133
April, 1939
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
To be stirred, like Paul, with the constraining love of Christ for the lost, the Sunday-school teacher needs to go back to Calvary. The International Lessons which are being studied around the world this month give opportunity for further insight into the Apostle Paul’s motives. The Emotions of Paul
By FREDERICK P. W O O D * London, England Illustrations by Ransom D. Marvin the heart of religion is religion in the heart. There can be no soul-saving work without emotion. Whoever saw a fire brigade or a lifeboat crew do their work without feeling the thrill of emotion? Yet a minister wrote to me the other day saying that when I came to his church for qn evangelistic cam paign, he thought I would find among his people “a nice, quiet enthusiasm”—what ever that meant! Paul is, perhaps, the outstanding evangel ist of the New Testament writers. W e do not think of him especially as an emotional character. W e rather look upon him as the man who was strong and virile, the master ful theologian, the cool, calculating logician, and yet there are sentences scattered throughout his writings which reveal great deeps of emotion in his nature. Let me men tion some of these. The Emotion of the Mourner In Romans 9:2, 3, we read: "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren.” Further, in Philippians 3:18, he says: “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ." “Great heaviness,” "sorrow in my heart,” “weeping”—these striking phrases describe the emotion of the mourner which throbbed and pulsated in his heart for all unsaved souls. Paul was not ashamed to weep, nor to tell us that he wept. He was like his Master, who with "strong crying and tears” “offered up prayers and supplications” (Heb. 5 :7 ), and who, gazing at Jerusalem, wept (Lk. 19:41). The word “wept” here, by the way, does not mean the ordinary shedding of tears as when He stood by the tomb of Lazarus. It is a word which really suggests that His whole frame shook with convulsive sobs. The Psalmist had the same spirit when he wrote: "Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law . . . Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.” Now do we ever feel like that toward the lost? Paul saw the godless world as a mourner sees his loved one cold in death, in the. grip of the last enemy. And as a mourner with broken heart sobs over the dead, so Paul experienced heartache and heartbreak as he mourned over those dead
T HE CYNIC discounts the value of all evangelism because to him it is nothing but emotion; yet the real truth is that without emotion, evangelism is ineffective. After many years in the field of evangelism, I have no hesitation in saying that the most subtle temptation to all who are engaged in this work is the snare of becoming too used to it. Familiarity breeds contempt. The peril comes to us all to get stale, to lose our freshness, to become so accustomed to the telling of the message that we lose the glow of our early enthusiasm, to get so used to facing audiences that we forget they are lost souls. Then preaching becomes metal lic, forced, professional, unctionless. This was Paul’s dread, lest having preached to others he might become a cast away, and this is much more to be dreaded than the fear of being hyperemotional. Of course, emotion and excitement are not syn onymous terms. Excitement is dangerous in religion; emotion indispensable. After all, *Director, National Young Life Campaign. • As a mourner with broken heart sobs over the dead, so Paul experienced h e a r ta c h e and h e a r tb r e a k as he mourned over those dead in sin and in the grip of the archenemy of souls.
• A mother will suffer anything for the little one she loves. Thus it was with Paul in the poignancy of his yearning over the souls of men. in sin and in the grip of the archenemy of souls. J. H. Jowett used to say: "Tearless hearts can never be heralds -of the passion. When our sympathy loses its pang, we can no longer be -the servants of the passion." I heard of a church some time ago where the officers got together for prayer. One deacon in a prayer of confession said, “Lord, forgive me for my dry eyes. I have never shed a tear over the lost.” There was a revival in that church soon after wards. It has well been said, "Revival is not go ing down the street with a big drum; it is going back to Calvary with a big sob.” The Emotion of the Mother The apostle speaks of "my little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). Here he is not mourning over the dead but is travailing like a mother, who will suffer anything for the little one she loves. Paul so loved the souls of men that he would en dure the pangs of childbirth to save them. He reminds me of David Brainerd who in his journal says: "I wrestled for the ingathering of souls. I was in such an agony from the sun half an hour high till near [Continued on page 164]
•
"Beware of prayerless tears, and beware of tearless prayers."
*
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker