distinction, vests distinctly in the head of the family, the father. He
stands for the whole family. And so, too, all of this descends directly
from the father at his death to his eldest son. In some parts the father
retires at a certain age, either really or nominally, and all becomes
vested technically in his eldest son. And if the son be an only begotten
son, then literally all that is in the father comes into the son. All
the fame, the inheritance, the traditions, the obligations, the wealth,
in short all the glory of the father comes of itself, by common action
of events, to the son.
Now this is what John is thinking of as he writes, "we beheld His glory,
glory as of _an_ only begotten of _a_ father." That is to say, all there
is in the Father is in Jesus. When you see Jesus, you are seeing the
Father. The whole of God is in this Jesus. This is what John is saying
here.
Grace and Truth Coupled.
And then John does a bit of exquisite packing of much in little. He
tells the whole story of the character, the revealed glory, of Jesus in
such a few simple words,--"_full of grace and truth_." Not grace
without truth. That would be a sort of weakly, sickly sentimentalism.
And not truth without grace. That would be a cold stern repellent
insistence on certain high standards. But grace and truth coupled,
intermingling.
Of course real grace and truth always are coupled. They tell the
exquisite poise that is in everything God does. Truth is the back-bone
of grace. Grace is the soft cushioning of flesh upon the bony framework
of truth. It is the soft warm breath of life in truth. Truth is grace
holding up the one only standard of purity and right and insisting upon
it. And as we look we know within ourselves we never can reach it. Grace
is truth reaching a strong warm hand down to where we are and _helping_
us reach it.
With God these things are always coupled. _We_ get them separated badly,
or would I better say, imitations of them. There is a sort of thing we
have called truth. It is not so common now as a generation or more ago.
It is a sort of stern elevated preaching of righteousness, but with no
warm feel of life to it. I can remember hearing preaching in my immature
boy days that made me feel that the man and the thing must be right, but
neither had any attraction for me. It was as though a man went fishing
with a carefully-made properly-labelled metallic-bait at the end of a
long stout cord, and said, as he dangled it in the sinful waters to the
elusive fish, "Now, bite; or be damned."
It was never put so baldly, of course, in words. And I was only a child
with immature childish imaginations. Yet that was the feeling about the
thing the child got. But it's scarcely worth while talking of that now
except to point the contrast; things have swung so far to the other
extreme.
The current thing to-day is grace without truth, or what is supposed to
be grace. It is a sort of man-made substitute. It's something like this.
Here's a man in the gutter, the moral gutter. It may be the actual
gutter. Or, there may be the outer trappings of refinement that easy
wealth provides; or, the real refinement that culture and inheritance
bring. But morally and in spirit, it's a gutter. The slime of sin and
low passion, of selfishness and indulgence and self-ambition, oozes over
everything in full sight. The man's in the gutter.
And along comes the modern philosopher of grace, so-called. He looks
down compassionately, and says, "Poor fellow, I'm so sorry for you. Too
bad you should have gotten down there. Let me help you a bit, my
brother." So he puts some flowering plants down in the slime of the
gutter, and he brushes the man's clothes a bit, and his hair, and
sprinkles the latest-labelled cologne-water over him, and pats him on
the shoulder, and says, "Now, you feel better, my man, don't you?" And
the man sniffs the perfume, and is quite sure he does. _But he is still
in the gutter._
There seems to be an increasing amount of this sort of thing over in my
neighbourhood. How is it in your corner of the planet? There's an
intense stress on environment; that means the _outside_ of things.
Better sanitation, improved housing, purer milk supply, and segregation
of vice which seems to mean putting some of the viler smelling slime of
the gutter, the slimer slime, all over in one guttered section by
itself. But there can be no health there. It's a _change of location_
that is needed!
The wondrous Jesus-plan is different. It holds things in poise. Grace
_and_ truth. Truth is Jesus stretching His hand up high, up to the limit
of arm's length, and saying, "Here is the standard, purity,
righteousness, utter honesty of heart and rigid purity of motive and
life. You _must_ reach this standard. It can't be lowered by the half
thickness of a paper-thin shaving. You must come to this standard. The
standard never comes down to you."
