Next the Throne
Matt. xx. 23
“To sit on My right hand, and on My left, is not Mine to give, but i( shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father.” — Matt. zx. 23.
HE request of James and John, through their mother, to which this is a portion of the answer, was singularlyblended of good and evil, devotion and selfishness, insight and ignorance. It breathed the heartiest love of Christ, the most entire belief in His Kingdom and power, the conviction that to be nearest to Him was to be most blessed, a brave readiness to risk and bear anything for that, and a profound confidence that if He said “Yes” the accomplishment was certain. So much for the good; but, on the other side, what vulgar, low notions of what His Kingdom was; what coarse, selfish ambition in this family conspiracy to steal a march on the others; and what utter ignorance of all the conditions for the place to which they aspire! Christ’s answer, wonderfully patient and gentle, tries to lift them into a higher region, to make them understand that they must be near Him in suffering bef re they could be near Him in glory, and that not even His will can give the honour they asked, as a mere piece of favouritism, and irrespective of moral and spiritual conditions.
I. The Seats by Christ’s Side. — The disciples’ request had no reference to the perfect form of Christ’s Kingdom in another life, and our Lord’s answer does not apply only to that. But the gulf between the present and future is largely imaginary, and these words of my text do apply to both sides of it, while yet they have a predominant reference to another life and to the conditions there. Observe that our Lord, in His patient and instructive answer to the foolish and selfish prayer of His two disciples, does not say to them, as it would have been so easy and natural to have said, if it had been true: “You are wrong altogether, there are no such places as those that you desire,” but, on the contrary, says distinctly that there are, inasmuch as He tells them that to sit on His right hand and left is prepared for some of His Father.
Therefore, there is distinctly, in the words of my text, the principle of diversity of degree corresponding to what we call rank, and that diversity depends upon, and is, diversity in closeness to Jesus Christ. Just as here on earth all the differences between Christian men come down at last to this one difference — that some live nearer their Master and that some are further away from Him — so in the Heavens it shall be, and pre-eminence there shall consist in nearness in heart and spirit to the King. All shall be close to Him, and all shall be every moment getting closer, but there shall be diversity in the proximity, and some shall sit on the right hand and on the left.
Of course we start with the conception of equality. All get the penny in the parable. All “sit down with Him on His throne,” which is the apex of the universe. All have the same eternal life; all possess the same conditions and prerogatives of that heavenly and glorified body, of likeness to Jesus Christ, of cessation from the toil of earth, and all are, in the true sense of the word, from the beginning of the eternity of growing glory, perfect. But perfection does not exclude growth. There may be the most entire symmetrical development of faculties, and yet there may be the possibility of widening and of deepening. The cup which is filled, according to the old Puritan illustration, may be larger or smaller, but all the cups are full. But that good old illustration does not tell the whole story. The cup is not, like one of gold, of fixed circumference and depth, but, like the calyx of a flower, it is endowed with the power of growth, and continually increases in capaciousness and, therefore, in contents. Equality does not exclude variety, and perfection is not inconsistent with progress, and if there be progress there must necessarily be diversity of stages.
This variety is distinctly taught in Scripture. We have two parables occupied with this matter, both of which have to be taken into account In that of the talents equal faithfulness in trading with unequal capital is made equal in recompense.
the same praise and the same entrance into the Lord’s joy being given to the servant who had received two talents as to his richer companion who had five. But in the other parable, which completes the teaching of the former, and which only a very hasty and superficial criticism could regard as but a varying edition of it — namely, that of the pounds — precisely the converse idea is presented. There we have the same amount originally given to all, but unequally increased by greater or less diligence, and therefore a graduated scale of rewards corresponding thereto, in the gifts of authority over ten or five cities. A city for every pound! so much greater than, and yet so accurately proportioned to, the faithfulness of earth are the rewards of heaven! There is such a thing as “salvation, yet so as by fire “; the man entering into eternal life and yet the work that he did as a Christian teacher all being consumed and burnt up, and so he suflering loss; and, on the other hand, there is such a thing as salvation in fulness and “an entrance ministered abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”.
