GodTreks

The Breadth of Jesus

Can you imagine a more broad-hearted man than Jesus? As Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson shows, His heart and His mission took in the world.

the-whole-world-in-his-hands_994x650 — Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations”

“There is a sense in which Jesus of Nazareth was lacking in breadth. . . . He walked a path which was narrow and refused to give his approbation to men and measures which won the esteem and praise of thousands of his countrymen. But there was a purpose in this narrowness, and a reason for it. His narrowness was a product of his breadth. He walked the narrow path because he carried in his heart the dream of an empire which was vast.”

“By standing in one place and striking repeatedly the strings of the same set of hearts, he started vibrations which have filled the world with music. By carefully tending the fire which he had kindled, he made it hot enough to change the spiritual climate of many lands. By saturating a little circle of chosen followers with his spirit, he made them capable of carrying on their shoulders a lost race to God. By persistently treading a single path, he made that path so luminous that every eye can see it.”

“By limiting himself, and by making himself of no reputation, he founded a kingdom as broad as humanity and of which there shall be no end. If you study the New Testament, you will see that this man from the beginning carried the world in his eye and the race on his heart. What strange paradoxes one finds in the realm of the soul. If you would be broad, then be narrow. Jesus was narrow because his breadth was immeasurable.”

Boundless Ideas and Thoughts

“The amplitude of Jesus’ ideas is evidenced by their perennial freshness and applicability to all kinds of men and conditions. How wonderful it is that Jesus’ ideas are broad enough to cover all the nations and all the centuries. Many ideas shrivel and dry up with the lapse of time. . . . But the ideas of Jesus have such breadth that they can cover the world and the ages.”

“So broad are these ideas and so universally applicable to the demands of the mind and the needs of the heart . . . that if one could see the whole of history unrolled before him, he would discover countless millions of humanity gathered round a single teacher. . . . Broad, indeed, must be the ideas which can cover all peoples and kindreds and tongues throughout all the eras of their existence.”

Boundless Love and Forgiveness

“His heart was as far-reaching as his brain. . . . His heart went out to all sorts and conditions of men in a way which was reckless and shocking. . . . The land was crossed in all directions by dividing walls and estranging barriers, constructed by narrow-hearted teachers, and after Jesus had walked through the land, lo, the barriers and walls were a mass of ruins. His great, loving heart burst asunder all the regulations and restrictions. There was room in his soul for everybody.”

“His love was unbounded. It was an ocean without a shore. He was not willing that his followers should set boundaries to their love, because all such barriers were contrary to his habit and foreign to his spirit. When Peter asked him how often a man ought to forgive another who has trespassed against him, and suggested seven as a number almost grotesquely large, being more than twice the number suggested by the most liberal of the rabbis, Jesus said: ‘Do not set any limits at all. There are no boundaries in the realm of love. You cannot calculate in the empire of the heart.'”

“Whenever he spoke about love he said something which amazed his hearers. One day he said, ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.’ When men stood aghast showing by their faces that only God could be expected to have a love so broad, Jesus went on to add that God is the model of all men who want to live right, that one’s constant aim shall be to bring his life up to God’s style, and to imitate Him in the unbounded reach of His goodwill.”

“Nor was this simply exhortation. It was not only preaching but practice. Jesus taught forgiveness because he knew the blessedness of a forgiving heart. He himself was forgiving always. He had no grudges, no retaliations, no revenges. Some men forgive because they have not eyes to see the heinousness of wrong, and not heart to feel its devilishness. Jesus saw the loathsomeness of vice, knew the odiousness of vulgarity, felt the hideousness of sin. His heart was so sensitive that it blazed against evil, but while he loathed the sin he could love the sinner, and so when his executioners nailed his hands and feet to the cross, the only word which escaped his lips was, ‘Forgive,’ ‘Forgive,’ ‘Forgive.’ That great word contained the blood of his heart.”

Boundless Hope and Promise

“It is this abounding love which accounts for the immeasurable reaches of his hope. He was the most hopeful of all teachers. No matter how dull the pupil, he still believed that he would learn. . . . To the religious teachers of Palestine certain classes were beyond redemption. They were lost and were labeled ‘Lost.’ It was known throughout the city that to certain sinners no exhortation could be directed, no promise could be offered.”

“But Jesus, because he loved, also hoped. His hope was as immeasurable as his love. He did not reject the refuse of society. . . . The dregs of society are not to be carelessly tossed away. There is a chance for the man who is supposed to have no chance, there is hope for the man whom men have doomed to perdition. You cannot tell what is in a man by what he says or even by what he does. There is more in him than comes out in his words and his deeds. And so Jesus proceeded to show that the so-called lost men were not lost. . . . He did not hesitate to direct his most earnest exhortations to men who were supposed to have no heart, and even when the world’s cruelty was cutting into him like steel, he said, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.’ So boundless was his confidence in man, that he set no limits to his expectations.”

