His victory was not meant to be exceptional, it was meant to be representative. It was to be shared and repeated by all those who walk in fellowship with Him. How much it means when a man is making his way through some dark forest or climbing some stiff mountainside to find the faintest sort of a trail. "Other men have passed this way," he cries, "and what men have done, men can do again."
Here is a trail of spiritual victory, reaching on and up through all manner of untoward situations! His own patient, bleeding feet marked it out and thousands of His faithful followers have traversed it in their turn. "Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can tribulation or distress or persecution or famine, or peril or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
When the long, hard, dark days come it means everything to a man to know that there is that within him which cannot go down in final defeat. His real life, his best life, his enduring life, is hid with Christ in God, and that life will yet have its way.
The earth is another place when it is seen to have a sky above it. This earthly life is another thing when it is seen to have a heaven above it and beyond it. We are saved by hope, by the hope of life abundant, life enduring, life eternal, which shines on and on, no matter how earth's clouds may come and go.
When all else seems to fail we look up and hear this young man say, "Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there ye may be. Be of good cheer, I have overcome and by My grace you will."
Here then is my case! Here is my own tribute of loyalty and affection for that young man who changed the history of the world. He did it by changing men's thoughts about God—"To us there is but one God, the Father." He did it by changing men's conception of goodness—to be good is to be like Him, simple, genuine, spontaneous, in our love and practice of the right life. He did it by changing the hearts of men from within—"If any man is in Christ he is a new creature." He did it by setting in our human sky a fixed star of hope to shine on until the day dawns and the shadows flee away.
In the face of it all how can any man of sense and conscience do less than follow Him and act with Him until His will is done on earth as it is done in Heaven!
"If Jesus Christ is a man
And only a man, I say
That of all mankind I cleave to Him
And to Him will I cleave alway.
"If Jesus Christ be God
And the only God, I swear
I will follow Him through Heaven and Hell,
The earth, the sea, the air."