James T. Cleland - "Two Marks of a Christian" (July 15, 1962)

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	(soft whistle tune)	0:08
-	Let us pray.	0:27
	Let the words of my mouth	0:30
	and the meditations of our hearts	0:33
	be acceptable in thy sight,	0:35
	oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer,	0:39
	amen.	0:44
	One of the repeated questions	0:52
	which any minister hears over and over again	0:56
	is what are the distinguishing marks Of a Christian.	1:00
	Now, this may be answered in various ways	1:09
	with the emphasis here or there, theological or ethical	1:13
	But almost without exception,	1:20
	Jesus of Nazareth	1:23
	who was called the Christ Finds a place in the reply.	1:26
	Now, today we shall look together	1:34
	at an answer implied in the morning lesson,	1:36
	Acts 1:15-26	1:40
	And try to find its relevance for us.	1:44
	The passage describes the first official meeting	1:51
	of the early church.	1:57
	There was about one piece of business on the agenda,	2:01
	the appointment of a successor to Judas his carrier.	2:07
	That complex figure who had separated himself from them.	2:14
	Peter who presided, laid down the qualifications necessary.	2:23
	So one of the men who have accompanied us	2:32
	during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in	2:35
	and out among us beginning from the baptism of John	2:38
	until the day when he was taken up from us.	2:47
	One of these men must become with us.	2:51
	A witness to his resurrection.	2:56
	Two names were put forward.	3:01
	One Matthias was chosen by law after prayer.	3:05
	Now I would suggest that the two prerequisites stated there	3:12
	are still two of the essential markers of a Christian.	3:17
	The first mark is an intimate knowledge	3:26
	of the earthly life of Jesus,	3:30
	of his walk and conversation in the days of his flesh.	3:34
	Matthias was chosen because he was one of those	3:41
	who had been with Jesus through his active ministry.	3:46
	He knew the facts about Jesus.	3:52
	Jesus had been brought up in Nazareth with four brothers	3:58
	and at least two sisters.	4:02
	He had been educated in the local synagogue.	4:06
	He was at home with nature.	4:10
	He enjoyed the ordinary person in the marketplace	4:14
	and on the village street,	4:17
	He had come under the influence of John the Baptist	4:20
	and identified himself with that movement.	4:23
	In the temptation experience,	4:28
	he had faced the problems of the content	4:30
	and of the possible reception of his message.	4:34
	The Galilean mission had moved along so successfully	4:40
	people swarmed to hear both what he said and how he said it	4:45
	But he aroused the hostility of church and state,	4:53
	The Pharisees and the Herodians	4:57
	so that he was forced to leave the country	5:02
	for his own personal safety.	5:05
	And then followed the strange days at Caesarea of Philippi	5:09
	when he accepted the title Messiah	5:16
	but interpreted it in a strange way	5:20
	that not one of the disciples Understood it.	5:24
	He walked gallantly into that last week in Jerusalem	5:31
	which opened with shouts of hosanna	5:36
	And ended with cries of crucifier	5:41
	But there was more than that to it.	5:48
	He was a teacher and his teaching at center on God.	5:51
	On God thought of as a father	5:57
	one who creates, sustains,	6:00
	comforts,	6:04
	Disciplines and redeems.	6:06
	Man is supposed to behave as a son of that kind of a father.	6:11
	If he does, he will be blessed	6:16
	that is happy a way down, deep inside.	6:18
	If he doesn't,	6:23
	he will be ultimately miserable.	6:27
	And so will the society be in which he lives.	6:30
	If the grace of God is refused	6:34
	then the judgment of God will take its place.	6:36
	No one can accuse Jesus of being either naive	6:39
	or mealy mouthed.	6:43
	Now that's two briefer sketch	6:47
	of what a candidate for Judas place	6:49
	among the apostles had to know.	6:53
	Where you say to me such knowledge may have been possible	6:59
	for those who were with Jesus	7:03
	during these three years of his public ministry.	7:06
	But is it still the mark of a Christian	7:10
	in the later history of the church?	7:13
	It is.	7:17
	Look at one example which suggests	7:20
	that a knowledge of the earthly life of Jesus	7:22