And the man in the gutter says, "I'll never reach it." And he is right.
_He_ never will--of himself, alone. Yet that's truth, true truth. "A
hopeless case" you say; "utter impractical idealizing! Case ruled out of
court." Just wait, that's only half the case, and not the warm half
either.
Grace is Jesus going down into the gutter, the gutterest gutter, and
taking the man by his outstretching hand, and _lifting_ him _clean up_
out of the gutter, up, and up, _till the man reaches the standard_, and
is never content till he does. That was a tremendous going down, and a
yet more tremendous lifting up. Jesus broke His heart and lost His life
in the going down.
But out from the broken heart came running the blood that proved both
cleansing and a salve. And out of the grave of that lost life came a new
life that proved an incentive, and a tremendous dynamic. The blood
cleanseth the _inside_ of the man in the gutter, and heals his sores,
restores his sight and hearing and sensitiveness of touch. The new life
put inside the man makes him rise up and _walk determinedly_ out of the
gutter to a _new location_. He is a new man, with a new inside, in a new
location. That threefold cord is ahead of Solomon's--it _can't_ be
broken.
And, if you'll mark it keenly, a new _in_side includes a new _out_side.
The thing that in religious talk is called conversion is a sociological
factor that cannot be ignored by the thoughtful student. The drunkard
goes down to the old-fashioned sort of mission where they insist on
teaching that the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin, and that the
Holy Spirit will make a new man of you, and burn the sin out.
And _something_ happens to the drunkard. He kneels a drunkard, drunk; he
rises a man, sober. He goes to the hole he calls home. And at once a
change begins to work gradually out. He treats his wife and children
differently. He works. They are fed better and clothed warmer. He gets a
better house in a better neighbourhood. The new sociological factor is
at work. It began inside; it revolutionizes the outside.
Settlement houses, better environment, improved outer conditions of
every sort, are blessed, and only blessed, after the inside is fixed or
in helping to get it fixed. If that isn't done, they are simply as a
lovely bit of pink-coloured court-plaster skilfully adjusted over an
ugly incurable ulcer. The man is befooled while the ulcer eats into his
vitals.
It's only the blood-power of a Jesus, _the Jesus,_ that can fix the
inside. He cuts out the ulcer and puts in a new strain of blood. Then
the inner includes the outer. And the most grateful of all is the man.
This is the Jesus-plan, John says, "_full of grace and truth._"
Grace is named first. It _comes_ first. That is a bit of the
graciousness of it. That's love's exquisite diplomacy. We feel the
grateful warmth of the sun in the winter's air, and are drawn by it. We
smell the fragrance of the roses and come eagerly nearer. We hear the
winsomeness of a gentle wooing voice a-calling, and instinctively answer
to it. And then we find the sun's power to heal and cleanse and its
insistence on burning up what can't stand its heat.
We find the inspiring, purifying uplift of the flowers, drawing us up
the hillside to the top. We find the voice--the Man--gently but with
unflinching unbending determination that never yields a hairbreadth,
insisting on our coming clear up to the topmost level. That's a wondrous
order of words, and coupling of helps, grace and truth.
And this is Jesus. This is John's simple tremendous picture. This Man
comes down into our neighbourhood, on our earth. He sticks up His
stretch of tent-canvas right next ours. He insists on being His own true
self in the midst of the unlikeliest surroundings. The glow of His
presence shines out over all the neighbourhood of human tents. There's a
purity of air that stimulates. Men take deep breaths. There's a
fragrance breathing subtly out from His tent that draws and delights.
Men come a-running with childlike eagerness.
Grace Flooding.
And now as Jesus comes quietly down the river road where John's crowd is
gathered, John the witness points his finger tensely out, and eagerly
cries out: _There He is! This is the man I've been telling you about! He
that cometh after me in point of time is become first in relation to me
in point of preeminence: for He was before me both in time and in
preeminence._
And then John adds a tremendous bit. He had just been talking about
Jesus being _full_ of that great combination of grace and truth. Now his
thought runs back to that. Listen: "Of _His fullness_ have we all
received."
