Consider Christ

Hebrews iii. 1

Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.

‘“PHERE are few things which the ordinary religious life of this day needs more than patient, quiet meditation. It is rail of energy, of liberality, of zeal for what it believes to be truth. Works of benevolence and of Christian self-sacrifice abound. But it may be gravely questioned whether all this vigour of service is not carried on at the cost of still more precious and essential things: whether our modern type of Christianity has root enough to bear all these blossoms without harm: whether good men commune with Christ as much as they work for Him. The stream flows broad, but what of the hidden springs which feed it? I venture to believe that one of the most needful and merciful of Christ’s words to His people is the injunction, “Come ye, yourselves, apart into a lonely place, and rest awhile.” And I select these words for a text, with the simple and distinctly practical purpose of urging upon them this great Christian duty of — still medi-

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tation on Christ, on what He is to us, and on what we are in and by Him.

I. We have here one great comprehensive command — “consider Christ”

Now that word “consider” implies in the original an earnest, fixed, prolonged attention of mind. Our gaze upon Christ is to be like that of a man who resolutely turns away his eyes from other things, to fix them, with keen interest and eagerness, with protracted, steady look, on something which he is resolved to learn thoroughly.

The first remark that I would make then is the very simple and obvious one — that a Christian man’s thoughts should be occupied with his Saviour.

Very simple and obvious no doubt — but, alas! I am afraid terribly forgotten in practice. How do you Christian people expect to get any good or blessing from Jesus Christ? Does He not work by His truth? And can that truth which sanctifies and saves, which is the weapon of the Spirit, and the medium of His grace, produce effects if it is not appropriated and digested by the meditative occupation of our minds with it? What is all the Gospel to you unless it is consciously present to your understanding, and through your understanding is ruling your affections, and moulding your will, and directing and shaping the outgoings of your life? Nothing — nothing! A man may call himself a Christian; but the measure of his Christianity is the occupation of his mind and heart with the truth as it is in Jesus.

When we “taste the good word of God” we are made partakers of “the powers of the world to come.” Unless there be that occupation of my thoughts with God’s Gospel, there is no union between me and it But the man and the word of salvation stand over against each other — there the fulness, here the emptiness; there all that I want, here I wanting it all. There is no channel by which that fulness flows into this emptiness unless our thoughts, and by means of them our whole spiritual nature, be occupied with the truth which reveals Christ, and with the Christ whom the truth reveals.

Then, that being premised, note how much practical direction as to the manner of that occupation of mind and spirit with Christ lies in that single emphatic word”consider.n

There is surely implied, to begin with, that such occupation must be the result of conscious effort. No man will keep Christ before his mind without having to make a sensible effort to turn away from the whole rabble of distracting thoughts that lie round him. In this same Epistle to the Hebrews, the writer lays it down as a condition of all persevering continuance in the race set before us that we should be “looking unto Jesus”; and he employs there a word which might be rendered, perhaps, “looking away” to Him. That conveys the same idea of rigid shutting out of other things in order that one supreme light may fill the eye and gladden the soul. If you do not carefully drop black curtains round the little chamber, and exclude all side lights, as well as all other objects from the field of vision, there will be no clear impression of the beloved face made upon the sensitive plate. It must be in the darkness that the image is transferred to the heart

Why should Christian people expect to be able to gaze upon Him whom they have not seen, without practising that concentration and limitation which is indispensable to far lower occupations of mind? Rather, it is needed here more than anywhere else, for we have here to do with One whom no sense reveals, and whom outward things and our own sluggish earthly-mindedness are ever conspiring to thrust from our hold. No man makes progress in any branch of human thought or science with out this first condition — the habit of pinning himself down wholly to the subject in hand, and rigidly restraining all wandering thoughts. You must bring your instrument to a point before it will penetrate, to an edge that it may cut — and only firm concentration of oneself on the matter before us will do that. And if that be true of regions of thought, where men willingly resort, and from which no reluctance of heart draws them back, how much more true it must be of that region to which our heavy souls are averse to rise, and whose pure keen air it is hard for our lungs to breathe? Why, you cannot even make money until, as you say, “you give your minds to business.” A man sitting at a desk, cannot even add up a column of figures correctly, if he is thinking about a hundred other things. And do you think that the Divine glories of Christ are to flow into a man’s soul on condition of less concentration and attention? If, on the wild stock of our sinful nature a better life has been budded, we have to take care that the energy of our souls does not waste itself in vagrant shoots, that bear only scentless, wild flowers; and that we prune close and unsparingly our wandering thoughts, our earthly desires, else we shall bear no fragrant blossoms.

