdom and reason. Oh, do it! Thou must do it. Stand by me, Thou true,
eternal God!"
The
Apostle now closes with a general summary virtue in the child of God.
(1)
Honour all men. Here is a fundamental command that could
have come only from the God who is love. Peter was surrounded, as we shall be
increasingly, by persecutors and slanderers, by whose hands he was ultimately
killed: nevertheless we are to "honour all
men" - all having infinite possibilities, all made in the image
of God, and all redeemed in their totality by Christ. It is a suggestive little fact that, in the
old days, no Jew would tread on any chance piece of paper on the floor lest the
name of God might be written on it. It must never leave our minds that there is no
man who may not carry, not the name, but the character of God. Tertullian says:- "When the pagans deserted
their nearest relatives in a plague, Christians ministered to the sick and
dying: when the pagans left their dead unburied after a battle, and cast their
wounded into the streets, the Christians hastened to relieve the suffering."
So Madame
Chiang Kai-Shek wrote recently:-
"The Generalissimo and I feel that no words we
could speak could sufficiently express our debt of gratitude to the missionary
body all over
(2)
Love the Brotherhood. In the fierce war of nations, and the
grave mistake of the Churches in identifying themselves with their nations’
erroneous teaching this command becomes much more difficult, yet far more
urgent. We own but one Brotherhood -
those born of God in every nation; and God’s command is that we love these everywhere, and under all circumstances. The
(3)
Fear God. Over against the fear of man Scripture
invariably counter-poises the fear of God, and not for the world only, but also
for the Church. Grace does not cancel
the fear of God: the command here is as direct and straight as the love of the
Brotherhood: Grace cancels for us the fear of God as Christless sinners, but imposes a real fear of God as His
responsible servants. "If we have lost our thought of God as an all-just and
all-holy judge who will call us to strict account for all service done or left
undone, we must re-capture it" (T. H. Darlow). "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling"
(Phil. 2: 12).
(4)
Honour the King. It is simply overwhelming to us,
who are standing on the threshold of Antichrist, that the ‘king’ under whom Peter wrote is Nero, who,
re-incarnated in the murdered ‘seventh emperor’
(Rev. 17: 11), will be the
Antichrist. "There is No power but of God"
(
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FOOTNOTE
The
concealed trap-door through which every child of God falls who ignores or
denies the Second Coming is this:- that the very prophecies which assert
God's complete ultimate triumph, after a decisive Armageddon, he - without
the Armageddon - pours over the present situation as a
soporific and an anodyne: so that desperate evil which ought to be fought to
the death is quietly assumed to be an evanescent by-product of evolution; and
God Himself is brought in (by an error which can be perfectly honest and
sincere) to establish and authenticate a monstrous misinterpretation of the
modern crisis. No man is logically
justified in accepting God’s heaven while rejecting God’s hell, or in forecasting a golden age while
obliterating the agony (birth-pangs: Matt. 24: 8)
which alone can give it birth. For two days after the outbreak of the Great
War, Dr. Clifford says, he was too stunned to pray. Happy will be the younger generation if,
cradled in a false optimism, and identifying the Most High with a ‘social’ Christianity, it does not turn infidel at the
first shock of the last judgments.
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