RECEPTION CHRIST MET WITH
JOHN -18.
In describing the Word of God, John
mentions two attributes of His by which His relation
to men becomes apparent: “All things were
made by Him,” and “the life was the light
of men.” By whom were all things made?
what is the originating force which has produced the
world? how are we to account for the existence, the
harmony, and the progress of the universe? these
are questions which must always be put. Everywhere
in nature force and intelligence appear; the supply
of life and power is unfailing, and the unconscious
planets are as regular and harmonious in their action
as the creatures that are endowed with conscious intelligence
and the power of self-guidance. That the whole
universe is one does not admit of a doubt. Far
as the astronomer can search into infinite space,
he finds the same laws and one plan, and no evidence
of another hand or another mind. To what is this
unity to be referred? John here affirms that
the intelligence and power which underlie all things
belong to the Word of God: “without Him
was not anything made which was made.”
“In Him was life.”
In this Divine Being, who was “in the beginning”
before all things, there was that which gives existence
to all else. “And the life was the light
of men.” That life which appears in the
harmony and progress of inanimate nature, and in the
wonderfully manifold and yet related forms of animal
existence, appears in man as “light” intellectual
and moral light, reason and conscience. All the
endowment possessed by man as a moral being, capable
of self-determination and of choosing what is morally
good, springs from the one fountain of life which
exists in the Word of God.
It is in the light of this close relationship
of the Word to the world and to men that John views
the reception He met with when He became flesh and
dwelt among us. This reception forms the great
tragedy of human history. “In Agamemnon
returning to his palace after ten years’ absence,
and falling by the hand of his unfaithful spouse, we
have the event which is tragical par excellence
in pagan history. But what is that outrage when
compared with the theocratic tragedy? The God
invoked by the nation appears in His temple, and is
crucified by His own worshippers.” To John
it seemed as if the relationship borne by the Word
to those who rejected Him was the tragical element
in the rejection.
Three different aspects of this relationship
are mentioned, that the blindness of the rejecters
may more distinctly be seen. First, he says,
although the very light that was in man was derived
from the Word, and it was by His endowment they had
any power lo recognise what was illuminating and helpful
to their spiritual nature, they yet shut their eyes
to the source of light when presented in the Word Himself.
“The life was the light of men.... And
the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness apprehended
it not.” This is the general statement of
the universal experience of the Eternal Word, and
it is illustrated in His incarnate experience summarily
related in verses 10 and 11. Again: “He
was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and
the world knew Him not.” So little had
men understood the source of their own being, and so
little had they learned to know the significance and
purpose of their existence, that when their Creator
came they did not recognise Him. And thirdly,
even the narrow and carefully-trained circle of the
Jews failed to recognise Him; “He came unto
His own” to everything which had
pointedly and of set purpose spoken of Him, and could
not have existed but to teach His character “and
His own received Him not.”
1. “The light shineth in
the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”
As yet John has said nothing of the Incarnation, and
is speaking of the Word in His eternal or pre-incarnate
state. And one thing he desires to proclaim regarding
the Word is, that although it is from Him every man
has such light as he has, yet this light is commonly
rendered useless, and is not cherished. As it
is from the Word, from God’s uttered will, that
all men have life, so it is from the same source that
all the light which is in reason and in conscience
is derived. Before the Word appeared in the world,
and shone out as the true light (ver. 9), He
was in all rational creatures as their life and light,
imparting to men a sense of right and wrong, and shining
in their heart with some of the brightness of a Divine
presence. This sense of a connection with God
and eternity, and this moral faculty, although cherished
by some, were commonly not “comprehended.”
Evil deeds have been suffered to darken conscience,
and it fails to admit the true light.
2. “He was in the world,
and the world was made by Him, and the world knew
Him not.” When our Lord came to earth the
heathen world was mainly represented by the Roman
Empire, and one of the earliest events of His life
on earth was His enrolment as a subject of that empire.
If we had been invited before His coming to imagine
what would be the result upon this empire of His appearance,
we should probably have expected something very different
from that which actually happened. The real Sovereign
is to appear; the Being who made all that is, is to
come and visit His possessions. Will not a thrill
of glad expectancy run through the world? Will
not men eagerly cover up whatever may offend Him, and
eagerly attempt, with such scant materials as existed,
to make preparations for His worthy reception?
The one Being who can make no mistakes, and who can
rectify the mistakes of a worn-out, entangled world,
is to come for the express purpose of delivering it
from all ill: will not men gladly yield the reins
to Him, and gladly second Him in all His enterprise?
Will it not be a time of universal concord and brotherhood,
all men joining to pay homage to their common God?
