One Man
Clifton H. Payne, Jr.
The current population of the earth is estimated to be in excess of seven billion people. What is one man among so vast a number of people? What can one man do? Can one man change the world? Can one man make a difference?
Consider that the ancient Sages of Israel said that the Bible tells us that all mankind was created from one man to teach us that to destroy one life is equal to destroying an entire world. From one man came all the vast numbers of people that have populated our planet. This is not just a Biblical story that can be easily dismissed as a myth because modern science has confirmed this to be an accurate account. The Human Genome Project discovered the amazing fact that every human on earth today is descended from one woman. So we all have a common mother and we are all brothers and sisters.
The Bible also tells us the story of one man who listened and obeyed God in a time when the world had become a very violent and Godless place. This one man was called Noah and his obedience preserved the life of his family and the animals when God sent the flood. One very old man named Abraham believed and obeyed God in the midst of a pagan world and God promised him that he would become a great nation and in him all the families of the earth would be blessed and his offspring became the nation of Israel.
One man named Joseph suffered abuse by his own brothers and was sold into slavery only to ultimately be used by God to save his people from starvation. These same people became slaves themselves and God called one man, Moses, to lead them from slavery to freedom and give them the Torah and the land of Israel.
David was one very young man who believed God and stood up to a giant with only his trust in God and a rock in his hand who went on to become King of Israel. Elijah was only one man when he stood against the prophets of Baal and Esther was only one woman when her loyalty and faithfulness saved her people.
Jesus was only one man (and yet more than a man) but salvation was made available to all who call upon His name. As John wrote:“1John 4:14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.
1John 4:15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
1John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1John 4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.”
We are called to go into all the world and share the message of salvation with all who will respond. As Jesus said,
”Matt. 10:40 “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” And, “Luke 10:16 He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” And, “John 13:20 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”
He has called us to act as His agents to bring His salvation to the uttermost parts of the world because God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God so loved the world; not just the Jews or the Greeks, not just the men but also the women, not just the rich but also the poor, not just the slaves but also the free and not just the black race but also the white and the red and the yellow and the brown for Jesus loves all the people of the world.
“1Cor. 12:12 For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
1Cor. 12:13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.
1Cor. 12:14 For in fact the body is not one member but many.
1Cor. 12:15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body?
1Cor. 12:16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body?
1Cor. 12:17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?
1Cor. 12:18 But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.
1Cor. 12:19 And if they were all one member, where would the body be?
1Cor. 12:20 But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.
1Cor. 12:21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
1Cor. 12:22 No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary.
1Cor. 12:23 And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty,
1Cor. 12:24 but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it,
1Cor. 12:25 that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another.
1Cor. 12:26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
1Cor. 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.
We are a diverse group but in our diversity we must never lose site of our unity. Just as Paul wrote:“1Cor. 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1Cor. 1:10 Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
Jesus prayed: “John 17:20 ¶ “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
John 17:21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
John 17:22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:
John 17:23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
The forces of darkness are doing their best to divide us by our diversity. In the day in which Paul wrote he was bringing the gospel message to the Gentiles who lived in a very different culture from the Jews. The Jews had always thought that when the Messiah came the world would convert to Judaism. They never held any idea that God would accept the Gentiles in full fellowship without their conversion to Judaism with all of their ritual and covenantal obligations. Peter was the first to receive the revelation that God would accept the Gentiles without them becoming Jews and Paul was later given the commission to go throughout the Greco-Roman world preaching the good news and calling the Gentiles to repentance and to faith in the God of Israel.
Paul was only one man but his message empowered by the Holy Spirit changed the world. He called the Gentiles to obedience to the moral obligations of the law without commanding their obedience to the ritual and covenantal insulators and identifiers of the law. As Paul said, “1Cor. 7:19 Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters.”
This caused problems and misunderstandings as noted by Peter: “2Pet. 3:15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you,
2Pet. 3:16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.”
Peter equates the writings of Paul with Scripture, which gives them enormous credibility, but he also says that Paul was being misunderstood in his own day. Once the message crossed cultural lines the greater the opportunities became for misunderstandings.
Even to our own day there is much misunderstanding concerning “The Law” and what Paul meant. It would take a treatise to explain it all but put as succinctly as possible, God created mankind to be a social creature. As it is written: “Gen. 2:18 And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
We all want to be liked and accepted. So, given enough time we naturally tend to become like those people with whom we associate. (“1Cor. 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”) God put his people in the midst of a pagan world to be His witnesses. To protect them from assimilation and corruption He needed to insulate them from the pagan religions and customs and to give them covenantal identifiers and ritual regulations that isolated and insulated them from the corruption of idolatry until the coming of the Messiah, which would allow all mankind to come near unto God. Now that the price for sin had been paid God knew it would be nearly impossible to ask every culture to totally change their way of life and diet and to ask all men to become circumcised. So God did not require all the nations to become Jews in order to have full fellowship with Him, but He does require us to fulfill the universal moral obligations of the law. “1Cor. 7:19 Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters.”
Paul wrote: “Rom. 8:4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Gal. 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And he also wrote: ”Gal. 5:15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another! “
The forces of darkness are getting us to focus on our differences rather than on what binds us together. I have long been amazed how I could come to love people so totally different from myself just because we share our love of Jesus and what He has done for us. As an old hippie I came to have great fondness for an old redneck that I had absolutely nothing in common with and he with me. But we came to love and understand one another because of Jesus and without Jesus we would have never known or respected one another. We need to realize that culture divides and separates people more than race does and it is only in the love of God that we can find unity and commonality.
As a young white musician working and living with black musicians I sometimes would hear someone say or do something that I didn’t understand and I would say, “what?” I was told, “ you can’t understand man; it’s a black thing.” Even though we all spoke English we didn’t all speak the same language. If you are not part of a culture it is easy to misunderstand and that is why we have difficulty at times understanding the Bible because God chose the Jewish people and the Jewish culture to bring salvation to the world and that culture is largely unknown to us. And so we all sometimes misunderstand each other because our world is made up of many diverse cultures. As scripture says, 1Cor. 12:14 For in fact the body is not one member but many. 1Cor. 12:17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?
1Cor. 12:18 But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.
It is only by the love of God that comes to live in our hearts that we can go beyond our differences to be one people, one body.
God could have made us all adopt one culture and one language and one diet, but He didn’t. It seems that God likes diversity. He’s never made two snowflakes alike, so they tell me. So in our diversity we must find the unity of the Holy Spirit and express love to one another and realize that indeed all lives matter. If one of us suffers then we all suffer. We must all have the same concern for one another. And it must begin with each one of us.
One man, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation and ended slavery in this country. In WWII one man named Oskar Schindler, who was Roman Catholic, saved the lives of 1200 Jews at the risk of his own life and at the cost of his personal fortune. He was only one man but one who chose to love others more than himself. In the 60’s one man named Martin Luther King, Jr. stood up to protest injustice and discrimination and to fight for civil rights but he did not do so with the weapons of this world but by turning the other cheek, by nonviolent protest, by loving his enemies and shouting from the rooftops that one day our children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
We are all descended from one mother; we are all brothers and sisters. We all have a divine potential; we all have a purpose. We are all created in the image of God. We are the body of Christ and each one of us is a part of His body. United we stand as one man, the body of Christ Jesus. Divided we fall for a house divided cannot stand. What can one man do? Isolated and alone perhaps not much but united with God one man can change the world and indeed has changed the world.
“ Phil. 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. “God with one man can make a world and change a world. God asks, “Who will go for me?” God needs one man. Will you be that man?
