What Jesus Says About Understanding
Ourselves
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Luke 19:10
I wonder if we truly understand ourselves. I wonder if we have the answer to the basic questions of life. Who am I? What is my true nature? Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the meaning of existence?
There is an immense amount of knowledge on almost every subject and in almost every field today, but we know very little about ourselves. I suppose the average American knows more about the operation of his automobile than he knows about the operation of his own heart. He knows more about the laws of the physical world around him that he does about the spiritual world within him. Psychologists claim that one of the basic conflicts in the human personality is the conflict between man and himself. He does not know how to adjust himself to himself. The noted psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung has written. "About one third of my cases are suffering from no
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clinically definable neurosis but from the senselessness and the emptiness of their lives. They do not understand themselves. They are unable to live happily with themselves." Says a critic of one of Marquand's recent books, "He has all the little answers; he does not ask the big questions." I rather suspect that today we have the little answers, but few of us are asking the big questions.
Jesus Christ comes to grips with the big questions of life. He reaches down into the deepest hungers of the heart. He sheds light into the hidden recesses of the soul. What is life? Why is there suffering, evil, and death in the world? His answers to these fundamental problems are satisfying; they fit all the facts and embrace all of life's experiences. Christ tells us things about ourselves which we cannot know apart from Him. Introducing us to our true selves, He sets up for us true standards and reveals our true worth as children of God. Disclosing our true destiny, He gives us a revelation of life's true values. He orients us to reality.
The Master teaches us that the meaning of existence is understood only in the light of God. This is our Father's world. He has placed us on this earth and has a plan for us. His purpose is that we enter into fellowship with Him and share His glory; that we do His will and dwell together as brethren. Christ teaches us that man is not a coincidence, a sport of chance who just happens to be here. We are creatures made by the hand of God, capable of moral choices. Man is not merely body and bulk, but a spiritual being created in the image of God. He carries about him reflections of the Divine Being in intelligence, the capacity for evaluation and judgment, and a moral sensitivity to right and wrong. He has ca-
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pacity for fellowship with the most High. These are the principles about man that Christ sets forth.
The twentieth-century tragedy is that man is widely viewed as no more than a high-grade animal without ultimate significance or meaning. With this view current in our civilization, we cannot wonder that this century has seen a most humiliating degradation of human personality. Man is used as cannon fodder, the chattel of the all-powerful State, thrust into death factories for fertilizer. Many are living simply for animal appetites and creature comforts, scarcely lifting their eyes above the dirt to see the lofty summits to which God has called them. Life has no divine dimension.
The summer after I graduated from high school, I traveled with a companion to Yosemite Park for a few days. We arrived after nightfall. By the time we reached our camp ground, it was quite dark. We had no flashlights and groping along through the trees, came to what appeared to be a level spot. We threw down our bedrolls and crawled in. So far as we could see, Yosemite was no different than any other place in the mountains. The trees were dark against the starlight overhead. It appeared that we were alone. Weary from the day, we soon dropped into a deep slumber. It was rather late the next morning when we awakened. As consciousness returned, I looked up through the trees to a beautiful blue heaven. Towering majestically on either side were the sheer granite walls of the canyon cliffs. A new dimension, a new perspective, a new world was apparent to me with the coming of light. Standing at the foot of our bedrolls I saw several children, and looking beyond them I realized that we were surrounded by campers in the midst of their household activities. The children were looking at us wonderingly as if to say, "How are
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these young men going to climb out of their bedrolls and dress in such a public spot?" — a question that was concerning us too, believe me!
Life can be like that. We throw down the bedrolls of existence. We don't see beyond the moment. There is no clear perspective. But when the light of Christ dawns, we see ourselves in the majesty of God's great plan. And without that light and purpose, we are unsuited literally for living.
Christ made it clear that the whole of life's meaning is found in knowing God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John 17:13). To know Him and to fellowship with Him is life's highest privilege. To become like Him and to dwell with Him forever is life's true destiny. St. Augustine's dictum is true to Christ's word, "O Lord, Thou hast made us for Thyself. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."
The realm of nature is also transformed in this view of Christ. All that we behold of physical phenomena around us is simply the robe of God, His garment of glory displaying His perfection and manifesting His power. The flowers of the field, the birds of the air, the hairs of the head are numbered and man as an individual is held in His mind and heart. He gives Himself to us through His ordered world.
