The Honest Disciple
Oome characters in the Bible are painted with a single stroke. Enoch, the stanch old patriarch who walked with God; Caleb the faithful, “who followed the Lord fully; Dorcas, who made the needle sacred; Onesiphorus, the model gentleman, who oft refreshed Paul and “was not ashamed of his chain;” Demas, the deserter from duty, — all these and many others owe their peculiar immortality to a mere line or two of Holy Writ.
One of these striking characters of whom we would like to know more is Nathanael, of Cana. The main facts that we gain about him are that he dwelt in the village where Christ turned pure water into pure wine; and it is possible that he was the bridegroom at that famous wedding. His name in Hebrew has the same significance with Theodore in the Greek, — “the Gift of God.” Perhaps his mother laid his name on the little head of her new-horn darling in especial gratitude for a child whose coming she regarded as a special mercy. Would that we all so recognized God’s hand in the bestowal of children that we could write beside each name in the family-record, “A gift of God to my heart, and therefore not to be given by me to the Devil!”
Every good man is God’s boon to society; but this Nathanael’s especial trait was downright sincerity. He was an honest man. When his friend Philip invites him to come and follow Jesus, he rather bluntly inquires,” Can any good thing come out of Nazareth 1 “Not merely did he mean by this that the Nazarenes were a disreputable set; but he was too close a student of the Jewish Scriptures not to know that the Messiah was predicted to make his appearance in Bethlehem of Judea (not in Galilee). Philip’s curt and sensible I’eply is, “Come and see.” This is the conclusive argument, after all. The only satisfactory test of Christianity is the test of personal examination and personal experiment. Come and see Jesus for yourself! Come and try him for yourself. There are some truths which, like good medicines, must be taken in order to be trusted, as well as trusted in order to be taken. Of such truths, the pre-eminent is a divine, incarnate Redeemer. Friend, if you want to know Christ’s ineiFable beauty, come and see him; if you want to know his pardoning love and sustaining power, come and obey him. Do his will, if you would know of his doctrine. I never heard of an infidel who had fairly tried the experiment of living out the religion of Christ Jesus.
Philip’s request was obeyed; and when Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, he said of him, “Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile!” It is as if he had said, Behold a man of faith and of frank sincerity. Christ does not pronounce Nathanael to be absolutely sinless. And if Nathanael had so pretended, he would not have been guileless; for if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Nathanael was an honest
Israelite, a man of faith, a man ot prayer, and above all a man above shams and false pretences. Even “when Jesus pronounced him “vpithout guile,” he did not begin to stammer out any self-depreciating cant: “Lord, you give me too much credit; I don’t deserve to be called an honest man. I am only a miserable sinner.” Nathanael left all such lying cant to those Pharisees of modern prayer-meetings vsho pretend to be worse than they are, in order to get credit for humility. I believe that there are as many lies told in self-depreciation as there are in self-exaggeration. When a Christian knows whom he has believed, and knows that he is sincerely striving to follow Jesus, even in an imperfect fashion, he has no moral right to apply to himself, in penitential prayer, the same words which describe a sceptic, a felon, or a hypocrite. Some people have a very sneaking way of feeding their self-conceit on phrases of profound humility. Other people — and really sincere Christians — introduce many phrases of self-abasement out of mere form; just as I have overheard giddy, frivolous girls and careless men of pleasure mumble that solemn litany, “Lord, have mercy on us, miserable sinners!” Had. 1 told them the same thing to their faces, they would have grown red with wrath and resented it as an insult.
Our holy Redeemer had an intense abhorrence of hypocrisy. He denounced sanctimoniousness with a severity that startles us in One so gentle and compassionate. On no class of sinners did he thunder such terrific rebukes as on “the whited sepulchres,” who looked fair on the outside, but within were full of rottenness. Christ emphasized the necessity of consistency between the faith of the heart and the practice of the life. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” And where the renewed heart is a sweet fountain, his Word teaches us that it should not send forth bitter waters. The honest accordance of the heart that loves Christ and the life that honors Christ is what the Bible means by “godly sincerity.” Those memorable words of Eobertson of Brighton will bear to be quoted again.
“The first lesson in religion is, be true; the second lesson is, he true; and the third lesson still is, he torue.’’ I cannot believe that growth in grace is possible to the man or woman whose daily habit is to confess a guilt they do not feel, and to profess a love for Jesus which they do not experience.
The glory of Nathanael is that he was an honest disciple. For he was a disciple, and one of the chosen twelve. His call to discipleship was similar to that of Andrew and Peter. He obeyed the call of Jesus, and did not go back to his “fig-tree,” under which the All-seeing Eye had discovered him. In the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this honest brother is mentioned by his surname or second name, Bartholomew. His whole name seems to have been Nathanael Bartholomew, which last word signifies “the son of Tholmai.” John, however, calls him only by his beautiful “Christian name,” the “Gift of God.”
Philip and Nathanael Bartholomew are always spoken of together. They seemed to have grown to each other like twins. After Christ’s resurrection, Nathanael met his master on the beach of Galilee; and his hand had hold of the net when the huge draught of fishes came up to the shore. After the Ascension, Nathanael attended the prayer-meeting in the “upper room.” From that hour we never hear of him again. Tradition says that he was crucified in Armenia. But, wherever he died, we never hear that he forfeited that golden name which Jesus bound about his brow: “The Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.’’