The Marks of Jesus

From henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus.—Galatians 6:17.

The Apostle was growing an old man. He was stamped and marked by life. The wounds of his conflicts, the furrows of his years, were on him. And all these wounds and furrows had come to him since the great change of his life. They were closely bound up with the service of his Master. Every scar must still have quivered with the earnestness of the words of Christian loyalty which brought the blow that made it. See what he calls these scars, then. “I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus.” He had a figure in his mind. He was thinking of the way in which a master branded his slaves. Burnt into their very flesh, they carried the initial of their master’s name, or some other sign that they belonged to him, that they were not their own. That mark on the slave’s body kept any other but his own master from touching him or compelling his labour. It was the sign at once of his servitude to one master and of his freedom from all others. St. Paul says that these marks in his flesh, which signify his servitude to Jesus, are the witnesses of his freedom from every other service. Since he is responsible to his Master, he is responsible to no one else.

The stigmata are the marks of ownership branded on the Apostle’s body. These stigmata were used: (1) In the case of domestic slaves. With these, however, branding was not usual, at least among the Greeks and Romans, except to mark out such as had attempted to escape or had otherwise misconducted themselves, hence called “stigmatized (literati),” and such brands were held to be a badge of disgrace. (2) Slaves attached to some temple or persons devoted to the service of some deity were so branded. (3) Captives were so treated in very rare cases. (4) Soldiers sometimes branded the name of their commander on some part of their body. The metaphor here is most appropriate, if referred to the second of these classes. Such a practice at all events cannot have been unknown in a country which was the home of the worship of Cybele. A temple slave is mentioned in a Galatian inscription. The brands of which the Apostle speaks were doubtless the permanent marks which he bore of persecution undergone in the service of Christ.1 [Note: J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 225.]

In the Roman Empire when a slave ran away, if he was caught, his owner might have him stripped, the irons heated, and the letters “FVG.” (fugitivus) branded upon him. Perhaps the owner’s initials might be burnt on the slave, too. The practice long survived in France, where convicts were branded “V” (voleur), or “TF” (travail forcé), and people took their children to see it done as a lesson in virtue. The historian, Herodotus, tells us that in Egypt, if a slave were dissatisfied with his master, he might go to the temple of Herakles and take on him the stigmata of the god, and be free for ever of his master and belong to the god. Such marks were indelible.2 [Note: T. R. Glover, Vocation, 36.]

The branding was a mark of shame. No man was branded of his own free will—apart from slaves taking on them such a brand as that of Herakles, which was to exchange one servitude for another. To be the slave of Jesus Christ had not been Paul’s intention. The shame of bearing Christ’s name—of being “made as the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:13)—the loss of home and family and friendships, of everything (Php 3:8)—the squalid life of privation, insult, persecution and danger—humiliation from beginning to end—no man would have chosen it, and Paul did not choose it. It was a vocation: “Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel! For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, I am entrusted with a stewardship” (1 Corinthians 9:16-17). A steward was very often a slave, if not always. Paul is at the beck and call of another whom he never chose to make his Master. He must have no will of his own. “Go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do” (Acts 9:6),—so far was he from choosing a vocation, he has to wait for his orders.

The two responsibilities go together—the servant is responsible to the Master, and the Master to the servant. The very stigmata themselves become so many promises. The body is marked all over with signs of the Master’s use, as a favourite book, which a man reads often, shows most signs of wear—pencilled in here and there, crushed, worn and shabby, and in all these things identified with the reader who cannot do without it. The battered body and the tried and weary spirit are reminders themselves to Paul that “Christ liveth in me.”1 [Note: T. R. Glover, Vocation, 37.]