There's another translation of this sentence that I have run across
several times. It reads in this way: "Of His _skimpiness_ have we all
received." I never found that in common print; only in the larger print
of men's lives. But in that printing it seems to have run into a large
edition, with very wide circulation. Men don't read this old Book of God
much; less than ever. They get their impression of God wholly from those
who call themselves His followers.
They watch the procession go by. Here they come crippled diseased
maimed weakened in body, piteously pathetically crutching along, singed
and burned with the flames of the same low passion that the onlooking
crowds know so well, struggling, limping, crutching along bodily and in
every other way.
And that's a crowd with very keen logic, those onlookers. It judges God
by those bearing His name, very properly. And it says more or less
_unconsciously_,--"What a poor sort of God He must be those people have.
No doubt He has a great job of management on His hands. There are so
many of them to provide for. And apparently there can't be any
abundance, certainly no overflow, no surplus. He has to piece it out the
best He can to make it go as far as possible."
"I think maybe I needn't be in any hurry to join that crowd, at least
till I have to, along towards the end of things here. There would only
be one more to carry. He has such a crowd now. And the resources are
pretty badly strained, judging by appearances." So the crowd talks. Poor
God! How He is misrepresented by some walking translations. "Of His
_skimpiness_---!" Be careful. Don't take too much. Be grateful for the
crumbs.
Please clean your spectacles, and readjust them carefully, and if you
are afflicted with the small-print Bible that seems in such common use,
get a reading-glass and look here at the proper translation. That
crutching, leather-bound translation is grossly inaccurate, if it _is_
in such big print, and in such wide circulation. Look here. Can you see
the words? This is the only correct reading: "Of His _fullness_ have all
we received." Put that into the print of your life, for your own sake
and for the crowd's sake, yes, and for God's sake, too, that the crowd
may know the kind of a God God is.
And as if John had a suspicion about possible bad translations, he did a
bit of underscoring. That word _fullness_ is underscored in John's
original copy. It's a heavy underscoring, in red. The underscoring is in
three words he adds: "Grace for grace." That is, grace _in place of_
grace. It's a sort of picture. Some grace has been received. And it is
so wondrous that nothing seems so good. And the man is singing as he
goes about his work.
Then comes a sudden soft inrushing of a flood of grace so great that it
seems to displace all that was there. Oh! the man didn't know there was
such grace as this. It seems as if he had never known grace before. And
the work-song is hushed into a great stillness, though the wondrous
rhythm of peace is greater than before.
And then before he quite knows how it happens in comes another soft
subtle inrushing flood-tide of grace that seems to displace all again.
Some temptation comes, some sore need, some tight corner. You look to
Him; lean on Him; risk all on His response. He _responds_; and in comes
the fresh inrush.
And then this sort of thing becomes a habit, God's habit of responding
to your need, need of every sort. It becomes the commonplace, the
blessed commonplace that can never be common. That's John's underscoring
of the word "fullness." May the crowds whose elbows we jostle get this
underscored translation, bound in shoe-leather, _your_ shoe-leather.
Then in his eagerness to make us understand the thing really, John makes
a contrast. "The law was _given_ through Moses; grace and truth _came_
through Jesus Christ." The law was a thing, _given_, through a man.
Grace and truth was _a man coming_, the very embodiment in Himself of
what the two words stand for.
The law, the old Mosaic law, was not a statement of the _full_ message
of God. That was given much earlier. It was given to all. It came
directly. It was given first in Eden, in its flood; and then
continuously to every man wherever he was. It was given within each
man's own heart, and through the unfailing flooding light in nature
above and below and all around. The tide of its coming has never ceased
in volume nor in steadiness of flow; and does not cease. That tide came
to flood in Jesus. And that flood has never known an ebb.
But men's eyes got badly affected. They didn't let the light in, either
clearly or fully. The light was there, but it was not getting in.
Something had to be done to help out those eyes. So the law was given.
It was merely a mirror to let a man see his face, what it was like.
Here's a mother calling to her little son, "Come here and let me wash
your face." And he calls out, "It isn't dirty." "Yes, dear, it is very
dirty, come at once." "Why, no, mother, it isn't dirty; you washed it
this morning." And the child's tone blends a hurt surprise and a settled
conviction that his mother is certainly wrong _this_ time about the
condition of his face.
