Gamaliel, the Appeaser
Nobody ever called the acts of the apostles a dull book. Something is happening in it every minute. These early Christians, on fire for God, tackled the world, the flesh and the devil in a head-on collision and soon got into plenty of trouble.
By the time we reach the fifth chapter this trouble has assumed several forms. The chapter begins with trouble inside the church: ''But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife. . .'' The church has always been harmed most by trouble within, but at this time it was not so anemic as now and the poison was soon cleared.
Then trouble looms again on the outside. Peter and the apostles are again brought before the council, the religious authorities. True Christianity through the ages has always clashed with organized religion. Peter and the apostles minced no words. Their speech is a classic: ''We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are his
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witnesses of these things: and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.''
No wonder the council was ''cut to the heart''! A sermon like that, with the Trinity in it, Calvary in it, the resurrection in it, repentance in it, forgiveness in it, the gift of the Spirit in it, plainly charging the rulers with murder and boldly claiming to be Christ's witnesses—and all in four verses!—a sermon like that was bound to cut to the heart even a religious council, often the hardest crowd on earth to move.
Trouble within, trouble without. And now comes another kind of trouble in disguise, trouble on the fence. Dr. Gamaliel, learned and famous teacher of the law, stands up. He cautions them to be careful what they do with these men. He cites two cases on record, two men, Theudas and Judas, who had led popular movements that came to nought. He advised suspended judgment. ''If this council or this work be of men it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.''
There was a time when I was much impressed with Gamaliel. I thought he made a great speech. It sounded sober, sane and sound, level-headed, reasonable. But the years have changed my convictions about many men, and I have had a radical change of mind about Gamaliel.
The fact is, Gamaliel was an appeaser and he compromised this meeting into a Munich. If Peter was an apostle of Christ, Gamaliel was an apostle of compromise. He was one of the first protagonists of that tolerance which has disgraced the pages of history through the centuries.
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There is no excuse for Gamaliel. He was a teacher in Israel and knew these things. He knew the Scriptures about Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ had come and fulfilled these Scriptures right in Gamaliel's vicinity and in his time, for this thing was not done in a corner. It was no time for suspended judgment. There was nothing to suspend judgment about. Gamaliel should have taken his stand with these apostles. There is a tradition that he became a Christian, but it is more likely that he lived and died a Pharisee. It is to his eternal disgrace that, like Meroz, he came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Of course, there would have been a price to pay if he, a teacher of reputation, had taken his stand with these despised Galileans. Gamaliel decided to be neither for nor against. He took to the fence, and there he sits as the first of a line of straddlers who have perhaps caused the church more trouble than trouble within or trouble without. God would rather have a man on the wrong side of the fence than on the fence. The worst enemies of apostles are not the opposers but the appeasers.
Gamaliel made three mistakes. First, he made a false comparison. Although the apostles were immediately in mind, he was really comparing Jesus Christ with Theudas and Judas, for it was Jesus who had started this movement. But you cannot compare Jesus with Theudas or Judas or anybody else. Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ. He admits of no comparison. There is a popular tendency today to airily measure Jesus in the same mold one uses for ordinary men and to compare the Christian movement with man-made religions and enterprises. Some of it has a very scholarly smell and
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sounds as though it were honest, but it is utterly beside the point. Paul wasted no time comparing the Gospel with current religions and trying to convince his hearers that the Gospel was the best answer to the world's ills that had as yet come along. He declared it to be the only answer that ever had come along or ever would come along, all in a class to itself, with all comparisons out of order. Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ, the first and last. Without Him nothing can be done about salvation. With Him nothing more needs to be done. Theudas and Judas and all men and movements maybe compared with each other but never with Him. God has spoken, God has come, God lived and died and rose again in His Son. That is finality, and all Gamaliels who try to liken something else or someone else to Jesus Christ are trying to compare the incomparable.
