"Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared:

"Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;

"And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." — Heb. 5:7-9.

This Scripture may contain one or two things that seem to be a little difficult. We are taught here that Jesus learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and we are also taught that by His sufferings and obedience He was made perfect; and that being made perfect, He was fitted to be the author of salvation to all who obey Him.

The question comes: Was not Christ divine and perfect and complete from the beginning? Did He need suffering in order to teach Him obedience? Did He need obedience in order to make Him perfect? There seems to be implied in this language that Jesus was very imperfect, and that there was in Him a liability to disobedience, etc. Now I do not believe the Scripture teaches this. When the Lord explains a Scripture to me which contains something that people stumble over, I just delight to take that Scripture, to untangle the knot, by the help of God, and make that very Scripture that seemed to be a barrier to spiritual life, a steppingstone to our own faith and experience.

I want to explain this Scripture: first in reference to Jesus, and secondly in reference to ourselves. Learning obedience through suffering! Jesus did not have to suffer in order to get an obedient heart. Jesus had it by nature, or by inheritance; by His own nature, for it was pure and holy. He did not inherit depravity as others do. He did not have the carnal mind within Him. Jesus brought into this world with Him the essence, the spirit, of perfect obedience. He was born in an atmosphere of perfect obedience. The trend and drift and constitution and bias of His whole will and heart was in the line of obedience. There was never one atom of rebellion, there never was one scintilla of disobedience, in the outward or in the inner life. He never did one single thing, and He never had a disposition to do a single thing, to displease God. Every breath He drew and every act He performed and every outgoing of His heart pleased God.

How can I assert all that? Because God the Father asserts it. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." How can we take that broad statement and reconcile it with this Scripture, "He learned obedience by the things which he suffered"? I answer, that in obeying the Father, the principle of obedience which He possessed in His nature had to be brought out and unfolded day by day and year by year, and the principle of obedience had to have ten thousand forms of application. And He as a man — for He was perfect man and perfect God — had to learn like any other man has to learn; as a child, as an infant, as a little boy He had to learn.

When He stayed behind His father and mother in Jerusalem with the doctors and the lawyers, His whole heart was bent on beginning right there and doing the work of His ministry, — teaching and explaining God's Word,— for He saw that the doctors of divinity were all blind as bats; and a great many of them are yet. He saw that the Church was dying and starving for spiritual light, and His little heart reveled in unfolding these things. That was perfectly innocent and perfectly pleasing to God. And yet He found out, after being corrected by His mother, under the instruction of the Holy Ghost, that His time had not come yet; that He must go home and be subject unto His parents. In doing that there was mental suffering; and yet there was not one atom of disobedience toward God on the one side or His mother on the other. He had to consent to hold His mind back for all those long years, while He was eager to save and bless the world; and in that very act that little boy had to undergo a mental suffering. He learned how to apply the spirit of obedience on that very point, and it involved suffering; it involved a degree of self-denial to forego that privilege, so that the principle of obedience was applied all the way along. Doubtless in His playing with the boys, doubtless through the early years and all through His life, — for you know that only a small part of the life of Christ is written, — in ten thousand forms, in an innumerable number of cases, the principle of obedience was unfolded day by day and applied to this circumstance or that occasion; and in the applying of the principle of obedience He suffered, and He learned what obedience was, in His practical life, by the things He suffered.

You must remember that the principle of obedience is one thing, — that lies in the heart, — but the application of that principle is something else. There is no suffering in the principle of obedience. The element of loyalty lies in the heart, and there is no suffering in that. But when you take that principle of loyalty, of obedience in the heart, and come to apply it in the outward life, it necessarily involves a great deal of suffering. And Jesus learned how to apply the principle of obedience by the things which He suffered.

When a boy volunteers to go into the navy, and gets a naval suit on, walks the deck, and is gay and jolly with his comrades, he has in his young heart the principle of loyalty to his government; but he knows no more of what that principle is going to involve than anything in the world. When he gets on the high seas, when sickness breaks out and he is in a foreign port, when he goes into a naval engagement and encounters storm and strife, and this extends over years, he finds that the principle of loyalty which he had in his heart must be unfolded day by day, month by month, and year by year; and as that principle of loyalty is applied on this point and on that point, it may involve a great deal of suffering. Thus he never knows what obedience is, in its practical form, until he has gone through the career of a sailor. Then he not only knows what the principle is, but he knows what it involves in the line of life.

Now that illustrates Jesus. Jesus had in His heart the perfect, untarnished principle of obedience; but Jesus, as He went through life and through His public ministry, down to His grave and up to His cross, found that that principle of loyalty to the Father was constantly meeting applications here and there and yonder, on this point and that point, so that nearly every step of His life involved some suffering.

