FOR THE FACULTY and for the student body I bid you welcome to the Seminary and its work. You are going to prepare yourself for the preaching of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You are going to preach Christ and Him crucified. You will preach Jesus and the Resurrection.
You will preach this Christ both to the church and to the world. Both sorely need that Christ. The church needs to be built up in the faith; the world needs to be brought unto the faith. Those in the world need to be brought unto Christ through the Word, and those in the church need to be sanctified through the Word. You are therefore with us to learn to understand the Word in order from it to preach the Christ.
Not as though the distinction between the church and the world as made is absolute. There are those in the church who are not true believers. So then both the promises and the warnings of the Word must be preached to all men everywhere.
Look then with me for a moment at the Christ as He presented Himself to the people of God and through them to the world.
The Deep Sympathy of Christ
Watch Him first as with deepest sympathy for their needs and their distress the Christ offered Himself to the people of Israel and through them to the world as the Light of the world. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." It is the primary or proper work of the Christ to save, not to condemn. To be sure, from the beginning His work was negative as well as positive. But it was negative against Satan and all his hosts. Christ came forth from the Father to save the world from Satan, not to give it, or any part of it, into his clutches. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which is lost… For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Jesus looks upon the multitude and has compassion on them. They are blind, and therefore stubborn. Their fathers had killed the prophets, and they sought to kill Him. Recognizing degrees of guilt, He yet found all of them responsible. But guilty and polluted though they were, He sought to lead them out of darkness into light. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not… I am the light of the world.”
Shall we not then as preachers of the gospel learn to have true Christ-like sympathy with men in their blindness and their resultant folly? Shall we not patiently present to men the Christ of Scriptures as the Light of the World? To do so we must learn to distinguish darkness from light. We must learn about the devious ways in which those who are in the church but not of the church often think in terms of the principles of the world. We must learn the meaning of the Word, not in a vacuum but in the midst of and by way of contrast to the thought of the world. To preach Christ as the Light of the world we must know the world and its ways of darkness. Christ with unequalled keenness signalized that which was Satanic in the hearts and lives of men. But He did so in order to liberate them from it. We too must know the way of Satan in this world, but we must know it primarily in order to preach the Christ as the One through whom the prisoners of darkness may see the light of truth.
The Warnings of Christ
To preach Christ as the Light of the world, however, requires us to follow His example also when He warns of the consequences of rejecting Him. "And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house; and it fell; and great was the fall thereof." And what he claims for Himself He also claims for His ambassadors. "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city" (Mt, 10: 14-15 ).
The choice for or against the Christ must be shown to be all important for this life and for the life to come. We are to warn men of the wrath to come. Those who accept not the Christ as the Light of the world will be cast out into outer darkness: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.”
But if our warnings are to be fraught with such stupendous consequences how thoroughly must we understand the Word! We dare not bring any warning but the warning of the Word. We must learn to use the keys of the kingdom. But we must learn to use them aright. Usurpers in the church have claimed to use these keys and have locked out the true children of God. They knew not the Christ and drove others from the Christ. To use the keys of the kingdom aright we must learn to use them as the King Himself used them. We must learn to present the Christ so dearly that men will be compelled to choose for or against Him. We must preach Christ existentially.
The Results
Will men then readily accept that Christ? Will they turn to the Light as soon as it is placed before them? They will not. They love darkness rather than light. Their blindness is self-imposed and irremediable except for the grace of God. "All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. (Mt, 12:27)… But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor. 2: 14). Men are not like the innocent child, unable to find its way in the woods. They hate the light. They turn from it. The carnal mind is at enmity against God (Rom. 8: 5), and this enmity is death. The god of this world hath blinded the minds of those who believe not, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18).
Is then our preaching vain? Are you preparing yourself for a task with no results, or with only negative results? Far from it. Whether men hear or forbear, they have heard the Word and through it have seen the Christ, the beckoning, the pleading Christ, but also the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who will place at his left those who have not desired Him to be their king.
But never fear. Study the Word. Present the Light of the world to all men everywhere. God has caused the Light to shine into the hearts of His people. He has promised to make His Word effective to the conversion of sinners even through our preaching, if only the preaching be true to His Word. His Word cannot return unto him void. Christ's work cannot be in vain. His Spirit envelops Saul the persecutor and turns him into Paul the apostle. His Word and Spirit do essentially the same today.
Welcome, then, thrice welcome, to the work of preparation for the preaching of the gospel. To help men prepare for that task is the sole purpose of the Seminary. It is the sole ambition of its faculty. We would help you in any way we can, personally as well as in the classroom. "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Eph. 3:21).