Love to the Uttermost | Page 9

sake. Anything to be with Thee."
How little Peter knew himself! How much better did Christ know him.
"What! dost thou profess thyself willing to die with Me? Verily, verily,
I say unto thee, thou shalt deny Me thrice, between now and cock-crow
to-morrow morning." These words silenced Peter for all the evening
afterward. He does not appear to have made another remark, but was
absorbed in heart-breaking grief: though all the while there rang in his
heart those blessed words of hope: "Whither I go, thou canst not follow
Me now; but thou shalt follow Me afterward"--words which our Lord
caught up and expanded for the comfort of them all, who now with
Peter for the first time realized that they were about to be parted from
Jesus, and were almost beside themselves with grief: "Let not your
heart be troubled. . . ."
I. THE DESIRE TO BE WITH CHRIST.--This was paramount. These
simple men had little thought of heaven as such. If Christ had begun to
speak of golden pavement, gates of pearl, and walls of chrysolite, they
would have turned from His glowing words with the one inquiry, "Wilt
Thou be there?" If that question had been answered uncertainly, they
would have turned away heart-sick, saying: "If Thou art not there, we
have no desire for it; but if Thou wert in the darkest, dreariest spot in
the universe, it would be heaven to us."
There were three desires, the strands of which were woven in this one
yearning desire and prayer to be with Christ. They wanted His love, His
teaching, His leading into full, richer life. And is not this our position
also? We want Christ, not hereafter only, but here and now, for these
three self-same reasons.
We want His love.--There is no love like His--so pure and constant and
satisfying. What the sun is to a star-light, and the ocean to a pool left by
the retiring tide, such is the love of Jesus compared with all other love.
To have it is superlative blessedness; to miss it is to thirst forever.

We want His light.--He speaks words that cast light on the mysteries of
existence, on the dark problems of life, on the perplexing questions
which are perpetually knocking at our doors.
We want His life.--Fuller and more abundant life is what we crave. It is
of life that our veins are scant. We desire to have the mighty tides of
divine life always beating strongly within us, to know the energy, vigor,
vitality of God's life in the soul. And we are conscious that this is to be
found only in Him.
Therefore we desire to be with Him, to drink deeper into His fellowship,
to know Him and the power of His resurrection, to be brought into an
abidingness from which we shall never recede. We have known Christ
after the flesh; we desire to know Him after the Spirit. We have known
Him in humiliation; we want to know Him in His glory. We have
known Him as the Lamb of the Cross; we want to know Him as the
Divine Man on the throne.
II. THE FATAL OBSTACLE TO THE IMMEDIATE GRANTING OF
THESE DESIRES.--"Thou canst not follow Me now." There is thus a
difference in His words to His disciples, and those to the Jews. These
also were told that they could not follow Him, but the word now was
omitted. There was no hope held out to them of the great gulf being
bridged. That was the cannot of moral incompatibility; this, of
temporary unfitness, which by the grace of God would finally pass
away, and the whole of their aspirations be realized (John vii. 34; viii.
21).
It is easy to see why Peter was unfit for the deeper realization of Christ
in His resurrection. Our Lord had just spoken of being glorified through
death. It was as Judas left the chamber, intent on his betrayal, that Jesus
said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified!" He saw that the hidden
properties of His being could only be unfolded and uttered through
death and resurrection. But Peter had little sympathy with this; he
might avow his determination to die, but he had never really entered
into the meaning of death, and all it might involve.
He could not detect evil. The traitor was beside him; but he had to ask

the beloved disciple to elicit from Jesus who it might be by whom the
Master would be betrayed.
He was out of sympathy with the Lord's humiliation, so that he chode
with Him for stooping to wash his feet; and if he could not understand
the significance and necessity of this lowly deed of love, how could he
enter into the spirit of that life which