'… Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.'—JOHN iii. 14.
I have chosen this text for the sake of one word in it, that solemn
'must' which was so often on our Lord's lips. I have no purpose of
dealing with the remainder of this clause, nor indeed with it at all,
except as one instance of His use of the expression. But I have felt it
might be interesting, and might set old truths in a brighter light, if
we gather together the instances in which Christ speaks of the great
necessity which dominated His life, and shaped even small acts.
The expression is most frequently used in reference to the Passion and
Resurrection. There are many instances in the Gospels, in which He
speaks of that _must_. The first of these is that of my text. Then
there is another class, of which His word to His mother when a
twelve-year-old child may be taken as a type: 'Wist ye not that I
_must_ be about My Father's business?' where the mysterious
consciousness of a special relation to God in the child's heart drew
Him to the Temple and to His Father's work. Other similar instances are
those in which He responded to the multitude when they wanted to keep
Him to themselves: 'I _must_ preach in other cities also'; or as when
He said, 'I _must_ work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day.'
Yet another aspect of the same necessity is presented when, looking far
beyond the earthly work and suffering, He discerned the future triumph
which was to be the issue of these, and said, 'Other sheep I have… them
also I _must_ bring.'
And yet another is in reference to a very small matter: His selection
of a place for a few hours' rest on His last fateful journey to
Jerusalem, when He said, 'Zaccheus,… to-day I _must_ abide at thy
house.'
Now, if we put these instances together, we shall get some precious
glimpses into our Lord's heart, and His view of life.
I. Here we see Christ recognising and accepting the necessity for His
death.
My text, if we accept John's Gospel, contributes an altogether new
element to our conception of our Lord as announcing His death. For the
other three Gospels lay emphasis on it as being part of His teaching,
especially during the later stage of His ministry. But it does not
follow that He began to think about it or to see it, when He began to
speak about it. There are reasons for the earlier comparative
reticence, and there is no ground for the conclusion that then first
began to dawn upon a disappointed enthusiast the grim reality that His
work was not going to prosper, and that martyrdom was necessary. That
is a notion that has been frequently upheld of late years, but to me it
seems altogether incongruous with the facts of the case. And, if John's
Gospel is a true record, that theory is shivered against this text,
which represents Him at the very beginning of His career—the time when,
according to that other theory, He was full of the usual buoyant and
baseless anticipations of a reformer commencing His course—as telling
Nicodemus, 'Even so _must_ the Son of Man be lifted up.' In like
manner, in the previous chapter of this same Gospel, we have the
significant though enigmatical utterance: 'Destroy this Temple, and in
three days I will raise it up'; with the Evangelist's authoritative
comment: 'He spake of the Temple of His body.' So, from the beginning
of His career, the end was clear before Him.
And why _must_ He go to the Cross? Not merely, as the other Evangelists
put it, in order that 'it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the
prophets.' It was not that Jesus must die because the prophets had said
that Messiah should, but that the prophets had said that Messiah should
because Jesus must. There was a far deeper necessity than the
fulfilment of any prophetic utterance, even the necessity which shaped
that utterance. The work of Jesus Christ could not be done unless He
died. He could not be the Saviour of the world unless He was the
sacrifice for the sins of the world.
We cannot see all the grounds of that solemn imperative, but this we
can see, that it was because of the requirements of the divine
righteousness, and because of the necessities of sinful men. And so
Christ's was no martyr's death, who had to die as the penalty of the
faithful discharge of His duty. It was not the penalty that He paid for
doing His work, but it was the work itself. Not that gracious life, nor
'the loveliness of perfect deeds,' nor His words of sweet wisdom, nor
His acts of transcendent power, equalled only by the pity that moved
the power, completed His task, but He 'came to give His life a ransom
for many.'
'Must' is a hard word. It may express an unwelcome necessity. Was this
necessity unwelcome? When He said, 'The Son of Man must be lifted up,'
was He shrinking, or reluctantly submitting? Ah, no! He _must_ die
because He _would_ save, and He _would_ save because He _did_ love. His
filial obedience to God coincided with His pity for men: and not merely
in obedience to the requirements of the divine righteousness, but in
compassion for the necessities of sinners, necessity was laid upon Him.
