Biblical Essays
THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST – PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
(Exodus 21:1-6; John 13:1-10; Luke 12:37)
Part 1 – His Service in the Past
“For even the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
It is necessary to retire from all thoughts about our service to the Lord, and our work for Him, and to have our hearts occupied with His service toward us. And when we say this, please do not suppose for a moment that it is our desire or thought to weaken in the smallest degree in any heart the desire to work for Christ, whatever sphere He may open, or according to whatever gift He may bestow. Quite the reverse; indeed, we seek in every way to strengthen and intensify that desire. But we may be so occupied with work and service that our heart may lose the sense of what Christ is toward us in His marvelous character as a servant.
Here let us say that our immediate thesis is the Lord Jesus as the servant of His people’s necessities. That is the field into which we are introduced by these Scriptures. From first to last, the Lord Jesus is the servant of the soul’s necessities in every stage of its history – from the depths of our ruin and degradation as sinners, in all our weakness and failure as saints from day to day, until He plants us in the joys of His own kingdom. And His services will not end there; for, as we read in Luke 12:37, He will gird Himself and serve us in glory. Thus His work as a servant, overlaps all the soul’s history – past, present, and future. He has served us in the past, He is serving us now, and He will serve us forever. And here allow us to say that the line of truth which we offer herein is of a directly individual character. Previously, we were speaking of the truth with respect to our corporate condition and character, and therefore we feel freer on this occasion to enter on what is more directly personal – to speak of truth that bears directly on the soul’s individual condition and needs. And we seek to place ourselves straight in view of this theme – Christ the servant of our necessities. It is possible there may be souls who want to begin at the beginning with this precious theme. They want to know Christ as the One who came into this world to serve them in all their deep and varied need as lost, self-destroyed, guilty, hell-deserving sinners. If there be any such, we ask them to ponder deeply that verse we have read, “The Son of Man is come to serve and to give.” This is a divine reality. Jesus came into this world to meet our need, to serve us in all that in which we need His precious service, and to give His life a ransom for many; to serve us by bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, and working out a full and eternal salvation. He did not come to get; He did not come to take – He did not come to be ministered to; He did not come to be gazed at – He came to be used. Therefore, while the soul that is exercised may be raising this harassing question, “What can I do for the Lord?” the answer is, “You must pause, see and believe what the Lord has done for you. You must stand still and see the salvation of God.” Remember those words of divine and evangelistic sweetness. “To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). We can never intelligently or properly serve Christ until we know and believe how He has served us. We must cease our restless doings, and rest in a divinely accomplished work.
Then, but not until then, will we be able to start on a career of Christian service. It is necessary for all anxious souls to understand that true Christian service begins with the possession of eternal life, and is rendered in the power of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Spirit, in the light and on the authority of Holy Scripture. This is the divine idea of Christian work and service.
Now, though the primary object is for those who are saints of God, who have set out on their course, still we do not think it would be according to the heart and sympathies of Christ to overlook the fact that there may be some soul that wants, as we said, just to begin at the beginning with this precious mystery – Christ the servant; that have never taken the attitude of simple repose in Christ’s finished work. They have begun to think of their soul’s salvation, to think about eternity; but they are occupied with the thought that the Lord is claiming something from them: “I must do this, I must do that, and I must do the other.” Now, if such there be, we repeat, with deepest earnestness, we must cease altogether from our own doings, cease from our own reasoning, cease from our own feelings; because it is neither feeling, thinking, reasoning nor doing – it is pausing and gazing. It is hearing and believing. It is looking off from self and our service to Christ and His service. It is ceasing from our restless and worthless doings, and reposing in full, unquestioning confidence in the one offering of Jesus Christ, which has perfectly satisfied and glorified God regarding the great question of our sin and guilt. Here lies the divine secret of peace – peace in Jesus – peace with God – eternal peace. Nothing will ever be right till we get on this ground. If we are occupied with our doings for Christ, we will never get peace; but if we take God at His Word, and rest in His Christ, we shall possess a peace that no power of earth or hell can ever disturb.
