Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me
Shame of Christ, and its consequences
I. A COURSE OF CONDUCT SPECIFIED. “Ashamed “ of Christ--
1. In a sceptical rejection of Him as the true Messiah. Jews.
Infidels.
2. In an unbelieving disregard to His demands and authority.
3. In a compromising spirit of conformity to the world.
4. In a neglect of His ordinances, and in avoiding a public profession of Him before men.
5. In an unwillingness to consecrate all we are and have to His service.
II. THE INEVITABLE RESULTS DECLARED. “Of Him shall the Son of man be ashamed,” &c. The result shall be--
1. That such shall receive a similar return.
2. Christ shall be ashamed of them.
3. He will be ashamed of them in the day of His glory.
4. He will be ashamed of them when the dispensation of grace will have ceased for ever. (J. Burns, D. D.)
False shame
I. WHAT THERE IS IN CHRIST AND HIS WORDS OF WHICH MEN ARE ASHAMED.
1. Their reason is perplexed by the mystery of His person. Indeed, it may be said that Christ was a mystery in His day both to His disciples and to His enemies. If He had not been a mystery, He would not have been a Saviour. No man who is merely on the level of man both in his intellectual and moral nature can be the Saviour of man. It was because the men of His age did not see this truth that they so stumbled at His words. And men may be offended at Him, and ashamed of Him, still, because of the mystery which attaches to His person. They cannot comprehend it. It combines in one the earthly and the heavenly, the finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine; and reason cannot compass and explain a union of such contrasted properties and attributes. It cannot understand even man himself. Still less can it understand God. And yet it would fain understand the God manifest in the flesh.
2. But this is not all. Some men are ashamed because their pride is humbled by the nature of His work. For what is that work? It is a work which assumes, at the very beginning, the helplessness of man. Christ would never have been known by man as a Saviour but for this helplessness. He did not come to vilify our nature, and make it seem worse than it really is. But He did come to convince the world of sin; and this could not be done without humbling the pride of man.
II. But let us now consider IN WHAT MANNER MEN MAY SHOW THAT THEY ARE ASHAMED OF CHRIST. There are several ways. The shame of some is seen in their shrinking from the profession of His name. Everywhere you see men shrinking from responsibility, fearing responsibility, declining responsibility. They like to be unattached. They want to feel free. Do not be ensnared in the too common mistake that it is only the becoming a Christian that creates the obligation to live a holy life. That is a duty whether you are or profess to be a Christian or not. Then as to the other aspect of shame, namely, that of shrinking from the responsibility of giving yourself openly to the Church of Christ; you may shrink from it, but the duty remains. We can show our shame of Christ by silence and by compliance. We can show it by silence; by the cowardice with which we hear religion ridiculed, and not rebuke the mocker; by the cowardice which will hear the oath, or the impure and immoral sentiment, and not remind the swearer or the unclean person that neither profanity nor uncleanness will ever enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. There is too much silence among Christian men when the honour of Christ is at stake. And this is all the sadder when you see how courageous men will be in defence of their friends. But men may show their shame of Christ by compliance, as well as by silence. By compliance I mean doing as the world does, not because it is right, but because the world does it. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
The monstrous shame
1. In the first place, there are people ashamed of Christ’s name. They recoil at the idea of being called Christians. If you should call them worldlings, they would stand that. If you should call them half a dozen other names, they would stand that. But the idea of their being Christians! They are embarrassed. They say: “You are mistaken. Have! ever given any signs of being pious? Did you ever see me weak? Did you ever see me pray? No, sir! I want you to understand that I am not a Christian.” Ashamed of the sweetest name that ever thrilled the lips of men, or woke up the harps of heaven! Ashamed of that name which now costs so little to avow! Ashamed of that name which was the last word on the dying lip of your father, and in the song with which your mother sang you to sleep in those times before the evil days came, when you forgot her counsel and broke her dear old heart!
2. Again: I find that there are people ashamed of Christ in the person of His friends. “John, who was that you were seen going through the street with yesterday?” He, a worldly young man, flushes up and says; “I wasn’t with that Christian man, I just happened to meet him. I wasn’t walking with him.” Ashamed of being associated with those who are living for eternity, but not ashamed of being with those who live for time!
