“YE KNOW YOUR CALLING, BRETHREN.”
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“But ye are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath
called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”-1 Peter 2:9.
VOCATION” is the term
that describes the special business of any person, while the word “avocation”
describes an occasional business; as, the Apostle Paul’s vocation was that of a
minister of the Truth, while his avocation, or occasional employment when
necessary to provide things honest and decent in the sight of God and men, was
tent-making. Similarly all of the Lord’s people should consider that their
vocation or calling is of God, and relates to the special or spiritual ministry
in which he privileges us to engage as fellow servants of our Lord Jesus
Christ. In order to provide the necessities of life for ourselves and those
dependent on us, it is necessary that we should have some earthly employment
also; but this we should always regard, not as our vocation-not as our chief or
principal business in life-but merely as our avocation, or temporary engagement
incidentally necessary to our chief business. Of course it would not be wise
for the Lord’s people to speak of spiritual things from this standpoint to worldly
people. Our Lord warned us against so doing, saying, “Cast not your pearls
before swine”-attempt not to tell the deep and precious things that belong to
you as spiritual New Creatures in Christ, and which you only can understand and
appreciate through the holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14), to those who have not the
Spirit and who cannot comprehend your teachings and who would be disappointed
in the matter, as swine would be disappointed if you gave them pearls which
they could not appreciate, instead of corn which they could appreciate. In our
own hearts, however, and amongst the “brethren,” this thought should always be
uppermost; namely, that our calling, or business, or vocation is of God,-that
we are called to be members of the Royal Priesthood.
We are viewing our text just now specially from the standpoint of the
Priesthood, or new race, or new nation, different from the remainder of mankind
in that God has invited them to become joint-heirs with his Son in the great
Royal Priesthood which he designs shall ultimately bless all the families of
the earth. The royal feature of the matter belongs to the future; we have no
royalty yet. It is only in prospect; it will be attained after we have
faithfully performed the service which belongs to this present time and have
thus proven ourselves worthy, according to the divine terms, to be members of
the glorified Priesthood through our Lord Jesus’ merit, and under him as our
Head. Meantime it behooves us to learn distinctly what is expected of us as
respects our vocation in the present time; what obligations attach to us as
those who have made the consecration and have been respectively accepted to
this Royal Priesthood and anointed with the holy Spirit in anticipation of our
attainment of the goal.
The Apostle Paul (Heb. 8:3) declares that “Every High Priest is ordained
to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man [the
man Christ Jesus] have somewhat also to offer.” The thought is that the High
Priest serves,-is as an offerer or sacrificer to God. True, the Apostle is
speaking here of our Lord Jesus and not of us, but from his own words elsewhere
we will know that it is expected of all the members of the body that they shall
be joint sharers with their Lord and Master in the sufferings and sacrifices of
this present time, that they may be counted worthy to share with him the
glories of the future. And the same Apostle explains that he (Christ) is our
Head, and that we are, as members of his body, “filling up that which is behind
of the afflictions of Christ,” walking in his footsteps. The lesson, then, to each member of this Royal Priesthood,
is that the special mission of their office, vocation, calling in the present
time, is to sacrifice.
In the light of the Apostle’s explanation we can see that our Lord
Jesus as the Head Priest had something to offer to God, and that he did offer
it in that he offered up himself a sacrifice. (Heb. 7:27.) We can see how his
sacrifice could be acceptable to God, because in him was no sin-he was holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. But how can we, who “by nature are
children of wrath even as others,”-how can we fulfil our mission as priests to
present some offering to God when we have nothing which is our own that would
be acceptable, because all we have and are is by nature tainted with sin and
under divine condemnation? The Scriptures answer that “that which God hath
cleansed,” his people are no longer to consider common or unclean; they tell us
that God has justified us freely from our imperfections through the merit of
Christ’s sacrifice; they tell us that we are acceptable to God “in the
Beloved.”
The Apostle carries this same thought further, and emphasizes it, saying,
“I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God [no longer aliens,
strangers, foreigners, but redeemed and accepted of the Father], that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.” (Rom. 12:1.) Here the entire matter is summed up.