Sadly, some hearts have not yet rested here. Some are not satisfied with Christ’s service; they cannot rest in His work – even though the Son of God has stooped to serve them. The One who made us, the One who gave us life and breath and all things, the One to whom all are responsible, He has stooped to become our servant. It is not a question of asking us to do anything, or asking us to give anything, because they are words that sweep throughout the history of the Son of Man – they are words that in all their length and breadth and fullness, we can take up and use as if we were the only object of this service in the world – “The Son of Man is come to serve and to give.” He is not come to get; He is not come to ask.
The legal mind leads us to think that God is an exactor – that He is making demands on us – that He wants our services in one way or another. But remember that our first great business, our primary and all-important work, is to truly believe in Jesus – to rest sweetly in Him, and in what He has done for us on the cross, and in what He is doing for us on the throne. “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” Remember the interesting question of the Psalmist – a question asked when his eye rested on the magnitude and multitude of Jehovah’s benefits – “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits?” What is the reply? “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.”
Is this the way to “render unto the Lord”? Yes, this is the way that gratifies and glorifies Him. If we really want to render, we must take. Take what? “The cup of salvation” – a full and brimming cup; and as we drink of that cup, as the glories of God’s salvation shine in the vision of our soul, then streams of living praise will flow from our grateful heart. And we know He says, “Whoso offereth praise, glorifieth Me.”
In other words, we must first of all allow our soul to dwell on the marvelous mystery of Christ’s service toward us in all the depth of our need; and the more we dwell on that, the more we will be in the true attitude to serve Him.
Take another striking illustration. In that remarkable passage in the second book of Samuel (chap. 7), when David sat in his house of cedar and looked around at all that God had done for him, he said, “I must rise and build a house.”
Immediately the prophet was dispatched to correct David on this point: “You shall not build Me a house, but I will build you a house.” The matter must be reversed. God wants us to sit down and gaze more fully and intently on His actions on our behalf. He wants us to look, not only at the past and the present, but into the bright future; to see our entire history overlapped by His magnificent grace.
What was the effect of all this on the heart of David? We have the answer in that one pithy statement: “Then went King David in, and sat before the Lord, and said, ‘Who am I?’” Note the attitude, and ponder the question. They are full of deep meaning. “He sat.” This is rest and sweet repose. He wanted to go to work too soon. No, says God; sit down and look at My work, and trace My actions on your behalf in the past, present, and future.
And then the question, “Who am I?” In this we see the fact that for the moment self was lost sight of. It was flung into the shade by the luster of divine revelation. Self and its poor little actions were set aside by the glory of and rich magnificence of the actions of God on behalf of His servant.
Some might have thought that when David was rising to take the trowel to build the house, he was an active, useful man; and they might have thought him a good-for-nothing man to be sitting still when there was work to be done. But, let us remember that God’s thoughts are not like our thoughts. He prizes our worship much more highly than our work. Indeed, it is only the true and intelligent worshiper that can be a true and intelligent workman. No doubt God graciously accepts our poor services, even stamped as they so often are with all sorts of mistakes. But when it becomes a question of the comparative value of service and worship, the former must give place to the latter; and we know that when our brief span of working time shall have expired, our eternity of worship shall begin.
Before leaving this part of our subject, let us further remark that no one need fear that the practical effect of what we have been saying will be to cripple our service, or lead us to fold our arms in culpable idleness or cold indifference. The reverse is the case, as we may see in the history of David. Study 1 Chronicles 28-29. There we have a splendid presentation of service – a triumphant answer to all who would place work before worship. There, as it were, we see King David rising from the attitude of worshiper into that of workman, and making ample provision for the building of that very house of which he was not allowed to set one stone on another.
And not only does he make provision according to the claims of holiness, but, as he says “Because I have set my affection to the house of my God, I have of mine own proper good, of gold and silver, which I have given to the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house, even three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, overlay the walls of the house.”
In other words, as we would express it, out of his own private purse he freely gave a princely sum toward the house that was to be reared by the hand of another. This, as he informs us, was “over and above” what he had “prepared for the holy house.” Thus we see that it is the true worshiper who makes the effective servant. It is when we have sat and gazed on the actions of Christ for us that we are enabled in some small degree to act for Him. And then, too, we shall be able to say with David, as he surveyed the untold wealth prepared for the house of God, “It is all Thine, and of Thine own have we given Thee.”
We now briefly turn to the opening paragraph of Exodus 21: “If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh, he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And If the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.”