“He was in the world, and the world was made
by Him” that is the true, bare, unvarnished
statement of the fact. There He was, the Creator
Himself, that mysterious Being who had hitherto kept
Himself so hidden and remote while yet so influential
and supreme; the wonderful and unsearchable Source
and Fountain out of which had proceeded all that men
saw, themselves included, there at last
He was “in the world” Himself had
made, apparent to the eyes of men, and intelligible
to their understandings; a real person whom they could
know as an individual, whom they could love, who could
receive and return their expressions of affection
and trust. He was in the world, and the world
knew Him not.
Indeed, it would not have been easy
for the world to show a more entire ignorance of God
than while He was upon earth in human form. There
was at that time abundance of activity and intelligent
apprehension of the external wants of men and nations.
There was a ceaseless running to and fro of the couriers
of the empire, a fine system of communications spread
over the whole known world like a network, so that
what transpired in the most remote corner was at once
known at the centre. Rome was intelligent to
the utmost circumference through all its dominions;
as if a nervous system radiated through the whole of
it, touch but the extremity in one of the remotest
colonies and the touch is felt at the brain and heart
of the whole. The rising of a British tribe, the
discovery of some unheard-of bird or beast, the birth
of a calf with two heads every scrap of
gossip found its way to Rome. But the entrance
of the Creator into the world was an event of such
insignificance that not even this finely sympathetic
system took any note of it. The great Roman world
remained in absolute unconsciousness of the vicinity
of God: they registered His birth, took account
of Him as one to be taxed, but were as little aware
as the oxen with whom He shared His first sleeping-place,
that this was God; they saw Him with the same stupid,
unconscious, bovine stare.
3. But in this great world of
men there was an inner and specially trained circle,
which John here designates “His own.”
For although the world might be called “His
own,” as made and upheld by him, yet it seems
more likely that this verse is not a mere repetition
of the preceding, but is intended to mark a deeper
degree of insensibility on the part of Christ’s
rejecters. Not only had all men been made in God’s
image, so that they might have been expected to recognise
Christ as the image of the Father; but one nation
had been specially instructed in the knowledge of
God, and was proud of having His dwelling-place in
its midst. If other men were blind to God’s
glory, the Jews at least might have been expected
to welcome Christ when He came. Their temple and
all that was done in it, their law, their prophets,
their institutions, their history and their daily
life, all spoke to them of God, and reminded them
that God dwelt among them and would come to His own.
Though all the world should shut its doors against
Christ, surely the gates of the Temple, His own house,
would be thrown open to Him. For what else did
it exist?
Our Lord Himself, in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,
makes even a heavier accusation against the Jews, intimating, as He there does,
that they rejected Him not because they did not recognise Him, but because they
did. This is the Heir. Come, let us kill Him, that the inheritance
may be ours. In any case their guilt is great. They had been
definitely and repeatedly admonished to expect some great manifestation of God;
they looked for the Christ to come, and immediately before His appearance they
had been strikingly awakened to prepare for His coming. But what was their
actual state when Christ came? Again and again it has been pointed out
that their whole thoughts were given to the schemes which usually distract
conquered nations. They were tossing in unhelpful and inefficacious
sedition, resenting or paying hollow homage to the rule of the foreigner,
looking uneasily for deliverance, and becoming the dupes of every fanatic or
schemer that cried, Lo here! or Lo there! Their power of discerning a
present God and a spiritual Deliverer was almost as completely gone as that of
the heathen, and they tested the Divine Saviour by external methods which any
clever charlatan could have satisfied. The God they believed in and sought
was not the God revealed by Christ. They existed for Christs sake, that
among them He might find a home on earth, and through them be made known to all;
they believed in a Christ that was to come, but when He came the throne they
raised Him to was the cross. And the suspicion that perhaps they were
wrong has preyed on the Jewish mind ever since, and has often pricked them on to
a fierce hatred of the Christian name, while sometimes it has taken almost the
form of penitence, as in the prayer of Rabbi Ben Ezra,
“Thou! if Thou wast
He, who at mid-watch came,
By the starlight, naming a
dubious name!
And if, too heavy with sleep too
rash
With fear O Thou,
if that martyr-gash
Fell on Thee coming to take
Thine own,
And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne,
Thou art the Judge.”
It is the detailed history of this
rejection which John presents in his Gospel.
He tells the story of Christ’s miracles, and
the jealousy they excited; of His authoritative teaching
and the opposition it aroused; of His unveiling His
Divine nature, His mercy, His power to give life, His
prerogative of judgment, His humble self-sacrifice,
and of the misunderstanding which ran parallel to
this manifestation. He tells how the leaders
strove to entangle Him and find Him at fault; how they
took up stones to stone Him; how they schemed and
plotted, and at length compassed His crucifixion.