We are not to consider any longer that, after being justified by faith, the
Lord esteems us unholy and unacceptable, but are to understand that the very
object of our present justification by faith was to make us acceptable to the
Father, to make us to be priests, to furnish us opportunities to do the work of
a priest in this present time; namely, to sacrifice-to sacrifice ourselves-to
present our bodies living sacrifices to God through Christ’s merit. What a
wonderful plan! what a wonderful privilege to be permitted to be priests! what
a gracious arrangement! It gives us opportunity of completing the priestly
service of sacrificing now, to the intent that by and by we may enjoy the
privileges of the other part of the priest’s work, connected with the glory and
royalty of the Millennial Kingdom.
If then God ordained the High Priest to offer sacrifices, and that was the
particular feature of his calling while on earth, so likewise it is the
particular feature of the calling of all those who would walk in his steps-ordained
to offer gifts and sacrifices to God. The Apostle Peter calls this same matter
to our attention in a verse preceding our text (v. 5), where he declares the
Church “A holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ.” Ah, but, says one, the Apostles differ respecting what shall be
our sacrifices. The Apostle Paul declares, “Present your body a living
sacrifice,” while the Apostle Peter here declares that we should offer up
spiritual sacrifices, and our bodies are certainly not spiritual bodies. We
reply that the word “spiritual” in this text is not found in the oldest
Greek manuscript, known as the Sinaitic. Apparently some scribe of
about the fourth or fifth century must have concluded that the Apostle had left
his statement of the matter incomplete, and that there would be danger of some
understanding him to mean that the Royal Priesthood should offer bullocks and
goats; and to hinder such a construction of the Apostle’s language, the no
doubt well-meaning copyist added the word “spiritual.”
But in the light of Present Truth we can see that he erred in attempting
to assist the inspiration which guided the Apostle to a proper statement of the
matter. We can see most clearly that our Lord Jesus did not offer a spiritual
sacrifice, but a human sacrifice for sin-that for this reason it was
necessary that he should leave the spiritual condition in which he previously
existed and should take upon him human conditions,-become a man,-that he by the
grace of God might taste death for every man. Adam was not a spirit being when
he sinned, hence God’s sentence was not against a spirit being, but, “Dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Hence it was necessary that the Lord
Jesus should become the man Christ Jesus; that as by a man came
death, so also by man should come the resurrection of the dead. And as
our Lord’s sacrifice was not a spiritual sacrifice but a human one, so it is
also with our sacrifice: we are not to sacrifice our spiritual natures nor our
spiritual interests nor anything else that is spiritual; but we are to
sacrifice our justified human natures, our justified flesh, as the Apostle
urges, “Present your bodies living sacrifices, holy, acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable service.”
The question should now properly arise in the minds of all who realize
themselves as consecrated to the Lord, as members of the Royal Priesthood, to
what extent am I fulfilling my present priestly office, and performing daily as
I may have opportunity my appointed work of sacrifice-laying down my life for
the brethren? Too many, alas! under the false teachings of Babylon, both in
word and in custom, have come to consider that money getting and honor getting
and ease getting and general self-preservation constitute the reasonable
service of the Lord’s people. Sacrificers are looked upon as deluded
fanatics-especially in proportion as the sacrificing is done for the Truth’s
sake in the interest of spiritual things. We are not, however, to be taught of
the world, nor by a cold worldly-wise churchianity; but we are to hearken to
the voice of the good Shepherd, to hear his Word, to learn of him if we would
be prepared by him in the school of Christ for the glorious things promised us
as his joint-heirs in the future. “If we suffer with him we shall also reign
with him,” is the message.
We can see how the Apostle, even though finding it at times necessary to
engage in the business of tentmaking, might be considered as a priest whose
time, energy, talents were all sacrificed to the Lord and given freely in
serving his people-in doing good unto all men as he had opportunity, especially
unto the household of faith: but how can others who have not the opportunity,
not the talents, not the open door for such special service as his-how can
those who must provide for their own household according to the Lord’s Word, be
sacrificing priests, when as a matter of necessity nearly all of their time
must be given to tent making, shoe making, housework, or whatever other
employment providence seems to have opened before them as their avocations?
When it is necessary to spend nearly all of eight to twelve hours per day
continuously in the service of our avocations, how can we consider or serve the
interests of our vocation, the priesthood?
The Lord has very graciously made arrangements adapted to this very
condition. He assures us in his Word that it is not the amount we shall
accomplish in his cause, but the spirit, the desire and the effort which we
manifest that in his esteem would indicate the degree of our self-sacrifice.
He graciously declares that if our hearts be given to him, whatsoever we do may
be done as unto the Lord, and if done as unto him will be accepted by him.
