THE GLORY OF THE REPROACH.
Are you reproached, reader? Are you sad because of it? Do you feel that it is unjust and cruel? It may be so. But for what are you reproached? Who brings the reproach? Sometimes it is more honorable to be reproached than to be commended. It depends upon who reproaches or commends us, and for what we are reproached or commended. When the girl possessed by a demon followed Paul and Silas saying, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation,” the words were true, but the commendation was no help to the messengers of God. The devil’s object was either to get prestige for his servant by associating her with the apostles, or to ruin the work of the apostles by identifying them with his servant. The commendation brought no joy to the apostle, and he rebuked the evil spirit. He who bears God’s message may bear it to the evil-minded, but he must not identify himself with their work. Sometimes the thing for which we are reproached is most worthy of commendation. So it was with a reproach laid upon Jesus. When Levi the publican made Jesus a feast and our Lord attended, the “higher class” Jews, the scribes and Pharisees, said, “Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?” At another time when He invited Himself to the house of a despised publican, the Pharisees said that “He was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner.” On another occasion they sought to heap reproach upon Him by saying, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” Yet what a glory was in the reproach. If they had known God, they would have seen that the very thing for which they sought to condemn Jesus was to His highest praise. He was indeed “the Friend of sinners.” He came “to seek and to save that which was lost,” to call “sinners to repentance.” He did not come to man because man was His equal, because man was rich or righteous, but because man needed Him, because man was without hope and without God in the world,—poor, lost, undone. Why should not Jesus meet with those He came to save? How could He be otherwise than the Friend of all the needy and oppressed? He loved the Pharisee. He came to him, but the Pharisee clothed his own needy, dying heart with the impervious garment of self-righteousness, and Jesus could not help him. He rejected Jesus, and hated the sinners not in his class; and therefore he hated the Man who acknowledged Himself the Sinner’s Friend. The Pharisee’s love of self in every age and land has been the cause of his hatred of worldly, unfortunate sinners, or those beneath him in the social scale; and he who has in Christ’s name sought to lift them up, has been forced to bear the reproach, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” What a glory there is in the reproach! “Sing it o’er and o’er again,
Christ receiveth sinful men.” Therefore He receives me, and you, and every soul who will come to Him. Then be of good courage, sinner; Jesus Christ is your Friend. The reproach is true, but no longer a reproach to the trembling, burdened sinner who has found Him. No higher praise could be said. Christian friend, bear Him company. Wherever a blind, weak, weary soul needs help, there help him. Go down by his side. Tell him of the Friend of sinners. And then, “if ye are reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you.”