Category: Jesus Character

The Indignation of Jesus

The Gospels say that sometimes Jesus blazed with anger. Yet in His anger, He did not sin. Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson explains why.

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The Lamb is also The Lion

“There are certain moods and feelings which we are reluctant to ascribe to Jesus, because they are so common and so human. Characteristics which are conspicuous and disconcerting in ourselves, we do not readily associate with him. For instance, was it possible for Jesus to be angry? If it was, he was amazingly like ourselves. The humblest and least gifted of us are adepts in the realm of indignation. Our capacity for wrath was manifested in us early, and we have developed it by constant use.”

“Moreover, anger is associated in our mind with infirmity. Much of our own anger has been . . . a boiling of the blood, full of sound and fury, having no ethical significance. Sometimes it has been a burst of petulance, an explosion of nervous energy, a sort of madness bordering on the frontiers of insanity. While the fever was upon us we felt our wrath was justifiable, but on the cooling of the blood we repented in sackcloth and ashes. We have also noticed what anger does for others. It has not escaped us that when men and women are angry they usually make fools of themselves.”

“Most of the indignation which we have known has been so childish or so brutish, so full of fury and of bitterness, that we find it hard to give it place in the experience of a strong and holy man. So prone is anger to mix itself with base and unlovely elements, and so frequently does it stir up the mud at the bottom of the soul, that it has been often classed among the vices as a passion which is always ignoble, and therefore to be condemned, resisted, strangled. . . . It is not easy to free one’s self from the feeling that anger has something sinful in it, or that if anger is not actually sinful, it is at any rate unlovely, a defect or flaw in conduct, a deformity in character.”

“He Looked Around at Them in Anger”

“It is because of this assumption that anger is in its essence sinful that many persons find it impossible to think of Jesus in an angry mood. . . . But the evangelists were not . . . handicapped by the notions which bewilder us. They felt that they must write down clearly what they saw and heard, and prompted thus to tell a round, unvarnished tale they do not hesitate to inform us that Jesus sometimes blazed with anger.”

“They tell us that it was inhumanity and insincerity which always kindled his heart to furnace heat. When he saw men — ordained religious leaders of the people — more interested in their petty regulations than in the welfare of their fellow men, his eyes burned with holy fire. . . . Any darkening of the world by cruelty or craft brought his soul to its feet fiery-eyed and defiant. He was angered by the desecration of the Temple. . . . That a building erected for the purpose of adorning the name of God should be converted into a market was so abhorrent to his great soul that he was swept onward into action. . . . Who can read the denunciation of the Pharisees without realizing that he is in the presence of a volcano belching molten lava? No one could speak language like that which the evangelists have recorded who was not capable of tremendous indignation. It is a wrath which leaps beyond the wrath of man.”

The Lion and The Lamb

“Here, then, we have in Jesus what seems to some a contradiction. He is a Lamb and at the same time he is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. He caresses like a mother and he also strikes like a thunderbolt. He is tender but he is also terrible; he is loving but he also smites with a blow which crushes.”

“How can we reconcile the indignation of Jesus with his love? Nothing is easier. His indignation is the creation of his love. . . . Only those who have never loved have difficulty in understanding the heart’s capacity for wrath. Did you ever see a lover stand calm-eyed and gentle-tempered in the presence of the villain who had dared insult the queen of his heart? When since the world began has love ever maintained a quiet pulse in the presence of the assailant of a loved one? A mother, all gentleness and sweetness as she moves among her children, passes into an avenging fury in the face of a foe who would harm them. The dimensions of her indignation will be determined by the depth and heat of her love.”

“It is the hottest love which when enlisted in the welfare of others scorches opposing forces to cinders. The power of loving and the power of hating must always go together. There is right and there is wrong, the first must be approved, the second must be condemned. The condemnation must not be cold but vehement. It must carry with it all the energy of the soul. It must have at the heart of it that heavenly fire which is known on earth as indignation.”

“In Your Anger Do Not Sin”

“In Jesus, then, we see what a normal man is and feels. He is full-orbed, complete. He gives sweep to every passion of the soul. He will not admit that in the garden of the heart there are any plants which the Heavenly Father has planted which ought to be rooted up. All the impulses, desires, and passions with which the Almighty has endowed us have a mission to perform, and life’s task is not to strangle them but to train them for their work.”

“Jesus was angry but he did not sin. Anger because of its heat readily passes beyond its appointed limits. Like all kinds of fire, it is dangerous and difficult to control. Jesus controlled it. ‘Thus far,’ he said, ‘and no farther.’ No sinful element mingled in that indignation which burned with a white and resistless heat.”

