Part 3. Chapters 13-17

I have followed the Lord through chapters 1.-12. of this Gospel, noticing his ways as the Son of God, the Stranger from heaven, and also his intercourses and controversies with Israel. The one was a path of grace to sinners, but of loneliness to himself—the other lay much in the track of the prophet Jeremiah. Like Jeremiah, the Lord had witnessed the backslidings of the daughter of Zion. Like him, he had warned her, and taught her, and would fain have healed her. But, like him, he had seen the stubbornness of her heart, had suffered rebuke and rejection from her, and had now only to weep for her. He had, as in the words of Jeremiah, said to her, even to the end of his ministry (see chap. 12: 35), “Give glory to the Lord your God; before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness. But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride.” (Jeremiah 13:16,17.)
Jesus had thus wept over Jerusalem; for she had not repented. The boar had now again left his woods to devour her; the “Destroyer of the Gentiles” was again on his way, as in the prophet’s day. The captivity in Babylon had no more purged away the dross of Zion, than the waters of Noah had sanctified the earth; ‘and all was again ripe for another judgment. But as, in the midst of all this, Jeremiah of old had his Baruch, the companion of his temptations (Jeremiah 36. and 43.), to whom from the Lord he pledges present life (chap. 45.), and with whom he deposits the sure evidence of final rest and restoration (chap. 32.), so now Jesus has his saints, the companions of his rejection, to whom he gives the present certainty of life, and the sure promise of future rest and honor.
With these we now get our Lord in secret. We have now done with his public ministry: and we have him now with his own, — telling them, as their Prophet, the secrets of God.
And being about to listen to him as the Prophet of the Church, I would observe, that what the Lord gives us as our Prophet is our present riches. It is not with us, as with Israel of old, “blessings of the basket and of the store,” nor is it with us now, as it will be by and by, “authority over cities,”—but “we have the mind of Christ.” Treasures of wisdom and knowledge hid in Christ are our present treasures. (Colossians 2:3.) Arid accordingly, having now turned away from Israel towards his elect, and looking at them apart from the world, he makes known to them all things that he had heard of the Father. By and by, as the King of glory, he will share his dominion with the saints; but now he has only the tongue of the learned for them, that he may teach them the secrets of God. It is only as their Prophet that he now enriches them. As to other riches, they may count themselves poor, as one of them of old said (and said it, beloved, without shame), “Silver and gold have I none.”
Our Lord Jesus is the Prophet like unto Moses, who had been promised of old. God saw Moses face to face. He spake with him, as a man speaketh unto his friend, saying of him, “With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold.” In all this high prerogative, Moses was the shadow of the Son of God. Moses had access to God. He was on the heights of the hill with him, beyond the region of thunder and tempest; then, within the cloud of glory, as it stood at the door of the temporary tabernacle; and lastly, in the very holy, of holies, when the tabernacle itself was reared. (Exodus 24: 33; 25: 22.) And lie stood in all that nearness to God, whenever he pleased, and without blood—though even Aaron, we know, could be there only once a year, and that not without blood—all this telling us, in affecting and intelligible language, of the divine personal worthiness of our prophet—of the God—head glory of him, whose shadow Moses was, who was then in the bosom of the Father, and has now spoken to us. (Hebrews 1:1,2.)
And what Moses learned on the top of the hill, or within the cloud of glory, or from off the Mercy Seat in the holiest, was the secret which the Son has now brought out from the bosom of the Father. Moses learned there the grace of God, and saw “the glory of goodness.” (Exodus 33:19.) Blessed vision! And the only-begotten Son was among us, “full of grace and truth.”
But the services which the Lord renders us as our Prophet are various; and in this variety we shall find the special character of this Gospel by John fully maintained. In the opening of Matthew, the Lord, as the Prophet, revealed the mind of God, touching the conduct of his people, interpreting the law in its extent and purity, thus determining the divine standard, and applying it to the conscience. He prescribed the order and ways of the saints, so as to make them worthy of the regeneration and the kingdom, calling the soul into exercise towards God, and giving it its due ends and objects. (See Matthew 5-7) But in our Gospel, he is the Prophet in a higher character. He declares “the Father,” and reveals the “heavenly” things. He speaks as the One who had “ascended into heaven,” and was “from above.” (John 3:13,31.) It is not so much our conduct as God’s thoughts, that lie tells us of. He tells us of the mysteries of life and judgment. He declares the love of the Father, the works and glories of the Son, and the place and actings of the Holy Ghost in and for the Church of God. He is, in this Gospel, the Prophet of the secrets of the Father’s bosom, disclosing the most hidden ways of the Sanctuary. He speaks as the Word, who was with God, and was God, giving us such knowledge as a mere walk on the earth in righteousness and service would not have needed, but such as makes us nothing less than “friends” (John 15:15), and gives us communion, in knowledge, with the ways of “the Father of glory.” (Ephesians 1:17.)
Such is the variousness of the Lord’s exercise of his prophetic office, and such, I judge, the peculiar exercise of it which we have in this Gospel, the exercise of it in its highest department, again making the Gospel so peculiarly precious to the saint. And when the gathering of the Church in this present “day of salvation” is over, and all have come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, we shall not lose our Lord as our prophet. We shall listen to him as such, even in the kingdom. His lessons will feed us forever. Solomon was a prophet as well as a priest and a king. His servants stood continually before him, and all kings of the earth sought his presence to hear him. The queen of Sheba came to prove him with hard questions, and he answered her in all her desire. When she beheld all his ways—the king’s magnificence, the priest’s ascent to the house of God, and the prophet’s wisdom—these were altogether more than a match for her heart; the half had not been told her; “there was no more spirit in her.” And so, in the coming kingdom, we shall have that which shall fill the eye with glory, give the heart its satisfied affections, ever feed the still enlarging thoughts of our minds with the treasures of wisdom that are hid in our divine Prophet, and withal give our ears the music of his praise forever.
But let me say, for my own admonition as for my brethren, that we should constantly suspect and dread all mere effort of mind, while listening to the words of our Prophet, that is, while reading the Scriptures. The Spirit is a ready Teacher, as well as a ready Writer; and the light of the Spirit, though it may shine at times, through our darkness, but dimly, yet will it always evidence itself with more or less certainty. And let us remember also, that it is a Temple light—a light that suits the Sanctuary. It was in the holy place that the candlestick stood; and the intelligence that is awakened in the soul by the Holy Ghost is attended by the spirit of devotion and communion. It is a Temple light still.
I have already noticed the Lord’s different exercise. of his prophetic office in Matthew’s Gospel and in this. In his discourses with his elect,—after his public ministry is over, as given is by these two Evangelists, the same characteristic difference is still to be clearly discerned. In Matthew, he talks with them on the Mount of Olives about Jewish matters (24. 25.); but here, he leads them in spirit, into heaven, to open to them the sanctuary there, and to tell them of heavenly secrets. (13.-17.) The Lord takes his seat, not on the Mount of Olives to tell his Remnant of Israel’s sorrows and final rest, but in heaven, to disclose to his saints the actings of their High Priest there, and their own peculiar sorrows and blessings as the Church of God, during the age of that heavenly Priesthood. The heavenly Priesthood is the great subject throughout these chapters, on which I would now somewhat more particularly meditate. They form one section of our Gospel; but I will consider them in distinct portions, as their contents seem to me to suggest.
13. Here, at the opening, the Lord’s action—washing the disciples’ feet—is an exhibition of one great branch of his heavenly service.
The washing of the feet was among the duties of hospitality. The Lord rebukes the neglect of it in his host in Luke 7 (See 1 Timothy 5: 10.) conveyed two benefits to the guest; I may say it cleansed the traveler after the soiling of the journey, and refreshed him after the fatigue of it.
Abraham, Lot, Laban, Joseph, and the old-man of Gibeah, are eminent among those who observed this duty. (Genesis 18, 19, 24, 43; Judges 19) And the Son of God, as receiving into the heavenly house, would give his elect the full sense of their welcome and their fitness, that they might take their place, with happy confidence, in any department of that royal sanctuary. It was a sanctuary, it is true. But this washing fitted them for such a place. The Son of God was doing for the disciples the duty and service of the Brazen Laver towards the priests, the sons of Aaron, in the Tabernacle. (Exodus 30) He was taking on himself the charge of having them fit for the divine presence. It is the common way of every well-ordered family, that the servants keep themselves clean, or leave the house. But such is the grace of the Son of God, the Master of the heavenly house, that he charges himself with the duty of keeping the household in even priestly sanctification and honor.
“Unfathomable wonder, and mystery divine.” All we need is the spirit of a simple, unquestioning faith, which rests in the reality of such surpassing grace but his service for us in the sanctuary, as the High Priest of our profession, his cleansing of our feet as the true Laver of God’s house, Jesus did not enter on, till he had accomplished his passion on earth, and ascended into the heavens; and thus it was not, as we read here, till “after the supper was ended,” that he took a towel and girded himself to wash his disciples’ feet; for the “ supper” was the exhibition of his passion and death, as he had said, “ Take, eat; this is my body.” And accordingly he seems to go through the whole of this mystic scene, in the consciousness that he had now finished his sufferings, had ascended, and was looking back on his saints; for it is introduced in these words, “ Having loved his Own which were in the world”—words that suggest the apprehension he had of his saints being still in the world, while he had left them for higher and holier regions. And in the sense of all this, though glorified again in and with the Father, as the gracious servant of their need and infirmities, he girds himself with a towel and washes their feet; giving them to know that he was abiding in the heavenly sanctuary, just to impart to them the constant virtue of the “holiness” which, as their High Priest, he ever carried for them on his forehead before the throne of God. (Exodus 28)
Thus, there is a difference between the mystic import of “the supper,” and of this subsequent “washing of the feet;” and the difference is the same as between “the day of atonement” and “the ashes of the Red Heifer,” under the law. The day of atonement, like the supper, sets forth the virtue of the blood of the Son of God, the ashes of the heifer, like this washing, the virtue of his intercession. The day of atonement was but one day in the Jewish year, a great annual day of reconciliation, on which the sin of Israel was put away once for all; the ashes of the heifer were provided for every day’s transgressions, for all the occasional defilements which any Israelite might contract, while passing through the year. So, with the blood-shedding first, and the priestly intercessions of the Son of God afterward: as a scripture says, “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.
And we have the same blessings in the same order in another form; viz., the paschal Lamb once and forever redeemed Israel out of Egypt, but in the wilderness, it was the intercession of Moses that turned away wrath from the occasional trespasses of the camp. And so the blood of Jesus our Passover, and the intercession of Jesus our Mediator—the supper first, and then the washing of the feet, the death here, and then the life in heaven for us. He that is once washed in the blood needeth not save to wash his feet; and that washing of his feet, that removal of the soil which the saint gathers in his walk along this earth day by day, the High Priest who is in heaven for him accomplishes by his presence and intercession there. He is the Mediator of the new covenant, as well as the Blood of it.
Thus, the love of the Son of God for the elect, as it had been front everlasting, so, must it be to everlasting; as it—is here written, “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” Every age and scene must witness the same love in some of its services, and in its abiding fervor and truth. No change of time could affect it the dreariness of this world and the glories of heaven found it in his heart the same. Neither sorrow nor joy, suffering nor glory, could touch it for a moment. His death here and his life in heaven alike declare it. Nay, much more He had served her in this love before the world was, when he said, “Lo, I come—and in the kingdom after the world he will serve her still in the same love, making his saints to sit down to meat, while he waits on their joy. (Luke 12:37.)
