John 12

John 12:32

CHRIST’S AND John 12:32. JESUS spake these words “signifying what death He should die”. But the words are more significant still. They refer not alone to His death, but to His post-mortem influence. They express a confidence touching the final issues of His life and His Gospel such as only the most assured, or the most egotistical could ever utter. To be reminded that this is the language of assurance and not of egotism, one needs to remember who the speaker is, and what powers are at His command. Dr.

Robert MacArthur, in his volume, “The Attractive Christ”, collates some of the significant names ascribed by inspiration to this spokesman. He is the “Shiloh” in Genesis; the “I am” in Exodus; the “Star and Scepter” in Numbers. In Deuteronomy, He is “Our Rock”; in Joshua, He is the “Captain of the Lord’s Host”, and in Job, He is the “Redeemer.” He was David’s “Shepherd and Lord”, and in the Song of Solomon, He is the “Beloved”. In Isaiah, He is the “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace”. In Jeremiah, He is the “Lord of our Righteousness”; in Daniel, He is the “Messiah”; in Zechariah, He is the “Branch”; and in Haggai, He is the “Desire of all Nations”. In Malachi, He is the “Messenger of the Covenant and the Son of Righteousness”.

He is John the Baptist’s “Lamb of God”, and John the Evangelist’s “Vine, Way, Truth, Life, Light”. The Apostle Peter speaks of Him as the “Shepherd and Bishop of souls”, and in the Book of Revelation, He is the “Alpha and Omega”, and also the “Morning Star”. If a mere man had said, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me”, the whole world would have laughed His egotism to scorn. But when the “Shiloh” of Genesis and the “Morning Star” of Revelation says the same, the whole world attends to the words, knowing that the speech is the utterance of self-conscious Divinity I want us, therefore, to look deeply into this text and come into some appreciation of the drawing of this Divine Magnet.CHRIST STANDS FOR THE FACTS OF Christianity is a historical religion. Its history is an open page. When Paul referred to the life and labors of Jesus Christ in his defense before Festus, he said,“The king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely; for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26). And that speech was not more true of Christ than it is of Christianity, for Christ stands for the fact of Christianity.His birth was Christianity’s birth. The Theosophists of the present time would have us believe that their religion is older than Christianity. Then we ask them when and where it was born. They answer the first question, “In the remote past,” and the second, “Beyond the Himalayas.” If you take that modern fad of faith, Christian Science, and ask for its history, Mrs. Eddy replies, “In the year 1866, I discovered metaphysical healing and named it Christian Science.” The beginning then of Theosophy is a fog-bank, and the beginning of Christian Science a flippancy. But the beginning of Christianity is a historical fact, occurring at a definite place—Bethlehem; a definite time—1900 years ago when Mary “brought forth her Firstborn and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger”.For thirty-three years that first-born son lived and taught, and in that life and teaching, Christianity took its rise.

I do not know of any life, the main incidents of which are so universally accepted as historical facts as those of Christ’s life. Niebuhr, an expert in the realm of historical criticism, says, “In my opinion, he is not a protestant Christian who does not receive the historical facts of Christ’s early life in their literal acceptation, with all their miracles, as equally authentic with any event recorded in history, and whose belief in them is not as firm and tranquil as his belief in the latter.”The late Dr.

Lorimer rightly argued, “Present time is not independent of time that is past, and remains its record and its witness. I can read what has been in what is. * * * * Were some skeptically minded individual to assert that Lorenzo de Medici was not born in 1448, did not restore the Academy of Pisa, did not found a new one at Florence, and did not collect vast treasures of literature and art, and that the story of his career and of his magnificence was only a myth, a fable of the middle ages, there would confront him the unanswerable logic of this princely merchant’s gorgeous tomb, the biographies of this enlightened man in circulation, and more than all the art world of to-day, which is but a development of his wise foresight and generous appreciation of the beautiful. Serious people would not waste a moment upon so absurd a supposition as this myth-hypothesis, and would be apt to think its author a fit subject for examination in our lunacy courts.” And yet, he would be sane beside the man who called into question the beginning of Christianity, doubting the facts of Christ’s birth and life.Theodore Parker, the great Unitarian, said, “It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus.”Dr. Van Dyke argues that “to stop short of Christ in our tracing the history of the Church is as if one should try to account for the flow of the Nile after the fashion of ancient geographers, by attributing it to the melting snows on the mountains of the moon, instead of tracing it to the great fountains in the Albert Nyanza.”Christ’s life measures the life of Christianity. The Church may depart from Christ’s life; it often has. But Christianity never does; it never can; for nothing is worthy the name Christianity that does not perfectly correspond with Christ’s life, and is not in perfect keeping with Christ’s philosophy.The cry of some modern critics who are disposed to set up Jesus as against Paul, and against Peter, and against James, and against John, is, “Back to Christ”!

