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‘Jesus therefore perceiving that they were about to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew again into the mountain Himself alone.’
Joh_6:15 (R.V.)
I. It is not Christ’s first object to secure for men in this life outward conditions favourable to universal ease and comfort.—That was clearly not His object in the creation of the material universe which He has built for our home. Men have to live by the sweat of their brow, and in most parts of the world they have to work hard in order to live. There are fogs and floods; harvests are blighted; there is intolerable heat; there is intolerable cold. Men are disciplined to endurance by physical discomfort. Their intellectual life is provoked to strenuous activity by the hardships and difficulties of their condition. The proverbial garden of the sluggard is not a reproach to Providence, but to the sluggard. It was God’s will that he should have not only a garden bright with flowers, but that he should have the physical vigour, the industry, and the intelligence that would come from cultivating it. God cares more for the man than for the garden.
II. Nor is it Christ’s first object to give us a social and political order that shall certainly secure for men universal physical happiness. Government is a Divine institution; but it is through human virtue, human self-sacrifice, human patience, human sagacity, that the material blessings which are possible through the social condition are to be actually won; and it is not God’s will that we should have the material blessings apart from the virtues and the intellectual labours which are necessary for the maintenance of a just social order. It was impossible that Christ should accept power on the terms upon which He knew it was offered Him.
III. The relations of Christ to the political, economic, and social order have exercised the thoughts of men ever since He returned to His glory. He declared before His Ascension that all authority had been given to Him in heaven and on earth; the great words of the psalmist had been fulfilled—not the elect race only, but all nations had been given to Him as His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth as His possession. During His earthly ministry He and His apostles had declared that the Kingdom of Heaven was ‘at hand’; after His resurrection that proclamation ceased; the kingdom was no longer ‘at hand’; it had actually come, for the King had come; and through the redemption which He had achieved the whole race stood in a new relation to God. He was King of kings and Lord of lords—King by Divine right, Lord by Divine appointment. There were no longer any aliens from the Divine commonwealth; every man was a subject of Christ by birth; revolt was still possible, but revolt is a crime of which only the subjects of a lawful prince can be guilty; men are the subjects of Christ by the Divine Will, though it lies with their own will whether they will be obedient to His laws and loyal to His throne. His authority extends over every province of human life: over the business of men and their pleasures; over science, literature, and art; over the family, over the State, as well as over the Church.
Let men learn to acknowledge Him as the true King of men, and within a generation the whole life of the country would be changed.
Illustration
‘If the social order is to be great, men must be great; if the social order is to be kindly, men must be kindly. We can only hope for great and enduring changes for the better in the social order as the result of great and enduring changes for the better in the spirit and character of the whole people. The ethical quality of the organisation of a State—political, economic, social—must, I suppose, be always more or less inferior to the general ethical life of the nation. Reforms which are far in advance of that life may be carried as the result of transient enthusiasm, but they will not be effective, and they will not endure.’