With an Open Mind
[EGW
editor's preface: Several years ago I found this transcribed
article of J.C. Ryle on a shareware CD-ROM I had purchased for
its Bible-study resources. In his article, The Fallibility of Ministers, Ryle
indicates membership of the Church of England, albeit as a somewhat
dissatisfied member. Otherwise, at present I know very
little about J.C. Ryle's background other than what the transcriber
included in his prefaces. Some of what Ryle wrote indicates
to me he practiced and taught a broader definition of Christianity
than what the New Testament teaches. Bearing that mind,
Ive included this particular article in this column for
three main reasons: 1) In this article, Ryle demonstrated
desire and skill to think both broadly and deeply when he studied
a passage of Scripture. 2) He was willing to present the
conclusions and questions he reached from his studies, even when
they challenged the teachings of popular denominations. 3)
He urged his audience to have an attitude of responsibility toward
God, that God expects something of His people; or as he put it
concerning his key passage, 1 Timothy 4:15, There are
some things which the high demand of this text suggests, as needful
to be followed after and practiced. While I do
disagree with some of what J.C. Ryle believed and taught and
said, even in this article, I do agree with this attitude.
(Unfortunately, as hard as he worked to drive home his
point that Christians should be concerned about their responsibility,
he failed to address the fact that the concerned responsibility
in this verse and its context is about doctrine correctly
learning it, correctly teaching it, and correctly exampling it
for the salvation of the teacher and of the learner.)
I also agree with the attitude he encourages in his closing
paragraph that we should be looking higher than any mans
example of lifes pattern to the example of Jesus Christ
Himself. In his article The Fallibility of Ministers, Ryle
illustrates and discusses this attitude in much greater detail.
Have you read the EGW editors note defining and caveating the
purpose of the With an Open Mind column yet? If
you havent yet, please do so at this time before continuing
with the article.]
Give Yourself
Wholly to Them
by J.C. Ryle
[Preface
For more than a century, J. C.
Ryle was the leader of the evangelical party in the Church of
England. His policy was to encourage the conservative men
to remain in the church rather than to abandon ship and leave
the liberals to pursue their program unhindered.
J. C. Ryle is best known for his
plain and lively writings on practical and spiritual themes.
His great aim in all his ministry, was to encourage strong
and serious Christian living. But Ryle was not naive in
his understanding of how this should be done. He recognized
that, as a pastor of the flock of God, he had a responsibility
to guard Christ's sheep and to warn them whenever he saw approaching
dangers. His penetrating comments are as wise and relevant
today as they were when he first wrote them. His sermons
and other writings have been consistently recognized, and their
usefulness and impact have continued to the present day, even
in the outdated English of the author's own day.
Why then should expositions already
so successful and of such stature and proven usefulness require
adaptation, revision, rewrite or even editing?
The answer is obvious. To increase its usefulness to today's
reader, the language in which it was originally written needs
updating.
Though his sermons have served
other generations well, just as they came from the pen of the
author in the nineteenth century, they still could be lost to
present and future generations, simply because, to them, the
language is neither readily nor fully understandable.
My goal, however, has not been
to reduce the original writing to the vernacular of our day.
It is designed primarily for you who desire to read and
study comfortably and at ease in the language of our time. Only
obviously archaic terminology and passages obscured by expressions
not totally familiar in our day have been revised. However,
neither Ryle's meaning nor intent have been tampered with.
Tony
Capoccia
All Scripture references are taken
from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL
VERSION (C) 1978 by the New York Bible Society, used by permission
of
Zondervan Bible Publishers.
Warning
#3 to the Church
Give
Yourself Wholly to Them
by
J.
C. Ryle
(1816-1900)
The
following Sermon was preached in England, in August, 1859.
Give yourself wholly to them
(1 Timothy 4:15)
I need hardly to remind you, that
the Greek expression which we have translated, give yourself wholly to them, is somewhat remarkable. It would be
more literally rendered, Be in these things. We
have nothing exactly corresponding to the expression in our language,
and the words which our translators have chosen are perhaps as
well calculated as any to convey the idea which was put by the
Holy Spirit in Paul's mind.
When the Apostle says, give yourself wholly to these things, he seems to look at the things
of which he had been speaking in the preceding verses, beginning
with the words Set
an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in
faith and in purity.
