A Call to Friendship.
One day I watched two young men, a Japanese and an American, pacing the
deck of a Japanese liner bound for San Francisco. Their heads were close
together and bent down, and they were talking earnestly. The Japanese was
saying, "Oh, yes, I believe all that as a theory, but is there _power_ to
make a man _live_ it?"
He was an officer of the ship, one of the finest boats on the Pacific. The
American was a young fellow who had gone out to Japan as a government
teacher, and when his earnest sort of Christianity led to his dismissal he
remained, and still remains, as a volunteer missionary. With his rare gift
in personal touch he had won the young officer's confidence, and was
explaining what Christianity stood for, when the Japanese politely
interrupted him with his question about power. The tense eagerness of his
manner and voice let one see the hunger of his heart. He had high ideals
of life, but confessed that every time he was in port, the shore
temptations proved too much, and he always came back on board with a
feeling of bitter defeat. He had read about Christianity and believed it
good in theory. But he knew nothing of its power.
Through his new American friend he came into personal touch with Christ,
then and there. And up to the day we docked he put in his spare time
bringing other Japanese to his friend's stateroom, and there more than one
of them knelt, and came into warm touch of heart with the Lord Jesus.
Just so our Lord Jesus draws men, Oriental and Occidental alike. Just so
He drew men when He was down here. He had great drawing power. Men came
eagerly wherever they could find Him.
He drew all sorts of men. He drew the Jews, to whom He belonged racially.
He drew the aggressive, domineering Romans, and the gentler cultured
Greeks. He drew the half-breed Samaritans, who were despised by both Jew
and foreigner, as not being either one thing or the other. The military
men and the civilians, the cultured and the unlettered, the official class
and those in private life, all alike felt the strong pull upon their
hearts of His presence.
The pure of heart, like gentle Mary of Bethany, and the guileless
Nathanael, were drawn to Him. And the very opposite, those openly bad in
their life, couldn't resist His presence, and the call away from their
low, bad level, but eagerly took His hand and came up. Fisherfolk and
farmers, dwellers in the city and country, scholars and tradesmen, crude
and refined, richly clad and ragged,--all sorts contentedly rubbed elbows
and jostled each other in the crowds that came to listen, and stayed to
listen longer, and then went away to come back again for more.
This was why He came--to draw men to Himself. Our Lord Jesus was the face
of God looking longingly into men's faces. And they couldn't withstand the
appeal of that gentle strong face. He was the voice of God talking into
men's ears; and the music of that low, quiet voice thrilled and thralled
their hearts. He was the hand of God, strong and warm, reaching down to
take men by the hand and give them a strong lift up and back to the old
Eden life. And, in time, as men put their hand in His, they came to feel
the little knotted place in the palm of that outstretched hand, and the
feel of it went strangely into their inmost being. He was the heart of
God, tender and true, beating rhythmically in time and tune with the human
heart. And the music had, and has, strange power of appeal to human
hearts, and power to sway human lives like a great wind in the trees.
Our Lord Jesus was the person of God in human shape and human garb, come
down close, to draw us men back again to the old trysting place under the
Tree of Life. And in every generation, and every corner of the earth,
then, and ever since then, men of every colour and sort have come back,
and found how His presence eases the tug of life on many a steep roadway,
and more, much more.[1]
And our Lord Jesus drew men into personal friendship with Himself. He
didn't like the long range way of doing things. Keeping men at arm's
length never suited Him. He gave the inner heart touch, and He longed for
the touch of the innermost heart. He was our friend. He asked that we be
His friends, real friends of the rare sort, of which one's life has only a
few.
And He asked, too, that all else that we brought to Him should be that
which grew out of this personal friendship. He gave and did all that He
did and gave, because He was our friend. He asked only for what grew out
of a real heart friendship with Himself. He longed to have us give all,
yet only what our hearts couldn't hold back. His friendship has one thing
peculiar to itself. He has no favourites, in our common thought of that
word, among the countless numbers who have come to be included in His
inner circle of friends. Yet He gives to each such a distinctive personal
touch of His own heart that you feel yourself to be on closest terms. He
is nearer and closer than any other, and your longing is to be as near and
close to Him in life as He is to you in His heart.[2]
Now, because we are His friends and He is our friend, He calls us to
follow Him. It is a privilege of friendship. He would share with you and
with me the things of His own heart and life. He wants to have us come
close up to Himself, and live close up. And the only way we can do it is
by giving a glad "Yes" to His invitation, and following so close that we
shall be up to Himself. Nothing less than this contents His longing.
But there is more than friendship here. He has a plan of action in His
heart. It is a wide-reaching plan, clear beyond our idea of what
wide-reaching means. It is nothing less than a plan for the whole world,
the entire race, for winning it up to the old Eden life of purity and of
close walking with God. That plan is the passion of His great heart. He
has held nothing back--spared nothing--that it might be done. He is
thinking of that plan as He comes eagerly to you and me, now, all afresh,
and with His heart in His voice says "Follow Me." This is a bit of His
plan for me and for you--that we shall be partners with Him in His plan
for the world.
