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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 543. The Example
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IV
The Example
Literature
Austin, A. B., Linked Lives (1913), 97.
Bacon, L. W., The Simplicity that is in Christ (1892), 309.
Blunt, J. J., Plain Sermons, ii. (1868) 256.
Bruce, A. B., The Training of the Twelve (1871), 371.
Burn, A. E., The Crown of Thorns (1911), 1.
Burrell, D. J., A Quiver of Arrows (1902), 297.
Carpenter, W. B., The Son of Man among the Sons of Men (1893), 63.
Fairbairn, A. M., Studies in the Life of Christ (1881), 258.
Davies, D., Talks with Men, Women and Children, iv. (1892) 599.
Dawson, W. J., The Man Christ Jesus (1901), 358.
Deems, C. F., Jesus (1880), 603.
Edersheim, A., The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. (1887) 471.
Farrar, F. W., The Life of Christ (1894), 471.
Farrar, F. W., The Life of Lives (1900), 431.
Hough, L. H., The Men of the Gospels (1913), 40.
Ingram, A. F. W., Addresses in Holy Week (1902), 1.
Jones, J. D., The Glorious Company of the Apostles (1904), 239.
Ker, J., Sermons, i. (1885) 282.
Killip, B., Citizens of the Universe (1914), 207.
Liddon, H. P., Passiontide Sermons (1891), 210.
Lightfoot, J. B., Sermons Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral (1891), 58.
Little, W. J. K., Sunlight and Shadow in the Christian Life (1892), 270.
Lovell, R. H., First Types of the Christian Life (1895), 158.
Maclaren, A., Leaves from the Tree of Life (1899), 153.
Morrow, H. W., Questions Asked and Answered by Our Lord, 235.
Moulton, J. H., Visions of Sin (1898), 93.
Parker, J., The Ark of God (1877), 40.
Rattenbury, J. E., The Twelve (1914), 285.
Rawnsley, R. D. B., Village Sermons, iii. (1883) 74.
Salmon, G., Cathedral and University Sermons (1900), 88.
Simcox, W. H., The Cessation of Prophecy (1891), 269.
Stalker, J., The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ (1894), 110.
Wakinshaw, W., John's Ideal City (1915), 122.
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. (1906) 907 (J. G. Tasker).
Is not the case of Judas so exceptional that his temptation is not our temptation, that his crime cannot be our crime, and that therefore his fall has no lesson of warning for us? Nay, his sin seems so unnatural and monstrous that we have some difficulty in even realizing it. The contrast is too violent between the Apostle and the traitor-the intimate communion with the Holy One here; the vile perfidy to the Friend and Saviour there; the unique advantages here, the unparalleled baseness there. The perfect example of the Master, the elevating society of the fellowdisciples, the words of truth, the works of power, the grace, the purity, the holiness, the love-all these forgotten, spurned, trampled under foot, to gratify one miserable, greedy passion, if not the worst, at least the meanest, that can possess the heart of man. On this moral contrast our Lord lays special emphasis. “Have not I chosen you, the twelve, chosen you out of the many thousands in Israel, in preference to the high-born and the powerful, in preference to the rabbi and the scribe and the priest, chosen you a mere handful of men to be My intimate friends, My special messengers now, to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel hereafter; and yet one among you is not faithless only, not unworthy, not sinful only, but a very impersonation of the Accuser, the Arch-fiend himself?”
Our experiences may recall some faint type of such a contrast, where the circumstances of the criminal and the baseness of the crime seem to stand in no relation to each other. We may have seen some one member of a family, brought up under conditions the most favourable to his moral and religious development, watcned over by parents whose devoted care was never at fault, growing up among brothers and sisters whose example suggested only innocence and truthfulness, breathing, in short, the very atmosphere of holiness and purity and love; and yet he has fallen-fallen we know not how, but fallen so low that even the world rejects him as an outcast. He is a traitor to the family name, he has dragged the family honour in the mire. And yet, until lately, he was, to all outward appearances, as one of the rest-sharing the same companionships, joining in the same amusements, learning the same lessons, nay, even wearing the same family features, speaking with his father's voice, or smiling with his mother's smile.
How peculiarly does the warning of Judas come home to those who in our own day “do the work of a gospeller,” whose life is spent in proclaiming the message Judas spoke in the villages of Galilee long ago. Surely if anyone could be safe from the seductions of worldliness, it must be the man or woman whose voice is day by day telling the glad news to old and young, pointing to eager seekers the narrow path that leads to everlasting life. Is it so? Has the preacher never felt within him the vague but horrible consciousness that the oft-repeated message is becoming for him a parrot cry that he knows the way of salvation so well by heart that the tenderest of God's words wakes no loving echo in his soul, that faith is frozen into an “ism,” and that no instrument fashioned of man has power to expel nature-nature, alas! ever prone to degrade? Have the gaols of our country never opened to men from whose lips thousands once heard the truth, while within them worldliness was having its perfect work, sapping the power which alone kept that gospel from being only the most hideous of hypocrisies? Yes; Judas is not the only fallen apostle whose name the tears of God have blotted out of the Book of Life.1 [Note: J. H. Moulton, Visions of Sin, 108.]