The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II
by Marcus Dods · English · Gutenberg #33288 · 677,584 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II
Author: Marcus Dods
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
Release date: July 29, 2010 [eBook #33288]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33288
Credits: Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN, VOL. II ***
Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries)
[Transcriber's Note:
This e-text is intended for users whose text readers cannot display
the Unicode (utf-8) version of the file. Greek words have been
transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =ho logos=.
_Italic_ words have been similarly enclosed in underscores.
A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
The Table of Contents refers to page numbers in the original text.
All advertising material has been placed at the end of the text.]
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.
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXCII.
THE
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
BY
MARCUS DODS, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY, NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
_VOL. II._
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXCII.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I.
THE ANOINTING OF JESUS 3
II.
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 19
III.
THE CORN OF WHEAT 31
IV.
THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE OF THE CROSS 47
V.
RESULTS OF CHRIST'S MANIFESTATION 65
VI.
THE FOOT-WASHING 75
VII.
JUDAS 91
VIII.
JESUS ANNOUNCES HIS DEPARTURE 109
IX.
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE 123
X.
THE FATHER SEEN IN CHRIST 137
XI.
THE BEQUEST OF PEACE 159
XII.
THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES 175
XIII.
NOT SERVANTS, BUT FRIENDS 193
XIV.
THE SPIRIT CHRIST'S WITNESS 205
XV.
LAST WORDS 229
XVI.
CHRIST'S INTERCESSORY PRAYER 247
XVII.
THE ARREST 263
XVIII.
PETER'S DENIAL AND REPENTANCE 281
XIX.
JESUS BEFORE PILATE 299
XX.
MARY AT THE CROSS 321
XXI.
THE CRUCIFIXION 335
XXII.
THE RESURRECTION 351
XXIII.
THOMAS' TEST 365
XXIV.
APPEARANCE AT SEA OF GALILEE 383
XXV.
RESTORATION OF PETER 399
XXVI.
CONCLUSION 413
I.
_THE ANOINTING OF JESUS._
"Jesus therefore six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where
Lazarus was, whom Jesus raised from the dead. So they made Him a
supper there: and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that
sat at meat with Him. Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of
spikenard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped
His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of
the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, which should
betray Him, saith, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred
pence, and given to the poor? Now this he said, not because he cared
for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the bag took
away what was put therein. Jesus therefore said, Suffer her to keep
it against the day of My burying. For the poor ye have always with
you; but Me ye have not always. The common people therefore of the
Jews learned that He was there: and they came, not for Jesus' sake
only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom He had raised from
the dead. But the chief priests took counsel that they might put
Lazarus also to death; because that by reason of him many of the
Jews went away, and believed on Jesus."--JOHN xii. 1-11.
This twelfth chapter is the watershed of the Gospel. The
self-manifestation of Jesus to the world is now ended; and from this
point onwards to the close we have to do with the results of that
manifestation. He hides Himself from the unbelieving, and allows their
unbelief full scope; while He makes further disclosures to the faithful
few. The whole Gospel is a systematic and wonderfully artistic
exhibition of the manner in which the deeds, words, and claims of Jesus
produced,--on the one hand, a growing belief and enthusiasm; on the
other, a steadily hardening unbelief and hostility. In this chapter the
culmination of these processes is carefully illustrated by three
incidents. In the first of these incidents evidence is given that there
was an intimate circle of friends in whose love Jesus was embalmed, and
His work and memory insured against decay; while the very deed which had
riveted the faith and affection of this intimate circle is shown to have
brought the antagonism of His enemies to a head. In the second incident
the writer shows that on the whole popular mind Jesus had made a
profound impression, and that the instincts of the Jewish people
acknowledged Him as King. In the third incident the influence He was
destined to have and was already to some extent exerting beyond the
bounds of Judaism is illustrated by the request of the Greeks that they
might see Jesus.
In this first incident, then, is disclosed a devotedness of faith which
cannot be surpassed, an attachment which is absolute; but here also we
see that the hostility of avowed enemies has penetrated even the inner
circle of the personal followers of Jesus, and that one of the chosen
Twelve has so little faith or love that he can see no beauty and find no
pleasure in any tribute paid to his Master. In this hour there meet a
ripeness of love which suddenly reveals the permanent place which Jesus
has won for Himself in the hearts of men, and a maturity of alienation
which forebodes that His end cannot be far distant. In this beautiful
incident, therefore, we turn a page in the gospel and come suddenly into
the presence of Christ's death. To this death He Himself freely alludes,
because He sees that things are now ripe for it, that nothing short of
His death will satisfy His enemies, while no further manifestation can
give Him a more abiding place in the love of His friends. The chill,
damp odour of the tomb first strikes upon the sense, mingling with and
absorbed in the perfume of Mary's ointment. If Jesus dies, He cannot be
forgotten. He is embalmed in the love of such disciples.
On His way to Jerusalem for the last time Jesus reached Bethany "six
days before the Passover"--that is to say, in all probability[1] on the
Friday evening previous to His death. It was natural that He should wish
to spend His last Sabbath in the congenial and strengthening society of
a family whose welcome and whose affection He could rely upon. In the
little town of Bethany He had become popular, and since the raising of
Lazarus He was regarded with marked veneration. Accordingly they made
Him a feast, which, as Mark informs us, was given in the house of Simon
the leper. Any gathering of His friends in Bethany must have been
incomplete without Lazarus and his sisters. Each is present, and each
contributes an appropriate addition to the feast. Martha serves;
Lazarus, mute as he is throughout the whole story, bears witness by his
presence as a living guest to the worthiness of Jesus; while Mary makes
the day memorable by a characteristic action. Coming in, apparently
after the guests had reclined at table, she broke an alabaster of very
costly spikenard[2] and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet
with her hair.
This token of affection took the company by surprise. Lazarus and his
sisters may have been in sufficiently good circumstances to admit of
their making a substantial acknowledgment of their indebtedness to
Jesus; and although this alabaster of ointment had cost as much as would
keep a labouring man's family for a year, this could not seem an
excessive return to make for service so valuable as Jesus had rendered.
It was the manner of the acknowledgment which took the company by
surprise. Jesus was a poor man, and His very appearance may have
suggested that there were other things He needed more urgently than
such a gift as this. Had the family provided a home for Him or given
Him the price of this ointment, no one would have uttered a remark. But
this was the kind of demonstration reserved for princes or persons of
great distinction; and when paid to One so conspicuously humble in His
dress and habits, there seemed to the uninstructed eye something
incongruous and bordering on the grotesque. When the fragrance of the
ointment disclosed its value, there was therefore an instantaneous
exclamation of surprise, and at any rate in one instance of blunt
disapproval. Judas, instinctively putting a money value on this display
of affection, roundly and with coarse indelicacy declared it had better
have been sold and given to the poor.
Jesus viewed the act with very different feelings. The rulers were
determining to put Him out of the way, as not only worthless but
dangerous; the very man who objected to this present expenditure was
making up his mind to sell Him for a small part of the sum; the people
were scrutinising His conduct, criticising Him;--in the midst of all
this hatred, suspicion, treachery, coldness, and hesitation comes this
woman and puts aside all this would-be wisdom and caution, and for
herself pronounces that no tribute is rich enough to pay to Him. It is
the rarity of such action, not the rarity of the nard, that strikes
Jesus. This, He says, is a noble deed she has done, far rarer, far more
difficult to produce, far more penetrating, and lasting in its fragrance
than the richest perfume that man has compounded. Mary has the
experience that all those have who for Christ's sake expose themselves
to the misunderstanding and abuse of vulgar and unsympathetic minds; she
receives from Himself more explicit assurance that her offering has
given pleasure to Him and is gratefully accepted. We may sometimes find
ourselves obliged to do what we perfectly well know will be
misunderstood and censured; we may be compelled to adopt a line of
conduct which seems to convict us of heedlessness and of the neglect of
duties we owe to others; we may be driven to action which lays us open
to the charge of being romantic and extravagant; but of one thing we may
be perfectly sure--that however our motives are mis-read and condemned
by those who first make their voices heard, He for whose sake we do
these things will not disparage our action nor misunderstand our
motives. The way to a fuller intimacy with Christ often lies through
passages in life we must traverse alone.
But we are probably more likely to misunderstand than to be
misunderstood. We are so limited in our sympathies, so scantily
furnished with knowledge, and have so slack a hold upon great
principles, that for the most part we can understand only those who are
like ourselves. When a woman comes in with her effusiveness, we are put
out and irritated; when a man whose mind is wholly uneducated utters his
feelings by shouting hymns and dancing on the street, we think him a
semi-lunatic; when a member of our family spends an hour or two a day in
devotional exercises, we condemn it as waste of time which might be
better spent on practical charities or household duties.
Most liable of all to this vice of misjudging the actions of others, and
indeed of misapprehending generally wherein the real value of life
consists, are those who, like Judas, measure all things by a
utilitarian, if not a money, standard. Actions which have no immediate
results are pronounced by such persons to be mere sentiment and waste,
while in fact they redeem human nature and make life seem worth living.
The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava served none of the
immediate purposes of the battle, and was indeed a blunder and waste
from that point of view; yet are not our annals enriched by it as they
have been by few victories? On the Parthenon there were figures placed
with their backs hard against the wall of the pediment; these backs were
never seen and were not intended to be seen, but yet were carved with
the same care as was spent upon the front of the figures. Was that care
waste? There are thousands of persons in our own society who think it
essential to teach their children arithmetic, but pernicious to instil
into their minds a love of poetry or art. They judge of education by the
test, Will it pay? can this attainment be turned into money? The other
question, Will it enrich the nature of the child and of the man? is not
asked. They proceed as if they believed that the man is made for
business, not business for the man; and thus it comes to pass that
everywhere among us men are found sacrificed to business, stunted in
their moral development, shut off from the deeper things of life. The
pursuits which such persons condemn are the very things which lift life
out of the low level of commonplace buying and selling, and invite us to
remember that man liveth not by bread alone, but by high thoughts, by
noble sacrifice, by devoted love and all that love dictates, by the
powers of the unseen, mightier by far than all that we see.
In the face, then, of so much that runs counter to such demonstrations
as Mary's and condemns them as extravagance, it is important to note the
principles upon which our Lord proceeds in His justification of her
action.
First, He says, this is an occasional, exceptional tribute. "The poor
always ye have with you, but me ye have not always." Charity to the poor
you may continue from day to day all your life long: whatever you spend
on me is spent once for all. You need not think the poor defrauded by
this expenditure. Within a few days I shall be beyond all such tokens of
regard, and the poor will still claim your sympathy. This principle
solves for us some social and domestic problems. Of many expenses common
in society, and especially of expenses connected with scenes such as
this festive gathering at Bethany, the question always arises, Is this
expenditure justifiable? When present at an entertainment costing as
much and doing as little material good as the spikenard whose perfume
had died before the guests separated, we cannot but ask, Is not this,
after all, mere waste? had it not been better to have given the value to
the poor? The hunger-bitten faces, the poverty-stricken outcasts, we
have seen during the day are suggested to us by the superabundance now
before us. The effort to spend most where least is needed suggests to
us, as to these guests at Bethany, gaunt, pinched, sickly faces, bare
rooms, cold grates, feeble, dull-eyed children--in a word, starving
families who might be kept for weeks together on what is here spent in a
few minutes; and the question is inevitable, Is this right? Can it be
right to spend a man's ransom on a mere good smell, while at the end of
the street a widow is pining with hunger? Our Lord replies that so long
as one is day by day considering the poor and relieving their
necessities, he need not grudge an occasional outlay to manifest his
regard for his friends. The poor of Bethany would probably appeal to
Mary much more hopefully than to Judas, and they would appeal all the
more successfully because her heart had been allowed to utter itself
thus to Jesus. There is, of course, an expenditure for display under the
guise of friendship. Such expenditure finds no justification here or
anywhere else. But those who in a practical way acknowledge the
perpetual presence of the poor are justified in the occasional outlay
demanded by friendship.
2. But our Lord's defence of Mary is of wider range. "Let her alone," He
says, "against the day of my burying hath she kept this." It was not
only occasional, exceptional tribute she had paid Him; it was solitary,
never to be repeated. Against my burial she has kept this unguent; for
me ye have not always. Would you blame Mary for spending this, were I
lying in my tomb? Would you call it too costly a tribute, were it the
last? Well, it is the last.[3] Such is our Lord's justification of her
action. Was Mary herself conscious that this was a parting tribute? It
is possible that her love and womanly instinct had revealed to her the
nearness of that death of which Jesus Himself so often spoke, but which
the disciples refused to think of. She may have felt that this was the
last time she would have an opportunity of expressing her devotion.
Drawn to Him with unutterable tenderness, with admiration, gratitude,
anxiety mingling in her heart, she hastens to spend upon Him her
costliest. Passing away from _her_ world she knows He is; buried so far
as she was concerned she knew Him to be if He was to keep the Passover
at Jerusalem in the midst of His enemies. Had the others felt with her,
none could have grudged her the last consolation of this utterance of
her love, or have grudged Him the consolation of receiving it. For this
made Him strong to die, this among other motives--the knowledge that His
love and sacrifice were not in vain, that He had won human hearts, and
that in their affection He would survive. This is His true embalming.
This it is that forbids that His flesh see corruption, that His earthly
manifestation die out and be forgotten. To die before He had attached to
Himself friends as passionate in their devotion as Mary would have been
premature. The recollection of His work might have been lost. But when
He had won men like John and women like Mary, He could die assured that
His name would never be lost from earth. The breaking of the alabaster
box, the pouring out of Mary's soul in adoration of her Lord--this was
the signal that all was ripe for His departure, this the proof that His
manifestation had done its work. The love of His own had come to
maturity and burst thus into flower. Jesus therefore recognises in this
act His true embalming.
And it is probably from this point of view that we may most readily see
the appropriateness of that singular commendation and promise which our
Lord, according to the other gospels, added: "Verily I say unto you,
wherever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this
also that she hath done shall be spoken for a memorial of her."
At first sight the encomium might seem as extravagant as the action. Was
there, a Judas might ask, anything deserving of immortality in the
sacrifice of a few pounds? But no such measurements are admissible here.
The encomium was deserved because the act was the irrepressible
utterance of all-absorbing love--of a love so full, so rich, so rare
that even the ordinary disciples of Christ were at first not in perfect
sympathy with it. The absolute devotedness of her love found a fit
symbol in the alabaster box or vase which she had to break that the
ointment might flow out. It was not a bottle out of which she might take
the stopper and let a carefully measured quantity dribble out, reserving
the rest for other and perhaps very different uses--fit symbol of our
love to Christ; but it was a hermetically sealed casket or flask, out of
which, if she let one drop fall, the whole must go. It had to be broken;
it had to be devoted to one sole use. It could not be in part reserved
or in part diverted to other uses. Where you have such love as this,
have you not the highest thing humanity can produce? Where is it now to
be had on earth, where are we to look for this all-devoting, unreserving
love, which gathers up all its possessions and pours them out at
Christ's feet, saying, "Take all, would it were more"?
The encomium, therefore, was deserved and appropriate. In her love the
Lord would ever live: so long as she existed the remembrance of Him
could not die. No death could touch her heart with his chilly hand and
freeze the warmth of her devotion. Christ was immortal in her, and she
was therefore immortal in Him. Her love was a bond that could not be
broken, the truest spiritual union. In embalming Him, therefore, she
unconsciously embalmed herself. Her love was the amber in which He was
to be preserved, and she became inviolable as He. Her love was the
marble on which His name and worth were engraven, on which His image was
deeply sculptured, and they were to live and last together. Christ
"prolongs His days" in the love of His people. In every generation there
arise those who will not let His remembrance die out, and who to their
own necessities call out the living energy of Christ. In so doing they
unwittingly make themselves undying as He; their love of Him is the
little spark of immortality in their soul. It is that which indissolubly
and by the only genuine spiritual affinity links them to what is
eternal. To all who thus love Him Christ cannot but say, "Because I
live, ye shall live also."
Another point in our Lord's defence of Mary's conduct, though it is not
explicitly asserted, plainly is, that tributes of affection paid
directly to Himself are of value to Him. Judas might with some
plausibility have quoted against our Lord His own teaching that an act
of kindness done to the poor was kindness to Him. It might be said that,
on our Lord's own showing, what He desires is, not homage paid to
Himself personally, but loving and merciful conduct. And certainly any
homage paid to Himself which is not accompanied by such conduct is of no
value at all. But as love to Him is the spring and regulator of all
right conduct, it is necessary that we should cultivate this love; and
because He delights in our well-being and in ourselves, and does not
look upon us merely as so much material in which He may exhibit His
healing powers, He necessarily rejoices in every expression of true
devotedness that is paid to Him by any of us.
And on our side wherever there is true and ardent love it must crave
direct expression. "If ye love me," says our Lord, "keep my
commandments"; and obedience certainly is the normal test and exhibition
of love. But there is that in our nature which refuses to be satisfied
with obedience, which craves fellowship with what we love, which carries
us out of ourselves and compels us to express our feeling directly. And
that soul is not fully developed whose pent-up gratitude, cherished
admiration, and warm affection do not from time to time break away from
all ordinary modes of expressing devotion and choose some such direct
method as Mary chose, or some such straightforward utterance as Peter's:
"Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee."
It may, indeed, occur to us, as we read of Mary's tribute to her Lord,
that the very words in which He justified her action forbid our
supposing that any so grateful tribute can be paid Him by us. "Me ye
have not always" may seem to warn us against expecting that so direct
and satisfying an intercourse can be maintained now, when we no longer
have Him. And no doubt this is one of the standing difficulties of
Christian experience. We can love those who live with us, whose eye we
can meet, whose voice we know, whose expression of face we can read. We
feel it easy to fix our affections on one and another of those who are
alive contemporaneously with ourselves. But with Christ it is different:
we miss those sensible impressions made upon us by the living bodily
presence; we find it difficult to retain in the mind a settled idea of
the feeling He has towards us. It is an effort to accomplish by faith
what sight without any effort effectually accomplishes. We do not _see_
that He loves us; the looks and tones that chiefly reveal human love are
absent; we are not from hour to hour confronted, whether we will or no,
with one evidence or other of love. Were the life of a Christian
nowadays no more difficult than it was to Mary, were it brightened with
Christ's presence as a household friend, were the whole sum and
substance of it merely a giving way to the love He kindled by palpable
favours and measurable friendship, then surely the Christian life would
be a very simple, very easy, very happy course.
