John 11

John 11:1-12

Section 3. (John 11:1-57; John 12:1-50.)Resurrection-Life; in which the Son of God is glorified. We have now the character of the life received as resurrection-life. For us it has necessarily sprung out of death, the death of Another: according to the Lord’s words that we find here, that, “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” For us also quickening is out of death. Dead naturally in trespasses and sins, we are quickened together with Christ, and raised up together. The first is a change of condition, an immense one, from death unto life, from a naturally hopeless state of alienation from God (“alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts,”) to a state of knowledge of God which implies communion with Him, even though it be at first about our sins. “Risen with Christ” is a change of position; the place of the dead is changed for the place of the living: it is the opposite of burial, as life is the opposite of death. Thus resurrection-life is life with the fruits of Christ’s death attaching to it; fruits into the enjoyment of which we come more or less gradually, but which belong to us from the beginning of the life itself. Here we find the removal of the hindrances which have existed to our drawing near to God, and the opening of the sanctuary: the realization upon our side of that which upon God’s side we have seen already. This shows us the unity of this third subdivision, as also we have seen. It is Christ’s death that has delivered us from the bondage of the law, and brought us out of the fold into the green pastures into which the Shepherd leads His sheep. The sections here unite together into a perfect whole, as needs must be the case where they are realities of the Spirit’s work, and in Scripture which is everywhere a living organism. The section divides naturally into two parts: the first, dwelling upon the presence among men of the Personal Life Himself; the second showing the death, out of which for us the life must come.

1. The presence of the Life is for those who receive Him the annulling of death, as is shown for us illustratively in the resurrection of Lazarus. Here text and sermon are interwoven throughout; the Lord’s words interpreting His works, while yet the faith of His disciples was unable to apprehend in any proper way what for full development waited the coming of the Spirit to disclose. Here again we find the anticipative character of the Gospel, and the link between John and Paul, of which I have before spoken. We must go on to Ephesians and Colossians to learn fully what it is to be quickened and raised up with Christ, though here we have the basis of the doctrine. (1) Lazarus, whom Jesus loves, is lying sick at Bethany; and his sisters, Mary and Martha, of whom Mary is specially dwelt upon as the one who anointed the Lord’s feet with ointment, send Him word of it. They need do nothing more than let Him know. The after-circumstances cannot but remind us of the story of Jairus, daughter in the synoptic Gospels, in which also there was delay upon the road, and when He came the child was dead; the greater miracle of resurrection followed also in this case. The typical meaning is made plain there by that other story of her who touched in faith the border of His garment, while He was on the way, and was healed of her bloody issue. Even so, while on His way to raise dead Israel, as He yet will do, He is detained by the faith of the Gentiles which claims and draws virtue from Him. Underneath this dispensational view there lies a universal application in which the two miracles are but different sides of the one story of salvation. From the human side, faith lays hold of Christ, and finds the virtue that is in Him. From the divine side, man is seen to be dead, and must have life. Israel’s state nationally only pictures the condition of men at large. These meanings may perhaps co-exist in the story of Lazarus (or Eleazar, “the Mighty One is helper”) of Bethany (the “house of humiliation”). The names alone tell a story of where the help of the Mighty One is found. Israel will find it there in the day that is to come. But that the deeper and at the same time wider application is that which is most in the line of truth before us here needs no argument. Although there are in John, as we have seen, supplementary glances at Israel’s condition, yet the deeper and therefore universal view of man as man is what is the general truth, and that as the basis for the announcement of higher and Christian blessings. Lazarus is sick; and, though Jesus loves him, -nay, even because He does, -Lazarus must die; yet his sickness is “not unto death,” -has not that in view as its end, -“but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.” The blessing of the creature is not forgotten in this, but established; for it is in this pre-eminently that God is glorified. On the Urim and Thummim of the high priest’s breast-plate, the “lights and perfections” (typically) of God Himself, are written the names of the tribes of Israel; and these again, for us, are the typical expression of the Christian in his various characters. “I am glorified in them,” says the Lord of glory; and He who is thus glorified in them will glorify them with Himself. Mary’s anointing of Him is not forgotten here: the “exalted