I

Outward Marks

Every Christian man or woman ought to bear in his or her body, in a plain, literal sense, the tokens that he or she belongs to Jesus Christ. You ask how? “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee.” There are things in our physical nature that we have to suppress; that we have always to regulate and coerce; that we have sometimes entirely to cast away and do without, if we mean to be Jesus Christ’s at all. The old law of self-denial, of subduing the animal nature, its passions, appetites, desires, is as true and as needful to-day as it ever was; and for us all it is essential to the loftiness and purity of our Christian life that our animal nature and our fleshly constitution should be well kept down under heel and subdued. If we are not living a life of self-denial, if we are not crucifying the flesh with its affections and lusts, if we are not “bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body,” what tokens are there that we are Christ’s slaves at all?

The marks of Christ are brands burnt into the very body, so no outward thing will satisfy; nothing that your hands have done, nothing that the world can measure, for it is beneath all the dress and apparel of a so-called religious life, of which the world takes cognizance. They are part and parcel of yourself, so they can be nothing which can be taken up and laid down at will. They are inseparable, like flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. You may be stripped of all else, like a body washed ashore, but by these shall it be known whether you are Christ’s or no.2 [Note: Canon Furse.]

At the Cross, Bunyan tells us, Christian received four gifts from the angels—peace, new raiment, a mark, and a sealed roll. The mark, like the raiment, has to do with the outward appearance, but it is more intimately connected with the individuality of the man than the new garments. It seems to stand for something distinguishable by others, which is in a stricter sense ourselves than even our character is—a subtle change wrought upon the very personality by the Cross of Christ, as the marks of the Cross were printed upon St. Francis of Assisi in the familiar incident of the stigmata. In the Bible there are such references as the mark of Cain; the mark of Ezekiel’s man with the slaughter-weapon; the mark of the beast and the mark in the foreheads of the chosen ones, recorded in Revelation. All these illustrate in various ways the subtle change in men, recognizable by others, produced by supreme experiences of good and evil.1 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, i. 72.]

1. Here is a man whose restless spirit, whose keen hungry eye, whose hard face, whose metallic voice, tells the story of a sordid soul. Do we need to ask anything about his master? We know, as we listen to him, as we look into his face, that he has a craving for money; that his life is spent in following the god of gold, and worshipping in the temple of mammon. Mammon is his master, and he bears branded upon his body the “stigmata” of the master he serves. Here is one whose bloated face, feverish lips, and furtive glance tell of sensuality. The vice seems to have petrified on the countenance. Not a finger-touch of God seems to be left there. We know the name of the master that man serves. He bears branded upon his sensual face the marks of the master whose slave he is. The name of his master is lust. Here is another whose mien betokens a lofty indifference and a contemptuous disregard for others, and an unquestioning appropriation of the best of everything. Those haughty looks tell the story of a life completely dominated by pride. Here is another whose face is scarred and marred with anguish. It says, as you look at it, “I am a man who has seen affliction.” The furrowed face, wrinkled brow, and sunken cheeks tell of a life that has been trodden by the hoof of sorrow. We know that the man has spent long years in the school of sorrow; he bears on his body the “stigmata” of pain.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, “I won’t count this time!” Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific, spheres by so many separate acts and hours of work.1 [Note: W. James, Principles of Psychology, i. 127.]

In one of Tolstoy’s books he represents an ideal Czar who keeps open house and table for all comers. But the guests had to face one condition—each man had to show his hands before sitting down to the feast. Those whose hands were rough and hard with honest toil were welcomed to the best of the board, but those whose hands were soft and white had only the crusts and crumbs. The hands were the index of the soul. The hard rough hands told the story of toil, sacrifice, and suffering, and it was for these the best of the feast was spread.2 [Note: J. G. Mantle, God’s To-morrow, 38.]

2. The face of a Christian disciple should testify to the grace of God within. It is a matter of constant observation that strong ruling emotions of heart do come, in time, to stamp themselves upon the countenance. Sometimes we see a face that speaks of beaming kindliness, or of sweet, devout, and holy peace. What God wants is that His character should be so stamped upon the lives of all His children that every observer of their daily walk should recognize in them what is really Divine.

