Why Jesus Is the Hope of the World

Why Jesus Is the Hope of the World WHY JESUS IS THE HOPE OF THE WORLD
J. P. Sanders

We are standing today on the threshold of one of the most dramatic and significant periods in all history. We are living in the last phases of an age which has betrayed itself. The world’s unspeakable chaos together with the speeding velocity of events makes any attempt to criticize or to analyze it very difficult. Yet we look hopefully for a tomorrow which will bring a new pattern for living, a pattern that will be more truly and thoroughly grounded in the principles of social justice advocated by Jesus of Nazareth. Any worthwhile civilization, be it a democracy or not, must rest upon Christian principles and ideals. Only that which is righteous and good can last, and God has revealed all goodness to the world through Christ. Only as men follow Jesus can they attain the good life, righteousness of character, peace on earth, and the hope of peace in the world to come. Jesus is the hope of the world because he reveals to us those principles which must undergird our homes, our schools, the church, and our personal lives. It is because men have not known Jesus, or have for-gotten him, that the world finds itself in the darkness and the confusion of this present war. It is because men have not undergirded with the teachings of Jesus the various institutions that concern our modern life. The right principles have not been applied in building the institutions that lie at the basis of our pattern of living.

I. Education and the Church.
Let us begin with education. In the first part of the nineteenth century Benthom and Mill believed the adoption of universal education would solve all the serious social problems of the country before the close cf the century. The idea was a very old one, for even Socrates held knowledge to be virtue, and Bacon had found it to be power. Nevertheless the idea did not develop the utopia longed for. It did produce an age intoxicated with knowledge and drunk with power, but nothing positive and favorable could be said for its virtue. The program was successful in developing intelligence without character and the result was public calamity. It became noticeable that a trained mind does not necessarily guarantee a straight life nor make one a desirable citizen. A neglect of moral and religious training cannot but result in impoverished spiritual living, in the failure to develop the type citizenship that will make the community safer and better. Even in this critical hour when a bewildered world is calling for an overwhelming stress upon spiritual perspective there is a steady decline in the study of those things that will bring about these spiritual ideals. There is an increasing emphasis on the purely secular. The emphasis in education has been such as to produce, not spiritualized character, but robot recruits with highly integrated manual skills for service in an industrial and material world. It has been entirely lacking in soul-saving culture and in spiritual realism. Training of students chiefly for occupational and gainful pursuits in life is after all a kind of sordid business. Much that is called civilization today is of all things most uncivilized. In the midst of our unprecedented learning with its none-such type of efficiency, in the blazing glory of its intellectual light, we are surrounded with chaos and the ravages of war. We are pairt of a generation that seems to know best how to work its own destruction by' way of literally starving itself to death in the midst of plenty. We have produced a famine of the word of God.

Even within the last decade there has been a very marked decline in religious training. There are a number of reasons for this. The people of America have been guilty of trying to serve two masters, God and mammon. We have been So in love with the material in all its forms that there has been little time left for things of the spirit. We have sought the comforts, advantages, and privileges which usually come with increasing wealth and prosperity. We have become the most prosperous nation in all the world. We sought to live for ourselves and took but little time to think of ourselves as our brother’s keeper. All of this material progress has been largely at the expense of our neglected souls. Our wealth has created for us a higher standard of living, a higher material standard of living. The price that we have paid for it has been taken from the realm of the spiritual. Interest in Christianity has therefore changed in weight. Young people were taught in our schools that science held all the answers to their problems, and they forgot even the brotherhood of man, not only in our own country, but also toward the other nations of the world.

Educational programs came almost wholly within the realm of the state’s influence, which caused them to become more secular, materialistic, and cynical. They have been permitted to teach everything but a knowledge of God. The fundamental spiritual qualities of life handed down to us by the forefathers of our country were questioned and often ridiculed. Skepticism came in to take their place, and loss of faith resulted. Someone has said, Material science built for the student a sensuous concept of the universe, which satisfied his search for the secret of life, its purpose and its meaning. These things have resulted in changes in home life, and very definite change in the status of women. The school became more and more responsible for the education of children as the home neglected this care. Since the school was not concerned with teaching spiritual values these values went down. The foundation stones of true character were neglected and often entirely wanting. Entertainment and amusements have increased, since education and material enjoyments flourished while spiritual education was lessened. The temporal gained more and more prominence—the eternal declined. As a result, apathy toward the church and Christian teaching has been felt even within our own membership. We are faced therefore with a great need, a great challenge, for a spiritual awakening. Jesus is our only hope.

