Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
and lies down, weary, to sleep on the wooden pillow at the end of
it; aye, but He rises and He says, 'Peace, be still,' and the waves
fall. He borrows the upper room, and with a stranger's wine and
another man's bread He founds the covenant and the sacrament of His
new kingdom. He borrows a grave; aye, but He comes out of it, the
Lord both of the dead and of the living. And so we have to say,
'Consider the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He was
rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty
might become rich.'
The noblest life that was ever lived upon earth-I hope you and I
think it is a great deal more than that, but we all think it is that
at any rate--the noblest life that was ever lived upon earth was the
life of a poor man. Remember that pure desires, holy aspirations,
noble purposes, and a life peopled with all the refinement and
charities that belong to the spirit, and that is ever conscious of
the closest presence of God and of the innate union with Him, is
possible under such conditions, and so remember that the pauper
Christ is, at the least, the perfect Man.
But then what I more immediately intended was to ask you to take
that central figure with this external fact of His poverty, of the
depth of His true inanition, the emptying of Himself for our sakes,
as being the great motive, and Oh! thank God that with all humility,
we may venture to say, the great Pattern to which you and I have to
conform. There is the reason why we say, 'I love to speak His name,'
there is the true measure of the devotion of the consecration and
the self-surrender which He requires. Christ gave all for us even to
the uttermost circumference of external possession, and standing in
the midst of those for whose sakes He became poor, He turns to them
with a modest appeal when He says, 'Minister unto Me, for I have
made Myself to need your ministrations for the sake of your
redemption.' So much, then, for the first point which I would desire
to urge upon you from this incident before us.
Now, in the next place, and pursuing substantially the same course
of thought, let me suggest to you to look at the love--the love here
that stoops to be served.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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