Here we have one of the shadows of good things to come – a shadow or figure of the True Servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, that blessed One who loved the church and gave Himself for it. Having served the legal time, the Hebrew servant was free to go out; but he loved his wife and his children, and that, too, with such a love that led him to surrender his own personal liberty for their sakes. He proved his love for them by sacrificing himself. He might have gone forth and enjoyed his freedom, but what of them? How could he leave them behind? No. He loved them too well for that; and hence he deliberately walked to the door-post, and there, in the presence of the judges, had his ear bored in token of perpetual service.
This was love. There was no mistake about it. From then on, gazing on the bored ear, the wife and each child could read the touching and powerful proof of the love of that servant’s heart.
Here is something for the heart to dwell on – yea, something over which the heart may well break itself. We see in this Old Testament type the everlasting Lover of our souls – Jesus, the true servant. Remember that remarkable occasion in our Lord’s life when He was setting before His disciples the solemn fact of His approaching cross and passion. We find it in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark: “And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He spake that saying openly. And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him.”
Though he knew it not, Peter would fain have interrupted the True Servant in His movement to the door-post. He would have Him pity Himself, and maintain His own personal freedom. But hearken to the withering rebuke administered to the very man who just before had made such a fine confession of Christ. “But when he had turned about and looked on His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, ‘Get thee behind Me, Satan; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.’”
Note the action. “He turned and looked on His disciples,” as though He would say, “If I harken to your counsel, Peter – if I pity Myself – if I retreat from that cross which lies before Me, then what is to become of these?” It is the Hebrew servant saying, “I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free.”
It is important for us to see that there was no necessity whatsoever laid on the Lord Jesus Christ to walk to the cross; there was no necessity whatsoever laid on Him to leave the glory that He had with the Father from all eternity and come down here. And when He had come down into this world, and taken perfect humanity on Him, there was no necessity laid on Him that He should have gone to the cross; for at any moment during the whole of His blessed history, from the manger of Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary, He might have gone back to where He came from. Death had no claim on Him. The prince of this world came and had nothing in Him. He could say, speaking of His life, “No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John 10:18). And on His way from the garden to the cross we hear Him saying, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” And may we not say there was much more truth than the utterers were aware of in these accents of mockery that fell on the blessed Savior’s ear as He hung on the cross – “He saved others; Himself He cannot save”? But they might have said, “Himself He will not save.”
No, blessed forever be His name, He did not pity or spare Himself, but He pitied us. He beheld us in our hopeless ruin, guilt, misery, and danger. He saw that there was no eye to pity, no arm to save; and – all praise to His matchless name – He laid aside His glory, came down into this wretched world, became a man, that as a man He might, by the sacrifice of Himself, deliver us from the lake of fire, and associate us with Himself on the new and eternal ground of accomplished redemption, in the power of resurrection-life, according to the eternal counsels of God, and to the praise of His glory.
We cannot possibly overestimate the importance of dwelling on the fact that there was no necessity whatsoever laid on our blessed Lord Jesus Christ to die on the cross, and to endure the wrath of God. Neither in His person, in His nature, nor in His relations, was He obnoxious to death. He was God over all, blessed forever. He was the Eternal Son of God. And in His human nature He was pure, spotless, sinless, and perfect. He knew no sin. He always and only did the things that please God. He glorified Him, and finished His work; and He has saved us in such a way as to glorify God in the most wonderful manner. To use the language of our type, He was free to go out by Himself; but had He done so, our place must inevitably have been the lake of fire forever.
Let us never forget this. Rather let us constantly cherish in our hearts the most grateful remembrance of it. The more we dwell on the height of Christ’s personal glory, the more fully we shall see the depths of His humiliation. The more profoundly we meditate on the glory of what He was, the more we must be arrested by the grace of what He became. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.”
