No. 1. — “In Him Was Light.”
The life of Jesus was the bright shining of a candle. It was such a lamp in the house of God as needed no golden tongs or snuff-dishes. It was ordered before the Lord continually, burning as from pure beaten oil. It was making manifest all that was around, exposing and reproving; but it ever held its own place uncondemned.
Whether challenged by disciples or adversaries, as the Lord was again and again, there is never an excusing of himself. On one occasion disciples complain, “Master, carest thou not that we perish” But he does not think of vindicating the sleep out of which this challenge awakes him. On another occasion they object to him, “The multitude throng thee, and press thee and sayest thou, Who touched me?” But he does not need this inquiry, but acts upon the satisfaction of it. At another time Martha says to him, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” But he does not excuse his not having been there, nor his delaying for two days in the place where he was; but instructs Martha in the wondrous character which his delay had given to that hour.
What a glorious vindication of his delay that was! And thus it was on every like occasion; whether challenged or rebuked, there is never the recalling of a word, nor the retracing of a step. Every tongue that rises in judgment against him he condemns. The mother rebukes him in Luke 2; but instead of making good her charge, she has to listen to him convicting the darkness and error of her thoughts. Peter takes upon him to admonish him: “This be far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee.” But Peter has to learn, that it was Satan himself that in Peter prompted the admonition. The officer in the palace of the High Priest goes still farther, correcting him, and smiting him on the cheek. But he is convicted of breaking the rules of judgment in the very face and place of judgment.
Therefore, when we look at the Lord Jesus as the lamp of the sanctuary, the light in the house of God, we find at once that the tongs and snuff-dishes cannot be used. They are discovered to have no Counterpart in him. Consequently, they who undertook to challenge or rebuke him when he was here had to go back rebuked and put to shame themselves. They were using the tongs or snuffers with a lamp which did not need them, and they only betrayed their folly: and the light of this lamp shone the brighter, not because the tongs had been used, but because it was able to give forth some fresh witness (which it did on every occasion) that it did not need them.
The Lord was “poor, yet making rich,” “having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” These high and wondrous conditions were exhibited in him, in ways that were and must have been peculiar-altogether his own. He would receive ministry from some godly women out of their substance, and yet minister to the need of all around him out of the treasures of the fullness of the earth. He would feed thousands in desert places, and yet be himself an hungered, waiting for the return of his disciples with victuals from a neighboring village. This is “having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” But while thus poor, both needy and exposed, nothing that in the least savored of meanness is ever seen attaching to his condition. He never begs, though he have not a penny; for when he wanted to see one (not to use it for himself), he had to be ask to be shown it. He never runs away, though exposed, and his life jeoparded, as we speak, in the place where he was. He withdraws himself, or passes by as hidden. And thus, again, I may say, nothing mean, nothing unbecoming full personal dignity, attaches to him, though poverty and exposure were his lot every day.
Blessed and beautiful! Who could preserve under our eye such an object, so perfect, so unblemished, so exquisitely, delicately pure, in all the minute and most ordinary details of human life! Paul does not give us this. None could give it to us but Jesus, the God-man. The peculiarities of his virtues in the midst of the ordinariness of his circumstances tell us of his person. It must be a peculiar person, it must be the divine man, if I may so express him, that could give us such peculiarities in such common-place conditions. Paul does not give us anything like it, again I say. There was great dignity and moral elevation about him, I know. If any one may be received as exhibiting that, let us agree that it was he. But his path is not that of Jesus; he is in danger of his life, and he uses his nephew to protect him. Again, his friends let him down the wall of the town in a basket. I do not say he begs or asks for it, but he acknowledges money sent to him. I say not how Paul avowed himself a Pharisee in the mixed assembly, in order to shelter himself; or how he spake evil of the High Priest that was judging him. Such conduct was morally wrong; and I am speaking here only of such cases as were, though not morally wrong, below the full personal and moral dignity that marks the way of Christ. Nor is the flight into Egypt, as it is called, an exception in: this characteristic of the Lord; for that journey was taken to fulfill prophecy, and under the authority of a divine oracle.
In answering inquiries Christ did not so much purpose to satisfy them, as to reach the conscience or the condition of the enquirer.
In his silence, or refusal to answer at all, when he stood before the Jew or the Gentile at the end, before either the priests or Pilate or Herod, we can trace the same perfect fitness as we do in his words or answers; witnessing to God, that at least One among the sons of men know “a time to keep silent, and a time to speak.”
Great variety in his very tone and manner also presents itself in all this; and all this variety, minute as it was as well as great, was part of his fragrance before God. Sometimes his word was gentle, sometimes peremptory; sometimes he rear sons; sometimes he rebukes at once; and sometimes conducts calm reasoning up to the heated point of solemn condemnation; for it is the moral of the occasion he always weighs.
Matthew 15 has struck me as a Chapter in which this perfection, in much of its various beauty and excellency, may be seen. In the course of it the Lord is called to answer the Pharisees, the multitude, the poor afflicted stranger from the coasts of Tire, and his own disciples, again and again, in their different exposure of either their stupidity or their selfishness; and we may notice his different style of rebuke and of reasoning, calm, patient teaching, and of faithful, wise, and gracious training of the soul: and we cannot but feel how fitting all this variety was to the place or occasion that called it forth. And such was the beauty and the fitness of his neither teaching no. learning in Luke 2, but only hearing and asking questions —To have taught then would not have been in season, a child as he was in the midst of his elders, To have learned would not have been in full fidelity to the light, the eminent, and bright light, which he knew he carried in himself; for we may surely say of him, “He was wiser than the ancients, and had more understanding than his teachers.” I do not mean as God, but as One “filled with wisdom,” as was then said of him. But he knew in the perfection of grace how to use this fullness of wisdom, and he is, therefore, not presented to us by the Evangelist in the midst of the doctors in the temple, at the age of twelve, either teaching or learning; but it is simply said of him, that he was hearing and asking questions. Strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God upon him, is the description of him then, as he grew up in tender years; and when a man, conversing in the world, his speech was always with grace, seasoned with salt, as of one who knew how to answer every man. What perfection and beauty suited to the different seasons of childhood and manhood!