OPEN DOORS AND ADVERSARIES
‘A great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries.’
1 Corinthians 16:9
St. Paul’s ‘great and effectual door’ was at Ephesus (see Acts 18, 19). How was the opposition met? St. Paul changed his tactics, but he never changed his message. He was a man who believed in adaptation. Thus, when he found that opposition was growing, he withdrew from the synagogue and went into the school of one Tyrannus. The work was done gradually and slowly, but still most effectually, and there was, in consequence, a large gathering into the Church.
The Christian Church of to-day has to contend with ‘adversaries.’ Here are some of them:—
I. Unspiritual workers.— Acts 19:14 shows that there was a great deal of sorcery and false teaching going on, but St. Paul left these false teachers alone, and God dealt with them. Let us take great care that our ministry, our work, is genuine, and that we preach and teach a personal Saviour—One of Whom we know in our own personal experience.
II. Spiritual depression.—St. Paul does not expressly mention this, but he may have been tempted to despond, in the face of open hostility. Do not despair, but rather persevere in good work, and the blessing will come.
III. Mechanicalism.—There is not a little connection between depression and mechanicalism. As soon as we get depressed the fire and life seem to go out of our work, and when we get mechanical we sink into a dull and sluggish condition.
IV. Pride.—This is doing a great deal of harm in the Church of God. If God is blessing us with success, we may see how pride steps in. As long as the spirit of soreness and jealousy is there, it will do much to darken our lives and cripple our usefulness. If we can conquer pride we shall be better able to cope with other temptations.
‘Open doors’ and ‘adversaries’ will come, but we may conquer difficulties by a close walk with God and confidence in our message.
Rev. W. H. Hewett.
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‘To Ephesus, as the capital of the Roman province, and the centre of provincial life, there poured multitudes daily from every quarter of Asia. Hither Gentiles and Jews alike hastened continually on errands of business, religion, and pleasure. And the lecture-room of Tyrannus welcomed all who came, whether attracted by curiosity or by love of the truth. By degrees St. Paul had gathered round him a band of evangelists who carried the Gospel back to their own Asian towns. Thus, to those seven cities of Asia, and to others not numbered in the mystical seven, the faith was first brought; churches were planted and organised, or (to use the Apocalyptic figure) the Divine candlestick was set up, ministering the oil of grace through the golden channels of apostolic order, and burning brightly amid pagan darkness. Thus, St. Paul’s figure of a great door set open exactly describes his joy at finding the Gospel penetrate so soon from Ephesus through Asia.’

STRENGTH OF SPIRIT
‘Be strong.’
1 Corinthians 16:13
Over and over again in Holy Writ we find this short, stirring text. We find it in the mouth of Moses, when, handing over his leadership to Joshua, he bid him more than once ‘be strong.’ It was echoed by the people of Israel, when they vowed to follow their new leader as they had followed the old, if only he would ‘be strong.’ The Lord Himself declared that the Divine power and presence which had been with Moses should be with Joshua, so long as he kept to the command, thrice repeated, to ‘be strong.’ David’s last charge to Solomon urges the same sure method of ruling men.
The appeal is not to the body, nor to the intellect, but to the spirit.
I. Be strong to take the right side.—That is seldom an easy thing. When St. Peter feared to be known as a disciple of the Lord Jesus, and thrice denied Him, it was because he dared not be strong for right. When Pilate gave over the innocent Jesus to be scourged and crucified, it was because he feared the people. And when we know we ought to take our stand openly and bravely for the right, but hold back because we are afraid of the sneers and laughter of our companions, or of the loss of their good opinion, or of our place in the world, wherein are we better? ‘Be strong,’ and take the side of Christ, cost you what it may, unpopular though it be.
II. Be strong in your repentance.—For men are often sadly weak in their dealing with their own souls. They will not dare to look at their sins as God looks at them. They deceive themselves, and try to bury their faults out of their sight. It was said by a master of the spiritual life that most men had a dark room in their hearts where they dare not go with a light. Be strong to be candid with yourself and with God. Be strong to repent of the past. Be strong to believe in the forgiveness won for every earnest penitent by the strength of the sacrifice of Calvary.
III. ‘Be strong’ to fight the battle of a Christian’s life.—When the cross of baptism glittered in shining drops upon your young brow, words were said over each one of you which solemnly dedicated you ‘manfully to fight under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto your life’s end.’ That battlefield is in your own heart, and there you will find your foe. Every temptation to tell a lie, to be dishonourable, to overreach another; every desire to be lazy and careless, selfish and slovenly; every time you are moved to be gluttonous, sulky, unkind, vain, impure, is a challenge from the enemy of your soul. Then, in the name of God, ‘be strong.’ Strong to drive away the foul thought which is brooding, like some hideous night-bird over its prey, over your heart. Strong to control a hasty temper; strong to speak the simple truth; strong to do your plain duty. I know of no better motto for a young man’s life than that furnished by these two words. Kingsley wrote them down when once asked for his favourite text. Let each of us take them and write them over all our life, to be uttered each morning on our knees, ere we go forth to our work and to our labours. ‘Be strong’ against the temptations of the coming day. ‘Be strong’ faithfully to do its duties, bravely to bear its trials, humbly to accept its joys.