From this standpoint we can see that the work which the Apostle Paul did upon
the tents passed to his credit as a part of his priestly sacrifice, just as
much as the other part of his time which he spent in more congenial methods of
proclaiming the gospel. Similarly, we can see that the shoemaker working at
his bench, or the tinner at his labor, or the butcher in his shop, or the
housekeeper, if at heart fully consecrated to the Lord, would be seeking to do
their work as unto the Lord, and that if careful to use his opportunities for
proclaiming the Truth, for serving the brethren, for doing good unto all men as
opportunity afforded, the improvement of the few opportunities coming to them
and their willingness to sacrifice personal tastes and convenience for the
service of the Truth and for the brethren, would be counted by the Lord as a
full sacrifice, because such a disposition in respect to little things would
imply an equal faithfulness in the presence of larger opportunities. Luke
16:10.
This does not mean that the Lord’s people are to
be content with the usual routine of daily life in the home or in the shop, and
are to say to themselves, “God accepts my labor as thoroughly as though it were
given directly to him in some other more desirable form,” but it does mean that
each person so situated should day by day carefully scan his earthly duties and
obligations to see in what manner he could justly and properly cut off moments,
hours or days from the service of earthly things and earthly interests, that
now might be given to sacrifice for spiritual things and spiritual interests of
himself or others. The consecrated heart, the sacrificing priest, is the one
who will improve the moments as they swiftly fly, using them as far as possible
in the Father’s business. For instance, a workman may not take his
employer’s time to talk religion to his mate, for that would be unjust and
contrary to the divine arrangement; but in the noon hour he may improve
opportunities, and instead of engaging in worldly or foolish conversation or
rude jest, he will seek to use opportunities to tell the good tidings to
others; or if he have no such opportunities, finding no hearing ears, he will
use the time in spiritually uplifting himself by study of the teachings and
principles of the divine Word. In the evening he may not neglect duties of a
social nature toward his wife and children, but will remember that under the
divine arrangement he has some obligation toward them in respect to their
mental and spiritual development as well as for their temporal necessities, and
he will seek to use a part of his time in their service, perhaps sacrificing an
inclination to read some story or light literature, or to indolently while away
the time doing nothing. In addition to thinking of his obligations toward his
family, he will think beyond them of his own spiritual needs and of the Lord’s
family and their necessities, and will endeavor to judge of the mind of the
Lord in respect to how each moment shall be used. He consecrated every hour,
every moment, when he presented himself a living sacrifice to the Lord; and the
opportunities of laying down moments and hours in the interests of his New
Creature and in the interests of spiritual brethren, etc., are coming and going
daily, and the Lord is looking to see to what extent he was a sincere
covenanter, sacrificer. These sacrifices on behalf of neighbors, friends,
wife, children, husband, parents, are accepted of the Lord if done as a result
of consecration to him, and as a result of the believing that these are the
opportunities which his providence has opened for exhibitions of the
self-sacrificing spirit.
The same opportunities, though in a different form, come to the youth who
is under age and subject to his parents, and to the wife surrounded by family
cares and duties. If the consecration be to the Lord,
then every sacrifice of our just rights and interests on behalf of ourselves as
New Creatures, on behalf of husbands or children, father or mother, neighbors
or friends, brethren in Christ, is counted of the Lord as so much done to him;
whereas if the very same services were rendered from any other standpoint-by
any one unjustified, and not consecrated to the Lord, or merely done to the
individuals and not as a sacrifice unto the Lord-these things would not count to
us as priests, as our sacrifices; but when viewed from the standpoint of
consecration to the Lord, and faithfully performed as being our best judgment
of what would be the Lord’s will concerning our use of our time, interests,
talents, etc., they are sacrifices wholly acceptable to God, our reasonable
service.
We are to remember that abstaining from immoralities, from sins, is not
sacrificing. Nothing can be acceptably sacrificed to the Lord that is not of
itself right, just, proper. It may be imperfect, as all that we have and do
are necessarily blemished by reason of our share with the race in its fall; but
unintentional blemishes of proper things are all covered by the merits of our
Redeemer’s sacrifice, as we have just seen. Another
form of sacrifice frequently not discerned by the Royal Priesthood is the
opportunity of renouncing our own ways or plans, our own methods or
preferences, and in the interests of peace accepting instead the plans, the
preferences of others-where it is merely a matter of personal preference, and
where we believe the Lord will be as willing to have the matter one way as
another. We can in the interests of peace sacrifice our preferences to the
wishes of others if we see some good can be gained by such a course; as,
for instance, the preservation of the peace of the home or the opportunity of
winning our opponent to the Truth, or any good cause. Such sacrifices are
pleasing to the Lord, who instructs us through the Apostle that, so far as in
us lies, we should live peaceably with all men; and that we should rather
suffer wrong and take injury from a brother in Christ than take the matter
before the world of unbelievers and thus risk a general odium upon the Lord’s
cause.-Rom. 12:18; 1 Cor. 6:7.
