'I, if I be lifted up … will draw all men unto Me.'—JOHN xii. 32.
'Never man spake like this Man,' said the wondering Temple officials
who were sent to apprehend Jesus. There are many aspects of our Lord's
teaching in which it strikes one as unique; but perhaps none is more
singular than the boundless boldness of His assertions of His
importance to the world. Just think of such sayings as these: 'I am the
Light of the world'; 'I am the Bread of Life'; 'I am the Door'; 'A
greater than Solomon is here'; 'In this place is One greater than the
Temple.' We do not usually attach much importance to men's estimate of
themselves; and gigantic claims such as these are generally met by
incredulity or scorn. But the strange thing about Christ's loftiest
assertions of His world-wide worth and personal sinlessness is that
they provoke no contradiction, and that the world takes Him at His own
valuation. So profound is the impression that He has made, that men
assent when He says, 'I am meek and lowly in heart,' and do not answer
as they would to anybody else, 'If you were, you would never have said
so.'
Now there is no more startling utterance of this extraordinary
self-consciousness of Jesus Christ than the words that I have used for
my text. They go deep down into the secret of His power. They open a
glimpse into His inmost thoughts about Himself which He very seldom
shows us. And they come to each of us with a very touching and strong
personal appeal as to what we are doing with, and how we individually
are responding to, that universal appeal on which He says that He is
exercising.
I. So I wish to dwell on these words now, and ask you first to notice
here our Lord's forecasting of the Cross.
A handful of Greeks had come up to Jerusalem to the Passover, and they
desired to see Jesus, perhaps only because they had heard about Him,
and to gratify some fleeting curiosity; perhaps for some deeper and
more sacred reason. But in that tiny incident our Lord sees the first
green blade coming up above the ground which was the prophet of an
abundant harvest; the first drop of a great abundance of rain. He
recognises that He is beginning to pass out from Israel into the world.
But the thought of His world-wide influence thus indicated and
prophesied immediately brings along with it the thought of what must be
gone through before that influence can be established. And he discerns
that, like the corn of wheat that falls into the ground, the condition
of fruitfulness for Him is death.
Now we are to remember that our Lord here is within a few hours of
Gethsemane, and a few days of the Cross, and that events had so
unfolded themselves that it needed no prophet to see that there could
only be one end to the duel which he had deliberately brought about
between Himself and the rulers of Israel. So that I build nothing upon
the anticipation of the Cross, which comes out at this stage in our
Lord's history, for any man in His position might have seen, as clearly
as He did, that His path was blocked, and that very near at hand, by
the grim instrument of death. But then remember that this same
expression of my text occurs at a very much earlier period of our
Lord's career, and that if we accept this Gospel of John, at the very
beginning of it He said, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up'; and that that
was no mere passing thought is obvious from the fact that midway in His
career, if we accept the testimony of the same Gospel, He used the same
expression to cavilling opponents when He said: 'When ye have lifted up
the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He.' And so at the
beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His career the same idea is
cast into the same words, a witness of the hold that it had upon Him,
and the continual presence of it to His consciousness.
I do not need to refer here to other illustrations and proofs of the
same thing, only I desire to say, as plainly and strongly as I can,
that modern ideas that Jesus Christ only recognised the necessity of
His death at a late stage of His work, and that like other reformers,
He began with buoyant hope, and thought that He had but to speak and
the world would hear, and, like other reformers, was disenchanted by
degrees, are, in my poor judgment, utterly baseless, and bluntly
contradicted by the Gospel narratives. And so, dear brethren, this is
the image that rises before us, and that ought to appeal to us all very
plainly; a Christ who, from the first moment of His consciousness of
Messiahship—and how early that consciousness was I am not here to
inquire—was conscious likewise of the death that was to close it. 'He
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,' and likewise for
_this_ end, 'to give His life a ransom for the many.' That gracious,
gentle life, full of all charities, and long-suffering, and sweet
goodness, and patience, was not the life of a Man whose heart was at
leisure from all anxiety about Himself, but the life of a Man before
whom there stood, ever grim and distinct away on the horizon, the Cross
and _Himself_ upon it. You all remember a well-known picture that
suggests the 'Shadow of Death,' the shadow of the Cross falling, unseen
by Him, but seen with open eyes of horror by His mother. But the
reality is a far more pathetic one than that; it is this, that He came
on purpose to die.
But now there is another point suggested by these remarkable words, and
that is that our Lord regarded the Cross of shame as exaltation or
'lifting up.' I do not believe that the use of this remarkable phrase
in our text finds its explanation in the few inches of elevation above
the surface of the ground to which the crucified victims were usually
raised. That is there, of course, but there is something far deeper and
more wonderful than that in the background, and it is this in part,
that that Cross, to Christ's eyes, bore a double aspect. So far as the
inflicters or the externals of it were concerned, it was ignominy,
shame, agony, the very lowest point of humiliation. But there was
another side to it. What in one aspect is the _nadir_, the lowest point
beneath men's feet, is in another aspect the _zenith_, the very highest
point in the bending heaven above us. So throughout this Gospel, and
very emphatically in the text, we find that we have the complement of
the Pauline view of the Cross, which is, that it was shame and agony.
