'If a man love Me, He will keep My word' (not 'words,' as our
Authorised Version has it), 'and My Father will love him, and We will
come unto him, and make Our abode with him.' Now notice how here, in
the first part of this verse, our Lord subtly and significantly alters
the form of the statement which He has already made. He had formerly
said, 'If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments,' but now He casts
it into a purely impersonal form, and says, 'If a man,' anybody, not
'you' only, but anybody—'If a man love Me, he,' anybody, 'will keep My
word.' And why the change? Why, I suppose, in order to strike full and
square against that complacent assumption of Judas that it was 'to us
and not to the world' that the showing was to take place. Our Lord, by
the studiously impersonal form into which He casts the promise,
proclaims its universality, and says this to His ignorant questioner,
'Do not suppose that you Apostles have the monopoly. You may not even
have a share in My self-manifestation. Anybody may have it. And there
is no "world," as you suppose, to which I do not show Myself. Anybody
may have the vision if he observes the conditions.'
Now I need not dwell at any length upon the earlier words of this text,
because we have had to consider them in previous sermons on the former
verses of this chapter. I need only remark that here, as there, our
Lord brings out the thought that the very life-blood of love is the
treasuring of the word of the beloved One; and that there is no joy
comparable to the joy of the loving heart that yields itself to the
Beloved's will. That is true about earth, and it makes the sweetest and
selectest blessedness of our ordinary existence. And it is true about
heaven, and it makes the liberty and the gladness of the bond that
knits us to Him.
But I would like just to notice, before I come to the more immediate
subject of my discourse, that remarkable expression, 'He will keep My
_word_.' That is more than a 'commandment' is it not? Christ's 'word'
is wider than _precept_. It includes all His sayings, and it includes
them all as in one vital unity and organic whole. We are not to go
picking and choosing among them; they are one. And it includes this
other thought, that every word of Christ, be it revelation of the deep
things of God, or be it a promise of the great shower of blessings
which, out of His full hand, He will drop upon our heads, enshrines
within itself a commandment. He utters no revelations, simply that we
may know. He utters no comforting words, simply that our sore hearts
may be healed, but in all His utterances there is a practical bearing;
and every word of His teaching, every word of His sweet, whispered
assurances of love and favour to the waiting heart, has in it the
imperativeness of His manifested will, and has a direct bearing upon
duty. All His _words_ are gathered into one word, and all the variety
of His sayings is, in their unity, the law of our lives. So much by way
of observation on the mere language of my text. And now let us look at
what, as He says to us here, are the rewards and crown of loving
obedience.
Christ will show Himself to the loving heart. That is true on the very
lowest level. Every act of obedience to any moral truth is rewarded by
additional insight. Every act of submission to His will cleanses the
lenses of the telescope from some film that has gathered upon them, and
so the stars look brighter and larger and nearer. All duty done opens
out into a loftier conception of duty, and a clearer vision of Him. 'To
him that hath shall be given.' As we climb the hill we get a wider
view. Obedience is in all things the parent of insight.
But in reference to our relation to Him, we have to do not with truths
only, but with a Person. How do we learn to know people? There is only
one way—that is, by loving them. Sympathy is the parent of all true
knowledge of one another. They tell us in the foolish old proverb that
'love is blind.' No! There is not such a pair of clear eyes anywhere as
the eyes of love; and if we want to see into a man, the first condition
is that we feel kindly towards him. Sympathy is the parent of insight
into persons, as Obedience is the parent of insight into duty.
But both of these illustrations are only imperfect preparations for the
great truth here, which is that our loving obedience to the discerned
will of Jesus Christ has not only an operation inwards upon us, but has
an effect outwards upon Him. I am afraid that Christian people in this
generation have but a very imperfect belief in the actual,
supernatural, and, if you like to call it so, miraculous manifestation
of Jesus Christ, His very Self, to men that love Him and cleave to Him.
Do you believe as a simple revealed truth, plain as a sunbeam in such
words as these, that Jesus Christ Himself will do something on you, and
in you, and for you, if you love Him and trust Him; that His hand will
be laid on your eyes as it was laid of old; that He will indeed, in no
metaphor, but in reality, show Himself to you? I may be mistaken, but I
think that too commonly it is the case, that even good Christian people
have a far more vivid and realising and real faith in the past work of
Christ on earth than in the present work of Christ in themselves. They
think the one a plain truth, and the other something like a metaphor,
whereas the New Testament teaches us, as plainly as it can teach us
anything, that, far above all the natural operations of truth upon our
understandings, hearts, and wills, there is an actual, supernatural,
continuous communication of Christ to hearts that love Him, which leads
day by day, if they be faithful, to a fuller knowledge, a sweeter love,
a larger possession, of a fuller Christ. And it is this that He tells
us of, to fire our ambition to attain, in such words as these.
