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S.D.A. Bible Commentary Vol. 5
12, 13 (
Matthew 20:28
;
Mark 2:17
;
10:45
;
Luke 5:31, 32
).
Relief in Every Case
—Christ was a physician of the body as well
as of the soul. He was minister and missionary and physician. From
His childhood He was interested in every phase of human suffering
that came under His notice. He could truly say, I came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister. In every case of woe He brought
relief, His kind words having a healing balm. None could say He
had worked a miracle, yet He imparted His virtue to those He saw in
suffering and in need. Through the whole thirty years of His private
life He was humble, meek, and lowly. He had a living connection
with God; for the Spirit of God was upon Him, and He gave evidence
to all who were acquainted with Him that He lived to please, honor,
and glorify His Father in the common things of life (
The Review
and Herald, October 24, 1899
).
13 (
Mark 2:17
;
Luke 5:32
). Rejected Pleasantness to Fulfill
Need
—He [Christ] might have gone to the pleasant homes of the
unfallen worlds, to the pure atmosphere where disloyalty and re-
bellion had never intruded; and there He would have been received
with acclamations of praise and love. But it was a fallen world that
needed the Redeemer. “I came not to call the righteous,” said He,
“but sinners to repentance” (
The Review and Herald, February 15,
1898
).
16
. See
EGW comment on Matthew 6:16
.
17 (
Mark 2:22
;
Luke 5:37, 38
). New Bottles for New Wine
—
The work of Jesus was to reveal the character of the Father, and
to unfold the truth which He Himself had spoken through prophets
and apostles; but there was found no place for the truth in those
wise and prudent men. Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, had
to pass by the self-righteous Pharisees, and take his disciples from
unlearned fishers and men of humble rank. These who had never
been to the rabbis, who had never sat in the schools of the prophets,
who had not been members of the Sanhedrin, whose hearts were not
bound about with their own ideas,—these He took and educated for
His own use. He could make them as new bottles for the new wine
of His kingdom. These were the babes to whom the Father could
[1089]
reveal spiritual things; but the priests and rulers, the scribes and
Pharisees, who claimed to be the depositaries of knowledge, could
give no room for the principles of Christianity, afterward taught by