But the connection between ourselves and Christ is not of the body that
passes, but of the spirit which endures. It is spiritual, and such a
connection may be seriously perverted by the interference of sense and
of bodily sensations. To measure the love of Christ by His expression of
face and by His tone of voice is legitimate, but it is not the truest
measurement: to be drawn to Him by the accidental kindnesses our present
difficulties must provoke is to be drawn by something short of perfect
spiritual affinity. And, on the whole, it is well that our spirit should
be allowed to choose its eternal friendship and alliance by what is
specially and exclusively its own, so that its choice cannot be
mistaken, as the choice sometimes is when there is a mixture of physical
and spiritual attractiveness. So much are we guided in youth and in the
whole of our life by what is material, so freely do we allow our tastes
to be determined and our character to be formed by our connection with
what is material, that the whole man gets blunted in his _spiritual_
perceptions and incapable of appreciating what is not seen. And the
great part of our education in this life is to lift the spirit to its
true place and to its appropriate company, to teach it to measure its
gains apart from material prosperity, and to train it to love with
ardour what cannot be seen.
Besides, it cannot be doubted that this incident itself very plainly
teaches that Christ came into this world to win our love and to turn all
duty into a personal acting towards Him; to make the _whole_ of life
like those parts of it which are now its bright exceptional holiday
times; to make all of it a pleasure by making all of it and not merely
parts of it the utterance of love. Even a little love in our life is the
sunshine that quickens and warms and brightens the whole. There seems at
length to be a reason and a satisfaction in life when love animates us.
It is easy to act well to those whom we really love, and Christ has come
for the express purpose of bringing our whole life within this charmed
circle. He has come not to bring constraint and gloom into our lives,
but to let us out into the full liberty and joy of the life that God
Himself lives and judges to be the only life worthy of His bestowal upon
us.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is uncertain whether the "six days" are inclusive or exclusive of
the day of arrival and of the first day of the Feast. It is also
uncertain on what day of the week the Crucifixion happened.
[2] In _The Classical Review_ for July 1890 Mr. Bennett suggests that
the difficult word =pistikes= should be written =pistakes=, and that it
refers to the _Pistacia terebinthus_, which grows in Cyprus and Judaea,
and yields a very fragrant and very costly unguent.
[3] So Stier.
II.
_THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM._
"On the morrow a great multitude that had come to the feast, when
they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took the branches of
the palm trees, and went forth to meet Him, and cried out, Hosanna:
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, even the King of
Israel. And Jesus, having found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is
written, Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold, thy King cometh,
sitting on an ass's colt. These things understood not His disciples
at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they
that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these
things unto Him. The multitude therefore that was with Him when He
called Lazarus out of the tomb, and raised him from the dead, bare
witness. For this cause also the multitude went and met Him, for
that they heard that He had done this sign. The Pharisees therefore
said among themselves, Behold, how ye prevail nothing: lo, the world
is gone after Him."--JOHN xii. 12-19.
If our Lord arrived in Bethany on Friday evening and spent the Sabbath
with His friends there, "the next day" of ver. 12 is Sunday; and in the
Church year this day is known as Palm Sunday, from the incident here
related. It was also the day, four days before the Passover, on which
the Jews were enjoined by the law to choose their paschal lamb. Some
consciousness of this may have guided our Lord's action. Certainly He
means finally to offer Himself to the people as the Messiah. Often as He
had evaded them before, and often as He had forbidden His disciples to
proclaim Him, He is now conscious that His hour has come, and by
entering Jerusalem as King of peace He definitely proclaims Himself the
promised Messiah. As plainly as the crowning of a new monarch and the
flourish of trumpets and the kissing of his hand by the great officers
of state proclaim him king, so unmistakably does our Lord by riding into
Jerusalem on an ass and by accepting the hosannas of the people proclaim
Himself the King promised to men through the Jews, as the King of peace
who was to win men to His rule by love and sway them by a Divine Spirit.
The scene must have been one not easily forgotten. The Mount of Olives
runs north and south parallel to the east wall of Jerusalem, and
separated from it by a gully, through which flows the brook Kidron. The
Mount is crossed by three paths. One of these is a steep footpath, which
runs direct over the crest of the hill; the second runs round its
northern shoulder; while the third crosses the southern slope. It was by
this last route the pilgrim caravans were accustomed to enter the city.
On the occasion of our Lord's entry the road was probably thronged with
visitors making their way to the great annual feast. No fewer than three
million persons are said to have been sometimes packed together in
Jerusalem at the Passover; and all of them being on holiday, were ready
for any kind of excitement. The idea of a festal procession was quite to
their mind. And no sooner did the disciples appear with Jesus riding in
their midst than the vast streams of people caught the infection of
loyal enthusiasm, tore down branches of the palms and olives which were
found in abundance by the roadside, and either waved them in the air or
strewed them in the line of march. Others unwrapped their loose cloaks
from their shoulders and spread them along the rough path to form a
carpet as He approached--a custom which is still, it seems, observed in
the East in royal processions, and which has indeed sometimes been
imported into our own country on great occasions. Thus with every
demonstration of loyalty, with ceaseless shoutings that were heard
across the valley in the streets of Jerusalem itself, and waving the
palm branches, they moved towards the city.
Those who have entered the city from Bethany by this road tell us that
there are two striking points in it. The first is when at a turn of the
broad and well-defined mountain track the southern portion of the city
comes for an instant into view. This part of the city was called "the
city of David," and the suggestion is not without probability that it
may have been at this point the multitude burst out in words that linked
Jesus with David. "Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is the King that
cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our father
David. Hosanna, peace and glory in the highest." This became the
watchword of the day, so that even the boys who had come out of the city
to see the procession were heard afterwards, as they loitered in the
streets, still shouting the same refrain.
After this the road again dips, and the glimpse of the city is lost
behind the intervening ridge of Olivet; but shortly a rugged ascent is
climbed and a ledge of bare rock is reached, and in an instant the whole
city bursts into view. The prospect from this point must have been one
of the grandest of its kind in the world, the fine natural position of
Jerusalem not only showing to advantage, but the long line of city wall
embracing, like the setting of a jewel, the marvellous structures of
Herod, the polished marble and the gilded pinnacles glittering in the
morning sun and dazzling the eye. It was in all probability at this
point that our Lord was overcome with regret when He considered the sad
fate of the beautiful city, and when in place of the smiling palaces and
apparently impregnable walls His imagination filled His eye with
smoke-blackened ruins, with pavements slippery with blood, with walls
breached at all points and choked with rotting corpses.
Our Lord's choice of the ass was significant. The ass was commonly used
for riding, and the well-cared-for ass of the rich man was a very fine
animal, much larger and stronger than the little breed with which we
are familiar. Its coat, too, is as glossy as a well-kept
horse's--"shiny black, or satiny white, or sleek mouse colour." It was
not chosen by our Lord at this time that He might show His humility, for
it would have been still humbler to walk like His disciples. So far from
being a token of humility, He chose a colt which apparently had never
borne another rider. He rather meant by claiming the ass and by riding
into Jerusalem upon it to assert His royalty; but He did not choose a
horse, because that animal would have suggested royalty of quite another
kind from His--royalty which was maintained by war and outward force;
for the horse and the chariot had always been among the Hebrews symbolic
of warlike force. The disciples themselves, strangely enough, did not
see the significance of this action, although, when they had time to
reflect upon it, they remembered that Zechariah had said: "Rejoice
greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy
King cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and
riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut
off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the
battle bow shall be cut off: and He shall speak peace unto the heathen."
When John says, "these things understood not His disciples at the
first," he cannot mean that they did not understand that Jesus by this
act claimed to be the Messiah, because even the mob perceived the
significance of this entry into Jerusalem and hailed Him "Son of David."
What they did not understand, probably, was why He chose this mode of
identifying Himself with the Messiah. At any rate, their perplexity
brings out very clearly that the conception was not suggested to Jesus.
He was not induced by the disciples nor led on by the people to make a
demonstration which He Himself scarcely approved or had not intended to
make. On the contrary, from His first recorded act that morning He had
taken command of the situation. Whatever was done was done with
deliberation, at His own instance and as His own act.[4]
This then in the first place; it was His own deliberate act. He put
Himself forward, knowing that He would receive the hosannas of the
people, and intending that He should receive them. All His backwardness
is gone; all shyness of becoming a public spectacle is gone. For this
also is to be noted--that no place or occasion could have been more
public than the Passover at Jerusalem. Whatever it was He meant to
indicate by His action, it was to the largest possible public He meant
to indicate it. No longer in the retirement of a Galilean village, nor
in a fisherman's cottage, nor in dubious or ambiguous terms, but in the
full blaze of the utmost publicity that could possibly be given to His
proclamation, and in language that could not be forgotten or
misinterpreted, He now declared Himself. He knew He must attract the
attention of the authorities, and His entrance was a direct challenge to
them.
What was it then that with such deliberation and such publicity He meant
to proclaim? What was it that in these last critical hours of His life,
when He knew He should have few more opportunities of speaking to the
people, He sought to impress upon them? What was it that, when free from
the solicitations of men and the pressure of circumstances, He sought
to declare? It was that He was the Messiah. There might be those in the
crowd who did not understand what was meant. There might be persons who
did not know Him, or who were incompetent judges of character, and
supposed He was a mere enthusiast carried away by dwelling too much on
some one aspect of Old Testament prophecy. In every generation there are
good men who become almost crazed upon some one topic, and sacrifice
everything to the promotion of one favourite hope. But however He might
be misjudged, there can be no question of His own idea of the
significance of His action. He claims to be the Messiah.
Such a claim is the most stupendous that could be made. To be the
Messiah is to be God's Viceroy and Representative on earth, able to
represent God adequately to men, and to bring about that perfect
condition which is named "the kingdom of God." The Messiah must be
conscious of ability perfectly to accomplish the will of God with man,
and to bring men into absolute harmony with God. This is claimed by
Jesus. He stands in His sober senses and claims to be that universal
Sovereign, that true King of men, whom the Jews had been encouraged to
expect, and who when He came would reign over Gentiles as well as Jews.
By this demonstration, to which His previous career had been naturally
leading up, He claims to take command of earth, of this world in all its
generations, not in the easier sense of laying down upon paper a
political constitution fit for all races, but in the sense of being able
to deliver mankind from the source of all their misery and to lift men
to a true superiority. He has gone about on earth, not secluding Himself
from the woes and ways of men, not delicately isolating Himself, but
exposing Himself freely to the touch of the malignities, the
vulgarities, the ignorance and wickedness of all; and He now claims to
rule all this, and implies that earth can present no complication of
distress or iniquity which he cannot by the Divine forces within Him
transform into health and purity and hope.
This then is His deliberate claim. He quietly but distinctly proclaims
that He fulfils all God's promise and purpose among men; is that
promised King who was to rectify all things, to unite men to Himself,
and to lead them on to their true destiny; to be practically God upon
earth, accessible to men and identified with all human interests. Many
have tested His claim and have proved its validity. By true allegiance
to Him many have found that they have gained the mastery over the world.
They have entered into peace, have felt eternal verities underneath
their feet, and have attained a connection with God such as must be
everlasting. They are filled with a new spirit towards men and see all
things with purged eyes. Not abruptly and unintelligibly, by leaps and
bounds, but gradually and in harmony with the nature of things, His
kingdom is extending. Already His Spirit has done much: in time His
Spirit will everywhere prevail. It is by Him and on the lines which He
has laid down that humanity is advancing to its goal.
This was the claim He made; and this claim was enthusiastically admitted
by the popular instinct.[5] The populace was not merely humouring in
holiday mood a whimsical person for their own diversion. Many of them
knew Lazarus and knew Jesus, and taking the matter seriously gave the
tone to the rest. The people indeed did not, any more than the
disciples, understand how different the kingdom of their expectation was
from the kingdom Jesus meant to found. But while they entirely
misapprehended the purpose for which He was sent, they believed that He
was sent by God: His credentials were absolutely satisfactory, His work
incomprehensible. But as yet they still thought He must be of the same
mind as themselves regarding the work of the Messiah. To His claim,
therefore, the response given by the people was loud and demonstrative.
It was indeed a very brief reign they accorded to their King, but their
prompt acknowledgment of Him was the instinctive and irrepressible
expression of what they really felt to be His due. A popular
demonstration is notoriously untrustworthy, always running to extremes,
necessarily uttering itself with a loudness far in excess of individual
conviction, and gathering to itself the loose and floating mass of
people who have no convictions of their own, and are thankful to any one
who leads them and gives them a cue, and helps them to feel that they
have after all a place in the community. Who has not stood by as an
onlooker at a public demonstration and smiled at the noise and glare
that a mass of people will produce when their feelings are ever so
little stirred, and marked how even against their own individual
sentiments they are carried away by the mere tide of the day's
circumstances, and for the mere sake of making a demonstration? This
crowd which followed our Lord with shoutings very speedily repented and
changed their shouts into a far blinder shriek of rage against Him who
had been the occasion of their folly. And it must indeed have been a
humbling experience for our Lord to have Himself ushered into Jerusalem
by a crowd through whose hosannas He already heard the mutter of their
curses. Such is the homage He has to content Himself with--such is the
homage a perfect life has won.
For He knew what was in man; and while His disciples might be deceived
by this popular response to His claim, He Himself was fully aware how
little it could be built upon. Save in His own heart, there is no
premonition of death. More than ever in His life before does His sky
seem bright without a cloud. He Himself is in His early prime with life
before Him; His followers are hopeful, the multitude jubilant; but
through all this gay enthusiasm He sees the scowling hate of the priests
and scribes; the shouting of the multitude does not drown in His ear the
mutterings of a Judas and of the Sanhedrim. He knew that the throne He
was now hailed to was the cross, that His coronation was the reception
on His own brows of all the thorns and stings and burdens that man's sin
had brought into the world. He did not fancy that the redemption of the
world to God was an easy matter which could be accomplished by an
afternoon's enthusiasm. He kept steadily before His mind the actual
condition of the men who were by His spiritual influence to become the
willing and devoted subjects of God's kingdom. He measured with accuracy
the forces against Him, and understood that His warfare was not with the
legions of Rome, against whom this Jewish patriotism and indomitable
courage and easily roused enthusiasm might tell, but with principalities
and powers a thousandfold stronger, with the demons of hatred and
jealousy, of lust and worldliness, of carnality and selfishness. Never
for a moment did He forget His true mission and sell His spiritual
throne, hard-earned as it was to be, for popular applause and the
glories of the hour. Knowing that only by the utmost of human goodness
and self-sacrifice, and by the utmost of trial and endurance, could any
true and lasting rule of men be gained, He chose this path and the
throne it led to. With the most comprehensive view of the kingdom He was
to found, and with a spirit of profound seriousness strangely
contrasting in its composed and self-possessed insight with the blind
tumult around Him, He claimed the crown of the Messiah. His suffering
was not formal and nominal, it was not a mere pageant; equally real was
the claim He now made and which brought Him to that suffering.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] This is more distinctly brought out in the Synoptic Gospels than in
St. John: cp. Mark xi. 1-10.
[5] According to the reading of the scene by St. John, the people needed
no prompting.
III.
_THE CORN OF WHEAT._
"Now there were certain Greeks among those that went up to worship
at the feast: these therefore came to Philip, which was of Bethsaida
of Galilee, and asked him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip
cometh and telleth Andrew: Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell
Jesus. And Jesus answereth them, saying, The hour is come, that the
Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by
itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth
his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal."--JOHN xii. 20-26.
St. John now introduces a third incident to show that all is ripe for
the death of Jesus. Already he has shown us that in the inmost circle of
His friends He has now won for Himself a permanent place, a love which
ensures that His memory will be had in everlasting remembrance. Next, he
has lifted into prominence the scene in which the outer circle of the
Jewish people were constrained, in an hour when their honest enthusiasm
and instincts carried them away, to acknowledge Him as the Messiah who
had come to fulfil all God's will upon earth. He now goes on to tell us
how this agitation at the centre was found rippling in ever-widening
circles till it broke with a gentle whisper on the shores of the isles
of the Gentiles. This is the significance which St. John sees in the
request of the Greeks that they might be introduced to Jesus.
These Greeks were "of those that came up to worship at the feast." They
were proselytes, Greeks by birth, Jews by religion. They suggest the
importance for Christianity of the leavening process which Judaism was
accomplishing throughout the world. They may not have come from any
remoter country than Galilee, but from traditions and customs separate
as the poles from the Jewish customs and thoughts. From their heathen
surroundings they came to Jerusalem, possibly for the first time, with
wondering anticipations of the blessedness of those who dwelt in God's
house, and feeling their thirst for the living God burning within them
as their eyes lighted on the pinnacles of the Temple, and as at last
their feet stood within its precincts. But up through all these desires
grew one that overshadowed them, and, through all the petitions which a
year or many years of sin and difficulty had made familiar to their
lips, this petition made its way: "Sir, we would see Jesus."
This petition they address to Philip, not only because he had a Greek
name, and therefore presumably belonged to a family in which Greek was
spoken and Greek connections cultivated, but because, as St. John
reminds us, he was "of Bethsaida of Galilee," and might be expected to
understand and speak Greek, if, indeed, he was not already known to
these strangers in Jerusalem. And by their request they obviously did
not mean that Philip should set them in a place of vantage from which
they might have a good view of Jesus as He passed by, for this they
could well have accomplished without Philip's friendly intervention. But
they wished to question and make Him out, to see for themselves whether
there were in Jesus what even in Judaism they felt to be
lacking--whether He at last might not satisfy the longings of their
Divinely awakened spirits. Possibly they may even have wished to
ascertain His purposes regarding the outlying nations, how the Messianic
reign was to affect them. Possibly they may even have thought of
offering Him an asylum where He might find shelter from the hostility of
His own people.
Evidently Philip considered that this request was critical. The
Apostles had been charged not to enter into any Gentile city, and they
might naturally suppose that Jesus would be reluctant to be interviewed
by Greeks. But before dismissing the request, he lays it before Andrew
his friend, who also bore a Greek name; and after deliberation the two
make bold, if not to urge the request, at least to inform Jesus that it
had been made. At once in this modestly urged petition He hears the
whole Gentile world uttering its weary, long-disappointed sigh, "We
would see." This is no mere Greek inquisitiveness; it is the craving of
thoughtful men recognising their need of a Redeemer. To the eye of
Jesus, therefore, this meeting opens a prospect which for the moment
overcomes Him with the brightness of its glory. In this little knot of
strangers He sees the firstfruits of the immeasurable harvest which was
henceforth to be continuously reaped among the Gentiles. No more do we
hear the heart-broken cry, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" no longer the
reproachful "Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life," but the
glad consummation of His utmost hope utters itself in the words, "The
hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified."