“Our anger is frequently a manifestation of our selfishness. We become indignant over trifles. The streetcar does not stop, or someone knocks off our hat, or a servant disappoints us, and we are aflame. Our comfort has been molested, our rights have been entrenched upon, our dignity has been affronted, and we are downright mad. . . . But in the presence of gigantic outrages perpetrated on the helpless and the weak, some of us are as calm as a summer morning. Bad men do not make us angry unless they interfere with our own affairs.”

“Our indignation then is quite different from that of Jesus. His anger never had its roots in selfishness. When men abused him, he was unruffled. When they lied about him, his pulse beat was not quickened. When they nailed his hands to the cross, . . . his calm lips kept on praying, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ It was when he saw his brother men abused that his great soul rose in wrath. The more helpless the person who was mistreated, the hotter was the fire of his indignation. . . . The thought of bad men leading innocent souls to sin converted him into a furnace of fire. What a whirlwind of flame sweeps through a sentence like this, ‘Whoso shall cause one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.'”

Our Anger and God’s Righteousness

“If, then, we have ever been scandalized by the account of Jesus’ indignation, we should examine ourselves and find out why we shrink from the thought that a man like him should burn with anger. . . . It may be that our criticism springs from blood which has become impoverished.”

“If we fail to burn in the presence of cruelty and injustice, it is because the higher faculties of the soul have become atrophied by sin. If wood does not burn, it is because it is green or rotten. If hearts do not burn with holy fire against wicked men and their wicked deeds, it is because the heart is too undeveloped to feel what manly hearts were meant to feel, or because the core of the heart has been eaten out by the base practices of a godless life. It is one of the lamentable signs of our times — our incapacity for anger. Many of us are lukewarm in the presence of evils which are colossal. Some of us are indifferent. Indifference to wrongdoing is always a sign of moral deterioration. If we do not flame against villainy, it is because there is so much of the villain in ourself.”

“Society would be cleansed of much of its pollution if we had more men and women capable of becoming genuinely angry. Let us pray then every day that a new indignation may sweep through the world. As Plutarch put it long ago, ‘Anger is one of the winds by which the sails of the soul are filled.’ Many a belated bark would have reached port long ago if anger had been allowed to do its perfect work. It is the devil’s trick to keep good men from becoming angry.”

“The world is full of sentimentalists — men and women who gush of love, and who do not know what love is. After listening to their flimsy talk it is refreshing to get into a book where every bad deed is held up to scorn and every bad man, if unrepentant, is overwhelmed with shame. Nowhere in the Gospels is there a soft or flabby thought, a doughy or mushy feeling. . . . Under such a sky, life becomes august, solemn, beautiful. It is worthwhile to strive, to work, to suffer. One feels sure that God is in His heaven, and though wickedness may flourish for a season, God’s heart burns with quenchless fire against it, and at the end of the days every impure man, and every cruel man, and every man who loves and makes a lie, will find himself outside the city whose streets are gold.”

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

The Gladness of Jesus

As Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson shows, even Jesus’s critics recognized His joy. And Jesus said His joy would be in us, if only we abide in Him.

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Imagine the joy of Jesus

“We are trying to see Jesus of Nazareth! Our one question is: What kind of man was he? . . . It is by no means easy to see him as he was, the mists blow in between us and him, and blur the features of his face. The dust settles upon the picture which the evangelists have painted and the man becomes dim to our eyes. All sorts of men — poets, philosophers, painters — have like so many human spiders woven cobwebs over the picture, so that until we brush the cobwebs away it is impossible to see him.”

“All the Christian churches take their name from this man. The churches differ widely from one another in worship, in government, in teachings, . . . but this one thing is remarkable, that all the Christian churches of the world are clinging tenaciously to the garments of this man. . . . ‘He,’ they say, ‘is our example. We are to reproduce the characteristic notes displayed in him.’ And therefore it becomes not only an interesting enterprise, but one of tremendous importance, this effort to find out what kind of man he was. If we get a distorted image of him, we harm ourselves and rob the world.”

“Pushing then all the poets and philosophers aside, let us ask ourselves the question: Did Jesus of Nazareth impress men as glad or sad, solemn or radiant, jubilant or melancholy? There is no doubt about the answer which the painters give. They nearly always paint him sad. . . . But we cannot afford to follow the painters. They paint Jesus with a halo. Nobody in Jerusalem ever saw the halo. . . . We want to see him as he was.”

