The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. I
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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. I
Author: Marcus Dods
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
Release date: July 13, 2010 [eBook #33151]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
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Credits: Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN, VOL. I ***
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THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of "The Expositor."_
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
BY
MARCUS DODS, D.D.
NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON,
51 EAST TENTH STREET
(NEAR BROADWAY).
1891.
THE
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
BY
MARCUS DODS, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY, NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
_VOL. I._
NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON,
51 EAST TENTH STREET
(NEAR BROADWAY).
1891.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix
CHAPTER I.
THE INCARNATION 3
CHAPTER II.
RECEPTION CHRIST MET WITH 21
CHAPTER III.
THE BAPTIST'S TESTIMONY 35
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST DISCIPLES 55
CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST SIGN--THE MARRIAGE IN CANA 69
CHAPTER VI.
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 87
CHAPTER VII.
NICODEMUS 101
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRAZEN SERPENT 119
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA 131
CHAPTER X.
JESUS DECLARES HIMSELF 147
CHAPTER XI.
THE SECOND SIGN IN GALILEE 161
CHAPTER XII.
SABBATH CURE AT BETHESDA 177
CHAPTER XIII.
JESUS LIFE-GIVER AND JUDGE 193
CHAPTER XIV.
JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE 209
CHAPTER XV.
THE CRISIS IN GALILEE 225
CHAPTER XVI.
JESUS DISCUSSED IN JERUSALEM 243
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY 259
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 273
CHAPTER XIX.
JESUS REJECTED IN JERUSALEM 289
CHAPTER XX.
SIGHT GIVEN TO THE BLIND 305
CHAPTER XXI.
JESUS THE GOOD SHEPHERD 321
CHAPTER XXII.
JESUS, SON OF GOD 337
CHAPTER XXIII.
JESUS THE RESURRECTION AND LIFE 355
CHAPTER XXIV.
JESUS THE SCAPEGOAT 371
* * * * *
NOTE ON CHAP. VI., VERS. 37, 44, 45 387
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
In order to read the Gospel of St. John with some intelligence, it is
necessary to understand its purpose and its plan. For in the whole range
of literature there is no composition which is a more perfect work of
art, or which more rigidly excludes whatever does not subserve its main
end. From the first word to the last there is no paragraph, sentence, or
expression which is out of its place, or with which we could dispense.
Part hangs together with part in perfect balance. The sequence may at
times be obscure, but sequence there always is. The relevancy of this or
that remark may not at first sight be apparent, but irrelevancy is
impossible to this writer.
The object which the Evangelist had in view in writing this Gospel we
are not left to find out for ourselves. He explicitly says that his
purpose in writing was to promote the belief that "Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God" (chap. xx. 31). This purpose, he judges, he will best
accomplish, not by writing an essay, nor by framing an abstract argument
in advocacy of the claims of Jesus, but by reproducing in his Gospel
those manifestations of His glory which elicited faith in the first
disciples and in others. That which had produced faith in his own case
and in that of his fellow-disciples, will, he thinks, if fairly set
before men, produce faith in them also. He relates, therefore, with the
utmost simplicity of language, the scenes in which Jesus seemed to him
most significantly to have revealed His power and His goodness, and most
forcibly to have demonstrated that the Father was in Him. At the same
time he keeps steadily in view the circumstance that these
manifestations had not always produced faith, but that alongside of a
growing faith there ran an increasing unbelief which at length assumed
the form of hostility and outrage. This unbelief he feels called upon to
account for. He feels called upon to demonstrate that its true reason
lay, not in the inadequacy of Christ's manifestations, but in the
unreasonable and unspiritual requirements of the unbelieving, and in
their alienation from God. The Gospel thus forms the primary apologetic,
which by its very simplicity and closeness to reality touches at every
point the underlying causes and principles of faith and unbelief.
The object of the Gospel being kept in view, the plan is at once
perceived. Apart from the Prologue (chap. i. 1-18) and the Appendix
(chap. xxi.), the body of the work falls into two nearly equal parts,
chaps. i. 19-xii., and xiii.-xx. In the former part the Evangelist
relates, with a singular felicity of selection, the scenes in which
Jesus made those self-revelations which it was most important that men
should understand, and the discussions in which their full significance
was brought out. Thus he shows how the glory of Christ was manifested
at the marriage in Cana, in the cleansing of the Temple, in the
conversation with the Samaritans, in the healing of the impotent man, in
the feeding of the five thousand, in the cure of the man born blind; and
how, through these various signs or object-lessons, Jesus makes Himself
known as the Life, the Light, the Judge of men, or, in one word, as the
Son doing the Father's works, manifesting the Father's presence,
disclosing in His various words and deeds "the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
These manifestations culminate in the raising of Lazarus, recorded in
the eleventh chapter. This final sign, while in "many of the Jews" (xi.
45) it produced faith, aggravated at the same time the unbelief of the
authorities, who "from that day forth took counsel together for to put
Him to death" (xi. 53). The twelfth chapter, therefore, holds a place by
itself. In it we have three incidents related, and all related for the
same purpose, namely, to demonstrate that there was now no further need
of such manifestations of the glory of Jesus as had already been given,
and that all things were now ripe for the catastrophe. The incidents in
which this became apparent were Mary's anointing of Jesus, His triumphal
entry into Jerusalem, and the enquiry of the Greeks. By introducing
these three incidents together at this point, John wishes to show (1)
that Jesus was now embalmed in the love of His intimate friends, (2)
that He had found in the untutored instincts of the people a response to
His claim, and (3) that even in the still wider circle of the outlying
nations His name was known. He may, therefore, now safely finish His
self-revelation. It has done its work. And the completeness of its
result is seen, not only in this widely-extended impression and
firmly-rooted attachment, but also in the maturity of unbelief which now
took active steps to take Jesus and put Him to death.
This part of the Gospel therefore appropriately closes with the words:
"These things spake Jesus and departed, and did hide Himself from them"
(xii. 36). The public manifestation of Jesus is closed.
Between the first and the second part of the Gospel there is interposed
a paragraph (xii. 37-50), in which John briefly points out that the
rejection of Jesus by the Jews was no more than had been predicted by
the prophet Isaiah, and that it reflects no suspicion on the
manifestations of His relation to the Father which Jesus had made. He
then sums up in one or two sentences the significance and consequences
of receiving and of rejecting Jesus.
In the second part of the Gospel the writer is still guided by the same
purpose of showing how Jesus manifested His glory. This is obvious not
merely from the contents of this second part, but also from the fact
that in the language of John the death of Jesus is constantly referred
to as His glorification, being the "lifting up" which was an essential
step to, or part of, His glorification. Before entering upon the last
scenes, which are described in chaps. xiii.-xix., Jesus is assured that
in His death the Father is to glorify His Name (xii. 28); and in the
prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter, which closes the
explanations which our Lord Himself made of His work, it is still the
manifestation of His glory that is in His thoughts. The characteristic
which distinguishes this second part of the Gospel is, that Jesus no
longer manifests His glory to the people in signs of manifest power, but
now, in chapters xiii.-xvii., further discloses His glory privately to
the Twelve; and in chapters xviii. and xix. passes triumphantly through
the ultimate trial which still lay between Him and the final
consummation of His glory. That this final glory has been achieved is
witnessed by the Resurrection, the record of which, and of its results
in faith, occupies the twentieth chapter. De Wette has the credit of
being the first to discern that the entire Gospel is held together by
this idea of the manifestation of Christ's glory, and that "the glory of
our Lord appears in all its brightness in the second part of the
narrative (xiii.-xx.), and that (_a_) inwardly and morally in His
sufferings and death (xiii.-xix.), and (_b_) outwardly and sensibly, in
the triumphant event of the Resurrection."
The best tabulated division of the Gospel with which I am acquainted is
that which the Rev. A. Halliday Douglas, M.A., of Huntly, has printed
for private circulation. By the kindness of the author I am allowed to
publish it here.
THE DIVISIONS OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL.
THE PROLOGUE OR INTRODUCTION. Chap. i. 1-18.
PART I. _The Manifestation of Christ's Glory in Life
and Power._ Chap. i. 19-xii. 36.
1. Christ's Announcement of Himself, and the Beginnings
of Faith and Unbelief. Chap. i. 19-iv.
2. The Period of Conflict. Chap. v.-xii. 36.
THE EVANGELIST'S PAUSE FOR REFLECTION, AND REVIEW
OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. Chaps. xii. 36-50.
PART II. _The Manifestation of Christ's Glory in
Suffering and Death._ Chaps. xiii.-xx.
1. Moral Victory in Suffering:--
_a._ In Anticipation. Chaps. xiii.-xvii. [_Faith_ finally
settled in the disciples, and _unbelief_ cast out from
among them.]
_b._ In the Actual Struggle. Chaps. xviii., xix. [Unbelief
apparently victorious, faith scarcely saved.]
2. Actual Victory over Death. Chap. xx. [Faith proved
right, and unbelief condemned.]
THE EPILOGUE OR APPENDIX. Chap. xxi.
I.
_THE INCARNATION._
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things
were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that hath
been made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And
the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it
not. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. The same
came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all
might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he
might bear witness of the light. There was the true light, even the
light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. He was in the
world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He
came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not. But
as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become
children of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and
we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth. John beareth witness of Him, and crieth,
saying, This was He of whom I said, He that cometh after me is
preferred before me: for He was before me. For of His fulness we all
received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses; grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him."--JOHN i. 1-18.
In this brief introduction to his Gospel John summarises its contents,
and presents an abstract of the history he is about to relate in detail.
That the Eternal Word, in whom was the life of all things, became flesh
and was manifested among men; that some ignored while others recognised
Him, that some received while others rejected Him,--this is what John
desires to exhibit at large in his Gospel, and this is what he summarily
states in this compact and pregnant introductory passage. He briefly
describes a Being whom he names "The Word;" he explains the connection
of this Being with God and with created things; he tells how He came to
the world and dwelt among men, and he remarks upon the reception He met
with. What is summed up in these propositions is unfolded in the Gospel.
It narrates in detail the history of the manifestation of the Incarnate
Word, and of the faith and unbelief which this manifestation evoked.
John at once introduces us to a Being whom he speaks of as "The Word."
He uses the term without apology, as if already it were familiar to his
readers; and yet he adds a brief description of it, as if possibly they
might attach to it ideas incompatible with his own. He uses it without
apology, because in point of fact it already had circulation both among
Greek and Jewish thinkers. In the Old Testament we meet with a Being
called "The Angel of the Lord," who is at once closely related, if not
equivalent, to Jehovah, and at the same time manifested to men. Thus
when the Angel of the Lord had appeared to Jacob and wrestled with him,
Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for, said he, "I have seen
God face to face."[1] In the apocryphal books of the Old Testament the
Wisdom and the Word of God are poetically personified, and occupy the
same relation to God on the one hand, and to man on the other, which was
filled by the Angel of the Lord. And in the time of Christ "the Word of
the Lord" had become the current designation by which Jewish teachers
denoted the manifested Jehovah. In explaining the Scriptures, to make
them more intelligible to the people, it was customary to substitute for
the name of the infinitely exalted Jehovah the name of Jehovah's
manifestation, "the Word of the Lord."
Beyond Jewish circles of thought the expression would also be readily
understood. For not among the Jews only, but everywhere, men have keenly
felt the difficulty of arriving at any certain and definite knowledge of
the Eternal One. The most rudimentary definition of God, by declaring
Him to be a Spirit, at once and for ever dissipates the hope that we can
ever see Him, as we see one another, with the bodily eye. This depresses
and disturbs the soul. Other objects which invite our thought and
feeling we easily apprehend, and our intercourse with them is level to
our faculties. It is, indeed, the unseen and intangible spirit of our
friends which we value, not the outward appearance. But we scarcely
separate the two; and as we reach and know and enjoy our friends through
the bodily features with which we are familiar, and the words that
strike upon our ear, we instinctively long for intercourse with God and
knowledge of Him as familiar and convincing. We put out our hand, but we
cannot touch Him. Nowhere in this world can we see Him more than we see
Him here and now. If we pass to other worlds, there, too, He is
concealed from our sight, inhabiting no body, occupying no place. Job is
not alone in his painful and baffling search after God. Thousands
continually cry with him, "Behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: on the left hand, where He doth
work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that
I cannot see Him."
In various ways, accordingly, men have striven to alleviate the
difficulty of mentally apprehending an invisible, infinite,
incomprehensible God. One theory, struck out by the pressure of the
difficulty, and frequently advanced, was not altogether incompatible
with the ideas suggested by John in this prologue. This theory was
accustomed, although with no great definiteness or security, to bridge
the chasm between the Eternal God and His works in time by interposing
some middle being or beings which might mediate between the known and
the unknown. This link between God and His creatures, which deemed to
make God and His relation to material things more intelligible, was
sometimes spoken of as "The Word of God." This seemed an appropriate
name by which to designate that through which God made Himself known,
and by which He came into relations with things and persons not
Himself. Vague indeed was the conception formed even of this
intermediary Being. But of this term "the Word," and of the ideas that
centred in it, John took advantage to proclaim Him who is the
manifestation of the Eternal, the Image of the Invisible.[2]
The title itself is full of significance. The word of a man is that by
which he utters himself, by which he puts himself in communication with
other persons and deals with them. By his word he makes his thought and
feeling known, and by his word he issues commands and gives effect to
his will. His word is distinct from his thought, and yet cannot exist
separate from it. Proceeding from the thought and will, from that which
is inmost in us and most ourselves, it carries upon itself the imprint
of the character and purpose of him who utters it. It is the organ of
intelligence and will. It is not mere noise, it is sound instinct with
mind, and articulated by intelligent purpose. By a man's word you could
perfectly know him, even though you were blind and could never see him.
Sight or touch could give you but little fuller information regarding
his character if you had listened to his word. His word is his character
in expression.
Similarly, the Word of God is God's power, intelligence, and will in
expression; not dormant and potential only, but in active exercise.
God's Word is His will going forth with creative energy, and
communicating life from God, the Source of life and being. "Without Him
was not any thing made that was made." He was prior to all created
things and Himself with God, and God. He is God coming into relation
with other things, revealing Himself, manifesting Himself, communicating
Himself. The world is not itself God; things created are not God, but
the intelligence and will that brought them into being, and which now
sustain and regulate them, these are God. And between the works we see
and the God who is past finding out, there is the Word, One who from
eternity has been with God, the medium of the first utterance of God's
mind and the first forthputting of His power; as close to the inmost
nature of God, and as truly uttering that nature, as our word is close
to and utters our thought, _capable of being used by no one besides, but
by ourselves only_.
It is apparent, then, why John chooses this title to designate Christ in
His pre-existent life. No other title brings out so clearly the
identification of Christ with God, and the function of Christ to reveal
God. It was a term which made the transition easy from Jewish Monotheism
to Christian Trinitarianism. Being already used by the strictest
Monotheists to denote a spiritual intermediary between God and the
world, it is chosen by John as the appropriate title of Him through whom
all revelation of God in the past has been mediated, and who has at
length finished revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. The term
itself does not explicitly affirm personality; but what it helps us to
understand is, that this same Being, the Word, who manifested and
uttered God in creation, reveals Him now in humanity. John wishes to
bring the incarnation and the new spiritual world it produced into line
with the creation and God's original purpose therein. He wishes to show
us that this greatest manifestation of God is not an abrupt departure
from previous methods, but is the culminating expression of methods and
principles which have ever governed the activity of God. Jesus Christ,
who reveals the Father now in human nature, is the same Agent as has
ever been expressing and giving effect to the Father's will in the
creation and government of all things. The same Word who now utters God
in and through human nature, has ever been uttering Him in all His
works.
All that God has done is to be found in the universe, partly visible and
partly known to us. There God may be found, because there He has uttered
Himself. But science tells us that in this universe there has been a
gradual development from lower to higher, from imperfect towards perfect
worlds; and it tells us that man is the last result of this process. In
man the creature at last becomes intelligent, self-conscious, endowed
with will, capable to some extent of meeting and understanding its
Creator. Man is the last and fullest expression of God's thought, for in
man and man's history God finds room for the utterance not merely of His
wisdom and power, but of what is most profoundly spiritual and moral in
His nature. In man God finds a creature who can sympathise with His
purposes, who can respond to His love, who can give exercise to the
whole fulness of God.
But in saying that "the Word become flesh" John says much more than that
God through the Word created man, and found thus a more perfect means
of revealing Himself. The Word created the visible world, but He did not
become the visible world. The Word created all men, but He did not
become the human race, but one Man, Christ Jesus. No doubt it is true
that all men in their measure reveal God, and it is conceivable that
some individual should fully illustrate all that God meant to reveal by
human nature. It is conceivable that God should so sway a man's will and
purify his character that the human will should be from first to last in
perfect harmony with the Divine, and that the human character should
exhibit the character of God. An ideal man might have been created,
God's ideal of man might have been realized, and still we should have
had no incarnation. For a perfect man is not all we have in Christ. A
perfect man is one thing, the Word Incarnate is another. In the one the
personality, the "I" that uses the human nature, is human; in the other,
the personality, the "I," is Divine.
By becoming flesh the Word submitted to certain limitations, perhaps
impossible for us to define. While in the flesh He could reveal only
what human nature was competent to reveal. But as the human nature had
been created in the likeness of the Divine, and as, therefore, "good"
and "evil" meant the same to man as to God, the limitation would not be
felt in the region of character.
The process of the Incarnation John describes very simply: "The Word
became flesh, and dwelt among us." The Word did not become flesh in the
sense that He was turned into flesh, ceasing to be what He had
previously been, as a boy who becomes a man ceases to be a boy. In
addition to what He already was He assumed human nature, at once
enlarging His experience and limiting His present manifestations of
Divinity to what was congruous to human nature and earthly circumstance.
The Jews were familiar with the idea of God "dwelling" with His people.
At the birth of their nation, while they were still dwelling in tents
outside the land of promise, God had His tent among the shifting tents
of the people, sharing all the vicissitudes of their wandering life,
abiding with them even in their thirty-eight years' exclusion from their
land, and thus sharing even their punishment. By the word John here uses
he links the body of Christ to the ancient dwelling of God round which
the tents of Israel had clustered. God now dwelt among men in the
humanity of Jesus Christ. The tabernacle was human, the indwelling
Person was Divine. In Christ is realized the actual presence of God
among His people, the actual entrance into and personal participation in
human history, which was hinted at in the tabernacle and the temple.