3. Still, further, there are people ashamed of Christ in His book. If you found them reading a novel, or a poem, or an essay, or any worldly book, they would not be embarrassed; but if you come suddenly upon them and find them reading the Bible, how flustered they would be I how excited I how they would try to have you think they were not reading at all. My text intimates that the tide is going to turn after awhile. The same feeling which some men now have toward God, God will have toward them. “Whosoever is ashamed of Me and of My Word, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in His own glory, and of the Father, and of the holy angels.” He comes! He will cry through all the earth and the sea: “ Gather together those people who are ashamed of Me. Fetch up their bodies from the graves. Fetch up their souls from the dungeons. Gather them together.” And, as He looks at the long array of blanched faces, He will be ashamed of them. He will remember their cowardice. He will say: “These are the people who were ashamed of Me. These are the people who, by their comrades and friends, were kept away from heaven, and these are the people who lost their souls. I am ashamed of them, of their sin and cowardice. They cannot sit with My people. They cannot share My royalty. Out with them! Executioners, bind them hand and foot, and cast them into outer darkness. They despised Me. Now, I despise them. Away with them for ever!” (Dr. Talmage.)
On dishonouring Christ
I. THE CONDUCT WHICH IS HERE CONDEMNED.
1. An evasion or rejection of those truths which are peculiar to the gospel, because they are hostile to carnal reason.
2. The refusal to make those sacrifices which an attachment to the gospel of Christ must induce, on account of their apparent harshness and severity.
3. An abandonment of the public profession of religion, because of the hatred or hostility which it would excite.
II. THE CONSEQUENCES WHICH THIS CONDUCT INVOLVES. Those who have treated the Saviour with evil, shall, at His glorious coming, receive evil in return. As they have rendered to Him, it shall be rendered to them again.
1. As to the grounds on which this doom proceeds, they are such as will fully justify the sentence given.
(1) It is an opposition to the essential principles on which the Divine Governor proceeds in the management of His intelligent creatures. A rejection of the rewards of eternity for those of time.
(2) It is base ingratitude against the arrangements of infinite love. It is taking the sceptre of God’s benevolence and dashing it in pieces against His justice.
2. The results which the view of condemnation thus stated should produce.
(1) Engage at once in the service of Christ.
(2) Be not ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. (J. Parsons.)
Am I ashamed of Christ?
I. WHAT IT IS TO BE ASHAMED OF CHRIST AND OR HIS WORDS; AND WHAT IS REQUISITE. TO EVIDENCE THAT WE ARE NOT IN SUCH A CASE. Every one who is unwilling to sacrifice his temporal ease and pleasures, or to lay down his life for the sake of Christ, and who neglects to persevere in a steady and uniform course of obedience to His commands, in spite of all opposition and of every indignity that may be cast upon him, is considered--Jesus being His own interpreter--as ashamed of Christ. But somemeek and lowly person, with much humility of mind, and great fear and trembling, may perhaps anxiously and eagerly inquire--not being without hope that he is ready to own his Lord--How must I act in order to prove the sincerity of my desires, and to evidence that such is the language and feeling of my heart? To this it is replied, It is undoubtedly requisite that there should be--
1. A confession of the Lord Jesus.
2. A readiness to defend the Saviour’s cause.
II. WHENCE DANGER ARISES OF BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST,
1. The simplicity of the gospel itself. Against this point the men of the world have frequently directed the weapons of their wit and jesting. Thus of old, by the polite and learned Greeks, the doctrines of the gospel were considered as foolishness. And in modern times, the wise of this world affect to sneer at the doctrines of the Cross, and mock at those who espouse truths so humiliating.
2. The character of the age in which the profession of Christ is to be maintained. In the days of our Lord it laboured under this peculiar disadvantage--it was to be professed in an adulterous and sinful generation. Awful as this language may appear, yet it conveys but too striking and faithful a picture of the manners and character of the present age.