Oh, brethren! nothing held Christ to the Cross but His own desire to
save us. Neither priests nor Romans carried Him thither. What fastened
Him to it was not the nails driven by rude hands. And the reason why He
did not, as the taunters bade Him do, come down from it, was neither a
physical nor a moral necessity unwelcome to Himself, but the yielding
of His own will to do all which was needed for man's salvation.
This sacrifice was bound to the altar by the cords of love. We have
heard of martyrs who have refused to be tied to the stake, and have
kept themselves motionless in the centre of the fierce flames by the
force of their wills. Jesus Christ fastened Himself to the Cross and
died because He would.
And, oh! if we think of that sweet, serene life as having clear before
it from the very first steps that grim end, how infinitely it gains in
pathetic beauty and in heart-touchingness! What wonderful
self-abnegation! How he was at leisure from Himself, with a heart of
pity for every sorrow, and loins girt for all service, though during
all His life the Cross closed the vista! Think that human shrinking was
felt by Him, think that it was so held back that His purpose never
faltered, think that each of us may say, 'He _must_ die because He
_would_ save me'; and then ask, 'What shall I render to the Lord for
all His benefits toward me?'
II. In a second class of these utterances, we see Christ impelled by
filial obedience and the consciousness of His mission.
'Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' That was a
strange utterance for a boy of twelve. It seems to negative the
supposition that what is called the 'Messianic consciousness' dawned
upon Jesus Christ first after His baptism and the descent of the
Spirit. But however that may be, it and the similar passages to which I
have already referred, bearing upon His discharge of His work prior to
His death, teach that the necessity was an inward necessity springing
from His consciousness of Sonship, and His recognition of the work that
He had to do. And so He is our great Example of spontaneous obedience,
which does violence to itself if it does not obey. It was instinct that
sent the boy into the Temple. Where should a Son be but in His Father's
house? How could He not be doing His Father's business?
Thus He stands before us, the pattern for the only obedience that is
worth calling so, the obedience which would be pained and ill at ease
unless it were doing the work of God. Religion is meant to make it a
second nature, or, as I have ventured to call it, an instinct—a
spontaneous, uncalculating, irrepressible desire—to be in fellowship
with God, and to be doing His will. That is the meaning of our
Christianity. There is no obedience in reluctant obedience; forced
service is slavery, not service. Christianity is given for the specific
purpose that it may bring us so into touch with Jesus Christ as that
the mind which was in Him may be in us; and that we too may be able to
say, with a kind of wonder that people should have expected to find us
in any other place, or doing anything else, 'Wist ye not that because I
am a Son, _I_ must be about my Father's business?' As certainly as the
sunflower follows the sun, so certainly will a man animated by the mind
that was in Jesus Christ, like Him find his very life's breath in doing
the Father's will.
So then, brethren, what about our grudging service? What about our
reluctant obedience? What about the widespread mistake that religion
prohibits wished-for things and enforces unwelcome duties? If my
Christianity does not make me recoil from what it forbids, and spring
eagerly to what it commends, my Christianity is of very little use. If
when in the Temple we are like idle boys in school, always casting
glances at the clock and the door, and wishing ourselves outside, we
may just as well be out as in. Glad obedience is true obedience. Only
he who can say, 'Thy law is within my heart, and I do Thy will because
I love Thee, and cannot but do as Thou desirest,' has found the joy
possible to a Christian life. It is not 'harsh and crabbed,' as those
that look upon it from the outside may 'suppose,' but musical and full
of sweetness. There is nothing more blessed than when 'I choose' covers
exactly the same ground as 'I ought.' And when duty is delight, delight
will never become disgust, nor joy pass away.
III. We see, in yet another use of this great 'must,' Christ
anticipating His future triumph.
'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring,
and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd.' Striking as these words
are in themselves, they are still more striking when we notice their
connection; for they follow immediately upon His utterance about laying
down His life for the sheep. So, then, this was a work beyond the
Cross, and whatever it was, it was to be done after He had died.
