The cost of Christian freedom.
The cost of Christian freedom.
Charles Simeon on what Christ suffered to make us free.
Charles Simeon was an evangelical Anglican clergyman whose ministry spanned the backend of the 18th century into the 1800s. He was an educated theologian, graduating from King’s College in Cambridge and receiving further tutelage under Christopher Atkinson at St. Edward King and Martyr, a parish church that has been referred to as the “cradle of the Reformation” in England. Simeon’s evangelical theology was not always well-received, though. In fact, when became curate of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge in 1783, many parishioners openly voiced their disdain, even locking up their pews and regularly disturbing services (Lee, 256). Despite this initial resistance, however, Simeon remained with that parish until he died in 1836, preaching thousands of messages to a crowded congregation. Charles Simeon’s legacy endures both for his pastoral resilience and his meticulous twenty-one-volume exposition of Scripture, entitled, Horae Homileticae, which remains a rich source of scriptural and doctrinal insight. This is especially true of his notes on Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 1:15, where the apostle declares, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” Simeon comments:
His own creatures had ruined themselves; and he came to save them. Though it was his law that they transgressed, and his authority that they despised, and his yoke that they cast off; yea, though he was the one great object of their contempt and abhorrence, he came to save them. Though he knew that they would murder him as soon as ever he should put himself into their power, yet he came to save them; to save the vilest of them, not excepting those who unrighteously condemned him, or insultingly mocked him, or cruelly pierced him with the nails and spear. When there was no alternative but either that they must perish, or he come down from heaven to suffer in their stead, down he came upon the wings of love, and ‘saved them from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for them.’ He suffered that they might go free; and died, that they might live forever. (18.486)
Simeon was familiar with the paradigm of suffering at the hands of the very ones to whom you are called to minister. Perhaps this notion cast new light on Jesus’s resolve to forgive the very ones who were beating nails into his hands and feet. Nevertheless, we are confronted by the depths of the gospel in this passage, as we are reminded of what Christ suffered to make sinners free. He weathered their vitriol and surrendered to their violent bent so that true and everlasting freedom and forgiveness might be offered to all, even Jesus’s own perpetrators. Christian freedom, as we are often reminded, is costly. It cost Jesus everything. Yet, despite the cost, he willingly paid it in full by giving himself up to die in our stead (Gal. 1:4). He freely suffered the full scope of his Father’s wrath and the worst forms of human agony so that we might be spared, so that we might go free.
Grace and peace.
Works cited:
Charles Simeon, “Philippians to 1 Timothy,” Horae Homileticae: or Discourses (Principally in the Form of Skeletons) Now First Digested into One Continued Series, and Forming a Commentary Upon Every Book of the Old and New Testament, Vols. 1–21 (London: Holdsworth & Ball, 1855).
Sidney Lee, editor, Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 52 (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1897).