'… When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of
this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the
world, He loved them unto the end.'—JOHN xiii. 1.
The latter half of St. John's Gospel, which begins with these words, is
the Holy of Holies of the New Testament. Nowhere else do the blended
lights of our Lord's superhuman dignity and human tenderness shine with
such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is His speech at once so simple
and so deep. Nowhere else have we the heart of God so unveiled to us.
On no other page, even of the Bible, have so many eyes, glistening with
tears, looked and had the tears dried. The immortal words which Christ
spoke in that upper chamber are His highest self-revelation in speech,
even as the Cross to which they led up is His most perfect
self-revelation in act.
To this most sacred part of the New Testament my text is the
introduction. It unveils to us gleams of Christ's heart, and does what
the Evangelists very seldom venture to do, viz. gives us some sort of
analysis of the influences which then determined the flow and the shape
of our Lord's love.
Many good commentators prefer to read the last words of my text, 'He
loved them unto the _uttermost_' rather than 'unto the _end_'—so taking
them to express the depth and degree rather than the permanence and
perpetuity of our Lord's love. And that seems to me to be by far the
worthier and the nobler meaning, as well as the one which is borne out
by the usual signification of the expression in other Greek authors. It
is much to know that the emotions of these last moments did not
interrupt Christ's love. It is even more to know that in some sense
they perfected it, giving even a greater vitality to its tenderness,
and a more precious sweetness to its manifestations. So understood, the
words explain for us why it was that in the sanctity of the upper
chamber there ensued the marvellous act of the foot-washing, the
marvellous discourses which follow, and the climax of all, that
High-priestly prayer. They give utterance to a love which Christ's
consciousness at that solemn hour tended to shapen and to deepen.
So, under the Evangelist's guidance, we may venture to gaze at least a
little way into these depths, and with all reverence to try and see
something at all events of the fringe and surface of the love 'which
passeth knowledge.' 'Jesus, knowing that His hour was come, that He
should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved His own
which were in the world, loved them then unto the uttermost.'
My object will be best accomplished by simply following the guidance of
the words before us, and asking you to look first at that love as a
love which was not interrupted, but perfected by the prospect of
separation.
I. It would take us much too far away, however interesting the
contemplation might be, to dwell with any particularity upon our Lord's
consciousness as it is here set forth in that 'He knew that His hour
was come, that He should depart out of the world unto the Father.' But
I can scarcely avoid noticing, though only in a few sentences, the
salient points of that Christ-consciousness as it is set forth here.
'He knew that His hour was come.' All His life was passed under the
consciousness of a divine necessity laid upon Him, to which He lovingly
and cheerfully yielded Himself. On His lips there are no words more
significant, and few more frequent, than that divine 'I must!' 'It
behoves the Son of Man' to do this, that, and the other—yielding to the
necessity imposed by the Father's will, and sealed by His own loving
resolve to be the Saviour of the world. And in like manner, all through
His life He declares Himself conscious of the hours which mark the
several crises and stages of His mission. They come to Him and He
discerns them. No external power can coerce Him to any act till the
hour come. No external power can hinder Him from the act when it comes.
When the hour strikes He hears the phantom sound of the bell; and,
hearing, He obeys. And thus, at the last and supreme moment, to Him it
dawned unquestionable and irrevocable. How did He meet it? Whilst on
the one hand there was the shrinking of which we have such pathetic
testimony in the broken prayer that He Himself amended—'Father! save Me
from this hour…. Yet for this cause came I unto this hour,'—there is a
strange, triumphant joy, blending with the shrinking, that the decisive
hour is at last come.
Mark, too, the form which the consciousness took—not that now the hour
had come for suffering or death or bearing the sins of the world—all
which aspects of it were nevertheless present to Him, as we know; but
that now He was soon to leave all the world beneath Him and to return
to the Father.
The terror, the agony, the shame, the mysterious burden of a world's
sins were now to be laid upon Him—all these elements are submerged, as
it were, and become less conspicuous than the one thought of leaving
behind all the limitations, and the humiliations, and the compelled
association with evil which, like a burning brand laid upon a tender
skin, was an hourly and momentary agony to Him, and soaring above them
all, unto His own calm home, His habitation from eternity with the
Father, as He had been before the world was. How strange this blending
of shrinking and of eagerness, of sorrow and of joy, of human trembling
consciousness of impending death, and of triumphant consciousness of
the approach of the hour when the Son of Man, even in His bitterest
agony and deepest humiliation, should, paradoxically, be glorified, and
should 'leave the world to go unto the Father'!
