Stanford
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Sincerity Is Not Enough

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: June 3, 1951?

Location: Atlanta, Ga.?

Genre: Sermon

Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Career in Ministry

Details

Following his graduation from Crozer in May 1951, King returned to Atlanta for the summer and preached occasionally at Ebenezer where he delivered a sermon sharing the title of the following handwritten outline and brief manuscript.1 He argues for the importance of intelligence in religion and cautions: “If sincerity is not [buttressed?] by intelligence it can become the most [ruinous] force in human nature.”

 

Sincerity Is Not Enough, Sermon outline

Subject—Sincerety Is Not Enough
Text Roman 10:22

  1. Introduction
  2. Text
    1. Historical background
  3. The revelation of this fact in various areas
    1. History
    2. Our contempory political life
      1. The people who think that ou economic system can survive without a deep seated change
      2. The people who cry up war.
      3.  

 

Sincerity Is Not Enough

From the earliest moments of the Christian era the church has admonished men to be sincere, conscientious, kind-hearted, and well intentioned. Christianity inherited this emphasis from its Jewish ancestors, for Judaism always insisted that morality and religion were one, not two. Certainly this is a noble inheritance. But to say to a man that he must be sincere and conscientious, important though they be, does not cover the ground. Sincerity is not enough. If sincerity is not [buttressed?] by intelligence it can become the most runious force in human nature.

Indeet, the Apostle Paul was quite cognizant of this fact. He had the experience of having his life's work opposed on every hand by a group of men who were profoundly sincere yet desprerately stupid. These men, refered to as Judaizers, insisted that before a Gentile could come into the Christian church he must first be circumsized and accepts the tenents of the Jewish law. Paul, on the contrary other hand, did not insist on the necessity of a Gentile becoming a Jew before he could become a Christian. Because of his liberal open-minded leanings these Judaizers attempted to undermine Paul's efforts on every [strikeout illegible] hand. They followed him from shore to shore with the desire to defeat him. O how sincere they were in there attempt to defeat this great Christian missionary. They felt that they were doing the will of God. And so in his letter to the Roman Church in a verse which seems certain to be referring to these men, Paul says: “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according knowledge.”3How true this is of so many Christians. How easily this passage of scripture can be applied to 1951 A. D.

Surely this text needs to be repeated over and over again, especially in religious circles. All of the moral voices in the world seem to tell us to have a zeal of God, to be sincere, and to be conscientious, but how few voices tell us to be intelligent. Sincerity void of intelligence will never solve the spiritual problems of mankind. I must hasten to say that by intelligence I do not mean mere formal education.

1. King's announced sermon topic for 3 June 1951 was “Sincerity Is Not Enough” (“Rev. M. L. King, Sr. On Leave From Ebenezer Baptist,” Atlanta Daily World, 2 June 1951).

2. “For I bear them, record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”

3. Romans 10:2.

Source: CSKC-INP, Coretta Scott King Collection, In Private Hands, Sermon file. 

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