Our Knowledge of Our Saviour
Chapter 9
“I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Saviour” (Phil. 3:8).
It is a searching question for us all to decide, whether we are making enough of our personal contact and friendship with the Lord Jesus. Undeniably it is now in a glass darkly, and very different from that face to face communion which will be possible, when earth’s curtains are drawn back; but nevertheless, there is, according to Paul, even in this life an excellency of knowledge, to obtain which he was prepared to forego the loss of all things. It would be indeed a distressing comment on the misused opportunities of our lives, if at the end, we should hear Him say sadly to us as to Philip: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?” Paul, on the other hand, was prepared to count all things but loss, if only he might gain Christ.
I. The incidents of life furnish most valuable opportunities of knowing our Lord. Perhaps it has been specially ordered and contrived for that purpose. Probably the angels, with all their opportunities, can never have such a knowledge of the Son of God, as we who have summered and wintered with Him for the longer or shorter span of human existence. In a mountainous country, we are glad to avail ourselves of the companionship of a friendly guide, who knows each step of the way which we must take. As mile succeeds to mile and we discover his practical acquaintance with every difficulty, his dexterity, and resource, we come to a knowledge of him and a faith in him, which perhaps the inmates of his household cannot possess. We know by experience how exact is his knowledge, how keen his eye, how steady his step. So, with the Saviour. At the beginning of life, we trust Him, because of what others may tell us of Him; but, as the years pass, we can say as the Samaritans of old: We have seen Him for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.” May we not go further and confess that often our Father allows our need to reach a climax of difficulty, which is absolutely insoluble by any wit or strength of our own? And then we suddenly awake, like Hagar, when God opened her eyes, and she saw the well of water that saved Ishmael’s life (Gen. 21:14-21).
It was when Sennacherib came against Jerusalem with the full equipment necessary to scale the walls, that Isaiah and Hezekiah discovered that Jehovah was prepared to be “a place of broad rivers and streams,” which would effectually prevent them from reaching the outward defenses of the city. There was no natural river – Jerusalem was built on the mountains – but the eternal God became all that a river would have been, intercepting the attack of the foe. They needed no intercepting river, since God Himself would intercept the attack by His own glorious intervention (Ps. 46:4; Isa. 33:21, 22).
It was only when Ezra, on the return of the Jews to Palestine, halted at the Euphrates, that he awoke to the peril of crossing the wilderness inhabited by robber tribes. But, in answer to his prayer, Jehovah supplied their lack of a band of soldiers and horsemen. The perils of that desert journey revealed a side of His character, which otherwise had escaped their notice (Ezra 8:22).
The sisters at Bethany would never have known our Saviour, as the Resurrection and the Life, had mortal sickness not desolated their home with their brother’s death. So, in after-years, they were thankful to have had that sorrow which led to such a revelation. Paul would never have known what Jesus could be unless he had suffered that thorn in the flesh. His sufferings provided a new angle of vision.
Do not dread the dealings of God’s providence. He is leading you by a right way. There are texts in the Bible which you would never have understood and there are provisions of grace, you would never have used, if your life had been otherwise than it is.
II. Loneliness is an opportunity for our Saviour to make Himself known. It was when the beloved apostle was alone on the isle of Patmos that he was “in the Spirit,” and the Spirit revealed the Lord. Thereupon a fellowship began which opened the way to an Apocalypse. The ancient mystics went to the deserts in order to enter on that intimacy. But a desert is not necessary. Get alone. Let the silt have time to drop to the bottom. Allow time for the glare of the world to die out from your eyes. Be still from the voices of flattery, of hatred, and of the passing hour. He that hath Christ’s commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Him, and such will be loved by Him and by the Father, and they will come to him and make their mansion with him, until one of the many mansions yonder shall be his home forever. (The same word is used in John 14:2 and 23). Thomas a Kempis says: “Shut thy door upon thee and call unto Jesus thy love. When Jesus is nigh, all goodness is nigh; but when He is not nigh, all things are hard. If Jesus speaks one word, there is great comfort. To be without Jesus is a grievous hell, and to be with Jesus is a sweet paradise. If Jesus be with thee, no enemy shall hurt thee. It is a great craft for a man to be conversant with Jesus; and to know how to hold Jesus is a great prudence.”
When, therefore, you are lonely; when, like John, on the Lord’s Day, you feel as though you were exiled from His house, when the Ægean of separation intervenes between Patmos and Ephesus, when the prayers and hymns of the sanctuary are lost in the intervening distance, remember that your loneliness constitutes a strong claim on your Saviour. He will not leave you orphaned and comfortless. He will come to you. Though you may be passing through a valley of shadow, and lover or friend appear to have forsaken, the Good Shepherd will go at your side, armed with a crook to extricate you from the pitfalls and a club to beat back your foes. He is an unfailing Friend.
III. Hours of suffering and pain yield conspicuous opportunities for a deeper knowledge of our Saviour. It has been truly said: “There is none other way to life and inward peace, but the way of the Cross.” This was specially marked in Paul’s experience. He was always bearing about in his body the dying of Jesus. Poverty, persecution, ill-health, the hatred of the Jewish party – such were the deep waters that threatened his life. But, in all he was “more than conqueror,” i.e., he carried off the spoils of war. True, he suffered for Christ, but Christ suffered with him. The Master was ever the abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life through the one Man, even Jesus Christ. So he received and so he reigned (Rom. 5:15, 17).