one,” as her name denotes, is best known as that in her exaltation of Him. Wherever the gospel is preached is this told for a memorial of her. Here it is mentioned anticipatively, though it will be again given in its place historically. (2) Jesus loves them all, these disciples of His, and remains where He is two days still, as if the news of this sickness had not affected Him. But now He says, to the surprise of those who after all knew Him so little, “Let us go into Judea again.” When they object that the Jews had sought to stone Him, He simply refers them to the twelve hours of the day, in which without stumbling man could walk. He, in fact, was the light of the world while in it; full light for those that followed Him. Apart from that they might stumble; for the light was not in themselves. And then He tells them, not of His present safety from the men of Judea, but of the purpose which, without needing to think of them at all, drew Him there at this time. “Our friend Lazarus,” He says, finding a motive for them also in the affection in which their hearts accompany His own, “Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” He talks so quietly they do not understand Him; for the shadow of death is upon all their souls, but the thought of sleep is not even a shadow. “Lord,” they say, “if he have fallen asleep, he will be healed.” Then He descends to their common language: “Lazarus hath died; and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that ye may believe:” -how little like faith was their present mood! -“nevertheless let us go to him.” Thomas breaks out with a love which has not emerged yet from the shadow, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” (3a) How monotonous and tedious in its night-like uniformity is the spirit of unbelief! specially, as we see it here, not in the outside world, which has rejected Christ, but among those who yet have, spite of all, received Him, and cling to Him. We are permitted here to see how heavily the cloud hangs before we see it lift and scatter: for the Life is come; and the Life is the Light of men. We find the Saviour now come to Bethany, where Lazarus had been already four days in the tomb. Martha, foremost always in her activity, meets Him outside the village, with a confession at once of her faith and her disappointment: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” In what follows, her emotion, excited by His presence, goes beyond her actual faith, as the result shows: “But even now I know that whatsoever Than shalt ask of God, God will give it Thee.” The Lord tests her at once with the assurance of a joy too great for her: “Thy brother shall rise again.” She sinks at once into mere orthodoxy: “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” The Lord replies in the memorable words that have comforted so many since: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and every one who liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” Here then is He in whom resides the power of resurrection and of a life not subject to death. Resurrection comes first, and is that which would appeal to Martha in her present condition. Of life untouched by death she could think only as a future thing, to follow this when in its full reality it should be come. But the Lord applies it to the then present time, dividing this from the past by the presence of Himself now come for the annulling of death. He that believed on Him, though having died, death should be annulled for him: he should live again, and live eternally. But for the believer now alive, this power over death would at once manifest itself; and here He makes it plain that He is speaking of no special, exceptional class: “every one who liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” The difficulty of the passage has been such to some as to make them think of the Lord’s coming as the time when it would be fulfilled. When He comes again the dead in Him will be raised, the living believer, changed into His image, will never die. There will certainly be the most perfect fulfilment of what is said here. But on the other hand, there is nothing but such a fulfilment to make us think of such a postponement of it to the future, which is quite in opposition to the division of time which the Lord is making: “every one that liveth and believeth” -now; not shall be living and believing at My return: of which He is not saying a word here. As for the present application the apostle does not hesitate to say that God according to His own purpose and grace, given us in Christ Jesus before the age-times,* “now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, has abolished” (or “annulled”) “death, and brought life and incorruption” (not “immortality”) “to light by the gospel” (1 Timothy 1:9-10). This is the inspired application of the Lord’s words here, which it makes perfectly plain. In the past death was, -a shadow over souls, such as we see it in the previous part of the chapter, such as we find it in the wail of a Hezekiah, or in Job’s picture of “a land of darkness, as darkness itself and . . . where the light is as darkness” (Job 10:22). But now with the Life is come the Light; and the shadow of death is penetrated by it. He that had the power of death is met and vanquished, the captives are freed (Hebrews 2:14-15).
