Acts 1:8 But you shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come on you: and you shall be witnesses to me both in Jerusalem… I. OUR LORD HIMSELF IS THE GLORIOUS REALITY TO WHICH HIS SERVANTS ARE TO BEAR THEIR WITNESS. Witnesses unto Me! "Others might witness to My miracles, they were wrought in the face of day; others might repeat My discourses, 'spoken in the temple,' and you, in witnessing to Me, will witness to them likewise; but they are but the rays which proceed from Myself, and it is to this and to all that this implies, that I bid you witness." Contrast this with what we should expect from a great man. We should expect him to tell us that his endowments or achievements were the unmerited gift of heaven. If he should claim honour for himself, then our good opinion would be outraged, and we should proclaim him unworthy of His greatness. Our Lord defies this rule and the conscience of mankind justifies Him in defying it. He who could say, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" "I and the Father are one," could truly feel that it was impossible for Him to eclipse any higher greatness by drawing attention to Himself. His words and works were His own. As God, He was the author of the gifts which He received as Man. And therefore He thought it not robbery to draw the eyes of men away from the miracles and words to Himself, who gave their greatness to both. II. How CAN WE BEAR WITNESS TO A PERSON? We can witness to that which we know, a miracle or sermon; but how can we know so impalpable a thing as a person? especially how can we witness to a superhuman person? 1. But let me ask, can we be witnesses to each other? Yes, for we can know each other. Not merely the form and colour of the body or features, but that which gives to features and to form their interest, the soul. We cannot, indeed, see the soul with the eye of the body. But with the eye of the mind we can see it, and form a very clear conception of it, which we call "character."(1) When a man speaks, we read in his language, in its very accent, the movement of an undying spirit, the strength or weakness of an understanding, the warmth of a heart, the vigour or feebleness of a will. (2) And as through language the soul speaks to the ear of man, so by action the soul addresses itself to the eye of man. When a man acts, specially under circumstances of responsibility or of difficulty, then his true passions, capacities, littlenesses, greatness, come to the surface. (3) Once more, the soul is too active and imperious a tenant not to leave its mark upon the texture of the body, which it has inhabited for a term of years. Every human face, not less by its reserves than by its disclosures, records the play of thought and passion within a subtle immaterial spirit. Fear, joy, pride, lust, rage, sadness, shame, love, patience, each by reiterated throbs leaves its mark upon the flesh, till at length the soul has moulded the ductile matter, so that it shall truly portray its tale of baseness or of beauty. 2. Now in Jesus Christ, God made use of this provision to enter into communion with His creatures. Reason may discover God's existence and attributes, and under favourable conditions may attain to a cold and partial appreciation of His glory. But to reason, unaided by Revelation outside the soul, and by grace within it, God must ever seem abstract and remote. Therefore, that He might embrace His fallen creatures with a revelation of His beauty, the Most High robed Himself in a human body and a human soul. The thoughtful Gentile might have learnt something concerning Him in the natural world; the devout Jew might have read more of His true character in the Mosaic law; but a living personal revelation of what He is was reserved for the faith of Christendom. There are strangers, alas! to our faith, who yet confess that in the Gospels they encounter a form of unapproached grace and power. In the last age infidel writers like Diderot and Rousseau challenged the sceptics of the time, in language which has since become classical, to match, if they could, the moral beauty of the gospel. For in the gospel we meet with one who in His pre-eminent humanity is perfectly one with us, yet also most mysteriously distinct. So rare and refined is His type of manhood, He escapes the peculiarities of either sex. He is tied to no one form of human existence, yet adapt that Himself to all. He is born in extreme poverty, yet He has no grudge against wealth: He is claimed as their representative, by Geeek and Roman, and African and Teuton, no less truly than by the children of His people. No class professional, or national prejudice has lelt its taint upon that ideal Form, so as to make it less than representative of pure humanity. Yet, so far is He from being a cold, passionless statue, divested of all interests, strictly human, that there is a warmth and vividness in His character which none who have truly love or wept can fail to understand and to embrace. He hates evil, and denounces it; but He is never betrayed into an unbalanced statement; Herod does not make Him a revolutionist, nor the Pharisees an Antinomian. His triumphs cannot disturb, and His humiliations do but enhance the serene, self-possession of His soul. Well might we surmise that such a character as this was more than human. We know ourselves too well to suppose that human nature would conceive the full idea, much less that it could create the reality. Even to the Roman officer the truth revealed itself. "Truly this was the Son of God." Nay, Jesus Himself used language which no intimacy between God and holy souls would warrant if it were not literally true. Either we must resign that vision of beauty which we meet in the character of Jesus as an untrustworthy phantom, since it is dashed with a pretension involving at once falsehood and blasphemy, or we must confess that Jesus is Divine. Jesus is God; and in His acts, words, and very physiognomy the Apostles came face to face with the Perfect Being of beings. He had taken our nature as an instrument through which to act upon us, but also as an interpreter who should translate His own matchless perfections into audible words and visible actions (1 John 1:1-3). An enthusiasm, of which the object is merely human, must pass away, since its object is necessarily transient and imperfect. As you sit with the ashes of Wellington beneath your feet, you little dream of the warmth with which Englishmen named their great general on the morrow of Waterloo. One only has succeeded in creating an impression, which is as fresh in the hearts and thoughts of His true disciples at this moment as it was eighteen centuries ago; and as we listen to His words, and watch His actions, and almost seem to gaze on His face, irradiated with superhuman beauty in the pages of the Gospels we feel that He, as none other, had a right to say to unborn generations, "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." III. IS THERE ANYTHING IN OUR CONDUCT, OR OUR WORDS, THAT REALLY BEARS WITNESS TO THE SAVIOUR? Or are we living, speaking, feeling, acting, thinking, much as we might have done if He had never brightened our existence. Or are we bearing Him what our conscience tells us is a partial witness; a witness of language but not of conduct; a witness which attests those features of His work and doctrine which we prefer, rather than all that we know or might know about Him? This witness is the debt which all Christians owe to Christ. No class, or sex, or disposition, or age, or race can claim exemption. We cannot delegate it to our clergy. It is not merely that we are bound to witness to Him. If we are living Christian lives, we cannot help doing so. Be Christians indeed, and you will forthwith witness for Jesus — you who are at the summits of society, and you who are at its base; you who teach, and you who learn; you who command, and you who obey. In the lower and feeble sense they who practise the natural virtues, witness to Him, who is the source of all goodness. And thus courage under difficulties, and temperance amid self-indulgent livers, and justice truly observed between man and man, are forms of witness. They bear this witness who are in power, and who, renouncing selfish purposes, aim at the good of others. They too bear it, who have wealth, and who spend it not in perishing baubles, but in relieving bodily or spiritual suffering. Rut they, especially, who know our Lord in His pardoning mercy will hardly be content with a silent witness. For the disease which He heals is universal, and the efficacy of His cure is undoubted. The redemptive love of Jesus, like the sun in the heavens, is the inheritance of all who will come to have a share in it, and, as with the heart that love is believed in unto righteousness, so with the mouth confession of it is made unto salvation. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. |
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