	is one mark of the Christian.	7:25
	Many people are surprised that there are so few references	7:30
	to the historic Jesus In the letters of Paul.	7:35
	Now they are few.	7:42
	Let me read with you	7:46
	one of the best known Pauline passages.	7:47
	Here are four verses from the so-called Hymn of love.	7:50
	1 Corinthians 13,	7:56
	as it is translated in the Revised standard version.	7:59
	Love is patient and kind.	8:04
	Love is not jealous or boastful.	8:08
	It is not arrogant or rude.	8:14
	Love does not insist on its own way.	8:18
	It is not irritable or resentful.	8:20
	It does not rejoice it wrong, but rejoices in the right.	8:24
	Love wears all things, believes all things	8:29
	hopes all things, endures all things.	8:33
	Let me change one repeated word in that passage.	8:40
	And also the tense of the verb.	8:47
	Now, how does it run?	8:52
	Jesus was patient and kind.	8:55
	Jesus was not jealous or boastful.	9:01
	Jesus was not arrogant or rude.	9:06
	Jesus did not insist on his own way.	9:11
	Jesus was not irritable or resentful.	9:16
	Jesus did not rejoice it wrong, but rejoiced in the right.	9:21
	Jesus bore all things, believed all things,	9:27
	hoped all things, endured all things.	9:31
	Love was the quality of Jesus's earthly life.	9:37
	In fact love was the essence of his being.	9:41
	Paul must have learned that	9:45
	from those who had companied with Jesus in Galilee	9:47
	and these verses in first Corinthians	9:51
	seem to me to be his veiled portrait in miniature of Jesus.	9:56
	Isn't this equally true of person after person	10:05
	in century after century.	10:10
	they steep themselves, soak themselves	10:13
	in the life of the one whom they call Lord.	10:17
	You see that in Francis of Assisi and Erasmus.	10:22
	You see it's strangely enough in Calvin	10:29
	and less strangely in Luther.	10:32
	You see it in Wesley and in Rauschenbusch.	10:36
	Now we are being told today that it is impossible	10:41
	for us to recapture a true biography of Jesus of Nazareth	10:45
	but there's really no point in setting out on a quest	10:50
	for the historic Jesus.	10:54
	The facts are just not there.	10:57
	Now there's a measure of truth in this assertion	11:00
	No evangelist tried to pen a paragraph of data about Jesus	11:04
	to be incorporated in a first century who's who.	11:12
	They told us what he meant to them.	11:17
	Moreover, each man wrote with his own personal bias.	11:21
	To Matthew Jesus was the expounder of the new law.	11:26
	The fourth gospel is an old man's reminiscences	11:31
	About Jesus as the word of God incarnate	11:38
	and modern attempts at biography	11:43
	are also the understandable outcome of predilection	11:45
	and conditioning.	11:49
	I think of three authors who have influenced me	11:51
	despite or because of their bias.	11:55
	Klausner.	12:00
	Klausner is a Jew	12:02
	who feels that Jesus has misunderstood Judaism.	12:03
	Simkovich is an economic historian who depicts Jesus	12:10
	as attempting the solution of Jewish Roman relations	12:16
	in the first century.	12:23
	Shirley Jackson case is a historical pathologist	12:26
	who does an interesting post mortem on Jesus	12:31
	with almost a cold detachment.	12:34
	Yep, there is a swing back to the quest,	12:39
	to a new quest of the historic Jesus.	12:43
	Robert Iran, A Jew has just produced a readable volume	12:47
	on the hidden years.	12:52
	An attempt to picture the kind of influences on Jesus	12:55
	in the 30 years before his baptism.	12:58
	Boren Carmen in Germany and Robinson in America	13:02
	are seeking to find how the early church	13:07
	really thought of Jesus.	13:10
	So as to discover the first interpretations of him	13:13
	whom we call Lord.	13:18
	This new quest is a legitimate one	13:21
	and we should join in it.	13:24
	Therefore it is back to the gospels for us	13:27
	not read as a succession of verses	13:31
	to be divided into 10 for bedtime devotion,	13:36
	but the gospels on a desk with commentaries	13:42
	and dictionaries to be studied	13:49
	so that we may know at least more about what he said of him	13:54
	who under God is the founder of our faith.	14:01
	And there's no harm to supplementing such gospel study	14:09
	with modern biographies of Jesus.	14:15
