Mk. 41 And Jesus sat over against the treasury; and he looked up, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and he saw the rich men casting in their gifts, and many 42 that were rich cast in much. And he saw also a certain poor widow; and she came and 43 threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in than all 44 they which have cast into the treasury: for all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury did cast in all that she had, even all her living.J. 20 And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast. 21 The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, 22 saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again, An- 23 drew and Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that 24 the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth 25 much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this 26 world, shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father 27 honour. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this 28 hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. 29 The people therefore that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered. Others said, 30 An angel spake to him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, 31 but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this 32 world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. 33, 34 This he said, signifying what death he should die. The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man 35 must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man? Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon 36 you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.

These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.

If I be lifted. It was mentioned as a contingency then. It is a reality now. Christ has been lifted up, and for eighteen centuries he has been drawing all men, men of all ranks and all lands unto himself. It is not merely Christ that is to draw men—not Christ with his heart of love and look of pity—not Christ in all the excellence of his character, not the wonder of his miracles, and the completeness of his daily works. It is Christ lifted up—Christ agonizing—bleeding, dying on Calvary. It was Christ on the cross that stayed nature in her course, that caused her to clothe herself in darkness, that made the rocks rend and the earth quake. Christ controlled nature always as her Lord, but it was not till he hung upon the cross that nature came to weep in sympathy with him, and send forth her cry of agony in response to his own. As it was Christ lifted up that caused such manifestations then in nature, so it is Christ lifted up that has exerted such wondrous influence since. When we feel the power of our sins, when we look bodily to death and its darkness, and to judgment and its terrors, it is Jesus on the cross that attracts us. It is the cross that concentrates within itself all the elements of power that can draw a ruined race. J. D.

Mk. 41. His terrible denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees having been delivered, Jesus passes into a court of the temple called the Court of the Women. On one side of this court stood the thirteen large chests, with openings shaped like trumpets, into which the free-will offerings of the people were thrown. Over against them Jesus seats himself, watching the passers-by. . . . The strong emotions of righteous indignation passed out of his breast, he sits quietly down, all trace of anger gone from his countenance, and asks his disciples to notice the poor widow’s act. H.—Beheld how the people. Was watching: The original indicates that he was purposely observing the people, studying their action and characters. Christ still keeps like watch in his Church. L. A.—As temple-offerings are needed still, for the service of Christ at home and abroad, so “looking down” now, as then “up,” he “sees” who “cast in” and how much. Christ’s standard of commendable offering is not our superfluity but our deficiency—not what will never be missed, but what costs us some real sacrifice, and just in proportion to the relative amount of that sacrifice. B.—God will not refuse the poor offerings of the poor; but he will not accept the poor offerings of the rich. Medley.

43,44. Hath cast in more.** He made use of this incident to impress them again with the truth, so often and variously illustrated by him, that it is the heart which fixes the character of actions; that the greatest gifts are valueless without pure motives; the smallest, worthy, with them. The same principle was set forth in his saying that great and small acts were alike in moral worth, if done in his name. N.—This widow’s mite, which had noiselessly dropped into the alms-box, deserved more attention than the stones and ornaments of the temple. It was not a mite, but an invisible act of the mind which the alms had made visible. There was something great in this action, greater than the temple, with its stairs, its peristyles, its arches and colossal walls. A. V.

The loving soul, which makes itself a willing sacrifice, is the true temple of God, the altar whence pure incense rises to heaven. Compared with this spiritual beauty, what are those sumptuous marble porticoes? Nothing could be a stronger expression of the broad contrast he had established between true religion and false. On the one hand was Pharisaism doing its good works to be seen of men, worshipping and serving only itself, under the show of the service of God; on the other hand, the religion of the heart, sweet and lowly charity. De P.—He wished to teach forever the great lesson that the essence of charity is self-denial; and the self-denial of this widow in her pauper condition was far greater than that of the wealthiest Pharisee who had contributed his gold. F.—She had found out how to render unto God the things that are God’s, not stinting herself to those offerings which cost her nothing. As she drew back her empty hand, and went away to toil for more, what countless riches Christ poured into her everlasting keeping—“She hath cast in more than they all.” New measurements, new standards of value, new reckonings of much and little, high and low, humble and exalted, strong and weak, the gospel brings. F. D. H.