The patience with which He met this “contradiction
of sinners” was a sufficient revelation of His
Divine nature. Though rudely received, though
met on all hands with suspicion, coldness, and hostility,
He did not abandon the world in indignation. He
never forgot that He came, not to judge the world,
not to deal with us on our merits, but to save the
world from its sin and its blindness. For the
sake of the few who received Him He bore with the many
who rejected Him.
For some did receive Him. John
could say for many, along with himself, “We
beheld His glory,” and recognised that it was
Divine glory, such as none but an Only-begotten in
the image of His Father could manifest. This
glory dawned upon believing men, and gradually encompassed
them in the brightness and beauty of a Divine revelation,
by the appearance among them of the Incarnate Word,
“full of grace and truth” (ver. 14).
Not the works of wonder which He did, not the authority
with which He laid the angry waves and commanded the
powers of evil, but the grace and truth which underlay
all His works, shone into their hearts as Divine glory.
They had previously known God through the law given
by Moses (ver. 17); but coming as it did through
law, this knowledge was coloured by its medium, and
through it God’s countenance seemed stern.
In the face of Jesus Christ they saw the Father, they
saw “grace,” an eye of tender compassion
and lips of love and helpfulness. In the law they
felt that they were seeing through a dimmed glass
darkly; they became weary of symbols and of forms
in which often they saw but flitting shadows.
What must it have been for such men to live with the
manifested God; to have Him dwelling among them, and
in Him to handle and see (1 John the “truth,”
the reality to which all symbol had pointed? “The
law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ."
And to those who acknowledge in their
hearts that this is Divine glory which is seen in
Christ, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father,
He gives Himself with all His fulness. “As
many as received Him, to them gave He the right to
become children of God.” This is the immediate
result of the acceptance of Christ as the Revealer
of the Father. In Him we see what true glory
is and what true sonship is; and as we behold the
glory of the Only-begotten, sent to declare the Father
to us, we acknowledge the unseen Father, and His Spirit
brings us into the relationship of children.
That which is in God passes into us, and we share
in the life of God; and this through Christ. He
is “full” of grace and truth. In
all He is and does, grace and truth overflowingly manifest
themselves. And “of His fulness have all
we received, and grace upon grace." John read this
off his own experience and that of those for whom
he could confidently speak. What they had seen
and valued in Christ became their own character.
The inexhaustible fulness of grace in Christ renewed
in them grace according to their need. They lived
upon Him. It was His life which maintained life
in them. By communion with Him they were formed
in His likeness.
The presentation of Christ to men
now divides them into two classes, as at the first.
There are always those who accept and those who reject
Him. His contemporaries showed, for the most part,
a complete ignorance of what might be expected of
God, a native inability to understand spiritual greatness,
and to relish it when presented to them. And yet
Christ’s claims were made with such an air of
authority and truth, and His whole character and bearing
were so consistent, that they were half persuaded
He was all He said. It is chiefly because we have
not a perfect sympathy with goodness, and do not know
its value, that we do not at once and universally
acknowledge Christ. There is in men an instinct
that tells them what blessings Christ will secure to
them, and they decline connection with Him because
they are conscious that their ways are not His ways,
nor their hopes His hopes. The very presentation
to men of the possibility of becoming perfectly pure
reveals what at heart they are. By the judgment
each man passes on Christ he passes judgment on himself.
Let us stir ourselves to a clearer
decision by remembering that He is presented to us
as to His contemporaries. Time was when any one
going into the synagogue of Nazareth would have seen
Him, and might have spoken with Him. But the
particular thirty years during which this manifestation
of God on earth lasted makes no material difference
to the thing itself. The Incarnation was to be
some time, and it is as real having occurred then
as if it were occurring now. It occurred in its
fit time; but its bearing on us is not dependent on
the time of its occurrence. If it had been accomplished
in our day, what should we have thought of it?
Would it have been nothing to us to see God, to hear
Him, perhaps to have had His eye turned upon us with
personal observation, with pity, with remonstrance?
Would it have been nothing to us to see Him taking
the sinners place, scourged, mocked, crucified?
Is it conceivable that in presence of such a manifestation
of God we should have been indifferent? Would
not our whole nature have burned with shame that we
and our fellow-men should have brought our God to this?
And are we to suffer the mere fact of Christ’s
being incarnate in a past age and not in our own,
to alter our attitude towards Him, and blind us to
the reality? Of more importance than anything
that is now happening in our own life is this Incarnation
of the Only-begotten of the Father.