Wednesday, February 27, 2013

A Wholly Different Kind Of King




















He was no Caesar; you cannot make him appear like one: call him not autocrat, emperor, or czar - he has an authority greater than all these, yet not after their kind. His purple is different from theirs, and his crown also, but his face differs more, and his heart most of all. “My kingdom,” saith he, “is not of this world.” For troops he has a host of sorrows, for pomp a surrounding of scorn, for lofty bearing humility, for adulation mockery, for homage spitting, for glory shame, for a throne a cross. Yet was there never truer king, indeed all kings are but a name, save this King, who is a real ruler in himself and of himself; and not by extraneous force.

Right royal indeed is the Nazarene, but he cannot be likened unto the princes of earth, nor can his kingdom be reckoned with theirs.... Christ’s kingdom shines as a lone star with a brightness all its own. It standeth apart like a hill of light, sacred and sublime: the high hills may leap with envy because of it, but it is not of them nor like unto them. Is not this manifest even in the appearance of our Lord as Pilate brings him forth and cries, “Behold your King!”?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Ecce Rex," delivered May 6, 1877. Image by Matteo Paciotti on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

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