Again, if you love some one, you will constantly aim to please that person. You will be considerate of his feelings, you will refrain from any conduct that might be displeasing, and strive in every possible way to be of service and help to his interests. It is none else with Christ. Consideration for Him and obedience to Him, and that as a pleasure and privilege, is a criterion of our love to Him; and this alone you will find where there is true attachment. The maiden that loves will think nothing of leaving a pleasant home to cast her lot with the man of her devotion. The mother will spend herself, unselfishly sacrifice her comfort, strength, and even life itself, for the objects of her affection, and this rule applies to the Christian sphere.—No man ever possessed true love for Christ who was not willing to lay down in sacrifice what he cherished highly. Here, then, are a few criterions, and now, with all sincerity, repeat the question once more, "Lovest thou me?" Lovest thou my Word, my house, my sacraments? Is my service thy delight? What sacrifice art thou bringing? Shall the Savior say unto thee as Delilah said unto Samson: "How canst thou say, I love thee, when thy heart is not with me?" Or are you able to say with the Apostle, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee"? May we all be brought to love and adore, with our whole, undivided heart, Him who loved us and gave Himself for us, and who is the Model and Source of all pure and ennobling lives.
But there is yet another consideration for us to weigh in the text. Peter, making threefold confession of His attachment, is three times, after each answer, commanded, "Feed my lambs," "Feed my sheep." A desperate cause, in this passage as in a few others, wants to find a proof of Peter's supremacy. There is a certain pontiff who wears a triple crown—the tiara—upon his head, styles himself Peter's successor, and seals his briefs and documents with the "Fisherman's Ring," and he affects to rule all Christendom in virtue of the right conferred on that Apostle by Christ. But in vain do we seek the scripture for any such reference, and surely no such sense is implied here. That scene on the shores of the Sea of Galilee can by no means be interpreted to mean that Peter was being exalted above his fellow-apostles. Neither could we regard it as a reproof and abasement. None other had so sorrowfully forfeited his charge as Peter had, and it was not necessary to reinstate them. Where, then, is the exaltation? Nor is there any such a sense implied in the words themselves. "Feed my lambs," is Christ's direction. Romanism, you will observe, exalts the ruling; you can see that in such words as pope, cardinal, primate, bishop, prelate, diocesan, throne, and so forth. Protestantism emphasizes the "feeding." Protestantism makes much of preaching, Rome but little. Rome exalts the clergy, Protestantism gives prominence to the congregation.
It is easy enough to decree and lord it over, it is not so easy to feed. And food is what a flock explicitly needs. It can live without edicts, it cannot live without food. Observe, also, the pronoun "my" sheep. The flock was not Peter's, it was the flock of Peter's Lord. The flock does not belong to the under-shepherd; it belongs to the chief shepherd. And did not Peter himself—and that is one reason why his letters are never read in the Romish Church—very strongly denounce the very things which it is asserted that Christ had invested him with: lordship over the Church, a separate hierarchical priesthood, and refuse such honors as are freely given to his successor? As Luther has well said: "Popery never drew its doctrine from the Bible, but uses it as a means to thrust upon the world an audacious system which has its origin somewhere else."
Nor can we leave entirely unnoticed the difference the Lord makes between His people,—"Feed my lambs," and again, "Feed my sheep." Some of Christ's flock are lambs, lambs in years. Perhaps there are more lambs than sheep, more true members of Christ in the nursery and in the Sunday-school and in the Christian day-school than in the assembly of the adults, and these we are to feed, and it becomes those who are invested with the sacred office, and those who are supporting the sacred office, to dispense to them wholesome and health-sustaining spiritual food. Our responsibilities in this respect are great, and all the greater because the more secular knowledge would crowd out religious, the many things that are now regarded needful, and set aside "the one thing needful." "Feed my lambs," and, "Feed my sheep," says the Chief Shepherd. See that they get the proper food and get it in proper proportion.
And "My sheep;" we are not always to remain lambs. Christian life is a growth. First the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. First babes, and then we need milk; afterwards adults, and then we need meat. Alas! that, like the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, we are sometimes constrained to complain "that many of you who ought by this time be teachers, are yet needing again that one teach them the first rudiments of the oracles of God, having become such as have need of milk and not of solid food."
This was a crisis in Peter's life. Hitherto he had been tended as a sheep, henceforth he was to tend as a shepherd. Having been converted, that is to say, having been turned again to his Master, he is henceforth to strengthen his brethren. What hinders us from doing likewise, pastors and teachers, educating, tending, and feeding the flock of God? This is the privilege of the laity, not less than of the ministry. When the laity really do their work, they, too, are really a ministry, true shepherds. But let us evermore keep in mind—which was the first part of our sermon—that the essential qualification, the principle of such service, as it is the only thing that will render your work delightful and carry you through all difficulties, is love to Christ, "Lovest thou me more than these?—Feed my sheep." Amen.
THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.
Neither do men, light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.—Matt. 5, 15. 16.
The religion of Jesus Christ is the religion of everyday life. He touched the common things, and, like a magic wand, they changed into the finest gold. He went into the kitchen for a text, and transfigured the meal, the dough in the bread wrought into a parable of God's working grace. He went into the garden or the woods, and found a lesson in the springing seed and the flowers which carpeted the ground. "Consider the lilies," He said in His Sermon on the Mount. He went on board the fishing boat, and the nets become a picture of the kingdom of heaven. Here, in this immediate verse, our Lord steps into an Eastern or Oriental house for a text and speaks under the illustration of an article which is to be found in every home, of a candle, or rather, a lamp.