In the Incarnation, then, we have God's response to man's craving to
find, to see, to know Him. Men, indeed, commonly look past Christ and
away from Him, as if in Him God could not be satisfactorily seen; they
discontentedly long for some other revelation of the unseen Spirit. But
surely this is to mistake. To suppose that God might make Himself more
obvious, more distinctly apparent to us, than He has done, is to mistake
what God is and how we can know Him. What are the highest attributes of
Divinity, the most Divine characteristics of God? Are they great power,
vast size, dazzling physical glory that overpowers the sense; or are
they infinite goodness, holiness that cannot be tempted, love that
accommodates itself to all the needs of all creatures? Surely the
latter, the spiritual and moral qualities, are the more Divine. The
resistless might of natural forces shows us little of God till we have
elsewhere learned to know Him; the power that upholds the planets in
their orbits speaks but of physical force, and tells us nothing of any
holy, loving Being. There is no moral quality, no character, impressed
upon these works of God, mighty though they be. Nothing but an
impersonal power meets us in them; a power which may awe and crush us,
but which we cannot adore, worship, and love. In a word, God cannot
reveal Himself to us by any overwhelming display of His nearness or His
power. Though the whole universe fell in ruins around us, or though we
saw a new world spring into being before our eyes, we might still
suppose that the power by which this was effected was impersonal, and
could hold no fellowship with us.
Only, then, through what is personal, only through what is like
ourselves, only through what is moral, can God reveal Himself to us. Not
by marvellous displays of power that suddenly awe us, but by goodness
that the human conscience can apprehend and gradually admire, does God
reveal Himself to us. If we doubt God's existence, if we doubt whether
there is a Spirit of goodness upholding all things, wielding all things,
and triumphant in all things, let us look to Christ. It is in Him we
distinctly see upon our own earth, and in circumstances we can examine
and understand, _goodness_; goodness tried by every test conceivable,
goodness carried to its highest pitch, goodness triumphant. This
goodness, though in human forms and circumstances, is yet the goodness
of One who comes among men from a higher sphere, teaching, forgiving,
commanding, assuring, saving, as One sent to deal with men rather than
springing from them. If this is not God, what is God? What higher
conception of God has any one ever had? What worthy conception of God is
there that is not satisfied here? What do we need in God, or suppose to
be in God, which we have not in Christ?
If, then, we still feel as if we had not sufficient assurance of God, it
is because we look for the wrong thing, or seek where we can never find.
Let us understand that God can best be known as God through His moral
qualities, through His love, His tenderness, His regard for right; and
we shall perceive that the most suitable revelation is one in which
these qualities are manifested. But to apprehend these qualities as they
appear in actual history we must have some sense for and love of them.
They that are pure in heart, they shall see God; they who love
righteousness, who seek with lowliness for purity and goodness, they
will find in Christ a God they can see and trust.
The lessons of the Incarnation are obvious. First, from it we are to
take our idea of God. Sometimes we feel as if in attributing to God all
good we were dealing merely with fancies of our own which could not be
justified by fact. In the Incarnation we see what God has actually done.
Here we have, not a fancy, not a hope, not a vague expectation, not a
promise, but accomplished fact, as solid and unchangeable as our own
past life. This God whom we have often shunned, and felt to be in our
way and an obstacle, whom we have suspected of tyranny and thought
little of injuring and disobeying, has through compassion and sympathy
with us broken through all impossibilities, and contrived to take the
sinner's place. He, the ever blessed God, accountable for no evil and
sole cause of all good, accepted the whole of our condition, lived as a
creature, Himself bare our sicknesses, all that is hardest in life, all
that is bitterest and loneliest in death, in His own experience
combining all the agonies of sinning and suffering men, and all the
ineffable sorrows wherewith God looks upon sin and suffering. All this
He did, not for the sake of showing us how much better a thing the
Divine nature is than the human, but because His nature impelled Him to
do it; because He could not bear to be solitary in His blessedness, to
know in Himself the joy of holiness and love while His creatures were
missing this joy and making themselves incapable of all good.
Our first thought of God, then, must ever be that which the Incarnation
suggests: that the God with whom alone and in all things we have to do
is not One who is alienated from us, or who has no sympathy with us, or
who is absorbed in interests very different from ours, and to which we
must be sacrificed; but that He is One who sacrifices Himself for us,
who makes all things but justice and right bend to serve us, who
forgives our misapprehensions, our coldness, our unspeakable folly, and
makes common cause with us in all that concerns our welfare. As while on
earth He endured the contradiction of sinners, and waited till they came
to a better mind, so does He still, with Divine patience, wait till we
recognise Him as our Friend, and humbly own Him as our God. He waits
till we learn that to be God is not to be a mighty King enthroned above
all the assaults of His creatures, but that to be God is to have more
love than all besides; to be able to make greater sacrifices for the
good of all; to have an infinite capacity to humble Himself, to put
Himself out of sight, and to consider our good. This is the God we have
in Christ; our Judge becoming our atoning Victim, our God becoming our
Father, the Infinite One coming with all His helpfulness into the most
intimate relations with us; is this not a God to whom we can trust
ourselves, and whom we can love and serve? If this is the real nature of
God, if we may always expect such faithfulness and help from God, if to
be God be to be all this, as full of love in the future as He has shown
Himself in the past, then may not existence yet be that perfect joy our
instincts crave, and towards which we are slowly and doubtfully finding
our way through all the darkness, and strains, and shocks that are
needed to sift what is spiritual in us from what is unworthy?
The second lesson the Incarnation teaches regards our own duty.
Everywhere among the first disciples was this lesson learned and
inculcated. "Let this mind," says Paul, "be in you which was also in
Christ Jesus." "Christ suffered for us," says Peter, "leaving us an
example." "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" is the
very spirit of John. Look steadily at the Incarnation, at the love which
made Christ take our place and identify Himself with us; consider the
new breath of life that this one act has breathed into human life,
ennobling the world and showing us how deep and lovely are the
possibilities that lie in human nature; and new thoughts of your own
conduct will lay hold of your mind. Come to this great central fire, and
your cold, hard nature will be melted; try in some sort to weigh this
Divine love and accept it as your own, as that which embraces and cares
for and carries you on to all good, and you will insensibly be imbued
with its spirit. You will feel that no loss could be so great as to
lose the possession and exercise of this love in your own heart. Great
as are the gifts it bestows, you begin to see that the greatest of them
all is that it transforms you into its own likeness, and teaches you
yourself to love in the same sort. Understanding our security and our
joyful prospect as saved by the care of God, and as provided for by a
love of perfect intelligence and absolute resource; humbled and softened
and melted by the free spending upon us of so Divine and complete a
grace, our heart overflows with sympathy. We cannot receive Christ's
love without communicating it. It imparts a glow to the heart, which
must be felt by all that comes in contact with the heart.
And as Christ's love became incarnate, not spending itself in any one
great display, apart from the needs of men, but manifesting itself in
all the routine and incident of a human life; never wearying through the
monotonous toil of His artisan-life, never provoked into forgetfulness
in His boyhood; so must our love derived from Him be incarnated; not
spent in one display, but animating our whole life in the flesh, and
finding expression for itself in all that our earthly condition brings
us into contact with. The thoughts we think and the actions we do are
mainly concerned with other people. We are living in families, or we are
related as employer and employed, or we are thrown together by the
hundred necessities of life; in all these connections we are to be
guided by the spirit which prompted Christ to become incarnate. Our
chance of doing good in the world depends upon this. Our review of life
at the close will be satisfactory or the reverse in proportion as we
have or have not been in fact animated by the spirit of the Incarnation.
We must learn to bear one another's burdens, and the Incarnation shows
us that we can do so only in so far as we identify ourselves with others
and live for them. Christ helped us by coming down to our condition and
living our life. This is the guide to all help we can give. If anything
can reclaim the lowest class in our population, it is by men of godly
life living among them; not living among them in comforts unattainable
by them, but living in all points as they live, save that they live
without sin. Christ had no money to give, no knowledge of science to
impart; He lived a sympathetic and godly life, regardless of Himself.
Few can follow Him, but let us never lose sight of His method. The poor
are not the only class that need help. It is our dependence on money as
the medium of charity that has begotten that feeling. It is easy to give
money; and so we discharge our obligation, and feel as if we had done
all. It is not money that even the poorest have most need of; and it is
not money at all, but sympathy, which all classes need--that true
sympathy which gives us insight into their condition, and prompts us to
bear their burdens, whatever these are. There are many men on earth who
are mere hindrances to better men; who cannot manage their own affairs
or play their own part, but are continually entangled and in
difficulties. They are a drag on society, requiring the help of more
serviceable men, and preventing such men from enjoying the fruit of
their own labour. There are, again, men who are not of our kind, men
whose tastes are not ours. There are men who seem pursued by misfortune,
and men who by their own sin keep themselves continually in the mire.
There are, in short, various classes of persons with whom we are day by
day tempted to have no more to do whatever; we are exasperated by the
discomfort they occasion us; the anxiety and vexation and expenditure of
time, feeling, and labour constantly renewed so long as we are in
connection with them. Why should we be held down by unworthy people? Why
should we have the ease and joy taken out of our life by the ceaseless
demands made upon us by wicked, careless, incapable, ungrateful people?
Why must we still be patient, still postponing our own interests to
theirs? Simply because this is the method by which the salvation of the
world is actually accomplished; simply because we ourselves thus tax the
patience of Christ, and because we feel that the love we depend upon and
believe in as the salvation of the world we must ourselves endeavour to
show. Recognising how Christ has humbled Himself to bear the burden of
shame and misery we have laid upon Him, we cannot refuse to bear one
another's burdens, and so fulfil the _law_ of Christ.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See also Gen. xvi. 13, xviii. 22; Exod. iii. 6, xxiii. 20; Judges
xiii. 22.
[2] For the need of intermediaries, see Plato, _Symposium_, pp. 202-3:
"God mingles not with men; but there are spiritual powers which
interpret and convey to God the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to
men the commands and rewards of God. These powers span the chasm which
divides them, and these spirits or intermediate powers are many and
divine." See also Philo (_Quod Deus Immut._, xiii.): "God is not
comprehensible by the intellect. We know, indeed, that He is, but beyond
the fact of His existence we know nothing." The Word reveals God; see
Philo (_De post. Caini_, vi.) "The wise man, longing to apprehend God,
and travelling along the path of wisdom and knowledge, first of all
meets with the Divine words, and with them abides as a guest."
II.
_RECEPTION CHRIST MET WITH._
JOHN i. 1-18.
In describing the Word of God, John mentions two attributes of His by
which His relation to men becomes apparent: "All things were made by
Him," and "the life was the light of men." By whom were all things made?
what is the originating force which has produced the world? how are we
to account for the existence, the harmony, and the progress of the
universe?--these are questions which must always be put. Everywhere in
nature force and intelligence appear; the supply of life and power is
unfailing, and the unconscious planets are as regular and harmonious in
their action as the creatures that are endowed with conscious
intelligence and the power of self-guidance. That the whole universe is
one does not admit of a doubt. Far as the astronomer can search into
infinite space, he finds the same laws and one plan, and no evidence of
another hand or another mind. To what is this unity to be referred? John
here affirms that the intelligence and power which underlie all things
belong to the Word of God: "without Him was not anything made which was
made."
"In Him was life." In this Divine Being, who was "in the beginning"
before all things, there was that which gives existence to all else.
"And the life was the light of men." That life which appears in the
harmony and progress of inanimate nature, and in the wonderfully
manifold and yet related forms of animal existence, appears in man as
"light"--intellectual and moral light, reason and conscience. All the
endowment possessed by man as a moral being, capable of
self-determination and of choosing what is morally good, springs from
the one fountain of life which exists in the Word of God.
It is in the light of this close relationship of the Word to the world
and to men that John views the reception He met with when He became
flesh and dwelt among us. This reception forms the great tragedy of
human history. "In Agamemnon returning to his palace after ten years'
absence, and falling by the hand of his unfaithful spouse, we have the
event which is tragical _par excellence_ in pagan history. But what is
that outrage when compared with the theocratic tragedy? The God invoked
by the nation appears in His temple, and is crucified by His own
worshippers." To John it seemed as if the relationship borne by the Word
to those who rejected Him was the tragical element in the rejection.
Three different aspects of this relationship are mentioned, that the
blindness of the rejecters may more distinctly be seen. First, he says,
although the very light that was in man was derived from the Word, and
it was by His endowment they had any power lo recognise what was
illuminating and helpful to their spiritual nature, they yet shut their
eyes to the source of light when presented in the Word Himself. "The
life was the light of men.... And the light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness apprehended it not." This is the general statement of the
universal experience of the Eternal Word, and it is illustrated in His
incarnate experience summarily related in verses 10 and 11. Again: "He
was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him
not." So little had men understood the source of their own being, and so
little had they learned to know the significance and purpose of their
existence, that when their Creator came they did not recognise Him. And
thirdly, even the narrow and carefully-trained circle of the Jews failed
to recognise Him; "He came unto His own"--to everything which had
pointedly and of set purpose spoken of Him, and could not have existed
but to teach His character--"and His own received Him not."
1. "The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it
not." As yet John has said nothing of the Incarnation, and is speaking
of the Word in His eternal or pre-incarnate state. And one thing he
desires to proclaim regarding the Word is, that although it is from Him
every man has such light as he has, yet this light is commonly rendered
useless, and is not cherished. As it is from the Word, from God's
uttered will, that all men have life, so it is from the same source that
all the light which is in reason and in conscience is derived. Before
the Word appeared in the world, and shone out as the true light (ver.
9), He was in all rational creatures as their life and light, imparting
to men a sense of right and wrong, and shining in their heart with some
of the brightness of a Divine presence. This sense of a connection with
God and eternity, and this moral faculty, although cherished by some,
were commonly not "comprehended." Evil deeds have been suffered to
darken conscience, and it fails to admit the true light.
2. "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world
knew Him not." When our Lord came to earth the heathen world was mainly
represented by the Roman Empire, and one of the earliest events of His
life on earth was His enrolment as a subject of that empire. If we had
been invited before His coming to imagine what would be the result upon
this empire of His appearance, we should probably have expected
something very different from that which actually happened. The real
Sovereign is to appear; the Being who made all that is, is to come and
visit His possessions. Will not a thrill of glad expectancy run through
the world? Will not men eagerly cover up whatever may offend Him, and
eagerly attempt, with such scant materials as existed, to make
preparations for His worthy reception? The one Being who can make no
mistakes, and who can rectify the mistakes of a worn-out, entangled
world, is to come for the express purpose of delivering it from all ill:
will not men gladly yield the reins to Him, and gladly second Him in all
His enterprise? Will it not be a time of universal concord and
brotherhood, all men joining to pay homage to their common God? "He was
in the world, and the world was made by Him"--that is the true, bare,
unvarnished statement of the fact. There He was, the Creator Himself,
that mysterious Being who had hitherto kept Himself so hidden and remote
while yet so influential and supreme; the wonderful and unsearchable
Source and Fountain out of which had proceeded all that men saw,
themselves included,--there at last He was "_in_ the world" Himself had
made, apparent to the eyes of men, and intelligible to their
understandings; a real person whom they could know as an individual,
whom they could love, who could receive and return their expressions of
affection and trust. He was in the world, and the world knew Him not.
Indeed, it would not have been easy for the world to show a more entire
ignorance of God than while He was upon earth in human form. There was
at that time abundance of activity and intelligent apprehension of the
external wants of men and nations. There was a ceaseless running to and
fro of the couriers of the empire, a fine system of communications
spread over the whole known world like a network, so that what
transpired in the most remote corner was at once known at the centre.
Rome was intelligent to the utmost circumference through all its
dominions; as if a nervous system radiated through the whole of it,
touch but the extremity in one of the remotest colonies and the touch is
felt at the brain and heart of the whole.[3] The rising of a British
tribe, the discovery of some unheard-of bird or beast, the birth of a
calf with two heads--every scrap of gossip found its way to Rome.[4] But
the entrance of the Creator into the world was an event of such
insignificance that not even this finely sympathetic system took any
note of it. The great Roman world remained in absolute unconsciousness
of the vicinity of God: they registered His birth, took account of Him
as one to be taxed, but were as little aware as the oxen with whom He
shared His first sleeping-place, that this was God; they saw Him with
the same stupid, unconscious, bovine stare.[5]
3. But in this great world of men there was an inner and specially
trained circle, which John here designates "His own." For although the
world might be called "His own," as made and upheld by him, yet it seems
more likely that this verse is not a mere repetition of the preceding,
but is intended to mark a deeper degree of insensibility on the part of
Christ's rejecters. Not only had all men been made in God's image, so
that they might have been expected to recognise Christ as the image of
the Father; but one nation had been specially instructed in the
knowledge of God, and was proud of having His dwelling-place in its
midst. If other men were blind to God's glory, the Jews at least might
have been expected to welcome Christ when He came. Their temple and all
that was done in it, their law, their prophets, their institutions,
their history and their daily life, all spoke to them of God, and
reminded them that God dwelt among them and would come to His own.
Though all the world should shut its doors against Christ, surely the
gates of the Temple, His own house, would be thrown open to Him. For
what else did it exist?
Our Lord Himself, in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, makes even a
heavier accusation against the Jews, intimating, as He there does, that
they rejected Him not because they did not recognise Him, but because
they did. "This is the Heir. Come, let us kill Him, that the inheritance
may be ours." In any case their guilt is great. They had been definitely
and repeatedly admonished to expect some great manifestation of God;
they looked for the Christ to come, and immediately before His
appearance they had been strikingly awakened to prepare for His coming.
But what was their actual state when Christ came? Again and again it has
been pointed out that their whole thoughts were given to the schemes
which usually distract conquered nations. They were "tossing in
unhelpful and inefficacious sedition," resenting or paying hollow homage
to the rule of the foreigner, looking uneasily for deliverance, and
becoming the dupes of every fanatic or schemer that cried, "Lo here!" or
"Lo there!" Their power of discerning a present God and a spiritual
Deliverer was almost as completely gone as that of the heathen, and they
tested the Divine Saviour by external methods which any clever charlatan
could have satisfied. The God they believed in and sought was not the
God revealed by Christ. They existed for Christ's sake, that among them
He might find a home on earth, and through them be made known to all;
they believed in a Christ that was to come, but when He came the throne
they raised Him to was the cross. And the suspicion that perhaps they
were wrong has preyed on the Jewish mind ever since, and has often
pricked them on to a fierce hatred of the Christian name, while
sometimes it has taken almost the form of penitence, as in the prayer of
Rabbi Ben Ezra,--
"Thou! if Thou wast He, who at mid-watch came,
By the starlight, naming a dubious name!
And if, too heavy with sleep--too rash
With fear--O Thou, if that martyr-gash
Fell on Thee coming to take Thine own,
And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne,--
Thou art the Judge."
It is the detailed history of this rejection which John presents in his
Gospel. He tells the story of Christ's miracles, and the jealousy they
excited; of His authoritative teaching and the opposition it aroused; of
His unveiling His Divine nature, His mercy, His power to give life, His
prerogative of judgment, His humble self-sacrifice, and of the
misunderstanding which ran parallel to this manifestation. He tells how
the leaders strove to entangle Him and find Him at fault; how they took
up stones to stone Him; how they schemed and plotted, and at length
compassed His crucifixion. The patience with which He met this
"contradiction of sinners" was a sufficient revelation of His Divine
nature. Though rudely received, though met on all hands with suspicion,
coldness, and hostility, He did not abandon the world in indignation. He
never forgot that He came, not to judge the world, not to deal with us
on our merits, but to save the world from its sin and its blindness. For
the sake of the few who received Him He bore with the many who rejected
Him.