But while promise was thus given of the glorification of the Messiah by
His reception among all men, the path which led to this was never absent
from the mind of our Lord. Second to the inspiriting thought of His
recognition by the Gentile world came the thought of the painful means
by which alone He could be truly glorified. He checks, therefore, the
shout of exultation which He sees rising to the lips of His disciples
with the sobering reflection: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it
die, it bringeth forth much fruit." As if He said, Do not fancy that I
have nothing to do but to accept the sceptre which these men offer, to
seat Myself on the world's throne. The world's throne is the Cross.
These men will not know My power until I die. The manifestation of
Divine presence in My life, has been distinct enough to win them to
inquiry; they will be for ever won to Me by the Divine presence revealed
in My death. Like the corn of wheat, I must die if I would be abundantly
fruitful. It is through death My whole living power can be disengaged
and can accomplish all possibilities.
Two points are here suggested: (I.) That the life, the living force that
was in Christ, reached its proper value and influence through His death;
and (II.) that the proper value of Christ's life is that it propagates
similar lives.
I. The life of Christ acquired its proper value and received its fit
development through His death. This truth He sets before us in the
illuminating figure of the corn of wheat. "Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone." There are three uses to
which wheat may be put: it may be stored for sale, it may be ground and
eaten, it may be sown. For our Lord's purposes these three uses may be
considered as only two. Wheat may be eaten, or it may be sown. With a
pickle of wheat or a grain of oats you may do one of two things: you may
eat it and enjoy a momentary gratification and benefit; or you may put
it in the ground, burying it out of sight and suffering it to pass
through uncomely processes, and it will reappear multiplied a
hundredfold, and so on in everlasting series. Year by year men sacrifice
their choicest sample of grain, and are content to bury it in the earth
instead of exposing it in the market, because they understand that
except it die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much
fruit. The proper life of the grain is terminated when it is used for
immediate gratification: it receives its fullest development and
accomplishes its richest end when it is cast into the ground, buried out
of sight, and apparently lost.
As with the grain, so is it with each human life. One of two things you
can do with your life; both you cannot do, and no third thing is
possible. You may consume your life for your own present gratification
and profit, to satisfy your present cravings and tastes and to secure
the largest amount of immediate enjoyment to yourself--you may eat your
life; or you may be content to put aside present enjoyment and profits
of a selfish kind and devote your life to the uses of God and men. In
the one case you make an end of your life, you consume it as it goes; no
good results, no enlarging influence, no deepening of character, no
fuller life, follows from such an expenditure of life--spent on yourself
and on the present, it terminates with yourself and with the present.
But in the other case you find you have entered into a more abundant
life; by living for others your interests are widened, your desire for
life increased, the results and ends of life enriched. "He that loveth
his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal." It is a law we cannot evade. He that
consumes his life now, spending it on himself--he who cannot bear to let
his life out of his own hand, but cherishes and pampers it and gathers
all good around it, and will have the fullest present enjoyment out of
it,--this man is losing his life; it comes to an end as certainly as the
seed that is eaten. But he who devotes his life to other uses than his
own gratification, who does not so prize self that everything must
minister to its comfort and advancement, but who can truly yield himself
to God and put himself at God's disposal for the general good,--this
man, though he may often seem to lose his life, and often does lose it
so far as present advantage goes, keeps it to life everlasting.
The law of the seed is the law of human life. Use your life for present
and selfish gratification and to satisfy your present cravings, and you
lose it for ever. Renounce self, yield yourself to God, spend your life
for the common good, irrespective of recognition or the lack of it,
personal pleasure or the absence of it, and although your life may thus
seem to be lost, it is finding its best and highest development and
passes into life eternal. Your life is a seed now, not a developed
plant, and it can become a developed plant only by your taking heart to
cast it from you and sow it in the fertile soil of other men's needs.
This will seem, indeed, to disintegrate it and fritter it away, and
leave it a contemptible, obscure, forgotten thing; but it does, in fact,
set free the vital forces that are in it, and give it its fit career and
maturity.
Looking at the thing itself, apart from figure, it is apparent that "he
that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this
world shall keep it unto life eternal." The man who most freely uses his
life for others, keeping least to himself and living solely for the
common interests of mankind, has the most enduring influence. He sets in
motion forces which propagate fresh results eternally. And not only so.
He who freely sows his life has it eternally, not only in so far as he
has set in motion an endless series of beneficent influences, but
inasmuch as he himself enters into life eternal. An immortality of
influence is one thing and a very great thing; but an immortality of
personal life is another, and this also is promised by our Lord when He
says (ver. 26), "Where I am, there shall also My servant be."
This, then, being the law of human life, Christ, being man, must not
only enounce but observe it. He speaks of Himself even more directly
than of us when He says, "He that loveth his life shall lose it." His
disciples thought they had never seen such promise in His life as at
this hour: seedtime seemed to them to be past, and the harvest at hand.
Their Master seemed to be fairly launched on the tide that was to carry
Him to the highest pinnacle of human glory. And so He was, but not, as
they thought, by simply yielding Himself to be set as King and to
receive adoration from Jew and Gentile. He saw with different eyes, and
that it was a different exaltation which would win for Him lasting
sovereignty: "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." He knew
the law which governed the development of human life. He knew that a
total and absolute surrender of self to the uses and needs of others was
the one path to permanent life, and that in His case this absolute
surrender involved death.
A comparison of the good done by the life of Christ with that done by
His death shows how truly He judged when He declared that it was by His
death He should effectually gather all men to Him. His death, like the
dissolution of the seed, seemed to terminate His work, but really was
its germination. So long as He lived, it was but His single strength
that was used; He abode alone. There was great virtue in His life--great
power for the healing, the instruction, the elevation, of mankind. In
His brief public career He suggested much to the influential men of His
time, set all men who knew Him a-thinking, aided many to reform their
lives, and removed a large amount of distress and disease. He
communicated to the world a mass of new truth, so that those who have
lived after Him have stood at quite a different level of knowledge from
that of those who lived before Him. And yet how little of the proper
results of Christ's influence, how little understanding of Christianity,
do you find even in His nearest friends until He died. By the visible
appearance and the external benefits and the false expectations His
greatness created, the minds of men were detained from penetrating to
the spirit and mind of Christ. It was expedient for them that He should
go away, for until He went they depended on His visible power, and His
spirit could not be wholly received by them. They were looking at the
husk of the seed, and its life could not reach them. They were looking
for help from Him instead of themselves becoming like Him.
And therefore He chose at an early age to cease from all that was
marvellous and beneficent in His life among men. He might, as these
Greeks suggested, have visited other lands and have continued His
healing and teaching there. He might have done more in His own time than
He did, and His time might have been indefinitely prolonged; but He
chose to cease from all this and voluntarily gave Himself to die,
judging that thereby He could do much more good than by His life. He was
straitened till this was accomplished; He felt as a man imprisoned and
whose powers are held in check. It was winter and not spring-time with
Him. There was a change to pass upon Him which should disengage the
vital forces that were in Him and cause their full power to be felt--a
change which should thaw the springs of life in Him and let them flow
forth to all. To use His own figure, He was as a seed unsown so long as
He lived, valuable only in His own proper person; but by dying His life
obtained the value of seed sown, propagating its kind in everlasting
increase.
II. The second point suggested is, that the proper value of Christ's
life consists in this--that it propagates similar lives. As seed
produces grain of its own kind, so Christ produces men like Christ. He
ceasing to do good in this world as a living man, a multitude of others
by this very cessation are raised in His likeness. By His death we
receive both inclination and ability to become with Him sons of God.
"The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if one
died for all, then all died; and that He died for all, that they which
live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died
for them." By His death He has effected an entrance for this law of
self-surrender into human life, has exhibited it in a perfect form, and
has won others to live as He lived. So that, using the figure He used,
we may say that the company of Christians now on earth are Christ in a
new form, His body indeed. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that
body which shall be, but bare grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath
pleased Him, and to every seed his own body." Christ having been sown,
lives now in His people. They are the body in which He dwells. And this
will be seen. For standing and looking at a head of barley waving on its
stalk, no amount of telling would persuade you that that had sprung from
a seed of wheat; and looking at any life which is characterised by
selfish ambition and eagerness for advancement and little regard for the
wants of other men, no persuasion can make it credible that that life
springs from the self-sacrificing life of Christ.
What Christ here shows us, then, is that the principle which regulates
the development of seed regulates the growth, continuance, and
fruitfulness of human life; that whatever is of the nature of seed gets
to its full life only through death; that our Lord, knowing this law,
submitted to it, or rather by His native love was attracted to the life
and death which revealed this law to Him. He gave His life away for the
good of men, and therefore prolongs His days and sees His seed
eternally. There is not one way for Him and another for us. The same law
applies to all. It is not peculiar to Christ. The work He did was
peculiar to Him, as each individual has his own place and work; but the
principle on which all right lives are led is one and the same
universally. What Christ did He did because He was living a human life
on right principles. We need not die on the cross as He did, but we must
as truly yield ourselves as living sacrifices to the interests of men.
If we have not done so, we have yet to go back to the very beginning of
all lasting life and progress; and we are but deceiving ourselves by
attainments and successes which are not only hollow, but are slowly
cramping and killing all that is in us. Whoever will choose the same
destiny as Christ must take the same road to it that He took. He took
the one right way for men to go, and said, "If any man follow Me, where
I am there will he be also." If we do not follow Him, we really walk in
darkness and know not whither we go. We cannot live for selfish purposes
and then enjoy the common happiness and glory of the race. Self-seeking
is self-destroying.
And it is needful to remark that this self-renunciation must be real.
The law of sacrifice is the law not for a year or two in order to gain
some higher selfish good--which is not self-sacrifice, but deeper
self-seeking; it is the law of all human life, not a short test of our
fidelity to Christ, but the only law on which life can ever proceed. It
is not a barter of self I make, giving it up for a little that I may
have an enriched self to eternity; but it is a real foregoing and
abandonment of self for ever, a change of desire and nature, so that
instead of finding my joy in what concerns myself only I find my joy in
what is serviceable to others.
Thus only can we enter into permanent happiness. Goodness and happiness
are one--one in the long-run, if not one in every step of the way. We
are not asked to live for others without any heart to do so. We are not
asked to choose as our eternal life what will be a constant pain and can
only be reluctantly done. The very heathen would not offer in sacrifice
the animal that struggled as it was led to the altar. All sacrifice must
be willingly made; it must be the sacrifice which is prompted by love.
God and this world demand our best work, and only what we do with
pleasure can be our best work. Sacrifice of self and labour for others
are not like Christ's sacrifice and labour unless they spring from love.
Forced, reluctant, constrained sacrifice or service--service which is no
joy to ourselves through the love we bear to those for whom we do it--is
not the service that is required of us. Service into which we can throw
our whole strength, because we are convinced it will be of use to
others, and because we long to see them enjoying it--this is the service
required. Love, in short, is the solution of all. Find your happiness in
the happiness of many rather than in the happiness of one, and life
becomes simple and inspiring.
Nor are we to suppose that this is an impracticable, high-pitched
counsel of perfection with which plain men need not trouble themselves.
_Every_ human life is under this law. There is no path to goodness or to
happiness save this one. Nature herself teaches us as much. When a man
is truly attracted by another, and when genuine affection possesses his
heart, his whole being is enlarged, and he finds it his best pleasure to
serve that person. The father who sees his children enjoying the fruit
of his toil feels himself a far richer man than if he were spending all
on himself. But this family affection, this domestic solution of the
problem of happy self-sacrifice, is intended to encourage and show us
the way to a wider extension of our love, and thereby of our use and
happiness. The more love we have, the happier we are. Self-sacrifice
looks miserable, and we shrink from it as from death and destitution,
because we look at it in separation from the love it springs from.
Self-sacrifice without love _is_ death; we abandon our own life and do
not find it again in any other. It is a seed ground under the heel, not
a seed lightly thrown into prepared soil. It is in love that goodness
and happiness have their common root. And it is this love which is
required of us and promised to us. So that as often as we shudder at the
dissolution of our own personal interests, the scattering of our own
selfish hopes and plans, the surrender of our life to the service of
others, we are to remember that this, which looks so very like death,
and which often throws around our prospects the chilling atmosphere of
the tomb, is not really the termination, but the beginning of the true
and eternal life of the spirit. Let us keep our heart in the fellowship
of the sacrifice of Christ, let us feel our way into the meanings and
uses of that sacrifice, and learn its reality, its utility, its grace,
and at length it will lay hold of our whole nature, and we shall find
that it impels us to regard other men with interest and to find our true
joy and life in serving them.
IV.
_THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE OF THE CROSS._
"Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from
this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify
Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have
both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The multitude
therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it had thundered:
others said, An angel hath spoken to Him. Jesus answered and said,
This voice hath not come for My sake, but for your sakes. Now is the
judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast
out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
Myself. But this He said, signifying by what manner of death He
should die. The multitude therefore answered Him, We have heard out
of the law that the Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou,
The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man? Jesus
therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you.
Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not: and he
that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye
have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of
light."--JOHN xii. 27-36.
The presence of the Greeks had stirred in the soul of Jesus conflicting
emotions. Glory by humiliation, life through death, the secured
happiness of mankind through His own anguish and abandonment,--well
might the prospect disturb Him. So masterly is His self-command, so
steadfast and constant His habitual temper, that one almost inevitably
underrates the severity of the conflict. The occasional withdrawal of
the veil permits us reverently to observe some symptoms of the turmoil
within--symptoms which it is probably best to speak of in His own words:
"Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Shall I say, 'Father,
save Me from this hour'? But for this cause came I unto this hour.
Father, glorify Thy name." This Evangelist does not describe the agony
in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was needless after this indication of
the same conflict. Here is the same shrinking from a public and shameful
death conquered by His resolution to deliver men from a still darker and
more shameful death. Here is the same foretaste of the bitterness of the
cup as it now actually touches His lips, the same clear reckoning of all
it meant to drain that cup to the dregs, together with the deliberate
assent to all that the will of the Father might require Him to endure.
In response to this act of submission, expressed in the words, "Father,
glorify Thy name," there came a voice from heaven, saying, "I have both
glorified it, and will glorify it again." The meaning of this assurance
was, that as in all the past manifestation of Christ the Father had
become better known to men, so in all that was now impending, however
painful and disturbed, however filled with human passions and to all
appearance the mere result of them, the Father would still be glorified.
Some thought the voice was thunder; others seemed almost to catch
articulate sounds, and said, "An angel spake to Him." But Jesus
explained that it was not "to Him" the voice was specially addressed,
but rather for the sake of those who stood by. And it was indeed of
immense importance that the disciples should understand that the events
which were about to happen were overruled by God that He might be
glorified in Christ. It is easy for us to see that nothing so glorifies
the Father's name as these hours of suffering; but how hard for the
onlookers to believe that this sudden transformation of the Messianic
throne into the criminal's cross was no defeat of God's purpose, but its
final fulfilment. He leads them, therefore, to consider that in His
judgment the whole world is judged, and to perceive in His arrest and
trial and condemnation not merely the misguided and wanton outrage of a
few men in power, but the critical hour of the world's history.
This world has commonly presented itself to thoughtful minds as a
battle-field in which the powers of good and evil wage ceaseless war. In
the words He now utters the Lord declares Himself to be standing at the
very crisis of the battle, and with the deepest assurance He announces
that the opposing power is broken and that victory remains with Him.
"Now is the prince of this world cast out; and I will draw all men unto
Me." The prince of this world, that which actually rules and leads men
in opposition to God, was judged, condemned, and overthrown in the death
of Christ. By His meek acceptance of God's will in the face of all that
could make it difficult and dreadful to accept it, He won for the race
deliverance from the thraldom of sin. At length a human life had been
lived without submission at any point to the prince of this world. As
man and in the name of all men Jesus resisted the last and most violent
assault that could be made upon His faith in God and fellowship with
Him, and so perfected His obedience and overcame the prince of this
world,--overcame him not in one act alone--many had done that--but in a
completed human life, in a life which had been freely exposed to the
complete array of temptations that can be directed against men in this
world.
In order more clearly to apprehend the promise of victory contained in
our Lord's words, we may consider (I.) the object He had in view--to
"draw all men" to Him; and (II.) the condition of His attaining this
object--namely, His death.
I. The object of Christ was to draw all men to Him. The opposition in
which He here sets Himself to the prince of this world shows us that by
"drawing" He means attracting _as a king attracts_, to His name, His
claims, His standard, His person. Our life consists in our pursuance of
one object or another, and our devotion is continually competed for.
When two claimants contest a kingdom, the country is divided between
them, part cleaving to the one and part to the other. The individual
determines to which side he shall cleave,--by his prejudices or by his
justice, as it may be; by his knowledge of the comparative capacity of
the claimants, or by his ignorant predilection. He is taken in by
sounding titles, or he penetrates through all bombast and promises and
douceurs to the real merit or demerit of the man himself. One person
will judge by the personal manners of the respective claimants; another
by their published manifesto, and professed object and style of rule;
another by their known character and probable conduct. And while men
thus range themselves on this side or on that, they really pass judgment
on themselves, betraying as they do what it is that chiefly draws them,
and taking their places on the side of good or evil. It is thus that we
all judge ourselves by following this or that claimant to our faith,
regard, and devotion, to ourself and our life. What we spend ourselves
on, what we aim at and pursue, what we make our object, that judges us
and that rules us and that determines our destiny.
Christ came into the world to be our King, to lead us to worthy
achievements. He came that we might have a worthy object of choice and
of the devotion of our life. He serves the same purpose as a king: He
embodies in His own person, and thereby makes visible and attractive,
the will of God and the cause of righteousness. Persons who could only
with great difficulty apprehend His objects and plans can appreciate His
person and trust Him. Persons to whom there would seem little attraction
in a cause or in an undefined "progress of humanity" can kindle with
enthusiasm towards Him personally, and unconsciously promote His cause
and the cause of humanity. And therefore, while some are attracted by
His person, others by the legitimacy of His claims, others by His
programme of government, others by His benefactions, we must beware of
denying loyalty to any of these. Expressions of love to His person may
be lacking in the man who yet most intelligently enters into Christ's
views for the race, and sacrifices his means and his life to forward
these views. Those who gather to His standard are various in
temperament, are drawn by various attractions, and must be various in
their forms of showing allegiance. And this, which is the strength of
His camp, can only become its weakness when men begin to think there is
no way but their own; and that allegiance which is strenuous in labour
but not fluent in devout expression, or loyalty which shouts and throws
its cap in the air but lacks intelligence, is displeasing to the King.
