Corinth
165
of the living God, mighty to transform and to save. Henceforth his
life was wholly devoted to an effort to portray the love and power of
the Crucified One. His great heart of sympathy took in all classes. “I
am debtor,” he declared, “both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians;
both to the wise, and to the unwise.”
Romans 1:14
. Love for the Lord
of glory, whom he had so relentlessly persecuted in the person of His
saints, was the actuating principle of his conduct, his motive power. If
ever his ardor in the path of duty flagged, one glance at the cross and
the amazing love there revealed, was enough to cause him to gird up
the loins of his mind and press forward in the path of self-denial.
Behold the apostle preaching in the synagogue at Corinth, rea-
soning from the writings of Moses and the prophets, and bringing
his hearers down to the advent of the promised Messiah. Listen as
he makes plain the work of the Redeemer as the great high priest of
mankind—the One who through the sacrifice of His own life was
to make atonement for sin once for all, and was then to take up His
ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. Paul’s hearers were made to un-
derstand that the Messiah for whose advent they had been longing,
had already come; that His death was the antitype of all the sacrificial
offerings, and that His ministry in the sanctuary in heaven was the
great object that cast its shadow backward and made clear the ministry
of the Jewish priesthood.
[247]
Paul “testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ.” From the Old
Testament Scriptures he showed that according to the prophecies and
the universal expectation of the Jews, the Messiah would be of the
lineage of Abraham and of David; then he traced the descent of Jesus
from the patriarch Abraham through the royal psalmist. He read the
testimony of the prophets regarding the character and work of the
promised Messiah, and His reception and treatment on the earth; then
he showed that all these predictions had been fulfilled in the life,
ministry, and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
Paul showed that Christ had come to offer salvation first of all to the
nation that was looking for the Messiah’s coming as the consummation
and glory of their national existence. But that nation had rejected
Him who would have given them life, and had chosen another leader,
whose reign would end in death. He endeavored to bring home to his
hearers the fact that repentance alone could save the Jewish nation
from impending ruin. He revealed their ignorance concerning the