Discipleship
“Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, ye are My disciples indeed:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” — John 8 :3r, 32.
As soldiers, we fight “the good fight of faith;” as sheep, we follow the Shepherd; as stewards, we guard and use the treasures He has given us; as disciples, we sit at His feet and learn.
The heart-thought of the text is discipleship, and around this centre cluster its basis, its test, its fruit, and its glory.
I. The Basis of Discipleship.
It is faith in Christ. “Jesus said to those Jews who believed on Him.” It is not faith in a creed, though every word of it may be true. It is not faith in a church, though it be the church founded by Christ Himself. It is not faith in an ordinance, though established by the Lord. It is not faith even in a book, though every word of it be inspired. It is faith in a Person — the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing not about Him, but in Him, resting your hope of salvation completely on Him.
II. The Test of Discipleship.
It is twofold, made up of time and truth. “If ye continue, ye are My disciples indeed,” Time is the test that tries the soil and the seed. The seed that fell upon stony places sprang up suddenly, but in a little while withered. It could not stand the test of time. Some of these Jews, under a temporary impulse, expressed their faith in Christ. To-morrow, among unsympathetic and persecuting Pharisees, they may deny Him. Continuance is the test. Only the man who continues has really begun.
And it is continuance in the word of Christ: “If ye continue in My word, ye are My disciples indeed.” What is meant by “My word?” Only the utterances of Jesus, or the whole Word to which He subscribed? In His prayer for the disciples He said: u Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.” “Thus saith the Lord” rings through the prophets, and Christ put His name to the writings of Moses, the Psalms, and <the prophets. So that what we call the Bible may be, in a very true sense, called the Word of Christ. The tendency of the times is not to continue in that Word, but rather to criticise it; not to seek to cultivate faith in it, but rather to upset faith.
And the lack of Biblical knowledge which some of the critics show is amusing, if not alarming. I read of one the other day who said he could not accept that story about the ark: he was a dealer in lumber, and the ark was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, and if it had been filled with food and animals, it must have weighed thousands of tons. “Now,” he said, “you cannot make me believe that men could carry such a thing as that through the wilderness.” His mixture of the arks is a fair sample of the mixture of facts for which some critics of, the Bible are noted. They dip into the Word here and there, read magazine articles on it, books about it, but have never carefully and persistently studied it. May we seek to continue in the Word rather than to* criticise it!
I believe that the Bible can stand every test of honest criticism. I like to see the old Book tried by all fair methods. It can take care of itself; it needs no defenders. It has stood the onslaught of ages, and in times past its enemies were stronger than they are now. But the test of discipleship is not finding fault with the Word, but continuing in it.
III. The Fruit of Discipleship.
“Ye shall know the truth.” Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” is here answered. If ye would know truth, believe in Him who is the truth, and continue in His Word. John Newton, as he grew old, lost his memory, but he used to say, “Two things I can never forget: I am a great sinner, and Jesus Christ is a great Saviour.” Such knowledge of the truth makes a man broad and narrow. The fact that he loves spiritual truth makes him sympathize all the more with moral, scientific, and historic truth. The realm of truth is one, ruled by the God of truth. The Bible and nature belong to the same empire. But truth can never sympathize with falsehood any more than light can with darkness, disease with health, honesty with roguery, virtue with vice. There is a breadth of latter times in which many see great beauty; a sympathy with everything and a holding to nothing tenaciously. I saw a broad river the other day, 250 yards wide, running through the mountains over stones, down the cataract, eddying in quiet pools; and after a while it narrowed down to about 40 feet in width, and there it was 100 feet deep, running with the swiftness of an arrow. At this narrow place men think of building their factories; there is the place of power. And the man who would be broader than what he believes to be true loses power in proportion to his breadth. He who is willing to be as broad as all truth, and not a whit broader, will have the power that goes with truth blessed by the God of truth, i ;S Milk and Meat.
IV. The Glory of Discipleship.
“The truth shall make you free.” It does not help us to free ourselves. It makes us free. Some prisoners in Malta during a plague were offered their liberty on condition that they leave their isolated cells and nurse the afflicted. They accepted the condition, and thus won their liberty. Christ does better than that for us: He not only shows how we may be free, but He makes us free. He breaks the shackles; He issues the Emancipation Proclamation, and stands ready with the arm of His omnipotence to enforce the decree that every one who believes in Him shall be free.
Freed from what? From sin, of course, Past sins often hound us; sins never get out of date. But Jesus Christ frees us from the guilt and penalty of every past sin.
Three prisoners in a Wisconsin penitentiary escaped by digging a tunnel after the fashion of the Libby Prison tunnel. They worked on it two years, and finally at an opportune time made their escape. In the fresh, free air, they felt very happy; but in less than ten days the officers of the law had put them behind the walls again and stopped up the tunnel. Their temporary freedom did not last. But the man who has been freed by Jesus Christ shall never be brought into condemnation. His guilt has been annihilated. He stands now before God as if he had never sinned.