Such was the Lord, such is the Lord, and such will be the Lord, in his unceasing service of love towards his saints; and he tells them to be his imitators. “If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.” He expects to see, among us on earth, the copy of that which he is doing for us in heaven. He is there daily washing our feet, bearing our need and meeting our defilements before the throne; and he would have us daily washing one another’s feet, bearing one another’s infirmities, and helping one another’s joy, here on the footstool.
This action and teaching of the Lord was thus a taking of the church, like Moses before, up into the mount to show her the patterns, according to which the things on earth were to be made. Moses then stood above the law, —beyond the region of fire and tempest, and so the church here. The disciples are called up in spirit into the heavenly sanctuary, and there shown the ways of the High Priest in his daily love and care of than; and they are told to go down and do likewise. As was said to Moses, “See thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the Mount.” The time for the taking of Moses into the Mount to abide there had not then come. He was only to visit it, that he might see the patterns, and receive orders. And so here the church was not yet ready for the glory, and for the Father’s house. “Whither I go,” says the Lord to the disciples, “thither ye cannot come.” They shall follow afterward as the Lord further promises; but for the present there was to be only a sight of the patterns on the mount; that they might copy them on the earth. But love alone can fashion those copies; for love is the artificer of the originals in heaven. As the Lord again says, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” It is, not, as of old, the skill of such as “work in brass” that will do now; but the skill of such as “walk in love.” The fashioning of any kind thought in the heart toward a brother, the arming of the mind with power to bear and forbear in love, the goings forth of the soul id sympathies, and the molding off or softening down of any hard or selfish affection, —these are the copies of the heavenly patterns. It is only as “dear children” we can be “imitators of God.” (Ephesians 5:1.) And what comfort is this! When the Lord would appoint on earth the witness of his own ways in heaven, he tells us to love one another, to wash one another’s feet What a sight of him, though within the veil, does this give its “He shows his thoughts how kind they be.” What manner of daily occupation of our Priest in his sanctuary on high is here disclosed to us!
And, beloved, let me admonish myself and you, to seek to walk more amid these witnesses of the Lord than we do; for this would be our assurance before him, and our joy among ourselves. If our ways were steady, unwavering ways of love, we should be ever walking in the midst of the shadows and emblems of Christ; We should have the Lord’s thoughts in all their kindness and constancy ever before us; and what joy and assurance would that give us! No suspicions of his love, no cloudings of doubt and fear, could then gather on the soul; but we should hear him with our ears, and see him with our eyes, and handle him with our hands; for all that ear, or eye, or hand met from one another would witness, as well as savor, of his love. This, indeed, would be a sweet dwelling “in the house of the Lord,” a blessed beholding of “the beauty of the Lord.” But all this display of glorious love the poor heart of man is not prepared for. Peter expresses this common ignorance. He does not yet understand this connection between glory and service. He follows his human thoughts, and says, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” But Peter was to know all this by-and-by, as his Lord promises; for Peter and his Lord were one. But Judas must be separated. “I speak not of you all,” said the Lord. The presence of the traitor in the midst of the saints up to this solemn moment was needed; for the Scripture had said, “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” Man, in this dispensation of ours, has despised love, and thus matured his sin—as the Lord afterward says, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.” (15: 24.) But having now despised the love of the Gospel, Man has “gone his way:” as Judas here, having received the sop, “went out” to betray him who had given it. And our Evangelist adds— “it was night.” Solemn words! —night in man, and night for Jesus.
But he at once looks beyond this night; for dark as it was to be to him, it was to open into the perfect day Jesus would be glorified in God at once; for God was glorified in him; the only Son of Man in whom he ever was glorified. He had kept the nature without spot, and was now about to present it to God a sheaf of untainted human fruit fitted for God’s garner. Man, in Jesus had been glorified; for all that had proceeded froth him, all that had been drawn out of him, was according to God. (14: 30, 31.) Not one speck sullied the moral beauty there. Man, in Jesus had not come short of the glory of God. And God, who had thus been glorified in him, would therefore glorify him in himself. But as to all besides, it was altogether otherwise Jesus could go at once to God, by virtue of all this moral glory; but as to all beside, it matters not, whether saints or unbelievers, whether Peters or Pharisees, there could not be this. A place with God must be prepared ere even the saints could be gathered into, it (14: 1); and therefore, the Lord says to them, “Ye, shall seek Me; and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say to you.” This day of his own glory in God, Jesus here anticipates, saying, as soon as the traitor was gone out, “Now is the Son of Man glorified.” And so, by and by, there will be room again for the display of the glory, when the Son of Mau r shall have gathered out of his kingdom all things that offend, and all that do iniquity; when the traitor shall again “go out,” then shall the glory be witnessed, and the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their righteous The floor once purged, the sheaves of glory will be gathered into the garner.
14.-16.—Having thus passed, in spirit, through the night, and taken his place in the day that lay beyond it, the Lord turns to his disciples, and in these chapters, as the prophet of the heavenly things, instructs and comforts them, telling them of the mystery of his own heavenly Priesthood, and of their calling, and duties, and blessings, as the church of God still sojourning on earth during that Priesthood.
The Priesthood of the Son of God, or the present dispensation, during which He is on the Father’s throne, and we in “the kingdom of God’s dear Son,” was a secret with God laid from the thoughts of Israel altogether. “The little while” was a stage in the divine procedure, of which both the Jews and the disciples were equally ignorant. (John 7:33; 16: 17.) They had all thought that Christ was to abide forever (chap. 12: 34); for their prophets had spoken of Him in connection with earthly dominion. There were, however, many intimations, both from prophecy and from history, which might have prepared them for this Joseph’s residence and glory in Egypt, and during that time, his forgetfulness of his kindred in Canaan till stress of famine brought them to him, had typified this mystery. So had Moses’ sojourn in Midian. (See Acts 7) We may judge, no doubt, that both Joseph and Moses had constant recollections of their own people, and many a desire towards them, while separated from them—but it was an untold desire. So, we know that the Lord is now mindful of Jerusalem, her walls are continually before him, engraven on the palms of his hand. But, apparently, he is to them as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save.
And beside those typical histories, the Prophets had spoken directly of this mystery. They had foretold Jerusalem’s widowhood, which was to continue for a season. Moses at the beginning had left a standing testimony with Israel, that the Lord for a time would hide his face from them, and provoke them to jealousy by those who were “no people.” (Deuteronomy 32) David had said that Messiah, as his Lord, should for a while sit at the right hand of God. (Psalms 110) Isaiah had a vision of Christ in the heavenly glory during a season of judgment on Israel. (Isaiah Ezekiel saw the glory leave the city, and then, after a, season„ return to it. And the Lord had said, by Hosea, “I will go and return unto my place, till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.” In his own ministry the Lord Jesus had already referred to the same mystery. In Matthew, he corrects the thought that Christ was to abide forever, by a recital of those scriptures which spoke of the rejection of the stone by the builders. In St. Luke, he had shown, by the parable of the nobleman going into a far country, that there was to be an interval between the first appearing of Messiah, and his appearing in his kingdom. But now, in our gospel, he treats of this matter more fully, showing the character. of this interval, or of his session for a while at the right hand of God in heaven.
Having, therefore, closed his public ministry, and being in retirement with the disciples, he occupies himself with this subject. In the action of the 13th chapter, in the teaching of these 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters, and again in the action of the 17th, it is the heavenly Priesthood that he is variously either exhibiting or teaching; thus showing that in his present interval of separation from Israel, he is blessedly occupying himself for the church. In sympathies and intercessions, in the diligence and wakefulness of one whose eye is over them, he is all action towards his saints now. He is separated from his brethren according to the flesh, it is true, but he is, the while, like Moses, tending the flock of his Father at the Mount of ‘God, far away both from Egypt’s pollutions and Israel’s unbelief, tasting the comforts of a beloved home and family, in holy retirement.
An impression of a very happy character lies on my mind from reading the opening of the l4th chapter it is this. Our Lord assumes that his ministry had brought the Father so near to them, that his disciples ought to have concluded that his house was their home. There is great consolation in this.
The Lord’s ministry had been such a revelation of the Father’s love to them, that it would have been strange indeed, had this not been the case. Such a thing would have been an exception, and therefore to have been noticed. But that there were mansions for them, as well as for him, in the Father’s house, was so fully in character with all his previous works and words, that such a fact, such a truth, needed no mention at all. It was a necessary conclusion. All family privileges were theirs, and, of course, the family mansion was their home.
What a conclusion for faith to be entitled to draw, without direct instruction: Not, that we should be chargeable with spiritual dullness, if we did not draw it. How could such a ministry as that of Jesus, “the Son from the bosom,” tell of anything less than this, that the Father’s own house was to be our home forever.
“Unfathomable wonder and mystery divine,” I may again say. All we need, is that spirit of childlike faith which rests in the reality of such surpassing grace.
Would that his family were refreshing the solitudes of the Son of God better than they do. Would that there were a more “beautiful flock” for his care and tendency at the Mount of God! a more joyous scene to compensate him for his present loss of Israel! But he has laid down his life for them, he has given himself for the sheep, and in his love he abideth faithful.
And these chapters, I may further say, show us that the ministry of the Son had done nothing that was effectual upon the hearts of his disciples. For so the divine order ran—the Father had worked hitherto, the Son was now working, but the Holy Ghost had also to work, ere the church could be set in her place. And thus, it is not until now we get the name of God fully revealed. The revelation of it shines gradually brighter and brighter as dispensations advance.
In Genesis 1 it is simply “God” that we see and hear. It is “God” who goes through the six days’ work, and then rests on the seventh. But in Genesis 2 it is “the Lord God” that we see and hear. And these are two stages in God’s revelation of himself. In the 1st chapter we see him coming forth, as God simply, for his own delight and glory. He takes his full delight in the work, beholding it all to be very good; and he glorifies himself by the work, setting over it one in his own image, the representative of himself. But in the 2nd, we see “the Lord God,” that is, God in a covenanted character, God entered upon purposes and plans for the blessing of his creature. And therefore, much of the previous detail of the work, as it proceeded under the hand of “God,” is omitted, and many things are brought into view which had no place before. Thus we have in strong relief, and which we had not at all in the 1st chapter, the Garden and the River, the manner of creating the Man, of investing him with dominion, of forming the Woman, and of instituting their union—and we have also the mystic Trees, and the Commandment with its penalty—for all these concerned the place and blessing of the creature in covenant with “ the Lord God.”
Thus did he begin to unfold his name to us; and after these first notices of “God” and “the Lord God,” we get the name “ God, Almighty” published to Abram. This was a further revelation of himself. And this was done when Abram was “past age,” and had nothing to lean upon but the almightiness, or all-sufficiency, of God. (Genesis 17:1.) In this name, which declared this needed sufficiency, God led him, and Isaac, and Jacob, after him; for they were all strangers and pilgrims on the earth, having nothing but the promise of an Almighty Friend for their stay and staff. (Genesis 28. 35. 48.) In process of time, however, God was known to his children by another name. Bringing them into the covenant, into the promised inheritance, he calls himself “Jehovah;” that is, the covenant’ God of Israel. (Exodus 6:1-6.) And under God as Jehovah, Israel take their seat in Canaan.
