the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Zechariah 13:7—Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my Fellow.
There is no uncertainty as to the application of these striking words. On the eve of his death our Lord appropriated them to Himself. To his troubled disciples was He not the Shepherd and they the little flock? (Matthew 26:31). How well every word suits his lips!
He was a Shepherd, true, stedfast to his Father’s charge. There is a special emphasis in the pronoun my: since the Father had given over to his care a number of souls who were his, but whom He committed to the Son with the charge that He should lose none, but raise all of them up at the last day.
But He was more than Shepherd. He was Jehovah’s Fellow. From eternity He had dwelt in the bosom of the Father. He counted not equality with God a prize to be grasped at, as though there were any uncertainty about it. It was his native right. To all the deep secrets and purposes of God He was privy in all the plans of creation, providence, and redemption, He had fellowship. My Shepherd, said the Almighty; and my Fellow. But, O my soul, stand still and wonder; He who was all this became also a man! What an astonishing combination: The man that is "my Fellow!" The mediator between God and man was Himself—man.
But listen to the appeal to the sword of Divine justice. It had slept. Even since the sin of Eden it had remained quiet and unavenging. The pledge of the Son to come in the fullness of time met all its demands. But when He came it awoke. He was made sin for us: He bore the penalty of our transgression: He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and slain. And now, O sword of Divine Justice, thou hast returned into thy sheath, never again to awake.
