Christ a Servant
‘’ I HERE is one character in which Christians too seldom think of their Divine Redeemer. It is that of a disinterested servant, ever serving our highest interests. We call ourselves Christ’s servants. Do we constantly think of him as ours 1
At the last supper, we read that Jesus rose from the table and laid aside his robe. He takes a towel, and girds himself after the manner of an attendant in a guest chamber. Pouring water into a basin, he washes the disciples’ feet, and wipes them with thie towel wherewith he is girded. After the surprising act of self-humiliation is over, he says to them, Know ye what I have done to you”? Ye call me Master and Lord; ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done unto you.”
Then he tells his disciples for what paltry distinctions the Gentiles and the worldlings crave. But they were to aim at a nobler, sublimer supremacy, ^- the supremacy of disinterested love, and devotion to the wants of others. “Let him who would be chiefest among you become servant of all.” The feet of his followers were scarcely dry from the washing he had given them, as he says, “I am among you as he that serveth.”
Run your eye, my brother, over the whole earthly career of our blessed Lord, and you will find in it a beautiful illustration of the truth that the loftiest post of honor is the lowliest post of service. Every word, every act, is inspired by disinterested love. He condescends to teach the most ignorant, for they have the deepest need of light. He condescends to feed the hungry poor out of his miraculous basket. He condescends to sit at meat with despised publicans, to heal way- 2 ‘2 6 THOUGHT-HITES.
side beggars and outcast lepers, the children of poor, heart-broken mothers, and the servants in noblemen’s kitchens. More than one fallen woman, whom most parents would have thrust out of doors, he allows to come into the sunshine of his presence, and does not let them go until they are penitent and pardoned. And so all through that three years’ pilgrimage of love, — instructing the benighted, comfortrng the afflicted, pardoning the guilt)-, healing the sick, stooping to wash disciples’ feet and to cleanse their still more polluted hearts, — Jesus is everj-where the seiTant of all.” The years of penitent, self-denying service culminate in the grandest, most stupendous, and sublime service of all, — the service of suffering on the cross of Calvary! Oh! self-indulgent Christian, who ait unwilling to lift a finger to relieve a fellow-being or undo his burthen, look on the wondrous spectacle of an incarnate God stooping to the lowHest offices of love, — bearing poverty, and ignominy, and toU. — bearing the curse of the broken law. — bearing your sins in his bleeding body on the cross, — look at this, and hide your selfish head in shame!
Nor did the service of our Divine servant end with the cross and the new tomb in the garden. When he ascended to heaven, he only ascended to new departments of service for us. He ever liveth there to make intercession for his people. He is our “friend at court.” He is our advocate to plead our suit. He hears our complaints, and gives a ready ear to the faintest prayer which the feeblest faith breathes forth in its closet.
Does he not gird himself as with a towel, to wash away our impurities’? Not once only, but constantly. One cleansing of a soul at the time of regeneration will no more keep a Christian for ever pure than a single ablution of his face or form would make his body clean for a life-time. The world soils our souls every day. Each unholy thought, each angry word, each act of deceit, each covetous touch of gold, each insincere, unbelieving prayer, each cowardly desertion of duty, leaves an ugly spot, “Cj-eate in me a clean heart” is an every hour’s prayer for a Christian’s whole life. And he who girded a towel about him, and washed his disciples’ feet from the dust of Jerusalem’s streets, is ever beside us, ready to wash away the moral defilement which our daily walk on the world’s highways brings upon our souls.
How many other ser^ices, too, our Saviour is rendering us! When starved on husks, he gives us the bread of life. When faint in spirit, he brings us into his orchard, whose apples of delight cause our lips to sing. Manv an obscure saint in a smoky hovel has yet dwelt in the King’s banqueting-house. The holy Rutherford, when in prison for Christ’s sake, testifies that his prison-cell was “the King’s wine-cellar” to his thirsty soul, in which every taste of the divine love only made him more hungry for the “supper-time ’ in heaven. He says. I get sweet iaflngs of my Lord’s comforts; but the cause of that is not that our steward, Christ Jesus, is niggard and narrow-hearted, but because our stomachs are so weak, and oui’ souls are narrow; but the great feast is coming, when our hearts shall be enlarged to take in the fulness of the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
Time would fail us to tell in how many ways the loving Jesus serves his people, — as their physician, their protector, and their guide through the Aalley of the death-shade. And one of the great practical teachings of Christ’s sublime, self-denying serAace for us is that the lowliest post of service is the loftiest post of honor. If Jesus was a servant, who shall be ashamed to serve 1
Why is it that so many professed Christians “feel above “undertaking humble work for God and humanity? We have heard of a minister of Christ complaining that his station was beneath his talents “! As if the soul of a beggar were beneath the genius of a Paul! Some are unwilling to enter a mission-school, or to distribute tracts through a poor district, strangely forgetting that their DiAine Master was himself a missionary.
Have such never learned that the towel wherevith Jesus wiped his disciples’ feet out-
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shone the purple that wrapped Ctesar’s limbs 1 Do they not know that the post of honor is the post of service 1 “My seat in the Sunday school is higher than my seat in the Senate,’’ said an eminent Christian statesman. When we take the lowliest place of sacred service, we find ourselves in the best society. — in the society of mothers sening their children, of patriots sening their country, of pastors serving their flocks, and of One who is ever the gracious servant of his people. Heaven is but a higher sphere of service. For in that realm of unwearying activity and bUssful worship we read that “they serve God day and night in his temple; his name is written on their foreheads;” and “they follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth, and he leadeth them to living fountains of water.”