Bible Commentaries

The Self-revelation of Christ

John 14:12)

Jesus Christ thus indicated a period of working. He never made anything of his miracles. Other people were surprised at them, he was never amazed; beholders exclaimed, What a worker of wonders!—Jesus went out that he might pray. To pray is the greatest wonder of all; to touch heaven by right of love and faith is the supreme token of filial fellowship with God. As to quieting storms, and soothing seas, and raising dead bones, these are infantalities, trifles, things hardly to be accounted of at all; but to hold God by the violence of prayer is the great end and aim of spiritual education, to be consummated in the other world by an exchange of prayer for the delight and the satisfaction of praise. When did Jesus Christ ever call his Church to less and less work? When did he say, By-and-by, all this necessity will cease, and then the whole week will be be one hymn-singing Sabbath day? Never. He said, You have worked well today, but to-morrow with what sinew, with what strength, will you ply the vocation of God! You have done well this week, but next week you will not know your former selves; you will be giants refreshed, you will have new programmes, new enterprises; you will see new heavens, new earth, new possibilities, and there will be no holding you back. This is the mission I open to you, this is the reason why I comfort you; if I give you a moment's sleep it is that when you are waken out of it you may be the better qualified to prosecute your noble toil.

"Greater works than these" there are always to be done. Work begins on a small scale, enlarges, increases, develops, and you enlarge and consolidate along with your service, and thus you are proceeding upon an ever-enlarging line of service. There is no end to Christian culture; there is no period in the literature of sacrifice; whilst anything has been withheld nothing has been given; whilst one pulse has been kept back from God's altar the whole life has also been kept back. Never believe any men who think their work is done; even if they think their own personal work is done, the work is being carried on by braver men, keener minds, larger hearts, and more perfect fidelity. No man has ever imagined with any approach to completeness what God means humanity to be. This word must always resound in our soul, "Greater works than these." What we do is nothing compared to what we shall yet do. Is there not need, then, after such a revelation of the future, of a word of special comfort and encouragement? Trust the divine artist; he knows where the light should be, and where the shadow should fall.

Having thus called his disciples to greater labour, Christ says:—

"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 anything in my name, I will do it" ( John 14:13-14).

They might well wonder how the greater works were to be done. Here is the answer. Ask, and ye shall receive. What a marvellous combination of limitation and illimitableness we find in these words! Never man spake like this man! "And whatsoever,"—that is bold, almost to recklessness. Who can tell what human fancy may crave, what human imagination may suggest? But the word does not end with "whatsoever," but proceeds thus—"ye shall ask in my name." Everything must be sanctified by the name, limited by the name, defined and designated by the spirit of Christ. Here, then, you have obedience, surrender to God, confidence in the divine John 15:1).

Is it not important in all life to know who is the principal, the head John 15:6-7).

Is there anything unreasonable, then, in Christianity, when its principal quest is to know the head and origin, the fountain and spring, of things? This is indeed Christianity. It will not be content with minor explanations, with any work of men's hands; it cannot sit down at the outer line of phenomena and say, These will do: they are very wonderful! Christianity does not send us to create a museum of specimens of curiosities, oddities, and eccentricities; Christianity says, To the fountain, to the origin, to the all-supplying force of things—where is that? Having found that all the rest will come, by naturalness of development; but until you have found the well-head, the spring, and the fountain, you have found nothing that may not perish in your hand, and disappoint you even in the moment when you thought you had touched the height of victory. This is the supreme characteristic of the New Testament; this is the supreme characteristic of Christianity. Christ reveals the Father: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten John 15:15—"Henceforth I call you not servants," but "friends." That is the line of promotion. We shall know when we are called friends by Christ; a new consciousness will dawn within, a larger sense of life will possess us; we shall know, when the lifetide rises, when a nobler enthusiasm inflames our nature, when mightier impulses stir within us,—we shall know that we have gone up in the grade of Christian relationship, and that we who began as slaves have been promoted to the rank of friends. In this school we must graduate. Herein we may all take the honours of the school, and the meekest will take the most. We have read in Isaiah that Abraham was called by Jehovah, "my friend." When Augustus called Virgil his friend it was thought he had conferred an honour upon the singer—as if an emperor could confer an honour on a poet! Jesus Christ calls us friends. Why does he change the designations—"for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth "—is not in the innermost secret of things; he only waits at the door, and beholds from afar—"but have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." I have created you trustees, I have invested you with the dignity and the responsibility of stewards; you have in you, did you but know it, the manifold wisdom of God; so then, ye are no more your own souls. This is the reasoning of the Apostle Paul—"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature": he has not got some new faculties, aptitudes, opportunities, but he himself is a new John 15:14, John 15:17).