   There is, however, in the Lord’s words here, that anticipative character which we have seen so much in John. He Himself was even then, as He is just about to show, the “resurrection and the life,”; yet this anticipates that death of His through which alone the power of death could be annulled. In Him the Eternal Life was to pass through death, not to be enfeebled even for a moment by it, but the reverse: to gain thereby a new energy for the deliverance of those now to receive it, which should make it that “abundant” life of which we have heard the glorious Giver speak. The time had not yet come to utter it fully, and we must go on to the epistles of Paul to find the doctrine in its full development. But here is the root of it. He that is quickened of God now is “quickened together with Christ, and raised up together” (Ephesians 2:5-6): the virtues of that death out of which alone is life attach to the life communicated.

For those who have it, death in the reality of this is behind and not before them; the storm of judgment is behind and not before: that which is before is the pathway of light in which the risen Christ is ascended to glory, the Representative-Head, and Forerunner of His people. For the full development of this, as has been said, we must wait for him whose gospel is in his own description of it, “the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, Gk.), whom the Spirit of truth was pleased to use for the ministry of this; but we shall find the Lord in John steadily leading us on in this direction, until He finally commends us to the Spirit of truth to teach us what as yet they could not bear (John 16:12-13). Martha shows us this in her answer to the Lord here. When He asks of her, “Believest thou this she can only answer, with true faith but without understanding of the blessedness contained in the words she has just listened to, “Yea, Lord, I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, that should come into the world.” True, and a glorious truth; but it is not that of which He has been speaking. (b) Evidently she has the consciousness of this: for immediately she leaves Him, and goes in search of a better scholar. She who has learnt so much at the feet of Jesus, she -it seems as if she said -will understand the better what this means. So she goes and calls Mary her sister secretly, and says: “The Teacher is come, and calleth for thee.” Mary, who seems to have been waiting for a positive call, thereupon rises quickly and comes to Him. The Jews, who had come out from Jerusalem to comfort as best they might the afflicted sisters, follow her, as they suppose, to the tomb, and find themselves instead in the presence of Jesus. Mary is unconscious of them now. She falls at His feet with a stronger emotion than has been manifested in Martha, but only to repeat in her sister’s words what they had evidently often said to one another, that if He had but been there, their brother would not have died. There unlike Martha, she stops and says no more. She sees no way, and cannot speak as if she did. Let the lips she has listened to so often speak for Him and her. And here the Lord is moved as we do not read of His being before.

As He looks upon the weepers round Him, He is deeply moved in spirit, and His words move on to action. “Where have ye laid him?” He asks. And when they bid Him “come and see,” His tears are restrained no longer: “Jesus wept.” Precious sympathy of One whose consciousness of power does not prevent His entering into the sorrows He is relieving; who in His wonders of divine power was still the Man Christ Jesus, and “Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.” The Jews take notice of His grief, and say, “See how He loved him;” while with some it wakes the inquiry, has He then, like others, nothing but His tears to give him? He opened the eyes of the blind; and could He not prevent this man dying? Then again He is deeply moved within Himself, as He feels the unbelief which everywhere follows Him. And now He is at the tomb. (c) It is a cave; and a stone lies at the mouth of it. And now the unbelief of Martha would oppose the removal of the stone: of what use can it be to bring to light a man four days buried? of what but to turn a sweet if sad memory into an offence? But the only offence is the unbelief that will retain him in the tomb, and shut out from the soul, as the Lord reminds her, the glory of the living, omnipotent God. He is now then face to face with death, and in view of the multitude gathered there, He thanks the Father that He has heard Him, and as One always hearing Him; expressly referring to that assemblage there in unbelief, but who may be brought to believe. In that confidence, and in attestation of such oneness always with the Father, He calls aloud for Lazarus to “come forth!” How that multitude of eyes must have peered into the darkness; and what a hush of expectation must have fallen upon the crowd, as they strained every sense to catch the issue of such a pledging of God to a miracle like this. Jairus, daughter had but just died; the widow’s son at Nain was but on his way to burial; but here was one who in that quick southern clime must have been already far sunk into corruption, and God pledged by One professing to be always heard by Him to bring him up! And the pledge is redeemed! Shambling forward, as one bound up yet in the habiliments of death, Lazarus obeys the call and comes -a living man. He has recrossed the boundary-line which none of himself or by mere human aid has ever come back over. He has come back a witness to the Resurrection and the Life, that the Son of God may be glorified in him. He has come back, a challenge thrown in the face of Christ’s would-be murderers, of the possibility of success against One to whom death and the grave are subject. He has come back to walk in the power of such a victory, the type and pattern of that resurrection-life which “every one that liveth and believeth on Him” is called now to enjoy.

