Let us, you and I, go through our experiences graciously, not grudgingly, not balking, cheerily, aye, with a bit of joy in the voice and a gleam of light in the eye.  And remember, and not forget, that alongside is One who knows the experience that just now is ours, and, knowing, sympathizes.

There were with Jesus the commoner experiences and the great outstanding ones:  the mountain range with the foot-hills below and the towering peaks above.  From His earliest consciousness until the cross was reached, Jesus ran the whole gamut of human experiences common to us all, with some greater ones, which are the same as come to all men, but with Him intensified clear beyond our measurements.

These greater experiences were tragic until the great tragedy was past.  Each has in it the shadow of the greatest.  The Jordan waters meant turning from a kingdom down another path to a cross.  The Wilderness fight pointed clearly to successive struggles, and the greatest.  The Transfiguration mount meant turning from the greatest glory of His divinity which any earthly eye had seen to the little hill of death, which was to loom above the mount.  Gethsemane is Calvary in anticipation.  Calvary was the tragedy when love yielded to hate and, yielding, conquered.  There love held hate’s climax, death, by the throat, extracted the sting, drew the fang tooth, and drained the poison sac underneath.  Love’s surgery.

And the tinge of the tragedy remains in the Resurrection and Ascension in lingering scars.  They are still in that face.  It is a scale ascending from the first.  In each is seen the one thing from a different angle.  The cross in advance is in each experience, growing in intensity till itself is reached, and casting its shadow as it is left behind.

Our Brother.

Through the crowds at the Jordan River, there quietly walked one morning a Man who came up to where John stood.  He took a place in the line of those waiting to be baptized, so indicating His own intention.  John is absorbed in his work, but as he faces this Man, next in order, he is startled.  This is no ordinary man.  That face!  Its wondrous purity!  That intangible something revealing the man!  That spirit looking through those eyes into his own!  In that presence he feels his own impurity.  It is the instant unpremeditated recognition by this fine-grained Spirit-taught John of his Master, his Chief.  The remonstrance that instinctively springs to his lips is held in check by the obedience he at once feels is due this One.  Whatever He commands is right, however unexpected it may be, or however strange it may seem.

Why did Jesus go to John for baptism?  The rite was a purifying one.  It meant confession of sin, need of cleansing, a desire for cleansing, a purpose to turn from wrong and sin and lead a new life.  How could Jesus accept such a rite for Himself?  Why did He?  Read in the light of the whole story of Jesus the answer seems simple.  Jesus was stepping down into the ranks of man as His Brother.  The kingdom He was to establish among men was to be set up and ruled over by man’s Brother.  The salvation was to be by One, close up, alongside.  The King will brush elbows with His subjects, for they are brothers too.  No long-range work for Jesus, but personal touch.