3. The sense of fear, under apprehended danger. The cry, as directed against Jesus, that oft falls upon the ear, is, “Away with this fellow from the earth”; and the question that follows upon it is, “Art not thou one of this man’s disciples?” Immediately we begin to fear, and perhaps reply, “We know not the man.” Alas! this shameful fear too often gains the victory, and leads the disciples of Christ to base desertion in the hour of danger.
III. WHAT WILL BE THE FINAL AND AWFUL CONSEQUENCES OF YIELDING TO THE THREATENING DANGER. “Of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.” It is justly remarked that the day is coming when the cause of Christ will appear as bright and illustrious as it now seems mean and contemptible; for, as Christ had, so His cause shall have a state of humiliation and exaltation. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The folly and guilt of being ashamed of Christ
I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST.
1. The sentiment of shame. Fear of the world’s laughter and companions’ sneers.
2. The principal causes.
(1) The pain of singularity.
(2) The power of ridicule.
(3) The want of sincerity.
3. The consideration of the effects, as well as the causes of this principle, will assist in explaining its nature. One of the most certain consequences of being ashamed of duty, is to lead to boldness and audacity in vice. Shame is, perhaps, the evidence of a middle character, neither virtuous nor abandoned. It is always accompanied with some remaining reverence for God. But, judging from the licentious face of the world, that other sinners are not subject to the same constraints, it blushes for this sentiment as for a weakness. Endeavouring to cover its belief, or its fears, it assumes a greater show of infidelity and license than perhaps is real. It soon affects to talk in the style of the world, to divert itself with serious persons, and at length with serious things. But conscious insincerity urges them to extremes to cover its own deceptions. And men being prone to form their opinions, no less than to derive their feelings from sympathy, these mutual appearances contribute to create at length, that vice and infidelity to which all, in the beginning, only pretend. It is, besides, a principle of human nature, that pretence itself will ultimately form those dispositions and habits which it continues to affect.
II. THE FOLLY AND GUILT OF BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST.
1. Its folly.
(1) In being ashamed of our true glory.
(2) In hoping to avoid, by renouncing religion, an evil which cannot be shunned among men, I mean detraction and ridicule.
(3) In fearing an imaginary evil, that is, reproach for real virtue and piety.
(4) And finally, in exposing ourselves to infinite danger, for the sake of covering a fruitless deception.
2. Its guilt.
(1) In exalting the authority of man above the glory of God.
(2) In ingratitude to Him who was not ashamed of us.
(3) In promoting vice by the pernicious influence of our example. (S. S. Smith, D. D.)
Confessing Christ
St. Augustine relates, in his “Confessions,” that one Victorinus, a great man at Rome, who had many rich heathen friends and relations, was converted to the Christian religion. He repaired to a friend of his, also a convert, and told him secretly that he too was a Christian. “I will not believe thee to be a Christian,” said the other, “until I see thee openly profess it in the church.” “What,” said Victorinus, “do the church walls make a Christian?” But directly the answer came to his own heart--“Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, of him, also, shall the Son of man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.” He was ready to bear the scorn and persecution of his heathen friends, that he might honour his Master in a public confession of His name. It cost something to acknowledge Christ in those early days of His church. When Symphorianus, a young Roman, acknowledged himself a believer in Jesus, he was seized and scourged nearly to death, and then dragged away to a place of execution. His heroic Christian mother walked by his side, not shrieking and bewailing his terrible fate, as her mother’s heart prompted, but encouraging and cheering him with such words as these--“Son, my son, remember life eternal! Look up to heaven! Lift up thine eye to Him that reigneth there! Life is not taken from thee, but exchanged for a better.” At these words, the young man’s heart was wondrously cheered, as if God had sent an angel to strengthen him. He went to the block with a face all glowing with holy joy. What power but that of a “living God” could sustain a mother and son in such an hour? What a glorious exchange was such a belief for the dead system of heathen worship in which they had been born! (Biblical Treasury.)
