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.
“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.
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 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. In The Classical Review for July 1890 Mr. Bennett
suggests that the difficult word πιστικῆς should be written
πιστακῆς, and that it refers to the Pistacia terebinthus,
which grows in Cyprus and Judæa, and yields a very fragrant and very
costly unguent.
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
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
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
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
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. So Stier.
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
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,
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
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
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
“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.
The scene must have been one not easily forgotten. The Mount of Olives
runs north and south parallel to
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
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
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 This is more distinctly brought out in the Synoptic Gospels
than in St. John: cp.
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
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,
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. According to the reading of the scene by St. John, the
people needed no prompting.
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
“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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
“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.
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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.
See iii. 14.
Accordingly, although they had recognised Jesus as
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
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
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
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
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
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.
“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.
In order to account for what follows, the precise time is defined in the
words “supper being served” Compare See ver. 2. ὑπολύετε, παῖδες, καὶ ἀπονίζετε. The “tûsht” and “ibrîek” of modern Palestine.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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. 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.
“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.
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
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
This sin of Judas presents us with one of the most
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
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.” Cæsar
defended himself till the dagger of a friend pierced him; then in
indignant grief
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
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
£5. More exactly, £3 10 8, the legal value of a slave.
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 £5,
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
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
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
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
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
“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.
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;
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 “That ye love one another” is the twice-expressed
commandment. “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.”
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
“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.
Or, “And whither I go ye know the way.”
This interruption by Thomas gives occasion to the
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
“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 come unto you. Yet a little while, and the world beholdeth Me no more; but ye behold Me: because I live, ye shall live also. In that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto him.”—John xiv. 8–21.
Ignorant as this request may be, it sprang from the thirst for God which
was felt by an earnest and godly man. It arose from the craving that now
and again visits every soul to get to the heart of all mystery. Here in
this life we are much in the dark. We feel ourselves to be capable of
better enjoyments, of a higher life. The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth, as if striving towards some better and more satisfying
state. There is a something not yet
To Philip’s eager request Jesus replies: “Have I been so long time with
you, and hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen
the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father?” And it is thus our
Lord addresses all whose unsatisfied craving finds voice in Philip’s
request. To all who crave some more immediate, if not more sensible
What do we find in Christ? We find perfection of moral character, superiority to circumstances, to the elements, to disease, to death. We find in Him One who forgives sin and brings peace of conscience, who bestows the Holy Spirit and leads to perfect righteousness. We cannot imagine anything in God which is not made present to us in Christ In any part of the universe we should feel secure with Christ. In the most critical spiritual emergency we should have confidence that He could right matters. In the physical and in the spiritual world He is equally at home and equally commanding. We can believe Him when He says that he that has seen Him has seen the Father.
What precisely does this utterance mean? Does it only mean that Jesus in
His holy and loving ways and in the whole of His character was God’s
very image? As you might say of a son who strongly resembles his father,
“If you have seen the one, you have seen the other.” It is true that the
self-sacrifice
But it is plain that the connection between Jesus and God was a different kind of connection from that which subsists between every man and God. Every man might in a sense say, “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” But plainly the very fact that Jesus said to Philip, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?” is proof that it was not this ordinary connection He had in view. Philip could have had no difficulty in perceiving and acknowledging that God was in Jesus as He is in every man. But if that were all that Jesus meant, then it was wholly out of place to appeal to the works the Father had given Him to do in proof of this assertion.
When, therefore, Jesus said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” He did not merely mean that by His superior holiness He had revealed the Father as no other man had done (although even this would be a most surprising assertion for any mere man to make—that He was so holy that whoever had seen Him had seen the absolutely holy God), but He meant that God was present with Him in a special manner.
So important was it that the disciples should firmly grasp the truth
that the Father was in Christ that Jesus proceeds to enlarge upon the
proof or evidence of this. In the course of doing so He imparts to them
three assurances fitted to comfort them in the prospect of His
departure: first, that so far from being weakened by His going to the
Father, they will do greater works than even those which had proved that
the Father was
But all this experience would serve to convince them that the Father was in Him. He had, He says, lived among them as the representative of the Father, uttering His will, doing His works. These works might have convinced them even if they were not spiritual enough to perceive that His words were Divine utterances. But a time was coming when a satisfying conviction of the truth that God had been present with them in the presence of Jesus would be wrought in them. When, after His departure, they found themselves doing the works of God, greater works than Jesus had done, when they found that the Spirit of truth dwelt in them, imparting to them the very mind and life of Christ Himself, then they should be certified of the truth that Jesus now declared, that the Father was in Him and He in the Father. “At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” What their understanding could not at present quite grasp, the course of events and their own spiritual experience would make plain to them. When in the prosecution of Christ’s instructions they strove to fulfil His commands and carry out His will upon earth, they would find themselves countenanced and supported by powers unseen, would find their life sustained by the life of Christ.
Jesus, then, speaks here of three grades of conviction regarding His
claim to be God’s representative: three kinds of evidence—a lower, a
higher, and the
Miracles are not the highest evidence, but they are evidence. One miracle might not be convincing evidence. Many miracles of the same kind, such as a number of cures of nervous complaints, or several successful treatments of blind persons, might only indicate superior knowledge of morbid conditions and of remedies. A physician in advance of his age might accomplish wonders. Or had all the miracles of Jesus been such as the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, it might, with a shade of plausibility, have been urged that this was legerdemain. But what we see in Jesus is not power to perform an occasional wonder to make men stare or to win for Himself applause, but power as God’s representative on earth to do whatever is needful for the manifestation of God’s presence and for the fulfilment of God’s will. It may surely at this time of day be taken for granted that Jesus was serious and true. The works are given Him by the Father to do: it is as an exhibition of God’s power He performs them. They are therefore performed not in one form only, but in every needed form. He shows command over all nature, and gives evidence that spirit is superior to matter and rules it.
The miracles of Christ are also convincing because they are performed by
a miraculous Person. That an ordinary man should seem to rule nature, or
should exhibit wonders on no adequate occasion, must always seem
unlikely, if not incredible. But that a Person notoriously exceptional,
being what no other man has ever been, should do things that no other
man has
At present men are swinging from an excessive exaltation of miracles to
an excessive depreciation of them. They sometimes speak as if no one
could work a miracle, and sometimes as if any one could work a miracle.
Having discovered that miracles do not convince every one, they leap to
the conclusion that they convince no one; and perceiving that Christ
does not place them on the highest platform of evidence, they proceed to
put them out of court altogether. This is inconsiderate and unwise. The
miracles of Christ are appealed to by Himself as evidence of His truth;
and looking at them in connection with His person, His life, and His
mission or object, considering their character as works of compassion,
and their instructive revelation of the nature and purpose of Him who
did them, we cannot, I think, but feel that they carry
But Christ Himself, in the words before us, expects that those who have listened to His teaching and seen His life should need no other evidence that God is in Him and He in God—should not require to go down and back to the preliminary evidence of miracles which may serve to attract strangers. And, obviously, we get closer to the very heart of any person, nearer to the very core of their being, through their ordinary and habitual demeanour and conversation than by considering their exceptional and occasional acts. And it is a great tribute to the power and beauty of Christ’s personality that it actually is not His miracles which solely or chiefly convince us of His claims upon our confidence, but rather His own character as it shines through His talks with His disciples and with all men He met. This, we feel, is the Person for us. Here we have the human ideal. The characteristics here disclosed are those which ought everywhere to prevail.
But the crowning evidence of Christ’s unity with the Father can be
enjoyed only by those who share His life. The conclusive evidence which
for ever scatters doubt and remains abidingly as the immovable ground of
confidence in Christ is our individual acceptance of His Spirit.
Christ’s life in God, His identification with the ultimate source of
life and power, is to become one of the unquestioned facts of
consciousness, one of the immovable data of human existence. We shall
one day be as sure of His unity with the Father, and that in Christ our
life is hid in God, as we are sure that now we are alive. Faith in
Christ is to become an unquestioned certainty. How then is this
assurance to be attained? It is to be attained when
Christ calls our attention to this with His usual formula when about to
declare a surprising but important truth: “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, He that believeth on Me shall do greater works than these.”
Beginning with such evidence and such trust as we can attain, we shall
be encouraged by finding the practical strength which comes of union
with Christ. It speedily became apparent to the disciples that our Lord
meant what He said when He assured them that they would do greater works
than He had done. His miracles had amazed them and had done much good.
And yet, after all, they were necessarily very limited in number, in the
area of their exercise, and in the permanence of their results. Many
were healed; but many, many more remained diseased. And even those who
were healed were not rendered permanently unassailable by disease. The
eyes of the blind which were opened for a year or two must close shortly
in death. The paralysed, though sent from Christ’s presence healed, must
yield to the debilitating influences of age and betake themselves again
to the crutch or the couch. Lazarus given back for a time to his
sorrowing sisters must again, and this time without recall, own the
power of death. And how far did the influence of Christ penetrate into
these healed persons? Did they all obey His words and sin no more? or
did some worse thing than the disease He freed them from fall upon some
of them? Was there none who used his restored eyesight to minister to
sin, his restored energies to do more wickedness than otherwise would
have been possible? In one word, the miracles of
But was this the object of Christ’s coming? Did He come to do a little
less than several of the great medical discoverers have done? Assuredly
not. These works of healing which He wrought on the bodies of men were,
as John regularly calls them, “signs”; they were not acts terminating in
themselves, and finding their full significance in the happiness
communicated to the healed persons; they were signs pointing to a power
over men’s spirits, and suggesting to men analogous but everlasting
benefits. Christ wrought His miracles that men, beginning with what they
could see and appreciate, might be led on to believe in and trust Him
for power to help them in all their matters. And now He expressly
announces to His disciples that these works which He had been doing were
not miracles of the highest kind; that miracles of the highest kind were
works of healing and renewal wrought not on the bodies but on the souls
of men, works whose effects would not be deleted by disease and death,
but would be permanent, works which should not be confined to Palestine,
but should be coextensive with the human race. And these greater works
He would now proceed to accomplish through His disciples. By His removal
from earth His work was not to be stopped, but to pass into a higher
stage. He had come to earth not to make a passing display of Divine
power, not to give a tantalising glimpse of what the world might be were
His power acting freely and continuously in it; but He had come to lead
us to apprehend the value of spiritual health and to trust Him for that.
And now that He
This crowning evidence of Christ’s being with the Father and in Him the
disciples very soon enjoyed. On the day of Pentecost they found such
results following from their simple word as had never followed the word
of Christ. Thousands were renewed in heart and life. And from that day
to this these greater works have never ceased. And why? “Because I go to
the Father.” And two reasons are given in these simple words. In the
first place, no such results could be accomplished by Christ because not
till He died was the Father’s love fully known. It was the death and
resurrection of Christ that convinced men of the truth of what Christ
had proclaimed in His life and in His words regarding the Father. The
tender compunction which was stirred by His death gave a purchase to the
preacher of repentance which did not previously exist. It is Christ’s
death and resurrection which have been the converting influence through
all the ages, and these Christ Himself could not preach. It was only
when He had gone to the Father that the greater works of His kingdom
could be done. Besides, it was only then that the greater works could be
understood and longed for. The fact is, that the death and resurrection
of Christ radically altered men’s conceptions of the spiritual world,
and gave them a belief in a future life of the spirit such as they
previously had not and could not have. When men came experimentally into
contact with One who had passed through death,
But when Christ gives as a reason for the greater works of His disciples
that He Himself went to the Father, He also means that, being with the
Father, He would be in the place of power, able to respond to the
prayers of His people. “I go unto the Father, and whatsoever ye shall
ask in My name that will I do.” No man in Christ’s circumstances would
utter such words at random. They are uttered with a perfect knowledge of
the difficulties and in absolute good faith. But praying “in Christ’s
name” is not so easy an achievement as we are apt to think. Praying in
Christ’s name means, no doubt, that we go to God, not in our own name,
but in His. He has given us power to use His name, as when we send a
messenger we bid him use our name. Sometimes when we send a person to a
friend we are almost afraid to give him our name, knowing that our
friend will be anxious for our sakes to do all he can and perhaps too
much for the applicant. And in going to God in the name of Christ, as
those
But praying in Christ’s name means more than this. It means that we pray
for such things as will promote Christ’s kingdom. When we do anything in
another’s name, it is for him we do it. When we take possession of a
property or a legacy in the name of some society, it is not for our own
private advantage but for the society we take possession. When an
officer arrests any one in the Queen’s name, it is not to satisfy his
private malice he does so; and when he collects money in the name of
government, it is not to fill his own pocket. Yet how constantly do we
overlook this obvious condition of acceptable prayer! To pray in
Christ’s name is to seek what He seeks, to ask aid in promoting what He
has at heart. To come in Christ’s name and plead selfish and worldly
desires is absurd. To pray in Christ’s name is to pray in the spirit in
which He Himself prayed and for objects He desires. When we measure our
prayers by this rule, we cease to wonder that so few seem to be
answered. Is God to answer prayers that positively lead men away from
Him? Is He to build them up in the presumption that happiness can be
found in the pursuit of selfish objects and worldly comfort? It is when
a man stands, as these disciples stood, detached from worldly hopes and
finding all in Christ, so clearly apprehending the sweep and benignity
of Christ’s will as to see that it comprehends all good to man, and that
life can serve no purpose if it do not help to fulfil that will—it is
then a man prays with assurance and finds his prayer answered. Christ
had won the love of these men and knew that their chief desire would be
to serve Him, that their
And therefore He gives them the final encouragement that He would still
be with them, not indeed in a visible form apparent to all eyes, but in
a valid and powerful spiritual manner appreciable by those who loved
Christ and strove to do His will. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.
And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter,”
another Advocate, one called to your aid, and who shall so
effectually aid you that in His presence and help you will know Me
present with you. “I will not leave you comfortless, like orphans: I
will come to you.” Christ Himself was still to be with them. He was not
merely to leave them His memory and example, but was to be with them,
sustaining and guiding and helping them even as He had done. The only
difference was to be this—that whereas up to this time they had
verified His presence by their senses, seeing His body, hearing His
words, and so forth, they should henceforward verify His presence by a
spiritual sense which the world of those who did not love Him could not
make use of. “Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye
see Me: because I live, ye shall live also.” They would find that their
life was bound up in His; and as that new life of theirs grew strong and
proved itself victorious over the world and powerful to subdue men’s
hearts to Christ and win the world to Christ’s kingdom, they should feel
a growing persuasion, a deepening consciousness, that this life of
theirs was but the manifestation of the continued life
Consciousness, then, of Christ’s present life and of His close relation
to ourselves is to be won only by loving Him and living in Him and for
Him. Lower grades of faith there are on which most of us stand, and by
which, let us hope, we are slowly ascending to this assured and
ineradicable consciousness. Drawn to Christ we are by the beauty of His
life, by His evident mastery of all that concerns us, by His knowledge,
by the revelation He makes; but doubts assail us, questionings arise,
and we long for the full assurance of the personal love of God and of
the continued personal life and energy of Christ which would give us an
immovable ground to stand on. According to Christ’s explanation given in
this passage to His disciples, this deepest conviction, this
unquestionable consciousness of His presence, is attained only by those
who proceed upon the lower grades of faith, and with true love for Him
seek to find their life in Him. It is a conviction which can only be won
experimentally. The disciples passed from the lower to the higher faith
at a bound. The sight of the risen Lord, the new world vividly present
to them in His person, gave their devotedness an impulse which carried
them at once and for ever to certainty. There are many still who are so
drawn by spiritual affinity to Christ that unhesitatingly and
unrepentingly they give themselves wholly to Him, and have the reward of
a conscious life in Christ. Others have more slowly to win their way
upwards, fighting against unbelief, striving to give themselves more
undividedly to Christ, and encouraging themselves with the hope that
from their hearts also all doubts will one day for ever
Christ’s promise is explicit—a promise given as the stay of His friends
in their bitterest need: “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth
them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of
My Father, and I will love Him, and will manifest Myself to him.” It
will still be a spiritual manifestation which can be perceived only by
those whose spirits are exercised to discern such things; but it will be
absolutely satisfying. We shall find one day that Christ’s work has been
successful, that He has brought men and God into a perfect harmony.
“That day” shall arrive for us also, when we shall find that Christ has
actually accomplished what He undertook, and has set our life and
ourselves on an enduring foundation—has given us eternal life in God, a
life of perfect joy. Things are under God’s guidance progressive, and
Christ is the great means He uses for the progress of all that concerns
ourselves. And what Christ has done is not to be fruitless or only half
effective; He will see of the travail of His soul and be
satisfied—satisfied because in us the utmost of happiness and the
utmost of good have been
These utterances are fitted to dispel a form of unbelief which seriously hinders many sincere inquirers. It arises from the difficulty of believing in Christ as now alive and able to afford spiritual assistance. Many persons who enthusiastically admit the perfectness of Christ’s character and of the morality He taught, and who desire above all else to make that morality their own, are yet unable to believe that He can give them any real and present assistance in their efforts after holiness. A teacher is a very different thing from a Saviour. They are satisfied with Christ’s teaching; but they need more than teaching—they need not only to see the road, but to be enabled to follow it. Unless a man can find some real connection between himself and God, unless he can rely upon receiving inward support from God, he feels that there is nothing which can truly be called salvation.
This form of unbelief assails almost every man. Very often it results
from the slow-growing conviction that the Christian religion is not
working in ourselves the definite results we expected. When we read the
New Testament, we see the reasonableness of faith, we cannot but
subscribe to the theory of Christianity; but when we endeavour to
practise it we fail. We have tried it, and it does not seem to work. At
first we think this is something peculiar to ourselves, and that through
some personal carelessness or mistake we have failed to receive all the
benefit which others receive. But as time goes on the suspicion
strengthens in some minds that faith is a delusion: prayer seems to be
unanswered; effort seems to be unacknowledged. The power of an almighty
spirit within the human
What, then, is to be said in view of such doubts? Perhaps it may help us
past them if we consider that spiritual things are spiritually
discerned, and that the one proof of His ascension to God’s right hand
which Christ Himself promised was the bestowal of His Spirit. If we find
that, however slowly, we are coming into a truer harmony with God; if we
find that we can more cordially approve the Spirit of Christ, and give
to that Spirit a more real place in our life; if we are finding that we
can be satisfied with very little in the way of selfish and worldly
advancement, and that it is a greater satisfaction to us to do good than
to get good; if we find ourselves in any degree more patient, more
temperate, more humble,—then Christ is manifesting in us His present
life in the only way in which He promised to do so. Even if we have more
knowledge, more perception of what moral greatness is, if we see through
the superficial formalisms which once passed for religion with us, this
is a step in the right direction, and if wisely used may be the
foundation of a superstructure of intelligent service and real
fellowship with God. Every discovery and abandonment of error, every
unmasking of delusion, every attainment of truth, is a step nearer to
permanent reality, and is a true spiritual gain; and if in times past we
have had little experience of spiritual joy and confidence, if our
thoughts have been sceptical and questioning and perplexed, all this may
be the needful preliminary to a more independent and assured and truer
faith, and may be the very best proof that Christ is guiding our mind
and attending to our prayers. It
It may also be said that to think of Christ as a good man who has passed
away like other good men, leaving an influence and no more behind Him,
to think of Him as lying still in His tomb outside Jerusalem, is to
reverse not only the belief of those who knew Christ best, but the
belief of godly men in all ages. For in all ages both before and after
Christ it has been the clear conviction of devout souls that God sought
them much more ardently and persistently than they sought God. The truth
which shines most conspicuously in the experience of all the saved is
that they were saved by God and not by themselves. If human experience
is to be trusted at all, if it in any case reflects the substantial
verities of the spiritual world, then we may hold it as proved in the
uniform experience of men that God somehow communicated to them a living
energy, and not only taught them what to do, but gave them strength to
do it. If under the Christian dispensation we are left to make the best
we can for ourselves of the truth taught by Christ and of the example He
set us in His life and death, then the Christian dispensation, so far
from being an advance on all that went before, fails to supply us with
that very thing which is sought through all religions—actual access to
a living source of spiritual strength. I believe that the resurrection
of Christ is established by stronger evidence than exists for any other
historical fact; but apart altogether from the historical evidence, the
entire experience of God’s people goes to show that Christ, as the
mediator between God and man, as the representative of God and the
channel of
“Judas (not Iscariot) saith unto Him, Lord, what is come to pass that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth Me not keepeth not My words: and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved Me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe. I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in Me; but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.”—John xiv. 22–31.
Apparently Judas’ construction of the future was still entangled with
the ordinary Messianic expectation. He thought Jesus, although departing
for a little, would return speedily in outward Messianic glory, and
would triumphantly enter Jerusalem and establish Himself there. But how
this could be done privately he could not understand. And if Jesus had
entirely altered His plan, and did not mean immediately to claim
Messianic supremacy, but only to manifest Himself to a few, was this
possible?
By His reply our Lord shows for the hundredth time that outward proclamation and external acknowledgment were not in His thoughts. It is to the individual and in response to individual love He will manifest Himself. It is therefore a spiritual manifestation He has in view. Moreover, it was not to a specially privileged few, whose number was already complete, that He would manifest Himself. Judas supposed that to him and his fellow-Apostles, “us,” Jesus would manifest Himself, and over against this select company he set “the world.” But this mechanical line of demarcation our Lord obliterates in His reply, “If any man loveth Me, ... We will come to him.” He enounces the great spiritual law that they who seek to have Christ’s presence manifested to them must love and obey Him. He that longs for more satisfying knowledge of spiritual realities, he that thirsts for certainty and to see God as if face to face, must expect no sudden or magical revelation, but must be content with the true spiritual education which proceeds by loving and living. To the disciples the method might seem slow—to us also it often seems slow; but it is the method which nature requires. Our knowledge of God, our belief that in Christ we have a hold of ultimate truth and are living among eternal verities, grow with our love and service of Christ. It may take us a lifetime—it will take us a lifetime—to learn to love Him as we ought, but others have learned and we also may learn, and there is no possible experience so precious to us.
It is, then, to those who serve Him that Christ manifests Himself, and
manifests Himself in an abiding, spiritual, influential manner. That
those who do not serve Him do not believe in His presence and power
At this point (ver. 25) Jesus pauses; and feeling how little He had time
to say of what was needful, and how much better they would understand
their relation to Him after He had finally passed from their bodily
sight, He says: “These things I have spoken to you, while yet I remain
with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, which the Father will send
in My name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all
that I have said to you.” Jesus cannot tell them all He would wish them
to know; but the same Helper whom He has already promised will
especially help them by giving them understanding of what has already
been told them, and by leading them into further knowledge. He is to
come “in the name” of Jesus—that is to say, as His representative—and
to carry on His work in the
world. “In this designation of the teaching Spirit as holy, there
lie lessons for two classes of people. All fanatical professions of
possessing Divine illumination, which are not warranted and sealed by
purity of life, are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand,
cold-blooded intellectualism will never force the locks of the palace of
Divine truth; but they that come there must have clean hands and a pure
heart; and only those who have the love and the longing for goodness
will be wise scholars in Christ’s school.”—Maclaren.
