The Safety of Faith
Phillips Brooks, D. D. Mark 16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick… Let us consider the safety which Christ offers. It is a safety not by the avoidance of deadly things, but by the neutralizing of them through a higher and stronger power. There is no such idle promise as that if a man believes in Christ a wall shall be built around his soul, so that the things out of which souls make sin cannot come to Him. The Master knew the world too well for that. His own experience on the hill of His temptation was still fresh in His memory. He knew that life meant exposure, that sin must surely beat at every one of these hearts. Nay, that the things out of which sin is made, temptation, moral trial, must enter into every heart; and so He said not, "I will lead you through secluded ways where none but sweet and healthy waters flow," but, "Where I lead you, there will be the streams of poison. Only if you have the vitality which comes by faith in Me, your life shall be stronger than the poison's death. If you drink any deadly thing it shall not harm you"....Only those temptations which we encounter on the way of duty, in the path of consecration, only those has our Lord promised us that we shall conquer. He sends us out to live and work for Him. The chances of sin which we meet while that Divine design of life, the life and work for Him, is clear before us, shall not hurt us. When we forget that design, our arm withers, our immunity is gone. It is only when we are about some higher task, only when they meet us as accidents in the service of Christ, that we have a right deliberately to encounter temptation and the chance to sin, and may claim the Lord's promise of immunity. Think in how many places that law applies. Have I a right to read this sceptical book — this hook in which some able, witty man has gathered all his skill against my Christian faith? It is a book of poison. Have I a right to drink it? Who can say absolutely yes or no? Who does not feel that it depends upon what sort of life the reader brings to meet the poison? If in your soul there is a passionate desire for truth, if you do really love and serve Christ, and want to know Him better, that you may love and serve him more, if this book comes as a help to that part of a study by which you shall get nearer to the heart of the truth and Him, then if you drink that deadly thing it shall not harm you. Nay, you may rise up from the reading with a faith more deep. Whatever change your faith may undergo, it shall win a profounder life. But if there is no such earnestness, no such life as this, if it is mere curiosity, mere desire to be fine and liberal, mere defiance, a mere wantonness, then the poison has it all its own way; there is no vigorous life to meet it; and its death spreads through the nature till it finds the heart....And so it is everywhere with all exposure of the spiritual life. "What took you there?" "What right had you to be there?" These are the critical questions on which everything depends. If you are passing through temptation with your eye fixed on a pure, true life beyond it, temptation being only a necessary stage upon your way, so long as you keep that purpose, that resolution, that ideal, you shall be safe. If you are in temptation for temptation's sake, with no purpose beyond it, you are lost. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. WEB: they will take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will in no way hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."