He is Lord as well as Paraclete; he is Sovereign, as well as Redeemer; he is Lord of all. Yet, who thinks of Jesus Christ giving commands? We often think of him as the Creator of the beatitudes, the Poet of benefaction, the Man who had fine fancy enough almost to invent characteristics for separate qualities; we read his beatitudes, and bless him for his gentle words; but the Author of the beatitudes is the Author of the Christian commandments: Follow me; believe God; believe me; love one another. These are not proposals that may be modified; these are not suggestions that are open to compromise; these are the living commandments of the living Christ. We bless this mighty speaker for his eloquence on the mountain which all men might hear, but with a tenderer praise we thank him for these other words, spoken in the privacy of love, uttered in the secrecy of heart-to-heart intercourse. We might know more of Christ if we loved him more. To love he will ever manifest himself—to criticism he will seldom speak. From love he will never withdraw.

The Prepared Place

John 14:2

There are two remarkable things about this statement. First of all, that the master should prepare for the servant. This upsets the ordinary course of procedure. You are expecting to entertain some chosen friends. All your appointments are made; you have sent before your face servants in whom you have confidence, and have told them to do as you have commanded, that all things may be in readiness for the invited guests. This is customary; this is considered right. But Jesus Christ says to his servants—such poor, incomplete, and blundering servants too—"I, your Lord and Master, go to prepare a place for you." This is quite in keeping with the method which Jesus Christ adopted in his ministry. This is no exceptional instance of condescension, self-ignoring, self-humiliation. "He took a towel, girded himself, and began to wash his disciples" feet." And having finished this lowly exhibition, he said, "If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet. I have given you an example." So his whole life was a humiliation. Wherever he was on earth he was, so to speak, out of place; if his method be measured by his original and essential dignity, his whole life was a stoop, his whole ministry a Godlike condescension. John 14:21

Here is a promise of divine manifestation to the human mind, and of divine indwelling in the human heart. "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father." "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." So then, God need not be unto the human soul as a far-off and unapproachable King—he may be in the heart as a gracious Father; his presence need not be as a coldly glittering star away in the inaccessible heights, but as a summer filling the heart with fire, working in the life all the strange enchantments of intermingling colours, and covering the soul with abundant fruitfulness. Thus we have distinctly set before us the highest possibility in spiritual life—the possibility of being temples of the Holy Ghost, of having fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, and of being made partakers of the divine nature. This thought should silence the clamour of all earthly appeal to cur affections, and give us the true idea of our susceptibilities as children of God. We can do the daily business of life, yet through it all can have shining upon us the most holy and transfiguring image of the Son of man; we can be in the city of men, yet hidden in the sanctuary of God; our feet may be in the dust, but our heads among those who worship day and night; we may carry with us him whose name is Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God. So being and so doing we are no longer of the world; we are only waiting to pay it back the dust it lent us, and then we shall be free of it for ever; our true life is hidden; it is in God's keeping; it is never seen drawing water from this world's muddy wells, nor eating the base food of the beasts that perish; it lives on the living word, it draws water from the wells of salvation; it has meat to eat that the world knoweth not of. "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and his Church "—and I invite you to follow me, in a prayerful and quiet spirit, in an endeavour to show first the condition on which divine manifestation is granted; and, secondly, some of the blessed evidences by which we may know that such manifestation has been realised in our own experience. O Spirit of Light, shine upon us, that we may see every step of the ascending and glorious way!