Brethren, one piece of honest, loving obedience is worth all the study
and speculation of an unloving heart when the question is, 'How are we
to see Christ?'
Again, Jesus shows Himself to the obedient heart in indissoluble union
with the Father. Look at the majesty, and, except upon one hypothesis,
the insane presumption, of such words as these: 'If a man love Me, My
Father will love _him_'; as if identifying love to Christ with love to
Himself. And look at that wondrous union, the consciousness of which
speaks in '_We_ will come.' Think of a _man_ saying that. It is
blasphemous insanity; or else the speech of Him who is conscious of
union with the Father, close and indissoluble and transcending all
analogies. '_We_ will come,' together, hand-in-hand, if I may so say;
or rather, His coming is the Father's coming. Just as in heaven so
closely are they represented as united, that there is but one throne
'for God and the Lamb,' so on earth so closely are they represented as
united, that there is but one coming of the Father in the Son.
And this is the only belief, as it seems to me, that will keep this
generation from despair and moral suicide. The question for this
generation is, Is it possible for men to know God? Science, both of
material things and of inward experiences, is more and more unanimous
in its proclamation; 'Behold! we know not anything'; and the only
attitude to take before that great black vault above us is to say, 'We
know nothing.' The world has learned half of a great verse of the
Gospel: 'No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him.' If the
world is not to go mad, if hearts are not to be tortured into despair,
if morality and enthusiasm and poetry and everything higher and nobler
than the knowledge of material phenomena and their sequences is not to
perish from the earth, the world must learn the next half of the verse,
and say, 'The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him.' Christ shows Himself in indissoluble union with the
Father.
Lastly about this matter, Christ shows Himself to obedient love by a
true coming. 'We will come and make our mansion with him.' And that
coming is a fact of a higher order, and not to be confounded either
with the mere divine Omnipresence, by which God is everywhere, nor to
be reduced to a figment of our own imaginations, or a strong way of
promising increased perception on our part of Christ's fullness. That
great central Sun, if I might use so violent a figure, draws nearer and
nearer and nearer to the planets that move about it, and having once
been far off on an almost infinitely distant horizon, approaches until
planet and Sun unite.
Dear brethren, if we could only get to the attitude of simple
acceptance of this as a literal truth, and believe that, in prose
reality, Christ comes to every heart that loves Him, would not all the
world be different to us?
That coming is a permanent residence: 'We will make our abode with
him.' Very beautiful is it to notice that our Lord here employs that
same sweet and significant word, with which He began this wonderful
series of encouragements, when He said, 'In My Father's house are many
mansions.' Yonder they dwell for ever with God; here God in Christ for
ever dwells with the loving heart. It is a permanent abode so long as
the conditions are fulfilled, but only so long. If self-will, rising in
the Christian heart from its torpor and apparent death, reasserts
itself and shakes off Christ's yoke, Christ's presence vanishes. In the
last hours of the Holy City there was heard by the trembling priests
amidst the midnight darkness the motion of departing Deity, and a great
voice said: 'Let us depart hence'; and to-morrow the shrine was empty,
and the day after it was in flames. Brethren, if you would keep the
Christ in whom is God, remember that He cannot be kept but by the act
of loving obedience.
II. Now, in the next place, my text gives us the negative side, and
shows us what keeps away Christ and all His blessings.
An unloving disobedience closes the eyes to the vision, and the heart
against the entrance, of that dear Lord. Our Master lays down for us
two principles, and leaves us to draw the conclusion for ourselves.