If we are going to be the masters rather than the slaves of our great material scientific developments we must possess a greater knowledge of the Bible and a change of heart and life that a vital knowledge of the word of God will bring with it. The all-compelling list of ideals found in the teaching of Jesus, which can effectively guide our development and progress, must receive our devotion and loyalty. Leaders are needed for our time—decisive leaders—guided and inspired by these ideals,, who can see out on the horizon, and there catch the vision of a greater and better tomorrow. Life is never static. As the tides rise and fall life surges on to eternity. Today is but a moment on the fringe of that endless merging of the known present with the unknown future—a future whose possibilities lie in the hands of those who shape the educational policies and destinies of today. Those who shape these policies are too often inspired by pagan concepts and motivated by selfish ideals. The result will be the continuation of the darkness and chaos of the present.

Dr. H. H. Horn says in his book, JeSus the Master Teacher, “Those who are interested in education have not known about Jesus, and those interested in Jesus have not known education.” It is the responsibility of the Christian school, not only to know Jesus, but to be vitally interested also in the processes! by which a knowledge of Jesus can be spread to the world. We must face the responsibility of taking our educational program more seriously. Christianity is a teaching religion, it is educational in nature and process. Jesus was called Teacher more than by any other title. The public school has a child five days each week for six hours each day. This thirty hours stands in sharp contrast with the very small amount of religious training which the average child receives during the week. The elaborate equipment and highly trained teachers in the public school system also stand in contrast to the meager equipment and often poorly trained teachers of the Christian program. Unless we are willing to admit that secular education is more im-portant than Christian education the proportion of emphasis is entirely too small on the religious side. This should challenge us to increase both the time spent and the efficiency of our Christian educational work. Our growing young people cannot help being impressed, consciously or otherwise, by this failure on our part to provide adequately for Christian instruction.

Let us pause here to ask the question, what is Christian education? Teaching is no more than the introduction of control into the experience of a person. A person grows, develops and learns something whether he is taught or not. The teaching introduces control, guidance, direction, and stimulation into the activity of the person, so that certain desirable ideals and aims may be attained. With this in mind we may define Christian education as the introduction of control into experience in terms of the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament. Truly Christian teaching is the guiding and controlling of the growth and development of a person so as to produce the Christian life. The word “teach” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “tae- cean,” which meant “to show how to do.” Christian teaching is showing persons how to do in terms of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ so thoroughly and skillfully that they will learn to do and to be all that is expected of Christian men and women. The achievements of Christian education, then, are to be measured in terms of the improvements of the pupils’ lives. The teacher may present many interesting facts and all of them may be very true, but unless, by means of them, a change for the better has been effected in the life of the pupil, no real teaching has been accomplished. If, under the Christian teacher’s leadership, the pupil gains clear understanding of the word of God, realizes a high loyalty to Christ, sets for himself true Christian goals, and achieves righteousness in living, then he has learned, and of course the teacher has really taught. The aims of Christian teaching are set forth very clearly in the scriptures. For where else can one find the goal that we as Christian teachers are to follow. Jesus set the goal for the Christian life in the sermon on the Mount. “Ye therefore shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Toward this goal the Christian teacher sets his hopes and aspirations. To achieve in himself, and to lead his pupils, into an achievement of it, so that they will think rightly, feel rightly, and act rightly, is his greatest ambition. The chief difference between the point of view of the secular college and the point of view of the Christian college is: We believe that the integrating factor of Christianity is essential to remedying the hopeless confusion of modern education. Christianity gives one his proper relation to the universe, his general framework that will enable him to keep balance and proportion, and into which he may place all other knowledge gained in specialized fields of study. When one starts with Christianity he views the universe from the center outward. Consequently he sees all parts of the circumference very well. But if one starts with any other viewpoint he is looking toward the center from the circumference and he loses both proportion and perspective.

