WHY We Are to Be Always Ready For Trial —REASONS IN REGARD OF CHRIST 2/3

4. When the cross is on—what then? then the Christian must ‘follow Christ.’He is not [to] stand still and fret, but ‘follow;’ not be drawn and hauled after Christ, but [to] follow, as a soldier his captain, voluntarily.  Christ doth not, as some generals, drive the country before him, and make his servants fight whether they will or no; but he invites them in, ‘I will allure her...into the wilderness,’ Hosea 2:14.  Indeed a gracious heart follows Christ into the wilderness of af­fliction as willing as a lover his beloved into some sol­itary private arbour or bower, there to sit and enjoy his presence.  Christ useth arguments in his word, and by his Spirit, so satisfactory to the Christian, that he is very willing to follow him; as the patient, who at first, may be, shrinks and draws back, when the physi­cian talks of cutting or bleeding, but, when he hath heard the reasons given by him why that course must be taken, and is convinced it is the best way for his health, then he very freely puts forth his arm to the knife, and thanks the physician for his pains.

           Reason Second.  Christ deserves this frame of spirit at our hands.  Of many, take but two particulars, wherein this will appear.  1. If we consider his readiness to endure trouble and sorrow for us.  2. [If we consider] his tender care over us, when he calls us into a suffering condition.

1. Christ deserves this readiness to meet any suf­fering he lays out in his providence for us, if we con­sider his readiness to endure sorrow and trouble for us.When God called him to the work of mediator­ship, he found the way laid with sharper stones, I hope, than we do in the road that is appointed us to walk in.  He was to tread upon swords and spikes, all manner of sorrows—and those edged with the wrath of God; this was the sharpest stone of all, which he hath taken out of our way, and yet how light did he go upon the ground!  O had not his feet been well shod with love to our souls, he would soon have turned back, and said the way was unpassable; but he goes on and blinks not; never did we sin more willingly, than he went to suffer for our sin.  ‘Lo, I come,’ saith he to his Father, ‘I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart,’ Ps. 40:7, 8.  O what a full consent did the heart of Christ rebound to his Father’s call, like some echo that answers what is spo­ken twice or thrice over!  Thus, when his Father speaks to him to undertake the work of saving poor lost man, he doth not give a bare assent to the call, but trebles it; ‘I come...I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.’  He was so ready, that before his enemies laid hands on him, in the instituting of the Lord’s supper, and there did sacramentally rend the flesh of his own body, and broach his own heart to fill that cup with his precious blood, which with his own hand he gave them, that they might not look upon his death now at hand as a mere butchery from the hand of man’s violence, but rather as a sacrifice, wherein he did freely offer up himself to God for them and all believers.  And when the time was come that the sad tragedy should be acted, he, knowing the very place whither the traitor with his black guard would come, goes out, and mar­cheth into the very mouth of them.  O what a shame were it, that we should be unwilling to go a mile or two of rugged way to bear so sweet a Saviour company in his sufferings!  ‘Could ye not watch with me one hour?’ said Christ to Peter, Matt. 26:40—not with me, who am now going to meet with death itself, and ready to bid the bitterest pangs of it welcome for your sakes? not with me?
2. Christ deserves this readiness to meet any suf­fering he lays out in his providence for us, if we con­sider his tender care over his saints, when he calls them into a suffering condition.Kind masters may well expect cheerful servants.  The more tender the captain is over his soldiers, the more prodigal they are of their own lives at his command.  And it were strange, if Christ’s care, which deserves more, should meet with less ingenuity in a saint.  Now Christ’s care appears,

           (1.) In proportioning the burden to the back he lays it on.  That which overloads one ship, and would hazard to sink her, is but just ballast for another of a greater burden.  Those sufferings which one Christian cannot bear, another sails trim and even under.  The weaker shoulder is sure to have the lighter carriage.  As Paul burdened some churches, which he knew more able, to spare others; so Christ, to ease the weaker Christian, lays more weight on the stronger. ‘Paul laboured more abundantly than them all,’ he tells us, I Cor. 15:10.  But why did Christ so unequally divide the work?  Observe the place, and shall find that it was but necessary to employ that abundant grace he had given him.  ‘His grace,’ saith he, ‘which was bestowed on me, was not in vain; but I laboured more,’ &c.  There was so much grace poured into him, that some of it would have been in vain, if God had not found him more to do and suffer than the rest.  Christ hath a perfect rate by him of every saint’s spiritual estate, and according to this all are assessed, and so none are oppressed.  The rich in grace can as easily pay his pound, as the poor his penny.  Paul laid down his head on the block for the cause of Christ as freely as some—and those true, but weak Christians —would have done a few pounds out of their purse. He endured death with less trouble than some could have done reproach for Christ.  All have not a martyr’s faith, nor all the martyr’s fire.  This forlorn con­sists of a few files picked out of the whole army of the saints.