After the death of the saintly McCheyne, a letter addressed to him was found in his locked desk, a letter he had shown to no one while he lived. It was from one who wrote to tell him that he had been the means of leading him to Christ, and in it were these words, “It was nothing that you said that first made me wish to be a Christian, it was the beauty of holiness which I saw in your very face.”3 [Note: G. H. Knight, Divine Upliftings, 159.]

II

Spiritual Marks

1. While it is true that the primary reference of the text is to the scars of old and recent wounds which St. Paul had endured in the service of Christ, these were not the only “marks of Jesus” that he bore. After all, the true marks of Jesus are not outward but inward, not physical but spiritual. It was the Apostle Paul himself who said, “If any man hath not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” And in St. Paul’s own case, the wounds he bore, while in some respects the most striking, were not the deepest and most convincing “marks” of Jesus. The final and absolutely decisive proof that St. Paul belonged to Christ was that he had the spirit of Christ and that Christ lived over again in him.

The brand of Christ may be upon the mind and heart as truly as upon the body: on the mind, in the effort we make to subdue our natural arrogance and pride into humbleness and faith; on the heart, in the loving pity we have for the misfortunes of others. Are our minds no longer conformed to the spirit of the world, but transformed to the image of the Son; so that the mind that was in Christ is the mind that is in us? Are our hearts thus quick to suffer in the suffering of others, as His was, who by force of sympathy bore our grief and carried our sorrows? Therein only can we rest, thus only be at peace about ourselves; and as we pass through the detractions and misunderstandings of this world, and as we journey down the long road whose goal is death, we can learn to say, “Let no man trouble me—let me not even be troubled for myself—I have the marks of Christ, I know whom I have believed, and who shall separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, my Lord?” To have the marks, the brands, the stigmata, the open proofs of self-surrender and self-sacrifice—that alone counts.

There is a tendency, even in these days, to think Christ’s “marks” are external and mechanical. We think sometimes that the “mark” of a Christian is that he observes the Sabbath and attends church services and belongs to some ecclesiastical organization. I do not disparage the Sabbath and church attendance and membership. But these external things are not the “real” marks of Jesus. Did not Jesus Himself say that a man may have all manner of Church guarantees and certificates and be none of His? Did He not say, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out devils, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” No, it is not the crucifix on the watch-chain, or the “S.A.” on the collar, or the name on the church roll that constitutes the marks of Jesus. The marks are inward and spiritual. They are certain features of character, and especially these three, obedience, love, sacrifice. Indeed, our Lord Himself emphasized and underlined these three things as being, above all others, the marks of His servants. First, obedience. “Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Secondly, love. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” And thirdly, sacrifice. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Have we got these marks? Is our life characterized by an utter obedience to God, a great passion for souls, a remorseless sacrifice of self? We ask sometimes, “Hath He marks to lead me to Him, if He be my guide?” And we answer, “Yes, He has certain infallible marks: ‘In His feet and hands are wound-prints, and His side.’ ” But there is another question: Have we the marks that single us out as His? Does the world recognize Christ’s marks on us? Life always leaves its mark. The life of greed leaves its mark. The life of frivolous self-pleasing leaves its mark. The life of sin leaves its mark. And the life of Christian service leaves its mark. “They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” The world, in their courage and devotion and self-sacrifice, saw the “marks of Jesus.” But more important still, does Jesus see the “marks”? “The Lord knoweth them that are his.” How? By the marks. We read how, in the last great day, there will be a division and a discrimination. The great Shepherd will then gather and fold His sheep. And that is how He will know them—by the “marks.” Shall we then be amongst the sheep on the right hand? It all comes back to this: Do we bear branded upon us the “marks” of Jesus—the infallible signs and tokens of His service? Do we possess that spirit of obedience to God, and love to men, and utter self-sacrifice which a real surrender of ourselves to Jesus Christ always produces? “For if any man hath not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”1 [Note: J. D. Jones, The Gospel of Grace, 249.]