Here, then, the Lord predicts that one day His disciples will know more than He has taught them. They were to advance in knowledge beyond the point to which He had brought them. His teaching would necessarily be the foundation of all future attainment, and whatever would not square with that they must necessarily reject; but they were to add much to the foundation He had laid. We cannot therefore expect to find in the teaching of Jesus all that His followers ought to know regarding Himself and His connection with them. All that is absolutely necessary we shall find there; but if we wish to know all that He would have us know, we must look beyond. The teaching which we receive from the Apostles is the requisite and promised complement of the teaching which Christ Himself delivered. He being the subject taught as much as the teacher, and His whole experience as living, dying, rising, and ascending, constituting the facts which Christian teaching was to explain, it was impossible that He Himself should be the final teacher. He could not at once be text and exposition. He lived among men, and by His teaching shed much light on the significance of His life; He died, and was not altogether silent regarding the meaning of His death, but it was enough that He furnished matter for His Apostles to explain, and confined Himself to sketching the mere outline of Christian truth.
Again and again throughout this last conversation
But He does give them that which all other bequests aim at producing:
“Peace I leave with you.” Men may differ as to the best means of
attaining peace, or even as to the kind of peace that is desirable, but
all agree in seeking an untroubled state. We seek a condition in which
we shall have no unsatisfied desires gnawing at our heart and making
peace impossible, no stings of conscience, dipped in the poison of past
wrong-doing, torturing us hour by hour, no foreboding anxiety darkening
and disturbing a present which might otherwise be peaceful. The
comprehensive nature of this possession is shown by the fact that peace
can be produced only by the contribution of past, present, and future.
As health implies that all the laws which regulate bodily life are being
observed, and as it is disturbed by the infringement of any one of
these, so peace of mind implies that in the spiritual life all is as it
should be. Introduce remorse or an
Jesus further defines the peace which He was leaving to the disciples as that peace which He had Himself enjoyed: “My peace I give unto you,”—as one hands over a possession he has himself tested, the shield or helmet that has served him in battle. “That which has protected Me in a thousand fights I make over to you.” The peace which Christ desires His disciples to enjoy is that which characterised Himself; the same serenity in danger, the same equanimity in troublous circumstances, the same freedom from anxiety about results, the same speedy recovery of composure after anything which for a moment ruffled the calm surface of His demeanour. This is what He makes over to His people; this is what He makes possible to all who serve Him.
There is nothing which more markedly distinguishes Jesus and proves His
superiority than His calm peace in all circumstances. He was poor, and
might have resented the incapacitating straitness of poverty. He was
driven from place to place, His purpose and motives were suspected, His
action and teaching resisted, the good He strove to do continually
marred; but He carried Himself through all with serenity. It is said
that nothing shakes the nerve of brave men so much as fear of
assassination: our Lord lived among bitterly
This unruffled serenity was so obvious a characteristic of the demeanour of Jesus, that as it was familiar to His friends, so it was perplexing to His judges. The Roman governor saw in His bearing an equanimity so different from the callousness of the hardened criminal and from the agitation of the self-condemned, that he could not help exclaiming in astonishment, “Dost Thou not know that I have power over Thee?” Therefore without egotism our Lord could speak of “My peace.” The world had come to Him in various shapes, and He had conquered it. No allurement of pleasure, no opening to ambition had distracted Him and broken up His serene contentment; no danger had filled His spirit with anxiety and fear. On one occasion only could He say, “Now is My soul troubled.” Out of all that life had presented to Him He had wrought out for Himself and for us peace.
By calling it specifically “My peace” our Lord distinguishes it from the
peace which men ordinarily pursue. Some seek it by accommodating
themselves to the world, by fixing for themselves a low standard and
disbelieving in the possibility of living up to any high standard in
this world. Some seek peace by giving the fullest possible gratification
to all their desires; they seek peace in external things—comfort, ease,
plenty, pleasant connections. Some stifle anxiety about worldly
There are, in fact, two roads to peace—we may conquer or we may be
conquered. A country may always enjoy peace, if it is prepared always to
submit to indignities, to accommodate itself to the demands of stronger
parties, and absolutely to dismiss from its mind all ideas of honour or
self-respect. This mode of obtaining peace has the advantages of easy
and speedy attainment—advantages to which every man naturally attaches
too high a value. For in the individual life we are daily choosing
either the one peace or the other; the unrighteous desires which
distract us we are either conquering or being conquered by. We are
either accepting the cheap peace that lies on this side of conflict, or
we are attaining or striving towards the peace that lies on the other
side of conflict. But the peace we gain by submission is both
short-lived and delusive. It is short-lived, for a gratified desire is
like a relieved beggar, who will quickly find his way back to you with
his request rather enlarged than curtailed; and it is delusive, because
it is a peace which is the beginning of bondage of the worst kind. Any
peace that is worth the having or worth the speaking about lies beyond,
at the other side of conflict. We cannot long veil this from ourselves:
we may decline the
Again, the peace of which Christ here speaks may be called His, as being
wrought out by Him, and as being only attainable by others through His
communication of it to them. We do at first inquire with surprise how it
is possible that any one can bequeath to us his own moral qualities.
This, in fact, is what one often wishes were possible—that the father
who by long discipline, by many painful experiences, has at last become
meek and wise, could transmit these qualities to his son who has life
all before him. As we read the notices of those who pass away from among
us, it is the loss of so much moral force we mourn; it may be, for all
we know, as indispensable elsewhere, but nevertheless it is our loss, a
loss for which no work done by the man, nor any works left behind him,
compensate; for the man is always, or generally, greater than his works,
and what he has done only shows us the power and possibilities that are
in him. Each generation needs to raise its own good men, not
independent, certainly, of the past, but
How, then, does Christ communicate to us His peace or any of His own
qualities—qualities in some instances acquired by personal experience
and personal effort? He gives us peace, first, by reconciling us to God
by removing the burden of our past guilt and giving us access to God’s
favour. His work sheds quite a new light upon God; reveals the fatherly
love of God following us into our wandering and misery, and claiming us
in our worst estate as His, acknowledging us and bidding us hope.
Through Him we are brought back to the Father. He comes with this
message from God, that He loves us. Am I, then, troubled about the past,
about what I have done? As life goes on, do I only see more and more
clearly how thoroughly I have been a wrong-doer? Does the present, as I
live through it, only shed a brighter and brighter light on the evil of
the past? Do I fear the future as that which can only more and more
painfully evolve the consequences of my past wrong-doing? Am I gradually
awaking to the full and awful import of being a sinner? After
Reconcilement with God is the foundation, manifestly and of course, of
all peace; and this we have as Christ’s direct gift to us. But this
fundamental peace, though it will eventually pervade the whole man, does
in point of fact only slowly develop into a peace such as our Lord
Himself possessed. The peace which our Lord spoke of to His disciples,
peace amidst all the ills of life, can only be attained by a real
following of Christ, and a hearty and profound acceptance of His
principles and spirit. And it is not the less His gift because we have
thus to work for it, to alter or be altered wholly in our own inward
being. It is not therefore a deceptive bequest. When the father gives
his son a good education, he cannot do so irrespective of the hard work
of the son himself. When the general promises victory to his men, they
do not expect to have it without fighting. And our Lord does not upset
or supersede the fundamental laws of our nature and of our spiritual
growth. He does not make effort of our own unnecessary; He does not give
us a ready-made character irrespective of the laws by which character
grows, irrespective of deep-seated thirst for holiness
But He helps us to peace, not only though primarily by bringing us back to God’s favour, but also by showing us in His own person and life how peace is attained and preserved, and by communicating to us His Spirit to aid us in our efforts to attain it. He found out more perfectly than any one else the secret of peace; and we are stirred by His example and success, not only as we are stirred by the example of any dead saint or sage with whom we have no present personal living fellowship, but as we are stirred by the example of a living Father who is always with us to infuse new heart into us, and to give us effectual counsel and aid. While we put forth our own efforts to win this self-conquest, and so school all within us as to enter into peace, Christ is with us securing that our efforts shall not be in vain, giving us the fixed and clear idea of peace as our eternal condition, and giving us also whatever we need to win it.
These words our Lord uttered at a time when, if ever, He was not likely
to use words of course, to adopt traditional and misleading phrases. He
loved the men He was speaking to, He knew He was after this to have few
more opportunities of speaking with them, His love interpreted to Him
the difficulties and troubles which would fall upon them, and this was
the armour which He knew would bear them scathless through all. That His
promise was fulfilled we know. We do not know what became of the
majority of the Apostles, whether they did much or little; but if we
look at the men who stood out prominently in the early history of the
Church, we see how much they stood in need of this peace and how truly
they received it. Look at
“Arise, let us go hence. I am the true Vine, and My Father is the Husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit. Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me. I am the Vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples. Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you; abide ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled. This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.”—John xiv. 31–xv. 12.
As Jesus, then, rises, and as they all fondly cluster round Him, and as He recognises once more how much He is to these men, there occurs to His mind an allegory which may help the disciples to understand better the connection they have with Him, and how it is still to be maintained. It has been supposed that this allegory was suggested to Him by some vine trailing round the doorway or by some other visible object, but such outward suggestion is needless. Recognising their fears and difficulties and dependence on Him as they hung upon Him for the last time, what more natural than that He should meet their dependence and remove their fears of real separation by saying, “I am the Vine, ye the branches”? What more natural, when He wished to set vividly before them the importance of the work He was bequeathing to them, and to stimulate them faithfully to carry on what He had begun, than to say, “I am the Vine, ye the fruit-bearing branches: abide in Me, and I in you”?
Doubtless our Lord’s introduction of the word “true” or “real”—“I am
the true Vine”—implies a comparison with other vines, but not
necessarily with any vines then outwardly visible. Much more likely is
it that as He saw the dependence of His disciples upon Him, He saw new
meaning in the old and familiar idea that Israel was the vine planted by
God. He saw that in Himself That the vine was a recognised symbol of the Messiah is
shown by Delitzsch in the Expositor, 3rd series, vol. iii., pp. 68,
69. See also his Iris, pp. 180–190, E. Tr.
I. The first idea, then, which our Lord wished to present by means of this allegory is, that He and His disciples together form one whole, neither being complete without the other. The vine can bear no fruit if it has no branches; the branches cannot live apart from the vine. Without the branches the stem is a fruitless pole; without the stem the branches wither and die. Stem and branches together constitute one fruit-bearing tree. I, for my part, says Christ, am the Vine; ye are the branches, neither perfect without the other, the two together forming one complete tree, essential to one another as stem and branches.
The significance underlying the figure is obvious, and no more welcome
or animating thought could have reached the heart of the disciples as
they felt the first tremor of separation from their Lord. Christ, in His
own visible person and by His own hands and words, was no longer to
extend His kingdom on earth. He was to continue to fulfil God’s purpose
among men, no longer however in His own person, but through His
disciples. They were now to be His branches, the medium through which He
could express all the life that was in Him, His love for man, His
purpose to lift and save the world. Not with His own lips was He any
longer
This, then, is the last word of encouragement and of quickening our Lord
leaves with these men and with us: I leave you to do all for Me; I
entrust you with this gravest task of accomplishing in the world all I
have prepared for by My life and death. This great end, to attain which
I thought fit to leave the glory I had with the Father, and for which I
have spent all—this I leave in your hands. It is in this world of men
the whole results of the Incarnation are to be found, and it is on you
the burden is laid of applying to this world the work I have done. You
live for Me. But on the other hand I live for you. “Because I live, ye
shall live also.” I do not really leave you. If I say, “Abide in Me,” I
none the less say, “and I in you.” It is in you I spend all the Divine
energy you have witnessed in my life. It is through you I live. I am the
Vine, the life-giving Stem, sustaining and quickening you. Ye are the
branches, effecting what I intend,
II. The second idea is that this unity of the tree is formed by unity of life. It is a unity brought about, not by mechanical juxtaposition, but by organic relationship. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, but must abide in the vine, so neither can ye except ye abide in Me.” A ball of twine or a bag of shot cannot be called a whole. If you cut off a yard of the twine, the part cut off has all the qualities and properties of the remainder, and is perhaps more serviceable apart from the rest than in connection with it. A handful of shot is more serviceable for many purposes than a bagful, and the quantity you take out of the bag retains all the properties it had while in the bag; because there is no common life in the twine or in the shot, making all the particles one whole. But take anything which is a true unity or whole—your body, for example. Different results follow here from separation. Your eye is useless taken from its place in the body. You can lend a friend your knife or your purse, and it may be more serviceable in his hands than in yours; but you cannot lend him your arms or your ears. Apart from yourself, the members of your body are useless, because here there is one common life forming one organic whole.
It is thus in the relation of Christ and His followers. He and they
together form one whole, because one common life unites them. “As
the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, so neither can ye.” Why can the
branch bear no fruit except it abide in the vine? Because it is a
vital unity that makes the tree one. And what is a vital unity between
persons? It can be nothing else than a spiritual unity—a unity not of
a
We must be content, then, to be branches. We must be content not to stand isolated and grow from a private root of our own. We must utterly renounce selfishness. Successful selfishness is absolutely impossible. The greater the apparent success of selfishness is, the more gigantic will the failure one day appear. An arm severed from the body, a branch lopped off the tree, is the true symbol of the selfish man. He will be left behind as the true progress of mankind proceeds, with no part in the common joy, stranded and dying in cold isolation. We must learn that our true life can only be lived when we recognise that we are parts of a great whole, that we are here not to prosecute any private interest of our own and win a private good for ourselves, but to forward the good that others share in and the cause that is common.
How this unity is formed received no explanation on this occasion. The
manner in which men become branches of the true Vine was not touched
upon in the allegory. Already the disciples were branches, and no
explanation was called for. It may, however, be legitimate to gather a
hint from the allegory itself regarding the formation of the living bond
between Christ and His people. However ignorant we may be of the
On His side Christ has laid bare His deepest feelings and spirit. In His
life and in His death He submitted to that severest operation which
seemed to be a maiming of Him, but which in point of fact was the
necessary preparation for His receiving fruitful branches. He did not
hide the true springs of His life under a hard and rough bark; but
submitting Himself to the Husbandman’s knife, He has suffered us through
His wounds to see the real motives and vital spirit of His
nature—truth, justice, holiness, fidelity, love. Whatever in this life
cut our Lord to the quick, whatever tested most thoroughly the true
spring of His conduct, only more
But when we turn to the cutting of the branch, we see reluctance and
vacillation and much to remind us that, in the graft we now speak of,
the Husbandman has to deal, not with passive branches which cannot
shrink from his knife, but with free and sensitive human beings. The
hand of the Father is on us to sever us from the old stock and give us a
place in Christ, but we feel it hard to be severed from the root we have
grown from and to which we are now so firmly attached. We refuse to see
that the old tree is doomed to the axe, or after we have been inserted
into Christ we loosen ourselves again and again, so that morning by
morning as the Father visits His tree He finds us dangling useless with
signs of withering already upon us. But in the end the Vinedresser’s
patient skill prevails. We submit ourselves to those incisive operations
of God’s providence or of His gentler but effective word
And even after the graft has been achieved the husbandman’s care is still needed that the branch may “abide in the vine,” and that it may “bring forth more fruit.” There are two risks—the branch may be loosened, or it may run to wood and leaves. Care is taken when a graft is made that its permanent participation in the life of the tree be secured. The graft is not only tied to the tree, but the point of juncture is cased in clay or pitch or wax, so as to exclude air, water, or any disturbing influence. Analogous spiritual treatment is certainly requisite if the attachment of the soul to Christ is to become solid, firm, permanent. If the soul and Christ are to be really one, nothing must be allowed to tamper with the attachment. It must be sheltered from all that might rudely impinge upon it and displace the disciple from the attitude towards Christ he has assumed. When the graft and the stock have grown together into one, then the point of attachment will resist any shock; but, while the attachment is recent, care is needed that the juncture be hermetically secluded from adverse influences.
The husbandman’s care is also needed that after the branch is grafted it
may bring forth fruit increasingly. Stationariness is not to be
tolerated. As for fruitlessness, that is out of the question. More fruit
each season is looked for, and arranged for by the vigorous prunings of
the husbandman. The branch is not left to nature. It is not allowed to
run out in every direction, to waste its life in attaining size. Where
it seems to be doing grandly and promising success, the knife of
III. This brings us to the third idea of the allegory—that the result
aimed at in our connection with Christ is fruit-bearing. The allegory
bids us think of God as engaged in the tendance and culture of men with
the watchful, fond interest with which the vinedresser tends his plants
through every stage of growth and every season of the year, and even
when there is nothing to be done gazes on them admiringly and finds
still some little attention he can pay them; but all in the hope of
fruit. All this interest collapses at once, all this care becomes a
foolish waste of time and material, and reflects discredit and ridicule
on the vinedresser, if there is no fruit. God has prepared for us in
this life a soil than which nothing can be better for the production of
the fruit He desires us to yield; He has made it possible for every man
to serve a good purpose; He does His part not with reluctance, but, if
we may say so, as His chief interest; but all in the expectation of
fruit. We do not spend days of labour and nights of anxious thought, we
do not lay out all we have at command, on that which is to effect
nothing and give no satisfaction to ourselves or any one else; and
neither does God. He did not make this world full of men for want of
something better to do, as a mere idle pastime. He made it that the
earth might yield her increase, that each of us might bring forth fruit.
Fruit alone can justify the expense put upon this world. The wisdom, the
patience, the love that have guided all things through the slow-moving
ages will be justified in the product. And what this product is we
already know: it is the attainment of moral perfection
The production of this fruit became a certainty when Christ was planted
in the world as a new moral stem. He was sent into the world not to make
some magnificent outward display of Divine power, to carry us to some
other planet, or alter the conditions of life here. God might have
departed from His purpose of filling this earth with holy men, and might
have used it for some easier display which for the moment might have
seemed more striking. He did not do so. It was human obedience, the
fruit of genuine human righteousness, of the love and goodness of men
and women, that He was resolved to reap from earth. He was resolved to
train men to such a pitch of goodness that in a world contrived to tempt
there should be found nothing so alluring, nothing so terrifying, as to
turn men from the straight path. He was to produce a race of men who,
while still in the body, urged by appetites, assaulted by passions and
cravings, with death threatening and life inviting, should prefer all
suffering rather than flinch from duty, should prove themselves actually
superior to every assault that can be made on virtue, should prove that
spirit is greater than matter. And God set Christ in the world to be the
living type of human perfection, to attract men by their love for Him to
His kind of life, and to furnish them with all needed aid in becoming
like Him—that as Christ had kept the Father’s commandments, His
disciples should keep His commandments, that thus a common
understanding, an
Perhaps it is not pressing the figure too hard to remark that the fruit differs from timber in this respect—that it enters into and nourishes the life of man. No doubt in this allegory fruit-bearing primarily and chiefly indicates that God’s purpose in creating man is satisfied. The tree He has planted is not barren, but fruitful. But certainly a great distinction between the selfish and the unselfish man, between the man who has private ambitions and the man who labours for the public good, lies in this—that the selfish man seeks to erect a monument of some kind for himself, while the unselfish man spends himself in labours that are not conspicuous, but assist the life of his fellows. An oak carving or a structure of hard wood will last a thousand years and keep in memory the skill of the designer: fruit is eaten and disappears, but it passes into human life, and becomes part of the stream that flows on for ever. The ambitious man longs to execute a monumental work, and does not much regard whether it will be for the good of men or not; a great war will serve his turn, a great book, anything conspicuous. But he who is content to be a branch of the True Vine will not seek the admiration of men, but will strive to introduce a healthy spiritual life into those he can reach, even although in order to do so he must remain obscure and must see his labours absorbed without notice or recognition.
Does the teaching of this allegory, then, accord with the facts of life as we know them? Is it a truth, and a truth we must act upon, that apart from Christ we can do nothing? In what sense and to what extent is association with Christ really necessary to us?
Something may of course be made of life apart from Christ. A man may have much enjoyment and a man may do much good apart from Christ. He may be an inventor, who makes human life easier or safer or fuller of interest. He may be a literary man, who by his writings enlightens, exhilarates, and elevates mankind. He may, with entire ignorance or utter disregard of Christ, toil for his country or for his class or for his cause. But the best uses and ends of human life cannot be attained apart from Christ. Only in Him does the reunion of man with God seem attainable, and only in Him do God and God’s aim and work in the world become intelligible. He is as necessary for the spiritual life of men as the sun is for this physical life. We may effect something by candle-light; we may be quite proud of electric light, and think we are getting far towards independence; but what man in his senses will be betrayed by these attainments into thinking we may dispense with the sun? Christ holds the key to all that is most permanent in human endeavour, to all that is deepest and best in human character. Only in Him can we take our place as partners with God in what He is really doing with this world. And only from Him can we draw courage, hopefulness, love to prosecute this work. In Him God does reveal Himself, and in Him the fulness of God is found by us. He is in point of fact the one moral stem apart from whom we are not bearing and cannot bear the fruit God desires.
If, then, we are not bringing forth fruit, it is because there is a flaw
in our connection with Christ; if we are conscious that the results of
our life and activity are not such results as He designs, and are in no
sense traceable to Him, this is because there is something
How, then, is it with ourselves? By examining the results of our lives,
would any one be prompted to exclaim, “These are trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified”? For
this examination is made, and made not by one who chances to pass, and
who, being a novice in horticulture, might be deceived by a show of
leaves or poor fruit, or whose examination might terminate in wonder at
the slothfulness
It concerns us to make such inquiries, for fruitless branches cannot be
tolerated. The purpose of the tree is fruit. If, then, we would escape
all suspicion of our own state and all reproach of fruitlessness, what
we have to do is, not so much to find out new rules for conduct, as to
strive to renew our hold upon Christ and intelligently to enter into His
purposes. “Abide in Him.” This is the secret of fruitfulness. All that
the branch needs is in the Vine; it does not need to go beyond the Vine
for anything. When we feel the life of Christ ebbing from our soul, when
we see our leaf fading, when we feel sapless, heartless for Christian
duty, reluctant to work for others, to take anything to do with the
relief of misery and the repression of vice, there is a remedy for this
state, and it is to renew our
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you. Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you. These things I command you, that ye may love one another.”—John xv. 13–17.
