What say you, brothers and sisters? Do you own any other master beside Christ? If you do, in that divided sovereignty you shall find ten thousand miseries. Oh! if your right eye is contrary to Christ, pluck it out and cast it from you; if your very life should stand up in rivalry with Christ, it would be much better for you that you should die than that you should lead such a life as that. Our Lord Jesus is the sole Master of us this day.
And what a choice Master he is also! If we had had the opportunity in our old state of choosing our master, we were so blind and foolish that we would not have chosen him; but if we had known then what we know now we should have chosen him; and if we knew infinitely more about him we should never discover a reason why he should not be our Master; but we should continually find stronger arguments why we should be his servants forever. There was never such a Master as our Lord Jesus Christ, who took our nature that he might be able to master such servants as we are, who even died to win us, and whose only mastership after all is that of love. He rules us sovereignly; yet in his hand is the silver scepter, not the rod of iron. Our Master is at the same time our Husband, whom we must obey. Oh! it is blessed to obey him to whom our hearts are fully surrendered, and in whom all loveliness is centred. When a husband truly loves his wife it becomes easy for the wife to be obedient unto her husband; and as Christ loves us infinitely, we must love him and serve him in return. Look by faith into his blessed face; it is Jehovah’s joy to look upon him, and it shall be ours forever. Was there ever such another countenance? Was ever such loveliness imagined as really exists in him? Look at all his character, from Bethlehem even until now; peep in upon him in his loneliness, or see him in the midst of the crowd, and will you not say of him, “He is the standard-bearer among ten thousand; yea, he is altogether lovely”? Pick out all the charms that ever could be found in the most amiable character, gather up all the virtues that ever glittered in the most spiritual man or woman, and bring them all here. Ah! but they are not worthy to be compared with the glory and beauty and excellency of the Well-beloved. All their goodness came from him, therefore, let them all lie at his feet for there is none to be compared with him.
Next, our spirit exultingly says, “As he is our choice Master so he is our chosen Master. Since he has chosen us, we have learned to choose him.” The love was at first all on his side; but now, through the effectual working of his grace, it is on our side too. We can each one say, “I love my Master; I love his house; I love his children; I love his service; I have chosen him to be mine for ever. If he should dismiss me from his service I would come back to him again. If he gave me what men call liberty, I would beg of him to withdraw such accursed liberty and let me be, forever, and only, and completely, and entirely his; for as he has chosen me by his grace, so has his grace led me to choose him.” I know that many of you can say the same; and I daresay while I have been speaking you have been thinking of George Herbert’s lines,—
How sweetly doth ‘my Master’ sound!
‘My Master!’
As ambergris leaves a rich scent Unto the taster:
So do these words give a sweet content
An oriental fragrancy, ‘My Master.’
We delight to use this title concerning our Lord for he is, further, our gracious Master. That word “Master” seems to lose the idea of masterfulness when it is applied to him. He is most graciously and wondrously our Lord; but yet we call him no more “Baali,” that is, “my Lord,” but we call him “Ishi,” that is, “my Man,” “my Husband.” There is truly a service to which we are called; yet his message to his disciples was, “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” We never can forget that, with all his love, he is our Lord; it is our joy to remember that; yet what loving service we have received at his hands! He has been so much our servant that we have sometimes had to ask ourselves, “Which is the servant?” He is Servus servorum—the Servant of servant—as he proved when he washed his disciples’ feet. He has done more than that for us; for he stooped so low as to be despised of men and rejected of the people in order that he might save us. Then surely it shall be our joy and bliss and glory henceforth to call him Master and Lord.
He is also our life-long Master. No; that is a mistake, for there was, alas! a time when we lived, yet we lived not unto him. Some of us were but boys when erst we began to serve him. I always feel glad to think that I wore a boy’s jacket when I was baptized into his name; I had not assumed the garb of a man, but my whole soul was his and I was buried with him. I wish it had been earlier still. O dear young people, there is no such joy as that of knowing Christ in your early youth! We hear sometimes of life-long teetotallers, but I could wish that I had been a life-long abstainer from selfrighteousness, a life-long drinker of the river of the water of life; but as all of us failed to serve the Lord at the beginning of our life, let us try with all our hearts to serve him right to the end. Oh, to have him for our life-long Master—with no little intervals of running away, no furloughs, no holidays! Brethren, we have our recreations in Christ’s service, but we never have any holidays; that is to say, he re-creates us, but he permits us to continue in his work without cessation or intermission. It would be no recreation for us to have a furlough from the great work of the Lord; we only wish that we could live and labor and spend ourselves, and find our rest as some birds do, on the wing, flying, mounting, singing, and so resting, and making this to be our continual joy. So you see, we are in for our Master’s service for life; we have entered his employ and we are bound to him; and “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” and Master forever, blessed be his name!
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
I love this. More of it is needed