<u>Jehovah--Jesus.</u>
Of all the men who knew Jesus intimately John stands first and highest. He
misunderstood for a time. He failed to understand, as did the others. He
did not approach the keen insight into Jesus' being and purpose that Mary
of Bethany did. But, then, she was a woman. He was a man. Other things
being equal (though they almost never are), woman has keener insight into
the spirit and motives than has man. But John stood closer to Jesus than
any other. Jesus drew him closer. And that speaks volumes for John's
fineness of spirit. He alone of the inner twelve did not forsake in the
hardest hour that Thursday night, but went in "_with_ Jesus." How grateful
must Jesus have been for the presence of His sympathetic friend that black
night, with its long intense shadows!
Now John writes about Jesus. And what this closest friend says will be of
intensest interest to all lovers of Jesus. But it is of even intenser
interest to note keenly _when_ John writes. He waits until the end. He
gets the longest range on Jesus that his lengthening years will permit.
Distance is essential to perspective. You must get far away from a big
thing to see it. The bigger the thing to be seen, the longer the distance
needed for good perspective. John shows his early appreciation of the size
of Jesus by waiting so long. When all his mental faculties are most
matured, when any heat of mere youthful attachment has cooled off, when
the eye of the spirit is clearest and keenest, when the facts through long
sifting have fallen into right place and relation in the whole circle of
truth, then the old man settles to his loving task.
He had been _looking_ long. His perspective has steadily lengthened with
the looking years. The object has been getting bigger and bigger to his
eyes. He is getting off as far as possible within his earthly span. At
last he feels that he has approximately gotten the range. And with the
deep glow of his heart gleaming up out of his eyes, he picks up a
freshly-sharpened quill _to tell folk about Jesus_.
As he starts in he takes a fresh, long, earnest look. And so he writes,
like a portrait artist working, with his eyes ever gazing at the vision of
that glorified Face. He seems to say to himself, "How _shall_ I--how _can_
I ever _begin_ to tell them--about _Him_!" Then with a master's skill he
sets out to find the simplest words he can find, put together in the
simplest sentences he can make, so simple folk everywhere may read and get
something of a glimpse of this Jesus, whose glory is filling his eyes and
flooding his face and spilling out all over the pages as he writes.
He is seeing back so far that he is getting beyond human reach. So he
fastens his line into the farthest of the far-reaches of human knowledge,
the creation, and then flings the line a bit farther back yet. He must use
a human word, if human folk are to understand. So he says "_beginning_."
"In the beginning," the beginningless beginning, away back of the Genesis
beginning, the earliest known to man.
Then he recalls the tremendous fact that when, in the later beginning man
knew about, the worlds came into existence, it was by a _word_ being
spoken, a _creative, outspoken word_. The power that created things
revealed itself in a few simple words. Then he searches into the depths of
language for the richest word he knew to express thought outspoken. And
taking that word he uses it as a _name_ for this One of whom he is trying
to tell. The scholars seem unable to sound the depths of the word that
John in his own language uses. It means this, and beyond that, it means
_this_, deeper yet, and then _this_. And then all of these together, and
more. That is John's word. "In the beginning was _the Word_."
Then with a few swift touches of his pen he says, "This was Jesus before
He came among men, the man Jesus whom we know." In the earliest beginning
the whole heart and thought of God toward man was outspoken in a person.
This person, this outspeaking God, it was He who later became known to us
as Jesus. Jesus, away back before the farthest reach of our human
knowledge, was God speaking out of His inner heart to us. This Jesus _is_
God speaking out His innermost heart to man. Did you ever long to hear God
speak? Look at Jesus. He's God's speech. This One was _with_ God. He _was_
God. It was _He_ who spoke things into being, that creative span of time.
Only through Him _could_ anything come into being. All life was in Him,
and this life was man's light. It is He who came into our midst, shining
in the darkness that could neither take Him in nor hold Him down from
shining out.
Every now and then as he writes John's heart seems near the breaking
point, and a sob shakes his pen a bit, as it comes over him all anew, and
almost overcomes him, how this wondrous Jesus, this throbbing heart of
God, was treated. Listen: "He came to His _own possessions_, and they who
were His--own--kinsfolk--and the quiver of John's heart-sob seems to make
the type move on the page--_His own kinsfolk_ received him not into their
homes, but left Him outside in the cold night; _but_--a glimpse of that
glorious Face steadies him again--as many as _did_ receive Him, whether
His own kinsfolk or not, to them He gave the right to become _kinsfolk of
God_, the oldest family of all."
