Colossians 1:28 Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: The false teachers had a good deal to say about a higher wisdom reserved for the initiated. They apparently treated the Apostolic teaching as trivial rudiments only fit for the vulgar crowd. They had their initiated class to whom their mysteries were entrusted in whispers. Such absurdities excited Paul's special abhorrence. He had broken with Judaism on the very ground of its exclusiveness. These dreamers were trying to enforce an intellectual exclusiveness quite as opposed to the gospel. So the apostle takes up their phrases — "Mystery," "perfect" or initiated, "wisdom," and presses them into the service of the principle that the most recondite secrets of the gospel were for every man. Our business is to tell out as fully and loudly as we can to all, all the wisdom we have learned. I. THE APOSTLE'S STATEMENT OF HIS WORK. 1. Not a theory or a system, but a living Person. (1) The peculiarity of Christianity is that you cannot take its message and put aside Christ. His Person is inextricably intertwined with His teaching, which centres in Him who is "The Truth." You may separate between Buddha's and Confucius's teaching and themselves, but you cannot do so with Jesus. If we think less of Him than Paul does in this chapter, we shall scarcely feel that He should be the preachers theme; hut if He is to us what He was to him, then our own message will be "Behold the Lamb." Let who will preach abstractions, the Christian minister has to preach Christ. (2) To preach Him is to set forth His person, and the facts of His life and death, and to accompany these with that explanation which turns a biography into a gospel. "The gospel which" Paul preached was "how that Christ died." That is biography, and to stop there is not to preach Christ; but add "for our sins," etc., and you preach Christ. (3) A ministry of which Christ is manifestly the centre may sweep a wide circumference, and include many themes. The requirement bars out no province of thought or experience, but demands that all themes should lead up to Christ, and that His .name, like some deep tone on an organ, shall be heard sounding on through all the ripple and change of the higher notes. 2. The manner of the Apostle's activity. (1) "We proclaim," tell out fully, clearly, earnestly. We are not muttering mystery-mongers. We cry in the streets to every man. (2) This implies that the speaker has a message, that he is not a speaker of his own words or thoughts, but of what has been told him to tell. 3. This connection of the minister's office. (1) Contrasts with the priestly theory. "We preach," not we sacrifice, work miracles at any altar, or impart grace by any rites, but by the manifestation of the truth discharge our office, and spread the blessings of Christ. (2) Contrasts with the false teacher's style of speech, which finds its parallel in much modern talk. Their business was to argue and refine and speculate. They sat in a lecturer's chair; we stand in a preacher's pulpit. If the Christian minister allows the philosopher in him to overpower the herald, and substitutes his thoughts about the message or his arguments in favour of it for the message itself, he abdicates his office. 4. We hear many demands to-day for a "higher type of preaching," which I would heartily echo, if only it be preaching, the proclamation of the great facts of Christ's work. But many are trying to play up to the requirements of the age by turning their sermons into dissertations, philosophical, moral, or aesthetic. We need to fall back upon this "Whom we preach," and oppose that to the demands of an age one half of which "require a sign," and would degrade the minister into a priest, and the other calls for "wisdom," and would turn him into a professor. II. THE VARYING METHODS BY WHICH THIS ONE GREAT END IS PURSUED. 1. Warning or admonishing. (1) The teaching of morality is an essential part of preaching Christ. But the moral teaching which is confined to general principles is woefully like repeating platitudes and firing blank cartridges; yet if the preacher goes beyond these toothless generalities, he is met with the cry of "personalities." But there is no preaching Christ completely which does not include plain speaking about plain duties. (2) Nor is such preaching complete without plain warning of the end of sin. People like to have the smooth side of truth always uppermost; but there are no rougher words about what wrong-doers come to than some of Christ's; and he has only given one half of his Master's message who hides or softens "the wages of sin is death."(3) But all this must be connected with and built on Christ. Christian morality has Jesus for its perfect exemplar, His love for its motive, His grace for its power. Nothing is more impotent than mere moral teaching. 2. "Teaching." In the facts of Christ's life and death, as we grow up to understand them, we get to see more and more the key to all things, and the Christian minister's business is to be ever learning and teaching more and more of the manifold wisdom of God. He must seek to present all sides of truth, teaching all wisdom, and so escaping from his own limited mannerisms. The Christian, ministry is distinctly educational, and is more than the "simple preaching" which is the "avoidance of mere dogma" or the repetition of "Believe." The New Testament and common sense require more from a teacher. 3. Observe the repetition of "every man," which is Paul's protest against an intellectual aristocracy, and his affirmation that Christianity is for all. III. THE ULTIMATE END OF THESE DIVINE METHODS. 1. Presentation at the Judgment. 2. Perfection. The word may be used in its, technical meaning of "initiated," but negatively it implies the entire removal of, all defects, and positively the complete possession of all that belongs to human nature as God meant it to be. 3. This completeness is attainable only in Christ, by that vital union with Him brought about by faith, which will pour His Spirit into ours. 4. This is possible for every man. There are no hopeless classes. IV. THE STRUGGLE AND THE STRENGTH WITH WHICH PAUL REACHES TOWARD THIS AIM. 1. He has found that he cannot do his work easily. That great purpose made a slave of him. I not only preach, I toil like a man tugging at an oar, and putting all his might into each stroke. Perhaps there were people who thought the preacher's life an easy one, and so the apostle had to insist that the most exhaustive work is that of heart and brain. The minister who is afraid of putting all his strength into his work, up to the point of weariness, will never do much good. 2. There must be not only toil, but conflict, "striving," contending with hindrances, without and within, which sought to mar his work. 3. Now for the strength. The measure of our power is Christ's power in us. He whose presence makes the struggle necessary, by His presence strengthens us for it. We have not only His presence beside us as an ally, but His grace within us. Let us take courage then for all work and conflict. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: |
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