To give us true freedom, to make this life a thing we choose with the
clearest perception of its uses and with the utmost ardour, our Lord
makes known to us all that He heard of the Father. What He had heard of
the Father, all that the Spirit of the Father had taught Him of the need
of human effort and of human righteousness, all that as He grew up to
manhood He recognised of the deep-seated woes of humanity, and all that
He was prompted to do for the relief of these woes, He made known to His
disciples. The irresistible
This, then, is the point of this great utterance: Jesus takes our lives
up into partnership with His own.
He says this, and lest any should think, “This is fantastic; how can
such an one as I am forward the work of Christ? It is enough if I get
from Him salvation for myself,” He goes on to say, “Ye have not chosen
Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that ye should go and bring
forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. It was,” He says,
“precisely in view of the eternal results of your work that I
Does He, then, point out to us with unmistakable exactness what we are to do, and how we are to do it? Does He lay down for us a code of rules so multifarious and significant that we cannot mistake the precise piece of work He requires from us? He does not. He has but one sole commandment, and this is no commandment, because we cannot keep it on compulsion, but only at the prompting of our own inward spirit: He bids us love one another. He comes back and back to this with significant persistence, and declines to utter one other commandment. In love alone is sufficient wisdom, sufficient motive, and sufficient reward for human life. It alone has adequate wisdom for all situations, new resource for every fresh need, adaptability to all emergencies, an inexhaustible fertility and competency; it alone can bring the capability of each to the service of all. Without love we beat the air.
That love is our true life is shown further by this—that it is its own
reward. When a man’s life is in any intelligible sense proceeding from
love, when this is
This truth, then, that whatever a man does from love is its own reward,
is the solution of the question whether virtue is its own reward. Virtue
is its own reward when it is inspired by love. Life is its own reward
when love is the principle of it. We know that we should always be happy
were we always loving. We know that we should never weary of living nor
turn with distaste from our work were all our work only the expression
of our love, of our deep, true, and well-directed regard for the good
of
Sometimes, however, we find ourselves grieving at the prosperity of the
wicked: we think that they should be unhappy, and yet they seem more
satisfied than ourselves. They pay no regard whatever to the law of life
laid down by our Lord; they never dream of living
But this one essential of Christian service and human freedom—how are
we to attain it? Is it not the one thing which seems obstinately to
stand beyond our grasp? For the human heart has laws of its own,
And perhaps we do well not too curiously to question and finger our love, making sure only that we are keeping ourselves in Christ’s fellowship and seeking to do His will. Affection, indeed, induces companionship, but also companionship produces affection, and the honest and hopeful endeavour to serve Christ loyally will have its reward in a deepening devotion. It is not the recruit but the veteran whose heart is wholly his chief’s. And he who has long and faithfully served Christ will not need to ask where his heart is. We hate those whom we have injured, and we love those whom we have served; and if by long service we can win our way to an intimacy with Christ which no longer needs to question itself or test its soundness, in that service we may most joyfully engage. For what can be a happier consummation than to find ourselves finally overcome by the love of Christ, drawn with all the force of a Divine attraction, convinced that here is our rest, and that this is at once our motive and our reward?
“If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for My name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated Me without a cause. But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear witness of Me: and ye also bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning. These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be made to stumble. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God. And these things will they do, because they have not known the Father, nor Me. But these things have I spoken unto you, that when their hour is come, ye may remember them, how that I told you. And these things I said not unto you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go unto Him that sent Me; and none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou? But because I have spoken these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you. And He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold Me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify Me: for He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He taketh of Mine, and shall declare it unto you.”—John xv. 18–xvi. 15.
I. “If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated Me before it
hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but
because ye
No idea had fixed itself more deeply in the mind of John than this of
the identity of Christ and His people. As he brooded upon the life of
Christ and sought to penetrate to the hidden meanings of all that
appeared on the surface, he came to see that the unbelief and hatred
with which He was met was the necessary result of goodness presented to
worldliness and selfishness. And as time went on he saw that the
experience of Christ was exceptional only in degree, that His experience
was and would be repeated in every one who sought to live in His Spirit
and to do His will. The future of the Church accordingly presented
II. The second consolation and encouragement the Lord gave them was that
they would receive the aid of a powerful champion—the Paraclete, the
one effectual, sufficient Helper. “When the Paraclete is come, whom I
will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which
proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of Me: and ye also
bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.”
Inevitably the disciples would argue that, if the words and works of
Jesus Himself had not broken down the unbelief of the world, it was not
likely that anything
Our Lord assures them that together with their witness-bearing there will be an all-powerful witness—“the Spirit of truth”; one who could find access to the hearts and minds to which they addressed themselves and carry truth home to conviction. It was on this account that it was “expedient” that their Lord should depart, and that His visible presence should be superseded by the presence of the Spirit. It was necessary that His death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of the Father should take place, in order that His supremacy might be secured. And in order that He might be everywhere and inwardly present with men, it was necessary that He should be visible nowhere on earth. The inward spiritual presence depended on the bodily absence.
Before passing to the specific contents of the Spirit’s testimony, as
stated in vv. 8–11, it is necessary to gather up what our Lord indicates
regarding the Spirit Himself and His function in the Christian
dispensation. First, the Spirit here spoken of is a personal existence.
Throughout all that our Lord says in this last conversation regarding
the Spirit personal epithets are
The function for the discharge of which this Spirit is necessary is the
“glorification” of Christ. Without
To discharge this function a twofold ministry is undertaken by the Spirit: He must enlighten the Apostles, and He must convince the world.
He must enlighten the Apostles. From the nature of the case much had to
be left unsaid by Christ. But this would not prevent the Apostles from
understanding what Christ had done, and what applications His work had
to themselves and their fellow-men. “I have yet many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth,
ὁδηγήσει.
This promise does not involve that the Apostles, and through them all
disciples, should know everything. “All the truth” is relative to the
subject taught. All that they need to know regarding Christ and His work
for them they will learn. All that is needed to glorify Christ, to
enable men to recognise Him as the manifestation of God, will be
imparted. To the truth which the Apostles learn, therefore, nothing need
be added. Nothing essential has been added. Time has now been given to
test this promise, and what time has shown is this—that while libraries
have been written on what the Apostles thought and taught, their
teaching remains as the sufficient guide into all the truth regarding
This instruction of the Apostles by the Spirit was to recall to their
minds what Christ Himself had said, and was also to show them things to
come. The changed point of view introduced by the dispensation of the
Spirit and the abolition of earthly hopes would cause many of the
sayings of Jesus which they had disregarded and considered
unintelligible to spring into high relief and ray out significance,
while the future also would shape itself quite differently in their
conception. And the Teacher who should superintend and inspire this
altered attitude of mind is the
Spirit. Godet says: “The saying xiv. 26 gives the formula of the
inspiration of our Gospels; ver. 13 gives that of the inspiration of the
Epistles and the Apocalypse.”
Not only must the Spirit enlighten the Apostles; He must also convince
the world. “He shall bear witness of Me,” and by His witness-bearing the
testimony of the Apostles would become efficacious. They had a natural
fitness to witness about Christ, “because they had been with Him from
the beginning.” No more trustworthy witnesses regarding what Christ had
said or done or been could be called than those men with whom He had
lived on terms of intimacy. No men could more certainly testify to the
identity of the risen Lord. But the significance of the facts they spoke
of
But it is apparent from our Lord’s description of the subject-matter of the Spirit’s witness that here He has especially in view the function of the Spirit as an inward teacher and strengthener of the moral powers. He is the fellow-witness of the Apostles, mainly and permanently, by enlightening men in the significance of the facts reported by them, and by opening the heart and conscience to their influence.
The subject-matter of the Spirit’s testimony is threefold: “He will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”
I. He should convict the world of sin. No conviction cuts so deeply and
produces results of such magnitude as the conviction of sin. It is like
subsoil ploughing: it turns up soil that nothing else has got down to.
It alters entirely a man’s attitude towards life. He cannot know himself
a sinner and be satisfied with that condition. This awakening is like
the waking of one who has been buried in a trance, who wakes to find
himself bound round with grave-clothes, hemmed in with all the insignia
of corruption, terror and revulsion distracting and overwhelming his
soul. In spirit
Nothing is more overwhelming than this conviction, but nothing is more
hopeful. Given a man who is alive to the evil of sin and who begins to
understand his errors, and you know some good will come of that. Given a
man who sees the importance of being in accord with perfect goodness and
who feels the degradation of sin, and you have the germ of all good in
that man. But how were the Apostles to produce this? how were they to
dispel those mists which blurred the clear outline of good and evil, to
bring to the self-righteous Pharisee and the indifferent and worldly
Sadducee a sense of their own sin? What instrument is there which can
introduce to every human heart, howsoever armoured and fenced round,
this healthy revolution? Looking at men as they actually are, and
considering how many forces are banded together to exclude the knowledge
of sin, how worldly interest demands that no brand shall be affixed to
this and that action, how the customs we are brought up in require us to
take a lenient view of this and that immorality, how we
Christ, knowing that men were about to put Him to death because He had tried to convict them of sin, confidently predicts that His servants would by His Spirit’s aid convince the world of sin and of this in particular—that they had not believed in Him. That very death which chiefly exhibits human sin has, in fact, become the chief instrument in making men understand and hate sin. There is no consideration from which the deceitfulness of sin will not escape, nor any fear which the recklessness of sin will not brave, nor any authority which self-will cannot override but only this: Christ has died for me, to save me from my sin, and I am sinning still, not regarding His blood, not meeting His purpose. It was when the greatness and the goodness of Christ were together let in to Peter’s mind that he fell on his face before Him, saying, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” And the experience of thousands is recorded in that more recent confession:
Of other convictions we may get rid; the consequences
But not only does the death of Christ exhibit the intricate connections of our sin with other persons and the grievous consequence of sin in general, but also it exhibits the enormity of this particular sin of rejecting Christ. “He will convince the world of sin, because they believe not on Me.” It was this sin in point of fact which cut to the heart the crowd at Jerusalem first addressed by Peter. Peter had nothing to say of their looseness of life, of their worldliness, of their covetousness: he did not go into particulars of conduct calculated to bring a blush to their cheeks; he took up but one point, and by a few convincing remarks showed them the enormity of crucifying the Lord of glory. The lips which a few days before had cried out “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” now cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do, how escape from the crushing condemnation of mistaking God’s image for a criminal? In that hour Christ’s words were fulfilled; they were convinced of sin because they believed not on Him.
This is ever the damning sin—to be in presence of goodness and not to
love it, to see Christ and to see Him with unmoved and unloving hearts,
to hear His call without response, to recognise the beauty of holiness
and yet turn away to lust and self and the world. This is the
condemnation—that light is come into the world and we have loved
darkness rather than
II. The conviction of righteousness is the complement, the other half, of the conviction of sin. In the shame of guilt there is the germ of the conviction of righteousness. The sense of guilt is but the acknowledgment that we ought to be righteous. No guilt attaches to the incapable. The sting of guilt is poisoned with the knowledge that we were capable of better things. Conscience exclaims against all excuses that would lull us into the idea that sin is insuperable, and that there is nothing better for us than a moderately sinful life. When conscience ceases to condemn, hope dies. A mist rises from sin that obscures the clear outline between its own domain and that of righteousness, like the mist that rises from the sea and mingles shore and water in one undefined cloud. But let it rise off the one and the other is at once distinctly marked out; and so in the conviction of sin there is already involved the conviction of righteousness. The blush of shame that suffuses the face of the sinner as the mist-dispelling Sun of righteousness arises upon him is the morning flush and promise of an everlasting day of righteous living.
For each of us it is of the utmost importance to have a fixed and
intelligent persuasion that righteousness is what we are made for. The
righteous Lord loveth righteousness and made us in His image to widen
the
But, after all, it is by fact men are convinced; and were there no facts
to appeal to in this matter conviction could not be attained. It does
seem that we are made for righteousness, but sin is in this world so
universal
But it was open to those whom the Apostles addressed to deny that Jesus had thus lived; and therefore the conviction of righteousness is completed by the evidence of the resurrection and ascension of Christ. “Of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more.” Without holiness no man shall see God. It was this that the Apostles appealed to when first moved to address their fellow-men and proclaim Christ as the Saviour. It was to His resurrection they confidently appealed as evidence of the truth of His claim to have been sent of God. The Jews had put Him to death as a deceiver; but God proclaimed His righteousness by raising Him from the dead. “Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.”
Probably, however, another idea underlies the words “because I go to My
Father, and ye see Me no more.” So long as Christ was on earth the Jews
believed that Jesus and His followers were plotting a revolution: when
He was removed beyond sight such a suspicion became ludicrous. But when
His disciples could no longer see Him, they continued to serve Him and
to strive with greater zeal than ever to promote His cause. Slowly then
it dawned on men’s minds that righteousness was what Christ and His
Apostles alone desired and sought to establish on earth. This new
spectacle of men devoting their lives to the advancement of
III. The third conviction by which the Apostles were to prevail in their
preaching of Christ was the conviction “of judgment, because the prince
of this world is judged.” Men were to be persuaded that a distinction is
made between sin and righteousness, that in no case can sin pass for
righteousness and righteousness for sin. The world that has worldly ends
in view and works towards them by appropriate means, disregarding moral
distinctions, will be convicted of enormous error. The Spirit of truth
will work in men’s minds the conviction that all and every sin is
mistake and productive of nothing good, and can in no instance
accomplish what righteousness would have accomplished. Men will find,
when truth shines in their spirit, that they have not to await a great
day of judgment in the end, when the good results of sin shall be
reversed and reward allotted to those who have done righteously, but
that judgment is a constant and universal element in God’s government
and to be found everywhere throughout it, distinguishing between sin and
righteousness in every present instance, and never for one moment
allowing to sin the value or the results which only righteousness has.
In the minds of men who have been using the world’s unrighteous methods
and living for the world’s selfish ends, the conviction is to be wrought
that no good can come of all that—that sin is sin and not valid for any
good purpose. Men are to recognise that a distinction is made between
And this conviction is to be wrought in the light of the fact that in Christ’s victory the prince of this world is judged. The powers by which the world is actually led are seen to be productive of evil, and not the powers by which men can permanently be led or should at any time have been led. The prince of this world was judged by Christ’s refusal throughout His life to be in anything guided by him. The motives by which the world is led were not Christ’s motives.
But it is in the death of Christ the prince of this world was especially judged. That death was brought about by the world’s opposition to unworldliness. Had the world been seeking spiritual beauty and prosperity, Christ would not have been crucified. He was crucified because the world was seeking material gain and worldly glory, and was thereby blinded to the highest form of goodness. And unquestionably the very fact that worldliness led to this treatment of Christ is its most decided condemnation. We cannot think highly of principles and dispositions which so blind men to the highest form of human goodness and lead them to actions so unreasonable and wicked. As an individual will often commit one action which illustrates his whole character, and flashes sudden light into the hidden parts of it, and discloses its capabilities and possible results, so the world has in this one act shown what worldliness essentially is and at all times is capable of. No stronger condemnation of the influences which move worldly men can be found than the crucifixion of Christ.
But, besides, the death of Christ exhibits in so touching a form the
largeness and power of spiritual
In point of fact the world is judged. To adhere to worldly motives and ways and ambitions is to cling to a sinking ship, to throw ourselves away on a justly doomed cause. The world may trick itself out in what delusive splendours it may; it is judged all the same, and men who are deluded by it and still in one way or other acknowledge the prince of this world destroy themselves and lose the future.
Such was the promise of Christ to His disciples. Is it fulfilled in us?
We may have witnessed in others the entrance and operation of
convictions which to all appearance correspond with those here
described. We may even have been instrumental in producing these
convictions. But a lens of ice will act as a burning-glass, and itself
unmelted will fire the tinder to which it transmits the rays. And
perhaps we may be able to say with much greater confidence that we have
done good than that we are good. Convinced of sin we
Now, when we begin to doubt the efficacy of the Christian method on
account of its apparent failure in our own case, when we see quite
clearly how it ought to work and as clearly that it has not worked, when
this and that turns up in our life and proves beyond controversy that we
are ruled by much the same motives and desires as the world at large,
two subjects of reflection present themselves. First, have we remembered
the word of Christ, “The servant is not greater than his Lord”? Are we
so anxious to be His servants that we would willingly sacrifice whatever
stood in the way of our serving Him? Are we content to be as He was in
the world? There are always many in the Christian Church who are, first,
men of the world, and, secondly, varnished with Christianity; who do not
seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; who do not yet
understand that the whole of life must be consecrated to Christ and
spring from His will, and who therefore without compunction do make
themselves greater in every worldly respect than their professed Lord.
There are also many in the Christian Church at all times who decline to
make more of this world than Christ Himself did, and whose constant
study it is to
But, secondly, we must beware of disheartening ourselves by hastily concluding that in our case Christ’s grace has failed. If we may accept the Book of Revelation as a true picture, not merely of the conflict of the Church, but also of the conflict of the individual, then only in the end can we look for quiet and achieved victory—only in the closing chapters does conflict cease and victory seem no more doubtful. If it is to be so with us, the fact of our losing some of the battles must not discourage us from continuing the campaign. Nothing is more painful and humbling than to find ourselves falling into unmistakable sin after much concernment with Christ and His grace; but the very resentment we feel and the deep and bitter humiliation must be used as incentive to further effort, and must not be allowed to sound permanent defeat and surrender to sin.
“A little while, and ye behold Me no more; and again a little while, and ye shall see Me. Some of His disciples therefore said one to another, What is this that He saith unto us, A little while, and ye behold Me not; and again a little while, and ye shall see Me: and, Because I go to the Father? They said therefore, What is this that He saith, A little while? We know not what He saith. Jesus perceived that they were desirous to ask Him, and He said unto them, Do ye inquire among yourselves concerning this, that I said, A little while, and ye behold Me not, and again a little while, and ye shall see Me? Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world. And ye therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you. And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, He will give it you in My name. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled. These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but shall tell you plainly of the Father. In that day ye shall ask in My name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father. I came out from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go unto the Father. His disciples say, Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now know we that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee: by this we believe that Thou camest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”—John xvi. 16–33.
Seeing the perplexity which certain of His expressions had created in
the minds of His disciples, He proceeds to remove it. They had great
need of hopefulness and courage, and He sought to inspire them with
these qualities. They were on the edge of a most bitter experience, and
it was of untold consequence that they should be upheld in it. He does
not hide from them the coming distress, but He reminds them that very
commonly pain and anxiety accompany the birth-throes of a new life; and
if they found themselves shortly in depression and grief which seemed
inconsolable, they were to believe that this was the path to a new and
higher phase of existence and to a joy that would be lasting. Your
grief, He says, will shortly end: your joy never. Your grief will soon
be taken away: your joy no one shall take away. When Christ rose again,
the disciples remembered and understood these words; and a few chapters
further on we find John returning upon the word and saying, “When they
saw the Lord, they were glad,”—they had this
The resurrection of Christ was, however, meant to bring lasting joy, not
to these men only, but to all. These greatest of all events, the descent
to earth of the Son of God with all Divine power and love, and His
resurrection as the conqueror of all that bars the path of men from a
life of light and joy, became solid facts in this world’s history, that
all men might calculate their future by such a past, and might each for
himself conclude that a future of which such events are the preparation
must be great and happy indeed. Death, if not in all respects the most
desolating, is the most certain of all human ills. Anguish and mourning
it has brought and will bring to many human hearts. Do what we will we
cannot save our friends from it; by us it is unconquerable. Yet it is in
this most calamitous of human ills God has shown His nearness and His
love. It is to the death of Christ men look to see the full brightness
of God’s fatherly love. It is this darkest point of human experience
that God has chosen to irradiate with His absorbing glory. Death is at
once our gravest fear and the spring of our hope; it cuts short human
intercourse, but in the cross of Christ it gives us a never-failing,
divinely loving
Lasting joy is the condition in which God desires us to be, and He has given us cause of joy. In Christ’s victory we see all that is needed to give us hopefulness about the future. Each man finds for himself assurance of God’s interest in us and in our actual condition: assurance that whatever is needful to secure for us a happy eternity has been done; assurance that in a new heavens and a new earth we shall find lasting satisfaction. This true, permanent, all-embracing joy is open to all, and is actually enjoyed by those who have something of Christ’s Spirit, whose chief desire is to see holiness prevail and to keep themselves and others in harmony with God. To such the accomplishment of God’s will seems a certainty, and they have learned that the accomplishment of that will means good to them and to all who love God. The holiness and harmony with God that win this joy are parts of it. To be the friends of Christ, imbued with His views of life and of God, this from first to last is a thing of joy.
That which the disciples at length believed and felt to be the
culmination of their faith was that Jesus had come forth from God. He
Himself more fully expresses what He desired them to believe about Him
in the words: “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world:
again I leave the world, and go to the Father.” No doubt there is a
sense in which any man may use this language of himself. We can all
truthfully say we came forth from God and came into the
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he addressed Him as a teacher “come from
God,” because, he added, “no man can do these miracles which Thou doest
except God be with Him.” In Nicodemus’ lips, therefore, the words “a
teacher come from God” meant a teacher with a Divine mission and
credentials. In this sense all the prophets were teachers “come from
God.” And accordingly many careful readers of the Gospels believe that
nothing more than this is meant by any of those expressions our Lord
uses of Himself, as “sent from God,” “come forth from God,” and so on.
The only distinction, it is supposed, between Christ and other prophets
is that He is more highly endowed, is commissioned and equipped as God’s
representative in a more perfect degree than Moses or Samuel or Elijah.
He had their power to work miracles, their authority in teaching; but
having a more important mission to accomplish, He had this power and
authority more fully. Now, it is quite certain that some of the
expressions which a careless reader might think conclusive in proof of
Christ’s divinity were not intended to express anything more than that
He was God’s commissioner. Indeed, it is remarkable how He Himself seems
to wish men to believe this above all else—that
There are, however, some expressions which unquestionably affirm Christ’s pre-existence, and convince us that before He appeared in this world He lived with God. And among these expressions the words He uses in this passage hold a place: “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” These words, the disciples felt, lifted a veil from their eyes; they told Him at once that they found an explicitness in this utterance which had been a-wanting in others. And, indeed, nothing could be more explicit: the two parts of the sentence balance and interpret one another. “I leave the world, and go to the Father,” interprets “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.” To say “I leave the world” is not the same as to say “I go to the Father”: this second clause describes a state of existence which is entered upon when existence in this world is done. And to say “I came forth from the Father” is not the same as to say “I came into the world”; it describes a state of existence antecedent to that which began by coming into the world.
Thus the Apostles understood the words, and felt therefore that they had
gained a new platform of faith. This they felt to be plain-speaking,
meant to be understood. It so precisely met their craving and gave them
the knowledge they sought, that they felt more than
This belief, however, assured though it was, did not save them from a
cowardly desertion of Him whom they believed to be God’s representative
on earth. They would, when confronted with the world’s authorities and
powers, abandon their Master to His fate, and “would leave Him alone.”