For some did receive Him. John could say for many, along with himself,
"We beheld His glory," and recognised that it was Divine glory, such as
none but an Only-begotten in the image of His Father could manifest.
This glory dawned upon believing men, and gradually encompassed them in
the brightness and beauty of a Divine revelation, by the appearance
among them of the Incarnate Word, "full of grace and truth" (ver. 14).
Not the works of wonder which He did, not the authority with which He
laid the angry waves and commanded the powers of evil, but the grace and
truth which underlay all His works, shone into their hearts as Divine
glory. They had previously known God through the law given by Moses
(ver. 17); but coming as it did through law, this knowledge was coloured
by its medium, and through it God's countenance seemed stern. In the
face of Jesus Christ they saw the Father, they saw "grace," an eye of
tender compassion and lips of love and helpfulness. In the law they felt
that they were seeing through a dimmed glass darkly; they became weary
of symbols and of forms in which often they saw but flitting shadows.
What must it have been for such men to live with the manifested God; to
have Him dwelling among them, and in Him to handle and see (1 John i. 1)
the "truth," the reality to which all symbol had pointed? "The law was
given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."[6]
And to those who acknowledge in their hearts that this is Divine glory
which is seen in Christ, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father,
He gives Himself with all His fulness. "As many as received Him, to them
gave He the right to become children of God." This is the immediate
result of the acceptance of Christ as the Revealer of the Father. In Him
we see what true glory is and what true sonship is; and as we behold the
glory of the Only-begotten, sent to declare the Father to us, we
acknowledge the unseen Father, and His Spirit brings us into the
relationship of children. That which is in God passes into us, and we
share in the life of God; and this through Christ. He is "full" of grace
and truth. In all He is and does, grace and truth overflowingly manifest
themselves. And "of His fulness have all we received, and grace upon
grace."[7] John read this off his own experience and that of those for
whom he could confidently speak. What they had seen and valued in Christ
became their own character. The inexhaustible fulness of grace in Christ
renewed in them grace according to their need. They lived upon Him. It
was His life which maintained life in them. By communion with Him they
were formed in His likeness.
The presentation of Christ to men now divides them into two classes, as
at the first. There are always those who accept and those who reject
Him. His contemporaries showed, for the most part, a complete ignorance
of what might be expected of God, a native inability to understand
spiritual greatness, and to relish it when presented to them. And yet
Christ's claims were made with such an air of authority and truth, and
His whole character and bearing were so consistent, that they were half
persuaded He was all He said. It is chiefly because we have not a
perfect sympathy with goodness, and do not know its value, that we do
not at once and universally acknowledge Christ. There is in men an
instinct that tells them what blessings Christ will secure to them, and
they decline connection with Him because they are conscious that their
ways are not His ways, nor their hopes His hopes. The very presentation
to men of the possibility of becoming perfectly pure reveals what at
heart they are. By the judgment each man passes on Christ he passes
judgment on himself.
Let us stir ourselves to a clearer decision by remembering that He is
presented to us as to His contemporaries. Time was when any one going
into the synagogue of Nazareth would have seen Him, and might have
spoken with Him. But the particular thirty years during which this
manifestation of God on earth lasted makes no material difference to the
thing itself. The Incarnation was to be some time, and it is as real
having occurred then as if it were occurring now. It occurred in its fit
time; but its bearing on us is not dependent on the time of its
occurrence. If it had been accomplished in our day, what should we have
thought of it? Would it have been nothing to us to see God, to hear Him,
perhaps to have had His eye turned upon us with personal observation,
with pity, with remonstrance? Would it have been nothing to us to see
Him taking the sinners place, scourged, mocked, crucified? Is it
conceivable that in presence of such a manifestation of God we should
have been indifferent? Would not our whole nature have burned with shame
that we and our fellow-men should have brought our God to this? And are
we to suffer the mere fact of Christ's being incarnate in a past age and
not in our own, to alter our attitude towards Him, and blind us to the
reality? Of more importance than anything that is now happening in our
own life is this Incarnation of the Only-begotten of the Father.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See Isaac Taylor's _Restoration of Belief_.
[4] See Pliny's _Letters to Trajan_, 23, 98.
[5] Cp. Faber's _Bethlehem_.
[6] The first introduction in the Gospel of the name of Jesus Christ.
[7] This expression means a succession of graces, higher grace ever
taking the place of lower.
III.
_THE BAPTIST'S TESTIMONY._
"There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. The same came
for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might
believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he might
bear witness of the light.... John beareth witness of Him, and
crieth, saying, This was He of whom I said, He that cometh after me
is preferred before me: for He was before me. For of His fulness we
all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses;
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him. And this is the witness of John, when the Jews
sent unto him from Jerusalem priests and Levites to ask him, Who art
thou? And he confessed, and denied not; and he confessed, I am not
the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elijah? And he
saith, I am not. Art thou the prophet? And he answered, No. They
said therefore unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to
them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the
voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the
Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet. And they had been sent from the
Pharisees. And they asked him, and said unto him, Why then baptizest
thou, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elijah, neither the
prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: in the
midst of you standeth One whom ye know not, even He that cometh
after me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose.
These things were done in Bethany beyond Jordan, where John was
baptizing. On the morrow he seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith,
Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!
This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which is preferred
before me: for He was before me. And I knew Him not; but that He
should be made manifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing
with water. And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit
descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon Him. And I
knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, He said
unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and
abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth with the Holy
Spirit. And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son
of God."--JOHN i. 6-8, 15-34.
In proceeding to show how the Incarnate Word manifested Himself among
men, and how this manifestation was received, John naturally speaks
first of all of the Baptist. "There came a man, sent from God, whose
name was John. The same came for witness ... that all might believe
through him." The Evangelist himself had been one of the Baptist's
disciples, and had been led to Christ by his testimony. And to many
besides, the Baptist was the true forerunner of the Messiah. He was the
first to recognise and proclaim the present King. John had come under
the Baptist's influence at the most impressible time of his life, while
his character was being formed and his ideas of religion taking shape;
and his teacher's testimony to the dignity of Jesus had left an
indelible print upon his spirit. While his memory retained anything it
could not let slip what his first teacher had said of Him who became his
Teacher and his Lord. While, therefore, the other Evangelists give us
striking pictures of the Baptist's appearance, habits, and style of
preaching, and show us the connection of his work with that of Jesus,
John glances very slightly at these matters, but dwells with emphasis
and iteration on the testimony which the Baptist bore to the Messiahship
of Jesus.
To us, at this time of day, it may seem of little importance what the
Baptist thought or said of Jesus. We may sympathise rather with the
words of the Lord Himself, who, in allusion to this witness, said, "I
receive not testimony from man." But it is plain that, at any rate from
a Jewish point of view, the witness of John was most important. The
people universally accepted John as a prophet, and they could scarcely
think him mistaken in the chief article of his mission. In point of
fact, many of the most faithful adherents of Jesus became such through
the influence of John; and those who declined to accept Jesus were
always staggered by John's explicit indication of Him as the Christ. The
Jews had not only the predictions of prophets long since dead, and
descriptions of the Christ which they could perversely misconstrue; they
had not merely pictures of their Messiah by which they might identify
Jesus as the Christ, but of which it was also quite possible for them to
deny the likeness; but they had a living contemporary, whom they
themselves acknowledged to be a prophet, pointing out to them another
living contemporary as the Christ. That even such a testimony was to a
large extent disregarded shows how much more the inclination to believe
has to do with our faith than any external proofs.
But even to us the testimony of a man like John is not without
importance. He was, as our Lord bore witness, "a burning and a shining
light." He was one of those men who give new thoughts to their
generation, and help men to see clearly what otherwise they might only
dimly have seen. He was in a position to know Jesus well. He was His
cousin; he had known Him from His childhood. He was also in a position
to know what was involved in being the Messiah. By the very
circumstance that he himself had been mistaken for the Messiah, he was
driven to define to his own mind the distinctive and characteristic
marks of the Messiah. Nothing could so have led him to apprehend the
difference between himself and Jesus. More and more clearly must he have
seen that he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that
light. Thus he was prepared to receive with understanding the sign (ver.
33) which gave him something more than _his own personal surmises_ to go
upon in declaring Jesus to the world as the Messiah. If there is any
man's testimony we may accept about our Lord it is that of the Baptist,
who, from his close contact with the most profligate and with the most
spiritual of the people, saw what they needed, and saw in Jesus power to
give it; the business of whose life it was to make Him out, and to
arrive at certain information regarding Him; a man whose own elevation
and force of character made many fancy he was the Messiah, but who
hastened to disabuse their minds of such an idea, because his very
elevation gave him capacity to see how infinitely above him the true
Christ was. Seen from the low ground the star may seem close to the top
of the mountain; seen from the mountain-top it is recognised as
infinitely above it. John was on the mountain-top.
Of John's person and work nothing need here be said save what serves to
throw light on his witness to Christ. Going from the comfortable home
and well-provided life and fair prospects of a priest's family, he went
to the houseless wilderness, and adopted the meagre, comfortless life of
an ascetic; not from any necessity, but because he felt that to entangle
himself with the affairs of the world would be to blind him to its
vices, and to silence his remonstrance, if not to implicate him in its
guilt. Like thousands besides in all ages of the world's history, he
felt compelled to seek solitude, to subdue the flesh, to meditate
undisturbed on things Divine, and discover for himself and for others
some better way than religious routine and the "good wine of Mosaic
morality turned to the vinegar of Pharisaism." Like the Nazarites of the
earlier times of his country, like the old prophets, with whose
indignation and deep regret at the national vices he was in perfect
sympathy, he left the world, gave up all the usual prospects and ways of
life, and betook himself to a life of prayer, and thought, and
self-discipline in the wilderness. When first he went there, he could
only dimly know what lay before him; but he gathered a few friends of
like disposition around him, and, as we learn, "taught them to pray." He
formed in the wilderness a new Israel, a little company of praying
souls, who spent their time in considering the needs of their
fellow-countrymen, and in interceding with God for them, and who were
content to let the pleasures and excitements of the world pass by while
they longed for and prepared themselves to meet the great Deliverer.
This adoption of the _role_ of the ancient prophets, this resuscitation
of their long-forgotten function of mourning before God for the people's
sin, and addressing the nation authoritatively as God's voice, was
outwardly shown by his assumption of the prophet's dress. The rough skin
for a cloak; the long, uncared-for hair; the wiry, weather-beaten frame;
the lofty, calm, penetrating eye, were all eloquent as his lips. His
whole appearance and habits certified his claim to be the "voice" of one
crying in the wilderness, and gave him authority with the people.
Slightly altering what has been said of a great modern, we may much
more truly say of the Baptist,--
"He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear:
He struck his finger on the place,
And said, 'Thou ailest here, and here.'
He looked on (Isr'el's) dying hour
Of fitful dreams and feverish power,
And said, 'The end is everywhere,
(Christ) still has truth, take refuge there.'"
He was listened to. It is so always, in our own day as in others; the
men who are unworldly and have the good of their country or of any class
of men at heart, the men who are saintly and of few desires, these are
listened to as the commissioned messengers of heaven. It is to these men
we look as the salt of the earth, who preserve us still from the
corrupting, disintegrating influence of doubt. To these men, no matter
how different they be from us in creed, we are forced to listen, because
the _Holy_ Spirit, wherever He is, is the Spirit of God; and all men
instinctively acknowledge that those who are themselves in the kingdom
of God have authority to summon others into it, and that those who are
themselves unworldly have alone a right to dictate to worldly men. There
is no power on earth like the power of a holy, consecrated life, because
he who is leading such a life is already above the world, and belongs to
a higher kingdom. There is hope for our country, or for any country,
when its young men have something of John's spirit; when they school the
body until it becomes the ready instrument of a high and spiritual
intention, fearless of hardship; when by sympathy with God's purposes
they apprehend what is most needed by men, and are able to detect the
weaknesses and vices of society, and to bear the burden of their time.
But the Baptist's equipment for the most responsible office of
proclaiming the Messiahship of Jesus was not completed by his own
saintliness of character and keen perception of the people's needs, and
knowledge of Jesus, and incorruptible truthfulness. There was given to
him a sign from heaven, that he might be strengthened to bear this
responsibility, and that the Messiah might never seem to be only of the
Baptist's appointing and not of God's. Some degree of disappointment may
be felt that external signs should have intruded on so profoundly
spiritual and real an occasion as the baptism of Christ. Some may be
ready to ask, with Keim, "Is it, or was it ever, the way of God, in the
course of His spiritual world, above all upon the threshold of spiritual
decisions affecting the fate of the world, and in contradiction to the
wise economy of revelation pursued by His supreme ambassador Himself, to
take away from seeking and finding souls the labour of deciding their
own destiny?" But this is to suppose that the signs at the baptism of
Jesus were mainly for His encouragement, whereas John describes them as
being given for the certification of the Baptist. "I knew Him not"--that
is, I did not know He was the Messiah--"but He that sent me to baptize
with water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit
descending, and abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth with the
Holy Spirit. And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the
Son of God."
The baptism of Jesus was, in fact, His anointing as the Messiah; and
this anointing by which He became the Christ was an anointing, not with
a symbolic oil, but with the Divine Spirit (Acts x. 38). This Spirit
descended upon Him "in a _bodily_ shape" (Luke iii. 22), because it was
not one member or faculty or power which was communicated to Jesus, but
a whole _body_ or complete equipment of all needful Divine energies for
His work. "God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him;" there is no
gauge, no metre checking the supply. Now for the first time can the
whole Spirit be given, because now for the first time in Jesus is there
room to receive it. And that the Baptist may confidently proclaim Him as
King the sign is given,--not the outward sign alone, but the outward
sign accompanying and tallying with the inward sign; for it was not said
to the Baptist, "Upon whomsoever thou shalt see a dove descend," but,
"upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descend."
This anointing of Jesus to the Messiahship occurred at the moment of His
truest identification of Himself with the people. John shrank from
baptizing One whom he knew to be already pure, and to have no sins to
confess. But Jesus insisted, identifying Himself with a polluted people,
numbered with transgressors. It was thus He became true King and Head of
mankind, by identifying Himself with us, and taking upon Him, through
His universal sympathy, all our burdens, feeling more shame than the
sinner's self for his sin, pained with the suffering in all their pain.
It was the Divine Spirit of universal love, attracting Him to all sorrow
and suffering, which identified Him in the mind of His first confessor
as the Christ, the Son of God. This to the Baptist was the glory of the
Only-begotten, this sympathy which felt with all, and shrank from no
sorrow or burden.
Thus equipped, the Baptist gives his testimony with confidence. This
testimony is manifold, and uttered on several occasions,--to the
Sanhedrim's deputation, to the people, and to his own disciples. It is
negative as well as positive. He repudiates the suggestions of the
deputation from Jerusalem that he himself is the Christ, or that he is
in their sense Elijah. But the most remarkable repudiation of honours
which could be rendered to Christ alone is found recorded in chap. iii.
22-30, when the growing popularity of Jesus excited the jealousy of
those who still adhered to the Baptist. Their complaint was the occasion
of calling up clearly in the Baptist's own consciousness the relation in
which he stood to Jesus, and of prompting the most emphatic enouncement
of the unrivalled dignity of our Lord. He says to his jealous disciples,
"If I do not gather a crowd of followers while Jesus does, this is
because God has appointed to me one place, to Him another. Beyond God's
design no man's destiny and success can extend. What is designed for me
I shall receive; beyond that I desire to receive and I can receive
nothing. Least of all would I covet to be called the Christ. You know
not what you say in even remotely hinting that such a man as I could be
the Christ. It is no mere unworldliness or purity which can raise a man
to this dignity. He is from above; not to be named with prophets, but
the Son of God, who belongs to the heavenly world of which He speaks."
To make the difference between himself and Christ clear, the Baptist
hits upon the happy figure of the Bridegroom and the Bridegroom's
friend. "He that has and keeps the Bride is the Bridegroom. He to whom
the world is drawn, and on whom all needy souls lean, is the Bridegroom,
and to Him alone belongs this special joy of satisfying all human
needs. I am not the Bridegroom, because men cannot find in me
satisfaction and rest. I cannot be to them the source of spiritual life.
Moreover, by instigating me to assume the Bridegroom's place you would
rob me of my peculiar joy, the joy of the Bridegroom's friend." The
function of the bridegroom's friend, or paranymph, was to ask the hand
of the bride for the bridegroom, and to arrange the marriage. This
function the Baptist claims as his. "My joy," he says, "is to have
negotiated this matter, to have encouraged the Bride to trust her Lord.
It is my joy to hear the glad and loving words that pass between
Bridegroom and Bride. Do not suppose I look with sadness on the
defection of my followers, and on their preference for Christ. These
crowds you complain of are evidence that I have not discharged the
function of paranymph in vain. To see my work successful, to see Bride
and Bridegroom at length resting in one another with undisturbed,
self-forgetting confidence, this is my joy. While the Bridegroom cheers
the Bride with His voice, and opens to her prospects which only His love
can realize, shall I obtrude myself and claim consideration? Is it not
enough for one life to have had the joy of identifying the actually
present Christ, and of introducing the Bride to her Lord? Has not that
life its ample reward which has been instrumental in achieving the
actual union of God and man?"
Probably, then, the Baptist himself would think we waste too much
emotion over his self-sacrifice and magnanimity. After all, it not being
possible to him to be the Messiah, it was no small glory and joy to be
the friend, the next, to the Messiah. The tragic character of the
Baptist's death, the despondent doubt which for a time shook his spirit
during his imprisonment, the severe life he had previously led, all tend
to make us oblivious of the fact that his life was crowned with a deep
and solid joy. Even the poet who has most worthily depicted him still
speaks of
"John, than which man a _sadder_ or a greater
Not till this day has been of woman born."
But the Baptist was a big enough man to enjoy an unselfish happiness. He
loved men so well that he rejoiced when he saw them forsake him to
follow Christ. He loved Christ so well that to see Him honoured was the
crown of his life.
Besides this negative repudiation of honours that belonged to Jesus, the
Baptist emits a positive and fivefold testimony in His favour, (1) to
His dignity (vv. 15, 27, 30), "He that cometh after me _is preferred
before me_;" (2) to His pre-existence (vv. 15, 30), which is adduced as
the reason of the foregoing, "for He _was_ before me;" (3) to His
spiritual fulness and power (ver. 33), "He baptizeth with the Holy
Ghost;" (4) to the efficacy of His mediation (ver. 29), "Behold, the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;" (5) to His unique
personality (ver. 34), "this is the Son of God."
