Sermon Bible Commentary
Matthew 16:26
I. Our Lord tells us in the text that our choice of a principle and end of living involves an exchange. You get nothing in life, good or bad, without cost. No man ever leaped into a success of any kind without cost to himself. Success is always paid for with some coin or other. Do you expect you will win moralsuccess, spiritual victory, on any other terms?
II. Look at the nature of the exchange in this particular case. If you buy the world you pay a definite price for it, a price from which there is no discount to the most favoured buyer, and that price is your life.
Our Lord states it as a principle, a universal fact, that the man who takes the world takes it at the price of his life.
III. Suppose we go the whole length of our Lord's words. Suppose you gain the whole world, everything the world has to give you. I submit (1) that you have gotten something perishable; (2) your interest in it will not last. "The world passeth away, and the desire of it."(3) It will not satisfy you. (4) You have gotten something dangerous. When you buy the world you buy a master at the price of your life. (5) You come to the line at last, and pass over. Whatever price you pay for the world, you leave the world behind you when you pass the gate of death. The only thing that has any hold on the future is the Christlike self, and if you have not that, if you have parted with that for the world, what have you?
M. R. Vincent, God and Bread,p. 21.
Every one of us is able fluently to speak of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and is aware that the knowledge of it forms the fundamental difference between our state and that of the heathen. And yet, in spite of our being able to speak about it, there seems scarcely room to doubt that the greater number of those who are called Christians in no true sense realize it in their own minds at all. It is a very difficult thing to bring home to us and to feel that we have souls; and there cannot be a more fatal mistake than to suppose we see what the doctrine means as soon as we can use the words which signify it.
I. To understand that we have souls is to feel our separation from things visible, our independence of them, our distinct existence in ourselves, our individuality, our power of acting for ourselves this way or that way, our accountableness for what we do. We feel that while the world changes, we are one and the same; we are led to distrust it, and are weaned from the love of it, till at length it floats before our eyes merely as some idle veil, which, notwithstanding its many tints, cannot hide the view of what is beyond it; and we begin, by degrees, to perceive that there are but two beings in the whole universe our own soul, and the God who made it.
II. We never in this life can fully understand what is meant by our living for ever, but we can understand what is meant by this world's not living for ever, by its dying never to rise again. And learning this, we learn that we owe it no service, no allegiance; it has no claim over us, and can do us no material good or harm. On the other hand, the law of God, written in our hearts, bids us serve Him, and partly tells us how to serve Him, and Scripture completes the precepts which nature began. And both Scripture and conscience tell us we are answerable for what we do, and that God is a righteous Judge; and above all, our Saviour, as our visible Lord God, takes the place of the world as the only-begotten of the Father, having shown Himself openly, that we may not say God is hidden. And thus a man is drawn by all manner of powerful influences to turn from things temporal to things eternal, to deny himself, to take up his cross and follow Christ.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 15.
I. Man has a soul. You may call it mind, or spirit, or will, or affection, or reason, even as the sea washing different continents has various names. It includes all these. Scripture reveals to us its independent creation and existence. The great difference between the soul of man and the soul and being or substance of all other creatures is that they are made out of the kingdom of nature. The soul is not created; it is derived, and its derivation is Divine.
II. Consider the value of the soul. (1) Its power. It can sin; it can suffer; it can think. (2) Its duration. For ever; no cessation. "I am, and I can never cease to be."
III. A soul may be lost. Man's greatest danger is his perverted will. But I may mention four causes of the loss of the soul: (1) ignorance; (2) error; (3) passion; (4) a perverted will, which underlies the whole. Thy soul is not truly thine till it is given to God. If you look beneath you, behold your life lying there, it is not your own; it is Satan's.
IV. The soul may be saved. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."
E. Paxton Hood, Sermons,p. 291.
Let us consider why the saying of our Lord in the text, while generally admitted to be true, is yet so little laid to heart.
I. Because we are accustomed to admit freely the incomparable worth of the soul, but without a clear perception of that in which its worth consists. We feel the unique dignity of our own position in creation. We can compare ourselves with the world around us; and it and all that it can offer of possession and power, of enjoyment and honour, is beneath the soul. But in what does this incomparable worth of the soul consist? The only true answer is this: The incomparable value of the soul consists in its being capable of and destined for communion with God in the direct meaning of the word. How few have any definite conception of this. There is but one way in which we can learn it, in the contemplation of Christ.
II. Because we have usually no clear idea of the injury which may happen to our souls. It is not sufficiently clear that there really do exist permanent consequences of a single sinful deed, even of a sinful disposition of mind. That such consequences do exist, we can plainly see in such frightful developments of sin as we find in the hardened criminal. But we do not sufficiently grasp the truth of the words, "He that committeth sin is the servant of sin."
III. Because we so often fail to perceive clearly how we can and ought to care for the salvation of our soul, and because the only successful mode of doing so is not usually pleasing to us. We do not like to admit that the care for our soul must begin with the care for its recovery, because by nature it is diseased. The care for our soul must be a care for our soul's salvation. It consists simply in turning to Christ, in accepting Him by faith, in giving ourselves up to Him in love, and in obedience to the workings of His Word and of His Spirit. By such care for our souls life will not become more painful, it will only be elevated.
R. Rothe, Nachgelassene Predigten,p. 37.
References: Matthew 16:26. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 269; J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons,p. 78; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches,p. 14; S. Cox, Expositions,vol. ii., p. 149. Matthew 16:27. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 554; B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith,p. 87; J. Keble, Sermons from Advent to Christmas Eve,p. 108. Matthew 16:28. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. x., No. 594.