'Them also I must bring.' A necessity is laid upon Him, which springs
at once from that divine work which is the law of His life, and from
His own love and pity. The means for accomplishing this necessary work
are implied in the context, as in other parallel Scriptural sayings, to
be His propitiatory death. The instrumentality employed is not only His
own personal agency on earth, nor only His throned rule on the right
hand of God with power over the Spirit of holiness, but also the work
of His Church, and His work through them. Of that He is mainly speaking
when He says, 'Them also I must bring.' Here, then, are some truths
which ought to underlie and shape as well as animate our efforts for
heathenism.
And first, remember that the same sovereign necessity which was laid on
Him presses on us.
The 'Spirit of life' which was in Christ had its 'law,' which was the
will of God. That shaped all His being, and He set us the example of
perfectly clear recognition of, and perfect obedience to it, from the
first moment when He said, 'I must be about My Father's business,' to
the last, when He sighed forth, 'Father, into Thy hands I commit My
spirit.' Hence the frequent sayings setting forth His work as
determined by an imperative 'must,' which, whether it be alleged in
reference to some apparently small or to some manifestly great thing in
His life, is always equally imperative, and whether it seem to be based
on the need for the fulfilment of some prophetic word, or on the
proprieties and congruities of sonship, reposes at last on the will of
God. His final words on the Passover night, before he went out to
Gethsemane in the moonlight, contain the influence which moulded His
whole earthly life, 'As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.'
And this divine will constitutes for Him the deepest ground of the
necessity in the case before us. The eternal counsels of God had willed
that 'all the ends of the earth should see the salvation of the Lord';
therefore, whatever the toils and the pains, the loss and the death,
He, whose meat and drink was to do the will of Him that sent Him, must
give Himself to the task, nor rest till, one by one, the weary
wanderers are brought back on His shoulders and folded in His love.
In all which, let us remember, Jesus Christ is our pattern, not in His
work for the salvation of men, but in the spirit in which He did His
work. The solemn law of duty before which He bowed His head is a law
for us also. The authoritative imperative which He obeyed has power
over us. If we would have our lives holy and strong, wise and good, we
must have 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, making us
free from the law of sin and death,' for the obedience to the higher
law enfranchises from slavery to the lower, and all other authority
ceases over us when we are Christ's men. We are bound to service
directed to the same end as His—even the salvation of the world. The
same voice which says to Him, 'I will give Thee for a light to the
Gentiles,' says to us, 'Ye are My witnesses, and My servant whom I have
chosen.' The same Will which hath constituted Him the anointed Prophet,
says of us, 'Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.' We
are redeemed that we may show forth God's praises. Not for ourselves
alone, nor for purposes terminating in our own personal acceptance with
God, or the perfecting of our own characters, priceless as these are,
but for ends which affect the world has God had mercy on us. We are
bought with a price that we may be the servants of God. We have
received that we may give forth,
'God doth with us, as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.'
'Arise, shine, for thy light is come.'
This missionary work of ours, then, is not one that can be taken up and
laid down at our own pleasure. It is no excrescence, or accidental
outgrowth of the Church's life. We are all too apt to think of it as an
extra, a kind of work of supererogation, which those may engage in who
have a liking that way, and which those who do not care about it may
leave alone, and no harm done. When shall we come to feel deeply,
constantly, practically, that it must be done, and that we are sinning
when we neglect it? Dear brethren, have we laid on our hearts and
consciences the solemn weight of that necessity which moulded His life?
Have we felt the awful power of God's plainly spoken will, driving us
to this task? Do we know anything of that spirit which hears
ever-pealing in our ears that awful commandment, 'Go, go to all the
world, preach, preach the Gospel to every creature?' God commands us to
take the trumpet, and if we would not soil our souls with gross and
palpable sin, we must set it to our lips and sound an alarm, that by
His grace shall wake the sleepers, and make the hoary walls of the
robber-city that has afflicted the earth for so many weary millenniums,
rock to their fall, that the redeemed of the Lord may pass over and set
the captives free.
If we felt this as we ought, surely our consecration would be more
complete, and our service more worthy. A clear conviction of God's will
pointing the path for us, is, in all things, a wondrous help to
vigorous action, to calmness of heart, and thus to success. In this
mighty work, it would brace us for larger efforts, and fit us for
larger results. It would simplify and deepen our motives, and thus
evolve from them nobler deeds and purer sacrifices. To all objections
from so-called prudence, to all calculations from sparse results, to
all cavils of onlookers who may carp and seek to hinder, we should have
one all-sufficient answer. It is not for us to bandy arguments on such
points as these. We care nothing for difficulties, for discouragements,
for cost. We may think about these till we lose all the manly chivalry
of Christian character, like the Apostle who gazed on the white crests
of the angry breakers flashing in the pale moonlight, till he forgot
who stood on the storm, and began to sink in his great fear. A nobler
spirit ought to be ours. The toil is sore, the sacrifices many, and the
yield seems small. Be it so! To all such thoughts we have one
answer—Oh! that we felt more its solemn power!—such is the will of God.