And yet--and yet--this helping Him, this partnership, this working with
Him in His plan, is to be because of our friendship, His and mine, His and
yours. It is a more than friendship He is thinking of. But that more is
_through_ the friendship. It grows out of the friendship. Only so does it
work out His real plan.
Climbing the Hilltops.
Now this "Follow Me" of His, if taken into one's life, and followed up,
will come to mean two things. There are two great things that stand
sharply out in our Lord Jesus' life down here, His _characteristics_ and
His _experiences_. I mean what He was in Himself; and what He went
through, suffered, enjoyed, and accomplished; the Man Himself, and the
Man's experiences. These are the two things about which these simple talks
will be grouped. Our Lord Jesus wants us to follow that we may climb up
the hill as high as He did in these things.
Following means climbing. A friend has told recently of a journey taken to
a certain village in New England from which, she had been told, a fine
view could be got of the White Mountains. On arrival it seemed that a low
hill completely shut out the view, to her intense disappointment. But her
companion, by and by, called from the top of the low hill and eagerly
beckoned her to come up. A bit of climbing quickly brought her to where
the magnificent beauty of the mountains broke upon her delighted eyes.
Our Lord Jesus climbed the hilltops, both in His character and in His
experiences. He wants us to share those rare hilltops with Him. He has
gone away ahead of any other. He is the Lone Man in both character and
experiences. And in some of His experiences He will ever remain the lone
occupant of the hilltop. But He is eager for our companionship. He longs
for the personal touch. He wants us to have all He has got. He has blazed
a way through the thicket where there was no path before. He left the
plain marks on the trees as He went through, so we could surely find the
way. And now He eagerly beckons us to follow.
But following means climbing. It's a hill road, sometimes down hill,
sometimes up hill. Which makes stiffer climbing? Usually the one you are
doing seems the harder. Sometimes the road is a dead level between hills.
And dead level walking--the monotonous dead-a-way, with no bracing air, no
inspiring outlook--is often much harder than down hill or up. And so it
too is climbing. Following means climbing. He climbed. He made the high
climb all alone. No other ever had the courage to climb so high as He.
It's easier since He has smoothed down the road with His own feet; yet it
isn't easy; still it is easier than not climbing; that is, when you reckon
the whole thing up--with _Him_ in.
Now He asks you and me to climb. He cannot climb for you. That is, I mean
He cannot do the climbing you ought to do. He has climbed for us, marked
out the hill path, and made it possible for us to climb up too. But the
after-climbing He cannot do for us. Each must do his own climbing. So
lungs grow deeper, and heart-action stronger, and cheeks clearer, and
muscles firmer. Step by step we must pull up, maybe through a fog, with no
view of beauty, no bracing air yet, only His strong beckoning hand.
But those who reach up and get hold of hands with Him, and get up even to
some of the lower reaches of the climb, stand with full hearts and dumb
lips. They can't find words to tell the exhilaration of the climb, the
bracing air, the far outlook, and, yet more, the wondrous presence of the
Chief Climber, even though there's a bit of smarting of face and hands
where the thorny tanglewood tore a bit as you went by.
Just now I want you to come with me for a bit of a look at the Lone Man,
who has gone before. I mean at the Man Himself. We want to take a look at
the characteristics of His life; what the Man was in His character.
And please understand me here. Following does not mean that we are to try
to imitate these characteristics. No, it's something both simpler and
easier, and deeper and better than that. It means that, as we companion
with Him daily, these same traits will appear in us. It is not to be
imitation simply, good as that might seem, yet always bringing a sense of
failure, and that sense the thing you remember most. It is to be some One
living His life in you, coming in through the open door of your will. Your
part is opening up, and keeping open, listening and loving and obeying.
The touchstone of the "Follow Me" life is not imitation but following; not
copying but obeying; not struggle--though there will be struggle--but
companionship, a companionship which nothing is allowed to take the fine
edge off of.
And please remember, too, the meaning for us sinful men of these
characteristics of His. With us character is a result of choice, and then
nearly always--or should I cut out that "nearly"? the earnest man in the
thick of the fight finds no "nearlys"--it's always with him--character is
always the result of a fight to keep to the choice decided upon.
Now with greatest reverence for our Lord Jesus, let me say, _it was so
with Him_. He was as truly God as though not man. Yet He lived His
life,--He insisted on living His life, on the human level.[3] He was as
truly human as though not peculiarly divine. He had the enormous advantage
of a virgin birth, a divine fatherhood with a human motherhood. And, be it
said with utmost reverence, He needed that advantage for the terrific
conflict and the tremendous task of His life, such as no other has known.