It is not the aim of the Christian college to be solely interested in the discovery of truth, but its interest is in the use of truth in making the world more Christian. The ideal of the secular school may be truth for truth’s sake, but that is not enough. We want to find the truth that we may use it to make the world a better place in which to live. We want to bring order out of chaos, to see the whole as greater than the part, and to find a life purpose that can steer a straight course in spite1 of the storms and cross currents. We want to build the truth into human life and to make it serviceable to the church and to generations yet to come. This great task cannot be achieved by just a department, but every sphere of campus life must be permeated by Christianity. It will be the aim of the Christian school to make the science classroom equally a center for the propagation of Christianity with the Bible classroom. The primary agencies for carrying out this purpose held sacred by the Christian college is the faculty. The aim of the college cannot hope to be achieved by teach-ers that are disqualified by character or by preparation for their task. If the teaching is to be distinguished by its religious purposes the teachers themselves must be thoroughly Christian. They are the most important human factor in reaching the goal. The personal influence of the teacher is very great. His maturity, superior education, academic prestige, make him a powerful personal influence. Very often those teachers who come in contact with students in their athletic, campus, and social activities, have the greatest opportunity for helping them build life ideals, and it should become a part of the religious function of the school that these teachers should be qualified to reflect the ideals and a^ms of Christian education. The cynic has no place among these, or the misanthrope who has lost contact with, and sympathy for youth, or that vigorous intellectualist not unknown in American institutions of higher learning today, who concedes his profession to be degraded if it ever is said in his presence that the college is the place for the upbuild ing of character. We are faced today with the need of an army of teachers who are willing to devote themselves to the great task of instructing the earth’s unchristian millions in the way of righteousness.

