"Great and marvellous are Thy works,
O Lord God the Almighty;
Righteous and true are Thy ways,
Thou King of the ages."
III. WHILST GOD IS WORKING OUT OUR LIFE-PLAN, WE MUST GIVE OURSELVES TO PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE.—"Follow thou Me." The Master reiterated this command, both when He told Peter his destiny, and when His apostle was prying into secrets with which he had no immediate concern. Whatever threatens us, looming in the future, we must not be deterred from following our Master; and we are not to waste our time in speculation as to matters which lie beyond our ken, but apply ourselves to the practical duties, which lie ready to our hand.
But what is it to follow Christ? It is not to live an Oriental life beneath these Northern skies, nor wear an Eastern garb, nor speak in the Hebrew tongue. A man might do all these, and in addition wander like Him, homeless and outcast, through the land, and yet not follow in His steps. No! Following Jesus means our identification in the principles that underlay His life, in His devotion and prayer, in His absolute compliance with God's will, in His constant service of mankind, in the sweetness and gentleness and strength of His personal character. There is no path of legitimate duty into which we are called to go, in which He does not precede; for when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and His sheep follow. As of old, His disciples saw Him going before them ascending up to Jerusalem, and they followed Him; there is no path of arduous duty and suffering in which He does not still precede.
Following Christ involves almost certain suffering at first. When Peter asked what they would have, who had left all to follow Jesus, the Master did not hesitate to say that the bitter herb of suffering would mingle with all the dishes with which their table might be spread: and when James and John tried to bespeak the right and left seats of the throne, He spoke of the cup and baptism of pain. But afterward, when the cross and grave are passed, then the fullness of joy and the pleasures, which are at God's right hand forever-more!
We may follow Christ, and yet our paths diverge. Peter and John had been close friends. In them, the binary stars of love and zeal, labor and rest, action and contemplation, revolved in a common orbit. Together at the grave, in the boat, in the temple, in prison; but their outward fellowship was not permitted to continue; perhaps if it had, it would have been too absorbing. It is in silence and solitude that spirits attain their complete beauty, and so the Master is sometimes obliged to say to us, "What is that to thee? follow thou Me."
In following Jesus, with the shadow of the cross always on his spirit, Peter learned to sympathize with his Master's anticipation of death, which in earlier years had been incomprehensible to him, and had led him to say, "That be far from Thee, Lord"; and it gave him finally the opportunity of fulfilling his first resolve to go with Him to prison and to death. We often think ourselves strong to do and suffer long before patience had done her perfect work. We rush impetuously forward, and are overwhelmed. Then our Master has to lead us about, to take us round by another and longer route, to train us by toils and tears and teachings, till, hopeless of our own strength and confident in His, in our old age we cry, "I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me."
If the old legend is true, Peter was crucified with his head downward, because he felt unworthy to be so like his Lord—following Him with humility and reverence. But whatever befalls us, whatever be the nature of our experience in life or death, let it be our one aim to glorify God. "And the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that we have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, stablish, strengthen us. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."
XXXVII
Back to the Father
"And there are also many other things which Jesus did."—JOHN xxi. 25.