Jesus Christ
is more than a system, tradition, or belief. He
is a Person who knows our needs, feels our pain,
and sympathizes with our weakness. In exchange
for our trust, He offers to forgive our sins, to
intercede for us, and to bring us to His Father.
He cried for us, died for us, and rose from the
dead to show that He was all He claimed to be.
Conquering death, He showed us that He can save
us from our sins, live His life through us on
earth, and then bring us safely to heaven. He
offers Himself as a gift to anyone who will
trust Him ( John
20:24-31).
Looking Unto
Jesus
". . . looking unto Jesus . .
."
Hebrews 12:2
Only these three
words,
but in these three words
is the
whole secret of life.
LOOKING UNTO
JESUS
IN THE SCRIPTURES, to learn there what
He is, what He has done, what He gives, what He
desires; to find in His character our pattern,
in His teachings our instruction, in His
precepts our law, in His promises our support,
in His person and in His work a full
satisfaction provided for every need of our
souls.
LOOKING UNTO
JESUS
CRUCIFIED, to find in His shed blood
our ransom, our pardon, our
peace.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
RISEN, to
find in Him the righteousness which alone makes
us righteous, and permits us, all unworthy as we
are, to draw near with boldness, in His name, to
Him who is His Father and our Father, His God
and our God.
LOOKING UNTO
JESUS
GLORIFIED, to find in Him our Heavenly
Advocate completing by His intercession the work
inspired by His lovingkindness for our salvation
(1John 2:1); Who even now is appearing for us
before the face of God (Heb. 9:24), the kingly
Priest, the spotless Victim, continually bearing
the iniquity of our holy things (Ex.
28:38).
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
REVEALED BY
THE HOLY SPIRIT, to find in constant communion
with Him the cleansing of our sin-stained
hearts, the illumination of our darkened
spirits, the transformation of our rebel wills;
enabled by Him to triumph over all attacks of
the world and of the evil one, resisting their
violence by Jesus our Strength, and overcoming
their subtlety by Jesus our Wisdom; upheld by
the sympathy of Jesus, Who was spared no
temptation . . . .Who yielded to
none.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
WHO GIVES
REPENTANCE as well as forgiveness of sins (Acts
5:31), because He gives us the grace to
recognize, to deplore, to confess, and to
forsake our transgressions.
LOOKING UNTO
JESUS
TO RECEIVE FROM HIM the task and the
cross for each day, with the grace which is
sufficient to carry the cross and to accomplish
the task; the grace that enables us to be
patient with His patience, active with His
activity, loving with His love; never asking
"What am I able for?" but rather: "What is He
not able for?" and waiting for His strength
which is make perfect in our weakness (2Cor.
12:9).
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
TO GO FORTH
FROM OURSELVES and to forget ourselves; so that
our darkness may flee away before the brightness
of His face; so that our joys may be holy, and
our sorrow restrained; that He
may
cast us down, and that He may
raise us up; that He may afflict us, and that He
may comfort us; that He may despoil us, and that
He may enrich us; that He may teach us to pray,
and that He may answer our prayers; that while
leaving us in the world, He may separate us from
it, our life being hidden with Him in God, and
our behavior bearing witness to Him before
men.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
WHO, HAVING
RETURNED TO THE FATHER'S HOUSE, is engaged in
preparing a place there for us; so that this
joyful prospect may make us live in hope, and
prepare us to die in peace, when the day shall
come for us to meet this last enemy, whom He has
overcome for us, whom we shall overcome through
Him - so that what was once the king of terrors
is today the harbinger of eternal
happiness.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
WHOSE
CERTAIN RETURN, at an uncertain time, is from
age to age the expectation and the hope of the
faithful Church, who is encouraged in her
patience, watchfulness, and joy by the thought
that the Savior is at hand (Phil. 4: 4-5; 1Thes.
5:23).