We have known cases, however, where dear brethren in the interests of
peace and harmony yielded their rights-and properly enough where no principle
was involved-but who, nevertheless, held a kind of grudge against those to whom
they had yielded, feeling that somehow or other they had been defrauded of
their rights. This is wrong, and indicates that the sacrifice was not fully
made. If the matter in dispute had been fully sacrificed, as unto the Lord,
there would surely have been no room for feeling that it had been taken from
them. Under such circumstances the Lord’s dear followers would do well to make
haste to cast out of their minds anything akin to resentment and the feeling
that they had been deprived of their just rights, and, instead, to take into
their hearts that they had fully, freely, absolutely given up the matter in the
interests of peace and it was dead, buried forever, with no resentment toward
any one, but, on the contrary, with the feeling of joy and rejoicing that this
matter had been sacrificed to the Lord, to the interests of the home or the
Church or what not, because they believed that it would be pleasing, acceptable
to him, and, therefore, their reasonable service.
We are to remember that we have each but one
sacrifice; that it is to be rendered to the Lord day by day in the improvement
of every opportunity, as it comes to us, to serve him and his. We are to
remember that while it consists of many little sacrifices, some of them too
small to mention or even to consider, nevertheless it will require all of these
to complete the one sacrifice which we made at the beginning of our induction
into his family. When we gave our wills, our hearts, we gave our all; and any
holding back in any of the little affairs of life-any refusal to sacrifice that
which we think would please the Lord-is a keeping back of that much of what we
have devoted to him.
The Lord is very patient toward us, and gives us repeated
opportunities to accomplish the work of sacrifice; but it must be accomplished,
our wills must be slain, must be submitted to the Lord’s will, else we shall
never attain to joint-heirship with him in the Kingdom-never become members of
the overcoming Royal Priesthood. He graciously gives us line upon line, lesson
upon lesson, respecting this subject; shows it to us in his Word from different
standpoints, impressing upon us the necessity of being dead to self and alive
toward God through Jesus Christ our Lord-the necessity of developing the
various graces of the Spirit which are implied in this sacrificing work. Every one who will be a sacrificer must of necessity be
meek, humble, teachable, else very shortly he will get out of the way. He must
also learn to develop the grace of the Lord along the line of patience, because
it certainly requires patience to deny ourselves and to submit at times to
injustice where there is no proper means of avoiding it without doing injury to
the Lord’s cause or to some of his people. It also implies a cultivation of
brotherly kindness and, in a word, the development of the whole will of God in
our hearts and lives; namely, love, which must be attained in a large and
overcoming measure ere we shall have completed our earthly work of sacrificing.
In our studies of the “Tabernacle Shadows of Better Sacrifices,” we
saw that every one who took part in the priesthood was required to wash his
hands and feet at the laver. We saw that the laver represented the Word, or
message of God, and that the water, therefore, represented the Truth; and thus
it is the Truth which is to cleanse the Royal Priesthood from the defilements
of the flesh. As a whole we are clean, being covered with the robe of Christ’s
righteousness; but in our contact with the world we are to seek to put away the
defilements of earth which come to us in connection with our daily walk and
service, represented by our feet and our hands. And the Apostle, in the verse
preceding our text, is not forgetful to mention this cleansing which all must
have in order to be acceptable as members of the Royal Priesthood. In the verses
1 to 3, inclusive, he mentions that those who would be Royal Priests must lay
aside “all malice and all guile and hypocrisies, and envies and all evil
speakings.” As the sacrificing requires all of the present life, so the
washing requires all the present life; and only those who both wash and
sacrifice will be accepted into the glorious Royal Priesthood of the future.
