-28. The Lord answers the question now proposed, " Lo, we have left all and followed Thee, what shall we have? " " There is no man who has left house," etc., " on account of me, and on account of the Gospel, that shall not receive an hundredfold " in kind even (the Lord in this omits " wife "; there is no promise to give him back this-this stands on other and its own ground) in all the comforts and kindness, and peace, and enjoyments which belong to Christians as such here, with persecutions as from the world, and in the age to come eternal life. Yet there is no mere human standard of purchase as it were, or recompense. There are many who seem to take the lead, and do externally, who shall be last, and last apparently for a time who shall be first. The expression " mothers " shows that it is not in a mere natural sense, yet it is, in the counterpart, enjoyment of actual present things, finding in the Church what really fills the gap an hundredfold, made by these breaches. But, though in love to Christ and the Church, there may be infinitely more than an hundredfold for sacrificing wife, yet that is never made up in counterpart. There is not that made up in the actual enjoyments of the heart in the sources of happiness around, that may perhaps make the sacrifice more blessed, because Christ alone can make it up, but the other thing is not, though that may be more than verified. But in all other things, though with persecution, there is a positive more than making good in all that draws out, and fills up, and satisfies, and enlarges the affections in the relations with all around, besides the world to come, which seals it all with blessing and joy. " But there are first," etc. This encouragement was graciously given to us all, when the effect of the Gospel was stated, and brought to light indeed in the rejection of the Savior. Such was the portion of the Savior. He had now fully brought it out, and indeed they had seen how He had been treated and rejected at the seat of the nation's judgment and authority. He had also put it before them, and hence pressing on them the way He was to be treated; and what position He stood in towards the nation, and how He was rejected indeed, and what man was, shown too in Elias.
-30. Does not this imply, as other passages, that Christianity is not an aion (age)? For " the world to come " is, I apprehend, the millennial state.
-32. " And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem," where His glory was to be cast down to the ground; " And Jesus was going before them," conducting them there; " And they were astonished," how He could lead them thus on to the very destruction He had declared; " And they, following, were afraid." This very courage which led straight on to predicted oppression and disaster, frightened and terrified them; it is its natural consequence, for the flesh shrinks from what is so inconsistent and contrary to its natural feelings. There is something that terrifies nature, because it is what we call unnatural, and to see One in our nature do it distresses us. But the Lord led calmly and peaceably straight on. He knew why, and where, and to what end He was going, and, in patient determination of love and obedience, steadfastly set His face to go there. The Lord, seeing their terror, knowing their condition, speaks openly to them of it all-does not leave them in their affright, but calmly explains all that was coming. His soul was at peace, and able to care, and caring for them, and relieve them by talking to them of it as a clear and settled purpose. And the explanation was clearer, and fuller, and more intimate than before. Before this it had a character just relative to the position they stood in, to the character in which He had just been revealed, as for example, the Transfiguration. But now it was the full detail, on the guilt of the nation, not merely the fact as regarded His glory, but their conduct; this might be now openly exposed, for they had now really rejected Him, and the Apostles felt their position as to this, and therefore it was right to explain it all to them as it stood in the knowledge of the Lord's mind. " Taking the twelve again to Him, He began to tell them the things that were about to happen to Him-that, lo, we go up to Jerusalem." This was what was the source of their fright, when they were silently following Him in the way. This, says the Lord, is my account of the matter. " Lo, we do go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and scribes "-all this is coming-" And they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles. And they shall mock Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him "-treat Him with every possible indignity-" and they shall kill Him; and after three days He shall rise again." The whole case was now before them, thoroughly weighed by and known to the Lord. Jews and Gentiles were alike to take their own appropriate evil in the dreadful act of man's accomplished rejection of Him, already true in spirit. And the third day He was to show His victory over all the evil they were instruments of. Everything was perfectly weighed. He calmly surveyed, set about, and could communicate it all. Such was the divine counsel. Resurrection was the grand remedy and power of blessing. All the now proved evil had not escaped God's eye. This was the course to be taken. It was most important, too, as laying the foundation of their faith and understanding, when He did rise from the dead. Nothing could be plainer, calmer, and more apposite, or more in facts needful to be communicated. Just a sentence upon all that was in man, in every character, Jew or Gentile, religious, or in power.
-35. Note the terms of this request, as a warning as to the frame of man's spirit " We would " (thelomen, will). There was no faith in this, though perhaps it was formed on what they had verbally heard of the limits of faith; it was strange request. But let us judge ourselves in spirit, not making the Lord and His glory mere servant to our will and unholy presumption. Let us also learn not to judge others. " He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him."