We are doing as we are bid, and we mean to go on. 'Them also must I
bring,' says the Master. 'Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me if
I preach not the Gospel,' echoes the Apostle. Let us, in the
consecration of resolved hearts, and in trembling obedience to the
divine will, add our choral Amen, and in the face of all the paralysing
suggestions of our own selfishness, and all the tempting voices of
worldly wisdom and unbelieving scornfulness that would stay our
enterprise, let us fling back the grand old answer, 'Whether it be
right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge
ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.'
We must not forget, however, that it was no abhorrent toil to which
Christ reluctantly consented. But in this case, as always with Him, the
words of prophecy were true, 'I delight to do Thy will.' The schism
between law and choice had no existence for Him; and when He says that
He must bring the wandering sheep into the fold, He means not more
because of God's will than because of His own yearning desire to pour
out the treasures of His mercy.
So it ought to be with us. Our missionary work should not be degraded
beneath the level of duty indeed, but neither should it be left on that
level. We ought not only to be led to it by a power without, but
impelled by an energy within. If we would be like our Master, we must
know the necessity arising from our own heart's promptings, which leads
us to work for Him. He has very imperfectly caught the spirit of the
Gospel who has never felt the word as a fire in his bones, making him
weary of forbearing. If we only take to this work because we are bid,
and without sympathy for men, and longing desire to bring them all to
Him who has blessed us, we may almost as well leave it alone. We shall
do very little good to anybody, to ourselves little, to the world less.
That our own hearts may teach us this necessity, we must live near our
Master, and know His grace for ourselves. In proportion as we do, we
shall be eager to proclaim it, and not stand idling in a corner of the
market-place, till some unmistakable order sends us into the vineyard,
but go for the relief of our own feelings. 'This is a day of good
tidings, and we cannot hold our peace,' said the poor lepers in the
camp to one another. The same feeling that we must tell the good news
just because we know it, and it will make our brethren glad, is part of
the Christian character. A blessed necessity, then, is laid upon us. A
blessed work is given us, which brings with it at once the joy of
obedience to our Father's will, and the joy of gratifying a deep
instinct of our nature. 'Them also must I bring,' said the Saviour,
because He loved men. 'To me who am less than the least of all saints,
is this _grace_ given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches,' echoes the Apostle. Let us live in the light of
our Lord's eye, and drink deep of His spirit, till the talk becomes a
grace and privilege, not a burden, and till silence and idleness in His
cause shall be felt to be impossible, because it would be violence to
our own feelings, and the loss of a great joy as well as sin against
our Father's will.
Consider again, by what means the sheep are to be brought to Christ?
The context distinctly answers the question. There His propitiatory
death is emphatically set forth as the power by which it is to be
accomplished. The verse before our text says, 'I lay down My life for
the sheep'; that after our text says, 'Therefore doth My Father love
Me, because I lay down My life.' It is the same connection of means and
end as appears in the wonderful words with which He received the Greeks
who came up to the feast, and heard the great truth, for want of which
their philosophy and art came to nothing. 'Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die it abideth alone'—'I, if I be lifted up from
the earth will draw all men unto Me.'
Yes, brethren! the Cross of Christ, and it alone, gathers men into a
unity; for it alone draws men to Christ. His death, as our
propitiation, effects such a change in the aspects of the divine
government, and in the incidence of the divine justice, that 'we who
were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.' His death, as the
constraining motive of life in the hearts which receive it, draws them
away from their own ways by the cords of love, and binds them to Him.
His death is His purchase of the gifts of that divine Spirit for the
rebellious, who now convinces the world and endows the Church, 'till we
all come unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.'
The First Begotten from the dead is therefore the prince of all the
kings of the earth, and He so rides among the nations as to bring the
world to Himself. The philosophy of history lies in the words, 'Other
sheep I have, them also I must bring.'