Who can measure the heights and the depths of those two words, “rich” and “poor,” in their application to our adorable Lord and Savior? No created intelligence can fathom them; but most assuredly we should cultivate the habit of dwelling on the love that shines all along the pathway of the divine Servant as He walked to the cross for us. It is as we dwell on His love for us that our hearts shall be drawn out by the Holy Spirit in the power of responsive love to Him. “The love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
Part 2 – His Service in the Present
Having glanced at our Lord’s service toward us in the past, let us briefly look at His present service – at what He is now doing for us continually in the presence of God. This is presented to us in John 13. The same Precious grace shines in this as in all that on which we have been dwelling. Looking back at the past we behold the Perfect Servant nailed to the cross for us; looking up to the throne now we behold Him girded for us not only according to our present need, but according to the perfect love of His love to the Father – His love to the church; His love to each individual believer from the beginning to the end of time. “Now before the feast of the Passover when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him; Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God; He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.”
Here we have a marvelous presentation of Christ’s present service toward “His own which are in the world.” There is something peculiarly precious in the expression, “His own.” It brings us very near to the heart of Christ. It is so sweet to think that He can look at such poor, feeble, failing creatures as us, and in effect say, “They are Mine. It matters not what others may think about them; they belong to Me, and I must have them in a condition worthy of the place from where I came, and where I am going.” This is ineffably precious and edifying for our souls. It was in the sense of His personal glory, in the consciousness that He had come from God and was going to God, that He could stoop down and wash His people’s feet. There was nothing; there could be nothing higher than the place from where Jesus had come – there was nothing; there could be nothing lower than the defiled feet of His disciples. But blessed and praised forever be His name, in His own divine person and marvelous service He fills up every point between those two extremes. He can lay one hand on the throne of God, and the other on our feet, and be – and is – Himself the divine and eternal link between.
There are three things in this Scripture we are anxious to consider: the special action of our Lord toward His own in the world; the spring of that action; and the measure of the action, its spring and its measure.
The Special Action of Our Lord toward His Own in the World: First, we consider the action itself. Bear in mind that presented here is not “the washing of regeneration.” That pertains to the first stage of our Lord’s service on our behalf. “His own which are in the world” – all who belong to that highly privileged class (all who truly believe in His name) have passed through that great washing, in virtue of which Christ can pronounce them “clean every whit.”
There is not a spot or a stain on the feeblest of that blessed number whom He calls “His own.” “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.” If a single spot could be detected on one of Christ’s own, it would be a dishonor cast on Him, because He has washed us from all our guilt according to the perfection of His work as the Servant of our need, and, far above all, the Servant of the eternal counsels, purposes, and glory of God. He found us clean never a whit, and He has made us “clean every whit.”
This is the washing of regeneration, which is never repeated. We have a figure of this in the case of the priests of the Mosaic economy. On the great day of their inauguration they were washed in water. This action was never repeated. But after this, from day to day, in order to fit them for the daily discharge of their priestly functions, they had to wash their hands and their feet in the brazen laver in the tabernacle, or the brazen sea in the temple. This daily washing is the figure of the action in John 13. The two washings, being distinct, must never be confounded; and being intimately connected, must never be separated. The washing of regeneration is divinely and eternally complete: the washing of sanctification is being divinely and continually carried on. The former is never repeated – it gives us a part in Christ, of which nothing can rob us; the latter is never interrupted – it gives us a part with Christ, of which anything may deprive us. The one is the basis of our eternal life; the other is the ground of our daily communion.
We must see and understand the meaning of having our feet washed, moment by moment, by the hands of that blessed One who is girded as the divine Servant of our present need. It is utterly impossible for anyone to overestimate the importance of this work; but we may at least gather something of its value from our Lord’s words to Peter; for, like ourselves, Peter was far from seizing the full significance of what his Lord was doing. “Then cometh He to Simon Peter; and Peter saith unto Him, ‘Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.’ Peter saith unto Him, ‘Thou shalt never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me.’”
Here is the grand point – “part with Me.” The washing of regeneration gives us a part inChrist: the daily washing of sanctification gives us a part with Christ. In order to have full, intelligent, happy communion, we must have a clean conscience, and clean feet. The blood of atonement secures the former; the water of purification maintains the other. But both the blood and water flowed from a crucified Christ. The death of Christ is the necessary basis of everything. He died to make us clean; He lives to keep us clean. We are made as clean as His death can make us; we are kept as clean as His life can keep us.
Let us never forget that this marvelous ministry of Christ on our behalf never ceases. He always lives to act for us on high, and to act on us and in us by His Word and Spirit. He speaks to God for us, and He speaks to us for God. He came from God, and traveled down to the profoundest depths of our need. He has gone back to God, to always bear us on His heart, to meet our daily need, and to maintain us in the integrity of the position and relationship into which He has introduced us.