The King, who has great ends in view, will not inquire what it is
precisely which forms the bond between Him and His subjects so long as
they truly sympathise with Him and second His efforts. The one question
is, Is He their actual leader?
Of the kingdom of Christ, though a full description cannot be given, one
or two of the essential characteristics may be mentioned.
1. It is _a kingdom_, a community of men under one head. When Christ
proposed to attract men to Himself, it was for the good of the race He
did so. It could achieve its destiny only if He led it, only if it
yielded itself to His mind and ways. And those who are attracted to Him,
and see reason to believe that the hope of the world lies in the
universal adoption of His mind and ways, are formed into one solid body
or community. They labour for the same ends, are governed by the same
laws, and whether they know one another or not they have the most real
sympathy and live for one cause. Being drawn to Christ, we enter into
abiding fellowship with all the good who have laboured or are labouring
in the cause of humanity. We take our places in the everlasting kingdom,
in the community of those who shall see and take part in the great
future of mankind and the growing enlargement of its destiny. We are
hereby entered among the living, and are joined to that body of mankind
which is to go on and which holds the future--not to an extinct party
which may have memories, but has no hopes. In sin, in selfishness, in
worldliness, individualism reigns, and all profound or abiding unity is
impossible. Sinners have common interests only for a time, only as a
temporary guise of selfish interests. Every man out of Christ is really
an isolated individual. But passing into Christ's kingdom we are no
longer isolated, abandoned wretches stranded by the stream of time, but
members of the undying commonwealth of men in which our life, our work,
our rights, our future, our association with all good, are assured.
2. It is a _universal_ kingdom. "I will draw _all_ men unto Me." The one
rational hope of forming men into one kingdom shines through these
words. The idea of a universal monarchy has visited the great minds of
our race. They have cherished their various dreams of a time when all
men should live under one law and possibly speak one language, and have
interests so truly in common that war should be impossible. But an
effectual instrument for accomplishing this grand design has ever been
wanting. Christ turns this grandest dream of humanity into a rational
hope. He appeals to what is universally present in human nature. There
is that in Him which every man needs,--a door to the Father; a visible
image of the unseen God; a gracious, wise, and holy Friend. He does not
appeal exclusively to one generation, to educated or to uneducated, to
Orientals or to Europeans alone, but to man, to that which we have in
common with the lowest and the highest, the most primitive and most
highly developed of the species. The attractive influence He exerts upon
men is not conditioned by their historical insight, by their ability to
sift evidence, by this or that which distinguishes man from man, but by
their innate consciousness that some higher power than themselves
exists, by their ability, if not to recognise goodness when they see it,
at least to recognise love when it is spent upon them.
But while our Lord affirms that there is that in Him which all men can
recognise and learn to love and serve, He does not say that His kingdom
will therefore be quickly formed. He does not say that this greatest
work of God will take a shorter time than the common works of God which
prolong one day of our hasty methods into a thousand years of solidly
growing purpose. If it has taken a million ages for the rocks to knit
and form for us a standing-ground and dwelling-place, we must not expect
that this kingdom, which is to be the one enduring result of this
world's history, and which can be built up only of thoroughly convinced
men and of generations slowly weeded of traditional prejudices and
customs, can be completed in a few years. No doubt interests are at
stake in human destiny and losses are made by human waste which had no
place in the physical creation of the world; still, God's methods are,
as we judge, slow, and we must not think that He who "works hitherto" is
doing nothing because the swift processes of jugglery or the hasty
methods of human workmanship find no place in the extension of Christ's
kingdom. This kingdom has a firm hold of the world and must grow. If
there is one thing certain about the future of the world, it is that
righteousness and truth will prevail. The world is bound to come to the
feet of Christ.
3. Christ's kingdom being universal, it is also and necessarily
_inward_. What is common to all men lies deepest in each. Christ was
conscious that He held the key to human nature. He knew what was in man.
With the penetrating insight of absolute purity He had gone about among
men, freely mixing with rich and with poor, with the sick and the
healthy, with the religious and the irreligious. He was as much at home
with the condemned criminal as with the blameless Pharisee; saw through
Pilate and Caiaphas alike; knew all that the keenest dramatist could
tell Him of the meannesses, the depravities, the cruelties, the blind
passions, the obstructed goodness, of men; but knew also that He could
sway all that was in man and exhibit that to men which should cause the
sinner to abhor his sin and seek the face of God. This He would do by a
simple moral process, without violent demonstration or disturbance or
assertion of authority. He would "draw" men. It is by inward conviction,
not by outward compulsion, men are to become His subjects. It is by the
free and rational working of the human mind that Jesus builds up His
kingdom. His hope lies in a fuller and fuller light, in a clearer and
clearer recognition of facts. Attachment to Christ must be the act of
the soul's self; everything, therefore, which strengthens the will or
enlightens the mind or enlarges the man brings him nearer to the kingdom
of Christ, and makes it more likely he will yield to His drawing.
And because Christ's rule is inward it is therefore of universal
application. The inmost choice of the man being governed by Christ, and
his character being thus touched at its inmost spring, all his conduct
will be governed by Christ and be a carrying out of the will of Christ.
It is not the frame of society Christ seeks to alter, but the spirit of
it. It is not the occupations and institutions of human life which the
subject of Christ finds to be incompatible with Christ's rule, so much
as the aim and principles on which they are conducted. The kingdom of
Christ claims all human life as its own, and the spirit of Christ finds
nothing that is essentially human alien from it. If the statesman is a
Christian, it will be seen in his policy; if the poet is a Christian,
his song will betray it; if a thinker be a Christian, his readers soon
find it out. Christianity does not mean religious services, churches,
creeds, Bibles, books, equipment of any kind; it means the Spirit of
Christ. It is the most portable and flexible of all religions, and
therefore the most pervasive and dominant in the life of its adherent.
It needs but the Spirit of God and the spirit of man, and Christ
mediating between them.
II. Such being Christ's object, what is the condition of His attaining
it? "I, _if I be lifted up_, will draw all men unto Me." The elevation
requisite for becoming a visible object to men of all generations was
the elevation of the Cross. His death would accomplish what His life
could not accomplish. The words betray a distinct consciousness that
there was in His death a more potent spell, a more certain and real
influence for good among men than in His teaching or in His miracles or
in His purity of life.
What is it, then, in the death of Christ which so far surpasses His life
in its power of attraction? The life was equally unselfish and devoted;
it was more prolonged; it was more directly useful,--why, then, would it
have been comparatively ineffective without the death? It may, in the
first place, be answered, Because His death presents in a dramatic and
compact form that very devotedness which is diffused through every part
of His life. Between the life and the death there is the same difference
as between sheet lightning and forked lightning, between the diffused
heat of the sun and the same heat focussed upon a point through a lens.
It discloses what was actually but latently there. The life and the
death of Christ are one and mutually explain each other. From the life
we learn that no motive can have prompted Christ to die but the one
motive which ruled Him always--the desire to do all God willed in men's
behalf. We cannot interpret the death as anything else than a consistent
part of a deliberate work undertaken for men's good. It was not an
accident; it was not an external necessity: it was, as the whole life
was, a willing acceptance of the uttermost that was required to set men
on a higher level and unite them to God. But as the life throws this
light upon the death of Christ, how that light is gathered up and thrown
abroad in world-wide reflection from the death of Christ! For here His
self-sacrifice shines completed and perfect; here it is exhibited in
that tragic and supreme form which in all cases arrests attention and
commands respect. Even when a man of wasted life sacrifices himself at
last, and in one heroic act saves another by his death, his past life is
forgotten or seems to be redeemed by his death, and at all events we own
the beauty and the pathos of the deed. A martyr to the faith may have
been but a poor creature, narrow, harsh and overbearing, vain and
vulgar in spirit; but all the past is blotted out, and our attention is
arrested on the blazing pile or the bloody scaffold. So the death of
Christ, though but a part of the self-sacrificing life, yet stands by
itself as the culmination and seal of that life; it catches the eye and
strikes the mind, and conveys at one view the main impression made by
the whole life and character of Him who gave Himself upon the cross.
But Christ is no mere hero or teacher sealing his truth with his blood;
nor is it enough to say that His death renders, in a conspicuous form,
the perfect self-sacrifice with which He devoted Himself to our good. It
is conceivable that in a long-past age some other man should have lived
and died for his fellows, and yet we at once recognise that, though the
history of such a person came into our hands, we should not be so
affected and drawn by it as to choose him as our king and rest upon him
the hope of uniting us to one another and to God. Wherein, then, lies
the difference? The difference lies in this--that Christ was the
representative of God. This He Himself uniformly claimed to be. He knew
He was unique, different from all others; but He advanced no claim to
esteem that did not pass to the Father who sent Him. Always he explained
His powers as being the proper equipment of God's representative, "The
words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself." His whole life was
the message of God to man, the Word made flesh. His death was but the
last syllable of this great utterance--the utterance of God's love for
man, the final evidence that nothing is grudged us by God. Greater love
hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. His
death draws us because there is in it more than human heroism and
self-sacrifice. It draws us because in it the very heart of God is laid
bare to us. It softens, it breaks us down, by the irresistible
tenderness it discloses in the mighty and ever-blessed God. Every man
feels it has a message for him, because in it the God and Father of us
all speaks to us.
It is this which is special to the death of Christ, and which separates
it from all other deaths and heroic sacrifices. It has a universal
bearing--a bearing upon every man, because it is a Divine act, the act
of that One who is the God and Father of all men. In the same century as
our Lord many men died in a manner which strongly excites our
admiration. Nothing could well be more noble, nothing more pathetic,
than the fearless and loving spirit in which Roman after Roman met his
death. But beyond respectful admiration these heroic deeds win from us
no further sentiment. They are the deeds of men who have no connection
with us. The well-worn words, "What's Hecuba _to me_ or I to Hecuba?"
rise to our lips when we try to fancy any deep connection. But the death
of Christ concerns all men without exception, because it is the greatest
declarative act of the God of all men. It is the manifesto all men are
concerned to read. It is the act of One with whom all men are already
connected in the closest way. And the result of our contemplation of it
is, not that we admire, but that we are drawn, are attracted, into new
relations with Him whom that death reveals. This death moves and draws
us as no other can, because here we get to the very heart of that which
most deeply concerns us. Here we learn what our God is and where we
stand eternally. He who is nearest us of all, and in whom our life is
bound up, reveals Himself; and seeing Him here full of ungrudging and
most reliable love, of tenderest and utterly self-sacrificing
devotedness to us, we cannot but give way to this central attraction,
and with all other willing creatures be drawn into fullest intimacy and
firmest relations to the God of all.
The death of Christ, then, draws men chiefly because God here shows men
His sympathy, His love, His trustworthiness. What the sun is in the
solar system, Christ's death is in the moral world. The sun by its
physical attraction binds the several planets together and holds them
within range of its light and heat. God, the central intelligence and
original moral Being, draws to Himself and holds within reach of His
life-giving radiance all who are susceptible of moral influences; and He
does so through the death of Christ. This is His supreme revelation.
Here, if we may say so with reverence, God is seen at His best--not that
at any time or in any action He is different, but here He is _seen_ to
be the God of love He ever is. Nothing is better than self-sacrifice:
that is the highest point a moral nature can touch. And God, by the
sacrifice which is rendered visible on the cross, gives to the moral
world a real, actual, immovable centre, round which moral natures will
more and more gather, and which will hold them together in self-effacing
unity.
To complete the idea of the attractiveness of the Cross, it must further
be kept in view that this particular form of the manifestation of the
Divine love was adapted to the needs of those to whom it was made. To
sinners the love of God manifested itself in providing a sacrifice for
sin. The death on the cross was not an irrelevant display, but was an
act required for the removal of the most insuperable obstacles that lay
in man's path. The sinner, believing that in the death of Christ his
sins are atoned for, conceives hope in God and claims the Divine
compassion in his own behalf. To the penitent the Cross is attractive as
an open door to the prisoner, or the harbour-heads to the storm-tossed
ship.
Let us not suppose, then, that we are not welcome to Christ. He desires
to draw us to Himself and to form a connection with us. He understands
our hesitations, our doubts of our own capacity for any steady and
enthusiastic loyalty; but He knows also the power of truth and love, the
power of His own person and of His own death to draw and fix the
hesitating and wavering soul. And we shall find that as we strive to
serve Christ in our daily life it is still His death that holds and
draws us. It is His death which gives us compunction in our times of
frivolity, or selfishness, or carnality, or rebellion, or unbelief. It
is there Christ appears in His own most touching attitude and with His
own most irresistible appeal. We cannot further wound One already so
wounded in His desire to win us from evil. To strike One already thus
nailed to the tree in helplessness and anguish, is more than the hardest
heart can do. Our sin, our infidelity, our unmoved contemplation of His
love, our blind indifference to His purpose--these things wound Him more
than the spear and the scourge. To rid us of these things was His
purpose in dying, and to see that His work is in vain and His sufferings
unregarded and unfruitful is the deepest injury of all. It is not to the
mere sentiment of pity He appeals: rather He says, "Weep not for Me;
weep for yourselves." It is to our power to recognise perfect goodness
and to appreciate perfect love. He appeals to our power to see below the
surface of things, and through the outer shell of this world's life to
the Spirit of good that is at the root of all and that manifests itself
in Him. Here is the true stay of the human soul: "Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden"; "I am come a light into the world:
walk in the light."
V.
_RESULTS OF CHRIST'S MANIFESTATION._
"But though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed
not on Him: that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled,
which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath
the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this cause they could not
believe, for that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and
He hardened their heart; lest they should see with their eyes, and
perceive with their heart, and should turn, and I should heal them.
These things said Isaiah, because he saw His glory; and he spake of
Him. Nevertheless even of the rulers many believed on Him; but
because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should
be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the glory of men more
than the glory of God. And Jesus cried and said, He that believeth
on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me. And he that
beholdeth Me beholdeth Him that sent Me. I am come a light into the
world, that whosoever believeth on Me may not abide in the darkness.
And if any man hear My sayings, and keep them not, I judge him not:
for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that
rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My sayings, hath One that judgeth
him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last
day. For I spake not from Myself; but the Father which sent Me, He
hath given Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should
speak. And I know that His commandment is life eternal: the things
therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I
speak."--JOHN xii. 37-50.
In this Gospel the death of Christ is viewed as the first step in His
glorification. When He speaks of being "lifted up," there is a double
reference in the expression, a local and an ethical reference.[6] He is
lifted up on the cross, but lifted up on it as His true throne and as
the necessary step towards His supremacy at God's right hand. It was,
John tells us, with direct reference to the cross that Jesus now used
the words: "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." The Jews,
who heard the words, perceived that, whatever else was contained in
them, intimation of His removal from earth was given. But, according to
the current Messianic expectation, the Christ "abideth for ever," or at
any rate for four hundred or a thousand years. How then could this
Person, who announced His immediate departure, be the Christ? The Old
Testament gave them ground for supposing that the Messianic reign would
be lasting; but had they listened to our Lord's teaching they would have
learned that this reign was spiritual, and not in the form of an earthly
kingdom with a visible sovereign.
Accordingly, although they had recognised Jesus as the Messiah, they
are again stumbled by this fresh declaration of His. They begin to fancy
that perhaps after all by calling Himself "the Son of man" He has not
meant exactly what they mean by the Messiah. From the form of their
question it would seem that Jesus had used the designation "the Son of
man" in intimating His departure; for they say, "How sayest thou, The
Son of man must be lifted up?" Up to this time, therefore, they had
taken it for granted that by calling Himself the Son of man He claimed
to be the Christ, but now they begin to doubt whether there may not be
two persons signified by those titles.
Jesus furnishes them with no direct solution of their difficulty. He
never betrays any interest in these external identifications. The time
for discussing the relation of the Son of man to the Messiah is past.
His manifestation is closed. Enough light has been given. Conscience has
been appealed to and discussion is no longer admissible. "Ye have light:
walk in the light." The way to come to a settlement of all their doubts
and hesitations is to follow Him. There is still time for that. "Yet a
little while is the light among you." But the time is short; there is
none to waste on idle questionings, none to spend on sophisticating
conscience--time only for deciding as conscience bids.
By thus believing in the light they will themselves become "children of
light." The "children of light" are those who live in it as their
element,--as "the children of this world" are those who wholly belong to
this world and find in it what is congenial; as "the son of perdition"
is he who is identified with perdition. The children of light have
accepted the revelation that is in Christ, and live in the "day" that
the Lord has made. Christ contains the truth for them--the truth which
penetrates to their inmost thought and illuminates the darkest problems
of life. In Christ they have seen that which determines their relation
to God; and that being determined, all else that is of prime importance
finds a settlement. To know God and ourselves; to know God's nature and
purpose, and our own capabilities and relation to God,--these constitute
the light we need for living by; and this light Christ gives. It was in
a dim, uncertain twilight, with feebly shining lanterns, the wisest and
best of men sought to make out the nature of God and His purposes
regarding man; but in Christ God has made noonday around us.
They, therefore, that stood, or that stand, in His presence, and yet
recognise no light, must be asleep, or must turn away from an excess of
light that is disagreeable or inconvenient. If we are not the fuller of
life and joy the more truth we know, if we shrink from admitting the
consciousness of a present and holy God, and do not feel it to be the
very sunshine of life in which alone we thrive, we must be spiritually
asleep or spiritually dead. And this cry of Christ is but another form
of the cry that His Church has prolonged: "Awake, thou that sleepest,
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."
The "little while" of their enjoyment of the light was short indeed, for
no sooner had He made an end of these sayings than He "departed, and did
hide Himself from them." He probably found retirement from the feverish,
inconstant, questioning crowd with His friends in Bethany. At any rate
this removal of the light, while it meant darkness to those who had not
received Him and who did not keep His words, could bring no darkness to
His own, who had received Him and the light in Him. Perhaps the best
comment on this is the memorable passage from _Comus_:
"Virtue could see to do what virtue would
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the great sea sunk.
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the midday sun,
Himself is his own dungeon."
And now the writer of this Gospel, before entering upon the closing
scenes, pauses and presents a summary of the results of all that has
been hitherto related. First, he accounts for the unbelief of the Jews.
It could not fail to strike his readers as remarkable that, "though He
had done so many miracles before the people, yet they believed not in
Him." In this John sees nothing inexplicable, however sad and
significant it may be. At first sight it is an astounding fact that the
very people who had been prepared to recognise and receive the Messiah
should not have believed in Him. Might not this to some minds be
convincing evidence that Jesus was not the Messiah? If the same God who
sent Him forth had for centuries specially prepared a people to
recognise and receive Him when He came, was it possible that this people
should repudiate Him? Was it likely that such a result should be
produced or should be allowed? But John turns the point of this argument
by showing that a precisely similar phenomenon had often appeared in the
history of Israel. The old prophets had the very same complaint to make:
"Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been
revealed?" The people had habitually, as a people with individual
exceptions, refused to listen to God's voice or to acknowledge His
presence in prophet and providence.
