9月22日 传道者的主人

你们称呼我夫子，称呼我主，你们说的不错，我本来是。（约十三13）

有一位主人与被人驱使，是两回事。有一位主人，就是有一位比我更认识我的人；他比朋友更亲密；他深入我内心的深处，叫我满足；他解决我心思里一切的困惑与疑难，叫我安稳。这就是主人的意思，不折不扣－－只有一位是我们的主人，就是基督。

主从不勉强人顺服，也不会设计使我们做他要我做的。有时我宁愿神管制我，迫我做某些事，可是他不会这样；有时我又希望他不要管我，但他也不会这样。“你们称呼我夫子，称呼我主”－－他果真是吗？夫子和主，在我们的字汇中很少出现；我们喜欢用救主、使人成圣者、医治者等字眼。唯一可以描写有一位主人这经历的字眼，就是爱，而我们对神所启示的爱，认识又那么少。这在我们对“顺服”一词的运用上，就可以看出来。在圣经中，顺服是根据平等关系而言，就是儿子与父亲的关系。我们的主并不是神的仆人，他是神的儿子。“他虽然为儿子，还是……学了顺服。”若我们以为是被辖管，这就是我们并未有主人的明证；这种对耶稣的态度，与他所想望的关系相距实在太远。他要我们与他的关系，应该是自然地以他为主人，只知道我们属他、听他的话。

祈祷◆噢，主啊，我怀着灵性上极之枯干和贫乏的感觉，来到你面前；噢，主啊，为着你的名，求你激发我。我不会在你面前悲叹，却会被你的灵所充满。

September 22 The Missionary's Master

“Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.” John 13:13

To have a master and to be mastered is not the same thing. To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less – “One is your Master, even Christ.”

Our Lord never enforces obedience; He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.

“Ye call me Master and Lord” – but is He? Master and Lord have little place in our vocabulary, we prefer the words Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer. The only word to describe mastership in experience is love and we know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we use the word obey. In the Bible obedience is based on the relationship of equals, that of a son with his father. Our Lord was not God's servant, He was His Son. “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience . . .” If our idea is that we are being mastered, it is a proof that we have no master; if that is our attitude to Jesus, we are far away from the relationship He wants. He wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.