This is replete with solid comfort for the soul. We are passing through a defiling world, where we are constantly liable to contract evils of one kind or another which, though they cannot touch our eternal life, can seriously affect our communion. It is impossible for us to tread the sanctuary of the divine presence with soiled feet; and hence the deep and unspeakable blessedness of having One always in the presence of God for us – One who, having been in this scene, knows its true character; and One who, having come from God and gone back to Him, knows the full extent of His claims, and all that is needful to fit us for fellowship with Him. The provision is divinely perfect. Sin or uncleanness can never be found in the presence of God. If we can make light of either one or the other, God cannot and will not. The holiness that shines in the demand for purity is as bright as the grace that provides it. Grace has made the provision but holiness demands application thereof. The goodness of God provided a laver for the priests of old, but the holiness of God demanded that the priests should use that laver. The great washing of inauguration introduced them to the office of the priesthood; the washing in the laver fitted them for the duties of that office. It was impossible for acceptable priestly service to be discharged with unclean hands.
We may say that it is likewise as impossible for us to walk in the pathway of holiness, if our feet are not washed and wiped by that blessed One who has girded Himself to perpetually serve us in this matter.
There are two links in Christianity: eternal life, which can never be snapped by anything; and personal communion, which can be snapped in a moment by the weight of a feather. It is as our ways are cleansed by the holy action of the Holy Spirit through the Word that our communion is maintained in its unbroken integrity. But, if we are afraid to face the Word of God or if we are willfully refusing its action, how can we enjoy communion with God?
We are not speaking of ignorance of the Word of God. The Lord bears with a wonderful amount of ignorance in us – far more than we are able to bear in one another. We do not now refer to the question of ignorance. For example, suppose a young person enters the assembly, taking her seat on one of the pews. She is dressed in the fashion of this world – jewels on her fingers; her heart full of vanity and folly. But she is met with the grace of love in all its fullness and freeness. The arrow of divine conviction enters her soul. She is broken down under the mighty power of the Holy Spirit through His mighty Word. She is brought to repentance toward God and true obedient faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. She is saved and leaves the place rejoicing in a full salvation. This joy continues for many days. She is engrossed with her newly found treasure. She no longer thinks about fashion or jewels. True, she may continue to wear them, simply because she as yet sees nothing wrong in doing so. She does not yet know that there is anything in the Word of God bearing on such things.
Brethren, we should be prepared for such a case as this, and be prepared to meet it. Some of us have little wisdom or patience to deal with cases of this type. We are in undue haste to enter on what may be called the stripping process. This is a mistake. We must allow time for the hidden virtues of the kingdom of God to develop. We must not attempt to reduce Christian worship into a place in which a certain livery is adopted. This will never do. We should not – we cannot reduce everything to a dead level. We must allow the Word of God to act on any life the Spirit of God has implanted. We do nothing but mischief to people if we get them to adopt a certain style of dress merely at our suggestion. The grand thing is to allow the kingdom of God to assert its holy sway over the entire character. This is to His glory and reduces all to a dead level.
Let us pursue our example. In her own time; in the course of her reading, our young friend is arrested by the following pointed passage: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works” (1 Tim. 2:9-10).
And again, “Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Pet. 3:3-4).
Here we have attempted to illustrate the present ministry of Christ – the action of the Word on the soul – the application of the basin to the feet – the washing of water by the Word. It is Jesus stooping down to wash the feet of this young disciple. The question is: how will she receive the action? Will she resist it, or yield to it? Will she push away the basin? Will she refuse the gracious ministry? “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me.”
This is very solemn, demanding serious attention. Next in moral importance to having the conscience purged by the blood of Christ stands this cleansing of our ways by the action of the Word (never to be repeated), through the power of the Holy Spirit (never to be interrupted). The former gives us a part in Christ; the latter, a part with Christ. If we really desire fellowship with Christ, we must allow Him to wash our feet moment by moment. We cannot tread the pure precincts of the sanctuary of God with defiled feet any more than we can enter them with a defiled conscience.