But, still further, our gaze on Him must be the look of eager interest; it must be intense as well as fixed.

I do not wonder at so many people thinking that there is nothing to interest them in the Gospel. There is nothing — and that for many reasons, and among the rest for this, that they do not come to it with awakened eagerness, with interested earnest gaze; and so, because they are careless, it is weary; because they have no hunger, it is tasteless; because they neither expect nor wish to receive anything, they go as empty as they came. To one man, looking out on the world almost as a beast might look, nothing appears wonderful, nothing great j to another, “every common sight” bears “the glory and the freshness of a dream,” and seems “apparelled in celestial light” To one man, looking up with lack-lustre stolid gaze, the stars are but so many shining points, laid flat on a flat arch. To another, they are spheres immeasurable and multitudinous, set in violet depths which imagination cannot fly across, nor thought fathom. And as the earth and the heavens vary according to the eye that looks upon them, so does Christ vary. “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” The careless glance sees nought even in that unparalleled sorrow — while some who gaze are bowed in grief, and some are smitten with penitence, and angels are filled with wonder. He, and His words and works, His life and death, seem to some of you familiar and commonplace — and, thank God 1 some of us looking on the very same facts, see in them the very mightiest and most blessed things ever done in the world’s history; and listening to the very same truths, find His lightest word weighty with inexhaustible meaning; and, gazing on the very same person in whom you see no “beauty that you should desire him,” behold Him as fairer than the sons of men, and the dimmest gleam from His face as bright beyond the radiance of the noon-day sun. On the road to Damascus the same objective phenomenon was probably presented to the senses of Saul, and of his companions. But they saw only light, while he beheld a form; they heard only a sound, he heard a voice with a meaning which smote upon his conscience, and bowed his will We, brethren, stand together in the secret place of thunder, we stand together before the fontal source of light Some of us hear but an inarticulate rumbling above the clouds, while others hear the very speech of God. Some of us see but a formless brightness, where others behold Him who is the master-light of all our seeing. If we would hear Christ, we must keep our ear attent unto His voice. If we would behold Him, we must gaze with reverent eagerness and fixed concentration — salting our thoughts on things above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. To superficial investigation, no treasure! are disclosed; we must dig deep, if we would find the vein where the gold lies. “If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God”

Still further, another requisite of this occupation of mind with Christ and His work may be suggested as included in the word. Our consideration must be resolute, eager; and, also — steady or continuous. A hurried glance is as profitless as a careless one. You do not see much on first going into a dark room out of the light; nor do you see much on first going into the light out of the dark. When a man steps for a hasty moment out of the bright sunny market-place, with all its gay colouring, into the cool, dark cathedral, he sees but dimly the still figures above the altar, and the subdued splendour of stained glass and sculptured shrines. And if he rushes back to the outside glare before his eyes become accustomed to the obscurity, he will bear away but a vague impression of confused richness, and have nothing definite to remember. No man can see the beauty of a country as he hurries through it in a train. It is only when we sit still and gaze till all the landscape sinks into our souls, and we are steeped in it, that its fairness is revealed to us.

But, alas! how little of this patient prolonged concentration of interested thought on our dear Lord, do even the best and devoutest of us employ! And as for the ordinary Christian life of this day — what a sad contrast does it present to such an ideal! It was Newton, I think, who, when asked as to his method of working in attacking complicated problems, had only the simple answer to give, “I keep it before me.” Yes; that is the way to master any subject of thought. The steady gaze will, by slow degrees, see order where the random glance saw only chaos; and the mind long familiar with a truth will have an ease and mastery in wielding it, an instinctive perception of its roots and its consequences, its relations to others, which will seem miraculous to one who has only looked upon it by snatches.

