Exposition by Max A Forsythe
Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA)
I
recently overheard a philosophical discussion that sounded intriguing.
The question was simple but the answer is complex.
Why does Gargamel hate the Smurfs?
Say what?
Well, in case you have never seen that popular children’s show of the
eighties, the Smurfs are true blue cartoon characters.
Gargamel and his cat are the resident enemies of Smurfdom.
Certainly, the cat would eat the tiny little Smurfs if given half a
chance, yet Gargamel consistently protects the funny little blue imps, even as
he tries to trap them and make their lives as miserable as his own.
But why does the stodgy old wizard -- in his castle, which has seen
better days -- hate the fun-loving playful creatures of the forest so intensely?
Now,
I’m not certain I remember this correctly.
But I think I once read that part of the charm of this particular series
is its Old World source in the artistry of the low countries of Europe.
Now I would almost bet that the creative New Age artists would lay their
enlightened humanistic life style along side that of the now ancient Dutch
Reformers, who might be considered to be fretful that any young person might be
having fun in the sun instead of being miserably repressed.
Certainly, we would disagree with that image, just as we might disagree
with the intent of the popular newspaper cartoon series Calvin & Hobbes.
The author of that series supposedly began his drawings as a means of
comparing the philosopher Thomas Hobbes with the theologian John Calvin.
The series was not intended to build up the image of our favorite
theologian!
Thomas Hobbes was a self-centered atheist who upheld the arbitrary
absolute rule of the monarchy, in a time when republican democracy was being
developed.
A quiet, ordered society would be beneficial only if it served
the purpose of the man who would be god and king in his own right.
If
you detect some unordered thoughts there, you are on the right track.
Now, what has all of this got to do with the opening text of Romans Nine?
In two words: worldly envy.
King Herod the great, who was descended from Idumean or Edomite
ancestors, once ordered the total destruction of the genealogical files kept in
the Temple, so that no Jew would have a better, more provable pedigree than
himself!
Calvin
-- the theologian, not the cartoon character -- delves into the Jewish
hesitation to accept the claims of Jesus Christ in this sense, as he comments on
Paul’s text.
“In
this chapter Paul begins to meet the offenses which might have turned men’s
minds away from Christ, for the Jews...not only rejected, or despised, but for
the most part detested him....the Jews had too great a hatred for all that Paul
had said up to this point concerning the law of Moses and the grace of Christ to
assist the faith of the Gentiles by agreeing with him.
The removal of this stumbling block was therefore necessary, lest it
should impede the course of the Gospel.”
Why
do the Jews reject, despise and detest their Christ?
Well may we ask.
Gently, pastorally, Paul speaks to the matter before us.
How can the majority of the Old Testament saints miss the coming of their
long awaited Messiah?
Later in the New Testament we have heard the answer -- men loved darkness
more than the light.
Like the cartoonish Gargamel, the Jewish leaders pounced on the early
church, detesting the freedom the Spirit gave to the Christians from their
man-made laws.
You see, the Jewish church had become a religion instead of a faith.
Man-made traditions had become more important than life in the Spirit, as
Paul described it in Chapter Eight.
Paul’s heart is almost broken by their rejection.
Today,
many within the Evangelical church cannot believe that even the Jews must at
long last accept their Messiah.
Pretribulation rhapsodies of a mass coming over to the Christ play well
to many camps of Christians.
For most of this century, covert funding of Zionists has long been an
embarrassment to Christ’s church.
And how has the Zionist group in Israel responded to such Christian
encouragement?
There is a Israeli law that any ethnic Jew who becomes a Christian is no
longer Jewish.
Even more, the church of our Lord Jesus is held up as insensitive for
affirming that there is no salvation except in Christ.
Look at Paul’s mood in these opening verses.
There is something wonderful here in his heartfelt imitation of our Lord.
Not
only is there despair but also a Christ-like love for the lost members of his
people.
Look carefully at the words in verse three.
What does Paul mean by this
“anathema,” as
the Greek and older translations have it?
John Murray tells us that it “means
to be separated from Christ and devoted to destruction....It means to be
abandoned to perdition.”
In contemporary idiom he is saying: “I
could almost go to hell for the sake of my people.”
Calvin agrees, by observing: “It
was, therefore, a proof of the most fervent love that Paul did not hesitate to
call on himself the condemnation which he saw hanging over the Jews, in order
that he might deliver them.”
His love here is patterned after the love of our Lord who was made a
curse and sin for our own redemption.
What greater love has a man than to lay down his own life that others may
live?
The
whole tragic spectacle of the movie Schindler’s List shows us this
greater love in action.
At the end of that movie Schindler grieves that he hadn’t traded his
car and his jewelry for another handful of Jews.
Those whose freedom he had bought comforted him with the knowledge that
he had done all that he could.
Could the Jews, of Paul’s time, have appreciated the sacrifice that
Paul almost wished upon himself, so that they might know the Christ?
Would
that we were better able to mirror the agony of Christ, in our concern for the
lost in our day!
Some of our own relatives, neighbors and friends are eternally lost, and
do we even grieve for them?
Certainly, the worldly Gargamels chase after us evangelical “smurfs,”
to keep us from enjoying our spiritual freedom.
Yet how many of us have even the worldly wisdom or the compassion of Papa
Smurf, not to hate the enemy?
How many of us even pray for the salvation of the worldly, let alone
imitate the grief of Paul, imitating the grief of Christ, as we see in these
short verses?
One
of the friends of our congregation lamented the fact that the old liberal
Presbyterian Church, out of which some of us came, has all of the treasures of
the centuries past, except one.
Like Paul’s litany here of the Israelites, they have the beautiful
buildings, the stained glass windows, the historic places, the creeds and
confessions.
But -- and we have to remind ourselves of this quite regularly -- they
have not Jesus Christ.
The very congregations that I loved and called home when I was a boy are
now in occupied territory.
Their faith is being reimaged, the gospel is barely known and the people
still there who know the truth are largely silenced or unlistened to.
In the little colonial cemeteries outside those rustic churches are my
ancestors buried, but the ground is no longer holy because a foreign god-spell
is being preached and administered.
What in heaven’s name could get their attention, we may ask? Certainly we see that Paul stops short of desiring something that he ought not, yet he could almost wish to die like Christ that his people might have life eternal. As we gather around the Lord’s table today and reflect upon how Christ died for us, let us carefully consider this imitation of Christ by Paul. And at the very least, let us fill our prayers with sorrow for the dying and pray that by the grace of our Lord some might come to know our Jesus.
Resources Used: The Holy Bible, New International Version
Places Preached:Hodge, Charles. Romans. Mackenzie, R. Calvin's New Testament Commentaries: Romans. Murray, John. New International Commentary: Epistle to Romans. Reese, W.L. "Hobbes, Thomas", Dictionary of Philosophy & Religion.
Christ Covenant REFORMED (Presbyterian Church in America) Post Office Box 13926 - Columbus, OH 43213-7926
Rom09a.htm 29 October 95
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