Therefore, may we have our ways continually submitted to the purifying action of the precious Word of God. Let us put away; let us abandon everything condemned by that Word – every position, association and practice which that Word condemns, so that our holy fellowship with Christ may be maintained in its freshness and integrity. Nothing is more dangerous than to trifle with evil in any shape or form. God can and does graciously bear with ignorance, but the willful resistance of His Word in any one point is sure to lead to disastrous results. The heart becomes hardened, the conscience seared, the moral sense blunted, and the whole moral being gets into a deplorable condition. We get away from the Lord, and make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. May the Lord keep us near to Him, walking with Him in tenderness of conscience and uprightness of heart. In living formative power may His Word always tell on our souls. So that our way be cleansed according to the claims of the sanctuary of God.
The Spring Of That Action: But let us now briefly inquire into the spring of this action on which we have been dwelling. This is presented with touching sweetness and power in the first verse of John 13 – “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”
Here we have the mighty spring of Christ’s present ministry. It is the changeless love of His heart – a love that was stronger than death, and which many waters could not quench. “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word” (Eph. 5:25-26). This is the blessed basis and motive – spring of that marvelous ministry which our Lord Jesus Christ is now carrying on for us and toward us. He knew what He was undertaking when He uttered those words in the fortieth Psalm, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” He knew what it would cost Him when He took up our case. But His love was and is divinely equal to all. We need not be afraid of exhausting that love which triumphed over all the unutterable horrors of Calvary, and went down under the deep and dark waters of death and judgment. At times, we may feel ashamed to so often have to bring our defiled feet to that blessed One for cleansing; but His love is equal to all, and that love is the spring of His precious and indispensable ministry.
It is a common saying that love is blind, but we look on it as a libel on love. Certainly it does not and could not apply to the love of Christ. He knew all that was in us, and He now knows all our ways, all our weakness, and all our follies; but He loves us notwithstanding all – and in the power of that love He acts toward us in order to deliver us from all that He sees in us and about us which would hinder our holy fellowship with the Father and with His Son.
Of what use would a blind love be to us? None whatsoever. How could we ever repose in a love that only acted toward us in ignorance of our blots and blemishes? What we need is a love superior to all our imperfections – a love that can deliver us from them. This love we have in Christ! It is a love that no matter how it may expose us to ourselves will never expose us to another. It is a love that comes to us with the basin and towel, and stoops down in infinite tenderness and lowly, matchless grace to wash away every soil, and give us the comfortable sense of being “clean every whit.” This is the love we long for, and this is the love we have found in divine fullness and power in the heart of that perfect Servant who is always girded for us before the throne.
“Having loved His own which were in the world He loved them” – how long? As long as they behaved themselves, and walked with soiled feet? No; this would never do. “He loved them unto the end.” Precious perfect, divine, everlasting love – a love that overlaps, underlies, and outlives our blots and blemishes, our failings and faltering, our wants and weaknesses, our wanderings and waywardness; a love that comes to us armed with all that our condition could possibly demand; a love that will never cease to act forus and toward us and in us, until it presents us in unblemished perfectness before the throne of God.
The Measure of the Action, Its Spring and Its Measure: We now briefly consider the measure of Christ’s present action for us and toward us. This is a point of unspeakable value and importance. It is essential for us to know that whether it is a question of Christ’s service for us in the past or His present service, the measure of both one and the other is and can be nothing less than the claims of the sanctuary, the throne, and the nature of God. We might suppose that the measure would be our necessities, but this could never do. If we think of Christ’s atoning work, we know, and rejoice to know His precious work has done much more than meet the deepest measure of our necessities as sinners. The work of the cross has divinely met all the claims of God. Merely knowing that the highest claims of human conscience had been met by the atoning death of Christ could never give solid peace to our souls. We must be assured on divine authority that the highest claims of the government, the character the nature, and the glory of God have all been perfectly met by the precious work of Christ.
So it is through infinite grace that every divinely exercised soul can find settled and eternal peace. The same is true pertaining to Christ’s present work for us. It could never satisfy our souls to be told that that work is measured by our deepest need. There is no doubt that need is met; but it is because Christ’s present ministry goes far beyond that need, and reaches to, and satisfies the claims of, the sanctuary of God.
