Love to the Uttermost / Expositions of John XIII.-XXI.

by F. B. Meyer

When a missionary, with ample means and loving friends, deliberately spends among squalid and repulsive conditions, the precious years which might have been passed among congenial society and luxurious comfort in the homeland; chooses a lot from which nature inevitably shrinks instead of that to which every conclusion but one points, and stays at his post, though his return, so far from being resented, would actually be favored by all whose opinion is of weight—this is a voluntary submission to the evitable.

When a home pastor stays by his poor flock because they need him so sorely, and sets his face toward grinding poverty and irksome toil when the city church invites him to a larger stipend and wealthier surroundings—this again is a voluntary surrender to the evitable.

When a wealthy bachelor is willing to forego the ease and quiet of his beautiful home in order to welcome the orphans of his deceased brother, who might have been sent to some charitable institution or cast on strangers, that they may be beneath his personal supervision, and have a better chance in life—this again is voluntary submission to the evitable.

In each such case, it is not inevitable that the cross should be borne, and the hands yielded to the binding thong. The tongue of scandal could hardly find cause for criticism if the easier path were chosen. Perhaps the soul hardly realizes the kindredness of its resolve with the loftiest that this world has seen. But it is superlatively beautiful, nevertheless. And let it never be forgotten, that nothing short of this will satisfy the standard of Christ. No Christian has a right to use all his rights. None can claim immunity from the duty of seeking the supreme good of others, though it involve the supreme cost to himself.

II. THE RECOGNITION OF GOD'S WILL IN HIS PERMISSIONS.—In the bitter anguish which had immediately preceded the arrest, our Lord had repeatedly referred to His cup. "If this cup," He said, "may not pass from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done." The cup evidently referred to all the anguish caused to His holy nature in being numbered among the transgressors, and having to bear the sin of the world. Whether it was the anguish of the body, beneath which He feared He would succumb, as some think; or the dread of being made a sin-offering, a scape-goat laden with sin, as others, or the chill of the approaching eclipse, which extorted the cry of forsakenness, as seems to me the more likely—is not pertinent to our present consideration. It is enough to know that, whilst there was much that cried, "Back!" there was more that cried, "On!"—and that He chose from the profoundest depths of His nature, to do the Father's will, to execute His part in the compact into which they had entered before the worlds were made, and to drink to the dregs the cup which His Father had placed in His hands.

But here we note that to all appearances the cup was mingled, prepared, and presented by the malignity and hate of man. The High Priests had long resolved to put Him to death, because His success with the people, His fresh and living comments on the law, His opposition to their hypocrisies and pretensions had exasperated them to madness. Judas also seemed to have had a conspicuous share in his discovery and arrest. Had we been left to our unaided reasonings we might have supposed that the most bitter ingredients of His cup had been supplied by the ingratitude of His own, the implacable rancor of the priests, and the treachery of Judas; but, see, He recognizes none but the Father—it is always the Father, always the cup which the Father had given.

There had been times in our lives when we may have been tempted to distinguish between God's appointments and permissions, and to speak of the former as being manifestly His will for us, whilst we suspended our judgment about the latter, and questioned if we were authorized in accounting them as being equally from Heaven. But such distinctions are fatal to peace. Our souls were kept in constant perturbation, as we accounted ourselves the shuttlecock of rival powers, now God's, now man's. And we ended in ruling God out of more than half our life, and regarding ourselves as the hapless prey of strong and malicious forces to which we were sold, as Joseph to the Ishmaelites.

A deeper reading of Scripture has led us to a truer conclusion. There is no such distinction there. What God permits is as equally His will as what He appoints. Joseph tells his brethren that it was not they who sent him to Egypt, but God. David listens meekly to Shimei's shameful words, because he felt that God allowed them to be spoken. And here Jesus refuses to see the hand of His foes in His sufferings, but passes beyond the hand which bore the cup to His lips to the Father who was permitting it to be presented, and reposed absolutely in the choice of Him of One who loved Him with a love that was before the foundation of the world.

Oh, sufferer! whether by those strokes, which, like sickness or bereavement, seem to come direct from heaven, or by those which, like malicious speeches or oppressive acts, seem to emanate from man, look up into the face of God, and say, "My Father, this is Thy will for me; Thine angels would have delivered me had it been best. But since they have not interposed, I read Thy choice for Thy child, and I am satisfied. It is sweet to drink the cup which Thy hands have prepared."

III. THE DEEP LAW OF SUBSTITUTION.—Some of the rabble crowd had probably shown signs of a disposition to arrest some of Christ's followers. He, therefore, interfered, and reminded them of their own admission, that He was the object to their midnight raid, and bade them allow these to go their way. Is it surprising that the evangelist generalizes this act, finding in it an illustration of His Master's ceaseless interposition on behalf of His own—that of those whom the Father had given Him He should lose none.