THE MOST MAGNIFICENT THING
IN THE WORLD
A Sermon by
Dr. Walter A. Maier
Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor
that ye through His poverty might be rich. — 2 Cor. 8:9.
WHAT is the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the
most magnificent thing in this world? Can it be sought and found in the
entrancing splendor of nature, in the rugged grandeur of rock-bound,
snow-capped mountains that etch their majestic peaks against the
evening background of the flaming skies; or in the sylvan silence of
cathedral-like forests, where stately sentinels of leafy green lift
men’s gaze from earth to heaven? No; there is something infinitely more
beautiful, more wonderful, more magnificent than all this; for the
earth and all that is in it is but the footstool of One whose divine
power has given us a far nobler and more exalted height of wondrous
beauty and magnificence.
We ask again, then: Is this to be sought and found
among men, in the exquisite forms of physical beauty, or in the deeper
treasures of the inner life? Many there are who would answer, “Yes,”
and point us to the charm of blemishless beauty or to the deep and
powerful emotion of love, the love of husband and wife, the love of
parents and children, the love of friendship, the love of patriotism,
love m its purest and noblest human forms. But again comes the echo:
There is something more beautiful, far more wonderful, inexpressibly
more magnificent, than all this. We read in the Record of Truth of One
who is fairer than the children of men.” We hear of a greater love,
that of laying down one’s life for one’s friends. And He who told us of
this love Himself laid down His life, not only for His friends, but for
His enemies, to reveal to us by that very self-sacrifice the
unparalleled height of immeasurable magnificence, the grace of God in
Jesus Christ.
Unparalleled and immeasurable, I say, because the
human intellect, even with its most advanced achievements, lacks every
capacity to understand adequately the depth and the meaning of that
love which the great apostle describes when he tells us: “Ye know the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your
sakes He became poor that ye through His poverty might be rich.”
THE MAGNIFICENT RICHES OF CHRIST.
Note how clearly these words point to the
magnificent riches of Jesus Christ in these opening words, “though He
was rich.” And oh, that it were possible to picture to you the
limitless munificence of your Savior! The national wealth of these
United States is estimated at about four hundred billion dollars. The
wealth of all the nations of the whole earth and of all ages would
aggregate staggering totals of inconceivable billions. But if we could
take the sum total of all the wealth of which men have ever known and
multiply it a thousandfold, all this would be a mere bagatelle compared
with the depth of the riches over which our Lord, as the eternal God,
held undisputed sway. He was rich, rich in the resources and wealth of
the entire universe that is His; rich in the exercise of all power in
heaven and in earth, in the control of the myriads of constellations
beyond the searching gaze of the most penetrating telescope; rich in
the direction of the shifting tides of the oceans, in the shaping of
human affairs as they are molded into history. He was rich in the
majestic adoration of the heavenly legions that encircle the throne of
His divinity; rich in the glory and purity of His divine sinlessness;
rich in truth, in wisdom, and in justice. But — endless praise to His
holy name! — He was rich in love, in mercy, in grace, toward a
corroding and decaying world that had spurned the guidance of God, — so
rich that, as unfathomable as it may be to our human reason, He showed
the depth of His divine compassion for human souls by the magnificence
of that tremendous sacrifice of which our text continues to speak when
it adds, “Yet for your sakes He became poor.”
THE MAGNIFICENT SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
I sometimes wonder how many there are who can
adequately measure the abject poverty of our Lord in the depths of His
humiliation when He humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the
cross. It is true, we speak of His holy cross with reverence and love.
We mold it into symbols of gold and precious metals; we place it high
upon the spires of our churches, above all the noise and grime of our
earth-bound, daily existence; we have made the cross the greatest of
all human symbols. Yet how little we sometimes comprehend the love of
Him who so inexpressibly impoverished Himself and finally died upon the
accursed tree!
