it was in the heathen mind and as it is in ours, with the thought of
Judgment. How could He speak of raising the dead, without speaking of
a judgment through which the dead would have to pass? He anticipates
the objection, and does much more than answer it. '_For the Father_,'
He says, '_judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the
Son; that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the
Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which
hath sent Him._' These words have been much used in theological
argumentation. I am far from saying that they have not been used
fairly. But I have warned you already, that if we wish to understand
St. John, we must follow his course of thought, not eagerly snatch at
sentences which may serve a temporary purpose. On this ground I
refused to take the first words of his Gospel as a dogmatical
assertion of the divinity of Jesus. I said we must begin, as he began,
at the beginning. We must wait till he spoke to us of Jesus of
Nazareth, and declared His nature to us. Then we should learn much
more of His divinity than if we were in haste to get proofs of it. For
are we not learners, who want to be told what divinity is and what
humanity is? Have we not need to sit at the Apostle's feet, that he
may instruct us in those things which it is most needful for us to
know? Is there not a danger of our fancying that we know all
already--of our taking his divine words merely to confirm propositions
of ours, into the sense and power of which we have never entered?
I would apply this rule in the present case. St. John has told us that
in the Word who was with God was life, and that His life was the light
of men. We have found him illustrating this language in various
ways,--beginning from John the Baptist, as the witness of the light,
afterwards telling us how Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of this being the
condemnation, '_that light was come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil_.' In both
these passages, in the last especially, and in those which I have not
recalled to your memory, the Word or Son of God is described as a
Judge; as One who discovers the thoughts and intents of the heart; as
One whom the man confesses to be His Lord and King, whether he shrinks
back from His clear light, or asks that he may be penetrated by it. In
strict consistency with this teaching, our Lord here declares the
office of a Judge to be implied in the relation of the divine Son to
men. In doing so, He clears away confusions that have darkened the
conscience and disturbed the practice of all men. We think of the
judgment of God. It is sometimes a terrible thought; it is more
commonly a vague, misty thought. It never has been an effectual one in
making men inwardly or even outwardly better, till they could connect
it with some human judgment,--till they could attribute to some being
of their own race, even though he were a frail being liable to error,
the function of pronouncing upon their deeds and upon their
characters. Why has it been so? Because '_the Father judgeth no man,
but hath committed all judgment unto the Son_.' Because by an eternal,
irreversible law, involved in the very nature of God and the nature of
man, we cannot bring ourselves face to face with the absolute Being.
Our consciences tremble at His name; they do not, they cannot, bring
their secrets directly into His light. Until they acknowledge One
close to themselves, One who knows what is going on within them; until
they acknowledge a Word, a Christ, who is nigh to them and not afar
off; there is no distinction in their minds. Good thoughts and evil
thoughts lie huddled together. Good deeds and bad deeds are only
known, apart from each other, by some results which they may happen to
produce. It is when the man has started like a guilty thing surprised,
at the presence of One who brings back to him past passages of his
existence; who tells him all that ever he did; who shows him that his
acts, his petty words, are not lost in the sum of all the acts that
have been done and the words that have been spoken since the
creation-day, but have all been recorded; it is when the man
understands that He who keeps the record is the dearest Friend he has,
the One who has been guiding him, watching over him, restraining him
from evil, urging him to good from his birth onward; it is when he
understands that the Reprover can give him remission of his sins, can
endue him with a new life;--it is then that he can believe, and
rejoice in the belief, that there is a judgment of God--a judgment for
the whole universe. For it is then that he honours the Son even as he
honours the Father. It is then that he confesses these testimonies in
his own heart to be the echoes of the Voice which gave commandment to
the sea, and fixed its bounds that it should not pass, and ordained
laws for all the generations of men. It is then that the Will which
governs him is felt to be the Will of a Father. He honours it, and
bows to it, and delights in it, because he honours and bows to and
delights in the will of the Son whom He hath sent.
In the words which follow, our translators have exhibited an instance
of the timidity which I have had occasion sometimes to notice before.