But His character as a man--the thing we are to look at now--was a result
of choice, and choice insisted upon against terrible odds.
This gives new meaning to His "Follow Me." He went the same sort of road
that we must go. He insisted on treading _our_ road. It was not one made
easier for His specially prepared feet. It was the common earth road every
man must go, who will. And so the way He went we can go if we will, every
step of it. By His help working through our wills, we _can_, and, please
God, surely we will.
The Dependent Life.
There were _three traits in His character upward_, that is in His relation
with His Father. First of all He chose to live _the dependent life_. He
recognized that everything He was, and had, and could do, was received
from the Father, and could be at its true best only as the Father's direct
touch was upon it. This was the atmosphere in which all His human powers
would do their best. He had nothing of Himself, and could do nothing of
Himself. This is the plan the Father has made for human life and
effort.[4] Our Lord Jesus recognized this and lived it. Our common word
for this is humility. Humility is a matter of relationship. It means
keeping one's relationship with the Father clear and dominant. And this in
turn radically affects and controls our relationship with our fellows.
There were three degrees or steps in the dependent life He chose to live.
There was the giving up part, then the accepting for Himself the plan of
human life, and then accepting it even to the extent of yielding to wrong
and shameful treatment, without attempting to assert His rights against
such treatment. These were the three steps in His humility. In Paul's
striking phrase, He "emptied out" of Himself all He had in glory with the
Father before coming to the earth; He decided to come to the human level
and live fully the human life of utter dependence; and He carried this to
the extent of being wholly dependent on the Father for righting the wrongs
done Him.[5]
This is God's plan for the human life. It is to be a dependent life. It
actually is a dependent life, utterly dependent upon Him. It is to be
lived so. Then only is the fragrance of it gotten. It is part of the
dependent life--the true human life--that we depend on the Father for
vindication when wronged, as for everything else.[6]
Our Lord Jesus chose to live this life. There was an entire absence of the
self-spirit, that is the self-assertive, the self-confident spirit. There
was a remarkable confidence in action, but it was confidence in His
Father's unfailing response to His requests or needs. This sense of utter
dependence was natural to Him; as indeed it is natural to man unhurt by
sin. And then He carefully cultivated it. As He came in contact with the
very opposite all around Him, He set Himself--indeed He had to set
Himself--to keeping this sense of dependence untainted, unhurt by His
surroundings.
Now there were three things which naturally grew out of this dependent
life, or which naturally are part of it. One was, the sense of His Father,
and of His Father's presence. In a perfectly simple natural way, He was
always conscious of His Father's presence. Is this the meaning--one
meaning--of "blessed are the pure in heart for they shall _see God_"? And
then He doubtless set Himself to cultivate this, as an offset to what He
found around Him. He would quietly look up and speak to the Father in the
midst of a crowd.[7] This was the natural thing to do. He was more
conscious of the Father's presence than of the crowd pressing in to get
near. When He was speaking to the crowd He knew the Father too was
listening. He felt the Father watching as He helped the people. This was
the natural thing with Him, the presence of the Father.
With this there went a second thing, the habit of getting alone to talk
things over with the Father. The common word for this is prayer. Without
doubt His whole outer life grew out of His inner secret talking things out
with the Father. Everything was passed in review here, first of all. This
naturally grew out of the consciousness of His Father's presence, and this
in turn increased that consciousness. So He was in the habit of looking at
everything through His Father's eyes.
And with these two, there was plainly a third thing, a settled sense of
the power, the authority, of God's written Word. It was not simply that He
did not question it, but there was a deep-rooted sense grown down into
His very being that God was speaking in the Book, and that this revelation
of Himself and His will was _the thing_ to govern absolutely one's life.
This points back to a study of the Book. Doubtless that Nazareth shop was
a study shop too. He quoted readily and freely from all portions of the
Old Testament Bible. He seemed saturated with both its language and its
spirit. The basis of such familiarity would be long, painstaking,
prayerful study.
These three things naturally grew out of the dependent life He had
deliberately chosen to live and were a part of it. They were necessary to
it. These are the lungs and the heart of the dependent life.
Now His "Follow Me" does not mean merely that we try to imitate Him in all
this. We will naturally long to do so. And He is the example we will ever
be eager to follow. But the meaning goes deeper than this. It means that
as we really come close up in the road behind Him this will come to be the
natural atmosphere of our lives. We let _Him_ in, and His presence within,
yielded to and cultivated and obeyed, will work this sort of thing out in
our lives. We will come to recognize, and then to feel deep down in our
spirit, how dependent we are upon Him in everything. We will gradually
come to realize intensely that the dependent life is the true natural
life. It is God's plan. It reveals wondrously His love. It draws out
wondrously our love, and radically changes the whole spirit of the life.
Poor--Except in Spirit.