Rev. Professor H. C. Shuttleworth.
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‘When the martyrs died a cruel death rather than risk their loyalty to Jesus Christ, they were strong in spirit. Weak women and children were among them, simple and unlearned men were among them. But all knew what it meant to “be strong.” Many will recall the beautiful Academy picture “Diana or Christ,” which proclaims better than words how a weak maiden could “be strong.” Many will have read, in our most popular tale of school life, the true chapter which tells how a young, weak boy knelt down to pray in the midst of a crowd of jeering, bullying schoolfellows, and taught them and us to “be strong.” ’

CHRISTIAN UNITY
‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran=atha.’
1 Corinthians 16:22
It is not against men who labour under a theological mistake that St. Paul launched his threat, but ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.’ That is the one unpardonable heresy—to know what the Lord Jesus Christ has done and is, and not to love Him. With that man no communion may be held, however exact his creed may be.
I. It is not that the English Church thinks little of orthodoxy; nothing can be more alien to her temper than laxity concerning the truth; she considers accurate doctrine as important as a holy life and dogmatic study to be the strong meat of living souls. And yet the acceptance of orthodoxy is not the main teaching of the Church. After telling us that none can be saved without keeping undefined the Catholic faith, she goes on to tell us what the Christian faith consists of—that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. The most faultless set of propositions on the relations of the Divine Persons do not constitute a Catholic creed; but dogma must hush us into worship. And so the English Church writes out a summum Theologiæ, and throws out all who do not accept it; she teaches all to love and rejoice in Christ.
II. We begin then at the right end when we persuade men first and foremost to love God, and to bear patiently with them until they come, under the power of this love, to the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which the Church sees in Him. Men have tried too long to unite men on the basis of the identity of thought first and foremost. The time is surely come to unite them on the ground of a common worship. Who is there who with all his heart and unfeignedly worships the Lord Jesus Christ, bursting out with that cry, ‘Master, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel’? Who is there who, when he feels Christ near, falls prostrate in body and spirit, because he knows himself unworthy of the presence, and is yet rooted to the spot, because his love is the master of his fear, though his satisfaction and desire and love is mingled with alarm and fear and sense of unworthiness? Who is there feels his heart swell within him with joy and hope at the name of Jesus? Who is there that looks for the least motion of the finger of Christ to guide him, and who, when he sees the way whence his beloved Lord has pointed him, would pass all obstacles rather than disobey Christ by turning back? That is the man to whom every Churchman’s heart will go out as St. Paul’s did when he said, ‘Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.’ Oh, why should there be a barricade to sunder such a man from us because he believes a few things more or a few things less than we do, or uses practices which we should not feel at liberty to use, or fears to use some which we think it right and necessary for us to use? Is not our Christian love, our love to Jesus Christ Himself, and therefore to each other, strong enough yet to bear down all these barriers and sweep them away? Dogmas we must have; but Christ died for unity, and that unity can never be promoted except through recognising one another’s devotion, and bearing with one another’s opinions, and best of all by kneeling together, living memorials of His death and passion, knowing that He is alive and among us, and that we are fed on earth with the healthy robustness of the Spirit, eating side by side, and without defilement.
III. Oh, for more love of Christ—how soon would our sins disappear! ‘Oh, to love Him,’ as À Kempis says, ‘as well as any creature can love Him. To be without Him is punishment enough.’ ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha,’ St. Paul says. Blessed Apostle, I cannot imagine that Gospel spirit could prompt him to deliver these words as a wish or prayer, or as a curse even, on any enemy of Christ. ‘May not this form of curse be an Apostolic rhetoric?’ asks another saint. Is not the truest interpretation of this: ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, he is Anathema Maran-atha—cursed creature’? The chilling of that blessed passion within his breast is the saddest curse, the ‘death of deaths.’ And saintly Herbert, casting about for some terrible imprecation upon himself if he ceased to love Christ, bursts out: ‘Oh, my dear God, let me not love Thee if I love Thee not.’
—Rev. Professor A. J. Mason.
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‘ “If these persons be Christians in their lives, and Christians in their practices,” cries holy Jeremy Taylor in his greatest work; “if they acknowledge the Eternal Son of God for their Master and their Lord, and live in all relations as becomes persons making such professions—why should we slight these persons who love God, whom God loves, who are partakers of Christ, who dwell in Christ and Christ in them, because their understandings have not been brought up like ours? They have not met the same books or the same company, or are not so wise, or are wiser—that is, for some reason or other for which I do not understand or blame, they do not believe as I do.” ’