She has cast in more than they all together—more, not in money value, but in moral worth. And what else, by giving such world-wide circulation to her act and his sentence on it, did Jesus mean, than to give a world-wide circulation to the truth, that in his sight it is the motive which gives its true character to the act; that greatness consists not in the doing of great acts that every eye must see and every tongue may praise, but in doing what may be little things—so small that they shall escape all human notice, and so insignificant that none may think them worthy of praise; but doing them in a great spirit, for a great and noble and holy end? H.—Christ even now beholds, with no less attention, the visible hand and the invisible heart, both of the rich and poor. We must desire to be seen by no other eyes but those of Christ, if we desire to receive the invisible reward of charity, and not the empty reward of vanity. Not eminent actions are great in the sight of God; but those which are done with a true Christian heart—a heart thoroughly sensible of its own poverty, which offers to God whatever it is, whatever it does, and whatever it possesses, and yet always believes it scarce offers to him anything at all. Q.—Let none of the Lord’s poor think they are shut out from the prizes of beneficence. The million that, silent, patient, loving, shine on in quiet deeps to God, but never to this world—for them waits the crown of heaven’s gold, if not that of earth’s. That God with whom they walk and work in holy secret, meek and solitary, with no note of man, with look to him only—in the light and love of that God they shall forever live, forever shine. Post.

J. 21. We would see Jesus. Chaldeans from the East had sought his cradle; these Greeks from the West came to his cross. Who they were we know not. F.—These men, like many God-fearing Gentiles at that time, being weary of their idols, were seeking the true God, and at the great feasts worshipped at Jerusalem in the house of prayer appointed for all nations. R. B.—Just as the setting sun throws the most brilliant rays, illuminating the horizon far and wide, so the glory which beamed forth from the Lord, while standing on the threshold of death, was so marvellously beautiful, that a desire to see him was awakened even in the Gentiles who were from afar; just as he also, in the time of his early dawn, in his childhood, had, through the light of the wondrous star, drawn the wise men from Persia to his cradle, as the first-fruits of the Gentiles. Gerhard.

23. The hour is come.** Seldom it is that Christ gives us any glimpse of what was passing in his own spirit. With the greater interest we ponder over the few occasions in which the mantle round its inner shrine is partially uplifted. On the very eve of his agony and death, these Greeks, Gentiles, come desiring to see him. In their coming he sees the first-fruits of that rich harvest which the world in all its borders was to yield. The great future of the gospel ages brightens into its full glory before his eye. The time, he knows, is near—he takes this very message from these Greeks as the token of its approach—when the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile shall be broken down, wide over the earth the glad tidings of salvation in his name go forth, and men of all peoples, and tongues, and kindreds be gathered into that one fold, of which he is the Shepherd. But between the present and this great result there lay, now very near at hand, his own sufferings and death—the lifting of him upon that cross which is the great means of gathering all men unto him. H.

The Son of man be glorified. The very appearance of these Greeks was to Christ a token that his glorification was at hand. But this glory could not be without suffering first. It seems as if there arose suddenly before his mind, in all its vastness and all its agony, that redeeming work for the whole human race which was now about to reach its consummation in death. J. S. H.—In his glorification are contained: first, the completion of his obedience, carried out even to the death of the cross; secondly, his exaltation to the glory which belonged to him as the Eternal Word, of which he emptied himself to earn it again for the human nature which he had taken unto himself; thirdly, the setting forth of his name as the Saviour of all for whom he has made atonement through his blood, and whom he gathers together into one in his Church through the gospel; so that now, since the accomplishment of his baptism of blood, the streams of the Holy Ghost, as living waters, are flowing forth from the glorified Head of the Church upon all and through all the members. R. B.

24. If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.** The analogy in the vegetable kingdom to illustrate this change from weakness to power is at once patent and beautiful. A grain of seed-wheat, kept dry, remains itself and itself only; but, laid in the warm, moist bosom of its mother earth, it dies; yet dying, it soon rises again to verdure, fruitage, glory. So would be the death of Jesus and its resulting consequences. H. C.—This entire sentence revealed, under a striking figure, the mighty foundation truth, the great principle of the gospel, that Christ’s vicarious death (not his life, or miracles, or teaching, but his death) was to bring forth fruit to the praise of God, and to provide redemption for a lost world. A passage like this can never be explained by those who regard Christ’s death as nothing more than a martyrdom or an example of self-denial. It was something far greater. It is the world’s life. J. C. R.—Of the world’s great spiritual harvest Jesus is the one seed-corn. He had the life in himself, and might have kept it forever there. But to turn it into the source of life to others he too must obey the law of life, propagating itself and spreading abroad through death. He too must die, that by dying he may bring forth much fruit. H.—Paul, in 1 Cor. 15, applies the simile of the grain of wheat, whose germ of life breaks forth from the enveloping substance which perishes in the earth, to the bodies of Christians. Christ is the First-fruits of the harvest of the resurrection; as on the third day he arose (on the very day, too, of the presentation of the first-fruits of the harvest), so at the last day will he rise again in millions of his members, and then the rich fruit of glory will be completely gathered in. R. B.