Boundless Redemption and Reach

“He could not accomplish the redemption of the world in the few years of his earthly career, but he would form a society, baptize it with his spirit, and through this society God from His throne in heaven would redeem the race. . . . Mark the method of Jesus. He chooses men of all grades and from all classes. . . . There is a mercurial man, Peter; and there is a lymphatic man, Thomas. There is a fire-eater, Simon the Zealot, a member of the fieriest political party in Palestine; and there is the prosaic and slow-going Philip. There is a man of good family and spotless reputation, John; and by his side is a man with a tarnished name, Matthew, the publican.”

“In doing a wide work you must have a broad instrument, and the Christian church as it left the hands of Jesus embraced in its membership the types of men which would be able to open all the doors. Never does the breadth of the mind of Jesus come out with more startling clearness than in the manner of his choices in the formation of the society which was to bear his name and carry on his work.”

“It was a great work, the vastest which has ever entered into the heart of man. He had constantly the ends of the earth in his eye. . . . At an early stage he told his apostles not to go outside the limits of their own people in their work, but this limitation of field was only educational, and with their increasing strength was to pass forever away. . . . Before he left the earth he poured into their ear the great message which had been in his heart from the beginning, and it ran thus, ‘Go preach the Gospel to the whole creation.’ All national boundaries are now obliterated. . . . ‘Go disciple the nations.'”

Boundless God

“In Jesus of Nazareth we get a revelation of the breadth of the heart of the Eternal. How did it happen that Jesus was so spacious in his ideas and so broad in his sympathies and so far-reaching in his plannings? It was because God was in him revealing Himself to men. That is what God always is — broad in His sympathies, wonderful in His expectations, boundless in His love. He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son — and this Son came to earth and tasted death for every man — and the Spirit whom He sent and also the bride who is His church, they keep on crying . . . ‘Come! Let him that is athirst come. Whosoever will, let him take the water of life.'”

“This, then, is a message for us all. No matter who you are, you have a sure place in the mind and heart of God. No matter how you have sinned, you are inside the boundaries of His sympathy. No matter what you have said or felt or thought or done, you are still the object of His love. No matter how often you have disappointed Him, He is still expecting of you better things. Whoever you are, and wherever you are, and whatever you are, you are included in His plans. When He laid down the lines of His vast scheme for humanity, you were not overlooked or forgotten. When He framed His church, a place inside of it was assigned to you. That place will remain vacant until you fill it. You cannot escape Him. His arms are all-embracing. The width of His heart is infinite.”

Excerpts from The Character of Jesus by Charles Edward Jefferson (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1908)

The Narrowness of Jesus

Jesus was not a man to pursue just any path. As Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson explains, He said and He did only what the Father wanted.

narrow-path_994x650 — Jesus said, “Narrow is the path, and few will find it”

“Let us think about the narrowness of Jesus. I know it is a disparaging word in our modern speech. . . . We say, ‘Oh, yes, he is narrow,’ meaning that one side of his nature has been blighted, blasted. His mind is not full-orbed. His heart is not full-grown. He is a dwarfed and stunted man, cramped by a defective education or squeezed out of shape by a narrowing environment.”

“In no such sense as this was the Man of Galilee narrow. But what word will better express one of the conspicuous traits of Jesus than just this word ‘narrowness’? He set definite boundaries for himself, he shut himself up within contracted limits; in this sense he was narrow.”

Narrow Circle of Work

“How narrow was the circle inside of which he did all his work! He lived his life in Palestine, a little country no larger than Connecticut. It was not a prominent country. . . . Yet the Prince of Glory confined himself to this little corner of the earth. He might have traveled across the world as many an illustrious teacher had done before his day. . . . But he rather chose to stay at home, to give his time to the cities of Galilee, to pour out his strength on the villages of Judea.”

“If his field was contracted, so also was the character of his work. He only tried to do one thing. There were a thousand good things which a good man in Palestine might have done, but he left nine hundred and ninety-nine of them unattempted and confined himself to the one thing which his Heavenly Father had given him to do. . . . Jesus set limits to his activity, and beyond those limits no man ever persuaded him to go.”

“He could not dissipate his energy, he could not waste a single hour. It was always, ‘I must,’ ‘I must,’ ‘I must.’ There were broad roads on his right and left, and along these roads thousands of his countrymen were traveling, but he could not go with them. It was for him to walk along the narrow path, for this alone led to the glorious life which was to cheer and save the world. When he talks to men about the two ways, one of them narrow and the other one broad, he is speaking out of his own experience; and when he urges men to choose the narrow one . . . he is only saying, ‘Follow me!'”

Narrow Conception of Truth

“In the realm of the intellect he chose the way which was narrow. There is a feeling now prevalent that it is unwise for a man to confine himself to any one religion or any one particular statement of belief. It is better — so men say — not to pin your faith to the sleeve of any one idea or truth, but hold yourself in readiness to accept every idea which may come your way. Keep the windows and doors of your mind wide open and . . . do not settle down upon any definite conceptions of God or the soul, of duty or destiny, because in so doing you narrow yourself and may ultimately degenerate into a bigot.”