The sufferings of Christ have never been written down. His sufferings on the cross, His sufferings in the garden have been alluded to. But all His living was a life of suffering. It must be so, because His nature was so utterly at variance with all human nature. As a little boy He found nothing but bundles of selfishness in every child He met. As a young man He found nothing but bundles of depravity in every young person around Him. And every time He came in contact with the uncouthness and unkindness and corruption and depravity and blindness of childhood and youth or mature years — all through His life His soul was undergoing a perpetual crucifixion. He was feeling constantly the sharp, keen briers of the depraved minds that lay around Him everywhere. He felt like a tender footed child walking through an immense brier patch and every step was on thorns that drew the blood. And so He went right through life, applying at every step the principle of perfect obedience; and when He got to the end He had learned what obedience was, not only in principle, but in the application.

Now the next thought about Christ is this: that this learning obedience by the things which He suffered, although He was a Son, made Him perfect as a Savior. Being made perfect through sufferings, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all who obey Him. The sufferings of Christ did not make Him perfect as a man. The sufferings of Christ did not make Him perfect in His moral nature. He was holy, pure, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. So that He was perfect in that sense. But remember that there are different kinds of perfection. There is a perfection of the moral nature; there is a perfection of your life work. Jesus as a man was perfect without sufferings. Sufferings did not make His heart any cleaner. Sufferings did not make Him any more humble, did not make Him any more loyal, did not make Him anything in His moral character. It simply brought out and intensified and eliminated that character. But in order to be a Savior He must not only have a clean heart and a pure soul and perfect mind, but He must undergo long experiences that will qualify Him to be the Savior of sinners. Now remember that Jesus' perfection, spoken of in this text, is a perfection simply in order to be a Savior. He was made perfect as a Savior by His sufferings. He was made perfect by suffering on the cross and by suffering in the garden. Jesus could never have saved us by His moral perfection. And do you know this text is one of the great many texts that utterly refute the sentimentalism of modern times? I suppose — let me make a guess now — I suppose seven-tenths (perhaps not that many — one-half) of all the so-called sermons and talks to-day in Boston, on any average Sunday, are on this line: "Jesus is a good man; His was a beautiful life, beautiful miracles." It is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Jesus, and the beautiful example of heroism of Jesus, and all that, and it is preached that we are to imitate, imitate, imitate. That is a gospel of monkeys, and a great many monkeys preach that kind of gospel; theological monkeys, ecclesiastical monkeys. The Church is full of ecclesiastical monkeys, that' preach simply that we are to imitate the beautiful life of Jesus. You might as well tell the frog to imitate the song of the nightingale. How can a depraved, wretched, miserable, impure-hearted man or woman imitate the spotless Jesus until they get the very nature of that Jesus inside of them? We are taught here that it is the suffering of Jesus that qualified Him to be a Savior. I want you to know that the beautiful Jesus saves nobody. I mean to say this, that Jesus does not save any man by His holiness, His loveliness, His consistency, His nobility. Jesus does not save us by the traits of His character; Jesus saves us by suffering and dying. Jesus could have lived a perfectly beautiful, spotless life, and walked back to heaven and left us to sink into hell, the whole of us; and we would never have found pardon but for His suffering. My text says it was the sufferings of Christ that qualified Him to be our Savior. Now you take that, and lay it down by the side of Universalism and Swedenborgianism and Unitarianism in this country. It gives a light on all these things. Jesus would never have been able to save us by all His miracles, by all His life, by all His teachings, by all His beauty, by all the intrinsic glory of His nature, unless He had suffered; and my text says it was the sufferings of Christ that qualified Him to be a Savior. That is why, being made perfect, — not as a man, for He had that to begin with, — being made perfect as a Savior through suffering, He became the Author of eternal salvation.

A great many men say they preach Christ, Christ, Christ! I want you to know you can "preach Christ" a hundred years and get no converts. St. Paul says, "We preach Christ crucified!" It is that that does the business. Preach Christ and leave off the crucified, and you and your people will be lost.

And so Jesus was qualified to be a Savior. His sufferings were the things that made Him to be our Savior.