Hostile Witnesses

“To find out what impression he really made upon the people of his day, it will be worth our while to listen to what his enemies had to say. Of course his enemies will not speak the ungarbled truth, they will deal in falsehoods; but even falsehoods are of great advantage in trying to make one’s way toward the truth. . . . For falsehoods when arranged in a row have a curious fashion of pointing in the direction of the truth. When a man begins lying, if you can only keep him lying long enough, he will by and by put you on the track of discovering what the truth is. And so it is with the enemies of Jesus.”

“They have said certain things which are invaluable to us in our search after authentic knowledge of the character of Jesus. . . . They declared he was a glutton. Of course he was not, but they said he was. Now a glutton is never a glum and sour-faced man. Gluttony is a form of pleasure. . . . When men said he was a glutton we may rest assured he was not an ascetic in his looks or habits.”

“They also called him a wine bibber. Of course he was not, but the very fact that they accused him of guzzling wine points in the direction of the kind of man he was. A wine bibber is usually a jolly man. . . . A man under the influence of wine is exceedingly social and talkative and genial. The enemies of Jesus would never have called him a wine bibber if he had been as glum and sad as some of the artists have painted him.”

“They called him also the friend of publicans and sinners. . . . He associated with people who had no piety at all. When they declared he was a friend of these non-churchgoers, they implied that he was of the same stripe as they. . . . So his enemies declared, and if Jesus had been taciturn and sullen, grim and morose, his enemies would never have declared he was a boon companion of lighthearted men. . . . Put, then, these three bits of falsehood together, and what is the direction in which they point? They are the most precious bits of slander that ever slipped from slimy lips. They prove indisputably that whatever Jesus was or was not, he was not morose or sour or melancholy.”

Wedding Joy

“Having listened to the testimony of his enemies, let us now study one of the words Jesus applied to himself. . . . Some people came to Jesus one day in disgust, saying, ‘Why do your disciples not fast?’ The reply of Jesus is illuminating. He said, ‘How can the children of the bridechamber fast when the bridegroom is with them?’ Did you ever mark the use of that word ‘bridegroom’? . . . He seized upon a word that is the symbol of human joy. If ever a man is happy in this world, it is on his wedding day. Jesus says that he lives in an atmosphere of wedding joy, and so also do his disciples.”

“It would seem, then, that Jesus was a man abounding in joy. Gladness was one of the notes of his character. Listen to him as he teaches, and again and again you catch the notes of happiness. He was all the time saying, ‘Unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of God’ — and what was it in the little child that attracted him? One thing which attracted him was the child’s sunny heart. What would we do in this world without the children laughing away the cares and sighs?”

“Or listen again to what he says about worry. He defines it as one of the deadliest of all sins. We are not to worry about the present, about the necessities of existence, about tomorrow, about what we ought to do or say in the great crises which lie ahead of us. It is not right, he says; it is contrary to the law of God. Look at nature: see the lilies and the birds, there is not a trace of worry or of care in all nature’s lovely face.”

“Listen again to the exhortations which he gives his disciples. He tells them that when men persecute them and say all manner of evil against them falsely, they are to rejoice and be exceeding glad. The English translation does not do justice to the Greek. He says, ‘Rejoice and leap for joy.’ Let your joy express itself. When matters are at their worst, then you ought to have the happiness which leaps. Certainly a sad-hearted man could never give advice like that.”

“Listen to him again as he says to the great crowds, ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ A glum-faced prophet could never speak so. He was glad even to the end. Even in the upper chamber, with death only a few hours away, he goes right on speaking of the joy that is bubbling up in his own heart and he prays that the same joy may abound in the hearts of those that love him. He tells his disciples that all of his teaching has been granted unto them because of his desire that his joy might remain in them.”

Son Kissed

“A Christian must then, if he would follow Jesus, be a joyous and jubilant man. Someone says at once, ‘Ah, I know many Christians who are anything but happy, they are the most doleful creatures in all the world, they whine and whimper, they sob and cry, their very faces are images of woe — how will you explain that?’ The explanation is that all such persons although they profess to follow Jesus, follow him afar off.”

“They are not developed Christians, mature or ripened Christians. The very finest apples, you know, in the earlier stages of their growth are sour and green. It is not until the sun has done his perfect work that they are golden and luscious. Just so it is with souls in the earlier stages of development — they are often green and sour, crabbed, and full of acid. But if they will only subject themselves to the shining of the sun, the great joyous, exuberant, laughing sun, all the juices of their nature will grow sweet and mellow, and they will find themselves at last in the kingdom of peace and joy.”

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

The Firmness of Jesus

Jesus is velvet, but He is also steel. He is tender and giving, but stands firm as a mountain wall of rock. Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson explains.

