Though a profound stranger among men, meeting nothing to attract Him, but everything to force His spirit continually to retire, yet was the Lord most accessible and full of activity; and this glorifies His life, or sets it off in great moral beauty—that, though forced, through purity, to be a lonely One, He was ever, in grace, an active One. These activities of His were spent on all kinds of persons, and therefore assumed all kinds of forms. He was brought into contact with adversaries of different characters—with the fickle multitude, with a body of disciples who (in a sense separated from the people) companied with Him, with the twelve, and with individuals. This kept Him not only in constant, but in very various activity, and He had to know (as I need not say He did to perfection) “how to answer every man.”
Individuals, who either claimed Him and sought Him, or were sought and found by Him, give us the most precious view of His activity, for they show us His dealing with the soul. It is the question of life and eternity that is discussed and settled on such occasions. It is something more than answering adversaries with fitting wisdom, or meeting the multitude in their need, or warning disciples who followed Him, or talking in the intimacy of friendship with the twelve. It is the soul that is concerned immediately and personally. Andrew and his companion seek Him—Philip is found of Him, and so is the Samaritan, and so the blind beggar outside the camp—Zacchaeus seeks Him—Matthew is called by Him; but in all these individual cases it is the soul in its quickening for eternity we see, and this gives these cases the dearest, deepest character. We hang over them with an interest which tells us we ourselves have part in them.
At Bethany, we see the Lord adopting a family scene. There He admitted such fellowship as would not have been consistent with a disallowance of the scene. He could not have been at Bethany, as we see He was, had He disallowed the affection that suits a family circle. He was as a well-known friend there, finding, as we still say among ourselves, a home in that loved house. “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.” These are words which bespeak this. He was not there merely as an invited guest—nay, nor merely as a Saviour, nor as one that had won for Himself a welcome by His sweet and profitable words. Such was seen in the house of Simon the Pharisee, in the village of the Samaritans, and at the table at Emmaus; but here, at Bethany, Jesus was as one well known—a loved and honored visitor, whose title to all that was there was understood and felt. But, though it were thus, Jesus did not interfere with the arrangements of the house. As having the title of an intimate friend, He knew His welcome at all times; yet the order of the family was not at His discretion. Martha may still be the busy one—the housekeeper. Jesus leaves things as He finds them. It was not for Him to meddle. As He could not enter the house of another unbidden, so, having entered, He would not interfere with the order He finds there. All this is perfection in its place. But, if one of the family, instead of carrying herself in her family place, will step out and be a teacher in His presence, He will then resume His higher character and set things divinely right, though He would not touch them, as I may speak, domestically.
What various and exquisite beauty! —what an archetype of all moral perfectness may be traced in this Son of man!
It is, however, happy to see kindredness in the personal beauty of the Lord and in the inwrought beauty of the saints. It is indeed true that this moral perfectness belongs to Him. It is His own—His personally; while it is theirs in and by the Spirit only. This gives, in one sense, an infinite distance between Him and them—the distance that there is between the Sanctifier and the sanctified, which is infinite. Still it is blessed to see how the workmanship of the Spirit, or the fruit of the renewed mind in a saint, is after the model or original of a mind that was in Christ; and we may see a sample of this in St. Paul, according to that which we have now been looking at in the Lord.
Paul, in his ministry, like his Master, had to do with a great variety of persons. In his preaching, he was debtor, as he tells us, “both to the wise and to the unwise, to the Greek and to the barbarian, the bondman and the freeman; and he was willing to be all things to all men, that he might by all means save some.” In his care of the churches, he had to watch all the devices of the enemy in corrupting the truth or in ensnaring the saints—to feed the soul—to warn and to exhort—to rejoice and to be sorry, according to the condition of things he found among them, and to meet all this in the grace of Him who had gone before him in this extended experience of what man was, and what the ways of the great enemy.
And Paul had his narrower circle, as Jesus had before him. He had his dear son Timothy, whose tears he called to mind, and in recollection of whom, and of his dear family, his heart could indulge itself; and he had also his loved Philippians, for whom he could “thank God upon every remembrance of them.”
And, further, like His Lord, he had his disappointments where he might have expected comforts-his discouragements when he might have looked for supports. They of Asia deserted him, and “at his first answer in the presence of the power no man stood with him.”
All this was a large field of ministerial experience, among men or in the world-among disciples or in the churches— from false brethren, or at least unfaithful ones—from the deep and various subtleties of Satan, as well as from the personal grace and fellowship of a few who were his comfort to the end.
Beyond all this, however, we see the apostle in a certain connection with a family scene, as we have already looked at the Lord at Bethany. I mean in his intercourse with Philemon; and we see him ordering himself in that intercourse in a way which may still remind us of his Master.
In his epistle to that beloved fellow-disciple, we listen to the voice of an apostle, a suitor, and a brother in Christ. St. Paul had to sustain all these characters; and he does so, not sacrificing one of them to another of them; and this is beautiful—the workmanship of the Spirit in him, as it were, after the model of Jesus at Bethany.
In the first ten verses of this lovely epistle, we hear the voice of an apostle. Paul addresses Philemon in conscious authority, as having a higher relationship to him in the faith or in the order of the house of God. He salutes him, thanks God for him, and then prays for him—as he does, ordinarily, in all his epistles, for the churches—expressing likewise his joy in the grace that was in him, as he would rejoice in the grace that was in them, as, for instance, in his dear Philippians.
Then, to the 19th verse, we hear the suitor; and in such a character Paul stands in the acknowledgment of Philemon’s rights, as a master in his own house and owner of his own possessions, as simply and as fully as if he were not an apostle. His desire as a suitor, is not allowed to take advantage of his apostleship; and this is beautiful. He who charges servants not to despise their masters because they are brethren, will not presume on the worldly rights of a brother because he is an apostle (see 1 Tim. 6). Paul makes his requests of Philemon touching Philemon’s servant Onesimus, under the sense of his title as a master, as much as any stranger, any citizen of the world could have done; and again, I say, this is beautiful. As Jesus would not interfere with family order, His servant would not trespass on family rights and possessions. He knows when to be an apostle and when to be a suitor, and how to be both in season, in the spirit of his Lord, who knew when to be the Teacher, the divine authoritative Teacher, and when to be the family Friend. The Spirit of the Master guided the servants in the steps of the Master, and we may follow Paul as he followed Christ. There is something lovely in this. The character of a suitor is not lost in that of the apostle. Apostleship is not allowed to trespass on civil rights. Paul skillfully uses his materials, and plies his reasons. That is so; but that is just what an interested suitor would do, and every suitor should be interested. This is only the perfection of the new character in which he was now speaking. He also lets Philemon know that his compliance would be obedience. This was but the integrity of a suitor to a Christian like Philemon. Paul’s skill or art in plying his reasons would have been but cunning had it not been accompanied by such integrity as this. I may, therefore, say his way as a suitor is beautiful.
And then, to the end, we listen to the words of a brother—the breathings of one who knew the grace that was in a fellow-disciple, and with confidence could count upon it and use it. “But withal,” says he, “prepare me also a lodging, for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.” Here it is Philemon’s love in the Spirit that he reckons upon, as before it had been his rights in the world he was acknowledging.
Surely, there is something excellent in all this. And one other thought on the whole epistle I would suggest s that Paul, the prisoner, in no measure grudges Philemon, the master, his comforts and possessions and liberty. No. What he had in Christ was too paramount in his heart—too commanding and occupying there—to leave room for such a feeling. But it is blessed to see this. Nay, he knew the dignity of suffering for Christ. To him it was “given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but to suffer for His sake.”