Christ's constancy of love.
If there is any time when a man's attention is presumed to be necessarily and properly directed to himself, that time is the time when danger is present and when death approaches. But when our Savior's hour was come, when the shadow of the cross fell athwart his path, he seems to have been signally unselfish in all his actions, and disinterested in his very thoughts. Humiliation, suffering, and death were immediately before him; but it is beautiful, instructive, encouraging to see how warmly his heart beat for his friends, and how anxious he was to use the closing days of his ministry for their spiritual profit. These words reveal to us Christ's constancy of love.
I. ITS OBJECTS. Whom did he love, and love unto the end?
1. They were "his own," i.e. those who were called and chosen by him, who were loved and purchased by him. His own possession and property, his own spiritual kin, these friends of Jesus were attached and devoted to him, conformed to his character, participators in his spirit.
2. They were "in the world." This expression is significant, as implying that Christ's disciples were the objects of his affection, notwithstanding that they were encompassed by life's difficulties and temptations, notwithstanding that in their character they bore traces of this world's influences and assaults.
3. The language used is applicable to others beside the immediate disciples of our Lord. He felt towards others and prayed for others (John 17:1-26.) as he felt towards the twelve and prayed for them. All are "his own" who truly trust and love and obey him; and all his own have an interest in his purposes of pity and of grace.
II. ITS WONDER. Marvelous indeed is it that the affection of Jesus should outlast the many trials to which it was put by his disciples, to which it has been put by all of us. There was very much in his followers which was fitted to check, to kill, the love of Jesus.
"Could we bear from one another
What he daily bears from us?
Yet this glorious Friend and Brother
Loves us, though we treat him thus!
Though for good- we render ill,
He accounts us brethren still."
"His own" were:
1. Slow to understand his teaching.
2. Slow to appreciate his nature and his mission.
3. Unworthy in their character of his fellowship and his Name.
4. Inconstant, as was shown by their afterwards forsaking him in the depth of his distress and humiliation.
Amazing was the love which endured when so tried! Amazing is the love which we and all Christ's people have experienced from him, notwithstanding our unfaithfulness and coldness!
III. ITS MOTIVE AND EXPLANATION.
1. The constancy of our Savior's affection is not attributable to any qualities in his disciples, which could deserve and retain his interest and attachment. So far as we are concerned, our need, our dependence upon him, are all that have to be taken into account. If Jesus were not faithful to us, where would be our strength, our safety, our hope?
2. For the explanation of this marvelous constancy we must look to Christ's own character, to his faithful, unchanging nature, free from every caprice, from every unkindness. It is his nature to love, and to love without fickleness or weariness.
IV. ITS PROOFS.
1. In the lessons he taught. Christ's was a love that first and chiefly contemplated the highest good of its objects. His aim has ever been the spiritual welfare of those whom he befriends, tie teaches
as in the context, where, first by washing the disciples' feet, and then by instituting the Lord's Supper, he evinces his affectionate interest in his disciples' well-being by imparting to them pictorial and sacramental lessons which were intended to perpetuate to all generations the memory and the blessing of his unchanging love.
2. In the sufferings and death to which he was about to submit. Only constant, unchanging friendship could account for our Lord's willingness to lay down his life for his own. And no one who studies this record can doubt that the sacrifice was willing and cheerful; that our Lord, the good Shepherd, "laid down his life for the sheep."
V. ITS DURATION. "To the end," says John the evangelist, who had good reason to know the Master well. To the approaching end of his own earthly ministry and life, and to the end of his disciples' period of probation and of education. Christ's love is "faithful, free, and knows no end." It is not only mighty; it is immortal. T.