Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn | Page 4

will. Such was his motive. To him the will of the
Father was the perfect good. He knew of nothing nobler than it, so that
the whole energy of his character consisted in the force of obedience.
This phrase may carry us back to that time in the counsels of the
Godhead when, as we conceive such matters, the Father determined to
save the world that had rebelled against him. The question was, where
to find a Saviour; and the spirit of the Divine Son was manifested in his
self-dedication to the work. He, too, loved man, but that was not his
main motive. He loved the Father. He appreciated the Father's wish to
save. He gave himself to carry out that wish. "Lo, I come," said he, "to
do thy will, O God." Thus we may perceive, I think, the deep reality in
the Divine Sonship of Christ; and certainly on earth this was his
controlling motive. He was obedient even unto death. To obey to the
very least particular the Father's will was the principle of his being. To
him the Father's will was not hard, stern law, as we with our rebellious
instincts so often regard it; it was the Father's wish. When love exists
between two persons, the will of one it is the other's joy to do, if
possible. Love impels to its accomplishment. Love rejoices in being of
service, in giving the loved one pleasure, in carrying out the other's
desire. So the will of God was, to Christ, his Father's wish. Obedience

was the mainspring of his soul's life, and his errand in the world
derived its sanctity and its glory--in spite of man's antagonism and in
spite of apparent fruitlessness--from the fact that it was the will of God.
In this Christ discloses the very highest spiritual life which it is possible
to conceive. How marvelous was this! He who has won the greatest
influence over the race, he before whom the head bows in adoration, he
who has changed already the course of history, and will change it until
every knee has bowed to him, was one whose supreme wish was to be
an obedient Son. Instead of conquering by selfishness he conquered by
self-abnegation. Instead of doing his own work, he gave himself up to
doing his Father's. Here is at once a miracle of history and a model of
life of which man would never have dreamed.
3. As a consequence of all this we can perceive in the language of the
text Christ's joy in the discovery of a special opportunity of carrying
out the highest purpose of the Father's will. It would seem that his
meeting with the Samaritan woman awakened almost a state of
excitement in his mind. It lifted him above the reach of physical desires.
This I suppose was because he recognized in that meeting an
opportunity of doing what he knew was dearest to his Father's heart.
His errand was to ultimately save the world, and now he was engaged
in saving at least one soul. No doubt his devotion to the Father's will
sustained him, even in the darkest hour. When the will of God
consigned him to the hatred of men, to the rejection of the people, to
the bitter sorrow of the cross, he could bow his head in humble
compliance and say, "Thy will, not mine, be done." But he knew well
that the Father willed his sorrows in order to the world's salvation, and
that the object dearest to the Father's heart was the recovery of lost
souls. He himself has told us of the angels' joy over such. And he has
described the whole object of his appearing to man by these matchless
words: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life."
And therefore his love of God the Father, no less than his love of man,
made him hail with especial joy such an opportunity as this. We may
fairly say that Christ followed the lead of providence. He did himself
what he requires of us; he was quick to recognize opportunities. He
heard in them a divine call; and by all his sense of his mission among

men, by all his desire to please the Father, did he hail the rising faith of
that Samaritan and rejoice in bringing to her the message of salvation.
Hence I say his evident excitement, if we may use the phrase. Hence
his obliviousness to hunger. Hence his forgetfulness of his former
fatigue. "Lift up your eyes," he cried to his disciples, "and look on the
fields, for they are white already unto harvest." The Father's will would
be accomplished, and in the joy of