He had always, indeed, been alone. All men who wish to carry out some
novel design or accomplish some extensive reform must be prepared to
stand alone, to listen unmoved to criticism, to estimate at their real
and very low value the prejudiced calumnies of those whose interests are
opposed to their design. They must be prepared to live without reward
and without sympathy, strong in the consciousness of their own rectitude
and that God will prosper the right. Jesus enjoyed the affection of a
considerable circle of friends; He was not without the comfort and
strength which come of being believed in; but in regard to His purpose
in life He was always alone. And yet, unless He won men over to His
views, unless He made some as ardent as Himself regarding them, His work
was lost. This was the special hardship of Christ’s solitariness. Those
whom He had gathered were to desert Him in the critical hour; but the
sore part of this desertion was that they were
At all times this is the problem Christ has to solve: how to prevail upon men to look at life from His point of view, to forget their own things and combine with Him, to be as enamoured of His cause as He Himself is. He looks now upon us with our honest professions of faith and growing regard, and He says: Yes, you believe; but you scatter each to his own at the slightest breath of danger or temptation. This scattering, each to his own, is that which thwarts Christ’s purpose and imperils His work. The world with its enterprises and its gains, its glitter and its glory, its sufficiency for the present life, comes in and tempts us; and apart from the common good, we have each our private schemes of advantage. And yet there is nothing more certain than that our ultimate advantage is measured by the measure in which we throw in our lot with Christ—by the measure in which we practically recognise that there is an object for which all men in common can work, and that to scatter “each to his own” is to resign the one best hope of life, the one satisfying and remunerative labour.
In revealing what sustained Himself Christ reveals the true stay of
every soul of man. His trial was indeed severe. Brought without a single
friend to the bar of unsympathetic and unscrupulous judges: the Friend
of man, loving as no other has ever loved, and craving love and sympathy
as no other has craved it, yet standing without one pitying eye, without
one voice raised in His favour. Alone in a world He came to convince and
to win; at the end of His life, spent in winning men, left without one
to say He had not
Times which in their own degree try us with the same sense of
solitariness come upon us all. All pain is solitary; you must bear it
alone: kind friends may be round you, but they cannot bear one pang for
you. You feel how separate and individual an existence you have when
your body is racked with pain and healthy people are by your side; and
you feel it also when you visit some pained or sorrowing person and sit
silently in their presence, feeling that the suffering is theirs and
that they must bear it. We should not brood much over any apparent want
of recognition we may meet with; all such brooding is unwholesome and
weak. Many of our minor sufferings we do best to keep to ourselves and
say nothing about them. Let us strive to show sympathy, and we shall
feel less the pain of not having it. To a large extent every one must be
alone in life—forming his own views of things, working out his own idea
of life, conquering his own sins, and schooling his own heart. And every
one is more or less misunderstood even by his most intimate friends. He
finds himself congratulated on occurrences which are no joy to him,
applauded for successes he
But there are occasional times in which the want of sympathy is crushingly felt. Some of the most painful and enduring sorrows of the human heart are of a kind which forbid that they be breathed to the nearest friend. Even if others know that they have fallen upon us they cannot allude to them; and very often they are not even known. And there are times even more trying, when we have not only to bear a sorrow or an anxiety all our own, but when we have to adopt a line of conduct which exposes us to misunderstanding, and to act continuously in a manner which shuts us off from the sympathy of our friends. Our friends remonstrate and advise, and we feel that their advice is erroneous: we are compelled to go our own way and bear the charge of obstinacy and even of cruelty; for sometimes, like Abraham offering Isaac, we cannot satisfy conscience without seeming to injure or actually injuring those we love.
It is in times like these that our faith is tested. We gain a firmer
hold of God than ever before when we in actual life prefer His
countenance and fellowship to the approbation and good-will of our
friends. When in order to keep conscience clean we dare to risk the
good-will of those we depend upon for affection and for support, our
faith becomes a reality and rapidly matures. For a time we may seem to
have rendered ourselves useless, and to have thrown ourselves out of all
profitable relations to our fellow-men: we may be
For really in our own life, as in the life of Christ, all is summed up
in the conflict between Christ and the world; and therefore the last
words of this His last conversation are: “In the world ye shall have
tribulation: but be of good courage. I have overcome the world.” When
Christ speaks of “the world” as comprising all that was opposed to Him,
it is not difficult to understand His meaning. By “the world” we
sometimes mean this earth; sometimes all external things, sun, moon, and
stars as well as this earth; sometimes we mean the world of men, as when
we say “All the world knows” such and such a thing, or as when Christ
said “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” But
much more commonly Christ uses it to denote all in the present state of
things which opposes God and leads man
Therefore Christ, as the result of all His work, announces that He has
“overcome the world.” And on the ground of this conquest of His He bids
His followers rejoice and take heart, as if somehow His conquest of the
world guaranteed theirs, and as if their conflict would be easier on
account of His. And so indeed it is. Not only has every one now who
proposes to live for high and unworldly ends the satisfaction of knowing
that such a life is possible, and not only has he the vast encouragement
of knowing that One has passed this way before and attained His end;
but, moreover, it is Christ’s victory which has really overcome the
world in a final and public way. The world’s principles of action, its
pleasure-seeking, its selfishness, its childish regard for glitter and
for what is present to sense, in a word, its worldliness when set over
against the life of Christ, is for ever
Christ has overcome the world, then, by resisting its influence upon Himself, by showing Himself actually superior to its most powerful influences; and His overcoming of the world is not merely a private victory availing for Himself alone, but it is a public good, because in His life the perfect beauty of a life devoted to eternal and spiritual ends is conspicuously shown. The man who can look upon the conflict between the world and Christ as John has shown it, and say, “I would rather be one of the Pharisees than Christ,” is hopelessly blind to the real value of human life. But what says our life regarding the actual choice we have made?
“These things spake Jesus; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He
said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may
glorify Thee: even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that
whatsoever Thou hast given Him, to them He should give eternal life.
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true
God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ. I glorified
Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast
given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own
self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. I
manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the
world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have
kept Thy word. Now they know that all things whatsoever Thou hast
given Me are from Thee: for the words which Thou gavest Me I have
given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I
came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me. I
pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou
hast given Me; for they are Thine: and all things that are Mine are
Thine, and Thine are Mine: and I am glorified in them. And I am no
more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee.
Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me, that
they may be one, even as We are. While I was with them, I kept them
in Thy name which Thou hast given Me: and I guarded them, and not
one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture
might be fulfilled. But now I come to Thee; and these things I speak
in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I
have given them Thy word; and the world hated them, because they are
not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that
Thou shouldest take them from the world, but that Thou shouldest
keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am
not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth. As
Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the
world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves
also may be sanctified in truth. Neither for these only do I pray,
but for them also that believe on Me through their word; that they
may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that
they also may be in Us: that the world
The prayer was the natural conclusion to the conversation which Jesus and the disciples had been carrying on. And as the Eleven saw Him lifting His eyes to heaven, as if the Father He addressed were visible, they no doubt felt a security which had not been imparted by all His promises. And when in after-life they spoke of Christ’s intercession, this instance of it must always have risen in memory and have formed all their ideas of that part of the Redeemer’s work. It has always been believed that those who have loved and cared for us while on earth continue to do so when through death they have passed nearer to the Source of all love and goodness; this lively interest in us is supposed to continue because it formed so material an element in their life here below; and it was impossible that those who heard our Lord thus awfully commending them to the Father should ever forget this earnest consideration of their state or should ever come to fancy that they were forgotten.
Beginning with prayer for Himself, our Lord passes at the sixth verse into prayer for His disciples, and at the twentieth verse the prayer expands still more widely and embraces the world, all those who should believe on Him.
First, Jesus prays for Himself; and His prayer is, “Father, glorify Thy
Son; glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with
Thee before the world was.” The work for which He came into the world
was done; “I have finished the work which
How immeasurably beneath this level is the vaunted equanimity of the thinker who says, “Death can be no evil because it is universal”! How immeasurably beneath it is the habit of most of us! Which of us can stand in that clear air on that high point which separates life from what is beyond and can say, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do”? A broken column is the fit monument of our life, unfinished, frustrated, useless. Wasted energy, ill-repaired blunders, unfulfilled purposes, fruitless years, much that is positively evil, much that was done mechanically and carelessly and for the day; plans ill conceived and worse executed; imperfect ideals of life imperfectly realised; pursuits dictated by uneducated tastes, unchastened whims, accidental circumstances,—such is the retrospect which most of us have as we look back over life. Few men even recognise the reality of life as part of an eternal order, and, of the few who do so, still fewer seriously and persistently aim at fitting in their life as a solid part of that order.
Before we know whether we have finished the work given us to do we must
know what that work is. At the outset of his account of Christ’s work
John gives us his conception of it. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten
of the Father.” This work was now accomplished, and Jesus can say, “I
have glorified Thee on the earth”; “I have manifested Thy name unto the
men which Thou gavest Me out of the world.” We may all add our humble
responsive “Amen” to this account of His finished work. John has carried
us through the scenes in which Jesus manifested the glory of the Father
and showed the full meaning of that name, displaying the Father’s love
in His self-sacrificing interest in men, the Father’s holiness and
supremacy in His devoted filial obedience. Never again can men separate
the idea of the true God from the life of Jesus Christ; it is in that
life we come to know God, and through that life His glory shines. This
many a man has felt is the true Divine glory; this God yearning over His
lost and wretched children, coming down and sharing in their
wretchedness to win them to Himself and blessedness—this is the God for
us. This alone is glory such as we bow before and own to be infinitely
worthy of trust and adoration, almightiness applying itself to the
necessities and fears of the weak, perfect purity winning to itself the
impure and the outcast, love showing itself to be Divine by its
patience, its humility, its absolute sacrifice. It is Christ who has
found entrance for these conceptions of God once for all into the human
mind; it is to Christ we owe it that we know a God we can entirely love
and increasingly worship. With the most assured truth He could say, “I
have finished the work which
But Christ recognises a work which ran parallel with this, a work which
continually resulted from His manifestation of the Father. By His
manifesting the Father He gave eternal life to those who accepted and
believed His revelation. The power to reveal the Father which Christ had
received He had not on His own account, but that He might give eternal
life to men. For “this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” Eternal life is
not merely life indefinitely prolonged. It is rather life under new
conditions and fed from different sources. It can be entered upon now,
but a full understanding of it is now impossible. The grub might as well
try to understand the life of the butterfly, or the chick in the shell
the life of the bird. To know what Christ revealed, this is the birth to
life eternal. To know that love and holiness are the governing powers in
conformity with which all things are carried onward to their end; to
know what God is, that He is a Father who cannot leave us His children
of earth behind and pass on to His own great works and purposes in the
universe, but stoops to our littleness and delays that He may carry
every one of us with Him,—this is life eternal. This it is that subdues
the human heart and cleanses it from pride, self-seeking, and lust, and
that inclines it to bow before the holy and loving God, and to choose
Him and life in Him. This it is that turns it from the brief joys and
imperfect meanings of time and gives it a home in eternity—that severs
it in disposition and in destiny from the changing, passing world and
gives it an eternal
The earthly work of Christ, then, being finished, He asks the Father to
glorify Him with His own self, with the glory He had with Him before the
world was. It seems to me vain to deny that this petition implies on
Christ’s part a consciousness of a life which He had before He appeared
on earth. His mind turns from the present hour, from His earthly life,
to eternity, to those regions beyond time into which no created
intelligence can follow Him, and in which God alone exists, and in that
Divine solitude He claims a place for Himself. If He merely meant that
from eternity God had conceived of Him, the ideal man, and if the
existence and glory He speaks of were merely existence in God’s mind,
but not actual, His words do not convey His meaning. The glory which He
prayed for now was a conscious, living glory; He did not wish to become
extinct or to be absorbed in the Divine being; He meant to continue and
did continue in actual, personal, living existence. This was the glory
He prayed for, and this therefore must also have been the glory He had
before the world was. It was a glory of which it was proper to say, “I
had it,” and not merely God
What that glory was, who can tell? We know it was a glory not of position only, but of character—a glory which disposed and prepared Him to sympathize with suffering and to give Himself to the actual needs of men. From that glory He came to share with men in their humiliation, to expose Himself to their scorn and abuse, to win them to eternal life and to some true participation in His glory.
But Christ’s removal from the earthly and visible life involved a great
change in the condition of the disciples. Hitherto He had been present
with them day by day, always exhibiting to them spiritual glory, and
attracting them to it in His own person. So long as they saw God’s glory
in so attractive and friendly a form it was not difficult for them to
resist the world’s temptations. “While I was with them in the world, I
kept them in Thy name”—that is, by revealing the Father to them; but
“now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come
to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast
given Me. Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.” Christ
had been the Word Incarnate, the utterance of God to men; in Him men
recognised what God is and what God wills. And this sanctified them;
this marvellous revelation of God and His love for men drew men to Him:
they felt how Divine and overcoming a love this was; they adored the
name Father which Christ the Son made known to them; they felt
themselves akin to God and claimed by Him, and spurned the world; they
recognised in themselves that which could understand and be appealed to
But now the visible image, the Incarnate Word, is withdrawn, and Christ commits to the Father those whom He leaves on earth. “Holy Father,” Thou whose holiness moves Thee to keep men separate to Thyself from every evil contagion, “keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me.” It is still by the recognition of God in Christ that we are to be kept from evil, by contemplating and penetrating this great manifestation of God to us, by listening humbly and patiently to this Incarnate Word. Knowledge of the God whose the world and all existence is, knowledge of Him in whom we live and whose holiness is silently judging and ruling all things, knowledge that He who rules all and who is above all gives Himself to us with a love that thinks no sacrifice too great—it is this knowledge of the truth that saves us from the world. It is the knowledge of those abiding realities which Christ revealed, of those great and loving purposes of God to man, and of the certainty of their fulfilment, which recalls us to holiness and to God. There is reality here; all else is empty and delusive.
But these realities are obscured and thrust aside by a thousand
pretentious frivolities which claim our immediate attention and
interest. We are in the world, and day by day the world insists that we
shall consider it the great reality. Christ had conquered it and was
leaving it. Why, then, did He not take with Him all whom He had won to
Himself out of the world? He did not do so because they had a work to
accomplish which could only be accomplished in the world. As He had
consecrated Himself to the work
But as it was not by telling men about God that Christ convinced men
that somewhere there existed a holy God who cared for them, but by
showing God’s holiness and love present to them in His own person, so
our
This text is often cited by those who seek to promote the union of
churches. But we find it belongs to a very different category and much
higher region. That all churches should be under similar government,
should adopt the same creed, should use the same forms of worship, even
if possible, is not supremely desirable; but real unity of sentiment
towards Christ and of zeal to promote His will is supremely desirable.
Christ’s will is all-embracing; the purposes of God are wide as the
universe, and can be fulfilled only by endless varieties of
dispositions, functions, organisations, labours. We must expect that, as
time goes on, men, so far from being contracted into a narrow and
monotonous uniformity, will exhibit increasing diversities of thought
and of method, and will be more and more differentiated in all outward
respects. If the infinitely comprehensive purposes of God are to be
fulfilled, it must be so. But also, if these purposes are to be
fulfilled, all intelligent agents must be at one with God, and must be
so profoundly in sympathy with God’s mind as revealed in Christ that,
however different one man’s work or methods may be from another’s, God’s
will shall alike be carried out by both. If this will can be more freely
carried out by separate churches, then outward separation is no great
calamity. Only when outward separation leads one church to despise
But why should unity be the ultimate desire of Christ, the highest point to which the Saviour’s wishes for mankind can reach? Because spirit is that which rules; and if we be one with God in spirit the future is ours. This mighty universe in which we find ourselves, apparently governed by forces compared to which the most powerful of human engines are weak as the moth—forces which keep this earth, and orbs immeasurably larger, suspended in space,—this universe is controlled by spirit, is designed for spiritual ends, for ends of the highest kind and which concern conscious and moral beings.
It is as yet only by glimpses we can see the happiness of those who are
one with God; it is only by inadequate comparisons and with mental
effort we can attain to even a rudimentary conception of the future that
awaits those who are thus eternally blessed. Of them well may Paul say,
“All things are yours; for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” It is
for Christ all things are governed by God; to be in Him is to be above
the reach of catastrophe—to be, as Christ Himself expresses it, beside
Himself on the throne, from which all things are ruled. Having been
attracted
If there lingers in our minds a feeling that the end Christ proposes and
utters as His last prayer for men does not draw us with irresistible
force, it might be enough to say to our own heart that this is our
weakness, that certainly in this prayer we do touch the very central
significance of human life, and that however dimly human words may be
able to convey thoughts
“When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Kidron, where was a garden, into the which He entered, Himself and His disciples. Now Judas also, which betrayed Him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His disciples. Judas then, having received the band of soldiers, and officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth, and saith unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am He. And Judas also, which betrayed Him, was standing with them. When therefore He said unto them, I am He, they went backward, and fell to the ground. Again therefore He asked them, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way: that the word might be fulfilled which He spake, Of those whom Thou hast given Me I lost not one. Simon Peter therefore having a sword drew it, and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. Now the servant’s name was Malchus. Jesus therefore said unto Peter, Put up the sword into the sheath: the cup which the Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it? So the band and the chief captain, and the officers of the Jews, seized Jesus and bound Him, and led Him to Annas first; for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, which was high priest that year. Now Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.”—John xviii. 1–14.
The futility of such preparations became at once apparent. So far from trying to hide Himself or slip out by the back of the garden, Jesus no sooner sees the armed men than He steps to the front and asks, “Whom seek ye?” Jesus, in order that He might screen His disciples, wished at once to be identified by His captors themselves as the sole object of their search. By declaring that they sought Jesus of Nazareth, they virtually exempted the rest from apprehension. But when Jesus identified Himself as the person they sought, instead of rushing forward and holding Him fast, as Judas had instructed them, those in front shrank back; they felt that they had no weapons that would not break upon the calmness of that spiritual majesty; they went backward and fell to the ground. This was no idle display; it was not a needless theatrical garnishing of the scene for the sake of effect. If we could imagine the Divine nobility of Christ’s appearance at that critical moment when He finally proclaimed His work done and gave Himself up to die, we should all of us sink humbled and overcome before Him. Even in the dim and flickering light of the torches there was that in His appearance which made it impossible for the bluntest and rudest soldier to lay a hand upon Him. Discipline was forgotten; the legionaries who had thrown themselves on spear-points unawed by the fiercest of foes saw in this unarmed figure something which quelled and bewildered them.
But this proof of His superiority was lost upon His disciples. They
thought that armed force should be met by armed force. Recovering from
their discomfiture,
While our Lord thus calmly resigned Himself to His fate, He was not
without an indignant sense of the wrong that was done Him, not only in
His being apprehended, but in the manner of it. “Are ye come out as
against a thief with swords and with staves? I sat daily teaching in the
Temple, and ye laid no hold on Me.” Many of the soldiers must have felt
how ungenerous it was to treat such a Person as a common felon,—coming
upon Him thus in the dead of night, as if He were one who never appeared
in the daylight; coming with bludgeons and military aid, as if He were
This, then, is the result produced by our Lord’s labours of love and
wisdom. His conduct had been most conciliatory—conciliatory to the
point of meekness unintelligible to those who could not penetrate His
motives. He had innovated certainly, but His innovations were blessings,
and were so marked by wisdom and sanctioned by reason that every direct
assault against them had broken down. He did not seek for power further
than for the power of doing good. He knew He could lift men to a far
other life than they were living, and permission to do so was His grand
desire. The result was that He was marked as the object of the most
rancorous hatred of which the human heart is capable. Why so? Do we need
to ask? What is more exasperating to men who fancy themselves the
teachers of the age than to find another teacher carrying the
convictions of the people? What is more painful than to find that in
advanced life we must revolutionise our opinions and admit the truth
taught by our juniors? He who has new truths to declare or new methods
to introduce must recognise that he will be opposed by the combined
forces of
When thus treated, men are apt to be embittered towards their fellows.
When all their efforts to do good are made the very ground of accusation
against them, there is the strongest provocation to give up all such
attempts and to arrange for one’s own comfort and safety. This world has
few more sufficient tests to apply to character than this; and it is
only the few who, when misinterpreted and ill-used by ignorance and
malignity, can retain any loving care for others. It struck the
spectators, therefore, of this scene in the garden as a circumstance
worthy of record, that when Jesus was Himself bound He should shield His
disciples. “If ye seek Me, let these go their way.” Some of the crowd
had perhaps laid hands on the disciples or were showing a disposition to
apprehend them as well
In relating this part of the scene John puts an interpretation on it which was not merely natural, but which has been put upon it instinctively by all Christians since. It seemed to John as if, in thus acting, our Lord was throwing into a concrete and tangible form His true substitution in the room of His people. To John these words He utters seem the motto of His work. Had any of the disciples been arrested along with Jesus and been executed by His side as act and part with Him, the view which the Christian world has taken of Christ’s position and work must have been blurred if not quite altered. But the Jews had penetration enough to see where the strength of this movement lay. They believed that if the Shepherd was smitten the sheep would give them no trouble, but would necessarily scatter. Peter’s flourish with the sword attracted little attention; they knew that great movements were not led by men of his type. They passed him by with a smile and did not even arrest him. It was Jesus who stood before them as alone dangerous. And Jesus on His side knew that the Jews were right, that He was the responsible person, that these Galileans would have been dreaming at their nets had He not summoned them to follow Him. If there was any offence in the matter, it belonged to Him, not to them.
But in Jesus thus stepping to the front and shielding the disciples by
exposing Himself, John sees a picture of the whole sacrifice and
substitution of Christ. This figure of his Master moving forward to meet
the swords and staves of the party remains indelibly stamped upon
It is not without surprise that we read that when Jesus was arrested all the disciples forsook Him and fled. John, indeed, and Peter speedily recovered themselves and followed to the hall of judgment; and the others may not only have felt that they were in danger so long as they remained in His company, but also that by accompanying Him they could not mend matters. Still, the kind of loyalty that stands by a falling cause, and the kind of courage that risks all to show sympathy with a friend or leader, are qualities so very common that one would have expected to find them here. And no doubt had the matter been to be decided in Peter’s fashion, by the sword, they would have stood by Him. But there was a certain mysteriousness about our Lord’s purpose that prevented His followers from being quite sure where they were being led to. They were perplexed and staggered by the whole transaction. They had expected things to go differently and scarcely knew what they were doing when they fled.
There are times when we feel a slackening of devotion to Christ, times
when we are doubtful whether we have not been misled, times when the
bond between us and Him seems to be of the slenderest possible
description, times when we have as truly forsaken Him as these
disciples, and are running no risks for Him, doing nothing to advance
His interests, seeking only our own comfort and our own safety. These
times will frequently be found to be the result of disappointed
Another point which John evidently desires to bring prominently before
us in this narrative is Christ’s willingness to surrender Himself; the
voluntary character of all He afterwards suffered. It was at this point
of His career, at His apprehension, this could best be brought out.