And we, dear brethren, shall never see the glory of that light which dwells between the Cherubim, if our visit? to the shrine are brief and interrupted, and the bulk of our time is spent outside the tabernacle amidst the glaring sand and the blazing sunshine. The Psalmist desired to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life, that he might behold the beauty of the Lord “— for he knew that only such continuousness of abode would fit his eyes to see the light, and attune his ears to hear the voice of answer to him inquiring in the temple. No short swallow-flights of soul will ever cany us to the serene height where He dwells. It is the eagle, with steady unflagging flap of his broad pinion, and open-eyed gaze upwards, that rises “close to the sun, in lonely lands,1* and leaves all the race of short-winged and weak-sighted twitterers far below. Let us fix our eyes on Him — our Lord. Surely there is enough there to draw and satisfy the most prolonged eager gaze. He if our Example, our Redeemer, our Prophet In Him we see all of God that man can apprehend, and all of man. In Him we behold our wisdom, our strength, our righteousness. We may gaze on Him with the confident look of faith, with the else hopeless look of those in whose veins is poisoned death, with the submission of obedience, with the rapture of love. And how do we look t Languidly, carelessly, as a child does at his task, while the butterflies and the flowers in the garden draw away his wandering gaze. We think of Him by snatches. We give Him some few moments in the morning, before we are well awake perhaps; and some few moments at night, when we are almost asleep; and the day is occupied with a multitude of thoughts, which would not be much unlike what they are, if there were no Christ at all. We give Him an hour or two on a Sunday, and fancy that the manna gathered then will last all the week! Alas! alas! for the coldness, the vagrancy, and the infrequency of the thoughts which we afford to Him who ever thinks of us, and whom it is our life to know and keep in our hearts. Alas! alas! for the satire on Christian life, as we so often see it, which that exhortation and its accompanying motives contain, “Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling — consider — Christ Jesus.”

II. So much, then, for this one comprehensive injunction. Now, let me say a very few words as to The great aspects of Chrisfs work which should fix our gaze.

We have Himself proposed as the object of our thoughts. Not merely the truth concerning Him, but Him as brought near us by the truth. Scripture never deals with Christ’s work apart from Him — the worker, nor presents Christian truth in the hard and abstract form which it must necessarily take when men begin to reflect upon it, and try to arrange their thoughts into •omething like order and consistency. But it by no means follows from that difference between the Bible and theological dogmas or creeds that these are unwarrantable

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expansions of Christian truth. They are inevitable, they are necessary, they have their own purpose, and are good for that But they are not the nourishment of loving devotion and living faith. The Christian contemplation of which my text speaks is the contemplation of Christ made known as the living and Divine agent of our redemption, who is our propitiation, in whom we have forgiveness through His blood, who of God is made unto us righteousness, who is our life and our hope. It is not the consideration of abstract ideas, however accurate, of atonement, forgiveness, sanctification. We need these that we may understand what Christ is; but we have to look on Him as being all these for us — and then the contemplation is joyful and fruitful

What, then, are the aspects of the work and character of Christ which the writer here proposes for our patient gaze? There are two — consider Him as Apostle and as High Priest

He is the “Apostle n of our profession. The application of that name to Him is startling to us, who are accustomed to apply it exclusively and almost technically to the twelve. But its use here may show, as has been observed, that those whom we call apostles were not so distinctly marked as a separate class at the date of this epistle, as they have been since. At all events, there is nothing surprising in the idea conveyed by the word. No declaration was more common on our Lord’s lips when on earth than that He was” sent of God.” There need then be no surprise at the thought that is here expressed. It is not only in harmony with his own words, but is singularly appropriate and relevant to the writer’s purpose in this place; for the point which he has been establishing up till now has been the superiority of the Son over all former messengers of the Divine Will, whether the prophets who received partial and progressive syllables of God’s voice to speak to the fathers, or the angels who do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word All these are “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister *: but this man is higher than the angels, inasmuch as He is the sole messenger, sent by God as none others are sent, to declare His whole name once and for all, to bring His whole love, not only to serve but to save, not only to help but to rule the sons of men, His brethren. He is sent forth from God, and brings God to us. He and He alone, He and He for ever, He and He for all is — the sent of God.

