The Advantages and Disadvantages of Having the Divine Oracles Compared
T. Chalmers, D. D. Romans 3:1-2 What advantage then has the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?… I. TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN MUCH WILL BE REQUIRED; THE QUESTION, THEN, IS WHETHER IT IS BETTER, THAT IT SHALL BE GIVEN OR WITHHELD. 1. The Jew, who sinned against the light of his revelation, will have a severer retribution than the Gentile who only sinned against the light of his own conscience; and the nations of Christendom who have rejected the gospel will incur a darker doom than the native of China, whose remoteness, while it shelters him from the light of the New Testament in this world, shelters him from the pain of its fulfilled denunciations in another. And with these considerations a shade of uncertainty appears to pass over the question — whether the Christianisation of a people ought at all to be meddled with. 2. But without an authoritative solution of this question from God, we are really not in circumstances to determine it. We have not all the materials of the question before us. We know not how to state what the addition is which knowledge confers upon the sufferings of disobedience; or how far an accepted gospel exalts the condition of him who was before a stranger to it. It is all a matter of revelation on which side the difference lies; and he who is satisfied to be wise up to that which is written will quietly repose upon the deliverance of Scripture on this subject. "Go and preach the gospel to every creature under heaven," and "go unto all the world, and teach all nations." These parting words of our Saviour may not be enough to quell the anxieties of the speculative Christian, but they are quite enough to decide the conduct of the practical Christian. 3. But the verses before us advance one step farther, and enter on the question of profit and loss attendant on the possession of the oracles of God; and to decide, on the part of the former, that the advantage was much every way. And it is not for those individuals alone who reaped the benefit that the apostle makes the calculation. He makes an abatement for the unbelief of all the others; and, balancing the difference, he lands us in a computation of clear gain to the whole people. And it bears importantly on this question; for surely we may well venture to circulate these oracles when told of the most stiff-necked and rebellious people on earth, that, with all their abuse of them, they conferred a positive advantage on their nation. And yet what a fearful deduction from this advantage must have been made by their wickedness. It were hard to tell the amount of aggravation upon all their sin, in that it was sin against the light of the oracles of God; but the apostle tells us that, let the amount be what it may, it was more than countervailed by the positive good done through these oracles. II. A FEW REMARKS BOTH ON THE SPECULATIVE AND ON THE PRACTICAL PART OF THIS QUESTION. 1. The Bible, when brought into a new country, may be instrumental in saving those who submit to its doctrine; and, in so doing, it saves them from an absolute condition of misery in which they were previously involved. If along with this advantage to those who receive it, it aggravates the condition of those who reject it, it does not change into wretchedness that which before was enjoyment; and the whole amount of the evil that has been rendered is only to be computed by the difference in degree between the suffering that is laid upon sin with, and sin without the knowledge of the Saviour. We do not know how great the difference is, but we gather that it was better for the Jews, in spite of all the deeper responsibility and guilt which their possession of the Old Testament laid upon the disobedient, yet that a net accession of gain was thus rendered to the whole — then may we infer that any enterprise by which the Bible is more extensively circulated, or taught, is of positive benefit to every neighbourhood. 2. Though in Jewish history they were the few to whom the oracles of God were a blessing, and the many to whom they were an additional condemnation — yet, on the whole, the good so predominated over the evil, that it on the whole was for the better and not for the worse that they possessed these oracles. But the argument gathers in strength as we look onward to futurity, as we dwell upon the fact of the universal prevalence of the gospel of Christ. Even in this day of small things, the direct blessing which follows in the train of a circulated Bible and a proclaimed gospel overbalances the incidental evil; and when we think of the latter-day glory which it ushers in, who should shrink from the work of hastening it forward, because of a spectre conjured up from the abyss of human ignorance? Even did the evil now predominate over the good, still is a missionary enterprise like a magnanimous daring for a great moral and spiritual achievement, which will at length reward the perseverance of its devoted labourers. There are collateral evils attendant on the progress of Christianity. At one time it brings a sword instead of peace, and at another it stirs up a variance in families, and at all times does it deepen the guilt of those who resist the overtures which it makes to them. But these are only the perils of a voyage that is richly laden with the moral wealth of many future generations. These are but the hazards of a battle which terminates in the proudest and most productive of all victories — and, if the liberty of a great empire be an adequate return for the loss of the lives of its defenders, then is the glorious liberty of the children of God, which will at length be extended over the face of a still enslaved and alienated world, more than an adequate return for the spiritual loss that is sustained by those who, instead of fighting for the cause, have resisted and reviled it. III. CONCLUDE WITH A FEW PRACTICAL REMARKS. 1. It is with argument such as this that we would meet the anti-missionary spirit, Not long ago Christianising enterprise was traduced as a kind of invasion on the safety and innocence of paganism, and it was affirmed that, though idolatry is blind, yet it were better not to awaken its worshippers, than to drag them forth by instruction to the hazards and the exposures of a more fearful responsibility. But why should we be restrained now from the work by a calculation, which did not restrain the missionaries of two thousand years ago? 2. If man is to be kept in ignorance because every addition of light brings along with it an addition of responsibility — then ought the species to be arrested at home as well as abroad in its progress towards a more exalted state of humanity; and such evils as may attend the transition to moral and religious knowledge, should deter us from every attempt to rescue our own countrymen from any given amount of darkness by which they may now be encompassed. 3. However safe it is to commit the oracles of God into the hands of others, yet, considering ourselves in the light of those to whom these oracles are committed, it is a matter of urgent concern whether, to us personally, the gain or the loss will predominate. It resolves itself, with every separate individual, into the question of his secured heaven, or his more aggravated hell — whether he be of the some who turn the message of God into an instrument of conversion; or of the many who, by neglect and unconcern, render it the instrument of their sorer condemnation. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? WEB: Then what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the profit of circumcision?