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
For what is it that He addresses? Universal human nature, the
universal human wants, and mainly and primarily, as I believe, the
sense of sin which lies dormant indeed, but capable of being
awakened, in all men, because the fact of sin attaches to all men.
There is no man but has the needs to which Christ addresses Himself,
and no man but has the power of apprehending, of accepting, and of
living by, the great Incarnate Word and His message to the world. So
that instead of there being a restriction implied in the words
before us, there is the broadest implication of the universality of
Christ's message. And just as every man comes into the world with a
pair of ears on his head, so every man comes into the world with the
capacity of listening to, and accepting, that gracious Lord. That is
the first thing that our Master distinctly declares here, that we
all have ears.
II. If we have ears we are bound to use them.
'Let him hear.' In all regions, as I need not remind you, capacity
and responsibility go together; and the power that we possess is the
measure of the obligation under which we come. All our natural
faculties, for instance, are given to us with the implied command,
'See that you make the best use of them.' So that even these bodily
organs of ours, much more the higher faculties and capacities of the
spirit of which the body is partly the symbol and partly the
instrument, are intrusted to us on terms of stewardship. And just as
it is criminal for a man to go through life with a pair of ears on
his head, and a pair of eyes in his forehead, neither of which he
educates and cultivates, so is it criminal for a man having the
capacity of grasping the great Revelation of God, who 'at sundry
times and in divers manners hath spoken unto the Fathers by the
prophets, but in these last days hath spoken unto us by the Son,' to
turn away from that Voice, and pay no heed to it.
It is universally true that obligation goes with capacity. It is
especially true with regard to our relation to Jesus Christ. We are
all bound to 'hear Him,' as the great Voice said on the Mount of
Transfiguration. The upshot of all that manifestation of the divine
glory welling up from the depths of Christ's nature, and
transfiguring His countenance, the upshot of all that solemn and
mysterious communion with the mighty dead, Moses and Elias, the end
of all that encompassing glory that wrapped Him, was the Voice from
Heaven which proclaimed, 'This is My beloved Son; hear ye Him.'
Moses with his Law, Elijah with his Prophecy, faded away and were
lost. But there stood forth singly the one Figure, relieved against
the background of the glory-cloud, the Christ to whom we are all
bound to turn with the vision of longing eyes, with the listening of
docile ears, with the aspiration of yearning affection, with the
submission of absolute obedience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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