I need not point out to you how far afield Christ's vision goes out
into the dim, waste places, where on the dark mountains the straying
sheep are torn and frightened and starving. I need not dwell upon how
far ahead in the future His glance travels, or how magnificent and how
rebuking to our petty narrowness this great word is. 'There shall be
one _flock_' (not fold); and they shall be one, not because they are
within the bounds of any visible 'fold,' but because they are gathered
round the one Shepherd, and in their common relation to Him are knit
together in unity.
But what sort of a Man is this who considers that His widest work is to
be done by Him after He is dead? 'Them also I _must_ bring.' Thou? how?
when? Surely such words as these, side by side with a clear prevision
of the death that was so soon to come, are either meaningless or the
utterance of an arrogance bordering on insanity, or they anticipate
what an Evangelist declares did take place—that the Lord was 'taken up
into heaven and sat at the right hand of God,' whilst His servants
'went everywhere preaching the Word, the Lord also working with them
and confirming the Word' with the signs He wrought.
'Them also I must bring.' That is not merely a necessity rooted in the
nature of God and the wants of men. It is not merely a necessity
springing from Christ's filial obedience and sense of a mission; but it
is a 'must' of destiny, a 'must' which recognises the sure results of
His passion; a 'must' which implies the power of the Cross to be the
reconciliation of the world. And so for all pessimistic thoughts
to-day, or at any time, and when Christian men's hearts may be
trembling for the Ark of God—although, perhaps, there may be little
reason for the tremor—and in the face of all blatant antagonisms and of
proud Goliaths despising the 'foolishness of preaching,' we fall back
upon Christ's great 'must.' It is written in the councils of Heaven
more unchangeably than the heavens; it is guaranteed by the power of
the Cross; it is certain, by the eternal life of the crucified Saviour,
that He will one day be the King of humanity, and _must_ bring His
wandering sheep to couch in peace, one flock round one Shepherd.
IV. Lastly, we have Christ applying the greatest principle to the
smallest duty.
'Zaccheus! make haste and come down; to-day I _must_ abide in thy
house.' Why must He? Because Zaccheus was to be saved, and was worth
saving. What was the 'must'? To stop for an hour or two on His road to
the Cross. So He teaches us that in a life penetrated by the thought of
the divine will, which we gladly obey, there are no things too great,
and none too trivial, to be brought under the dominion of that law, and
to be regulated by that divine necessity. Obedience is obedience,
whether in large things or in small. There is no scale of magnitude
applicable to the distinction between God's will and that which is not
God's will. Gravitation rules the motes that dance in the sunshine as
well as the mass of Jupiter. A triangle with its apex in the sun, and
its base beyond the solar system, has the same properties and comes
under the same laws as one that a schoolboy scrawls upon his slate.
God's truth is not too great to rule the smallest duties. The star in
the East was a guide to the humble house at Bethlehem, and there are
starry truths high in the heavens that avail for our guidance in the
smallest acts of life.
So, brethren, bring your doings under that all-embracing law of
duty—duty, which is the heathen expression for the will of God. There
are great regions of life in which lower necessities have play.
Circumstances, our past, bias and temper, relationship, friendship,
civic duty, and the like—all these bring their necessities; but let us
think of them all as being, what indeed they are, manifestations to us
of the will of our Father. There are great tracts of life in which
either of two courses may be right, and we are left to the decision of
choice rather than of duty; but high above all these, let us see
towering that divine necessity. It is a daily struggle to bring 'I
will' to coincide with 'I ought'; and there is only one adequate and
always powerful way of securing that coincidence, and that is to keep
close to Jesus Christ and to drink in His spirit. Then, when duty and
delight are conterminous, 'the rough places will be plain, and the
crooked things straight, and every mountain shall be brought low, and
every valley shall be exalted,' and life will be blessed, and service
will be freedom. Joy and liberty and power and peace will fill our
hearts when this is the law of our being; 'All that the Lord hath
spoken, that _must_ I do.'