The common lot of master and servant.
Point out the connection in which this text stands. Christ illustrated what was his claim on men, and what was involved in becoming citizens of his kingdom, by sending out his apostles on a trial or model mission. He corrects certain wrong impressions and false expectations in this passage. Those apostles will not meet with all the success they anticipate. They will repeat his own story of thankless labour and reproach.
I. THE IDEA OF A TRUE LIFE IS LIVING OVER AGAIN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. The disciples of Christ are expected to reproduce their Master's ideas, principles, and even actions; but their own personal stamp is to be quite plain on all their reproductions. A worthy servant does, both consciously and unconsciously, what he sees his master do. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Master in such a sense as makes him our ideal of what the true and noble life is. Reproducing him may be said to involve:
1. Looking at life in the light in which Christ looked at it. It is not for self, it is not for any earth-ends. It is for God, and for God as the Father-God. The true imitation of Christ is the sway in our lives of those principles that ruled his. Wherever we may be, the Christly spirit may be in us, and may be glorifying all our relations.
2. Uttering the Christly spirit by lip and life as he did. Loving words and loving deeds expressed Christ's loving thought and purpose. While motive is the most important thing, it can never be separated from fitting action.
3. Bearing the earthly disabilities of a Christly life as be did. The same, or similar, disabilities come to Christians in every age as came to Christ. The variations we notice are on the surface, and belong only to forms and features. "The light shines in darkness," and is similarly affected by the bad atmospheres. Misunderstandings, reproaches, persecutions, abound still. "If reproached in the name of Christ, happy are ye." Take St. Paul's life, and show how his troubles repeat Christ's, with characteristic variations.
II. THIS IDEA OF LIFE TRUE HEARTS WELL FIND EVER-SATISFYING. The feeling of the Divine worth and beauty of that blessed life of Jesus will ever grow on us as we come into spiritual communion with it. And to reproduce it, to work it out in our own lives, will engage all our thought, and use up all our faculty, in a delightful way What is the fact? Do men learn of Christ from our Christ-likeness?—R.T.