Furthermore, Gamaliel suggested a false criterion. ''We will measure this movement by the success of it. Time will tell.'' Now, success may be the standard gauge of this world, and ''nothing succeeds like success,'' but earth's yardstick does not apply to Jesus Christ. According to the viewpoint of His time Jesus was a failure. He died in disgrace, the death of a criminal, and His followers were scattered. Nineteen centuries have gone, and today it still looks as though Caesar, not Christ, were on the throne and that the world, the flesh and the devil had things pretty much their way. And, instead of the world being converted, we know that the Lord Himself said, ''When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?'' That certainly is not success as this world measures it. Nor is it true in the things of Christ that ''time will tell.'' But eternity will tell and we await the verdict of eternity.
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The man who postpones taking his stand for Jesus Christ until he sees how the Gospel movement succeeds will live and die with Gamaliel. Visible success has never been the proof of Jesus or His followers. They have been the scum and offscouring of the earth, and although God often blesses true Christians with wealth and advancement in things material, all that is purely incidental. He who tries to use this world's textbooks on success in the things of the Spirit will end up like the man who offered to sell a set of books on ''How to Succeed'' for a month's room and board! It just doesn't work.
Finally, Gamaliel arrived at a false conclusion. ''Refrain from these men, and let them alone.'' But you can't let them alone! You cannot play hands off with the cause of Jesus Christ. ''He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.'' You cannot suspend judgment and do nothing. You are either dead or alive, and you are either a Christian or you are not. This polite business of waiting to see how it all turns out, adding up all the evidence and making up our minds later when we think all the facts are in, puts man on the pedestal and Jesus before him on trial in the hope of meriting His approval. The fact is, we are guilty and condemned sinners, with the wrath of God abiding on us but with mercy offered, and until we definitely trust Christ we have definitely rejected Him. ''He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.'' That admits of no fence-sitters, although many would assume such a position. You cannot leave Jesus Christ or His
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cause alone. You are with Him or against Him, gathering or scattering, condemned or not condemned.
So Gamaliel was utterly mistaken in what seems at first thought a sound and sane position. He was right when he said that if the Gospel movement were of men it would come to nought but if it were of God it could not be overthrown. But if we get no further than all those ''ifs'' we shall die in our sins. Until we decide that it is of God and join it, we oppose it. It is we who are on trial. There was a man in a European art gallery who criticized the pictures severely as he walked out the door. The old doorkeeper replied, ''If you please, sir, the pictures are no longer on trial but the spectators are!'' Christ and the Gospel have proven themselves, and who are we to take the judges' seat and pass on them? God offers salvation as a free gift: take it and you are saved; leave it and you are lost. And until you take it, you leave it.
But Gamaliel's stand reaches out into many applications. As we said at the outset, he was an appeaser, and opportunist, who would not commit himself. We are reminded of the crowd on Carmel when Elijah called down fire from heaven. There were seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed to Baal. There were four hundred and fifty priests of Baal. Both of these groups had at least taken a stand and could be numbered. But when Elijah challenged his congregation, ''How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him,'' we read that ''the people answered him not a word.'' They would not commit themselves. They would not take a stand. They would wait and see how things turned out.
This is an age of appeasement. It begins in the home,
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where the rod is spared and the child spoiled. It continues in school, where right and wrong have become relative instead of absolute. It shows up in nations as it did at Munich. And it has infected the professing church. It does not take a clear stand with Peter and in no uncertain words cut the opposition to the heart. It straddles the fence with Gamaliel and dismisses the assembly.
Erasmus was a typical appeaser, in true succession to Gamaliel. It has been written:
He [Luther] dwells on the ingenious carefulness of Erasmus to avoid decisive utterance, attempting always to shade down his Yes till it is almost a No, and to burnish up his No until it might almost pass for a Yes. Erasmus is a Proteus! He is an eel. . . .In the debate. . . people of academic culture, of speculative disengagement and serene intellectual indifference, sided with Erasmus. The Moderates throughout Europe, the gentlemen of courts, the semi-skeptical intelligences of the universities, told the golden-mouthed apostle of compromise that he was in the right. . . . The heart of Christianity beat with Luther instead.
