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Title: Personal Friendships of Jesus

Author: J. R. Miller

Release Date: November 28, 2008 [EBook #27349]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSONAL FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS ***

Produced by Al Haines

Personal Friendships

of Jesus

BY J. R. MILLER, D. D. AUTHOR OF "SILENT TIMES," "MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE," "THINGS TO LIVE FOR," "BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS," ETC.

  One friend in that path shall be,
    To secure my steps from wrong;
  One to count night day for me,
    Patient through the watches long,
  Serving most with none to see.
                            BROWNING.

New York

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1897,

BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.

EIGHTH THOUSAND PREFACE.

George MacDonald said in an address, "The longer I live, the more I am assured that the business of life is to understand the Lord Christ." If this be true, whatever sheds even a little light on the character or life of Christ is worth while.

Nothing reveals a man's heart better than his friendships. The kind of friend he is, tells the kind of man he is. The personal friendships of Jesus reveal many tender and beautiful things in his character. They show us also what is possible for us in divine friendship; for the heart of Jesus is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.

These chapters are only suggestive, not exhaustive. If they make the way into close personal friendship with Jesus any plainer for those who hunger for such blessed intimacy, that will be reward enough.

J. R. M. PHILADELPHIA. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS II. JESUS AND HIS MOTHER III. JESUS AND HIS FORERUNNER IV. JESUS' CONDITIONS OF FRIENDSHIP V. JESUS CHOOSING HIS FRIENDS VI. JESUS AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE VII. JESUS AND PETER VIII. JESUS AND THOMAS IX. JESUS' UNREQUITED FRIENDSHIPS X. JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS XI. JESUS COMFORTING HIS FRIENDS XII. JESUS AND HIS SECRET FRIENDS XIII. JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS XIV. JESUS' FRIENDSHIPS AFTER HE AROSE XV. JESUS AS A FRIEND

  All I could never be,
  All men ignored in me,
  This I was worth to God.
              BROWNING.

        But lead me, Man divine,
  Where'er Thou will'st, only that I may find
  At the long journey's end Thy image there,
  And grow more like to it. For art not Thou
  The human shadow of the infinite Love
  That made and fills the endless universe?
  The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown,
  Eternal Good that rules the summer flower
  And all the worlds that people starry space.
              RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. CHAPTER I. THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS.

  O God, O kinsman loved, but not enough,
    O man with eyes majestic after death,
  Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
    Whose lips drawn human breath;

  By that one likeness which is ours and thine,
    By that one nature which doth hold us kin,
  By that high heaven where sinless thou dost shine,
    To draw us sinners in;

  By thy last silence in the judgment hall,
    By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree,
  By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall,
    I pray thee visit me.
                           JEAN INGELOW.

There is a natural tendency to think of Jesus as different from other men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of his youth and young manhood as altogether unlike those of any other boy or young man in the village where he grew up. This same feeling leads us to think of his temptation as so different from what temptation is to other men as to be really no temptation at all.

So we are apt to think of all the human life of Jesus as being in some way lifted up out of the rank of ordinary experiences. We do not conceive of him as having the same struggles that we have in meeting trial, in enduring injury and wrong, in learning obedience, patience, meekness, submission, trust, and cheerfulness. We conceive of his friendships as somehow different from other men's. We feel that in some mysterious way his human life was supported and sustained by the deity that dwelt in him, and that he was exempt from all ordinary limiting conditions of humanity.

There is no doubt that with many people this feeling of reverence has been in the way of the truest understanding of Jesus, and ofttimes those who have clung most devoutly to a belief in his deity have missed much of the comfort which comes from a proper comprehension of his humanity.

Yet the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels furnishes no ground for any confusion on the subject of his human life. It represents him as subject to all ordinary human conditions excepting sin. He began life as every infant begins, in feebleness and ignorance; and there is no hint of any precocious development. He learned as every child must learn. The lessons were not gotten easily or without diligent study. He played as other boys did, and with them. The more we think of the youth of Jesus as in no marked way unlike that of those among whom he lived, the truer will our thought of him be.

Millais the great artist, when he was a young man, painted an unusual picture of Jesus. He represented him as a little boy in the home at Nazareth. He has cut his finger on some carpenter's tool, and comes to his mother to have it bound up. The picture is really one of the truest of all the many pictures of Jesus, because it depicts just such a scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in his youth. Evidently there was nothing in his life in Nazareth that drew the attention of his companions and neighbors to him in any striking way. We know that he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and kindness. There was never any sin or fault in him; he always kept the law of God perfectly. But his perfection was not something startling. There was no halo about his head, no transfiguration, that awed men. We are told that he grew in favor with men as well as with God. His religion made his life beautiful and winning, but always so simple and natural that it drew no unusual attention to itself. It was richly and ideally human.

So it was unto the end. Through the years of his public ministry, when his words and works burned with divine revealing, he continued to live an altogether natural human life. He ate and drank; he grew weary and faint; he was tempted in all points like as we are, and suffered, being tempted. He learned obedience by the things that he endured. He hungered and thirsted, never ministering with his divine power to any of his own needs. "In all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren."

In nothing else is this truth more clearly shown than in the humanheartedness which was so striking a feature of the life of Jesus among men. When we think of him as the Son of God, the question arises, Did he really care for personal friendships with men and women of the human family? In the home from which he came he had dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had enjoyed the companionship of the highest angels. What could he find in this world of imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this world's deepest and holiest love? What light can a dim candle give to the sun? Does the great ocean need the little dewdrop that hides in the bosom of the rose? What blessing or inspiration of love can any poor, marred, stained life give to the soul of the Christ?

Yet the Gospels abound with evidences that Jesus did crave human love, that he found sweet comfort in the friendships which he made, and that much of his keenest suffering was caused by failures in the love of those who ought to have been true to him as his friends. He craved affection, and even among the weak and faulty men and women about him made many very sacred attachments from which he drew strength and comfort.

We must distinguish between Christ's love for all men and his friendship for particular individuals. He was in the world to reveal the Father, and all the divine compassion for sinners was in his heart. It was this mighty love that brought him to earth on the mission of redemption. It was this that impelled and constrained him in all his seeking of the lost. He had come to be the Saviour of all who would believe and follow him. Therefore he was interested in every merest fragment or shred of life. No human soul was so debased that he did not love it.

But besides this universal divine love revealed in the heart of Jesus, he had his personal human friendships. A philanthropist may give his whole life to the good of his fellow-men, to their uplifting, their advancement, their education; to the liberation of the enslaved; to work among and in behalf of the poor, the sick, or the fallen. All suffering humanity has its interest for him, and makes appeal to his compassion. Yet amid the world of those whom he thus loves and wishes to help, this man will have his personal friends; and through the story of his life will run the golden threads of sweet companionships and friendships whose benedictions and inspirations will be secrets of strength, cheer, and help to him in all his toil in behalf of others.

Jesus gave all his rich and blessed life to the service of love. Power was ever going out from him to heal, to comfort, to cheer, to save. He was continually emptying out from the full fountain of his own heart cupfuls of rich life to reinvigorate other lives in their faintness and exhaustion. One of the sources of his own renewing and replenishing was in the friendships he had among men and women. What friends are to us in our human hunger and need, the friends of Jesus were to him. He craved companionship, and was sorely hurt when men shut their doors in his face.

There are few more pathetic words in the New Testament than that short sentence which tells of his rejection, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Another pathetic word is that which describes the neglect of those who ought to have been ever eager to show him hospitality: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Even the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven had warmer welcome in this world than he in whose heart was the most