Matthew 3:11-12

CHRIST FIRST

‘He that cometh after me is mightier than I.’

Matthew 3:11

These are some of the most beautiful words in human history, and they gain an added beauty from the personal circumstances under which they were spoken. The speaker is the great forerunner of the Lord, and they are spoken of the Lord Himself. Love of prominence and pre-eminence is directly contrary to the example of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

I. A sanctified ambition.—It is not ambition, it is discipline of ambition, which needs to be preached among men. If you come into close contact with any one man, however distinguished, whose life has been actuated throughout by an ambitious purpose, you will, I believe, bear me out in saying that for all his eminence there is in him an element which grates upon the finer feelings of the Christian nature. There is always the danger that he who seeks his own advancement at the cost of others will spread sorrow throughout the world. I would not say to you, ‘Fling away ambition,’ yet I will say, ‘Fling away all that is base and sordid and self-seeking in ambition.’ It is the chastened, sanctified ambition, not ambition at all costs, that needs to be enjoined upon your mind.

II. Strength of character.—It is a mistake to suppose—and the Baptist’s history shows it—that the man who is free from the ignominy of being jealous must be a weak, pliable character. That was not the character of the Baptist. He was strong, as he showed when he constantly rebuked vice, as in the case of Herod Antipas. He was strong in his endurance of the suffering that he was called to bear from one whose vice he had rebuked, and yet he, who could constantly speak and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake, was the man whose high glory it is to have recognised the intrinsic superiority of the Lord, to have spoken of himself as only ‘a voice crying in the wilderness,’ a runner, going before to clear the way for One greater than himself, and it will be well if you and I lay to heart the lesson of the Baptist’s example.

III. The Divine Example.—When we speak of self-sacrifice, of self-effacement, we go back to the divine example of Him Who was so high and became so low, Who left the heaven of His father’s glory that He might suffer and die upon earth. We can never wholly forget, if indeed we can never wholly obey, a motive to be content with the lower room, to acquiesce in the rising of others above ourselves, and to love the work which God permits us to do, above any possible reward of doing it. Let us, then, bethink us of the example of John the Baptist, and still more of the example of Him to whom the Baptist so willingly gave place; let us concede no more than the second place in our own thoughts to our personal interest and advantage; let us yield the first place unreservedly to Him.

—Bishop J. E. C. Welldon.

Illustration

‘It has not been my experience that the preaching of ambition as a duty is greatly required among men. I think there is plenty of self-seeking, plenty of the desire to rise above others, and of the effort to get on at the cost of sacrifice of our fellow men. Those who have been engaged in the training of the young are aware how much pains it is the fashion to take, to teach them that they must struggle for success, that they must aim at winning prizes, that they must set before themselves the love of distinction. And yet the only ambition which is praised in the Gospel is, first, the ambition to keep the faith of Jesus Christ; next the ambition to be acceptable in the sight of the divine Lord; and, last and strangest of all, the ambition to be quiet.’