And if the mother be of the thoughtful brooding kind, she says nothing,
but gets a hand mirror, and holds it before the child's face. That will
always get a child's attention. And the boy looks; he sees his dirty
face reflected. The blank astonishment on his face can't be put into
words. It tells the radical upsetting revolution in his thought on that
subject. How could it have happened that his face got into that
condition! And the washing process is yielded to at least; possibly even
asked for.
That's what the law did and does. It showed man his face, his heart, his
need. It brings upsetting revolutionary ideas regarding one's self.
There it stops. That's its limit. Then the Man who in Himself is grace
and truth does the rest.
The Spokesman of God.
Then John quietly, deftly draws the line around to the starting point in
that first tremendous statement. He completes a circle perfect in its
strength and beauty and simplicity, as every circle is. If we follow the
order of the words somewhat as John wrote them down, we find the bit of
truth coming in a very striking, as well as in a fresh way. "_God no
one has ever, at any time, seen_."
That seems rather startling, does it not? What do these older pages
say? Adam talked and walked and worked with God, and then was led to
the gate of the garden. God appeared to Abraham, and gave him a
never-to-be-forgotten lesson in star study. Moses spent nearly six weeks
with Him, twice over, in the flaming mount, and carried the impress of
His presence upon his face clear to Nebo's cloudy top.
The seventy elders "saw the God of Israel, and did eat and drink," the
simple record runs. And young Isaiah that morning in the temple, and
Ezekiel in the colony of exiles on the Chebar, and Daniel by the Tigris
at the close of his three weeks' fast,--these all come quickly to mind.
John's startling statement seems to contradict these flatly.
But push on. John has a way of clearing things up as you follow him
through. Listen to him further: The only-begotten God who is in the
bosom of the Father--_He_ has always been the _spokesman_ of God. Look
into that sentence of John's a little. It seems quite clear, clear to
the point of satisfying the most critical research, that John wrote down
the words, "the only-begotten _God_." The contrast in his mind is not
between "God," and the "only begotten Son." It is a contrast whose
verbal terms fit with much nicer exactness than that. It is a contrast
between "God" and the "only-begotten God."
There is only one such person whichever way unity. They tell the whole
story hanging at the end of John's pen. This little bit commonly called
the prologue is a gem of simplicity and compactness.
It is John's Gospel in miniature, even as John's Gospel is the whole
Bible story in miniature. You can see the whole of the sun reflected in
a single drop of water. You can see the whole of both Father and Son in
the action of love in these simple opening lines of John's Gospel.
Have you ever been walking down a country road till, weary and thirsty,
you stopped at an old farmhouse and refreshed yourself at the
old-fashioned well, with its bucket and long sweep? And as you rested a
bit by the well you wondered how deep it was. It didn't look deep at
all. The water was near, and it was so clear and sweet and refreshing,
and so easy to get at for a drink.
_Is_ it deep? So you fish a rather long bit of string out of your
pocket, and tie it to a bit of stone you find lying close by. And you
let the stone down, and down, and down, till you are surprised to find
that the well is deeper than your string is long.
Well, John's opening bit is just like that. It seems very simple, easily
understood at first flush in the mere statements made. The water is near
the top. You easily drink. And you are refreshed. But when you try to
find out how deep it is, you are startled to find that it is clear over
your head.
But it is _never over your heart_. It is too deep for you to grasp and
understand. You never touch bottom. _But_ it's never beyond
heart-understanding. You can sense and feel and love. You can open the
sluice-gates into your heart, and have the blessed flood-tide lift and
lift and bear you aloft and along. You can _love._ And that is the whole
story.
Was John an artist? Is he making a rare painting for us here? Is he
studying perspective, shading and spacing, to an exquisite nicety that
is revealed in the very way he puts words and sentences and paragraphs
together? I do not know. And if any of you think the thing I am about to
speak of is due to a mere mechanical chance of the pen, I'll not quarrel
with you. Though I shall still have my own personal thought in the
matter.
But will you notice this? John begins his prologue with a description of
a wonderful personality. He ends it with another description of this
same personality. Both descriptions are rare in beauty and boldness, in
simplicity and brevity. And right midway between the two, at almost the
exact middle line of the reading, at what is the artistic center, stands
the word "_came_."