'_Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and
believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life._' There
can be no good reason why the word κρίσις should be rendered
_judgment_ in the 22d verse, and _condemnation_ in the 24th. But from
a fear, I suppose, lest the one should seem to contradict the
other,--lest the Son should be thought not to execute the judgment
that had been committed to Him,--they were unfaithful to the letter,
perhaps even more unfaithful to the spirit, of the passage. To make
the language fit their notion of the sense, they were forced to change
the tense of '_come_,'--to make it '_shall not come_,' instead of
'_doth not come_.' Those who cannot venture these outrages upon the
text, must be content to accept the statement of it simply; that there
is an eternal life in the Son of God,--that eternal life which was
spoken of in the dialogue with the woman of Sychar; that those who
hear His voice speaking to them in their hearts, and receive Him as
the Witness and Manifestation of the eternal God, enter into that
life; that they _do_ not come into judgment. The light does not scare
them, but invites them. They fly to it as a deliverance, not from it
lest it should consume them.
Then the next passage becomes far more intelligible. It is not a mere
repetition of what has gone before; it enlarges and expands the
doctrine we have heard, and applies it to the future as well as to the
present. '_Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now
is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they
that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath
He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given Him
authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man.
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are
in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that
have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done
evil, unto the resurrection of judgment._' There can be no doubt that
when the Jews spoke either of resurrection or of judgment, they meant
merely a resurrection and a judgment after death. Jesus teaches us
that we can know nothing of a resurrection or a judgment after death,
unless we connect it with the Son of God, in whom men may believe and
rise to newness of life here,--with the Son of God who speaks to us
and judges us here. When we acknowledge Him as the Word in whom is
life,--when we confess that His life is our light,--then we shall go
on to acknowledge how both His life-giving power and His judging power
extend over the whole universe, over the dead as well as the quick;
then we shall understand that those who are in their graves are as
little beyond the reach of His voice, as little without the sphere of
His light, as those who are walking upon the earth. So much is
involved in the very idea of a Son who is one with the Father. If we
believe that the Father hath life in Himself, we must believe that
there is a life in the Son which corresponds with that. If we believe
that all thoughts, and acts, past and present, are open to the Father,
we must believe that they are open to the Son. And, as I said before,
the scrutiny of our own hearts and spirits must be in the Son of Man.
We can know nothing of God's scrutiny, except through Him who is in
contact with us, and knows all the throbs and pulses of our spirits.
How dark are all our thoughts of the tomb, till we believe this! How
horrible its abysses seem, when we think of them as out of the circle
of all the laws and relations which exist among us upon earth! What a
sunlight there is upon it--what flowers spring from the sods about
it--when we believe that the Son of God and the Son of Man rules there
as here; that those who have tried to catch the sound of His voice
here, recognise it more clearly and fully in the unseen world; that
those who have done evil, because they have refused to listen to it,
have still Him, and no other than Him, for their Judge!
It is perilling the sense of the whole chapter, to separate this
passage concerning life and judgment from that concerning the Father
and the Son, which introduced it. Our Lord points out, still more
clearly than He has yet done, the relation between the two subjects,
in the next verse. '_I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I
judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but
the will of the Father who hath sent me._' They had said, '_He called
God His Father, making Himself equal unto God._' He answers, 'When I
speak of a Father, I signify that I can of mine own self _do nothing_.
I do not raise myself to the rank of King or Judge over men; I give up
all independent power of judgment. I claim to obey a Will, to be
governed by it. And because that Will is the righteous and perfect
Will, my judgment is right. The moment I boasted that I could judge
according to the hearing of my ears, that moment my judgment would be
wrong. I should be denying my Sonship; I should become false.' And as
He could not judge others except by hearing His Father's judgment, by
following His Will, so neither could He judge Himself. '_If I bear
witness of myself, my witness is not true._' The Jews had asked Him
already--asked Him more emphatically afterwards--to tell them if He
was the Christ. Why could He not give the answer? Because it would not
have been an answer. It would not have shown Him to be a Son; it would
have led them to think of Him as another person altogether than that
which He was. He therefore refers to the words which had been spoken
by the preacher in the wilderness. '_There is another that beareth
witness of me; and I know that the witness which he beareth of me is
true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness of the truth._' John had
borne witness of a Word who was with God, of a Son of God, of a Lamb
of God. John had borne witness of a light shining in the darkness,
which the darkness did not comprehend. This was the true witness of
Christ; to this He could appeal, because it was a witness not to the
ear, but to the heart,--because it was the witness of one who did not
claim honour for himself,--and therefore was the fit herald of a
Christ who should come in the name of His Father, not in His own name.