<u>God's Spokesman.</u>
John has a way of reaching away back, and then by a swift use of pen
coming quickly to his own time, and then he keeps swinging back over the
ground he has been over, but each time with some added touch, like the
true artist he is.
John's statement, "the world was made by Him," takes one back at once to
the early Genesis chapters. There the creating One, who, by a word, brings
things into existence is called God. And then, that we may identify Him,
is called by a _name_, Jehovah. The creator is God named Jehovah. And this
Jehovah, John says, was the One who afterward became a Man, and pitched
His tent among men. And as one reads the old chapters through, this is the
God, the Jehovah, who appears in varying ways to these Old Testament men,
one after another. He talked and walked and worked with Adam in completing
the work of creation, and then broken-hearted led him out of the forfeited
garden.
Then to make his standpoint unmistakably plain to every one, before
starting in on the witness borne by the herald, he makes a summary. All
that he has been saying he now sums up in these tremendous words,
"_God_--no one ever yet has seen; the only begotten God,[7] in the bosom
of the Father, this One has been the spokesman." In what He _was_, and in
what He _did_ as well as in what He _said_, He hath been the spokesman.
Here is a difference made between the Father God, whom no one has seen,
and the only begotten God, who has been telling the Father out.
Now God revealed Himself to men in the Old Testament times. Repeatedly in
the Old Testament it distinctly speaks of men seeing God in varying ways
and talking with Him. Adam walked with Him, and Enoch, and Noah. Abraham
had a _vision_, and talked with the three men whose spokesman speaks as
God. Isaac has a night-vision and Jacob a dream and a night meeting with a
mysterious wrestler. Moses _spoke_ with Him "face to face" and "mouth to
mouth," and is said to have seen His "form." Yet after that first forty
days on the mount when Moses hungrily asks for more, He is told that no
man could endure the sight of that great glory of God's face. And he is
put in to a cleft of the rock, and God's hand put over the opening (in the
simple language of the record), and then only the _hinder_ part of God
passing is seen, while the wondrous voice speaks. Yet the impression so
made upon Moses far exceeds anything previous and completely overawes and
melts him down. The elders of Israel "saw God," yet the most _distinct_
impression of anything seen is of the beautiful _pavement under His feet_.
Isaiah's most definite impression, when the great vision came to him, was
of a train of glory, seraphim and smoke and a voice. Ezekiel has rare
power in detailed description. He has overpowering visions of the "glory of
Jehovah." Yet the most definite that he can make the description is a
storm gathering, a cloud, a fire, a centre spot of brightness, a clearness
as of amber, and four very unusual living creatures.
These men "saw" God. He "appeared" to them. Evidently that means many
different things, yet the word is always honestly used. It never means as
we gaze into another man's face. But always there is that profound
impression of having been in God's own presence. They _met_ Him. They
_saw_ Him. They heard His voice.
Yet John says here, "_God_--no one ever yet at any time has seen; the only
begotten God, in the bosom of the Father--this One has been the
spokesman." Clearly John, sweeping the whole range of past time, means
this: they saw Him whom we call Jesus. Jesus is Jehovah, the only
_begotten_ God. To all these men the only begotten God was the spokesman
of the Father.
Sometimes it was a voice that came with softness but unmistakable
clearness to the inner spirit of man, a soundless voice. Sometimes in a
dream, a more realistic vision of the night or of the day time; again, in
the form of a man, thus foreshadowing the future great coming. This One
who _came_ to them in various ways, this Jehovah has _come_ to men as
Jesus. This is John's statement. This is the setting of His gospel. The
setting becomes a part of the interpretation of what the gospel contains.
It explains what this that follows _meant to John_.
Is it surprising that John's Gospel has been pitched upon as the critics'
chief battle-field of the New Testament? Battle-field is a good word. The
fire has been thick and fast, needle-guns--sharp needles--and
machine-guns--Gatling guns and rattling--but no smokeless powder. The
cloud of smoke of a beautiful scholarly gray tinge has quite filled the
air. Men have been swinging away from a man, the Man to a book. But no
critic's delicately shaded and shadowing cloud of either dust or smoke, or
both, can hide away the Man. He's too tall and big. The simple hearted man
who will step aside from the smoke and noise to the shade of a quiet tree,
or the quiet of some corner, with this marvellous bit of manuscript from
John's pen for his keen, Spirit-cleared eye, will be enraptured to find a
_Man, the_ Man, the _God_-Man.