Besides, might it not very well be that the blindness and callousness of
the Jews in rejecting Jesus was the inevitable issue of a long process
of hardening? If, in former periods of their history, they had proved
themselves unworthy of God's training and irresponsive to it, what else
could be expected than that they should reject the Messiah when He came?
This hardening and blinding process was the inevitable, natural result
of their past conduct. But what nature does, God does; and therefore the
Evangelist says "they could not believe, because that Esaias said again,
He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should
not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart." The organ for
perceiving spiritual truth was blinded, and their susceptibility to
religious and moral impressions had become callous and hardened and
impervious.
And while this was no doubt true of the people as a whole, still there
were not a few individuals who eagerly responded to this last message
from God. In the most unlikely quarters, and in circumstances calculated
to counteract the influence of spiritual forces, some were convinced.
"Even among the chief rulers many believed on Him." This belief,
however, did not tell upon the mass, because, through fear of
excommunication, those who were convinced dared not utter their
conviction. "They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God."
They allowed their relations to men to determine their relation to God.
Men were more real to them than God. The praise of men came home to
their hearts with a sensible relish that the praise of God could not
rival. They reaped what they had sown; they had sought the esteem of
men, and now they were unable to find their strength in God's approval.
The glory which consisted in following the lowly and outcast Jesus, the
glory of fellowship with God, was quite eclipsed by the glory of living
in the eye of the people as wise and estimable persons.
In the last paragraph of the chapter John gives a summary of the claims
and message of Jesus. He has told us (ver. 36) that Jesus had departed
from public view and had hidden Himself, and he mentions no return to
publicity. It is therefore probable that in these remaining verses, and
before he turns to a somewhat different aspect of Christ's ministry, he
gives in rapid and brief retrospect the sum of what Jesus had advanced
as His claim. He introduces this paragraph, indeed, with the words,
"Jesus cried and said"; but as neither time nor place is mentioned, it
is quite likely that no special time or place is supposed; and in point
of fact each detail adduced in these verses can be paralleled from some
previously recorded utterance of Jesus.
First, then, as everywhere in the Gospel, so here, He claims to be the
representative of God in so close and perfect a manner that "he that
believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me. And he
that seeth Me, seeth Him that sent Me." No belief terminates in Christ
Himself: to believe in Him is to believe in God, because all that He is
and does proceeds from God and leads to God. The whole purpose of
Christ's manifestation was to reveal God. He did not wish to arrest
thought upon Himself, but through Himself to guide thought to Him whom
He revealed. He was sustained by the Father, and all He said and did
was of the Father's inspiration. Whoever, therefore, "saw" or
understood Him "saw" the Father; and whoever believed in Him believed in
the Father.
Second, as regards men, He is "come a light into the world." Naturally
there is in the world no sufficient light. Men feel that they are in
darkness. They feel the darkness all the more appalling and depressing
the more developed their own human nature is. "More light" has been the
cry from the beginning. What are we? where are we? whence are we?
whither are we going? what is there above and beyond this world? These
questions are echoed back from an unanswering void, until Christ comes
and gives the answer. Since He came men have felt that they did not any
longer walk in darkness. They see where they are going, and they see why
they should go.
And if it be asked, as among the Jews it certainly must have been asked,
why, if Jesus is the Messiah, does He not punish men for rejecting Him?
the answer is, "I came not to judge the world, but to save the world."
Judgment, indeed, necessarily results from His coming. Men are divided
by His coming. "The words that I have spoken, the same shall judge men
in the last day." The offer of God, the offer of righteousness, is that
which judges men. Why are they still dead, when life has been offered?
This is the condemnation. "The commandment of the Father is life
everlasting." This is the sum of the message of God to men in Christ;
this is "the commandment" which the Father has given Me; this is
Christ's commission: to bring God in the fulness of His grace and love
and life-giving power within men's reach. It is to give life eternal to
men that God has come to them in Christ. To refuse that life is their
condemnation.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] See iii. 14.
VI.
_THE FOOT-WASHING._
"Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was
come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having
loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. And
during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had
given all things into His hands, and that He came forth from God, and
goeth unto God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments; and
He took a towel, and girded Himself. Then He poureth water into the
basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the
towel wherewith He was girded. So He cometh to Simon Peter. He saith
unto Him, Lord, dost Thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto
him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt understand
hereafter. Peter saith unto Him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus
answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me. Simon Peter
saith unto Him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet,
but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. For He knew him
that should betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean. So when
He had washed their feet, and taken His garments, and sat down again, He
said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call Me, Master,
and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the
Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet.
For I have given you an example, that ye also should do as I have done
to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, A servant is not greater than
his lord; neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye
know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them."--JOHN xiii. 1-17.
St. John, having finished his account of the public manifestation of
Jesus, proceeds now to narrate the closing scenes, in which the
disclosures He made to "His own" form a chief part. That the transition
may be observed, attention is drawn to it. At earlier stages of our
Lord's ministry He has given as His reason for refraining from proposed
lines of action that His hour was not come: now He "knew that His hour
was come, that He should depart out of this world unto the Father." This
indeed was the last evening of His life. Within twenty-four hours He was
to be in the tomb. Yet according to this writer it was not the paschal
supper which our Lord now partook of with His disciples; it was "before
the feast of the Passover." Jesus being Himself the Paschal Lamb was
sacrificed on the day on which the Passover was eaten, and in this and
the following chapters we have an account of the preceding evening.
In order to account for what follows, the precise time is defined in the
words "supper being served"[7] or "supper-time having arrived"; not, as
in the Authorised Version, "supper being ended," which plainly was not
the case;[8] nor, as in the Revised Version, "during supper." The
difficulty about washing the feet could not have arisen after or during
supper, but only as the guests entered and reclined at table. In
Palestine, as in other countries of the same latitude, shoes were not
universally worn, and were not worn at all within doors; and where some
protection to the foot was worn, it was commonly a mere sandal, a sole
tied on with a thong. The upper part of the foot was thus left exposed,
and necessarily became heated and dirty with the fine and scorching dust
of the roads. Much discomfort was thus produced, and the first duty of a
host was to provide for its removal. A slave was ordered to remove the
sandals and wash the feet.[9] And in order that this might be done, the
guest either sat on the couch appointed for him at table, or reclined
with his feet protruding beyond the end of it, that the slave, coming
round with the pitcher and basin,[10] might pour cool water gently over
them. So necessary to comfort was this attention that our Lord
reproached the Pharisee who had invited Him to dinner with a breach of
courtesy because he had omitted it.
On ordinary occasions it is probable that the disciples would perform
this humble office by turns, where there was no slave to discharge it
for all. But this evening, when they gathered for the last supper, all
took their places at the table with a studied ignorance of the
necessity, a feigned unconsciousness that any such attention was
required. As a matter of course, the pitcher of cool water, the basin,
and the towel had been set as part of the requisite furnishing of the
supper chamber; but no one among the disciples betrayed the slightest
consciousness that he understood that any such custom existed. Why was
this? Because, as Luke tells us (xxii. 24), "there had arisen among them
a contention, which of them is accounted to be the greatest." Beginning,
perhaps, by discussing the prospects of their Master's kingdom, they had
passed on to compare the importance of this or that faculty for
forwarding the interests of the kingdom, and had ended by easily
recognised personal allusions and even the direct pitting of man against
man. The assumption of superiority on the part of the sons of Zebedee
and others was called in question, and it suddenly appeared how this
assumption had galled the rest and rankled in their minds. That such a
discussion should arise may be disappointing, but it was natural. All
men are jealous of their reputation, and crave that credit be given them
for their natural talent, their acquired skill, their professional
standing, their influence, or at any rate for their humility.
Heated, then, and angry and full of resentment these men hustle into the
supper-room and seat themselves like so many sulky schoolboys. They
streamed into the room and doggedly took their places; and then came a
pause. For any one to wash the feet of the rest was to declare himself
the servant of all; and that was precisely what each one was resolved
he, for his part, would not do. No one of them had humour enough to see
the absurdity of the situation. No one of them was sensitive enough to
be ashamed of showing such a temper in Christ's presence. There they
sat, looking at the table, looking at the ceiling, arranging their
dress, each resolved upon this--that he would not be the man to own
himself servant of all.
But this unhealthy heat quite unfits them to listen to what their Lord
has to say to them that last evening. Occupied as they are, not with
anxiety about Him nor with absorbing desire for the prosperity of His
kingdom, but with selfish ambitions that separate them alike from Him
and from one another, how can they receive what He has to say? But how
is He to bring them into a state of mind in which they can listen wholly
and devotedly to Him? How is He to quench their heated passions and stir
within them humility and love? "He riseth from the supper-table, and
laid aside His garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself. After
that He poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples'
feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded." Each
separate action is a fresh astonishment and a deeper shame to the
bewildered and conscience-stricken disciples. "Who is not able to
picture the scene,--the faces of John and James and Peter; the intense
silence, in which each movement of Jesus was painfully audible; the
furtive watching of Him, as He rose, to see what He would do; the sudden
pang of self-reproach as they perceived what it meant; the bitter
humiliation and the burning shame?"
But not only is the time noted, in order that we may perceive the
relevancy of the foot-washing, but the Evangelist steps aside from his
usual custom and describes the mood of Jesus that we may more deeply
penetrate into the significance of the action. Around this scene in the
supper-chamber St. John sets lights which permit us to see its various
beauty and grace. And first of all he would have us notice what seems
chiefly to have struck himself as from time to time he reflected on this
last evening--that Jesus, even in these last hours, was wholly possessed
and governed by love. Although He knew "that His hour had come, that He
should depart out of this world unto the Father, yet having loved His
own which were in the world He loved them unto the end." Already the
deep darkness of the coming night was touching the spirit of Jesus with
its shadow. Already the pain of the betrayal, the lonely desolation of
desertion by His friends, the defenceless exposure to fierce, unjust,
ruthless men, the untried misery of death and dissolution, the critical
trial of His cause and of all the labour of His life, these and many
anxieties that cannot be imagined, were pouring in upon His spirit, wave
upon wave. If ever man might have been excused for absorption in His own
affairs Jesus was then that man. On the edge of what He knew to be the
critical passage in the world's history, what had He to do attending to
the comfort and adjusting the silly differences of a few unworthy men?
With the weight of a world on His arm, was He to have His hands free for
such a trifling attention as this? With His whole soul pressed with the
heaviest burden ever laid on man, was it to be expected He should turn
aside at such a call?
But His love made it seem no turning aside at all. His love had made Him
wholly theirs, and though standing on the brink of death He was
disengaged to do them the slightest service. His love was love, devoted,
enduring, constant. He had loved them, and He loved them still. It was
their condition which had brought Him into the world, and His love for
them was that which would carry Him through all that was before Him. The
very fact that they showed themselves still so jealous and childish, so
unfit to cope with the world, drew out His affection towards them. He
was departing from the world and they were remaining in it, exposed to
all its opposition and destined to bear the brunt of hostility directed
against Him--how then can He but pity and strengthen them? Nothing is
more touching on a death-bed than to see the sufferer hiding and making
light of his own pain, and turning the attention of those around him
away from him to themselves, and making arrangements, not for his own
relief, but for the future comfort of others. This which has often
dimmed with tears the eyes of the bystanders struck John when he saw his
Master ministering to the wants of His disciples, although He knew that
His own hour had come.
Another side-light which serves to bring out the full significance of
this action is Jesus' consciousness of His own dignity. "Jesus, knowing
that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He came
forth from God, and goeth unto God," riseth from supper, and took a
towel and girded Himself. It was not in forgetfulness of His Divine
origin, but in full consciousness of it, He discharged this menial
function. As He had divested Himself of the "form of God" at the first,
stripping Himself of the outward glory attendant on recognised Divinity,
and had taken upon Him the form of a servant, so now He "laid aside His
garments and girded Himself," assuming the guise of a household slave.
For a fisherman to pour water over a fisherman's feet was no great
condescension; but that He, in whose hands are all human affairs and
whose nearest relation is the Father, should thus condescend is of
unparalleled significance. It is this kind of action that is suitable to
One whose consciousness is Divine. Not only does the dignity of Jesus
vastly augment the beauty of the action, but it sheds new light on the
Divine character.
Still another circumstance which seemed to John to accentuate the grace
of the foot-washing was this--that Judas was among the guests, and that
"the devil had now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to
betray him." The idea had at last formed itself in Judas' mind that the
best use he could make of Jesus was to sell Him to His enemies. His
hopes of gain in the Messianic kingdom were finally blighted, but he
might still make something out of Jesus and save himself from all
implication in a movement frowned upon by the authorities. He clearly
apprehended that all hopes of a temporal kingdom were gone. He had
probably not strength of mind enough to say candidly that he had joined
the company of disciples on a false understanding, and meant now quietly
to return to his trading at Kerioth. If he could break up the whole
movement, he would be justified in his dissatisfaction, and would also
be held to be a useful servant of the nation. So he turns traitor. And
John does not whitewash him, but plainly brands him as a traitor. Now,
much may be forgiven a man; but treachery--what is to be done with it;
with the man who uses the knowledge only a friend can have, to betray
you to your enemies? Suppose Jesus had unmasked him to Peter and the
rest, would he ever have left that room alive? Instead of unmasking him,
Jesus makes no difference between him and the others, kneels by his
couch, takes his feet in His hands, washes and gently dries them.
However difficult it is to understand why Jesus chose Judas at the
first, there can be no question that throughout His acquaintance with
him He had done all that was possible to win him. The kind of treatment
Judas had received throughout may be inferred from the treatment he
received now. Jesus knew him to be a man of a low type and impenitent;
He knew him to be at that very time out of harmony with the little
company, false, plotting, meaning to save himself by bringing ruin on
the rest. Yet Jesus will not denounce him to the others. His sole weapon
is love. Conquests which He cannot achieve with this He will not achieve
at all. In the person of Judas the utmost of malignity the world can
show is present to Him, and He meets it with kindness. Well may Astie
exclaim: "Jesus at the feet of the traitor--what a picture! what lessons
for us!"
Shame and astonishment shut the mouths of the disciples, and not a sound
broke the stillness of the room but the tinkle and plash of the water in
the basin as Jesus went from couch to couch. But the silence was broken
when He came to Peter. The deep reverence which the disciples had
contracted for Jesus betrays itself in Peter's inability to suffer Him
to touch his feet. Peter could not endure that the places of master and
servant should thus be reversed. He feels that shrinking and revulsion
which we feel when a delicate person or one much above us in station
proceeds to do some service from which we ourselves would shrink as
beneath us. That Peter should have drawn up his feet, started up on the
couch, and exclaimed, "Lord, do you actually propose to wash my feet!"
is to his credit, and just what we should have expected of a man who
never lacked generous impulses. Our Lord therefore assures him that his
scruples will be removed, and that what he could not understand would be
shortly explained to him. He treats Peter's scruples very much as He
treated the Baptist's when John hesitated about baptizing Him. Let Me,
says Jesus, do it now, and I will explain My reason when I have
finished the washing of you all. But this does not satisfy Peter. Out he
comes with one of his blunt and hasty speeches: "Lord, Thou shalt never
wash my feet!" He knew better than Jesus, that is to say, what should be
done. Jesus was mistaken in supposing that any explanation could be
given of it. Hasty, self-confident, knowing better than anybody else,
Peter once again ran himself into grave fault. The first requirement in
a disciple is entire self-surrender. The others had meekly allowed Jesus
to wash their feet, cut to the heart with shame as they were, and
scarcely able to let their feet lie in His hands; but Peter must show
himself of a different mind. His first refusal was readily forgiven as a
generous impulse; the second is an obstinate, proud, self-righteous
utterance, and was forthwith met by the swift rebuke of Jesus: "If I
wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me."
Superficially, these words might have been understood as intimating to
Peter that, if he wished to partake of the feast prepared, he must allow
Jesus to wash his feet. Unless he was prepared to leave the room and
reckon himself an outcast from that company, he must submit to the
feet-washing which his friends and fellow-guests had submitted to. There
was that in the tone of our Lord which awakened Peter to see how great
and painful a rupture this would be. He almost hears in the words a
sentence of expulsion pronounced on himself; and as rapidly as he had
withdrawn from the touch of Christ, so rapidly does he now run to the
opposite extreme and offer his whole body to be washed--"not my feet
only, but my hands and my head." If this washing means that we are Thy
friends and partners, let me be all washed, for every bit of me is
Thine. Here again Peter was swayed by blind impulse, and here again he
erred. If he could only have been quiet! If he could only have held his
tongue! If only he could have allowed his Lord to manage without his
interference and suggestion at every point! But this was precisely what
Peter had as yet not learned to do. In after-years he was to learn
meekness; he was to learn to submit while others bound him and carried
him whither they would; but as yet that was impossible to him. His
Lord's plan is never good enough for him; Jesus is never exactly right.
What He proposes must always be eked out by Peter's superior wisdom.
What gusts of shame must have stormed through Peter's soul when he
looked back on this scene! Yet it concerns us rather to admire than to
condemn Peter's fervour. How welcome to our Lord as He passed from the
cold and treacherous heart of Judas must this burst of enthusiastic
devotion have been! "Lord, if washing be any symbol of my being Thine,
wash hands and head as well as feet."
Jesus throws a new light upon His action in His reply: "He that is
washed, needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and
ye are clean, but not all." The words would have more readily disclosed
Christ's meaning had they been literally rendered: He that has bathed
needeth not save to wash his feet. The daily use of the bath rendered it
needless to wash more than the feet, which were soiled with walking from
the bath to the supper-chamber. But that Christ had in view as He washed
the disciples' feet something more than the mere bodily cleansing and
comfort is plain from His remark that they were not all clean. All had
enjoyed the feet-washing, but all were not clean. The feet of Judas were
as clean as the feet of John or Peter, but his heart was foul. And what
Christ intended when He girt Himself with the towel and took up the
pitcher was not merely to wash the soil from their feet, but to wash
from their hearts the hard and proud feelings which were so uncongenial
to that night of communion and so threatening to His cause. Far more
needful to their happiness at the feast than the comfort of cool and
clean feet was their restored affection and esteem for one another, and
that humility that takes the lowest place. Jesus could very well have
eaten with men who were unwashed; but He could not eat with men hating
one another, glaring fiercely across the table, declining to answer or
to pass what they were asked for, showing in every way malice and
bitterness of spirit. He knew that at bottom they were good men; He knew
that with one exception they loved Him and one another; He knew that as
a whole they were clean, and that this vicious temper in which they at
present entered the room was but the soil contracted for the hour. But
none the less must it be washed off. _And He did effectually wash it off
by washing their feet._ For was there a man among them who, when he saw
his Lord and Master stooping at his couch-foot, would not most gladly
have changed places with Him? Was there one of them who was not softened
and broken down by the action of the Lord? Is it not certain that shame
must have cast out pride from every heart; that the feet would be very
little thought of, but that the change of feeling would be marked and
obvious? From a group of angry, proud, insolent, implacable, resentful
men, they were in five minutes changed into a company of humbled, meek,
loving disciples of the Lord, each thinking hardly of himself and
esteeming others better. They were effectually cleansed from the stain
they had contracted, and could enter on the enjoyment of the Last
Supper with pure conscience, with restored and increased affection for
one another, and with deepened adoration for the marvellous wisdom and
all-accomplishing grace of their Master.
