STRAITENED!

"And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof And I beheld and, lo,.. a Lamb as it had been slain." — Revelation or St. John.

"And it came to pass, when the time was come that He should be received up, He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." — St. Luke ix. 51.

"I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" — St. Luke xii. 50.

It is no slight alleviation of the grievous things in human life that they are for the most part unforeseen, or at least are not clearly and circumstantially foreseen. There are places of pain and sorrow through which we know our path must some day lead, but a merciful obscurity veils them from our eyes; and thus the very weakness of our nature becomes in some sort a shelter from its troubles. But when Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem it was with a clear view of what should befall Him there — we may even say that it was because He had in a sense decided to die. From the beginning the life of Jesus had been a going up to Jerusalem, like a stream which with all its windings is always making for the ocean. At first unconsciously, then more and more consciously as the Father’s will unfolded itself to Him, and at last with deliberate intention, He takes the predestined way. The cross, no longer looming vague in the distance, has become a vivid and imminent reality. "Behold," He says to the disciples, "we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles: and they shall mock Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him, and shall kill Him."

The genuineness of these predictions has, as might be expected, been denied by many critics, but is substantially confirmed by the narrative with which they are incorporated, revealing, as it does, by many subtle and uncalculated touches the extraordinary tension of feeling under which our Lord made that last journey to Jerusalem. We hear it in the Master’s words, which are more than usually abrupt, solemn, and peremptory, demanding of men that concentrated, white-hot enthusiasm which regards all secondary interests, however precious, almost as enemies.1 We see it even in His bodily appearance. As He went down into the Valley of the Shadow there was that in His bearing and in the expression of His countenance that struck awe to the hearts of His followers. The disciples, as St. Mark tells, "were amazed, and as they followed were afraid" (x. 32). St. Luke’s phrase is more definitely descriptive. "Hestedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem," literally rendered, He "stiffened" His face, hardened it, set His face like a flint2 to go to Jerusalem. That Face of Jesus, lips clenched, eyes fixed and gleaming, every feature tense with the emotion of resolute, unyielding purpose, is one of the great pictures of the Gospels. It bids us look and marvel, sympathize and imitate.

1. Strength perfected in Weakness.

It bids us think once more, what it was to which Jesus was setting His face — Jerusalem. Sometimes it is given to God’s soldier-saints to lay down their lives at God’s feet in a blaze of unpremeditated sacrifice. The call comes, and they are ready. A leap into the dark, and "the black minute’s at end," and "sudden the worst turns the best to the brave." Oftener they go forward like St. Paul on the path of duty and danger, not knowing certainly what things shall befall them. How different was the ordeal through which the stedfastness of Jesus had to pass. He had a baptism to be baptized with, and no warm wave of impulse must carry Him through; in no paroxysm of exalted passion must He reach His goal and snatch the crown of victory. Deliberately — knowing, feeling, choosing all — He must foretaste the cup prepared for Him. Jesus may have seen crucifixions: He knew at least what crucifixion was; what it meant for Himself, for the followers who had placed their trust in Him, for the miserable men who should do the deed, for the nation He loved. And this was the thing He had to confront; into this black shadow He walked, stedfastly setting His face to go to Jerusalem. That Face of Jesus — what a mirror it is of grim resolve, of deadly determination, of a will that is braced to a supreme effort, putting forth all its force in resistance to a mighty antagonism!

This is a side of our Lord’s character that is not often made prominent. We think of Him, and delight to think of Him, as the embodiment of all gentle, passive virtues. "He is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth." Yes, but how are we taught here that the submissiveness of Jesus was the yielding, not of weakness but of strength; that all this passive side of His nature was balanced and completed by His uniting with it, in equal perfection, all those qualities and dispositions that form the heroic type of character — intrepid courage, unwavering resolution, the fortitude which shrinks from no ordeal, bends to no opposition, but braves and overcomes all that stands between it and its purpose? And yet there are to-day critics of Christ who scoff at His meekness as weakness; who tell us that Christianity breeds a servile and effeminate character; who speak of the "pale and bloodless Nazarene," and bid men throw off His yoke, and live a virile, full-blooded life. Surely they have no understanding, and the light that is in them is darkness. We think of a Paul saying, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, that I might finish my course with joy"; of a Luther, when they tell him that he must not go to Leipzig because the Duke will lay hands upon him, replying, "Though it should rain Dukes for three days, yet will I go to Leipzig"; of Livingstone on his last terrible journey, with death knocking at the door, vowing and praying day by day, "Nothing will make me give up my task. May the good Lord help me to show myself one of His stout-hearted servants"; of the men who yesterday and to-day are doing battle with falsehood and wrong,

"Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Yet their stedfastness is but a faint reflection of their Master’s. When we see Jesus setting His face to go to Jerusalem, striding on to the cross as men march to the consummation of their dearest hopes or struggle upward to the summit of their most cherished ambitions, we feel and know that here courage, fortitude, strength of will have reached the absolute limit of possibility, that such words need an expanded meaning to cover the case. If we would be men indeed, we must learn of Christ.

