Personal Friendships of Jesus - J. R. Miller (beach books txt) 📗

the truth of the resurrection began to be believed that morning, Peter wondered how Jesus would receive him. But he was not long kept in suspense. The women who came first to the tomb, to find it empty, received a message for "the disciples and Peter." This singling out of his name for special mention must have given unspeakable joy to Peter. It told him that the love of Jesus was not only stronger than death, but also stronger than sin. Then, sometime during the day, Jesus appeared to Peter alone. No doubt then, in the sacredness of love, the disciple made confession, and the Master granted forgiveness. Several times during the forty days Jesus and Peter met again. The friendship had not been marred by death. The risen Lord loved just as he had loved in the days of common human intercourse.

One of the most interesting of the after resurrection incidents is that of the walk to Emmaus. Cleophas and his friend were journeying homeward with sad hearts, when a stranger joined them. His conversation was wonderfully tender as he walked with them and explained the Scriptures. Then followed the evening meal, and the revealing of the risen Jesus in the breaking of bread. Again it was the same sweet friendship which had so warmed their hearts in the past, resumed by the Master on the other side of death.

It was the same with all the recorded appearances of Jesus. Those who had been his friends previous to his death found him the same friend as before. He took up with each of them the threads of affection just where they had been dropped when the betrayal and arrest wrought such panic among his disciples, scattering them away, and went on with the weaving.

May we not conclude that it will be with us even as it was with Jesus? His resurrection was not only a pledge of what that of believers will be, carrying within itself the seed and potency of a blessed immortality, but it was also a sample of what ours will be. Death will produce far less change in us than we imagine it will do. We shall go on with living very much as if nothing had happened. Dying is an experience we need not trouble ourselves about very much if we are believers in Christ. There is a mystery in it; but when we have passed through it we shall probably find that it is a very simple and natural event—perhaps little more serious than sleeping over night and waking in the morning. It will not hurt us in any way. It will blot no lovely thing from our life. It will end nothing that is worth while. Death is only a process in life, a phase of development, analogous to that which takes place when a seed is dropped in the earth and comes up a beautiful plant, adorned with foliage and blossoms. Life would be incomplete without dying. The greatest misfortune that could befall any one would be that he should not die. This would be an arresting of development which would be death indeed.

          "Death is the crown of life;
  Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;
  Were death denied, to live would not be life;
  Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die.
  Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign;
  Spring from our fetters; hasten to the skies,
  Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.
  Death gives us more than was in Eden lost;
  The king of terrors is the prince of peace."

There is need for a reconstruction of the prevalent thoughts and conceptions of heaven. We have trained ourselves to think of life beyond the grave as something altogether different from what life is in this world. It has always been pictured thus to us. We have been taught that heaven is a place of rest, a place of fellowship with God, a place of ceaseless praise. The human element has been largely left out of our usual conceptions of the blessed life. Not much is made of the relations of believers to one another. That which is emphasized in Christian hymns and in most books about heaven is the Godward side. Much is made of the glory of the place as suggested by the visions of St. John in the Apocalypse. In many of these conceptions the chief thought of heavenly blessedness is that it is a release from earth and from earthly conditions. There is no sorrow, no trouble, no pain, no struggle, no toil, in the home to which we are going. We shall sit on the green banks of beautiful rivers, amid unfading flowers, and sing forever. We shall lie prostrate before the throne, and gaze and gaze on the face of God.

But this is not the kind of heaven and heavenly life which the teachings of Jesus Would lead us to imagine. True, he speaks of the place to which he is going, and where, by and by, he would gather all his disciples, as "my Father's house." This suggests home and love; and the thought is in harmony with what we have seen in the life of Jesus during the forty days,—the continuance of the friendships formed and knit in earthly fellowships. But the vision of home life thus suggested need not imply a heaven of inaction. Indeed, no life could be more natural and beautiful than that which the thought of home suggests. We have no perfect homes on earth; but every true home has in it fragments of heaven's meaning, and always the idea is of love's service rather than of blissful indolence.

