The Mind of Jesus

The Mind of Jesus! What a study is this! To attain a dim reflection of it, is the ambition of angels — higher they can not soar. “To be conformed to the image of His Son!” — it is the end of God in the predestination of His Church from all eternity. “We shall be like Him!” — it is the Bible picture of heaven!

In a former little volume, we pondered some of the gracious Words which proceeded out of the mouth of Jesus. In the present, we have a few faint lineaments of that holy Character which constituted the living exposition and embodiment of His precepts.

But how lofty such a standard! How all creature-perfection shrinks abashed and confounded before a Divine portraiture like this! He is the true “Angel standing in the sun,” who alone projects no shadow; so bathed in the glories of Deity that likeness to Him becomes like the light in which He is shrouded — “no man can approach unto it.” May we not, however, seek at least to approximate, though we can not adequately resemble? It is impossible on earth to associate with a fellow-being without getting, in some degree, assimilated to him. So, the more we study “the Mind of Christ,” the more we are in His company — holding converse with Him as our best and dearest friend — catching up his holy looks and holy deeds — the more shall we be “transformed into the same image.”

“Consider,” says the Great Apostle (literally ‘gaze on’) “Christ Jesus” (Heb. iii. 1). Study feature by feature, lineament by lineament, of that Peerless Exemplar. “Gaze” on the Sun of Righteousness, till, like gazing long on the natural sun, you carry away with you, on your spiritual vision, dazzling images of His brightness and glory. Though He be the Archetype of all goodness, remember He is no shadowy model — though the Infinite Jehovah, He was “the Man Christ Jesus.”

We must never, indeed, forget that it is not the mind, but the work of Immanuel, which lies at the foundation of a sinner’s hope. He must be known as a Saviour, before He is studied as an Example. His doing and dying is the center jewel, of which all the virtues of His holy life are merely the setting. But neither must we overlook the Scripture obligation to walk in His footsteps and imbibe His Spirit, for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His!”

Oh, that each individual Christian were more Saviour-like! that, in the manifestation of a holy character and heavenly demeanor, it might be said in some feeble measure of the faint and imperfect reflection — “Such was Jesus!”

How far short we are of such a criterion, mournful experience can testify. But it is at least comforting to know that there is a day coming, when, in the full vision and fruition of the Glorious Original, the exhortation of our motto-verse will be needed no more; when we shall be able to say, in the words of an inspired apostle,

“We have the mind of Christ!”

“I have compassion on the multitude.” — Mark, viii. 2.

What a pattern to His people, the tender compassion of Jesus! He found the world He came to save a moral Bethesda. The wail of suffering humanity was every where borne to His ear. It was His delight to walk its porches, to pity, relieve, comfort, save! The faintest cry of misery arrested His footsteps — stirred a ripple in this fountain of Infinite Love. Was it a leper, — that dreaded name which entailed a life-long exile from friendly looks and kindly words? There was One, at least, who had tones and deeds of tenderness for the outcast. “Jesus, being moved with compassion, put forth His hand, and touched him.” Was it some blind beggars on the Jericho highway, groping in darkness, pleading for help? “Jesus stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched their eyes!” Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow’s tears at the gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the grave? “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, Weep not!” Even when He rebukes, the bow of compassion is seen in the cloud, or rather, that cloud, as it passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy. He pronounces Jerusalem “desolate,” but the doom is uttered amid a flood of anguished sorrow!

Reader! do the compassionate words and deeds of a tender Saviour find any feeble echo and transcript in yours? As you traverse in thought the wastes of human wretchedness, does the spectacle give rise, not to the mere emotional feeling which weeps itself away in sentimental tears, but to an earnest desire to do something to mitigate the sufferings of woe-worn humanity? How vast and world-wide the claims on your compassion! — now near, now at a distance — the unmet and unanswered cry of perishing millions abroad — the heathendom which lies unsuccored at your own door — the public charity languishing — the mission staff dwarfed and crippled from lack of needful funds — a suffering district — a starving family — a poor neighbor — a helpless orphan — it may be, some crowded hovel, where misery and vice run riot — or some lonely sick chamber, where the dim lamp has been wasting for dreary nights — or some desolate home which death has entered, where “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not,” and where some sobbing heart, under the tattered garb of poverty, mourns, unsolaced and unpitied, its “loved and lost.” Are there none such within your reach, to whom a trifling pittance would be as an angel of mercy? How it would hallow and enhance all you possess, were you to seek to live as almoner of Jehovah’s bounties! If He has given you of this world’s substance, remember it is bestowed, not to be greedily hoarded or lavishly squandered. Property and wealth are talents to be traded on and laid out for the good of others — sacred trusts, not selfishly to be enjoyed, but generously to be employed.

“The poor are the representatives of Jesus, their wants He considers as His own,” and He will recompense accordingly. The feeblest expression of Christian pity and love, though it be but the widow’s mite, or the cup of cold water, or the kindly look and word when there is neither mite nor cup to give, yet, if done in His name, it is entered in the “book of life” as a “loan to the Lord;” and in that day when “the books are opened,” the loan will be paid back with usury.

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

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