to Christ, are conscious of Christ, but that the Father is far away and
impalpable. They are therefore straining after some new vision or
experience of God, and undervaluing the religious life to which they
have already attained. It is a profound mistake. To have Jesus is to
have God; to know Jesus is to know God; to pray to Jesus is to pray to
God. Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. Look up to Him even now from
this printed page, and say, "My Lord and my God."
Jesus is not simply an incarnation of God in the sense in which, after
the fashion of the Greek mythology, gods might come down in the
likeness of men, adopting a disguise which they would afterward cast
aside; Jesus is God. All the gentle attributes of His nature are
God's; and all the strong and awful attributes of power, justice,
purity, which we are wont to associate with God, are His also.
Happy is the moment when we awake to realize that in Jesus we have God
manifest and present; to know this is the revelation of the Father by
the Son, of which our Saviour spoke in Matt. xi. 27.
III. A GLIMPSE INTO THE LORD'S INNER LIFE.--This Gospel is the most
lucid and profound treatise in existence on His inner life. It is the
revelation of the principles on which our Saviour lived.
So absolutely had He emptied Himself that He never spake His own words:
"The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself." He never did
His own works: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. . . . The
Father abiding in Me doeth His works." This was the result of that
marvellous self-emptying of which the Apostle speaks. Our Lord speaks
as though, in His human nature, He had a choice and will of His own.
"Not My will, but Thine be done," was His prayer. Perhaps it was to
this holy and divine personality that Satan made appeal in the first
temptation, bidding Him use His powers for the satisfaction of His
hunger, and in independence of His Father's appointment. But however
much of this independence was within our Lord's reach, He deliberately
laid it aside. Before He spoke, His spirit opened itself to the
Father, that He might speak by His lips; before He acted. He stilled
the promptings of His own wisdom, and lifted Himself into the presence
of the Father, to ascertain what He was doing, and to receive the
inflow of His energy (John v. 19; xii. 44, 49).
These are great mysteries, which will engage our further consideration.
In the meanwhile, let us reason that if our Lord was so careful to
subordinate Himself to the Father that He might be all in all, it well
becomes us to restrain ourselves, to abstain from speaking our own
words or doing our own works, that Jesus may pour His energies through
our being, and that those searching words may be fulfilled in us also,
"Striving according to His working, which worketh in Me mightily."
VII
The Great Deeds of Prayer
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works
that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;
because I go unto My Father."--JOHN xiv. 12.
Whenever our Lord was about to say something usually important, He
introduced it by the significant expression, "_Verily, verily_"; or, as
it is in the original, "Amen, amen, I say unto you." The words well
become His lips, who in the Book of Revelation is called "the Amen, the
Faithful and True Witness." They are really our Lord's most solemn
affirmation of the truth of what He was about to utter, as well as an
indication that something of importance is about to be revealed.
Indeed, it was necessary in the present case that the marvellous
announcement of the text should receive unusual confirmation, because
of its wide extent. If our Lord had ascribed this power of doing
greater works than Himself in His earthly life, to apostle, prophet, or
illustrious saint, we should have required no special assurance of its
deliberate truth; but to learn that powers so transcendent are within
the reach of any ordinary believer, to learn that any one who believes
may outdo the miracles on the outskirts of Nain, and at the tomb of
Bethany, is as startling as it is comforting. There is no reason why
the humblest soul that ponders this page should not become the medium
and vehicle through which the Christ of the glory shall not surpass the
Christ of Galilee, Jerusalem, and Judea.
The best method of treating these words is to take them clause by
clause as they stand.
I. THE FIRST NOTE IS FAITH.--"He that believeth on Me." Three
varieties of faith are alluded to in the context. Faith in His works:
"Believe the works." Faith in His words: "Believe Me." Faith in
Himself, as here. In the Greek the preposition translated _in_, would
be better rendered _into_, as though the believer was ever approaching
the heart of Christ in deeper, warmer, closer fellowship; perpetual
motion _toward_, combined with unbroken rest _in_. Each of these three
forms of faith plays an important part in the Christian life.
