Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
The consciousness of unworthiness will be deepened. The more we know
ourselves to be sinful, the more we shall cleave to Christ, and the
more we cleave to Christ, the more we shall know ourselves to be
sinful. Peter caught a glimpse of what Jesus was when he sat in the
boat, and he said, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!'
But Peter saw both himself and his Lord more clearly, that is more
truly, when, subsequent to his black treachery, his brother Apostle
said to him concerning the figure standing on the beach in the grey
morning, 'It is the Lord,' and he flung himself over the side and
floundered through the water to get to his Master's feet. For that
is the place for the man who knows himself unworthy. The more we are
conscious of our sin, the closer let us cling to our Lord's
forgiving heart, and the more sure we are that we have that love
which we have not earned, the more shall we feel how unworthy of it
we are. As one of the prophets says, with profound meaning, 'Thou
shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more
because of thy transgression, when I am pacified towards thee for
all that thou hast done.' The child buries its face on its mother's
breast, and feels its fault the more because the loving arms clasp
it close.
And so, dear brethren, deepen your convictions, if you are deluded
by that notion of merit; deepen your convictions, if you see your
own evil so clearly that you see little else. Come into the light,
come into the liberty, rise to that great thought, 'Not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.'
Have done with the religion of barter, and come to the religion of
undeserved grace. If you are going to stop on the commercial level,
'the wages of sin is death'; rise to the higher ground: 'the gift of
God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.'
JESUS AT THE BIER
'And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her,
and said unto her, Weep not. 14. And He came and
touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still.
And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.
15. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.
And He delivered him to his mother.'--LUKE vii. 13-15.
We owe our knowledge of this incident to Luke only. He is the
Evangelist who specially delights in recording the gracious
relations of our Lord with women, and he is also the Evangelist who
delights in telling us of unasked miracles which Christ performed.
Both of these characteristics unite in this story, and it may have
been these, rather than the fact of its being a narrative of a
resurrection, that found for it a place in this Gospel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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