“Oh, for such grace let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break,
And all harmonious human tongues
The Father’s praises speak!”
Again, the truth frees us from the law. Lazarus is liberated from his grave-clothes. Love takes the place of law. A home governed by rules is apt to be a prison. A school where nobody is put on his honor, but everything must work by rule, is not apt to be well governed. Some boys have no honor to be put upon, so that they must be treated as convicts; but when the scholars love the truth and the teacher, it is safer to let love and honor rule. I read the other day of a man and his wife in Iowa, who discovered after they were i So Milk and Meat.
married that they were not happy; so they drew up a matrimonial contract, in which the wife promised not to scold or quarrel and to perform all her duties, on condition that the husband would give her for all needs one hundred dollars a month. They wrere soon in court, the husband protesting that the wife had not fulfilled her condition, and the wife charging that the husband had failed to fulfil his. The result was a suit for divorce. But you know of homes where love is law: the father rules by love; the wife is the queen of love. No law is needed, for love is the fulfilling of law. Such a home is an anthem of harmony day by day.
We are freed from ceremonial law. Men who are the slaves of sin are sometimes bound by ceremonial law. Two burglars were heard conversing during Lent. One said to the other: “Jack, I knowr where there is a safe with one hundred thousand dollars in it; let ’s crack it to-night!” “I am not the man,” said Jack, “to crack a safe during Lent. We should practise self-denial.” After Lent was over he was ready for the safe-cracking, and with no qualm of conscience. The truth as it is in Jesus frees us from law, and yet leads us lovingly to obey the law without feeling its restraint.
We are freed from habit — bad habit, if you please: the habit, for instance, of drink and tobacco. Now let us be careful. We may hurt some tender conscience. There is a difference, I think, between tobacco and alcohol, though not so much as many suppose, for much tobacco is at least one tenth alcohol. But when a man becomes the slave of tobacco, he is not very different from the slave of drink. It may not lead him to abuse his wife and children, but he is not a free man. Now, if you have ever said: “I cannot quit tobacco,” make up your mind to do it or die. Say as Mr. Henson of Chicago, when he found that he was a slave to the weed, laying his cigar on the table, said: “You black rascal, I will not serve you any longer.” The truth as it is in Jesus can free any sort of slave from any sort of habit.
Even from a good habit we sometimes need to be freed. Men may perform religious duties by routine until they become mere machines. They act not from principle. I have heard of a dog belonging to a Presbyterian elder, which went to church every Sunday, slept in front of the pulpit during the sermon, shook himself during the doxology, and walked out with a joyful expression. The old Presbyterian elder died, and a Baptist deacon bought his farm. The dog remained on the farm, went with the Baptist family to the village the next Sunday, and on arriving at the Presbyterian church he was surprised that the family did not turn in as usual, but he went in, lay down before the pulpit, slept through the sermon, went home after the service, and for five or six years, as long as his dogship lived, he kept up the habit of attending his own church. He could not be induced to change his denominational relation. There was no principle involved; it was simply the force of habit. Just as that dog went to church by force of habit, we often go through family prayers, reading the Bible, and other religious duties, in the most mechanical way. If we truly believe in Christ, continue in His Word, and know the truth, we shall be freed from mechanism. The life principle within us will work. And that brings me to say, lastly, that all this freedom must come from within, not from without. Men are to be saved by the Gospel rather than by law. The sheriff and the penitentiary can never redeem the soul. Now I believe in punishing criminals: men that break the law ought to be put behind iron bars — Christian sentiment should demand it; but the old warden of the Ohio penitentiary was right when he called his institution the impenitentiary, for he said he rarely ever turned out any penitents. The freedom of soul we seek must come through an inward knowing of the truth. It must be as fruit upon the tree of faith and knowledge. One of the master painters has left a striking picture. It represents the scene in the wilderness when the Israelites were bitten by fiery serpents. The serpent of brass is gleaming on the hill. A group of bitten, horror-stricken men and women are tearing the serpents from their arms and sides. Yonder is another group covered with serpents, bowing before Moses, and with clasped hands are pleading for deliverance; but Moses cannot help them, and other serpents strike as soon as one is torn away. But the majority of the people are looking toward the serpent of brass, and the serpents are falling off as dead from their persons. There is no need of tearing them away. The picture illustrates two methods that are prevalent: one is to save from sin by external means, tearing the evil from us; and the other is by taking into our hearts the life which develops and strengthens, and casts out the evil. That brings true liberty — the only liberty that will last. “If ye continue in My word, ye are My disciples indeed: and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”