Luke 12:35-41
These verses, and indeed the whole chapter, show how the saints are viewed apart from this world. There was a scene around which was plotting against them. They were not to fear. “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” But there was something in it that they were to fear; they were to beware of hypocrisy (ver. 1), for all would be disclosed. The Lord presses that they should have their treasure in heaven. It is not as people often say, “Where your heart is, there is your treasure,” but, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” They were taken out of the world to serve in it; and He encourages them to have entire confidence in the care and love of God watching over them, and tells them that in God's mind and thought they were of value—of value to God. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His care. “Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” He is your Father— “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” You must trust Him. For the present they were obliged to have their loins girded. This was not rest. They were to be tucked up ready for work and service; their lights burning—, and they watching—ready for their Lord.
While that was their character in this world, there was a world that belonged to them—to the Father, and He was occupied with them about that world, though taking care of them through this. We have thus the constant abiding of His love. The Son of God has taken “the form of a servant,” and He will never give it up. He is the Lord Jesus Christ, one with the Father, God over all, blessed forever; but that gives the more force to His being a servant. He has had His ear pierced through with the awl at the doorpost. The Hebrew servant, when he had served seven years, if he said, “I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free,” became a servant forever; his ear, the sign of obedience, was bored. That is what He has done, and it is His glory—outward humiliation, but divine glory and love.
Love always delights to serve, but selfishness to be served. He is love, and He delights to serve; but if He is to serve us, He must come down low, and He comes in a love that is above everything that hinders; and the more He humbles Himself, the more I can see a love that can only be of God! It is this that is so touching in His life. He sits, weary with His journey, on the well, and says, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and” —not, who it is that speaketh to you, but— “who it is that saith to thee” (who it is that has come low enough to say) “Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” He was a divine Person sitting, talking to her, and He was her servant! He says again, “I am among you as he that serveth.” He was their only Master and Lord, but being above all, He has the privilege of taking the title of servant; and having refused to go out free, He has taken this place of serving love, forever. It is His glory, and has nothing to do with His Godhead, except to show His unutterable grace.
We find in Phil. 2 His coming down to take this place. “He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.” He served God; served us too in grace. He took the place in willing love. “Lo I come to do thy will, O God.” And He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He lays the form of the glory of Godhead aside (Godhead He never could lay aside), and thus we find His perfect, infinite love. Where should we have been if He had not taken the form of a servant? Lost forever. But there was love enough in Him to come to this place. He goes to death, and there I find the power of divine love in His service. Nothing stopped it; Satan's power was there; man's bitter and base ingratitude, as He says in that beautiful fiftieth of Isaiah, “When I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer?” He goes on; “Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke, I dry up the sea,” etc. As Jehovah—God—He did as He pleased. He not only did miracles Himself; but what proved His divine power much more, He gave others power to do them. “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to my Father” (John 14:12).
He is working in that perfectness of love in this world, and nothing stops it at all. “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” I have not ceased to be Jehovah, but I have taken the place of a servant, to take up every sorrow you are in. And see the return—men found it an occasion to reject Him! “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” Nothing stopped Him—death did not stop Him. He came to die; and felt what it was to die as none of us can; for He has taken the sting out of it. He came to be “made sin,” and felt how dreadful it was; for He was holy. He came to bear the wrath, and felt what it was; for He knew His Father's love. Desertion was there and betrayal, and the cup He had to drink was there. He felt it all; but in it all, divine love was there to serve and go through it, to serve us wretched sinners.
There was the power of divine love when everything was gone (for God had forsaken Him), except bitterness and death, Satan's power, and the wrath of God. There you get divine love, and service too. It is a divine power and a power of love to us—to His Father, but to us too—a power that carries Him through everything when everything was against Him; divine love that made Him serve through it, till it was finished. There I adore the love that led Him to be made sin for me. There was the full testing of the love that carried Him through all. It is deeply instructive, though very dreadful to see there what man is. What do I expect of my friends if I am on trial? At least that they will not forsake me. They all forsook Him, and fled! In a Judge? I expect him to protect innocence. Pilate washes his hands of His blood, and gives Him over to the people! In a priest, what do I expect? That he will intercede for the ignorant and for them that are out of the way. They urge the people, who cry, “Away with him, away with him!” Every man was the opposite of what was right, and that one Man was not only right, but in divine love was He going through it all!