Now apply it to us. We are His disciples, and we are united to Him by faith; and the same Scriptures which apply to Jesus apply in a modified sense to all the members of His body. This lesson would do us no good if we did not apply it to ourselves. We are to learn obedience by the things which we suffer, just like Christ. When do we get the spirit of obedience? By nature we are rebellious, disobedient, stubborn and self-willed. By nature we do not obey God. How can we ever get into the zone of obedience? We never learn, we never have in us, the principle of obedience in its real genuine form, until we are regenerated. When we are " born of God," God plants within us all the elements of His life, all the elements of Christ's life, — humility, faith, hope, love, perseverance, longsuffering, obedience, and all the graces of the Spirit. Every part of Jesus' life, — the various traits of His life, the various instincts of that life, the various longings of that life — is implanted in the heart that is born again, that is regenerated by the Holy Ghost. So that when your sins are pardoned, and the Holy Ghost implants within you the new life, the divine life, you have within you something that is divine, something you never had before; and in that new life you have in you the element of obedience. Thus every young convert begins to inquire, " Now what can I do for my Lord? How can I serve my God? Heavenly Father, what wouldst thou have me to do? " Every soul starts out from this wonderful work of regeneration under the impulse of obedience. That is why a young convert is the best candidate in the world for full salvation. A young convert has not been tampered with by any Zinzendorfs, has not been up and down with liberals and old backsliders. A young convert has within him the germs and impulses of the life of Jesus in its original and unsophisticated manner. It has not been tampered with. The young convert is ready, says John Wesley, to pluck out the eye, to cut off the hand. He is ready to obey the Lord. That is why he is prepared to be led on to full surrender, to full consecration. He has got obedience in His nature.

But that principle of obedience is not perfect. I will tell you why. Although you are born of God, and although the principle of obedience is implanted within your heart, at the same time there are remains of the carnal mind. Jesus had no depravity. He had nothing in His heart to draw Him back. He had nothing in His heart to tone down His obedience. Every young convert has a heart that is prone to obey God; he is not prone to wander. The young convert is prone to read his Bible, is prone to go to the first prayer meeting he can find, and he is prone to stand and testify. And yet right along the line of his service there is just enough depravity left in his nature to cripple and hamper and embarrass and make him timid and shy, and to some times overcome the principle of obedience; so that as he starts to obey God he finds something drawing him back and discouraging him. He has in him the element of obedience, but it is not perfect obedience.

What does he need? If he presses on after God he will find out that there is in him still a remnant of rebellion, --not universal, but partial rebellion. He will rebel on some things. He will obey the Lord on nine points and rebel on the tenth. He will say "yes" to God on eleven points, and say "no" to God on one point. He has partial obedience. There is something lacking in his faith. There is something lacking in his obedience. He finds out that he needs a further cleansing, a deeper work of grace, to remove out of his mind this latent murmuring, this latent rebellion, and this principle of disloyalty.

Then he comes under the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and under that baptism the principle of loyalty is perfected; he seeks and finds the clean heart and full deliverance; so that he comes out from that cleansing fountain realizing in his heart that his whole heart goes one way, and that he obeys God willingly and gladly. Now he will consent to do anything or to die for the Lord Jesus. Now he has in a certain sense reached the Christ life. But I want you to take that in a modified form. When your heart is cleansed from all depravity and carnality, while there is a restoration to the Christ life, properly speaking, remember that you never can have the identical strength and vigor of the Christ life, for this reason: your heart may be pure, you may be perfectly cleansed from all depravity and all sin, but you have inherited certain things. Your heredity has crippled you; your past sins have crippled you; your memory and the association of ideas. Now, remember, Jesus never had any inheritance of sin, Jesus never had any imperfection; so that it is not correct, it is not Bible, to say that in everything a sanctified believer is as perfect as Christ. That will not be true, because you have a thousand frailties resulting from habit, from heredity, from association. Although we are cleansed, although we are pure, yet there is a frailty and weakness; there are liabilities to error, there are liabilities to fanaticism, liabilities to foolishness, liabilities to nonsense; things that were not in Jesus. But so far as God is concerned, so far as your connection with the Lord is concerned, you are now restored to the Christ life, and you now have, in the evangelical sense, in the New Testament sense, perfect obedience; that is, evangelical obedience, not angelic obedience; that means gospel obedience. Now you begin the Christ life proper. Your conversion was but a preparatory step. Your sanctification introduces you to the real Christ life.

Think of all the lectures and talks given to people telling them indiscriminately to live the Christ life, the Christ life, the Christ life. Bless your dear soul, it is all very well to talk that way, but you have got to be convicted and converted and sanctified to get where you can begin the Christ life. You have got to get where your heart is broken, melted, and purged and baptized before you can begin to live the life that the infant Jesus lived: the life pure from sin.

