John 21:19

John 21:19

Follow Christ

I. You shall never be far from the Father. That pleasant countenance with which the Father beheld the well-beloved Son extends to all His followers to all who, in faith and affection, gather round Him or go after Him, like this little band beside the Lake of Galilee.

II. You will learn to do things as Christ did them. You will learn to feed the sheep or the lambs as He fed them; warning, reproving, exhorting, with a kindred longsuffering. You will learn to be calm amidst astounding insult; and what is harder still, you will learn to be kind to most unattractive misery. You will learn to meet temptation with "Thus it is written," and for trial you will learn to prepare by praying more earnestly.

III. Christ will conduct you where no other can take you. I do not mean merely in that better life to which He is the only entrance; but in this present world there are heights of attainment and regions of joy which are only reached in His company. As you follow on you will come to know Him better and to trust Him more, and you will at last find yourself looking down on earthly cares and solicitudes, on tumults of the people and national commotions, from heights such as the mere sage or statesman never scaled.

IV. Christ will take you up where all others leave you. One by one the companions of the pilgrimage drop off and disappear. And at last that mysterious summit will be reached where the rest can come no further; and as one by one the senses close, as in the thick fog dear faces fade away, and as far down the strand fond and familiar voices cease to overtake you, a countenance that you have never seen before, and which you yet know full well, will say, as plainly as the Supreme of Loveliness can say, "It is I, be not afraid"; and so with gladness and rejoicing shall you be brought into the palace of the King, and there you shall abide.

J. Hamilton, Works,vol. i., p. 339.

The best token of attachment and loyalty to Christ is to follow Him fully. Try to give such a representation of His religion as will be true to Himself and appropriate to your own position, and then it cannot fail to be attractive and impressive to others.

I. Among those features of the great Example which all may study and seek to assimilate, let me mention first, His sublime veracity. He was Himself the Truth, the Amen, the great Reality, whom it was impossible to know too thoroughly, or trust too entirely; and whilst from His own mouth guile never proceeded, there never was a presence in which affectations and hypocrisies felt so uncomfortable gasping and out of their element, and like to give up the ghost. In order to have the mind of Christ we must share His truthfulness.

II. Again, Jesus Christ hath left us a pattern in His kindness. Himself the Son of God incarnate, and crowning three years of the busiest beneficence by a deed of mercy, whose influence eternity cannot exhaust, and whose outgoings are felt in all worlds, one lesson of His life is the amount of consolation and encouragement and holy impulse which can be diffused from a single presence in its progress through one short day, when there are no conflicting elements when the fountain never intermits, when the light is never veiled.

III. Follow Christ in that wonderful faculty which turned every opportunity to the best account. If there be a frightful contagion in evil, there is in faith and earnestness a Divine ascendancy. One serious thinker can do much to arrest frivolity, even as one cheerful countenance can go far to brighten a gloomy company even as one high-toned spirit can go far to raise to his own level a large assembly.

IV. Follow Christ in His humility. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who humbled Himself and made Himself of no reputation." Whether it be in Christ or the Christian, there is in true humility nothing abject, nothing self-disparaging; on the other hand, there is affability, there is self-forgetfulness, there is contentment, there is submission to God's will, there is cheerful, unquestioning obedience. And this meek and quiet spirit is in the sight of God of great price.

J. Hamilton, Works,vol. i., p. 346.

References: John 21:19. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 528. John 21:19. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 349.