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Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




But there is more in the words than the mere close of a conversation,
and a summons to change of place. They indicate a kind of divine
impatience to be in the fight, and to have it over. The same emotion
is plainly revealed in the whole of the latter days of our Lord's
life. You remember how His disciples followed amazed, as He strode up
the road from Jericho, hastening to His Cross. You remember His
deliberate purpose to draw upon Himself public notice during that
dangerous and explosive week before the Passover, as shown in the
publicity of His entry into Jerusalem, His sharp rebukes of the rulers
in the Temple, and in every other incident of those days. You remember
His words to the betrayer: 'That thou doest, do quickly.' These latter
hours of the Lord were strongly marked by the emotion to which He gave
utterance in His earlier words: 'I have a baptism to be baptized with,
and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!' Perhaps that feeling
indicated His human shrinking; for we all know how we sometimes are
glad to precipitate an unwelcome thing, and how the more we dread it,
the more we are anxious to get it over. But there is far more than
that in it. There is the resolved determination to carry out the
Father's purpose for the world's salvation, which was His own purpose,
and was none the less His though He knew all the suffering which it
involved.

Let us adore the steadfast will, which never faltered, though the
natural human weakness was there too, and which, as impelled by some
strong spring, kept persistently pressing towards the Cross that on it
He might die, the world's Redeemer.

And do not let us forget that He summoned His lovers and disciples to
follow Him on the road. 'Let us go hence.' It is ours to take up our
cross daily and follow the Master, to do with persistent resolve our
duty, whether it be welcome or unwelcome, and to see to it that we
plant no faltering and reluctant foot in our Master's footsteps. For
us, too, if we have learned to flee to the Cross for our redemption
and salvation, the resolve of our Redeemer and the very passion of the
Saviour itself become the pattern and law of our lives. We, too, have
to cast ourselves into the fight, and to take up our cross, 'that the
world may know that we love the Father, and as the Father hath given
us commandment.' And if we so live, then our death, too, in some
humble measure, may be like His--the crowning act of obedience to the
Father's will; in which we are neither passively nor resistingly
dragged under by a force that we cannot effectually resist, but in
which we go down willingly into the dark valley where death 'makes our
sacrifice complete.'

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