First, I get Him serving me in His life; then, when He served us in death, in spite of ourselves (for man was against Him), there He was alone, all forsook Him, and God hid His face from Him. He went into the desert (Mark 6), and had no time to eat, but when the people come He ministers to them; “He could not be hid.” If He is in agony on the cross, there is a poor thief to be attended to. He tells him, “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” If He sits weary on a well, and a poor wretched woman comes, He waits on her. All through He takes the sorrows of human nature—weariness, hunger; but with a heart that never was weary when a service of love was to be performed; a Man who does not shrink from all the vileness and wretchedness of the world; a Man in all the perfection of holiness, carrying divine love to serve every need! It was, what was divine, in a Man who took the lowest place, and there is nothing like it. It is most sweet and blessed to see it, and to see He had no will of His own in it. When they tell Him, “He whom thou lovest is sick,” we should have thought He would have started off at once. No, He abode two days still where He was, He had no commandment from His Father. We see it was to show His Godhead. Still, as a servant, He had no word, and He did not stir. It seemed very hard. His home, if He had one on earth, was that house at Bethany. You never find Him going out of the place of a servant, and He was never anything but the perfection of love in it. That service He took, and performed, and finished; and now His service [here] is over, and He is going to glory (Luke 12).
In John, where we find more the divine side than the servant's side, He shows that His going to the Father does not change His service, save the character of it. He is not serving among men, but He is serving His people up there. When He was going away, there came the thought that now He is in the glory His service is ended. That would not do for His heart. He says, In the glory I am not going to stop serving those poor things. Could His heart stop serving them? No, it could not! He is the Advocate, as we find in the Epistle of John (1 John 2:1), and this is not in the world. He does not take it up till He goes to heaven. How could a heavenly person know the sorrows, temptations, and trials of us poor sinful beings? He comes down here, sinless of course; and, after being acknowledged by the Father, He is led of the Spirit to be tempted in the wilderness, because we were there. As soon as He has given the pattern of the place in which we are by redemption (Matt. 3:16, 17), He says, I must go there; and He is led of the Spirit (we are often led by other things) into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Now (John 13) He is going to glory, having so glorified God here as to have an earned place there, as well as having a rightful one there—an official place as well as a moral one. The world will not have Me. I cannot stay here with you. You cannot have rest here—it is polluted. I can serve, but not rest here. He must go up to God, I must go on serving. He says, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” I cannot have part with you in this sinful place, and I must fit you to have part with Me on high. Though we are washed so as to have part with Him, we pick up dirt by the way; but He is our Advocate and is still serving. He brings the heart to be humbled and broken at having dishonored His name, and it is restored. His blood is on us, but He is still washing our feet. I must make you clean according to my idea of cleanness. That is what He is doing now. It is blessed love, but it is service. Is He going to give up this satisfaction of His heart in serving us (it makes us adore Him)? He is not going to give it up, and never will. He is a Man, and a Man forever; that is what we learn in this chapter. Yet He is more than that, for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
There is one thing new for God, and what He only could do—to come down a Man here. No angel could do it; but God could come down, acting in divine supremacy and love. I cannot take the form of a servant, for if I am not a rebellious sinner, I am a servant. (I may have got into rebellion as one—that is another thing). A divine person can “take” on Him the form of a servant, and that is what He has done.
He says, “Let your loins be girded.” Here I am in the middle of a world that says, “Tomorrow shall be as yesterday, and yet more abundant.” I am to be expecting Christ; the world goes on (He alone knows how long); but “the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night; for when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” That is the character given it. “As in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man.” (There is sin, and still more now, but that is not the point). I believe this—not that it is the portion of believers—and so must have my loins girded. I cannot go on loosely with a world that is not going on forever. There ought to be a better motive the heart drawn out to Him. Oh, if it were only that! They go on saying, “Tomorrow shall be as yesterday,” etc., and yet terror is in their hearts; for there is uncertainty —nothing to reckon on for a day, or a week, or a year. He calls all Christians to take their places with their lights burning the distinct, unequivocal testimony of what they are, carrying their lights as servants, and not going on with a careless world that is basting to judgment. You cannot say how soon it may fall. The saints will be with the Lord before then. Can you say that it is the first thing the Lord will do—take you up in the air, to be forever with Himself? Can you tell what day He is coming? Are you ready for Him? You do not know what hour He is coming.
I believe it is hastening on rapidly. The saints were converted to wait for God's Son from heaven; and when they lost that, all the mischief came in. It is their character—not a bit of knowledge that is stuck up as a chief thing in teaching, but—that is what you are to be. If you were constantly waiting for Him, would it not change you? Finding duties to do, and doing them—quite right; but would people be heaping up money or treasures when they know He is coming? They enjoy themselves while they can, and then comes death, and they hope it will be all right. If you are expecting the Lord and ready to open to Him, it gives a character, “Ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord” like a man that has his hand on the lock of the door, “that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.” The Lord keep us in that readiness of condition and heart as servants waiting! That is our present condition when the Lord is not [yet] come. You cannot float down the stream of the world that is going to the ocean of judgment! You are to be looking for Him. If, by His first coming, I have been saved and justified, I look for Him to come again, that I may be where He is. Here we get what the believer's portion is who is waiting for Him.
[J. N. D.]
(To be continued)