18. Leading Paragraphs and Passages

Leading Paragraphs and Passages

Chapter 17

Beside prominent words and phrases, there are also more extended sayings and sentences, sometimes including a whole paragraph, which are turning points in argument or the text of which what follows is the exposition and illustration. To become familiar with these invests all scripture with new meaning. These should be lodged in the memory for they have to do with the whole philosophy of redemption, and always occur in circumstances that make them conspicuous. This designed prominence is variously hinted, sometimes by the conspicuous place or position of a scripture passage at the head of a discourse, or of a whole section. In Exodus 20:1-2, the authority of the whole Decalogue is made to rest upon one declaration: “And God spake all these words, saying:”

And, further, that He who thus spake was the Jehovah of the Exodus, whose great deliverance of His people entitled Him to command, and obligated them to obey.

Psalms 81:9-10 is very nearly the literal center of the whole inspired word; in Bagster’s Teacher’s Bible it holds the middle place. It certainly is one of the great leading passages of scripture:

Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee;

O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;

There shall no strange gods be in thee;

Neither shalt thou worship any strange god.

I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt:

Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

Here is another double shema—“Hear, O Israel!” Then follow two important double stanzas: the former an injunction against all idolatry; the latter an invitation to appropriate large blessing. The metaphor is drawn from the young fledglings that in the nest stretch their beaks to the utmost capacity to take in the dainty morsel brought by the parent bird. Jehovah invites His people, shunning all worship of strange gods and compromise with them, to test to the utmost His power, wisdom and love. God’s mercy is like water in a spring: man’s supply is like the same water in a cup. How much each gets and drinks depends on the capacity of his vessel. To bring a large pitcher to be filled assumes both a large abundance in the spring, and a large confidence in the heart of him who brings the vessel.

Matthew 6:33 is one of the dominant texts, expounding a great law of life:

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, And all these things shall be added unto you. The substance of this is: Put first things in the first place; aim first of all to be like God and make others like Him, and He will take care of all lesser interests. The two great principles of God in His dealings with man are here indicated:

1. Whenever the primary things are put in the primary place, He adds the secondary things without their being sought at all;

2. Whenever the secondary things are put in the primary place, the primary are forfeited altogether and even the secondary may be. It is notable that “add” is a mathematical term, and implies something, already possessed—to be added to—and this implies that to seek the first things is to secure them, and it is to these that the secondary are added. The whole context is dominated by this thought of putting first things in the first place—thought, affection, choice, being supremely fixed on the highest good, we shall not lay up treasures upon earth, nor lose singleness of aim, nor try to serve two masters, nor indulge anxious thought for the morrow.

Another dominant passage of scripture is Matthew 16:13-28, and its two most important suggestions may be connected with two short leading words, “Rock” and “Rebuke”: the rock is Peter’s sublime confession of Christ; the rebuke is that evoked by his concession to Satan. As to the rock, it is not the man but his message that is emphasized as the foundation upon which our Lord will build His church. Petros and Petra differ as a stone or piece of rock from the bedrock mass itself which alone furnishes a foundation. This interpretation is confirmed by the historic fact that upon the very confession of the divine character and mission of our Lord Jesus Christ, the church actually was built, and has ever since stood firm only upon that basis. (Acts 8:37; Romans 10; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 1 John 4:15).

After the council at Jerusalem (Acts 15) Peter disappears from the church-horizon and Paul becomes the prominent personage; and it is quite as true that the church was founded on Paul as on Peter. But, from Pentecost on, Peter’s confession continued to be the church symbol, the heart of its creed, and the standard of discipleship and criterion of church membership. As to our Lord’s rebuke, the substance of the lesson is contained in the two short mottoes—“Spare thyself” and “Deny thyself”—the first was Peter’s counsel to our Lord—the Devil’s advice—and the second our Lord’s counsel to Peter—the Savior’s own motto.

Two texts, set side by side, are of paramount importance, John 6:28-29; John 16:9. The former shows the one saving work is believing on Jesus: the latter, the one damning sin is not believing. These brief sayings are meant to be dominant—and from them all may learn what is the one sin which incurs damnation, and what is the one and only good work which God either requires or accepts in order to salvation: “this is the work of God that ye believe on Him whom God hath sent.”