John's testimony being of this character was not the testimony of man,
though it came through a man. Jesus, therefore, does not contradict
his former words when He adds, '_I receive not testimony from man: but
these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a
shining lamp_;' (our translators have lost the distinction between the
vessel containing the light, and the light itself,--a distinction
which St. John has carefully preserved;) '_and ye were willing for a
season to rejoice in his light. But I have a greater witness than
that of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to finish,
the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath
sent me._' John's lamp was one which God had kindled and filled with
his light, that they might be saved from their darkness; for a while
it had played about them, and they had felt a kind of joy in the
thought that God had not forgotten them. But Christ's works,--that
latest work, especially, which He had done on the Sabbath-day, to show
how and for what end His Father worked on that day,--these contained
witnesses of a filial power, a filial obedience, a filial
communion,--a witness to the hearts of suffering men,--which the words
of the Baptist, quick and penetrating as they were, did not contain.
He goes on: '_And the Father Himself which hath sent me, He beareth
witness of me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen
His shape._' 'In these acts of mine--these wonderful acts--as well as
in my ordinary discourse, in my daily deeds and works, a Father is
speaking to you, a Father is testifying of Himself to you. He is an
invisible Being. It is not by visible appearances, by sounds and by
shapes, that He communicates with you; it is by His Word.' Could it be
necessary to say this to a people who were called out of all nations
to know the unseen God, to protest against idols; to a people who had
the law and the Prophets; to a people who were proud of their calling,
proud of their law; who detested idols; who wrote out the Scriptures
continually, reverenced them, declared them to be the very words of
God?
Yes, brethren! it was necessary for this people. Jesus declares why it
was necessary. '_And ye have not His Word abiding in you: for whom He
hath sent, Him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures; for in them
ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
And ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life._' I think that
the late learned Bishop of Limerick and others, who have maintained
that the verb ἐρευνᾶτε, in the 39th verse, would better be translated
by the present tense of the indicative than by the imperative, have
produced sound arguments for their opinion, and that the context is
all in favour of it. But if the previous verse and those which follow
be heeded, I am quite willing to adopt our version; the sense will be
radically the same; and any who think that they cannot enforce the
duty of studying the Bible, if they are deprived of this precept, may
retain it as a motto for their sermons. What the Word of God is in St.
John's Gospel, we have not now to learn; he has been teaching us from
the first verse of it onwards. How that Word must abide in men, if
they are to have any light; how the rejection of it is the choice of
darkness, he has also been telling us, not once, but continually.
Those who will not have the Word of God abiding in them, must shut out
the invisible world, must become the slaves of the visible world. They
may not have idols of wood and stone; but they must have idols.
Besides the grosser idolatry of money,--to which, as a nation, they
will be driven by the want of any spiritual object,--their religious
men will fall into the worship of _letters_. The letters of the book
which testify of a living God, will receive the homage which the only
God claims in this book for Himself. This was the condition of the
Jewish people,--especially of the Jewish teachers,--when our Lord came
among them in the flesh. '_They searched the Scriptures; for in them
they thought they had life._' And those Scriptures they made the
excuses for rejecting Him in whom life dwelt,--the living Word of God.
This charge our Lord brings against them here and elsewhere. That he
wished them to search the Scriptures which testified of Him, no one, I
suppose, doubts. That He commanded them to do so in this place, I am
not at all anxious to dispute. And oh! how rejoiced should I be if we
English Christians, heirs of Jewish privileges, felt that command as
indeed addressed to ourselves! if we were ready to obey it! if,
instead of talking about the Bible as the only religion of
Protestants, writing its name upon banners, declaring that we are
ready to die for it, we would indeed search into its treasures,
because it testifies of Him in whom alone we can have life!
I do, indeed, desire that we should take the lesson contained in these
awful sentences home to ourselves. For I do feel that the danger of
the Jews in this case, as in that of which I spoke to you last Sunday,
is precisely our danger; that we are likely not to search the
Scriptures, because they bear witness of the Word of God, but to turn
them into idols, because we have not the Word of God abiding in us.