“With this sort of philosophy Jesus of Nazareth had no sympathy. To him certain conceptions of God were true and others were false, certain estimates of man were correct and others erroneous, certain standards of duty were uplifting and others degrading. . . . He never shrank from holding clean-cut opinions and from expressing them with vigor and emphasis. He was not afraid of being called intolerant. . . . In many a modern circle he would have been counted a narrow man, for he made no compromises, and he would not bend, and he maintained with unflinching persistency the things which he knew to be true and good.”

“He would not allow his followers to roam at their will through the realms of thought, accepting everything or nothing at their own whim or fancy; but he taught them . . . definite and positive conceptions and principles to which they must cling or else lose their souls. He came to bear witness to the truth, and for that reason he was not broad enough to give a place in his heart to falsehood.”

“There were some things he could praise and there were other things he was obliged to condemn. . . . He made distinctions, and he taught other men to make them too. There is a weak and sentimental way of lumping men together and trying to make it appear that men are all substantially alike and that one is not so much better after all than another. Jesus’ estimate was the product of severe discrimination. . . . Between some men and other men there was a great gulf fixed. He did not minimize the heinousness of sin by treating all men alike. It makes no difference to some of us whether men are honest or not, or whether they live filthy lives or not; but it made a difference to Jesus. . . . He was so narrow in his judgments he refused to let bad men feel that they were good.”

The Narrow Path Leads to Joy

“It is in his habit of drawing distinctions and setting boundaries that we are to find the cause of many things which might otherwise remain inexplicable. One of the notes of Jesus’ life was joy. He was a man acquainted with grief, and yet his joy was without measure. It was one of the things he had so much of that he could bequeath it to his disciples. Could he have been happy had he not walked within narrow limits?”

“What period in any man’s life is so wretched as that . . . in which he does not know what he is going to do? The big wide world lies stretched out before him with uncounted possibilities. . . . There are a hundred doors which he can open, but he does not know which one to try. There are a hundred fields in which he can expend his strength, but he cannot decide which field to enter.”

“Jesus’ work was definite. At twelve he knew the business to which he must give himself. There never was a day on which he allowed himself to be inveigled into doing something else. Right here is where we are prone to blunder. . . . We start out to do a certain work and immediately people begin to say, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ and before we are aware of our folly we have dissipated our energy in trying to do things which God never intended us to attempt. . . . If you want to see a man who sings at his work, look for him inside of a narrow circle.”

The Narrow Path Gives Us Strength

“Not only was Jesus joyful, but he was mighty. He made an impression because he stayed in one place, and hit the same nail on the head until it was driven completely in. Had he wandered over the earth speaking his parables, they would have fallen into more ears but would have molded fewer hearts. By staying in Palestine and keeping his heart close to a few chosen hearts, he became increasingly influential so that the authorities were frightened, fearing that he might overturn the nation. The men who were the nearest to him became so passionately in love with him that they were ready to die for him. He made himself thus mighty by limiting himself.”

“It is with men as it is with rivers: a river becomes a river only by the assistance of its banks. The difference between a river and a swamp is that a river has banks and a swamp has none. Take away its banks and the river becomes a swamp. Many a river becomes mightier and more majestic because the mountains press in upon it. Left to sprawl out over the plains it becomes shallow, muddy, feeble.”

“By limiting himself our Lord came off conqueror. He succeeded. What is it to succeed? It is to do the thing for which we were created. . . . Jesus attempted to do one thing only, and that was to perform the work which his Father had given him to do. He could look into his Father’s face and say, ‘I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do’. . . . Jesus’ life on earth covered only thirty-three brief years, and yet he did the greatest piece of work ever accomplished on the earth. It is wonderful what a stupendous task can be accomplished in a little time if a man is only willing to keep at it.”

The Narrow Path Is the Fine Art of Living

“We have been touching upon a great principle — which lies at the basis of all the fine arts. . . . They all subject the soul to a discipline which is severe, and insist upon a bondage which cannot be broken. In music there is no leeway left to the singer. He cannot sing a little sharp or a little flat and still produce music. In music everything is precise, exact, severe, and all the tones must take accurately the precise points assigned them by the master, else the music does not have in it that indescribable power which lifts and entrances the soul.”

“The most difficult of all the fine arts is the high art of living as God would have a mortal to live. Singing is easy . . . compared with this exacting, soul-taxing art of living. One cannot think anything he pleases, or feel as he wants to, or act as he is inclined to. He must walk the narrow path. Jesus walked it, and he calls men everywhere to become his followers. . . . He says, ‘Come unto me!’ We ask, ‘Cannot we go to others?’ His reply is, ‘There are no others. Come to me!’ And when we come he says, ‘Follow me!’ We hesitate and ask, ‘Is this really necessary, can we not choose an easier way?’ His reply is: ‘Follow me. If you do not take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple, and no one comes to the Father except through me.'”

Excerpts from The Character of Jesus by Charles Edward Jefferson (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1908)

The Originality of Jesus

There’s never been anyone like Jesus of Nazareth. He was a new man. Indeed, He was the New Man. Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson explains.

sunrise_994x650 — Jesus said, “Behold, I am making all things new!”

