8 'For He hath no form or comeliness'

A BABY OF course is only a baby, and you never know what he will become as he grows up. But as the years began to pass Mary could no longer conceal from herself the bitter and unexpected truth that Jesus did not seem to have anything particular about Him. Certainly He was not handsome; nor had He any athletic prowess to mark Him out from His companions. Most strange of all, there seemed to be no evidence of any supernatural power about Him. The apocryphal Gospels with their stories of a miracle-working playmate show clearly enough what the human mind would expect of God's Son as a Child. Surely the Son of God would be marked out from the very beginning as surpassing all other boys in His country! After all, Samuel was only human and yet at a very early age he became the prophet of Israel upon whose words the whole nation hung: David was the national hero in his 'teens, and his father was only Jesse! Strange, strange! Perhaps it was as well that they had allowed Him to be called Joseph's son. (Even His cousin John had been filled with the Holy Ghost from the Womb). No one would expect very much from a carpenter, even if he were a royal carpenter: and anyhow Joseph descended from Jechonias (called Coniah in Jeremiah 22:24-30), upon whose seed Jehovah had pronounced a curse!

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       Of course it was perfectly true that He gave no trouble in the home; He was astonishingly obedient, and as for love of the Scriptures there had never been His equal. He simply devoured them and was asking continual questions that they could not answer; there wasn't too much time for Bible reading with so many mouths to feed and so much work to be done. Really, there were more important things to do than to delve into Leviticus all day long! Leave that to the Rabbis who were paid to do it.

       There were those visions of course, and the wonderful words that had been uttered: time was when Joseph and Mary were continually talking about them. But you can't keep on talking about things that never seem to happen. All the excitement was over, forgotten by all, and life had to be lived. Well, of course, we won't forget them altogether and we can't help thinking, thinking, when the day's work is over: but we won't talk about them any more. If only Jesus had done something wonderful, or been more striking or—oh well, what's the good! He's what He is, and it can't be altered. Thank God He's a good boy in the house, and doesn't give any trouble ...

       In some such way faith faded into unbelief, and the tragedy of Isaiah 53 took place. The Lord of Glory was unnoticed and unrevealed, for His Father had ordained that He should grow up as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground with no form nor comeliness, nor any beauty to make Him desirable as a national leader. The Son of God passed His early life in this wretched village unobserved and unrecognised; a pleasant enough youth with nice manners and a godly turn to His conversation, but not in any way remarkable, or likely to stir men's hearts for a national crusade. His brothers and sisters accepted Him as one of themselves, the eldest of the family of course and extremely kind, but a bit of a

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religious fanatic, and even a prig—and of course there was the unfortunate fact that He was born out of wedlock. The House of David still wearied God, and missed the verse addressed especially to them (Isaiah 7:13).

       How was it that the Son of God could escape the notice of the sons of men with whom He lived so intimately? There must have been something unusual about Him surely: there was indeed, but it was something that seemed to them to be of little or no value. He was obedient, both to God and man! At a time when the foreign invader held sway over the Promised Land, and his soldiers and tax-gatherers were in every village, who wanted obedience! No, rather give us daring courage, another Gideon or a Jephthah! Obedience—all very well for girls: we need someone who can disobey the Roman Emperor and set God's people free.

       Yet the Almighty had other ideas for His Son, for God's thoughts are higher than men's. To the One whose Creation had been wrecked by lawlessness, whose every endeavour had been frustrated by man's disobedience, whose world was in chaos and whose kingdom in bondage, there was no higher virtue than simple obedience to His Word: and He was prepared to elevate to His Own Throne all who were ready to obey His Word, and renounce their own ambition.

       There had been, and still is an age-long controversy with God about His Law. Since Adam's days men had disobeyed it, and declared that it could not be kept. It was too hard for humans, beyond their power. Even the softened law that proceeded from Moses had proved unwelcome to them. None had ever kept it, nor even could keep it. God was unreasonable to expect it, to give man free will and then expect him to withstand all temptation and yield that will in perfect obedience to another.

       God had to answer this challenge; and He answered it

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in His Son. Jesus should lay down everything which could give Him an advantage over others; should come and live a purely human life with purely human resources; should know every temptation that the world, the flesh or the devil could contrive; should be handicapped by every difficulty of life; should be poor, despised, a failure, the Son of God living the life of a poor village carpenter: and yet should, through it all, obey, and prove that any man who made use of the Grace of God could keep His Law. It cost Him tremendous struggles. The wilderness, the Mount of Transfiguration, Gethsemane all bore witness to that. It could not be done easily—but it could be done.

       By this victory Jesus of Nazareth plunged the whole world into inescapable condemnation. No longer could man say that God had asked the impossible, or find refuge in the Fall of Adam for their own disobedience. The simple truth was out: man sinned because he wanted to, not because he must. The first man who wanted with all His heart to obey—obeyed. There was everything in His circumstance to make Him rebellious: He was denied the privileges which many children had. God's Son had less than man's son, lest He should be accused of favouritism, or told that His Son only obeyed from 'cupboard' love, the taunt that was flung at Job and magnificently rebuked.

       Further than this, the office for which Jesus was destined, that of High Priest, demanded that He should be in all things like those to whom He was to minister, that He might have that true compassion which only comes from a like experience. He and His brethren must have the fellowship of similar temptations, like fears, equal shocks, and parallel adventures. If the Son of God was ever to lead, it could only be because in all the changes and stresses of life He surpassed all His brethren. Theology

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has often with unreasoning piety deprived Jesus of Nazareth of His real glory, and put Him into a sham fight which He fought with advantages which made victory easy. The incredible doctrine of the two natures has succeeded for centuries in mystifying the intellect of believers, and saddening their hearts. How can I, a man, take example from One who was God, with all the tremendous advantage contained in that fact? Of course God could live sinlessly, of course He could work miracles, of course He could not be overcome.

       Take heart O thou whom Christ is not ashamed to call a brother. It is true that it was God who did these things: but it is equally true that it was God emptied, God living a human life for thirty years, God voluntarily bereft of all His advantages for your sake; God praying to God, God needing succour from God and overcoming through the dependence of weakness; God who only knew victory because the Grace of His Father came to the rescue of His own weakness; God who, like Gideon, was strengthened by the appearance of a mere angel, and fortified by a meal provided, like Elijah's, by angels; God who, like Paul, knew that when He was weak then was He strong. Your fight was His fight, your resources His resources, your difficulties His difficulties. Even His flesh He took from David and Adam through Mary's womb; His body grew up with all the normal difficulties of adolescence and manhood. He was indeed at all points tempted as you are—yet, unlike you, never overcome! From the beginning He set His face as a flint to obey God, and He obeyed Him to the end.

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