Before we can achieve a greater unity of spirit, purpose, and power, we must ask and answer such questions as the following: Shall we return to Rome, to Athens, or to Jerusalem? By Rome, we mean that for which pagan Rome was symbolical; namely, dependence on organized and only material power. By Athens, we mean that for which Athens became a symbol; namely, religious philosophy. By Jerusalem, we mean that for which the church must ever remember her; namely, the upper room. In other words, the danger which today is dogging the footsteps of the church is that of returning to Rome and to Athens rather than to Jerusalem and the upper-room experience.
Another question which we should ponder is, Shall we stand for the religion of a church, the religion of a book, or the religion of the Spirit as disclosed in the church and the Book?
Again, Shall we represent a religion of authority, or a religion of adventure? That is, shall we deal with realities exemplified in human lives, or theories which we do not demonstrate? Shall we stand for a religion of declaration, merely, or a religion of demonstration?
And finally, Shall the church take its cue from the world, or from Christ? Upon the answer to these questions—the correct answer in life and ministry—hangs acceptable service for God in this crisis hour. Away from the byways and highways of these dangers, Christ's words, found in our text (John 17:23), are calculated to lead us. Let us not miss the way. Let us not falter as we find the way.
We recognize that these are not separate and distinct questions. We have only enumerated them in order to catch the various shadings and aspects of much of the religion of our day, which the world is examining and refusing. God is also examining and likewise refusing. The trend today is earthward, and can never meet the spiritual demands of this hour. The precarious condition of the Protestant world has come about by a cherished and overindulged desire on the part of the church to be like the world, and like the great counterfeit and apostate church.
In a recent issue of the World's Work, William Pierson Merrill said: "Protestantism is today in a critical position. It may have had its day, and henceforth exist as a declining, weakening cause. It may burst into new vigor and go on into the splendor of a new day and a new life. Whether this or that shall be its destiny depends on Protestants themselves, . . . on whether they let their churches remain partly Catholic, or make them wholly Protestant. . . . The simple remedy is in making Protestantism true to itself. . . . Protestantism will be doomed to dwindle and die, if it keeps on trying to compete with Catholicism on its own lines."
No truer words could be spoken than these. And the same will apply to any church that tries to ape anything in this old sin-cursed, selfish world. The pattern is in. heaven. "I in them, . . . that the world may know," is to be the guiding star of Christians always. The ideals of the true Christian religion must now be lived so vividly that there can be no uncertainty about them anywhere in the world. That is what Christ longed for and prayed for. Will we not indulge Him in His heartbroken plea? Why are we so stupid? Why are we so slow?
Running all through the life and ministry of Christ was the compassion He had for the world because the world did not know. "They know not what they do," was His earnest plea in their behalf. This realization haunted Him night and day throughout His entire ministry. We must think of it more until it becomes in us, as in Him, a burning passion, a fire uncontrolled, bursting forth in loving, exemplifying service, like that of Christ Himself, Such a vision continually before us would affect our whole life and ministry.
We must never forget the fact that present-day doubt is concerning God.. Men wonder if there can be a good God back of what they see going on. But when we reveal to them a Christlike life and ministry, we lead these torn, distracted minds to turn to Jesus and say with relief, "If God is like that, He is all right." To make Christ known, trusted, loved, obeyed, and exemplified in the whole range of individual life and ministry, and in all human relationships,—nothing less,—is the task to which we are called. Is this not the work most needed now across the breadth of earth? And is it not likewise true that it is the task most neglected? If it is the most needed work and the most neglected work, it then follows that it is the most important work that God has committed to men today.
Aside from this, is not such a work the most productive work, judged by every test? Do not the centuries teach that it is the most enduring, yes, the only enduring work? Therefore, must it not be the most Christlike work? Then why, oh, why is it not the mainspring of all our counsel and planning and serving?
As we think of our text, "I in them, . . . that the world may know," and then think of the work of Christ and the church, do we not find it true that in every time and in every place where Christianity has been manifested in purest form and has revealed itself as the greatest transforming, world-conquering power, this central purpose of our Lord has been increasingly central in the minds of His ministering servants? Think of Paul, and of how nearly he struck the real objective in his life and ministry, and then hear him express his central aim:
"I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: . . . that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend . . . the love of Christ." Eph. 2:8-19.
The immeasurable difference between real Christianity and all other religions is found in this great central theme of Christ's prayer. "I in them, . . . that the world may know," fulfilled in the lives of God's leaders in this generation means much. It means, first of all, being in the world, but not of it. It means winning men from, the world, but not borrowing from the world that with which to perform the task. Christ never so much as by a hair's breadth stepped over the line of worldliness to reach His divine objectives. Somehow, He always had hidden resources for every emergency. He was undaunted before every problem. His zeal was untarnished, regardless of what He was called upon to pass through.
There is no place where we as leaders so need to represent and exemplify Jesus Christ before the church as in resourcefulness for the accomplishment of the waiting task. "I in them" will also bring unlimited resources upon which they can draw for solving every perplexity and every emergency. It must be so, for "Christ is all, and in all."
As we look around us and realize how few, comparatively, are coming under the spell of our Lord, do we not hear the summons to seek and find the experience alluded to in our text? I grant, that when we compare the numbers gathered into the fold these days, with those in any earlier century, we have much to cause our hearts to leap high with gratitude and with confidence. But when we contemplate the lateness of the hour, and the great task yet to be performed within this single generation, do we not cry out in our very souls for some means, some method, by which our results may be greatly multiplied?
When we contrast the number who are being reached in certain areas with the number being reached in other areas, we think we see the secret; and instead of yielding to pessimism, we have a deepening confidence that were the same processes, the same emphases, brought to bear on these other fields, and particularly upon our great cities, we should see like signs and wonders, and a like expansion of the kingdom of Christ. We are therefore forced to think now of our sins of omission, of our falling short of what is God's obvious purpose for us. With fuller meaning we hear the voice of our praying Saviour calling back again over the two thousand years that intervene between us and the first century, the pleading words of our text: "I in them, . . . that the world may know."
There is all around us today a peculiar interest in religion and what it connotes. We find people today in the midst of reflections and discussions of more wide and more serious concern than in any previous time. There is, too, a responsiveness to the note of reality wherever it is struck today. There is also something deeply pathetic and moving in the kind of questions that are now being presented with such insistence. There is a reaching out for reality; and what means more, there is a willingness to pay the price in order to come under the spell of reality, a willingness upon the part of a very considerable number, which is highly reassuring and very refreshing.
Calculated by everything around us and every agency at our command, this hour is undoubtedly the most opportune time for the finishing of the work of God in all the earth by the means referred to in our text. Soon the agencies of evil will so control the world situation, because of the withdrawal of the restraining hand of God, that demons will dictate the thoughts and acts of men to a much larger degree than at the present moment. Deception then will sweep across the world "with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." Shall we not now join together in a solemn covenant, as leaders of the hosts of God in the earth today, to move out into the program outlined in our text, "that the world may know," and that the work of God may triumph speedily?