In such a life is God indeed glorified. In such a life is power over the world attained. In men taken out of the world, sanctified and sent into it again, to represent Him in it as He did the Father. “Loose him and let him go,” is now the enfranchizing word. The will of the Lord is that those who have received life from Him should enjoy it in all its blessed freedom, delivered from the grave-clothes of Judaism, meant to put on men the stamp of death, and not of life. “Loose him and let him go,” is the Lord’s word now to the evangelist and to the teacher. Let the law do its work thoroughly upon the life of flesh and nature; and let the Cross confirm the lesson of the end of human strength, human wisdom, human will; but let the man in Christ be free as the light and air of heaven to which now he belongs: not in bondage but in freedom can the Son of God be glorified; and everywhere there rings through the New Testament the echo of His own words here, “Loose him and let him go.” The result of the miracle is that, on the one hand, many believe; on the other, word is brought to the Pharisees, and stirs more than ever the animosity which seeks the life of Christ. 2. (1) Here then the second part begins, in which we find the need of that Death out of which alone for us the resurrection-life can come. Anticipations of it and of its fruit start up in unlikely places. A Sadducean high-priest prophesies unwittingly, God overruling the heartless suggestion of human expediency to give testimony to the unique value of His Son’s work which then goes beyond it. On the other hand, Christ has His own feast, the anticipation of what He can find in the company of His people. Out of worst evil is going to be the bud and fruitage of fullest good; and God shall be supreme over all, His glory everywhere manifest. (a) We find then the Pharisees in council with the chief priests, men of a different creed and interests, but with whom they could make common cause against Christ. They have to confess that He whom they are unrelentingly pursuing “doeth many signs.” Their only argument from this is that if they let Him alone, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans will take away their place and nation. This brings forward Caiaphas who rebukes them for their inability to make so simple a calculation as that between the value of one man and a nation. He does not speak of right but of profit, and claims this for his own side of the account. Nor does he realize the blinding nature of self-interest, nor question the competence of his conclusion in the least. His arithmetic is so simple it can hardly be worked wrong. Notice how, when God puts His seal upon all this, the whole character of it changes. From God’s side, this “profitable for us” becomes (of course) “profitable for you;” the self-interest that in the first case distorts and spoils everything becomes a glorious manifestation of divine love, which can then only consist with fullest righteousness. “The Son of man must be lifted up,” that this profit may be realized: if it were not divine righteousness itself, Love could not give up its Beloved to it. Thus Israel’s blessing is secured; but there is a purpose beyond this in the death of Christ that the evangelist from his standpoint cannot fail to notice. He is not going to die “for that nation only, but also that He might gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.” As the Shepherd had sheep not of the Jewish fold, so the Father had children not of that family. As not all in the fold were the Shepherd’s sheep, so not all the family of Israel were God’s family. The law which gendered to bondage could not mark out or gather the children of God. Adoption could not be enjoyed under it: the real children were as servants and not sons. God was saying, I am a Father to Israel,” not to those born of the Spirit, and children of God indeed. The moment He acts upon this latter principle, the old distinction is given up, and the children that Judaism scattered abroad are gathered. Thus John keeps steadily to his theme, eternal life and what accompanies its possession, now that it is manifested. Of the Church he does not speak; but of the family; unity with him is unity of life, and so in the Father and the Son. (b) The Lord being thus rejected, and His death determined, He withdraws from those who are compassing it to a country near the desert, to a city called Ephraim, and remains there with His disciples. This too seems an anticipation of what is coming, when withdrawn from Israel, and found among disciples only, He really withdraws for “double fruit,” which “Ephraim” means. Among the Jews, gathering in preparation for their passover, there is expectation with uncertainty, while the malice of His enemies is planning for His death. (c) Six days before the passover, He is at Bethany again, in the midst of that little company who had in so remarkable a way been witnesses of His glory, and who show us that believing remnant which, while Israel rejected Him, gathered around Him. These are soon to be the commencement of that Christian gathering which in John has been already variously foreshadowed. Here they make Him a feast, as once (and only once) before, Matthew the publican had made Him a feast, though with a very different company. There as the Saviour of sinners, Matthew had put Him in company with sinners; and a feast, we may be sure, that meant for Him. Here it is with saints that He is found, the fruit of His salvation, and typically on resurrection ground; and here service, communion, worship, have their representatives. Martha still serves; Lazarus is at table with Him; while Mary, entering more deeply into what is before Him, anoints Him for His burial.

