33. The Pathway of Life
The Pathway of Life
Third, there is light on the pathway of life, “For even hereunto were ye called; because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:21-23).
We have a marvelous passage here, the most wonderful event in human history is revealed here as regulating the commonplaces of our daily lives. Note that the sufferings and the example of Christ are united and they never can be separated. You cannot lift up Christ as Savior without emphasizing the place that He has a right to fill in human life, and the influence that He means to exert in human service. On the other hand you err, and greatly err, if you try to put any difference between Christ as a Redeemer and Christ as an Exemplar and set them up as if they could be set up in rivalry one to the other. If you want to know the example of Christ you must begin at the cross with Him. If you want to know the practical experience of the cross then you must follow Him as your example, “If any man will be my disciple let him take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24 interpretation). And what God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Christ is my example only in the measure in which He is my Savior. The two offices of Christ are like the two sides of a coin. They are both distinct, and yet perfectly related the one to the other. So here God shows us the steps of the Lord Jesus Christ which He took with bleeding feet right up to the cross, and He says, “Follow Me.” There is light on the pathway of life. Shall we look at those steps? The first was, “He did no sin.” In the midst of all the ill treatment to which He was subjected He never sinned. Second, He did no guile. There was no crookedness in Him, there were no false motives in His service, there was no compromising in His spirit, there was absolute straightness in every thought and word and act on the part of the Lord Jesus. Follow Him.
Third, there was no retaliation, when He was reviled He did not revile. The Lord never paid back His enemies in their own coin.
Fourth, there was no self-vindication. When He suffered He did not threaten, He did not stand in His own defense. Again and again when He was attacked by His enemies, it is written in the Word of God, “He answered them nothing” (Matthew 27:12, Mark 15:3, Luke 23:9).
Whenever the honor of His Father was touched words sprang to His lips, but whenever anything concerned Himself He was silent. There was no self-vindication in the Lord’s life.
Here you have Christian ethics upon a grand scale. And they have all had their birth at Calvary. I sometimes hear ministers in my own country (perhaps they are not very distinguished for their spirituality) say, “Oh, yes, I believe in an ethical revival,” and who does not? Where was there ever a revival in the history of the Christian Church that did not produce an ethical revival, a revival that was not ethical? A revival that does not lift the morals of the people is no revival from God. In that wonderful Welsh revival in 1905, of which I saw a little, one of the features of it was that debts were paid, and people believed in revival. Family quarrels were made up, family relationships were changed; there was a wonderful ethical revival in Wales. But what was the cause of it? Calvary—the preaching of Calvary.
We had a little bit of a revival in 1921 in Scotland, confined largely to the fisher-folk, and one of the results was that in many places the fishermen brought their pipes and their cigarettes and their tobacco pouches and their playing cards out of their homes and out of their pockets and made a heap of them and had a great bonfire. Is this not a real ethical revival? The public houses were practically empty and the drink sellers were saying, “The trade is gone.” That was an ethical revival, but what was the root of it? The sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. There can be no ethical revival without a spiritual revival. A Christian ethic or a religious ethic without the Christian dynamic of the cross is simply something that is cold and self-righteous without any power or any influence. True ethics are the result of the sufferings of Christ.
Notice the fifth step of the Lord, the perfect trust in the righteousness of God, “He committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). Do you notice that that was the grand revenge He took upon His enemies? He committed Himself to His Father, and it became His constant habit.
There is light on the pathway of life just in ordinary, commonplace, practical ways for you and for me. Do not ever say the teaching of the cross is not practical. There is no other teaching that is so practical. Every other teaching receives its practical power from the cross. There is light upon the pathway of life to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and the example of Christ is the normal life of the Christian. If only we could get that into our minds. It is not for conventions, it is for you and for me when we go back to the home, and back to the office, and to the school, and if we have it only at conventions we are not following in the steps of the Lord. The example of Christ is the normal life for the Christian, and, beloved brother and sister, it is the only safe road for you to travel. To be guided by the spirit of the cross is the only way in which you can carry out the full purpose of God through life. Is that picture of Christ being anything like realized in you and in me? What is going to get the world today is not printing a theology but living a theology. The world stands today with a sad, sick heart at the controversies that are going on between the modernists and the fundamentalists, sick of it all, heart-sore in its awful, despairing need, and what is going to help that little bit of the world through which you pass is not so much putting a tract in its hand as living that tract just where you are. It is not the printed theology that the world cares anything for, it is the living theology, it is a Christian being the Word of God, revealing through a sanctified life the knowledge of God for which the world’s heart is yearning in agony, the knowledge that God is sufficient through Jesus Christ to meet every need, to solve every problem, to face every test, to conquer every sin.