We cannot enter with any particularity or depth into this marvellous
and unique consciousness, but it is set forth here—and that is the
point to which especially I desire to turn your attention—as the basis
and the reason for a special tenderness softening His voice, and taking
possession of His heart, as He thought of the impending separation.
And is that not beautiful? And does it not help us to realise how truly
'bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh,' and bearing a heart
thrilling with all innocent human emotions that divine Saviour was? We,
too, have known what it is to feel, because of approaching separation
from dear ones, the need for a tenderer tenderness. At such moments the
masks of use and wont drop away, and we are eager to find some word, to
put our whole souls into some look, our whole strength into one
clinging embrace that may express all our love, and may be a joy to two
hearts for ever after to remember. The Master knew that longing, and
felt the pain of separation; and He, too, yielded to the human impulse
which makes the thought of parting the key to unlock the hidden
chambers of the most jealously guarded heart, and let the shyest of its
emotions come out for once into the daylight. So, 'knowing that His
hour was come, He loved them unto the uttermost.'
But there is not only in this a wonderful expression of the true
humanity of the Christ, but along with that a suggestion of something
more sacred and deeper still. For surely amidst all the parting scenes
that the world's literature has enshrined, amidst all the examples of
self-oblivion at the last moment, when a martyr has been the comforter
of his weeping friends, there are none that without degradation to this
can be set by the side of this supreme and unique instance of
self-oblivion. Did not Christ, for the sake of that handful of poor
people, first and directly, and for the rest of us afterwards, of
course, secondarily and indirectly, so suppress all the natural
emotions of these last moments as that their absolute absence is unique
and singular, and points onwards to something more, viz. that this Man
who was susceptible of all human affections, and loved us with a love
which is not merely high above our grasp, absolute, perfect, changeless
and divine, but with a love like our own human affection, had also more
than a man's heart to give us, and gave us more, when, that He might
comfort and sustain, He crushed down Himself and went to the Cross with
words of tenderness and consolation and encouragement for others upon
His lips? Knowing all that was lying before Him, He was neither
absorbed nor confounded, but carried a heart at leisure to love even
then 'unto the uttermost.'
And if the prospect only sharpened and perfected, nor interrupted for
one instant the flow of His love, the reality has no power to do aught
else. In the glory, when He reached it, He poured out the same loving
heart; and to-day He looks down upon us with the same Face that bent
over the table in the upper room, and the same tenderness flows to us.
When John saw his Master next, after His Ascension, amidst the glories
of the vision in his rocky Patmos, though His face was as the sun
shineth in his strength, it was the old face. Though His hand bore the
stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced with the
nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of
sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which John's happy
head had lain; and though the 'Voice was as the sound of many waters,'
it soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless
sea about him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, 'Fear not … I
am the First and the Last.' Knowing that He goes to the Father, He
loves to the uttermost, and being with the Father, He still so loves.
II. And now I must, with somewhat less of detail, dwell upon the other
points which this text brings out for us. It suggests to us next that
we have in the love of Jesus Christ a love which is faithful to the
obligations of its own past.
Having loved, He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore
He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies
divinity. About nothing human can we say that because it has been
therefore it shall be. Alas! about much that is human we have to say
the converse, that because it has been, therefore it will cease to be.
And though, blessed be God! they are few and they are poor who have had
no experience in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has
been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same
absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest,
'Having loved, he loves.' But we can say so about Christ. There is no
exhaustion in that great stream that pours out from His heart; no
diminution in its flow.
They tell us that the central light of our system, that great sun
itself, pouring out its rays exhausts its warmth, and were it not
continually replenished, must gradually, and even though continually
replenished, will ultimately cease to blaze, and be a dead, cold mass
of ashes. But this central Light, this heart of Christ, which is the
Sun of the World, will endure like the sun, and after the sun is cold,
His love will last for ever. He pours it out and has none the less to
give. There is no bankruptcy in His expenditure, no exhaustion in His
effort, no diminution in His stores. 'Thy mercy endureth for ever';
'Thou hast loved, therefore Thou wilt love' is an inference for time
and for eternity, on which we may build and rest secure.