We may get many thoughts of the heavenly life from other teachings of Jesus. Life is continuous. Whosoever liveth and believeth shall never die. There is no break, no interruption of life, in what we call dying. We think of eternal life as the life of heaven, the glorified life. So it is; but we have its beginnings here. The moment we believe, we have everlasting life. The Christian graces we are enjoined, to cultivate are heavenly lessons set for us to learn. If we would conceive of the life of heaven, we have but to think of ideal Christian life in this world, and then lift it up to its perfect realization. Heaven is but earth's lessons of grace better learned, earth's best spiritual life glorified. Therefore we get our truest thoughts of it from a study of Christ's ideal for the life of his followers, for it will simply be this life fully realized and infinitely extended.

For example, the one great lesson set for us, the one which includes all others, is love. God is love, and we are to learn to love if we would be like him. All relationships are relationships of love. All graces are graces of love. All duties are parts of one great duty—to love one another. All worthy and noble character is love wrought out in life. All life here is a school, with its tasks, its struggles, its conflicts, its minglings with men, its friendships, its experiences of joy and sorrow, its burdens, its disappointments and hopes, and the final education to be attained is love. Browning puts it thus in "Rabbi Ben Ezra":—

  Our life, with all it yields of joy or woe,
  And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,
  Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
  How love might be, hath been, indeed, and is.

What is this love which it is the one great lesson of life to learn? Toward God, it may express itself in devotion, worship, praise, obedience, fellowship. This seems to be the chief thought of love in the common conception of heaven. It is all adoration, glorifying. But love has a manward as well as a Godward development. St. John, the disciple of love, teaches very plainly that he who says he loves God must prove it by also loving man. If the whole of our training here is to be in loving and in living out our love, we certainly have the clew to the heavenly life. We shall continue in the doing of the things we have here learned to do. Life in glory will be earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. Inaction can never be a condition of blessedness for a life made and trained for action. The essential quality of love is service—"not to be ministered unto, but to minister;" and for one who has learned love's lesson, happiness never can be found in a state in which there is no opportunity for ministering. In heaven it will still be more blessed to give than to receive; and those who are first will be those who with lowly spirit serve most deeply. Heaven will be a place of boundless activity. "His servants shall serve him." The powers trained here for the work of Christ will find ample opportunity there for doing their best service. Said Victor Hugo in his old age, "When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, 'I have finished my day's work;' but I cannot say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again next morning. My tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thoroughfare; it closes with the twilight to open with the dawn."

Whatever mystery there may be concerning the life that believers in Christ shall live in heaven, we may be sure at least that they will carry with them all that is true and divine of their earthly life. The character formed here they will retain through death. The capacity they have gained by the use of their powers they will have for the beginning of their activity in the new life. There can be no doubt that they shall find work commensurate with and fitted to their trained powers.

So heaven will be a far more natural place than we imagine it will be. It will not be greatly unlike the ideal life of earth. We probably shall be surprised when we meet each other to find how little we have changed. The old tenderness will not be missing. We shall recognize our friends by some little gentle ways they used to have here, or by some familiar thoughtfulness that was never wanting in them. The friendships we began here, and had not time to cultivate, we shall have opportunity there to renew, and carry on through immortal years.

Even at the best, human friendships only begin in this life; in heaven they will reach their best and holiest possibilities. There are lives which only touch each other in this world and then separate, going their different ways—like ships that pass in the night. There will be time enough in heaven for any such faintest beginnings of friendship to be wrought out in beauty. Friendships with Jesus here touch but the shore of an infinite ocean; in heaven, unhindered, in uninterrupted fellowship, we shall be forever learning more of this love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

CHAPTER XV. JESUS AS A FRIEND.

        "Long, long centuries
  Agone, One walked the earth, his life
  A seeming failure;
  Dying, he gave the world a gift
        That will outlast eternities."

The world has always paid high honor to friendship. Some of the finest passages in all history are the stories of noble friendships,—stories which are among the classics of literature. The qualities which belong to an ideal friend have been treated by many writers through all the centuries. But Jesus Christ brought into the world new standards for everything in human life. He was the one complete Man,—God's ideal for humanity. "Once in the world's history was born a Man. Once in the roll of the ages, out of innumerable failures, from the stock of human nature, one bud developed itself into a faultless flower. One perfect specimen of humanity has God exhibited on earth." To Jesus, therefore, we turn for the divine ideal of everything in human life. What is friendship as interpreted by Jesus? What are the qualities of a true friend as illustrated in the life of Jesus?

It is evident that he lifted the ideal of friendship to