Part 15 (2/2)
”He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
Surely we may trust that love. If it moved Him to endure the Cross and despise the shame, is there anything that it will withhold, anything that it will not do? His love is stronger than death, and mightier than the grave. Strong waters cannot quench it, floods cannot drown it. It silences all praise, and beggars all recompense. To believe and accept it is eternal life. To dwell within its embrace is the foretaste of everlasting joy. To be filled by it is to be transfigured into the image of G.o.d Himself.
XXIV
Drinking the Cup
”The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?”--JOHN xviii. 1-14.
In our Master's arrest the one feature which stands out in unique splendor is its voluntariness. He went into the garden ”knowing all things that should come upon Him.” Even at the last moment He might have evaded the kiss of the traitor, and the binding thong with which Malchus sought to manacle His gracious hands. The spell of His intrinsic n.o.bleness and glory, which had flung His captors to the ground, might have held them there; the power that could heal the wounded ear might have destroyed with equal ease the entire band.
The reason for all this hardly needs explaining. His life and death were not merely a sacrifice, but a self-sacrifice. He freely gave Himself up for us all. Each believer may dare to appropriate the words of the apostle: ”He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” It was through the Eternal Spirit that He offered Himself without spot to G.o.d. It was from His own invincible love that He gave Himself for the Church, His Bride. ”From beginning to end the moving spring of all His actions was deliberate self-devotedness to the good of men, and the fulfillment of G.o.d's will, for these are equivalents. And His death as the crowning act of this career was to be conspicuously a death embodying and exhibiting the spirit of self-sacrifice.” Let us learn:
I. THE SUPREME n.o.bILITY OF SURRENDER TO THE EVITABLE.--It is, of course, most n.o.ble, when the martyr goes to his death without a murmur of complaint; allowing his enemies to wreak their vengeance without recrimination or threatening; bowing the meek head to the block; extending the hand to the hungry flame. He has no alternative but to die; there are no legions waiting under arms to obey his summons; no John of Gaunt to stand beside him, as beside Wycliffe, to see him fairly tried and insist on his acquittal. Then, there is nothing for it but to evince the patience and gentleness of Christ in being led as a lamb to the slaughter.
But though this spectacle stirs the hearts of men, there is one still more ill.u.s.trious--when the sufferer bends to a fate which he might easily avoid, but confronts for the sake of others. The former is submission to the inevitable, this to the evitable. That is bearing a yoke which is imposed by superior authority; this taking a yoke which might be evaded without blame, as judged by the tribunal of public opinion. And this is the sublimest spectacle on which the eye of man or angel can rest; for thus the sacrifice of Christ finds its n.o.blest counterpart and fulfillment.
When a missionary, with ample means and loving friends, deliberately spends among squalid and repulsive conditions, the precious years which might have been pa.s.sed among congenial society and luxurious comfort in the homeland; chooses a lot from which nature inevitably shrinks instead of that to which every conclusion but one points, and stays at his post, though his return, so far from being resented, would actually be favored by all whose opinion is of weight--this is a voluntary submission to the evitable.
When a home pastor stays by his poor flock because they need him so sorely, and sets his face toward grinding poverty and irksome toil when the city church invites him to a larger stipend and wealthier surroundings--this again is a voluntary surrender to the evitable.
When a wealthy bachelor is willing to forego the ease and quiet of his beautiful home in order to welcome the orphans of his deceased brother, who might have been sent to some charitable inst.i.tution or cast on strangers, that they may be beneath his personal supervision, and have a better chance in life--this again is voluntary submission to the evitable.
In each such case, it is not inevitable that the cross should be borne, and the hands yielded to the binding thong. The tongue of scandal could hardly find cause for criticism if the easier path were chosen.
Perhaps the soul hardly realizes the kindredness of its resolve with the loftiest that this world has seen. But it is superlatively beautiful, nevertheless. And let it never be forgotten, that nothing short of this will satisfy the standard of Christ. No Christian has a right to use all his rights. None can claim immunity from the duty of seeking the supreme good of others, though it involve the supreme cost to himself.
II. THE RECOGNITION OF G.o.d'S WILL IN HIS PERMISSIONS.--In the bitter anguish which had immediately preceded the arrest, our Lord had repeatedly referred to His cup. ”If this cup,” He said, ”may not pa.s.s from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.” The cup evidently referred to all the anguish caused to His holy nature in being numbered among the transgressors, and having to bear the sin of the world.
