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And
every one that hath left houses . . . for My name’s sake, shall receive
a hundredfold.
(Matthew 19:29; cf. Luke 14:26-27)
"If any
man come to Me, and hate not . . . , he
cannot be My disciple." The word "hate"
sounds harsh, and yet it is uttered by the most human of human beings
because Jesus was Divine; there was never a human breast that beat with more
tenderness than Jesus Christ’s. The word "hate"
is used as a vehement protest against the pleas to which human nature is
only too ready to give a hearing. If we judge our Lord by a standard of
humanity that does not recognize God, we have to put a black mark against
certain things He said.
One such mark would come in
connection with His words to His mother at Cana, "Woman,
what have I to do with thee?" Another would come in connection
with John the Baptist; instead of Jesus going and taking His forerunner out
of prison, He simply sends a message to him through his disciples—"Go
your way, and tell John. . . . And
blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me."
But if we could picture the look
of our Lord when He spoke the words, it would make a great difference to the
interpretation. There was no being on earth with more tenderness than the
Lord Jesus, no one who understood the love of a mother as He did, and if we
read this into His attitude towards His mother and towards John we shall
find the element of pain to which He continually alludes, that is, we have
to do things that hurt the best relationships in life without any
explanation. If we make our Lord’s words the reply of a callous nature, we
credit Him with the spirit of the devil; but interpret them in the light of
what Jesus says about discipleship, and we shall see that we must sacrifice
the natural in order to transform it into the spiritual.
All through our Lord’s teaching
that comes—"If you are going to be My disciple, you must barter the
natural." Our Lord is not talking about sin, but about the natural life
which is neither moral nor immoral; we make it moral or immoral. Over and
over again we come to the practice of pain in grace, and it is the
only explanation of the many difficult things Jesus said which make people
rebel, or else say that He did not say them.
Have we begun to walk the practical path in
grace? Do we know anything about the practice of pain? Watch what the
Bible has to say about suffering, and you will find the great characteristic
of the life of a child of God is the power to suffer, and through
that suffering the natural is transformed into the spiritual.
The thing we kick against most is the
question of pain and suffering. We have naturally the idea that if we
are happy and peaceful we are all right. "I came
not to send peace, but a sword," said our Lord—a striking
utterance from the Prince of Peace.
Happiness is not a sign that we are right
with God; happiness is a sign of satisfaction, that is all, and the majority
of us can be satisfied on too low a level. Jesus Christ disturbs every kind
of satisfaction that is less than delight in God. Every strand of
sentimental satisfaction is an indication of how much farther we have to go
before we understand the life of God, it is the satisfaction of a smug
self-interest which God by circumstances and pain shocks out of us as we go
in the discipline of life.
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