John alone names Mary here, as he alone points out the traitor as raising the murmuring against her and that which moved him in it. John too, speaks of the anointing of His feet, the other Gospels of that of His head. Here she is like the woman in the Pharisee’s house, as in the wiping them with the hair of her head. John also tells us how the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. Thus deeper appreciation on the part of the beloved disciple seems to flow from deeper communion with the Lord’s own estimate (comp. Luke 7:44; Luke 7:46).

How sweet to Him was that lavish expenditure of love which others counted waste. In the Synoptists the memorial of it goes out with the gospel; in John the odor abides in the house. Glorious testimony to a woman’s act, such as we find recorded of no other. But she had learnt at His feet what she poured out there. (d) This act of love brings out the traitor; and we have a glance at His previous history. What the other was pouring out on Him, he would have filched from Him. When he could do this no longer, he sold himself. (2) Now we have the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem as King of Israel. It naturally occupies in John a much smaller place than in the other Gospels. The elaborate preparation for it that we see in the others John has nothing of; nor is there the detail of the entry itself, the purification of the temple, nor the strife with Him on the part of the heads of the people, nor His solemn arraignment of them all. Nor have we the Olivet prophecy following. On the other hand, we have the effect of the resurrection of Lazarus, the testimony to Him of those in whom it had wrought, and on the other hand, the intensifying of the opposition by it. The fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy is only realized by the disciples afterwards.

All this is for John the history of a struggle, and the end of which is the Cross and the setting aside of Israel nationally. He marks it in connection with what follows here, which is peculiar to himself. For his purpose, he has no need to enlarge upon it. The coming up of the Greeks introduces once again what is his peculiar theme. (3) The Greeks here are pure Gentiles and not Grecian Jews, although worshippers of the true God as revealed in Israel. As sharers of the hopes that Israel’s prophets had aroused, they come forward, respectfully using the mediation of a disciple to gain an interview with Him. The mediation of a Jew was a perfectly natural thought for a Gentile believing in the prophets, where the Gentile seeking God, clings to the skirts of the Jew (Zechariah 8:23). As the centurion before used the Jewish elders, so the Greeks here would use Philip. He, with the caution of his people in such a matter, associates another with himself to approach his Master in the matter; and Andrew takes the lead in communicating their desire to the Lord. He at once declares that the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified; using the title by which is indicated His link with man as Man.* As Son of man, all peoples, nations and languages are to serve Him, and in a Kingdom that shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:14).
The hour had not arrived, however, for the Kingdom here depicted; and it has not yet arrived; nor is the Son of man a title which He takes in relationship to the Church. But there was an hour just at hand for another, His strange, yet greatest glory, to be acquired by Him; and in which not His connection with Israel but His manhood place for men was for all eternity to make Him glorious. By the power of this work the Son of man lifted up was to draw all men to Him. In the value of it, the earth and all the dwellers in it will become His own. Without it man’s ruined race could be but as a cinder-slag in the fire of God’s wrath. He goes on immediately to speak of this necessity, therefore, in order to His own fruitfulness, affirming it as constantly in John with what is of deepest importance with the seal of His double “verily:” “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Nature is summoned here to show the law of increase which is stamped upon her; and that creative law is made an argument for the necessity of the death that is before Him.