For our Lord says, 'Now the hour is come when the Son of Man shall be
glorified.' Whether it is glory or shame depends on what it was that
bound Him there. The reason for His enduring it makes it the very
climax and flaming summit of His flaming love. And, therefore, He is
lifted up not merely because the Cross is elevated above the ground on
the little elevation of Calvary, but that Cross is His throne, because
there, in highest and sovereign fashion, are set forth His glories, the
glories of His love, and of the 'grace and truth' of which He was
'full.'
So let us not forget this double aspect, and whilst we bow before Him
who 'endured the Cross, despising the shame,' let us also try to
understand and to feel what He means when, in the vision of it, He
said, 'the hour is come that the Son of Man shall be glorified.' It was
meant for mockery, but mockery veiled unsuspected truth when they
twined round His pale brows the crown of thorns, thereby setting forth
unconsciously the everlasting truth that sovereignty is won by
suffering; and placed in His unresisting hand the sceptre of reed,
thereby setting forth the deep truth of His kingdom, that dominion is
exercised in gentleness. Mightier than all rods of iron, or sharp
swords which conquerors wield, and more lustrous and splendid than
tiaras of gold glistening with diamonds, are the sceptre of reed in the
hands, and the crown of thorns on the head, of the exalted, because
crucified, Man of Sorrows.
But there is still another aspect of Christ's vision of His Cross, for
the 'lifting up' on it necessarily draws after it the lifting up to the
dominion of the heavens. And so the Apostle, using a word kindred with
that of my text, but intensifying it by addition, says, 'He became
obedient even unto the death of the Cross, wherefore God also hath
highly lifted Him up.'
So here we have Christ's own conception of His death, that it was
inevitable, that it was exaltation even in the act of dying, and that
it drew after it, of inevitable necessity, dominion exercised from the
heavens over all the earth. He was lifted up on Calvary, and because He
was lifted up He has carried our manhood into the place of glory, and
sitteth at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So much for the first
point to which I would desire to turn your attention.
II. Now we have here our Lord disclosing the secret of His attractive
power.
'I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.' That
'if' expresses no doubt, it only sets forth the condition. The Christ
lifted up on the Cross is the Christ that draws men. Now I would have
you notice the fact that our Lord thus unveils, as it were, where His
power to influence individuals and humanity chiefly resides. He speaks
about His death in altogether a different fashion from that of other
men, for He does not merely say, 'If I be lifted up from the earth,
this story of the Cross will draw men,' but He says, 'I will' do it;
and thus contemplates, as I shall have to say in a moment, continuous
personal influence all through the ages.
Now that is not how other people have to speak about their deaths, for
all other men who have influenced the world for good or for evil,
thinkers and benefactors, and reformers, social and religious, all of
them come under the one law that their death is no part of their
activity, but terminates their work, and that thereafter, with few
exceptions, and for brief periods, their influence is a diminishing
quantity. So one Apostle had to say, 'To abide in the flesh is more
needful for you,' and another had to say, 'I will endeavour that after
my decease ye may keep in mind the things that I have told you'; and
all thinkers and teachers and helpers glide away further and further,
and are wrapped about with thicker and thicker mists of oblivion, and
their influence becomes less and less.
The best that history can say about any of them is, 'This man, having
served his generation by the will of God, fell on sleep.' But that
other Man who was lifted on the Cross saw no corruption, and the death
which puts a period to all other men's work was planted right in the
centre of His, and was itself part of that work, and was followed by a
new form of it which is to endure for ever.
The Cross is the magnet of Christianity. Jesus Christ draws men, but it
is by His Cross mainly, and that He felt this profoundly is plain
enough, not only from such utterances as this of my text, but, to go no
further, from the fact that He has asked us to remember only one thing
about Him, and has established that ordinance of the Communion or the
Lord's Supper, which is to remind us always, and to bear witness to the
world, of where is the centre of His work, and the fact which He most
desires that men should keep in mind, not the graciousness of His
words, not their wisdom, not the good deeds that He did, but 'This is
My body broken for you … this cup is the New Testament in My blood.' A
religion which has for its chief rite the symbol of a death, must
enshrine that death in the very heart of the forces to which it trusts
to renew the world, and to bless individual souls.
