Love to the Uttermost | Page 4

save those that had clean hands and a pure heart; and because of all
this, He turned to them, by symbol and metaphor, to impress upon their

heart and memory the necessity of participating in the cleansing of
which the Laver is the type.
The highest love is ever quickest to detect the failures and
inconsistencies of the beloved. Just because of its intensity, it can be
content with nothing less than the best, because the best means the
blessedest; and it longs that the object of its thought should be most
blessed forever. It is a mistake to think that green-eyed jealousy is
quickest to detect the spots on the sun, the freckles on the face, and the
marring discords in the music of the life; love is quicker, more
microscopic, more exacting that the ideal should be achieved. Envy is
content to indicate the fault, and leave it; but love detects, and waits
and holds its peace until the fitting opportunity arrives, and then sets
itself to remove, with its own tenderest ministry, the defect which had
spoiled the completeness and beauty of its object.
Perhaps there had never been a moment in the human consciousness of
our Lord, when, side by side with this intense love for His own, there
had been so vivid a sense of oneness with His Father, of His unity with
the source of Infinite Purity and Blessedness. We might have supposed
that this would have alienated Him from His poor friends, but in this
our thoughts are not as His. Just because of His awful holiness, He was
quick to perceive the unholiness of His friends, and could not endure it,
and essayed to rid them of it. Just because of His Divine goodness He
could detect the possibilities of goodness in them, and be patient
enough to give it culturing care.
The most perfect musician may be most tortured by incompetence; but
he will be most likely to detect true merit, and give time to its training.
"The powerfullest magnet will pick out, in the powdered dust of the
ironstone, fine particles of metal that a second or third-rate magnet
would fail to draw to itself." Do not dread the awful holiness of Jesus;
it is your hope. He will never be content till He has made you like
Himself; and side by side with His holiness, never fail to remember His
gentle, tender love.
III. THE DIVINE HUMILITY, THAT COPES WITH HUMAN
SIN.--"He riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments; and He

took a towel and girded Himself." This is what the apostle calls taking
upon Himself the form of a servant. The charm of the scene is its
absolute simplicity. You cannot imagine Christ posturing to the ages.
There was no aiming at effect, no thought of the beauty or humility of
the act, as there is when the Pope yearly washes the feet of twelve
beggars, from a golden basin, wiping them with a towel of rarest fabric!
Christ did not act thus for show or pretence, but with an absolutely
single purpose of fulfilling a needed office. And in this He set forth the
spirit of our redemption.
This is the key to the Incarnation.--With slight alteration the words will
read truly of that supreme act. He rose from the throne, laid aside the
garments of light which He had worn as His vesture, took up the poor
towel of humanity, and wrapped it about His glorious Person; poured
His own blood into the basin of the Cross, and set Himself to wash
away the foul stains of human depravity and guilt.
As pride was the source of human sin, Christ must needs provide an
antidote in His absolute humility--a humility which could not grow
beneath these skies, but must be brought from the world where the
lowliest are the greatest, and the most childlike reign as kings.
This is the key to every act of daily cleansing.--We have been washed.
Once, definitely, and irrevocably, we have been bathed in the crimson
tide that flows from Calvary. But we need a daily cleansing. Our feet
become soiled with the dust of life's highways; our hands grimy, as our
linen beneath the rain of filth in a great city; our lips are fouled, as the
white doorstep of the house, by the incessant throng of idle, unseemly
and fretful words; our hearts cannot keep unsoiled the stainless robes
with which we pass from the closet at morning prime. Constantly we
need to repair to the Laver to be washed. But do we always realize how
much each act of confession, on our part, involves from Christ, on His?
Whatever important work He may at that moment have on hand;
whatever directions He may be giving to the loftiest angels