1. Three times over the Baptist declared the superiority of Jesus; a
superiority so immense that language failed him in trying to represent
it. The Rabbis said, "Every office which a servant will do for his
master a scholar should perform for his teacher, except loosing his
sandal-thong." But this exceptionally menial office the Baptist declares
he was not worthy to perform for Jesus. None so well as the Baptist
himself knew his limitations. He had evoked in the people cravings he
could not satisfy. There had gathered to him a conscience-stricken
people, longing for renewal and righteousness, and demanding what he had
no power to give. Therefore, not merely his explicit enouncements from
time to time, but his entire ministry, pointing to a new order of things
which he himself could not inaugurate, declared the incomparable
greatness of Him that was to come after him.
2. This superiority of Christ was based on His pre-existence. "He was
before me." It may appear unaccountable that the Baptist, standing on
Old Testament ground, should have reached the conclusion that Jesus was
Divine. But it is at any rate evident that the Evangelist believed the
Baptist had done so, for he adduces the Baptist's testimony in support
of his own affirmation of the Divine glory of the Incarnate Word (ver.
15). After the wonderful scene at the Baptism, John must have talked
closely with Jesus regarding both His work and His consciousness; and
even if the passage at the close of the third chapter is coloured by the
Evangelist's style, and even by his thought, we must suppose that the
Baptist had somehow arrived at the belief that Jesus was "from above,"
and made known upon earth the things which He, in a pre-existent state,
had "heard and seen."
3. The Baptist pointed to Jesus as the source of spiritual life. "He
baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." Here the Baptist steps on to ground on
which his assertions can be tested. He declares that Jesus can
communicate the Holy Ghost--the fundamental article of the Christian
Creed, which carries with it all else. No one knew better than the
Baptist where human help failed; no one knew better than he what could
be effected by rites and rules, by strength of will and asceticism and
human endeavour; and no one knew better at what point all these become
useless. More and more they seemed to him but a cleansing with water, a
washing of the outside. More and more did he understand that, not from
without, but from within, true cleansing must proceed, and that all
else, save a new creation by the Spirit of God, was inefficacious. Only
Spirit can act upon spirit; and for true renewal we need the action upon
us of the Divine Spirit. Without this no new and eternal kingdom of God
can be founded.
4. The Baptist pointed to Jesus as "the Lamb of God, that taketh away
the sin of the world." That by this title he meant only to designate
Jesus as a person full of gentleness and innocence is out of the
question. The second clause forbids this. He is the Lamb that takes away
sin. And there is only one way in which a lamb can take away sin, and
that is, by sacrifice. The expression no doubt suggests the picture in
the fifty-third of Isaiah of the servant of Jehovah meekly enduring
wrong. But unless the Baptist had been previously speaking of this
chapter, the thoughts of his disciples would not at once turn to it,
because in that passage it is not a lamb of sacrifice that is spoken of,
but a lamb meekly enduring. In the Baptist's words sacrifice is the
primary idea, and it is needless to discuss whether he was thinking of
the paschal lamb or the lamb of morning and evening sacrifice, because
he merely used the lamb as the representative of sacrifice generally.
Here, he says, is the reality to which all sacrifice has pointed, the
Lamb of God.
5. The Baptist proclaims Jesus as "the Son of God." That he should do so
need not greatly surprise us, as we read in the other Gospels that Jesus
had been thus designated by a voice from heaven at His baptism. Very
early in His ministry, not only His disciples, but also the demoniacs
ascribe to Him the same dignity. In one sense or other He was designated
"Son of God." No doubt we must bear in mind that this was in a rigidly
monotheistic community, and in a community in which the same title had
been freely applied to Israel and to Israel's king to designate a
certain alliance and close relation subsisting between the human and the
Divine, but of course not suggesting metaphysical unity. But considering
the high functions which clustered round the Messianic dignity, it is
not unlikely that the Messiah's forerunner may have supposed that a
fuller meaning than had yet been recognised might be latent in this
title. Certainly we are safe in affirming that by applying this title to
our Lord, the Baptist intended to indicate His unique personality, and
to declare that He was the Messiah, God's Viceroy on earth.
Whether we can add to this testimony the thoughts contained in the
closing paragraph of the third chapter may be doubted. The thought of
the passage moves within the circle of ideas familiar to the Baptist;
and that the style is the style of the Evangelist does not prevent us
from receiving the ideas as the Baptist's. But there are expressions
which it is difficult to suppose that the Baptist could have used. The
preceding conversation was occasioned by the growing popularity of
Jesus; was this, then, an occasion on which it could be said, "No one
receives His testimony"? Is this not more appropriate to the Evangelist
than to the Baptist? It would seem, then, that in this paragraph the
Evangelist is expanding the Baptist's testimony, in order to indicate
its application to the eternal relations subsisting between Jesus and
men generally.
The contents of the paragraph are a most emphatic testimony to the
pre-existence and heavenly origin of Christ. In contrast to persons of
earthly origin, He is "from heaven." He "cometh" from above, as if His
entrance into this world were a conscious transition, a voluntary coming
from another world. His origin determines also His moral relationships
and His teaching. He is "above all," in dignity, in authority, in
spirit; and He speaks what He has seen and heard. But in the
thirty-fourth verse a new idea is presented. There it is said that He
speaks the words of God, not directly, because He is from above, and
speaks what He has seen and heard, but "because God giveth not the
Spirit by measure unto Him." What are we to understand by this double
Divine inhabitation of the humanity of Jesus? And what are we to
understand by the Spirit being given without measure to the Incarnate
Word?
In the Old Testament two ideas present themselves regarding the Spirit
which illustrate this statement. The one is that which conveys the
impression that only a limited amount of spiritual influence was
communicated to prophetic men, and that from them it could be conveyed
to others. In Numb. xi. 17 the Lord is represented as saying to Moses,
"I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon
them;" and in 2 Kings ii. 9 Elisha is represented as praying that the
eldest born's portion, the two-thirds of Elijah's spirit, might be
bequeathed to him. The idea is a true and instructive one. The Spirit
does, in point of fact, pass from man to man. It is as if in one
receptive person the Divine Spirit found entrance through which He might
pass to others. But another idea is also frequent in the Old Testament.
The Spirit is spoken of rather as conferring a gift here and a power
there than as dwelling wholly and permanently in men. One prophet had a
dream, another a vision, a third legislated, a fourth wrote a psalm, a
fifth founded an institution, a sixth in the power of the Spirit smote
the Philistines, or, like Samson, tore a lion in pieces.
In Christ all powers are combined--power over nature, power to teach,
power to reveal, power to legislate. And as in the Old Testament the
Spirit passed from man to man, so in the New Testament Christ first
Himself receives and then communicates to all the whole Spirit. Hence
the law noticed at a subsequent stage of this Gospel that "the Spirit
was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified" (vii. 39). We
cannot see to the bottom of the law, but the fact is apparent, that
until Christ received into every part of His own humanity the fulness of
the Divine Spirit, that Spirit could not fill with His fulness any man.
But why was the Spirit needed in a personality of which the Word, who
had been with God and known God, was the basis? Because the humanity of
Christ was a true humanity. Being human, He must be indebted to the
Spirit for all impartation to His human nature of what is Divine. The
knowledge of God which the Word possesses by experience must be humanly
apprehended before it can be communicated to men; and this human
apprehension can only be arrived at in the case of Christ by the
enlightenment of the Spirit. It was useless for Christ to declare what
could not be apprehended by human faculty, and His own human faculty was
the measure and test of intelligibility. By the Spirit He was
enlightened to speak of things Divine; and this Spirit, interposed, as
it were, between the Word and the human nature of Jesus, was as little
cumbrous in its operation or perceptible in consciousness as our breath
interposed between the thinking mind and the words we speak to declare
our mind.
To return to the direct testimony of the Baptist, we must (1)
acknowledge its value. It is the testimony of a contemporary, of whom we
know from other sources that he was generally reckoned a prophet--a man
of unblemished and inviolable integrity, of rugged independence, of the
keenest spiritual discernment. There was no man of larger size or more
heroic mould in his day. In any generation he would have been
conspicuous by his spiritual stature, his fearless unworldliness, his
superiority to the common weaknesses of men; and yet this man himself
looks up to Jesus as standing on quite a different platform from his
own, as a Being of another order. He can find no expressions strong
enough to mark the difference: "I am not worthy to loose His shoe
latchet;" "He that is of the earth" (that is, himself) "is earthly, and
speaketh of the earth: He that cometh from heaven is above all." He
would not have used such expressions of Isaiah, of Elijah, of Moses. He
knew his own dignity, and would not have set so marked a difference
between himself and any other prophet. But his own very greatness was
precisely what revealed to him the absolute superiority of Christ. These
crowds that gathered round him--what could he do for them more than
refer them to Christ? Could he propose to himself to found among them a
kingdom of God? Could he ask them to acknowledge him and trust in him
for spiritual life? Could he promise them His Spirit? Could he even link
to himself all kinds of men, of all nationalities? Could he be the light
of men, giving to all a satisfying knowledge of God and of their
relation to Him? No; he was not that light, he could but bear witness of
that light. And this he did, by pointing men to Jesus, not as a brother
prophet, not as another great man, but as the Son of God, as One who had
come down from heaven.
It is, I say, impossible that we can make nothing of such a testimony.
Here was one who knew, if any man ever did, spotless holiness when he
saw it; who knew what human strength and courage could accomplish; who
was himself certainly among the six greatest men the world has seen; and
this man, standing thus on the highest altitudes human nature can reach,
looks up to Christ, and does not only admit His superiority, but
shrinks, as from something blasphemous, from all comparison with Him.
What is the flaw in his testimony, or why are we not accepting Christ as
our light, as able to take away our sins, as willing to baptize us with
the Holy Ghost?
But (2) even such testimony as John's is not sufficient of itself to
carry conviction to the reluctant. None knew better than John's
contemporaries that he was a true man, not liable to make mistakes in a
matter of this kind. And his testimony to Christ did stagger them, and
often held them in check, and no doubt threw a kind of undefined awe
over the person of Christ; but, after all, not many believed on account
of John's testimony, and those who did were not influenced solely by his
testimony, but by his work as well. They had become concerned about sin,
sensitive to defilement and failure, and were thus prepared to
appreciate the offers of Christ. The two voices chimed, John's voice
saying, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" the voice of their own conscience
crying for the taking away of sin. It is so still. The sense of sin,
the feeling of spiritual weakness and need, the craving for God, direct
the eye, and enable us to see in Christ what we do not otherwise see. We
are not likely to know Christ until we know ourselves. What is the man's
judgment regarding Christ worth who is not conscious of his own
littleness and humbled by his own guilt? Let a man first go to school
with the Baptist, let him catch something of his unworldliness and
earnestness, let him become alive to his own shortcomings by at last
beginning to strive after the highest things in life, and by seeking to
live, not for pleasure, but for God, and his views of Christ and his
relation to Him will become satisfactory and true.
IV.
_THE FIRST DISCIPLES._
"Again on the morrow John was standing, and two of his disciples;
and he looked upon Jesus as He walked, and saith, Behold, the Lamb
of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed
Jesus. And Jesus turned, and beheld them following, and saith unto
them, What seek ye? And they said unto Him, Rabbi (which is to say,
being interpreted, Master), where abidest Thou? He saith unto them,
Come, and ye shall see. They came therefore and saw where He abode;
and they abode with Him that day: it was about the tenth hour. One
of the two that heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother. He findeth first his own brother Simon, and
saith unto him, We have found the Messiah (which is, being
interpreted, Christ). He brought him unto Jesus. Jesus looked upon
him, and said, Thou art Simon the son of John: thou shalt be called
Cephas (which is by interpretation, Peter). On the morrow he was
minded to go forth into Galilee, and he findeth Philip: and Jesus
saith unto him, Follow Me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the
city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto
him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets,
did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said
unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto
him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of
him, Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael
saith unto Him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto
him, Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I
saw thee. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God;
Thou art King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I
said unto thee, I saw thee underneath the fig tree, believest thou?
thou shalt see greater things than these. And He saith unto him,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye shall see the heaven opened, and
the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of
man."--JOHN i. 35-51.
In the prosecution of his purpose to tell how the Incarnate Word
manifested His glory to men, John proceeds to give one or two instances
of the eagerness with which prepared souls welcomed Him, and of the
instinctive perception with which true and open minds confessed Him Son
of God and King of Israel. This paragraph is the continuation of that
which begins at ver. 19 with the general title, "This is the witness of
John." We are now introduced to some of the results of John's witness,
and are shown that Christ is King, not only by official proclamation,
but by the free choice of men. These instances here cited are but the
first among countless numbers who in every generation have felt and
owned the majesty of Christ, and who have felt irresistibly drawn to Him
by a unique affinity. In the spell which His personality laid upon these
first disciples, in the uninvited yet cordial and assured
acknowledgments of His dignity which they felt drawn to make, we see
much that is significant and illustrative of the allegiance He evokes
from age to age in humble and open-minded men.
In proceeding to gather to Himself subjects who might enter into His
purposes and loyally serve Him, Jesus shows a singularly many-sided
adaptability and inexhaustible originality in dealing with men. Each of
the five disciples here introduced is individually dealt with. "The
finding of the one was not the finding of the other. For John and Andrew
there was the talk with Jesus through the hours of that
never-to-be-forgotten evening; for Simon, the heart-searching word,
convincing him he was known and his future read off; for Philip, a
peremptory command; and for Nathanael, a gracious courtesy disarming him
of prejudice, assuring him of a perfect sympathy in the breast of the
Lord. Thus there are those who seek Christ, those who are brought by
others to Christ, those whom Christ seeks for Himself, those who come
without doubts, and those who come with doubts."[8]
The two men who enjoyed the signal distinction of leading the way in
owning the majesty and attaching themselves to the person of Christ were
Andrew and probably John who wrote this Gospel. The writer, indeed, does
not name himself, but this is in accordance with his habit. The
suppression of the name is an indication that he himself was the
disciple spoken of, since had it been another he could have had no
scruple in mentioning his name. We know also that the families of
Zebedee and Jonah were partners in trade, and it was likely that the
young men of the families would go in company to visit the Baptist when
the fishing was slack. These two young men had already attached
themselves to the Baptist; had not merely passed through the fashionable
ceremony of baptism, and returned home to talk about it, but were laid
hold of by John's teaching and character, and had resolved to wait with
him till the predicted Deliverer should appear.
And at length the day came when the master whom they trusted as God's
prophet suddenly checked them in their walk, laid his hand breathlessly
upon them, and gazing at a passing figure, said, "Behold, the Lamb of
God!" There in actual bodily presence was He for whom all ages of their
people had longed; there within sound of their voice was He who could
take away their sin, lift off the burden and the trouble of life, and
let them know the blessedness of living. We are ever ready to think it
was easy for those who saw Christ to follow Him. Could we read His
sympathy and truthfulness in His face, could we hear His words addressed
directly to ourselves, could we ask our own questions and have from Him
personal guidance, we fancy faith would be easy. And no doubt there is a
greater benediction pronounced on those who "have not seen, and yet have
believed." Still, the advantage is not wholly theirs who saw the Lord
growing up among other boys, learning His trade with ordinary lads,
clothed in the dress of a working man. The brothers of Jesus found it
hard to believe. Besides, in giving the allegiance of the Spirit, and
forming eternal alliance, it is well that the true affinities of our
spirit be not disturbed by material and sensible appearances.
These two men, however, felt the spell, and "followed
Jesus"--representatives of all those who, scarcely knowing what they do
or what they intend, are yet drawn by a mysterious attraction to keep
within sight of Him of whom they have ever been hearing, and whom all
ages have sought, but who now for the first time stands clear before
their sight. Without a word to their teacher or to one another, silent
with wonder and excitement, they eagerly follow the passing figure. So
does enquiry begin with many a soul. He who is much spoken of by all,
but of whom few have personal knowledge, suddenly assumes a reality they
scarcely were looking for. It is no longer the hearing of the ear, but
now, whispers the soul, mine eye seeth Him. The soul for the first time
feels as if some action were demanded of it; it can no longer just sit
and listen to descriptions of Christ, it must arise on its own account,
and for itself seek further knowledge of this unique Person.
"Then Jesus turned and saw them following,"--turned probably because He
heard them following, for He suffers none to follow in vain. Sometimes
it may seem as if He did; sometimes it may seem as if the best years of
life were spent in following, and all to no purpose. It is not so. If
some have spent years in following, and cannot yet say that Christ has
turned and made them conscious that He is responding to their search,
this is because in their path lie many obstacles, all of which must be
thoroughly cleared away. And no man should grudge the time and the toil
that is spent on honestly clearing away whatever prevents a perfect
cohesion to this eternal Friend.
The question put by Jesus to the following disciples, "What seek ye?"
was the first breath of the winnowing fan which the Baptist had warned
them the Messiah would use. It was not the gruff interrogation of one
who would not have his retirement invaded, nor his own thoughts
interrupted, but a kindly invitation to open their minds to Him. It was
meant to help them to understand their own purposes, and to ascertain
what they expected in following Jesus. "What seek ye?" Have you any
object deeper than mere curiosity? For Christ desires to be followed
intelligently, or not at all. At all times He used the winnowing fan to
blow away the chaff of the great crowds that followed Him, and leave the
few immovably resolute souls. So many follow because a crowd streams
after Him and carries them with it; so many follow because it is a
fashion, and they have no opinion of their own; so many follow
experimentally, and drop off at the first difficulty; so many follow
under misapprehension, and with mistaken expectations. Some who came to
Him with great expectations left in shame and sorrow; some who thought
to make use of Him for party ends left Him in anger when they found
themselves unmasked; and one who thought skilfully to use Him for the
gratification of His own selfish worldliness, discovered that there was
no surer path to eternal ruin. Christ turns away none for mere slowness
in apprehending what He is and what He does for sinful men. But by this
question He reminds us that the vague and mysterious attraction which,
like a hidden magnet, draws men to Him, must be exchanged for a clear
understanding at least of what we ourselves need and expect to receive
from Him. He will turn from none who, in response to His question, can
truly say, We seek God, we seek holiness, we seek service with Thee, we
seek Thyself.
The answer which these men returned to the question of Jesus was the
answer of men who scarce knew their own minds, and were suddenly
confused by being thus addressed. They therefore reply, as men thus
confused commonly reply, by asking another question, "Rabbi, where
dwellest Thou?" Their concern was about Him, and so far the answer was
good; but it implied that they were willing to leave Him with only such
information as might enable them to visit Him at some future time, and
so far the answer was not the best. Still their shyness was natural,
and not without reason. They had felt how the Baptist searched their
soul, and of this new Teacher the Baptist himself had said he was not
worthy to loose his sandal-thong. To find themselves face to face with
this greatest person, the Messiah, was a trying experience indeed. The
danger at this point is hesitation. Many persons fail at this point from
a native reluctance to commit themselves, to feel pledged, to accept
permanent responsibilities and bind themselves with indissoluble ties.