But still, all this did not communicate God in the full glory of his name. There was grace in God, and gifts by grace, which these ways of his did not fully unfold. But this is done in the name which is now published to us—the name of the “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” This is the full name or glory of our God, and grace, and the gifts of grace, are effectually brought to us by that dispensation which publishes it.
Thus, it was not until the present age, that the full name and glory of our God was published. The Father had been working, it is true, (as was observed under chapter 5.) in all ages of the Jewish times; but still Israel was put nationally under God, simply as “Jehovah.” The revelation of “the Father” had to wait for the ministry of the Son, and certain dispensations had to finish their course, ere the Son could come forth. The Son could not have been the minister of the law; such ministry would not have been worthy of him who dwelt in the bosom of the Father. It was committed to angels. And the Son did not come forth in the ministry, till the “great salvation” was ready to be published. (Hebrews 2:1-3.) So, the manifestation of the Holy Ghost waited for its due time. The Holy Ghost could not wait on the ministry of the law any more than the Son. Smoke and lightning and the voice of thunder were there (Exodus 19), but the Holy Ghost came forth with his gifts and powers to wait on the ministry of the Son, on the publication of the great salvation. (Hebrews 2:4.) The Spirit of God could not be a spirit of bondage gendering fear; the law may do that, but the Holy Ghost must gender confidence. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”
Till the Son of God had finished his work, the Holy Ghost could not come forth. The heart must first be purged from an evil conscience, so that the temple might be sanctified for the indwelling Spirit, and the holy furniture (that is, the spirit of liberty and adoption, and the knowledge of glory) must be prepared for this temple; and all this could be done only by the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son. The revelation of the Holy Ghost waited for these things. He had been, it is true, the holy power in all, from the beginning. He had spoken by the prophets. He was the strength of judges and of kings. He was the power of faith, of service, and of suffering, in all the people of God. But all this was below the place which he now takes in the church. His indwelling in us, as in his temple, had not been of old; but now he does so dwell, spreading out a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. As the Spirit of wisdom, he gives us “the mind of Christ,” spiritual senses for the discerning of good and evil. As the Spirit of worship, he enables us to call God “Father,” and Jesus “Lord,” and makes intercessions in us with groanings that cannot be uttered. He sheds abroad in the heart “the love of God,” and causes us “to abound in hope.” He is in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life, and he is the source also of “rivers of living waters,” flowing forth from us to refresh the weary. And he forms the saints together as “a spiritual house,” where “spiritual sacrifices “are offered, no longer admitting “a worldly sanctuary” and “carnal ordinances;” for they are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit, and gifts, causing them all to grow up into Christ in all things, are dispensed among them.
These are some of the ways of the Holy Ghost in his kingdom within the saint: these are his works which shine in the place of his dominion. He is there an Earnest, an Unction, and a Witness. He tells us “plainly of the Father,” and “takes of the things of Christ,” to “show them to us.” His presence in us is so pure, that there is no evil he does not resent and grieve over (Ephesians 4:30); and yet so tender and sympathizing, that there is nothing of godly sorrow that he does not feel and groan over. (Romans 8:23.) He causes hope to abound; lie imparts the sense of full divine favor; he reads to our conscience a title to calm and entire assurance. There is nothing of feebleness, or narrowness, or uncertainty in the place of his power. His operations savor of a kingdom, and a kingdom of God too, full of beauty and strength. We have to own how little we live in the virtue and sunshine of it; but still, this is what it is in itself, though our narrow and hindered hearts so poorly possess themselves of it. And his handiwork is to have its praise from us, and his glory in his temples is to be declared. It is well to be humbled at times, by testing ourselves in reference to such an indwelling kingdom, but the kingdom itself is not to be so measured.
Precious, I need not say, beloved, all this mystery is. The whole order of things to which we are introduced tells us (and this is full of richest comfort), that it is God and not ourselves we have now immediately to do with. In the law it was otherwise. The law dealt with us immediately, saying, “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not.” But now it is God we have first to do with. We are absolutely summoned away from ourselves, and are not to remember whether we were Jews or Greeks. We have God to look to, God to hear, God to do with. And this is the highest possible point of blessing for a poor sinner to apprehend—so blessed is it, that Satan does what he can to keep us short of it, to make the ear heavy to the voice of God, and the eye dim to the ways and works of God, and the heart irresponsive to the love of God. He would fain busy us with anything, that the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, may not shine in. He makes some busy with thoughts of their righteousness, and others busy with thoughts of their sins, that he may keep’ them, either through vain glory or fear, apart from God himself.
(To be continued.)
Operations of the Spirit of God
I turn now to the instruction which the 4th chapter supplies, where it is compared to the living water; and we see at once the stupidity and incapability of the flesh to receive the things of the Spirit,. in the repeated replies of the woman to the statements of the Lord, which, one would have supposed, must have awakened her to something beyond her ordinary thoughts. It is not the capacity of the flesh to receive it, but the revelation of the Lord concerning it, that I now refer to. It is not as a quickening agent he now speaks of it, but as a gift—that which was given by Him. Here, we must remark, Christ is the giver, not the gift. “He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him” (it is spoken of as indwelling), “it shall be in him a well of water.” Given as the energy of indwelling life—divinely given—the gift of God (as afterward) that I shall give him—it springs up into everlasting life. It is divine life from the Son, enjoyed by the power of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us. Not as the Spirit of God revealing his glory; but the power of life, having its communion and result in the eternal source from which it flows. Whether Jesus were in humiliation, or whether Jesus. were glorified, this power was in Him; and though the expression of the power may be different, still it was the same power. lie had life in Himself, as the Son of God. He might raise to natural life, or He might raise in resurrection life, and hence the difference; for now, it is in the latter, being, in ultimate purpose, that in which power conforming to Himself is, that tie might be the first-born among many brethren. It is life more abundantly, even if they were alive before.
With this new life withal, specially the Spirit dwells and bears witness. He might communicate the life then; but it could not be in the revelation or character which belonged to Christ as risen, or as the Head of the body. It was this great truth that was breaking through the clouds all through the Lord’s discourse to his disciples; while He was affording to the nation to which He came, not only this, but the most ample evidence of every prophecy fulfilled, and power exercised, which left them without excuse as to his actual reception, whether we regard his character or person. Through this operation of the Spirit, so indwelling, with our new man, it is that God is specially known and enjoyed; but being the Spirit of the Son, in that we are quickened of the Son, God specially enjoyed and worshipped as the Father. This is the great result of the revelation of the Son, and our life in and by Him. And herein is eternal life. (John 17:2.) God was known in a measure to a godly Jew; but if He were sought in an especial manner of relationship, it was as Jehovah. To us the special manner of relationship is, “My Father and your Father, my God and your God.”
We know Him as sons; but it is God who is known and enjoyed. This we find hinted at in this 4th chapter of John. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” But it is said, just before, “shall worship the Father; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.” This communion with and knowledge of God is matter of exceeding joy—I mean, knowing Him and enjoying Him as God. There is a depth in it which, in that we do it in the peace and communion which is the result of all question of sin being laid aside, is, perhaps (it is hard to compare things in these subjects), beyond all other of our thoughts, and lasts through and beyond the actual covenant blessings which are our portion to enjoy as children. These, chastenings may remove for our need,— “If needs be, we may be in heaviness through manifold temptations.” But, though the joy may be weakened, the spring of righteous confidence in God is there; and, indeed, we are thrown ‘more abstractedly and essentially upon God. We should joy in God at all times; but we are apt to turn to the blessings conferred, and in a measure forget the Blesser. (See Psalms 63) Hence the deprivation, that we may remember Him. But properly, this well of water springing up into everlasting life, is that partaking of the divine nature in which (“ having escaped”) we joy in God, repose in Him, delight in Him, are filled into his fullness, know Him indeed in the blessedness of actual revelation; but still in the nature of God, as such, the power of this communion is conveyed, being rooted and grounded in love, knowing God and known of Him, it supposes all the rest of truth, and it is found in Christ. “He hath given us an understanding that we should know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true—that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ—He is the true God and eternal life.” Of this the ungrieved Spirit is the power, and blessed it is when it is so with us. It is based on the plainest truth,” He suffered, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” Of this we have the perfect exhibition in Jesus, in spite of all trial; for how should the Spirit, which dwelt in all fullness in Him, even as a man, be grieved with divine perfectness? “Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” “That the love (says the Lord, speaking of the converse, and therefore the power of this) Wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them;” and so, as to the form of it, as it were with us,— “In that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” But now we speak of it as specially knowing God. I think, if the psalms be studied, what Christ’s Spirit passed through and teaches us, will be deeply learned in this—there, of course, among Jews it is Jehovah, when He speaks of covenant-blessings, as we have more specially to say, “Father:”—but not resting here on this distinction:—if the psalms, and parts of psalms, in which Jehovah is used, and in which God is used, be referred to, and compared and studied, the deepest practical instruction will be derived as to this power of communion from the Spirit of Christ itself: only we must remember, that for us it is founded on an accomplished work, and that which He passed through, as accomplishing it, is to us the fellowship of his sufferings or loving chastisement. We may look to the 42nd and 43rd Psalms as an example of this. But, further, if we turn to our Lord’s personal history, and note the difference between that word, “ Father, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but thine be done”—and, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”—we shall see the deepening entrance into another character of communion, in which the whole power and character of God were called out, borne indeed by Jesus our most glorious and blessed Head; that to us in that day, that power and character might become infinite and eternal joy; and is now to us all as to sons, through the consequent gift of God. by virtue of his resurrection; for such is the power of eternal life to us consequent on Christ’s death.
O that the Church more entered into these things —walked more in the power of unseen communion with God I say not this, as though I did.; but I say it only as so knowing the blessedness of it in Him, as to pray and desire it for the Church, in the sense of the lack of it often.
Hitherto I have spoken, either of the quickening power of the Spirit of God, as introducing us into the kingdom; or, as dwelling in the individual, as the power of eternal life, through which his communion with God. is carried on: this there must be where there is life according to Christ Jesus. There remains a wide field to treat of, on which I feel almost deterred from entering; not because I fear there is not boundless joy in passing, over, and learning it in one’s own soul—entering into it; but because it is boundless, and that I feel deeply my inadequacy to do so properly, even to satisfy my own mind: and I will add, especially when one considers the responsibility of being a communicator, and, as it were, teacher of these things to others. The deep interest and importance of the subject is my excuse: I would not have done it, if it had not been pressed on my own mind. It is the largeness of the subject which deters me.