What an exaltation of the analogies in nature, to exhibit and use them in such a way as this! and what a means of interpreting nature itself is here given us! How it shows that Christ, ignored by the so-called “natural” theology, is the true key to the interpretation of nature, and that the Cross is stamped ineffaceably upon it. Nature is thus invested with the robe of a primaeval prophet, and that the Word, who is God, is the Creator of all things becomes not merely the announcement of Scripture, but a plainly demonstrated fact before our eyes today. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies: it has life in it, and it carries it with it through death itself. The death which it undergoes is in the interest even of the life, which it sets free from its encasement -from the limitations which hedge it in -to lay hold of and assimilate the surrounding material, by which it expands into the plant which is its resurrection, and thus at last into the many grains which are its resurrection-fruit. How plainly is this no accidental likeness which the Lord has seized for illustration of His point. It is as real a prediction as ever came from the lips of an Old Testament prophet: every seed sown in the ground to produce a harvest a positive prediction that the Giver of life must die. The union of Christ with men is not in incarnation, though that, of course, was a necessary step towards it. But the blessed Man, so come into the world, was a new, a Second Man, who could not unite with the old race, but becomes the Head of a new one, another -a “last Adam.” Alone He was the life, and the Life was the Light of men; but if that were all the history would be summed in the words that follow: “And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

He was in the world . . . and the world knew Him not.” To the dead life must be communicated, that there may be eyes to see. Men can only be born again into the family of God, of which the Son of God as Man is the beginning. Yet the Life cannot simply communicate the life. Around Him are the bands of eternal righteousness, which has pronounced condemnation upon the guilty, and only by the satisfaction of righteousness in the penalty incurred can these bands be removed. Death -death as He endured it -alone can set Him free from these limitations: He is “straitened till it be accomplished.” In resurrection He is enlarged, and becomes the Head of a new creation and “if any man be in Christ, it is new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). In those redeemed by His blood the tree of life has come to its precious fruitage. Thus the Son of God goes forward to His death. These Greeks coming up show divine grace working. Mere King of the Jews He is not, but the Saviour of men; and the wide harvest coming in is claiming Him for the realization of its promise. The burden of the world is upon Him. Past, present and future centre in Him. The glory of God, the blessing of man, call on Him with a voice which He has heard long since in the height from which He has descended. Now from a lower and nearer point of view the depths appear of the abyss into which He must yet descend, that He may lay in it the eternal foundations which nothing shall shake again. Each grain of wheat that is found on the parent plant follows of necessity by the law of its own nature the pattern of the grain from which it came. His people too must be prepared to follow Him upon the road on which He is going. “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. He that serveth Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be; if any one serve Me, him will the Father honor.” Here is the rule, and here is the reward of service: to be with Christ, where He is, is such reward as love itself would seek, crowned with the honor which the Father puts upon such loving service. The way of attainment is by the path that He has trodden, and that way, in its general character at least, is unmistakably plain. For Him, however, there was that which darkened the road, and made it what for us it never can be. What He has taken from ours was the intense sorrow of His; not mere death, nor even with all that the wickedness of man and the malignity of Satan could add to it of bitterness, but the awful reality of sin borne by Him in the midst of all this, and the penalty of it in its unrelieved intensity. The anticipation of this presses upon Him as He speaks: “Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour?” Nay, “for this cause came I to this hour.” Relief could not be found in this direction: there was but one thing could give it, but one prayer possible: “Father, glorify Thy Name.” To that immediately the answer comes: and in the hearing of the multitude: “there came a voice from heaven: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” That was what the Son was here in the world for, and it was in open acceptance of the Son’s work that the Father glorified His own name. In a special way this had been done in the resurrection of Lazarus; but it was to be done in a more signal manner, when “by the glory of