Whether it was the anguish of the body, beneath which He feared He would succ.u.mb, as some think; or the dread of being made a sin-offering, a scape-goat laden with sin, as others, or the chill of the approaching eclipse, which extorted the cry of forsakenness, as seems to me the more likely--is not pertinent to our present consideration. It is enough to know that, whilst there was much that cried, ”Back!” there was more that cried, ”On!”--and that He chose from the profoundest depths of His nature, to do the Father's will, to execute His part in the compact into which they had entered before the worlds were made, and to drink to the dregs the cup which His Father had placed in His hands.
But here we note that to all appearances the cup was mingled, prepared, and presented by the malignity and hate of man. The High Priests had long resolved to put Him to death, because His success with the people, His fresh and living comments on the law, His opposition to their hypocrisies and pretensions had exasperated them to madness. Judas also seemed to have had a conspicuous share in his discovery and arrest. Had we been left to our unaided reasonings we might have supposed that the most bitter ingredients of His cup had been supplied by the ingrat.i.tude of His own, the implacable rancor of the priests, and the treachery of Judas; but, see, He recognizes none but the Father--it is always _the Father_, always the cup which the Father had given.
There had been times in our lives when we may have been tempted to distinguish between G.o.d's appointments and permissions, and to speak of the former as being manifestly His will for us, whilst we suspended our judgment about the latter, and questioned if we were authorized in accounting them as being equally from Heaven. But such distinctions are fatal to peace. Our souls were kept in constant perturbation, as we accounted ourselves the shuttlec.o.c.k of rival powers, now G.o.d's, now man's. And we ended in ruling G.o.d out of more than half our life, and regarding ourselves as the hapless prey of strong and malicious forces to which we were sold, as Joseph to the Ishmaelites.
A deeper reading of Scripture has led us to a truer conclusion. There is no such distinction there. What G.o.d permits is as equally His will as what He appoints. Joseph tells his brethren that it was not they who sent him to Egypt, but G.o.d. David listens meekly to s.h.i.+mei's shameful words, because he felt that G.o.d allowed them to be spoken.
And here Jesus refuses to see the hand of His foes in His sufferings, but pa.s.ses beyond the hand which bore the cup to His lips to the Father who was permitting it to be presented, and reposed absolutely in the choice of Him of One who loved Him with a love that was before the foundation of the world.
Oh, sufferer! whether by those strokes, which, like sickness or bereavement, seem to come direct from heaven, or by those which, like malicious speeches or oppressive acts, seem to emanate from man, look up into the face of G.o.d, and say, ”My Father, this is Thy will for me; Thine angels would have delivered me had it been best. But since they have not interposed, I read Thy choice for Thy child, and I am satisfied. It is sweet to drink the cup which Thy hands have prepared.”
III. THE DEEP LAW OF SUBSt.i.tUTION.--Some of the rabble crowd had probably shown signs of a disposition to arrest some of Christ's followers. He, therefore, interfered, and reminded them of their own admission, that _He_ was the object to their midnight raid, and bade them allow _these_ to go their way. Is it surprising that the evangelist generalizes this act, finding in it an ill.u.s.tration of His Master's ceaseless interposition on behalf of His own--that of those whom the Father had given Him He should lose none.
In brief, this scene affords a conspicuous and striking ill.u.s.tration of the great doctrine of subst.i.tution. As the Good Shepherd steps to the front and sheathes the swords of His foes in His own breast, while He demands the release of the cowering flock, He is doing on a small scale what He did once and forever on Calvary; when, exposing Himself to the penalty due to sin, and braving the concentrated antagonism of a broken law, the drawn sword of inviolable justice, the sharpness of death, the shame of the cross, and the humiliation of the grave, He said, ”If ye seek Me, let these go their way.”
Christ sheltered us without reckoning the cost to Himself. He stood to the front, and bore the extreme brunt of all that was to be borne. He subst.i.tuted His suffering for ours, His wounds for our pain, His death for our sins. If you are fearing the just recompense of your sins, like a band of arresting soldiers lurking in the dark shadows and threatening to drag you forth to pay the uttermost farthing, take heart; Jesus has met, and will meet, them for you. Listen to His majestic voice, saying, ”Take Me, but let this soul, who clings to the skirts of My robe, go his way.” He is arrested, and led away; thou art free--that in thy freedom thou shouldest give thyself to be His very slave.
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