And our faithful and loving thoughts are to lay hold upon this aspect of His nature and work, not to tarry in the simple manhood, fair and blessed as that is, but to discern in him the complete expression of the Divine Will, the complete fulfilment of the slow marching revelations of God, the perfect, final, eternal word spoken of God among men.

Then we are to think of Him as our High Priest “As Apostle,” it has been well said, “he pleads God’s cause with us: as High Priest he pleads our cause with God. The Apostolate and the Priesthood of Christ are both included in the one word — mediator.” The idea of priesthood depends upon that of sacrifice, and the idea of sacrifice, as this epistle abundantly shows, is incomplete, without that of expiation. The idea of priesthood includes that of representation, and the priestly representation of the people is incomplete, as this epistle again shows, without the presence of the priest within the vail. So, when we are bid to consider the “High Priest of our profession,” our thoughts are pointed back to the one great act by which Christ “hath offered one sacrifice for sins for ever,” and up to the continuous work which, with ever ready sympathy and ever prevalent intercession, He carries on in the heavens, presenting there His Eternal Sacrifice, preparing a place for us because He is there, and sending down on us the fulness of the gifts which are His that they may be ours.

The central point of our meditation and of our faith in the work of Christ is His Sacrifice and Intercession. He has come forth from the Father — His messenger to men; He has gone to the Father — our priest and forerunner with God. By both offices He completes His merciful mediation — the Christ whom it is our life and blessedness to set ever before us is the Christ who, Son of God, lived that He might declare God to men; and, Son of Man, died, that He might reconcile men to God — and Son of God, and Son of Man, ever liveth that He may pour heaven’s gifts upon earth, and at last lift earth’s children to heaven. “Wherefore — consider Jesus Christ, our Apostle and High Priest”

III. Notice, finally, the Great Reasons for this occupation of Mind and Heart with Christ, our Mediator.

These are to be found in the remaining portion of this verse. The author of the epistle does not formally adduce them as motives, but he is in effect urging to this loving contemplation in all that he says here. The terms in which he addresses his readers, the obligations at which he points in reminding them of their profession and what it implied, and the connection which he establishes, by the “wherefore” of our text, between this practical precept, and all the preceding argument for Christ’s exalted dignity — all these are meant to give force to, and converge upon, the one injunction. We may briefly indicate what seems to be the force of these reasons.

Our relation to Christ and the benefit we derive from it should impel us to loving meditation on Him. “Holy brethren.” That is a very unusual phrase, and it obviously refers back to the former chapter where we read, “Both he that makes holy, and they who are made holy, are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” Because, then, of the ties of brotherhood which knit us all to that dear Lord, and because He, our elder brother, sanctifies us all, should we not ever turn with loving thoughts to Him who has not been ashamed to claim kindred with us ragged prodigals, but Himself brings the best robe and puts it on us? He has brought us into the family of God If we are His brethren, we are God’s sons; He has knit us into one household. He has put the Spirit of His own Sonship into our hearts, and has sanctified us with His own imparted life. How should we not think of Him who has already done this for us 1 What occupation of mind can be too great, what devotion of heart can be too utter, to render to Him to whom alone we owe it, that we

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are no more slaves but sons, no more bondsmen of corruption, but free and holy? We have received these gifts from Him. We continue to receive them, on condition of keeping this injunction. Gratitude should lead us to consider Him; and regard for our own continued reception of His blessings should do so too. “Consider him,” because you are by His mercy holy brethren: and not less — consider Him that you may continue and increase in consciousness of brotherhood, and in fairer holiness.

Christian men, learn the means of growth in all Christian excellencies. Not by lamentations over our own deficiencies — though we need the humblest consciousness of these. Not by painful efforts after working ourselves into a happy consciousness of sonship, or after a purer life. But by forgetting all about ourselves, and occupying ourselves wholly with Jesus Christ, our Brother and our Sanctifier. The nearer we get to Him, the holier we become. The closer we press to Him, the liker Him we grow. The more we meditate on our Brother and our Lord, the more shall we be conscious that we, too, are sons of God, and brethren of the Lord. The more firmly we clasp His hand, the more abundantly will healing and energy flow from His touch into our sick impotence. Since we claim to be called holy brethren, let us never forget Him who makes us so. If we would deserve the name, let us turn away our thoughts from all else, and keep our spirits fixed upon Him. Then a great peacefulness shall rest upon our hearts, and we shall be holy as He is holy.