Now of course all this is in sharpest contrast to the common spirit of
life as men live, then and now. The spirit that dominates human life
everywhere is a spirit of independence. And this seems intensified in our
day to a terrific degree. There is, of course, a good independence in our
dealings with our fellows. But this is carried to the extreme of
independence of every one, even--say it softly--of God Himself.
Criticising God, ignoring Him, leaving Him severely out so far as we are
concerned,--this has become the commonplace. If for a moment He ignored
us, how quickly things would go to pieces! This has come to be the
dominant spirit of the whole race to a degree more marked than ever
before, if that be possible.
It seems to come into life early. I have seen a little tot, whom I could
with no inconvenience have tucked under my arm, walking down the road,
head up in the air, breathing out an aggressive self-confidence, and
defiance of all around, worthy of one of the old-time kings. And I
recognized that he had simply absorbed the atmosphere in which his four
brief years had been lived.
This has come to be the inbred spirit of mankind. Everywhere this proud,
self-assertive, self-sufficient, self-confident, self-aggressive spirit is
found, in varying degree. It is coupled sometimes with laughable
ignorance; sometimes with real learning and wisdom and culture. It is
emphasized sometimes the more by school training, and other such
advantages. But through all these accidental things it remains,--the
dominant human characteristic. The chief letter in man's alphabet is the
one next after h, spelled and written with a large capital. The yellow
fever--the fever for gold--so increasingly epidemic, is at heart a bit of
the same thing. The money gives power, and power gives a certain
independence of others, and then a certain compelling of others to be
dependent on the one who has the money and wields the power. Men
everywhere say just exactly what they are specially warned against saying,
"_my_ power and the might of _my_ hand hath gotten me this wealth." They
forget the words following this in the old Book of God. "But thou shalt
remember the Lord thy God, for it is _He_ that giveth thee power to get
wealth."[8]
This seems to be the picture that underlies that phrase, "poor in spirit,"
which the Master declared to be so blessed.[9] He is trying to woo men
away from the thing that is dominating those all around Him. I have
puzzled a good bit over the phrase to find out just what was in the
Master's mind. Emphasizing the word "spirit" seems to bring out the
meaning. The blessedness is not in being poor, but in a certain spirit
that may control a man. We are all poor in everything except spirit.
The last degree of poverty is to be a pauper. Now, the simple truth is
that we are all--every last man of us--paupers in everything. We haven't a
thing we haven't got from some one else. We are beneficiaries to the last
degree, dependent on the bounty of Another. We are paupers in life itself.
Our life came to us in the first instance from the creative Hand, through
the action of others, and it is being sustained every moment by the same
Hand. We had nothing to do with its coming, and, while we influence our
life by living in accord with certain physical laws, still the life itself
is all the time being supplied to us directly by the same unseen Hand.
We are paupers in ability, in virtue, in character, in fact in everything.
We own nothing; we only hold it in trust. We have nothing except what some
One else is supplying. What we call our ability, our genius, and so on,
comes by the creative breath breathing afresh upon and through what the
patient creative Hand has supplied and is sustaining. We are paupers,
without a rag to our bones, or a copper in the pocket we haven't got, not
having a rag to our bones; paupers in everything except----.
There is an exception. It is both pitiable and laughable. We are
enormously rich in _spirit_, in our imagination, in our thought of
ourselves. Blessed are they who are as poor in spirit as they actually are
in everything else. They recognize that they are wholly dependent on some
One else, and so they live the dependent life, with its blessed closeness
of touch with the gracious Provider. In certain institutions are placed
those who imagine themselves to be in high social and official rank, and
in possessions what they are not, who imagine it to such a degree that it
is best that they be kept apart from others. It would seem like an extreme
thing to say that these people are spirit-mirrors in which we may partly
see ourselves. Yet it would be saying the truth. How laughable, if it were
not so overwhelmingly pitiful, must men look to God,--without a stitch to
their backs except what He has given, without a copper in their pockets
except what has been borrowed from His bank, yet strutting up and down the
street of life, heads held high in air, as though they owned the universe,
and--if it did not sound blasphemous I could add the rest of the fact--and
were doing Him a favour by running His world so skilfully! And it grieves
one to the heart to note that this seems to be about as true within Church
circles as without. The difference between is ever growing smaller to the
disappearing point.
It was into such an atmosphere, never intenser than in Palestine and
Jerusalem nineteen centuries ago, that the man Christ Jesus came. And He
had the moral daring to begin living a dependent life, the true human
life, looking up gratefully to the Father's hand for everything. Was it
any wonder His presence caused such a disturbance in the moral atmosphere
of the world! He insisted, with the strange insistence of gentleness, on
living such a life, through all the extremes that the hating world-spirit
could contrive against Him. Out of such a life comes His "Follow Me." And
in this He is simply calling us back to the original human life as planned
by God.
