358
The Acts of the Apostles
pointing to trial and suffering, yet answered confidently, “We are able.”
They would count it highest honor to prove their loyalty by sharing all
that was to befall their Lord.
“Ye shall drink indeed of My cup, and be baptized with the baptism
that I am baptized with,” Christ declared—before Him a cross instead
of a throne, two malefactors His companions at His right hand and
at His left. James and John were to be sharers with their Master in
suffering—the one, destined to swift-coming death by the sword; the
other, longest of all the disciples to follow his Master in labor and
reproach and persecution. “But to sit on My right hand, and on My
left,” He continued, “is not Mine to give, but it shall be given to them
for whom it is prepared of My Father.”
Matthew 20:21-23
.
Jesus understood the motive that prompted the request and thus
reproved the pride and ambition of the two disciples: “The princes
of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great
exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but
whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and
whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as
[543]
the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give His life a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:25-28
.
In the kingdom of God, position is not gained through favoritism.
It is not earned, nor is it received through an arbitrary bestowal. It is
the result of character. The crown and the throne are the tokens of a
condition attained—tokens of self-conquest through the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Long afterward, when John had been brought into sympathy with
Christ through the fellowship of His sufferings, the Lord Jesus revealed
to him what is the condition of nearness to His kingdom. “To him that
overcometh,” Christ said, “will I grant to sit with Me in My throne,
even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His
throne.”
Revelation 3:21
. The one who stands nearest to Christ will be
he who has drunk most deeply of His spirit of self-sacrificing love,—
love that “vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, ... seeketh not her own,
is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil” (
1 Corinthians 13:4, 5
),—love
that moves the disciple, as it moved our Lord, to give all, to live and
labor and sacrifice even unto death, for the saving of humanity.
At another time during their early evangelistic labors, James and
John met one who, while not an acknowledged follower of Christ,