What unspeakable mercy. Here we may rest in perfect tranquility. We have One on high undertaking for us, ever living in the presence of God for us; One who not only knows our necessities, but also knows the claims of God. He knows what this scene is through which we are passing, and He knows what that scene is into which He has entered; and in His own perfect ministry He meets both one and the other. He meets all our claims since He meets all God’s claims, for the less must ever be included in the greater.
What solid comfort is found here; what unruffled repose. We have One in the presence of God for us, in whose hands all our affairs are perfectly, because divinely, safe. They can never fall through, never go wrong. We may say that before the weakest of those whom Christ calls “His own in the world” can fail, Christ Himself must fail, and that can never be. His own are as safe as Himself.
What a grand reality. With what perfect confidence may we refer every objector, every accuser, and every opposer to this blessed manager; what folly on our part to attempt to answer such ourselves. Oh, may we learn to lean more confidently on that blessed One who thus presents Himself before our souls as the girded servant of our deep and manifold necessities. May we prize His precious ministry more and more – His ministry for us, His ministry to us. May we repose more sweetly in the assurance that He is speaking to the Father for us, in all our failures, in all our shortcomings, in all our sins.
We should constantly be comforted by remembering that even before we slip, He has been pleading for us, as He pleaded for Peter. “I have prayed for thee,” said the loving One, “that thy faith fail not.” What matchless grace is revealed in these words. He did not pray that Peter might not fall, but that, having fallen, his confidence might not give way – his faith might not fail. So He pleads for us, so we are sustained, and so we are restored when we fall, or else we would quickly go from bad to worse and be shipwrecked. “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” We are sustained every moment by His precious and powerful ministry. We could not stand for a single hour without Him.
Things are continually turning up that would prove destructive of our fellowship, if we did not have that blessed One acting for us – whose intervention on our behalf never ceases. Not only does He know our need, but He knows what the sanctuary demands; and not only does He know it, but He provides for it, according to His own infinite perfectness and acceptance before God, meeting His people’s necessities.
There are some people who have such a one-sided notion of the standing of the believer, that they throw the Lord’s priestly ministry overboard. We say it is one-sided, and there is nothing more dangerous than one-sided truth – nothing. We would far rather see a man going through the length and breadth of New York publishing palpable error, such as the simplest mind could detect. We would have far less apprehension of the mischievous result of his ministry than of the teaching of a man who takes up one side of a truth, and presses it in such a way as to interfere with some other truth.
There is an adjusting power in the truth of God – an adjusting power in Scripture that constitutes one of its brightest moral glories. Hence we find that while the Word of God fully establishes the truth that the true believer stands complete in Christ, justified from all things, accepted in the Beloved, “clean every whit,” it also at the same time with equal clearness and fullness, sets forth the fact that the true believer is, in himself a poor feeble creature, exposed to manifold snares, temptations, and hostile influences; liable at any moment to fall into error and evil; utterly unable to keep himself, or to grapple with the difficulties and dangers surrounding him; liable at any moment to contract defilement that would unfit him for the holy fellowship and worship of the sanctuary.
How are all those things to be met? How, in the face of such things, is the Christian to be kept? Having an evil nature, a crafty foe, and a hostile world to cope with, how is he to get on? How is he to be kept? How is he to be restored if he wanders? How is he to be lifted up if he falls? The answer to all these questions is found in that ever-precious sentence of inspiration, “He ever liveth to make intercession for us”; and again, “He is able to save to the uttermost”; and again, “We shall be saved by His life”; and again, “Because I live, ye shall live also”; and again, “We have an advocate with the Father.”
How the heart delights to present and ponder over such utterances as these. They are marrow and fatness to the soul. In the face of such passages, how can anyone think of calling in question the grand foundation-truth of the priesthood of Christ, in its application to Christians now? We can only say that we know not. But there is no accounting for the depths of error into which we may fall, if we allow our minds to work and get away from the direct authority of Holy Scripture. And we may truly say that a palpable proof of our need of the intercession of Christ is to be found in the sad fact that any of His servants should be found denying it.
We shall add no more on this point, except to warn all the Lord’s dear people against the terrible error of denying our continual need of the priestly ministry, the precious intercession and all-prevailing advocacy of our Lord Jesus Christ – an error second only to the denial of His atoning work. For most surely our need of His priesthood is second only to our need of His atoning blood.