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
THE AUTHOR
AND THE FINISHER OF OUR FAITH: that is to say,
He Who is its pattern and its source, even as He
is its object; and Who from the first step even
to the last marches at the head of the
believers; so that by Him our faith may be
inspired, encouraged, sustained, and led on to
its supreme consummation.
LOOKING UNTO
JESUS
AND AT NOTHING ELSE, as our text
expresses it in one untranslatable word
(aphoroontes), which at the same time directs us
to fix our gaze upon Him, and to turn it away
from everything else.
UNTO JESUS
AND
NOT AT OURSELVES, our thoughts, our reasonings,
our imaginings, our inclinations, our wishes,
our plans;
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT THE
WORLD, its customs, its example, its rules, its
judgments;
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT
SATAN, though he seek to terrify us by his fury,
or to entice us by his flatteries. Oh! from how
many useless questions we would save ourselves,
from how many disturbing scruples, from how much
loss of time, dangerous dallyings with evil,
waste of energy, empty dreams, bitter
disappointments, sorrowful struggles, and
distressing falls, by looking steadily unto
Jesus, and by following Him wherever He may lead
us. Then we shall be too much occupied with not
losing sight of the path which He marks out for
us, to waste even a glance on those in which He
does not think it suitable to lead
us.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT OUR CREEDS,
no matter how evangelical they may be. The faith
which saves, which sanctifies, and which
comforts, is not giving assent to the doctrine
of salvation; it is being united to the person
of the Savior. "It is not enough," said Adolphe
Monod, "to know about Jesus Christ, it is
necessary to have Jesus Christ." To this one may
add that no one truly knows Him, if he does not
first possess Him. According to the profound
saying of the beloved disciple, it is in the
Life there is Light, and it is in Jesus there is
Life (John 1:4).
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT
OUR MEDITATIONS AND OUR PRAYERS, our pious
conversations and our profitable reading, the
holy meetings that we attend, nor even to our
taking part in the supper of the
Lord.
Let us faithfully use all these
means of grace, but without confusing them with
grace itself; and without turning our gaze away
from Him Who alone makes them effectual, when,
by their means, He reveals Himself to
us.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT TO OUR POSITION
IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, to the family to which
we belong, to our baptism, to the education
which we have received, to the doctrine which we
profess, to the opinion which others have formed
of our piety, or to the opinion which we have
formed of it ourselves. Some of those who have
prophesied in the Name of the Lord Jesus will
one day hear Him say: "I never knew you" (Matt.
7:22-23); but He will confess before His Father
and before His angels even the most humble of
those who have looked unto Him.
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT TO OUR BRETHREN, not even to
the best among them and the most beloved. In
following a man we run the risk of losing our
way; in following Jesus we are sure of never
losing our way. Besides, in putting a man
between Jesus and ourselves, it will come to
pass that insensibly the man will increase and
Jesus will decrease; soon we no longer know how
to find Jesus when we cannot find the man, and
if he fails us, all fails. On the contrary, if
Jesus is kept between us and our closest friend,
our attachment to the person will be at the same
time less enthralling and more deep; less
passionate and more tender; less necessary and
more useful; an instrument of rich blessing in
the hands of God when He is pleased to make use
of him; and whose absence will be a further
blessing, when it may please God to dispense
with him, to draw us even nearer to the only
Friend who can be separated from us by "neither
death nor life" (Rom. 8:38-39).
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT AT HIS ENEMIES OR AT OUR OWN.