That word "came" gathers up into itself and tells out to you the whole
story about this twice-described personality. "He came" John says.
That's the whole thing. First the _He_ fills your eye, and then what He
did--_came_. And as you step off a bit for better perspective, and
change your personal position this way and that to get the best light,
you find the picture standing out before your awed eyes.
It is a Man coming down the road with face looking into yours. He is
truly a man, every line of the picture makes that clear to you. But such
a man as never was seen before, with the rarest blending of the kingly
and the kindly in His bearing. The purest purity, the utmost
graciousness, the highest ideals, the gentlest manner, nobility beyond
what we have known, and kindliness past describing,--all these blend in
the pose of His body and most of all in the look of His face. And He is
in motion. He is walking, walking towards us, with hands outstretched.
This is John's picture of Jesus. He came to His own. He came because His
own drew Him. Out from the bosom of His Father, into the womb of a
virgin maid, and into the heart of a race He came. Out of the
glory-blaze above into the gloom of the shadow, and the glare of false
lights below, He came.
Out of the love of a Father's heart, the Only-begotten came, into
contact with the hate that was the only-begotten of sin, that He might
woo us men up, and up, and up, into the only-begotten life with the
Father.
Jesus was God on a wooing errand to the earth.
III
The Lover Wooing
_A Group of Pictures Illustrating How the Wooing Was Done, and How
the Lover Was Received_
"Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy
Came the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
_Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter Me_.'"
--"_The Hound of Heaven_."
"O thou hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble,
why shouldst thou be as a sojourner in the land, and as a wayfaring
man that spreadeth his tent for a night?"--_Jeremiah xiv. 8_.
He came unto his own home, and they who were his own kinsfolk
received him not into the house, but left him standing outside in
the cold and dark of the winter's night. But as many as did receive
him he received into his home, and gave each a seat in the inner
circle at the hearthfire of God.--_John i. II, 12. Free
translation_.
III
The Lover Wooing
(John i. 19-xii. 50)
The Mother of all Love-Words.
Brooding is love at its tenderest and best It is love giving its best,
and so bringing out the best possible in the one brooded over.
Look into the nest where the word itself was brooded. It is a warm
something, warm in itself, not a borrowed warmth. The warmth is its
chief trait. It is a soft tender unfailing cuddling warmth. It cuddles
and coos, it glows and floods a gentle comforting stimulating warmth.
And the best there is lying asleep within the thing so brooded over
awakes.
It answers to that creative mothering warmth. It pushes out, against all
obstacles, and comes shyly and winsomely, but steadily and strongly, out
to the brooding warmth, growing as it comes and growing most as it comes
into closest touch with the warm brooder.
Brooding is the mother of all love-words,--friendship, wooing, pitying,
helping, mothering, fathering, witnessing, believing. It is the
mother-word, from out whose warm womb all these others come, warm, too,
and full of gentle strong life. Its mother quality is so strong that we
are apt to think of it only in connection with actual mothers, mothers
among animals and birds and of our human kind.
But this is only one meaning, really a surface meaning, though such a
fine deep meaning in itself. Its real heart meaning lies much deeper.
_Brooding is the mother of all love._ It is its warmth that draws out
that fine feeling that makes and marks friendship. It is its tender
warmth that draws out that finest degree of friendship which knits with
unbreakable bonds two lives into one.
It reaches out most subtly to knit up again the ends that have ravelled
out under the sore stress of life. It bends compassionately over those
hurt in body, and hurt yet more in their spirit by the greedy rivalry of
life, and nurses into newness of life the shivering shredded hurt parts.
In the more familiar use of the word it fathers and mothers the newly
minted morsels of precious humanity, coming into life with big wondering
eyes.
And it warms into highest life that highest love that, through the
process of hearing, assenting, trusting, risking, giving the heart's
devotion, comes to know God as a tender Father, and Christ as a precious
personal Saviour. Whether in close friend, or ardent lover, gracious
philanthropist, devoted parent, or earnest witness, it is the same warm
thing underneath, at its fine task--brooding.