We have here a target set before
the ministers of the New Testament, at which we are all to aim,
and of which we must all feel we fall short. Yet it is
an old saying, He that aims high is the most likely to
strike high; and he that shoots at the moon will shoot further
than the man who shoots at the bush.
The Apostle appears to me to suggest
that the minister must be a man of one thing: to use his own
words, a man
of God. We hear of
men of business, and men of pleasure, and men of science. The
aim of the minister should be, to be a man of God;
or to employ a phrase used in some heathen countries, to be Jesus
Christ's man. An expression is sometimes used with
reference to the army, which we may apply to the soldiers of
the Great Captain of our salvation. Some men are said to be carpet
knights. They are said to have entered the army for
the sake of the uniform, and for no other cause. But there
are many of whom public opinion says, such a man is every
inch a soldier. This should be the aim which we should
place before us; we should seek to be every inch the minister
of Jesus Christ.
We should aim to be the same men
at all times, in all positions, and places; not on Sunday only,
but on week days also; not merely in the pulpit, but everywhere--in
the living room of the rich, by our own fireside, and in the
house of the poor man. There are those, of whom their congregations
have said, that when they were in the pulpit they never wished
them to come out, and when they went out they never wished them
to go in. May God give us all grace to take that to heart!
May we seek so to live, so to preach, so to work, so to
give ourselves wholly to the business of our calling, that this
bitter remark may never be made upon us. Our profession
is a very peculiar one. Others have their seasons of relaxation,
when they can altogether lay aside their work. This can
never be done by the faithful minister of Jesus Christ. Once
put on, his office must never be put off. At home, abroad,
taking relaxation, going to the sea side, he must ever carry
his business with him. A great lawyer could say of his
official robes, Lie there, Lord Chancellor. Such
ought never to be the mind of the minister of Christ.
There are some things which
the high demand of this text suggests, as
needful to be followed after and practiced. [EGW editor:
emphasis mine]
It demands, firstly, entire devotion
to the great work to which we are ordained. When one was
commanded by the Savior to follow Him, he replied, Lord, first let me go and bury
my father; but then there
came that solemn saying, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and
proclaim the kingdom of God.
Still another said, I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back
and say good-by to my family;
and to him there came the remarkable sentence, No one who puts his hand to the
plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Do not greet anyone on the road, was Christ's charge to the seventy disciples.
Surely these Scriptural expressions teach us, that in all
our dealings in our office, we must have a high standard. We
must strive to be men of one thing--that thing being the work
of Jesus Christ.
It demands, secondly, a thorough
separation from the things of the world. I hold it to be
of the greatest importance to keep the ministerial office, so
far as we can, distinct and separate from everything that is
secular. I trust we shall hear every year of fewer and
fewer ministers of the Gospel who are magistrates, and fewer
and fewer ministers who take part in agricultural meetings, and
win prizes for fat pigs, enormous bulls, and large crops of turnips.
There is no apostolical succession in such occupations.
Nor yet is this all. We should be separated from
the pleasures of the world, as well as from its business. There
are many innocent and indifferent amusements, for which the minister
of Christ ought to have no time. He ought to say, I
have no time for these things. I am doing a great work, and I
cannot come down.
It demands, thirdly, a jealous
watchfulness over our own social conduct. We ought not
to be always paying morning calls of courtesy and dining out,
as others do. It will not do to say, that our Lord went
to a marriage feast, and sat at supper in the pharisee's house,
and therefore we may do the same. I only reply, Let us
go in His spirit, with His faithfulness and boldness, to say
a word in season, and to give the conversation a profitable turn,
and then we may go with safety. Unless we do this, we should
be careful where we go, with whom we sit down, and where we spend
our evenings. There was a quaint saying of John Wesley
to his ministers, which Cecil quotes, as containing the germ
of much truth. Don't aim at being thought gentlemen; you
have no more to do with being gentlemen than with being masters
at dancing. Our aim should be not to be regarded
as agreeable persons at the dinner table, but to be known everywhere
as faithful, consistent ministers of Jesus Christ.
It demands, fourthly, a diligent
redemption of time. We should give attention to reading,
every day that we live. We should strive to bring all our
reading to bear on our work. We ought to keep our eyes
open continually, and be ever picking up ideas for our sermons--as
we travel by the way, as we sit by the fireside, as we are standing
on the platform at the railway station. We should be keeping
in our mind's eye our Master's business--observing, noting, looking
out, gathering up something that will throw fresh light on our
work, and enable us to put the truth in a more striking way.
