Facets of a Diamond

Excerpt from Spiritual Classics

Just over two hun­dred years ago, in 1754 to be pre­cise, Horace Wal­pole coined the word ​“serendip­i­ty,” which has now come to be accept­ed into our lan­guage. The word, which is derived from the ancient name for Cey­lon, is defined as ​“the fac­ul­ty of mak­ing hap­py and unex­pect­ed dis­cov­er­ies by acci­dent.” Before I go on to dis­cuss the work of trans­lat­ing the Gospels I feel I must men­tion some of the ​“hap­py and unex­pect­ed dis­cov­er­ies” which I made in the trans­la­tion of the Epistles.

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The first one I will men­tion, which of course may all the time have been no secret to any­body else, was the expres­sion ​“rich in mer­cy” (Eph. 2:4). This struck me as a pos­i­tive jew­el. Just as we might say that a Texas tycoon is ​“rich in oil,” so Paul writes it as a mat­ter of fact that God is ​“rich in mer­cy.” The pagan world was full of fear, and the Chris­t­ian gospel set out to replace that fear of the gods or the fates, or even life itself, with love for and trust in God. ​“Rich in mer­cy” was good news to the ancient world and it is good news today.… 

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I had for some time been wor­ried about the expres­sion ​“fear and trem­bling.” It did not seem like­ly to me that Paul in writ­ing to the Philip­pi­ans could have meant lit­er­al­ly that they were to work out their sal­va­tion in a con­di­tion of anx­i­ety and ner­vous­ness. We all know that fear destroys love and spoils rela­tion­ships, and a great deal of the New Tes­ta­ment is tak­en up with get­ting rid of the old ideas of fear and sub­sti­tut­ing the new ideas of love and trust. 

I realised that the Greek word trans­lat­ed ​“fear” can equal­ly well mean ​“rev­er­ence” or ​“awe” or even ​“respect,” but I was both­ered about the ​“trem­bling.” Sure­ly the same Spir­it who inspired Paul to write to Tim­o­thy that ​“God hath not giv­en us the spir­it of fear; but of pow­er and of love and of a sound mind” could not also have meant us to live our entire lives in a state of ner­vous ter­ror. I came to the con­clu­sion, a lit­tle reluc­tant­ly, that the expres­sion ​“in fear and trem­bling” had become a bit of a cliché, even as it has in some cir­cles today. 

As I went on trans­lat­ing I found that this must be the case. For when Paul wrote to the Corinthi­ans and report­ed that Titus had been encour­aged and refreshed by their recep­tion of him, he then went on to say that the Corinthi­an Chris­tians received him with ​“fear and trem­bling” (2 Cor. 7:13)! Now this makes no sense, unless it is a pure­ly con­ven­tion­al ver­bal form imply­ing prop­er respect. For, lit­tle as we know of Titus, we can­not imag­ine any real Chris­t­ian min­is­ter being encour­aged and refreshed by a dis­play of ner­vous anxiety. 

We get the same phrase occur­ring again in Paul’s advice to Chris­t­ian slaves (Eph. 6:5), where the con­text makes it quite clear that faith­ful­ness and respon­si­bil­i­ty are much more what Paul means than ​“fear and trem­bling.” This much became plain, and then I realised that when Paul real­ly did mean the words to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly he ampli­fied them to make sure they would be prop­er­ly under­stood. I think we some­times imag­ine that the incred­i­bly hero­ic Paul suf­fered from no human weak­ness­es, except for the ​“thorn in the flesh” about which all New Tes­ta­ment com­men­ta­tors have writ­ten (2 Cor. 12:7). But if we turn to 1 Corinthi­ans 2:3, we find Paul writ­ing that ​“I was with you in weak­ness, and in fear, and in much trem­bling.” Now this is a dif­fer­ent thing alto­geth­er. Here we have a man hon­est enough to admit that he was fright­ened and that he was, or had been, ill. ​“Fear and trem­bling” here are per­fect­ly legit­i­mate. It is only when they are used as a phrase almost with­out lit­er­al mean­ing that we begin to feel uncomfortable.

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There are nat­u­ral­ly many more hap­py and unex­pect­ed dis­cov­er­ies which I made over the years, some of them per­haps mere­ly reveal­ing how super­fi­cial must have been my pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of the New Tes­ta­ment let­ters. But since this is a per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny, I have felt it right to men­tion some of the things which came to me with fresh and star­tling clar­i­ty. I have kept the best until last. 

It occurs in John’s first let­ter, chap­ter 3, verse 20. Like many oth­ers, I find myself some­thing of a per­fec­tion­ist, and if we don’t watch our­selves this obses­sion for the per­fect can make us arro­gant­ly crit­i­cal of oth­er peo­ple and, in cer­tain moods, des­per­ate­ly crit­i­cal of our­selves. In this state of mind it is not real­ly that I can­not sub­scribe to the doc­trine of the For­give­ness of Sins, but that the tyran­ni­cal super-Me con­demns and has no mer­cy on myself. 

Now John, in his wis­dom, points out in inspired words, ​“If our heart con­demn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” This is a gen­tle but salu­tary rebuke to our assump­tion that we know bet­ter than God! God, on any show­ing, is infi­nite­ly greater in wis­dom and love than we are and, unlike us, knows all the fac­tors involved in human behaviour. 

We are guilty of cer­tain things, and these we must con­fess with all hon­esty, and make repa­ra­tion where pos­si­ble. But there may be many fac­tors in our lives for which we are not real­ly to blame at all. We did not choose our hered­i­ty; we did not choose the bad, indif­fer­ent, or excel­lent way in which we were brought up. 

This is nat­u­ral­ly not to say that every wrong thing we do, or every fear or rage to which we are sub­ject today, is due entire­ly to hered­i­ty, envi­ron­ment, and upbring­ing. But it cer­tain­ly does mean that we are in no posi­tion to judge our­selves; we sim­ply must leave that to God, who is our Father and ​“is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” It is almost as if John is say­ing, ​“If God loves us, who are we to be so high and mighty as to refuse to love ourselves?