(1) The condition on which divine manifestation is granted to man.—That condition is distinctly asserted in the text, and in other Scriptures, to be love. "The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me." "If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him." Where love is wanting, all is wanting; there may be rough interpretations of the divine presence as seen in the wonders of creation; for he would be a fool who could mistake the sun as having been written by any other hand than God's; he who reads only the writing on the face of nature is as the letter-carrier, who reads only the outward address, not the wise and tender words written for the heart. Love is, so to speak, the faculty by which we apprehend God, without which we can never know more of him than that he is a dread mystery. Love is the fulfilling of the law: thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength; Nor need it appear strange that love is the only interpreter of God. In all our education and intercourse we find again and again that love sees farthest, hears quickest, feels deepest. God has not set up an arbitrary test of manifestation, he has taken the common course of our life, and given it applications to himself. I might challenge the worshipper of Nature to say whether his god does not demand precisely the same condition of manifestation? The mountain is saying, If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him; the sun holds the same language, so does the sea, so does every leaf of the forest. Two men shall walk along the same road; the one shall see nothing of beauty, and hear nothing of music. When he reaches his journey's end he may, perhaps, have a dim impression that there was a hedge on one side of him and that there was garden land on the other; he may not be prepared absolutely to deny that a bird or two might have been singing in the air as he came along; he may not be ready to take an oath that now and again he passed a wayside flower; but he knows nothing, he is not in the slightest degree enriched by reason of his walk through the enchanting scenery. To such an eye as his Nature refuses to reveal herself in any but her most outward forms, and even they are misunderstood by so blind a reader. The companion who walked with him has, on the contrary, enriched his mind with many a picture; he has heard voices which will linger in his ear for many a day; the wayside flower has spoken to him some tender message, and the whole scene has been to him as the distinct handwriting of the great Creator. How are we lo account for the difference? The road was the same, the two men travelled the same path at the same moment; yet the one was poor at his journey's end, and the other was filled with a sweet delight. The explanation is easy: the one loved Nature, and therefore Nature manifested herself to his admiring eye; the other cared nothing for Nature, and Nature in return cared nothing for him. What I wish to insist upon is, that even in your sanctuary, O worshipper of Nature, the same law holds good as in the sanctuary of the living God; in both we hear the words, "If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him."

The same rule holds good with Art. Every great picture is saying to those who look upon it, If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him. It is not every man who can read a picture. To some men a picture is only so much canvas and so much paint, without life, without idea, without poetry; there the great work hangs, having no message to those who look upon it with unappreciative eyes. You have heard persons who knew nothing of works of art, who, in passing great pictures, have said, "That is not so bad," or, "What a glorious frame that is!" but into the soul of the painter they have not seen at all; they have not appreciated the expenditure of mind which has been lavished on that costly work. On the other hand, there have been men who have stood before a great picture dumb with amazement, quivering with inexpressible delight, moved to the very depths of their being! The picture is the same, the light in which it is viewed by both parties is the same; yet to the one mind the picture is representing truths too deep for utterance, and to the other nothing but the coarsest exterior. Here again, therefore, we are thrown back upon the law of the text, and are shown that it is no arbitrary law which Almighty God has set up. Art unites with Nature in saying in the most distinct manner, If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him. Nor do we come to a change of this law if we enter into the circle in which human nature is most deeply studied. You can never know a man deeply until you love him. If you wish to know what is in your friend, sound his depths by entrusting him with more and more of your friendship. As flowers expand in the sunshine, so character discloses itself under the genial radiance of trustful affection. All character, indeed, does not reveal itself in the same way, but some men, and probably the grandest men, do not show themselves fully except under the influence of love. We may make many happy conjectures concerning the disposition of men. By putting one thing and another together which we may have seen in their character, we may come to some tolerably correct conclusion regarding the life of those whom we carefully study; but to know a man deeply and truly, to know him as he knows himself, we must test him by our own love, we must develop him by the fulness and reality of our special trust. The mother often knows more about the child than the father does. You may remember that in your childish days you were able to go to your mother with a very broken story, and she was patient and wise enough to put it together for you and make something of it; but you did not care to go to your father until you had a straightforward story to tell, and were prepared to stand a close cross-examination upon it. Perhaps some little girl may say that in her case it was precisely the contrary, for she could go to her father better than to her mother. I am glad to know it; such an instance does not at all destroy the validity of my position; it still remains true that where there is the most love there will be the highest power of interpretation, and that love will draw from its object most surely all that it requires. What we have found in Nature, in art, and in the family circle, we find in the whole course of our general study. The poet is saying, If any man love me, I will manifest myself to him. He will not speak to the prosaic reader. His poem will be but so many lines to the man who has no poetic faculty. The poet will only speak to the poet. Two men shall read the same poem—one will feel it tedious and wearisome exceedingly; the other will feel as if it ended too soon, so rich, so inspiring, so grand he felt it to be. What is this but the application of the principle of the text? So with the musician: to some men (men, indeed, who are to be sincerely pitied) music is nothing; it does not come to them with interpretations which could never be expressed in common words; they are lost in what, to them, is a terrible discord—the clash of instruments, the throbbing of great drums, the roll of stupendous organs, the blending of many voices—to them it is all confusion, without spirit, without figure, without signification. To others, music is as a voice from heaven: in the grand compositions of the masters they see, as it were, the very spirit of music walking upon the wings of the tuneful wind, and beckoning them away to higher scenes and nobler delights than earth can afford. How is this? Music will not visit the silent chambers of the soul that gives it no loving invitation; music, on the contrary, will never cease to sound in the hearing of those who pray that her voice may continue to soothe and inspire them.