Seven words of our Lord—six in the original—are perhaps as significant in their bearing upon holy living, as any other equal number ever spoken:

“Ye in me and I in you” John 14:20. This expression of mystic, corporate, double union between the disciple and his Lord was left to His last discourse before His crucifixion as the climax of all His teaching. What a paradox is here—a mutual abiding! for how can anything be at once in and out, contained and containing? His parable is His explanation. Botanically it is true, for the vine and branch grow into each other, their fibers interpenetrating and interlocking. Such language suggests an element, like air, fire, water, earth, of all which it is true that they are in what is in them, as the fire is in the iron when the iron is in the fire. The order here is fixed: for He must be in us that we may be in Him, as the iron must first be in the fire if the fire is to be in the iron, or the bird in the air if the air is to be in the bird.

How comprehensive these few words! Here are the two sides or aspects of spiritual life: one concerns our being in Christ, accepted, forgiven, justified, reconciled—our standing; the other concerns His being in us, the power and secret of holy living—our state, and the standing in order to the state. So important are these few words that they are the index to the contents of all the twenty-one Epistles, which may be classified according to their relations to this inspired motto, setting forth one or both sides of this double truth. The sublime teachings of our Lord in His last discourse and prayer fall under one of these two heads: for example,

Apply the same analysis to the Epistles:

1 Corinthians 3:14-15 is a leading scripture. Nowhere else are we so plainly taught the difference between the salvation of the man, and the salvation of his work. Every believer is a builder, and he cannot help it—and the great question is what sort of structure is he building. Even upon the one foundation which cannot be destroyed one may build worthless material—wood, hay, stubble, instead of gold, silver, precious stones. And when the fire tries every man’s work, his work may be utterly burned while he himself escapes, so as by fire.

1 Corinthians 6:17. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit” is a short sentence of ten English words. Yet it suggests to us the highest possible unity between the disciple and his Lord. Many other forms are used to express this identification, but none approach this in the conception of inseparable oneness. The sheep may wander from the shepherd, the branch be cut off from the vine; the member be severed from the body, the child alienated from the father, and even the wife from the husband; but when two spirits blend in one, what shall part them? No outward connection or union, even of wedlock, is so emphatically expressive of perfect merging of two lives in one.

2 Corinthians 5:7. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” though printed as a parenthesis, in our English version, is one of the leading passages of the scripture. It closes one paragraph and begins another, and interprets both. From 2 Corinthians 4:7, there has been a constant contrast presented between the seen and the unseen—the outward trials and the inward triumphs; the dying of the flesh and the life of the spirit; the affliction without, the compensation within; the dissolution of the body and the introduction to the presence of the Lord. The always confidence is due to the fact that the walk is by faith, not sight; looking at the unseen and eternal rather than the seen and temporal. To get a thorough conception of the meaning of those seven words is to comprehend all that precedes. And so as to what follows. It has to do with the ministry of reconciliation, its motives, its dignity and its reward. To walk by faith is to “practice the presence of God,” and to do everything as His ambassadors, under His instructions, in His stead, for His approval. It is to keep in mind not the superficial and indecisive judgment of men but the judgment seat of Christ; not the temporal success but the eternal reward. Thus this simple saying reflects light both ways, backward and forward, upon the context.

1 Peter 1:10-12 is the leading scripture upon the purpose, character and limitations of prophecy. From it we learn:

1. The prophets testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.

2. They searched to find the meaning of their own predictions, uttering what was a mystery to themselves.

3. They were taught that it was mainly for future ages that they bore their testimony.

Here three great questions are settled: first, the Old Testament predictions are messianic; whatever their secondary reference, their primary application is to Jesus of Nazareth; second, so far were these predictions from being shrewd human conjectures that they were mysteries to those who spoke them; and, third, they could neither be understood nor fulfilled until after ages. What a number of mooted questions this one authoritative statement settles!

Whenever a circumstance or occurrence has a marked prominence in scripture, and especially where it gives occasion for a new ordinance or signalizes a new departure it is to be very carefully noted. “As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike. And it was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel unto this day,” 1 Samuel 30:24-25, comp.Numbers 31:11-27; Joshua 22:8. When the unexpected spoil nearly proved the pretext for a serious quarrel, the selfishness and sordidness of the children of Belial claiming it all for the actual warriors who had been in the battle. David decreed that the two hundred whose faintness compelled them to tarry at the brook, Besor, should have a share of the booty. And this principle henceforth became “a statute and an ordinance for Israel,” for all time to come. It had been already done on previous occasions by Moses and Joshua; but it did not pass into the form of a stated and fixed decree until now. Its bearing is universal, and affects the whole work of the church of God. All cannot engage in the actual battle at the front, as in the great contests on the home mission borders and the foreign mission field; but those who at home tarry with the stuff and guard the base of supplies shall share alike.