Christian missions abundantly prove that the Cross and the proclamation
of the Cross have this power, and that nothing else has. It is not the
ethics of Christianity, nor the abstract truths which may be deduced
from its story, but it is the story of the suffering Redeemer that
gives it its power over human hearts, in all conditions, and climates,
and stages of culture. The magnetism of the Cross alone is mighty
enough to overcome the gravitation of the soul to sin and the world. We
hear much nowadays about a new reformation which is to be effected on
Christianity, by purifying it of its historical facts and of its
repulsive sacrificial aspect. When this is done, and the pure spiritual
ideas are disengaged from their fleshly garb, then, we are told, will
be the apotheosis and glorification of Christ. This will be the real
lifting up from the earth; this will draw all men. Aye, and when this
is done what will be left? Christianity will be purified back again
into a vague Deism, which one would have thought had proved itself
toothless and impotent, centuries ago. Spiritualising will turn out to
be very like evaporating, the residuum will be a miserably
unsatisfactory something, near akin to nothing, and certainly incapable
either of firing its disciples with a desire to spread their faith, if
we may call it so by courtesy, or of drawing men to itself. A
Christianity without a Sacrifice on the altar will be a Christianity
without worshippers in the Temple. The King of Kings who rides forth
conquering is clothed in a vesture dipped in blood. The Christian
Emperor saw in the heavens the Cross, with the legend: 'In this sign
thou shalt conquer!' It is an emblem true for all time. The Cross is
the power unto salvation. The races scattered on the earth have often
sought to make for themselves a rallying-point, and their attempts at
union have become Babels, centres of repulsion and confusion. God has
given us the Centre, the Tree of life in the midst. The crucified
Saviour is the Root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign for the
people; to it shall the Gentiles seek, and resting beneath the shadow
of the Cross be at peace. 'I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto Me.'
Once more our Lord teaches us here to identify the work of the Church
with His own. What His servants do for Him He does, for from Him they
derive the power to do it, and from Him comes the blessing which makes
it effectual. He works in us, He works with us, He works for us. He
works in us. We have the grace of His Spirit to touch our hearts and
sanctify us for service. He puts it into the wills and desires of His
Church to consecrate themselves to the task. He teaches them sympathy
and self-devotion. He breathes world-wide aspirations into them. He
raises up men to go forth. He works _with_ us, helping our weakness,
enlightening our ignorance, directing our steps, giving power to the
student at his dry task of grammar and dictionary, being mouth and
wisdom to them that speak in His name, touching the hearts of them that
hear. In our basket He puts the seed-corn; the furrows of the field He
makes soft with showers, and when it is sown He blesses the springing
thereof. He works for us, opening doors among the nations, ordering the
courses of providence, and holding His hand around His servants, so
that they are immortal till their work is done; and can ever lift up
thankful voices to Him who leads them joyful captives at His own
triumphal car, as it rolls on its stately march, scattering the sweet
odours of His name wherever the long procession sweeps through the
world. We neither go a warfare at our own charges, nor in our own
might. He will fight with us, and He will pay us liberally at the last.
When we count up our own resources, do not we often leave Christ out of
the reckoning? Do we not measure our strength against the enemies', and
forget that one weak man, plus Christ, is always in the majority? 'It
is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of My Father which speaketh in
you.' 'I laboured, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.'
So helped, so inspired, we are wrong to despond; we are wrong not to
expect great things and attempt great things; we are wrong not to dare,
we are wrong to do the work of the Lord negligently. Let us feel that
Christ's work is ours, and we shall be bowed beneath the solemnity of
the thought, shall accept joyfully the necessity. Let us feel that our
work is Christ's, and we shall rejoice in infirmity that His power may
rest upon us, shall bid adieu to faint-hearted fears, and be sure that
then it must prosper. 'Arise, O Lord! plead Thine own cause.' Not unto
us, O Lord! not unto us, but to Thy name give glory.
'The Lord ascended into Heaven and sat on the right hand of God, and
they went everywhere preaching the word.' It seems a strange contrast
between the rest of the Lord, sitting in sublime expectancy of
conscious power til His enemies become His footstool, and the toils of
His scattered disciples. It is like that moment which the genius of the
great painter has caught in an immortal work, when Jesus in rapt
communion with the mighty dead, and crowned with the accepting word
from Heaven, floated transfigured above the Holy Mount, while below His
disciples wrestled impotently with the demon that would not be cast
out. But it is not really contrast. He has not so parted the toils as
that His are over ere ours begin. He has not left His Church militant
to bear the brunt of the battle while the Captain of the Lord's host
only watches the current of the heady fight—like Moses from the safe
mountain. The Evangelist goes on to tell us that the Lord also was
working with them and sharing their toils, lightening their burdens,
preparing for them successes on earth, and a rest like His when He
shall gird Himself and serve them. Thus, the first time that the
heavens opened again to mortal eyes after they closed on His ascending
form, was to show Him to the martyr in the council chamber, not sitting
careless or restful, but _standing_ at the right hand of God, to
intercede for, to strengthen, to receive and glorify His dying servant.
He goes with us where we go, and through our works and gifts and
prayers, through our proclamation of the Cross, He worketh His will,
and shall finally accomplish that great necessity laid upon Him by the
Father's counsels, and upon us by His commandment, and to be effected
by His death, that He should die, not for that nation only, but also
that He should gather together in one the children of God who are
scattered abroad.