John H. Paterson
WHEN it comes to dealing with spiritual things, there is a great difference believing and understanding. I mean this not only in the sense that, when things become difficult for the Christian, he or she will say, "I don't understand, but I believe the Lord means it for good, and I trust Him." Many of us know that experience. Rather I mean that it is quite possible to believe in the Lord Jesus, and yet totally mis-understand His ways.
In recently re-reading the Gospels I have been struck by the truth of that statement where Jesus' disciples were concerned. They provide the best example of how one could have a growing faith, culminating in the acknowledgement that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and the Messiah, and even have a daily contact with Him, but without any real grasp of the meaning of the events and the words which they witnessed.
This was apparent, in the first place, in the questions which they asked Jesus, sometimes cutting right across His train of thought and teaching to do so. For example, in those last, precious few moments which the Lord had with them, and which John recorded in chapters 13-17 of his account, their persistent questioning betrayed an ignorance of what it all meant that must have been intensely saddening to the Lord. A lesser man would have shouted at them, or thrown up his hands in disgust, and asked "Haven't you understood anything that I've taught you?" The Lord Jesus, sad though He may have been, went patiently on, answering their silly questions and then returning to what He wanted to say.
These questions, while they give us some measure of the disciples' ignorance, were at least a frank admission of what they did not understand. What I find particularly interesting, however, is the frequency with which they thought they did understand -- but were wrong! Time and again they acted, or made suggestions for action, evidently confident that they would meet with Jesus' approval, only to be rebuked, or disregarded, or put right.
They must sometimes have felt utterly baffled like children who think their parents will be pleased when they pick all the flowers in father's garden, and are astonished that their offering is not appreciated! What the disciples were reduced to was trying to guess: would He be pleased with them or not? [73/74]
Let me refer to a few examples of this guessing game that went wrong. There was the time (Luke 9:52-56) when Jesus and His disciples were not welcomed in a Samaritan village, and James and John wanted to call down fire to avenge the insult to their Master. "But he turned and rebuked them, and said, ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." In the next chapter (Luke 10:17-20), we have the story of how the seventy whom He had sent out to preach "returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name." Surely, they could be happy about that? No! "In this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
Then there was the occasion (Matthew 19:13-15; cf. Mark 10:13-14) when little children were brought to Him, and the disciples were doing a splendid job of shielding the Lord from unnecessary pressure. They were doing what good secretaries nowadays are supposed to do -- making sure that the manager's time is not wasted by visitors who are not bona fide customers! But they were wrong again: He wanted the children to come.
Then there was the sternest of all His rebukes recorded in three Gospels, when Peter took it upon himself to tell Jesus His own business: "Peter took him, and began to rebuke him saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee" (Matthew 16:22, etc.) Peter obviously felt that, if Jesus did not know what was good for Him then he, Peter, would see to it that He learned!
Poor Peter! Not only did his boldness earn him a crushing rebuke on that occasion, but his was the ill-judged proposal on the Mount of Transfiguration, that they should build three tabernacles there to commemorate the event ("He wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid" reports Mark 9:6). And Peter was the subject, also, of the ultimate in brain-twisters, of which we read in John 13:6-10. He told the Lord Jesus that he did not want his feet washed. That proved to be the wrong response, so what did he do? He tried the opposite reply! Surely, one or other of them must be right?
No! Neither response was right, which simply goes to show that in the realm of spiritual things, guessing is no good. But I can sympathise with Peter, as I am sure many of us can. Confronted by a choice in the Lord's service between two courses, we either try one of them -- gingerly -- and then go back and try the other, or we simply guess. And so often it later seems, as it must have done to Peter, that both courses are wrong. The Lord was really leading us by neither of those ways.
Of course, a time came when all these experiences must have seemed merely a bad memory; when the disciples now become apostles, showed such a grasp and understanding of spiritual things that men and women were amazed by their wisdom One of the striking features, surely, of the Acts of the Apostles was the confidence, the "boldness", of these same men. They spoke and acted with complete assurance in the foundling years of the Church. No more guessing!
What had happened in the meantime was, of course, that the Holy Spirit had come, and was giving them understanding of the ways of the spiritual life. He taught them gradually, and sometimes He startled them, as He did Peter at Joppa (Acts 10), but what quick learners most of them proved to be! Now they were growing, as Peter was later to put it, both in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord (2 Peter 3:18).
Did they, I wonder, sometimes look back and marvel at their own earlier ignorance? Did they ask themselves, "Where did we go wrong?" Perhaps they did and, if so, perhaps this is how, with the benefit of hindsight, they now saw those incidents to which I earlier referred:
Firstly, they now saw that they had been too concerned with maintaining the dignity of their Master, at times and in places when He Himself was not so concerned. They took offence on His behalf when a village cold-shouldered Him; or, on a previous occasion, when they saw someone who did not belong to their number casting out devils in Jesus' name -- infringing His copyright. [74/75] They wanted Him to save Himself for really important people, and not to waste time and energy on children who, they probably argued, were too young anyway to understand Him.
They now realised that He had not been concerned in any of these ways for Himself: that when He told them that He had come among them as one who served (Luke 22:27), He was explaining that it was not His personal status that concerned Him, but obedience to His Father's will. In other words, their standard of values, their priorities, had been wrong. The things they felt should be important to Him were not important at all. They had been baffled by that reversal of values of which Paul was one day to write so movingly -- by that spiritual world where rich is poor, and great is small, and weakness is strength.
Secondly, they now understood that many of their mistakes had arisen from assuming that Jesus had come to establish, then and there, a permanent kingdom or rule. Their concern was that it should be founded (with themselves, incidentally, playing key roles!) without delay, to last for ever. So, when the Lord Jesus began to talk about being killed, or going away, they were totally lost. Why should anybody with His powers throw away all that He might achieve -- simply pass across the scene and disappear again? For all the vicissitudes of its history, Israel had a measure of permanence: it could look back to Moses, David and the rest. The Roman Empire -- alas for the Jews! -- must have seemed to them the absolute embodiment of permanence. Yet here came a Man, greater than Abraham or David, and all He could talk about was going away again.
The last thing they asked Him -- the last of many questions before the coming of the Spirit brought them answers -- was, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). The heavenly time-scale -- the idea of ultimate rather than immediate fulfilment -- was still a mystery to them, just as it had been that day on the mountain when Peter wanted to give permanence to a fleeting experience by building his tabernacles. The Lord Jesus then clarified once for all the question of time. He answered in one sentence all the questions that Christians would ever ask which would begin with the word "When?" He said, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts 1:7). In the spiritual world, the time-scale is different, and it is known to God alone. For now, as for the early Church, everything is temporary, movable, transitory. We crave permanence in the work of God, but we can never have it -- not until God Himself says "Now!" and brings about in that moment the consummation of all things, and the presentation of the Lord Jesus in His true status, as King of Kings.
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