Afterwards He might say He suffered willingly, but so far as appearances
went He had no option. Previous to His apprehension His professions of
willingness would not have been attended to. It was precisely now that
it could be seen whether He would flee, hide, resist, or calmly yield
Himself. And John is careful to bring out His willingness. He went to
the garden as usual, “knowing all things that should come upon Him.” It
would have been easy to seek some safer quarters for the night, but He
would not. At the last moment escape from the garden could not have been
impossible. His followers could have covered His retreat. But He
advances to meet the party, avows Himself to be the man they sought,
will not suffer Peter to use his sword, in every way shows that His
surrender is voluntary. Still, had He not shown His power to escape,
onlookers might have thought this was only the prudent conduct of a
brave man who wished to preserve His dignity, and therefore preferred
delivering Himself up to being ignominiously dragged from a
hiding-place. Therefore it was made plain that if He yielded it was not
for want of power to resist.
The reason of this is obvious. Christ’s life was to be all sacrifice,
because self-sacrifice is the essence of holiness and of love. From
beginning to end the moving spring of all His actions was deliberate
self-devotement to the good of men or to the fulfilment of God’s will;
for these are equivalents. And His death as the crowning act of this
career was to be conspicuously a death embodying and exhibiting the
spirit of self-sacrifice. He offered Himself on the cross through the
eternal Spirit. That death was not compulsory; it was not the outcome of
a sudden whim or generous impulse; it was the expression of a constant
uniform “eternal” Spirit, which on the cross, in the yielding of life
itself, rendered up for men all that was possible. Unwillingly no
sacrifice can be made. When a man is taxed to support the poor, we do
not call that a sacrifice. Sacrifice must be free, loving, uncompelled;
it must be the exhibition in act of love, the freest and most
spontaneous of all human emotions. “It is a true Christian instinct in
our language which has seized upon the word sacrifice to express the
self-devotion prompted by an unselfish love for others: we
It is to this willingness of Christ to suffer we must ever turn. It is this voluntary, uncompelled, spontaneous devotion of Himself to the good of men which is the magnetic point in this earth. Here is something we can cleave to with assurance, something we can trust and build upon. Christ in His own sovereign freedom of will and impelled by love of us has given Himself to work out our perfect deliverance from sin and evil of every kind. Let us deal sincerely with Him, let us be in earnest about these matters, let us hope truly in Him, let us give Him time to conquer by moral means all our moral foes within and without, and we shall one day enter into His joy and His triumph.
But when we thus apply John’s words we are haunted with a suspicion that
they were perhaps not intended to be thus used. Is John justified in
finding in Christ’s surrender of Himself to the authorities, on
condition that the disciples should escape, fulfilment of the words that
of those whom God had given Him He had lost
It is, I think, well that we should occasionally put to ourselves such
questions and train ourselves to look at the events of Christ’s life as
actual occurrences, and to distinguish between what is fanciful and what
is real. So much has been said and written regarding His work, it has
been the subject of so much sentiment, the basis of so many conflicting
theories, the text of so much loose and allegorising interpretation,
that the original plain and substantial fact is apt to be overlaid and
lost sight of. And yet it is that plain and substantial reality which
has virtue for us, while all else is delusive, howsoever finely
sentimental, howsoever rich in coincidences with Old Testament sayings
or in suggestions of ingenious doctrine. The subject of substitution is
obscure. Inquiry into the Atonement is like the search for the North
Pole: approach it from
Looking, then, at this surrender of Christ in the light of John’s comment, we see clearly enough that Christ sought to shelter His disciples at His own expense, and that this must have been the habit of His life. He sought no companion in misfortune. His desire was to save others from suffering. This willingness to be the responsible party was the habit of His life. It is impossible to think of Christ as in any matter sheltering Himself behind any man or taking a second place. He is always ready to bear the burden and the brunt. We recognise in this action of Christ that we have to do with One who shirks nothing, fears nothing, grudges nothing; who will substitute Himself for others wherever possible, if danger is abroad. So far as the character and habit of Christ go, there is unquestionably here manifest a good foundation for His substitution in our stead wheresoever such substitution is possible.
It is also in this scene, probably more than in any other, that we see
that the work Christ had come to do was one which He must do entirely by
Himself. It is scarcely exaggeration to say He could employ no assistant
even in its minor details. He did indeed send forth men to proclaim His
kingdom, but it was to proclaim what He alone did. In His miracles He
did not use His disciples as a surgeon uses His assistants. Here in the
garden He explicitly puts the disciples
There is no question, then, of Christ’s willingness to be our
substitute; the question rather is, Is it possible that He should suffer
for our sin and so save us from suffering? and does this scene in the
garden help us to answer that question? That this scene, in common with
the whole work of Christ, had a meaning and relations deeper than those
that appear on the surface none of us doubts. The soldiers who arrested
Him, the judges who condemned Him, saw nothing but the humble and meek
prisoner, the bar of the Sanhedrim, the stripes of the Roman scourge,
the material cross and nails and blood; but all this had relations of
infinite reach, meaning of infinite depth. Through all that Christ did
and suffered God was accomplishing the greatest of His designs, and if
we miss this Divine intention we miss the essential significance of
these events. The Divine intention was to save us from sin and give us
eternal life. This is accomplished by Christ’s surrender of Himself to
this earthly life and all the anxiety, the temptation, the mental and
spiritual strain which this involved. By revealing the Father’s love to
us He wins us back to the Father; and the Father’s love was revealed in
the self-sacrificing suffering He necessarily endured in numbering
Himself with sinners. Of Christ’s satisfying the law by suffering the
penalty under which we lay Paul has much to say. He explicitly affirms
that Christ bore and so abolished the curse or penalty of sin. But in
this Gospel there
We can certainly say that Christ suffered our penalties in so far as a perfectly holy person can suffer them. The gnawing anguish of remorse He never knew; the haunting anxieties of the wrong-doer were impossible to Him; the torment of ungratified desire, eternal severance from God, He could not suffer; but other results and penalties of sin He suffered more intensely than is possible to us. The agony of seeing men He loved destroyed by sin, all the pain which a sympathetic and pure spirit must bear in a world like this, the contradiction of sinners, the provocation and shame which daily attended Him—all this He bore because of sin and for us, that we might be saved from lasting sin and unrelieved misery. So that even if we cannot take this scene in the garden as an exact representation of the whole substitutionary work of Christ, we can say that by suffering with and for us He has saved us from sin and restored us to life and to God.
“So the band and the chief captain, and the officers of the Jews, seized Jesus and bound Him, and led Him to Annas first; for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, which was high priest that year. Now Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people. And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known unto the high priest, and entered in with Jesus into the court of the high priest; but Peter was standing at the door without. So the other disciple, which was known unto the high priest, went out and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. The maid therefore that kept the door saith unto Peter, Art thou also one of this man’s disciples? He saith, I am not. Now the servants and the officers were standing there, having made a fire of coals; for it was cold; and they were warming themselves: and Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself.... Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said therefore unto him, Art thou also one of His disciples? He denied, and said, I am not. One of the servants of the high priest, being a kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with Him? Peter therefore denied again: and straightway the cock crew.”—John xviii. 12–18, 25–27.
There is a difficulty in tracing the movements of Jesus at
this point. John tells us He was led to Annas first, and at ver. 24 he
says that Annas sent Him to Caiaphas. We should naturally conclude,
therefore, that the preceding examination was conducted by Annas. But
Caiaphas has been expressly indicated as chief priest, and it is by the
chief priest and in the chief priest’s palace the examination is
conducted. The name “chief priest” was not confined to the one actually
in office, but was applied to all who had held the office, and might
therefore be applied to Annas. Possibly the examination recorded vv.
19–23 was before him, and probably he was living with his son-in-law in
the palace of the chief priest.
When Jesus was led in bound to this palace, there entered with the crowd of soldiers and servants one at least of His disciples. He was in some way acquainted with the high priest, and presuming on this acquaintanceship followed to learn the fate of Jesus. He had seen Peter following at a distance, and after a little he goes to the gate-keeper and induces her to open to his friend. The maid seeing the familiar terms on which these two men were, and knowing that one of them was a disciple of Jesus, very naturally greets Peter with the exclamation, “Art not thou also one of this man’s disciples?” Peter, confused by being suddenly confronted with so many hostile faces, and remembering the blow he had struck in the garden, and that he was now in the place of all others where it was likely to be avenged, suddenly in a moment of infatuation, and doubtless to the dismay of his fellow-disciple, denies all knowledge of Jesus. Having once committed himself, the two other denials followed as matter of course.
Yet the third denial is more guilty than the first. Many persons are
conscious that they have sometimes acted under what seems an
infatuation. They do not plead this in excuse for the wrong they have
done. They are quite aware that what has come out of them
The remarkable feature of this sin of Peter’s is that at first sight it
seems so alien to his character. It was a lie; and he was unusually
straightforward. It was a heartless and cruel lie, and he was a man full
of emotion and affection. It was a cowardly lie, even more cowardly than
common lies, and yet he was exceptionally bold. Peter himself was quite
positive
Perhaps it was this very warning which betrayed Peter. When he struck the blow in the garden, he thought he had falsified his Lord’s prediction. And when he found himself the only one who had courage to follow to the palace, his besetting self-confidence returned and led him into circumstances for which he was too weak. He was equal to the test of his courage which he was expecting, but when another kind of test was applied in circumstances and from a quarter he had not anticipated his courage failed him utterly.
Peter probably thought he might be brought bound with his Master before
the high priest, and had he been so he would probably have stood
faithful. But the devil who was sifting him had a much finer sieve than
that to run him through. He brought him to no formal trial, where he
could gird himself for a special effort, but to an unobserved, casual
questioning by a slave-girl.
Had Peter distrusted himself and seriously accepted his Lord’s warning, he would have gone with the rest; but ever thinking of himself as able to do more than other men, faithful where others were faithless, convinced where others hesitated, daring where others shrank, he once again thrust himself forward, and so fell. For this self-confidence, which might to a careless observer seem to underprop Peter’s courage, was to the eye of the Lord undermining it. And if Peter’s true bravery and promptitude were to serve the Church in days when fearless steadfastness would be above all other qualities needed, his courage must be sifted and the chaff of self-confidence thoroughly separated from it. In place of a courage which was sadly tainted with vanity and impulsiveness Peter must acquire a courage based upon recognition of his own weakness and his Lord’s strength. And it was this event which wrought this change in Peter’s character.
Frequently we learn by a very painful experience that our best qualities are tainted, and that actual disaster has entered our life from the very quarter we least suspected. We may be conscious that the deepest mark has been made on our life by a sin apparently as alien to our character as cowardice and lying were to the too venturesome and outspoken character of Peter. Possibly we once prided ourselves on our honesty, and felt happy in our upright character, plain-dealing, and direct speech; but to our dismay we have been betrayed into double-dealing, equivocation, evasive or even fraudulent conduct. Or the time was when we were proud of our friendships; it was frequently in our mind that, however unsatisfactory in other respects our character might be, we were at any rate faithful and helpful friends. Alas! events have proved that even in this particular we have failed, and have, through absorption in our own interests, acted inconsiderately and even cruelly to our friend, not even recognising at the time how his interests were suffering. Or we are by nature of a cool temperament, and judged ourselves safe at least from the faults of impulse and passion; yet the mastering combination of circumstances came, and we spoke the word, or wrote the letter, or did the deed which broke our life past mending.
Now, it was Peter’s salvation, and it will be ours, when overtaken in
this unsuspected sin, to go out and weep bitterly. He did not
frivolously count it an accident that could never occur again; he did
not sullenly curse the circumstances that had betrayed and shamed him.
He recognised that there was that in him which could render useless his
best natural qualities, and that the sinfulness which could make his
strongest natural defences brittle as an egg-shell must be serious
And it is obvious that if we are to rise clear above the sin that has
betrayed us we can do so only by as lowly a penitence. We are all alike
in this: that we have fallen; we cannot any more with justice think
highly of ourselves; we have sinned and are disgraced in our own eyes.
In this, I say, we are all alike; that which makes the difference among
us is, how we deal with ourselves and our circumstances in connection
with our sin. It has been very well said by a keen observer of human
Every one who has passed through a time such as this single night was to
Peter knows the strain that is laid upon the soul, and how very hard it
is to yield utterly. So much rises up in self-defence; so much strength
is lost by the mere perplexity and confusion of the thing; so much is
lost in the despondency that follows these sad revelations of our
deep-seated evil.
It may be worth while to note the characteristics and danger of that
special form of weakness which Peter here exhibited. We commonly call it
moral cowardice. It is originally a weakness rather than a positive sin,
and yet it is probably as prolific of sin and even of great crime as any
of the more definite and vigorous passions of our nature, such as hate,
lust, avarice. It is that weakness which prompts a man to
The examples of its ill-effects are daily before our eyes. A man cannot
bear the coolness of a friend or the contempt of a leader of opinion,
and so he stifles his own independent judgment and goes with the
majority. A minister of the Church finds his faith steadily diverging
from that of the creed he has subscribed, but he cannot proclaim this
change because he cannot make up his mind to be the subject of public
astonishment and remark, of severe scrutiny on the one side and still
more distasteful because ignorant and canting sympathy on the other. A
man in business finds that his expenditure exceeds his income, but he is
unable to face the shame of frankly lowering his position and curtailing
his expenses, and so he is led into dishonest appearances; and from
dishonest appearances to fraudulent methods of keeping them up the
But of all the forms into which moral cowardice develops this of denying
the Lord Jesus is the most iniquitous and disgraceful. One of the
fashions of the day which is most rapidly extending and which many of us
have opportunity to resist is the fashion of infidelity. Much of the
strongest and best-trained intellect of the country ranges itself
against Christianity—that is, against Christ. No doubt the men who have
led this movement have adopted their opinions on conviction. They deny
the authority of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, even the existence
of a personal God, because by long years of painful thought they have
been forced to such conclusions. Even the best of them cannot be
acquitted of a contemptuous and bitter way of speaking of Christians,
which would seem to indicate that they are not quite at ease in their
belief. Still, we cannot but think that so far as any men can be quite
unbiassed in their
Such persons we aid and abet when we do either of two things: when we
either cleave to what is old as unreasoningly as they take up with what
is new, refusing to look for fresh light and better ways and acting as
if we were already perfect; or when we yield to the current and adopt a
hesitating way of speaking about matters of faith, when we cultivate a
sceptical spirit and seem to connive at if we do not applaud the cold,
irreligious sneer of ungodly men. Above all, we aid the cause of
infidelity when in our own life we are ashamed to live godly, to act on
higher principles than the current prudential maxims, when we hold our
allegiance to Christ in abeyance Some of the ideas in this chapter were suggested by a
sermon of Bishop Temple’s.
“They led Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the palace: and it was
early; and they themselves entered not into the palace, that they
might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover. Pilate therefore
went out unto them, and saith, What accusation bring ye against this
man? They answered and said unto him, If this man were not an
evil-doer, we should not have delivered Him up unto thee. Pilate
therefore said unto them, Take Him yourselves, and judge Him
according to your law. The Jews said unto him, It is not lawful for
us to put any man to death: that the word of Jesus might be
fulfilled, which He spake, signifying by what manner of death He
should die. Pilate therefore entered again into the palace, and
called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art Thou the King of the Jews?
Jesus answered, Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it
thee concerning Me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation
and the chief priests delivered Thee unto me: what hast Thou done?
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were
of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be
delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence. Pilate
therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou
sayest that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and to this
end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice. Pilate saith
unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out
again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find no crime in Him.
But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the
Passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the
Jews? They cried out therefore again, saying, Not this man, but
Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. Then Pilate therefore took
Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns,
and put it on His head, and arrayed Him in a purple garment; and
they came unto Him, and said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they
struck Him with their hands. And Pilate went out again, and saith
unto them, Behold I bring Him out to you, that ye may know that I
find no crime in Him. Jesus therefore came out, wearing the crown of
thorns and the purple garment. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold,
the man! When
So far as Caiaphas and his party were concerned, then, Jesus was
prejudged. His trial was not an examination to discover whether He was
guilty or innocent, but a cross-questioning which aimed at betraying Him
into some acknowledgment which might give colour to the sentence of
death already decreed. Caiaphas or
Annas See note to chapter xviii.
Had the Roman governor not been present in the city the high priests and their party might have ventured to carry into effect their own sentence. But Pilate had already shown during his six years of office that he was not a man to overlook anything like contempt of his supremacy. Besides, they were not quite sure of the temper of the people; and a rescue, or even an attempted rescue, of their prisoner would be disastrous. Prudence therefore bids them hand Him over to Pilate, who had both legal authority to put Him to death and means to quell any popular disturbance. Besides, the purpose of Caiaphas could better be served by bringing before the governor this claimant to the Messiahship.
Pilate was present in Jerusalem at this time in accordance with the
custom of the Roman procurators of Judæa, who came up annually from
their usual residence at Cæsarea to the Jewish capital for the double
purpose of keeping order while the city was crowded with all kinds of
persons who came up to the feast, and of trying cases reserved for his
decision. And the Jews no doubt thought it would be easy to persuade a
man who, as they knew to their cost, set a very low value on human blood
to add one victim more to the robbers or insurgents who might be
awaiting execution. Accordingly, as soon as day dawned and they dared to
disturb the governor, they put Jesus in chains as a condemned criminal
and led Him away,
This apparent intention on Pilate’s part, if not to reopen the case at least to revise their procedure, is resented by the party of Caiaphas, who exclaim, “If He were not a malefactor we would not have delivered Him up unto thee. Take our word for it; He is guilty; do not scruple to put Him to death.” But if they were indignant that Pilate should propose to revise their decision, he is not less so that they should presume to make him their mere executioner. All the Roman pride of office, all the Roman contempt and irritation at this strange Jewish people, come out in his answer, “If you will make no charge against Him and refuse to allow me to judge Him, take Him yourselves and do what you can with Him,” knowing well that they dared not inflict death without his sanction, and that this taunt would pierce home. The taunt they did feel, although they could not afford to show that they felt it, but contented themselves with laying the charge that He had forbidden the people to give tribute to Cæsar and claimed to be Himself a king.
As Roman law permitted the examination to be conducted within the prætorium, though the judgment must be pronounced outside in public, Pilate re-enters the palace and has Jesus brought in, so that apart from the crowd he may examine Him. At once he puts the direct question, Guilty or not guilty of this political offence with which you stand charged?—“Art Thou the King of the Jews?” But to this direct question Jesus cannot give a direct answer, because the words may have one sense in the lips of Pilate, another in His own. Before He answers He must first know in which sense Pilate uses the words. He asks therefore, “Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee?” Are you inquiring because you are yourself concerned in this question? or are you merely uttering a question which others have put in your mouth? To which Pilate with some heat and contempt replies, “Am I a Jew? How can you expect me to take any personal interest in the matter? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me.”
Pilate, that is to say, scouts the idea that he should take any interest
in questions about the Messiah of the Jews. And yet was it not possible
that, like some of his subordinates, centurions and others, he too
should perceive the spiritual grandeur of Jesus and should not be
prevented by his heathen upbringing from seeking to belong to this
kingdom of God? May not Pilate also be awakened to see that man’s true
inheritance is the world unseen? may not that expression of fixed
melancholy, of hard scorn, of sad, hopeless, proud indifference, give
place to the humble eagerness of the inquiring soul? may not the heart
of a child come back to that bewildered and world-encrusted soul? Alas!
this is too much for Roman pride. He cannot in presence
It is possible that Jesus by His question meant to suggest to Pilate the actual relation in which this present trial stood to His previous trial by Caiaphas. For nothing could more distinctly mark the baseness and malignity of the Jews than their manner of shifting ground when they brought Jesus before Pilate. The Sanhedrim had condemned Him, not for claiming to be King of the Jews, for that was not a capital offence, but for assuming Divine dignity. But that which in their eyes was a crime was none in the judgment of Roman law; it was useless to bring Him before Pilate and accuse Him of blasphemy. They therefore accused Him of assuming to be King of the Jews. Here, then, were the Jews “accusing Jesus before the Roman governor of that which, in the first place, they knew that Jesus denied in the sense in which they urged it, and which, in the next place, had the charge been true, would have been so far from a crime in their eyes that it would have been popular with the whole nation.”
But as Pilate might very naturally misunderstand the character of the
claim made by the accused, Jesus in a few words gives him clearly to
understand that the kingdom He sought to establish could not come
Pilate, convinced of the innocence of Jesus, makes several attempts to
save Him. All these attempts failed, because, instead of at once and
decidedly proclaiming His innocence and demanding His acquittal, he
sought at the same time to propitiate His accusers. One generally
expects from a Roman governor some knowledge of men and some
fearlessness in his use of that knowledge. Pilate shows neither. His
first step
His second attempt to save Jesus from death was more unjust and as
futile as the first. He scourges the Prisoner whose innocence he had
himself declared, possibly under the idea that if nothing was confessed
by Jesus under this torture it might convince the Jews of His innocence,
but more probably under the impression that they might be satisfied when
they saw Jesus The cry according to the best reading was simply “Crucify,
crucify,” or as it might be rendered, “The cross, the cross.”
A third time Pilate refused to be the instrument of their inhuman and
unjust rage, and flung the Prisoner on their hands: “Take Him
yourselves, and crucify Him: for I find no crime in Him.” But when the
Jews answered that by their law He ought to die, because “He made
Himself the Son of God,” Pilate was again seized with dread, and
withdrew his Prisoner for the fourth time into the palace. Already he
had remarked in His demeanour a calm superiority which made it seem
quite possible that this extraordinary claim might be true. The books he
had read at school and the poems he had heard since he grew up had told
stories of how the gods had sometimes
Besides—and this probably is the main reason of the silence—Pilate was now forgetting altogether the relation between himself and his Prisoner. Jesus had been accused before him on a definite charge which he had found to be baseless. He ought therefore to have released Him. This new charge of the Jews was one of which Pilate could not take cognisance; and of this Jesus reminds him by His silence. Jesus might have made influence for Himself by working upon the superstition of Pilate; but this was not to be thought of.
Offended at His silence, Pilate exclaims: “Speakest Thou not unto me?