They are past the stage of merely keeping Christ in view, but very
little past it. The closer dealings they have had with Him have as yet
led to nothing. Their fate hangs in the balance.
Out of this condition our Lord delivers these two men by His
irresistible invitation, "Come and see." And well for them it was that
He did so, for next day He left that part of the country, and the mere
knowledge of His lodging by the Jordan would have availed them nothing;
a warning to all who put themselves off with learning more about
salvation before they accept it. An eagerness in acquiring knowledge
_about_ Christ may as effectually as any other pursuit retard us in
making acquaintance with Him. It is mere trifling to be always enquiring
about One who is Himself with us; the way to secure that we shall have
Him when we need Him is to go with Him now. How can we expect our
difficulties to be removed while we do not adopt the one method God
recognises as effectual for this purpose, fellowship with Christ? Why
enquire longer about the way of salvation, and where we may find it at a
future time? Christ offers His friendship now, "Come with Me, now," He
says, "and for yourself enter My dwelling as a welcome friend." Can the
friendship of Christ do us harm, or retard us in any good thing? May we
not most reasonably fear that hesitation now may put Christ beyond our
reach? We cannot tell what new influences may enter our life and set an
impassable gulf between us and religion.
Sixty years after, when one of these men wrote this Gospel, he
remembered as if it had been yesterday the very hour of the day when he
followed Jesus into His house. His whole life seemed to date from that
hour; as well it might, for what could mark a human life more deeply and
lift it more surely to permanent altitude than an evening with Jesus?
They felt that at last they had found a Friend with human sympathies and
Divine intelligence. How eagerly must these men who had of late been
thinking much of new problems, have laid all their difficulties before
this master-mind, that seemed at once to comprehend all truth, and to
appreciate the little obstacles that staggered them. What boundless
regions of thought would His questions open up, and how entirely new an
aspect would life assume under the light He shed upon it.
The astonished satisfaction they found in their first intercourse with
Christ is shown in the bursting enthusiasm with which Andrew sought out
his brother Simon, and summarily announced, "We have found the Christ."
That is how the Gospel is propagated. The closer the tie, the more
emphatic the testimony. It is what brother says to brother, husband to
wife, parent to child, friend to friend, far more than what preacher
says to hearer, that carries in it irresistible persuasive power. When
the truth of the utterance is vouched for by the obvious gladness and
purity of the life; when the finding of the Christ is obviously as
_real_ as the finding of a better situation and as satisfying as
promotion in life, then conviction will be carried with the
announcement. And he who, like Andrew, can do little himself, may, by
his simple testimony and honest life, bring to Christ a Simon who may
become a conspicuous power for good. The mother whose influence is
confined to the four walls of her own house may lodge Christian
principle in the heart of a son, who may give it currency in one form or
other to the remotest corner of the earth.
The language in which Andrew announced to Simon his great fortune was
simple, but, in Jewish lips, most pregnant. "We have found the Christ!"
What his people had lived and longed for through all past ages, "_I_
have found" and known. The perfect deliverance and joy which God was to
bring by dwelling with His people, this at last had come. Taught to
believe that all evil and disappointment and thwarting were but
temporary, the Jew had waited for the true life of man--a life in the
presence and favour and fellowship of the Highest. This was to come in
the Messiah, and Andrew had found this. He had entered into life--all
darkness and shadow were gone; the light shone round him, making all
things bright, and piercing into eternity with clear radiance.
The words with which Jesus welcomes Simon are remarkable: "Thou art
Simon, son of John: thou shalt be called Cephas." This greeting yields
its meaning when we recall the character of the person addressed. Simon
was hot-headed, impulsive, rash, unstable. When his name was mentioned
on the Lake of Galilee there rose before the mind a man of generous
nature, frank and good-hearted, but a man whose uncertainty and
hastiness had brought him and his into many troubles, and with whom,
perhaps, it was well to have no very binding connection in trade or in
the family. What must the thoughts of such a man have been when he was
told that the Messiah was present, and that the Messianic kingdom was
standing with open gates? Must he not have felt that this might concern
others,--decent steady men like Andrew,--but not himself? Must he not
have felt that instead of being a strength to the new kingdom he would
prove a weakness? Would not that happen now which so often before had
happened--that any society he joined he was sure to injure with his
hasty tongue or rash hand? Other men might enter the kingdom and serve
it well, but he must remain without.
Coming in this mood, he is greeted with words which seem to say to him,
I know the character identified with the name "Simon, son of John;" I
know all you fear, all the remorseful thoughts that possess you; I know
how you wish now you were a man like Andrew, and could offer yourself as
a serviceable subject of this new kingdom. But no! thou art Simon;
nothing can change that, and such as you are you are welcome; but "thou
shalt be called Rock," Peter. The men standing round, and knowing Simon
well, might turn away to hide a smile; but Simon knew the Lord had found
him, and uttered the very word which could bind him for ever to Him. And
the event showed how true this appellation was. Simon became
Peter,--bold to stand for the rest, and beard the Sanhedrim. By
believing that this new King had a place for him in His kingdom, and
could give him a new character which should fit him for service, he
became a new man, strong where he had been weak, helpful and no longer
dangerous to the cause he loved.
Such are the encouragements with which the King of men welcomes the
diffident. He gives men the consciousness that they are known; He begets
the consciousness that it is not with sin in the abstract He takes to
do, but with sinners He can name, and whose weaknesses are known to Him.
But He begets this consciousness that we may trust Him when He gives us
assurance that a new character awaits us and a serviceable place in His
kingdom. He assures the most despondent that for them also a useful life
is possible.
As Andrew, in the exuberant joy of his discovery of the Messiah, had
first imparted the news to his own brother Simon, so Philip, when
invited by Jesus to accompany him to Galilee, sought to bring with him
his friend Nathanael Bartholomew (son of Tolmai). This was one of the
devout Jews who had long been wondering who that mysterious Personage
should be of whom all the prophets had spoken, and for whom the world
waited that He might complete it. The news that He was found seemed only
too good to be true. He had come too easily and unostentatiously, and
from so unlooked-for a quarter, "Can any good come out of Nazareth?"
Good men, as well as others, have their narrow views and illiberal
prejudices, and mark off in their own minds as hopeless and barren whole
religions, sects, or countries out of which God determines to bring that
which is for the healing of the nations. To rise above such prejudices
we must refuse to accept current rumours, traditional opinions,
proverbial or neat dicta which seem to settle a matter; we must
conscientiously examine for ourselves,--as Philip says, "Come and see."
He instinctively knew how useless it was to reason with men about
Christ's claims so long as they were not in His presence. One look, one
word from Himself will go further to persuade a man of His majesty and
love than all that any one else can say. To make Christ known is the
best way to prove the truth of Christianity.
The shade of the fig-tree is the natural summer-house or arbour under
which Eastern families delight to take their meals or their mid-day
rest. Nathanael had used the dense foliage of its large and thick leaves
as a screen behind which he found retirement for devotional purposes. It
is in such absolute seclusion, retirement, and solitude that a man shows
his true self. It was here Nathanael had uttered himself to his Father
who seeth in secret; here he had found liberty to pour out his true and
deepest cravings. His guilelessness had been proved by his carrying into
his retirement the same simple and unreserved godliness he professed
abroad. And he is astonished to find that the eye of Jesus had
penetrated this leafy veil, and had been a witness to his prayers and
vows. He feels that he is known best at the very point in which he had
most carefully contrived concealment, and he recognises that no one is
more likely to be the fulfiller of his prayers than that same Person who
has manifestly been somehow present at them and heard them.
To the man of prayer a suitable promise is given, as to the man of
uncertain character a promise fitting his need had come. Under his
fig-tree Nathanael had often been in sympathy with his forefather Jacob
in his great experience of God's attentiveness to prayer. When Jacob
fled from home and country, a criminal and outcast, he no doubt felt how
completely he had himself fallen into the pit he had digged. Instead of
the comforts of a well-provided household, he had to lie down like a
wild beast with nothing between him and the earth, with nothing between
him and the sky, with nothing but an evil conscience to speak to him,
and no face near save the haunting faces of those he had wronged. A more
miserable, remorseful, abandoned-looking creature rarely lay down to
sleep; but before he rose he had learned that God knew where he was, and
was with him; that on that spot which he had chosen as a hiding, because
no one could find him, and scarcely his own dog track him to it, he was
waited for and met with a loving welcome by Him whom he had chiefly
wronged. He saw heaven opened, and that from the lowest, most forlorn
spot of earth to the highest and brightest point of heaven there is a
close connection and an easy, friendly communication. If Jesus, thought
Nathanael, could reopen heaven in that style, He would be worthy of the
name of King of Israel. But he is now to learn that He will do far more;
that henceforth it was to be no visionary ladder, swept away by the
dawn, which was to lead up to heaven, but that in Jesus God Himself is
permanently made over to us; that He, in His one, visible person, unites
heaven and earth, God and man; that there is an ever-living union
between the highest height of heaven and the lowest depth of earth.
Profound and wide as the humanity of Christ, to the most forgotten and
remote outcast, to the most sunken and despairing of men, do God's love
and care and helpfulness now come; high and glorious as the divinity of
Christ may the hopes of all men now rise. He who understands the
Incarnation of the Son of God has a surer ground of faith, and a richer
hope and a straighter access to heaven, than if the ladder of Jacob
stood at his bed-head and God's angels were ministering to him.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] See Mr. Reith's rich Handbook on _The Gospel of John_ (Clark).
V.
_THE FIRST SIGN--THE MARRIAGE IN CANA._
"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the
mother of Jesus was there: and Jesus also was bidden, and His
disciples, to the marriage. And when the wine failed, the mother of
Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine. And Jesus saith unto her,
Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. His
mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.
Now there were six waterpots of stone set there after the Jews'
manner of purifying, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus
saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them
up to the brim. And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto
the ruler of the feast. And they bare it. And when the ruler of the
feast tasted the water now become wine, and knew not whence it was
(but the servants which had drawn the water knew), the ruler of the
feast calleth the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man setteth
on first the good wine; and when men have drunk freely, then that
which is worse: thou hast kept the good wine until now. This
beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested
His glory; and His disciples believed on Him."--JOHN ii. 1-11.
Having recorded the testimony borne to Jesus by the Baptist, and having
cited instances in which the overmastering personality of Jesus elicited
from simple-hearted and godly men the acknowledgment of His majesty,
John now proceeds to relate the homely incident which gave occasion to
the first public act in which His greatness was exhibited. Testimony
comes first; inward and intuitive recognition of the greatness declared
by that testimony second; perception that His works are beyond the reach
of human power comes last. But in the case of these first disciples,
while this order was indeed maintained, there was no great interval
between each step in it. It was but the "third day" after they had in
their hearts felt His impressiveness that He "manifested forth His
glory" to them in this first sign.
From the place where they first met Him to Cana of Galilee was a
distance of twenty-one or twenty-two miles.[9] Thither Jesus repaired to
be present at a marriage. His mother was already there, and when Jesus
arrived, accompanied by His new-found friends, all were invited to
remain and share in the festivities. Owing probably to this unexpected
increase to the number of the guests, the wine begins to fail. Among the
minor trials of life there are few which produce more awkwardness than
the failure to provide suitable entertainment for a specially festive
occasion. Mary, with the practised eye of a woman whose business it was
to observe such matters, and perhaps with a near relative's charge and
liberty in the house, perceives the predicament and whispers to her Son,
"They have no wine." This she said, not to hint that Jesus would do well
to retire with His too many friends, nor that He would cover the lack of
wine by brilliant conversation, but because she had ever been accustomed
to turn to this Son in all her difficulties, and now that she sees Him
acknowledged by others her own faith in Him is stimulated.
Considering the simple manner in which He had walked in, and taken His
place among the other guests, and partaken of the refreshment, and
joined in the conversation and mirth of the day, it would seem more
likely that she should have had no definite expectation as to the way in
which He would extricate the host from his difficulty, but only turned
to Him on whom she was accustomed to lean. But His answer shows that he
felt Himself urged to action of some kind by her appeal; and her
instructions to the servants to do whatever He ordered indicates that
she definitely expected Him to relieve the embarrassment. How He would
do so she could not know, and had she definitely expected a miracle she
would probably have thought the help of the servants unnecessary.
But though Mary did not anticipate a miracle, it had already occurred
to our Lord that this was a fit occasion for manifesting His kingly
power. His words grate somewhat on the ear, but this is partly due to
the difficulty of translating fine shades of meaning, and to the
impossibility of conveying in any words that modification of meaning
which is given in the tone of voice and expression of face, and which
arises also from the familiarity and affection of speaker and hearer. In
His use of the word "Woman" there is really no harshness, this being the
ordinary Greek term of address to females of all classes and
relationships, and being commonly used with the utmost reverence and
affection. The phrase "What have I to do with thee?" is a needlessly
strong translation, although it might be difficult to find a better. It
"implies a certain resistance to a demand in itself, or to something in
the way of urging it;" but might be quite sufficiently rendered by such
an expression as "I have other thoughts than thine." There is nothing
approaching angry resentment at Mary's inviting His aid, nothing like
repudiation of any claim she might have upon Him, but only a calm and
gentle intimation that in the present instance she must allow Him to act
in His own way. The whole phrase might be rendered, "Mother, you must
let Me act here in My own way: and My time for action is not yet come."
She herself was perfectly satisfied with the answer. Knowing her Son
well, every gleam of His expression, every tone of His voice, she
recognised that He meant to do something, and accordingly left the
matter in His hands, giving orders to the servants to do whatever He
required.
But there was more in the words of Jesus than even Mary understood.
There were thoughts in His mind which not even she could fathom, and
which had He explained them to her then she could not have sympathized
with. For these words, "Mine hour is not yet come," which she took to be
the mere intimation of a few minutes' delay before granting her request,
became the most solemn watchword of His life, marking the stages by
which He drew near to His death. "They sought to take Him, but no man
laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come." So again and
again. From the first He knew what would come of His manifesting His
glory among men. From the first He knew that His glory could not be
fully manifested till He hung upon the cross.
Can we wonder, then, that when He recognised in His mother's request the
invitation from God, though not from her, that He should work His first
miracle and so begin to manifest His glory, He should have said, "My
thoughts are not yours; Mine hour is not yet come"? With compassion He
looked upon her through whose soul a sword was to pass; with filial
tenderness He could only look with deep pity on her who was now the
unconscious instrument of summoning Him to that career which He knew
must end in death. _He_ saw in this simple act of furnishing the wedding
guests with wine a very different significance from that which she saw.
It was here at this wedding feast table that He felt Himself impelled to
take the step which altered the whole character of His life.
For from a private person He became by His first miracle a public and
marked character with a definite career. "To live henceforth in the
vortex of a whirlwind; to have no leisure so much as to eat, no time to
pray save when others slept, to be the gazing-stock of every eye, the
common talk of every tongue; to be followed about, to be thronged and
jostled, to be gaped upon, to be hunted up and down by curious vulgar
crowds; to be hated, and detested, and defamed, and blasphemed; to be
regarded as a public enemy; to be watched and spied upon and trapped and
taken as a notorious criminal"--is it possible to suppose that Christ
was indifferent to all this, and that without shrinking He stepped
across the line which marked the threshold of His public career?
And this was the least of it, that in this act He became a public and
marked character. The glory that here shed a single ray into the rustic
home of Cana must grow to that dazzling and perfect noon which shone
from the cross to the remotest corner of earth. The same capacity and
willingness to bless mankind which here in a small and domestic affair
brought relief to His embarrassed friends, must be adapted to all the
needs of men, and must undauntedly go forward to the utmost of
sacrifice. He who is true King of men must flinch from no
responsibility, from no pain, from no utter self-abandonment to which
the needs of men may call Him. And Jesus knew this: in those quiet hours
and long, untroubled days at Nazareth He had taken the measure of this
world's actual state, and of what would be required to lift men out of
selfishness and give them reliance upon God. "I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all men unto Me"--this was even now present to His mind. His glory
was the glory of absolute self-sacrifice, and He knew what that
involved. His kingship was the rendering of service no other could
render.
The _manner_ in which the miracle was performed deserves attention.
Christ does all while the servants seem to do all. The servants fill in
the water and the servants draw off the wine, and there is no apparent
exercise of Divine power, no mysterious words of incantation uttered
over the waterpots, not so much as a command given that the water should
become wine. What is seen by the spectators is men at work, not God
creating out of nothing. The means seem to be human, the result is found
to be Divine. Jesus says, "Fill the water pots with water," and they
_filled_ them; and filled them not as if their doing so were a mere
form, and as if they would leave room for Christ to add to their work;
no, they filled them up to the brim. Again He says, "Draw out now, and
bear to the governor of the feast," and they _bore_. They knew very well
they had only put in water, and they knew that to offer water to the
governor of a marriage feast would be to insure their own punishment;
but they did not hesitate. There seemed every reason why they should
refuse to do this, or why they should at least ask some explanation or
security that Jesus would bear the evil consequences; but there was one
reason on the other side which outweighed all these--they had the
command of Him whom they had been ordered to obey. And so, where
reasoning would have led them to folly, obedient faith makes them
fellow-workers in a miracle. They took their place and served, and they
who serve Christ and do His will must do great things; for Christ wills
nothing that is useless, futile, not worth doing. But this is how we are
tried: we are commanded to do things which seem unreasonable, and which
we have no natural ability to do. We are commanded to repent, and are
yet told that repentance is the gift of Christ; we are commanded to come
to Christ, and are at the same time assured that we cannot come except
the Father draw us; we are commanded to be perfectly holy, and yet we
know that as the leopard cannot change his spots, nor one of us add a
cubit to his stature, so neither can we put away the sins that stain
our souls and walk uprightly before God. And yet these commands are
plainly given us, not only to make us feel our helplessness, but to be
performed. We feel our inability, we may say it is unreasonable to
demand from us what we cannot perform, to require that out of the thin
and watery substance of our human souls we should produce wine that may
be poured out as an offering on the holy altar of God; but this is not
unreasonable. It is our part in simplicity to obey God; what is
commanded we are to do, and while we work He Himself will also work. He
may do so in no visible way, as Christ here did nothing visibly, but He
will be with us, effectually working. As the will of Christ pervaded the
water so that it was endowed with new qualities, so can His will pervade
our souls, with every other part of His creation, and make them
conformable to His purpose. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it;" this
is the secret of miracle-working. Do it, though you seem to be but
wasting your strength and laying yourself open to the scorn of
onlookers; do it, though in yourself there is no ability to effect what
you are aiming at; do it wholly, up to the brim, as if you were the only
worker, as if there were no God to come after you and supply your
deficiencies, but as if any shortcoming on your part would be fatal; do
not stand waiting for God to work, for it is only in you and by you that
He performs His work among men.