If, then, that is true, if Jesus Christ was not all wrong when He spoke
as He did in my text, then the question arises, what is it about His
death that makes it the magnet that will draw all men? Men are drawn by
cords of love. They may be driven by other means, but they are drawn
only by love. And what is it that makes Christ's death the highest and
noblest and most wonderful and transcendent manifestation of love that
the world has ever seen, or ever can see? No doubt you will think me
very narrow and old-fashioned when I answer the question, with the
profoundest conviction of my own mind, and, I hope, the trust of my own
heart. The one thing that entitles men to interpret Christ's death as
the supreme manifestation of love is that it was a death voluntarily
undertaken for a world's sins.
If you do not believe that, will you tell me what claim on your heart
Christ has because He died? Has Socrates any claim on your heart? And
are there not hundreds and thousands of martyrs who have just as much
right to be regarded with reverence and affection as this Galilean
carpenter's Son has, unless, when He died, He died as the Sacrifice for
the sins of the whole world, and for yours and mine? I know all the
pathetic beauty of the story. I know how many men's hearts are moved in
some degree by the life and death of our Lord, who yet would hesitate
to adopt the full-toned utterance which I have now been giving. But I
would beseech you, dear friends, to lay this question seriously to
heart, whether there is any legitimate reason for the reverence, the
love, the worship, which the world is giving to this Galilean young
man, if you strike out the thought that it was because He loved the
world that He chose to die to loose it from the bands of its sin. It
may be, it is, a most pathetic and lovely story, but it has not power
to draw all men, unless it deals with that which all men need, and
unless it is the self-surrender of the Son of God for the whole world.
III. And now, lastly, we have here our Lord anticipating continuous and
universal influence.
I have already drawn attention to the peculiar fullness of the form of
expression in my text, which, fairly interpreted, does certainly imply
that our Lord at that supreme moment looked forward, as I have already
said, to His death, not as putting a period to His work, but as being
the transition from one form of influence operating upon a very narrow
circle, to another form of influence which would one day flood the
world. I do not need to dwell upon that thought, beyond seeking to
emphasise this truth, that one ought to feel that Jesus Christ has a
living connection now with each of us. It is not merely that the story
of the Cross is left to work its results, but, as I for my part
believe, that the dear Lord, who, before He became Man, was the Light
of the World, and enlightened every man that came into it, after His
death is yet more the Light of the World, and is exercising influence
all over the earth, not only by conscience and the light that is within
us, nor only through the effects of the record of His past, but by the
continuous operations of His Spirit. I do not dwell upon that thought
further than to say that I beseech you to think of Jesus Christ, not as
One who died for our sins only, but as one who lives to-day, and
to-day, in no rhetorical exaggeration but in simple and profound truth,
is ready to help and to bless and to be with every one of us. 'It is
Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the
right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.'
But, beyond that, mark His confidence of universal influence: 'I _will_
draw all men.' I need not dwell upon the distinct adaptation of
Christian truth, and of that sacrifice on the Cross, to the needs of
all men. It is the universal remedy, for it goes direct to the
universal epidemic. The thing that men and women want most, the thing
that _you_ want most, is that your relation with God shall be set
right, and that you shall be delivered from the guilt of past sin, from
the exposure to its power in the present and in the future. Whatever
diversities of climate, civilisation, culture, character the world
holds, every man is like every other man in this, that he has 'sinned
and come short of the glory of God.' And it is because Christ's Cross
goes direct to deal with that condition of things that the preaching of
it is a gospel, not for this phase of society or that type of men or
the other stage of culture, but that it is meant for, and is able to
deliver and to bless, every man.
So, brethren, a universal attraction is raying out from Christ's Cross,
and from Himself to each of us. But that universal attraction can be
resisted. If a man plants his feet firmly and wide apart, and holds on
with both hands to some staple or holdfast, then the drawing cannot
draw. There is the attraction, but he is not attracted. You demagnetise
Christianity, as all history shows, if you strike out the death on the
Cross for a world's sin. What is left is not a magnet, but a bit of
scrap iron. And you can take yourself away from the influence of the
attraction if you will, some of us by active resistance, some of us by
mere negligence, as a cord cast over some slippery body with the
purpose of drawing it, may slip off, and the thing lie there unmoved.
And so I come to you now, dear friends, with the plain question, What
are you doing in response to Christ's drawing of you? He has died for
you on the Cross; does that not draw? He lives to bless you; does that
not draw? He loves you with love changeless as a God, with love warm
and emotional as a man; does that not draw? He speaks to you, I venture
to say, through my poor words, and says, 'Come unto Me, and I will give
you rest'; does that not draw? We are all in the bog. He stands on firm
ground, and puts out a hand. If you like to clutch it, by the pledge of
the nail-prints on the palm, He will lift you from 'the horrible pit
and the miry clay, and set your feet upon a rock.' God grant that all
of us may say, 'Draw us, and we will run after Thee'!