A decrepit old man lived in a single room in a slum, cooking his meagre meals, making his own bed, living on a mere pittance, left alone in the world. One day he was asked this question, a strange one to be asked of a man in his condition: What was his definition of a gentleman? What did he know of gentlemen? Surely they moved in a vastly different circle to his.
The answer he gave was surprising, and satisfying as it was surprising. He replied, “Read Psalm 15, and you’ll see a fine definition of a gentleman.” On hearing this incident, we turned to Psalm 15, and were immensely struck by the old man’s answer, for here we have God’s definition of a gentleman. The Psalm only consists of five verses, so we may as well repeat it in full.
“LORD, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? He that walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart. He that backbites not with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbour, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbour, in whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honours them that fear the LORD: He that swears to his own hurt, and changes not. He that puts not out his money to usury, nor takes reward against the innocent. He that does these things shall never be moved.”
Certainly any man, who acted fully on these lines, would be a gentleman indeed. But let us see what the Psalm teaches. There are many men in this world who are classed as gentlemen, and perhaps in their attitude and conduct to their fellow men, they would be rightly considered so. But we must ever remember that we have duties to GOD, as well as to our fellow men. Nay more, unless our duties are carried out to God, we fail, and are bound to fail, in our real attitude to our fellow men. We might illustrate it thus. Suppose the planets of our solar system were to arrange to keep in right relation to each other, of what use would that be, if the centre of the system, the SUN, were ignored in the arrangement? Nothing but terrific disaster would come of such an arrangement. Our parable is easily understood. How can our actions be right if we leave God out of our account? There are many so-called gentlemen, who live as if there were no God. No man can be a true gentleman unless he is a Christian gentleman. It matters little what social environment a man is born into, what matters is his relation first of all to GOD. Right with Him, he will be right with his fellow man.
We owe our existence to God, we owe our subsistence to God; we owe our spiritual life to God, and we owe our salvation, if we believe the Gospel of the grace of God, to the Saviour, who died on the cross for us.
We read that the man who acts according to this lovely Psalm will abide in God’s tabernacle and dwell in His holy hill. Living in such an atmosphere, one can well understand how the rest of the Psalm describes his conduct.
The man in this Psalm walks uprightly. Acting rightly towards God, he will naturally act rightly to his fellow man. Socialism makes a great claim, that if its aims were realized, it would bring in a New Order of security and uplift, that would make men content with their lot. Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the government of the people by the people for the people.” This might be described as a horizontal line of man’s fallen effort. It does not rise higher than man. But things will not work that way. We must have a perpendicular lines, one stretching from heaven to earth. We have the perpendicular line pithily described in the prayer taught by our Lord, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). What a beautiful world this would be if this were the case. We should have a world of true gentlefolk.
A bishop made a very true remark, “Without Christianity socialism is impossible, and with it it is unnecessary.” That means in other words that if God’s will were done on earth as it is done in heaven, then all injustice between man and man would cease. Sweating of labour, social inequalities would vanish, as they will one day when the Lord Jesus Christ as the Sun of righteousness arises with healing in His wings.
The man in the Psalm works righteousness. How could he do otherwise, seeing he abides in God’s tabernacle and dwells in His holy hill? His very residence there would prove that his ways were pleasing to the Lord.
The man in the Psalm speaks truth in his heart. The cynic who said that honesty was the best policy for he had tried both policies, was not honest in his heart. He was honest for profit, for he found he could gain more by honesty than dishonesty. If he could have gained more by dishonesty, dishonest he would have been. To speak truth from the heart is to love truth for truth’s sake. And he who has to do with the God of truth will revere truth and speak it from his heart.
Now we come to what the man in this Psalm does not do. He does not backbite with his tongue. We believe it is a true statement that nine-tenths of the sins committed by humanity have to do with the tongue. The writer James speaks very solemnly of the tongue. Every kind of beast, of bird, of serpent, of the denizen of the sea, can be tamed, but man cannot tame the tongue. What man cannot do, God can do. The Apostle James tells us the tongue is “set on fire of hell.” The word for “hell” here is Gehenna, a word which first appears in the synoptical Gospels, where it fell from the lips of our Lord, who came to save from hell. Only once outside these instances is the word mentioned, and, that by James, in connection with the tongue. We are exhorted not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, to “let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice” (Eph. 4:31). These evil things get expression through the tongue. The man of Psalm 15 restrains his tongue from backbiting.
The man in our Psalm will not do evil to his neighbour, nor listen to stories against his character. He will not be one thing before his neighbour’s face and another thing behind his back. He can be trusted by his neighbour to act rightly in relation to him, for he will act as God would act in this respect.
And how does the man in Psalm 15 react to the character of those around him? The vile man is condemned. Those who fear the Lord are honoured. The wisest of men, King Solomon, tells us plainly that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If we are wise, we are only truly so, as we keep in touch with the source of our wisdom, even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
The vile man is condemned. We all have the flesh that answers sympathetically to the flesh in others, and it is only as we judge it in ourselves that we can rightly judge it in others.
The man in Psalm 15, if he swears to his own hurt, changes not. We may illustrate it thus; a man promises to sell his house to a prospective purchaser for £1,000. When the prospective purchaser arrives with his cheque on account, so as to clinch the bargain, he is informed that an offer of £1,200 has been received and accepted. He made the promise verbally, and because it was not in writing he took the chance to go back on his word. The man in Psalm 15 would show that his word was as good as his bond, and would honour his word rather than net a profit by being dishonourable.
It was said that when David Livingstone was about to disappear in Africa, carrying his life in his hand, not knowing what to expect, but imbued with a desire to open up the dark continent to the Gospel of God, that he declared referring to the blessed Lord, and speaking with the utmost reverence, he was committing himself to the care of a Gentleman, who never went back on His word. He was relying on the strong promise of God with a double negative, which might be translated, “I will never, never, leave thee; never, never, forsake thee.” We are assured that Livingstone was not disappointed. Surely our Lord is the great example today, for any who would seek to follow in the footsteps of the man in Psalm 15.
The man of Psalm 15 would not put out his money to unjust usury, nor take reward against the innocent. A sum of money lent may be a great boon to the borrower in times of great difficulty, but if an exhorbitant rate of interest is charged, the transaction becomes very evil indeed. How many a Shylock has ruined his clients by this means, fastening on them shackles they cannot break. The man of our Psalm would not operate in “the Black Market,” taking unscrupulous advantage of a time of famine in commodities.
No wonder the Psalm ends that such a man should never be moved.
Someone said to the late George Vicesimus Wigram, a man of saintly life, that in heaven there would be no gentlemen. “On the contrary,” he replied, “they will all be gentlemen there.” And if all gentlemen there, why not all gentlemen here? It all comes back to God’s will being done in earth as it is in heaven. That is the secret of the only true New World Order.
A son of mine, when very young, was reading the Bible, and said to me, “Was not the Apostle Paul a great gentleman?” Indeed he was. The grace of God brought this about, as He would do with every one of us.
God’s gentlemen will not be unmanly or soft, but will stand for truth unswervingly, yet will do so with gentleness and graciousness. “Thy gentleness has made me great” (Ps. 18:35). The writer has in mind one, now with the Lord, who was at once the most gracious of men, and yet at the same time most firm in his upholding of divine principles and right conduct. He was one who could be very happily described by Psalm 15. May we all aim at answering to this description.