Arrested by the works of Christ--His irresistible power over nature,
His tender pity for those who sought His aid, the blessed and
far-reaching results of His miracles--we cry with Nicodemus, "Verily,
this is a Teacher come from God; for none can do such miracles, except
God be with him." The Master perpetually appealed to the witness borne
by His works to His Divine mission, as when He said, "If I had not done
among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin, but
now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father." And again,
"The very works that I do bear witness of Me." But at the best the
works of Christ are only like the great bell ringing in the
church-tower calling attention to the life being unfolded within, and
are not calculated to induce the faith to which the greater works are
possible.
Next we come to the words of Christ. They are spirit and life: they
greatly feed the soul. He speaks as none other has ever spoken of the
mysteries of life, death, God, and eternity. It is through the words
that we come to the Speaker. By feeding on them we are led into vital
union with Himself. But His words, as such, and apart from Him, will
not produce works that shall surpass those He wrought in His earthly
ministry.
Therefore from works and words we come to the Lord Himself with a trust
which passes up beyond the lower ranges of faith; which does not simply
receive what He waits to give, or reckon upon His faithfulness, but
which unites us in indissoluble union with Himself. This is the
highest function of faith; it is _unitive_: it welds us in living union
with our Lord, so that we are one with Him, as He is one with God.
We are in Him in the Divine purpose which chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world; grafted into Him in His cross; partaking of a
common life with Him through the regeneration of the Holy Ghost. But
all these become operative in the union wrought by a living faith; so
that the strongest assertions which Jesus made of the close
relationship between His Father and Himself become the current coin of
holy speech, as they precisely describe the union which subsists
between us and Jesus. The living Saviour has sent us, and we live by
the Saviour. The words we speak are not from ourselves, but the
Saviour within us, He doeth His works. We are in Him and He in us, all
ours are His, and His ours.
Stay, reader, and ask thyself whether thou hast this faith which
incorporates thee with the Man who died for thee on the cross, and now
occupies the Throne, the last Adam who has become a life-giving Spirit.
II. A TRUE FAITH ALWAYS WORKS.--"He that believeth in Me, the works
that I do shall He do also."
There are many counterfeits of faith in the world. Electroplate!
veneer! They will inevitably fail in the last supreme test, if not
before. James especially calls attention to the distinction between a
living and a dead faith. It becomes us to be on our guard.
The test of genuine faith are twofold. In the _first_ place, a
genuine, living faith has Christ for its object. The hand may tremble,
but it touches His garment's hem; the eye may be dimmed by doubt, but
it is directed toward His face; the feet may stumble, but as the
fainting pilgrim staggers onward, this is his repeated cry, "Thou, O
Christ, art all I want."
In the _second_ place, a true faith works. Its works approve its
nature, and show that it has reached the heart of Christ, and becomes
the channel through which His life-forces pour into the soul. Jacob
knew that Joseph was alive and that his sons had opened communications
with him, because of the wagons that he sent; and we may know that
Jesus lives beyond the mist of time, and that our faith has genuinely
connected us with Him, because we feel the pulse of His glorious nature
within our own. And when this is so, we cannot but work out what He is
working within.
Ask me why a true faith must work! Ask why the branch can do no other
than bear clusters of ruddy grapes; its difficulty would be to abstain
from bearing; the vitality of the root accounts for its life and
productiveness. Blame the lark, whose nature vibrates in the sunshine,
for pouring from its small throat acres of sound; blame the child, full
of bounding health, for laughing, singing, and leaping; blame the
musician, whose soul has caught some fragments of the music of
eternity, for pouring it forth in song, before you wonder why it is
that the true faith which has opened the way from the believer to his
Lord produces those greater works.
III. THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF WORK INDICATED.--(1) "_The works that I do
shall he do also._"--What a blessing Christ's ministry must have been
to thousands of sufferers! He passed through Galilee as a river of
water of life. In front of Him were deserts of fever blasted by the
sirocco, and malarious swamps of ague and palsy, and the mirage of the
sufferer's deferred hope; but after He had passed, the parched ground
became a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water, the eyes of the
blind were opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man
leaped as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sang.
How glad the sick of any district must have been when it was rumored
that He was on His way to it! What eager consultations must have been
held as to the best means of conveying them into His presence! What
sleepless nights must have been spent of speculation as to whether, and
how, He would heal!
Such results followed the labors of the apostles. The lame man at the
beautiful gate of the Temple; the palsied Aeneas; the dead Dorcas; the
crowds in the streets over-shadowed by Peter's passing figure; the
miracles wrought by Paul at Paphos, Lystra, Philippi, and Malta--all
attested the truth of the Master's words, "The works that I do shall ye
do also." There is no doubt that, if it were necessary, such miracles
might be repeated, if only the Church exercised the same faith as in
those early days of her ministry to the world. But there are greater
works than these.
(2) "_Greater works than these shall ye do._"--The soul is greater than
the body, as the jewel than the casket. All work, therefore, which
produces as great an effect on the soul-life as miracles on the
physical life, must be proportionately greater, as the tenant is
greater than the house, as the immortal than the mortal. It is a
greater work to give sight to the blind soul than to the blind body; to
raise the soul from its grave than Lazarus from his four days' sleep.
Again, eternity is also greater than time, as the ocean is greater than
a creek. The ills from which the miracles of Christ delivered the
suppliant crowds, were at the most limited by years. The flesh of the
leper became wrinkled with old age; Jairus' daughter fell again on
sleep; the generation which had been benefited by the mighty works,
passed away without handing on a legacy of health to succeeding time!
But if a sinner is turned from the error of his ways, if salvation
comes to a nature destined for immortality, and lifts it from the
slough of sin to the light of God, the results must be greater because
more permanent and far-reaching.
Moreover, the pain from which the word of the Gospel may save, is
infinitely greater than that which disease could inflict. Men have
been known to brave any physical torture rather than endure the
insupportable anguish of a sin-laden conscience. The worm that never
dies is more intolerable than cancer; the fire that is never quenched
keener than that of fever. To save a soul from these is, therefore, a
greater work.
Christ hinted at this distinction in one of His earliest miracles, when
He proposed to forgive the sick of the palsy his sins, before bidding
him walk; and bade the seventy rejoice more that their names were
written in heaven than that the devils were subject to them. The
apostles bear witness to a growing appreciation of this distinction, by
the small space given in the Acts of the Apostles to their miracles,
compared with the greater attention concentrated on their discourses;
and surely the history of Christendom bears witness to the great and
permanent character of spiritual work. The Church could not have
influenced the world as she has done, had she been nothing more than a
healer of diseases and an exorciser of demons.
IV. THE SOURCE OF THESE GREATER WORKS.--"Because I go to the Father."
Clearly the Church has had an argument to present to men which even her
Master could not use. He could not point, except indefinitely, to the
cross, its flowing blood, its testimony to a love which the cold waters
of death could not staunch. Through the ages this has been the
master-motive, the supreme argument.
Then, again, the Master could not count upon the coöperation of the
Spirit in His convicting power, as we can. "When He is come, He will
convict the world of sin"; but He did not come till after that brief
career of public ministry had closed. Speaking reverently, we may say
that the Church has an Ally that even her Master had not.
But the main reason is yet to come. Perhaps an illustration will best
explain it. Supposing the great painter, Raphael, were to infuse his
transcendent power, as he possessed it during his mortal life, into
some young brain, there is no reason why the genius of the immortal
painter should not effect, through a mere tyro in art, results in form
and color as marvellous as those which he bequeathed to coming time.