And I feel as if our Lord had laid bare the inmost root of our
disease, as He does of the Jewish disease, in the verses which follow:
'_I receive not honour from men. But I know you, that ye have not the
love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me
not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How
can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the
honour that cometh from God only?_'
He begins with asserting this as His distinction, that He seeks His
glory from the only God (παρὰ τοῦ μόνου Θεοῦ), not from
man. He concludes with asking how they can believe Him, when they seek
honour from each other, not from this only God. And who is this only
God of whom He sought glory? He has told us before,--the God who loved
the world, and gave His Son, that through Him it might be saved. That
love He reflected; of that love, in His words and deeds, He testified.
No such love was in them. They did not feel their want of it; they did
not seek it where it was to be found. They flattered each other; they
lived upon each other's praises. And the consequence was, that they
did not believe in One who denied Himself, who abjured all praises,
who said that He could do nothing but what He saw His Father do. Such
a Being was incomprehensible to them. They _could_ not believe in Him.
They must take Him to be a blasphemer and a devil. Let us remember it
and tremble. When religious men open 'a benefit club of mutual
flattery,' and live upon the allowances that are doled out from it,
they must deny the Father and the Son.
There are still some sentences left in this chapter which must not be
passed over. '_Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father:
there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had
ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But
if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?_'
However little of the _love_ of God there might be in the men to whom
Jesus spoke, there was a conscience which responded to what He said.
Their conscience said there must be a Father,--we _ought_ to be His
children. If so, and if this man were not a blasphemer, but the Son of
God, might He not charge them before His Father for their denial of
Him? The thought was a natural one. How eagerly a teacher who came in
his own name would have profited by the terror it excited! How
continually the ministers of Jesus Christ _have_ said to unbelievers,
'What! dare you question His mission? If He should be what we say He
is, how certainly He will accuse you to the Father for your rejection
of Him.' Jesus Himself declares that this is not His office--that He
is not, and never can be, the accuser. The law in which they gloried,
in which they trusted, that was accusing them,--that was telling them
how they had resisted the God of love,--that was telling them that
they needed a Person to unite them to God; an elder Brother, in whom
they might meet and behold their Father. Moses the lawgiver was
writing of this Advocate and Brother. But if those letters of his were
boasted of and worshipped, not believed, how could they believe the
quickening, life-giving words, which are written not in tables of
stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart, by the Son of Man?
DISCOURSE XIII.
THE BREAD FROM HEAVEN.
[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday after Easter, April 27, 1856.]
ST. JOHN VI. 35.
_And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to
me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst._
In general, the signs or miracles of Christ which St. John records are
not the same with those which the other Evangelists have recorded. The
exceptions are found in this chapter. Here, as in St. Matthew, St.
Mark, and St. Luke, we have a narrative of the feeding of the five
thousand; here, as in St. Matthew and St. Mark, we have the narrative
of Jesus walking on the sea. There is no doubt that the events
described in all the Gospels are the same. In time, place, numbers,
and in most of the circumstances, they exactly correspond. The
variations in St. John, however, are very instructive as to his own
design. We may learn from them why he repeats his predecessors, as
well as why he so commonly introduces topics which they have not
touched.
'_After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the
Sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed Him, because they
saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased. And Jesus
went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. And the
Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh._' The addition to the story
is in the last verse. It has puzzled the harmonists. It does occasion
serious difficulties in the chronology of this Gospel. Yet I hesitate
to call it an interpolation. The Jerusalem feasts are continually
present to the mind of St. John. Even when he leads us into Samaria
and Galilee, we are never allowed to forget them. I own, however, that
this notice of the Passover does not prepare us for a visit to the
city; and that it is quite unnecessary as an introduction to the
following discourse, which, as we all know, was suggested by an event
which took place near Capernaum.
'_When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great crowd come to
Him, He saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may
eat? And this He said to prove him: for He Himself knew what He would
do. Philip answered Him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not
sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of
His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto Him, There is
a lad here which hath five barley-loaves, and two small fishes: but
what are they among so many?_' The force of the sign is often, as I
said before, to be discerned in these incidents, quite as much as in
what we call the miraculous part of it. We see how our Lord uses
events as an education of His disciples; how part of an event serves
to bring out the character of one man, part of another. And what was
true then, according to the doctrine that goes through the book, is
true always. As the Teacher does not change--as, in essentials, the
learner of the West is not different from the learner of the
East--the same method of discipline belongs to both. We may
understand, from the specimens of it which St. John gives us, how our
thoughts are awakened--how we are made conscious of doubts, that they
may be satisfied.