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Soft meadows, and rock walls

“Let us think now of the firmness of Jesus. Of his tenderness we think often, and also of his gentleness and graciousness. To these lovely graces the heart is joyfully responsive, and in dwelling upon them we are likely to overlook other traits no less beautiful and praiseworthy. Gentleness of nature is not a virtue but a defect unless it is accompanied by tenacity of will. Sweetness of disposition is not enough to make a man useful and noble. Along with the sweetness there must go strength, and underneath the moods soft as velvet there must lie a resoluteness hard as steel.”

“He is indeed a strong character who dares run counter to the traditions and fashions of his time. Even the strongest and most independent often bow down before standards against which conscience revolts and submit to customs against which the heart protests. Humanity goes in crowds and droves. . . . The majority of mortals are not strong enough to be themselves: they become echoes of their neighbors and walk in paths marked out by others.”

“But when we come to Jesus we are in the presence of a man whom nobody swerved or dominated, who is so free from the bias of his race and so clean of the spirit of his age that he seems to belong to all races and all ages. . . . He is not a citizen of the first century only, but the contemporary of each succeeding generation. Immersed in an ocean of mighty forces which beat upon him furiously through every hour of his career, he resisted them all successfully by the indomitable energy of a victorious will, living a life unique in its beauty and achieving a work unmarred by the limitations either of time or place.”

Not Insurrection — Resurrection

“He was not insensible to the dominant forces of his time. . . . His countrymen had formed definite ideas of the Messiah. He was to be a wonder worker and the manifestations of his power were to be spectacular and overwhelming. He was to trample opposing forces under his feet and make Palestine the center of the world. This was the dream, this was the expectation. The best men expected this, as did also the worst men. It is a dangerous thing to baffle popular expectations. . . . Good and great men have found no difficulty in every land and generation in bringing themselves to yield, at least up to a certain point, to the wishes and demands of their countrymen.”

“How could Jesus hope to win the attention of his people or control the current of their life unless he fell in with their ideals and attempted to carry out the program on which their hearts were set? It was a great temptation, so terrific that he told his apostles all about it. He assured them that in this temptation he had been wrestling with the very prince of infernal powers, but . . . had come out of the conflict victorious. In choosing the road which led to supremacy by way of Gethsemane and Golgotha, he renounced the ideals of his countrymen and disappointed their dearest expectations.”

Not Your Plan — The Plan

“When we study his life with attentive eyes we see it was one long resistance to the forces of his age. He was a patriot, but he could not go with his countrymen in their patriotic programs or expectations. He was a churchman, but he could not go with the members of the Jewish church in their favorite teachings and ceremonies. They taught doctrines of the Sabbath which he could not accept. They presented forms of worship to which he could not submit. They laid down lines of separation which it was impossible for him to observe.”

“It is not easy to run counter to the deep-seated feelings of the most religious people of one’s day, or to cut across the grain of the prejudices of the most conscientious men in town. There were many reasons why Jesus should have conformed to the ideas and customs of the church, but he firmly resisted all the voices which urged him toward conformity, standing out alone in defiance of what the best men were doing and saying, even though his nonconformity seemed to the majority impiety and to many blasphemy. For a godly man to be classed among blasphemers is one of the bitterest experiences which the heart can know. But Jesus paid the price and continued firm.”

“One party after another tried to work him into its scheme, but he was intractable and went on his way independent, unshackled, free. All the seductions offered by men who sat on thrones could not swerve him from his course, and although his steadfastness made him enemies and finally nailed him to the cross, he was everywhere and always a man who could not be moved.”

Not Your Wish — God’s Will

“There are men who are too strong to be manipulated by their foes, but in the hands of their friends they are plastic as wax. Jesus could not be manipulated even by his friends. He had many friends in Nazareth, but he never gave up his principles to please them. They had their prejudices and superstitions, but he never surrendered to them. He knew their bigotry and narrowness, and so in his opening sermon he told the story of God’s compassion on a Syrian leper, and also on a Sidonian widow. His sermon raised the storm which he had anticipated, but he bore the fury of it without flinching. He would not keep silent when he knew he ought to speak.”

“Probably no neighbor in Nazareth was ever so near to Jesus’ heart as his dear friend Simon Peter. At a crisis in Jesus’ life Peter did his best to dissuade him from a certain course, but the loyal and loving friend succeeded no better than the most hostile Pharisee. This man of Nazareth could not be moved by friend or foe. It was his Father’s business he was attending to, and therefore all efforts to draw him aside were made in vain. ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ he said to the astonished Peter, recognizing in him the same evil spirit he had contended with years before in the desert. To defy powerful enemies is hard, but to turn a deaf ear to loving friends is harder still. Only a man of unconquerable will is equal to a test so taxing. Jesus met it and did not fail.”