Knowest Thou not that I have power to release Thee, and have power to
crucify Thee?” Here was an unwonted kind of prisoner who would not curry
favour with His judge. But instead of entreating Pilate to use this
power in His favour Jesus replies: “Thou wouldest have no power against
Me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered Me
unto thee hath greater sin.” Pilate’s office was the ordinance of God,
and therefore his judgments should express the justice and will of God;
and it was this which made the sin of Caiaphas and the Jews so great:
they were making use of a Divine ordinance to serve their own
God-resisting purposes. Had Pilate been a mere irresponsible executioner
their sin would have
More impressed than ever by this powerful statement falling from the lips of a man weakened by the scourging, Pilate makes one more effort to save Him. But now the Jews play their last card and play it successfully. “If thou release this man, thou art not Cæsar’s friend.” To lay himself open to a charge of treason or neglect of the interests of Cæsar was what Pilate could not risk. At once his compassion for the Prisoner, his sense of justice, his apprehensions, his proud unwillingness to let the Jews have their way, are overcome by his fear of being reported to the most suspicious of emperors. He prepared to give his judgment, taking his place on the official seat, which stood on a tesselated pavement, called in Aramaic “Gabbatha,” from its elevated position in sight of the crowds standing outside. Here, after venting his spleen in the weak sarcasm “Shall I crucify your King?” he formally hands over his Prisoner to be crucified. This decision was at last come to, as John records, about noon of the day which prepared for and terminated in the Paschal Supper.
Pilate’s vacillation receives from John a long and careful treatment.
Light is shed upon it, and upon the threat which forced him at last to
make up his mind, from the account which Philo gives of his character
and administration. “With a view,” he says, “to vex the Jews, Pilate
hung up some gilt shields in the palace of Herod, which they judged a
profanation of the holy city, and therefore petitioned him to remove
them. But when he steadfastly refused to do so, for he was a man
Philo, Ad Caium, c. 38.
The very thing that Pilate feared, and to avoid which he sacrificed the
life of our Lord, came upon him six years
In this would-be equitable Roman governor, exhibiting his weakness to
the people and helplessly exclaiming,
Nothing could save Pilate from the responsibility attaching to his
connection with Jesus, and nothing can save us from the responsibility
of determining
Could Pilate really persuade himself he made everything right with a
basin of water and a theatrical transference of his responsibility to
the Jews? Could
Fairly to apportion blame where there are two consenting parties to a
wickedness is for us, in many cases, impossible; and what we have to do
is to beware of shifting blame from ourselves to our circumstances or to
other people. However galling it is to find ourselves mixed up with
transactions which turn out to be shameful, or to discover that some
vacillation or imbecility on our part has made us partakers in sin, it
is idle and worse to wash our hands ostentatiously and try to persuade
ourselves we have no guilt in the matter. The fact that we have
The calmness and dignity with which Jesus passed through this ordeal,
alone self-possessed, while all around Him were beside themselves, so
impressed Pilate that he not only felt guilty in giving Him up to the
Jews, but did not think it impossible that He might be the Son of God.
But what is perhaps even more striking in this scene is the directness
with which all these evil passions of men—fear, and self-interest, and
injustice, and hate—are guided to an end fraught with blessing.
Goodness finds in the most adverse circumstances material for its
purposes. We are apt in such circumstances to despair and act as if
there were never to be a triumph of goodness; but the little seed of
good that one individual can contribute even by hopeful and patient
submission is that which survives and produces good in perpetuity, while
the passion and the hate and the worldliness cease. In so wild a scene
what availed it, we might have said, that one Person kept His
steadfastness and rose superior to the surrounding wickedness? But the
event showed that it did avail. All the rest was scaffolding that fell
away out of sight, and this solitary integrity remains as the enduring
monument. In our measure we must
“They took Jesus therefore: and He went out, bearing the cross for Himself, unto the place called The place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified Him, and with Him two others, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. And Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross. And there was written, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. This title therefore read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and in Latin, and in Greek. The chief priests of the Jews therefore said to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but, that He said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written. The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be; that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted My garments among them, And upon My vesture did they cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did. But there were standing by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold, thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home.”—John xix. 17–27.
Pilate from the first look he got of his Prisoner understood that he had
before him quite another kind of person than the ordinary zealot, or
spurious Messiah, or turbulent Galilean. Pilate knew enough of the Jews
to feel sure that if Jesus had been plotting rebellion against Rome He
would not have been informed against by the chief priests. Possibly he
knew enough of what had been going on in his province to understand
Nominally, but only nominally, Jesus was crucified for sedition. If we pass, in search of the real charge, from Pilate’s judgment-seat to the Sanhedrim, we get nearer to the truth. The charge on which He was in this court condemned was the charge of blasphemy. He was indeed examined as to His claims to be the Messiah, but it does not appear that they had any law on which He could have been condemned for such claims. They did not expect that the Messiah would be Divine in the proper sense. Had they done so, then any one falsely claiming to be the Messiah would thereby have falsely claimed to be Divine, and would therefore have been guilty of blasphemy. But it was not for claiming to be the Christ that Jesus was condemned; it was when He declared Himself to be the Son of God that the high priest rent His garments and declared Him guilty of blasphemy.
Now, of course it was very possible that many members of the Sanhedrim
should sincerely believe that blasphemy had been uttered. The unity of
God was the distinctive creed of the Jew, that which had made his
nation, and for any human lips to claim equality with the one infinite
God was not to be thought of. It must have fallen upon their ears like a
thunder-clap; they must have fallen back on their seats or started from
them in horror when so awful a claim was
Was the Sanhedrim, then, to blame for condemning Jesus? They sincerely
believed Him to be a blasphemer, and their law attached to the crime of
blasphemy the punishment of death. It was in ignorance they did it; and
knowing only what they knew, they could not have acted otherwise. Yes,
that is true. But they were responsible for their ignorance. Jesus had
given abundant opportunity to the nation to understand Him and to
consider His claims. He did not burst upon the public with an
uncertified demand to be accepted as Divine. He lived among those who
were instructed in such matters; and though in some respects He was very
different from the Messiah they had looked for, a little openness of
mind and a little careful inquiry would have convinced them He was sent
from God. And had they acknowledged this, had they allowed themselves to
obey their instincts and say, This is a true man, a man who has a
message for us—had they not sophisticated their minds with quibbling
literalities, they would have owned His superiority and been willing to
learn from Him. And had they shown any disposition to learn, Jesus was
too wise a teacher to hurry them and overleap needed steps in conviction
and experience. He would have been slow to extort from any a confession
of His divinity until they had
From all this, then, two things are apparent. First, that Jesus was
condemned on the charge of blasphemy—condemned because He made Himself
equal with God. His own words, pronounced upon oath, administered in the
most solemn manner, were understood by the Sanhedrim to be an explicit
claim to be the Son of God in a sense in which no man could without
blasphemy claim to be so. He made no explanation of His words when He
saw how they were understood. And yet, were He not truly Divine, there
was no one who could have been more shocked than Himself by such a
claim. He understood, if any man did, the majesty of God; He knew better
than any other the difference between the Holy One and His sinful
creatures; His whole life was devoted to the purpose of revealing to men
the unseen God. What could have seemed to Him more monstrous, what could
more effectually have stultified the work and aim of His life, than that
He, being a man, should allow Himself to be taken for God? When Pilate
told Him that He was charged with claiming to be a king, He explained to
Pilate in what sense He did so, and removed from Pilate’s mind the
erroneous supposition this claim had given birth to.
Another reflection which is forced upon the reader of this narrative is,
that disaster waits upon stifled inquiry. The Jews honestly convicted
Christ as a blasphemer because they had dishonestly denied Him to be a
good man. The little spark which would have grown into a blazing light
they put their heel upon. Had they at the first candidly considered Him
as He went about doing good and making no claims, they would have become
attached to Him as His disciples did, and, like them, would have been
led on to a fuller knowledge of the meaning of His person and work. It
is these beginnings of conviction we are so apt to abuse. It seems so
much smaller a crime to kill an infant that has but once drawn breath
than to kill a man of lusty life and busy in his prime; but the one, if
fairly dealt with, will grow to be the other. And while we think very
little of stifling the scarcely breathed whisperings in our own heart
and mind, we should consider that it is only such whisperings that can
bring us to the loudly proclaimed truth. If we do not follow up
suggestions, if we do not push inquiry to discovery, if we do not value
the smallest grain of
Guided by the perfect taste which reverence gives, John says very little
about the actual crucifixion. He shows us indeed the soldiers sitting
down beside the little heap of clothes they had stripped off our Lord,
parcelling them out, perhaps already assuming them as their own wear.
For the clothes by which our Lord had been known these soldiers would
now carry into unknown haunts of drunkenness and sin, emblems of our
ruthless, thoughtless desecration of our Lord’s name with which we
outwardly clothe ourselves and
These hours of suffering, as the sword was slowly driven through Mary’s
soul, according to Simeon’s word, who shall measure? Hers was not a
hysterical, noisy sorrow, but quiet and silent. There was nothing wild,
nothing extravagant, in it. There was no sign of feminine weakness, no
outcry, no fainting, no wild gesture of uncontrollable anguish, nothing
to show that she was the exceptional mourner and that there was no
sorrow like unto her sorrow. Her reverence for the Lord saved her from
disturbing His last moments. She stood and saw the end. She saw His head
lifted See Faber’s Bethlehem.
Mary was commended to John as the closest friend of Jesus. These two would be in fullest sympathy, both being devoted to Him. It was perhaps an indication to those who were present, and through them to all, that nothing is so true a bond between human hearts as sympathy with Christ. We may admire nature, and yet have many points of antipathy to those who also admire nature. We may like the sea, and yet feel no drawing to some persons who also like the sea. We may be fond of mathematics, and yet find that this brings us into a very partial and limited sympathy with mathematicians. Nay, we may even admire and love the same person as others do, and yet disagree about other matters. But if Christ is chosen and loved as He ought to be, that love is a determining affection which rules all else within us, and brings us into abiding sympathy with all who are similarly governed and moulded by that love. That love indicates a certain past experience and guarantees a special type of character. It is the characteristic of the subjects of the kingdom of God.
This care for His mother in His last moments is of a piece with all the
conduct of Jesus. Throughout His life there is an entire absence of
anything pompous or excited. Everything is simple. The greatest acts in
human history He does on the highway, in the cottage, among a group of
beggars in an entry. The words which have thrilled the hearts and mended
the lives of myriads were spoken casually as He walked with a few
friends. Rarely did He even gather a crowd. There was no advertising, no
admission by ticket, no elaborate arrangements for a set speech at a set
hour.
Those who witnessed the hurried events of the morning when Christ was
crucified might be pardoned if their minds were filled with what their
eyes saw, and if little but the outward objects were discernible to
them. We are in different circumstances, and may be expected to look
more deeply into what was happening. To see only the mean scheming and
wicked passions of men, to see nothing but the pathetic suffering of an
“The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted My garments among them, And upon My vesture did they cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.... After this Jesus, knowing that all things are now finished, that the scripture might be accomplished, saith, I thirst. There was set there a vessel full of vinegar: so they put a sponge full of the vinegar upon hyssop, and brought it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit. The Jews therefore, because it was the Preparation, that the bodies should not remain on the cross upon the Sabbath (for the day of that Sabbath was a high day), asked of Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. The soldiers therefore came, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with Him: but when they came to Jesus, and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs: howbeit one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and straightway there came out blood and water. And he that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also may believe. For these things came to pass, that the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of Him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on Him whom they pierced.”—John xix. 23, 24, 28–37.
The first instance of this which John cites is the manner in which the
soldiers dealt with His clothes. After fixing Jesus to the cross and
raising it, the four men who were detailed to this service sat down to
watch. Such was the custom, lest friends should remove the crucified
before death supervened. Having settled themselves for this watch, they
proceeded to divide the clothes of Jesus among them. This also was
customary among the Romans, as it has been everywhere usual that the
executioners should have as their perquisite some of the articles worn
by the condemned. The soldiers parted the garments of Jesus among them,
each of the four taking what he needed or fancied—turban, shoes,
girdle, or under-coat; while for the large seamless plaid that was worn
over all they cast lots, being unwilling to tear it. All this fulfilled
an old prediction to the letter. The reason why it had been spoken of
was that it formed a weighty element in the suffering of the crucified.
Few things can make a dying man feel more desolate than to overhear
those who sit round his bed already disposing of his effects, counting
him a dead man who can no longer use the apparatus of the living, and
congratulating themselves on the profit they make by his death. How
furious have old men sometimes been made by any betrayal of eagerness on
the part of their heirs! Even to calculate on a man’s death and make
arrangements for filling his place is justly esteemed indecorous and
unfeeling. To ask a sick man for anything he has been accustomed to use,
and must use again if he
This distribution of His clothes was also calculated to make Him intensely sensible of the reality and finality of death. Jesus knew He was to rise again; but let us not forget that Jesus was human, liable to the same natural fears, and moved by the same circumstances as ourselves. He knew He was to rise again; but how much easier had it been to believe in that future life had all the world been expecting Him to rise! But here were men showing that they very well knew He would never again need these clothes of His.
A comparison of this narrative with the other Gospels brings out that
the words “I thirst” must have been uttered immediately after the
fearful cry “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” For when the
soldier was mercifully pressing the sponge steeped in vinegar to His
parched lips, some of the bystanders called out, “Let be: let us see
whether Elias will come to save Him,” referring to the words of Jesus,
which they had not rightly understood. And this expression of bodily
suffering is proof that the severity of the spiritual struggle was over.
So long as that deep darkness covered His spirit He was unconscious of
His body; but with the agonised cry to His Father the
The last act of the Crucifixion, in which John sees the fulfilment of
Old Testament prophecy, is the omission in the case of Jesus of the
common mode of terminating the life of the crucified by breaking the
legs with an iron bar. Jesus being already dead, this was considered
unnecessary; but as possibly He might only have swooned, and as the
bodies were immediately taken down, one of the soldiers makes sure of
His death by a lance thrust. Medical men and scholars have largely
discussed the causes which might produce the outflow of blood and water
which John affirms followed this spear thrust, and various causes have
been assigned. But it is a point which has apparently only physiological
interest. John indeed follows up his statement of what he saw with an
unusually strong asseveration that what he says is true. “He that saw it
bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true,
that ye might believe.” But this strong asseveration is introduced, not
for the sake of persuading us to believe that water as well as blood
flowed from the lance wound, but for the sake of certifying the actual
death of Jesus. The soldiers who had charge of the execution discharged
their duty. They made sure that the Crucified was actually dead. And
John’s reason for
The emphatic language John uses regarding the certainty of Christ’s death is, then, only an index to the importance he attached to the Resurrection. He was aware that whatever virtue lay in the life and death of Christ, this virtue became available for men through the Resurrection. Had Jesus not risen again all the hopes His friends had cherished regarding Him would have been buried in His tomb. Had He not risen His words would have been falsified and doubt thrown upon all His teaching. Had He not risen His claims would have been unintelligible and His whole appearance and life a mystery, suggesting a greatness not borne out—different from other men, yet subject to the same defeat. Had He not risen the very significance of His life would have been obscured; and if for a time a few friends cherished His memory in private, His name would have fallen back to an obscure, possibly a dishonoured, place.
It is not at once obvious what we are to make of the physical sufferings
of Christ. Certainly it is very easy to make too much of them. For, in
the first place, they were very brief and confined to one part of His
life. He was exempt from the prolonged weakness and misery which many
persons endure throughout life.
Two things, however, the physical sufferings of Christ do secure: they
call attention to His devotedness, and they illustrate His willing
sacrifice of self. They call attention to His devotedness and provoke a
natural sympathy and tenderness of spirit in the beholder, qualities
which are much needed in our consideration of Christ. Had He passed
through life entirely exempt from suffering, in high position, with
every want eagerly ministered to, untouched by any woe, and at last
passing
Besides, it is through the visible suffering we can read the willingness of Christ’s self-surrender. It was always more difficult for Him to suffer than for us. We have no option: He might have rescued Himself at any moment. We, in suffering, have but to subdue our disposition to murmur and our sense of pain: He had to subdue what was much more obstinate—His consciousness that He might if He pleased abjure the life that involved pain. The strain upon His love for us was not once for all over when He became man. He Himself intimates, and His power of working miracles proves, that at each point of His career He might have saved Himself from suffering, but would not.
When we ask ourselves what we are to make of these sufferings of Christ,
we naturally seek aid from the Evangelist and ask what he made of them.
But on reading his narrative we are surprised to find so little comment
or reflection interrupting the simple relation of facts. At first sight
the narrative seems to flow uninterruptedly on, and to resemble the
story which might be told of the closing scenes of an ordinary life
terminating tragically. The references to Old Testament prophecy alone
give us the clue to John’s thoughts about the significance of this
death. These
Why, then, does John just at this point of the life of Jesus see so many
evidences of the fulfilment of all prophecy? Need we ask? Is not
suffering that which is the standing problem of life? Is it not grief
and trouble and sorrow which press home upon our minds most convincingly
the reality of sin? Is it not death
And if a Divine Person were in the course of things to come into this
human world, to enter into our actual experiences, and feel and bear the
actual strain that we bear, it is obvious He must come incognito—not
distinguished by such marks as would bring the world to His feet, and
make an ordinary human life and ordinary human trials impossible to Him.
When sovereigns wish to ascertain for themselves how their subjects
live, they do not proclaim their approach and send in advance an army of
protection, provision, and display; they do not demand to be met by the
authorities of each town, and to be received by artificial, stereotyped
addresses, and to be led from one striking sight to another and from one
comfortable palace to another: but they leave their robes of state
behind them, they send no messenger in advance, and they mix as one of
the crowd with the crowd, exposed to whatever abuse may be going, and
living for the time on the same terms as the rank and file. This has
been done often in sport, sometimes as matter of policy or of interest,
but never as the serious method of understanding and lifting the general
habits and life of the people. Christ came among us, not as a kind of
Divine adventure to break the tedium of eternal glory, nor merely to
make personal observations on His own account, but as the requisite and
only means available for bringing the fulness of Divine help into
practical contact with mankind. But as all filth and squalor are hidden
away in the slums from the senses of the king, so that if he is to
penetrate into the burrows
It is also obvious that such a Person would concern Himself not with art or literature, not with inventions and discoveries, not even with politics and government and social problems, but with that which underlies all these and for which all these exist—with human character and human conduct, with man’s relation to God. It is with the very root of human life He concerns Himself.
The sufferings of Christ, then, were mainly inward, and were the
necessary result of His perfect sympathy with men. That which has made
the cross the most significant of earthly symbols, and which has
invested it with so wonderful a power to subdue and purify the heart, is
not the fact that it involved the keenest physical pain, but that it
exhibits Christ’s perfect and complete identification with sinful men.
It is this that humbles us and brings us to a right mind towards God and
towards sin, that here we see the innocent Son of God involved in
suffering and undergoing a shameful death through our sin. It was His
sympathy with men which brought Him into this world, and it was the same
sympathy which laid Him open to suffering throughout His life. The
mother suffers more in the illness of a child than in her own; the shame
of wrong-doing is often more keenly felt by a parent or friend than by
the perpetrator himself. If Paul’s enthusiasm and devoted life for men
made him truly say, “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” who shall measure
the burden Christ bore from day to day in the midst of a sinning
But it is not the suffering that does us good and brings us to God, but
the love which underlies the suffering. The suffering convinces us that
it is love which prompts Christ in all His life and death,—a love we
may confidently trust to, since it is staggered at no difficulty or
sacrifice; a love which aims at lifting and helping us; a love that
embraces us, not seeking to accomplish only one thing for us, but
necessarily, because
“Now on the first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, while it was yet dark, unto the tomb, and seeth the stone taken away from the tomb. She runneth therefore, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we know not where they have laid Him. Peter therefore went forth, and the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. And they ran both together: and the other disciple outran Peter, and came first to the tomb; and stooping and looking in, he seeth the linen cloths lying; yet entered he not in. Simon Peter therefore also cometh, following him, and entered into the tomb; and he beholdeth the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, that was upon His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place by itself. Then entered in therefore the other disciple also, which came first to the tomb, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. So the disciples went away again unto their own home. But Mary was standing without at the tomb weeping: so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she beholdeth two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him. When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and beholdeth Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away, Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him in Hebrew, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith to her, Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto My brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God. Mary Magdalene cometh and telleth the disciples, I have seen the Lord; and how that He had said these things unto her.”—John xx. 1–18.
When Mary brought the startling intelligence that the tomb was empty,
Peter and John instantly made for the spot at the top of their speed.
The older man was left behind by John, but natural reverence kept him
from entering the rocky chamber. He looked in, however, and to his
surprise saw enough to convince him that the body had not been removed
for interment elsewhere or to be cast out with the bodies of criminals.
For there were the linen cloths in which He had been wrapped, carefully
taken off and left behind. The impression made by this circumstance was
confirmed when Peter came up, and they both entered and
This simple narrative will be to many minds more convincing than an
accumulation of elaborate arguments. The style is that of an eyewitness.
Each movement and every particular is before his eye: Mary bursting,
breathless, and gasping out the startling news; the hasty springing up
of the two men, and their rapid racing along the streets and out through
the city gates to the garden; John standing panting at the rock-hewn
sepulchre, his stooping down and peering into the dark chamber; Peter
toiling up behind, but not hesitating a moment, and entering and gazing
at this and that till the dumb articles tell their story; and the two
men leave the sepulchre together, awed and convinced. And the eyewitness
who thus graphically
To some minds this simple narrative will, I say, carry home the conviction of the truth of the Resurrection more than any elaborate argumentation. There is an assuring matter-of-factness about it. Sceptics tell us that visions are common, and that excited people are easily deceived. But we have no word of visions here. John does not say he saw the Lord: he tells us merely of two fishermen running; of solid, commonplace articles such as grave-clothes; and of observations that could not possibly be mistaken, such as that the tomb was empty and that they two were in it. For my part I feel constrained to believe a narrative like this, when it tells me the grave was empty. No doubt their conclusion, that Jesus had Himself emptied the tomb, was not a certain but only a probable inference, and, had nothing more occurred, even John himself might not have continued so confident; but it is important to notice how John was convinced, not at all by visions or voices or embodied expectations of his own, but in the most matter-of-fact way and by the very same kind of observation that we use and rely upon in common life. And, moreover, more did occur; there followed just such results as were in keeping with so momentous an event.
One of these immediately occurred. Mary, exhausted with her rapid
carrying of the news to Peter and John, was not able to keep pace with
them as they ran to the tomb, and before she arrived they were gone.
Probably she missed them in the streets as she came out of the
In all this we have the picture of a real and profound grief, and
therefore of a real and profound love. We see in Mary the kind of
affection which a knowledge of Jesus was fitted to kindle. And to Mary
our Lord
Mary standing without at the sepulchre weeping is a concrete
representation of a not uncommon state of mind. She stands wondering why
she was ever so foolish, so heartless, as to leave the tomb at all—why
she had allowed it to be possible to become separated from the Lord. She
looks despairingly at the empty grave-clothes which so lately had held
all that was dear to her in the world. She might, she thinks, had she
been present, have prevented the tomb from being emptied, but now it is
empty she cannot fill it again. It is thus that those who have been
careless See Pusey’s sermon on this subject.
