First of all, notice how here, as always to Jesus Christ, the
outward was nothing, except as a symbol and manifestation of the
inward; how the thing that He saw in a man was not the external
accidents of circumstance or position, for His true, clear gaze and
His loving, wise heart went straight to the essence of the matter,
and dealt with the man not according to what he might happen to be
in the categories of earth, but to what he was in the categories of
heaven. All the same to Him whether it was some poor harlot, or a
rabbi; all the same to Him whether it was Pilate on the judgment-seat,
or the penitent thief hanging at His side. These gauds and shows were
nothing; sheer away He cut them all, and went down to the hidden heart
of the man, and He allocated and ranged them according to that.
Christian men and women, do you try to do the same thing, and to get
rid of all these superficial veils and curtains with which we drape
ourselves and attitudinise in the world, and to see men as Christ saw
them, both in regard to your judgment of them, and in regard to your
judgment of yourselves? 'I am a scholar and a wise man; a great thinker;
a rich merchant; a man of rising importance and influence.' Very well;
what does that matter? 'I am ignorant or a pauper'; be it so. Let us
get below all that. The one question worth asking and worth answering
is, 'How am I affected towards Him?' There are many temporary and
local principles of arrangement and order among men; but they will
all vanish some day, and there will be one regulating and arranging
principle, and it is this: 'Do I love God in Jesus Christ, or do I
not?' Oh! for myself, for yourself, and for all our outlook towards
others, let us not forget that the inmost, deepest, hidden man of the
heart is the man, and that all else is naught, and that its whole
character is absolutely determined by its relation to Jesus Christ.