The significance of this incident is manifold. First, it gives us the
key to the miracles of our Lord. It has become the fashion to depreciate
miracles, and it is often thought that they hamper the gospel and
obscure the true claim of Christ. It is often felt that so far from the
miracles verifying Christ's claim to be the Son of God, they are the
greatest obstacle to His acceptance. This is, however, to misunderstand
their significance. The miracles unquestionably formed a most important
element in Christ's life; and, if so, they must have served an important
purpose; and to wish them away just because they are so important and
make so large a demand upon faith seems to me preposterous. To wish them
away precisely because they alter the very essence of the religion of
Christ, and give it that very power which through all past ages it has
exerted, seems unreasonable.
When the Jews discussed His claims among themselves or with Him, the
power to work miracles was always taken into account as weighing heavily
in His favour. He Himself distinctly stated that the crowning
condemnation of those who rejected His claims arose from the
circumstance that He had done among them the works which none other man
had done. He challenges them to deny that it was by the finger of God
that He wrought these works. After His withdrawal from earth the miracle
of the Resurrection was still appealed to as the convincing proof that
He was all He had given Himself out for. There can be no doubt,
therefore, that the power of working miracles was one great evidence of
the Divine mission of Christ.
But though this is so, we are not on that account warranted in saying
that the only purpose for which He wrought miracles was to win men's
belief in His mission. On the contrary, we are told that it was one of
His temptations, a temptation constantly resisted by Him, to use His
power for this object without any other motive. It was the reproach He
cast upon the people that except they saw signs and wonders they would
not believe. He would never work a miracle merely for the sake of
manifesting His glory. Whenever the unsympathetic, ignorant crowd
clamoured for a sign; whenever with ill-concealed dislike they cried,
"How long dost Thou make us to doubt? Show us a sign from heaven, that
we may believe," He was silent. To create a mere compulsory consent in
minds which had no sympathy with Him was never a sufficient motive. Was
there a sick child tossing in fever, was there a blind beggar by the
roadside, was there a hungry crowd, was there even the joy of a feast
interrupted: in these He could find a worthy occasion for a miracle; but
never did He work a miracle merely for the sake of removing the doubts
of reluctant men. Where there was not even the beginning of faith
miracles were useless. He could not work miracles in some places because
of their unbelief.
What then was the motive of Christ's miracles? He was, as these first
disciples owned Him, the King of God's kingdom among men: He was the
ideal Man, the new Adam, the true Source of human goodness, health, and
power. He came to do us good, and the Spirit of God filled His human
nature to its utmost capacity, that it might do all that man can do.
Having these powers, He could not but use them for men. Having power to
heal, He could not but heal, irrespective of the result which the
miracle might have on the faith of those who saw it; nay, He could not
but heal, though He straitly charged the healed person to let no man
know what had been done. His miracles were His kingly acts, by which He
suggested what man's true life in God's kingdom should be and will be.
They were the utterance of what was in Him, the manifestation of His
glory, the glory of One who came to utter the Father's heart to His
strayed children. They expressed good-will to men; and to the spiritual
eye of a John they became "signs" of spiritual wonders, symbols and
pledges of those greater works and eternal blessings which Jesus came to
bestow. The miracles revealed the Divine compassion, the grace and
helpfulness that were in Christ, and led men to trust Him for all their
needs.
We must, therefore, beware of falling into the error that lies at either
extreme. We must neither, on the one hand, suppose that Christ's
miracles were wrought solely for the purpose of establishing His claim
to be God's Viceroy on earth; nor, on the other hand, are we to suppose
that the marvels of beneficence by which He was known did nothing to
prove His claim or promote His kingdom. The poet writes because he is a
poet, and not to convince the world that he is a poet; yet by writing he
does convince the world. The benevolent man acts just as Christ did when
He seemed to lay His finger on His lips and warned the healed person to
make no mention of this kind act to anyone; and therefore all who do
discover his actions know that he is really charitable. The act that a
man does in order that he may be recognised as a good and benevolent
person exhibits his love of recognition much more strikingly than his
benevolence; and it is because the miracles of Christ were wrought from
the purest and most self-denying compassion that ever explored and bound
up the wounds of men, that we acknowledge Him as incontestably our King.
2. In what respects, then, did this first miracle manifest the glory of
Christ? What was there in it to stir the thought and attract the
adoration and trust of the disciples? Was it worthy to be the medium of
conveying to their minds the first ideas of His glory they were to
cherish? And what ideas must these have been? The first impression they
must have received from the miracle was, no doubt, simple amazement at
the power which so easily and unostentatiously turned the water into
wine. This Person, they must have felt, stood in a peculiar relation to
Nature. In fact, what John laid as the foundation of his Gospel,--that
the Christ who came to redeem was He by whom all things were at first
made,--Jesus also advanced as the first step in His revelation of
Himself. He appears as the Source of life, whose will pervades all
things. He comes, not as a stranger or interloper who has no sympathy
with existing things, but as the faithful Creator, who loves all that He
has made, and can use all things for the good of men. He is at home in
the world, and enters physical nature as its King, who can use it for
His high ends. Never before has He wrought a miracle, but in this first
command to Nature there is no hesitation, no experimenting, no anxiety,
but the easy confidence of a Master. He is either Himself the Creator of
the world He comes to restore to worth and peace, or He is the Delegate
of the Creator. We see in this first miracle that Christ is not an alien
or an usurper, but one who has already the closest connection with us
and with all things. We receive assurance that in Him God is present.
3. But it was not only the Creator's power which was shown in this
miracle, but some hint was given of the ends for which that power would
be used by Christ. Perhaps the disciples who had known and admired the
austere life of the Baptist would expect that He whom the Baptist
proclaimed as greater than himself would be greater in the same line,
and would reveal His glory by a sublime abstemiousness. They had
confessed Him to be the Son of God, and might naturally expect to find
in Him an independence of earthly joys. They had followed Him as the
king of Israel; was His kingly glory to find a suitable sphere in the
little family difficulties that poverty begets? It is almost a shock to
our own ideas of our Lord to think of Him as one of a marriage party; to
hear Him uttering the ordinary salutations, civilities, and enquiries of
a friendly and festive gathering; to see Him standing by while others
are the principal figures in the room. And we know that many who had
opportunity to observe His habits could never understand or reconcile
themselves to His easy familiarity with all kinds of people, and to His
freedom in partaking in mirthful scenes and hilarious entertainments.
And just because of this difficulty we find in reconciling religion with
joy, God with nature, does Christ reveal His glory first at a
marriage-feast, not in the temple, not in the synagogue, not by taking
His disciples apart to teach them to pray, but at a festive gathering,
that thus they may recognise in Him the Lord of all human life, and see
that His work of redemption is co-extensive with human experience. He
comes among us, not to crush or pour contempt on human feelings, but to
exalt them by sharing in them; not to show that it is possible to live
separate from all human sympathies, but to deepen and intensify them;
not to do away with the ordinary business and social relations of life,
but to sanctify them. He comes sharing in all pure feelings and joys,
sanctioning all natural relationships; Himself human, with interest in
all human interests; not a mere spectator or censor of human affairs,
but Himself a man implicated in things human. He shows us the folly of
fancying that God looks with an austere and morose eye upon outbursts
of human affection and joy, and teaches us that to be holy as He is holy
we are not required to abandon the ordinary affairs of life, and that
however we make them the apology for worldliness, it is not the
necessary duties or relations of life that prevent our being Christlike,
but these are the very material in which His glory may be most clearly
seen, the soil in which must grow and ripen all Christian graces and
fruits of righteousness.
This, then, was the glory Christ wished His disciples first of all to
see. He was to be their King, not by drilling men to fight for Him, nor
by interrupting the natural order and upsetting the established ways of
men, but by entering into these with a gladdening, purifying, elevating
spirit. His glory was not to be confined to a palace or to a small
circle of courtiers, or to one particular department of activity, but
was to be found irradiating all human life in its most ordinary forms.
He came, indeed, to make all things new, but the new creation was the
fulfilment of the original idea: it was not to be achieved by thwarting
nature, nor by a one-sided development of some elements of nature, but
by guiding the whole to its original destination, by lifting the whole
into harmony with God. We see the glory of Christ, and accept Him as our
Ruler and Redeemer, because we see in Him perfect sympathy with all that
is human.
4. While enjoying the bounty of Christ at the marriage feast, John
cannot have yet understood all that was involved in His Master's purpose
to bring new life and happiness to this world of men. Afterwards, no
doubt, he saw how appropriately this miracle took the first place, and
through it read his Lord's own thoughts about His whole work on earth.
For it is impossible that Christ Himself should not have had His own
thoughts about the significance of this miracle. He had, during the
previous six weeks, passed through a time of violent mental disturbance
and of supreme spiritual exaltation. The measureless task laid upon Him
had become visible to Him. Already He was aware that only through His
death could the utmost of blessing be imparted to men. Is it possible
that while He first put forth His power to restore the joy of these
wedding guests, He should not have seen in the wine a symbol of the
blood He was to shed for the refreshment and revival of men? The
Baptist, whose mind was nourished with Old Testament ideas, called
Christ the Bridegroom, and His people the Bride. Must not Jesus also
have thought of those who believed in Him as His bride, and must not the
very sight of a marriage have set His thoughts working regarding His
whole relation to men? So that in His first miracle He no doubt saw a
summary of His whole work. In this first manifestation of His glory
there is, to Himself at least, a reminder that only by His death will
that glory be perfected. Without Him, as He saw, the joy of this wedding
feast had been brought to an untimely close; and without His free
outpouring of His life for men there could be no presenting of men to
God unblemished and blameless, no fulfilment of those high hopes of
mankind that nourish pure characters and noble deeds, but a swift and
dreary extinction of even natural joys. It is to the marriage supper of
the _Lamb_, of Him who was slain, and has redeemed us by His blood, that
we are invited. It is the "Lamb's wife" that John saw adorned as a bride
for her Husband. And whosoever would sit down at that feast which
consummates the experience of this life, terminating all its
vacillation of trust and love, and which opens eternal and unlimited joy
to the people of Christ, must wash and make white his garments in this
blood. He must not shrink from the closest fellowship with the purifying
love of Christ.
5. His disciples, when they saw His power and His goodness in this
miracle, felt more than ever that He was the rightful King. They
"believed on Him." To us this first of signs is merged in the last, in
His death. The joy, the self-sacrifice, the holiness, the strength and
beauty of human character which that death has produced in the world, is
the great evidence which enables many now to believe in Him. The fact is
indubitable. The intelligent secular historian, who surveys the rise and
growth of European nations, counts the death of Christ among the most
vital and influential of powers for good. It has touched all things with
change, and been the source of endless benefit to men. Are we then to
repudiate Him or to acknowledge Him? Are we to act like the master of
the feast, who enjoyed the good wine without asking where it came from;
or are we to own ourselves debtors to the actual Creator of our
happiness? If the disciples believed on Him when they saw Him furnish
these wedding guests with wine, shall we not believe, who know that
through all these ages He has furnished the pained and the poor with
hope and consolation, the desolate and broken-hearted with restoring
sympathy, the outcast with the knowledge of God's love, the sinner with
pardon, with heaven, and with God? Is not the glory He showed at this
marriage in Cana precisely what still attracts us to Him with confidence
and affection? Can we not wholly trust this Lord who has a perfect
sympathy guiding His Divine power, who brings the presence of God into
all the details of human life, who enters into all our joys and all our
sorrows, and is ever watchful to anticipate our every need, and supply
it out of His inexhaustible and all-sufficient fulness? Happy they who
know His heart as His mother knew it, and are satisfied to name their
want and leave it with Him.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Modern topography inclines to identify this Cana, not, as formerly,
with Kafr-Kenna, but with Kanet-el-Jelil, some six miles N.E. of
Nazareth. It is called Cana of Galilee to distinguish it from Cana in
Asher, S.E. from Tyre (Joshua xix. 28).
VI.
_THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE._
"After this He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His
brethren, and His disciples: and there they abode not many days. And
the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep
and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and He made a scourge
of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the
oxen; and He poured out the changers' money, and overthrew their
tables; and to them that sold the doves He said, Take these things
hence; make not My Father's house a house of merchandise. His
disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of Thine house
shall eat me up. The Jews therefore answered and said unto Him, What
sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things?
Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore said, Forty and six
years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou raise it up in
three days? But He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore
He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He spake
this; and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had
said."--JOHN ii. 12-22.
Whether the Nazareth family returned from Cana to their own town before
going down to Capernaum, John does not inform us. Neither are we told
why they went to Capernaum at all at this time. It may have been in
order to join one of the larger caravans going up to Jerusalem for the
approaching Feast. Not only the disciples, some of whom had their homes
on the lake-side, accompanied Jesus, but also His mother and His
brothers. The manner in which the brothers are spoken of in connection
with His mother suggests that He and they bore to her the same relation.
They remained in Capernaum "not many days," because the Passover was at
hand. Having come to Jerusalem, and appearing there for the first time
since His baptism, He performed several miracles. These John omits, and
selects as more significant and worthy of record one authoritative act.
The circumstances which occasioned this act were familiar to the
Jerusalem Jew. The exigencies of Temple worship had bred a flagrant
abuse. Worshippers coming from remote parts of the Holy Land, and from
countries beyond, found it a convenience to be able to purchase on the
spot the animals used in sacrifice, and the material for various
offerings--salt, meal, oil, frankincense. Traders were not slow to
supply this demand, and vying with one another they crept nearer and
nearer to the sacred precincts, until some, under pretence perhaps of
driving in an animal for sacrifice, made a sale within the outer court.
This court had an area of about fourteen acres, and was separated from
the inner court by a wall breast high, and bearing intimations which
forbade the encroachment of Gentiles on pain of death. Round this outer
court ran marble colonnades, richly ornamented and supported by four
rows of pillars, and roofed with cedar, affording ample shade to the
traders.
There were not only cattle-dealers and sellers of pigeons, but also
money-changers; for every Jew had to pay to the Temple treasury an
annual tax of half a shekel, and this tax could be paid only in the
sacred currency. No foreign coin, with its emblem of submission to an
alien king, was allowed to pollute the Temple. Thus there came to be
need of money-changers, not only for the Jew who had come up to the
feast from a remote part of the empire, but even for the inhabitant of
Palestine, as the Roman coinage had displaced the shekel in ordinary
use.
There might seem, therefore, to be room to say much in favour of this
convenient custom. At any rate, it was one of those abuses which, while
they may shock a fresh and unsophisticated mind, are allowed both
because they contribute to public convenience and because they have a
large pecuniary interest at their back. In point of fact, however, the
practice gave rise to lamentable consequences. Cattle-dealers and
money-changers have always been notorious for making more than their own
out of their bargains, and facts enough are on record to justify our
Lord calling this particular market "a den of thieves." The poor were
shamefully cheated, and the worship of God was hindered and impoverished
instead of being facilitated and enriched. And even although this
traffic had been carried on under careful supervision, and on
unimpeachable principles, still it was unseemly that the worshipper who
came to the Temple seeking quiet and fellowship with God should have to
push his way through the touts of the dealers, and have his devotional
temper dissipated by the wrangling and shouting of a cattle market. Yet
although many must have lamented this, no one had been bold enough to
rebuke and abolish the glaring profanation.
Jesus on entering the Temple finds Himself in the midst of this
incongruous scene--the sounds and movements of a market, the loud and
eager exclamations of competing traders, the bustle of selecting one
animal out of a flock, the loud talk and laughter of the idle groups of
onlookers. Jesus cannot stand it. Zeal for the honour of His Father's
house possesses Him. The Temple claims Him as its vindicator from abuse.
Nowhere can He more appropriately assert His authority as Messiah. Out
of the cords lying about He quickly knots together a formidable scourge,
and silently, leaving the public conscience to justify His action, He
proceeds single-handed to drive out cattle and traders together. A scene
of violence ensued,--the cattle rushing hither and thither, the owners
trying to preserve their property, the money-changers holding their
tables as Jesus went from one to another upsetting them, the scattered
coin scrambled for; and over all the threatening scourge and the
commanding eye of the Stranger. Never on any other occasion did our Lord
use violence.
The audacity of the act has few parallels. To interfere in the very
Temple with any of its recognized customs was in itself a claim to be
King in Israel. Were a stranger suddenly to appear in the lobby of the
House of Commons, and by sheer dignity of demeanour, and the force of
integrity, to rectify an abuse of old standing involving the interests
of a wealthy and privileged class, it could not create a greater
sensation. The Baptist might be with Him, cowing the truculent with his
commanding eye; but there was no need of the Baptist: the action of
Christ awakening conscience in the men themselves was enough to quell
resistance.
No doubt Jesus began His work at the house of God because He knew that
the Temple was the real heart of the nation; that it was belief in God
which was their strength and hope, and that the loss of that belief, and
the consequent irreverence and worldliness, were the most dangerous
features of Jewish society. The state of matters He found in the Temple
could not have been tolerated had the people really believed God was
present in the Temple.
Such an act could not pass without being criticised. It would be keenly
discussed that evening in Jerusalem. At every table it would be the
topic of conversation, and a most serious one wherever men in authority
were meeting. Many would condemn it as a piece of pharisaic ostentation.
If He is a reformer, why does He not turn His attention to the
licentiousness of the people? Why show such extravagant and unseemly
zeal about so innocent a custom when flagrant immoralities abound? Why
not spend His zeal in clearing out from the land the polluting
foreigner? Such charges are easy. No man can do everything, least of
all can he do everything at once. And yet the advocate of temperance is
twitted with his negligence of other causes which are perhaps as
necessary; and he who pleads for foreign missions is reminded that we
have heathen at home. These are the carping criticisms of habitual
fault-finders, and of men who have no hearty desire for the advancement
of what is good.
Others, again, who approved the act could not reconcile themselves to
the manner of it. Might it not have been enough to have pointed out the
abuse, and to have made a strong representation to the authorities? Was
it fair to step in and usurp the authority of the Sanhedrim or Temple
officials? Was it consistent with prophetic dignity to drive out the
offenders with His own hand? Even those most friendly to Him may have
felt a little jarred as they saw Him with uplifted scourge and flaming
eyes violently driving before Him men and beasts. But they remembered
that it was written, "The zeal of Thine house will consume Me." They
remembered perhaps how the most popular king of Israel had danced before
the ark, to the scandal indeed of dull-souled conventionalists, but with
the approval of all clear-seeing and spiritually-judging men. They might
also have remembered how the last of their prophecies had said, "Behold,
the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple. But who may
abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?"
This zeal at once explained and justified His action. Some abuses may be
reformed by appeal to the constituted authorities; others can be
abolished only by the blazing indignation of a righteous soul who cannot
longer endure the sight. This zeal, conquering all consideration of
consequences and regard to appearances, acts as a cleansing fire,
sweeping before it what is offensive. It has always its own risks to
run: the authorities at Jerusalem never forgave Jesus this first
interference. By reforming an abuse they should never have allowed, He
damaged them in the eyes of the people, and they could never forget it.