The Evangelist Mark saw more in the Lord’s appearance to Mary than a
response to her seeking love. He reminds his readers that this was the
woman out of whom the Lord had cast seven devils, meaning apparently to
suggest that those who have most need of encouragement from Him are
surest to get it. He had not appeared to Peter and John, though these
men were to build up His Church and be responsible for His cause. To the
man whom He loved, who had stood by Him at His trial and in His death,
who had received His mother and was now to be in His place to her, He
made no sign, but allowed him to examine the empty tomb and retire. But
to this woman He discloses Himself at once. The love which sprang from a
sense of what she owed Him kept her at the tomb and threw her in His
way. Her sense of dependence was the magnetic point on earth which
attracted and disclosed His presence. Observe the situation. Earth lay
uncertain; some manifestation is needed to guide men at this critical
time; blank disappointment or pointless waiting broods everywhere. At
what point
As Mary answered the angels she heard a step behind or saw the tomb
darkened by a shadow, and on turning discerns dimly through her tears a
figure which naturally enough she supposes to be the gardener—not
because Jesus had assumed the clothes or lifted the tools of the
gardener, but because he was
Mary’s happiness is easily understood. No explanation is needed of the
peace and bliss she experienced when she heard herself owned as the
friend of the risen Lord, and called by her name in the familiar tone by
Him who stood now superior to all risk, assault, and evil. This perfect
joy is the reward of all in the measure of their faith. Christ rose, not
that He might bring ecstasy to Mary alone, but that He might fill all
things with His presence and His fulness, and that our joy also might be
full. Has He not called us also by name? Has He not given us at times a
consciousness that He understands our nature and what will satisfy
Mary had no time to reason and doubt. With one quick exclamation of
ecstatic recognition and joy she sprang towards Him. The one word “my
Master,” “Rabboni” had more of reverence in it than would be
conveyed by “my Teacher,” and it is legitimate here to use “Master” in
its wider sense.
But as Mary sprang forward, and in a transport of affection made as
though she would embrace the Lord, she is met by these quick words:
“Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.” Various
conjectural reasons for this prohibition have been supposed,—as, that
it was indecorous, an objection which Christ did not make when at a
dinner-table a woman
And if these words of Jesus seemed at first chilling and repellent, they were followed by words of unmistakable affection: “Go to my brothers, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.” This is the message of the risen Lord to men. He has become the link between us and all that is highest and best. We know that He has overcome all evil and left it behind; we know that He is worthy of the highest place, that by His righteousness and love He merits the highest place. We know that if such an one as He cannot go boldly to the highest heaven and claim God as His God and Father, there is no such thing as moral worth, and all effort, conscience, hope, responsibility, are vain and futile. We know that Christ must ascend to the highest, and yet we know also that He will not enter where we cannot follow. We know that His love binds Him to us as strongly as His rights carry Him to God. We can as little believe that He will abandon us and leave us out of His eternal enjoyment, as we can believe that God would refuse to own Him as Son. And it is this which Christ puts in the forefront of His message as risen and ascending: “I ascend unto My Father and your Father.” The joy that awaits Me with God awaits you also; the power I go to exercise is the power of your Father. This affinity for heaven which you see in Me is coupled with affinity for you. The holiness, the power, the victory, I have achieved and now enjoy are yours; I am your Brother: what I claim, I claim for you.
“When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had said this, He showed unto them His hands and His side. The disciples therefore were glad, when they saw the Lord. Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe. And after eight days again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into My side: and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”—John xx. 19–29.
Having saluted them and removed their consternation, He fulfils the
object of His appearance by giving them their commission, their
equipment, and their authority as His Apostles: “As the Father hath sent
Me, even so send I you”—to fulfil still the same purpose, to complete
the work begun, to stand to Him in the same intimate relation as He had
occupied to the Father. To impart to them at once all that they required
for the fulfilment of this commission He bestows upon them the Holy
Spirit, breathing on them, to convey to them the impression that He was
actually there and then communicating to them that which constituted the
very breath of His own life. This is His first act as Lord of all power
in heaven and on earth, and it is an act which inevitably conveys to
them the assurance that His life and theirs is one life. Impulse and
power to proclaim Him as risen they did not yet experience. They must be
allowed time to settle to some composure of mind and to some clear
thoughts after all the disturbing events of these last days. They must
also have the confirmatory testimony to the Resurrection, which could
only be furnished after repeated appearances of the Lord to themselves
and to others.
With this perfect equipment our Lord added the words: “Whosesoever sins
ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain,
they are retained.” These words have been the occasion of endless
controversy. See Steitz’ article Schlüsselgewalt in Herzog.
But when our Lord thus appeared on the day of His resurrection to His disciples one of their number was absent. This might not have been noticed had not the absentee been of a peculiar temper, and had not this peculiarity given rise to another visit of the Lord and to a very significant restoration of belief in the mind of a sceptical disciple. The absent disciple was commonly known as Thomas or Didymus, the Twin. On various occasions he appears somewhat prominently in the gospel-story, and his conduct and conversation on those occasions show him to have been a man very liable to take a desponding view of the future, apt to see the darker side of everything, but at the same time not wanting in courage, and of a strong and affectionate loyalty to Jesus. On one occasion, when our Lord intimated to the disciples His intention of returning within the dangerous frontier of Judæa, the others expostulated, but Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him”—an utterance in which his devoted loyalty to his Master, his dogged courage, and his despondent temperament are all apparent. And when, some time afterwards, Jesus was warning His disciples that He must shortly leave them and go to the Father, Thomas sees in the departure of his Master the extinction of all hope; life and the way to life seem to him treacherous phrases, he has eyes only for the gloom of death: “Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?”
The absence of such a man from the first meeting of the disciples was to
be expected. In this chapter there are reminiscences of Trench.
But though he might not be to blame for absenting himself, he was to
blame for refusing to accept the testimony of his friends when they
assured him they had seen Jesus risen. There is a tone of doggedness
that grates upon us in the words, “Except I shall see in His hands the
print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and
thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Some deference was
due to the testimony of men whom he knew to be truthful and as little
liable to delusion as himself. We cannot blame him for not being
convinced on the spot; a man cannot compel himself to believe anything
which does not itself compel belief. But the obstinate tone sounds as if
he was beginning to nurse his unbelief, than which there is no more
pernicious exercise of the human spirit. He demands, too, what may never
be possible—the evidence of his own senses. He claims
Obviously, therefore, the first inference we naturally draw from this
state of mind is that it is weak and wrong to lay hold of one difficulty
and insist that except this be removed we will not believe. Let this
difficulty about the constitution of Christ’s person, or this about the
impossibility of proving a miracle, or this about the inspiration of
Scripture be removed, and I will accept Christianity; let God grant me
this petition, and I will believe that He is the hearer of prayer; let
me see this inconsistency or that explained, and I will believe He
governs the course of things in this world. The understanding begins to
take a pride in demanding evidence more absolute and strict than has
satisfied others, and seems to display acuteness and fairness in holding
to one difficulty. The test which Thomas proposed to himself seemed an
accurate and legitimate one; but that he should have proposed it shows
that he was neglecting the evidence already afforded him, the testimony
of a number of men whose truthfulness he had for years made proof of.
True, it was a miracle they required him to believe; but would his own
senses be better authentication of a miracle than the unanimous
But if this tells seriously against Thomas, we must not leave out of
account what tells in his favour. It is true he was obstinate and
unreasonable and a shade vain in his refusal to accept the testimony of
the disciples, but it is also true that he was with the little Christian
community on the second Lord’s Day. This puts it beyond a doubt that he
was not so unbelieving as he seemed. That he did not now avoid the
society of those happy, hopeful men shows that he was far from unwilling
to become, if possible, a sharer in their hope and joy. Perhaps already
he was repenting having pledged himself to unbelief, as many another has
repented. Certainly he was not afraid of being convinced that his Lord
had arisen; on the contrary, he sought to be convinced of this and put
himself in the way of conviction. He had doubted because he wished to
believe, doubted because it was the full, entire, eternal confidence of
his soul that he was seeking a resting-place for. He knew the tremendous
importance to him of this question—knew that it was literally
everything to him if Christ was risen and was now alive and to be found
by His people, and therefore he was slow to believe. Therefore also he
kept in the company of believers; it was on their side he wished to get
out
It is this which distinguishes Thomas and all right-minded doubters from thorough-going and depraved unbelievers. The one wishes to believe, would give the world to be free from doubt, will go mourning all his days, will pine in body and sicken of life because he cannot believe: “he waits for light, but behold obscurity, for brightness, but he walks in darkness.” The other, the culpable unbeliever, thrives on doubt; he likes it, enjoys it, sports it, lives by it; goes about telling people his difficulties, as some morbid people have a fancy for showing you their sores or detailing their symptoms, as if everything which makes them different from other men, even though it be disease, were a thing to be proud of. Convince such a man of the truth and he is angry with you; you seem to have done him a wrong, as the mendicant impostor who has been gaining his livelihood by a bad leg or a useless eye is enraged when a skilled person restores to him the use of his limb or shows him that he can use it if he will. You may know a dishonest doubter by the fluency with which he states his difficulties or by the affectation of melancholy which is sometimes assumed. You may always know him by his reluctance to be convinced, by his irritation when he is forced to surrender some pet bulwark of unbelief. When you find a man reading one side of the question, courting difficulties, eagerly seizing on new objections, and provoked instead of thankful when any doubt is removed, you may be sure that this is not a scepticism of the understanding so much as an evil heart of unbelief.
The hesitancy and backwardness, the incredulity and niggardliness of
faith, of Thomas have done as
These two things were simply brought about in Thomas’ instance. The
disciples were again assembled on the following Sunday, probably in the
same place, consecrated for ever in their memories as the place where
their risen Lord had appeared. It is doubtful whether they were more
expectant of a fresh appearance of their Lord this day than they had
been any day throughout the week, but certainly every reader feels that
it is not without significance that after a blank and uneventful week
the first day should again be singled out to have this honour put upon
it. Some sanction is felt to be given to those meetings of His followers
which ever since have been assembled on the first day of the week; and
the experience of thousands can testify that this day seems still the
favourite with our Lord for manifesting Himself to His people, and for
renewing the joy which a week’s work has somewhat dimmed. Silently and
suddenly as before, without warning, without opening of doors, Jesus
stood in their midst. But there was no terror now—exclamations
And thus it frequently happens that a man who has vowed that he will not
believe except this or that be made plain finds, when he does believe,
that something short of his own requirements has convinced him. He finds
that though he was once so express in his demands for proof, and so
clear and accurate in his declarations of the precise amount of evidence
required, at the last he believes and could scarcely tell you why, could
not at least show his belief as the fine and clean result of a logical
process. Thomas had maintained that the rest were too easily satisfied,
but at the last he is himself satisfied with precisely the same proof as
they. And it is somewhat striking that in so many cases unbelief gives
way to belief, not by the removal of
The faith of Thomas is full of significance. First, it is helpful to our
own faith to hear so decisive and so full a confession coming from the
lips of such a man. John himself felt it to be so decisive that after
recording it he virtually closes the Gospel which he had undertaken to
write in order to persuade men that Jesus is the Son of God. After this
confession of Thomas he feels that no more can be said. He stops not for
want of matter; “many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His
disciples” which are not written in this Gospel. These seemed
sufficient. The man who is not moved by this will not be moved by any
further proof. Proof is not what such a doubter needs. Whatever we think
of the other Apostles, it is plain that Thomas at least was not
credulous. If Peter’s generous ardour carried him to a confession
unwarranted by the facts, if John saw in Jesus the reflection of his own
contemplative and loving nature, what are we to say of the faith of
Thomas? He had no determination to see only what he desired, no
readiness to accept baseless evidence and irresponsible testimony. He
knew the critical nature of the situation, the unique importance of the
matter presented to his faith. With him there was no frivolous or
thoughtless underrating of difficulties. He did not absolutely deny the
possibility of Christ’s resurrection, but he went very near doing so,
and showed that practically he considered it either impossible or
unlikely in the extreme. But in the end he believes. And the ease with
which he passes from doubt to faith proves his honesty
His confession, too, is fuller than that of the other disciples. The
week of painful questioning had brought clearly before his mind the
whole significance of the Resurrection, so that he does not hesitate to
own Jesus as his God. When a man of profound spiritual feeling and of
good understanding has doubts and hesitations from the very intensity
and subtlety of his scrutiny of what appears to him of transcendent
importance; when he sees difficulties unseen by men who are too little
interested in the matter to recognise them even though they stare them
in the face,—when such a man, with the care and anxiety that befit the
subject, considers for himself the claims of Christ, and as the result
yields himself to the Lord, he sees more in Christ than other men do,
and is likely to be steadier in his allegiance than if he had slurred
over apparent obstacles instead of removing them, and stifled objections
in place of answering them. It was not the mere seeing of Christ risen
which prompted the full confession of Thomas. But slowly during that
week of suspense he had been taking in the full significance of the
Resurrection, coming at the close of such a life as he knew the Lord had
lived. The very idea that such a thing was believed by the rest forced
his mind back upon the exceptional character of Jesus, His wonderful
works, the intimations He had given of His connection with God. The
sight of Him risen came as the keystone of the arch, which being wanting
all had fallen to the ground, but being inserted clenched the whole, and
could now bear any weight. The truths about His person which Thomas had
begun to explain away return upon his mind with resistless force, and
each
This was a rare and memorable hour for Thomas, one of those moments that
mark a man’s spirit permanently. He is carried entirely out of himself,
and sees nothing but his Lord. The whole energy of his spirit goes out
to Him undoubtingly, unhesitatingly, unrestrained. Everything is before
him in the person of Christ; nothing causes the least diversion or
distraction. For once his spirit has found perfect peace. There is
nothing in the unseen world that can dismay him, nothing in the future
on which he can spend a thought; his soul rests in the Person before
him. He does not draw back, questioning whether the Lord will now
receive him; he fears no rebuke; he does not scrutinise his spiritual
condition, nor ask whether his faith is sufficiently spiritual. He
cannot either go back upon his past conduct, or analyse his present
feelings, or spend one thought of any kind upon himself. The scrupulous,
sceptical man is all devoutness and worship; the thousand objections are
swept from his mind; and all by the mere presence of Christ He is rapt
in this one object; mind and soul are filled with the regained Lord; he
forgets himself; the passion of joy with which he regains in a
transfigured form his lost Leader absorbs him quite: “he had lost a
possible king of the Jews; he finds his Lord and his God.” There can be
no question here about himself, his
On such a man even the Lord’s benediction were useless. This is the highest, happiest, rarest state of the human soul. When a man has been carried out of himself by the clear vision of Christ’s worth; when his mind and heart are filled with the supreme excellence of Christ; when in His presence he feels he can but worship, bowing in his soul before actually achieved human perfection rooted in and expressing the true Divine glory of love ineffable; when face to face, soul to soul, with the highest and most affecting known goodness, conscious that he now in this very moment stands within touch of the Supreme, that he has found and need never more lose perfect love, perfect goodness, perfect power,—when a man is transported by such a recognition of Christ, this is the true ecstasy, this is man’s ultimate blessedness.
And this blessedness is competent not only to those who saw with the
bodily eye, but much more to those who have not seen and yet have
believed. Why do we rob ourselves of it, and live as if it were not
so—as if such certitude and the joy that accompanies it had passed from
earth and were no more possible? We cannot apply Thomas’ test, but we
can test his test; or, like him, we can forego it, and rest on wider,
deeper evidence. Was he right in so eagerly confessing his belief? And
are we right to hesitate, to doubt, to despond? Should we have counted
it strange if, when the Lord addressed Thomas, he had sullenly shrunk
back among the rest, or merely given a verbal assent to Christ’s
identity, showing no sign of joy? And are we to accept the signs He
gives us
“After these things Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias; and He manifested Himself on this wise. There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing. They say unto him, We also come with thee. They went forth, and entered into the boat; and that night they took nothing. But when day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach: howbeit the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus therefore saith unto them, Children, have ye aught to eat? They answered Him, No. And He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his coat about him (for he was naked), and cast himself into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat (for they were not far from the land, but about two hundred cubits off), dragging the net full of fishes. So when they got out upon the land, they see a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now taken. Simon Peter therefore went up, and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, a hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, the net was not rent. Jesus saith unto them, Come and break your fast. And none of the disciples durst inquire of Him, Who art Thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus cometh, and taketh the bread, and giveth them, and the fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after that He was risen from the dead.”—John xxi. 1–14.
When the disciples had spent the Passover week at Jerusalem, they
naturally returned to their homes in Galilee. The house of the old
fisherman Zebedee
They are back among the familiar scenes, the boats are lying on the beach, their old companions are sitting about mending their nets as they themselves had been doing a year or two before when summoned by Jesus to follow Him on the moment. But though old associations are thus laying hold of them again, there is evidence that new influences are also at work; for with the fishermen are found Nathanael and others who were there, not for the sake of old associations, but of the new and common interest they had in Christ. The seven men have kept together; they participate in an experience of which their fellow-townsmen know nothing; but they must live. Hints have been thrown out that seven strong men must not depend on other arms than their own for a livelihood. And as they stand together that evening and watch boat after boat push off, the women wishing their husbands and sons good-speed, the men cheerily responding and busily getting their tackle in trim, with a look of pity at the group of disciples, Peter can stand it no longer, but makes for his own or some unoccupied boat with the words, “I go a-fishing.” The rest were only needing such an invitation. The whole charm and zest of the old life rushes back upon them, each takes his own accustomed place in the boat, each hand finds itself once more at home at the long-suspended task, and with an ease that surprises themselves they fall back into the old routine.
And as we watch their six oars flashing in the setting sun, and Peter
steering them to the familiar fishing
But apparently they were not destined to find even this so easy as they
expected. There was One watching that boat, following it through the
night as they tried place after place, and He was resolved that they
should not be filled with false ideas about the satisfactoriness of
their old calling. All night they toiled, but caught nothing. Every old
device was tried; the fancies of each particular kind of fish were
humoured,
In every trifling act character betrays itself. It is John who is first
to recognise Jesus; it is Peter who
The reason of Peter’s impetuousness on this occasion may partly have been that their fishing vessel was now as near the land as they could get it, and that he was unwilling to wait till they should get the small boat unfastened. The rest, we read, came ashore, not in the large vessel in which they had spent the night, but in the little boat they carried with them, the reason being added, “for they were not far from land”—that is to say, not far enough to use the larger vessel any longer. Peter, therefore, ran no risk of drowning. But his action reveals the eagerness of love. No sooner has he only heard from another that his Lord is near, than the fish for which he had been watching and waiting all night are forgotten, and for him, the master of the vessel, the net and all its contents might have sunk to the bottom of the lake. What this action of Peter suggested to the Lord is apparent from the question which a few minutes later He put to him: “Lovest thou Me more than these?”
Neither would Peter have sustained any serious loss even though his nets
had been carried away, for when he reaches the shore he finds that the
Lord was to be
The significance of this incident has perhaps been somewhat lost by looking at it too exclusively as symbolical. No doubt it was so; but it carried in the first place a most important lesson in its bare, literal facts. We have already noticed the precarious position in which the Church at this time was. And it will be useful to us in many ways to endeavour to rid our mind of all fancies about the beginning of the Christian Church, and look at the simple, unvarnished facts here presented to our view. And the plain and significant circumstance which first invites our attention is, that the nucleus of the Church, the men on whom the faith of Christ depended for its propagation, were fishermen.
