The reason for the application of the name to the Psalmist lies, not so
much in his personal character or in his religious elevation, as in the
fact that he was chosen of God for a specific purpose, to carry on the
divine plans some steps towards their realisation. Kings, priests,
prophets, the collective Israel, as having a specific function in the
world, and being, in some sense, the instruments and embodiments of the
will of God amongst men, have in an eminent degree the designation of
His 'servants.' And we might widen out the thought and say that all men
who, like the heathen Cyrus, are God's shepherds, though they do not
know it--guided by Him, though they understand not whence comes their
power, and blindly do His work in the world, being 'epoch-making' men,
as the fashionable phrase goes now--are really, though in a subordinate
sense, entitled to the designation.
But then, whilst this is true, and whilst Jesus Christ comes into this
category, and is one of these special men raised up and adapted for
special service in connection with the carrying out of the divine
purpose, mark how emphatically and broadly the line is drawn here
between Him and the other members of the class to which, in a certain
sense, He does belong. Peter says, 'Thy servant David,' but he says
'Thy _holy_ Servant Jesus.' And in the Greek the emphasis is still
stronger, because the definite article is employed before the word
'servant.' '_The_ holy Servant of Thine'--that is His specific and
unique designation.
There are many imperfect instruments of the divine will. Thinkers and
heroes and saints and statesmen and warriors, as well as prophets and
priests and kings, are so regarded in Scripture, and may profitably be
so regarded by us; but amongst them all there is One who stands in
their midst and yet apart from them, because He, and He alone, can say,
'I have done all Thy pleasure, and into my doing of Thy pleasure no
bitter leaven of self-regard or by-ends has ever, in the faintest
degree, entered.' 'Thy holy Servant Jesus' is the unique designation of
_the_ Servant of the Lord.
And what is the meaning of _holy_? The word does not originally and
primarily refer to character so much as to relation to God. The root
idea of holiness is not righteousness nor moral perfectness, but
something that lies behind these--viz, separation for the service and
uses of God. The first notion of the word is consecration, and, built
upon that and resulting from it, moral perfection. So then these men,
some of whom had lived beside Jesus Christ for all those years, and had
seen everything that He did, and studied Him through and through, had
summered and wintered with Him, came away from the close inspection of
His character with this thought; He is utterly and entirely devoted to
the service of God, and in Him there is neither spot nor wrinkle nor
blemish such as is found in all other men.
I need not remind you with what strange persistence of affirmation, and
yet with what humility of self-consciousness, our Lord Himself always
claimed to be in possession of this entire consecration, and complete
obedience, and consequent perfection. Think of human lips saying, 'I do
always the things that please Him.' Think of human lips saying, 'My
meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.' Think of a man whose whole
life's secret was summed up in this: 'As the Father hath given Me
commandment, _so_'--no more, no less, no otherwise--'so I speak.' Think
of a man whose inspiring principle was, consciously to himself, 'not My
will, but Thine be done'; and who could say that it was so, and not be
met by universal ridicule. There followed in Jesus the moral
perfectness that comes from such uninterrupted and complete
consecration of self to God. 'Thy servant David,'--what about
Bathsheba, David? What about a great many other things in your life?
The poet-king, with the poet-nature so sensitive to all the delights of
sense, and so easily moved in the matter of pleasure, is but like all
God's other servants in the fact of imperfection. In every machine
power is lost through friction; and in every man, the noblest and the
purest, there is resistance to be overcome ere motion in conformity
with the divine impulse can be secured. We pass in review before our
minds saints and martyrs and lovely characters by the hundred, and
amongst them all there is not a jewel without a flaw, not a mirror
without some dint in it where the rays are distorted, or some dark
place where the reflecting surface has been rubbed away by the
attrition of sin, and where there is no reflection of the divine light.
And then we turn to that meek Figure who stands there with the question
that has been awaiting an answer for nineteen centuries upon His lips,
and is unanswered yet: 'Which of you convinceth Me of sin?' 'He is the
holy Servant,' whose consecration and character mark Him off from all
the class to which He belongs as the only one of them all who, in
completeness, has executed the Father's purpose, and has never
attempted anything contrary to it.
Now there is another step to be taken, and it is this. The Servant who
stands out in front of all the group--though the noblest names in the
world's history are included therein--could not be _the_ Servant unless
He were the Son. This designation, as applied to Jesus Christ, is
peculiar to these three or four earlier chapters of the Acts of the
Apostles. It is interesting because it occurs over and over again
there, and because it never occurs anywhere else in the New Testament.
If we recognise what I think must be recognised, that it is a quotation
from the ancient prophecies, and is an assertion of the Messianic
character of Jesus, then I think we here see the Church in a period of
transition in regard to their conceptions of their Lord. There is no
sign that the proper Sonship and Divinity of our Lord was clear before
them at this period. They had the facts, but they had not yet come to
the distinct apprehension of how much was involved in these. But, if
they knew that Jesus Christ had died and had risen again--and they knew
that, for they had seen Him--and if they believed that He was the
Messiah, and if they were certain that in His character of Messiah
there had been faultlessness and absolute perfection--and they were
certain of that, because they had lived beside Him--then it would not
be long before they took the next step, and said, as I say, 'He cannot
be the Servant unless He is more than man.'