25. The death of the Redeemer stands by itself, the source of spiritual life to all united to him by faith. And yet there is a sense in which what was true of the head is true also of all the members. They too must take up their cross in turn, and in self-denial and self-sacrifice bear it; they must fill up what remains of his sufferings for his body the Church. H.—To Christ only, in the highest sense, belongs the joy of harvest. But he shares this joy with his true people. They, too, will be accompanied by many brethren, but on this condition, that they learn the law of self sacrifice. The penalty of self-seeking and self-indulgence is, that every selfish man “abideth alone.” J. S. H.—More than once did the Lord express, in the same words as he here emphatically repeats, the course of life which those must lead who would follow him. He who withholds the sacrifice of his own life from the living God shall lose what he loves more than God, and it will be made manifest that his love for his so-called life was in reality a hating of his true life; while life eternal is given, not only to martyrs who loved not their lives unto the death, but also to every true follower of Christ who acquiesces in his own will being broken, to every one who willingly stoops to bear the bitter but salutary cross.

26. The Lord himself interprets the simile which in its first sense applies to his own course of glorification—through sufferings to glory—as also applying to the course of glorification through which his servants are to pass. “It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: if we suffer, we shall also reign with him.” “Where I am, there shall also my servant be.” Wherever Christ is, whether in suffering or in glory, whether here, in this vale of sorrow, or above, in the halls of bliss, there must and there will his servant also be. He follows the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, even to sitting down with him on his throne. R. B.

27,28. Between what took place visibly, audibly here within the temple, and what happened two days afterward in the solitude of the garden, the correspondence is too close to be overlooked. You have in each case the struggle, the prayer, the triumph, following each other in the same order. H.—It was the contemplation of a contact of the all-Pure and all-Holy with everything most alien to the divine nature—sin, darkness, and death—that called forth these words, that heightened the agonies of Gethsemane, and found its deepest utterance in that cry of unimaginable suffering which was heard from Golgotha, when all that was contemplated was approaching its appalling realization. E.—Father, save me from this hour. It is a real petition, like that in Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me.” The sentiment conveyed by the prayer, in both cases, is twofold: that only one thing could reconcile him to the death of the cross—its being his Father’s will he should endure it—and that in this view of it he yielded himself freely to it. His recoil is not from subjection to his Father’s will; but it shows how tremendous a self-sacrifice that obedience involved. He first asks the Father to save him from it, and then signifies how perfectly he knows that he is there for the very purpose of enduring it. Only by letting these mysterious words speak their full meaning do they become intelligible and consistent. B.

28. Glorify thy name.** When Christ was lifted up from the earth, the glory of God was shown forth even more than in the creation of the world. Then was shown forth the glory of God’s holiness. Then was shown forth the glory of God’s mercy. Then was shown forth the glory of God’s righteousness. Then was shown forth the glory of God’s love. Hare.—Then came a voice from heaven. For the third time does the Father solemnly bear witness to the Son, while for the third time he accepts the sacrifice, as one well-pleasing to him, for which the Son presents himself to him. At his baptism and at his transfiguration on the holy mount, that same Voice had spoken from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Since the time of the Lord’s ascension the history of the Church has been a fulfilment of the word, “I will glorify it again;” and this will of God to honor his name is accomplished in the case of every Christian who is saved through faith in Christ Jesus. R. B.

31,32. The course of our Saviour’s thought here taken in its connection is grand, sublime. From extreme depression, intense forecasting of woes to be endured, from which human heart and flesh recoil, he rises through prayer—the prayer of deep submission and devotion to the Father’s will—to the assurance of glorious triumph. He sees the crisis of this world’s great conflict close at hand. He sees his great antagonist, the prince of this world, cast out, dethroned, despoiled. Of his death on the cross, indicated here as being “lifted from the earth,” he foresees that it will itself beget an attractive power which will draw men to himself in love and homage. The first effect of being thus “lifted up” will be to him simply torture, heart-darkness, his cup filled with woes; but the after-effects will be the drawing of men away from Satan unto himself, the casting out of his chief antagonist—the great usurper—and the firm enthronement of himself as King and Lord of all. Instead of the word “judgment” in verse 31, I prefer the Greek word itself which comes into our English—crisis. It signifies here the hour of destiny, the point where the great, long-pending issues of the conflict come to their final decision. The battle has been fought—with apparently varying fortunes and probabilities; but now the combat deepens. Satan is doing his utmost and his worst. He has gained entrance into the heart of one of the twelve. “This is his hour and the power of darkness;” he has at length compassed the death of the Son of man. But soon the Crucified One rises a mighty conqueror!—rises, and lo! it appears that his very death on the cross has lifted, not himself alone for agony, but all men by its moral power of love. All men are lifted and drawn away from the grasp of the devil, and into sweet allegiance to him who hath “loved them and given himself to die for them.” H. C.