Now, of course, in that first step, that great "emptying out" step, there
can be no following. There He is the Lone Man, unapproachable in the moral
splendour of His solitude. But from the time when He came in amongst us as
Jesus, our Brother, the typical Son of man, He was marking out afresh the
original road for our feet. This was the foundation trait in His
character. He lived the dependent life.
A Father-pleasing Life.
The second trait in His upward relation was this--He chose to live _a
Father-pleasing life_. I use those words because He used them.[10] I might
say "consecrated" or "dedicated" or "surrendered" or other like words. And
these are good words, but in common use we have largely lost their
meaning. They are used unthinkingly for something less--much less--than
they mean. Perhaps if we use the phrase He used we may be able to get back
to the thing He meant, and did.
There are three possible lives open to every man's choice: a bad life, in
which selfishness or passion or both, either refined or coarse, rule; a
good, true, natural life; and a Father-pleasing life. By a good, true,
natural life I mean, just now, a really Christian life in all that that
means, but lived as if there were no emergency in the world to change
one's habit of life.
You know an emergency coming into a man's life makes radical changes. You
go to bed tonight and ordinarily will sleep out your eight hours in
comfort and quiet. If a fire break out in the house, you are up in the
middle of the night, hurrying around, only partly clad, carrying out
valuables, or helping turn on water, or something of this sort. Your
natural arrangements for the night are all broken up by the fire. An
emergency may make radical changes in one's life for a little time,
sometimes for the whole life. Financial reverses may change the whole
habit of one's life.
Here's a man who has a well-assured, good-sized income from his business,
or his inheritance, or both. He lives in a luxuriously appointed home,
with many fine pictures and works of art and curios which it is enjoyable
to have. He has a choice library including some fine costly old prints and
editions, and enjoys adding rare books on subjects in which he is
specially interested. He belongs to some literary and social and athletic
clubs. He has an interesting family growing up around him whose education
is being carefully looked after. He is an earnest Bible-loving Christian,
faithful in church attendance and church duties, pure in life, and saintly
in character. He gives liberally to church and benevolent objects,
including foreign missions, which have become a part of the church system
into which he fits. And he goes an even, contented round of life, home,
church, club, recreation and so on, year in and out, holding and using the
great bulk of his money for himself. I think of that as one illustration
of the good, true, natural life.
Now, the Father-pleasing life is radically different in certain things.
Ordinarily the two would be identical. The true natural life as originally
planned for us would be the life pleasing to the Father. But something,
not a part of God's plan, has broken into life, a terrible something,
worse than a fire in the night, or a financial panic that sweeps away your
all. Sin has wrought fearful havoc; it has made an awful emergency, and
this emergency has affected the life and character of all the race, in a
bad way, terribly, awfully, beyond words to tell, or imagination to
depict. The whole earth is in the grip of a desperate moral emergency.
And naturally enough this emergency affects the life of any one concerned
with this earth. It has affected God's life, and God's plans,
tremendously. It has broken His heart with grief, and radically changed
His plans for His own life. He has made a plan for winning His world away
from its rebellion, its sin, back again to purity and close touch with
Himself. That plan centred around His Son, and He spared not His own Son,
but gave Him up.
And that emergency, and that plan of the Father's because of the
emergency, have affected our Lord Jesus' life on the earth. The whole plan
of His human life was radically revolutionized by it. The emergency, the
Father's plan, gripped Him. He turned away from the true, good, natural
life which it would have been proper for Him as a man to have lived, and
He lived another sort of life. It was an emergency life, a life fitted to
His Father's plan, and so the Father-pleasing life.
He became a homeless man, with all that that means. Would any man have
enjoyed home-life with all the rare home-joys, the sweetest of all natural
joys, so much as He? And then the larger circle of congenial friends, the
enjoyment of music, of exquisite art, the reverent study of the great
questions of life, of the wonders of nature whose powers it was given man
to study and cultivate and develop,[11]--it is surely no irreverence to
think of Him both enjoying and gracing such a life, for such was the
original plan of human life as thought out by a gracious Creator.
Instead, He had not where to lay His head, though so wearied with
ceaseless toil. He fairly burned His life out those few years, early and
late, ministering to the emergency-stricken crowds, healing their sick,
feeding their hunger, raising their dead, comforting broken hearts,
winning back sin-stained men and women, teaching the ignorant neglected
multitudes, preaching the Father's yearning love, searching out the
straying, ceaselessly travelling up and down, without leisure enough to
sleep or to eat oftentimes, and all this despite the efforts of His
kinsfolk to restrain His burning intensity.
This is what I mean by a Father-pleasing life. It was truly the
consecrated life, consecrated to His Father's emergency plan for His
world. It was the surrendered life, wholly given up to the one passionate
plan of His Father's broken heart for His earth family.
