Luke 19:1-10 And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho.… There are two ways of looking at sin: — One is the severe view: it makes no allowance for frailty — it will not hear of temptation, nor distinguish between circumstances. Men who judge in this way shut their eyes to all but two objects — a plain law, and a transgression of that law. There is no more to be said: let the law take its course. Now if this be the right view of sin, there is abundance of room left for admiring what is good and honourable and upright: there is positively no room provided for restoration. Happy if you have done well; but if ill, then nothing is before you but judgment and fiery indignation. The other view is one of laxity and false liberalism. When such men speak, prepare yourself to hear liberal judgments and lenient ones: a great deal about human weakness, error in judgment, mistakes, an unfortunate constitution, on which the chief blame of sin is to rest — a good heart. All well if we wanted, in this mysterious struggle of a life, only consolation. But we want far beyond comfort — goodness; and to be merely made easy when we have done wrong will not help us to that! Distinct from both of these was Christ's view of guilt. His standard of right was high — higher than ever man had placed it before. Not moral excellence, but heavenly, He demanded. "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Read the Sermon on the Mount. It tells of a purity as of snow resting on an Alpine pinnacle, white in the blue holiness of heaven; and yet also, He the All-pure had tenderness for what was not pure. He who stood in Divine uprightness that never faltered, felt compassion for the ruined, and infinite gentleness for human fall. Broken, disappointed, doubting hearts, in dismay and bewilderment, never looked in vain to Him. Purity attracting evil: that was the wonder. I see here three peculiarities, distinguishing Christ from ordinary men. I. A PECULIARITY IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE REDEEMER'S MORAL NATURE. Manifested in that peculiar title which He assumed — the Son of Man. Let us see what that implies. 1. It implies fairly His Divine origin; for it is an emphatic expression, and as we may so say, an unnatural one. None could without presumption remind men that He was their Brother and a Son of Man, except One who was also something higher, even the Son of God. 2. It implies the catholicity of His brotherhood. He is emphatically the Son of Man. Out of this arose two powers of His sacred humanity — the universality of His sympathies, and their intense particular personality. What was His mode of sympathy with men? He did not sit down to philosophize about the progress of the species, or dream about a millennium. He gathered round Him twelve men. He formed one friendship, special, concentrated, deep. He did not give Himself out as the leader of the publican's cause, or the champion of the rights of the dangerous classes; but He associated with Himself Matthew, a publican called from the detested receipt of custom. He went into the house of Zaccheus, and treated him like a fellow-creature — a brother, and a son of Abraham. His catholicity or philanthropy was not an abstraction, but an aggregate of personal attachments. II. PECULIARITY IN THE OBJECTS OF CHRIST'S SOLICITUDE. He had come to seek and to save the "lost." The world is lost, and Christ came to save the world. But by the lost in this place He does not mean the world; He means a special class, lost in a more than common sense, as sheep are lost which have strayed from the flock, and wandered far beyond all their fellows scattered in the wilderness. Blot half a century ago a great man was seen stooping and working in a charnel-house of bones. Uncouth, nameless fragments lay around him, which the workmen had dug up and thrown aside as rubbish. They belonged to some far-back age, and no man knew what they were or whence. Few men cared. The world was merry at the sight of a philosopher groping among mouldy bones. But when that creative mind, reverently discerning the fontal types of living being in diverse shapes, brought together those strange fragments, bone to bone, and rib to claw, and tooth to its own corresponding vertebrae, recombining the wondrous forms of past ages, and presenting each to the astonished world as it moved and lived a hundred thousand ages back, then men began to perceive that a new science had begun on earth. And such was the work of Christ. They saw Him at work among the fragments and mouldering wreck of our humanity and sneered. But He took the dry bones such as Ezekiel saw in vision, which no man thought could live, and He breathed into them the breath of life. III. A PECULIARITY IN HIS MODE OF TREATMENT. How were these lost ones to be restored? The human plans are reducible to three — chastisement, banishment, and indiscriminate lenity. In Christ's treatment of guilt we find three peculiarities — sympathy, holiness, firmness. 1. By human sympathy. In the treatment of Zaccheus this was almost all. We read of almost nothing else as the instrument of that wonderful reclamation, One thing only, Christ went to his house self-invited. But that one was everything. 2. By the exhibition of Divine holiness. The holiness of Christ differed from all earthly, common, vulgar holiness. Wherever it was, it elicited a sense of sinfulness and imperfection. Just as the purest cut crystal of the rock looks dim beside the diamond, so the best men felt a sense of guilt growing distinct upon their souls (Luke 5:8). But at the same time the holiness of Christ did not awe men away from Him, nor repel them. It inspired them with hope. 3. By firmness. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. |
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