In place of
hating them and fearing
them, we shall then know how to love them and to
overcome them.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT
THE OBSTACLES which meet us in our path. As soon
as we stop to consider them, they amaze us, they
confuse us, they overwhelm us, incapable as we
are of understanding either the reason why they
are permitted, or the means by which we may
overcome them. The apostle began to sink as soon
as he turned to look at the waves tossed by the
storm; it was while he was looking at Jesus that
he walked on the waters as on a rock. The more
difficult our task, the more terrifying our
temptation, the more essential it is that we
look only at Jesus.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT
AT OUR TROUBLES, to count up their number, to
reckon their weight, to find perhaps a certain
strange satisfaction in tasting their
bitterness. apart from Jesus trouble does not
sanctify, it hardens or it crushes. It produces
not patience, but rebellion; not sympathy, but
selfishness; not hope (Rom. 5:3) but despair. It
is only under the shadow of the cross that we
can appreciate the true weight of our own cross,
and accept it each day from His hand, to carry
it with love, with gratitude, with joy; and find
in it for ourselves and for others a source of
blessings.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT THE
DEAREST, THE MOST LEGITIMATE OF OUR EARTHLY
JOYS, lest we be so engrossed in them that they
deprive us of the sight of the very One Who
gives them to us. If we are looking at Him first
of all, then it is from Him we receive these
good things, made a thousand times more precious
because we possess them as gifts from His loving
hand, which we entrust to His keeping, to enjoy
them in communion with Him, and to use them for
His glory.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT THE
INSTRUMENTS, whatever they may be which He
employs to form the path which He has appointed
for us. Looking beyond man, beyond
circumstances, beyond the thousand causes so
rightly called secondary, let us ascend as far
as the first cause - His will: let us ascend
even to the source of this very will - His love.
Then our gratitude, without being less lively
towards those who do us good, will not stop at
them; then in the testing day, under the most
unexpected blow, the most inexplicable, the most
overwhelming, we can say with the Psalmist: "I
was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou
didst it" (Ps. 39:9). And in the silence of our
dumb sorrow the heavenly voice will gently
reply: "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou
shalt know hereafter" (John 13:7).
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT AT THE INTERESTS OF OUR CAUSE,
Of OUR PARTY, OF OUR CHURCH - still less at our
personal interests. The single object of our
life is the glory of God; if we do not make it
the supreme goal of our efforts, we must deprive
ourselves of His help, for His grace is only at
the service of His glory. If, on the contrary,
it is His glory that we seek above all, we can
always count on His grace.
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT AT THE SINCERITY OF OUR
INTENTIONS, AND AT THE STRENGTH OF OUR
RESOLUTIONS. Alas! how often the most excellent
intentions have only prepared the way for the
most humiliating falls. Let us stay ourselves,
not on our intentions, but on His love; not on
our resolutions, but on His promise.
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT AT OUR STRENGTH. Our strength
is good only to glorify ourselves; to glorify
God one must have the strength of
God.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT OUR
WEAKNESS. By lamenting our weakness have we ever
become more strong? Let us look to Jesus, and
His strength will communicate itself to our
hearts, His praise will break forth from our
lips.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT OUR SINS,
neither at the source from which they come
(Matt. 15:19) nor the chastisement which they
deserve. Let us look at ourselves, only to
recognize how much need we have of looking to
Him; and looking to Him, certainly not as if we
were sinless; but on the contrary, because we
are sinners, measuring the very greatness of the
offense by the greatness of the sacrifice which
has atoned for it, and of the grace which
pardons it. "For one look that we turn on
ourselves," said an eminent servant of God
(McCheyne) "let us turn ten upon Jesus." "If it
is very sure," said Vinet, "that one will not
lose sight of his wretched state by looking at
Jesus Christ crucified - because this wretched
state is, as it were, graven upon the cross - it
is also very sure that in looking at one's
wretchedness one can lose sight of Jesus Christ;
because the cross is not naturally graven upon
the image of one's wretchedness." And he adds,
"Look at yourselves, but only in the presence of
the cross, only through Jesus Christ." Looking
at the sin only gives death; looking at Jesus
gives life. That which healed the Israelite in
the wilderness was not considering his wounds,
but raising his eyes to the serpent of brass
(Num. 21:9).
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT - DO
WE NEED TO SAY IT? - AT OUR PRETENSE OF
RIGHTEOUSNESS. Ill above all who are ill is he
who believes himself in health; blind above the
blind he who thinks that he sees (John 9:41). If
it is dangerous to look long at our wretchedness
which is, alas! too real; it is much more
dangerous to rest complacently on imaginary
merits.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT THE LAW.
