For Christ's Sake
‘‘For my sake.’’? These three little words are the touchstone of love. The application of this touchstone begins with infancy and ends only with the end of life. If that baby in the mother’s arms could speak intelligently it would say, ‘‘It is for my sake that a mother’s eye watches unsleeping through the midnight hours and her arms hold me until they are ready to drop off for weariness.’’ ‘‘ For my sake’? many a successful man acknowledges gratefully that his parents toiled and economized in order to buy books and pay college bills. ‘‘ For my sake”? provides the sheltering roof and the arm-chair for dear old grandma at the fireside. Take these three words out of our language and you would rob home of its sweetness and human life of some — of its noblest inspirations.
Our divine Master made these words the text
+ of several of his most impressive injunctions. “Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.’ ‘To newly-converted Saul of Tarsus the first message is, ‘I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.’’? Again and again the early disciples were exhorted to bear crosses bravely for Jesus’ sake. Christ came into this world to save us from our sins, and chiefly to save us from the abominable and damning sin of selfishness. The one motive that has the power to lift us out of self and to exalt life to its highest and holiest phase is heart-love for a crucified Saviour. ‘‘ Love Me more than houses or lands or wife or children,’’ is the first condition of discipleship. No soul is truly converted until it cuts loose from self-righteousness and accepts Jesus Christ as the only ground of salvation. Conversion signifies that self has grounded its arms in its very citadel and has surrendered the keys of the heart to the conquering Saviour. Henceforth it inscribes ‘for Christ’s sake’’ on its banner. The shortest and most comprehensive confession of faith
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that any Christian can phrase is about in these words: ‘‘It is Christ’s business to save me; it is my business to serve Christ.’’ “Saviour, teach me day by day Love’s sweet lesson to obey;
Sweeter lesson cannot be,
Loving him who first loved me.”
The Master never allowed the supreme test of loyalty to him to be a mere emotion, however
fervid. It was a practical test. ‘‘If ye love me, —
keep my commandments.’ Write these decisive words upon the walls of every prayer-room, to rebuke the rant and the rhapsodies in which too many windy professors indulge, while their honest debts remain unpaid and their own children sneer at the pious sham. It is not how many promises we make, but how many commandments we obey; it is not how many tears we shed, but how many sins we renounce; it is not how many sacraments we observe, but how many deeds we do for the Master’s sake, that decides
the genuineness of our Christianity. Evermore is — at more is that voice saying unto us, ‘‘ Live for me; take up this cross for my sake.’’ When we are sore tempted to an act Of retaliation or to some sharp scheme that selfishness has varnished over with falsehood, that rebuking voice accosts us: ““Wound me not in the house of my friends.”’ Sometimes a suffering servant of Jesus comes to us for a proof of sympathy that costs more than smooth words. Selfishness begins to mutter
about ‘‘impostors’’ and ‘‘no end to these calls
of charity.’’ But He who died for both of us whispers gently, ‘‘Doit unto me. He is one of my suffering children. Help him for my sake.”’ There is not a negro freedman who solicits aid for his struggling church, or a hungry stranger. who knocks at our door for bread; there is not a poor widow that asks for a dollar to pay her rent, or a neglected child running in rags and reck-
lessness to ruin for want of a friend, but ever the
same voice is saying to us, ‘‘Give to them for my sake. Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these, ye do it unto me.”’
One of the little orphan boys in John Falk’s German charity school repeated at the supper-table their usual grace, ‘‘Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest and bless the food thou hast provided.”’. A lad looked up and said, ‘‘’Tell us, teacher, why the Lord Jesus never comes.’ ‘* Dear child, only believe, and you may be sure that he will come to us some of these times, for he always hears us.’? ‘‘’Then,’’ replied the bright lad, ‘‘I’ll set a chair for him;’’ and he put one by the table. By-and-by a knock was heard at. the door. A poor travelling apprentice was admitted and asked for food and lodging. The little fellow looked at the stranger a few moments and then piped out, ‘‘ Ah, I see! Jesus could not come to-night and so he sent this poor young man in his place. Is that the way, teacher?” ‘‘Yes, my boy, that is just it. Every cup of water or bit of bread we give to the poor and hungry for Jesus’ sake we give to Him. Inasmuch as we do it to the least of our brethren, we do it unto our Saviour.”’
There are a thousand applications of this principle of self-denial for Christ’s sake. Grand old Paul had it in his mind when he wrote, ‘‘It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth or is made weak.’’ It is not easy for a true Christian to keep this text in his Bible and to keep a bottle on his table. They do not harmonize. The bottle means temptation. ‘The text means that things which are not always sinful ger se should be cheerfully given up for the sake of others; and the legal liberty of the man or woman whose heart is in the right place will never be exercised when a moral evil may flow from such exercise. We have no right to put a stumbling-block in the path of others. As a Christian I am bound to surrender every self-indulgence which works directly against the best interests of my fellow-men, especially if it endangers precious souls for whom Jesus died. This principle gives to the doctrine of total abstinence from intoxicants a broad Bible basis as solid as the Hudson Palisades.
The two unanswerable arguments against the drinking usages are these: An alcoholic beverage
oe endangers me if I tamper with it; it endangers my fellow-man if I offer it to him. My Bible teaches me to let it alone for the sake of the ‘‘weak’’ and those who stumble. Ah, those stumblers! How many wrecks the word reveals! How many tombs it opens whose charitable turf hides out of sight what surviving kindred would love to hide from memory! For Jesus’ sake and for the sake of the easily tempted who will hide behind our example, let us who call ourselves Christians put away this bottled devil which conceals damnation under its ruby glow. This subject of self-surrender for Jesus’ sake is as wide as the domain of Christian duty. To live for Christ is the sweetest and holiest life we can live; to live for self is the most wretched. Every cross is turned into a crown, every burden becomes a blessing, every sacrifice becomes sacred and sublime, the moment that our Lord and Redeemer writes on it, ‘or my sake.’?
be CONSECRATION. 107
CONSECRATION.