If we adopt the most probable reading of the first clause of my text,
it is even more forcible than in our version: 'I came forth _out of_
the Father.' Such an egress implies a being _in_ the Father in a sense
ineffable for our words, and transcending our thoughts. It implies a
far deeper and closer relation than even that of juxtaposition,
companionship, or outward presence.
Now, in these great words there is involved obviously, to begin with,
that, during His earthly life, our Lord bore about with Him the
remembrance and consciousness of an individual existence prior to His
life on earth. I need not remind you how frequently such hints drop
from His lips--'Before Abraham was, I am,' and the like. But beyond
that solemn thought of a remembered previous existence there is this
other one--that the words are the assertion by Christ Himself of a
previous, deep, mysterious, ineffable union with the Father. On such a
subject wisdom and reverence bid us speak only as we hear; but I cannot
refrain from emphasising the fact that, if this fourth Gospel be a
genuine record of the teaching of Jesus Christ--and, if it is not, what
genius was he who wrote it?--if it be a genuine record of the teaching
of Jesus Christ, then nothing is more plain than that over and over
again, in all sorts of ways, by implication and by direct statement, to
all sorts of audiences, friends and foes, He reiterated this tremendous
claim to have 'dwelt in the bosom of the Father,' long before He lay on
the breast of Mary. What did He mean when He said, 'No man hath
ascended up into heaven save He which came down from heaven'? What did
He mean when He said, 'What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend
up where He was before'? What did He mean when He said, 'I came down
from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent
Me'? And what did He mean when, in the midst of the solemnities of that
last prayer, He said, 'Glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with
Thee before the world was'?
Dear friends! it seems to me that if we know anything about Jesus
Christ, we know _that_. If we cannot believe that He thus spoke, we
know nothing about Him on which we can rely. And so, without venturing
to enlarge at all upon these solemn words, I leave this with you as a
plain fact, that the meekest, lowliest, and most sane and wise of
religious teachers made deliberately over and over again this claim,
which is either absolutely true, and lifts Him into the region of the
Deity, or else is fatal to His pretensions to be either meek or modest,
or wise or sane, or a religious teacher to whom it is worth our while
to listen.