Jesus, then, does not mistake present defilement for habitual impurity,
nor partial stain for total uncleanness. He knows whom He has chosen. He
understands the difference between deep-seated alienation of spirit and
the passing mood which for the hour disturbs friendship. He
discriminates between Judas and Peter: between the man who has not been
in the bath, and the man whose feet are soiled in walking from it;
between him who is at heart unmoved and unimpressed by His love, and him
who has for a space fallen from the consciousness of it. He does not
suppose that because we have sinned this morning we have no real root of
grace in us. He knows the heart we bear Him; and if just at present
unworthy feelings prevail, He does not misunderstand as men may, and
straightway dismiss us from His company. He recognises that our feet
need washing, that our present stain must be removed, but not on this
account does He think we need to be all washed and have never been right
in heart towards Him.
These present stains, then, Christ seeks to remove, that our fellowship
with Him may be unembarrassed; and that our heart, restored to humility
and tenderness, may be in a state to receive the blessing He would
bestow. It is not enough to be once forgiven, to begin the day "clean
every whit." No sooner do we take a step in the life of the day than our
footfall raises a little puff of dust which does not settle without
sullying us. Our temper is ruffled, and words fall from our lips that
injure and exasperate. In one way or other stain attaches to our
conscience, and we are moved away from cordial and open fellowship with
Christ. All this happens to those who are at heart as truly Christ's
friends as those first disciples. But we must have these stains washed
away even as they had. Humbly we must own them, and humbly accept their
forgiveness and rejoice in their removal. As these men had with shame to
lay their feet in Christ's hands, so must we. As His hands had to come
in contact with the soiled feet of the disciples, so has His moral
nature to come in contact with the sins from which He cleanses us. His
heart is purer than were His hands, and He shrinks more from contact
with moral than with physical pollution; and yet without ceasing we
bring Him into contact with such pollution. When we consider what those
stains actually are from which we must ask Christ to wash us, we feel
tempted to exclaim with Peter, "Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet!" As
these men must have shivered with shame through all their nature, so do
we when we see Christ stoop before us to wash away once again the
defilement we have contracted; when we lay our feet soiled with the miry
and dusty ways of life in His sacred hands; when we see the
uncomplaining, unreproachful grace with which He performs for us this
lowly and painful office. But only thus are we prepared for communion
with Him and with one another. Only by admitting that we need cleansing,
and by humbly allowing Him to cleanse us, are we brought into true
fellowship with Him. With the humble and contrite spirit which has
thrown down all barriers of pride and freely admits His love and
rejoices in His holiness does He abide. Whoso sits down at Christ's
table must sit down clean; he may not have come clean, even as those
first guests were not clean, but he must allow Christ to cleanse him,
must honestly suffer Christ to remove from his heart, from his desire
and purpose, all that He counts defiling.
But our Lord was not content to let His action speak for itself; He
expressly explains (vv. 12-17) the meaning of what He had now done. He
meant that they should learn to wash one another's feet, to be humble
and ready to be of service to one another even when to serve seemed to
compromise their dignity.[11] No disciple of Christ need go far to find
feet that need washing, feet that are stained or bleeding with the hard
ways that have been trodden. To recover men from the difficulties into
which sin or misfortune has brought them--to wipe off some of the soil
from men's lives--to make them purer, sweeter, readier to listen to
Christ, even unostentatiously to do the small services which each hour
calls for--is to follow Him who girt Himself with the slave's apron. As
often as we thus condescend we become like Christ. By putting Himself in
the servant's place, our Lord has consecrated all service. The disciple
who next washed the feet of the rest would feel that he was representing
Christ, and would suggest to the minds of the others the action of their
Lord; and as often as we lay aside the conventional dignity in which we
are clad, and gird ourselves to do what others despise, we feel that we
are doing what Christ would do, and are truly representing Him.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Compare Mark vi. 2, =genomenou sabbatou=; and the Latin "posita
mensa."
[8] See ver. 2.
[9] =hypolyete, paides, kai aponizete=.
[10] The "tusht" and "ibriek" of modern Palestine.
[11] For the formal Foot-washing by the Lord High Almoner, the Pope, or
other officials, see Augustine's _Letters_ LV.; Herzog art.
_Fusswaschung_; Smith's _Dict. of Christian Antiq._ art. _Maundy
Thursday_.
VII.
_JUDAS._
"I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the
Scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth My bread lifted up his
heel against Me. From henceforth I tell you before it come to pass,
that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send
receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me.
When Jesus had thus said, He was troubled in the spirit, and
testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you
shall betray Me. The disciples looked one on another, doubting of
whom He spake. There was at the table reclining in Jesus' bosom one
of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoneth
to him, and saith unto him, Tell us who it is of whom He speaketh.
He leaning back, as he was, on Jesus' breast saith unto Him, Lord,
who is it? Jesus therefore answereth, He it is, for whom I shall dip
the sop, and give it to him. So when He had dipped the sop, He
taketh and giveth it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. And after
the sop, then entered Satan into him. Jesus therefore saith unto
him, That thou doest, do quickly. Now no man at the table knew for
what intent He spake this unto him. For some thought, because Judas
had the bag, that Jesus said unto him, Buy what things we have need
of for the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor. He
then having received the sop went out straightway: and it was
night."--JOHN xiii. 18-30.
When Jesus had washed the disciples' feet, apparently in dead silence
save for the interruption of Peter, He resumed those parts of His dress
He had laid aside, and reclined at the table already spread for the
supper. As the meal began, and while He was explaining the meaning of
His act and the lesson He desired them to draw from it, John, who lay
next Him at table, saw that His face did not wear the expression of
festal joy, nor even of untroubled composure, but was clouded with deep
concern and grief. The reason of this was immediately apparent: already,
while washing Peter's feet, He had awakened the attention and excited
the consciences of the disciples by hinting that on some one of them at
least, if not on more, uncleansed guilt still lay, even though all
partook in the symbolic washing. And now in His explanation of the
foot-washing He repeats this limitation and warning, and also points at
the precise nature of the guilt, though not yet singling out the guilty
person. "I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen; I have not
been deceived: but it was necessary that this part of God's purpose be
fulfilled, and that this Scripture, 'He that eateth bread with Me, hath
lifted up his heel against Me,' receive accomplishment in Me."
It was impossible that Jesus should undisturbedly eat out of the same
dish with the man whom He knew to have already sold Him to the priests;
it were unfair to the other disciples and a violence to His own feelings
to allow such a man any longer to remain in their company. But our Lord
does not name the traitor and denounce him; he singles him out and sends
him from the table on his hateful mission by a process that left every
man at the table unaware on what errand he was despatched. In this
process there were three steps. First of all, our Lord indicated that
among the disciples there was a traitor. With dismay these true-hearted
men hear the firmly pronounced statement "one of _you_ shall betray Me"
(ver. 21). All of them, as another Evangelist informs us, were exceeding
sorrowful, and looked on one another in bewilderment; and unable to
detect the conscious look of guilt in the face of any of their
companions, or to recall any circumstance which might fix even suspicion
on any of them, each, conscious of the deep, unfathomed capacity for
evil in his own heart, can but frankly ask of the Master, "Lord, is it
I?" It is a question that at once proves their consciousness of actual
innocence and possible guilt. It was a kindness in the Lord to give
these genuine men, who were so shortly to go through trial for His sake,
an opportunity of discovering how much they loved Him and how closely
knit their hearts had really become to Him. This question of theirs
expressed the deep pain and shame that the very thought of the
possibility of their being false to Him gave them. They must at all
hazards be cleared of this charge. And from this shock of the very idea
of being untrue their hearts recoiled towards Him with an enthusiastic
tenderness that made this moment possibly as moving a passage as any
that occurred that eventful night But there was one of them that did not
join in the question "Lord, is it I?"--else must not our Lord have
broken silence? The Twelve are still left in doubt, none noticing in the
eagerness of questioning who has not asked, each only glad to know he
himself is not charged.
The second step in the process is recorded in the 26th chapter of
Matthew, where we read that, when the disciples asked "Lord, is it I?"
Jesus answered, "He that dippeth his hand with Me in the dish, the same
shall betray Me." It was a large company, and there were necessarily
several dishes on the table, so that probably there were three others
using the same dish as our Lord: John we know was next Him; Peter was
near enough to John to make signs and whisper to him; Judas was also
close to Jesus, a position which he either always occupied as treasurer
and purveyor of the company, or into which he thrust himself this
evening with the purpose of more effectually screening himself from
suspicion. The circle of suspicion is thus narrowed to the one or two
who were not only so intimate as to be eating at the same table, but as
to be dipping in the same dish.
The third step in the process of discovery went on almost simultaneously
with this. The impatient Peter, who had himself so often unwittingly
given offence to his Master, is resolved to find out definitely who is
pointed at, and yet dare not say to Christ "Who is it?" He beckons
therefore to John to ask Jesus privately, as he lay next to Jesus. John
leans a little back towards Jesus and puts in a whisper the definite
question "Who is it?" and Jesus in the ear of the beloved disciple
whispers the reply, "He it is to whom I shall give a sop when I have
dipped it." And when He had dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas
Iscariot. This reveals to John, but to no one else, who the traitor was,
for the giving of the sop was no more at that table than the handing of
a plate or the offer of any article of food is at any table. John alone
knew the significance of it. But Judas had already taken alarm at the
narrowing of the circle of suspicion, and had possibly for the moment
ceased dipping in the same dish with Jesus, lest he should be identified
with the traitor. Jesus therefore dips for him and offers him the sop
which he will not himself take, and the look that accompanies the act,
as well as the act itself, shows Judas that his treachery is discovered.
He therefore mechanically takes up in a somewhat colder form the
question of the rest, and says, "Master, is it I?" His fear subdues his
voice to a whisper, heard only by John and the Lord; and the answer,
"Thou hast said. That thou doest, do quickly," is equally unobserved by
the rest. Judas need fear no violence at their hands; John alone knows
the meaning of his abrupt rising and hurrying from the room, and John
sees that Jesus wishes him to go unobserved. The rest, therefore,
thought only that Judas was going out to make some final purchases that
had been forgotten, or to care for the poor in this season of festivity.
But John saw differently. "The traitor," he says, "went immediately out;
and it was night." As his ill-omened, stealthy figure glided from the
chamber, the sudden night of the Eastern twilightless sunset had fallen
on the company; sadness, silence, and gloom fell upon John's spirit; the
hour of darkness had at length fallen in the very midst of this quiet
feast.
This sin of Judas presents us with one of the most perplexed problems
of life and character that the strange circumstances of this world have
ever produced. Let us first of all look at the connection of this
betrayal with the life of Christ, and then consider the phase of
character exhibited in Judas. In connection with the life of Christ the
difficulty is to understand why the death of Christ was to be brought
about in this particular way of treachery among His own followers. It
may be said that it came to pass "that Scripture might be fulfilled,"
that this special prediction in the 41st Psalm might be fulfilled. But
why was such a prediction made? It was of course the event which
determined the prediction, not the prediction which determined the
event. Was it, then, an accident that Jesus should be handed over to the
authorities in this particular way? Or was there any significance in it,
that justifies its being made so prominent in the narrative? Certainly
if our Lord was to be brought into contact with the most painful form of
sin, He must have experience of treachery. He had known the sorrow that
death brings to the survivors; He had known the pain and disappointment
of being resisted by stupid, obstinate, bad-hearted men; but if He was
to know the utmost of misery which man can inflict upon man, He must be
brought into contact with one who could accept His love, eat His bread,
press His hand with assurance of fidelity, and then sell Him.
When we endeavour to set before our minds a clear idea of the character
of Judas, and to understand how such a character could be developed, we
have to acknowledge that we could desire a few more facts in order to
certify us of what we can now only conjecture. Obviously we must start
from the idea that with extraordinary capacity for wickedness Judas had
also more than ordinary leanings to what was good. He was an Apostle,
and had, we must suppose, been called to that office by Christ under the
impression that he possessed gifts which would make him very serviceable
to the Christian community. He was himself so impressed with Christ as
to follow Him: making those pecuniary sacrifices of which Peter
boastfully spoke, and which must have been specially sore to Judas. It
is possible, indeed, that he may have followed Jesus as a speculation,
hoping to receive wealth and honour in the new kingdom; but this motive
mingled with the attachment to Christ's person which all the Apostles
had, and mingles in a different form with the discipleship of all
Christians. With this motive, therefore, there probably mingled in the
mind of Judas a desire to be with One who could shield him from evil
influences; he judged that with Jesus he would find continual aid
against his weaker nature. Possibly he wished by one bold abandonment of
the world to get rid for ever of his covetousness. That Judas was
trusted by the other Apostles is manifest from the fact that to him they
committed their common fund,--not to John, whose dreamy and abstracted
nature ill fitted him for minute practical affairs; not to Peter, whose
impulsive nature might often have landed the little company in
difficulties; not even to Matthew, accustomed as he was to accounts; but
to Judas, who had the economical habits, the aptitude for finance, the
love of bargaining, which regularly go hand in hand with the love of
money. This practical faculty for finance and for affairs generally
might, if rightly guided, have become a most serviceable element in the
Apostolate, and might have enabled Judas more successfully than any
other of the Apostles to mediate between the Church and the world. That
Judas in all other respects conducted himself circumspectly is proved by
the fact that, though other Apostles incurred the displeasure of Christ
and were rebuked by Him, Judas committed no glaring fault till this last
week. Even to the end he was unsuspected by his fellow-Apostles; and to
the end he had an active conscience. His last act, were it not so awful,
would inspire us with something like respect for him: he is overwhelmed
with remorse and shame; his sense of guilt is stronger even than the
love of money that had hitherto been his strongest passion: he judges
himself fairly, sees what he has become, and goes to his own place;
recognises as not every man does recognise what is his fit habitation,
and goes to it.
But this man, with his good impulses, his resolute will, his enlightened
conscience, his favouring circumstances, his frequent feelings of
affection towards Christ and desire to serve Him, committed a crime so
unparalleled in wickedness that men practically make very little attempt
to estimate it or measure it with sins of their own. Commonly we think
of it as a special, exceptional wickedness--not so much the natural
product of a heart like our own and what may be reproduced by ourselves,
as the work of Satan using a man as his scarcely responsible tool to
effect a purpose which needs never again to be effected.
If we ask what precisely it was in the crime of Judas that makes us so
abhor it, manifestly its most hateful ingredient was its treachery. "It
was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it; but it
was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance." Caesar
defended himself till the dagger of a friend pierced him; then in
indignant grief he covered his head with his mantle and accepted his
fate. You can forgive the open blow of a declared enemy against whom you
are on your guard; but the man that lives with you on terms of the
greatest intimacy for years, so that he learns your ways and habits, the
state of your affairs and your past history--the man whom you so confide
in and like that you communicate to him freely much that you keep hidden
from others, and who, while still professing friendship, uses the
information he has gained to blacken your character and ruin your peace,
to injure your family or damage your business,--this man, you know, has
much to repent of. So one can forgive the Pharisees who knew not what
they did, and were throughout the declared opponents of Christ; but
Judas attached himself to Christ, knew that His life was one of unmixed
benevolence, was conscious that Christ would have given up anything to
serve him, felt moved and proud from time to time by the fact that
Christ loved him, and yet at the last used all these privileges of
friendship against his Friend.
And Judas did not scruple to use this power that only the love of Jesus
could have given him, to betray Him to men whom he knew to be
unscrupulous and resolved to destroy Him. The garden where the Lord
prayed for His enemies was not sacred to Judas; the cheek that a seraph
would blush to kiss, and to salute which was the beginning of joy
eternal to the devout disciple, was mere common clay to this man into
whom Satan had entered. The crime of Judas is invested with a horror
altogether its own by the fact that this Person whom he betrayed was the
Son of God and the Saviour of the world, the Best-beloved of God and
every man's Friend. The greatest blessing that God had ever given to
earth Judas was forward to reject: not altogether unaware of the majesty
of Christ, Judas presumed to use Him in a little money-making scheme of
his own.
The best use that Judas could think of putting Jesus to, the best use he
could make of _Him_ whom all angels worship, was to sell Him for L5.[12]
He could get nothing more out of Christ than that. After three years'
acquaintanceship and observation of the various ways in which Christ
could bless people, this was all he could get from Him. And there are
still such men: men for whom there is nothing in Christ; men who can
find nothing in Him that they sincerely care for; men who, though
calling themselves His followers, would, if truth were told, be better
content and feel they had more substantial profit if they could turn Him
into money.
So difficult is it to comprehend how any man who had lived as the friend
of Jesus could find it in his heart to betray Him, should resist the
touching expressions of love that were shown him, and brave the awful
warning uttered at the supper-table--so difficult is it to suppose that
any man, however infatuated, would so deliberately sell his soul for L5,
that a theory has been started to explain the crime by mitigating its
guilt. It has been supposed that when he delivered up his Master into
the hands of the chief priests he expected that our Lord would save
Himself by a miracle. He knew that Jesus meant to proclaim a kingdom; he
had been waiting for three years now, eagerly expecting that this
proclamation and its accompanying gains would arrive. Yet he feared the
opportunity was once more passing: Jesus had been brought into the city
in triumph, but seemed indisposed to make use of this popular
excitement for any temporal advantage. Judas was weary of this
inactivity: might he not himself bring matters to a crisis by giving
Jesus into the hands of His enemies, and thus forcing Him to reveal His
real power and assert by miracle His kingship? In corroboration of this
theory, it is said that it is certain that Judas did not expect Jesus to
be condemned; for when he saw that he was condemned he repented of his
act.
