1 Peter 3:15; Proverbs 24:11,12; Luke 24:45-48
Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?
Then opened [Jesus] their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): There is a special sense in which the office of witness-bearing belonged only to those who had seen Jesus in the flesh, and could testify to the fact of His Resurrection—for witness implies fact, as being the simple attestation to the occurrence of things that truly happened in the earth…They were witnesses, and their business was to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. All doctrine and morality will come second. The first form of the Gospel is, “How that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was raised again the third day, according to the Scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3,4. First, a history; then a religion; then a morality; and morality and religion because it is a history of redemption. But that is somewhat apart from the main purpose of my remarks now. I desire rather to emphasise the thought that, with modifications in form, the substance of the functions of these early believers remains still the office and dignity of all Christian men. “Ye are the witnesses of these things.” And what is the manner of testimony that devolves upon you and me?
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): “Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold,” Job 36:24. Take this into consideration.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): We cannot live to ourselves, if we are Christians. The eyes of many will always be upon us. Men will judge by what they see, far more than by what they hear. If they see the Christian contradicting by his practice what he professes to believe, they are justly stumbled and offended.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): A man may know a great deal about truth, and yet be a very damaging witness on its behalf, because he is no credit to it.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Most men take their notions of what Christianity is from the average of the Christians round about them. And, if we profess to be Christ’s followers, we shall be taken as tests and specimen cases of the worth of the religion that we profess…It is our task to “adorn the doctrine of Christ in all things,” Titus 2:10. “Ye are the Epistles of Christ,” and if the writing be blurred and blotted and often half unintelligible, the blame will be laid largely at His door. And men will say, and say rightly, “If that is all that Christianity can do, we are just as well without it.”
J. C. RYLE: For the world’s sake, as well as for our own, let us labour to be eminently holy. Let us endeavour to make our religion beautiful in the eyes of men, and to “adorn the doctrine of Christ” in all things. Let us strive daily to lay aside every weight, and the sin which most easily besets us, and so to live that men can find no fault in us, except concerning the law of our God. Let us watch jealously over our tempers and tongues, and the discharge of our social duties. Anything is better than doing harm to souls. The cross of Christ will always give offence. Let us not increase that offence by carelessness in our daily life. The natural man cannot be expected to love the Gospel. But let us not disgust him by inconsistency.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Witness by your lives…And depend upon it, mightier than all direct effort, and more unusual than all utterances of lip, is the witness of the life of all professing Christians to the reality of the facts upon which they say they base their faith. But beyond that, there is yet another department of testimony which belongs to each of us—and that is the attestation of personal experience.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Every Christian should be able to give an account as to why he is a Christian.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: That is a form of Christian service which any and every Christian can put forth. You cannot all be preachers—But I will tell you what you all can be. You can all say, “Come and hear all ye; and I will declare what He hath done for my soul.” It does not take eloquence, gifts, learning, intellectual grasp of the doctrinal side of Christian truth for a man to say, as the first preacher of Christ upon earth said, “Brother! we have found the Messiah,” John 1:41. That was all, and that was enough—that you can say, if you have found Him—and after all, the witness of personal experience of what faith in Jesus Christ can make of a man, and do for a man, is the strongest and most universal weapon placed in the hands of Christian men and women—“this one thing I know, that whereas I was blind now I see.” There is no getting over that! “Ye are the witnesses of these things.”
WILLIAM ARNOT (1808-1875): The special work for which Christians are left in the world, is to be witnesses.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: May I say a word here about the grounds on which this obligation to witness rests for us? If Jesus Christ had never said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” it would not have made a bit of difference as to the imperative duty that is laid upon all Christian men; for it arises, not from that command, which only gives voice to a previous obligation, but it flows directly from the very nature of things—the obligation arises from the links that knit us all together. Humanity is one—our indebtedness and obligation is to every man, woman, and child that bears the form of man.
CHARLES BRIDGES (1794-1869): Ought they not to be the objects of our most yearning anxiety? What shall we then say to that frozen apathy, which forbears to deliver? “We have no right to judge—we knew it not—It is no concern of mine. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Why, the question answers itself. If he is your brother, you are certainly his keeper.
CHARLES BRIDGES: If “a true witness delivereth souls,” a false witness destroyeth them, Proverbs 14:25. Fearful guilt and responsibility! But how much more guilty to forbear the deliverance of immortal souls in ignorance, ungodliness, or unbelief, are “drawn unto death, and ready to be slain!” Might not many a soul have started back from ruin, had the discovery of his danger been made, ere it was too late? Yet the one word that might have saved was not spoken. Is there no brother, or child, or neighbour, who may pierce thy conscience to eternity with this rebuke—“Hadst thou dealt faithfully with my soul, I had not been in this place of torment.”
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Let this serve to silence all our frivolous pleas, by which we think to stop the mouth of conscience when it charges us with the omission of plain duty.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: It is cowardice to shirk the duty because of the peril that lies in it…And you cannot shuffle off the obligation—it peals into the ears of every Christian man and woman: “Thou art a witness of these things;” and “to this end were thou born again, that thou mightest bear witness to the truth.”