<u>Whom Moses Saw.</u>
What did Jesus say about Himself? The critics of the world, including the
skeptical, infidel critics, seem to agree fully and easily on a few things
about this Jesus on whose dissection they have expended so much time and
strength. They agree that in the purity of His life, the moral power of
His character, the wisdom of His teachings, the rare poise of His conduct
and judgment, the influence exerted upon men, He clear over-tops the whole
race. Surely His own opinion of Himself is well worth having. And it is
easy to get, and tremendous when gotten. It fits into John's conception
with unlabored simplicity and naturalness.
According, then, to Jesus' own words, He had come down out of heaven, and,
by and by, would go back again to where He was before. He had come on an
errand for the Father down into the world, and when the errand was
finished He would go back home to the Father again. He had seen the
Father, and He was the only one who _had_ ever seen Him. He was the Son of
God in a sense that nobody else was, a begotten Son, and the only Son who
had been begotten. Therefore He naturally called God His Father, and not
only that, but His _own_ Father, making Himself _equal_ with the Father.
This statement it was that swung the leaders over from silent contempt to
aggression in their treatment of Him. The Jews understood this perfectly
and instantly. They refused to accept it. Reckoning it blasphemous, they
attempted to stone Him. They were partly right. If it were not true, it
_was_ blasphemous, and their law required stoning. Yet they were fools in
their thought, and not even keen fools. For no blasphemous man could have
revealed the character and moral glory that Jesus constantly revealed
before their eyes.
Then follows one of John's exquisite reports of Jesus' words in reply. In
it run side by side the essential unity of spirit between Father and Son,
with the absolute life-giving or creative power invested in the Son. A
sweet, loving, loyal unity of spirit is between the two. It is love unity.
There can be none closer. In this unity the Son has full control of life
for all the race of men, and final adjustment of the character wrought out
by each. At His word all who have gone down under death's touch will come
into life again, and each by the character he has developed will go by a
moral gravitation to his natural place.
And then follows the bringing forward of witnesses, John, the Father, the
works, the Scriptures, and the climax is reached in the one whose name was
ever on their lips--Moses. And this is the significant reference to Moses,
"He wrote of _Me_." Sift into that phrase a bit. It cannot mean, he wrote
of me in the sacrifices provided for with such minute care. For Moses
clearly had had no such thought. It might be supposed to mean that
unconsciously to himself there was, in his writings about the sacrifices,
that which would be seen later to refer to Jesus in His dying. And there
is the resemblance in purity between Moses' sacrifices and the great
Sacrifice. Yet where there is so much plain meaning lying out on the face
of the thing, this obscure meaning may be dropped or checked in as an
incidental. There is a single allusion in Moses' writing to a prophet
coming like himself.
But Moses is ever absorbed in writing about a wondrous One who revealed
Himself to him in the burning bush, the pillar of cloud and fire, the
little peaked tent off by itself on the outskirts of the camp, and the
soft distinct voice. There was the One with whom He had twice spent forty
days in the mount, and whose great glory left its traces in his face. Ever
Moses is writing of this wondrous Jehovah. Jesus quietly says, "He wrote
of _Me_."
Another time He said, "I and the Father are one," provoking another
stoning. Invisibly holding back their hands He said, "The Father is in Me,
and I in the Father," and again they are aroused. In connection with this
word "Father," it may be noted that the Old Testament has been called the
"dispensation of the Father." But this seems scarcely accurate. God
speaking, appearing there is spoken of as Father very rarely, and then
chiefly in the great promises of the future glory. The common name for Him
is _Jehovah_. Jesus practically gives us the name Father for God. He
constantly refers to God as _His_ Father. It was He who taught us to call
God Father. He never speaks of Jehovah, but of the Father. His language in
this always fits in perfectly, as of course it would, with John's
standpoint, that Jesus is the Jehovah of the Old Testament times. A little
later Jesus says, "Moses gave you not the manna from heaven, but--my
Father giveth (note the change in the time element of the word)--giv_eth_
you the true bread." It is a sort of broken, readjusted sentence, as
though He was going to say who it was that gave the manna, and then
changes to speaking of the Father and the present. He does not say who it
was that _did_ give that manna. It is plain enough from John's standpoint
what _he_ understands Jesus to mean as he puts the incident into his
story.