The first is, 'He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings.' No love,
no obedience. That is plainly true, because the heart of all the
commandments is love, and where that is not, disobedience to their very
spirit is. It is plainly true, because there is no power that will lead
men to true obedience to Christ's yoke except the power of love. His
commandments are too alien from our nature ever to be kept, unless by
the might of love. It was only the rising sunbeam that could draw music
from the stony lips of Memnon, as he gazed out across the desert, and
it is only when Christ's love shines on our faces that we open our lips
in praise, and move our hands in service. Those great rocking-stones
down in Cornwall stand unmoved by any tempest, but a child's finger,
laid on the right place, will set them vibrating. And so the heavy,
hard, stony bulk of our hearts lies torpid and immovable, until He lays
His loving finger upon them, and then they rock at His will. There is
no keeping of Christ's commandments without love. That makes short work
of a great deal that calls itself Christianity, does it not? Reluctant
obedience is no obedience; self-interested obedience is no obedience;
constrained obedience is no obedience; outward acts of service, if the
heart be wanting, are rubbish and dung. Morality without religion is
nought. The one thing that makes a good man is love to Jesus Christ;
and where that is, there, and only there, is obedience.
'Talk they of morals? O Thou Bleeding Lamb!
The grand morality is love of Thee.'
'If a man love Me not, he will not keep My words.'
Then the second principle is, disobedience to Christ is disobedience to
God. 'The Word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's.' Christ's
consciousness of union so speaks out here as that He is quite sure that
all His words are God's words, and that all God's words are spoken by
Him. Paul has to say, 'So speak I, not the Lord.' And you would not
think a man a very sound or safe religious teacher who said to you, to
begin with, 'Now, mind, everything that I say, God says.' There are no
errors then, no deterioration of the treasure by the vessel in which it
lies. The water does not taste of the vase in which it is carried. The
personality of Jesus Christ is never, through all His utterances, so
separated from God but that God speaks in Him; and, listening to His
voice, we hear the absolute utterance of the uncreated and eternal
Wisdom.
Therefore follows the conclusion, which our Lord does not state, but
leaves us to supply. If it be true that the absence of love of Him is
disobedience to Him, and if it be true that disobedience to Him is
disobedience to God, then it plainly follows that what keeps away
Christ and all His gifts, and God in Him, is unloving obedience. What
brings Him is the obedience of love; what repels Him is alienation and
rebellion. If the heart be full of confusion, of the world, of self, of
unbridled inclinations, of careless indifference to His bleeding love,
He 'can but listen at the gate and hear the household jar within.'
And so, dear friends, from all this there follow one or two points,
which I touch very briefly. One is, that it is possible for men not to
see Christ, though He stands there close before them. It is possible to
grope at noonday as at midnight, to see only 'bracken green and cold
grey stone' on the hillside, where another man sees the chariots of
fire and the horses of fire. It is possible for you—and, alas! it is
the condition of some of my hearers—to look upon Christ and to turn
away and say, 'I see no beauty in Him that I should desire Him,' whilst
the man beside yon, looking at the same facts and the same face, can
see in Him the 'Chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.'
Another thought is, that Christ's showing of Himself to men is in no
sense arbitrary. It is you that determine what you shall see. You can
hermetically seal your heart against Him, you can blind yourself to all
His beauty. The door of your hearts is hinged to open from within, and
if you do not open it, it remains shut, and Christ remains outside.
Another thought is, that you do not need to do anything to blind
yourselves. Simple negation is fatal. 'If a man love not'; that is all.
The absence of love is your ruin.
And the last thought is this, that my text does not begin at the
beginning. Jesus Christ has been speaking about manifestations of
Himself to the loving and obedient; but there are manifestations of
Himself made that we may _become_ loving and obedient. You can build a
barrier over which these sweeter revelations, of which loyal love and
docile submission are the conditions, cannot rise. But you cannot build
a barrier over which the prior revelations to the unthankful and
disobedient cannot rise. No mountains of sin and neglect and alienation
can be piled so high but that the flood of pardoning grace will rise
above their crests, and pour itself into your hearts. You ask, How can
I get the love and obedience of which you have been singing the praises
now? There is only one answer, brethren. We know that we love Him when
we know that He loves us; and we know that He loves us when we see Him
dying on His Cross. So here is the ladder, that is planted in the miry
clay of the horrible pit, and fastens its golden hooks on His throne.
The first round is, Behold the dying Christ and His love to me. The
second is, Let that love melt my heart into sweet responsive love. The
third is, Let my love mould my life into obedience. And then Christ,
and God in Him, will come to me and show Himself to me; and give me a
fuller knowledge and a deeper love, and make His dwelling with me. And
then there is only one round still to roach, and that will land us by
the Throne of God, in the many mansions of the Father's house, where we
shall make our abode with Him for evermore.