TAKE CARE OF HIM
‘Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.’
The parable of ‘the good Samaritan’ is familiar to us all; what is the deeper and mystic intention of each successive line of this picture?
I. A representative man.—The ‘certain man who fell among thieves’ ‘is every one of us. There is not one who has not proved the Satanic power, and the evil which is in the world, and the evil which is in his heart; who has not been ‘robbed’ of his best possession, and become mortally ‘wounded.’ And we are ‘left’ wounded and suffering in body or soul; perhaps both.
II. Then comes the Good Samaritan—the Lord Jesus Christ. Despised by the world, but exceeding kind, and exactly what we wanted. And of His own free, loving goodness He came to us, quite close, and He was all we required, exactly what met our case—the binding for our wounds, the oil of the Spirit to cleanse, and the wine of the Gospel to cheer us. And He lifted us up, and He really changed places with us; and put us on the high and easy place, and Himself down in the dust. Then he brought us to an appointed spot, a place where we could rest and be cared for; and that resting place is the Church
III. In charge of the Church.—Christ commends and commits these suffering ones to us, the Church, and we are responsible—we His ministers, and you His people—we are responsible for their proper treatment, for their comfort, for their recovery—till Christ comes again. The diseased, whether suffering in body or suffering in soul, are committed to us by the great Friend and Master of us all, and He will come presently to see how we have fulfilled our trust, and deal with us accordingly. This is a solemn view of our position in such a world as this, that, as the Church, we are the caretakers, we are the restorers of the diseased and wounded soul, and diseased and wounded body, or else it might die. And we should look upon all these thus committed to us as those for whom we have a personal account one day to render. What ‘an inn’ might be to a wounded traveller on the road, such should the Church be to sinful souls and diseased bodies!
Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustration
(1) ‘The kindness of a Christian towards others should not be in word and in tongue only, but in deed and in truth. His love should be a practical love—a love which entails on him self-sacrifice and self-denial, both in money, and time, and trouble. His charity should be seen not merely in his talking, but his acting—not merely in his profession, but in his practice. He should think it no misspent time to work as hard in doing good to those who need help, as others work in trying to get money. He should not be ashamed to toil as much to make the misery of this world rather smaller, as those toil who hunt or shoot all day long. He should have a ready ear for every tale of sorrow, and a ready hand to help every one in affliction, so long as he has the power. Such brotherly love the world may not understand. The returns of gratitude which such love meets with may be few and small. But to show such brotherly love is to walk in the steps of Christ, and to reduce to practice the parable of the good Samaritan.’