Necessity of confessing Christ before men
Lieutenant Watson, once a gay young aristocrat, was awakened and converted by means of a few earnest words spoken by a brother officer (Captain Hawtry), when he was actually preparing for a ball. Growing rapidly in grace, and confessing Christ from the first and constantly, he was soon led, while serving in the Peninsula, under Wellington, to hold meetings in his own quarters for the soldiers, who were spiritually in a very destitute condition. Many of these were converted, but the officers generally mocked, calling Lieut. Watson “Coachie,” saying he drove the mail.coach to heaven, and cry Lug after him, “Any room for passengers inside or outside to-night?” One officer, however, Lieut. Whitley, a man of refined and scientific mind, behaved differently, and although he reasoned with Watson, he always behaved as a gentleman. The result of quiet conversations was that he became seriously interested in the gospel. “One day,” says Mr. Watson, “on his repeating the question, ‘How am I to get the Spirit?’ I replied, ‘The Lord said, “Ask and ye shall receive.”’ He said, ‘I hope I have asked, though feebly.’ I remarked, ‘Jesus said again, “If a man will be My disciple, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”’ ‘What did He mean by that?’ he said. I told him, ‘You can now have a practical proof. You know we have a public meeting, will you take up your cross and come tonight?’ ‘Anything but that,’ he said. ‘But you must remember the words of Jesus,’ I told him: ‘“Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My doctrine in this sinful generation, of him will I be ashamed when I come in My glory.” ‘Oh,’ he exclaimed, ‘I will go.’ And he went under great exercise of mind.” Of course, the going was greatly blessed to him, and soon after “ the Lord filled him with joy and peace in believing. He now became most valiant for the truth, and ceased not, wherever he was, to speak of Jesus.”
Tom Baird, the carter
Dr. Norman Macleod says: “Tom Baird, the carter, the beadle of my working man’s church, was as noble a fellow as ever lived--God-fearing, true, unselfish. I shall never forget what he said when I asked him to stand at the door of the working man’s congregation, and when I thought he was unwilling to do so in his working clothes. ‘If,’ said I, ‘you don’t like to do it, if you are ashamed’ ‘Ashamed!’ he exclaimed, as he turned round upon me. ‘I’m mair ashamed o’ yoursel’, sir. Div ye think that I believe, as ye ken I do, that Jesus Christ, who died for me, was stripped o’ his raiment on the cross, and that I--Na, na, I’m proud to stand at the door.’ Dear, good fellow I There he stood for seven winters, without a sixpence of pay; all from love, though at my request the working congregation gave him a silver watch. When he was dying from small-pox, the same unselfish nature appeared. When asked if they should let me know, he replied, ‘There’s nae man leevin’ I like as I do him. I know he would come. But he shouldna’ come on account of his wife and bairns, and so ye munna tell him!’ I never saw him in his illness, never hearing of his danger till it was too late.”
Christ’s threefold glory
Not without a purpose, we may reasonably believe, did our Lord take this opportunity of asserting the threefold glory in which He should appear as the anointed Judge of human kind. It becomes us to pause for a few moments, that we may, if possible, distinguish the separate rays of His final manifestation, and then turn them, in their united effulgence, on the cowardly who have been ashamed of their Redeemer. Christ shall come, this is the first assertion, “in His own glory”; and this is especially His glory as Mediator, that glory which accrued to Him as the recompense of His sufferings, when He was “exalted on the right hand of God”; when He “received a name which is above every name,” and was appointed to administer the affairs of this creation, as “head over all things to His Church.” Though the mediatorial kingdom be subordinate to the Divine, and though there is yet to come a day, when all rule, and all authority, and all power having been put down, this kingdom shall be delivered up to the Father--very glorious is it through its appointed duration. There is a glory in it which should especially commend itself to creatures like ourselves; not the glory of the fact, that on a throne of ineffable majesty sitteth one, who, though “found in fashion as a man,” guides every spring and regulates every movement throughout a crowded universe--but the glory of another fact, that this Man won to Himself this unlimited sovereignty, through humbling Himself for our sakes to the death upon the cross; that He exercises it upon our behalf, that He may shield us from the second death which is due to our sins. Christ “shall come in His own glory,” forasmuch as it will be in virtue of His office as Mediator, that He shall ascend the great white throne. And wondrously resplendent may we believe that glory shall be, forasmuch as it is to be proportioned to the depth of His humiliation, and to the intenseness of His