This seems a shallow view to take of Judas' remorse, and a feeble ground
on which to build such a theory. A crime seems one thing before, another
after, its commission. The murderer expects and wishes to kill his
victim, but how often is he seized with an agony of remorse as soon as
the blow is struck? Before we sin, it is the gain we see; after we sin,
the guilt. It is impossible to construe the act of Judas into a mistaken
act of friendship or impatience; the terms in which he is spoken of in
Scripture forbid this idea; and one cannot suppose that a keen-sighted
man like Judas could expect that, even supposing he did force our Lord
to proclaim Himself, his own share in the business would be rewarded. He
could not suppose this after the terrible denunciation and explicit
statement that still rang in his ears when he hanged himself: "The Son
of man goeth as it is written of Him: but woe unto that man by whom the
Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been
born."
We must then abide by the more commonplace view of this crime. The only
mitigating circumstance that can be admitted is, that possibly among the
many perplexed thoughts entertained by Judas he may have supposed that
Jesus would be acquitted, or would at least not be punished with death.
Still, this being admitted, the fact remains that he cared so little
for the love of Christ, and regarded so little the good He was doing,
and had so little common honour in him, that he sold his Master to His
deadly enemies. And this monstrous wickedness is to be accounted for
mainly by his love of money. Naturally covetous, he fed his evil
disposition during those years he carried the bag for the disciples:
while the rest are taken up with more spiritual matters, he gives more
of his thought than is needful to the matter of collecting as much as
possible; he counts it his special province to protect himself and the
others against all "the probable emergencies and changes of life." This
he does, regardless of the frequent admonitions he hears from the Lord
addressed to others; and as he finds excuses for his own avarice in the
face of these admonitions, and hardens himself against the better
impulses that are stirred within him by the words and presence of
Christ, his covetousness roots itself deeper and deeper in his soul. Add
to this, that now he was a disappointed man: the other disciples,
finding that the kingdom of Christ was to be spiritual, were pure and
high-minded enough to see that their disappointment was their great
gain. The love of Christ had transformed them, and to be like Him was
enough for them; but Judas still clung to the idea of earthly grandeur
and wealth, and finding Christ was not to give him these he was soured
and embittered. He saw that now, since that scene at Bethany the week
before, his covetousness and earthliness would be resisted and would
also betray him. He felt that he could no longer endure this
poverty-stricken life, and had some rage at himself and at Christ that
he had been inveigled into it by what he might be pleased to say to
himself were false pretences. His self-restraint, he felt, was breaking
down; his covetousness was getting the better of him; he felt that he
must break with Christ and His followers; but in doing so he would at
once win what he had lost during these years of poverty, and also
revenge himself on those who had kept him poor, and finally would
justify his own conduct in deserting this society by exploding it and
causing it to cease from among men.
The sin of Judas, then, first of all teaches us the great power and
danger of the love of money. The mere thirty pieces of silver would not
have been enough to tempt Judas to commit so dastardly and black a
crime; but he was now an embittered and desperate man, and he had become
so by allowing money to be all in all to him for these last years of his
life. For the danger of this passion consists very much in this--that it
infallibly eats out of the soul every generous emotion and high aim: it
is the failing of a sordid nature--a little, mean, earthly nature--a
failing which, like all others, may be extirpated through God's grace,
but which is notoriously difficult to extirpate, and which notoriously
is accompanied by or produces other features of character which are
among the most repulsive one meets. The love of money is also dangerous,
because it can be so easily gratified; all that we do in the world day
by day is in the case of most of us connected with money, so that we
have continual and not only occasional opportunity of sinning if we be
inclined to the sin. Other passions are appealed to only now and again,
but our employments touch this passion at all points. It leaves no long
intervals, as other passions do, for repentance and amendment; but
steadily, constantly, little by little, increases in force. Judas had
his fingers in the bag all day; it was under his pillow and he dreamt
upon it all night; and it was this that accelerated his ruin. And by
this constant appeal it is sure to succeed at one time or other, if we
be open to it. Judas could not suppose that his quiet
self-aggrandisement by pilfering little coins from the bag could ever
bring him to commit such a crime against his Lord: so may every covetous
person fancy that his sin is one that is his own business, and will not
damage his religious profession and ruin his soul as some wild lust or
reckless infidelity would do. But Judas and those who sin with him in
making continually little gains to which they have no right are wrong in
supposing their sin is less dangerous; and for this reason--that
covetousness is more a sin of the _will_ than sins of the flesh or of a
passionate nature; there is more choice in it; it is more the sin of the
whole man unresisting; and therefore it, above all others, is called
idolatry--it, above all others, proves that the man is in his heart
choosing the world and not God. Therefore it is that even our Lord
Himself spoke almost despairingly, certainly quite differently, of
covetous men in comparison with other sinners.
Disappointment in Christ is not an unknown thing among ourselves. Men
still profess to be Christians who are so only in the degree in which
Judas was. They expect _some_ good from Christ, but not all. They attach
themselves to Christ in a loose, conventional way, expecting that,
though they are Christians, they need not lose anything by their
Christianity, nor make any great efforts or sacrifices. They retain
command of their own life, and are prepared to go with Christ only so
far as they find it agreeable or inviting. The eye of an observer may
not be able to distinguish them from Christ's true followers; but the
distinction is present and is radical. They are seeking to use Christ,
and are not willing to be used by Him. They are not wholly and heartily
His, but merely seek to derive some influences from Him. The result is
that they one day find that, through all their religious profession and
apparent Christian life, their characteristic sin has actually been
gaining strength. And finding this, they turn upon Christ with
disappointment and rage in their hearts, because they become aware that
they have lost both this world and the next--have lost many pleasures
and gains they might have enjoyed, and yet have gained no spiritual
attainment. They find that the reward of double-mindedness is the most
absolute perdition, that both Christ and the world, to be made anything
of, require the whole man, and that he who tries to get the good of both
gets the good of neither. And when a man awakes to see that this is the
result of his Christian profession, there is no deadliness of hatred to
which the bitter disappointment of his soul will not carry him. He has
himself been a dupe, and he calls Christ an impostor. He know himself to
be damned, and he says there is no salvation in Christ.
But to this disastrous issue _any_ cherished sin may also in its own way
lead; for the more comprehensive lesson which this sin of Judas brings
with it is the rapidity of sin's growth and the enormous proportions it
attains when the sinner is sinning against light, when he is in
circumstances conducive to holiness and still sins. To discover the
wickedest of men, to see the utmost of human guilt, we must look, not
among the heathen, but among those who know God; not among the
profligate, dissolute, abandoned classes of society, but among the
Apostles. The good that was in Judas led him to join Christ, and kept
him associated with Christ for some years; but the devil of
covetousness that was cast out for a while returned and brought with him
seven devils worse than himself. There was everything in his position to
win him to unworldliness: the men he lived with cared not one whit for
comforts or anything that money could buy; but instead of catching their
spirit he took advantage of their carelessness. He was in a public
position, liable to detection; but this, instead of making him honest
perforce, made him only the more crafty and studiedly hypocritical. The
solemn warnings of Christ, so far from intimidating him, only made him
more skilful in evading all good influence, and made the road to hell
easier. The position he enjoyed, and by which he might have been for
ever enrolled among the foremost of mankind, one of the twelve
foundations of the eternal city, he so skilfully misused that the
greatest sinner feels glad that he has yet not been left to commit the
sin of Judas. Had Judas not followed Christ he could never have attained
the pinnacle of infamy on which he now for ever stands. In all
probability he would have passed his days as a small trader with false
weights in the little town of Kerioth, or, at the worst, might have
developed into an extortionous publican, and have passed into oblivion
with the thousands of unjust men who have died and been at last forced
to let go the money that should long ago have belonged to others. Or had
Judas followed Christ truly, then there lay before him the noblest of
all lives, the most blessed of destinies. But he followed Christ and yet
took his sin with him: and thence his ruin.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] More exactly, L3 10 8, the legal value of a slave.
VIII.
_JESUS ANNOUNCES HIS DEPARTURE._
"When therefore he was gone out, Jesus saith, Now is the Son of man
glorified, and God is glorified in Him; and God shall glorify Him in
Himself, and straightway shall He glorify Him. Little children, yet
a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek Me: and as I said unto
the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say unto you. A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I
have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men
know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another. Simon
Peter saith unto Him, Lord, whither goest Thou? Jesus answered,
Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now; but thou shalt follow
afterwards. Peter saith unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow Thee
even now? I will lay down my life for Thee. Jesus answereth, Wilt
thou lay down thy life for Me? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The
cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice. Let not your
heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My
Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have
told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto
Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go, ye
know the way."--JOHN xiii. 31-xiv. 4.
When Judas glided out of the supper-room on his terrible mission, a
weight seemed to be lifted from the spirit of Jesus. The words which
fell from Him, however, indicated that He not only felt the relief of
being rid of a disturbing element in the company, but that He recognised
that a crisis in His own career had been reached and successfully passed
through. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him."
In sending Judas forth He had in point of fact delivered Himself to
death. He had taken the step which cannot be withdrawn, and He is
conscious of taking it in fulfilment of the will of the Father. The
conflict in His own mind is revealed only by the decision of the
victory. No man in soundness of body and of mind can voluntarily give
himself to die without seeing clearly other possibilities, and without
feeling it to be a hard and painful thing to relinquish life. Jesus had
made up His mind. His death is the beginning of His glorification. In
choosing the cross He chooses the crown. "The Son of man is glorified"
in His perfect self-sacrifice that wins all men to Him; and God is
glorified in Him because this sacrifice is a tribute at once to the
justice and the love of God. The Cross reveals God as nothing else
does.
Not only has this decision glorified the Son of man and God through Him
and in Him, but as a consequence "God will glorify" the Son of man "in
Himself." He will lift Him to participation in the Divine glory. It was
well that the disciples should know that this would "straightway" result
from all that their Master was now to pass through; that the perfect
sympathy with the Father's will which He was now showing would be
rewarded by permanent participation in the authority of God. It must be
through such an one as their Lord, who is absolutely at one with God,
that God fulfils His purpose towards men. By this life and death of
perfect obedience, of absolute devotedness to God and man, Christ
necessarily wins dominion over human affairs and exercises a determining
influence on all that is to be. In all that Christ did upon earth God
was glorified; His holiness, His fatherly love were manifested to men:
in all that God now does upon earth Christ will be glorified; the
uniqueness and power of His life will become more manifest, the
supremacy of His Spirit be more and more apparent.
This glorification was not the far-off result of the impending
sacrifice. It was to date from the present hour and to begin in the
sacrifice. God will glorify Him "straightway." "Yet _a little while_"
was He to be with His disciples. Therefore does He tenderly address
them, recognising their incompetence, their inability to stand alone, as
"little children"; and in view of the exhibition of bad feeling, and
even of treachery, which the Twelve had at that very hour given, His
commandment, "Love one another," comes with a tenfold significance. I am
leaving you, He says: put away, then, all heart-burnings and
jealousies; cling together; do not let quarrels and envyings divide
you. This was to be their safeguard when He left them and went where
they could not come. "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love
one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this
shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to
another."
The commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves was no new
commandment. But to love "as I have loved you" was so new that its
practice was enough to identify a man as a disciple of Christ. The
manner and the measure of the love that is possible and that is
commanded could not even be understood until Christ's love was revealed.
But probably what Jesus had even more directly in view was the love that
was to bind His followers together[13] and make them one solid body. It
was on their mutual attachment that the very existence of the Christian
Church depended; and this love of men to one another springing out of
the love of Christ for them, and because of their acknowledgment and
love of a common Lord, was a new thing in the world. The bond to Christ
proved itself stronger than all other ties, and those who cherished a
common love to Him were drawn to one another more closely than even to
blood relations. In fact, Christ, by His love for men, has created a new
bond, and that the strongest by which men can be bound to one another.
As the Christian Church is a new institution upon earth, so is the
principle which forms it a new principle. The principle has, indeed, too
often been hidden from sight, if not smothered, by the institution; too
little has love been regarded as the one thing by which the disciple of
Christ is to be recognised, the one note of the true Church. But that
this form of love was a new thing upon earth is apparent.[14]
Tenderly as Jesus made the announcement of His departure, it filled the
minds of the disciples with consternation. Even the buoyant and hardy
Peter felt for the moment staggered by the intelligence, and still more
by the announcement that he was not able to accompany his Lord. He was
assured that one day he should follow Him, but at present this was
impossible. This, Peter considered a reflection upon his courage and
fidelity; and although his headlong self-confidence had only a few
minutes before been so severely rebuked, he exclaims, "Lord, why cannot
I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake." This was the
true expression of Peter's present feeling, and he was allowed in the
end to give proof that these vehement words were not mere bluster. But
as yet he had not at all apprehended the separateness of his Lord and
the uniqueness of His work. He did not know precisely what Jesus alluded
to, but he thought a strong arm would not be out of place in any
conflict that was coming. The offers which even true fidelity makes are
often only additional hindrances to our Lord's purposes, and additional
burdens for Him to bear. On Himself alone must He depend. No man can
counsel Him, and none can aid save by first receiving from Him His own
spirit.
Peter thus rebuked falls into unwonted silence, and takes no further
part in the conversation. The rest, knowing that Peter has more courage
than any of them, fear that if he is thus to fall it cannot be hopeful
for themselves. They feel that if they are left without Jesus they have
no strength to make head against the rulers, no skill in argument such
as made Jesus victorious when assailed by the scribes, no popular
eloquence which might enable them to win the people. Eleven more
helpless men could not well be. "Sheep without a shepherd" was not too
strong an expression to depict their weakness and want of influence,
their incompetence to effect anything, their inability even to keep
together. Christ was their bond of union and the strength of each of
them. It was to be with Him that they had left all. And in forsaking
all--father and mother, wife and children, home and kindred and
calling--they had found in Christ that hundredfold more even in this
life which He had promised. He had so won their hearts, there was about
Him something so fascinating, that they felt no loss when they enjoyed
His presence, and feared no danger in which He was their leader. They
had perhaps not thought very definitely of their future; they felt so
confident in Jesus that they were content to let Him bring in His
kingdom as He pleased; they were so charmed with the novelty of their
life as His disciples, with the great ideas that dropped from His lips,
with the wonderful works He did, with the new light He shed upon all the
personages and institutions of the world, that they were satisfied to
leave their hope undefined. But all this satisfaction and secret
assurance of hope depended on Christ. As yet He had not given to _them_
anything which could enable them to make any mark upon the world. They
were still very ignorant, so that any lawyer could entangle and puzzle
them. They had not received from Christ any influential position in
society from which they could sway men. There were no great visible
institutions with which they could identify themselves and so become
conspicuous.
It was with dismay, therefore, that they heard that He was going where
they could not accompany Him. A cloud of gloomy foreboding gathered on
their faces as they lay round the table and fixed their eyes on Him as
on one whose words they would interpret differently if they could. Their
anxious looks are not disregarded. "Let not your heart be troubled," He
says: "believe in God, and in Me, too, believe." Do not give way to
disturbing thoughts; do not suppose that only failure, disgrace,
helplessness, and calamity await you. Trust God. In this, as in all
matters, He is guiding and ruling and working His own good ends through
all present evil. Trust Him, even when you cannot penetrate the
darkness. It is His part to bring you successfully through; it is your
part to follow where He leads. Do not question and debate and vex your
soul, but leave all to Him. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why
art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise
Him who is the health of my countenance and my God."
"And in Me, too, trust." I would not leave you had I not a purpose to
serve. It is not to secure My own safety or happiness I go. It is not to
occupy the sole available room in My Father's house. There are many
rooms there, and I go to prepare a place for you. Trust Me. In order
that they may fully understand the reasonableness of His departure He
assures them, first of all, that it has a purpose. The parent mourns
over the son who in mere waywardness leaves his home and his occupation;
but with very different feelings does he follow one who has come to see
that the greater good of the family requires that he should go, and who
has carefully ascertained where and how he can best serve those he
leaves behind. To such an absence men can reconcile themselves. The
parting is bitter, but the greater good to be gained by it enables them
to approve its reasonableness and to submit. And what our Lord says to
His disciples is virtually this: I have not wearied of earth and tired
of your company, neither do I go because I must. I could escape Judas
and the Jews. But I have a purpose which requires that I should go. You
have not found Me impulsive, neither am I now acting without good
reason. Could I be of more use to you by staying, I would stay.
This is a new kind of assertion to be made by human lips: "I am going
into the other world to effect a a purpose." Often the sense of duty has
been so strong in men that they have left this world without a murmur.
But no one has felt so clear about what lies beyond, or has been so
confident of his own power to effect any change for the better in the
other world, that he has left this for a sphere of greater usefulness.
This is what Christ does.
But He also explains what His purpose is: "In My Father's house are many
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." The Father's house was a new
figure for heaven. The idea of God's house was, however, familiar to the
Jews. But in the Temple the freedom and familiarity which we associate
with home were absent. It was only when One came who felt that His real
home was in God that the Temple could be called "the Father's house."
Yet there is nothing that the heart of man more importunately craves
than the freedom and ease which this name implies. To live unafraid of
God, not shrinking from Him, but so truly at one with Him that we live
as one household brightened by His presence--this is the thirst for God
which is one day felt in every heart. And on His part God has many
mansions in His house, proclaiming that He desires to have us at home
with Him; that He wishes us to know and trust Him, not to change our
countenances when we meet Him at a corner, save by an added brightness
of joy. And this is what we have to look forward to--that after all our
coldness and distrust have been removed and our hearts thawed by His
presence, we shall live in the constant enjoyment of a Father's love,
feeling ourselves more truly at home with Him than with any one else,
delighting in the perfectness of His sympathy and the abundance of His
provision.
Into this intimacy with God, this freedom of the universe, this sense
that "all things are ours" because we are His, this entirely attractive
heaven, we are to be introduced by Christ. "I go to prepare a place for
you." It is He who has transformed the darkness of the grave into the
bright gateway of the Father's home, where all His children are to find
eternal rest and everlasting joy. As an old writer says, "Christ is the
quartermaster who provides quarters for all who follow Him." He has gone
on before to make ready for those whom He has summoned to come after
Him.