The evil, even of the saint's nature, had yet to be manifested in relation to His position in glory, when owned even, which passed by all the solemn and affecting truths just that moment presented, and which ought to have changed, could mere truths and facts do it, the whole position of the human heart. It was really the discovery of its irreparable badness, even when there was an acknowledgment of the glory, the humiliation, and the deep grace in it; and the ruin of man, of themselves, it disclosed, was entirely unfelt and unentered into- took no effect whatever on their heart; they were totally dark and blind to it. Man's heart is so. It must be partakers of them by the Holy Spirit to know them. It is a true portion of the saints that, if we keep the Lord's words, we may ask what we will, and it shall be done unto us. But here was the seeking their own exaltation in His glory, and that in the very face of the testimony of His humiliation. There was the appearance of faith, for it assumed His glory, and that He would be exalted, though He was just speaking of His humiliation. They say that whatever they ask He should do it. This is just the form of faith and promise; yet it was the pure spirit of self-exaltation, re-proved, and the very contrary to the Spirit of Christ. It did not enter into His humiliation, nor was really identified with Him, and sought its own glory, assuming, as we have said, withal the character of faith in His glory, flattering the Lord (had He been susceptible of anything of the kind) at the moment of His trial-a work really of Satan from beginning to end; and the form which the spirit of the world or self-exaltation takes in the saint under a spiritual giver-a suitable occasion for the flesh to make such a request, but the greatest, real insensibility. The Lord, however, in the patience of grace, His own soul now dwelling on what He was going to pass through, still presses this: " Ye know not what ye ask." And the deep self-humiliation, or rather the taking and keeping as His, the low place in which for our sakes, in the manifestation of the divine glory, He had set Himself.
-38. " Ye do not know what ye ask." Note the way to the Lord's glory necessarily. The snare, to our evil hearts, would have been to have taken the occasion to show that though humbled, we had a real title to glory; that it was all voluntary, our own doing, carrying the love of it in our hearts, though we might have relinquished it. But He, whose glory really was what He did, He did in perfectness. What we give up is false, though He may accept the sacrifice. What He laid by was true, and He humbled Himself truly; He had a cup to give them to drink-at least He could lead them to the drinking, it, He could lead them to this consequence, and tell them they would have that. But He professed no conferring of favors in His Kingdom. All moral perfectness He had, and this the rather from this very position, for what is true claims not itself outwardly thus-that is, of the world. He came as His Father's Servant, and that place He perfectly held. " To sit on my right hand and my left, is not mine to give, but to those for whom it is prepared." I am a Minister of accomplishing a given work. I can lead you in the renunciation of all things of life. ' I have a cup to drink, and you shall drink of this cup of self-sacrifice and death. But it is in the spirit of perfect submission and nothingness, that the Father, and He only, may be perfectly glorified. Nothing could exceed the admirable
perfectness of this reply, not in mere statement of principles, but in the blessed silent (yet far more eloquent) expression of it in His own conduct. I know not a more beautiful expression of our Lord's perfectness in humiliation, and abstract perfection in the place He had taken in which alone God could be perfectly glorified. How different from " Ye shall be as gods." As the first Adam exalted Himself to be as God, so the Second humbled Himself entirely (even to the death of the Cross) that God, in all His character, supremacy, and glory, might be completely, and finally, and altogether glorified. How fully He emptied Himself, and, just because Himself, never ceased to exist! Therefore the emptying was always absolutely perfect.
Then how blessed, as to the suffering, " The cup that I drink, shall ye drink! " Oh, what a privilege to follow Jesus, let it be ever so feebly! And all through grace, and so only blessed too. Yet in that in which He exhibited His own divine perfectness, not merely to follow but to be with Him in it- for we are not speaking of atonement here, but of suffering in it, not the cause or effect of the cup, but of His Spirit in drinking it, in which we have the privilege, according to our measure, of the sufferings of Christ abounding in us. Glorious privilege! And filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ, for His body's sake, the Church, and having all, in the certainty of His love, to His glory, and the Father's in it, knowing it is of grace in us, in Him of His will. Yet, in the perfect subjection of that will, suffering in the flesh. " For he that hath suffered in the flesh, hath ceased from sin," whereas the exercise of the will of the flesh is always sin; the subjection of it in suffering for God always righteousness, and, in Christ, being by His will intrinsic righteousness, in us conferred grace; compare Psa. 40 Through the truth, looking at this in communion as an object, we are sanctified.
