How Well Jesus Knows Us
Tn our last chapter we spoke of Jesus Christ as the soul’s trustee. As a sequel to that article, we wish now to speak of the perfect knowledge which Christ possesses of our nature and of all our necessities. When we are seriously sick, we prefer to send for a physician who not only understands his business, but who also understands our constitution and temperament and all our vulnerable points. Standing on the outside of us, the doctor ought to know as much as possible of “what is in us,” if he would attack the disease to advantage.
Jesus is the only soul-physician who deserves my perfect confidence. He “knows what is in man.’7 Not only in mankind, but in my own individual heart. As the watchmaker is -familiar with every wheel and pivot in the watch he has made, so the Divine Jesus knows his own workmanship. This is the infinite advantage which Christianity has over every other system. It submits the human soul to the Maker as well as to the Redeemer of that soul.
Christ knows full well that the deadly disease that man is suffering from is sin. His unerring word hath “concluded all men under it.7’ This is the universal malady that taints every heart, shapes every bitter word, breeds every sigh, sharpens every sword, forges every fetter, darkens every sad home, wrecks every splendid intellect that has become a power to destroy, and has dug every grave. Knowing just what the disease is, Jesus also knows that he alone can cure it. The idiotic delusion that man is capable of self-salvation finds no countenance — no, not for an instant — in all his profound and penetrating Gospel of sublime love. In this day of” advanced thought,” when liberal pulpits and presses are puffing their quackeries and proclaiming that man is capable of self-development into all the religion which God demands, what a relief and joy it is that Jesus knows just how to cure the deadly disease. For this very purpose he came to earth. “Neither is there salvation in any other.’7 With a perfect knowledge of the fatal malady and a perfect remedy for it, Christ Jesus united himself to our nature, became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and thus tasted death for us on the cross. There were two sides to my disease as a sinner. There was a curse upon me, and opposition to God within me. Jesus, by bearing the curse due to my sin in his own crucified body, took away the curse. By reconciling me to my offended God and my God to me, he took away the opposition. The old enmity gave way. The cancer was cut out; the condemnation gone; and the new condition of pardon and peace, acceptance and adoption, comes into its stead. God is in Christ, reconciling me to himself.
No longer an heir of Hell, I become an heir of Heaven. No longer a leprous outcast, I can come into my Father’s household a cleansed and accepted child, with the new blood in my veins and the new joy in my heart.
He who knew my spiritual disease, and how to cure it, knows also who of us is cured. We mayr deceive our fellow-men by claiming that we have been restored. An applicant for admission into Christ’s fold may deceive the pastor or whoever may be delegated to receive persons into church-membership. Some who are either carried away by temporary excitement or misled by false advisers may deceive themselves. But Jesus knoweth them that are his. “I know my sheep, and am known of mine.” The Shepherd can call every one of the flock by name. No putting on of “sheep’s clothing” can mislead the Omniscient Shepherd. Among the thousands in Chicago, or Boston, or elsewhere who are professing conversion
just now, it is not possible that Jesus himself shall be mistaken as to a solitary case. He reads every heart to the bottom. Not every one who “saith, Lord, Lord,” in a prayer-meeting, is truly cured; but only those who bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. Not every one who attends a “meeting for converts” is sure of a place in Christ’s fold; but they who truly follow the Shepherd. There is a solemn warning in this fact. But there is an inspiring comfort, too, in the fact that the Saviour knows every one who is saved. Not only does he know just who are in his flock, but also every thing that is in every one of them — their good points and their weak points, their besetting sins and their newly-developed graces. It is half the battle in family government for the parent to understand thoroughly his child. One boy can be led by a cotton thread; another one will break an ox-chain. The parent who is too indolent or too blind to study his children deserves the whip of scorpions which their misgovernment will yet lay on his bleeding heart. But Jesus, the divine teacher, when he takes an immortal soul under his care and into his training school, understands his pupils perfectly. He reads Mary through and through when she sits at his feet, and cheers her up by the assurance that the “better portion” is hers. In his raw inexperience Peter may brag of his loyalty loudly; but the Master takes him down by the startling announcement “before the cock crows, thou shalt deny me three times over! “Jesus detects the splendid capacities in Paul for the very foremost apostleship; but he also has a place for humble Tryphena and Tryphosa, and even a use for Dorcas’s needle. He knows just what is in every one of us, and just how much can be got out of us. This makes him not a hard master, but the most kind and considerate of employers and guardians. He never lays on weak shoulders the loads which only stronger ones can carry. All the while, too, how sweetly come the encouraging words: “My grace is sufficient for thee. I call you not my servant j I call you my friend.11
Jesus is perfectly acquainted also with all our weaknesses. He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are but dust. That poor tippler whom Brother Gough rescued from the dramshop can not understand his own frailty better than Jesus does. The battle with his old appetite is seen nowhere more distinctly than by that Redeemer who was once tempted in one way that he might succor those who are tempted in any way. The secret sorrow which I dare hardly breathe to my wife I can freely unbosom to my Saviour. Ah! how well he knows every thorn that pricks my foot and every wound that trickles its silent drops from the bleeding spirit! This is a wondrous encouragement to prayer. For my Physician never will administer the wrong medicine, and I may be sure that he never will refuse to hear my knock or my pull at “the night-bell” in the hour of distress.
This fact of Christ’s perfect knowledge of our soul’s needs and requirements throws great light on providences otherwise very dark. It explains a great many mysteries
—why one of us is put up and another put down; why one is prospered and another impoverished; why one seems to run before the breeze and another is buffeted with contrary winds. It explains why Jesus applies the lancet to some Christians who are getting too plethoric with prosperity and sumptuous fare. He is too skilful to open the wrong vein, too wise to apply the pruning-knife to the wrong vine. Dear loving Master! let him probe to the bottom, if the wound require it. He knoweth what is in me; yea, and he knoweth what ought to come out of me, if I would attain to the health and robustness of a true disciple. Better, far better the probe and the pruning-knife here than to be cast out at last as incurable cumberers of his fold. If it is a joy to me to “know whom I have believed,’7 it is equally a joy that he “knoweth them that are his.”