II. Jesus Our Model Teacher
The model for every teacher is Jesus, Christ the Lord. Dr. Horn mentions four reasons why JeSus was so successful as a teacher. First, he knew something to teach. He possessed a comprehensive knowledge of God and the materials and activities necessary to help his pupils attain the desired goal. Second, he knew human nature. He understood the structure and function of human personality. He knew the kind of help his pupils needed to live a godly life. Third, he knew how to teach. He was a master of the skills of mediating the subject matter of learning to the needs of the pupils So as to produce the greatest possible learning outcome. Fourth, he backed all of it up with a righteous life. His own personality was an example of what he wanted others to become. If we would be skillful teachers we need to follow Jesus in these fundamentals of teaching excellence. But such excellence is not attained without long and painstaking effort. The Bible must become the bread and meat of the daily study diet. The very best of educational philosophies must be understood and appropriated to Christian 'teaching. The teacher must first be a learner with all his mind, soul, and strength. Another characteristic. that every Christian, teacher needs to ac-quire is devotion to his pupils. Think of Jesus’ wil-lingness to lay down his life for his pupils. He was no hireling but tne shepherd of his sheep. Think of Paul spending and being spent for the souls of his converts. The Christian teacher must be able also to see values even in lives of delinquency, and devote himself vicariously to helping them realize the fullest possibilities as children of God. Jesus did vastly more than cherish ideals for people. As a good teacher he gave himself to help them realize those ideals. Educationally motivated self sacrifice is an essential quality of the real Christian teacher. Without this spirit of sacrificial service incarnate in flesh and blood teachers we may never experience the growth that is possible today and that was witnessed in the apostolic era. The Christian college is in no sense an adjunct of the church nor a substitute for the work of the church. But it is concerned with the educational process. It came into being because Christian people realized that it was better for their boys and girls to be trained under Christian teachers who are interested in their eternal welfare than under teachers with unchristian views of life who lack personal individualized interest in their sludents. Here are a few of the things the Christian college seeks to do. First, it gives constructive confirmation to the faith and teaching young people have received in Christian homes and in the church. The secular institution, in, spite of its great service, Very often destroys them. And even if it does not it fail's to develop them. Second, the Christian school seeks to develop Christian character in boys and girls, men and women entrusted to its care. This it does by providing instruction by men and women of deep Christian faith and genuine interest in the development of Christian personality. Purely secular education has miserably failed in this respect. We have learned with great sorrow that the trained mind does not guarantee the straight life. Only the teaching of Jesus Christ can do this. Third, the Christian college re-turns the students to their homes equipped and motivated to do their utmost to fill a place of service in the community and the church. It emphasizes Jesus’ statement, “He that would be greatest among you must become the servant of all.” Fourth, it equips young people for leadership by helping them prepare to be better parents, teachers, elders, and preachers. In this way they are able to contribute their part to the teaching and preaching of the gospel in the growth of the church. It encourages educational independence and does not follow all the fads and fashions of the prevailing mode of educational philosophy. It has convictions that are eternally Christian which cannot be sacrificed for these passing things. It is only when education becomes Christian that it can possibly prepare men and women to create a better world in which dwelleth righteousness. It is for this reason that we have no hesitation in saying that Jesus Christ is the hope of the world for education. The teaching of Jesus provides the only adequate foundation for the development of a really Christian happy home. For that reason Jesus is the hope of the home. There is hardly any doubt but that the home has received inadequate treatment from Christian teachers in times past. We have often talked about divorce, which of course should not be neglected, but have failed to discuss what the home ought to be and how its ideal is to be achieved. When we have presented Jesus’ teaching on divorce we have presented only a part of what Jesus had to say concerning the marriage relationship, and aftei all it is marriage and not divorce which constitutes our problem. Marriage is the problem and divorce is only a solution, an unfortunate solution, to an unfortunate marriage, ar- ragement. When marriage is contracted and made what Jesus intended it to be, divorce will never be thought of. Outside the teaching of the Bible the ideal home is unknown. We search in vain the writings of antiquity, and all pagan and secular literature, to discover what the home should be. It is only in the Bible that its ideals are set forth, that its beauties are revealed, that the self-sacrificing spirit undergirding all its members with love is pictured as the institution into which man comes, and which plays so important a part in shaping his destiny. We find ourselves under obligation to present the teaching of Jesus on the home not only to the adult but to the future home builders of America, our boys and girls. Where this is done and has been done in the past the results are most gratifying. In America there is one divorce for every six marriages, and following the war the percentage of divorces will no doubt increase very rapidly. While this is true for the country as a whole among those who have contracted marriage after at-tending Christian schools together, there is only one divorce in about seventy-five marriages. This is true because in Christian schools young people with similar Christian background are thrown together, and because in the Christian schools they receive instruction in the Bible concerning Jesus’ teaching regarding marriage and the home. Here too they have the opportunity of knowing one another and becoming acquainted during a period of courtship before a marriage is actually contracted. These things practically eliminate the element of chance from the marriage relationship. Perhaps if there were no other advantage to the Christian college other than it helps young men and women to select marriage partners with whom they can build successful Christian homes, it would justify its existence, and should cause every Christian parent to want to send his son and daughter to a Christian school.

Ill. Jesus and the Church
We said in the beginning that Jesus reveals to us those principles which undergird the church. We do not give this discussion less time than that given to education because we believe it less important. In fact, we believe it is the more important. It is, however, more often discussed, and is more familiar to all of you. For that reason we have allowed ourselves to discuss some of these other things in greater detail, and now call your attention to things which are more familiar. When we consider all that Jesus had to say on the subject of the kingdom of God and the. church, two great attributes stand out clearly. These are spirituality and universality. After all, these things imply one another. $)nly that which is spiritual can be universal, and nothing in religion is universal except that which belongs to the realm of the spiru tual. These qualities of the church, of the kingdom of God, definitely set it apa^t from the kingdom of popular Jewish expectation. The Jews were looking for a warrior on horseback who would establish what in other respects would be like any ordinary kingdom. They expected it to be visible to the eye and national in character. All Jew* were expected to have a place in it, and all the other nations of the world were to be used to minister to their glory and honor. They saw the Messiah seated in Jerusalem and extending the sway of his power over the old realm of David and Solomon. It was earthly, racial, national and material. Put Jesus had not come to found an earthly empire or to sit on a materiel throne in the Palestinian city of Jerusalem. He refused to be made a king when his popularity wras at its height and his followers most numerous, and he told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world. He came to establish a spiritual kingdom, the church.

