The Spirit at Work                                                                 11/9/41

 

Scripture:  Matthew 25: 31-40; 34-46.

 

Religion has often been thought of as that which improves one, personally, to the point where he is saved from that which he fears.  It is that.  But that is not all that there is to religion.  If Jesus knew what he was talking about, religion has to do also with the dealings and relationships of people with each other.  It is ethical as well as devotional.

 

The Scriptural passage which I read in your hearing deals not so much with the rewards of the righteous as it does with something else.  Rewards are mentioned in connection with what one may be rewarded for.  Jesus was teaching his disciples on the Mount of Olives that their relationship to him and to God meant not enough unless they were so saturated with the social significance of his gospel that they would willingly treat people, in any kind of need, just as they would treat him if he were in similar need.

 

But church people have had a great deal of trouble in satisfactorily interpreting that side of Jesus’ teachings ever since he walked the earth.  By the beginning of the 16th century, most of the church leaders in Europe seemed to have firmly fixed in mind the idea that the main business of religion, as administered by the church, was to make people individually good enough to get to heaven.  Some even went so far astray as to sell indulgences to insure heaven to those who broke, or intended to break, their codes of ethics, of law, or of social convention.  It seemed at that time that, so long as one maintained the proper religious relationship with God through his priest, usually with the proper consideration, he could do just as he pleased about trespassing against the rights or persons of his fellowmen.

 

Now of course many people inwardly revolted against that sort of implied interpretation of the place of religion.  But nothing revolutionary was done about it until the great religious reformation of the 16th century which tore open the hitherto united Christian Church and established new branches of the church which protested against it.

 

The religious reformation brought out two different types of theology in the Protestant churches.  And from these two types of theology sprang two main attitudes on the part of church people toward the welfare of other people.  These two lines of thought can be traced to Martin Luther in Germany and to John Calvin at Geneva in Switzerland.

 

Martin Luther freed the world from the yoke of a corrupt church by advancing and defending the doctrine of justification by faith alone.  Before this time, it had been supposed by altogether too many people that a man’s life was righteous only if his priest kept him right with God.  Hence people were entirely dependent for salvation upon the church.  But Luther maintained that a person’s faith effectively makes him a righteous man.  He insisted so thoroughly upon the theological idea that personal faith secures one’s salvation that he made religion appear to be entirely separated from social ethics.  So far as he was concerned, good works were not necessary to salvation of a man’s soul.  Hence religion could not be bothered with social ethics and the state ought to take care of the latter.  Luther made no effort to change social conditions in his time.  In fact he cruelly refused to help the peasants of Germany in their revolt against undue oppression.

 

John Calvin, on the other hand, advanced a theological doctrine of salvation that was totally different from that of Luther in its social consequences.  Luther stressed the love and the mercy of God.  Calvin stressed God’s justice.  It seemed to John Calvin that, if God is just, He can save or condemn people as He pleases.

 

To Calvin, every person is sinful and so has no claim on salvation from his sins except as God in His justice sees fit to grant mercy.  According to Calvin, God has mercifully seen fit to predestine some chosen people to be saved while others are predestined to be lost.  No living person can be sure that he is among those to be saved.  So it is to his own interest to act in such a way that others will grant the possibility that he may be saved, in case God has so decreed.  And no one would want to indicate by his conduct that he was clearly among the condemned. 

 

This kind of theology caused the followers of John Calvin always to pursue the good life.  A Lutheran of that time might rest easy on the assurance that he was justified and saved by his faith.  But a Calvinist must be continually proving himself.  Hence, to do good was centrally important to the Calvinist.  He was forced to consider the welfare of others as well as of himself.

 

The social theories of Luther and Calvin sprang, in deductive manner, directly from their ideas of the nature of God and His relationship to man.  Now let us take a look ahead into the eighteenth century revival which started in England.  The central figure of that revival was John Wesley.  What kind of ideas did he have with which to promote such a great movement?

 

John Wesley’s career is an interesting one in many respects.  We might look for his system of theology, but we would find it very difficult to put our fingers on it.  As a matter of fact, he gave the world no such systematic theological idea as did Luther or Calvin.  Compared to either of these, he was a religious free-lance and belonged in a class by himself.  He was a practical genius who helped start a great general evangelical revival, who organized new religious societies, who was interested in every practical problem that came along.  He adapted himself to any expedient which confronted him, and organized his forces as he went along.  He came to the point where he became a sort of opportunist in religion.  He favored whatever seemed to  him right, reasonable and workable in a given situation.

 

It must be admitted that Wesley began his constructive ministry with something of the Lutheran viewpoint in mind.  After several years of struggle in trying to be an effective minister, John Wesley had a conversion experience that convinced him that man is justified by faith alone.  And he began the constructive period of his ministry preaching this doctrine.  He was even convinced that good works had nothing whatever to do with salvation.

