About the Book
"Two Men From Eden" by Morris Cerullo is a book that explores the story of Adam and Jesus, drawing parallels between their lives and teachings. The author highlights the spiritual journey of these two men and the lessons that can be learned from their experiences. Through this comparison, Cerullo delves into the themes of redemption, grace, and the power of faith.
William Still
I recently read Dying to Live (Christian Focus, 1991), the autobiography of Scottish pastor William Still. I became interested in Still after reading his book The Work of the Pastor earlier this year.
The first half of Dying to Live tells about Still’s early years into young adulthood and his beginning in pastoral ministry. Still had an unsettled childhood. His parents were separated in his early years, and his father was an alcoholic. He was a sickly child who took refuge in music and became an accomplished pianist. He was part of the Salvation Army as a young man but then entered ministry in the Church of Scotland and served at the Gilcomston Church in his hometown of Aberdeen from 1945-1997.
The second half of the book deals with various aspects of Still’s pastoral ministry. Still was an evangelical. In his early ministry he worked with Billy Graham, Alan Redpath, and others in evangelistic events. With time, however, he moved away from what he came to call “evangelisticism” to develop a solid expositional ministry.
Still faced his fair share of hardships during the course of his ministry. When he moved away from pragmatic evangelistic methods, for example, more than two hundred people stopped attending his church almost overnight. In the preface, he references Martin Luther’s observation that there are three things which make a minister: study, prayer, and afflictions. He observes, “He who is not prepared to make enemies for Christ’s sake by the faithful preaching of the Word will never make lasting friends for Christ, either” (p. 93).
He describes one particularly difficult controversy early in his ministry when he confronted a group of disgruntled elders. At the end of one Sunday service, he read a statement confronting these men, which ended, “There you sit, with your heads down, guilty men. What would you say if I named you before the whole congregation? You stand condemned before God for your contempt of the Word and of his folk.” He adds, “The moment I had finished, I walked out of the pulpit. There was no last hymn—no benediction. I went right home. It was the hardest and most shocking thing I ever had to do in Gilcomston” (p. 124). That same week seven of his elders resigned and Still was called twice before his Presbytery to answer for the controversy. Yet, he endured.
Still maintains that in light of the unpleasantness one will face in the ministry that the minister of the Word must possess one quality in particular: “…I would say that this quality is courage: guts, sheer lion-hearted bravery, clarity of mind and purpose, grit. Weaklings are no use here. They have a place in the economy of God if they are not deliberate weaklings and stunted adults as Paul writes of both to the Romans and to the Corinthians. But weaklings are no use to go out and speak prophetically to men from God and declare with all compassion, as well as with faithfulness, the truth: the divine Word that cuts across all men’s worldly plans for their lives” (p. 140).
Still was a pioneer in several areas. First, he developed a pattern of preaching and teaching systematically through books of the Bible at a time when this was rarely done. He began a ministry of “consecutive Bible teaching” starting with the book of Galatians in 1947, calling this transition from “evangelisticism to systematic exposition … probably the most significant decision in my life” (p. 191).
He was also a pioneer in simplifying and integrating the ministry of the church. After noting how youth in the church were drifting away, even after extensive involvement in the church’s children’s ministry, Still writes, “I conceived the idea of ceasing all Sunday School after beginners and Primary age (seven years) and invited parents to have their children sit with them in the family pew from the age of eight” (p. 171). He laments “the disastrous dispersion of congregations by the common practice of segregating the church family into every conceivable category of division of ages, sexes, etc.” (p. 173).
Dying to Live is a helpful and encouraging work about the life and work of the minister and is to be commended to all engaged in the call of gospel ministry. As the title indicates, Still’s essential thesis is that in order to be effective in ministry the minister must suffer a series of deaths to himself (cf. John 12:24). On this he writes:
The deaths one dies before ministry can be of long duration—it can be hours and days before we minister, before the resurrection experience of anointed preaching. And then there is another death afterwards, sometimes worse than the death before. From the moment that you stand there dead in Christ and dead to everything you are and have and ever shall be and have, every breath you breathe thereafter, every thought you think, every word you say and deed you do, must be done over the top of your own corpse or reaching over it in your preaching to others. Then it can only be Jesus that comes over and no one else. And I believe that every preacher must bear the mark of that death. Your life must be signed by the Cross, not just Christ’s cross (and there is really no other) but your cross in his Cross, your particular and unique cross that no one ever died—the cross that no one ever could die but you and you alone: your death in Christ’s death (p. 136).
