No.3. “The Son Of Man Hath Not Where To Lay His Head.”
Christ Jesus was the only one who chose his own condition in the world, and his choice was adverse to all that human wisdom would have suggested. We should have said of him, as we say of ourselves, that an elevated station would afford the greater means of doing good. We should have thought a great deal about influence and opportunity, and the effect to be produced by a descent from princely greatness to a malefactor’s grave; with all the contrast to be exhibited by the way, between the humility of his deportment and the dignity of his station.
God judged otherwise—he has judged always otherwise. Whether to manifest that while the instrument is nothing, all power and all effect depend on the hand that wields it, or with intent to pour contempt on whatever seems great and glorious to us, he has never chosen the great things or great ones of this world with which to do His work, even when they seemed the fittest for His purpose. What an effect, as we should think, would have been produced, had Jesus made the throne of the Roman empire the stepping-stone to the cross, and exhibited his passion and humiliation before the delegates of the universe assembled there, through whom the report would have gone forth to every nation under heaven! But this was not what he intended: he chose his birth-place in a tributary province, distinguished indeed above every other, but with a distinction nothing thought of in the world; and he chose it not in the capital of that province, but in an inferior city; and not amongst the great ones there, but with its meanest and most unknown. All that was striking, all that was remarkable in the Redeemer’s birth, was supernatural. He deigned not to make any use of temporal signs to distinguish it from others, as if he were determined to derive no evidence of his greatness from the world, and to give it none but of a miraculous kind.
Nor was it for himself alone, that Jesus chose poverty and meanness of condition. He chose the same for companions and instruments of his work. He took his disciples from among the unknown; not that he preferred the poor because they were poor-we must beware of erecting poverty into a merit, as has been done ere now—but he preferred poverty, because he knew it to be the state in which his followers could best subserve his Father’s purposes. Doubtless he who foreknew and fore-arranged the whole, had placed in that situation those he intended to select from it—a choice as little consonant with our ideas of what would have been best, as that which he made for himself; because the sudden conversion of twelve persons of elevated station and distinguished talent would have produced a great sensation, tending much more directly, as it seems to us, to the evangelizing of the world. But God never meant to evangelize the world: he meant to call for himself a people out of it by the workings of his grace, and to this little flock to give his kingdom. He meant to send the whispers of his still small voice throughout the earth, that whosoever would hear it might be saved; but he would commend it to them by no factitious attractions, borrowed of this world’s wisdom and greatness.
It is as individuals, each one for ourselves, that we are to be conformed to the image of our Lord. He chose poverty, he chose meanness of condition, he chose to be the least of all men. Who besides him does so? Who is of the mind of Christ? There would be a remedy, if men believed that ‘they are strangers and pilgrims upon earth-travelers, whom it encumbers to have much to carry-sojourners, who have no abiding city here. This is what the Scripture says we are, but we do not think so.
It will be said, it is a needless question what we ought to choose, when we cannot choose at all. Our station in life is appointed by our Maker, and our subsequent fortunes are in his hands. But we must remember that “a man’s heart deviseth his way, though the Lord directeth his steps”; and the state of his heart may be judged by his desires, whether they be prospered or defeated. There is much in our condition that is entirely of God, and not of the will of man. I wish it were that part with which we are best satisfied. If it be an exalted station, it would be as rebellious to descend from it, as it would be from a lower to aspire to it. If it be in abundance, it would be as ungrateful not to enjoy it, as to complain when we have it not. The chief who leads an army to the battle, the insignia of nobility about him, is not to doff his dangerous distinctions, and seek for safety in the rear. Every christian should know, every one who is like-minded with his Lord does know, that distinctions are not desirable; and the more he has of them the better he knows it, whether they be talents, wealth, or name. To such a one they are not a source of pride or exaltation. I will say, for I believe it, that they are a source of humility and self-abasement. I believe a child of God, whose mind is as it should be, is never reminded of his powers or his possessions but his heart sinks within him under a sense of his unworthiness, and the deep responsibility that is upon him, testifying to himself, at least, that he did not choose it. Like most of the genuine traces of the Christian character, this is a hidden feature. Who but God would have known, had he not told it us, the different emotions of one royal bosom looking down from the ramparts of Babylon, and of another, when he asked, ‘Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house?’