Rough experiences and bitter facts appear to contradict this view. One might say, "Well, this is very fine but what about evil and injustice? What about sorrow and suffering? How can Christ say that life is glorious when confronted by these ugly facts? Let us simply point out that Jesus Himself went through the worst that the world could throw at Him, demonstrating for all time by His victory over sin and death,
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the Father's power and love. God will take the trusting life through any experience and prove His goodness.
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows
Keeping watch above His own.
— James Russell Lowell
Observe how Christ relates all things to the Father. He said, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me..." (John 4:34). The will of the Father was His satisfaction. It was also His joy. "I delight to do Thy will, O God..." (Psalm 40:8). When He prayed, He said, "Father, which art in heaven." When He ministered He witnessed to the Father, "...he doeth the works" (John 14:10). When He faced the suffering of the crucifixion, He accepted it in quiet confidence. "...shall I not drink the cup which my Father hath given me?" (John 18:11, RSV). His last words on the cross were, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit..." All life issues from the Father. All life is accepted in obedience and trust from the Father and thus all of life becomes sacred, meaningful, redemptive in the Father.
Let me encourage you to believe what Jesus says about you. You are a living soul and God has made you for Himself. Our Lord reminds us that the body is important. It is not to be abused or despised. Christ is concerned with physical need. He feeds the hungry. He heals the sick and clothes the naked. He cleanses the leper and causes the lame to walk. He makes the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, the blind to see. Jesus
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calls His disciples apart from their busy ministry to rest awhile, because He understands better than most of us today that we must go apart and rest with God or we come apart in the busyness of life. We observe that our Lord is concerned not only for man's soul, but his total being. In this world of destitution, physical suffering, loneliness, with its millions of refugees and war-blasted communities, Christians must be aware that their call is to minister with the Master to the physical needs of men.
Important as the body is, however, it is not the essence of life. It is the abode of something infinitely more important, man's eternal soul. So precious is this that our Lord warns, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mat. 16:26). "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body..." (Mat. 10:28). The body one day, will be laid aside, but the soul continues. The body is the scaffold erected for a few brief years, that within there might be the edifice of man's spirit which abides. The scaffold will be taken down, but the spiritual nature of man continues.
The soul has eternal destiny. The repentant, reconciled life which has turned in faith to God enters the Father's heart and home forever. But the unrepentant and unbelieving know eternal separation from God. This is a frightening thought and yet it comes from the One who supremely has taught us that God is love. If we accept the truth of the one, we must be prepared to accept the truth of the other. To the one, the Master calls, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant... enter thou into the joy of thy lord" (Mat. 25:21). But to the
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other, there will come the word, "... depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity" (Luke 13:27), and "...There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Mat. 25:30). So, you see, life is preparatory. It is decisive. It is a training ground. This is the field of great eternal decision. What concerns us most? Our physical or our spiritual life, the body or the soul, our comforts or our character, immediate satisfactions or eternal values?
Let us imagine a young woman returning home on the night of her engagement. She enters her room with lovely cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. Opening the box containing her ring, she lets the light gleam and sparkle on the diamond nestling in its pillow of velvet. She breathes a long sigh of satisfaction. Can we conceive that she would then toss the ring carelessly into the corner of a drawer, but slip the box beneath her pillow? Let us take care that we do not toss our souls into the corner and concentrate upon the passing pleasures and satisfactions of the body.
Our Lord goes still further. He says there is a present purpose for the Father's children. He teaches that goodness is possible and necessary for men. Contemporary literature would refute this. In today's novel, the good characters are set forth as bad and the bad characters as good. A French phrase is descriptive, "Homesickness for the mud." But Jesus always holds before us the possibility and the necessity of goodness. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Mat. 5:48). In every generation there have been those who have found power in Christ to lift their lives like the lotus, to bloom in purity to the glory of God.
Then He tells us that man may know peace and satisfaction in this world. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened the personality
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to a stagecoach crowded with passenger inheritances from our ancestors. These inherited characteristics may journey together in harmony, but more than likely, they will travel in disharmony and conflict. It is bad enough to have inherited conflicts within, but what chance do we have of an enjoyable ride when all kinds of troubles climb on board from without and begin to bounce us about?