Zeal also runs the risk of acting indiscreetly and taking too much upon
it. In itself zeal is a good thing, but it does not exist "in itself."
It exists in a certain character, and where the character is imperfect
or dangerous the zeal is imperfect or dangerous. The zeal of the proud
or selfish man is mischievous, the zeal of the ignorant fraught with
disaster. Still, with all risks, give us by all means rather the man who
is eaten up, possessed and carried away, by a passionate sympathy with
the oppressed and neglected, or with unquenchable zeal for rectitude and
honourable dealing or for the glory of God, than the man who can stand
and be a spectator of wrong because it is no business of his to see that
injustice be withstood, who can connive at unrighteous practices because
their correction is troublesome, invidious, hazardous. He who lays a
sudden hand on wrong-doing may have no legal authority to plead in his
defence when challenged, but to all good men such an act justifies
itself. It was a similar zeal which at all times governed Christ. He
could not stand by and wash His hands of other men's sins. It was this
which brought Him to the cross, this which in the first place brought
Him to this world at all. He had to interfere. Zeal for His father's
glory, zeal for God and man, possessed Him.
It was therefore no concern of Jesus to make Himself very intelligible
to those who could not understand the action itself and demanded a
sign. They did not understand His answer; and it was not intended they
should. Frequently our Lord's answers are enigmatical. Men have
opportunity to stumble over them, if they will. For frequently they
asked foolish questions, which admitted only of such answers. The
present question, "What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou
doest these things?" was absurd. It was to ask for a light to see light
with, a sign of a sign. His zeal for God that carried the crowd before
it, and swept God's house clean of the profane, was the best proof of
His authority and Messiahship. But there was one sign which He could
promise them without violating His principle to do no miracle merely for
the sake of convincing reluctant minds. There was one sign which formed
an integral part of His work; a sign which He must work, irrespective of
its effect on their opinion of Him--the sign of His own Resurrection.
And therefore, when they ask Him for a sign of His authority to reform
the abuses of the Temple, He promises them this sign, that He will raise
the Temple again when they destroy it. If He can give them a Temple He
has authority in it. "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will
raise it up."
What did He mean by this enigmatical saying, which not even His
disciples understood till long afterwards? We cannot doubt that in their
resistance to His first public act, righteous and necessary, and welcome
to all right-hearted men, as it was, He plainly saw the symptom of a
deep-seated hatred of all reform, which would lead them on to reject His
whole work. He had meditated much on the tone of the authorities, on the
religious state of His country--what young man of thirty with anything
in him has not done so? He had made up His mind that He would meet with
opposition at every point, and that while a faithful few would stand by
Him, the leaders of the people would certainly resist and destroy Him.
Here in His very first act He is met by the spirit of hatred, and
jealousy, and godlessness which was at last to compass His death. But
His rejection He also knew was to be the signal for the downfall of the
nation. In destroying Him He knew they were destroying themselves, their
city, their Temple. As Daniel had long ago said, "The Messiah shall be
cut off ... and the people of a prince who shall come shall destroy the
city and the sanctuary."
To Himself therefore His words had a very definite meaning: Destroy this
Temple, as you certainly will by disowning My authority and resisting My
acts of reform, and at length crucifying Me, and in three days I will
raise it. As by denying My authority and crucifying My Person you
destroy this house of My Father, so by My resurrection will I put men in
possession of God's true dwelling-place, and introduce a new and
spiritual worship. "It is in Christ's person this great drama is
enacted. The Messiah perishes: the Temple falls. The Messiah lives
again: the true Temple rises on the ruins of the symbolical temple. For
in the kingdom of God there is no simple restoration. Every revival is
at the same time an advance" (Godet). A living Temple is better than a
Temple of stone. Human nature itself, possessed and inspired by the
Divine, that is the true Temple of God.
This sign was in two years given to them. As Jesus drew His last breath
on the cross the veil of the Temple was rent. There was no longer
anything to veil; the unapproachable glory was for ever gone. The Temple
in which God had so long dwelt was now but a shell, mocking and
pathetic in the extreme, as the clothes of a departed friend, or as the
familiar dwelling that remains itself the same but changed to us for
ever. The Jews in crucifying the Messiah had effectually destroyed their
Temple. A few years more and it was in ruins, and has been so ever
since. That building which had once the singular, wonderful dignity of
being the spot where God was specially to be found and to be worshipped,
and where He dwelt upon earth in a way apprehensible by men, was from
the hour of Christ's death doomed to vacuity and destruction.
But in three days a new and better Temple was raised in Christ's body,
glorified by the presence of the indwelling God. Forty and six years had
the Jews spent in rearing the magnificent pile that astonished and awed
their conquerors. They had thus themselves rebuilt more splendidly the
Temple of Solomon. But to rebuild the Temple they destroyed in
crucifying the Lord was beyond them. The sign of rebuilding their Temple
of marble, which they scouted as a ridiculous extravagance, was really a
far less stupendous and infinitely less significant sign than that which
He actually gave them in rising from the dead. If it was impossible to
rear that magnificent fabric in three days, yet something might be done
towards it: but towards the raising of the dead body of Christ nothing
could be done by human skill, diligence, or power.
But it is not the stupendous difficulty of this sign which should
chiefly engage our attention. It is rather its significance. Christ rose
from the dead, not to startle godless and truth-hating men into faith,
but to furnish all mankind with a new and better Temple, with the means
of spiritual worship and constant fellowship with God. There was a
necessity for the resurrection. Those who became intimately acquainted
with Christ slowly but surely became aware that they found more of God
in Him than ever they had found in the Temple. Gradually they acquired
new thoughts about God; and instead of thinking of Him as a Sovereign
veiled from the popular gaze in the hidden Holy of holies, and receiving
through consecrated hands the gifts and offering of the people, they
learned to think of Him as a Father, to whom no condescension was too
deep, no familiarity with men too close. Unconsciously to themselves,
apparently, they began to think of Christ as the true Revealer of God,
as the living Temple who at all hours gave them access to the living
God. But not till the Resurrection was this transference complete--nay,
so fixed had their hearts been, in common with all Jewish hearts, upon
the Temple, that not until the Temple was destroyed did they wholly
grasp what was given them in the Resurrection of Jesus. It was the
Resurrection which confirmed their wavering belief in Him as the Son of
God. As Paul says, it was the resurrection which "declared Him to be the
Son of God with power." Being the Son of God, it was impossible He
should be held by death. He had come to the Temple calling it by an
unheard-of name, "_My_ Father's house." Not Moses, not Solomon, not
Ezra, not the holiest of high priests, would have dreamt of so
identifying himself with God as to speak of the Temple, not even as "our
Father's house" or "your Father's house," but "my Father's house." And
it was the Resurrection which finally justified His doing so, declaring
Him to be, in a sense no other was, the Son of God.
But it was not in the body of Christ that God found His permanent
dwelling among men. This sacred presence was withdrawn in order to
facilitate the end God has from the first had in view, the full
indwelling and possession of each and all men by His Spirit. This
intimate fellowship with all men, this free communication of Himself to
all, this inhabitation of all souls by the ever-living God, was the end
aimed at by all that God has done among men. His dwelling among men in
the Temple at Jerusalem, His dwelling among men in the living Person of
Christ, were preliminary and preparatory to His dwelling in men
individually. "Ye," says Paul, "are built up a spiritual house." "Ye are
builded together for a habitation of God." "Ye are the temple of the
living God." This is the great reality towards which men have been led
by symbol--the complete pervasion of all intelligence and of all moral
beings by the Spirit of God.
For us this cleansing of the Temple is a sign. It is a sign that Christ
really means to do thoroughly the great work He has taken in hand. Long
ago had it been said, "Behold the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to His Temple; and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of
silver." He was to come where holiness was professed, and to sift the
true from the false, the worldly and greedy religious from the devoted
and spiritual. He was not to make pretence of doing so, but actually to
accomplish the separation. To reform abuses such as this marketing in
the Temple was no pleasant task. He had to meet the gaze and defy the
vindictiveness of an exasperated mob; He had to make enemies of a
powerful class in the community. But He does what is called for by the
circumstances: and this is but a part and a sample of the work He does
always. Always He makes thorough, real work. He does not blink the
requirements of the case. We shrug our shoulders and pass by where
matters are difficult to mend; we let the flood take its course rather
than risk being carried away in attempting to stem it. Not so Christ.
The Temple was shortly to be destroyed, and it might seem to matter
little what practices were allowed in it; but the sounds of bargaining
and the greedy eye of trade could not be suffered by Him in His Father's
house: how much more shall He burn as a consuming fire when He cleanses
that Church for which He gave Himself that it might be without spot or
blemish. _He will cleanse it._ We may yield ourselves with gladness to
His sanctifying power, or we may rebelliously question His authority;
but cleansed the house of God must be.
VII.
_NICODEMUS._
"Now when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, during the feast,
many believed on His name, beholding His signs which He did. But
Jesus did not trust Himself unto them, for that He knew all men, and
because He needed not that any one should bear witness concerning
man; for He Himself knew what was in man. Now there was a man of the
Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came unto
Him by night, and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a
teacher come from God: for no man can do these signs that Thou
doest, except God be with Him. Jesus answered and said unto him,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he
cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a
man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his
mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is
flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not
that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew. The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born
of the Spirit."--JOHN ii. 23-iii. 8.
The first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem was not without considerable
effect on the popular mind. Many who saw the miracles He did believed
that He was a messenger from God. They saw that His miracles were not
the clever tricks of an impostor, and they were prepared to listen to
His teaching and enrol themselves as members of the kingdom He came to
found. Yet our Lord did not encourage them. He saw that they
misunderstood Him. He recognised their worldliness of heart and of aim,
and did not admit them to the intimacy He had established with the five
simple-minded Galileans. The Jerusalem Jews were glad to fall in with
one who seemed likely to do honour to their nation, and their belief in
Him was the belief men give to a statesman whose policy they approve.
The difference between them and those who rejected Christ was not a
difference of disposition such as exists between godly and ungodly men,
but consisted merely in the circumstance that they were convinced that
His miracles were genuine. Had our Lord encouraged these men they would
ultimately have been disappointed in Him. It was better that from the
first they should be stimulated to reflect on the whole matter by being
coldly received by the Lord.
It is always a point that calls for reflection: we have to consider not
only whether we have faith in Christ, but whether He has faith in
us--not only whether we have committed ourselves to Him, but whether
that committal is so genuine that He can build upon and trust it. Can He
count upon us for all service, for fidelity in times when much is
needed? Thoroughgoing confidence must always be reciprocal. The person
you believe in so utterly that you are entirely his, believes in you and
trusts himself to you--his reputation, his interests are safe in your
keeping. So is it with Christ. Faith cannot be one-sided here any more
than elsewhere. He gives Himself to those who give themselves to Him.
They who so trust Him that He is sure they will follow Him even when
they cannot see where He is going; they who trust Him, not in one or two
matters which they see He can manage, but absolutely and in all
things,--to these He will give Himself freely, sharing with them His
work, His Spirit, His reward.
To illustrate the state of mind of the Jerusalem Jews and Christ's mode
of treating them, John selects the case of Nicodemus. He was one of
those who were much impressed by the miracles of Jesus, and were
prepared to attach themselves to any movement in His favour. He belonged
to the Pharisees; to that party which, with all its narrowness,
pedantry, dogmatism, and bigotry, still preserved a salt of genuine
patriotism and genuine godliness, and reared high-toned and cultivated
men like Gamaliel and Saul. Nicodemus, whether a member of the
Sanhedrim's deputation to the Baptist or not, certainly knew the result
of that deputation, and was aware that a crisis in the national history
had arrived. He could not wait for the community to move, but felt that
whatever conclusion regarding Christ the Pharisees as a body might
arrive at, he must on his own responsibility be at the bottom of those
extraordinary events and signs that clustered round the person of Jesus.
He was a modest, reserved, cautious man, and did not wish openly to
commit himself till he was sure of his ground. He has been blamed for
timidity. I would only say that, if he felt it dangerous to be seen in
the company of Jesus, it was a bold thing to visit Him at all. He went
by night; but he went. And would that there were more like him, who,
whether cautious to excess or not, do still feel constrained to judge
for themselves about Christ; who feel that, no matter what other men
think of Him, there is an interest in Him which they cannot wait for
others to settle, but must for themselves settle before they sleep.
Probably Nicodemus made his visit by night because he did not wish to
precipitate matters by calling undue attention to the position and
intentions of Jesus. He probably went with the purpose of urging some
special plan of action. This inexperienced Galilean could not be
supposed to understand the populace of Jerusalem as well as the old
member of the Sanhedrim, who was familiar with all the outs and ins of
party politics in the metropolis. Nicodemus would therefore go and
advise Him how to proceed in proclaiming the kingdom of God; or at least
sound Him, and, if he found Him amenable to reason, encourage Him to
proceed, and warn Him against the pitfalls that lay in His path.
Modestly, and as if speaking for others as much as for himself, he says:
"Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God, for no man can do
these miracles that Thou doest except God be with Him!" There is here
neither patronizing acknowledgment nor flattery, but merely the natural
first utterance of a man who must say something to show the state of his
mind. It served to reveal the point at which Nicodemus had arrived, and
the ground on which the conversation might proceed. But "Jesus knew what
was in man." In this acknowledgment of His miracles on the part of
Nicodemus, Jesus saw the whole mental attitude of the man. He saw that
if Nicodemus had uttered all that was in his mind he would have said: "I
believe you are sent to restore the kingdom to Israel, and I am come to
advise with you on your plan of operation, and to urge upon you certain
lines of action." And therefore Jesus promptly cuts him short by saying:
"The kingdom of God is quite another thing than you are thinking of; and
the way to establish it, to enlist citizens in it, is very different
from the way you have been meditating."
In fact, Jesus was becoming embarrassed by His own miracles. They were
attracting the wrong kind of people--the superficial worldly people; the
people who thought a daring and strong hand with a dash of magic would
serve all their turn. His mind was full of this, and as soon as He has
an opportunity of uttering Himself on this point He does so, and assures
Nicodemus, as a representative of a large number of Jews who needed this
teaching, that all their thoughts about the kingdom must be ruled by
this principle, and must start from this great truth, that it was a
kingdom into which the Spirit of God alone could give entrance, and
could give entrance only by making men spiritual. That is to say, that
it was a spiritual kingdom, an inward rule over the hearts of men, not
an outward empire--a kingdom to be established, not by political craft
and midnight meetings, but by internal change and submission in heart to
God--a kingdom, therefore, into which admission could be given only on
some more spiritual ground than the mere circumstance of a man's natural
birth as a Jew.
In our Lord's _language_ there was nothing that need have puzzled
Nicodemus. In religious circles in Jerusalem there was nothing being
talked of but the kingdom of God which John the Baptist had declared to
be at hand. And when Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter this
kingdom he must be born again, He told him just what John had been
telling the whole people. John had assured them that, though the King
was in their midst, they must not suppose they were already within His
kingdom by being the children of Abraham. He excommunicated the whole
nation, and taught them that it was something different from natural
birth that gave admission to God's kingdom. And just as they had
compelled Gentiles to be baptized, and to submit to other arrangements
when they wished to partake of Jewish privileges, so John compelled them
to be baptized. The Gentile who wished to become a Jew had to be
symbolically born again. He had to be baptized, going down under the
cleansing waters, washing away his old and defiled life, being buried by
baptism, disappearing, from men's sight as a Gentile, and rising from
the water as a new man. He was thus born of water, and this time born,
not a Gentile, but a Jew.
The language of our Lord then could scarcely puzzle Nicodemus, but the
idea did stagger him that not only Gentiles but Jews must be born again.
John had indeed required the same preparation for entrance to the
kingdom; but the Pharisees had not listened to John, and were offended
precisely on the ground of his baptism. But now Jesus presses upon
Nicodemus the very same truth, that as the Gentile had to be naturalized
and born again that he might rank as a child of Abraham, and enjoy the
external privileges of the Jew, so must the Jew himself be born again if
he is to rank as a child of God and to belong to the kingdom of God. He
must submit to the double baptism of water and of the Spirit--of water
for the pardon and cleansing of past sin and defilement, of the Spirit
for the inspiration of a new and holy life.
Our Lord here speaks of the second birth as completed by two agencies,
water and the Spirit. To make the one of these merely the symbol of the
other is to miss His meaning. The Baptist baptized with water for the
remission of sins, but he was always careful to disclaim power to
baptize with the Holy Ghost. His baptism with water was of course
symbolical; that is to say, the water itself exercised no spiritual
influence, but merely represented to the eye what was invisibly done in
the heart. But that which it symbolised was not the life-giving
influence of the Holy Spirit, but the washing away of sin from the soul.
Assurance of pardon John was empowered to give. Those who humbly
submitted to his baptism with confession of their sins went from it
forgiven and cleansed. But more than that was needed to make them new
men--and yet more he could not give. For that which would fill them with
new life they must go to a Greater than he, who alone could bestow the
Holy Ghost.
These then are the two great incidents of the second birth--the pardon
of sin, which is preparatory, and which cuts our connection with the
past; the communication of life by the Spirit of God, which fits us for
the future. Both of these are represented by Christian baptism because
in Christ we have both; but those who were baptized by John's baptism
were only _prepared_ for receiving Christ's Spirit by receiving the
forgiveness of their sins.
Having thus declared to Nicodemus the necessity of the second birth, He
goes on to give the reason of this necessity. Birth by the Spirit is
necessary, because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the
kingdom of God is spiritual. Of course our Lord does not mean by flesh
the mere tangible substance of the body; He does not mean that our first
and natural birth puts us in possession of nothing but a material frame.
By the word "flesh" He signifies the appetites, desires, faculties,
which animate and govern the body, as well as the body itself--the whole
equipment with which nature furnishes a man for life in this world. This
natural birth gives a man entrance into much, and for ever determines
much, that has important bearings on his person, character, and destiny.
It determines all differences of nationality, of temperament, of sex;
apart altogether from any choice of his it is determined whether he
shall be a South Sea Islander or a European; an antediluvian living in a
cave or an Englishman of the nineteenth century. But the kingdom of God
is a spiritual kingdom, into which entrance can be had only by a man's
own will and spiritual condition, only by an attachment to God which is
no part of a man's natural equipment.
As soon as we clearly see what the kingdom of God is, we see also that
by nature we do not belong to it. The kingdom of God so far as man is
concerned is a state of willing subjection to Him--a state in which we
are in our right relation to Him. All irrational creatures obey God and
do His will: the sun runs his course with an exactness and punctuality
we cannot rival; the grace and strength of many of the lower animals,
their marvellous instincts and aptitudes, are so superior to anything in
ourselves that we cannot even comprehend them. But what we have as our
speciality is to render to God a willing service; to understand His
purposes and enter sympathetically into them. The lower creatures obey a
law impressed upon their nature; they cannot sin; their performance of
God's will is a tribute to the power which made them so skilfully, but
it lacks all conscious recognition of His worthiness to be served and
all knowledge of His object in creation. It is God serving Himself: He
made them so, and therefore they do His will. So it is with men who
merely obey their nature: they may do kindly, noble, heroic actions, but
they lack all reference to God; and however excellent these actions are,
they give no guarantee that the men who do them would sympathize with
God in all things, and do His will gladly.