Now, His "Follow Me" does not mean imitation. It does not mean a restless,
aggressive hurrying here and there in meetings and Christian service. It
means that there will be a getting so close that the sweet fever of His
heart shall be caught by ours. The world-vision of His eyes shall flood
ours. The passion of the Father's heart shall become the passion of our
hearts. And we shall be controlled in all our lives, our holdings, our
habits, _by what He tells us_. It does not mean that we will seek to be
homeless as Jesus was, though it may possibly turn out to mean for some of
us that we shall be homeless even as He.
But it means that we shall find out _the Father's plan for our lives_.
And when it has become clear, we will set to music pitched in the joyous
major our Lord's own words, "I do always the things that are pleasing to
Him." And then we will set our lives to that joyous music with its rare
undertone of the exquisite minor. It may mean Africa for you, or China for
this other one. It may mean a plainer home at home, a simpler wardrobe, a
more careful use of money. It may mean a new dominant note in your
preaching, and all the personal influence of your life. It may possibly
mean what will seem like yet more radical changes. It certainly will mean
a deepening peace within, a closer touch of fellowship with the Lord
Jesus, a wholly new conception of the meaning of prayer, and a radically
new experience of the power of God in our own bodies and lives, and in our
touch with others. It will mean that the music of His will and ours
swinging rhythmically together in all things shall sweep our lives even as
the strong wind the young saplings.
This was the second trait in our Lord Jesus' character upward, He lived
the Father-pleasing life. To some it will seem like a further step--a
fourth step--downward in His humility. And it was. The way up is down. The
down slant is the beginning of the hilltop road. Going down is the way up;
downward in the crowd's estimation; upward into closer touch of
sympathetic life with God, and in reaching the true ideal of life.
The Obedient Life.
The third trait of our Lord Jesus' character upward, in relation with His
Father, was that He lived _the obedient life_. This is really emphasizing
what has just been said. But it is putting the emphasis on the daily habit
of His life, rather than on the underneath motive. This was the daily
spelling out of the first two traits. Obedience became the touchstone by
which everything was tested.
The touchstone was not men's needs, deeply as that took hold of His heart,
and shaped so much His life. It was not the thought of service, though
never was a life so filled with eager glad service. The touchstone was not
natural liking or choice, the proper instinctive reach out of His true
human nature, though this would be strong in Him, the typical Son of Man.
This would not be repressed as an unholy or wrong thing. It would only be
given second place, or left out, as it might run across the grain of the
great life-passion. With a fresh touch of awe it may truly be said: He did
not come down to earth primarily to die, though He knew beforehand that
this would stand out as the great one thing. The death was an item in the
obedience. He came down to do His Father's will. The path of obedience led
straight to the hill of the cross, and He trod that path regardless of
where it led. Obedience was the one touchstone of His life.[12] And it
will be the one touchstone of His true follower's life. We shall run
across this same vein of bright yellow gold, again and again, as we work
on through this "Follow Me" mine. These were the three traits of our Lord
Jesus' character upward, toward His Father. They were not different
because of the emergency of sin He found in the world. They would have
marked His life just as fully had there been no sin. But the presence of
sin caused them to change radically the whole course of the life He
actually lived.
Sinless by Choice.
Then there were _two traits of character inward_, in Himself. One was His
_purity_. There was the absence of everything that should not be in Him.
This is the negative side, though no part of His character called for more
intense positiveness. Purity means sinlessness. He was sinless. But we
must quickly remember what this means, or else there may seem to be no
following for us, only a wistful gazing where we cannot go. It does not
mean simply this, that through His peculiar birthright there was freedom
from all taint of sin.
It means more than this. Sinlessness was a matter of choice with Him, and
of choice insisted upon. And, be it said reverently, no man ever had a
stiffer fight to keep true to his purpose than He. He was tempted in all
points like as we are. He was tempted more than we. The tempter did his
best and worst; he mustered all his cunning and driving power against this
Lone Man. And the temptations were real. I am not concerned over the
merely academical questions of the schoolmen here. The practical side is
the intense side that takes all one's strength and thought. Practically,
that our Lord Jesus was really tempted, means that He could have yielded
had He so chosen. That He did not meant real struggle on His part. Not, of
course, that He ever wanted to yield to what was wrong, but temptation was
never so subtle, and doing the right never made so difficult as for Him.
He suffered in being tempted.[13] His sinlessness meant a decision, then
many a time a moist brow, a clenched hand, and set jaw, a sore stress of
spirit, and deep-breathed continual prayer whose intensity down in His
heart could never be fully expressed at the lips. The temptation to fail
to obey, simply not to obey, when obeying meant going through a sore
experience was never brought so deftly, so subtly, so repeatedly and
insistently to any as to Him. Resisting not only meant the decision, but
the strength of resistance against terrific strength of repeated
insistence.
How wondrously human this God-man was in His temptations, in His set
refusals, and even more, how human in keeping free from sin. For sin is
not human, letting sin in would have been a going down from the human
level. This is the practical meaning of His sinlessness--choice, choice
insisted upon, fighting, continual prayer, the Father's help, such as any
man may have--not more.