Part 3 – His Service in the Future
Having briefly, and without doubt imperfectly, glanced at our Lord’s ministry in the past and present, we cannot close without a reference to His ministry in the future. One may feel disposed to say, “I do not understand how our Lord can ever be found serving us in the future. I can understand His serving us now on the throne, but how He is to serve us in the future is, I confess, beyond me.”
No doubt it is marvelous, and had we not His own veritable words for it, we might well hesitate in our statement of the fact that our Lord Christ shall serve His people in the brightness of glory. But let us hear what He Himself says to us. Turn to Luke 12:35: “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.”
This is distinct and unmistakable; as plain as it is marvelous. Christ will serve us in the future. He will serve us forever. His ministry overlaps our entire history. It reaches down to the deepest depths of our need as sinners, and up to the loftiest heights of glory. It goes back to the past, it covers the present, and it stretches away into the boundless future. Blessed be His name – He loves to serve us, and He gives us the assurance that “Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” When He personally enters in the glory of His own kingdom, He will gratify His loving heart by making us sit down amid the brightness of that glory, and there serve us in the same love that has characterized His service from the first – all praise and eternal homage to His peerless name.
But note another thing in this twelfth chapter of Luke. At the forty-first verse Peter puts the question,“Lord, speakest Thou this parable unto us, or even to all? And the Lord said, ‘Who then is that faithful and wise steward whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season. Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.’”
Thus we have two things: “watching” and “doing.” Which does Christ value most? The former, unquestionably; proven by the higher reward attached to it. To have Christ serving us in the glory is something far beyond any position that He may in His goodness assign to us.
Therefore, brethren, let us always bear in mind that above all things our blessed Lord values that loving attitude of the heart which expresses itself by watching for His return. No doubt it is also blessed and important to be found “doing” whatever He gives us to do, whether it is sweeping a crossing or evangelizing a nation; He will not allow the smallest act of service to go unrequited. It is not that He values service less, but He values watching more, and we can understand this; even nature itself teaches it to us. Suppose in the first century the head of a family is absent from home; the servants are told to have things in readiness for his return, and each will be found doing his or her appointed work. They will say Master is coming home; we must see and have all square and right for him. This is as it should be; but is there not something far deeper and higher than this? Is there not something that answers to the heart of that absent one? Surely there is; there is the earnest longing of an affectionate wife, without which the best ordered house would be but a poor, cold, cheerless thing to come back to.
We can be assured that so it is with our beloved absent Lord. Above all things, He prizes the affectionate earnest longings of our hearts to see His face. Something of what shone in Mephibosheth, when he said to David, “Let him take all, seeing my lord the king is come in peace.” Oh, may we cultivate more of this; may we see to it that we are of those who love the appearing of our adorable Lord and Savior. May the cry of our hearts be continually, “Why tarry the wheels of His chariot?”
Will this make us deficient in service? No; the very reverse. It is this which gives the true spring to all service, imparting a holy fragrance to the smallest act that may be done. On the other hand, if this deep personal affection is lacking, the most splendid and showy acts of service are as nothing to the heart of Jesus. The two mites of the widow were more precious to Christ than the most princely gifts of heartless offerers. In his sermons, Dr. William Harrison often said “Show me a heart that is watching for Christ, and I will show you a pair of hands occupied for Him in some way or another.” It does not matter in the least what we are doing, provided it be that which our Lord has given us to do, and there is nothing that will so quickly enable us to know what service to do as a loving heart. There is an instinct, a tact about true love that leads it to find out what is grateful to its object.
This is what is needed among brethren. There may be a vast amount of busy activity – running here and there – coming and going, but if the heart is not occupied with Christ, the hands, feet, and head are of little worth. He has given us a whole heart, and in return nothing can satisfy Him but a whole heart from us. His entire service – past, present, and future – is the fruit of His perfect love; and, with respect to us, nothing can meet His desire save a heart responsive in its affections to Him. And this will always express itself in an anxious, earnest longing for His coming. “Blessed are those servants, whom their lord when he cometh shall find watching.”
May the eternal Spirit fill our hearts with genuine love to the Person of our own adorable Lord and Savior; so that our one grand and undivided purpose may be to live for Him in this scene from which He has been cast out, and to wait for that moment when we shall see Him as He is, and be like Him and with Him forever.
