Daily Devotionals

Devotional: August 18th

THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD

The Lord will perfect, that which concerneth me. - Psalms 138:8

It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. - Matthew 10:25.

The disciple’s schooling is not ended until he has learned all that the master can teach; and the duty of the servant is not performed until he has done all that the lord commands. There is no adequate end to the experiences of the imperfect Christian life on earth, except that of being wholly assimilated to the character of Jesus Christ. So much accomplished, and so much unaccomplished - the contradiction between the two halves cannot continue for ever. The likeness of Jesus Christ, which is imperfectly realized in a man here, has in it " the promise and the potency " of a perfect conformity hereafter. Michael Angelo left several of his works with a part finished and polished to the last point of statuesque perfection, and the rest rough marble, with the marks of a tool upon it here and there. The face or the form was half-extricated from, and half still embedded in, the rude and formless block. You can see in Baalbec a pillar partially rounded and hewn out of the rock, and the rest of it still undelivered from its environment. So the Christian life here, in its incompleteness, prophesies of that which is to come. For if Christ is the Worker, then His work must correspond to His own perfection. If He is our Master, then He will not cease His teaching until we have learned all His "treasures of wisdom and knowledge." If He is our Lord, then we shall be perfectly like Himself. Never shall it be said of this man that "he began to build, and was not able to finish." " The Lord will perfect that which concerneth thee."

"It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master." Is it not enough for the heart, enough to know for the mind, amid all the dimness and the darkness of that future? We know not what lies beyond the pass: the fair lands on the other side the mountains are all unseen; but, as good old Richard Baxter says in his hymn -

"It is enough that Christ knows all,

And I shall be like Him."

If that likeness is to be completed hereafter, it must be begun here. Whatever speculations men may indulge in about the effect of passing beyond the vale, there is nothing either in what we know of the phenomenon of death, nor in what Scripture plainly teaches, to warrant the belief that the accident of dying shall revolutionise a man’s attitude to Jesus Christ. And it is a desperate risk to run, that we should trust to begin beyond the grave a life dead against the life that was lived here. We do know that, if imperfectly, we try to follow Christ on earth, there we shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. We do know that if here we enter ourselves in Christ’s school, there we shall get our remove to a higher form. We do know that if here the likeness begins, there it shall be perfected. As some poor bit of glass, smitten by a sunbeam, blazes with the light which it reflects, so, when we behold His countenance "as the sun shineth in his strength," we, too, " shall shine like the sun in the Heavenly Father’s Kingdom."

So the question comes to be, "Am I Christ’s scholar? Have I begun to be like Him? " Then I have the beginnings of peace and of heart-satisfaction. To be like Christ is enough for a man; nothing less is.

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