But suppose, further, that after having been three hundred years amid
the tones, forms, and colors of the heavenly world, he could return,
and express his thoughts and conceptions through some human medium,
would not these later productions be greater works than those which men
cherish as a priceless legacy? So if the Lord were to work in us such
works only as He did before He ascended to His glory, they would be
inferior to those which He can produce now that He has entered into His
glorified state, and has reassumed the power of which He emptied
Himself when He stooped to become incarnate. This is what He meant
when He said, "Because I go unto the Father."
Open your hearts to the living, risen, glorified Saviour. Let Him live
freely in your life, and work unhindered through your faith; expect Him
to pour through you as a channel some of those greater works which must
characterize the closing years of the present age. Remember how the
discourses and miracles of His earthly life even increased in
importance and meaning; for such must be the law of His ministry in the
heavenlies. According to our faith it will be unto us. The results
which we see around us are no measure of what Christ would or could do,
they indicate the straitening effect of our unbelief. Lift up your
heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye low-browed doors of
unbelief; and the King of Glory shall come in with His bright and
mighty retinue, and shall go out through human lives to do greater
works by the instrumentality of His people than ever He wrought in the
course of His earthly ministry.
VIII
How to Secure More and Better Prayer
"And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter,
that He may abide with you forever."--JOHN xiv. 16.
The great lack of our life is that we do not pray more. And there is
no failure so disastrous or criminal as this. It is very difficult to
account for it. If in all times of discouragement and vicissitude we
could have access to one of the wisest and noblest of our fellow
creatures, or to some venerated departed saint, or to the guardian
angel deputed to attend our steps, or to the archangel that presides as
vicegerent over this system of worlds, how strong and brave we should
become! Whatever our need, we would at once seek His august presence,
and obtain His counsel and assistance. How extraordinary is our
behavior then with respect to prayer, and that we make so little of our
opportunities of access into the presence of our Father, in whom
wisdom, power, and love blend perfectly, and who is always willing to
hear us--nay, is perpetually urging us to come!
The reason may lie in the very commonness of our opportunities. The
swing-door of prayer stands always waiting for the least touch of faith
to press it back. If our Father's presence-chamber were opened to us
only once a year, with how much greater reverence would we enter it,
how much more store would we set on it! We should anticipate the honor
and privilege of that interview for the whole year, and eagerly avail
ourselves of it. Alas, that familiarity with prayer does not always
increase our appreciation of its magnificence!
The cause of our apathy is probably also to be sought in the effort
which is required to bring our sensuous and earth-bound natures into
true union with the Spirit of God. True prayer is labor. Epaphras
labored in his intercessions. Our feet shrink from the steep pathway
that climbs those heights; our lungs do not readily accustom themselves
to the rare air that breathes around the summit of the Mount of
Communion.
But there is a deeper reason yet: we have not fully learned or obeyed
the laws and conditions of prayer. Until they are apprehended and
complied with, it is not possible for us to pray as we might. They are
not, however, very recondite. The least advanced in the Divine school
may read them on this page, where Christ unbares the deepest philosophy
of devotion in the simplest phrases.
It is evident that He expected that the age which Pentecost was to
inaugurate, and to which He so frequently refers as "in that day,"
would in a special sense be the Age of Prayer. Mark how frequently in
this last discourse He refers to it--(xiv. 13, 14; xv. 7, 16; xvi. 24,
26). Clearly the infilling of the Holy Spirit has a special bearing on
the prayerfulness of the individual and the Church. But this will
unfold as we proceed.
I. THE PRAYING CHRIST.--"I will pray the Father." It is true that He
sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, because He had
completed the work for which He became man. That session indicated a
finished atonement. As the Father rested from the work of creation, so
the Son entered into His rest, having ceased from the work of
redemption, so far as it could be effected in His death, resurrection,
and ascension. But as in His rest the Father worked in Providence,
sustaining that which He had created, so did the Saviour continue to
work after He had entered into His Sabbath-keeping.