the Father” Christ Himself would be raised from the dead (Romans 6:4). Meanwhile this Voice came as His witness to the multitude. For Himself it could not he needed, who walked in a communion with God which was never broken. Alas, for them a Voice from heaven was a strange and, for the mass, an unintelligible sound. The multitude said, “It thundered.” A few, who still did not clearly recognize it, said, “An angel has spoken to Him.” The Lord replies, It is for your sakes and not Mine; and then warns them that the world’s judgment is at hand in that which He is looking on to. His death at its hands would indeed be its condemnation. Its chosen prince was not the true, but the usurper; to be cast out yet by the power of that which He was accomplishing by its means. The Son of Man was to be lifted up from the earth, the witness of His rejection by men, yet of the curse borne for them: of which the final result in the new earth would be, all men drawn to Him by its sweet beneficent power, even now the attractive centre for the myriads of the redeemed. Thus it is His heart relieves itself. The glory of God, the overthrow of evil, the redemption and reconciliation of men, is to be accomplished by that, the cost of which is to be for Him so much. He weighs the gain against the purchase-price for Him, and is content. (4) There follows here again, as so constantly in John, that conflict of unbelief with the truth which reveals so perfectly the condition of man. The moral disease which cleaves to him is the very thing which makes the remedy so distasteful. Above all, the Cross is utterly an offence; and fullest grace of God is refused for its incompatibility with the self-righteousness of man. The Jews take up this affirmation that the Son of man must be lifted up, which they rightly enough interpret of His death, to put it in contrast with what the law has declared. The Christ according to it abides forever; and how can this be consistent with the Son of man being lifted up? Who is He then, this Son of man?

But the Lord does not directly answer them. For their state of heart is not reached by the formal answer of a question. He simply presses on them the speedy passing of the opportunity which they now had. The light would be soon taken from them, except by their availing themselves of it they make it their own. When the darkness came, they would lose the way indeed; acceptance of the light while yet they had it would make them sons of the light, in whom the light would be as nature. With these words He is gone again out of their midst, and hidden from them. He had wrought so many signs among them, and they had only fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of a people given up to hardening. The moral glory of His suffering and humiliation had only, being such as they were, blinded their eyes; and His grace published had but hardened their heart, so as to make it impossible for them to see or understand, to be converted and healed. These things Isaiah said, as seeing in the glory of Jehovah displayed in the temple the glory of Christ: for Christ is the Word, in whom alone God has ever displayed Himself; and in the Man Christ Jesus this display is at last fully made. But how could the Pharisaic Jew, ignorant of himself and God alike, recognize the One in the Other? Yet the evidence was abundant; so that among the chief rulers many believed. Their reason was convinced, but their hearts were unchanged, and the consequences of confessing Him were too serious: they desired the glory that men could bestow rather than the glory which God could give: the fatal choice of alas how many! (5) The Evangelist brings forward, therefore, here the emphatic words of Jesus which proclaim the responsibility attaching to the light which had shone among them. Light indeed it was, the revelation of God in His true character, so that to believe on Him was to believe on Him who sent Him forth, to behold Him was to behold the One from whom He came. There was no side interest to divert any from the true and living God He represented. His mission also was the appealing, attractive mission of salvation, and not of judgment. There was everything in it to win, rather than repel. Yet in the last day, that sweet and winning message would witness against the rejector of it all the more surely. Ah, says the apostle, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation And in all this, nothing was spoken from Himself, but all according to a commandment given Him of the Father. He knew it in its outcome, its meaning for man -eternal life! and spoke it in the joy of communion with it, -with Him who sent it. So the message ends: here is the responsibility of him who hears it. Henceforth, until as the Lamb of sacrifice He again appears among the people, He is shut up in the company of His own, to communicate to them His last words of guidance and overflowing love, for the impending time of His absence from them: a legacy which has never been exhausted yet; and of which, live as freely on it as we will, we shall find it hard to exhaust even the daily income.