We come, therefore, again and again upon the principle of the text. Whatever be your god—be it Nature, be it Art, be it humanity—you will find in it the same law that you find in the text, namely, that without love there can be no true manifestation. It is the same with reading books. All authors are not the same to us; we must take something to an author before we can get from him all that he will give. The "Stones of Venice" must be hard reading to a man who cares nothing for Gothic, Byzantine, bases, jambs, and archivolts; Shakespeare is uninteresting to the man who brings nothing of the dramatic in his own nature to the interpretation of the great poet; such a man will flee to Euclid's Geometry, as to an ark of refuge. Yes, even geometry itself insists upon the application of the law which we find in the text. Euclid is dull reading to the man who does not love mathematics; but to him who has, so to speak, a geometrical mind, even straight lines and circles are apt to become things of beauty. You will not regard these illustrations as tedious if they help you in any degree to realise the principle, that love is the secret of manifestation. In setting up love as the condition of divine fellowship, God does not set up an arbitrary law. This, indeed, is the common law of the universe. Like ever goes to like. He who loves the devil most, knows most of the devil. To love vice is to be a learned scholar in the school of the infernal spirit; is to be really clever at wickedness, to be refined in iniquity, to be a genius in abomination. Some men are so little learned in the arts of the devil as to expose themselves to the interference of the policeman and the magistrate; they are such clumsy servants of their bad master as actually to be imprisoned, and to be otherwise punished by the laws of their country; others, again, are such adepts in the art of doing that which is forbidden, that they can manage to build up a reputation for respectability while they are actually engaged in practices which cannot bear the light of day,—so silent are they, so skilful, so deeply do they love the devil, that they receive from him the most secret manifestations, whilst they can look abroad upon the world With a face which simulates the appearance of innocence. The law is impartial. To love is to know; to love is to have; to love is strength; to love is life.

(2) I intended to say something about the blessed evidences that we have realised this divine manifestation; but why attempt to explain what must of necessity be too great for utterance in words? When God is showing himself in the heart, there are many signs of his presence. In our deepest intercourse with the Father our souls enter into an ecstasy in which language is felt to be powerless. You cannot have God in your heart without knowing that he is there. You cannot always explain, in common language, how it is that you are assured of his presence; yet there are flashes of light upon your mind, there are surgings of love in your heart, which tell you most unmistakably that you are enjoying immediate fellowship with the Father and his Christ. If I were to enter into an enumeration of the evidences by which any man can be assured that God is manifesting himself to the human heart, I should put, first and foremost, this—namely, where God dwells there will be increasing hatred of sin as sin. I do not say that there will be mere dread of consequences; I do not teach that men will avoid sin simply because they fear the terrible rod which never fails to follow the evil-doer. I insist rather, that where God is reigning in the heart there will be an ever-deepening detestation of sin on its own account; of sin because it is sin, because it is so infinitely hateful to God himself. Where the spirit of order is in a man, he does not require to go with a square and compasses, and other mathematical instruments, in order to test whether this or that is out of order, or out of proportion; he detects it instantly, by reason of the very spirit that is in him. Where the spirit of honesty is in a man, he docs not retire in order to consult an Act of Parliament before he completes his transactions with those who have entered into business relations with him. He does not say, "If the Act will allow me to get off for elevenpence three-farthings, certainly I shall not pay one shilling." He is himself an Act of Parliament; he is the incarnation of the spirit of honesty—he represents the great law of divine righteousness, and, because of the spirit of integrity which is in him, it is utterly impossible for him to go astray from the path of rectitude. And even thus it is with regard to the very highest attainments of the divine life. When the spirit of holiness is in a man, his whole life will be made holy thereby; he will not care to consult rules and codes as determined by human critics; the spirit of holiness that is in him will lead him into truth, into purity, into the very holiness of the all-holy God. Let us then put ourselves to the test on this point: if we would really know whether God is manifesting himself to us, let us each say, Do I hate sin as sin, or would I roll it under my tongue as a sweet morsel if I could do so without suffering evil consequences for it? Do I abominate sin because it is opposed to the nature of God, or do I profess to hate it merely because such profession will secure for me a better standing in society? Would I sin if I were left alone, or if the most perfect secrecy could be granted to me? These are the piercing questions by which a man may test whether he is really enjoying divine manifestation, or is living a superficial and perhaps a hypocritical life.