It will be noticed that the Apostle does not represent that these priests
will wash themselves from murders and gross sins, for those who have been
begotten of the holy Spirit are necessarily far removed from any sympathy with
any of the grosser forms of sin. What he does show is the more refined forms
of evil which still infest the flesh, even of those who have the new mind, and
which require to be mortified, rooted out, cleansed away. How “close girdling”
are these sins that are mentioned-how many of the
prospective members of the Royal Priesthood find that they have defilements
along this line, malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking! It is safe to
say that every one has some, if not all of these weaknesses in the flesh to
contend with-especially at the beginning of his entrance upon the priestly
vocation. How carefully all should seek to put all these away! how each should
scrutinize, not only every act of life and every word and every thought, but,
additionally, every motive underlying his words, thoughts and actions, so that
they may be more and more purified from the earth defilements and be more and
more acceptable to the Lord!
With our very best endeavors we may never get entirely free from
all of these “close girdling” sins while still in the flesh; but one thing is
sure-the heart must be free from them, else we can never be accepted as members
of the glorious priesthood. The heart must be so completely filled with the
love of God that it will feel a repugnance to all of these evils, which are
repulsive to the divine mind; and happy for us it is that God has promised to
accept such a condition of our hearts, and that knowing the imperfections of
the flesh with which we contend, he is not requiring that we shall attain to
absolute flesh perfection, but that we shall be pure in heart in order to see
him and to share in the glory which he has promised to his people.
What we have seen respecting the perfect love which must dominate our
hearts in order to enable us to complete our sacrifice in the Lord, is not so
different from the Lord’s requirements respecting all his creatures. There
could be no angel of heaven acceptable to the Father without this spirit of
love, of devotion, which, if the conditions in heaven were similar to the
conditions now in the earth, would prompt and inspire all of the Lord’s
faithful angels to do good to the needy ones even at the cost of self-sacrifice
and inconvenience. We can see that the same law of love must ultimately be
required of the world of mankind who shall be developed under the training of
the Millennial age, the world’s school time. They also must ultimately reach
that degree of love which, if the conditions were similar to those which now
prevail, would lead them to sacrifice in the interest of the needy. Nothing
less than this could be considered as a recovery on man’s part of that which
was lost-the image and likeness of God.
The peculiarity, then, of this present time and of the Church’s position
in it, is the fact that we are begotten to the new mind, the new will, the new
spirit and law of love, while still sin and death prevail around us. Hence to
us living under present conditions, in contact with the weaknesses and
imperfections and trials of others, it becomes, necessarily, an evidence of the
new mind that, seeing these conditions, we should be permitted to make
sacrifices on behalf of the brethren and on behalf of all men as we have
opportunity. These indeed are severe testings and trials, which will come to
the world of mankind during the Millennial Age, when all conditions will be
favorable to the development of the new mind of love. They are more severe testings
also than are brought to bear upon the holy angels, who, although possessing
this love, have not the weaknesses and imperfections of the flesh, the fallen
nature, to contend with in its exercise, and who, therefore, can gain no such
victory as the Church of Christ is called upon to fight for and by the grace of
her Lord to win.
It is on this account that the Lord has attached to this “little flock,”
now being selected under these self-sacrificing conditions, so great a reward;
as it is written,-“Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into
the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
(1 Cor. 2:9.) Even though God hath revealed these things to us by his Spirit,
which searcheth all things, even the deep things of God, nevertheless it is not
possible for us to comprehend, know fully. As the Apostle says, we now see
these glorious things of the future through a smoked glass, obscurely; but by
and by we shall see face to face and know as we are known, and appreciate fully
the wonderful things which God has declared to us through his Son and his
faithful apostles. Then the royal feature of this priestly office will be
added, and they shall be indeed priests, royal, sons of the Highest, and shine
forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.
This royalty, while it will have great dignity, majesty and power, is not
attracting us by any illustrations we have in earthly royalty, with its pride
and often selfishness and pomp and show. It is attracting us, however, by the
glorious things which God hath spoken respecting the work of these Royal
Priests-the work of ruling, blessing and uplifting the world of mankind. This
glorious hope inspires, encourages and revives the fainting priests who are now
sacrificing, and the Lord has so intended. In view of these things let us
remember our calling, brethren, and not mistake the avocations of life for the
great vocation which God hath set before us in the Gospel. Let us see to it
that every day shall witness our faithfulness to our priestly ordination of
cleansing, priestly sacrificing, and thus preparing ourselves under the
direction of the great High-priest for the glorious work that the heavenly
Father has arranged for us in his wonderful plan.