There is one thing I feel it important to notice ere I pass on:—though the Spirit is life, and he that is joined to the Lord one spirit, and Christ as quickening Spirit is our life, yet the Holy Ghost is also spoken of as personally acting in power on our souls—acting in blessing; for He is God; and while we are made partakers of the divine nature, and have this life of God in us as born of Him, yet this is not the Holy Ghost; for the Holy Ghost is God. Therefore, we read, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirits that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs;” and therefore, the Scripture speaks of the inner spiritual man being strengthened, renewed, as—” strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.” Though our outward man perish, our “inner man is renewed day by day;” so “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”
The next point, before I pass on to its character and operation, is to advert to the fact of the special indwelling of the Holy Ghost: I mean in individual believers. I do not speak of this as if it were new to many who read this paper, but because I daily find it is new to many who inquire; and it puts the subject in entirely a different light. We shall see that it is connected with, and consequent upon, the ascension and glorifying of Christ; but we must remember, that while the coming down of the Holy Ghost is witness of ascension—glory and divine righteousness, and that our association in it was consequent (in the necessary course or the divine ministrations) upon Christ’s entering into the glory, yet was it withal the power to us of all that whence it came, and into which, and association with which, it brings us; and so we shall see in the texts to which I shall refer, closing with the one which more especially introduces me into my present subject;— “In whom,” (we read in the Ephesians) “ after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.” I know that this has been referred to gifts merely. To these I hope to refer before I finish this subject: but that it is not confined to these is manifest, however these may display it, because, in that case, where there were no gifts, there would be no earnest of the inheritance: but the Comforter Himself was to abide forever. Besides, gifts are not spoken of here, but the Holy Spirit itself as the earnest; and to confound them, is to confound the giver and the gift; for the Spirit distributes of these to every man severally as He will, and they are only the manifestation of the Spirit given for profit; and confounding them (unconsciously perhaps) undermines the personality and deity of the Holy Ghost, and confounds the power of witnessing to others (which may be with no vital or sanctifying power) with the blessed and sanctifying communion with, and anticipation of, things hoped for and treasured up in Christ as ours, and to be displayed in that day. In a word, the Spirit which distributes the gift is not the gift He, distributes, though He be displayed in the gift; nor are the things in which the given power is displayed, necessarily, any earnest of the inheritance at all; as in the gift of prophecy as in Balaam’s case, and as Paul states the possibility that a man might preach to others, and he himself be a castaway. And though their characters in some instances are indicative of the dispensation, and their number and circumstances may be different, yet the existence of extraordinary powers and acts in themselves were not characteristic of this indwelling and earnest of the Spirit. Many and remarkable miracles were wrought, and great power exhibited in service, before this came, before the Son of man was glorified. But these did not constitute the indwelling of the Spirit in the Church, for there was none such; nor in the individual, as an earnest of the inheritance; for they might be there, as in the case of Balaam, already adverted to, and the individual not be an heir: the Spirit, in them might search, and find the things they ministered were not unto themselves. I propose to return a little to this, and would now pursue my more immediate subject.
In the Galatians we find—having shown that they were sons through faith in Christ Jesus, not servants, “And because ye are sons, God bath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father;” clearly distinguishing between the regenerating power and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and speaking of one as a consequence of the other,—that it dwelt in an individual who was (and because he was) a son of God: we also see its distinction from a gift, for it is put in the heart to cry, Abba, Father. Further, we see that, as in such sort there, it is proper to, and characteristic of, the dispensation. For it is not the portion of the heir when an infant, and as a servant, under tutors and governors, which they, even if heirs, were previously, not in immediate communion with the Father personally. They had not the mind needful for it, not having the Holy Ghost thus. But it is their portion when they take properly the place of sons, which they do in this dispensation; and though they do not as yet enter upon the inheritance, yet are they to have the mind renewed in knowledge concerning it, and enter into the full interests of the Father’s house.
Again, says Peter, “We are witnesses of these things, and so also is the Holy Ghost, which is given to them that believe.” We find it in similar language in Ephesians, and Romans 8, — “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his; and if Christ be in you,” &c.; and in Ephesians—” That ye may be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” These are connected with communion, and mark it as an individual thing in which the heart has its portion by faith.
Again, —where the connection of things hoped for, and the power of communion in which they are enjoyed in the certainty of God’s love, are brought together, “hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us.” Again, in 2 Corinthians “For all the promises of God in Him are Yea, and. in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who also bath sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” A very full and blessed passage God, the great Author of it all, and Power by which it is wrought, establishing us in Christ, our glorious and blessed Head, in the communion of all like glory with Him: in the communion of that in which, by the fulfillment of all the promises in their amazing blessedness in Christ Himself as his, God is glorified,—and this while we are assumed in grace into a portion with Him, we being the very subjects of the blessing, not merely in consequence, but in association, and therefore having all the consequences. It is ours, the promises being in Christ, to the glory of God by us. Now God stablishes us in this portion: how do we know it? how is it marked? —how enjoyed, and the earnest possessed, while we have it not, when the glory is not yet come? God hath established us in it: that is the assurance and security. He bath anointed us with that unction from Himself—the Holy One, whereby we know all things (compare the whole of the 2nd of 1 Corinthians from verse 7 to the end, where this is fully explained): but then the having the Spirit is the seal or mark whereby we are significantly denoted as belonging to God, as his heirs,— “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his;” but being given us to dwell in us, in that we are heirs, we have it as an earnest in our hearts, abounding in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost, knowing that we are sons, and delighting in the thought of the inheritance, and of being like Him who is “ the first-born among many brethren:” and in this joy of the Holy Ghost, filled (it may be in the midst of much affliction) with all joy and peace in believing, the soul entering, as associated with Christ (and in this lies much, and that of the very kernel of the joy, though not all), into all the glory in which the promises of God are fulfilled in Him. I say, not all the joy; because it is not only, (with what riches are we endowed, yea, beyond all thought!) “As my Father hath loved me, so have I loved you,”—a blessing known, had communion with by the Spirit, as our portion, of which the glory is the display, as enjoyed along with Him,—but “that the world may know that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me;” and therefore they are not only companions with the Son of man in the glory, but in adoption—sons of God, as brethren, being brought into this joy, as in the Father’s kingdom, more properly the Father’s house, where ‘the place is prepared for us by the great First-born. Thus the Son’s rich and unjealous love (for it is divine), in giving us the glory which was given to Him, displays us in the glory which approves before the world that the Father has loved us as He loved Him. Was ever anything like this in love? Does it not, in its very conception, prove it altogether divine? None could deal, act, or know in such sort but God; and the very possession of these things in our hearts, is the witness that God is there, if they be known in love, holy love; for he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him: and these things we have now, not in possession indeed, but in (the earnest of the) Spirit; as the same Spirit by the apostle speaks,— “These things write I unto you, that your joy may be full, that ye may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” This is a very holy place to dwell one that. becometh saints—one, that nothing but the blood of Jesus could purchase—none but God, by his wondrous work in Christ, present us faultless in the presence of. Yet, blessed be his grace (and the more blessed, because it is holy and enjoyed), in that we have the Holy Spirit revealing it, giving us a divine spiritual communion with it, sealing us as heirs of all of it, and the power of our joy in it. This is our Place our portion: —O my soul, dwell there in joy, joy with Christ. You will note, He says, “His Son Jesus Christ;” which is not only the expression of faith, but presenting our blessed Lord in that character—the Savior, the anointed Man—in which He has brought us into fellowship, and associated us with Him in this Sonship, and given us fellowship moreover with the Father as sons; ourselves sons, though in Him. And the converse of this is met in that expression, “I say not, that I will pray the Father for you as if the Father did not Himself love you);’for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and believed that I came out from God.” This they had believed, but knew not yet in its fullness, known thus by the Holy Ghost (the Spirit of sonship given), namely, that He came forth from the Father. In this they were dull, it is the life of the saints: and this it is that makes the notion of sonship in Christ only when incarnate so destructive to the very elementary joy of the Church, and abhorrent to those who have communion by the Spirit in the truth.
But the joy and blessedness of which I speak, leads me at once to the statement, “He that believed’ on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Here again you will remark, it is an individual matter—the believer’s portion, however it may be ministered. “This spike He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet (given), because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” Now this statement (as I think we shall see) is one of extreme importance, and connected with the whole character and state of the dispensation, as being that of God’s blessings, which are beyond all dispensation, except the fact of giving the Spirit as the power of divine life and worship, inasmuch as they lead into communion with Himself. The 4th chapter of John, of which I have already spoken, though it involves, does not rest on dispensation; but that, on the passing away of “this mountain,” or even of that on which Jerusalem stood, the living power of communion with the Father everywhere, even with God as a Spirit, should take place. Hence it was a quickening. power, shown in humiliation, as well as in glory; yea, according to love in gift proved in humiliation: and the hour then was, as well as was coming. Not so, though they may include these things, the 3rd and 7th chapters. The 3rd, as we have seen, contains the kingdom; and shows what must belong to a Jew to enter into its earthly portion, the quickening, which alone could bring even the nominal children into the kingdom, because it was God’s kingdom.
But here, in the 7th, we have the gift of the Spirit consequent upon the ascension—glory, —on the glorifying of Jesus his brethren, representing in their unbelief the Jews, had proposed at the feast of tabernacles that Jesus should spew Himself to the world. Jesus’ reply was, their time was always ready, His time was not yet come. On the eighth day of that feast, and peculiar to it (the day of resurrection, the feast of the new week, the beginning of another scene), the great day of it, Jesus stood and cried. And as the water out of the rock (and that rock was Christ) followed and supplied the children of Israel through the wilderness till they came to keep the feast of tabernacles as at rest in the land, so Jesus, his people being united to Him their glorified Head, would so fill them with the Spirit, that out of them should flow—not merely out of Him to them, but out of them should flow rivers of living water, even of the Spirit which believers should receive. But it is said— “out of his belly;”—now this is to me a blessed expression: the use of it for the thoughts, feelings, condition of the inner man, is familiar in Scripture —on this the peculiar blessing all rests; and herein the essential difference of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost as now, and when operating on prophets before. The possession of the Holy Ghost rested now on union, and consequently was a constant thing, and an earnest to the person in whom it dwelt of his own interest in the things it communicated. He was brought into, communion, as united to the Head, in all the things in which that Head was revealed; and he had the Spirit by virtue of his being so united—the necessary witness therefore of his interest in them. And as this union was connected with a divine nature communicated, the mind, thoughts, feelings, joys, sorrows, interests, consolations, fears, hopes, and streams of love which that nature entered into, were now the portion of the saint, and that, withal, according to the power of the energy of the Spirit, which, though indwelling, still acted independently (i. e. as regards us), though, according to the order and revelations of the dispensation of which He was the power, speaking what he heard. I am not now speaking of the conflict, still, and therefore, —existing with the flesh (and, I must add, with the world, for both are the consequence of this very thing), but of the thing itself. This earnest of the Spirit is in connection with the glory of Jesus, therefore full of victory and full of hope. And yet, as it was the glory of the man witnessed, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in those not yet glorified, though sanctified to God, it became, on the one hand, the complete witness of the highest possible assurance of understanding, because Jesus was on the throne who had entered into the whole conflict, and of the Father’s acceptance of Him in divine righteousness: yet withal, on the other hand, it entered into all the circumstances through which that righteous man did pass; so giving the pattern and formation of knowledge, the tongue of the learned, in all the trial through which the saints as led of the Spirit had to (and must) pass; their portion—and therefore a Spirit of perfect sympathy, the sympathy of the Spirit of Christ, as knowing the glory, and therefore sensible, according to God, of the extreme misery, and sorrow, and degradation, into which, as to circumstance, those in whom (as the witness of Jesus) He dwelt were plunged and what their trial on the way to that glory and the path of patience towards it. Also was it witness of the Father’s love as shown in the glory; and hence it passed, as the river of that divine refreshment in the wilderness, through them, as flowing in their hearts, for they were united to Jesus, to refresh all to whom its heavenly and blessed streams came; that drinking in this as the parched ground, a desert land, they might spring forth in green and refreshing fruits, which the great Head of the Church might find delight and joy in; while their joy was full in communion with that from which it flowed. For wherever the river is received, it is the river still, Father by Jesus glorified, and becomes the witness of all the acceptance, which the glorifying of Jesus, the great responsible man under our sins, declares,—and of all the glory to which He is entitled, and all that is displayed in his person as there sat down (which is our hope, for we shall see Him as He is, and be like Him),—and, moreover, of communion with Him, not according to that glory in which He will appear to earth (for. I know not that that will need the Holy Ghost, though communion vitally with Him in any way does and will, but of this in the previous chapter); but according to the glory in which He sits on the Father’s throne, in which we who are sons shall know Him in that day, and the church knows Him now as sitting on the Father’s throne. There is a glory which He will take—his own glory as visible Lord and Son of Man, in which every eye shall see Him: bit there is a glory in which the Spirit now reveals Him, in which the church knows Him, in which, though Son of Man, He is one with the Father; a glory which He has taken as man, a glory with the Father, “ παρὰ σεαυτῷ,” and which in itself He had with the Father before the world was, but which He has now taken as man, and which the Spirit communicates to us who are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, and gives us communion with it; and which forms the power and object of hope to our minds. As it is written, “We through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness through faith.” That righteousness is established for us in Christ upon the throne; for He who bore our sins is gone to the Father in glory. The reward and end of that righteousness is this glory; hence we see that this is our portion in hope, for the righteousness is ours: and as, in Christ, the glory is ours too, although the oneness with the Father (which gives. Him the place in which the glory is now) is his only, yet is not this without its blessing, for the church knows it in Him; and the full divine source of the glory is manifested. As now Christ is in the Father, and we in Him, and He in us; so, in the day of his appearing, shall it be Christ in us and the Father in Him, that we may be made perfect in one, although the oneness with the Father (which gives. Him the place in which the glory is now) is his only, yet is not this without its blessing, for the church knows it in Him; and the full divine source of the glory is manifested. As now Christ is in the Father, and we in Him, and He in us; so, in the day of his appearing, shall it be Christ in us and the Father in Him, that we may be made perfect in one.