This helps us to see how intensely practical His "Follow Me" becomes. It
is not only that we will want to fight against the incoming of sin because
we feel we ought to. But as we get close to Him and breathe in His spirit,
there will come an inbred dislike, an intense inner loathing of sin,
however refined it may be in its approach. There will be a continual
coming for cleansing in the only fluid that can remove sin--His precious
blood, and in the only flame that can burn it out--the fire of the Holy
Spirit.[14] There will be a hardening of the set purpose to be free of
sin. We can be sinless in _purpose_. There can be a growing sinlessness in
actual life. And yet all experience goes to show that the nearer we
actually walk with God the more we shall be conscious of the need of
cleansing, the more we will talk about our Lord Jesus, and the less and
still less about our attainments.
The second inward trait in our Lord Jesus was the other side of this--His
positive _goodness_. I mean the presence in Him of all that should be
there. This is the exact reverse or complement of the purity. It is the
other half that must go with that to make a perfect character. I like to
use the word "holiness" in the sense of whole-ness. He had and developed a
whole life. It was fully rounded out. There was nothing lacking that
should be there, even as there was nothing present that should not have
been there.
There is among us a good bit of negative goodness of character. We point
with pride to what we don't do of that which is bad or not good. But this
is a very one-sided sort of thing. Purity and goodness together--purity
and holiness, wholeness--made the perfect, completed character of our
Lord. And it was so wholly through His choice, His own action, with His
Father's gracious help working through His choice. And the blessed
contagion of the Leader's presence will make an intense longing within to
follow Him here too.
A Fellow-Feeling.
Then there were _two outward traits of character_, that is in His
relations with His fellow-men, of Nazareth, of Israel, and of all the
race. He had _sympathy_ with men; a rare, altogether exceptional sympathy.
_He felt with men_ in all their feelings and needs and circumstances. His
fine spirit reached into men's inner spirit, and felt their hunger and
pain and longings and joys, felt them even as they did, and the arms of
His spirit went around them to help. And they felt it. They felt that He
really understood and felt with them. And so sincere and brotherly was His
fellow-feeling that they gladly welcomed it as from one really of
themselves. To men, this Man, so lone in certain traits and experiences,
was their brother, not only in His feeling with them, but in their feeling
toward Him.
There's something peculiar in that word sympathy. It's a warm word. It has
a soft cushion to it. It is a help word. There's something in it that
makes you think of a warm strong hand helping, of a soft padding
cushioning the sharp edges where they touch your flesh. It makes you think
of a tender, fine spirit breathing in and through your own spirit, even as
the soft south wind in the spring warms you, and the bracing mountain wind
in the summer brings you new life.
Our Lord Jesus had this great trait of sympathy with His fellows. He
_could_ have it, for He had been through all their experiences. He knew
the commonplace round of daily life so common to all the race. Nazareth
taught Him that, through thirty of His thirty-three years,--ten-elevenths
of His life. He knew temptation, cunning, subtle, stormy, persistent. He
knew the inner longings of a nature awakening, and yet what it meant to be
held down by outer circumstances. He knew the sharp test of waiting, long
waiting. He knew hunger and bodily weariness, and the pinch of scanty
funds. He was homeless at a time when a home would have been most
grateful. He knew what it meant to have the life-plan broken, and
something else, a bitter something else thrust in its place.
And he knew, too, the sweets of human life, of human love, of the
helpfulness of others' sympathy, of the Father's pleased smile, of the
Holy Spirit's indwelling, of the wondrous inner peace that follows
obedience in hard places, of the joys of service, of the delight of being
able to sympathize. His experience ran through the whole diapason of human
feelings, and so He can find a key-note in every one of its tones for the
sweet rich symphony of sympathy.
There is again an exception to be noted here. There could be no
fellow-feeling in choosing wrong, or in yielding to the low or base or
selfish. He is the Lone Man there. Does this make all the stronger His
sympathy with us in our upper reach out of such things? Surely it does.
The exception makes it stand out more sharply that our Lord Jesus felt our
feelings. Wherever you are, however tight the corner, or narrow the road,
or lonely the way, or keen the suffering, you can always stop and say: "He
was here. He was here _first_, and _most_. He understands." As you kneel
and look up, you can remember that there's a Man on the throne, a
fellow-man, with a human heart like mine, and like yours. He understands.
He feels. With utmost reverence let it be said, there's more of God since
our Lord Jesus went back. Human experience has been taken up into the
person of God.
And let me remind you again, that the "Follow Me" here will mean nothing
less than fellowship in the sufferings of our fellows, fellowship to the
point of radically affecting our lives. Sympathy will go deeper than a
sense of pity for those less fortunate, and a giving to them a warm hand
and a good lift up. The poor woman, living in a slum district, being
visited by a mission visitor, spoke for the universal human heart when she
said earnestly, "We don't want _things_; we want _love_." As we get up
close to our Lord Jesus there will come the indwelling in us of the spirit
that controlled Him. We will see through His eyes, we will feel with His
heart, our hands will reach out to grasp other human hands with the
impulse of His touch upon them. We shall know the exquisite pain of real
sympathy with men in need, and the great joy of sharing and making lighter
their load.
