Matthew 5:11

Matthew 5:11

The words of the text contain a distinct and cogent motive for religious life and service. We are to be religious men and to do religious things "for Christ's sake."

I. The urgency of such a motive involves a very distinct doctrine concerning Christ. It has important and suggestive bearings upon His distinctive character. (1) Is it not, to say the least, a remarkable, nay a unique principle, of religious obligation? The claim is so daring, it is preferred so frequently and in such a lofty style of conscious right, He who prefers it is so intelligent and calm, so holy and so humble, that there is but one satisfactory explanation of it. There did pertain to our Lord a distinctive and Divine character, which made it congruous for the lowliest and calmest of men to claim the highest of prerogatives. (2) But clearly the urgency does not rest upon Divine prerogative merely or mainly. A deep human element enters into this claim of our Lord. He appeals to the great mystery and love of His incarnation. He solicits our religious affections by all the claims that a human embodiment of the Divine gives Him upon our human affections; thus gathering into His urgency every conceivable element of pathos and power Divine and human of heaven and of earth.

II. Look at the pertinence and power of this new and peculiar motive of the religious life, and at some of the practical applications of it. It applies a new motive power which makes the truth that it teaches resistless: the sentiment of personal love for Him whose teaching we receive, the strong masterful passion that is the constraint of all true service, a power of constraint that the most selfish and sinful and indolent cannot resist. Christ urges this motive as a reason (1) for the consecration of the religious life; (2) for sacrifice and endurance; (3) for martyrdom itself.

Note (1) what a power of assurance there is in the personal and tender relationships thus established between the Master and His disciples. (2) What power of constraint such a motive exerts upon our practical religious life. (3) What a power of judgment there is in such an urgency.

H. Allon, The Vision of God,p. 339.

I. What is the nature of Jesus's claims and demands? The words before us are few, but the obligations involved are exceeding broad. Those who are expected to respond to these words are supposed to believe on Jesus, to trust Him, and to love Him, and the claim made is for the recognition of His own worthiness, and of our personal obligations. (1) Jesus claims work for His sake. Real work is no light matter. It is, in fact, the conquest of certain difficulties. There can be no work where there are no difficulties to be overcome. Jesus Christ claims work, the kind of work by which bread is earned and money gained, wrought for His sake. (2) We owe to Jesus Christ the patient endurance of suffering for His sake. Thorough and continuous work must, sooner or later, more or less, involve suffering. The prospect of suffering should not, however, prevent our undertaking work, nor should the endurance of it lead to our abandonment of work. The sorrows that are often incident to a sober, righteous, and godly life should not drive us from the path of righteousness. (3) Jesus claims cheerful and generous gifts for His sake. The gifts which He asks are according to that which we have, according to our ability and opportunity, time, power, influence, property, and ourselves as life-sacrifices. (4) Jesus Christ claims attachment to life, with a readiness to die for His sake. (5) Jesus claims the devotion of ourselves to Him. This is not necessarily included in the claims already named. The servant gives work, and in some cases suffering; the benefactor bestows gifts and services, but the wife has yielded herself to her husband. The true Christian is a servant of Christ, but something more; a disciple, but something more; the saved by Christ, but something more: Christ betroths His redeemed to Him for ever, and He claims the consecration of themselves.

II. Look at some of the means by which we may stir up ourselves to recognize the claims of Christ more cordially and perfectly. (1) Distinct ideas of the person of Christ are essential to our being moved by considerations which originate in Himself. (2) As another means of aiding our devotion to Jesus Christ we may name frequent meditation on the service He has rendered.

S. Martin, Rain upon the Mown Grass,p. 295.

We have here

I. A Person. Religions can accomplish more than philosophers, because philosophers concern themselves with ideas and abstractions, and religions concern themselves with persons. It is true that religions may have their philosophies, too, as there is no religion without its creed; but it is equally true that a person is a greater power than a creed, and men will die for a person when they will not die for a creed or an abstract principle. Retain the essentialand reject the personal,you cannot. The essential is the personal, and the personal is the essential. Christianity, so far as it embodies spiritual force and motive, so far as it meets man in his sin, weakness, sorrow, and despair, is Christnothing less than Christ. Christianity has a personal voice the voice of one person to another, the voice of Christ to man, and its voice is, "For My sake."

II. A unique Person. Upon what are the claims of the Saviour founded? The answer is twofold: (1) on what Christ is in His essential nature; (2) on what He has done for the benefit of man. The first ground is that of dignity, and the second is that of redemption, love, and service.

III. A unique Person who claims to be Lord of our life. And what, then, are we to do for the sake of Christ? (1) We are to labour for His sake; (2) we are to suffer for His sake. This is the one principle which will give unity to a life which, in the case of all of us, tends evermore to distraction, incoherency, fragmentariness, and therefore weakness. It will prove not merely an impulse, but one of undying might. Other motives may be powerful, but they are fitful too, and are like a summer brook, which today rushes and brawls, but tomorrow discovers nothing but a dry pebbly bed. "For Christ's sake" its analogies are the great central unchanging forces of Nature; like the sun, which has no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And while it is the highest motive, it is also the clearest light for our guidance as to what is right and what is wrong.

E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ's Garment,p. 87.

References: Matthew 5:11. W. J. Knox-Little, Characteristics of the Christian Life,p. 162; W. M. Taylor, Three Hundred Outlines of Sermons on the New Testament,p. 5.Matthew 5:11; Matthew 5:16. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 536.