But if we get a glimpse here of invincible strength, we get a glimpse too of the weakness in which that strength is perfected. That Face of Jesus Christ — what does it tell us? It tells of victory, but victory at the cost of inward conflict — victory which is first of all victory over self. It tells of effort, supreme effort; and effort always means strength, but always it means weakness too. It means strength that is taxed, strength triumphing over weakness and made perfect in weakness. Do we derogate from the perfection of Jesus in so speaking? Nay, we but enhance it. All human virtues depend for their very possibility upon the presence of their natural opposites. Were there no such thing as fear, there could be no moral grandeur in courage; no natural shrinking from pain, then no such virtue as fortitude, which is not insensibility to pain, but triumph over it; no natural tendency to succumb to difficulties, then no such virtue as perseverance. Strength always needs weakness as the background for the display of its loftiest perfection. So, when we see that set face of Jesus Christ, those rigid features, those sternly fixed eyes, how it reveals to us one steeling Himself against Himself, moving on through the scene of His tribulation, not with the impassive gait and unmoved countenance of a God, but with the effort, the tears, the tremblings, and heart struggles of a man, every step a victory over flesh and blood!

And we ourselves know what human weakness is, what human fears and tremblings are; and from this side of experience we may try to conceive, very faintly to conceive, what our redemption cost our Redeemer — how He had to overcome Himself and fight down every weakness of the flesh; how He stands before us as conqueror in a real conflict; how He yielded Himself up by a most real submission under the awful hand of God, and not only at the last, but at many a step up to that last, endured the cross and despised the shame.

The significance of this exalted example for our own lives is plainly written. There are features in the spirit of Jesus which it is possible to behold and even to admire without immediately desiring them for oneself, such, for example, as His meekness and lowliness of heart; but one does not need to be a Christian to desire to be strong of will. It is only as men are resolute that they are to be reckoned upon. He who is firm in will moulds the world to himself: in every

region of life the chief cause of failure to rise to the height of one’s possibilities is the lack of coherent and tenacious purpose; and though firmness of will is in itself neither Christian nor moral, it is indispensable to all moral and all Christian attainment. Unless religion can help us here, can not only direct the energies of the will upon the noblest objects, but in doing so bring to it Divine reinforcements to raise it above the ordinary human level, it offers no sufficing message of hope for mankind.

2. The Source of Strength.

Perhaps the first thing we need to take into account is that strength of will is not self-created or self-evoked. I can no more make myself strong by saying, "I will be strong," than I can fill my lungs in a vacuum. The human will cannot set itself in motion nor keep itself in motion; it can act at all only in response to some influence acting upon it. The will is moved by the emotions, and our emotions are fed by our thoughts, our visions and ideals. Strong and persistent effort of will is only the active outcome of prolonged and repeated concentration of the mind upon the end we have in view, until we are, as it were, obsessed by it and held in its grasp.

So was it with our Lord Himself. Look at those stedfast forward-gazing eyes of Jesus. What is it they are fixed upon? Before Him is the blinding smoke and dust of battle; but beyond it all He sees His joy, the crowning awful task accomplished, the eternal victory won. So He Himself interprets for us that Face stedfastly set to go to Jerusalem. "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" Already He had passed through one baptism. In the waters of Jordan He had once for all responded to the Divine call. Every power of His sinless manhood, and every Divine heightening of that power, had been devoted to the single aim of bringing Israel to repentance, and preparing a people in whom the Kingdom of God’s fatherly will should be realized. And He had failed. Now He saw that He had another baptism to be baptized with. He had come by water, as St. John says; but there was that in the need of men, and there was that in the love of God which not water but blood only could satisfy. His life, with all its fulness of spiritual power, must go down beneath the chill wave of death that it might rise to become the new life of the world. "And how am I straitened," He says, "till it be accomplished!" This Divine necessity has laid its hand upon Him; it holds Him with constraining grasp; He is its prisoner. In days of brooding thought and nights of prayer He has filled His soul with it; and it has kindled in Him a flame of unquenchable resolve. "How am I straitened!" He says. He has no liberty, no power to turn to the right hand or to the left, until it is accomplished. His whole soul is bound up in it, as it were compressed into a single wedge of purpose, cleaving its way to the moment when He shall say of this awful baptism, "It is finished."