<u>Jesus is God Wooing Man.</u>
During the autumn before His death, while in attendance on one of the
Jerusalem feasts, the leaders are boasting of their direct descent from
Abraham, and attacking Jesus. On their part the quarrel of words gets very
bitter. They ask sharply, "Who do you pretend to be? Nobody can be as
great as Abraham; yet your words suggest that you think you are." Then
came from Jesus' lips the words, spoken in all probability very quietly,
"Your father Abraham exulted that he might see my day, and he saw it, and
was glad." It is a tremendous statement, staggering to one who has not yet
grasped it.
In attempting to find its meaning, some of our writing friends have
supposed it means that, after Abraham's death, when he was in the other
world, at the time of Jesus being on the earth, he was conscious of Jesus
having come and was glad. But this hardly seems likely, else it would
read, "He _sees_, and _is_ glad." The seeing and gladness were both in a
day gone by. Others have supposed that it refers to the scene on Moriah's
top, when the ram used as a sacrifice instead of Isaac enabled Abraham to
see ahead _by faith_, not actually, the coming One. But this, too, seems a
bit far-fetched, because Abraham was surprised by the occurrences of that
day. He fully expected to sacrifice his son, apparently, so there could be
no exultant looking forward to _that_ day for him. And deeper yet, the
coming One was not expected to be a sacrifice, but a king.
The natural meaning seems to lie back in Abraham's own life. Abraham was
Israel's link with the idolatrous heathen, as well as the beginning of the
new life away from idolatry. He grew up among an idolatrous people, yet in
his heart there was a yearning for the true God. Back in his old home
there came to him one day the definite inner voice to cut loose from these
people, his own dear kinsfolk, and go out to a strange unknown land, with
what seemed an indefinite goal, and there would come to him a vision of
the true God.
It was a radical step for a man of seventy-five years to take. He was
living among his own kinsfolk. His nest was feathered. It meant leaving a
certainty for an uncertainty. It meant breaking his habit of life, a very
hard thing to do, and starting out on a wandering roaming life. Not
unlikely his neighbors thought it a queer thing, a wild goose chase, this
going off to a strange land in response to a call of God that he might see
a vision of the true God. Decidedly visionary. But the old man was clear
about the voice. The fire burned within to know God, the real true God.
All else counted as nothing against that. He would _see God_. And a
warming glow filled his heart and shone in his eyes and kept him steady
during the break, the good-byes, the start away, the journeying among
strangers. Into the strange land he came, and pitched his tent. And--one
night--in his tent--among these strange Canaanites, there came the
promised vision. "Jehovah appeared unto Abraham," and tied up there anew
with him the promise made back in his native land. This seems to be the
simple explanation of these words about Abraham. "He exulted that he might
see my day. He _saw_ ... and was glad."
With a contemptuous curl of the lip instantly they come back with: "Thou
art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" More quietly
than ever, with the calmness of conscious truth, come those tremendous
words, emphasized with the strongest phrase He ever used, "Verily, verily,
I say unto you, before Abraham was born, I am." The common version omits
"born," and so the sharp contrast is not made clear. Abraham was _born_.
He came into existence. Jesus says "I _am_." That "I am" is meant to mean
absolute existence. An eternal now without beginning or ending. Their
Jewish ears are instantly caught by that short sentence. Jesus was
identifying Himself with the One who uttered that sentence out of the
burning bush! Again stones for speech. Again the invisible power holds
their feverish impotent hands. That "I am" explains the meaning of the
expression "my day." It stretches it out backward beyond Abraham's day. It
lengthens it infinitely at both ends.
This is Jesus' point of view, this marvellous Jesus. He is the Jehovah in
Genesis' first chapters. It is with Him that Adam broke tryst that day,
and with Him that Enoch renewed the tryst after such a long wait, and took
those long walks. It is His voice and presence in the black topped,
flaming mount that awed the Israel crowd so. His voice it was that won and
impressed so winsomely the man waiting in the hand-covered cleft of the
rock that early morning, and long after, that other rugged, footsore man,
standing with face covered in the mouth of a cave. Isaiah saw _His_ glory
that memorable day in the temple. It was He who rode upon the storm before
Ezekiel's wondering eyes and who walks with His faithful ones on the seven
times heated coals, and reveals to Daniel's opened ears the vision of his
people's future. Jehovah--He comes as Jesus. Jesus--He is Jehovah. No
sending of messengers for this great work of winning His darling back to
the original image and mastery and dominion will do for our God. He comes
Himself. Jesus is God coming down to woo man up to Himself again.