And what a death it was! No matter under what
circumstances the Grim Reaper may come, there is always a crushing pain
and the sorrow of anguish which arises from grief-torn hearts when our
loved ones are called home by God. Even if we surround them with all
the comforts that money and medical science can offer, even if we give
them every possible attention, sit by their death-beds to wipe their
fevered brow and pray with all the fervor of which the human heart is
capable, even then there is that numb pain, that depressing sorrow,
that indescribable grief which always comes with death.
But how immeasurably more intense was our Savior’s
crucifixion! — a mode of capital punishment so horrible that it was not
recognized by the Church of the Old Testament, so degrading that, as a
Latin author tells us, it was a punishment inflicted upon slaves, so
painful that it has universally been considered one of the most
excruciating modes of torture ever known.
But this does not explain even partially the
fullness of the infinite grace of Christ and the appalling depths of
His self-assumed poverty. There have been men who have suffered long
and intensely and who have died for others, noble and heroic martyrs to
the cause of their country. We think, for example of Arnold von
Winkelried, who gathered the long spears of the Austrian phalanx and
plunged them into the warm life-blood of his heart to make way for his
Tyrolian fatherland. With the message of Armistice Day still lingering
with us, we think of unnamed and unknown heroes who have suffered and
bled and died in order to insure religious and political freedom to us
and to our posterity. We think of the noblest examples of such heroic
sacrifice; but when we compare all this with the self-sacrifice of the
Lord Jesus, it dwindles into less than obscurity. For on the cross,
deserted by God and by men, is One who in His marred and tortured body
bears the crushing weight of all the sins that have ever been
committed throughout the long annals of history. Here, in the poverty
of Christ, is the greatest spectacle of love which men have ever beheld
or ever will behold — “not that we loved God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Here, with His
divine arms outstretched as though He would embrace sinful humanity in
its overwhelming totality, is God’s answer to the plea of mankind for
the forgiveness of sins, for the power to counteract evil, for the
ability to rise up over the enshrouding gloom of death. Here, in the
abysmal poverty of Christ, is the magnificence of grace, pure, saving,
sanctifying grace.
THE MAGNIFICENT BLESSING OF CHRIST.
Then think of the universality of grace that is
embraced in these three words, “for your sakes.” We have become more
internationally minded than any previous generation; yet in spite of
all the activities of our various world congresses and leagues no
human plan or arrangement has ever begun to make the approach to that
universal appeal that comes with the Gospel-message of grace. We know
that President Chiang Kaishek recently followed the example of three
million Chinese by embracing Christianity; but can you conceive of a
President of the United States accepting Confucianism? We know that
four million of Mother India’s children have accepted the Christ as
their Savior; but the isolated Westerners who have adopted Buddhism or
Brahmanism are only the abnormal exceptions. Is there any one in my
audience from coast to coast tonight who can name a half dozen normal,
healthy-minded Americans who believe in Mohammed’s Koran, with its
background of Oriental passion and voluptuousness and its heaven of
sensual attractions? But hundreds of thousands of Mohammedans have been
brought to Christ. Why all this? Is it not because the message of the
great humiliation of Christ “for your sakes” is the promise which
holds out hope to every child of the human race regardless of racial,
national, or geographical distinctions? The magnificence of the grace
of Christ is seen just in this, that, whenever a man looks up to that
cross and beholds those arms outstretched to receive him, it does not
matter where that man comes from or what his education is, whether he
is an illiterate or an intellectual leader; it does not matter what his
social standing is, be it that of a criminal behind penitentiary bars
or that of one who has ascended to the pinnacle of preeminence in the
affairs of the world; it does not matter what his financial status is,
whether he be one of the large army of the unemployed who live on from
day to day in dread anticipation of the rigors of the coming winter, or
whether he be one whose Midas touch has heaped up a fabulous reserve of
golden treasures; it does not matter what a man s color, or his
culture, or his reputation, or his age, or his influence may be, — when
he comes to that cross and acknowledges that Christ as his Savior, his
Lord and his God, he finds in Him all that he needs to answer the
pressing question of sin and salvation, of life and death.