“No one in Palestine ever raised the question whether Jesus was original or not. Everyone took it for granted that he was. . . . Wherever he went men were stirred to fever heat by what they saw and by what they heard, and cried out in astonishment, ‘We have never seen it after this fashion.’ His teaching itself struck Jesus’ contemporaries as novel. ‘A new teaching!’ was the exclamation which followed many of his discourses. . . . There was something in the manner as well as in the matter which arrested attention and threw a fresh light upon God and men.”

“The common people observed at once that his manner was not the manner of the professional teacher of the land. He taught them as one who possessed authority. The man himself, men soon saw, was different from other men then living. Sometimes they imagined he might indeed be one of the giants of the early centuries returned to the earth again, and at other times they could offer no explanation for his genius, simply exclaiming, ‘What manner of man is this!'”

Eternal Ideas

“The world has come at last to question the originality of Jesus. . . . Schools of Bible students have vigorously denied his originality, and with industry and ingenuity have demonstrated that everything he said had been said before, and that to the world of thought he has not contributed a single fresh idea. His language, even, so these men assert, is taken from the poets and the prophets, while every one of his conceptions can be found in the literature of earlier days.”

“Was Jesus then original? It depends on what you mean by originality. If to be original one must coin words never heard before and speak in phrases which no other tongue has ever used, then Jesus was not original. He coined no new words and many of his phrases have the flavor of the olden times. Nor was he the proclaimer of ideas that had never entered man’s mind before. All his main ideas of God and the soul, of duty, and of destiny had been if not expanded in the writings of the Hebrew poets and prophets at least suggested there, and the principles of conduct which Jesus taught were for the most part the very principles which had been proclaimed by men of God before.”

“This may be surprising to those who have not given the subject careful thought, but on reflection you will see that this is just what might reasonably have been expected. If there is a God who loves our race, it is incredible that no correct idea of Deity or the soul, of duty or of destiny, should have entered the human mind before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. . . . The fact is that God has never left himself without a witness. The Son of God has always been in the world. He is the light that lights every man who is born. From the beginning he has been giving men right ideas and right feelings and helping them to reach right conclusions and decisions. We ought, therefore, to expect nothing in Jesus’ teaching absolutely unthought of before his incarnation.”

“We ought to expect to find just what we do find, . . . that all his cardinal ideas had existed in germ in the writings of holy men who at diverse times had been moved by the Holy Spirit. Jesus, instead of suggesting ideas never before heard of, . . . picked up the ancient writings, declaring that they contain the word of the Almighty and that he had come to interpret their meaning and to fulfill what the poets and prophets had dreamed. He did not come to destroy the old ideas or the old truths. He came to fill full. There had been foreshadowings and anticipations and approximations, and now in the fullness of time God is going to speak His full-toned message through His Son.”

New Emphasis

“It is at this point that we are to look for the originality of Jesus. We shall not find it in his phrases or even in his conceptions, but rather in his emphasis and his manner of reading life and the world. He began by reading an old chapter in Isaiah, but gave it an emphasis it had never known before, the result being that it burst upon the congregation in Nazareth with the force of a fresh revelation. Men were reading the Scriptures, but they did not know which words to emphasize. Jesus understood. The result was that the Scripture became new.”

“The leaders of the Jewish church had forgotten the point of emphasis. Jesus knew. By emphasizing mercy instead of sacrifice he made religion new. Men had forgotten how to read the world. There were institutions and there were human beings, and the wisest men of Israel had forgotten which is most important. . . . Jesus threw the emphasis on the individual soul.”

New Accent

“There was also an accent in his teaching which men had never heard before, not even in the voice of Moses or Elijah. It was the accent of assurance, certainty, authority. It is not the words which a man speaks, but the way in which he speaks them which determines their effect upon the life of the world.”

“No such an accent as that of Jesus had ever before been heard in Palestine. There was never a quaver in his voice. In no discourse was there anything problematic. He never hesitated, speculated, made use of intonations which indicate a wavering mind. He was always positive, certain, infallible. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you.’ Such was the manner of his speech, and it was a manner which he caught from none other.”

New Man

“The new accent and the new emphasis were the product of a new personality. No personality like that of Jesus had ever been encased in flesh before. He was a new man. Even Roman soldiers could feel that he was different from every other man they had ever known. He had all the faculties and passions of our common humanity, and yet no one had ever had them in the combination and in the strength in which they were found in him. . . . Jesus was man completed. What a fullness of life there was in him!”

“He was different from all other men that had ever been, and he said so. He lifted himself into a unique position and claimed for himself privileges and rights which he denied to all others. He claimed to be the light of the world, the bread of life, the water of life, the only good shepherd, the way, the truth, the life, the only mediator between God and man, the only one who knows deity completely and who can save the world from its sins. Here we strike something which is unique and in every sense original. . . . There is nothing even resembling this in the greatest of the Hebrew poets or prophets. It is when Jesus speaks of himself that we catch a note original in the music of our world.”