	For the first mark of a Christian according to Peter	14:20
	is that he has kept company with Jesus	14:23
	in his earthly ministry.	14:28
	There's a second mark of a Christian, according to Peter	14:32
	as he looked around the gathered company in the upper room	14:35
	he must be able to witness to the resurrection.	14:43
	The resurrection was the utterly new fact about Jesus.	14:52
	The grave had not held him.	14:57
	He was raised from the dead.	15:01
	He was seen.	15:03
	The man to take Judas place must be a witness	15:06
	to the resurrection.	15:12
	Now the physical raising of Jesus from the dead	15:15
	the resuscitation of his earthly body	15:18
	is not the important fact for the new Testament writers.	15:22
	When they try to describe what actually happened	15:27
	on that first Easter Sunday, they are in both confusion	15:31
	and disagreement.	15:36
	Ask them three questions.	15:40
	Where was Jesus first seen after the resurrection?	15:42
	To whom did he first appear?	15:46
	What kind of a body did he have?	15:50
	Listen to the discrepancies in the answers.	15:54
	The gospels are in harmony on the fact of the resurrection.	15:59
	They are not in Unison on his details.	16:05
	Nevertheless, it is because of the resurrection	16:09
	that Christianity is a religion independent of Judaism.	16:14
	Listen to Paul, if Christ did not rise,	16:21
	then our preaching has gone for nothing	16:25
	and your faith has gone for nothing too.	16:28
	If there had been no resurrection,	16:34
	the followers of Jesus	16:36
	might well have become another sect within Judaism.	16:38
	The Nazarenes like the Essene, the Pharisees, the Sadducee's	16:43
	but the early church was so convinced	16:50
	that Jesus was not holden of death.	16:53
	That Mathias was chosen	16:57
	because he was able to witness to the resurrection	17:01
	and to continue that witness.	17:05
	Now in the long history of the church, The cross,	17:10
	rather than the resurrection has reserved for many people	17:16
	the central place in the faith,	17:22
	that is symbolized in the fact that the old rugged cross	17:28
	is usually in first place in the popular vote	17:34
	for the favor of hymn.	17:38
	But would some of us prefer	17:42
	wouldn't it be another hymn of the cross?	17:44
	When I survey the wondrous cross	17:47
	in which the prince of glory died	17:50
	the cross is important, meaningful, inescapable.	17:55
	Perhaps no one can really experience the joy of Easter	18:02
	who has not sat in sorrow	18:07
	and in shame	18:11
	and in despair	18:13
	through the three hour service on good Friday.	18:16
	three o'clock in the afternoon of the first good Friday	18:22
	must have seemed to the followers of Jesus,	18:28
	the ringing down of the curtain	18:32
	on our most unsatisfactory drama.	18:36
	But if the cross were central we would worship on Friday,	18:42
	on each Friday of the week, but we don't.	18:49
	We worship on Sunday.	18:54
	No we don't.	18:56
	We worship on the Lord's day.	18:59
	The first day of every week is a little Easter.	19:07
	There was an English minister	19:14
	who late in his ministry discovered	19:16
	that Easter should be his focus rather than the crucifixion	19:18
	and to symbolize the discovery he had an Easter hymn sung	19:23
	at the morning service each Lord's day	19:28
	to acknowledge and to ratify his discovery.	19:33
	We sang hymn of the resurrection today.	19:37
	We witnessed to the fact that ours is a resurrection faith.	19:41
	Now, what does this mean for us?	19:47
	Almost the only way in which a person today	19:51
	can experience the risen Christ	19:55
	is to see him in another person.	19:59
	In you.	20:05
	In me.	20:08
	The only way in which a person can witness	20:12
	to the risen Christ is to have him within.	20:15
	Isn't that what Paul was driving at	20:18
	When he wrote the Galatians,	20:21
	I have been crucified with Christ.	20:23
	It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.	20:28
	Paul in that verse hyphenates his experience of the cross	20:35
	and the resurrection.	20:39
	But Paul emphasis is always on the risen Christ	20:40
	whose spirit is set free to dwell in his disciples.	20:44
	He is in control the behavior of one in whom he dwells	20:50
	witnesses to the indwelling of the resurrected Christ	20:56
