The Hands of Christ
OUR Divine Jesus becomes vastly nearer to us and dearer, too, when we think of him as a fellow-man. He was made like unto his brethren. This is the great mystery of godliness: but none the less true because it is too deep for our fathom-lines. He became actual flesh and blood, and his baby-lips drew milk from a mother’s breast. His feet trod the rough roads of Galilee, and his weary head was laid on the hard plank of the fishing-boat when he dropped asleep. His eyes looked upon guilty Jerusalem until the tears came, and looked upon guilty Peter, too, until his tears came. His hands were ever busy, from the time when they handled the axe and saw in Nazareth until they were pierced with the ragged nails on Calvary. Of these hands we read very often, and there are some precious lessons which they hold out to all his disciples to the end of time.
(1.) They were working hands. In the Songs of Solomon they are poetically described as like “gold rings set with the beryl” but they were actually the roughened hands which drove the chisel and swung the axe. What a divine dignity our Lord puts upon honest toil; and what a silent, stinging rebuke upon the upstart insolence which counts manual labor a menial degradation. In all God’s universe there is no room for that moral monster, an idle man. “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” It was a steady industry with Jesus that accomplished in a short three years such an amount of travel and preaching and healing of the diseased. Of all he said and did only a small portion has been recorded. What a sweep of work those hands performed — from lifting a corpse into life and touching a leper into health down to the lowly office of washing the feet of eleven poor sinners.
(2.) A very beautiful office was performed by our Master when he took a group of children up into his arms and “laid his hands upon them7’ and blessed them. What virtue went out of that holy touch into those young hearts we can not tell. We have often longed to know how those children turned out in after life and what gifts that divine benediction brought them. Tradition says that the brave martyr Ignatius was one of the little fellows who sat on the lap of Jesus and felt the pressure of the almighty hand. Precious Saviour! come in spirit and lay thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf. It is a grievous sin that we fathers and mothers do not with actual faith bring our children to Jesus, that he may lay upon them that mighty influence which alone can keep them from the Devil’s clutch. Either Jesus or Satan must have our children. Upon us parents too often hangs the deciding vote. A large portion of Christ’s miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will he not do for our children’s souls what he did for the bodies of the ruler’s daughter and the dead youth at Nain?
(3.) What power too was there in the hold of Jesus’s hands. One strong grasp lifts the sinking Peter out of the depths. So my dear Lord caught me when I was sinking toward Hell by the gravitation of my own guilt. So has he often lifted me out of trouble when the waves were ready to strangle me. The tighter I clung the safer I felt. At the moment when I let my whole weight hang upon his arm the responsibility for my salvation passed up from me to the Omnipotent Jesus. The assurance of my ever reaching Heaven hangs upon this golden promise: “None shall ever pluck them out of my hands.” Observe that this does not say that I may never play the fool and wickedly slip away into abominable backsliding. It does not say that I may not pettishly push away that hand when it is correcting me, or strike it when it is giving me bitter medicine. It does mean that while I remain in Jesus’s hands, true and humble and faithful to him, all the devils of the pit can not wrest me out of that grasp of love.
“Lord! I would clasp thy hand in mine, Nor ever murmur or repine; Content, whatever lot I see, Since ’tis thy hand that holdeth me.”
There is one precious promise suggested just here which we often misquote. Our Lord’s assurance is: “Behold! I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.” He does not say that our names only are written there. We are there — our persons, our case, our wants, our works, and every thing that concerns us. Jesus has taken us into his hands. Can I forget what I have graven upon my palms? Neither can our Master forget us or forsake us. Where the hands go, I go. Nor will he lose his hold until he leads me to the everlasting fountains of water in glory. (4.) Those hands which thus hold me were pierced for my redemption. The prints of the nails are there. Those wounded hands bore my guilt in the hour of atonement. Out of them flowed the atoning blood. He bids me ‘’reach thither my fingers and behold that hand, and be not faithless but believing.” It is the Jesus of Calvary that saves me. Nor does his work end with the sacrifice he made for us on the cross. Paul tells us in that magnificent eighth chapter to the Romans that “it is Christ that died — yea, is risen again; who is at the right hand of God and maketh intercession for us.” There he stands as our Advocate. He lifts up his hands for us. He pleads our cause. Like the wounded Roman hero who came before the Senate and held up the stumps of his arms in mute appeal for an imprisoned brother, and gained his suit, so our Elder Brother pleads for us with the pierced hands that bled on the cross.
These are a few of the thousand sweet and strengthening lessons which the hands of our Divine Redeemer bring to us. Let us kiss them with reverent love. Let us lay ourselves within them. Let us dismiss all coward fears and devilish doubts while “his left hand is under our heads and his right hand doth embrace us.7’