If we ask why it was needful that Christ should go forward thus, and
what precisely He had to do in the way of preparation, the question may
be answered in different ways. These disciples in after-years compared
Christ's passing into the Father's presence to the high priest's
entrance within the veil to present the blood of sprinkling and to make
intercession. But in the language of Christ there is no hint that such
thoughts were in His mind. It is the Father's house that is in His mind,
the eternal home of men; and He sees the Father welcoming Him as the
leader of many brethren, and with gladness in His heart going from room
to room, always adding some new touch for the comfort and surprise of
the eagerly expected children. If God, like a grieved and indignant
father whose sons have preferred other company to his, had dismantled
and locked the rooms that once were ours, Christ has made our peace, and
has given to the yearning heart of the Father opportunity to open these
rooms once more and deck them for our home-coming. With the words of
Christ there enters the spirit a conviction that when we pass out of
this life we shall find ourselves as much fuller of life and deeper in
joy as we are nearer to God, the source of all life and joy; and that
when we come to the gates of God's dwelling it will not be as the
vagabond and beggar unknown to the household and who can give no good
account of himself, but as the child whose room is ready for him, whose
coming is expected and prepared for, and who has indeed been sent for.
This of itself is enough to give us hopeful thoughts of the future
state. Christ is busied in preparing for us what will give us
satisfaction and joy. When we expect a guest we love and have written
for, we take pleasure in preparing for his reception,--we hang in his
room the picture he likes; if he is infirm, we wheel in the easiest
chair; we gather the flowers he admires and set them on his table; we go
back and back to see if nothing else will suggest itself to us, so that
when he comes he may have entire satisfaction. This is enough for us to
know--that Christ is similarly occupied. He knows our tastes, our
capabilities, our attainments, and he has identified a place as ours and
holds it for us. What the joys and the activities and occupations of the
future shall be we do not know. With the body we shall lay aside many of
our appetites and tastes and proclivities, and what has here seemed
necessary to our comfort will at once become indifferent. We shall not
be able to desire the pleasures that now allure and draw us. The need of
shelter, of retirement, of food, of comfort, will disappear with the
body; and what the joys and the requirements of a spiritual body will be
we do not know. But we do know that at home with God the fullest life
that man can live will certainly be ours.
It is a touching evidence of Christ's truthfulness and fidelity to His
people that is given in the words, "If it were not so, I would have told
you"--that is to say, if it had not been possible for you to follow Me
into the Father's presence and find a favourable reception there, I
would have told you this long ago. I would not have taught you to love
Me, only to have given you the grief of separation. I would not have
encouraged you to hope for what I was not sure you are to receive. He
had all along seen how the minds of the disciples were working; He had
seen that by being admitted to familiarity with Him they had learnt to
expect God's eternal favour; and had this been a deceitful expectation
He would have undeceived them. So it is with Him still. The hopes His
word begets are not vain. These dreams of glory that pass before the
spirit that listens to Christ and thinks of Him are to be realised. If
it were not so, He would have told us. We ourselves feel that we are
scarcely acting an honest part when we allow persons to entertain false
hopes, even when these hopes help to comfort and support them, as in the
case of persons suffering from disease. So our Lord does not beget hopes
He cannot satisfy. If there were still difficulties in the way of our
eternal happiness, He would have told us of these. If there were any
reason to despair, He Himself would have been the first to tell us to
despair. If eternity were to be a blank to us, if God were inaccessible,
if the idea of a perfect state awaiting us were mere talk, He would have
told us so.
Neither will the Lord leave His disciples to find their own way to the
Father's home: "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again,
and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."
Present separation was but the first step towards abiding union. And as
each disciple was summoned to follow Christ in death, he recognised that
this was the summons, not of an earthly power, but of his Lord; he
recognised that to him the Lord's promise was being kept, and that he
was being taken into eternal union with Jesus Christ. From many all the
pain and darkness of death have been taken away by this assurance. They
have accepted death as the needful transition from a state in which much
hinders fellowship with Christ to a state in which that fellowship is
all in all.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] "That ye love _one another_" is the twice-expressed commandment.
[14] "Any Church that professes to be _the_ Church of Christ cannot be
that Church. The true Church refuses to be circumscribed or parted by
any denominational wall. It knows that Christ is repudiated when His
people are repudiated. Not even a Biblical creed can yield satisfactory
evidence that a specified Church is the true Church. True Christians are
those who love one another across denominational differences, and
exhibit the spirit of Him who gave Himself to death upon the cross that
His murderers might live."
IX.
_THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE._
"Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; how
know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, and the Truth,
and the Life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had
known Me, ye would have known My Father also: from henceforth ye
know Him, and have seen Him."--JOHN xiv. 5-7.
It surprises us to find that words which have become familiar and most
intelligible to us should have been to the Apostles obscure and
puzzling. Apparently they were not yet persuaded that their Master was
shortly to die; and, accordingly, when He spoke of going to His Father's
house, it did not occur to them that He meant passing into the spiritual
world. His assuring words, "Where I am, there ye shall be also,"
therefore fell short. And when He sees their bewilderment written on
their faces, He tentatively, half interrogatively, adds, "And whither I
go ye know, and the way ye know."[15] Unless they knew where He was
going, there was less consolation even in the promise that He would come
for them after He had gone and prepared a place for them. And when He
thus challenges them candidly to say whether they understood where He
was going, and where He would one day take them also, Thomas, always the
mouthpiece for the despondency of the Twelve, at once replies, "Lord, we
know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?"
This interruption by Thomas gives occasion to the great declaration, "I
am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father,
but by Me." It is, then, to the Father that Christ is the Way. And He is
the Way by being the Truth and the Life. We must first, then, consider
in what sense He is the Truth and the Life.
I. I am the Truth. Were these words merely equivalent to "I speak the
truth," it would be much to know this of One who tells us things of so
measureless a consequence to ourselves. The faith of the disciples was
being strained by what He had just been saying to them. Here was a man
in most respects like themselves: a man who got hungry and sleepy, a man
who was to be arrested and executed by the rulers, assuring them that He
was going to prepare for them everlasting habitations, and that He would
return to take them to these habitations. He saw that they found it hard
to believe this. Who does not find it hard to believe all our Lord tells
us of our future? Think how much we trust simply to His word. If He is
not true, then the whole of Christendom has framed its life on a false
issue, and is met at death by blank disappointment. Christ has aroused
in our minds by His promises and statements a group of ideas and
expectations which nothing but His word could have persuaded us to
entertain. Nothing is more remarkable about our Lord than the calmness
and assurance with which He utters the most astounding statements. The
ablest and most enlightened men have their hesitations, their periods of
agonising doubt, their suspense of judgment, their laboured inquiries,
their mental conflicts. With Jesus there is nothing of this. From first
to last He sees with perfect clearness to the utmost bound of human
thought, knows with absolute certainty whatever is essential for us to
know. His is not the assurance of ignorance, nor is it the dogmatism of
traditional teaching, nor the evasive assurance of a superficial and
reckless mind. It is plainly the assurance of One who stands in the full
noon of truth and speaks what He knows.
But in His endeavours to gain the confidence of men there is discernible
no anger at their incredulity. Again and again He brings forward reasons
why His word should be believed. He appeals to their knowledge of His
candour: "If it were not so, I would have told you." It was the _truth_
He came into the world to bear witness to. Lies enough were current
already. He came to be the Light of the world, to dispel the darkness
and bring men into the very truth of things. But with all His
impressiveness of asseveration there is no anger, scarcely even wonder
that men did not believe, because He saw as plainly as we see that to
venture our eternal hope on His word is not easy. And yet He answered
promptly and with authority the questions which have employed the
lifetime of many and baffled them in the end. He answered them as if
they were the very alphabet of knowledge. These alarmed and perturbed
disciples ask Him: "Is there a life beyond? is there another side of
death?" "Yes," He says, "through death I go to the Father." "Is there,"
they ask, "for us also a life beyond? shall such creatures as we find
sufficient and suitable habitation and welcome when we pass from this
warm, well-known world?" "In My Father's house," He says, "are many
mansions." Confronted with the problems that most deeply exercise the
human spirit, He without faltering pronounces upon them. For every
question which our most anxious and trying experiences dictate He has
the ready and sufficient answer. "He is the Truth."
But more than this is contained in His words. He says not merely "I
speak the truth," but "I am the Truth." In His person and work we find
all truth that it is essential to know. He is the true Man, the
revelation of perfect manhood, in whom we see what human life truly is.
In His own history He shows us our own capacities and our own destiny.
An angel or an inanimate law might _tell_ us the truth about human life,
but Christ is the Truth. He is man like ourselves. If we are
extinguished at death, so is He. If for us there is no future life,
neither is there for Him. He is Himself human.
Further and especially, He is the truth about God: "If ye had known Me,
ye had known My Father also." Strenuous efforts are being made in our
day to convince us that all our search after God is vain, because by the
very nature of the case it is impossible to know God. We are assured
that all our imaginations of God are but a reflection of ourselves
magnified infinitely; and that what results from all our thinking is not
God, but only a magnified man. We form in our thoughts an ideal of human
excellence--perfect holiness and perfect love; and we add to this
highest moral character we can conceive a supernatural power and wisdom,
and this we call God. But this, we are assured, is but to mislead
ourselves; for what we thus set before our minds as Divine is not God,
but only a higher kind of man. But God is not a higher kind of man: He
is a different kind of being--a Being to whom it is absurd to ascribe
intelligence, or will, or personality, or anything human.
We have felt the force of what is thus urged; and feeling most deeply
that for us the greatest of all questions is, What is God? we have been
afraid lest, after all, we have been deluding ourselves with an image of
our own creating very different from the reality. We have felt that
there is a great truth lying at the heart of what is thus urged, a truth
which the Bible makes as much of as philosophy does--the truth that we
cannot find out God, cannot comprehend Him. We say certain things about
Him, as that He is a Spirit; but which of us knows what a pure spirit
is, which of us can conceive in our minds a distinct idea of what we so
freely speak of as a spirit? Indeed, it is because it is impossible for
us to have any sufficient idea of God as He is in Himself that He has
become man and manifested Himself in flesh.
This revelation of God in man implies that there is an affinity and
likeness between God and man--that man is made in God's image. Were it
not so, we should see in Christ, not God at all, but only man. If God is
manifest in Christ, it is because there is that in God which can find
suitable expression in a human life and person. In fact, this revelation
takes for granted that in a sense it is quite true that God is a
magnified Man--that He is a Being in whom there is much that resembles
what is in man. And it stands to reason that this must be so. It is
quite true that man can only conceive what is like himself; but that is
only half the truth. It is also true that God can only create what is
consistent with His own mind. In His creatures we see a reflection of
Himself. And as we ascend from the lowest of them to the highest, we see
what He considers the highest qualities. Finding in ourselves these
highest qualities--qualities which enable us to understand all lower
creatures and to use them--we gather that in God Himself there must be
something akin to our mind and to our inner man.
Christ, then, is "the Truth," because He is the Revealer of God. In Him
we learn what God is and how to approach Him. But knowledge is not
enough. It is conceivable that we should have learned much about God and
yet have despaired of ever becoming like Him. It might gradually have
become our conviction that we were for ever shut out from all good,
although that is incompatible with a true knowledge of God; for if God
is known at all, He must be known as Love, as self-communicating. But
the possibility of having knowledge which we cannot use is precluded by
the fact that He who is the Truth is also the Life. In Him who is the
Revealer we at the same time find power to avail ourselves of the
revelation. For:
II. "I am the Life." The declaration need not be restricted to the
immediate occasion, Christ imparts to men power to use the knowledge of
the Father He gives them. He gives men desire, will, and power to live
with God and in God. But is not all life implied in this? This is life
as men are destined to know it.
In every man there is a thirst for life. Everything that clogs, impedes,
or retards life we hate; sickness, imprisonment, death, whatever
diminishes, enfeebles, limits, or destroys life, we abhor. Happiness
means abundant life, great vitality finding vent for itself in healthy
ways. Great scope or opportunity of living to good purpose is useless to
the invalid who has little life in himself; and, on the other hand,
abundant vitality is only a pain to the man who is shut up and can spend
his energy only in pacing a cell eight feet by four. Our happiness
depends upon these two conditions--perfect energy and infinite scope.
But can we assure ourselves of either? Is not the one certainty of life,
as we know it, that it must end? Is it not certain that, no matter what
energy the most vigorous of us enjoy, we shall all one day "lie in cold
obstruction"? Naturally we fear that time, as if all life were then to
end for us. We shrink from that apparent termination, as if beyond it
there could be but a shadowy, spectral life in which nothing is
substantial, nothing lively, nothing delightsome, nothing strong. That
state which we shrink from our Lord chooses as a condition of perfect
life, abundant and untrammelled. And what He has chosen for Himself He
means to bestow upon us.
Why should we find it so hard to believe in that abundant life? There is
a sufficient source of physical life which upholds the universe and is
not burdened, which in continuance and exuberantly brings forth life in
inconceivably various forms. The world around us indicates a source of
life which seems always to grow and expand rather than to be exhausted.
So there is a source of spiritual life, a force sufficient to uphold all
men in righteousness and in eternal vitality of spirit, and which can
give birth to ever new and varied forms of heroic, holy, godly living--a
force which is ever pressing forward to find expression through all
moral beings, and capable of making all human action as perfect, as
beautiful, and infinitely more significant than the products of physical
life which we see around us. If the flowers profusely scattered by the
wayside are marvels of beauty, if the bodily frame of man and of the
other animals is continually surprising us with some new revelation of
exquisite arrangement of parts, if nature is so lavish and so perfect in
physical life, may we not believe that there is as rich a fountain of
moral and spiritual life? Nay, "the youths may faint and be weary, and
the young men utterly fall," physical life may fail and in the nature of
things must fail, "but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength, they shall run and not be weary."
It is Jesus Christ who brings us into connection with this source of
life eternal--He bears it in His own person. In Him we receive a new
spirit; in Him our motive to live for righteousness is continually
renewed; we are conscious that in Him we touch what is undying and never
fails to renew spiritual life in us. Whatever we need to give us true
and everlasting life we have in Christ. Whatever we need to enable us to
come to the Father, whatever we shall need between this present stage of
experience and our final stage, we have in Him.
The more, then, we use Christ, the more life we have. The more we are
with Him and the more we partake of His Spirit, the fuller does our own
life become. It is not by imitating successful men we become influential
for good, but by living with Christ. It is not by adopting the habits
and methods of saints we become strong and useful, but by accepting
Christ and His Spirit. Nothing can take the place of Christ. Nothing can
take His words and say to us, "I am the Life." If we wish life, if we
see that we are doing little good and desire energy to overtake the good
that needs to be done, it is to Him we must go. If we feel as if all our
efforts were vain, and as if we could not bear up any longer against our
circumstances or against our wicked nature we can receive fresh vigour
and hopefulness only from Christ. We need not be surprised at our
failures if we are not receiving from Christ the life that is in Him.
And nothing can give us the life that is in Him but our own personal
application to Him, our direct dealing with Himself. Ordinances and
sacraments help to bring Him clearly before us, but they are not living
and cannot give us life. It is only in so far as through and in them we
reach Christ and receive Him that we partake of that highest of all
forms of life--the life that is in Him, the living One, by whom all
things were made, and who in the very face of death can say, "Because I
live ye shall live also."
III. Being the Revealer of the Father, and giving men power to approach
God and live in Him, Jesus legitimately designates Himself "the Way."
Jesus never says "I am the Father"; He does not even say "I am God," for
that might have produced misunderstanding. He uniformly speaks as if
there were One on whom He Himself leant, and to whom He prayed, and with
whom, as with another person, He had fellowship. "I am the Way," He
says; and a way implies a goal beyond itself, some further object to
which it leads and brings us. He is not the Being revealed, but the
Revealer; not the terminal object of our worship, but the image of the
invisible God, the Priest, the Sacrifice.
Christ announces Himself to Thomas as the Way, in order to remove from
the mind of the disciple the uncertainty he felt about the future. He
knew there were heights of glory and blessedness to which the Messiah
would certainly attain, but which seemed dim and remote and even quite
unattainable to sinful men. Jesus defines at once the goal and the way.
All our vague yearnings after what will satisfy us He reduces to this
simple expression: "the Father." This, He implies, is the goal and
destiny of man; to come to the Father, who embraces in His loving care
all our wants, our incapacities, our sorrows; to reach and abide in a
love that is strong, wise, educative, imperishable; to reach this love
and be so transformed by it as to feel more at home with this perfectly
holy God than with any besides. And to bring us to this goal is the
function of Christ, the Way. It is His to bring together what is highest
and what is lowest. It is His to unite those who are separated by the
most real obstacles: to bring us, weak and unstable and full of evil
imaginings, into abiding union with the Supreme, glad to be conformed to
Him and to accomplish His purposes. In proclaiming Himself "the Way,"
Christ pronounces Himself able to effect the most real union between
parties and conditions as separate as heaven and earth, sin and
holiness, the poor creature I know myself to be and the infinite and
eternal God who is so high I cannot know Him.
Further, the way to which we commit ourselves when we seek to come to
the Father through Christ is a _Person_. "I am the Way." It is not a
cold, dead road we have to make the most of for ourselves, pursuing it
often in darkness, in weakness, in fear. It is a living way--a way that
renews our strength as we walk in it, that enlivens instead of
exhausting us, that gives direction and light as we go forward. Often we
seem to find our way barred; we do not know how to get farther forward;
we wonder if there is no book in which we can find direction; we long
for some wise guide who could show us how to proceed. At such times
Christ would have us hear Him saying, "I am the Way. If you abide in Me,
if you continue in My love, you are in the way and must be carried
forward to all good." Often we seem to lose ourselves and cannot tell
whether our faces and our steps are directed aright or not; we become
doubtful whether we have been making any progress or have not rather
been going back. Often we lose heart and begin to doubt whether it is
possible for us men ever to reach any purer, higher life; we are going,
we say, we know not whither; this life is full of blunders and failures.
Many of the best and most earnest and gifted men have owned their
ignorance of the purpose of life and of its end. No voice comes to us
out of the unseen world to give us assurance that there is life there.
How can lonely, ignorant, irresolute, weak, and helpless creatures such
as we are ever attain to anything we can call blessedness? To all such
gloom and doubting Christ, with the utmost confidence, says, "I am the
Way. Wherever you are, at whatever point of experience, at whatever
stage of sin, this way begins where you are, and you have but to take it
and it leads to God, to that unknown Highest you yearn for even while
you shrink from Him. From your person, as you are at this moment, there
leads a way to the Father."
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Or, "And whither I go ye know the way."
X.
_THE FATHER SEEN IN CHRIST._
"Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth
us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so longtime with you, and dost
thou not know Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;
how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in
the Father, and the Father in Me? the words that I say unto you I
speak not from Myself: but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works.
Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me: or else
believe Me for the very works' sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and
greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father.
And whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask Me anything in
My name, that will I do. If ye love Me, ye will keep My
commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you
another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit
of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth Him not,
neither knoweth Him: ye know Him; for He abideth with you, and shall
be in you. I will not leave you desolate: I c
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/33288