April, 1939
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
164
THE EMOTIONS OF PAUL [Continued {com page 133] dark that I was wet with sweat, but, oh, my Lord did sweat blood for such poor souls.” Is it any wonder that whole tribes of In dians were swayed as David Brainerd preached to them the evangel of divine love? Thus it is with Paul. When he would express the poignancy of his yearning over the souls of men, he does not hesitate to make use of the pangs of labor to give the experience adequate interpretation. Again he is like his Master, of whom Isaiah says: “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11). The Emotion of Money Expressing his abandonment of self, the apostle says, in 2 Corinthians 12:15: “I will very gladly spend and be spent for you.” One translator renders it: "For your sakes I will certainly spend my all and be spent myself.” The passage suggests to me the emotion of some one bidding at an auction. Some one else bids higher every time, but this bidder so prizes what he seeks to buy that he bids and bids till he puts his last cent on it, for at all costs he must have it. How far do we exhibit such a whole-hearted spirit? Is there on our part any real expenditure of time, strength, en ergy, vitality, to win souls? In London, England, recently, a man and his wife stood in a theater queue from six o’clock on a Thursday morning until eight on the following Friday evening in order to get a front seat at a first night. Think of it—-thirty-eight hours to see a passing show! What expenditure of time! How does that compare with the time we spend in eager service for our Lord? The Emotion of the Multitude "The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:14) is another of Paul’s expres sions of the evangelistic passion. What has that declaration to do with the emotion of the crowd? This, that the word "constrain” is the same Greek word as “press,” as found in Luke 8:45: “The multitude throng thee and press thee.” Paul therefore is saying, "The love of Christ throngs us, presses us, crowds us, sweeps us along.” There is always a peculiar emotion in a crowd: mass consciousness is a strange and inexplicable thing. W e do things in a crowd we never would do alone. That con dition is true in a cheering crowd or a laughing crowd or a weeping crowd. The emotion of a crowd can fairly carry us off our feet. So it was with Paul: the love of Christ swept him along, constrained him to toil and wrestle for souls. The Emotion of the Master Perhaps the most remarkable utterance of all those which reveal Paul’s emotions is Colossians 1:23, 24: “The gospel . . . which was preached . . . whereof I Paul am made a minister; who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.”
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Here, surely, is the very emotion of the Master, the emotion of Calvary, the emo tion of the cross. But did not Christ say, ’’It is finished”? Can there be anything be hind in the sufferings of Christ? Can there be anything to fill up? Ah, yes. The work of redemption is done, but the work of proclaiming it to a sin-enslaved world has to be done, and the same sacrificial spirit is needed for both. The emotion of love which took Christ to the cross must send us anywhere He bids us go to announce to man His full and free salvation. The Christ of the cross and the cross of Christ were repeated in Paul and must be repeated in you and me if we are ever to be soul-winners. There is truth and force in the statement, “Christianity with out sacrifice is the laughingstock of hell.” Robert Ferguson in his book, Evangelism [or Today, tells of a two-hours’ talk he once had with Studdert Kennedy, famil iarly known as Woodbine Willie. In tones of singular passion, Kennedy told how gripped he still was by a vision he had of Christ at the Battle of Messines. He had run toward the British line, half mad with fright, through what was once a wooded copse. It was being heavily shelled by the Germans. As he ran, he stumbled over something. It was the body of an underfed, undersized German boy. “Poor little beg gar,” he muttered. “What had you got to do with it?” And then as the fountains of his pity broke, there came a light—perhaps imagination-—and the boy disappeared and in his place lay Christ on the cross . . . From that moment Kennedy never saw a battlefied as anything but a Calvary. He saw the cross set up in every slum, every filthy quarter, every vice-laden street. "I saw Christ,” he said, “staring up at me from the pages of the newspaper that tells of a lost, bewildered world, and always, from the rising to the setting sun still stands my God, calling, calling, calling to men to come out and share His sorrow and help Him save His world."
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