The glories of the Lord Jesus are threefold_personal, official, and moral. His personal glory He veiled, save where faith discovered it, or an occasion demanded it. His official glory He veiled likewise; He did not walk through the land as either the divine Son from the bosom of the Father, or as the authoritative Son of David. Such glories were commonly hid as He passed through the circumstances of life day by day. But His moral glory could not be hid:He could not be less than perfect in every thing. From its intense excellency it was too bright for the eye of man; and man was under constant exposure and rebuke from it. But there it shone, whether man could bear it or not. It now illuminates every page of the four Gospels, as it once did every path which the Lord Himself trod on this earth of ours.
It is the assemblage or combination of virtues which forms moral glory. For example, the Lord Jesus knew, as the apostle Paul speaks, "how to be abased, and. . . how to abound" (Phil. 4:12)_how to use moments of prosperity, so to call them, and also times of depression. In His passage through life, He was introduced to each of these.
At the time of His transfiguration, the Lord was introduced for a moment in His personal glory, and a very bright moment it was. As the sun, the source of all brightness, He shone there. Such eminent ones as Moses and Elijah were there shining with Him, in His glory. But as He descended the hill, He charged those who had been with Him not to speak of it. And when the people, on His reaching the foot of the hill, ran to salute Him (Mark 9:15), He did not linger among them to receive their homage, but at once addressed Himself to His common service, for He knew "how to abound." He was not exalted by His prosperity. He sought not a place among men, but emptied Himself, made Himself of no reputation, quickly veiled the glory that He might be the Servant.
But He knew "how to be abased" also. Look at Him with the Samaritan villagers in Luke 9. At the outset of that action, in the sense of His personal glory, He anticipated His being "received (or raised] up." And in the common, well-known style of one who would have it known that a person of distinction was coming that way, He sent messengers before Him. But the unbelief of the Samaritans changed the scene. They would not receive Him. They refused to cast up a highway for the feet of this glorious One, but forced Him to find out for Himself the best path He could as the rejected One. But He accepted this place at once, without a murmur in His heart. He immediately became again the Nazarene, seeing He was refused as the Bethlehemite (the heir to David’s throne). Thus He knew "how to be abased"
As well as “how to abound.”
There are other combinations in the Lord’s character that we must look at. Another has said of Him, "He was the most gracious and accessible of men." We observe in His ways a tenderness and a kindness never seen in man, yet we always feel that He was a stranger. How true this is! He was a stranger as far as the rebelliousness of man dominated the scene, but intimately near as far as the misery and need of man made demands upon Him. The distance He took, and the intimacy He expressed, were perfect. He did more than look on the misery that was around Him; He entered into it with a sympathy that was all His own. And He did more than refuse the pollution that was around Him; He kept the very distance of holiness itself from every touch or stain of it.
Notice how He exhibited this combination of distance and intimacy in Mark 6. The disciples returned to Him after a long day’s service. He cared for them. He brought their weariness very near to Him. He took account of it and provided for it at once, saying to them, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile." But when the multitude followed Him, He turned with the same readiness to them, acquainting Himself with their condition. And having taken knowledge of them, as sheep that had no shepherd, He began to teach them. In all this we see Him very near to the varied need of the scene around Him, whether that need be the fatigue of the disciples, or the hunger and ignorance of the multitude. But the disciples soon resented His attention to the multitude, and urged Him to send them away. However, this would in no wise do for Him. There was immediate estrangement between Him and them which shortly afterwards expressed itself by His telling them to get into the ship while He sent the multitude away. But this separation from Him only worked fresh trouble for them. Winds and waves were against them on the lake; and then in their distress He was again near at hand to help and secure them!
How consistent in the combination of holiness and grace is all this. He is near in our weariness, our hunger, or our danger. He is apart from our tempers and our selfishness. His holiness made Him an utter stranger in such a polluted world; His grace kept Him ever active in such a needy and afflicted world. And this sets off His life, I may say, in great moral glory:for though forced, by the quality of the scene around Him, to be a lonely One, yet was He drawn forth by the need and sorrow of it to be the active One.
Along with exhibiting these beautiful combinations of virtues, with equal perfectness the Lord Jesus manifests wisdom in distinguishing things. For example, He was not drawn into softness when the occasion demanded faithfulness, and yet He passed by many circumstances which human sensibilities would have resented, and which the human moral sense would have judged it well to resent. He did not attempt to win the hearts of His disciples by means of an amiable nature. Honey was excluded as well as leaven from the meal offering (Lev. 2:11); neither was Jesus, the true meal offering, characterized by that honey of human civility and friendliness any more than He manifested that leaven of sin in His holy life. It was not merely civil, amiable treatment that the disciples got from their Master. He did not gratify, and yet He bound them to Him very closely; and this is power. There is always moral power when the confidence of another is gained without its being sought; for the heart so won has then become conscious of the reality of love. Another has written:"We all know how to distinguish love and attention, and that there may be a great deal of the latter without any of the former. Some might say, attention must win our confidence; but we know ourselves that nothing but love does." This is so true. Attention, if it be mere attention, is honey, and how much of this poor material is found with us! We are disposed to think that it is all well, and perhaps we aim no higher than to purge out leaven and fill the lump with honey. If we are amiable, perform our part well in the civil, courteous, well-ordered social scene, pleasing others, and doing what we can to keep people on good terms with us, then we are satisfied with ourselves and others with us also. But is this service to God? Is this a meal offering? Is this found as part of the moral glory of perfect man? Indeed it is not! It is one of the secrets of the sanctuary that honey was not used to give a sweet savor to the offering.
