To serve man at the expense of God's truth and principles is not Christianity, though persons who do so will be called “benefactors.” Christianity considers the glory of God, as well as the blessing of man; but as far as we lose sight of this, we shall be so far tempted to call many things waste and idleness which are really holy, intelligent, consistent, and devoted service to Jesus. Indeed, it is so. The Lord's vindication of the woman who poured her treasure on the head of Jesus tells me so (Matt. 26). We are to own God's glory in what we do, though man may refuse to sanction what does not advance the good order of the world, or provide for the good of our neighbor. But Jesus would know God's claims in this self-seeking world, while He recognized (very surely, as we may know) His neighbor's claim upon Himself.
He knew when to cast away, and when to keep. “Let her alone,” He said of the woman who had been upbraided for breaking the box of spikenard on Him; “she hath wrought a good work on me.” But after feeding the multitudes He would say, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”
This was observing the divine rule, “There is a time to keep, and a time to cast away.” If the prodigal service of the heart or hand in worship be no waste, the very crumbs of human food are sacred, and must not be cast away. He who vindicated the spending of three hundred pence on one of these occasions, on the other would not let the fragments of the five loaves be left on the ground. In His eyes such fragments were sacred. They were the food of life, the herb of the field, which God had given to man for his life. And life is a sacred thing. God is the God of the living. “To you it shall be for meat,” God had said of it, and therefore Jesus would hallow it. “The tree of the field is man's life,” the law had said, and accordingly had thus prescribed to them that were under the law— “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an ax against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down to employ them in the siege: only the trees that thou knowest are not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down” (Deut. 20.). It would have been waste, it would have been profaneness, to have thus abused the food of life, which was God's gift; and Jesus in like purity, in the perfectness of God's living ordinance, would not let the fragments lie on the ground. “Gather up the fragments that remain,” He said, “that nothing be lost.”
These are but small incidents; but all the circumstances of human life, as He passes through them, change as they may, or be they as minute as they may, are thus adorned by something of the moral glory that was ever brightening the path of His sacred, wearied feet. The eye of man was incapable of tracking it; but to God it was all incense, a sacrifice of sweet savor, a sacrifice of rest, the meal offering of the sanctuary.
But again. The Lord did not judge of persons in relation to Himself—a common fault with us all. We naturally judge of others according as they treat ourselves, and we mike our interest in them the measure of their character and worth. But this was not the Lord. God is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. He understands every action fully. In all its moral meaning He understands it, and according to that He weighs it. And, as the image of the God of knowledge, we see our Lord Jesus Christ, in the days of His ministry here, again and again. I may refer to Luke 11. There was the air of courtesy and good feeling towards Him in the Pharisee that invited Him to dine. But the Lord was “the God of knowledge,” and, as such, weighed this action in its full moral character.
The honey of courtesy, which is the best ingredient in social life in this world, should not pervert His taste or judgment. He approved things that are excellent. The civility which invited Him to dinner was not to determine the judgment of Him who carried the weights and measures of the sanctuary of God. It is the God of knowledge this civility on this occasion has to confront, and it does not stand, it will not do. Oh, how the tracing of this may rebuke us! The invitation covered a purpose. As soon as the Lord entered the house, the host acts the Pharisee, and not the host. He marvels that his guest had not washed before dinner. And the character he thus assumes at the beginning shows itself in full force at the end. And the Lord deals with the whole scene accordingly; for He weighed it as the God of knowledge. Some may say that the courtesy He had received might have kept Him silent. But He could not look on this man simply as in relation to Himself. He was not to be flattered out of a just judgment. He exposes and rebukes, and the end of the scene justifies Him. “And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things, laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.”
Very different, however, was His way in the house of another Pharisee, who, in like manner, had asked Him to dine (see Luke 7). For Simon had no covered purpose in the invitation. Quite otherwise. He seemed to act the Pharisee too, silently accusing the poor sinner of the city, and his guest for admitting her approach. But appearances are not the ground of righteous judgments. Often the very same words, on different lips, have a very different mind in them. And therefore the Lord, the perfect weigh-master, according to God, though he may rebuke Simon, and expose him to himself, knows him by name, and leaves his house as a guest should leave it, He distinguishes the Pharisee of Luke 7 from the Pharisee of Luke 11, though He dined with both of them.
So we may look at the Lord with Peter in Matt. 16. Peter expresses fond and considerate attachment to his Master: “This be far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee.” But Jesus judged Peter's words only in their moral place. Hard indeed we find it to do this when we are personally gratified. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” was not the answer, which a merely amiable nature would have suggested, to such words. But again, I say, our Lord did not listen to Peter's words simply as they expressed personal kindness and goodwill to Himself. He judged them, He weighed them as in the presence of God, and at once found that the enemy had moved them; for he, that can transform himself into an angel of light, is very often lurking in words of courtesy and kindness. And in the same way the Lord dealt with Thomas in John 20 Thomas had just worshipped Him. “My Lord and my God,” he had said. But Jesus has not to be drawn from the high moral elevation that He filled, and from whence He heard and saw everything, even by words like these. They were genuine words, words of a mind which, enlightened of God, had repented towards the risen Savior, and, instead of doubting any longer, worshipped. But Thomas had stood out as long as he could. He had exceeded. They had all been unbelieving as to the resurrection, but he had insisted that he would be still in unbelief till sense and sight came to deliver him. All this had been his moral condition; and Jesus has this before Him, and puts Thomas in his right moral place, as he had put Peter. “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.” “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Our hearts, in such cases as these, would have been taken by surprise. They could not have kept their ground in the face of these assaults, which the good-will of Peter, and the worship of Thomas, would have made upon them. But our perfect Master stood for God and His truth, and not for Himself. The ark of old was not to be flattered. Israel may honor it, and bring it down to the battle, telling it, as it were, that now in its presence all must be well with them. But this will not do for the God of Israel. Israel falls before the Philistines, though the ark be thus in the battle; and Peter and Thomas shall be rebuked, though Jesus, still the God of Israel, be honored by them.
Angels have their joy over the repentance of sinners. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” It is happy to have this secret of heaven disclosed to us, and to read one illustration of it after another, as we do in Luke 15.
J.G.B.