After Peter had confessed him as the Christ the Son of God at Caesarea-Philippi, Jesus said, “On this rock will I build my church” (Matthew 16:13). Jesus is at once both the founder and the foundation of this kingdom. Paul said, “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, wThich is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). Peter quotes Isaiah, “Behold I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious,” and applies it to Jesus. On the first Pentecost after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the kingdom of prophecy and the church of promise came into existence. Three thousand persons were added to it that day and it became an organic reality. Under the direction of the inspired apostles it grew until it practically covered the known world of that time. But even before the death of the last apostle grievous wolves wTere entering in which caused it to leave the path of right. It forsook the plain, simple teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, became corrupted with pagan philosophy and Roman politics until, it became the greatest ecclesiastical political power the world has ever known. Efforts at reformation resulted in the establishment of hundreds cf what wTe know as denominations. These all exist without the sanction of God, against the will of the Saviour, and are a stumbling block hindering the true Christian work that ought to be done in the wTorld. This condition presents us with a challenge, the challenge of getting back to Jesus and his teaching. Jesus is the only hope for the confusion that reigns in the religious world. And the only way to make progress in Christianity is to get back to him. The church must return to the organization, the plan of worship and the character that Jesus intended. Only then can it be wTell pleasing to him. Only then can it fulfill its God given mission m the world.

If the church is loyal to Christ, its hope, it must be the foe of every wrong. From the day that evil entered into the world in the Garden of Eden until this very hour, a conflict and state of tension exists between the forces of righteousness and the forces of evil. The devil always has and is continuing to make war on the church of our Lord. The ravishings of both earth and hell have been unleashed agamst it. Satan hates and defies the church and seeks to overrun and overthrow the kingdom of God. Since the church condemns the evil desires of men, attacks their cherished lusts and insists on the practice of self-denial and sacrifice, it cannot ecape the ridicule and onslaughts of Satan. Satan uses such weapons as atheism, infidelity, modernism, humanism, denominateonalism, and all the other km?, to divide and weaken the cause of the Lord. The lure of pleasure, the trick of perverting the truth, and offering substitutes for the word of God, deleting and amending the gospel plan of salvation, and every other device possible are used by him to defeat the interests of the church on earth. The devil uses weapons that have been forged by the inhabitants of darkness in furnaces of everlasting fire, and yet at the same time possessing the brilliance and all the skill of the world of man. Yet in spite of all these fiery darts of the evil one, the church has marched down the highway of the ages, is maintaining its work despite all this trouble, and will continue unto the very Saturday evening of time. The battle of the church is set forth for us in the word of the Lord, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). In all of this work the church must show itself no effeminate weakling but a mighty and a victorious foe to all that is evil. The church can be no straddler of issues where principles of truth are concerned. It must declcare itself defiantly against every foe of righteousness and can not hesitate to take a pronounced stand against it. As God commissioned Isaiah long ago, so God commissions the preacher of righteousness today, “Cry aloud, spare not, set thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1). Peter denounced the sins of his audience on Pentecost, Paul talked to Felix of righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come. We need the courage of a Nathan to say to every David, “Thou art the man.” Much preaching is weak and effeminate, unworthy of a God-like ministry in a sin-doomed age. The church needs fearless preaching that comes out of a heart of love, and that seeks the salvation of the sinner, and does not hesitate to condemn the sin that is destroying him.

There are all kinds of sins in the world and all of them are to be denounced. There are sins in doctrine, yes, they must be condemned with all the severity and vigor with which Paul condemned the Judaisers of his day. There are social sins which chill the desire in the hearts of the masses for God. Against these we cannot possibly close our eyes. But whatever the sin may be, whether against doctrine or against character, the church must stand militantly opposed to it.

Just as the church is the enemy of all that is evil, it is also the friend of that which is good. Her teaching is furnishing the highest ideals and the deepest motives for the individual life. It is guiding and purifying the emotions to well appointed scriptural worship, it seeks to promote those habits of thought that rise above the things of the earth and center themselves in things eternal. It bestows comfort in old age, sorrow, and disappointment, and keeps alive the consciousness of our obligation to God. The church is the greatest institution in ah the world. The church is the symbol of inaugurated, organized opposition to hell, its banner is high and lifted up, unfolded upon the air above every embattled field and every scene of contest, which has marked the progress of the church in sunshine and in darkness. It has ever streamed and triumphed while human ambitions have trailed in the dust. It will never be folded around its standard till man is redeemed and saved.