I. The first reference of this passage is to Christ's cause in the world.Thus interpreted, the passage is full of inspiration to each Christian philanthropist. Christ's cause the cause of virtuous happiness here on earth, and of glory to God in the highest this cause, amidst its seeming feebleness, is divinely secure. The same principle pervades the Lord's dealing with each individual soul. The entire eventual holiness of His people i.e.their perfection in knowledge, faith, and goodness is the Saviour's steadfast purpose; and in carrying out that purpose He exerts an unwearying and victorious patience.
II. Those who are seeking salvation should (1) avoid what would quench the smoking flax. There are regions so very cold, the icy realms of everlasting winter, that it is hardly possible to get anything to ignite. And so it is with cold companions. You will find that religion perishes whenever you walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners. (2) When once a brand of wick is fairly lighted, its tendency is to aid its own incandescence and keep up its clearer shining. And so the grace which has already grown most is likely to be most growthful; the piety which has become habitual will be not only permanent but progressive. For a smoking flax there is no specific like heaven's oxygen; for a faint and flickering piety there is no cure comparable to the one without which all our exertions are but an effort to light a lamp in vacuothe breath of the Holy Spirit.
J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 178.
The lesson which this passage teaches is that the Saviour is infinite in kindness.
I. The sinner is obscure, but the Saviour is omniscient.
II. The sinner is a thing of grief and guilt, but the Saviour is gentleness and grace impersonate.
III. The sinner is in himself worthless, but the Saviour is mighty; and out of the most worthless can make a vessel of mercy meet for the Master's use.
J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 164.
The source of Christ's perfect tenderness to sinners is none other than the Divine compassion. It was the love and pity of the Word made flesh. It teaches us, however, some great truths, full of instruction, which we will now consider.
I. It is plain that this gentle reception even of the greatest sinners implies that, where there is so much as a spark of life in the conscience, there is possibility of an entire conversion to God. Where there is room to hope anything, there is room to hope all things. Such is the mysterious nature of the human spirit, of its affections and will, such its energies and intensity, that it may at any time be so renewed by the spirit of the new creation as to expel, with the most perfect rejection, all the powers, qualities, visions, and thoughts of evil.
II. Another great truth implied in our Lord's conduct to sinners is, that the only sure way of fostering the beginning of repentance is to receive them with gentleness and compassion. On those in whom there is the faintest stirring of repentance the love of Christ falls with a soft but penetrating force. To receive sinners coldly, or with an averted eye, an estranged heart, and a hasty, unsparing tongue, will seldom fail to drive them into defiance or self-abandonment. A sinner that is out of hope is lost. Hope is the last thing left. If this be crushed the flax is extinct. Truth told without love is perilous in the measure in which it is true. There is in every sinner a great burden of misery, soreness, and alarm; but even these, instead of driving him to confession, make him shut himself up in a fevered and brooding fear. And it was in this peculiar wretchedness of sin that the gentleness of our Lord gave them courage and hope. It was a strange courage that came upon them; a boldness without trembling, yet an awe without alarm. What little motions of good were in them, what little stirrings of conscience, what faint remainder of better resolutions, what feeble gleams of all but extinguished light, all seemed to revive, and to turn in sympathy towards some source of kindred nature, and to stretch itself out in hope to something long desired, with a dim unconscious love. It is an affinity of the spirit working in penitents with the Spirit of Christ that made them draw to Him. It was not only because of His infinite compassion as God that Christ so dealt with sinners; but because, knowing the nature of man, its strange depths and windings, its weakness and fears, He knew that this was the surest way of winning them to Himself.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 377.
References: Isaiah 42:3. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 19; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 18.