In these thoughts of the flesh in the two brethren, we have first their own will which Christ did not take, and then their assertion of their own power to go through all He had to accomplish or pass through. This is drawn out by the expression of the Lord in the now consciousness of His approaching sorrow, for He was rejected: " Are ye able to drink the cup," etc., " and be baptized with the baptism " of death in all its weight of suffering, to rise again? They, equaling themselves with Him, say: " We are able." The Lord, in His wondrous grace, equals them with Him by grace. He does not 'say:
" Ye are indeed able," but " Ye shall indeed drink." As we have said, " Ye shall indeed suffer with me "; the reward of glory I leave to the appointment of the Father-it is not mine to give, but to whom it is prepared. The indignation of the ten was, if not so deliberate, not much less the flesh than the wish of the two. It was founded on the same feeling of being first or last. The Lord therefore calls them all, and reminds them this was a Gentile practice, the spirit of the world. It had, in a sense, been forbidden, even among earthly Israel. But here all was contrary, " Whosoever would be great " " among them should be " their " servant." They were a people quite separate, separated by the gulf of death and the Cross from the world; to be great there was out of question, but among them it was to be all different. " He who would be great should be their servant." And in very deed so it is; the lowest is the first in Christianity. Whoever wished to be first should be servant of all. It fulfills itself in the dispensations of God; for this indeed was the very errand of the Son, to come and act on His own principles-of love-in the midst of the world, and not to mix Himself with it, and fall in with its ways. He came in the power, and new principle of love, " to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." He it was they were to follow. Nothing could be simpler, for they were quite a separate people. The darkest sense of need was more to the purpose, in calling out the true and unfailing power of Christ, never failing and never wearied by man's wretchedness, in the effecting the works of divine mercy. And if the Lord came that they which saw might be made blind, He came that they which saw not might see. This poor blind man, in the sense of need, cries for mercy, owning Jesus honestly as the Son of David, less apparent faith than those who spoke of His glory that they might have it for themselves-grace, the grace of the Lord had prepared this man's soul for this occasion, and now the occasion occurred, for God works where we know not. But he was seeking the supply of his wants in the acknowledgment of Jesus' glory. The world rebuked him, but he was in earnest, he wanted the blessing, and he sought it. This man knew what he asked for-the sense of our wants is true knowledge (in asking). On the cry: " Have mercy," Jesus at once stood, and proposed, to this cry of need, the very thing which He had reproved and set aside in the two brethren: " What wilt thou that I should do unto you? " So different are the same words in the mouth of unbelief, a carnal, sordid, selfish claim, and in grace. " What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? " And he received all he desired, and used it to follow Jesus. How different from using the plea of His glory, merely to exalt ourselves! Followed the Lord in simplicity, where the disciples were astonished, and followed trembling!
Jesus was now entering by this ancient port of Israel-the sign of God's favor, and the nation's refusal of judgment in its rebuilding-the door of hope to rebellious and apostate Israel. Here He is first acknowledged King, the Son of David, by the blind receiving, in the sense of their misery, sight from Him. The nation's dealing in respect of this title remains to be seen. This was the blind seeing, Israel's true restoration and hope; for who was blind as His servant, seeing many things and observing not? Here the Remnant followed Him- this poor blind man, the first herald of the King of mercy, the Son of David, Jesus.
40. " To give; but " (save) " to those for whom it is prepared." For this use of alla (but, or save) see chapter 9: 8. What profound humiliation! To suffer all, but not to have, as it were, a place to give away in His Kingdom! And to avow it! But this is spiritual. He came to glorify His Father, and He was perfect. There is something exquisitely beautiful in all this in the life of Christ, and they are eternal principles.
45. He sets the example-" to serve." There is glory in what follows. But what self-devotion it is not " to give," as it were, as rich, but " His life "! It was what He had to give for sin; but what a gift!
48. We must look for rebukes in the exercise of faith. It seems to them troublesome and unreasonable; for why? They have not the same spiritual urgency, but true faith. " He cried much more." And the Lord will stop, though man would not; and their minds will be changed then, when they see the Lord has regard to the cry.
51. Compare verse 35. This is ever the Lord's word to faith. I suppose faith ever runs parallel with the Lord's will, for faith has its operation in the power of that kingdom which is the fulfillment of the Lord's will; when the request flows from our own will therefore, it cannot be the prayer of faith, and is a mere subjection of God and His counsels to our fallen wills. Accordingly, " We know that whatsoever we ask
according to His will, He heareth us." And I am persuaded this knowledge of the divine will and faith run proportionally. It is (not knowledge properly but) in fact the knowledge of faith, and where there is the inquiry of faith, short of the apprehension of the will of God, we pray in truth in implicit subjection to His will, looking for that increase of the Spirit which shall enlighten us in power of conversation. Our personal necessities, however, may, even in this subjection to the divine will, be brought before God; when there is genuine trust in Him, we propose ourselves for mercy. The " What wilt thou " is God's part; the " We will " comes quite wrong from us, and marks want of trust or acknowledgment of the need first of mercy, and we generally, in such case, " know not what " we ask. And hereto the word of man, besides the willingness, applies " Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst," and the Lord said: " I will, be thou." The point we should practically inquire into is, Is our will concerned, or is there simple-hearted reliance upon the wisdom, and acknowledgment of the righteousness of the divine counsels and will? If it be our will, we may judge it (and this includes our judgment) to be at variance with the divine counsels, and injurious to our own peace, though it may, as the two disciples had, have a reference generally to, and seeking strong acknowledgment of the object of faith. However, there is a distinction between doing this in ignorance and misled perhaps by others, as here, and willfully as in the Jews in the wilderness. In the latter case, I conceive the object will be found ever present and personal, and to be real distrust, and love of present gratification.
But the exact coincidence of the language of the two disciples, and the Lord's subsequent promise, John 14:1313And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:13), and chapter 15: 7, connected too with our Lord's words in verse 3 leads us to the true source of this deeply interesting question. But the just weighing of the several passages in the Gospel of John, fully opens this comprehensive, and all important truth to our souls.
-52. See the fruit, when the faith is genuine. The Jew, who recognized the Son of David so coming, received his sight, and followed Jesus to better, perhaps more sorrowful things, but in His triumph speedily in His time.