“It was a test he faced in his own home. His brothers did not understand him. Their lack of understanding curtailed their sympathy with him. From their standpoint he often did the injudicious thing, and refused to do the thing which would have forwarded his reputation. They were always ready with advice. He could not take it. They urged him to go to Jerusalem at a time when he could not go. They exhorted him to go home at a time when his duty was to be somewhere else. Only a man who has been driven by conscience to go contrary to the wishes of members of his own family can enter into the experience which Jesus suffered or can measure the strength of will which one must have to resist successfully the importunities of love.”

“This test of will power reached its climax in Jesus’ conflict with his mother. She loved him and he loved her, but he could not always carry out her wishes. There comes a time in many a man’s life when even his own mother’s exhortations must go unheeded in order to obey a higher call. Such an experience came to Jesus. . . . The ties to Mary were not so deep as the ties which bound Jesus to the heavenly Father, and when Mary’s wish conflicted with the Father’s will, the wish of the woman was pushed aside to make room for the will of God.”

Not Shifting and Drifting — The Rock of Ages

“Here, then, we have a situation which is distressing indeed. The most tender and gracious and obliging of men is compelled to resist not only the prayers of his countrymen but the wishes of his family and friends. He stands like a rock in the midst of a troubled sea, and all its billows dash themselves against his feet in vain. There was something inflexible in his will, something granitic in his soul. When he found a man whom he thought worthy to be the first member of his church he called him ‘rock.'”

“It is in this tenacity of will that we find an indispensable element of Christian character. Men are to resist exterior forces and form their life from within. They are not to be swayed by current opinion, but by the spirit of the Eternal in their heart. They are not to listen to the voices of time, but to live and work for eternity. We like this steadfastness in human character, and we also crave it in God. Men have always loved to think of Him as the unchanging and the unchangeable, the one ‘with whom there can be no variation, nor shifting shadow.’ And what we desire in God we find in Jesus of Nazareth. . . . ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yea and forever.'”

“What Jesus was in Palestine he is today and shall be for evermore. All his promises stand unshaken, all his warnings remain unchanged. His attitude to sinners is what it has been from the beginning and what it will be to the end. You cannot discourage him by your ingratitude or make him other than he is by your disobedience. He is not broken down by human folly or driven from his plan by human perversity. From age to age he is about his Father’s business, and in the midst of all nations and kindreds and tongues he goes about doing good.”

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

The Brotherliness of Jesus

Jesus said, “Love each other as I have loved you.” And brothers and sisters, O how He has loved us! Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson counts the ways.

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Always reaching for us

“Now I wish to think with you about another trait for which it is difficult for me to find a satisfying name. I should say it is the love of Jesus were not the word ‘love’ so ambiguous and so liable to misinterpretation. I should say it was the service of Jesus were it not for the fact that service is rather cold. . . . I should say the pity of Jesus, but pity is love looking downward, and that does not convey all the truth. I should call it the humanity of Jesus, but that is a vague and indefinite word that does not tell the story vividly. I should say the kindness of Jesus, but the word does not carry with it force enough.”

“Possibly we cannot do better than to take the word ‘brotherliness,’ for this word contains two elements, both of which are essential if we would understand the kind of man Jesus was. Brotherliness carries in it not only a sense of kinship but likewise a disposition to render help. There is a relationship and likewise a helpfulness, and both of these blended into one constitute the quality to which I invite your attention now.”

“Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”

“That this trait in Jesus made a profound impression upon his contemporaries is evidenced not only by what his friends have said about him, but also by the criticisms and sneers which he drew from his foes. It was a common taunt of the scribes and Pharisees that he was a friend of publicans and sinners, and when he hung dying on the cross the leading men of the Jewish church gathered round him saying with a jeer, ‘He saved others, he cannot save himself.'”

“Both of these accusations are as devilish as anything to be found in the literature of the world, but they are valuable to us in this — that they show conclusively what impression this man of Galilee made upon the people of his time. It had been his practice all the way through life to help men. He had been a friendly, brotherly man even to the lowest and the basest of society.”

“The same trait is characterized in a famous phrase written by one of his dearest friends, ‘He went about doing good.’ What more beautiful eulogy has ever been written about a man than that? With what more lovely wreath of roses could you cover a man’s career? In three sentences — ‘The friend of publicans and sinners,’ ‘He saved others, he cannot save himself,’ ‘He went about doing good’ — we get eloquent testimony that Jesus had a brotherly heart.”