The law gives commands, and gives no strength to
carry them out; the law always condemns, and
never pardons. If we put ourselves back under
the law, we take ourselves away from grace. In
so far as we make our obedience the means of our
salvation, we lose our peace, our joy, our
strength; for we have forgotten that Jesus is
the end of the law for righteousness to every
one that believeth (Rom. 10:4). As soon as the
law has constrained us to seek in Him our only
Savior, then also to Him only belongs the right
to command our obedience; an obedience which
includes nothing less than our whole heart, and
our most secret thoughts, but which has ceased
from being an iron yoke, and an insupportable
burden, to become an easy yoke and a light
burden (Matt. 11:30). It is an obedience which
He makes as delightful as it is binding, an
obedience which He inspires, at the same time as
He requires it, and which in very truth, is less
a consequence of our salvation than it is a part
of this very salvation - and, like all the rest,
a free gift.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT
WHAT WE ARE DOING FOR HIM. Too much occupied
with our work, we can forget our Master - it is
possible to have the hands full and the heart
empty. When occupied with our Master, we cannot
forget our work; if the heart is filled with His
love, how can the hands fail to be active in His
service?
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT TO THE
APPARENT SUCCESS OF OUR EFFORTS. The apparent
success is not the measure of the real success;
and besides, God has not told us to succeed, but
to work; it is of our work that He requires an
account, and not of our success - why then
concern ourselves with it? It is for us to
scatter the seed, for God to gather the fruit;
if not today, then it will be tomorrow; if He
does not employ us to gather it, then He will
employ others. Even when success is granted to
us, it is always dangerous to fix our attention
on it: on the one hand we are tempted to take
some of the
credit of it to ourselves; on
the other hand we thus accustom ourselves to
abate our zeal when we cease to perceive its
result, that is to say, at the very time when we
should redouble our energy. To look at the
success is to walk by sight; to look at Jesus,
and to persevere in following Him and serving
Him, inspite of all discouragements, is to walk
by faith.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT TO THE
SPIRITUAL GIFTS which we have already received,
or which we are now receiving from Him. As to
yesterday's grace, it has passed with
yesterday's work; we can no longer make use of
it, we should no longer linger over it. As to
today's grace given for today's work, it is
entrusted to us, not to be looked at, but to be
used. We are not to gloat over it as a treasure,
counting up our riches, but to spend it
immediately, and remain poor, "Looking unto
Jesus."
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT THE
AMOUNT OF SORROW that our sins make us
experience, or the amount of humiliation which
they produce in us. If only we are humiliated by
them enough to make us no longer complacent with
ourselves; if only we are troubled by them
enough to make us look to Jesus, so that He may
deliver us from them, that is all that He asks
from us; and it is also this look which more
than anything else will make our tears spring
and our pride fall. And when it is given to us
as to Peter to weep bitterly (Luke 22:62), oh!
then may our tear-dimmed eyes remain more than
ever directed unto Jesus; for even our
repentance will become a snare to us, if we
think to blot out in some measure by our tears
those sins which nothing can blot out, except
the blood of the Lamb of God.
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT AT THE BRIGHTNESS OF OUR JOY,
the strength of our assurance, or the warmth of
our love. Otherwise, when for a little time this
love seems to have grown cold, this assurance to
have
vanished, this joy to have failed us
- either as the result of our own faithlessness,
or for the trial of our faith - immediately,
having lost our feelings, we think that we have
lost our strength, and we allow ourselves to
fall into an abyss of sorrow, even into cowardly
idleness, or perhaps sinful complaints. Ah!
rather let us remember that if the feelings with
their sweetness, are absent, the faith with its
strength remains with us. To be able always to
be "abounding in the work of the Lord" (1Cor.