Further, the Lord did not pass judgments on persons in relation to Himself_a common fault with us all. We naturally judge others according as they treat ourselves, and we make their interest in us the measure of their character and worth. But this was not the Lord. God is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. He understands every action fully. In all its moral meaning He understands it, and according to that He weighs it.
In this regard let us refer to Luke 11. There was the air of courtesy and good feeling towards Him in the Pharisee who invited Him to dine. But the Lord was "the God of knowledge," and as such He weighed this action in its full moral character. The honey of courtesy, which is the best ingredient in social life in this world, did not pervert His taste or judgment. He approved things that are excellent. The civility which invited Him to dinner was not to determine the judgment of Him who carried the weights and measures of the sanctuary of God. As soon as the Lord entered the house, the host acted the Pharisee, and not the host. He marveled that his guest had not washed before dinner. And the character he thus assumed at the beginning showed itself in full force at the end. And the Lord dealt with the whole scene accordingly, for He weighed it as the God of knowledge. Some may say that the courtesy He had received might have kept Him silent. But He could not look on this man simply as in relation to Himself. He was not to be flattered out of a just judgment. He exposed and rebuked, and the end of the scene justified Him:"And as He said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge Him vehemently, and to provoke Him to speak of many things, laying wait for Him, and seeking to catch something out of His mouth, that they might accuse Him."
Very different, however, was His way in the house of another Pharisee who in like manner had asked Him to dine (Luke 7). This man, like the one in Luke 11, displayed pharisaical tendencies. He silently accused the poor sinner of the city, and his guest for allowing her to approach Him. But appearances are not the ground of righteous judgments. Often the very same words, on different lips, have a very different mind in them. And therefore the Lord, the perfect weigh master according to God, though He rebuked Simon and exposed him to himself, knew Simon by name and left his house as a guest should leave it. He distinguished the Pharisee of Luke 7 from the one of Luke 11, though He dined with both of them.
As another aspect of the moral glory of the Lord Jesus, He knew how to answer every man with words which were always to his soul’s profit. He perfectly fulfilled that which the apostle Paul urged upon the Colossian believers:"Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man" (4:6) Thus, in answering inquiries, He did not so much purpose to satisfy them as to reach the conscience or the condition of the inquirer.
In His silence, or refusal to answer at all, when He stood before the Jew or the Gentile at the end, before either the priests, or Pilate, or Herod, we can trace the same perfect fitness as we do in His words or answers. He witnessed to God that at least One among the sons of men knew "a time to keep silence, and a time to speak" (Eccl. 3:7).
Great variety in His very tone and manner also presents itself in all this; and all this variety added to the fragrance of His perfect life before God. Sometimes His word was gentle, and sometimes peremptory; sometimes He reasoned, and sometimes He rebuked at once; sometimes He conducted calm reasoning up to the heated point of solemn condemnation. It was the moral aspect of the occasion He always weighed.
Matthew 15 has struck me as a chapter in which this perfection may be seen. In the course of it the Lord was called to answer the Pharisees, the multitude, the poor afflicted stranger from the coasts of Tyre, and His own disciples, again and again, in their manifestation of either stupidity or selfishness. And we may notice His different style of rebuke and of reasoning, of calm, patient teaching, and of faithful, wise, and gracious training of the soul. We cannot help but feel how fitting all this variety was to the place or occasion that called it forth.
In a similar way we marvel at the beauty and the fitness of His neither teaching nor learning in Luke 2:46, but only hearing and asking questions. To have taught then would not have been in season since He was a child in the midst of His elders. To have learned would not have been in full fidelity to the light which He knew He carried in Himself, for we may surely say that He was wiser than the ancients and had more understanding than His teachers (Psa. 119:99,100). He knew in the perfection of grace how to use this fulness of wisdom. Strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God upon Him, is the description of Him then as He grew up in tender years; and when a man conversing in the world, His speech was always with grace, seasoned with salt, as of One who knew how to answer every man. What perfection and beauty suited to the different seasons of childhood and manhood!
Let me close by saying that it is blessed and happy for us, as well as part of our worship, to mark the characteristics of the Lord’s way and ministry here on the earth. All that He did and said, all His service, whether in the substance or the style of it, is the witness of what He was, and He is the witness to us of what God is.. And thus we reach God, the blessed One, through the paths of the Lord Jesus recorded in the pages of the four evangelists. Every step of that way becomes important to us. All that He did and said was a real, truthful expression of Himself, as He Himself was a real, truthful expression of God. If we can understand the character of His ministry, or read the moral glory that attaches to each moment and each particular of His walk and service here on earth, and so learn what He is, and thus learn what God is, we reach God in certain and unclouded knowledge of Him. We reach God through the ordinary paths and activities of the life of this divine Son of Man.
(Condensed from Short Meditation on the Moral Glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.)
FRAGMENT "According to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body" (Phil. 1:20). Is it our desire to be able to adopt Paul’s language? Do we hold our bodies as vessels for the display of Christ? As we rise in the morning do we look upon the coming day as another opportunity of making Christ great?