As in the Christ, though men beheld no beauty—

Only the marks of suffering and care,

God, from the first, beheld His own bright image

Rejoicing in the revelation fair.

So, where His children, looking on each other,

See forms and faces marred by pain and woe,

God, looking on the depths and not the surface,

Sees oftentimes His likeness formed below.2 [Note: Edith H. Divall, A Believer’s Rest, 35.]

2. The “stigmata,” the marks of Christ their Master, cannot be mistaken. His followers have His marks on their body, as signs that they are members of His Body, in all purity and chastity and holiness, as being “temples of the Holy Ghost.” But they also have His marks on their temper, as those who have taken up their cross and borne it after Him in self-denial and mortification, in patience, in forgiveness, in humility, in cheerfulness; His marks on their soul, as being set free from condemnation by the atoning mercy of the Saviour, as being made partakers of the precious fruits of His sacrifice upon the Cross—the mark of justification, and the mark of sanctification, the imputed righteousness of Christ, the imparted and inherent righteousness wrought in them by the Holy Ghost; His marks on their spirit; being full of all spiritual affections—love, joy, peace, patience amid the trials of earth, longing for the security of Heaven, the present enjoyment of an almost perfect rest in the arms of God; in short, “a life hid with Christ in God.”

I would not miss one sigh or tear,

Heart-pang, or throbbing brow;

Sweet was the chastisement severe,

And sweet its memory now.

Yes! let the fragrant scars abide,

Love-tokens in Thy stead,

Faint shadows of the spear-pierced side

And thorn-encompass’d head.

And such Thy tender force be still,

When self would swerve or stray,

Shaping to truth the froward will

Along Thy narrow way.

Deny me wealth; far, far remove

The lure of power or name;

Hope thrives in straits, in weakness love,

And faith in this world’s shame.1 [Note: J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions.]

III

Stigmata of the Saints

1. The Apostle, it may be added, may have used the word “stigmata” with special reference to those marks in the body of his blessed Lord which were in the eyes of faith the symbol of salvation, and which love imagined to be reproduced in the disciple; those marks on which Thomas looked, and cried aloud, “My Lord, and my God.” For in the heat of his love of Christ, and in the certainty of his oneness with Him, what image was more natural than that of his own heart bearing the traces of the wounds of Christ? Such a thought must have passed into the minds of many saints of God; and where legendary fancy has expressed it outwardly, in the figures of holy men receiving actually in their bodies the print of their Saviour’s wounds, can we not read in the painter’s art the spiritual truth, “I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus”?

St. Francis of Assisi in the year 1224 a.d. received in a trance the wound-prints of the Saviour on his body; and from that time to his death, it is reported, the saint had the physical appearance of one who had suffered crucifixion. Other instances, to the number of eighty, have been recorded in the Roman Catholic Church of the reproduction, in more or less complete form, of the five wounds of Jesus and the agonies of the cross; chiefly in the case of nuns. The last was that of Louise Lateau, who died in Belgium in the year 1883. That such phenomena have occurred there is no sufficient reason to doubt. It is difficult to assign any limits to the power of the human mind over the body in the way of sympathetic imitation. Since St. Francis’ day many Romanist divines have read the Apostle’s language in this sense; but the interpretation has followed rather than given rise to this fulfilment. In whatever light these manifestations may be regarded, they are a striking witness to the power of the cross over human nature. Protracted meditation on the sufferings of our Lord, aided by a lively imagination and a susceptible physique, has actually produced a rehearsal of the bodily pangs and the wound-marks of Calvary.1 [Note: G. G. Findlay, The Epistle to the Galatians, 457.]