We have already dealt with one branch of His twofold activity, in _His
work through those who believe_. The greater works which the risen
Saviour has been, and is, achieving through His people bear witness to
the perpetual energy streaming from His life in the azure depths. "The
apostles," Mark tells us, "went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord
working with them, and confirming their word with signs following."
The other branch of His twofold ministry is _His intercession on our
behalf_. He says, "I will pray the Father" for you.
(1) What a contrast to the assertions which we have already pondered of
His oneness with the Father, and to His assurance in almost the same
breath that He would Himself answer His people's prayers! It is
inexplicable, save on the hypothesis that He has a dual nature, by
virtue of which, on the one hand, He is God, who answers prayer, and on
the other the Son of Man, who pleads as the Head and Representative of
a redeemed race.
(2) It is, however, in harmony with Old Testament symbolism. The High
Priest often entered the Presence of God with the names of the people
on his breast, the seat of love, and on his shoulder, the seat of
power; and once a year, with a bowl of blood and sprig of thyme in his
hands, pleaded for the entire nation. What more vivid portrayal could
there be of the ceaseless intercession of that High Priest who was once
manifested to bear the sin of many, and who now appears in the presence
of God for us.
(3) In the days of His flesh, He pleaded for His _Church_, as in the
sublime intercessory prayer of chapter xvii.; for _individuals_, as
when He said, "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may
sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee"; and for _the world_, as
when He first assumed His High-priestly functions, saying from His
cross, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." Thus He
pleads still. For Zion's sake He does not hold His peace, and for
Jerusalem's sake He does not rest. For His Church, for individual
believers, for thee and me, He says in heaven, as on earth, "Father, I
pray for them." Perennially from His lips pours out a stream of tender
supplication and entreaty. This is the river that makes glad the city
of God. Anticipating coming trial; interposing when the cobra-coil is
beginning to encircle us; pitying us when the sky is overcast and
lowering; not tiring or ceasing, though we are heedless and unthankful;
He pleads on the mountain brow through the dark hours, whilst we sleep.
(4) These intercessions are further stimulated by our love and
obedience. "If ye love Me, keep My commandments, _and_ I will pray the
Father." He looks on us, and where love is yearning to love more
fully, and obedience falters in its high endeavors, He prays yet more
eagerly, that grace may be given us to be what we long to be. He prays
for those who do not pray for themselves; but He is even more intent on
the perfecting of those who are the objects of His special interest,
because of their loyalty and love--"I pray for them; I pray not for the
world."
(5) His special petition is that we may receive the gift of Pentecost.
"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter." It
would almost seem as though He spent the mysterious ten days between
His ascension and Pentecost in special intercession that His Church
might be endued with power from on high. The pleading Church on earth
and the pleading Saviour in heaven were at one. The two voices agreed
in perfect symphony, and Pentecost was the Father's answer. The
Saviour prayed to the Father, and He gave another Comforter. Nor has
He ceased in this sublime quest. It is not improbable that every
revival of religion, every fresh and deeper baptism of the Spirit,
every new infilling of individual souls, has been due to our Saviour's
strong cryings on our behalf. It may be that at this hour He is
engaged in asking the Father that He would dower the universal Church
with another Pentecost; and if so, let us join Him in the prayer.
II. THE PRAYING CHURCH.--"Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name."
(1) Prayer must be addressed to the Father. As soon as we utter that
sacred name, the Divine nature responds; and, to put it vividly, is on
the alert to hear what we desire. A little child cannot utter a sigh
however slight, a sob however smothered, without awakening the quick
attention of its mother; and at the first whisper of our Father's name,
He is at hand to hear and bless. Alas! we have too often grieved His
Holy Spirit by a string of selfish petitions, or a number of formal
platitudes! To the wonderment of angels, we thus fritter away the most
precious and sacred opportunities. Be still, then, before you pray, to
consider what to ask; order your prayers for presentation: and be sure
to begin the blessed interview with words of sincere and loving
appreciation and devotion.