But this is not all of these streams of living water, though it may be the great source and fountain, the glory of the Man on the Father’s throne. For as the feast of tabernacles was, on the accomplishment of the promises, held in the land,—and as Solomon spoke it on the great typical celebration of it, “The Lord bath performed with his hand all that He spoke to David my father with his mouth:” so to Christ Himself all the promises are made, as heir of all things, as Son of God, as Son of Man, and Son of David; as many as are the promises of God, in Him are they yea, and in Him amen, to the glory of God by us. Now as that which we have spoken of is for the glory of God manifested in Him, so, as it is by us, He takes the promises as man, that, having purged and sanctified them by his blood, He might introduce the children in witness of the Father’s love as co-heirs. Hence as to them also, that which he is heir of as the glorified man (in title as Son of God) is, in knowledge and communion by the Spirit, part of these living streams. Therefore it, is there added, “Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ is God, who bath also anointed us, and also hath sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” It not only then reveals the glory of Jesus as now on the throne of God as man, but also that which He takes when He appears in glory, when all shall be blessing, we being called to inherit a blessing; and therefore, the moment the earth comes into blessing, it becomes a portion of our inheritance in Christ. “The Lord shall hear the heavens,” &c. whatever there is promised to Christ as the seed and great purpose of God (see Galatians 3), whatever things there are in which the glory of God is displayed, and is the furniture, and reflection, and exhibition of that glory by Christ, and all things are for Him, is to that glory by us. Of this—in its wide and fullest blessedness as second Adam, Lord from heaven withal, the witness in blessing, evil being conquered, of all the Father’s love unfolded in and on the creature taken into the inheritance—of this, I say, the Spirit is the joy to us in hope. And, as the promises are to us in Christ, and we see Christ, though all things be not yet put under Him, crowned with the glory and honor, in which He is the securer of them all-sustaining all things—the first-born of every creature, as well as first-born from the dead, and Head of the Church—we, being in Christ and partakers of the Spirit, have all these as abounding in hope; for they are witness of the Father’s love and blessing, contributing to these rivers of living waters, that is, the knowledge of the glory of Christ as in them, enjoyed within by the Spirit; and, where so enjoyed, flowing over; for no human heart ever, when so enjoyed, could contain them.
And this surely is a joyous thought—for now we must take the promises in the widest sense—all things in heaven and in earth, all are Christ’s as heir; for indeed He made them all, and all are to be reconciled in Him; and if reconciled to God, how full the blessing Well may the streams flow through the desert when Israel is there passing, for desert it shall be no longer when Israel is owned; the streams were not indeed thence, but they were there for the firstborn when the first-born were there. A most blessed picture this of divine favor and exalting hope; the wilderness shall flourish and blossom as the rose, when in divine favor Israel obtains its inheritance; so, when Israel passes through it, for Israel (though the wilderness be unchanged by it) the streams which would renew and gladden it flow—refresh Israel blessedly through it. Thus, beautifully does the song of Moses, when he would as his God prepare Him a habitation, and as his father’s God exalt Him, declare, on his emergence from the Red Sea, — “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.” To God they were already brought, so we. Afterward— “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place which Thou hast, made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever.” The place of Israel, as the redeemed tribes in hope, was Canaan—and Canaan strictly within Jordan; so that Moses diode with the two and a half when proposing to stay without—and the rest only are then called the children of Israel. So of the Church, but the promises to Abraham were all from the river of Egypt to the great river; and there was a day coming when the wilderness and the solitary place would be glad for them, and the desert would rejoice and blossom as the rose, and see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of their God; yet still the sanctuary which God had prepared for Himself to dwell in, was the place where they were to be brought in. Blessed portion’ So with the saints now, —they have their place in heaven, and they know it now in spirit and in hope; know it as theirs, though evil spirits may yet for a very little season be to be resisted there, and have their hold till the great conflict comes, which shall exclude them forever. Thus they have their place, their seat in the heavenlies beyond Jordan; blessed inheritance, where to them Christ has set the glory, —the glory of the Father, and His own. Yet though it be thus, the world and all things are theirs, though it be a wilderness and they strangers in it; the moment they are redeemed, though they be not in the rest of Egypt, nor have the leeks, and cucumbers, and the onions, and the bondage, and though the world be a wilderness to them, a dry and barren land where no water is, they are called out into it as theirs—theirs, yet only as a wilderness,—but called out to hold a feast to the Lord there. And be it so, that they have holden a feast to the golden calf, while Moses is in the mount to receive the given law,—it does not alter what it is to the heart of faith; they have been led forth, and not only do they know in spirit that they have been brought to God, so in spirit to be in the heavenlies, but they find, and it is because they find, Jesus there, and finding Him they find all things theirs, even where they are; and they can be fed only from heaven, guided only by what is heavenly, drink only thus from the rock, or rather have the river of God flowing in themselves; but in Jesus they know their inheritance;—”All things are theirs, and they are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The wilderness is now only to pass through, there is nothing in it for them, yet all is theirs; but when Israel is in the wilderness, when the Church is thus passing through the world, which is its inheritance, the river is there, yea, is in their hearts; and they sing (for the redemption-work is complete in title, though not accomplished as to the creature in power), “ But you path He redeemed, reconciled;” “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation.” When the water revives the wilderness itself—when the Son of man actually takes the world as his inheritance, and the Spirit is poured out, shall it not then be glad, and rejoice, and blossom? Well, it fills the heart of God’s people, of him that believeth in Jesus now, and does so because he is in the wilderness: and shall he not rejoice and blossom? Yea, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water; and though often the heartless sand may drink it in and give no return, but be parched, and arid, and fruitless as before, yet—wherever the earth of God’s hand, and the seeds of God’s planting are, there shall they also be refreshed and spring up through it.
I feel it very important to remark here, the individual character noticed before, because it is the saving principle in the midst of desolations and evil, whatever common good it may produce; it is not, They shall drink of the river from the rock, or drink of some common river, but, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water;” it is the personal possession and indwelling of the Holy Ghost. So the gospel of John, which gives what is essential and uniting and not consequences, continually treats of it.
There is another point of view in which this indwelling of the Spirit has its peculiar feature and character in this dispensation. It results from the exaltation of Christ. The position in which He is, is the witness of all things being accomplished; and He Himself is personally in possession of the result of that accomplishment, and We united to Him in it, He being there continually. Consequently, it is as different as possible from any previous testimony of what was to be, let it be ever so blessed—as indeed the mystery was not fully revealed, nor, as I have already remarked as to the fact, had the testimony they had, any necessary connection with enjoyment of the things witnessed, not even where the witnesses were saints, as 1 Peter 1 shows. It was as different also as possible from any operation of the Spirit producing fruits, even as the living Spirit of Christ, (though this was ever surely saving,) because it never witnessed, and never could witness, a living Christ and glorified man in the heavens, with whom they were one, who had accomplished all the things they were to enjoy, and which gave the title to, and ground of, their enjoyment of them. This could only exist when Jesus had accomplished them, was in the glory, and thence sent down the Holy Ghost, the power of communion to those united to Him. The thing itself did not exist—the work was not accomplished—and Jesus, as a man, was not in the glory; therefore we read, “the Holy Ghost was not yet given,” οὔπω γὰρ ἦν, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. The fact is, the union of the Church with Him as one body was not yet even revealed, but was a mystery hid in God, as Christ now is, known therefore and enjoyed only by the Holy Ghost given to them which believe. It was not, of course, that there was any different work by which man could be saved (a believer knows this is impossible), nor another Spirit, for there is but one. But that Spirit could not then testify that the believer (to whom He witnessed and whom He influenced) was then in union with the risen Jesus, with the man who was actually glorified as a present thing, as He does now to a believer’s soul; for the thing did not exist to be testified of. If it be said, it was true to faith; I answer, it was not as true to faith that they were in union then, and knew Jesus as now glorified; for Jesus was not glorified, and therefore the Holy Ghost had not, on the footing of this union, taken up His abode in a believer’s heart, “was not yet,” in the sense of dwelling as the witness of the glorified man, in those who were united to Him. This made all the difference between being free, and hoping to be free on the certainty of a faithful man’s word, who never lied, and was able to perform. Both were certain; but they were not the same thing: “ If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed;” this was the better thing reserved for us, that they without us should not be made perfect; this is that which made the least in the kingdom of heaven greater than the greatest born of woman; this presence of the Holy Ghost with and in believers, as the result of the accomplishment of Christ’s work and the witness of their union with Him. This, too, I apprehend, is the difference between the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect. The children of Israel might have believed the Lord’s promise, and did, as Jacob showed—as Joseph showed, when he gave commandment concerning his bones (Genesis 1. 24): but however surely this faith was exercised, they could not say, “ Thou, Lord, in thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation;” for the work of their redemption was not accomplished:—they could sing that when they were brought out of Egypt through the Red Sea, though they were only brought into the wilderness where there was no way, nor food, nor water; for they were redeemed. I now take in the whole course, not any particular type.