Next to insisting upon this proof of divine manifestation to the human heart, I should point out that where God really dwells with men there will be on the part of men supremacy of the spiritual over the material. The flesh will be servant, not master. Christianity indeed does not destroy human passions, but gives them a higher direction. Where God dwells in the soul, and fills the mind with heavenly light, and stirs the heart with blessed expectation, the passions will, of necessity, take their order from reason. As the material universe is under God's control, so will the human body be under the control of the human spirit, where God dwells in the heart. As in nature we find occasional outbreakings of storm—as the winds now and again threaten to rock the world and shake it out of its place—as the volcano bursts forth in devastating fire—as the sea roars tumultuously, so there may be in our bodily experiences proofs that we are yet in a region where the enemy has some power over us; yet as God sits above the floods, and controls all the forces of creation, so will he give our spirit ability to overmaster all the agitation and turbulence which show that even yet we are more or less strangers in a strange land. Out of this hatred of sin and this spiritual supremacy there will, of course, come perfect trust in God's government of the world. The world becomes quite a new study when the heart is renewed in Christ's love. The world is no longer a threatening mystery; it is still, indeed, a problem, but there is the most perfect assurance in the heart that the solution will bring nothing but glory to the divine name. When God manifests himself to man, man is delivered from the terrors of the present world; he ceases to see mere accident in the courses of daily life that perplex him and distress him. He says, I do but see part of the divine movement in this; so far as these events that appear to be disastrous are concerned, I see that which is fragmentary, and I must patiently and confidently wait until God has completed his whole purpose. This is a sure sign that God is in the heart, for the world is displaced, its power is thrown down, and, even in the most threatening circumstances, there is a calmness which was never wrought in the human mind by carnal philosophy or unassisted reasoning. The world becomes less and less to a man who enjoys divine fellowship. To some men the world is, of course, everything; they have but one little world in their tiny universe—of course they are bound to make the most of it; to the man who is the temple of the Holy Ghost there is a great and indeed immeasurable universe, in view of which this speck of dust, on which some men would live for ever, dwindles into its proper insignificance. The Christian and the worldling are not, as they ought not to be, able to look upon the events of life with the same composure. The worldling must, of necessity, live in a constant state of alarm, because he is exposed to the mercy of what he calls accident, chance, misfortune. The Christian, on the other hand, by reason of taking wide views of things, by reason of associating himself with that which is infinite and absolute, enters into a profound and imperturbable peace. Yes, this peace is a sure sign that God is revealing himself to the heart Where grace is, there will be the most blessed peace. "Great peace have they that love thy law." The Lord will bless his people with peace.

Is any man in search of the Holy Grail? Here it is. "If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him." Hast thou been on the holy quest in many countries? Pause. The answer is here, "If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him." After many heartaches, many blighting disappointments, many cruel mockings, art thou still sighing for the Holy Sangreal? I have the answer, "If any man love me, I will manifest myself unto him." We must begin with love, the love which comes of earnest desire to know that which is heavenly, and then, in due time, will come a still tenderer affection. We must get to the point of love. All our self-sufficiency, all our high notions, and mighty imaginings, must be cast away as things unclean and unsatisfying, and then we shall see the Father. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Love is the brightest purity. Purity is the divinest love. I cannot tell you how wondrously God reveals himself to love! He can never do enough for it. It moves him to lavish upon us unsearchable riches. Nor is love on our part a fixed quantity; we may grow in love for ever, constantly going out after God, never exhausting his grace, yet ever increasing in capacity to receive it. As for your god, O ye idolaters of Mammon, your love is a vanishing quantity, though it may appear to increase; you are daily impairing your very power of love; you are letting your greedy god eat up your hearts, and yet suffering him to delude you with the notion that you are independent and high-minded thinkers. Mammon! accursed god! never satisfied, never thankful, never beneficent, thou dost slay all to whom thou dost reveal thyself! Men of business, let me warn you against this flattering and mocking money-god; he will deceive you at last; he will stir you with most exciting promises—he will show you the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them; he will throw open the doors of enchanting palaces, and give you visions of temples in which all is golden—but at last he will laugh you to scorn! Yes! he will surely reveal himself to you; he will grin as devils only can grin; and when you see him as he is you shall be like him. Blessed are they who have turned with loathing from his jewelled altars, and sought the Sangreal in the blessed Cross! Blessed is their life—blessed is their peace—blessed is their hope. Daily they draw themselves through the discipline of earth, by the inspiring expectation of heaven, and by the sweetness of grace they overcome the bitterness of sin.