	In theory and sometimes in practice,	21:02
	he lives Christ's life after him.	21:05
	Let me share with you an analogy	21:10
	which may help you to understand this experience.	21:13
	Professor of model philosophy	21:18
	in Glasgow University in my day was AE Bowman.	21:20
	who had just come to Glasgow from Princeton University,	21:25
	The impact of his teaching	21:31
	and of his person on the campus was Tremendous.	21:33
	40% of his class failed every year	21:41
	but they came back the next year and the year after	21:44
	and the year after.	21:46
	That it was fun even to fail in Bowman's class.	21:49
	You learned some much.	21:52
	He died very suddenly overnight, just like that.	21:54
	The result of lung injuries in the first world war.	21:58
	And one of his students reflecting on the matter	22:03
	said something like this.	22:05
	Bowman is dead.	22:08
	This is the end.	22:11
	No,	22:15
	Bowman is not dead.	22:18
	He was never more alive than he is today.	22:22
	As long as I live and hundreds of other students live,	22:27
	Bowman will continue to live	22:32
	because I live yet not I,	22:35
	Bowman liveth in me.	22:39
	now, please note that is but an analogy,	22:43
	But it gives an insight into the domination	22:49
	of the life of the believer By the indwelling Christ.	22:53
	For the second mark of a Christian according to Peter	22:59
	is that he bear personal witness to the resurrection.	23:03
	In 1910, Albert Schweitzer wrote a most significant book.	23:10
	The quest of the historical Jesus.	23:18
	It was a critical history of the efforts	23:24
	to recover the historic Jesus	23:26
	by setting him free from the grave clothes	23:29
	of theological dogma.	23:32
	Painstakingly with Germanic thoroughness	23:35
	Schweitzer worked his way down from 1778 to 1901	23:41
	his conclusions disturbed the theological halls of Europe.	23:49
	They suggest that we too may be in for surprises.	23:55
	If we seek to walk with Jesus	24:02
	from the baptism to the a garden tomb.	24:06
	But Schweitzer's conclusions	24:12
	are not nearly as exciting as his commitment.	24:15
	Here is one page from, here's one paragraph,	24:21
	rather one sentence from the second last page	24:23
	of that long quest.	24:26
	But the truth is it is not Jesus as historically known	24:29
	but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men	24:37
	who is significant for our time and can help it.	24:42
	And you all know the last paragraph of that book.	24:49
	Probably the most quoted statement	24:55
	from all of Schweitzer's writings	24:58
	and one of the most faulted statements	25:01
	from anybody's writings.	25:03
	Let me read to you again, the last paragraph of a,	25:06
	of a serious critical piece of work running to 401 pages.	25:12
	looking at the lines of Jesus	25:22
	written over a period of 130 years.	25:23
	And how does he finish?	25:25
	He comes to us as one unknown without a name	25:27
	as evolved by the Lakeside	25:35
	he came to those men who knew him not.	25:37
	He speaks to us the same word,	25:42
	follow thou need	25:47
	and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill	25:51
	for our time.	25:55
	He commands	25:58
	and to those who obey him	26:03
	whether they be wise or simple,	26:06
	he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts,	26:08
	the sufferings which they shall pass through	26:14
	in his fellowship.	26:16
	And as an inevitable mystery,	26:20
	they shall learn in their own experience who he is.	26:24
	Knowledge yes, but also experience of Jesus,	26:33
	teaching, crucified,	26:38
	risen, indwelling.	26:42
	These are still the marks,	26:48
	still two of the marks of a Christian.	26:52
	Amen.	26:58
	Let us pray.	27:00

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Two Marks of a Christian" (July 15, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4hq3x065

Date:

July 15, 1962

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0192
ref5588_bfd
uachapelsermaud
duke:627895
dcrau002203
ark:/87924/r4hq3x065
7d2938e3-45db-4c54-9f59-377be2d399f1

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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James T. Cleland - "Two Marks of a Christian" (July 15, 1962)

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