Such diversity is a necessary result of the very conception of the future, as being the retribution for the present. For if retribution, then it must correspond to that of which it is the outcome and the reward. And that to which it corresponds, we only too sadly know, is a dreadful inequality in the maturity and purity of Christian life and conduct here. If only we would bring more closely together in our thoughts, as they are bolted inseparably together in reality, our stature and progress in Christian character here, and the rewards and results that follow, we should understand that not only may, but must, there be wide adversities even in the one possession of the one eternal life; and that just as, and because, Christian men and women differ in the — I was going to say quantity of Christ which they make their own here, so shall they differ in the lustre of the glory and the sweep of the dominion which is granted to them hereafter. “One at the right hand and one on the left ‘*; and others further from the Throne, though all as near it as they can be, and all getting nearer it every moment
Nor let us forget, in reference to this diversity, that we are taught in the context to discharge from our minds, in connection with it, all earthly ideas of superiority, wherein the excellency of the one is the inferiority of the others, and pre-eminence for A means degradation for all the rest of the alphabet. It is not so here, but the pre-eminence consists in, or at least is manifested by, a larger faculty for service and a deeper desire to serve. That is a wonderful thought for that dim unknown future, that even amongst perfect natures there shall be room for mutual help, and that none shall be so directly united with the all-sufficient source of all blessing that it shall be impossible for him to receive anything of his brother, or to give anything to another, but rather that all shall be knit together in common bonds of impartation, and that ‘* no man shall say that anything” of the Christ which he possesses is his own, but they shall have all “of Him “common.” And thus the princes in that world are the servants of those who stand further from the light and are less participant of its radiance and its warmth.
The rabbis had a couple of parables which illustrated this thought. There was a great king, said they, who entered into a city with his court. All passed through the one gate into the one palace, but each was marshalled according to his dignity when he entered there.
And again they said, in a singular variant of Christ’s parable of the Marriage Supper: A great king made a feast, and invited many. Each man came bringing his seat; some, golden chairs; some, silken cushions; some, wooden benches; some, rough stones. Every man sat on what he brought. We determine where we shall sit. It is not all the same, in reference to that future life, how near your Master you live here. Plenty of us think that we should like to be very near Him in the heavens. “Ye know not what ye ask.” The conditions are that you should be near Him here.
II. — So that brings me to speak, in the second place, of the law of precedence in the kingdom.
It belongs to them “for whom it is prepared of My Father.” The language is strongly metaphorical. The conception is of the thrones all ranged and allocated in that upper chamber, as the stalls of the knights in some chapel of their order might be, while the owners were fighting in the field, and over each of the seats hung the banner and the cognizance of its occupant. So, says Christ, the vacant thrones are there, “prepared of My Father “; and prepared with a definite reference to certain persons.
Now I do not take it that in this there is any doctrine of an absolute unconditional destination of those seats for individuals, apart from their character and faithfulness here, but simply a strong and picturesque statement of this truth, which is the answer to the foolish prayer of the two disciples, that the places are not given by favouritism, nor mere arbitrary will, but allocated in accordance with fixed principles and eternal laws in the Divine mind. So the question comes to be, What sort of people they are for whom these calm thrones in the empyrean are waiting. Can we ascertain the laws of precedence, the grounds on which the Divine preparation of the seats is based? The answer is plain in the context. It gives us two great principles.
The seats are prepared, first, for those that have drunk most deeply of Christ’s cup. “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” They answered cheerfully and swiftly, “We can.” And nobly they stood to their vow in after days, though when they made it they knew so little of what it implied. To drink of Christ’s cup is no less the condition of our future nearness to Him. Not that the accident of actual martyrdom secures it A martyr is not necessarily a saint. It is not being burnt to ashes for Christ that fits for the seats next Him; but it is the inward appropriation of His life and spirit, which will certainly lead to a true participation in His cup. One of these two was the first martyr among the Apostles, the other was not called to die for Christ, but to linger here after all his companions, and to teach a new generation the wonders that had been.
The measure, then, in which we Christian people incorporate Jesus Christ into ourselves here will determine all our future. If our whole being is saturated with Him, that will lead to a threefold partaking of His cup. It will lead to our standing in a relation to the world and its evils similar to His, and, in our humble measure, we too shall know what He knew of the world’s antagonism, and of the sorrows of a pure soul walking amidst filth, and of love and self-sacrifice put forth in vain. It will lead to our sharing in the Master’s cup, inasmuch also as it will re-produce in our spiritual experience the crucifying of the flesh and the death to self and sin which were Christ’s, and we shall thus know “the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” There is no Christian life without that. It is a daily dying, a daily self-sacrifice, a daily putting to the death the old man, the natural passions, desires, tastes, inclinations. Unless we thus die ever we never live. Communion with Jesus Christ will lead to drinking of His cup in yet another fashion, inasmuch as it will make all our sufferings His, and bring into the darkest of our sorrows the sweet and blessed thought that in all our affliction He is afflicted, and so His presence will save us. If we drink His cup He drinks ours, and leaves the fragrance of His lips upon its edge. Thus fellowship with His sufferings here, which rests upon communion of spirit with Himself, is the condition on which we shall draw nearest to Him in the fellowship of His glory.