 

But he reacted before long from this position after a particularly disgusting interview with an extreme Antinomian who insisted to Wesley that one might do anything he wanted to do without really committing any sin if he lived by faith.  After this, Wesley began to stress good works as a necessary accompaniment to faith in order to be justified.

 

By various stages in his thinking, he finally reached the conclusion that good works were entirely essential, and were the test of righteousness.  In other words, to be good, one must do good.

 

Along with the decline of Wesley’s emphasis on faith alone, we see the imperfect growth of a social viewpoint.  Having become unpopular in the established Church of England, (in which he was ordained, and which he never left), he was frequently denied admission to its regular pulpits.  One day, when he was locked out of one of the Established churches, he started preaching on one of the highways the social message of Isaiah.  His text was this: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.  He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”  [Isaiah 61: 1].

 

We find him defining religion as the love of God in the heart, finding its expression in the practice toward others of justice, mercy, and truth.  His followers were soon nicknamed Methodists.  He defined a Methodist as one “who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, and with all his strength,” and who “loves his neighbor as himself,” who “loves every man as his own soul.”  [Lincoln’ definition of a desirable church creed.]

 

Wesley became, not the expounder of scholarly ideas, but the great practical, traveling preacher.  His travel was strenuously full with visits and counsel to the Methodist societies, with visits to prisons and army camps, with visits to the sick, with preaching several times each day to congregations that needed him and often flocked to hear him in the open field.  He started a much-needed loan fund; he founded various homes for various kinds of needy people; he threw himself into the unpopular fight for temperance.  And his message was modified and magnified by his observation of human needs as he met them in his work.

 

This, briefly speaking, is the way in which three men, typical of those types of religious thinking, approached the social side of the gospel.  Luther ignored it.  Calvin made it centrally important in his theory.  Wesley approached it, not through theology at all, but through the practical experiences of a varied life.

 

Jesus first sought disciples.  Then he commanded them to go forth and preach the gospel to every living creature.  I am confident that the same thing is expected of his disciples today.  The world will become Christian only as fast as Christ’s disciples preach the gospel by word and act, perhaps especially by act, according to their capabilities.

 

And if we are to preach and live a gospel, let it, by all means, be a “social” gospel.  Professor Tawney says that there are four main attitudes which religious opinion may adopt toward social relationships and institutions and economic relations.  Religious opinion may (first) stand aloof on one side and regard these so-called secular matters as unrighteousness.  Most modern religious leaders have abandoned that position long ago.  (Second) Religious opinion may take social relationships for granted and ignore them as matters of indifference with which religion has no concern.  This is like Luther’s position.  In the (third) place, religious opinion may throw itself into agitation for some particular reform, for the removal of some crying scandal, for the promotion of some final revolution or change which will bring in a reign of righteousness on earth.

 

In the (fourth) place, Professor Tawney says that religious opinion may at once “accept and criticize” social relations, “tolerate and amend” them, “welcome the gross world of human appetites as the squalid scaffolding from which the life of the spirit must rise, and insist that this also is the material of the Kingdom of God.”

 

To one who holds this opinion religion is connected with all activities, unless they are brutal or dead. 

 

Now we can reflect any one of these four attitudes, but it seems to me that the last is by far the best.  In our religious thinking, we must frankly and openly accept the whole field of human appetites, motives, ambitions, disappointments, sins, longings, embitterments, enjoyments, pleasures and hopes.  We must constructively criticize, help, tolerate, amend and counsel.  We must earnestly study those social questions on which no confident opinion has finally been formulated as yet.

 

We must study the actual conditions of life of people around us.  And we must not entirely judge people by the groups or industries or movements in which they are found.  Dr. Coe reminds us that the merits of men’s motives often differ greatly from the merits of the systems in which they are enmeshed.

 

We must do what we can to see that every human being shall have his fair chance to prove his personal worth.  The actual, practical code of our church must be written by the needs of our people and our community and the way in which we propose to meet those needs. 

 

Perhaps it seems hard to create and construct a social gospel instead of deducing it from a given theology.  And it is hard.  But it is right.  Needless to say, we must summon to our aid, in such a task, all of our personal faculties and capabilities; all of the available experience of the past, as revealed in sacred and secular literature; all of the contemporary wisdom we can glean from others; all of the actual case material we can gather; and all of the spiritual resources of God on which we can lay hold.

                        [Practical note: needs of the Red Cross]

 

[Need for increased giving in this year of emergency.  Christians usually lead.]

 

-------------

 

 

Dates and places delivered:

 

            Wailuku Union Church, January 5, 1930

            Paia Japanese Church, January 19, 1930

            Kahului Union Church, January 19, 1930

            Puunene Japanese Church, February 9, 1930

            Wailuku Japanese Church, February 9, 1930

            Kahului Union Church, September 3, 1933

            Makawao Union Church, August 12, 1934

            Puunene Hawaiian church, September 2, 1934

            Wananalua Church, Hana, October 20, 1935

            Pilgrim Church, October 4, 1936  AM

            Wisconsin Rapids, November 9, 1941