And we may well ask ourselves the question, if we admit, as the world
does admit, the moral perfectness of Jesus Christ, how comes it that
this Man alone managed to escape failures and deflections from the
right, and sins, and that He only carried through life a stainless
garment, and went down to the grave never having needed, and not
needing then, the exercise of divine forgiveness? Brethren, I venture
to say that it is hopeless to account for Jesus Christ on naturalistic
principles; and that either you must give up your belief in His
sinlessness, or advance, as the Christian Church as a whole advanced,
to the other belief, on which alone that perfectness is explicable:
'Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ! Thou art the Everlasting Son of
the Father!'
II. And so, secondly, let us turn to the other contrast here--the
Servant and the slaves.
I said that the humble group of praying, persecuted believers seemed to
have wished to take a lower place than their Master's, even whilst they
ventured to assume that, in some sense, they too, like Him, were doing
the Father's will. So they chose, by a fine instinct of humility rather
than from any dogmatical prepossessions, the name that expresses, in
its most absolute and roughest form, the notion of bondage and
servitude. He is the Servant; we standing here are slaves. And that
this is not an overweighting of the word with more than is meant by it
seems to be confirmed by the fact that in the first clause of this
prayer, we have, for the only time in the New Testament, God addressed
as 'Lord' by the correlative word to _slave_, which has been
transferred into English, namely, _despot_.
The true position, then, for a man is to be God's slave. The harsh,
repellent features of that wicked institution assume an altogether
different character when they become the features of my relation to
Him. Absolute submission, unconditional obedience, on the slave's part;
and on the part of the Master complete ownership, the right of life and
death, the right of disposing of all goods and chattels, the right of
separating husband and wife, parents and children, the right of issuing
commandments without a reason, the right to expect that those
commandments shall be swiftly, unhesitatingly, punctiliously, and
completely performed--these things inhere in our relation to God.
Blessed the man who has learned that they do, and has accepted them as
his highest glory and the security of his most blessed life! For,
brethren, such submission, absolute and unconditional, the blending and
the absorption of my own will in His will, is the secret of all that
makes manhood glorious and great and happy.
Remember, however, that in the New Testament these names of slave and
owner are transferred to Christians and Jesus Christ. 'The Servant' has
His slaves; and He who is God's Servant, and does not His own will but
the Father's will, has us for His servants, imposes His will upon us,
and we are bound to render to Him a revenue of entire obedience like
that which He hath laid at His Father's feet.
Such slavery is the only freedom. Liberty does not mean doing as you
like, it means liking as you ought, and doing that. He only is free who
submits to God in Christ, and thereby overcomes himself and the world
and all antagonism, and is able to do that which it is his life to do.
A prison out of which we do not desire to go is no restraint, and the
will which coincides with law is the only will that is truly free. You
talk about the bondage of obedience. Ah! 'the weight of too much
liberty' is a far sorer bondage. They are the slaves who say, 'Let us
break His bonds asunder, and cast away His cords from us'; and they are
the free men who say, 'Lord, put Thy blessed shackles on my arms, and
impose Thy will upon my will, and fill my heart with Thy love; and then
will and hands will move freely and delightedly.' 'If the Son make you
free, ye shall be free indeed.'
Such slavery is the only nobility. In the wicked old empires, as in
some of their modern survivals to-day, viziers and prime ministers were
mostly drawn from the servile classes. It is so in God's kingdom. They
who make themselves God's slaves are by Him made kings and priests, and
shall reign with Him on earth. If we are slaves, then are we sons and
heirs of God through Jesus Christ.
Remember the alternative. You cannot be your own masters without being
your own slaves. It is a far worse bondage to live as chartered
libertines than to walk in the paths of obedience. Better serve God
than the devil, than the world, than the flesh. Whilst they promise men
liberty, they make them 'the most abject and downtrodden vassals of
perdition.'
The Servant-Son makes us slaves and sons. It matters nothing to me that
Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled the law of God; it is so much the
better for Him, but of no value for me, unless He has the power of
making me like Himself. And He has it, and if you will trust yourselves
to Him, and give your hearts to Him, and ask Him to govern you, He will
govern you; and if you will abandon your false liberty which is
servitude, and take the sober freedom which is obedience, then He will
bring you to share in His temper of joyful service; and even we may be
able to say, 'My meat and my drink is to do the will of Him that sent
me,' and truly saying that, we shall have the key to all delights, and
our feet will be, at least, on the lower rungs of the ladder whose top
reaches to Heaven.
'What fruit had ye in the things of which ye are now ashamed? But being
made free from sin, and become the slaves of God, ye have your fruit
unto holiness; and the end everlasting life.' Brethren, I beseech you,
by the mercies of God, that ye yield yourselves to Him, crying, 'O
Lord, truly I am Thy servant. Thou hast loosed my bonds.'