“Nowhere does his brotherliness come out more clearly than in his treatment of the sick. He could not pass a sick man without his soul going out to help him. . . . Misery drew virtue from his heart. A large proportion of all the recorded miracles are miracles of healing. He could not look upon the deaf or dumb, the palsied, the blind, without putting forth his power to help them.”

“His brotherliness is also manifested in his teaching. He could not look into men’s faces without being pained by their confusion, their perplexity, and their misery. He could not see men passing on to the judgment day without telling them something about the great God in whose world they were living. When he saw men fainting and scattered abroad like sheep having no shepherd, his heart was moved with compassion.”

“Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”

“Not only was he brotherly himself, but to him brotherliness is the very essence of religion. Without brotherliness there can be no religion that is pleasing unto God. The old law had said that one man must not kill another, but Jesus went far beyond the requirements of that law — he said that calling a man names was also wicked and would bring him into judgment. To use adjectives that pierce and cut, . . . to speak of men in ways that degrade them — that is wickedness and will bring the severest retribution.”

“One of the greatest of his parables is the parable of Lazarus. A rich man fares sumptuously every day, and at his gate there lies a poor sick beggar, his body covered with ulcers, with no friend to bring relief. . . . Jesus says when that thing happens in this world, something happens in the next world. You can almost feel the heat of his indignant soul. You can hear him asking, ‘Do you suppose that inhumanity like that will go unpunished in the universe of God?'”

“It was not because the rich man was rich and dressed in fine raiment and fared sumptuously every day, that later on he lifted up his eyes in torment. Abraham also was rich and fared sumptuously every day, but Abraham went to heaven because he had a brother’s heart. This rich man went to hell because his heart was not tender, his sympathy did not go out to a brother’s need.”

“Love Each Other as I Have Loved You”

“And how did Palestine receive this brotherliness? It did not like it. Jesus was too brotherly, men misunderstood him. They misinterpreted him, they maligned him, they laid their plans to kill him; but they could not make him anything else than brotherly.”

“In spite of all their ugliness and vindictiveness he went on helping them all he could, and when they laid their plots to kill him, he went bravely forward giving help, saying: ‘If I cannot help them with my life I will help them with my death. By dying I will convince them that I wanted to do them good. I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. When hanging on the cross they will understand me as they cannot understand me now. When they hear me praying for them with my dying breath, they will be convinced that I am indeed their brother.'”

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

The Humility of Jesus

The Creator of the universe, the Lord of all, calls Himself humble. Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson explains the humbling significance for us.

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No crown of gold for this king

“‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden; and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’ That sentence is unique in the Gospel. There is nothing else at all like it. It is a bit of autobiography which is immeasurably precious. Nowhere is Jesus recorded as having said, ‘Come unto me, for I am patient — for I am courageous — for I am self-sacrificing;’ but here for the first time he calls attention to one of his characteristics.”

“He has allowed other men to call attention to this virtue or that grace, but he himself will bring out the fact that he is humble. At this point he takes the brush in his own hand, saying, ‘I will put this color on myself’. . . . He says, ‘Come unto me, I have something to teach you, I should like to teach you humility.'”

I Am Humble

“Possibly no other virtue in the catalogue of Christian virtues is so misunderstood as this one. No other one has been so often erroneously defined, no other grace has been so persistently counterfeited and caricatured. . . . One person says it is taking a low estimate of one’s deserts; another says it is making one’s self small. Another says it is a sense of inferiority in the presence of others. Another says it is a sense of imperfection, or of ill desert. Another says that it is softness, passivity, a willingness to submit.”

“All of these definitions are proved to be erroneous the moment we carry them into the atmosphere of the New Testament. The humility which Jesus requires of those who follow him is the humility which he had himself, and certainly his humility was not meanness of spirit. There was nothing cringing or crawling in him. When has there walked the earth a man who held his head higher than did he? When has the world known a man of such lofty, regnant spirit? . . . Let us then come close to him in order to understand just what he means when he says, ‘I am meek and lowly in heart.'”

I Am Teachable

“Jesus gave his disciples three great lessons on the subject of humility. . . . You will find the first of them recorded in the eighteenth of Matthew, the first five verses. On a certain occasion Jesus takes a little child, and putting him in the midst, says: ‘Whoever shall humble himself as a little child the same shall be great in the kingdom of heaven. Except ye become as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom.'”

“And what is the crowning characteristic of a little child? It is teachableness, docility, willingness to learn. A child is eager for knowledge, he is everlastingly asking questions, he is always bent on investigation, he pries into everything. He wants to go to the roots of everything. He always wants you to tell him one more story, he will wear a half dozen grown people out simply by the questions which he asks — so hungry is he for knowledge. This teachableness is humility.”

