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#10.
Separate Features: Self-denying Love.
pp. 109, 110
"Here we see . . . . . that self-denying love which `will eat no flesh while the world
standeth lest he make his brother to offend'." (Conybeare and Howson).
When, as dispensations change, gifts and graces pass away, Faith, Hope and Love
remain. When the ages have reached their goal, faith and hope will find their fullest
expression in love, which abides. Love is an all-pervading essence, too great, too
manifold, too diverse, for the mind of man to grasp on this side of resurrection. In the
Scriptures love is spoken of in terms of its outgoings rather than of its essence. One
phase will be seen as faith, another as joy, yet another as righteousness. A man may have
love for the Lord, for His Word, for His people, but, during this life, it may still be
crippled, half fledged or baffled. The self-denying element of Christian love is that
which is here brought before us. Paul expressed this quality in a remarkable way. He
refrained from enjoying the highest liberties and fullest rights that the gospel of grace had
brought him.
To you and to me, the question of whether we shall or shall not eat this or that is of
little consequence. Years of bondage, ages of tradition, veneration of one's elders, regard
for the sanctity of Moses and his law, respect for the interpreters of that law, a fear of the
damnation that followed the overstepping of its prohibitions (as expressed, for example,
in the eating of certain prohibited foods), have never held us in check. To yield a point to
the foolish scruples of a weak saints is easy. We do so with a good-humoured smile, and
the matter is ended. Not so with Paul. As a Hebrew, as an Israelite, as a Pharisee, as a
zealot for tradition, the question of clean and unclean meats was a vital one. It touched
his nation's peculiar sanctity. It involved his place in the covenant of the God of his
fathers. Nothing but a miracle could have delivered Saul, the Hebrew, from the slavery
of such scruples, and nothing but a miracle could have turned him into Paul the
Champion of Liberty. Again and again, in Galatians, in Corinthians, in Colossians, Paul
strikes the note of freedom. The observance of days; the question of meat offered to
idols; the question as to whether such meat had been killed according to the rules of the
Rabbis; from all such legal observances Paul stood gloriously free. And yet--and yet--
he who was free; he who fought, as no one since has fought, for the perpetuation of that
freedom to the Gentiles; he, the one whose boast it was that all things were now lawful,
it is he that willingly circumscribes his blood-bought liberties. It is he who does not enter
into all the opening avenues of freedom. He remembers that he had been set free by
self-denying love, the love of Christ.
"Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man
put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. I know, and am
persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that
esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with
thy meat, now walkest thou not according to love. Destroy not him with thy meat, for
whom Christ died . . . . . it is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing
whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak" (Rom. 14: 13-15, 21).