III. Then, still further, we have here this love suggested as being a
love which has special tenderness towards its own. 'Having loved His
own, He loved them to the uttermost.'
These poor men who, with all their errors, did cleave to Him; who, in
some dim way, understood somewhat of His greatness and His
sweetness—and do you and I do more?—who, with all their sins, yet were
true to Him in the main; who had surrendered very much to follow Him,
and had identified themselves with Him, were they to have no special
place in His heart because in that heart the whole world lay? Is there
any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of
Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with
special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him theirs
and have surrendered themselves to be His? Surely it must be that He
has special nearness to those who love Him; surely it is reasonable
that He should have special delight in those who try to resemble Him;
surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in a
special manner honour the drafts, so to speak, of those who have
confidence in Him, and are building their whole lives upon Him. Surely,
because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is
no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished
mirror that reflects its lustre. Surely, because Jesus Christ
loves—Blessed be His name!—the publicans and the harlots and the
outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with
special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and
have set their whole hopes upon Him. The rainbow strides across the
sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dewdrop that hangs
glistening on the blades of grass. There is nothing limited, nothing
sectional, nothing narrow in the proclamation of a special tenderness
of Christ towards His own, when you accompany with that truth this
other, that all men are besought by Him to come into that circle of
'His own,' and that only they themselves shut any out therefrom.
Blessed be His name! the whole world dwells in His love, but there is
an inner chamber in which He discovers all His heart to those who find
in that heart their Heaven and their all. 'He came to His own,' in the
wider sense of the word, and 'His own received Him not'; but also,
'having loved His own He loved them unto the end.' There are textures
and lives which can only absorb some of the rays of light in the
spectrum; some that are only capable of taking, so to speak, the violet
rays of judgment and of wrath, and some who open their hearts for the
ruddy brightness at the other end of the line. Do you see to it,
brethren, that you are of that inner circle who receive the whole
Christ into their hearts, and to whom He can unfold the fullness of His
love.
IV. And, lastly, my text suggests that love of Christ as being made
specially tender by the necessities and the dangers of His friends. 'He
loved His own which were in the world,' and so loving them, 'loved them
to the uttermost.'
We have, running through these precious discourses which follow my
text, many allusions to the separation which was to ensue, and to His
leaving His followers in circumstances of peculiar peril, defenceless
and solitary. 'I come unto Thee, and am no more in the world,' says He
in the final High-priestly prayer, 'but these are in the world. Holy
Father, keep them through Thine own name.' The same contrast between
the certain security of the Shepherd and the troubled perils of the
scattered flock seems to be in the words of my text, and suggests a
sweet and blessed reason for the special tenderness with which He
looked upon them. As a dying father on his deathbed may yearn over
orphans that he is leaving defenceless, so Christ is here represented
as conscious of an accession even to the tender longings of His heart,
when He thought of the loneliness and the dangers to which His
followers were to be exposed.
Ah! It seems a harsh contrast between the Emperor, sitting throned
there between the purple curtains, and the poor athletes wrestling in
the arena below. It seems strange to think that a loving Master has
gone up into the mountain, and has left His disciples to toil in rowing
on the stormy sea of life; but the contrast is only apparent. For you
and I, if we love and trust Him, are with Him 'in the heavenly places'
even whilst we toil here, and He is with us, working with us, even
whilst He 'sitteth at the right hand of God.'
We may be sure of this, brethren, that that love ever increases its
manifestations according to our deepening necessities. The darker the
night the more lustrous the stars. The deeper, the narrower, the
savager, the Alpine gorge, usually the fuller and the swifter the
stream that runs through it. And the more that enemies and fears gather
round about us, the sweeter will be the accents of our Comforter's
voice, and the fuller will be the gifts of tenderness and grace with
which He draws near to us. Our sorrows, dangers, necessities, are doors
through which His love can come nigh.
So, dear friends, we have had experience of sweet and transient human
love; we have had experience of changeful and ineffectual love; turn
away from them all to this immortal, deep heart of Christ's, welling
over with a love which no change can affect, which no separation can
diminish, which no sin can provoke, which becomes greater and tenderer
as our necessities increase, and ask Him to fill your hearts with that,
that you may 'know the length and breadth and depth and height of that
love which passeth knowledge,' and so 'be filled with all the fullness
of God.'