When You Don't Have To.
The second outward trait of our Lord Jesus' character was _sacrifice_.
This is not something different from what has been said; it is only going
a step further, indeed going the last step that He could go, in both His
sympathy with men and His obedience to His Father. It helps to remember
what sacrifice means; not suffering merely, though it includes suffering;
not privation simply, though it may include this, too. There is much
suffering and privation where there is no sacrifice. Sacrifice means doing
something to help some one else when it takes some of your life-blood, and
when you don't have to, except the have-to of love.
Sacrifice was so woven into the very fabric of Jesus' life that wherever
you cut in some of the red threads stick out. It was the never-absent
undertone of His life, from earliest years until the tragic close. But the
undertone rose higher and grew stronger until at the last it became the
dominant, the only tone to be heard. He gave His life out on the cross
that so men might be saved from the terrible result of their sin, when He
didn't have to, except the have-to of His great heart.
I have spoken of sacrifice as one of the two outward, manward traits of
His character. But the truth is His Calvary sacrifice faced three ways:
upward, inward and outward. It faced toward the Father, for it was
carrying out the Father's plan, and that lets us see not only the Father's
love, but His estimate, as the world's administrator of justice, of the
horribleness of the sin which He was so freely forgiving.[15] It faced in
toward Himself, for it was the purity and perfection of the life poured
out that gave the peculiar meaning to His death, and it was His
sympathetic love that led Him up that steep hill. It faced outward, for
the love of it was meant to break men's hearts and bend their stubborn
wills, and so it did and has.
His sympathy--love suffering--came to have a new meaning as He went to the
last extreme in His suffering. Sympathy is sometimes spoken of as putting
yourself in the other's place so as to help him better. Our Lord Jesus did
this. He did it as none other did, or could. He actually put Himself in
our place on the cross. He experienced what would have come to us had He
not taken our place. He suffered the suffering that belongs to us because
of our sin. He felt the feelings that came through sin working out to its
bitter end. Indeed He went beyond our own feelings here. For because He
consented to suffer as a guilty sinner, we, who trust His precious blood,
are spared that awful experience.
Calvary was sympathy to the extreme of sacrifice. But both words,
"sympathy" and "sacrifice," get new depths of meaning at Calvary. This red
shuttle thread of sacrifice will appear again and again in the fabric
which His "Follow Me" weaves out for us. What a character He calls us to!
What strength of friendship to insist on our coming up close to Himself!
Is it possible? Surely not. He is so far beyond us. Yet there is a way,
only one, the way of the dependent life, depending on Him to reproduce His
own likeness in us. And our giving Him a free hand in doing it.
There is one word that could be used to cover all of this, if we only
knew its full, rich, sweet meaning. That is the little understood, the
much misunderstood, much belittled-in-use word, "love." All that has been
said of the character of our Lord Jesus can be found inside that
four-lettered word. Each trait spoken of is but a fresh spelling of love,
some one side of it. Love planned the dependent life, and only love can
live it truly. Love longs to please love, regardless of any sacrifice
involved. Obedience is the active rhythm of love on the street of life.
Purity is the inner heart of love; and the fully rounded character is the
maturity of love. Sympathy is the heart of love beating in perfect rhythm
with your own, and sacrifice is love giving its very life gladly out to
save yours. Some day we shall know how much is meant by the sentence, "God
is love."
A little child of a Christian home came one day to his mother, asking what
it meant to "believe on the Lord Jesus." She thought a moment how to make
the answer simple to the child, and then said, "It means thinking about
Him, and loving Him." Sometime after, the little fellow was noticed
sitting very quietly, apparently much absorbed in thought, and his mother
said, "What are you doing, my son?" With child-like simplicity he said in
a quiet tone, "I'm believing on the Lord Jesus." And a warm flush of
feeling came to the mother's heart as she realized the practical tender
meaning to her son, of the word "believing."
May we be great enough to be as little children while I adapt that
mother's language here: Following our Lord Jesus is thinking about Him and
loving Him. As we come to know the meaning of love we shall find that
following is loving. The "Follow Me" life is the love life. But we must
learn the meaning of love before that sentence will grip us.
The closer we follow Him the closer we will come to knowing what love is.
The nearer we get to Him the nearer we get to its meaning. We will know it
as we know Him. When we come into His presence, face to face, its simple
full meaning will flash upon us with a great simple surprise.
Let us follow on to know it, that we may know Him. Let us live it and so
we shall live Him. And in so living we shall know it and Him; we shall
know love, and Jesus, and God.