To Make All Things New

“‘Behold I make all things new.’ He could say this because he was new himself. Not having our infirmities and fears, our frailties and our sins, his eyes see things as ours do not see them, and his heart has feelings which we but dimly understand. He says, ‘Come unto me and I will make all things new!’ He does it by giving us a changed attitude to life, by teaching us how to shift the emphasis from words unimportant to words important, and by showing us the insignificance of show and form compared with the qualities of a loving heart, by taking away our fears which stand round us like grim Kings of Night, and substituting in their places the angels of Faith and Hope, by striking off our fetters and bringing us into the light and liberty which belong to the sons of God. It is an original work, and only he can do it.”

“It may be that for some of you life has grown irksome and the world drab. . . . The days are threadbare and everything has lost its bloom. What will you do? This is the wise thing to do: Go to Jesus and give yourself afresh to him. Sink your life deeper into his life and catch his ways of seeing things and serving God. Take his standpoint, assume his attitude, catch his emphasis, drink in the accent of his voice, and . . . he will make all things new. He unifies human life and simplifies it and elevates it and transforms it and transfigures it, all because he is the Master and the Savior of the heart. ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.'”

Excerpts from The Character of Jesus by Charles Edward Jefferson (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1908)

The Optimism of Jesus

Jesus said in this world, you will have trouble. Yet no one has ever been more hopeful about your life. Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson shows why.

the-good-news_994x650 — Jesus said, “Repent and believe the good news!”

“If you insist on defining an optimist as a man who plays only with sunbeams, who hears nothing but harmonies, who is slightly concerned with the world’s agonies and tragedies because of his fancy that no matter what . . . everything is certain to come out all right, then Jesus was not an optimist. There is a sentimental optimism which is irrational and immoral. . . . It shuts its eyes to all hideous facts and stops its ears to all horrible sounds, and insists that in spite of appearances all is well with the world. This sort of optimism faces the future with a confidence born not of courage but of moral indolence.”

“Jesus of Nazareth was not a man who could shut his eyes to the sorrow and the heartbreak of the world. Never were eyes wider open than his. He saw everything. . . . He saw suffering in its every form. . . . Underneath the tragedy of suffering he saw the blacker tragedy of sin. Down underneath the surface of the world’s life he saw the cancer which was eating up its strength and its hope and its joy. He recognized as none other the tremendous power of evil. He saw with open eyes the roads which lead to death.”

“But he remains nevertheless undaunted. He never loses heart. He sees all, and he hears all, but he never gives up hope. He faces facts as they are, and he predicts grander facts which are to be. He sees both sides — the bright side and the dark side — and having seen both sides his face has light on it. He sings and he also sobs. His singing is sometimes broken by his sobbing, but he is never overwhelmed, he never surrenders, his head is always up, and his unfailing exhortation is, ‘Be of good cheer!'”

The Gospel Is Glorious News

“What a sad and depressing book the New Testament ought to be considering the dismal story it has to tell! It gives us the life of one who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. It portrays his sufferings through the cruel, disappointing years to his horrible death upon the cross. It narrates his awful predictions of coming woe and loss and ruin. It tells us that the leading cities of Galilee are rushing to destruction, and that even Jerusalem, glorious with the triumphs of a thousand years, is irretrievably doomed and that not one stone of all its stately edifices shall be left standing on another.”

“And yet not withstanding this heartbreaking story, the New Testament does not depress us or leave a shadow on the heart. It is a jubilant, exhilarating book, and the words which linger longest in the ear are, ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ The New Testament is a gospel, a bit of glorious news, because at the center of it there lives and works the world’s greatest optimist.”

“This is the man who can inspire our confidence and give us hope. We need a man with open eye and open ear and open heart, a man who sees things as they are and knows the thickness of the belt of night. We cannot follow a leader crying, ‘Peace,’ when we know that there is no peace; nor can we trust a teacher who asserts that all is well, when his assertion is contradicted daily by the experience of the world. Give us a man who feels the fury of the storm, yet is certain of the calm to follow. Give us a man who can measure accurately the dimensions of the night, and who also sees the dawning of a glorious morning.”

The Secret Is Faith in Our Father

“Let us try to find the secret of Jesus’ optimism. The secret is written large across the pages of the Gospel. It was a secret too good to keep — he gave it to everybody who had ears to hear. It was an abiding confidence in God.”

“We are sure of Him — sometimes. Our faith is clouded and it is intermittent. It floods and ebbs like the tide. Jesus never doubted. His vision was unclouded. His trust was absolute. To him God was an ever-present Father. This was his new name for God. The prophets and poets of Israel had only seldom ventured to think of God as father. . . . With Jesus, God was always Father. This is the name he carried on his lips when a boy of twelve, it was on his lips when he passed from this world into the other. He placed it on the lips of every man who followed him. It constantly amazed him that men had so little faith in God. ‘Have faith in God!’ This was the exhortation with which he braced the hearts of those who wished to live his life and do his work.”

The Result Is Hope for Everyone

“Along with unswerving trust in God there went an unshakable confidence in man. . . . He saw the possibilities and capacities of the human heart. He saw men’s littlenesses, frailties, vices, sins, but underneath all these he saw a soul created in God’s image.”

