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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?’
Mar_10:38
I. The cup is in the Father’s hand.—‘The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’ (Joh_18:11). If He teaches us to see the loving fingers of God holding out to us the mixed cup of life, and if by His patient example we drink thereof, content to know that God’s will, and not ours, is being done, He has taught us all we need to know.
II. Christ said to His Father, ‘The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them.’ Part of the gift to His followers was the heritage of suffering. This heritage is the preparation for the revelation of God’s glory. To be a partaker now with Christ in suffering, is nothing else than sharing His glory.
III. Christ’s answer to His ambitious disciples leads to the certain conclusion that nearness to Him in this world, and especially in the next, largely depends upon our capability of sharing the cup of sorrow. To sit on His right hand and on His left will be given to those for whom it is prepared; and those who will sit near to Him at the Lamb’s great supper will be clothed in the robes of salvation, which have been washed in the waters of tribulation, and made white in the blood of the Lamb.
Illustration
‘Some seem marked out to drink the cup of self-denial to the bitter dregs with a cheerful and unshaken heart. Their names are in all men’s minds, and their memory is green upon the earth. Of our own time such may be mentioned as Livingstone, Gordon, Patteson, Hannington, Sister Dora, Father Damien. Livingstone wrote, in the central savagery of Africa, “I feel I am not my own; I feel I am serving God when shooting a buffalo for my men, or when taking an astronomical observation.” Father Damien said, when the fatal signs of the foul leprosy appeared upon him, “I would not be cured if the price of my cure was that I must leave the island and give up my work.” These are Gordon’s words: “I do nothing; I am a chisel which cuts the wood. The Carpenter directs it. If I lose my edge, He must sharpen me; if He puts me aside and takes another, it is His own good will.” For the most of humankind this heroic spirit of martyrdom, although an effectual incentive, is too idealistic to be attained. “The daily round, the common task” furnish, nevertheless, plenty of opportunity for proving the power of Christ’s example.’