31. Now is the judgment of this world.** The world that “crucified the Lord of glory,” considered as a vast and complicated kingdom of Satan, breathing his spirit, doing his work, and involved in his doom, which Christ’s death by its hands irrevocably sealed. B.—The prince of this world was cast out in that all-gracious hour when Christ bare the sin of the world in his body; when through the cross he was lifted up to be, for all sinners redeemed from the power of the devil, the captain of eternal salvation. Through the blood of the Lamb Satan is vanquished by believers, who, though they still have sin, have yet no unforgiven sin, no indulged sin. R. B.

32. “If lifted up,” means not only after that I have been lifted up, but through the virtue of that uplifting. And truly the death of the cross, in all its significance, revealed in the light, and borne in upon the heart, by the power of the Holy Ghost, possesses an attraction over the wide world which breaks down all opposition, assimilates all to itself, and forms out of the most heterogeneous and discordant materials a kingdom of surpassing glory, whose uniting principle is adoring subjection “to him that loved them.” B.—The cross is not only the tribunal on which Christ judges the world, and pronounces the sentence of condemnation upon the devil: it is likewise the throne of his mercy toward sinners, the source of all blessings, the cause of our deliverance, the instrument of our salvation, and the meritorious original of an almighty grace, by which he draws all men unto him. Q.

33. Signifying what death he should die.** From the first he looked forward to his crucifixion, his being “lifted up,” as the appointed termination of his life and ministry. His going out of the world in that manner was in the plan of his mission as truly as were his advent, his preaching, his miracles, his life of truth and love. He announced to Nicodemus, as one of the truths he had brought down from heaven, the necessary vital relation of his death to the salvation of mankind; and for the key to this doctrine referred him to the lifting of the serpent by Moses as a type of the saving benefit to be derived from his crucifixion. J. P. T.—From the time that he was lifted up, by his cross, its triumphs and its attractions, Jesus has been bringing all men to him—men of every age, country, character, condition; the wise and simple, the rich and poor, the honored and despised, bond and free. He puts this cross into our hands; he bids us lift it up, he bids us carry it abroad. Ours the outward work of letting all men know who it was that died for them on Calvary, and what it was that by dying for them he has done. His the inward power to work upon the heart, to win it to peace, to love, to holiness, to heaven. H.

34. They were right in holding that “Christ abideth forever.” It is the universal doctrine of the Old Testament. They were wrong in not understanding that Christ had to suffer before he reigned. They were wrong in not seeing that the very “law” of which they made so much, pointed to his sacrifice as clearly as to his eternal glory. They forgot that Isaiah says that Messiah is to be “brought as a lamb to the slaughter,” and that Daniel speaks of his being “cut off.” J. C. R.—They had conducted Jesus, the Son of man, into Jerusalem as the promised Christ; and now he was speaking of his removal from the earth, of his dying; this did not square with the notions which they had formed of Christ. Their Christ was to abide forever, and that on earth, as King of a glorious kingdom of Israel. That his dying was the very way to his eternal abiding—this was hidden from them. This “Son of man” who was to die could not be Christ. Then who was he? The Lord bears with this question; but, without forcing them to understand that which was as yet hidden from them, and which could only be unveiled to them by actual deed preaching it, he addresses to their sluggish unbelieving hearts a loud and earnest summons to awake. R. B.—35, 36. Yet a little while is the light with you. Instead of answering their question, he warns them, with mingled majesty and tenderness, against trifling with their last brief opportunity, and entreats them to let in the light while they had it in the midst of them. B.—He, who through faith in the word which is his light becomes a child of light, remains forever united with the light. Such a one even finds the darkness of death illumined by the light of life; for in this light the crucified one is transfigured to his views into the exalted one. R. B.

Section 129.—Reflections on the Unbelief of the Jews.