“When has a man had greater reason to abandon faith in men than this optimist of Galilee? . . . His entire career was a tragedy. He was suspected, misrepresented, hated. He was surrounded by liars wherever he went. No matter what he said his words were twisted, no matter what he did his motives were impugned. Such treatment is apt to sour the heart of anyone long subjected to it. Jesus was mistreated all the way. The inhuman wretches who tortured him in the courtyard of Pontius Pilate were doing only what men had done to him from the beginning. His life was one long-drawn crucifixion. Men were always jamming thorns into his brow, jabbing spears into his side, driving spikes through his hands and feet.”

“But he never gave up faith in human nature. When he saw that men were determined to take his life he said, ‘If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me!’ No matter what cruel and devilish things human nature might be guilty of, there was after all down deep in the heart that which would respond to forgiveness and love. The enemies of Jesus were the meanest, most unprincipled, diabolical set of human hounds which ever tracked an innocent man to death; but they never broke down his confidence in the divinity of the human heart. . . . No matter what individual men may do, man is to be trusted still. When he comes to his true self, he will say, ‘I will arise and go to my Father!'”

The Way Is Infinite Love

“Cynics might come to Jesus and learn from him to expect large things from human nature everywhere. He sees the shallowness, the paltriness, the frailty of the heart; but he also sees its capacities, its possibilities, the mustard-seed germs of virtues and graces which the Spirit of God can unfold. We measure men too much by their powers, and not enough by their capacities, by what they are today and not by what they may become later on. It was because the eyes of Jesus swept the future that he could stand around the wreckage of a race in ruins and say, ‘Be of good cheer!'”

“This indomitable Optimist has confidence in you. . . . You see your weakness, sordidness, vileness; he sees deeper, and seeing deeper he has hope for you. He sees your capacity of God. He knows what you can do when you have come to yourself. He sees deeper also into God. You have no adequate conception of the patience or the mercy of the Infinite Father. He has. You do not know what Infinite Love can accomplish. He does. Because of your transgressions you have lost faith in yourself. He has not. Because you have failed a thousand times you say there is no use trying anymore. He says, ‘Try again!’ If you give yourself to him, he will make of you an optimist!”

Excerpts from The Character of Jesus by Charles Edward Jefferson (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1908)

The Holiness of Jesus

The Bible is clear: Jesus was in all points tempted just as we are, yet He never sinned. Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson explains why this is key.

white-dove-in-cloudless-skies_994x650 — Spotless, cloudless, holy — the Spirit of God alighted on Him

“Write the word ‘holiness’ before the names of the great poets. Speak these words: ‘The holiness of Homer,’ ‘of Dante,’ ‘of Shakespeare,’ ‘of Tennyson.’ The heart revolts against it. Write the word ‘holiness’ before the names of the great philosophers. . . . There is something which offends the soul. Write the word ‘holiness’ before the names of the great scientists . . . and the word does not fit those illustrious names.”

“But when you say the ‘holiness of Jesus,’ that seems altogether proper. There is but one name in human history with which we can link that glorious noun. What do we mean by holiness? We mean wholeness, full-orbed perfection. A holy man is a man without a flaw, a character without a blemish or a stain.”

“There is nothing in Jesus’ consciousness which indicates that he was guilty of any sin. There is no trace anywhere of regret, no indication anywhere of remorse. From first to last he is serene, jubilant, confident, free . . . from that shadow which the consciousness of sin always casts.”

Increasing Consciousness of Sin

“Everybody agrees Jesus was a good man, exceedingly good, extraordinarily good. . . . But if we admit this, we are bound to go a great deal farther, for just in proportion as a man is really good does he become sensitive to sin; just in proportion as his spiritual sense is keen does his consciousness of sin become disturbing and appalling. If you want the saddest confessions of shortcomings, do not go to the worst men, but to the best. The higher a man rises in spiritual attainment, the more is he cast down by the knowledge of his sins.”

“Run through the Scriptures, and you will find that all the saints have their faces in the dust. Isaiah has a vision of God and his first cry is, ‘Woe is me, for I am undone!’ Job has a vision of God, and he casts himself upon the ground, saying, ‘I abhor myself and repent in sackcloth and ashes.’ John the beloved disciple says, ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’ Paul . . . cries out in an agony of remorse, ‘I am the chief of sinners.’ Peter says, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’ There is no exception. . . . Every heart cries out in the language of the Psalmist: ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, and blot out my transgressions,’ ‘Wash me from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for my sin is ever before me.'”

Jesus: No Consciousness of Sin

“So far as any of the apostles knew there never escaped Jesus’ lips a cry for pardon. On the other hand he was always giving utterance to words like these: ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,’ ‘I do always those things which are pleasing unto him,’ ‘Which one of you convicteth me of sin?’ And even when in sight of the cross, with death only a few hours away, he looks into God’s face saying, ‘I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.’ Other men looked into the unstained splendor, the white radiance of the world eternal, and fell back abashed and condemned; Jesus looks into that same unspotted glory and says, ‘I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.'”

“Not only did he hold himself immeasurably above the heads of all other men, but he forgave sins, he spoke as one having authority. No other man had ever exercised such a prerogative. Even the worst sinners when penitent at his feet received from him authoritative assurance of forgiveness.”

