Spotless perfection in a confused world J. G. Bellett
How perfect in all its sympathies was the humanity the Son had assumed! Surely, indeed, it was the common humanity apart from sin. There is with us a temptation, in the time of confusion, to give up all as hopeless and gone, to say, It is endless and needless to be still making a difference. All is in disorder and apostasy, why then attempt to distinguish?
But this was not the Lord's way. Being in the world He was in the confusion, but not of it just as He was in the world, but not of it. He met all sorts of people in all sorts of conditions, here some and there some when all should have been compact together, but He held His even, narrow, unsoiled and undistracted way through it all. The pretensions of the Pharisees, the worldliness of the Herodians, the philosophy of the Sadducees, the fickleness of the multitude, the attempts of adversaries, and the ignorance and infirmities of the disciples, were moral materials which He had to meet and deal with every day.
The condition of things, as well as the characters of persons, exercised Him. The coin of Caesar was circulating in Immanuel's land, partition-walls all but in ruin, Jew and Gentile—dean and unclean —confounded, except as religious arrogance might still retain them after its own manner. His one "golden rule" expressed the perfectness of His passage through all—"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”
The remnant in the day of captivity, a like day of confusion, carried themselves beautifully, distinguishing things that differed, and not hopelessly giving all up. Daniel would advise the king, but not eat his meat. Nehemiah would serve in the palace, but not suffer the Moabite or the Ammonite in the house of the Lord. Mordecai would guard the king's life, but would not bow to the Amalekite. Ezra and Zerubbabel would accept favors from the Persian, but not Samaritan help, nor Gentile marriages. The captives would pray for the peace of Babylon, but would not sing Zion's songs there. All this was beautiful, and the Lord in His day was perfect in this remnant character.
All this has a voice for us, for ours is a day in its character of confusion not unlike these days of the captives, or of Jesus. And we, like them, are not to act on the hopelessness of the scene, but know still how to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.