Anathema and Grace
A. Maclaren, D.D. 1 Corinthians 16:22 If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. 1. Terror and tenderness are strangely mingled in this parting salutation. Paul has been obliged, throughout the whole Epistle, to assume a tone of remonstrance, and here he traces all their vices to their fountain-head — the defect of love to Jesus Christ — and warns of their fatal issue. 2. But he will not leave these terrible words for his last. The thunder is followed by gentle rain, and the sun glistens on the dewdrops (ver. 23). Nor for himself will he let the last impression he one of rebuke or even of warning (ver. 24). Is not that beautiful? And does it not go deeper than the revelation of Paul's character? May we not see in these terrible and tender thoughts a revelation of the true nature both of the terror and the tenderness of the gospel which Paul preached? Note — I. THE TERROR OF THE FATE OF THE UNLOVING. "Anathema" means an offering, or a thing devoted. In the story of the conquest of Canaan, e.g., we read of places, persons, or things that were "accursed," i.e., devoted or put under a ban. And this "devotion" was of such a sort as that the subjects were doomed to destruction. So Paul tells us that the unloving, like those cities full of uncleanness, when they are brought into contact with the infinite love of the coming Judge, shrivel up and are destroyed. "Maran-atha" is a separate sentence. It means "our Lord comes," and was perhaps a kind of watchword. The use of it here is to confirm the warning of the previous clause, by pointing to the time at which that warning shall be fulfilled. 1. "The Lord comes." Paul's Christianity gathered round two facts and moments — one in the past, Christ has come; one in the future, Christ will come. For memory, the coming by the cradle and the Cross; for hope, the coming on His throne in glory. And between these two moments, like the solid piers of a suspension bridge, the frail structure of the present hangs swinging. There have been many comings in the past, besides the coming in the flesh. One characteristic is stamped upon them all, and that is the swift annihilation of what is opposed to Him. The Bible has a set of standing metaphors by which to illustrate this thought — "A flood," "a harvest," the waking of God from slumber, etc. The second coming will include and surpass all the characteristics which these lesser and premonitory judgment days presented in miniature. 2. The coming of the Lord of love is the destruction of the unloving — not the cessation of their being, but a death worse than death, because a death in life. Suppose a man with all his past annihilated, with all its effort crushed, with all its possessions gone, and with his memory and his conscience stung into clear-sighted activity, so as that he looks back upon his former and into his present self, and feels that it is all chaos, would not that fulfil the word, "Let him be Anathema"? And suppose that such a man, in addition to these thoughts, and as the root and the source of them, had ever the quivering. consciousness that he was in the presence of an unloved Judge! The unloving heart is always ill at ease in the presence of Him whom it does not love. The unloving heart does not love, because it does not trust nor see the love. Therefore, the unloving heart is a heart that is only capable of apprehending the wrathful side of Christ's character. So there is no cruelty, no arbitrariness in the decree that the heart that loves not when brought into contact with the infinite Lord of love must find in the touch death and not life, darkness and not light, terror and not hope. 3. Paul does not say "he that hateth," but he that does not love. The absence of love, which is the child of faith, the parent of righteousness, the condition of joy in His presence, is sufficient to ensure that this fate shall fall upon a man. II. THE PRESENT GRACE OF THE COMING LORD. "Our Lord cometh." "The grace," etc. (ver. 23). 1. These two things are not contradictory, but we often deal with them as if they were. But the real doctrine says there is no terror without tenderness, and there is no tenderness without terror. You cannot have love which is anything nobler than facile good nature and unrighteous indifference, unless you have along with it aspects of God's character and government which ought to make some men afraid. And you cannot keep these latter aspects from being exaggerated and darkened into a Moloch of cruelty unless you remember that underlying them and determining them are aspects of the Divine nature, to which only child-like confidence and love rightly respond. The terror of the Lord is a garb which our sins forces upon the love of the Lord. 2. Note what the present grace is. A tenderness which gathers into its embrace all these imperfect, immoral, lax, heretical people in Corinth, as well as everywhere else — "with you all." And surely the love which gathers in such people leaves none outside its sweep. Let nothing rob you of this assurance, that the coming Lord is present with us all, and all we need, in order to get its full sunshine into our hearts, is that we trust Him utterly, and, so trusting, love Him back again with that love which is the fulfilling of the law and the crown of the gospel. III. THE TENDERNESS, CAUGHT FROM THE MASTER HIMSELF OF THE SERVANT WHO REBUKES (ver. 24). There is no other instance where he introduces himself and his own love at the end, after he has pronounced the solemn benediction. But here, as if he had felt that he must leave an impression of himself on their minds which corresponded to the impression of his Master that he desired to leave, he deviates from his ordinary habit, and makes his last word a personal word — "My love be with you all in Christ Jesus." Paul embraces all whom he has been rebuking in the warm embrace of his proffered love, which was the very cause of his rebuke. The healing balm of this closing message was to be applied to the wounds which his keen edged words had made, and to show that they were wounds by a surgeon, not by a foe. Because the gospel is a gospel, it must speak plainly about death and destruction to the unloving. The danger signal is not to be blamed for a collision. "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." (A. Maclaren, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha. WEB: If any man doesn't love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. Come, Lord!