I dwell thus much upon this, because many find it very difficult to understand how, if the way of being saved is the same, the state of those that are so can be different; whereas “the heir so long as he is a child differed, nothing from a servant, though he be lord of but is under tutors and governors,” having no free and immediate intercourse with the father’s mind, nor understanding of the father’s interests.
Known sonship with the Father, and union with Christ, seeing what Christ’s title is, are primary characteristics of this indwelling of the Spirit; and though we see not yet all things put under Christ, yet we see Him crowned with the glory and honor, so that we rejoice in the prospective title, knowing that “He is not ashamed to call us brethren.”
Thus, in the 8th of Romans, where this presence of the Spirit, as the very character of this dispensation, is much brought out, after shelving His moral operations (i.e., as life in the soul), and the quickening of the body, then spoken of as personally dwelling in present witness with us; He bears witness that we are children, therefore heirs, “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be glorified together.” Now, in this we have the whole case; —children, the assembly of the first-born, put, as Israel was, in the wilderness. Israel is my first-born. Next Canaan before us, heirs of God; for that was his land, and his title in Israel reached from river to river—Canaan and the wilderness, heaven and earth. “Joint-heirs with Christ,” as they of Immanuel’s land; and “if so be that we suffer,” they must pass through this world, as a wilderness simply. Now the Holy Ghost takes up all this, and in its two great characters—the glory and the suffering; the glory belonging to as children and co-heirs, and this we have in hope. When our prospect is dimmed, we become careless about it, and profane in our minds; when bright, we need naught but manna, and the water, and patience for the wilderness, longing for the rest, submitting to the will of God concerning it. And when our souls are really dwelling as in the glory, when the grapes of Eshcol really fill our souls, there is deadness to all, save the savor and brightness of, the hope: what is heavenly is heavenly to us; for we are heavenly-minded, we see the glory of the Lord, and it is in a place where his eyes are continually—a land not watered by foot, but by rivers that run among hills and valleys, the very dwelling-place of the Father’s kingdom. The Spirit in the revelation of God (for it is God) causes us thus to dwell in the fullness of God; and from hence we estimate the inheritance, the fellowship with Christ in it, and the glory; we dwell in it in the sweet savor of divine delight in Jesus, who fills all things, and will in very deed do so, and is now revealed so to us by the Spirit. His presence, as actually taking it, shall fill and gladden heaven and earth, banishing evil. But then, now it is, “if so be we suffer,” for the very dwelling in this glory, and seeing in spirit the whole creation reconciled, brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God—it cannot be of their grace—waiting for the manifestation of these sons,—makes us the more and distinctly sensible how it groans and travails together in bondage until now; and our body, too, being part of this, it becomes sensitive and sympathetic groaning. Now we know this groaning of the creation by our dwelling in the glory, but it becomes sympathetic because we are connected with it in our body, and that as unredeemed. But then it is not merely the selfish feeling of evil. The intercession of the Spirit in us is according to God. The Spirit, as dwelling in us, estimates the evil not according to mere human pain in it, but in the divine estimate of it, as interested in and dwelling in them who are in the midst of the evil, and partakers of it as to their bodies; and all their groans which take up the known groanings of the creation (for it is as to the body which is of it) are not from selfish pain, but the Spirit’s sense of the evil, as dwelling in us; and though we, as to mind and intelligence, cannot tell what to ask for, yet He who searcheth the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit that dwells there is; for He makes intercession according to God. Thus the Spirit, that other Comforter, in and through our hearts, feeling, in the non-adoption of the body, that it dwells in a world groaning under the bondage of corruption, not only teaches from the glory, so that we say, “ We know,” but expresses (in sense of it all, yet according to God) the need according to God, to be met in the saints now by more enlarged and deeper communion, and that glory in hope which shall put it all away.
As regards our own exercise on these things, I would say a very few words. As in the Spirit, our joy is full, the savor of heavenly things is fresh, our path easy; “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” there is communion which makes all light, and we walking and dwelling in it, and everything shines in it. The Holy Ghost is the communicating power of all fullness: but when we come to the wilderness there is exercise, difficulty, the heart is proved; all is opposite, it is a wilderness; and rest in a wilderness only keeps us in a wilderness still, and, indeed, will be found going back soon in heart after Egypt. For rest, we shall find it a wilderness, and bring the chastenings of the Lord of faithfulness upon us. Now even where trouble is, if the heart be right in the sight of God, God is known through it all; it is not that the trouble will not be felt, far from it; the more perfect the faith, the more it will be felt: the more I know, the more my heart and thought is in Canaan, the more I shall understand what the wilderness is: yea, the very worship of God, blessed as it may be, will be and savor of the wilderness; my mercies are mercies of the wilderness; my food, food for the wilderness; the clouds may guide me to Canaan, but in Canaan I shall need no cloud for the way, still, where the spirit is bright through grace, though it feels all this, it has rich and deep experience of God, which works hope which maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost given unto us. In that patience of spirit which is learned only in the wilderness (what patience shall we need in Canaan?) the deeper parts of God’s character are learned. If faith had to bear six hundred thousand rebellious ones, as if it had begotten them, how would it learn, through cultivated communion, the depth of God’s patience, the wisdom of his purposes, the extreme perfectness of his love, uncaused by anything it found, bent upon blessing, how He knew the end from the beginning, and while we were travailing in heart about present circumstances, God was using them for bringing forth to that heart the certainty of future hopes, or forming it for the enjoyment of them And how in us would the molding of heart in this intimacy of God’s ways, intrinsically form us for the estimate of the glory in breaking the links (which seemed strange to those occupied with present things) which tied us to those things, that the life in us might grow up into unhindered association with whatever was heavenly! It requires the wilderness (not to give a title which would bring us to God, but) practically to put God instead of Egypt within us; I do not say it ought, and that we ought not to be as Caleb and Joshua, ready at once to go up, and the grapes of Eshcol be our encouragement in going onward, rather than the sons of Anak our fear; for they bear the stamp of the beneficence and power of Him who called us there,—they were the grapes of his land, and this Lord was well able to bring us in. But it is God’s way habitually with us. But when our faith tastes those grapes, when our hearts are thus, we can rise over trouble, however felt; and when we are spiritual, all trouble is the instrument of the blessed experience of God.
God’s purposes are not ours; and He always works for his own, which are our perfect blessing, the making of us conformed to the image of his Son, co-heirs, “the glory of God by us.” Now in our blessed Master, as learning obedience by the things which He suffered, we see this path in the wilderness in perfectness, feeling as none else felt, but seeing (even then in perfect submission) the divine perfectness of the Father’s ways, and the end too they led to, His glory, enjoyed as joy set before Him, as a river of sure and blessed water too, thus to give rest and refreshment. “Then began He to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:” here was true grief, and thoroughly felt as grief there is no true grief but where there is no resource around; and around Jesus had none. “Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted, because they were not;” the word to her was “There is no hope in thine end.” But let us look to Jesus. “In the same hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes; even. so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” “All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” How did the rivers of water flow forth here from this heart-smitten rock! There was none indeed without: but how did they flow from the revealed depths within! The waters gushed forth, his own soul full, “All things are delivered,”—I can reveal the Father,— “Come to me.” How did his pent soul burst forth from the “Then have I labored in vain, and spent my strength for naught I” and in vain, as to present circumstances, to spread these living streams in the wilderness, which have, blessed Lord Jesus! refreshed the church, and shall refresh it through the wilderness, till it need nothing but thyself in Canaan. And are we not sons; poor indeed, but still; in exaltation of his fullness, “He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And where the Spirit of God really is, there is no breaking, no smiting, no operation of patience through the word, but brings forth more of them; for we are associated with infinite fullness now in Jesus. Because all perfectness was there, it all burst forth at once, and “I thank thee” was in one hour with “Woe unto thee.” In us often, that these streams may flow and flow pure, there is much process; and when the flesh is at work, and our will is at work, then, till laid low, there is no perception of the brightness and fullness before us, yea, with which we are in communion; for the flesh hath no communion with it, the will no part or portion in it: and till we are brought to say, “ I thank thee,” “I glory in my tribulations,” there is no “All things are delivered,” as they are ours in Jesus,—no real “Come to me,” though in our mere judgment we may say, There is the place where it is to be found: and this is deep work; but it is God’s work. Thus, much for the flowing of these living streams in us: they are all heavenly; and only as we are simply heavenly will they run. Wretched we, that we should need so much to make God’s blessed refreshing streams flow! Wondrous love, that He should patiently do so much! May we be enabled to say always, though not callous, “I thank thee!” Still, in all this bondage of corruption, though the will by which it came in was in man, not in the creature without (therefore Jesus’ was pure sorrow, because it was all according to God—ours not), though this will yet working in us must be subdued; yet, where the Spirit is, God, seeing it, in love, i.e., towards us, and putting in action the special process in love, that this will may be broken, every groan which does come (when ye know not what to ask for, nor how) is the perfect intercession of the Spirit whose mind is known to Him who searcheth the hearts, so that we may be comforted: and, resting in God, God will show us the brightness beyond. A true groan to God, however deep the misery, however prostrate the spirit, however unconscious that we are heard, is always received above as the intercession of the Spirit, and answered according to the perfectness of God’s purpose concerning us in Christ; therefore the charge is, “Ye have not cried unto me, when ye have howled upon your beds:” and there is no consequence of sin which is beyond the reach of this groaning to God, nothing, indeed but the self-will which will not groan to Him at all. This is a blessed thought! Such is our intercourse with God in joy and in sorrow; and I doubt not that in us poor, but blessed creatures, the truest, the most blessed (what will shine most when all things shine before God), are these groans to Him: they cannot, indeed, be, in their fullness, but where the knowledge of the glory of blessing is I can see them precede the greatest works and words of Jesus. The sense of the wilderness, taken into his heart, made but the streams which could refresh it, flow forth in the sympathy of the Spirit which it called forth; and now the Spirit is in us. I believe I must for the present close these thoughts. This has touched but upon one point (and O how narrowly and poorly! what muddy water!)—the presence of the blessed and. heavenly Spirit in the desert, as in our hearts, with joy for the things it gives in union with our Head, and refreshing for the scene it passes through, where God’s poor pilgrims are; the messenger of all their sorrow according to his estimate of it, who knows, loves, and effects the blessing of the portion of Christ in his people, as dwelling in them—their blessed Paraclete. “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.”
Hitherto we have seen the blessed Spirit generally, in His characteristic living operations, and not so much ecclesiastically, if I may so speak. The third, fourth, and seventh chapters of St. John’s Gospel have given us clear instruction in this: —
Firstly, as quickening or giving life.
Secondly, as given; and thus a well of water in us springing up into everlasting life: thus, too, as manifesting, or connected with, the riches of grace—making us know the Father as seeking such to worship, the God of love—and enabling us to worship Him in spirit and in truth, as thus known in the grace that has sought us—brought in by faith to fellowship with Him, fellowship with the Father and the Son, out of every nation—in a word, the dispensation of the manifested Son; manifested to faith as one with whom we are in union through the Spirit: this by the gift of grace.
Thirdly, as flowing forth from us, a river of refreshings—and this in connection with the glory of the Son of man; and therefore not so much the power of worship, as the earnest of glory, and the power of refreshing, and glorious testimony that man in Him prevails and has the glory; though yet he must wait for it till He be manifested to the world, set right indeed by his presence, in that great feast of tabernacles.
