The messenger has reached—what is his message? It is a brief, but a beautiful one. “Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick.”
No laboured eulogium—no lengthened panegyric could have described more significantly the character of the dying villager of Bethany. Four mystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of his pen the Apostle unfolds a heart-history; so that we desiderate no more—more would almost spoil the touching simplicity—“He whom Thou lovest!”
We might think at first the words are inverted. Can the messenger have mistaken them? Is it not more likely the message of the sisters was this:—“Go and tell Him, ‘Lord, he whom we love,’ or else, ‘he who loveth Thee is sick?’”
Nay, it is a loftier argument by which they would stir the infinite depths of the Fountain of love! They had “known and believed the love” which the Great Redeemer bore to their brother, and they further felt assured that “loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the end.” Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of the loveliest types of human affection)—was at best an earthly love—finite—imperfect—fitful—changing—perishable. But the love they invoked was undying and everlasting, superior to all vacillation—enduring as eternity.
It is ours “to take encouragement in prayer from God only;”—to plead nothing of our own—our poor devotedness, or our unworthy services; they are rather arguments for our condemnation;—but His promises are all “Yea, and amen.” They never fail. His name is “a strong tower,” running into which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and bulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting nature. Among these attributes not the least glorious is His Love—that unfathomable love which dwelt in His bosom from all eternity, and which is immutably pledged never to be taken from His people!
Man’s love to his God is like the changing sand—His is like the solid rock. Man’s love is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. His like the fixed stars, shining far above, clear and serene, from age to age, in their own changeless firmament.
Do we know anything of the words of this message? Could it be written on our hearts in life? Were we to die, could it be inscribed on our tombs, “This is one whom Jesus loved?”
Happy assurance! The pure spirits who bend before the throne know no happier. The archangels—the chieftains among principalities and powers, can claim no higher privilege, no loftier badge of glory!
Love is the atmosphere they breathe. It is the grand moral law of gravitation in the heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and joy, and glory, keeping by this great motive principle every spiritual planet in its orbit, “for God is love.”
That love is not confined to heaven. It may be foretasted here. The sick man of Bethany knew of it, and exulted in it. Though in the moment of dissolution he had to mourn the personal absence of his Lord, yet “believing” in that love, he “rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying couch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond which was about so soon to be dissolved, could triumph in the thought of an affection nobler and better which knit him and them to the Brother of brothers—and which, unlike any earthly tie, was indissoluble.