Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn | Page 3

man. His hatred of sin did not cause him to shun
the sinner. Hence, though our Lord was the model of a religious man,
he was no enthusiast, still less a fanatic. The enthusiast is a man who
sees but part of truth and magnifies it out of its proportion; and the
fanatic is one who, in addition to this, hates what he cannot understand.
According to Isaac Taylor, "Fanaticism is enthusiasm inflamed by
hatred." But Christ exaggerated nothing and hated no man. He hated sin,
but no sinner. His boundless, tender love itself prevented such moral
distortion. And, therefore, he is the ideal or model of human life. We
do not feel that in striving to imitate even his most spiritual qualities we
shall become impractical or unnatural. We do not feel this in the case of
most other holy men. They become examples of one virtue by

exaggerating it. But Christ never did this. Lofty as the view of life was
which he discloses in our text, sublime as was its spiritual consecration,
it existed in him in harmony with the life which by its thoroughly
human and practical features proves that we too, in at least some
measure, can make even his highest traits our exemplars. Look,
therefore, at this text which discloses his mind, and mark its principal
elements.
1. There is first disclosed the strong and constant consciousness that he
had a distinct errand in the world. He knew that he had been born for a
purpose, that a divine aim was in his coming, and that a positive result
would follow his life. This sense of a definite errand was expressed by
him on numerous occasions; in some of them quite incidentally, and in
others more directly. You remember how, as a boy in the temple, he
said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business?" You remember how, at the marriage in Cana, he said to her
again, "My hour is not yet come." So with that precious phrase which
on several occasions fell from his lips, "The Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which is lost." He regarded himself as one sent
from God; and when his life was about over he lifted up his eyes to
heaven and said, "Father, the hour is come; I have glorified thee on the
earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."
So in our text, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to
finish his work." He was here on a special errand, and that errand was
always before his mind. Earth was but a place of appointed work. Life
was to him an office, a stewardship. He had this consciousness, even
when he seemed to be accomplishing nothing. It gave unity to all his
acts and words. To Galilean peasants and to Jewish scribes he could
speak with equal assurance, because his errand was to both. Yet he
knew its limitations. He said to the Syro-Phoenician woman, "I am not
sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." He had come do a
special work among the Jews, and in that a work for all mankind. He
had not come to be glorified. He had not come to be ministered unto,
but to minister. But he had come on a distinct errand; and whatever be
your doctrine of Christ's person, you must confess that he considered
himself no accident of history; that he did not regard his life work as

originating in his own choice; that his sense of a mission did not come
as an afterthought to him, or grow clear as he advanced in life. He felt
his special errand from the start. It was always before his mind, so that
life was to him the performance of a given task and the fulfillment of
an assigned duty.
2. But furthermore, our text discloses that, to Christ's mind, this errand
of his in the world derived its sanctity from the fact that it was the will
or wish of his Father. Every man is governed by some controlling
motive or class of motives. The lowest of all is the motive of personal
gain and pleasure, and the sorrows and sins of men chiefly spring from
the tyranny of this degraded passion. Higher than it is the motive of
pity and compassion, which may lead us to do good for the sake of
benefiting others. This is the spring of much charity and philanthropy,
and, so far as it goes, it is of course to be commended. But there is a
higher motive than even it, and Christ reveals it to us here. It is the
wish to do God's