This is the age of Gamaliel and Erasmus, when, in the name of tolerance, men halt between two opinions and answer not a word. In the church it shows up in Laodicean lukewarmness, a little too hot to be cold and a little too cold to be hot, a state that nauseates the Lord Himself. The Gospel usually makes men mad, sad or glad, but today we walk out of our churches neither sad, mad nor glad—we just walk out. It were better that we went out mad! Gamaliel was neither. Peter was glad in the Lord, and his audience was mad, but Gamaliel was Gamaliel, just tolerant and nothing more.
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Such a spirit shows up in our pulpits, where Gamaliels flourish and apostles are few. Joseph Parker, writing about Nathan the prophet, who told King David, ''Thou art the man,'' says:
Definite statements are manageable but vague charges are never to be entertained. He is always a false accuser who makes a general charge; he is a learned false witness skilled and cunning who says he will not go into the case; he will say nothing about it; he thinks it better to hold his tongue. Would God his tongue had been cut when he said that! He has said more by not saying than he could have if he had told the truth. . . . No man makes progress who deals in generalities.
But Nathan belongs to the category of Peter and John and John the Baptist and Paul and Luther—and the Lord of them all. The issue is too clear-cut for middle-of-the-roaders, fundamental modernists and modernistic fundamentalists, neither fish nor fowl. The issues are life and death, heaven and hell, and the case does not call for suspended judgment.
The devil never had a greater ally than this modern atmosphere of genial, amiable, pleasant tolerance, in which nothing is bad, everything is good, and black and white are smeared into an indefinite gray. Nothing matters if everybody is in good humor. Let us not get excited over Peter and John and their Jesus. We will not stoop to take sides. We will see how it works out. Well, the church is still marching on, but nobody ever got anywhere with Gamaliel. Getting mixed up with an unpopular movement is not the worst thing one can do. I would rather have lost my head with James than have kept it with Gamaliel. This modern brand of tolerance has put our age into a stupor. Nothing is important
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enough to contend for. The devil does great business when the moral sensibilities of men have thus been doped. Even beer ads make much of this ''America of kindliness, of friendship, of good-humored tolerance.'' Well did Gresham Machen say that ''the most important things are not those about which men are agreed but those for which men will fight.'' But the fatigue and languor of this age have got us. Everybody is too dead tired to line up with Peter and the Gospel. It is much more comfortable to suspend judgment and go home to bed.
To be sure, some men have made mistakes on the side of Peter and the Gospel. Peter made some himself. But he never made the supreme mistake of waiting to follow Jesus until he saw how it all turned out. He threw his blundering impetuous self into the Saviour's cause from the very beginning, and although for a while almost everything he said and did was a mistake, his heart was not on the fence. He even denied his Lord, but he came back. The other disciples, too, forsook their Lord and fled. But they ended up, all but Judas, faithful through prison and scourging and martyrdom or lonely exile. They paid the price. Down through the centuries a worthy succession has followed in their train. And along the road they have evermore met their opposers within and without. But the church has never suffered from antagonism half as much as from appeasement. The apostles have had their opposers, but a thousand times more dangerous have been the appeasers.
We can thank God that Gamaliel had one pupil who did not follow in his steps. Paul started out an opposer and ended an apostle, but he never disgraced his name
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as an appeaser. You could always tell which side of the fence was Paul's. He was on either side with a vengeance. When he was against Christ, he was against Him. When he was for Him, he was for Him. He never sat on the fence with his famous teacher. Paul never could forget that he had opposed the church, but he never had to confess that he appeased the opposition. The opposition slew him, but he outlived it just the same. God help us to follow him as he followed Christ!