“Not only is he free from self-sufficiency, but he is free from vanity. A little child is not vain of the belongings of its parents. . . . It plays with perfect contentment with a child in the street whose parents have no carriages and who are too poor to own diamonds. . . . It also knows nothing of ambition, it knows nothing of social aspirations. Place before it the queen of England and its own mother, and it will choose its mother every time, though she be nothing but a washwoman — so simple, so human, so beautiful is the heart of a child. It is this characteristic of the child heart that Jesus loves.”

“It was because the Pharisees did not have it that he criticized them and condemned them. They were not teachable, they knew everything. Nobody could tell them anything. They were vain, they blew trumpets and called attention to their decorations. They loved salutations. They were ambitious, they were always pushing themselves forward, taking the chief places at the feasts. He could do nothing with them because they were not humble. He, on the other hand, had the heart of a child.”

I Am a Servant

“Let us now turn to the twentieth of Matthew, verses twenty-five to twenty-eight. His disciples, in spite of all his admonitions and teachings, are filled with the ambitious spirit. They all want to be first. They want to be high up. Two of them ask for chief places in his kingdom. . . . Jesus calls the twelve around him and says: ‘You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.'”

“Here we get another note in the grace of humility. It is not only teachableness, freedom from vanity and ambition, but it is also a willingness to serve. A humble man is a man who is ready to make himself useful. A man of lowly spirit is a man who will help his brethren, and here again Jesus in substance says: ‘Come unto me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. . . . The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister.'”

“Does this not paint the picture of his life? . . . ‘He went about doing good.’ He never patronized, nor looked down. He made himself of no reputation if only he could help those that needed help. He did not underestimate his powers, or make himself small, or feel himself to be unworthy; he simply came down to where men were in order to do them good. That is Christian humility.”

I Am Eternal

“The third lesson in humility was given his disciples on the very night of his betrayal, in the upper chamber. You will find the incident recorded in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. The disciples are still filled with the ambitious spirit. They have not yet learned the joy of serving, for all have nettled hearts because they have not gotten the places they wanted, and Jesus unwilling to allow the feast to go forward arises from the table, and taking a basin and girding himself with a towel proceeds to rinse the dust from the disciples’ feet.”

“He goes on to explain the meaning of his action, telling them, just as he has been willing to do the work of a slave in order to serve them, so they also must be willing to serve one another. Here, again, we see what humility really is. It is laying aside one’s dignity, it is making one’s self of no reputation, it is a willingness to come down, it is a delight in rendering service.”

“Why was Jesus able to do this? St. John gives the explanation in the wonderful words, ‘Knowing that he came from God, and was going back to God.’ It was not because he had mean ideas of himself, nor because he desired to make himself small; it was because he knew his divine origin and his divine destiny.”

“This is the secret of humility everywhere and always. A man is never humble except by coming close to God. It is by thinking of the Eternal that man becomes willing to do the things which otherwise would be difficult or impossible. It is because we do not know that we have come from God, and forget that we are going back to Him that we make such an ado about our dignity, and prize so highly our reputation, and are so lordly and so lofty-minded, and take such delight in putting on airs. Only he who is sure of God possesses the secret of humility.”

I Am Strong Enough To Be Meek

“Much of the so-called humility of the world is not humility at all. It is a slimy, crawling, despicable, snaky thing, a compound of vanity and falsehood. People who say they do not amount to anything, they cannot do anything, they have no talent, they do not know anything — never speak the truth. . . . They know they are not speaking the truth. It is their egotism masquerading under the form of humility. There is no vainer form of vanity than the vanity which apes humility.”

“The humility which Jesus wants, and which he exemplified in his life, is a form of strength. Only the strong man can be really humble. It is willingness to lay aside one’s rights, it is a refusal to use one’s power, it is a readiness to come down and to make one’s self of no reputation. Jesus was always giving up his rights, he was always refusing to use his power. . . . Hanging on the cross his enemies taunted him, saying, ‘Let him save himself.’ When they saw he would not save himself they supposed he did not because he could not, and they broke out in hateful jeers, ‘He saved others, himself he cannot save.’ But they were mistaken. He had the power to save himself, he would not use it. He could have called twelve legions of angels, but he would not call them. He was meek and lowly of heart, and was willing to give his life as a ransom for many.”

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

The Strength of Jesus

Picturing Jesus as passive and pallid? Pastor Charles Edward Jefferson shows that’s not how the Gospels portray this mighty man.