We see in our Lord’s own stedfastness the attraction of a supreme, compelling motive. That word "attraction" holds the secret alike of firmness and weakness of will. The Epistle of James, you remember, compares the double-minded, unstable man to the surge of the sea, "driven of the wind and tossed." Yet so unstable a thing as water is rendered stable by the power of attraction. There is nothing unstable about the tide; no clock made by man was ever so punctual in its movements; for the tide follows the moon, and the unstable element appropriates the stability of the heavenly body it obeys. So is it with ourselves. My strength of will is no independent strength; it is a derived strength, the strength of the attraction that draws me. It is ours to choose between the attractions, good and bad, primary and secondary, which our vision of life reveals, and to confirm our choice by keeping the vision fresh before us. But always strength and pertinacity of purpose are in proportion to the power with which some object, be it truth or illusion, has laid hold upon us. If you would will strongly, think deeply, see clearly, keep looking straight onward. Where your gaze penetrates, your face will be stedfastly set to go.

But as we look at that Face, we see a second element in the stedfastness of Jesus. If He fixes His eyes upon the victory lying beyond, this does not blind Him to the battle lying in front. Nothing in this last period of our Lord’s ministry is more remarkable than the deliberate persistence with which He dwells upon the horrors through which He has to go. We might have thought that He would spare Himself such anticipations — some might account it wisdom to do so; but He who was always so urgent on others to count the cost Himself felt the need. He gazes unshrinkingly into the tremendous cloud which must soon envelop Him. He thinks of the cross, talks of it, gazes upon the face of His agony until it becomes familiar. Thus He arms Him for the fight; for obstacles only strengthen His resolution, and the stedfast Face is set only the more stedfastly to go to Jerusalem.3 Let us take a lesson from the Master. A principal cause of that infirmity of purpose which more or less we all confess to, is that we do not adequately reckon with the difficulties to be overcome. We see some object, some amendment of our own life, as greatly to be desired; and straightway we resolve upon it. Cheerfully we promise it to ourselves, and feel as if it were already as good as done. We do not lay our account with the desperate difficulty of really lifting our life out of any deep rut it has worn for itself, the stubborn opposition which the world of facts offers to any attempt to make the ideal real. And so time after time we fail. Our ship is too lightly ballasted, too weakly engined for the voyage, and when the storm descends it is driven out of its course, or is overturned and sunk. A resolve lightly made is always a resolve easily broken.

If there is a threatening obstacle in your way, a heavy task, a bitter struggle, a cross grievous to be borne, learn from the Master to look it full in the face. Do not bandage your eyes. That is in every way fatal. Not only does the trial when it comes find you unprepared, with "unlit lamp and ungirt loin"; you lose the stimulus which opposition gives. Look once more on that resolute Face. What does it tell us but this: that the most heroic energies of the will are aroused only by antagonism, that courage thrives on difficulties, that for the true soul deterrents are incitements, enemies are helpers, the task grappled with brings the power, and hindrances pave the way to victory.

And yet I have not mentioned the sovereign element in the stedfastness of Jesus, and in all stedfastness like His — the power of God. I have said that the stedfastness of the will is that of the object which attracts it. I have compared it to the influence of the moon upon the tide. Upon the tide, yes! But it is the attraction of the sun that keeps the whole earth in its orbit. There is a moon which draws in its train the tide of your life — your profession, your fortune, your home, your political interests, your philanthropic or religious work. But like the moon, all such objects wax and wane, and they attract and give firmness only to a portion of your life. It is the Sun we need. God who alone is the eternal, unchangeable reality, God who is the moral Omnipotent, from whom our souls can derive sovereign strength. What is it that finally we see in that Face set to go to Jerusalem? Power, yes, the power that alone is absolute and invincible, the power of God, the strength of the Eternal Spirit, the omnipotence of love and truth and righteousness. No other power can explain that journey to Jerusalem. We know the vast power of sin and the world over men. Everywhere we see its deadly work. But no sinner ever went deliberately to crucifixion for the sake of his indulgence; no hater for the sake of his hatred; no slave of avarice for the sake of his gain; no ambitious man for his kingdom. But in the power of His Divine love for sinful men, in the assurance that thus He would open to them new fountains of life, Jesus stedfastly set His face even to the cross, once for all showing how our humanity can be filled with the moral omnipotence of the Divine. And millions, looking upon the face of the Captain of their salvation, have in their weakness laid hold upon His strength. Those who have followed the Christ, who have lived to do the will of God, who have seen the work given them to do or cross to bear, and, trusting in their Leader, have set their face to go to their Jerusalem, have never failed.

There is the strength that endures and conquers all — "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might." If at the last you would be found, though with many a stumble and many a fall, in the way everlasting, your faces set heavenward, seek the Lord Jesus and His strength.

1 e.g. Luke ix. 59-62, xiv. 26. Jesus felt as never before what the Kingdom of God required of men, because He felt as never before what it required of Himself.

2 The word is taken from the Greek version of Isa. 1. 7.

3 This thought is admirably expanded by Phillips Brooks.