It is not surprising that few hearts know peace and quiet contentment. Through all the turbulence of Jesus' journey with its opposition and outrage, denials and desertion, beatings and blasphemies, pain and death, He never lost His deep inner peace, save for that moment of dereliction when the Father's face was hidden as Christ bore our sins. He was united in a single, profound, pure purpose. There was about Him a remarkable single-mindedness. He was absolutely at home with Himself and with the Father. He reconciled and adjusted the conflicts which we feel so keenly and made them His servants. This divine peace is His legacy to us. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:27). "The peace of God which passeth all understanding..." is the inheritance of those who, with Christ, make the Father's heart their home.
An old martyr was being burned at the stake and as the preparations were completed the martyr turned to his judge and said, "Sir, I would that you would come and place your hand over my heart and see whose heart beats the faster!" For you see, the true child of God who dwells deep in the Father can move through life's severest testing with a calm heart.
I have more to learn about myself from the Master. He tells me that I am a living soul. He also tells me that I am a lost
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soul until I return to the Father's heart and the Father's home. The worst thing in the world is not ignorance or misfortune. The worst thing in the world is not even death. The worst thing in the world is sin. Sin is anything and everything that separates us from God and from our brother. Jesus compresses the awful consequences of sin into one word, "lost." Into that single word of four letters, we can let our imagination pack all the doom and dereliction conceivable. We cannot exaggerate it. Sin loses us to love. Sin loses us to our true service. Sin loses us to God's fellowship. Sin loses us to God's destiny. The Christ of the gospels is not just a religious teacher handing out truths to be accepted or rejected according to men's fancy. But we find Him on a mission of terrible urgency, "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). That mission consumes Him. Calvary is the true measure of what Jesus teaches about man's need. He is willing to lay down His life that the lost may be found, that man, separated by sin from his Father, may enter into the light and life of His presence. The note of "lostness" sounds through the Bible from start to finish.
But "lostness" is a minor note in the gospels. The major note is to be "found." It rings joyfully and triumphantly from every page. The woman loses her coin, but she will not rest until she finds it. One lost sheep is out in the wilderness, but the Shepherd will not rest until, forsaking the ninety and nine, He finds the lost sheep and carries it on His shoulders, rejoicing that the lost is found. The repentant prodigal turns his face homeward. The father seeing his son, yet a great way off, runs, embraces him and welcomes him back. God is like that, Jesus says.
To reach us where we are in our lostness, Christ Himself
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has come. He wants every man to know that whatever his condition, rich or poor, high or low, good or bad, He is willing to pardon him and impart the power of a new life.
The poor paralytic is laid at Jesus' feet. Our Lord looks at this helpless, wasted wretch and moved with compassion, says, "...Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee" (Mat. 9:2). The Scribes and Pharisees murmur among themselves. "...Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" (Luke 5:21). Jesus knew their thoughts and asked, "...What reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?" (Luke 5:22-23). "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins... I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house" (Luke 5:24). Immediately he is healed, and rising, he takes up his bed and walks, glorifying God. Wherever there is a moral or a spiritual cripple, helpless and unable to stand, there is a loving Father and a powerful Saviour able to make him whole.
Peter wanted to follow Christ and affirmed boldly before the disciples, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee..." (Mat. 26:35). Yet he denied his Lord around the fire and moved out into the night to weep bitterly. Many of us have started confidently to do right in our own strength, only to find that we have failed miserably. We need the gift that Christ gave Peter. Jesus found him, forgave him, and breathed upon him the power of the Holy Spirit. He made him to stand as a rock and pillar of the church of God. Christ wants us to know that we are loved, and that the love of God for us is a transforming love — a love that forgives, ennobles, and overcomes.
The thief upon the cross deserved to die because of his re-
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bellion and crime. In his agony he called to Christ, the Man on the central cross, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:42-43).
The meaning of the cross can be simply stated — though we are lost, we are loved of God. That love, so completely given in His Son, is seeking us. When we receive it and trust the Giver, we are found of Him and find ourselves. We have the answer to the biggest question life asks. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
