'Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what
his lord doeth.' The slave may see what his lord does, but he does not
know his purpose in his acts--'Theirs not to reason why.' In so far as
the relation of master and servant goes, and still more in that of
owner and slave, there is simple command on the one side and
unintelligent obedience on the other. The command needs no explanation,
and if the servant is in his master's confidence he is more than a
servant. But, says Christ, 'I have called you friends'; and He had
called them so before He now named them so. He had called them so in
act, and He points to all His past relationship, and especially to the
heart-outpourings of the Upper Room, as the proof that He had called
them His friends, in the fact that whatsoever He had heard of the
Father He had made known to them.
Jesus Christ, then, recognises the obligation of absolute frankness,
and He will tell His friends everything that He can. When He tells them
what He can, the voice of the Father speaks through the Son. Every one
of Christ's friends stands nearer to God than did Moses at the door of
the Tabernacle, when the wondering camp beheld him face to face with
the blaze of the Shekinah glory, and dimly heard the thunderous
utterances of God as He spake to him 'as a man speaks to his friend.'
That was surface-speech compared with the divine depth and fullness of
the communications which Jesus Christ deems Himself bound, and assumes
Himself able, to make to them who love Him and whom He loves.
Of course to Christ's frankness there are limits. He will not pour out
His treasures into vessels that will spill them; and as He Himself says
in the subsequent part of this great discourse, 'I have many things to
say unto you, but you are not able to carry them now.' His last word
was, 'I have declared Thy name unto My brethren, and _will declare_
it.' And though here He speaks as if His communication was perfect, we
are to remember that it was necessarily conditioned by the power of
reception on the part of the hearers, and that there was much yet to be
revealed of what God had whispered to Him, ere these men, that
clustered round Him, could understand the message.
That frank speech is continued to-day. Jesus Christ recognises the
obligation that binds Him to impart to each of us all that each of us
is in our inmost spirits capable of receiving. By the light which He
sheds on the Word, by many a suggestion through human lips, by many a
blessed thought rising quietly within our hearts, and bearing the token
that it comes from a sacreder source than our poor, blundering minds,
He still speaks to us, His friends.
Ought not that thought of the utter frankness of Jesus make us, for one
thing, very patient, intellectually and spiritually, of the gaps that
are left in His communications and in our knowledge? There are so many
things that we sometimes think we should like to know, things about
that dark future where some of our hearts live so constantly, things
about the depths of His nature and the divine character, things about
the relation between God's love and God's righteousness, things about
the meaning of all this dreadful mystery in which we grope our way.
These and a hundred other questionings suggest to us that it would have
been so easy for Him to have lifted a little corner of the veil, and
let a little more of the light shine out. He holds all in His hand. Why
does He thus open one finger instead of the whole palm? Because He
loves. A friend exercises the right of reticence as well as the
prerogative of speech. And for all the gaps that are left, let us bow
quietly and believe that if it had been better for us He would have
spoken. 'If it were not so I would have told you.' 'Trust Me! I tell
you all that it is good for you to receive.'
And that frankness may well teach us another lesson, viz., the
obligation of keeping our ears open and our hearts prepared to receive
the speech that does come from Him. Ah, brother! many a message from
your Lord flits past you, like the idle wind through an archway,
because you are not listening for His voice. If we kept down the noise
of that 'household jar within'; if we silenced passion, ambition,
selfishness, worldliness; if we withdrew ourselves, as we ought to do,
from the Babel of this world, and 'hid ourselves in His pavilion from
the strife of tongues'; if we took less of our religion out of books
and from other people, and were more accustomed to 'dwell in the secret
place of the Most High,' and to say, 'Speak, Friend! for Thy friend
heareth,' we should more often understand how real to-day is the voice
of Christ to them that love Him.
'Such rebounds the inward ear
Catches often from afar;
Listen, prize them, hold them dear,
For of God--of God--they are.'
III. Thirdly, notice how Christ's friends come to be so, and why they
are so.
'Ye have not chosen,' etc. (verse 16).
Our Lord refers here, no doubt, primarily to the little group of the
Apostles; the choice and ordaining as well as 'the fruit that abides,'
point, in the first place, to their apostolic office, and to the
results of their apostolic labours. But we must widen out the words a
great deal beyond that reference.
In all the cases of friendship between Christ and men, the origination
and initiation come from Him. 'We love Him because He first loved us.'