The name of a well-known scientific man having been mentioned, who, forbidden to work, occupies himself in closely watching his own case, Sir James Paget said, “It is a most dangerous thing to do that; people, by dwelling upon symptoms which they have not got, are very apt to produce them.” I said: “I have been told that the stigmata might quite well be produced in that way.” “Undoubtedly,” he replied.2 [Note: M. E. Grant-Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1892–95, 44.]

2. There is something far better for us to do than so to contemplate the sufferings of our Lord as depicted by human art, that the stigmata may literally appear on our hands and feet. It is so to contemplate our Lord in the whole spirit of His life and service and sacrifice, and so to come under His influence, that the spirit of His life and cross shall enter into us, and we shall go away from the secret place of contemplation to reproduce His image and likeness in conduct and character—that we, “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” may be “changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

In all art and literature, in every great and new creation, the impulse seems to lie in a new and vivid experience which makes a new knowledge. The man who was branded “FVG.,” like the woman in Hawthorne’s novel who wore the scarlet letter or the man who did not, knew something of those letters of the alphabet in quite a different way from all the rest. A burning experience and a burning memory indelible from flesh and spirit gave him those. It is somehow so that the poet learns his peculiar alphabet—something is burnt in upon him, perhaps in pain, perhaps in joy, for the joy of insight may go with pain and overwhelm it—and you get a new man, a “God-intoxicated man,” like Spinoza, perhaps—or a Jacob Behmen. All knowledge is changed for him; he knew before;—no, he thought he did; but he knows now—not so many things, but the one thing in a new way that alters all. “If any man be in Christ,” said Paul, “it is a new creation.” All things are made new—they have new values in the new light, and none is ever again what it was before; it cannot be. Life has a new intensity, a new direction a new purpose. It becomes a vocation.1 [Note: T. R. Glover, Vocation, 45.]

I saw in Siena pictures,

Wandering wearily;

I sought not the names of the masters,

Nor the works men care to see;

But once in a low-ceiled passage

I came on a place of gloom,

Lit here and there with halos

Like saints within the room.

The pure, serene, mild colours

The early artists used

Had made my heart grow softer,

And still on peace I mused.

Sudden I saw the Sufferer,

And my frame was clenched with pain;

Perchance no throe so noble

Visits my soul again.

Mine were the stripes of the scourging;

On my thorn-pierced brow blood ran;

In my breast the deep compassion

Breaking the heart for man.

I drooped with heavy eyelids,

Till evil should have its will;

On my lips was silence gathered;

My waiting soul stood still.

I gazed, nor knew I was gazing;

I trembled, and woke to know

Him whom they worship in heaven

Still walking on earth below.

Once have I borne His sorrows

Beneath the flail of fate!

Once in the woe of His passion,

I felt the soul grow great!

I turned from my dead Leader;

I passed the silent door;

The grey-walled street received me:

On peace I mused no more.1 [Note: G. E. Woodberry.]

IV

Christ’s Ownership

The ownership of Christ is one of the great realities of the Christian life. We speak of Christ as our Saviour, our Friend, our Example, our Teacher, but how seldom do we think and speak of Him as our Owner! And yet He is. We belong not to ourselves, but to Him. Our time, our talents, our money, our business, our home—all that we call our own is not so much ours as His. We were “bought with a price,” and we belong to Him who bought us.

That which is abject degradation when it is rendered to a man, that which is blasphemous presumption when it is required by a man, that which is impossible, in its deepest reality, as between man and man, is possible, is blessed, is joyful and strong when it is required by, and rendered to, Jesus Christ. We are His slaves if we have any living relationship to Him at all. Where, then, in the Christian life, is there a place for self-will; where a place for self-indulgence; where for murmuring or reluctance; where for the assertion of any rights of our own as against that Master? We owe absolute obedience and submission to Jesus Christ. The Christian slavery, with its abject submission, with its utter surrender and suppression of our own will, with its complete yielding up of self to the control of Jesus, who died for us; because it is based upon His surrender of Himself to us, and its inmost essence it is the operation of love, is therefore co-existent with the noblest freedom.