when they hurt you with words
The spirit of the old adage “words will never harm me” is not the sentiment of the Scriptures. Words can hurt, even when directed from an unknown profile online. God made a world in which words are powerful. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). And as public discourse falls to new lows in the digital age, God has not left us without a guide for how to respond to the pain when we are persecuted with words. Leaf through the New Testament, and you’ll find verbal attacks on Jesus, his apostles, and his church on nearly every page. At times, these attacks escalate to physical persecution — the stoning of Stephen, the martyrdom of James, the imprisonments of Peter and Paul, the crucifixion of Christ — but what remains constant, and significant, is a torrent of verbal persecution against Jesus and his people. And verbal persecution is not less than persecution because it’s verbal. Have You Been Reviled? Slander  and revile  are two of the main words for verbal attack in the English New Testament, and both occur frequently. Early Christians were so accustomed to being spoken against that they developed a rich vocabulary (if you call it that) of being slandered, reviled, insulted, maligned, mocked, and spoken evil against (at least six different Greek verbs, along with several related nouns and adjectives). Of the English terms, revile  may be the least common in normal usage today. One dictionary defines it as “to criticize in an abusive or angrily insulting manner.” To take our cues from specific biblical texts, revile  can mean “to speak evil against” (Matthew 5:11; Mark 9:39; Acts 19:9; 23:4); it is the opposite of verbally honoring someone (Mark 7:10). Reviling is an attempt to injure with words (1 Peter 3:16). We see it at Jesus’s crucifixion, where “those who passed by derided him” with their words, and the chief priests, scribes, and elders “mocked him,” and “the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled  him in the same way” (Matthew 27:39–44). But Jesus not only endured it; he prepared us for it as well. He and his apostles, and the early church, model for us how to receive and respond to slander and reviling. 1. Expect the world to say the worst. Amid this rich vocabulary of verbal attack, the New Testament sends no mixed signals as to whether Christians will be maligned. We will. Jews and Gentiles together bombarded Jesus and his disciples with verbal attacks. Physical persecution came and went, but reviling remained constant. When Paul arrived in Rome, the Jews reported to him, about Christianity, “With regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). For Christians, being reviled is not a matter of if  but when : “when they speak against you” (1 Peter 2:12). Unbelievers “are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery” — so what do they do? “They malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). After all, should we not expect the world, under the power of the devil (1 John 5:19; Ephesians 2:2), to lie about us? The Greek for devil ( diabolos ) actually means slanderer (1 Timothy 3:11; Titus 2:3). As Jesus said to his revilers in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. . . . When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” 2. Consider the cause. We should not assume that all verbal opposition we receive is good. Being reviled for Jesus’s sake and for his gospel is one thing; being reviled for our own folly and sin is another (1 Peter 3:17; 4:15–16). As far as it depends on us, we want to “give the adversary no occasion for slander” (1 Timothy 5:14). Slander itself is no win for the church. We want to do what we can, within reason and without compromise, to keep God’s name and word and teaching from reviling (1 Timothy 6:1; Titus 2:5). “Do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil” (Romans 14:16). But when the world speaks evil against us because of Jesus, we embrace it. “If you are insulted for the name of Christ , you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:14). 3. Do not revile in return. Christ’s calling to his church is crystal clear: Do not respond in kind. Do not stoop to the level of your revilers. “Keep your conduct honorable” (1 Peter 2:12). “Speak evil of no one” (Titus 3:2), including those who have spoken evil of you. Do not become a verbal vigilante, but “entrust yourself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). And as his redeemed, taste the joy of walking in his steps: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:23). Paul took up the same mantle: “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat” (1 Corinthians 4:12–13). So also Peter charges us to respond “with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:15–16). When we do not “revile in return,” we put our revilers to shame. Christians do not respond in kind. We lose the battle, and undermine our commission, when we let revilers make us into revilers. And it’s not just a matter of strategy, but of spiritual life and death. “Revilers,” 1 Corinthians 6:10 warns, “will not inherit the kingdom of God,” and Christians are instructed “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is . . . a reviler” (1 Corinthians 5:11). Christ expects, even demands, that our speech be different from the world’s, even when we respond to the world’s mean words. 4. Leap for joy. Leap for joy? That might seem way over the top. Can’t we just take our cues from the apostles in Acts 5:41? “They left the presence of the council, rejoicing  that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.” Amen, rejoice. Yes. Jesus’s own words in the Sermon on the Mount guide us: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad , for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11–12). But Luke 6:22–23 doesn’t leave it at simply rejoicing: “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy , for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Whether you’re just rejoicing in God deep down, or finding the emotional wherewithal, in the Spirit, to “leap for joy,” the point is clear: When others dishonor you, and exclude you, and utter all manner of evil against you, and even spurn your name as evil — and that on Jesus’s account , not on the account of your own folly — this is not new, and you are not alone (“so their fathers did to the prophets”). You have a great cause for joy. Their reviling you for his sake  means you are with him! And you will know him more as you share in the verbal persecution he endured (Philippians 3:10). 5. On the contrary, bless. There is one more shocking possibility for Christians, even more astounding than leaping for joy: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless , for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). This indeed is the spirit of Christ, and gives the most striking testimony of the Spirit of Christ at work in us. The grace and power of God not only enable us to expect and evaluate reviling, and not respond in kind but even rejoice, but also repay reviling with blessing . This is Christlikeness. This is Christian maturity (Matthew 5:48). This reflects the magnanimous heart of our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:45). This is the enemy-love to which Jesus not only calls us but works in us by his Spirit. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). In Christ, we have found ourselves blessed when we deserved to be cursed. We have come to know a Father who does not revile those who humbly seek him (James 1:5). When reviled, we now have the opportunity to bless undeserving revilers, just as we have been blessed from above — and will be further blessed for doing so (“that you may obtain a blessing,” 1 Peter 3:9). The swelling ocean of reviling in our day is not just an obstacle to be endured. It is an opportunity for gospel advance — and for deeper joy.