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The original Man of Steel

“What was the first impression Jesus made upon his contemporaries? What has been his first impression on you? Has he impressed you as subdued and meek, calm and effeminate? . . . When you think of him do you think of someone thin and gaunt, weak and pallid? Not so did he seem to the people of his day. Open the Gospel according to St. Mark. In the first chapter he tells you in four different places what impression Jesus made upon men.”

“He first tells you of the impression he made on John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a mighty man, none mightier had ever appeared in Judea; but John said there is coming one mightier than I. . . . He had faced the greatest men of his day without flinching, . . . but when this man from Nazareth appears, John falters and draws back and says: ‘I cannot baptize you. I have need to be baptized by you.'”

“Let us take another illustration: He walks one day along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and sees two men fishing; he says, ‘Follow me,’ and straightway they left their nets and followed him. A few steps farther on he sees two other men, he says to them, ‘Follow me,’ and they left all and followed him. Such was the impression he made upon them.”

“He goes into the synagogue and begins to teach, and they are amazed, not at what he says, but the manner in which he says it. He teaches them as one having authority and not as the scribes. There is something in his voice that pierces and cuts and thrills, a tone that they have never heard before. It is the note of authority, the note of strength.”

“Or take another illustration: There is a sick man in the synagogue, and Jesus heals him, and again the people are surprised because God has given such power to a man. In these four instances the first impression of Jesus is the impression of authority, mastery, power, leadership; he is a man of strength.”

Men Marveled

“And that, I think, is the teaching of all the Gospels: they give us repeated illustrations of the power of Jesus. He drew men to him. Wherever he went he was surrounded by a crowd. He goes down to the seashore, and the crowd is so great they push him into the water and he gets into a boat. He goes to the hilltop, and immediately the hillside is alive with people. He goes to the desert, and immediately a great crowd surrounds him. . . . Every city through which he passes is turned upside down by his presence. Only a man of strength draws to him great masses of men.”

“Not only did Jesus draw men to him but he stirred them whenever they came near. Have you ever noted how many times the evangelists say in speaking of the people: ‘they were astonished,’ ‘they were astonished with a great astonishment,’ ‘they were amazed,’ ‘they were filled with amazement,’ ‘they marveled’?”

“One day when Jesus propounded the question, ‘Who do men say that I am?’ the disciples told him that men had different opinions in regard to him. Some said he was John the Baptist, some said he was Elijah, others said he was Jeremiah, while others unable to give his exact name felt convinced he was one of the old prophets. This is remarkable! They went to the grave in order to find a man to whom they could liken him. . . . The name of no man living was great enough to convey their idea of the strength which they felt resided in Jesus. He was one of the giants of bygone ages who had come back to the earth carrying with him powers augmented by his sojourn in the realms of death. This tells us clearly that to them he was a man of tremendous power.”

Romans Recoiled

“And if the Jews felt this in regard to him, what was the impression which he made upon the Roman officials? He impressed them in the same way. When the policemen came to arrest him and asked him if he was indeed Jesus of Nazareth, he turned upon them and simply said, ‘I am,’ and they fell backward to the ground. What do you suppose his eyes looked like that night when they outflashed the Roman torches and outshone the Syrian stars?”

“Pilate is afraid of him. He is the representative of Caesar in Palestine. He is clothed with authority. Jesus is but a poor unarmed peasant. Nevertheless Pilate is afraid of him, he draws back from him, he wrings his hands in uncertainty, he washes his hands, he tries to get rid of this man. He feels there is a power in him unlike any power he has ever come in contact with before.”

Great Hate, Great Love

“But if you would have the finest proof of his power, you can find it in the intensity of the hatred and in the intensity of the love which he excited. How many hated him! They could not hear him talk without sizzling, hissing and boiling like a pot under which the fire roars. He stirred tempests in the heart, he awoke serpents in men. He drove them to madness until they cried out in frenzy, ‘Crucify him!’ Only a great man can do that. You cannot hate a pygmy, a weakling, a ninny. You can hate Nero or Napoleon or any giant, but you cannot hate a nobody. . . . The men that are loathed and feared are men of genius, who have in them extraordinary capacity for bringing things to pass.”

“But if Jesus drove some men to hate him, he drove other men to love him. He kindled a devotion that is superior to anything that has ever been known in this world. He kindled a fire which ran all over Palestine, and then around the edges of the Mediterranean, and then into the German forests, it then leaped over the English Channel, and later on it leaped over the Atlantic Ocean, and now it has leaped over all the oceans and is burning more brightly today than ever. And all this conflagration was kindled by his hot heart. . . . He called forth a kind of reverence that has never been granted to any other man who has ever lived. He was so mighty that when men thought of him, they thought of God.”

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