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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 44. What Is Sacrifice?
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What Is Sacrifice?
Now you will note that the chief thing in all this is sacrifice. The chief thing in all of our Lord's life, clear from Bethlehem to Calvary and the tomb, was sacrifice. It runs ever throughout; it finds its tremendous climax in the cross. And the word to put in here in quietest tone—the quietest is tensest, and goes in deepest—the word is this: Following means sacrifice. It means sacrifice as really for the follower as for the Lone Man ahead.
That word "sacrifice" has practically been dropped out of the dictionary of the Christian Church of the western world. It has not been wholly lost. There is much real sacrifice, no doubt, under the surface. But, in the main, it is one of the lost words in our generation of the Church. We are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing that we cannot provide by the lavish use of money; so we think. And the loss of that word explains the loss from our working dictionaries of another word, power. For the two words always go together.
But please note what sacrifice means. For we may get confused in the use of words, and like the Hebrews in Isaiah's day call things by the wrong names. (Isa_5:20.) Sacrifice does not merely mean suffering, though there may be much suffering included in it. But there may be suffering where there is no sacrifice. It does not mean privation, though there may be real painful privation in it. But again there may be much privation and pain without any element of sacrifice entering in.
The heart of sacrifice is that it is voluntary, and that it really costs you something. It is something that would not come to you unless you decide to let it come. It is wholly within your power to keep it away, and it brings with it real pain or cost of some kind. Sacrifice means doing something, or doing without something, that so help may come to another, even though it costs you some real personal suffering of spirit, or of body, or both, or lack of what you should have and would enjoy.
And please note that sacrifice is not the key-note of the "Follow Me" life. We are not to seek for sacrifice. Perhaps that is quite a needless remark. We are not likely to seek for it. No one loves a cross any more than did Peter, when he had the hardiness to rebuke his Master. (Mat_16:21-28.) And yet we remember those earnest souls in earlier times, who shut themselves up behind monastic walls, and inflicted pain upon themselves by privation and by bodily self-infliction. And we cannot help admiring their earnestness and saintliness, even while we see how morbid was their conception of life, and how completely they got the true order reversed. And there can be found some here and there, among us today, with the same idea.
But the key-note of the true life is not sacrifice. It is obedience. Sacrifice is something coming in the pathway of obedience. There come the places and times where you cannot obey without making a sacrifice. Obedience involves sacrifice. And the sacrifice may be of the very real, cutting, hurting sort, personally. The whole instinct of one's being is against it. This seems to be carrying things quite too far, we think. And so the test is on. The sacrifice is not sought. It is shrunk from with all the vigour of one's nature. Obedience means that you go steadily on, no matter how it cuts, or how much it costs.
And the motive under the obedience is usually the decisive thing. If that motive be a personal passion for the Lord Jesus, then you only wait long enough to be quite clear of His leading, of what He would have you do. And then you go on, regardless of the personal loss or pain to yourself. The key-note of the "Follow Me" music is obedience, simple, sane, poised, full obedience.