(Continued from page 127.)
(To be continued.)
On the Gospel by St. John
Now, to draw the disciples from a mere Jewish place into this elevation of the Church of God, and by this to comfort them under a sense of His absence, is the Lord’s great purpose in the discourse which he holds with them in these chapters—the like to which never passed between the sons of men—the heart and mind of God had never before so largely and blessedly communicated their treasures to the desires and thoughts of his people, as now the Lord was doing. Most sacred moments of communion between heaven and earth were these!
At the beginning the Lord says, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” This at once gives them notice of another object of faith than what they as yet had. God, in the sense of these words, had been already known to Israel. The disciples, in their Jewish place, were already believers in God. The Lord here allows that, as lie had before asserted, speaking to the woman of Samaria; “We (i.e. Jews) know what we worship.” The Jews had God; their faith was not wrong, but only defective, and the Lord would now fill it out. He would now have them to know the Father through the Son—and the whole of this discourse with his disciples furthers this design. He speaks particularly of the Father, and promises the Comforter to make these things (the things of the Father and the Son) known to them.
This was the character of grace which this Gospel at the beginning intimated, when St. John wrote” As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” And this early notice of the value and power of the Son’s ministry is, in these chapters, largely unfolded. But while this is doing, we have several forms of Jewish ignorance brought out—necessarily so, I may say; for Israel did not stand in this knowledge, into which the Lord was now leading them. Thomas is ignorant of Christ’s departure and separation from this earth, and says, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest;” for Israel had been taught to say that Christ was to abide forever. Philip betrays his unacquaintedness with the Father; for it was not the knowledge of the Father in the Son that Israel had been led into. Judas wonders at any glory, but the manifested worldly glory of Messiah; for such was Israel’s hope. And they all stand amazed at the mystery of “the little while.” But out of these thoughts, the heavenly prophet is leading them. They had been already drawn out from the apostate nation, as God’s remnant accepting Jesus as Messiah come from God, but they had still to know the Son as come from the Father, who, while he was with them, had been showing them the Father, was now about to return to the Father, and would come again to take them home to the Father. These were the great things of His love which their divine prophet here reveals to them; but these were as yet strange things unto them. Truths however, they are, upon which all that is peculiar to the Church rests.
But the course of our Lord’s own thoughts through this conversation is only for a while interrupted by these defective Jewish thoughts of his disciples. His purpose was to elevate them to the sense of their calling as the Church of God, and thus to comfort them; and that purpose he steadily follows, however he may for a time have to rebuke their slowness of heart. Thus, in the interruption occasioned by Peter, (13: 33; 14: 1,) the Lord, in answering Peter, is called to contemplate and foretell his faithlessness, and denial of Him; but this does not turn out of their course the thoughts of kindness about him, and the rest of them, which the Lord was pursuing. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” says the gracious Master, immediately after forewarning Peter of his baseness. So, at the close of the conversation, he had to tell his too confident disciples, that the hour was then at hand when every one of them would go “to his own, and leave him alone;” and yet, without allowing an interruption of his flow of love towards them for a single moment, he at once resumes his own thoughts, saying to them, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace—in the world ye shall have tribulation; but, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
And so, beloved, with his saints ever since. We may, through our own folly, have to listen to the “cock crowing”—to receive rebuke, go out, and weep; but the heart of Jesus does not repent of his purposed kindness toward us. His purpose is to save, and he will save; his purpose is to bless, and who shall hinder? He has not beheld iniquity in them. They are to have peace accomplished for them by his death, life brought to them by his resurrection, and glory to be hereafter theirs at his return. These are their blessings, and of these he tells them, in spite of all slowness of heart or unworthiness, for their comfort under the sense of his going away.
The works that Jesus did, in Matthew’s gospel, are owned to be those of the Son of David. (12: 23.) They are there as the seals of his Messiahship. But here the Lord offers them to his disciples as the seals of his Sonship of the Father. He would have them looked upon, not merely as tokens that he could order the kingdom of Israel, according to the promises of the prophets, (Isaiah 35:5,6,) but as witnesses that he was the dispenser of the Father’s grace and power; for he says, “Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” And this is in full consistency with our gospel. And the “greater works,” which he immediately afterward promises that believers in him should do, were to be, as I judge, works of the same character, works that were to savor of the Father’s grace, such as the bringing poor condemned sinners into the liberty of the children of God. As Paul says, “In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” And so is it still sinners are still brought into the liberty of dear children. “I will not leave you orphans,” says the Lord in this place, “I will come to you; because I live, ye shall live also.” No orphanage for them, no lamentation from them as there was from Israel, that they were fatherless. (14: 18, Gr. Lamentations 5: 3.) The adoption of the saints during the orphanage of Israel, is here brought out by the Lord, in terms of deep and wondrous meaning. They were to know that “he was in the Father, and they in him, and he in them.” The Father is the holy burthen here.
And there is a little action of the Lord’s that I must notice. At the close of the 14th chapter he says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you;” by this telling them, that ere he left this world he would leave his peace behind him—peace for them as sinners accomplished by his death. And after thus telling them of peace, he says, “Arise, let us go hence.” Upon which we may assume that they all rise from the paschal table, and walk forth toward the Mount of Olives; and then it is that he at once presents himself to them, as in resurrection, their life, the source of quickening power, saying, “I am the vine, and ye are the branches.”
There is a beauteous significancy in the whole of this action. He sits at the paschal table till peace had been pronounced, for on that table the pledges of their peace were at that moment spread; but as he rises from it, he tells them of the resurrection-life—life that they were, to know as in him, risen above the power of death, the true vine. And he tells them that there is no other life but this, saying, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered.” And having thus disclosed to them the only root of life, he shows them the joys and holy prerogatives of this life, teaching them that they were to have his own joy, the joy of the Son, fulfilled in them, and were also to enter into the dignity and grace of friendship with their Lord, and to assure themselves that his glory and their blessing were now but one interest; and moreover, that the Father’s great purpose was, to glorify the Son as this vine or head of life; that having planted it as the only witness of life in the earth, which is the scene of death, the Father would watch over it with the care and diligence of a husbandman. This the Lord here spews to be the Father’s present care, to have the vine in beauty and fruitfulness, to glorify Jesus as the HEAD OF LIFE, as by-and-by he will glorify him on the throne of glory as HEIR OF ALL THINGS. In old times, God’s eye, as her husbandman, was upon the land of Israel (Deuteronomy 11: 12), but now it is watching over this vine, which his own hand has planted.
All this told the disciples of exceeding riches of grace. But withal he tells them, that this union with him was to separate them from the world, this friendship with him was to expose them to the world’s hatred. The world was soon to express its full enmity to God, and then to them. The revelation of God in love, the revelation of the Father in and by the Son, was soon about to be fully refused by the world. This was hatred indeed, hatred “without a cause,” hatred for love. The cross of Christ was soon to present man’s fullest hatred, meeting God’s fullest love. Ignorant of the Father, it might be still zealous for God, and think to do God service by killing the children of the Father. For there may be zeal for the synagogue, yea, and for the God of the synagogue, with entire separation from the spirit of that dispensation which publishes riches of grace, and reveals the Father in the Son.
But this view of the sorrows which his saints might endure from the world, leads the Lord to exhibit the services of the promised Comforter in them and for them, still more blessedly. He tells them that the Comforter would stand for them against the world, convicting it of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; but at the same time dwelling in them, the witness of their Father’s love and their Lord’s glory. This comfort he provides for them against the day of the world’s hatred.
And here let me observe, that the Spirit was now to be received of the Father. God had approved Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 2:22); but it was of the Father that the Holy Ghost was to be received, and he would approve his presence according to this. Look at the character of his presence in the church, immediately on his being given. (Acts 2) What an oil of gladness, what a spirit of liberty and largeness of heart, is he in the saints there! Jesus had received him in the ascended place, where he himself had been made full of joy with God’s countenance, and, giving him forth from such a place, he manifests himself here accordingly, imparting at once something of that joy of God’s countenance into which their Lord had entered. They gladly received the word, ate their bread with gladness, and praised God. And this joy could easily dry up other sources. They parted with what might have secured human delights and provided for natural desires. The Holy Ghost in them was joy, and liberty, and largeness of heart. It was the Spirit “of the Father.” It was the reflection on the saints here of that light which had fallen on Jesus in the holiest. The oil had run down from the beard to the skirts of the clothing.
Indeed, we can form but a poor idea of the value of such a dispensation as this, which the Comforter was now to bring, to a soul that had been under the spirit of bondage, and of fear gendered by the law. What thoughts of judgment to come were now bidden to depart! What fears of death were now to yield to the consciousness of present life in the Son of God! And what would all this be but anointing with an oil of gladness? And the disciples, by this discourse, were under training for this joy and liberty.
The schoolmaster was soon to give up his charge—his rod and his book of elements were now to be dispensed with, —and in this discourse the Son is leading the children on their way home to their Father from under such tutors and governors, and they are soon to reach the Father, that they might know, through the Holy Ghost, the liberty and joy of adoption.
Such was this interesting hour to the Church. The Holy Ghost, the witness of the Father and the Son, and thus the Spirit of adoption, was soon to be imparted, and they were now led forth from the school of the law to wait for it. With thoughts of the Father and of the Son, and of the Church’s interests in all their love, the Holy Ghost was now to fill the saints. And this accordingly he does in our dispensation. He tells us, as the Lord here promises he should, of the delight that the Father has in the Son, of his purpose to glorify him, and of our place in that delight and that glory. He takes of these things and the like, and shows them unto us.
Look at Genesis 24—a well-known and much enjoyed scripture. It sets forth the election of a Bride for the Son by the Father, but the place which the servant occupies in it is just the place of the Holy Ghost in the Church, ministering (as in divine grace) to the joys of the Son and the Church, in perfecting the purposes of the Father’s love. In that scene, the servant of Abraham tells Rebecca of the way in which God had prospered his master, what a favored and beloved one Isaac was, how he had been, “the child of old age,” and how Abraham had made him “ the heir of all his possessions.” Be discloses to her the counsels which Abraham had taken touching a wife for this much-loved son of his, and lets her see clearly her own election of God to fill that holy and honored place. And at last he puts upon her the pledges of this election and of Isaac’s love.
Nothing could be more touching and significant than the whole scene. Would that our hearts knew more of the power of all this, under the Holy Ghost, as Rebecca knew it under the hand of Abraham’s servant! It was because he had filled her with thoughts of Abraham and of Isaac, and of her own interest in them, that she was ready to go with this Stranger all alone across the desert. Her mind was formed by these thoughts; and she was prepared to say to her country, her kindred, and her father’s house, “I will go.” And the thoughts of our heavenly Father’s love, and our Isaac’s delight in us, can still give us holy separation from this defiled place where we dwell. Communion with the Father and the Son, through the Comforter, is the holy way of distinguishing the Church from the world. There may be the fear of a coming judgment working something of actual separation from it, or the pride of the Pharisee working religious separation from it; but the present knowledge of the Father’s love, and the hope of the coming glories of the Son, can alone work a divine separation from its course and its spirit.