Indeed, to establish the proposition that flesh or nature does not give
us entrance into God's kingdom, we need go no further than our own
consciousness. Remove the restraints which grace puts upon our nature,
and we are aware that we are not in sympathy with God, fond of His will,
disposed for His service. Let nature have its swing, and every man knows
it is not the kingdom of God it takes him to. To all men it is natural
to eat, drink, sleep, think; we are born to these things, and need to
put no constraint on our nature to do them; but can any man say it has
come naturally to him to be what he ought to be to God? Do we not to
this hour feel drawn away from God as if we were not in our element in
His presence? Flesh, nature, in God's presence is as much out of its
element as a stone in the air or a fish out of water. Men who have had
the deepest religious experience have seen it most clearly, and have
felt, like Paul, that the flesh lusts against the spirit, and draws us
ever back from entire submission to God and delight in Him.
Perhaps the necessity of the second birth may be more clearly
apprehended if we consider it from another point of view. In this world
we find a number of creatures which have what is known as animal life.
They can work, and feel, and, in a fashion, think. They have wills, and
certain dispositions, and distinctive characteristics. Every creature
that has animal life has a certain nature according to its kind, and
determined by its parentage; and this nature which the animal receives
from its parents determines from the first the capabilities and sphere
of the animal's life. The mole cannot soar in the face of the sun like
the eagle; neither can the bird that comes out of the eagle's egg burrow
like the mole. No training can possibly make the tortoise as swift as
the antelope, or the antelope as strong as the lion. If a mole began to
fly and enjoy the sunlight it must be counted a new kind of creature,
and no longer a mole. The very fact of its passing certain limitations
shows that another nature has somehow been infused into it. Beyond its
own nature no animal can act. You might as well attempt to give the
eagle the appearance of the serpent as try to teach it to crawl. Each
kind of animal is by its birth endowed with its own nature, fitting it
to do certain things, and making other things impossible. So is it with
us: we are born with certain faculties and endowments, with a certain
nature; and just as all animals, without receiving any new, individual,
supernatural help from God, can act according to their nature, so can
we. We, being human, have a high and richly-endowed animal nature, a
nature that leads us not only to eat, drink, sleep, and fight like the
lower animals, but a nature which leads us to think and to love, and
which, by culture and education, can enjoy a much richer and wider life
than the lower creatures. Men need not be in the kingdom of God in order
to do much that is admirable, noble, lovely, because their nature as
animals fits them for that. If we were to exist at all as a race of
animals superior to all others, then all this is just what must be found
in us. Irrespective of any kingdom of God at all, irrespective of any
knowledge of God or reference to Him, we have a life in this world, and
a nature fitting us for it. And it is this we have by our natural birth,
a place among our kind, an animal life. The first man, from whom we all
descend, was, as St. Paul profoundly says, "a living soul," that is to
say, an animal, a living human being; but he had not "a quickening
spirit," could not give to his children spiritual life and make them
children of God.
Now if we ask ourselves a little more closely, What is human nature?
what are the characteristics by which men are distinguished from all
other creatures? what is it which marks off our kind from every other
kind, and which is always produced by human parents? we may find it hard
to give a definition, but one or two things are obvious and
indisputable. In the first place, we could not deny human nature to men
who do not love God, or who even know nothing of Him. There are many
whom we should naturally speak of as remarkably fine specimens of human
nature, who yet never think of God, nor in any way acknowledge Him. It
is plain, therefore, that the acknowledgment and love of God, which
give us entrance into His kingdom, are _not_ a part of our nature, are
not the gifts of our birth.
And yet is there anything that so distinctly separates us from the lower
animals as our _capacity_ for God and for eternity? Is it not our
capacity to respond to God's love, to enter into His purposes, to
measure things by eternity, that is our real dignity? The capacity is
there, even when unused; and it is this capacity which invests man and
all his works with an interest and a value which attach to no other
creature. Man's nature is capable of being born again, and that is its
peculiarity; there is in man a dormant or dead capacity which nothing
but contact with God, the touch of the Holy Ghost, can vivify and bring
into actual exercise.
That there should be such a capacity, born as if dead, and needing to be
quickened by a higher power before it can live and be of use, need not
surprise us. Nature is full of examples of such capacities. All seeds
are of this nature, dead until favouring circumstances and soil quicken
them into life. In our own body there are similar capacities, capacities
which may or may not be quickened into life. In the lower
animal-creation many analogous capacities are found, which depend for
their vivification on some external agency over which they have no
control. The egg of a bird has in it the capacity to become a bird like
the parent, but it remains a dead thing and will corrupt if the parent
forsakes it. There are many of the summer insects which are twice-born,
first of their insect parents, and then of the sun: if the frost comes
in place of the sun, they die. The caterpillar has already a life of its
own, with which, no doubt, it is well content, but enclosed in its
nature as a creeping thing it has a capacity for becoming something
different and higher. It may become a moth, or a butterfly; but in most
the capacity is never developed, they die before they reach this
end--their circumstances do not favour their development. These
analogies show how common it is for capacities of life to lie dormant:
how common a thing it is for a creature in one stage of its existence to
have a capacity for passing into a higher stage, a capacity which can be
developed only by some agency peculiarly adapted to it.
It is in this condition man is born of his human parents. He is born
with a capacity for a higher life than that which he lives as an animal
in this world. There is in him a capacity for becoming something
different, better and higher than that which he actually is by his
natural birth. He has a capacity which lies dormant or dead until the
Holy Ghost comes and quickens it. There are many things, and great
things, man can do without any further Divine assistance than that which
is lodged for the whole race in the natural laws which make no
distinction between godly and ungodly; there are many and great things
man may do by virtue of his natural birth; but one thing he cannot
do--he cannot quicken within himself the capacity to love God and to
live for Him. For this there is needed an influence from without, the
efficient touch of the Holy Spirit, the impartation of His life. The
capacity to be a child of God is man's, but the development of this lies
with God. Without the capacity a man is not a man, has not that which is
most distinctive of human nature. Every man is born with that in him
which the Spirit of God may quicken into Divine life. This is human
nature; but when this capacity is so quickened, when the man has begun
to live as a child of God, he has not lost his human nature, but has
over and above become a partaker of the Divine nature. When the image of
God, as well as of his earthly parents, becomes manifest in a man, then
his human nature has received its utmost development,--he is born again.
Of the Agent who accomplishes this great transformation there is need
only to say that He is free in His operation and also inscrutable. He is
like the wind, our Lord tells us, that blows where it lists. We cannot
bring the Spirit at will; we cannot use Him as if He were some
unintelligent passive instrument; neither can we subject all His
operations to our control. The grub must wait for those natural
influences which are to transform it; it cannot command them. We cannot
command the Spirit; but we, being free agents also, can do more than
wait,--we can pray, and we can strive to put ourselves in line with the
Spirit's operation. Seamen cannot raise the wind nor direct its course,
but they can put themselves in the way of the great regular winds. We
can do the same: we can slowly, by mechanical helps, creep into the way
of the Spirit; we can set our sails, doing all we think likely to catch
and utilize His influences--believing always that the Spirit is more
desirous than we are to bring us all to good. Why He breathes in one
place while all around lies in a dead calm we do not know; but as for
the wind's variations so for His, there are doubtless sufficient
reasons. We need not expect to see the Spirit's working separate from
the working of our own minds; we cannot see the Spirit in Himself--we
cannot see the wind that moves the ships, but we can see the ships
moving, and we know that without the wind they could not move.
If this, then, be the line on which our human nature can alone be
developed, if a profound harmony with God be that which can alone give
permanence and completeness to our nature, if in accordance with all
that we see in the world around us some men fail of attaining the end of
their creation, and lie for ever blighted and useless, while others are
carried forward to fuller and more satisfying life, we cannot but ask
with some anxiety to which class we belong. Good and evil are in the
world, happiness and misery, victory and defeat; do not let us deceive
ourselves by acting as if there were no difference between these
opposites, or as if it mattered little in our case whether we belong to
the one side or the other. It matters everything: it is just the
difference between eternal life and eternal death. Christ did not come
to play with us, and startle us with idle tales. He is the centre and
fountain of all truth, and what He says fits in with all we see in the
world around us.
But in endeavouring to ascertain whether the great change our Lord
speaks of has passed upon us, our object must be not so much to
ascertain the time and manner of our new birth as its reality. A man may
know that he has been born though he is not able to recall, as no man
can recall, the circumstances of his birth. Life is the great evidence
of birth, natural or spiritual. We may desire to know the time and place
of birth for some other reason, but certainly not for this, to make sure
we have been born. Of that there is sufficient evidence in the fact of
our being alive. And spiritual life quite as certainly implies spiritual
birth.
Again, we must keep in view that a man may be born though not yet full
grown. The child of a day old has as truly and certainly a human nature
as the man in his prime. He has a human heart and mind, every organ of
body and soul, though as yet he cannot use them. So the second birth
impresses the image of God on every regenerate soul. It may not as yet
be developed in every part, but all its parts are there in germ. It is
not a partial but a complete result which regeneration effects. It is
not one member, a hand or a foot that is born, but a body, a complete
equipment of the soul in all graces. The whole character is regenerated,
so that the man is fitted for all the duties of the Divine life
whensoever these duties shall come before him. A human child does not
need additions made to it to fit it for new functions: it requires
growth, it requires nurture, it requires education and the practice of
human ways, but it requires no new organ to be inserted into its frame;
once born it has but to grow in order to adapt itself with ease and
success to all human ways and conditions. And if regenerate we have that
in us which with care and culture will grow till it brings us to perfect
likeness to Christ. If we are not growing, if we remain small, puny,
childish while we should be adult and full grown, then there is
something seriously wrong, which calls for anxious enquiry.
But above all let us bear in mind that it is a new birth that is
required; that no care spent on our conduct, no improvement and
refinement of the natural man, suffices. For flying it is not an
improved caterpillar that is needed, it is a butterfly; it is not a
caterpillar of finer colour or more rapid movement or larger
proportions, it is a new creature. We recognise that in this and that
man we meet there is something more than men naturally have; we perceive
in them a taming, chastening, inspiring principle. We rejoice all the
more when we see it, because we know that no man can give it, but only
God. And we mourn its absence because even when a man is dutiful,
affectionate, temperate, honourable, yet if he have not grace, if he
have not that peculiar tone and colour which overspread the whole
character, and show that the man is living in the light of Christ, and
is moved by love to God, we instinctively feel that the defect is
radical, that as yet he has not come into connection with the Eternal,
that there is that awanting for which no natural qualities, however
excellent, can compensate--nay, the more lovely and complete the natural
character is, the more painful and lamentable is the absence of grace,
of Spirit.
VIII.
_THE BRAZEN SERPENT._
"Nicodemus answered and said unto Him, How can these things be?
Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou the teacher of Israel,
and understandest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
We speak that we do know, and bear witness of that we have seen; and
ye receive not our witness. If I told you earthly things, and ye
believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly things?
And no man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of
heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be
lifted up: that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that
the world should be saved through Him. He that believeth on Him is
not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because
he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and
men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were
evil. For every one that doeth ill hateth the light, and cometh not
to the light, lest his works should be reproved. But he that doeth
the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest,
that they have been wrought in God."--JOHN iii. 9-21.
There are two great obstacles to human progress, two errors which retard
the individual and the race, two inborn prejudices which prevent men
from choosing and entering into true and lasting prosperity. The first
is that men will always persist in seeking their happiness in something
outside themselves; the second is that even when they come to see where
true happiness lies they cannot find the way to it. In our Lord's time
even wise and godly people thought the permanent glory and happiness of
men were to be found in a free state, in self-government, lightened
taxes, impregnable fortresses, and a purified social order. And they
were not altogether wrong; but the way to this condition, they thought,
lay through the enthronement of a strong-handed monarch, who could
gather round his throne wise counsellors and devoted followers. This was
the form of worldliness which our Lord had to contend with. This was the
tendency of the unspiritual mind in His day. But in every generation and
in all men the same radical misconceptions exist, although they may not
appear in the same forms.
In dealing with Nicodemus, a sincere and thoroughly decent but
unspiritual man, our Lord had difficulty in lifting his thoughts off
what was external and worldly and fixing them on what was inward and
heavenly.[10] And in order to effect this, He told him, among other
things, that the Son of man was indeed to be lifted up--yes, but not on
a throne set up in Herod's palace. He was to be conspicuous, but it was
as the Brazen Serpent was conspicuous, hanging on a pole for the healing
of the people. His lifting up, His exaltation, was secure; He was to be
raised above every name that is named; He was destined to have the
pre-eminence in all things, to be exalted above all principalities and
powers; He was to have all power in heaven and in earth; He was to be
the true and supreme Lord of all,--yes; but this dignity and power were
to be attained by no mere official appointment, by no accidental choice
of the people, by no mere hereditary title, but by the sheer force of
merit, by His performing services for men which made the race His own,
by His leaving no depth of human degradation unexplored, by a sympathy
with the race and with individuals which produced in Him a total
self-abandonment, and suffered Him to leave no grievance unconsidered,
no wrong unthought of, no sorrow untouched. There is no royal road to
human excellence; and Jesus could reach the height He reached by no
swift ascension of a throne amidst the blare of trumpets, the flaunting
of banners, and the acclamations of the crowd, but only by being exposed
to the keenest tests with which this world can confront and search
human character, by being put through the ordeal of human life, and
being found the best man among us; the humblest, the truest; the most
faithful, loving, and enduring; the most willing servant of God and man.
It was this which Christ sought to suggest to Nicodemus, and which we
all find it hard to learn, that true glory is excellence of character,
and that this excellence can be reached only through the difficulties,
trials, and sorrows of a human life. Christ showed men a new glory and a
new path to it--not by arms, not by statesmanship, not by inventions,
not by literature, not by working miracles, but by living with the poor
and becoming the friend of forsaken and wicked men, and by dying, the
Just for the unjust. He has been lifted up as the Brazen Serpent was, He
has become conspicuous by His very lowliness; by a self-sacrifice so
complete that He gave His all, His life, He has won to Himself all men
and made His will supreme, so that it and no other shall one day
everywhere rule. He gave Himself for the healing of the nations, and the
very death which seemed to extinguish His usefulness has made Him the
object of worship and trust to all.
This is certainly the point of analogy between Himself and the Brazen
Serpent which our Lord chiefly intended to suggest--that as the serpent
was _lifted up_ so as to be seen from every part of the camp, even so
the death of the Son of man was to make Him conspicuous and easily
discernible. It is by their death that many men have become immortalized
in the memory of the race. Deaths of gallantry, of heroism, of
self-devotion have often wiped out and seemed to atone for preceding
lives of dissipation and uselessness. The life of Christ would have been
inefficient without His death. Had He only lived and taught, we should
have known more than was otherwise possible, but it is doubtful whether
His teaching would have been much listened to. It is His death in which
all men are interested. It appeals to all. A love that gave its life for
them, all men can understand. A love that atoned for sin appeals to all,
for all are sinners.
But though this is the chief point of analogy there are others. We do
not know _precisely_ what the Israelites would think of the Brazen
Serpent. We need not repeat from the sacred narrative the circumstances
in which it was formed and lifted up in the wilderness. The singularity
of the remedy provided for the plague of serpents under which the
Israelites were suffering, consisted in this, that it resembled the
disease. Serpents were destroying them, and from this destruction they
were saved by a serpent. This special mode of cure was obviously not
chosen without a reason. To those among them who were instructed in the
symbolic learning of Egypt there might be in this image a significance
which is lost to us. From the earliest times the serpent had been
regarded as man's most dangerous enemy--more subtle than any beast of
the field, more sudden and stealthy in its attack, and more certainly
fatal. The natural revulsion which men feel in its presence, and their
inability to cope with it, seemed to fit it to be the natural
representative of the powers of spiritual evil. And yet, strangely
enough, in the very countries in which it was recognised as the symbol
of all that is deadly, it was also recognised as the symbol of life.
Having none of the ordinary members or weapons of the wilder lower
creatures, it was yet more agile and formidable than any of them; and,
casting its skin annually, it seemed to renew itself with eternal youth.
And as it was early discovered that the most valuable medicines are
poisons, the serpent, as the very "personification of poison," was
looked upon as not only the symbol of all that is deadly, but also of
all that is health-giving. And so it has continued to be, even to our
own days, the recognised symbol of the healing art, and, wreathed round
a staff, as Moses had it, it may still be seen sculptured on our own
hospitals and schools of medicine.
But whatever else the agonised people saw in the brazen image, they must
at any rate have seen in its limp and harmless form a symbol of the
power of their God to make all the serpents round about them as harmless
as this one. The sight of it hanging with drooping head and motionless
fangs was hailed with exultation as the trophy of deliverance from all
the venomous creatures it represented. They saw in it their danger at an
end, their enemy triumphed over, their death slain. They knew that the
manufactured serpent was only a sign, and had in itself no healing
virtue, but in looking at it they saw, as in a picture, God's power to
overcome the most noxious of evils.
That which Moses lifted up for the healing of the Israelites was a
likeness, not of those who were suffering, but of that from which they
were suffering. It was an image, not of the swollen limbs and
discoloured face of the serpent-bitten, but of the serpents that
poisoned them. It was this image, representing as slain and harmless the
creature which was destroying them, which became the remedy for the
pains it inflicted. Similarly, our Lord instructs us to see in the cross
not so much our own nature suffering the extreme agony and then hanging
lifeless, as sin suspended harmless and dead there. All the virus seemed
to be extracted from the fiery, burning fangs of the snakes, and hung up
innocuous in that brazen serpent; so all the virulence and venom of sin,
all that is dangerous and deadly in it, our Lord bids us believe is
absorbed in His person and rendered harmless on the cross.
With this representation the language of Paul perfectly agrees. God, he
tells us, "made Christ to be sin for us." It is strong language; yet no
language that fell short of this would satisfy the symbol. Christ was
not merely made man, He was made sin for us. Had He merely become man,
and thus become involved in our sufferings, the symbol of the serpent
would scarcely have been a fair one. A better image of Him would in that
case have been a poisoned Israelite. His choice of the symbol of the
brazen serpent to represent Himself upon the cross justifies Paul's
language, and shows us that He habitually thought of His own death as
the death of sin.
Christ being lifted up, then, meant this, whatever else, that in His
death sin was slain, its power to hurt ended. He being made sin for us,
we are to argue that what we see done to Him is done to sin. Is He
smitten, does He become accursed, does God deliver Him to death, is He
at last slain and proved to be dead, so certainly dead that not a bone
of Him need be broken? Then in this we are to read that sin is thus
doomed by God, has been judged by Him, and was in the cross o
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