The context gives a second condition of that pre-eminence. It falls to those who most fully imitate His life and death of service and sacrifice. There is but one road to the Throne. If we are going where He is, we must go as He went, for there are no by-ways. Unselfish service for His sake is the only path. ‘* Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant’* The service does not cease to be unselfish because it is brightened by the hope of being near Him. They who, in entirest self-oblivion, regard all spiritual enjoyments, natural faculties, and material possessions as trusted to them to scatter for His sake, and so to increase, are they who will stand nearest the Master whom they were so like on earth; and, having taken part, in some humble measure, in the likeness of His life and death, such shall be found also in the likeness of His resurrection.
These words about the preparation by the Father further suggest the certainty that these seats thus prepared shall be ours if we adhere to the conditions. Here vaulting ambition doth o’erleap itself. Men scramble for the best places, and before they reach them somebody else is seated there. But there is one field of ambition legitimate, one field of unselfish ambition, one field of ambition which is always sure of gratification and of finding the results more blessed than its most sanguine dreams — and that is, that we should seek to be nearest our Master. If that be our aim, the aim shall not be missed. The inheritance incorruptible is reserved in heaven for those who by faith are kept for it. God is keeping my place for me, and will bring me to my place if I only abide near my Master, and live the unselfish life of service and sacrifice whereof He has set the pattern. So, at last. He will say to us, “Come, ye blessed, enter into the Kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.”
III. — Lastly, my text speaks of Jesus Christ as, under the aforesaid laws and restrictions, the Giver of the precedence.
To take the words before us as being an unconditional disclaimer, on His part, of His authority to give Heavenly places would be to run counter to the whole tenor of Scripture; and it would be to do violence to the whole force of the context. For His disclaimer must necessarily be interpreted with reference to the conceptions to which it is the answer. And these conceptions were that He could give the Kingdom, and pre-eminence in it, as a pure piece of partiality, and arbitrary favouritism, without regard to fitness. Since that was the request, the answer in my text must in all propriety be interpreted **It is not Mine to give so!* As you will observe, “shall be given ‘* is a supplement, and good commentators suggest that instead of reading “it shall be given to them,” we should translate without a supplement “It is not Mine to give except to them to whom it is prepared of My Father.” If we adopt such a rendering — and whether we adopt it or no the meaning is the same — then we have here Christ not denying, but affirming, in accordance with all Scriptural analogy, that He is the Giver of place in the Kingdom. Only He asserts, as He always does, that His giving is not merely of His own will, but by the will of the Father; and that it is regulated by the principles which I have already laid down.
He is the Giver. **Have thou authority over the cities “was the language of the lord of the servants. “/ will give to him that overcometh” is His own seven-fold utterance in the Apocalyptic epistles. He is the Judge, and, as Judge, exercises the authority to place men where He knows they ought to stand. He is not denuding Himselt of His power to bestow, but He is telling us that, in the exercise of that power. He and the Father are one; and that He gives, not from foolish fondness, nor in answer to a bare and ignorant wish, but in accordance with these great principles. The gift is surely from His hand, for if the hand had not been pierced with the nails it never had been able to give the crown. And all that we hope for in the future, or possess in the present, is alike the purchase of His blood and the result of His great sacrifice.
The gift of Christ is heaven, and our place in the heaven. And how much sweeter that thought makes the heavenly glories they only who possess them can tell. That they shall be Christ’s lovegitt, that they shall come to the recipients charged not only with their own essential sweetness, but surcharged, over and above, with the fragrance of His love, gilds even the refined gold of the heavenly crown, and makes even more precious “the unsearchable riches” of the treasures that are above.
Dear friends! one last word. Jesus Christ cannot give you heaven because you want it, nor as a mere piece of good nature and kindness. There are laws which He cannot break. Many of us seem to think that because God is merciful heaven is sure. It is a delusion. If Christ could save you He would. He wants to do it. He pleads with you that you will let Him. But, remember this, not even His love nor His power can give you the entrance there unless you comply with the condition. And the condition is that plain one, that you must be like Him, and so be fit for His presence. You can only become like Him by putting your trust, as a sinful man, in the great sacrifice of His Cross, and then taking that Cross as the pattern and law of your lives. You must begin with faith. “Add to your faith*’ all the graces which are the likeness of your Saviour- King, and so, and only so, “an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom,”