The Father’s love, of which the Comforter testifies, is an immediate love., It is the love of God that has visited the world in the gift of his Son (see 3:16); but the moment this love of God is believed, and the message of reconciliation which it has sent forth is received, then are believers entitled, through riches of grace, to know the Father’s love, a love that is an immediate love, as the Lord here tells us (16: 26, 27). It is of this love of the Father, as the glory of the Son, that the Comforter tells us by the way homeward. He is our companion for all the journey, and this is his discourse with us. How did the servant, I doubt not (to return to the same chapter, Genesis 24), as he accompanied Rebecca across the desert, tell her further of his master, adding many things to what he had already told her in Mesopotamia; for he had been the confidant of his master, and had known him from the beginning. He knew his desire t for a son, and God’s promise and God’s faithfulness. He knew of Abraham’s victory over the kings, of his rescue of Lot, and meeting with Melchisedek. He knew of the covenant, the pledge of the inheritance. He knew of the dismission of Ishmael from the house, and of Isaac’s walk in it without a rival; —of the mystic journey up Mount Moriah; and of Isaac being thus alive from the dead. All this he knew, and all this doubtless he told her of, as they traveled on together, with these recollections and prospects delighting her, though her back was now turned, and turned forever, upon her country and her father’s house. And, beloved were we more consciously “on the way” with the Comforter, the way would to us in like manner be beguiled by his many tales of love and glory, whispering of the Father and of the Son to our inmost souls. Be it so with us, thy poor people, blessed Lord, more and more!
17 —After thus comforting them with the knowledge of their standing, as the family of the Father, and, as it were, making gracious amends to them for his own present absence from them, and the hatred they were to suffer from the world, the Lord again exhibits, in this chapter, one of his priestly services, as he had done in the 13th. But the services are different; both, however, together constituting a full presentation of his ways as our Advocate in the heavenly temple. In the 13th chapter, he had as it were, laid one hand on the defiled feet of his saints, here he lays the other hand on the throne of the Father—forming, thus, a chain of marvelous workmanship, reaching from God to sinners. In the 13th chapter, his body was girt, and he was stooping down towards our feet—here, his eyes are lifted up, and he is looking in the face of the Father. What that is asked for us, by one who thus fills up the whole distance between the bright throne of God, and our defiled feet, can be denied? All must be granted—such an one is heard always.
Thus we get the sufficiency and acceptance of the Advocate, and we may notice the order in which he makes his requests, and lays his claims before the Father.
First. —He makes request in behalf of the Father’s own glory. “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.” His first thought was upon the Father’s interest; as he had before taught his disciples, ere they presented their own desires and necessities, to say, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
Life eternal the Lord lays in the Father’s hand; saying, “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” By this our Mediator bows to the truth of God, which Satan of old had traduced, and which man had questioned. (Genesis 3:4.) But He then adds, “and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,”—owning that life is now to be had only through redemption, that it is not the life of a creature merely, but of a ransomed creature, a life rescued for us from the power of death by the grace of the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior.
Secondly. —He claims his own glory. “Glorify me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” And this claim he grounds upon his having finished the work that had been given him to do, saying, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” For this was a work into which no blot had entered, in which, therefore, God could rest and be refreshed, as in his works of old; a work which the Father might behold and say of it, “it is all very good;” in which he might again find a Sabbath.
And this is the believer’s comfort, that he sees his salvation depending on a finished work, in which God, “smells a savor of rest.” At the beginning, on finishing the work of creation, God sanctified the seventh day, resting in full satisfaction in all that his hand had formed. But that rest man disturbed, so that God repented that he had made man on the earth. Again, in due time, the Lord provided for himself another rest, erecting a tabernacle in Canaan, and offering to Israel a place in that rest, giving them his Sabbath. (Ex. 31:13.) By the sword of Joshua, this rest in Canaan was first made good to Israel; (Joshua 21:44;23. 1;) and then under the throne of Solomon. (1 Chronicles 22:9.) But Israel, like Adam, disturbed this rest, the land did riot keep her Sabbath, for the wickedness of them that dwelt herein. (2 Chronicles 36:21.) The blessed God has now found another and a sure rest, a rest which can never be lost or disturbed. In the work finished by the Lord Jesus Christ (and which the Lord here Presents to him) God again rests, as in his works of old, with fullest complacency. This finished work is altogether according to his mind. By the resurrection of Christ, the Father bath said of it, “Behold, it is very good.” It is his rest forever; lie has an abiding delight in it; his eyes and his heart are upon it continually. The work of Christ accomplished for sinners has given, God a rest. That is a thought full of blessing to the soul. And when faith sets a right value, that is, God’s value, on the blood, there is rest, God’s own rest, for the soul. But it is then that a saint or believing sinner begins his toil. The moment I rest as a sinner I begin my labor as a saint. The rest for the saint is a rest that remaineth; and therefore it is written, “Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of ‘unbelief.” The sinner rests now, the saint labors still, and will till the kingdom come.
Thirdly. —He prays for his people. He asks that they might be kept through the Father’s name, and sanctified through the Father’s truth, so that they might be one in the communion of the Son’s joy now; and he asks that they might be with him where he is, and there behold his glory, and be one with him in his glory hereafter. These are large requests. The divine Advocate would have all his saints one. (See ver. 11, 21.) But this oneness is not such, I judge, as it is commonly interpreted to be—a manifested ecclesiastical oneness. It is a oneness in personal knowledge of, and fellowship with, the Father and the Son—oneness in spirit, in the spirit of their minds, each of them having the spirit of adoption, which was the peculiar grace and power of that dispensation which he, the Son, was about to introduce. The desire is, that such a spirit might have its course in the hearts of each and all of the elect now to be gathered.
Has this failed? That could not be; and all the epistles witness to us that it has not. For there we find the saints in every place, whether Jew or Gentile, considered as kept by the Father in his own name; kept’ as sons, as “accepted in the Beloved,” as having the “spirit of adoption,” as being brought together “into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” All such statements are assertions, that this desire of the great Advocate had been answered, each believer having the joy of the Son fulfilled in himself, and thus all of them one in the spirit of their minds. This desire does not, I assuredly judge, respect any ecclesiastical condition of things. That thought has led to many a human effort among the saints. They have condemned themselves for not realizing this prayer of the Lord by a manifestation of unity, and then taken means to bring this about. But I ask; is this prayer of the Lord made contingent on the energies of the saints? Is it not rather addressed to the Father, for what rested simply in the good pleasure and power and gift of the Father? Surely. It appealed to the Father, that he would keep the elect in his name, sanctify them by his truth, and impart to them the joy of the Son, so that each might have that joy fulfilled in himself.
This desire has been realized. The spirit of the Son is equally for each and all of the saints, and they are one in that spirit and in that joy. When the due season comes, we shall see the other desires of this chapter also made good. All who are to receive the testimony have not yet been called, nor has the glory yet shone out and been imparted to them, so that as yet the world has neither believed or known that the Father has sent the Son. (See ver. 21, 23.) The world as yet knows them not. (1 John 3:1.) But in their season these requests will be answered. And so, in like manner, the vision of glory. (See ver. 24.) As far as we have gone in divine dispensations, the desires have been answered; the rest only wait for their season.
To us, however, beloved, it is most comforting to find that all these glorious desires for the saints our Lord grounds simply on this, that they had received the Son’s testimony about the Father, arid had believed surely in the Father’s love. “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, arid have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”
But how full of blessing it is, to see that we are presented before God simply as believing that love I How surely does it tell us that the pleasure of our God is this, that we should know him in love, know him as the Father, know him according to the words of him who has come from his bosom. This is joy and liberty. And it is indeed only as having seen God in love, seen the Father and heard the Father in Jesus, that makes us the family. It is not the graces that adorn us, or the services that we render, but simply that we know the Father. It is this which distinguishes the saint from the world, and gives him his standing, as here, in the presence of the Father. It is simply this, (as the Mediator here tells the Father about us,) that we have received His word, received the Son’s testimony of love brought from the Father’s bosom.
Thus, does the divine Advocate plead before the Throne. The Father’s glory, his own, and his peoples are all provided for and secured. And having thus poured forth the desires of his soul, he commits “the world,” the great enemy, to the notice of the righteous Father. “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee.” For it had now proved itself to be a world that indeed knew not the Father, that hated him whom the Father had sent, and out of which the Lord was now sanctifying himself, and drawing his people. He does hot, however, call for judgment upon it; but leaves it (as something with which, as our Advocate, he had nothing to do) simply under the notice of the “righteous Father,” to whose judgment it belonged.
And it is merely as being ignorant of the Father that the Lord presents the world. He does not arraign her sins before the throne, but simply presents her as ignorant of the Father; as before, when presenting the Church, he did not speak of her graces or services, as we saw, but simply this, that she knew the Father. For as the knowledge of the Father makes the Church what she is, so this ignorance of the Father is that which makes the world what it is. The world is that which refuses to know God in love, so as to rejoice in him. It will make up its own pleasures, and draw from its own resources; it will have anything but the music, and the ring, and the fatted calf of the Father’s house. The world was formed by Satan in the garden of Eden. There the serpent beguiled the woman, and, being listened to and spoken with, he formed the human mind according to his own pattern. We have the history and character of this evil work in Genesis 3. God’s love and God’s word were traduced by the enemy—man believed the slander, and made God a liar. The lust of the flesh; the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, were planted in the soul as master-powers (ver. 6); and then conscience, and fear, and avoidance of God, became the condition into which man was cast. The man and the woman began to know that they were naked, and they hid themselves among the trees, retreating from the voice of God; and then from the covert, where they lay, they send forth excuses for themselves, and challenges of God. “The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat,” says Eve: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat,” says Adam.
Such was man then, and such has the world been ever since. Man’s own lusts are ruling him, with fear of God, and desired distance from him; and the secret whisper of his soul is this, that all this mischief must lie at God’s own door.
From such a world the saints are in spirit and in calling delivered, and the world itself left, as here, for judgment. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The world had no place in Jesus. The prince of it came, and only drew from him the full witness of this, that he loved the Father, and would do as he had commanded. (14: 30, 31.) So the saints have left it they have come forth from their covert at the voice of the Son; they have heard of the Father’s love towards them; they have believed it, and have walked forth in the sunshine of it. The promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head drew Adam forth from behind the trees of the garden; though dead in sins, he believed this promise of life, and came forth accordingly, calling his wife “the mother of all living.” And so, as we have seen in this chapter, it is just the believing the message of love which the Son has brought to us from the bosom of the Father—it is just this, that makes the saints what they are—an election out of the dark and distant regions where the world dwells, and where the spirit of the world breathes. And it is, as we have also seen, the refusal to listen to this message of love that keeps the world still the world. “O righteous Father, the world bath not known thee.” For men have only to receive God’s word of reconciliation, to believe his love in the gift of his Son, and then to take their happy place in his family as his chosen ones, “accepted in the Beloved.”
Here the third section of our Gospel ends. It has shown us Jesus the Son of the Father, as our Advocate, doing his constant services for us: it has shown us also Jesus the Son of the Father, revealing the Father to the children. The blessed God had got himself a name, the name of “Jehovah,” by his signs and wonders in Egypt and in Israel (Jeremiah 32: 20); but now was he getting himself another name, a name of still richer grace, the name of “Father.” This name he gets in the person and by the work of the Son of his love; and the power of it is now made effectual in the hearts of the children by the Holy Ghost.
Lo, these are parts of thy ways, our God and Father; but how little a portion of Thee do our narrow souls understand and enjoy!