“Moreover he was a man without a human ideal. All good men have looked up to some man better than themselves; Jesus looked up to no man. He placed himself above Moses. He said, ‘A greater than Solomon is here.’ He said to men, ‘Follow me, I am the ideal’. . . . If he were indeed perfect, all this was right; but if he were a sinner concealing his sin or unconscious of his sin, then all such exhortations as, ‘Follow me,’ are demoralizing, and his pretensions are blasphemous. If he was good at all, he was sinless.”

Faithful Followers’ Testimony

“Men who were nearest to him got the idea that he was without sin. . . . John was the beloved disciple, coming the nearest to the Master’s heart. In the third chapter of his first letter he says this, ‘He was manifested to take away our sin, and in him is no sin.’ That was the impression which the Lord made upon him.”

“Peter was one of his most loyal friends. He was with him day and night through three years. In the second chapter of his first letter he says, ‘He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.’ Now these men were with Jesus. They ate with him, drank with him, slept with him, they saw him in all conditions and in all moods. . . . They saw him hungry, angry, stern, surprised, disappointed, amazed, yet they believed that in him there was no sin.”

“The writer to the Hebrews . . . reminds his readers that while Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, yet he was without sin. That was the impression then which was made upon the church. After the resurrection, they worshipped him as God. It is inconceivable that in so short a time a great body of intelligent men and women should have been worshipping him as God and singing hymns of praise to him if he had not made upon them the impression that he was holy.”

The Master’s Perfect Power

“Here, then, we have reached the crowning characteristic of Jesus. It is this which differentiates him from all other men who have ever lived. Every other man has known the pang of remorse, every other man has cried for pardon. . . . Never has there been but one white soul, never but one life unspotted, never but one mind without a stain, never but one heart perfect.”

“It is this sinlessness which gives Jesus his power. You cannot understand the New Testament unless you acknowledge that he was holy. His life was one of suffering, persecution, ending in a horrible death, yet the New Testament is a joyous book. There is no gloom in it because there was no gloom in him. His soul was radiant. Nothing creates gloom in this world but sin. All the things which we count terrible are insignificant and have no power to cast a shadow. There is only one thing which makes the spirit droop, and that is sin. His sinlessness explains his joyfulness. . . . Because his heart was stainless, his vision of the Eternal was unclouded. He knew God as no other man has ever known him.”

“And it was this sinlessness which was the secret of his fascination. He drew men to him, they hung upon his words, they were fascinated by him even when they hated. . . . The reason we are drawn to him is not because of his courage, his sympathy, his patience, or his brotherliness; it is because we feel instinctively that he is far above us, a man without a sin. It is this which gives the Christian church its power. The Christian church has but one perfect possession, that is Jesus. . . . The church itself is imperfect, stained through and through with sin; but Jesus of Nazareth, the head of the church, is stainless. And because he is without sin the church will come off triumphant.”

The Spotless Lamb Says, “Come to Me”

“If you ask why it is that men are separated from Jesus, it is because he is sinless and they are not. Some of you are not interested in him; it is because he is so far above you. Some of you have no sympathy with him; it is because you are not at all like him. Some of you do not understand his words; that is because you are disobedient. Some of you have no disposition to do his will; it is because you are the prisoners of sin.”

“But the sinless Christ does not turn away from us, no matter how sinful we are. He says: ‘Come unto me. He that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.’ Without sin himself he can pity us in our sin, and is willing to wash away the stains. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”

Excerpts from The Character of Jesus by Charles Edward Jefferson (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1908)

The Reasonableness of Jesus

Is faith in Jesus opposed to reason? Certainly not! Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson shows why Jesus is the most reasonable man you could meet.

the-thinker-1880_auguste-rodin_994x650 — *Think about it*

“Jesus was a man of unparalleled common sense. Would you see how rational he is, study his attitude to life.”

Our Unreasonable Objections

“There is a widespread impression, especially among young people of a certain age, that Jesus is unreasonable, and that Christianity is a religion which constantly makes war on reason. Young men sometimes say, ‘I do not want to join the church because I want to use my reason.’ How strange such language when Jesus from first to last pleads for the use of the reason.”

“Men often think they are using their reason when in fact they are exercising their prejudices or suffering from paralysis of the brain. I have heard men rail at Christianity as unreasonable because a certain Christian man had said a certain thing, as though Jesus of Nazareth must be held responsible for everything that every follower of his may think or say. Other men have been hopelessly estranged from Christianity because of certain statements they have read in certain books. How unreasonable! It surely is not fair to hold Jesus of Nazareth responsible for everything which men who bear his name may think or publish.”

“If men want to know whether Christianity is reasonable or not, why do they not read the Gospels? They are short and can be read through at least once a week, and yet men go right on refusing to read the Gospels — the one source of all authentic information as to what the Christian religion really is. Many think nothing of reading a novel of four hundred pages who stagger under the task of reading the four Gospels. It is just such persons who like to talk about the unreasonableness of Christianity. Why not be reasonable? Christianity has but one authoritative volume. Why not read it?”

