Mark 12:31; Proverbs 24:11,12; Isaiah 43:10,11,15
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
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?
Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour…I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.
WILLIAM ARNOT (1808-1875): The special work for which Christians are left in the world is to be witnesses.
E. W. BULLINGER (1837-1913): We are God’s witnesses.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Here Isaiah includes all believers, for this office of bearing testimony is binding on all.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): You are not all, it is true, called to be ministers of Christ, but you are all to be witnesses for Him in the midst of a dark benighted world. And such must you be.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): “Before Pontius Pilate, Christ witnessed a good confession,” 1 Timothy 6:13. The servants of Christ in every age must remember that our Lord’s conduct in this place is meant to be their example. Like Him we are to be witnesses to God’s truth, salt in the midst of corruption, light in the midst of darkness, men and women not afraid to stand alone, and to testify for God against the ways of sin and the world. To do so may entail on us much trouble, and even persecution. But the duty is clear and plain.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): Note what we have to do—to bear witness; not to argue, not to adorn, but simply to attest. Note what we have to attest—the fact, not of the historical life of Jesus Christ, because we are not in a position to be witnesses of that, but the fact of His preciousness and power, and the fact of our own experience of what He has done for us.
CHARLES SIMEON: You must let it be seen that He both does, and will renew the powers of a withered soul, and infuse into it such energies as shall bear the stamp and character of divinity upon them.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: This is the witness that needs no eloquence, no genius, no anything except honesty and experience; and whosoever has tasted and felt and handled of the Word of Life may surely go to a brother and say, “Brother, I have eaten and am satisfied. Will you not help yourselves?” We can all do it, and we ought to do it. The Christian privilege of being witnessed to by the Spirit of God in our hearts brings with it the Christian duty of being witnesses in our turn to the world…The health of his own soul, his reverence for the truth he has learnt to love, his necessary connection with other men, make it a duty, a necessity, and a joy to tell what he has heard, and to speak what he believes.
WILLIAM ARNOT: Two qualifications are required in a witness, truth and love―Ephesians 4:15; these are needed, but these will do—the law under which we live is the law of love; and whenever any doubt arises as to practical details, the Pattern is at hand to mold it on and test it by: “Love one another as I have loved you,” John 15:12.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If there be no love to God, and no love to man, the vital element is wanting.
WILLIAM ARNOT: Whoso hath this world’s good, or the next world’s good, or both, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): What is to be thought of Christians who have heard the charge of the Lord Jesus, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” Mark 16:15, but who, paying no attention to the appalling condition of lost souls on every side of them, think only of their own pleasure and comfort?
JOHN CALVIN: In general no man ought to be accounted a believer, who conceals the knowledge of God within his own heart, and never makes an open confession of the truth.
CHARLES BRIDGES (1794-1869): But how much more guilty to forbear the deliverance of immortal souls in ignorance, ungodliness, or unbelief, drawn unto death, and ready to be slain! Ought they not to be the objects of our deepest, 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—Am I my brother’s keeper? It is no concern of mine.” But might not many a soul have started back from the brink of ruin, if only the discovery of his danger had been made, ere it was too late? Yet the one word, that might have saved him, was forborne.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): He knows and considers whether the excuse we make be true or no, whether it was because we did not know it or whether the true reason was not because we did not love our neighbour as we ought, but were selfish, and regardless both of God and man. 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: “Does not He that ponders the heart consider it?”
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Where shall we find words weighty and burning enough to tell what fatal cruelty lies in the unthinking negligence so characteristic of large portions of Christ’s professed followers?
J. C. RYLE: If we love life, if we would keep a good conscience, and be owned by Christ at the last day, we must be “witnesses.” It is written, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels,” Mark 8:38.
H. A. IRONSIDE: These are unspeakably solemn words and worthy of being carefully pondered in the presence of God by every converted reader of these lines. May grace be given to each one to weigh well their solemn import, and to seek day by day to faithfully make known the only message which can deliver from the second death.
C. H. SPURGEON: For this end were we born, and for this purpose were we sent into the world, that we might bear witness to grand soul-saving truths.
CHARLES BRIDGES: This obligation, with all the responsibility of its neglect, is the universal law of the gospel.
WILLIAM ARNOT: The prophets before Christ’s coming, and the apostles after it, all conspired to teach, by their lips and by their lives, that “a man liveth not to himself, and dieth not to himself,” Romans 14:7. Ye who bear the Saviour’s name, and trust in His love, ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price. Ye have talents to lay out, and a work to accomplish—a Master to serve and a brother to save.
J. C. RYLE: Happy is he who is not ashamed to say to others, “Come and hear what the Lord hath done for my soul,” Psalm 66:16…If we have anything to tell others about Christ, let us resolve to tell it. Let us not be silent, if we have found peace and rest in the Gospel. Let us speak to our relations, and friends, and families, and neighbours, according as we have opportunity, and tell them what the Lord has done for our souls.