But our responsibility is greater than it at first appears. The circumstances of birth are much; and constitutional differences are much; and God overrules the current of our destiny. But from the moment of our entrance into life, other agency begins to work upon our fortunes. For a while it is the parents’ responsibility, and the Christian parent does as much prove the likeness of his judgment to the judgment of his Lord, in the choice he makes for his children, as for himself; perhaps more, for he looks upon life then with its tried value full before him, and should have added knowledge to his faith. The choice of the heavenly Father for his children is the pattern by which to regulate our desires for those whose fortunes are in a measure within our influence. It rests with us to save our children from the very necessity we plead as an excuse for what our better principle condemns, by giving them simple habits, moderate desires, and a just estimate of what constitutes the greatness and happiness of a child of God, of an heir of heaven in the days of his minority; choosing a station rather below than above what they might by possibility attain.
With graphic clearness the word of God places before our eyes the two extremes of human destiny, each one in possession of his own good things—doubtless the things that in his lifetime he esteemed most good. It shows us the first Adam in the height of prosperity, lord of all that he beheld, possessed of the world’s good things, when they were good indeed, falling on the first temptation by desire for something more. And after him all who are molded in his likeness. Lot exposing himself to the sin and to the doom of Sodom, because of the rich pastures and well watered plains. Israel forgetting in their pleasant lands the lessons of their long adversity. Solomon, the Lord’s anointed, corrupting himself, in possession, with the very greatness he had been once too wise to ask. The rich man leaving Christ, because he had too much of earth to leave for him. All men, as St. Paul expresses it, seeking their own and not the things of Christ; exposing themselves to temptations, loading their consciences with sin, and piercing themselves through with many sorrows, because they will be rich, be great, be somebody, be something. On the other hand, the Scripture exhibits to us Christ, the second Adam, choosing lowliness as the fittest state in which to recover what the first in his plenitude had lost; to triumph in adversity, as he in prosperity had fallen: making himself the servant of all; and because he so humbled himself, God hath highly exalted him above every creature. And it shows us those who are renewed after his likeness, doing all the same thing. Moses preferring adversity with the people of God, to the riches and royalty of Egypt; Abraham leaving all that lie had to go out, he knew not whither; and those, of whom the world was not worthy, who held its greatness for nothing, and its wealth for dross, confessing they were strangers and pilgrims on earth.
There has been seen from that time forward the likeness of both—in the likeness of one or the other all men must be found. There are the rich and the poor, the prosperous and the afflicted, the high-born and the base, the rising and the sinking; but the line that separates these, though it were better defined than it is, could never separate the image of the first Adam from the image of the second, the lowly from the proud, the earth-renouncing from the earth-aspiring. There is a line visible from the heights of heaven, whether we upon earth can distinguish it or not. On one side of it are those who, be they what they may, would still be something more, or seem to be something that they are not; who cannot enjoy what they have because their desires exceed it, and cannot be grateful because they are not satisfied. There are those who are ashamed of a position which their Master chose, or proud of one which he refused to occupy; and, in spite of all God’s declarations to the contrary, persist in accounting the proud happy, and their end honorable.
On the other side this line of separation there are some, born indeed in the similitude of Adam, but changed by grace into the image and spirit of Christ. They have not changed their station, they are not at liberty to do so, unless God does it for them; but they have changed their mind. They have broken the scale by which this world’s good was measured, and taken the word of God to measure it by instead. Their vain imaginings have ceased, and the devices of their hearts are changed. The grasping hand is unloosed; the heart lets go its hold; the foot of pursuit is slackened. If there are none who have come to the full mind of Christ, which I cannot say there are not, that it is best to be least, and safest to be last, and happiest to be nothing, there are many who are hastening towards it, having more fear of than value for the world’s distinctions, do not admire them, do not seek them, and would rather not have them.
It is said that our position is not like Christ’s: He was God, and could not want means to do good. It is not to be supposed that he who had been partner of the Father’s throne should value the distinctions of this poor world. There is something almost ridiculous in the supposition. What should the Lord of glory want with the honors and pride of this life? The thought seems absurd—it is absurd; but what miserable pretenders then are we! How does our unbelief betray itself! Are not we, too, the heirs of celestial glory? Are we not expectants of a heavenly crown? Are we not preparing, in as short a space as he was, for a destiny so great, so blessed, that in comparison with it the distinctions and possessions of this world are really no more to us than they were to him? Are we not likewise sons’ and daughters of the Most High, too great to be exalted or debased by any condition here, or any thoughts that men may have of us?