 |  |
Their chief concern was His teaching as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, and used as a
way of living only, to be worked out by themselves as best they could. If they talked
about grace, it was regarded as a special power given by God to supplement their own
strivings towards self-justification. They were never able to distinguish between
salvation, and prize or reward. Confusing these separate aspects of truth, as thousands
have done since, and still do today, they were never able to appreciate properly the N.T.
position of `good works'. The Apostle Paul summed this up very clearly in Eph. 2: 8, 9:
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of
God; not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus unto good works . . . . .",
good works being the fruit of salvation with a prize or crown in view and not the
procuring cause.
The early Fathers were ready to take up the cross and suffer for Christ, but they had
the mistaken idea that this was the necessary pathway for salvation and ultimate
forgiveness. This is seen most clearly in the case of Ignatius, with his eagerness to suffer
martyrdom, that by so doing, he might at the end be found worthy of salvation. Such
confusion of truth is indeed tragic, when one remembers the lengths these early
Christians were prepared to go to for their faith.
What is so startling is the fact of this landslide away from basic truth so soon after the
Apostolic times, that is, 50 years after the death of the last Apostle, John. How did this
happen? There may have been more than one reason. The gospel of grace was new and
revolutionary and this fact alone made its acceptance difficult, both to the Jew with his
legal background, and the Gentile with his pagan Greek thought. But this of itself is not
sufficient to account for such a slipping away from truth. We believe Paul himself has
supplied the answer. In his last letter, writing to Timothy, he said:
"This thou knowest, that all that are in Asia turned away from me, of whom are
Phygellus and Hermogenes" (II Tim. 1: 15 R.V.).
There are some who interpret this verse as though it read `those of Asia' and referred
to certain Asiatic Christians who happened to be at Rome at the time of the Apostle's
arrest and imprisonment, or who had gone to Rome for the purpose of bearing witness on
behalf of Paul, but finding the extreme danger this would put them in by associating with
him, forsook him and fled. Certainly in II Tim. 4: 16, Paul states:
"At my first defence no one took my part, but all forsook me; may it not be laid to
their account" (R.V.).
This must have referred to believers in Rome, but it is pure conjecture to link this with
"all in Asia". Dr. H. D. Spence writes:
"This simple and more obvious meaning is here to be preferred, and we assume as
certain that the forsaking, the giving up St. Paul, took place in Asia itself. Large numbers
of Christians, if not whole churches, repudiated their connection with the father of
Gentile Christianity, and possibly disobeyed his teaching. What, in fact absolutely took
place in Asia, while St. Paul lay bound, waiting for death in Rome, had been often