The Hebrews had a scheme of qualified slavery. A man might sell his service for six years, but at the end of that time he was scot-free. On the New Year’s morning of the seventh year he was granted his full liberty, and given some grain and oil to begin life with anew. But if on that morning he found himself reluctant to leave all his ties binding him to his master’s home, this was the custom among them. He would say to his master, “I don’t want to leave you. This is home to me. I love you and the mistress. I love the place. All my ties and affections are here. I want to stay with you always.” His master would say, “Do you mean this?” “Yes,” the man would reply, “I want to belong to you forever.” Then his master would call in the leading men of the village or neighbourhood to witness the occurrence. And he would take his servant out to the door of the home, and standing him up against the door-jamb, would pierce the lobe of his ear through with an awl. Then the man became, not his slave, but his bond-slave, forever. It was a personal surrender of himself to his master; it was voluntary; it was for love’s sake; it was for service; it was after a trial; it was for life. Now, that was what Jesus did. The scar-mark of Jesus’ surrender was not in His ear, as with the old Hebrew slave. It was on His cheek, and brow, on His back, in His side and hands and feet. The scar-marks of His surrender were—are—all over His face and form. Everybody who surrenders bears some scar of it because of sin, his own or somebody else’s. Referring to the suffering endured in service, Paul tenderly reckons it as a mark of Jesus’ ownership—“I bear the scars, the stigmata, of the Lord Jesus.” Even of the Master Himself is this so. And that scarred Jesus, whose body told and tells of His surrender to His Father, comes to us. And with those hands eagerly outstretched, and eyes beaming with the earnestness of His great passion for men, He says, “Yoke up with Me. Let Me have the control of all your splendid powers, in carrying out our Father’s will for a world.”1 [Note: 1 S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 85.]

Some scars are ornaments. I do not know a more splendid word in all the supremely splendid Epistles of St. Paul than “I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus.” “Do you see this?” he said, “I was stoned there”; and then he would pull up his sleeve and say, “Do you see that?—it is the mark of the scourge. If you could only see my back, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus”; he exhibited them as some men parade their degrees. His scars were his crown.2 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

Walk through Greenwich Hospital, or go down to Chelsea and talk to some of the old pensioners. Are they ashamed of their scars? Why, I remember how, a few months back, we had, at one of our meetings, a brother who had served in the Crimean War, and he showed me how a bayonet had gone in here and come out there—how there was a mark in his arm where a ball had gone right through and a scar in his face where the sword had cut. I think he said that he had about twenty scars on him, and his eyes flashed fire as he told the story.3 [Note: 3 Archibald G. Brown.]

The “marks” of valour that the soldier obtains on the field of battle are invariably a matter of pride to himself and his friends. Lord Raglan’s orderly officer, Lieutenant Leslie, was wounded at the battle of Alma. On the evening of that day Lord Raglan said to another officer, “Do you know Tom Leslie’s mother? She is a charming woman. I must write to her. How proud she will be to hear that her son has a bullet in his shoulder!” At the battle of Busaco in Portugal, in 1810, Sir Charles Napier, afterwards the conqueror of Scinde, was shot through the face. His two brothers had been wounded a short time before, and when he wrote to his mother he said, “You have the pride of saying your three sons have been wounded and are all alive. How this would have repaid my father for all his anxieties, and it must do so for you. Why, a Roman matron would not have let people touch her garment in such a case. There is no shame for such wounds. The scars on my face will be as good as medals; better, for they were not gained by hiding behind a wall.”4 [Note: The Morning Watch, 1895, p. 62.]

If Thou, my Christ, to-day

Shouldst speak to me and say,

“What battles hast thou fought for Me?

Show Me thy scars; I fain would see

Love’s depth of victory;”

If Thou shouldst speak, my Christ,

My Leader and my King,

And bid me lay my wounds in sight,

The scars borne just for Thee in fight,

What love-scars could I bring?