Moreover, you have got to learn obedience in this sanctified life by the things you suffer, just as the Lord did. " But," you say, " when we are sanctified why don't we obey the Lord? " Like Christ in our text, we are to unfold the principle. You will find that as you live along in the life of faith, in the sanctified life, this principle of obedience will bring you up, day by day and year by year, against a thousand and one things that involve pain and suffering. The sanctified life is the most joyous life; it is the most peaceful life; it is the most glorious life. But I want you to know it is the life of the greatest suffering in this world, in a certain sense. I am not preaching long-facedness to you. I am talking facts. I want you to know the sanctified Christian has got to live right against everything in the world, — against every carnal, depraved element in the world, in his home, in his business, in his shop, in his store, along the street. I want you to know that he has affections and feelings that are more keenly alive than ever before. A sanctified man can feel an insult keener than ever before; and while he does not strike back, does not give back the curse, does not give back the lie nor the blow, while he does not resist, he is at the same time more delicately and keenly conscious of an insult than ever before. Sanctification elevates and purifies all the affections and all the sensibilities of the soul, so that it is a great mistake to think that the higher you rise in your knowledge of God and salvation and likeness to Christ, the more insensible you become. Brutish people, people like dogs and cats, who dare to give the lie and the blow, — they are always of coarse, animal, vulgar sensibilities. The more refined the man is, the less he resents an insult and the less he resents the ordinary evils of life. Jesus suffered most keenly, and yet He showed no resentment and no retaliation.

Your very love to God involves suffering. You love God and you long to see Jesus, and sometimes sanctified hearts get homesick. Life becomes a mere treadmill, and death is one of the easiest things in the world to a sanctified Christian. It takes a great deal more religion to live than to die. A great many persons think, If I could only get dying grace. Why, bless your soul, it takes ten times more grace to live than to die — to undergo the temptations, to endure all the assaults of the devil. How he will assault you! How he will come at you like a tornado! To endure all the waitings! The higher men rise toward God, the more God will test their faith. And He will test it on points that nobody but you and God understand. All these testings involve suffering and pain, a suffering and pain you cannot tell to anybody; and yet right through it there goes obedience, unswerving loyalty and obedience. You are learning how to apply obedience. In the first gush of your sanctified joy you said, "O Lord, I will do anything! go anywhere, Lord! to Africa, China, or Japan; anywhere with Jesus." And you meant it. The Holy Ghost put that in your heart. The Lord takes you at your word, and when the time comes for you to do the thing you promised to do it is not just play. You will find out, like the most of us find out, that in carrying out the principle of your obedient heart you will have to suffer; and that very suffering simply demonstrates and proves to angels and devils that you are true. God knew you were true to begin with, but God wants you to know you are true. God wants the angels to know it.

You go to the store to buy a spool of cotton. You put it in your pocket or your little satchel and carry it home. Now, you sit down and stitch, stitch, stitch. You take the spool of cotton and unfold and unroll the thread, and use it all up into garments until the cotton is all gone. You get the clean heart and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and you have got the spool of cotton. " Lord, I will obey. Here I am; anything you say I will do." You are happy and it is all right. The Lord says, "Very well." By and by the Lord begins to unroll you, and He begins to utilize all that spool of cotton, and He begins to have you do this and do that, until the thread of obedience that was in your heart has been stitched into a thousand garments of history. And when you die the walls of your life are draped with the drapery which has been stitched and made by the thread of obedience from your own heart. How many of us are learning this! Do you know we are making history? Jesus made history on this earth. He had a career before He came into the world and He had a career after He went back to heaven. But do you know, all through the endless cycles of eternity, the angels, the saints, the redeemed ones, will everlastingly be rehearsing the thirty-three years spent in Galilee? Just so you and I may live on forever and. forever in heaven, and God may utilize us in distant worlds and distant ages; but all through eternity we will be but carrying out the lessons of the obedience of the lives we are now living. We are to learn obedience; and this qualifies us, not to be a Savior, but to be coworkers with the Savior. Just as Jesus' sufferings qualified Him to be a Savior, so when we learn obedience by the things we suffer it qualifies us to coöperate with Him in saving the world. We learn wisdom, tact, skill.

Oh, it is a wonderful thing to live this Christ life! I sometimes think we do not appreciate it. Suppose Jesus were taken out of your soul to-night, and the Holy Ghost, and every particle of salvation, and you were to go out of that door a mere animal man or woman, devoid of every particle of divine grace, how much of your life would be worth anything? The salvation life is the only life worth living. In your home, in your business, in your conversation, in your correspondence, it is what Jesus has put in you that is the only thing worth counting on. All the rest is not worth mentioning.

So, my friends, we are living a wonderful life. Day by day, without our knowing it, if we are true to God, God is working in us and with us, and He is in a most wonderful sense reproducing the life of His Son in the soul of each and every true believer.. Oh, what a privilege, to have that blessed, adorable, Jesus life in our souls!

Now I trust, as we separate and go out through the winter days that are before us, that Jesus will anoint our hearts; send us out from this convention not only with more joy and more faith and love, but with more steel in our backbones; send us out with a resolve to stand true. Although crosses and sorrow and tears may come, they are only a part of the great contract. These things do not prove that we are backsliding, nor that we are disloyal to God. They only prove that we are walking in the footsteps with Him who, "though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."