Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
I need not remind you how this is the unique glory of Christ and of
Christianity. Men have been asking the question whether Christianity
is played out or not. What has been the motive power of all the
great movements for the elevation of mankind that have occurred for
the last nineteen centuries? What was it that struck the fetters of
the slaves? What is it that sends men out amongst savage tribes? Has
there ever been found a race of men so degraded that the message of
Christ's love could not find its way into their hearts? Did not
Darwin subscribe to the Patagonian Mission--a mission which takes in
hand perhaps the lowest types of humanity in the world--and did he
not do it because his own eyes had taught him that in this strange
superstition that we call the Gospel there is a power that, somehow
or other, nothing else can wield? Brethren! if the Church begins to
lose its care for, and its power of drawing, outcasts and sinners,
it has begun to lose its hold on Christ. The sooner such a Church
dies the better, and there will be few mourners at its funeral.
The Friend of publicans and sinners has set the example to all of us
His followers. God be thanked that there are signs to-day that
Christian people are more and more waking up to the consciousness of
their obligations in regard to the outcasts in their own and other
lands. Let them go to them, as Jesus Christ did, with no false
flatteries, but with plain rebukes of sin, and yet with manifest
outgoing of the heart, and they will find that the same thing which
drew these poor creatures to the Master will draw others to the
feeblest, faintest reflection of Him in His servants.
And, last of all, dear friends, let each think that Jesus Christ is
my Friend, and your Friend, because He is the Friend of sinners, and
we are sinners. If He did not love sinners there would be nobody for
Him to love. The universality of sin, however various in its degrees
and manifestations, makes more wonderful the universal sweep of His
friendship.
How do I know that He is my Friend? 'Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,' and when we
were yet enemies He was our Friend, and died for us. How shall we
requite that love? 'Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command
you to do.' All over the Eastern world to this day the name by which
the Patriarch Abraham is known is the 'Friend' or the 'Companion.'
Well for us, for time and for eternity, if, knowing that Jesus is
our Friend, we yield ourselves, in faith and love, to become His
friends!
THE TWO DEBTORS
'There was a certain creditor which had two debtors;
the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.
42. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly
forgave them both. Tell Me therefore, which of them
will love him most? 43. Simon answered and said, I
suppose that he to whom he forgave most.'--LUKE vii.41-43.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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