Our Unreasonable Way of Life

“Open your New Testament, then, and see Jesus’ attitude to life. The word ‘life’ was often on his lips. . . . He wanted men to live. The tragedy of the world to him was that human life was everywhere so thin and meager. ‘I came that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly,’ thus did he express the object of his coming. ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ It was in such phrases that he endeavored to give men an idea of his mission and his person.”

“Men everywhere want to live, but the tragedy of the world is that they do not succeed. . . . We do the very things which curtail the capacity for living and dry up the springs of vitality. We are imitative creatures, all of us, and we mimic the habits and methods of those around us to our hurt. We are cowards all of us, and we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked and browbeaten and cheated out of our birthright. We are greedy, all of us, and in our eagerness to secure the things on which we have set our heart we become feverish and wretched, losing out of life its richest satisfactions. We are shortsighted, all of us, and in order to attain immediate ends we barter away the treasures of coming years. Life is not full or rich or sweet for many of us because we are handicapped by our doubts and hampered by our fears and enslaved by the unreasonable standards and requirements of a foolish world.”

“It is the aim of Jesus to break the fetters and let life out to its completion. To do a thing which reduces the volume and richness of a man’s life is foolish. We are reasonable in our conduct only when we are doing things which give life fuller capacity and power. Jesus was always reasoning with men in regard to the right way of living. . . . His attitude from first to last is the attitude of God as pictured by Isaiah. He was always saying, ‘Come, now, let us reason together.'”

Sermon on the Mount of Reason

“The Sermon on the Mount is the part of the New Testament which is nowadays universally praised, and no wonder. Every sentence is a pearl, and every paragraph is the classical expression of unadulterated common sense.”

“Men in the first century had overdeveloped the forms of prayer. . . . They said the same thing over and over again and called it praying. They repeated pious words on the street corners and were satisfied if their neighbors looking on called it praying. To Jesus all such devotion was ridiculous. If God is an intelligent Being, what is the use of any such mummery and mockery as this? If God is Spirit, then to pray to him is to come into communion with him, and you can do that best when you are alone and have shut all the world out. It is not necessary to multiply words, the things essential being sincerity and spiritual contact. How sensible, so reasonable that it will never become obsolete.”

“Equally sane is he on the subject of fasting. The exercise of fasting in Palestine had been elaborated into a system. Men fasted by the clock. Precise rules were laid down and to obey these regulations punctiliously was the ambition of the pious. . . . But to Jesus the whole system was mechanical and abominable. There was no reason in it. It was utterly formal and deadening and stupid. Moreover, to make a display of it and flaunt the signs of it in the eyes of the world was contemptible. Fasting if it is to have value at all must be an exercise of the soul. It is the spirit which is central. . . . It is not the abstinence from food which is pleasing to the Almighty, but the condition of the heart of the person who is doing the fasting. . . . How illuminating and sensible!”

No Rest from Reason

“Jesus would not allow himself to be swayed or daunted by institutions however sacred. Among the Jews there was no institution held in higher reverence than the Sabbath. So deep was the reverence that it degenerated into slavery. The day was made so holy that there was no living with it. The rules of Sabbath observance were so numerous that one could not turn round without breaking several of them.”

“Jesus saw at once through all the mass of rubbish which had accumulated . . . and laid down a maxim which shed light brilliant as the sun at noon. ‘The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.’ The life of man is the first thing to consider. . . . Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath Day? Is it lawful to save life on the Sabbath? It was with such questions that he punctured the inflated reasonings of the Jerusalem dunces, and set men free from a bondage which had become intolerable. His view of Sabbath observance is reasonable.”

The Golden Rule of Reason

“There is one sentence in the New Testament which by the vote of the world has been counted golden: ‘Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them.’ What is this but perfect sense?”

“But someone may ask: Does not Christianity insist upon a namby-pamby attitude to the forces of the world? Does Jesus not virtually exhort his disciples to lie down and let men walk over them? No. You have gotten that idea from books other than the New Testament. Jesus is sensible at every point. ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet and turn and rend you’. . . . All men are not alike. All men are not to be treated alike. . . . When Jesus sent his disciples out to preach, he told them if people were unwilling to listen to them, to shake the dust from their sandals against them and go somewhere else. He followed that plan himself. No limp and sugary weakling was he. . . . Nowhere is he more sensible than in his attitude to bad men.”

Our Unreasonable Expectations

“But someone says, ‘Is he not unreasonable in demanding that we believe a lot of doctrines which we cannot understand?’ Where does he demand that? Put your finger on the place, for I cannot find it. When I open the New Testament I hear him saying: ‘Follow me!’ . . . And when men wanted to know how they were to ascertain whether or not he was indeed a leader worthy of being followed, his reply was, ‘If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.’ Is this not reasonable?”

“Jesus says if you want to understand the Christian life, then work at it. If you desire to know the truth, then live it. This is common sense. How else could one find the truth of a religion if he did not work at it? If you want to learn to speak Italian, you do not simply think about it, or read about it, but you go to work on it. It requires a deal of work, but no matter. . . . Just so is it with the Christian life. Men imagine they can become Christians by thinking about it, or reading about it, or hearing a preacher talk about it. How absurd! You can never become a Christian until you are willing to work at it. Are you willing to begin now?”