Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
Note then, I was going to say, the superb heroism of His calm
indifference to threats and dangers. He will go hence, and relieve
the tyrant's dominions of His presence; but He is careful to make it
plain that His going has no connection with the futile threatenings
by which they have sought to terrify Him. 'Nevertheless'--although I
do not care at all for them or for him--'nevertheless I must journey
to-day and tomorrow! But that is not because I fear death, but
because I am going to My death; for the prophet must die in
Jerusalem.' We are so accustomed to think of the 'gentle Jesus, meek
and mild' that we forget the 'strong Son of God.' If we were talking
about a man merely, we should point to this calm, dignified answer
as being an instance of heroism, but we do not feel that that word
fits Him. There are too many vulgar associations connected with it,
to be adapted to the gentleness of His fixed purpose that blenched
not, nor faltered, whatsoever came in the way.
Light is far more powerful than lightning. Meekness may be, and in
Him was, wedded to a will like a bar of iron, and a heart that knew
not how to fear. If ever there was an iron hand in a velvet glove it
was the hand of Christ. And although the perspective of virtues
which Christianity has introduced, and which Christ exhibited in His
life, gives prominence to the meek and the gentle, let us not forget
that it also enjoins the cultivation of the 'wrestling thews that
throw the world.' 'Quit you like men; be strong; let all your deeds
be done in charity.'
Then note, too, the solemn law that ruled His life. 'I _must_
walk.' That is a very familiar expression upon His lips. From that
early day when He said, 'Wist ye not that I _must_ be about My
Father's business,' to that last when He said, 'The Son of Man
_must_ be lifted up,' there crops out, ever and anon, in the
occasional glimpses that He allows us to have of His inmost spirit,
this reference of all His actions to a necessity that was laid upon
Him, and to which He ever consciously conformed. That necessity
determined what He calls so frequently 'My time; My hour'; and
influenced the trifles, as they are called, as well as the great
crises, of His career. It was the Father's will which made the Son's
_must_. Hence His unbroken communion and untroubled calm.
If we want to live near God, and if we want to have lives of peace
amidst convulsions, we, too, must yield ourselves to that all
encompassing sovereign necessity, which, like the great laws of the
universe, shapes the planets and the suns in their courses and their
stations; and holds together two grains of dust, or two motes that
dance in the sunshine. To gravitation there is nothing great and
nothing small. God's _must_ covers all the ground of our lives,
and should ever be responded to by our 'I will.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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