Do not shrink back when Jesus leads you into a dark chamber or brings you to an operating-table. One, of whom I have direct knowledge, was called to go through a severe surgical operation. He was told that it might endanger his life; and he resolved that therefore he would not employ an anesthetic, rendering him unconscious, as he desired to enter eternity, as his Master did, with an unclouded brain. When laid upon the operating-table, he was just able to look over its edge on the ground, and he saw there two pierced feet. He recognized them to be his Lord’s and knew that Jesus was standing there. So, absorbed was he with that vision, that he was absolutely unconscious of pain. In fact, he was quite surprised to hear that the operation was over. In a surprisingly brief period he recovered and was completely healed. May we not believe that that same Presence is beside our beds of pain? The martyrs would sometimes ask not to be taken off the rack of torture, because the vision of the Son of God, walking, as of old, in the burning furnace, was so real, so ecstatic, so oblivious of suffering.
The thousands of sick folk who were brought from every part of Galilee, revealed qualities in Jesus which would have remained unknown, had they not thronged Him. The leper revealed His purity; the paralyzed, His nervous energy; the dying, that He was the resurrection and the life. Each was a prism to break up the rays of color hidden in His pure manhood. So each trial or sorrow, which we share with Him, reveals, not only to us, but to the principalities in the heavenlies, some new phase of that wonderful Being who is the complement of the broken circle of our lives (Eph. 3:10). Let us dare to rejoice when the Master entrusts us with a life-long sorrow, and ever rejoice, because it constitutes a new claim upon His ever-present help. “Be thou faithful unto death, sentry, at thy post. The First and the Last is with thee. As He passed through death to an even richer life, so shalt thou.”
IV. Hours of thirst give opportunities for a more intimate knowledge of our Saviour. Had that woman of Sychar not been compelled by thirst, she would not have visited the well on the noon of that memorable day. Were it not for the imperative demand and prompting of the soul-thirst, men like Augustine would never have said that they were dissatisfied until they rested in God. If we were perfectly supplied from ourselves, we should never discover the heights, and depths, and breadth, and length of the love of Christ. There are those amongst us, who have immense capacity for human love, but have never been married, have never been loved supremely, nor have borne children of their own. They have thirsted, that they might learn, as so many have done, the personal love of Jesus.
Will not this constitute part of the blessedness of heaven? It is written: “The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their Shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life,” and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev. 7:17). Yes, even in that life, there will be need of supplies from outside of ourselves. We shall never become independent of our dear Lord. As we know, we shall follow on to know. Like Newton, we shall always feel that we are as children gathering stones on the shores of a boundless ocean. When we have explored one landscape of heaven, we shall be led to another, and yet another. We shall never be self-contained. Never able to dispense with Christ. Deep will always call to deep. Always satisfied up to our present need, but ever conscious of the awakening of new yearnings and hopes. Beloved, now are we the sons and daughters of the Almighty. We know not what we shall be, but we know that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God hath prepared for them that love Him.
V. When we are most deeply convicted of tire sin and failure of our best efforts, we shall appreciate, as never before, the purity and redeeming love of the Saviour. We recall the final beatitude of the ascended Christ, as it is given in the Revised Version: “Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right to come to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Rev. 22:14). Alas! that we need to wash them so often! It must be a more terrible thing than we realize, to be a sinner. We fail to realize what His friendship is, because this is a world of sinners, and we have never been in an untainted atmosphere, or mingled with an unfallen race. The child, born in a leper colony, cannot realize what the childhood of an untainted childhood is. We know enough to make us repent in dust and ashes, and cry, “Unclean,” as Isaiah did when he beheld the worship of the seraphim and heard them inciting each other to loftier songs. “One cried to another!” But we have never breathed untainted air or mingled with an unfallen race.
But we know enough to make our Saviour absolutely necessary for peace, strength, and salvation. We can understand what Augustine meant, when he cried: “O beata culpa!” “O blessed fault!” We dare not sin, that grace may abound, lest we open again the wounds of Calvary; but in our hours of deepest contrition, we have glimpses into the heart of Christ which unfallen beings cannot share.
After all, there is only one thing which really matters. It is “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.” The world is filled with discord and strife, with imitation and make-believes, with shams and counterfeits. In the shadows of the approaching night, it is as difficult to discriminate between friend and foe as between different shades of color. But there is no mistake about Jesus Christ. Amid all the “isms” of the present time, see that you do not lose Him, who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Possessing Him, we have the key to each of these.
That then is our last word. Whatever else has been set forth in these pages of Calvary, the Ascension, and Pentecost – all must be subordinated to the one object of knowing, loving, obeying, and glorifying Christ.
“Yes, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning,
He shall suffice us, for He hath sufficed;
Christ is the End, for Christ is the Beginning.
Christ the Beginning, for the End is Christ.”
“I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End!”