Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible. Matthew IX-XXVIII -- Commentaries
And, therefore, if Christ, and not merely a doctrinal truth about
Christ, be the Object of our faith, then it is very clear that
faith, which grasps a Person, must be something more than the mere
act of the understanding which assents to a truth. And what more is
it? How is it possible for one person to lay hold of and to come to
another? By trust and love, and by these alone. These be the bonds
that bind men together. Mere intellectual consent may be sufficient
to fasten a man to a dogma, but there must be will and heart at work
to bind a man to a person; and if it be Christ and not a theology,
to which we come by our faith, then it must be with something more
than our brains that we grasp Him and draw near to Him. That is to
say, your will is engaged in your confidence. Trust Him as you trust
one another, only with the difference befitting a trust directed to
an absolute and perfect object of trust, and not to a poor, variable
human heart. Trust Him as you trust one another. Then, just as
husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend, pass through
all intervening hindrances and come together when they trust and
love, so you come closer to Christ as the very soul of your soul by
an inward real union, than you do even to your dear ones, if you
grapple Him to your heart with the hoops of steel, which, by simple
trust in Him, the Divine Redeemer forges for us. 'Come unto Me,'
being translated out of metaphor into fact, is simply 'Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'
And still further, we have here, not only the initial act by which
companionship and union with Jesus Christ is brought about, but the
continual course by which it is kept up, and by which it is
manifested. The faith which saves a man's soul is not all which is
required for a Christian life. 'Take My yoke upon you, and _learn
of Me_.' The yoke is that which, laid on the broad forehead or
the thick neck of the ox, has attached to it the cords which are
bound to the burden that the animal draws. The burden, then, which
Christ gives to His servants to pull, is a metaphor for the specific
duties which He enjoins upon them to perform; and the yoke by which
they are fastened to their burdens, 'obliged' to their duties, is
His authority, So to 'take His yoke' upon us is to submit our wills
to His authority. Therefore this further call is addressed to all
those who have come to Him, feeling their weakness and their need
and their sinfulness, and have found in Him a Saviour who has made
them restful and glad; and it bids them live in the deepest
submission of will to Him, in joyful obedience, in constant service;
and, above all, in the daily imitation of the Master.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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