1 Corinthians 15:46-49 - Homiletics

The two grand types of character.

"Howbeit that was not," etc. The words show—

I. That man has set before him TWO MORAL IMAGES OR TYPES OF CHARACTER —the "earthy" and the "heavenly." These two are essentially distinct in the spring and spheres of their activities.

1. The one is sensuous, the other spiritual. The earthly man is material, partially developed, and gross.

2. The one is practically selfish, the other is benevolent. The earthly man is controlled in everything by a regard to his own pleasures and aggrandizements. Self is the centre and the circumference of all his activities, at once the lord of his faculties and the god of his worship. All outside of himself—even the universe itself—he values so far and no further than as it serves him. On the contrary, the heavenly man is benevolent. The social element within him controls the egotistic; his personal feelings are submerged in the ever-rising seas of sympathy with humanity and God. Like Christ, he "pleases not himself," and, like Paul, he would be "accursed" to help others.

3. The one is practically atheistic, the other is godly. The earthly man sees nothing but natural law, order, etc. "God is not in all his thoughts." The universe to him is only an eternal or a self-produced and self-regulating machine, a house that either has never had a builder or whose builder has deserted it. The other—the heavenly man—sees God in all; like the psalmist, sets him before him; like Enoch, walks ever with him. Such are the two images or types of character that are set before every man.

II. That man DOES BEAR THE ONE , HE SHOULD BEAR THE OTHER . Account for it how you like, every man, in the first stages of his life, bears the image of the "earthy." He is sensual, selfish, godless. This fact, which is too obvious to need or even to justify illustration, is at once the crime and the calamity of the race. But whilst we do bear this image at first, we should strive to bear the other. "We shall also" (or as Dr. Davidson renders it, "let us also") " bear the image of the heavenly." Let us do it:

1. Because it is right. This heavenly image, embodying all virtue, realizes the soul's highest ideal of excellence. It is just that for which we unconsciously hunger, and for which we shall hunger forever unless we get it.

2. Because it is practicable.

3. Because it is urgent. To do this is the grand mission of life. Unless the work is fulfilled, our existence becomes a failure and a curse. To pass from the "earthy" to the "heavenly," is to pass from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, from Satan to God, from Pandemonium to Paradise.

CONCLUSION Here is a test of character. Conventional evangelism concludes that all who adopt certain tenets, join certain sects, and attend to certain religious ordinances are of the heavenly type and fold. A tremendous mistake is this! Without uncharitableness, it must be confessed that the vast majority of what are called Churches bear the image of the earthly; they are selfish, sensuous, and practically godless. Here also is a guide for preachers. Unless you get men from the earthly to the heavenly type of life, what boots your sermons, with all their ratiocination and rhetoric? Get their souls out of the earthly into the heavenly, and in the heavenly go on building up a character suited to the higher hierarchies of being.

"So build we up the being that we are.

Thus drinking in the soul of things,

We shall be wise perforce: and while inspired

By choice, and conscious that the will is free,

Unswerving shall we move, as if impelled

By strict necessity—along the path

Of order and of good. Whate'er we see,

Whate'er we feel, by agency direct

Or indirect, shall tend to feed and nurse

Our faculties, shall fix in calmer seats

Of moral strength, and raise to loftier heights

Of love Divine, our intellectual soul."

(Wordsworth)