No one is excluded from this all-embracing “for your
sakes.” While extreme modern philosophy teaches the survival of the
fittest and insists that the sick and the weak and the unproductive
members of society be removed from the land of the living, here are the
riches of Christ’s invitation, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden.” While India says of its baby girls, “Drown them!” and
China echoes, “Sell them!” Jesus places His benediction upon childhood
and says, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them
not, for of such is the kingdom of God.” While Africa repudiates its
aged and infirm and calls out, “Drag them out into the jungle!” and our
modern system answers, “Over the hills to the poor-house!” the riches
of God’s Word say, “And even to your old age I am He, and even to hoar
hairs will I carry you.” In short, never has man known any program
which so completely obliterates every mark of human distinction as
Christ’s self-impoverization ‘“for your sakes,” that is, for the
redemption of the world, in its absolute entirety.
THE MAGNIFICENT MESSAGE TO YOU.
So tonight I invite you to come and to accept this
magnificent promise of our text, “that ye through His poverty might be
rich.” I appeal directly and especially to those who have come from
Christian homes and who have become untrue to the trust of God-fearing
parents; to those who may have been members of the Church of Jesus
Christ, but who permitted either the cares or the joys of this life to
crowd out the feeling of their duties and responsibilities toward God;
to those who may regard themselves beyond the pale of grace, who may
feel that because of particular, repeated, and grievous sins in their
own lives the grace and mercy of God does not extend to them. To all
such He, the unfailing Friend of sinners, has promised the inestimable
riches which offer to the world today a happiness, a contentment, and a
peace that passes all understanding. Have you been confronted by
disillusionment and disappointment? Here in Christ’s riches is the
hope of the hopeless, the rock which stands firm and steadfast amid the
flow and ebb of man’s changing favors. Do you find yourself in the
midst of inner struggles, in a surging conflict for which human
resources grant no help? Here, in Christ’s riches, you have Him who is
the Way and the Truth and the Life. Does your heart ache under the
crushing pain of recent bereavement and the hurt that lies too deep to
be probed by a physician’s skill? Here, in Christ’s riches, is the balm
that soothes your sorrow and the radiance that guides you through the
lowering darkness to the beacon of happiness, to Him that “doeth all
things well.” Are you anxiously striving to learn how to grow in
sanctification, how to obtain the crown of life, how to gain the
assurance of the blessed companionship with the Lord when life ends?
Here is the goal of your search; for here is Christ, who reaches out to
you tonight to bestow upon all who will receive it the most
magnificent gift in the world, His never-failing, never--ending grace.
Now, if there is some groping, questioning soul that
interrupts, “How can I come?” “What does it cost?” “What must I do?” —
what an unparalleled privilege is mine to be able to tell such souls
tonight, not the opinion of human speculation, but the positive truth
of God’s revelation to man: “We are justified FREELY, by His grace,
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, His Son” Christianity
is the only free religion on the face of the earth. It must be free
because there is not enough money in the world to compensate the price
that the Lord Jesus paid for salvation. I read the other day of a
manuscript of a child’s story that was purchased for almost $150,000.
Not long ago an automobile factory was sold for $146,000,000. Now, if
men place such values upon the material things of life, what figures
must be placed on the imperishable and everlasting grace of God? And
yet, wonder of wonders, it is free! Not only need we pay nothing, but
we need do nothing; for a lifetime of the most strenuous effort,
intensify it as we may, could never accomplish the humanly impossible
task of bringing men from earth to heaven.
Come, then, and take the vast resources of divine
love that Christ holds out to you. Led on by rumors of fabulous wealth,
men have strained every effort to uncover hidden treasures and to bring
to light the unsealed riches of past ages. But here, in the
time-defying, decay-challenging riches of the soul that Jesus offers
through His abysmal poverty and limitless self-giving, your treasure of
treasures is close at hand. Will you not come, then, tonight and take
into grateful hearts the outpouring of this most magnificent gift that
Heaven has given to men? Will you not through trusting, childlike,
implicit faith appropriate this unsearchable wealth of spirit for the
enriching of your soul? Come, I beseech you, from sin to grace, from
darkness to light, from poverty to riches, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
[The preceding sermon is included in the book, “The Lutheran Hour”
1931.]