"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ."
We are aware in how many different ways our fellow-disciples try and tempt us, as, no doubt, we do them. We see, or we fancy we see, some bad quality in them and we find it hard to go on in further company with them. And yet in all this, or in much of it, the fault may be with ourselves, mistaking a want of conformity of taste or judgment with ourselves, for something to be condemned in them.
But the Lord could not he thus mistaken; and yet He was never " overcome of evil," but was ever overcoming evil with good—the evil that was in them with the good that was in Himself. Vanity, ill temper, indifference about others, and carefulness about themselves, ignorance after painstaking to instruct, were of the things in them which He had to suffer continually. His walk with them, in its way and measure, was a day of provocation, as the forty years in the wilderness had been. Israel again tempted the Lord, I may say, but again proved Him. Blessed to tell it; they provoked Him, but by this they proved Him. He suffered, but He took it patiently. He never gave them up. He warned and taught, rebuked and condemned them, but never gave them up. Nay; at the end of their walk together, He is nearer to them than ever.
Perfect and excellent this is, and comforting to us. The Lord's dealing with the conscience never touches His heart. We lose nothing by His rebukes. And He Who does not withdraw His heart from us when He is dealing with our conscience, is quick to restore our souls, that the conscience, so to express it, may be enabled soon to leave His school, and the heart find its happy freedom in His presence again. As sings that hymn, which some of us know—
'' Still sweet 'tis to discover,
If clouds have dimm'd my sight;
When pass'd, Eternal Lover,
Towards me, as e'er Thou'rt bright."
Time made no change in the Lord. Kindred instances of grace and character in Him, before and after His resurrection, give us possession of this truth, which is of such importance to us. We know what He is this moment, and what He will be forever, from what He has been already-in character as in nature-in relationship to us as in Himself-" the Same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." The very mention of this is blessed. Sometimes we may be grieved at changes; sometimes we may desire them. In different ways we all prove the fickle, uncertain nature of that which constitutes human life. But Jesus was the same after His resurrection as He had been before, though late events had put Him and His disciples at a greater distance than companions had ever known, or could ever know. They had betrayed their unfaithful hearts, forsaking Him and fleeing in the hour of His weakness and need; while He, for their sakes, had gone through death—such a death as never could have been borne by another, as would have crushed the creature itself. They were still but poor, feeble Galileans-He was glorified with all power in heaven and on earth.
But these things worked no change; " nor height nor depth, nor any other creature," as the apostle speaks, could do that. Love defies them all, and He returns to them the Jesus Whom they had known before. He is their companion in labor after His resurrection, nay, after His ascension, as He had been in the days of His ministry and sojourn with them. And after He had risen, He takes the honeycomb and the fish, and eats before them, that they might know that it was He Himself.
Perfect Master! the same to us yesterday, to-day and forever; the same in gracious, perfect skill of love going on with the work He had already begun, resuming, as the risen Lord, the service which He had left when He was taken away from them, and resuming it at the very point, knitting the past to the present service in the fullest grace and skill!