agony in the garden and on the cross. But nevertheless, this is only the glory which appertains to Him as man; and stupendously brilliant as a creature may be when God puts upon him as much honour as a finite nature can admit, we still imagine something immeasurably more dazzling when we think of the glory of a being who is uncreated and infinite. Oh! Christ shall not come in His own glory alone--the glory appertaining to Him as Mediator and as man; He shall come also in “the glory of His Father”--the glory of essential Deity, which appertains to Himself as well as to the Father, seeing that He and the Father are one. I know not--tongue cannot express, thought cannot reach--what this glory shall be. It is utterly beyond us even to imagine amanifestation of Divine glory, as distinct from that glory which has been put upon the Son in His creative capacity; but we are distinctly taught the fact, and we know, therefore, that when “the sign of the Son of man” shall be seen in the heavens, and every eye of the earth’s mighty population shall be fastened on the descending Judge, there shall be more discernible than a mere human form, however “clothed with light as with a garment.” It shall be made evident, through some, at present, incomprehensible means, that there is actual Divinity, as well as actual humanity, in the person of Christ; and they who have here striven to prove Him nothing more than a creature, degrading Him to a man, and denying Him to be God, shall read at once their falsehood and their condemnation in that “glory of the Father” which shall be super added to His own glory as Mediator. Neither is this all. There is yet a third glory in which Jesus Christ shall appear--“the glory of the holy angels.” What does this mean? Is it only that the Mediator shall be attended with ten thousand times ten thousand ministering spirits? that the firmament shall be lined with the heavenly host, who shall swell His triumphs, and assist at His coronation as universal Lord? More than this is probably intended, seeing that Christ is to be actually invested with the glory of the holy angels; and this He could hardly be if merely accompanied by their processions. But you are to remember that “all things were made by Christ, and that without Him was not anything made that was made”; and the angels are the loftiest beings in creation, and may justly be taken as its representatives. So that, to come in “the glory of the holy angels” may be to come in the glory of the Creator; there may be some immediate and incontrovertible demonstration of the fact that Christ reared the universe, and replenished with animation the infinite void. Or, again, let it be remembered, that “holy angels “ owe it to Christ that they were confirmed in their allegiance, and are still preserved from apostasy. Then are holy angels a crown upon the brow of the Redeemer, just as the saints who have been ransomed by His blood. Or, once more, the law was given by the ministration of angels. To come, therefore, in the “ glory of the holy angels,” may be to come in the glory of the legal administration; Christ’s “ own glory” being the glory of the gospel, and His Father’s the glory of creation. So that to come in the triple glory is to come to judge men according to those several degrees of light under which they lived--that of nature, that of the law, and, the most glorious, that of the gospel. But, whichever be the more correct interpretation, enough is revealed to set in overwhelming contrast the base presence before which men are ashamed of Christ, and the inconceivable magnificence before which Christ shall be ashamed of men. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Witnessing for Christ
There are three main failures, so to call them, for which Christians will be condemned at the day of account.
I. DISOBEDIENCE--CONSCIOUS AND WILFUL TO THE GOSPEL LAW.
II. FALSE AND MERELY OUTWARD PROFESSION.
III. THE FAILURE TO PROFESS THE TRUTH OF WHICH THEY ARE SECRETLY CONVINCED. (Cannon Liddon.)
Ashamed for being ashamed of Christ
A soldier in hospital three times picked up the hymn, “Will you go?” which was scattered as a tract, and twice threw it down again. The last time he read it, he thought of it, and, taking his pencil, wrote deliberately on the margin these words: “By the grace of God, I will try to go. John Waugh, Company G, Tenth Regiment, P.R.V.C.” That night he went to a prayer-meeting, read his resolution, requested prayers for his salvation, and said: “I am not ashamed of Christ now; but I am ashamed of myself for having been so long ashamed of Him.” He was killed a few months after. How timely was his resolution!
Not ashamed of Christ
I remember hearing of a young convert who got up to say something for Christ in the open air. Not being accustomed to speak, he stammered a good deal at first, when an infidel came right along and shouted out, “Young man, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, standing and talking like that.” “Well,” the young man replied, “I’m ashamed of myself, but I’m not ashamed of Christ.” That was a good answer. (D. L. Moody.)