15:58) let us look steadily, not at our ever
changeful hearts, but at Jesus, who is always
the same.
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT THE
HEIGHTS OF HOLINESS to which we attained. If no
one may believe himself a child of God so long
as he still finds stains in his heart, and
stumblings in his life, who could taste the joy
of salvation? But this joy is not bought with a
price. Holiness is the fruit, not the root of
our redemption. It is the work of Jesus Christ
for us which reconciles us unto God; it is the
work of the Holy Spirit in us which renews us in
His likeness. The shortcomings of a faith which
is true, but not yet fully established, and
bearing but little fruit, in no way lessens the
fullness of the perfect work of the Savior, nor
the certainty of His unchanging promise,
guaranteeing life eternal unto whomsoever trusts
in Him. And so to rest in the Redeemer is the
true way to obey Him; and it is only when
enjoying the peace of forgiveness that the soul
is strong for the conflict.
If there are any
who abuse this blessed truth by giving
themselves over unscrupulously to spiritual
idleness, imagining that they can let the faith
which they think they have take the place of the
holiness which they have not, they should
remember this solemn warning of the Apostle
Paul: "They that are Christ's have crucified the
flesh with the affections and the lusts" (Gal.
5:24); and that of the Apostle John: "He that
saith, I know him, and keepeth not his
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in
him" (1John 2:4); and that of the Lord Jesus
Himself, "Every tree that bringeth not forth
good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire"
(Matt. 7:19).
UNTO JESUS
AND NOT AT
OUR DEFEATS OR VICTORIES. If we look at our
defeats we shall be cast down; if we look at our
victories we shall be puffed up. And neither
will help us to fight the good fight of faith
(1Tim. 6:12). Like all our blessings, the
victory, with the faith which wins it, it the
gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ (1Cor.
15:57), and to Him is all the glory.
UNTO
JESUS
AND NOT AT OUR DOUBTS. The more we look
at them the larger they appear, until they can
swallow up all our faith, our strength, and our
joy. But if we look away from them to our Lord
Jesus, Who is the Truth (John 14:6), the doubts
will scatter in the light of His presence like
clouds before the sun.
UNTO JESUS
AND
NOT AT OUR FAITH. The last device of the
adversary, when he cannot make us look
elsewhere, is to turn our eyes from the Savior
to our faith, and thus to discourage us if it is
weak, to fill us with pride if it is strong: and
either way to weaken us. For power does not come
from the faith, but from the Savior by faith. It
is not looking at our look, it is "looking unto
Jesus,"
UNTO JESUS
AND IT IS FROM HIM
AND IN HIM that we learn to know (not only
without danger, but for the well-being of our
souls) what it is good for us to know about the
world and about ourselves, our sorrows and our
dangers, our resources and our victories: seeing
everything in its true light, because it is He
Who shows them to us, and that only at the time
and in the proportion in which this knowledge
will produce in us the fruits of humility and
wisdom, gratitude and courage, watchfulness and
prayer. All that it is desirable for us to know,
the Lord Jesus will teach us; all that we do not
learn from Him, it is better for us not to
know.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS
AS LONG AS WE
REMAIN ON THE EARTH - unto Jesus from moment to
moment, without allowing ourselves to be
distracted by memories of a past which we should
leave behind us, nor by occupation with a future
of which we know nothing
UNTO JESUS
NOW
IF WE HAVE NEVER LOOKED UNTO HIM
--
UNTO JESUS AFRESH,
IF WE HAVE
CEASED DOING SO --
UNTO JESUS
ONLY,
UNTO JESUS STILL,
UNTO JESUS
ALWAYS --
WITH A GAZE MORE AND MORE CONSTANT,
more and more confident, "changed into the same
image from glory to glory" (2Cor. 3:18). Thus we
await the hour when He will call us to pass from
earth to Heaven, and from time to eternity
--
The promised hour,
the blessed
hour
when at last "we shall be like him; for
we shall see him as he is" (1John
3:2).
