After His public life commenced, the sense of being charged with a task which He had to fulfil was one of the master-thoughts of His life. It was written on His very face and bodily gait. He never had the easy, indeterminate air of one who does not know what He means to do in the world. "I have a baptism," He would say, "to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." In a rapt moment, at the well of Sychar, after His interview with the Samaritan woman, when His disciples proffered Him food, He put it away from Him, saying, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of," and He added, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work." On His last journey to Jerusalem, as He went on in front of His disciples, they were amazed and, as they followed, they were afraid. His purpose possessed Him; He was wholly in it, body, soul and spirit. He bestowed on it every scrap of power He possessed, and every moment of His time. Looking back now from the close of life, He has not to regret that any talent has been either abused or left unused. All have been husbanded for the one purpose and all lavished on the work.
What was this work of Christ? In what terms shall we express it? At all events it was a greater work than any other son of man has ever attempted. Men have attempted much, and some of them have given themselves to their chosen enterprises with extraordinary devotion and tenacity. The conqueror has devoted himself to his scheme of subduing the world; the patriot to the liberation of his country; the philosopher to the enlargement of the realm of knowledge; the inventor has rummaged with tireless industry among the secrets of nature; and the discoverer has risked his life in opening up untrodden continents and died with his face to his task. But none ever undertook a task worthy to be compared with that which engrossed the mind of Jesus.
It was a work for God with men, and it was a work for men with God.
The thought that it was a work for God, with which God had charged Him, was often in Christ's mouth, and this consciousness was one of the chief sources of His inspiration. "I must work the work of Him that sent Me while it is day," He would say; or, "Therefore doth my Father love Me, because I do always those things which please Him." And, at the close of His life-work, He said, in words closely related to those of our text, "I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." This was His task, to glorify God on the earth--to make known the Father to the children of men.