He that looks out for something to learn will always be
able to learn something.
Having suggested these things,
I will next proceed to ask, What will be the consequence of our
giving ourselves wholly to these things? Remember, we shall
not receive the praise of men. We shall be thought extreme, and
ascetic, and righteous. Those who want to serve God and
serve money at the same time, will think our standard too high,
our practice too stringent. They will say, that we are
going too far and too fast for a world such as that in which
we live. May we never care what men say of us, so long
as we walk in the light of Gods Word! May we strive
and pray to be wholly independent of, and indifferent to mans
opinion, so long as we please God!
May we remember the woe pronounced
by our Master, when He said, Woe to you when all men speak well of you, and the words of Paul, If I were still trying to please
men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
But though giving ourselves wholly to these
things we shall not win the
praise of men, we shall attain the far more important end of
usefulness to souls. I acknowledge to the full, the doctrine
of the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners. I
acknowledge that those who preach best, and live nearest to God,
have not always been honored in their lives to the saving of
many souls. But still, the man who is most entirely and wholly
Jesus Christs man--a man of one thing, who lives Sunday
and weekday, everywhere, at home and abroad, as a man whose single
endeavor is to give himself to the work of Jesus Christ--this
is the man, this is the minister, who will generally, in the
long run, do most good.
The case of Mr. Simeon will apply
here. You all know how he was persecuted when he began
to testify for Christ, in Cambridge. You know how many there
were who would not speak to him, how the finger of scorn was
pointed at him continually. But we know how he went on
persevering in the work, and how, when he died, all Cambridge
came forth to give him honor, and how heads of houses, and fellows
of colleges, and men who had scoffed at him while he lived, honored
him at his death. They testified, that the life he had
lived had had its effect, and that they had seen and known that
God was with him.
I once saw in Dundee one who had
known much of that godly man, Robert Murray McCheyne. She
told me that those who read his letters and sermons had a very
faint idea of what he was. She said to me, If you
have read all his works, you just know nothing at all about him.
You must have seen the man, and heard him, and known him,
and have been in company with him, to know what a man of God
he was.
Furthermore, giving ourselves wholly
to these things will bring happiness and peace to our consciences.
I speak now among friends, and not among worldly people,
where I should need to fence and guard and explain what I mean.
I shall not be suspected of holding justification by works
by those I see before me. I speak of such a clear conscience
as the Apostle refers to: We trust we have a clear conscience (Hebrews 13:18). To have this clear
conscience is clearly bound up with high aims, high motives,
a high standard of ministerial life, and practice. I am quite
sure, that the more we give ourselves wholly to the work of the
ministry, the more inward happiness, the greater sense of the
light of Gods countenance, are we likely to enjoy.
The subject is a deeply humbling
one. Who does not feel, My leanness, my leanness! My
unprofitableness! How far short I come of this high standard?
What reason have we, having received mercy, not to faint! What
reason have we, having been spared by Gods long suffering,
to abound in the work of the Lord, and to give ourselves wholly
to our business! The grand secret is, to be ever looking to
Jesus, and living a life of close communion with Him.
At Cambridge, the other day, I
saw a picture of Henry Martyn, bequeathed by Mr. Simeon to the
public library. A friend informed me that that picture
used to hang in Mr. Simeons room, and that when he was
disposed to trifle in the work of the ministry, he used to stand
before it and say, It seems to say to me, Charles Simeon,
dont trifle, dont trifle; Charles Simeon, remember
whose you are, and whom you serve. And then the worthy
man, in his own peculiar way, would bow respectfully, and say,
I will not trifle, I will not trifle; I will not forget.
May we, in conclusion, look to
a far higher pattern than any man--Martyn, McCheyne, or any other.
May we look to the Great Chief Shepherd, the great pattern,
in whose steps we are to walk!
May we abide in Him, and never
trifle! May
we hold on our way, looking to Jesus, keeping clear of the world,
its pleasures, and its follies--caring nothing for the worlds
frowns, and not much moved by the worlds smiles--looking
forward to that day when the Great Shepherd shall give to all
who have done His work, and preached His Gospel, a crown of glory
that does not fade away!
The more we have the mind of
Christ, the more we shall understand what it is to give ourselves wholly to these
things.
Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of
BIBLE BULLETIN BOARD MODEM (318)-949-1456
BOX 130 1200/2400/9600/14400 DS HST
SHREVEPORT, LA 71110 |