The calling of which we are partakers should impel us to loving meditation. God in Christ calls us to His service, to His love, to His heaven. That Divine calling which is addressed to us through Jesus Christ is heavenly in its origin, and heavenly in its aim. It echoes from and it summons to heaven. Of this call all Christian souls are recipients. Therefore it becomes them to set their thoughts and love on that Saviour, through whom they receive it at the first, and continue to feel its quickening impulse and its immortal hopes.

You are not true to your calling, Christian men and women, unless you “consider Christ” You will not preserve the blessed consciousness of “the great voice which says, Come up hither” — unless your thoughts are often turned to Him who has gone up on high that our hearts as well as our hopes should have a home above, If we would preserve our sense of the invitation that from heaven beckons us to heaven, and encircles us with heaven even on our journey thither — if we would continuously feel the quickening power of the hand that, laid upon our shoulders, summons us by its touch to higher and immortal life; because we are, and that we may continue to be, “partakers of the heavenly calling” — let Christ and His love fill our thoughts, and our faith and hope be fixed on Him.

Further, the avowal which we have mad* concerning Him should impel us to loving, steadfast contemplation. He is “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession,” or, perhaps, more accurately, “of our confession.” The expression may possibly have the same ambiguity as it

3 * has in English. We talk about “a confession of faith,” meaning thereby either the act of acknowledgment or the formal document in which it is contained. But, however this may be, the substantial meaning would be conveyed if we said, “the Apostle and High Priest whom we confess.” The motive that is urged in these final words, then, is just this. Such fixed, earnest, continuous contemplation of Christ is the only course that is consistent with our profession, or with the avowal that we make and the position we assume. We have professed a creed which ought to make it impossible for us to forget Him. We stand up and own Him for our Lord — do we obey Him in our lives? We profess that He is our Apostle and High Priest. Does our habitual neglect of Him not give the lie to our words? We say: “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father” — and before the words have died into silence, we forget Him. We say: “When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers” — and neither gratitude, nor wonder, nor hope are strong enough to keep His image in our treacherous hearts. We say: “Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father” — and our eyes are fixed on the earth at our feet, and seldom cast even a glance where He is whom we call our hope. We say: “We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge” — and the awful splendours of that day are too faint and far off to restrain us in sin or stimulate us to holiness. Our creed avows that Christ is everything to us. Alas! alas 1 how many of us proclaim in our lives that He is nothing. If these tremendous sentences are believed at all by us, what means this languid, occasional half-hearted gaze upon Him? Surely if we believe them, we should never turn away from beholding that face, so gentle and so Divine, radiant with the brightness of God, and soft with the dewy pity of a brother and a priest!

Is your life in accordance with your confession? If not, what is the confession but a blasphemy or a hypocrisy? And what does it avail except to make the life more criminal in its forgetfulness of your Saviour? The inconsistent life silences the loudest profession, and chokes it even in the throat that utters it. It makes men begin by denying the honesty of the professor, and end by doubting the truth of the creed which he professed. Of all the enemies of the cross of Christ, none are so potent as those who, professing to be His friends, live in manifest forgetfulness of Him, His love, and His gifts, and “mind earthly things.” Through such the name of Christ is blasphemed. “Wherefore, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession.”

Let me end then, as I began, with an earnest appeal for more of the habit of calm, fixed meditation on the work and preciousness of our great High Priest. I would urge on you, dear brethren, and on myself, not to allow our minds and hearts to wander “after vanities, and become vain,” but rigidly and watchfully to close them against the manifold distractions which in this busy age lay waste our lives. We need more — far more — still communion with our Master. For want of it our energy is feverish, our patience soon exhausted, our devotion lacking in depth, our hopes in brightness, our whole lives in calmness. Dear brethren! by all these motives, so strongly woven together in the words of our text, and by many more, we are called to the constant effort to “set the Lord always before us,” and, turning our happy thoughts to Him even in the midst of our daily duties, to “walk all the day long in the light of his countenance.”

Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, “and see no man any more, save Jesus only.” — “Laying aside every weight, let us run with patience, looking” away from all beside “unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.”