He has told us how, in His divine alchemy, He changes by the shedding
of His blood our enmity into friendship. In the previous verse He has
said, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends.' And as I remarked in my last sermon, the friends here
are the same as 'the enemies' for whom, the Apostle tells us that
Christ laid down His life. Since He has thus by the blood of the Cross
changed men's enmity into friendship, it is true universally that the
amity between us and Christ comes entirely from Him.
But there is more than that in the words. I do not suppose that any
man, whatever his theological notions and standpoint may be, who has
felt the love of Christ in his own heart in however feeble a measure,
but will say, as the Apostle said, 'I was apprehended of Christ.' It is
because He lays His seeking and drawing hand upon us that we ever come
to love Him, and it is true that His choice of us precedes our choice
of Him, and that the Shepherd always comes to seek the sheep that is
lost in the wilderness.
This, then, is how we come to be His friends; because, when we were
enemies, He loved us, and gave Himself for us, and ever since has been
sending out the ambassadors and the messengers of His love--or, rather,
the rays and beams of it, which are parts of Himself--to draw us to His
heart. And the purpose which all this forthgoing of Christ's initial
and originating friendship has had in view, is set forth in words which
I can only touch in the lightest possible manner. The intention is
twofold. First, it respects service or fruit. 'That ye may _go_'; there
is deep pathos and meaning in that word. He had been telling them that
He was going; now He says to them, 'You are to go. We part here. My
road lies upward; yours runs onward. Go into all the world.' He gives
them a _quasi_-independent position; He declares the necessity of
separation; He declares also the reality of union in the midst of the
separation; He sends _them_ out on their course with His benediction,
as He does _us_. Wheresoever we go in obedience to His will, we carry
the consciousness of His friendship.
'That ye may bring forth fruit'--He goes back for a moment to the sweet
emblem with which this chapter begins, and recurs to the imagery of the
vine and the fruit. 'Keeping His commandments' does not explain the
whole process by which we do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
We must also take this other metaphor of the bearing of fruit. Neither
an effortless, instinctive bringing forth from the renewed nature and
the Christlike disposition, nor a painful and strenuous effort at
obedience to His law, describe the whole realities of Christian
service. There must be the effort, for men do not grow Christlike in
character as the vine grows its grapes; but there must also be,
regulated and disciplined by the effort, the inward life, for no mere
outward obedience and tinkering at duties and commandments will produce
the fruit that Christ desires and rejoices to have. First comes unity
of life with Him; and then effort. Take care of modern teachings that
do not recognise these two as both essential to the complete ideal of
Christian service--the spontaneous fruit-bearing, and the strenuous
effort after obedience.
'That your fruit should remain'; nothing corrupts faster than fruit.
There is only one kind of fruit that is permanent, incorruptible. The
only life's activity that outlasts life and the world is the activity
of the men who obey Christ.
The other half of the issues of this friendship is the satisfying of
our desires, 'That whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name He may
give it you.' We have already had substantially the same promise in
previous parts of this discourse, and therefore I may deal with it very
lightly. How comes it that it is certain that Christ's friends, living
close to Him and bearing fruit, will get what they want? Because what
they want will be 'in His name'--that is to say, in accordance with His
disposition and will. Make your desires Christ's, and Christ's yours,
and you will be satisfied.
IV. And now, lastly, for one moment, note the mutual friendship of
Christ's friends.
We have frequently had to consider that point--the relation of the
friends of Christ to each other. 'These things I command you, that ye
love one another.' This whole context is, as it were, enclosed within a
golden circlet by that commandment which appeared in a former verse, at
the beginning of it, 'This is My commandment, that ye love one
another,' and reappears here at the close, thus shutting off this
portion from the rest of the discourse. Friends of a friend should
themselves be friends. We care for the lifeless things that a dear
friend has cared for; books, articles of use of various sorts. If these
have been of interest to him, they are treasures and precious evermore
to us. And here are living men and women, in all diversities of
character and circumstances, but with this stamped upon them
all--Christ's friends, lovers of and loved by Him. And how can we be
indifferent to those to whom Christ is not indifferent? We are knit
together by that bond. We are but poor friends of that Master unless we
feel that all which is dear to Him is dear to us. Let us feel the
electric thrill which ought to pass through the whole linked circle,
and let us beware that we slip not our hands from the grasp of the
neighbour on either side, lest, parted from them, we should be isolated
from Him, and lose some of the love which we fail to transmit.