This was not merely the picturesque drapery assumed by men of ability so
great and character so commanding that all positions in life were alike
to them. Let us recall to memory the group of men we have seen standing
at a corner in a fishing village or with whom we have spent a night at
sea fishing, and whose talk has been at the best old stories of their
craft or legends
And this is the reason of this miracle; this is the reason why our Lord
so pointedly convinced them that without Him they could not make a
livelihood: that they might fish all the night through and resort to
every device their experience could contrive and yet could catch
nothing, but that He could give them sustenance as He pleased. If any
one thinks that this is a secular, shallow way of looking at the
miracle, let him ask what it is that chiefly keeps men from serving God
as they think they should, what it is that induces men to live so much
for the world and so little for God, what it is that prevents them from
following out what conscience whispers is the right course. Is it not
mainly the feeling that by doing God’s will we ourselves are likely to
be not so well off, not so sufficiently provided for. Above all things,
therefore, both we and the Apostles need to be convinced that our Lord,
who asks us to follow Him, is much better able to provide for us than we
ourselves are. They had the same transition
And if we carefully read our own experience, might we not see, as
clearly as the Apostles that morning saw, the utter futility of our own
schemes for bettering ourselves in the world? Is it not the simple fact
that we also have toiled through every watch of the night, have borne
fatigue and deprivation, have abandoned the luxuries of life and given
ourselves to endure hardness, have tried contrivance after contrivance
to win our cherished project, and all in vain? Our net is empty and
light at the rising sun as it was at the setting. Have we not again and
again found that when every boat round was being filled we drew nothing
but disappointment? Have we not many times come back empty-handed to our
starting-place? But no matter how much we have thus lost or missed every
man will tell you it is much better so than if he had succeeded, if only
his own ill-success has induced him to trust Christ, if only it has
taught him really what he used with everybody else verbally to
say,—that in that Person dimly discerned through the light that begins
to glimmer round our disappointments there is
But this being so, it being the case that our Lord came this second time
and called them away from their occupations to follow Him, and showed
them how amply He could support them, they could not but remember how He
had once before in very similar circumstances summoned them to leave
their occupation as fishermen and to become fishers of men. They could
not but interpret the present by the former miracle, and read in it a
renewed summons to the work of catching men, and a renewed assurance
that in that work they should not draw empty nets. Most suitably, then,
does this miracle stand alone, the only one wrought after the
Resurrection, and most suitably does it stand last, giving the Apostles
a symbol which should continually reanimate them to their laborious
work. Their work of preaching was well symbolised by sowing; they
passed rapidly through the field of the world, at every step scattering
broadcast the words of everlasting life, not examining minutely the
hearts into which these words might fall, not knowing where they might
find prepared soil and where they might find inhospitable rock, but
assured that after a time whoso followed in their track should see the
fruit of their words. Not less significant is the figure of the net;
they let down the net of their good tidings, not seeing what persons
were really enclosed in it, but trusting that He who had said, “Cast
your net on the right side of the ship,” knew what souls it would fall
over. By this miracle He gave the Apostles to understand that not only
when with them in the flesh could He give them success. Even now after
His resurrection and
This is the miracle which has again and again restored the drooping
faith and discouraged spirit of all Christ’s followers who endeavour to
bring men under His influence, or in any way to spread out this
influence over a wider surface. Again and again their hope is
disappointed and their labour vain; the persons they wish to influence
glide out from below the net, and it is drawn empty; new opportunities
are watched for, and new opportunities arrive and are used, but with the
same result; the patient doggedness of the fisherman long used to turns
of ill-success is reproduced in the persevering efforts of parental love
or friendly anxiety for the good of others, but often the utmost
patience is at last worn out, the nets are piled away, and the gloom of
disappointment settles on the mind. Yet this apparently is the very hour
which the Lord often chooses to give the long-sought-for success; in the
dawn, when already the fish might be supposed to see the net and more
vigilantly to elude it, our last and almost careless effort is made, and
we achieve a substantial, countable success—a success not doubtful, but
which we could accurately detail to others, which makes a mark in the
memory like the hundred and fifty and three of these fishers, and which
were we to relate to others they must acknowledge that the whole weary
night of toil is amply repaid. And it is then a man recognises who it is
that has directed his labour—it is then he for the moment forgets even
the success in the more gladdening knowledge that such a success could
only have been given by One, and that it is the Lord
The Evangelist adds, “None of the disciples durst ask Him, Who art Thou?
knowing that it was the Lord”—a remark which unquestionably implies
that there was some ground for the question, Who art Thou? They knew it
was the Lord from the miracle He had wrought and from His manner of
speaking and acting; but yet there was in His appearance something
strange, something which, had it not also inspired them with awe, would
have prompted the question, Who art Thou? The question was always on
their lips, as they found afterwards by comparing notes with one
another, but none of them durst put it. There was this time no
certification of His identity further than the aid He had given, no
showing of His hands and feet. It was, that is to say, by faith now they
must know Him, not by bodily eyesight; if they wished to deny Him, there
was room for doing so, room for questioning who He was. This was in the
most delicate correspondence with the whole incident. The miracle was
wrought as the foundation and encouraging symbol of their whole vocation
as fishers of men during His bodily absence; it was wrought in order to
encourage them to lean on One whom they could not see, whom they could
at best dimly descry on another element from themselves, and whom they
could not recognise as their Lord apart from the wonderful aid He gave
them; and accordingly even when they come ashore there is something
mysterious and strange about His appearance, something that baffles
eyesight, something that would no longer have satisfied a Thomas,
something therefore which is the fit preparation for a state in which
they were to live altogether by faith and not at all by sight. This
This, then, explains why it was that our Lord appeared only to His
friends after His resurrection. It might have been expected that on His
rising from the dead He would have shown Himself as openly as before He
suffered, and would specially have shown Himself to those who had
crucified Him; but this was not the case. The Apostles themselves were
struck with this circumstance, for in one of his earliest discourses
Peter remarks that He showed Himself “not to all the people, but unto
witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with
Him after He rose from the dead.” And it is obvious from the incident
before us and from the fact that when our Lord showed Himself to five
hundred disciples at once in Galilee, probably a day or two after this,
some even of them doubted—it is obvious from this that no good
In other words, they needed to be able to certify Christ’s spiritual
identity as well as His physical sameness. They were so to know Him and
so to sympathise with His character that they might be able after the
Resurrection to recognise Him by the continuity of that character and
the identity of purpose He maintained. They were by daily intercourse
with Him to be gradually led to dependence upon Him, and to the
strongest attachment to His person; so that when they became witnesses
to Him they might not only be able to say, “Jesus whom you crucified
rose again,” but might be able to illustrate His character by their
own,
And what we need now and always is, not men who can witness to the fact of resurrection, but who can bear in upon our spirits the impression that there is a risen Lord and a risen life through dependence on Him.
“So when they had broken their fast, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My lambs. He saith to him again a second time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Tend My sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me? And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep.”—John xxi. 15–17.
When the Lord made Himself known by His miraculous action while yet the
disciples were too far off to see His features, Peter on the moment
forgot the fish he had toiled for all night, and though master of the
vessel left the net to sink or go to pieces for all he cared, and sprang
into the water to greet his Lord. Jesus Himself was the first to see the
significance of the act. This vehemence of welcome was most grateful to
Him. It witnessed to an affection which was at this crisis the most
valuable element in the world. And that it was shown not by solemn
protestations made in public or as part of a religious service, but in
so apparently secular and trivial an incident, makes it all the more
valuable. Jesus hailed with the deepest satisfaction Peter’s impetuous
abandonment of his fishing gear and impatient springing to greet Him,
because as plainly as possible it showed that after all Christ was
incomparably more to him than the old life. And therefore when the first
excitement had cooled down Jesus gives Peter an opportunity of putting
this in words by asking him, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more
than these?” Am I to interpret this action of yours as really meaning
what it seems to mean—that I am more to you than boat, nets, old ways,
old associations? Your letting go the net at the critical moment, and so
risking the loss of all, seemed to say that you love Me more than your
sole means of gaining a livelihood. Well, is it so? Am I to draw this
conclusion? Am I to understand that with a mind made up you do love Me
more than
Thus mildly does the Lord rebuke Peter by suggesting that in his recent conduct there were appearances which must prevent these present expressions of his love from being accepted as perfectly genuine and trustworthy. Thus gracefully does He give Peter opportunity to renew the profession of attachment he had so shamefully denied by three times over swearing that he not only did not love Jesus, but knew nothing whatever about the man. And if Peter at first resented the severity of the scrutiny, he must afterwards have perceived that no greater kindness could have been done him than thus to press him to clear and resolved confession. Peter had probably sometimes compared himself to Judas, and thought that the difference between his denial and Judas’ betrayal was slight. But the Lord distinguished. He saw that Peter’s sin was unpremeditated, a sin of surprise, while his heart was essentially sound.
We also must distinguish between the forgetfulness of Christ, to which
we are carried by the blinding and confusing throng of this world’s ways
and fashions and temptations, and a betrayal of Christ that has in it
something deliberate. We admit that we have acted as if we had no
desire to serve Christ and to bring our whole life within His kingdom;
but it is one thing to deny Christ through thoughtlessness, through
inadvertence, through sudden passion or insidious, unperceived
temptation—another thing consciously and habitually to betake ourselves
to ways which He condemns, and to let the whole form, appearance, and
meaning of our life plainly declare that our regard for
There are many who when the alternative is laid before them in cold
blood choose without hesitation to abide with Christ at all costs. Were
we at this moment as conscious as Peter was when this question fell from
the lips of the living Person before him, whose eyes were looking for
his reply, that we now must give our answer, many of us, God helping us,
would say with Peter, “Thou knowest that I love Thee.” We could not say
that our old associations are easily broken, that it costs us nothing to
hang up the nets with which so skilfully we have gathered in the world’s
substance to us, or to take a last look of the boat which has so
faithfully and merrily carried us over many a threatening wave and made
our hearts glad within us. But our hearts are not set on these things;
they do not command us as Thou dost; and we can abandon whatever hinders
us from following and serving Thee. Happy the man who with Peter feels
that the question is an easily answered one, who can say, “I may often
have blundered, I may
In this restoration of Peter our Lord, then, tests not the conduct, but the heart. He recognises that while the conduct is the legitimate and normal test of a man’s feeling, yet there are times at which it is fair and useful to examine the heart itself apart from present manifestations of its condition; and that the solace which a poor soul gets after great sin, in refusing to attempt to show the consistency of his conduct with love to Christ, and in clinging simply to the consciousness that with all his sin there is most certainly a surviving love to Christ, is a solace sanctioned by Christ, and which He would have it enjoy. This is encouraging, because a Christian is often conscious that, if he is to be judged solely by his conduct, he must be condemned. He is conscious of blemishes in his life that seem quite to contradict the idea that he is animated by a regard for Christ. He knows that men who see his infirmities and outbreaks may be justified in supposing him a self-deceived or pretentious hypocrite, and yet in his own soul he is conscious of love to Christ. He can as little doubt this as he can doubt that he has shamefully denied this in his conduct. He would rather be judged by omniscience than by a judgment that can scrutinise only his outward conduct. He appeals in his own heart from those who know in part to Him who knows all things. He knows perfectly well that if men are to be expected to believe that he is a Christian he must prove this by his conduct; nay, he understands that love must find for itself a constant and consistent expression in conduct; but it remains an indubitable satisfaction to be conscious that, despite all his conduct has said to the contrary, he does in his soul love the Lord.
The determination of Christ to clear away all misunderstanding and all doubtfulness about the relation His professed followers hold to Him is strikingly exhibited in His subjecting Peter to a second and third interrogation. He invites Peter to search deeply into his spirit and to ascertain the very truth. It is the most momentous of all questions; and our Lord positively refuses to take a superficial, careless, matter-of-course answer. He will thus question, and thrice question, and probe to the quick all His followers. He seeks to scatter all doubt about our relation to Him, and to make our living connection with Him clear to our own consciousness, and to place our whole life on this solid basis of a clear, mutual understanding between Him and us. Our happiness depends upon our meeting His question with care and sincerity. Only the highest degree of human friendship will permit this persistent questioning, this beating of us back and back on our own feelings, deeper and deeper into the very heart of our affections, as if still it were doubtful whether we had not given an answer out of mere politeness or profession or sentiment. The highest degree of human friendship demands certainty, a basis on which it can build, a love it can entirely trust. Christ had made good His right thus to question His followers and to require a love that was sure of itself, because on His part He was conscious of such a love and had given proof that His affection was no mere sentimental, unfruitful compassion, but a commanding, consuming, irrepressible, unconquerable love—a love that left Him no choice, but compelled Him to devote Himself to men and do them all the good in His power.
Peter’s self-knowledge is aided by the form the
Now, to apprehend the significance of this question is to apprehend what
Christianity is. Our Lord was on the point of leaving the world; and He
left its future, the future of the sheep He loved so well and had spent
His all upon, in the keeping of Peter and the rest, and the one security
He demanded of them was the confession of love for Himself. He did not
draw up a creed or a series of articles binding them to this and that
duty, to special methods of governing the Church or to special truths
they were to teach it; He did not summon them into the house of Peter or
of Zebedee, and bid them affix their signatures or marks to such a
document. He rested the whole future of the work He had begun at such
cost on their love for Him. This security alone He took from them. This
was the sufficient guarantee of their fidelity and of their wisdom. It
is not great mental ability that is wanted for the furtherance of
Christ’s aims in the world. It is love of what is best, devotion to
goodness. No question is made about their knowledge; they are not asked
what views they have about the death of Christ; they are not required to
analyse their feelings and say
The significance of this cannot be exaggerated. What is Christianity? It
is God’s way of getting hold of us, of attaching us to what is good, of
making us holy, perfect men. And the method He uses is the presentation
of goodness in a personal form. He makes goodness supremely attractive
by exhibiting to us its reality and its beauty and its permanent and
multiplying power in Jesus Christ. Absolutely simple and absolutely
natural is God’s method. The building up of systems of theology, the
elaborate organisation of churches, the various, expensive, and
complicated methods of men, how artificial do they seem when set
alongside of the simplicity and naturalness of God’s method! Men are to
be made perfect. Show them, then, that human perfection is perfect love
for them, and can they fail to love it and themselves become perfect?
That is all. The mission of Christ and the salvation of men through Him
are as natural and as simple as the mother’s caress of her child. Christ
came to earth because He loved men and could not help coming. Being on
earth, He expresses what is
And God’s method is as effectual as it is simple. Men do learn to love Christ. And this love secures everything. As a bond between two persons, nothing but love is to be depended upon. Love alone carries us out of ourselves and makes other interests than our own dear to us.
But Christ requires us to love Him and invites us to consider whether we do now love Him, because this love is an index to all that is in us of a moral kind. There is so much implied in our love of Him, and so much inextricably intertwined with it, that its presence or absence speaks volumes regarding our whole inward condition. It is quite true that nothing is more difficult to understand than the causes of love. It seems to ally itself with equal readiness with pity and with admiration. It is attracted sometimes by similarity of disposition, sometimes by contrast. It is now stirred by gratitude and again by the conferring of favours. Some persons whom we feel we ought to love we do not draw to. Others who seem comparatively unattractive strongly draw us. But there are always some persons in every society who are universally beloved; and these are persons who are not only good, but whose goodness is presented in an attractive form—who have some personal charm, in appearance or manner or disposition. If some churlish person does not own the ascendency, you know that the churlishness goes deep into the character.
But this poorly illustrates the ascendency of Christ
But the presence or absence in us of the love of Christ is an index not
only to our present state, but a prophecy of all that is to be. The love
of Christ was that which enabled and impelled the Apostles to live great
and energetic lives. It was this simple affection which made a life of
aggression and reformation possible to them. This gave them the right
ideas and the sufficient impulse. And it is this affection which is open
to us all and which equally now as at first impels to all good. Let the
love of Christ possess any soul and that soul cannot avoid being a
blessing to the world around. Christ scarcely needed to say to Peter,
“Feed My sheep; be helpful to those for whom I died,” because in time
Peter must have seen that this was his calling. Love gives us sympathy
and intelligence. Our conscience is enlightened by sympathy with the
person we love;
But are we not thus pronouncing our own condemnation? This is, it is
easy to see, the true and natural education of the human spirit—to love
Christ, and so learn to see with His eyes and become enamoured of His
aims and grow up to His likeness. But where in
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. Now this he spake, signifying by what manner of death he should glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me. Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned back on His breast at the supper, and said, Lord, who is he that betrayed Thee? Peter therefore seeing Him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me. This saying therefore went forth among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, that he should not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? This is the disciple which beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written.”—John xxi. 18–25.
To a man of Peter’s impulsive and independent temperament no future
could seem less desirable than that in which he should be unable to
choose for himself and do as he pleased. Yet this was the future to
which the love he was now expressing committed him. This love, which at
present was a delightful stimulus to his activities, diffusing joy
through all his being, would gain such mastery over him that he would be
impelled by it to a course of life full of arduous undertaking and
entailing much suffering. The free, spontaneous, self-considering life
to which Peter had been accustomed; the spirit of independence and right
of choosing his own employments which had so clearly shown itself the
evening before in his words, “I go a-fishing”; the inability to own
hindrances and recognise obstacles which so distinctly betrayed itself
in his leaping into the water,—this confident freedom of action was
soon to be a thing of the past. This ardour was not useless; it was the
genuine heat which, when plunged in the chilling disappointments of
life, would make veritable steel of Peter’s resolution. But such trial
of Peter’s love did await it; and it awaits all love. The young may be
arrested by suffering, or they may be led away from the directions they
had chosen for themselves; but the chances of suffering increase with
years, and what is possible in youth becomes probable and almost certain
in the lapse of a lifetime. So long as our Christian life utters itself
in ways we choose for ourselves and in which much active energy can be
spent and much influence exerted, there is so much in
The contrast drawn by our Lord between the youth and age of Peter is
couched in language so general that it throws light on the usual course
of human life and the broad characteristics of human experience. In
youth attachment to Christ will naturally show itself in such gratuitous
and yet most pardonable and even touching exhibitions of love as Peter
here made. There is a girding of oneself to duty and to all manner of
attainment. There is no hesitation, no shivering on the brink, no
weighing of difficulties; but an impulsive and almost headstrong
commital of oneself to duties unthought of by others, an honest surprise
at the laxity of the Church, much brave speaking, and much brave
But however this may be, there can be no doubt that in youth we are free to choose. Life lies before us like the unhewn block of marble, and we may fashion it as we please. Circumstances may seem to necessitate our departing from one line of life and choosing another; but, notwithstanding, all the possibilities are before us. We may make ours a high and noble career; life is not as yet spoiled for us, or determined, while we are young. The youth is free to walk whither he will; he is not yet irrecoverably pledged to any particular calling; he is not yet doomed to carry to the grave the marks of certain habits, but may gird on himself whatever habit may fit him best and leave him freest for Christ’s service.
Peter heard the words “Follow Me,” and rose and went after Jesus; John
did the same without any special call. There are those who need definite
impulses, others who are guided in life by their own constant love. John
would always absorbedly follow. Peter had yet to learn to follow, to own
a leader. He had to learn to seek the guidance of his Lord’s will, to
wait upon that will and to interpret it—never an easy thing to do, and
least of all easy to a man like Peter, fond of managing, of taking the
lead, too hasty to let his thoughts settle and his spirit fixedly
consider the mind of Christ.
It is obvious that when Jesus uttered the words “Follow Me,” He moved
away from the spot where they had all been standing together. And yet,
coming as they did after so very solemn a colloquy, these words must
have carried to Peter’s mind a further significance than merely an
intimation that the Lord wished His company then. Both in the mind of
the Lord and of Peter there seems still to have been a vivid remembrance
of Peter’s denial; and as the Lord has given him opportunity of
confessing his love, and has hinted what this love will lead him to, He
appropriately reminds him that any penalties he might suffer for his
love were all in the path which led straight to where Christ Himself for
ever is. The superiority to earthly distresses which Christ now enjoyed
would one day be his. But while he is beginning to take in these
thoughts Peter turns and sees John following; and, with that promptness
to interfere which characterised him, he asked Jesus what was to become
of this disciple. This question betrayed a want of steadiness and
seriousness in contemplating his own duty, and met therefore with
rebuke: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
follow thou Me.” Peter was prone to intermeddle with matters beyond his
sphere, and to manage other people’s affairs for them. Such a
disposition always betrays a lack of devotion to our own calling. To
brood over the easier lot of our friend, to envy him his capacity and
success, to grudge him his advantages and happiness, is to betray an
injurious weakness in ourselves. To be unduly anxious about the future
of any part of Christ’s Church, as if He had omitted to arrange for that
future, to act as if we were essential to the well-being of some part of
Christ’s Church, is to intermeddle like Peter. To show astonishment
Coming to the close of this Gospel, we cannot but most seriously ask
ourselves whether in our case it has accomplished its object. We have
admired its wonderful compactness and literary symmetry. It is a
pleasure to study a writing so perfectly planned and wrought out with
such unfailing beauty and finish. No one can read this Gospel without
being the better for it, for the mind cannot pass through so many
significant scenes without being instructed, nor be present at so many
pathetic passages without being softened and purified. But after all the
admiration we have spent upon the form and the sympathy we have felt
with the substance of this most wonderful of literary productions, there
remains the question: Has it accomplished its object? John has none of
the artifice of the modern teacher who veils his didactic purpose from
the reader. He plainly avows his object in writing: “These signs are
written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that believing ye might have life through His name.” After half a
century’s experience and consideration, he selects from the abundant
material afforded him in the life of Jesus those incidents and
conversations which had most powerfully impressed himself and which
seemed most significant to others, and these he presents
John, however, does not expect that men will believe
The Evangelist tells us how the incredulous but guileless Nathanael was
convinced of the supremacy of Jesus, and how the hesitating Nicodemus
was constrained to acknowledge Him a teacher sent by God. And so he
cites witness after witness, never garbling their testimony, not making
all bear the one uniform testimony which he himself bears; nay, showing
with as exact a truthfulness how unbelief grew, as how faith rose from
one degree to another, until the climax is reached in Thomas’s explicit
confession, “My Lord and my God!” No doubt some of the confessions which
John records were not acknowledgments of the full and
In this Gospel, then, we have various forms of evidence. We have the
testimonies of men who had seen and heard and known Jesus, and who,
though Jews, and therefore intensely prejudiced against such a
conception, enthusiastically owned that Christ was in
But in reading this Gospel one cannot but remark that John lays great
stress on the miracles which Christ wrought. In fact, in announcing his
object in writing it is especially to the miracles he alludes when he
says, “These signs are written that ye might believe.” In recent years
there has been a reaction against the use of miracles as evidence of
Christ’s claim to be sent by God. This reaction was the necessary
consequence of a defective view of the nature, meaning, and use of
In regard to miracles the two truths which must be held are: first, that they were wrought to make known the character and the purposes of God; and, secondly, that they serve as evidence that Jesus was the revealer of the Father. They not only authenticate the revelation; they themselves reveal God. They not only direct attention to the Teacher; they are themselves the lessons He teaches.
During the Irish famine agents were sent from England to the distressed
districts. Some were sent to make inquiries, and had credentials
explaining who they were and on what mission; they carried documents
identifying and authenticating them. Other agents went with money and
waggon-loads of flour, which were their own authentication. The
charitable gifts told their own story; and while they accomplished the
object the charitable senders of the mission had in
Our Lord always refused to show any bare authentication. He refused to leap off a pinnacle of the Temple, which could serve no other purpose than to prove He had power to work miracles. He resolutely and uniformly declined to work mere wonders. When the people clamoured for a miracle, and cried, “How long dost Thou make us doubt?” when they pressed Him to the uttermost to perform some marvellous work solely and merely for the sake of proving His Messiahship or His mission, He regularly declined. On no occasion did He admit that such authentication of Himself was a sufficient cause for a miracle. The main object, then, of the miracles plainly was not evidential. They were not wrought chiefly, still less solely, for the purpose of convincing the onlookers that Jesus wielded super-human power.
What, then, was their object? Why did Jesus so constantly work them? He
wrought them because of His sympathy with suffering men,—never for
Himself, always for others; never to accomplish political designs or to
aggrandise the rich, but to heal the sick, to relieve the mourning;
never to excite wonder, but to accomplish some practical good. He
wrought them because in His heart He bore a Divine compassion for men
and felt for us in all that distresses and destroys. His heart was
burdened by the great, universal griefs and weaknesses of men: “Himself
took our infirmities and
Supposing, then, that Christ came to earth to teach men the fatherhood
and fatherliness of God—could He have more effectually taught it than
by these miracles of healing? Supposing He wished to lodge in the minds
of men the conviction that man, body and soul, was cared for by God;
that the diseased, the helpless, the wretched were valued by Him,—were
not these works of healing the most effectual means of making this
revelation? Have not these works of healing in point of fact proved the
most efficient lessons in those
And, as John is careful throughout his Gospel to show, they suggest even more than they directly teach. John uniformly calls them “signs,” and on more than one occasion explains what they were signs of. He that loved men so keenly and so truly could not be satisfied with the bodily relief He gave to a few. The power He wielded over disease and over nature seemed to hint at a power supreme in all departments. If He gave sight to the blind, was He not also the light of the world? If He fed the hungry, was He not Himself the bread which came down from heaven?
The miracles, then, are evidences that Christ is the revealer of the Father, because they do reveal the Father. As the rays of the sun are evidences of the sun’s existence and heat, so are the miracles evidences that God was in Christ. As the natural and unstudied actions of a man are the best evidences of his character; as almsgiving that is not meant to disclose a charitable spirit, but for the relief of the poor, is evidence of charity; as irrepressible wit, and not clever sayings studied for effect, is the best evidence of wit—so these miracles, though not wrought for the sake of proving Christ’s union with the Father, but for the sake of men, do most effectually prove that He was one with the Father. Their evidence is all the stronger because it was not their primary object.
But for us the question remains, What has this Gospel
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