The phrase is an excellent one, though so improperly employed. We need not set Paul aside to get back to Christ, nor yet Peter, James, or John.

As His true disciples, they point always to Him. As His inspired spokesmen, their speech is always in accord with His life-philosophy. But we do well indeed, for the sake of Christianity, to accept these guides and by their assistance get back to Christ. As Henry Van Dyke says, “Back to the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; back to the facts that lie behind the definitions; back to the Person who embodies the truth; back to the record and reflection of that which the Apostles ‘heard and saw with their eyes, and looked upon, and their hands handled of the Word of Life’. This, and this only, is the way that leads us within sight of ‘the heaven-drawn picture of Christ, the Living Word’.” Christ’s triumph over death became the talisman of Christianity.“When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8). The late Dr. MacArthur said, “Christ’s enemies supposed when they lifted Him to the Cross, they had forever destroyed His power as their foe, and His influence as the Redeemer of men, * * * *. But He sways a scepter of spiritual dominion over men because once He died on the Cross.” The Cross is still a mighty attraction. Men who die for their country or for their race live again as mighty forces in commanding the world’s affection and reverence. Never did Satan commit a greater blunder than when he led to the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. His blunder consisted largely in the fact that he had not reckoned upon the resurrection, nor upon the part it should play in the proof of Christ’s Divinity, and the power of Christianity.Le Paux, a member of the French Directory, once told Talleyrand that he had invented a new religion, and named it “Theo-philanthropy”, but for some unaccountable reason, men were slow to accept it.

The great statesman and wit replied, “Take my advice and you will succeed.” “What is it? What is it?” asked Le Paux with eagerness. “Get yourself crucified and buried, and then rise again on the third day, and then go on working miracles, raising the dead and healing all manner of diseases, and casting out devils, and you will likely succeed.” Talleyrand knew what every thoughtful man ought to know, that Christ’s triumph over death has been, and is, and will be the talisman of Christianity, for “when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men”.CHRIST FOR THE FORCE OF Personality is the secret of power. One wrote truly, “The world moves by personality. All the great currents of history flowed through persons. Organization is powerful, but no organization has ever accomplished anything until a person has stood at the center of it, and filled it with his thought, with his life.”We speak of Judaism and expand our words to express the prominent part it has played in the progress of the race. But what is Judaism save the history of Abraham, the father of the faithful; of Isaac, the type of the Son of Man; of Jacob, the Prince with God; of Joseph, the forerunner of Jesus; of Moses, the Lawgiver; of Joshua, the soldier and statesman; of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the peerless Prophets, and of Daniel, the devoutest of seers. We speak of the Roman empire, and its world-wide dominion.

We remember that the Caesars were its central forces. We speak of the Reformation. We mean the record of the life and labors of Melancthon, Luther, Wycliff and Huss.“Truth is mighty and must prevail.” But it never prevails actually until it gets itself embodied, incarnated in a personality. Christianity has an organization; Christianity has a doctrine, but the force of Christianity, that which made it move and lent it power to move the world, is the Person at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the organization, and reality to the doctrine. All the abstract truths of Christianity might have come into the world in another form—nay, the substance of these truths did actually come into the world, dimly and partially through the fragmentary religions of the nations, more clearly and with increasing, prophetic light through the inspired Scriptures of the Hebrews; but still the world would not stir; still the truth could not make itself felt as a universal force in the life of humanity until“The Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds, In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.” These sage words from Henry Van Dyke find a perfect illustration in his statement concerning the motive power in the membership of the early church. He says, “It was the manifestation of Christ that converted them, the power of Christ that impelled them. He was their certainty and their strength. He was their peace and their hope. For Christ they labored and suffered; in Christ they gloried; for Christ’s sake they lived and died. They felt and they declared that the life that was in them was His life.

They were confident that they could do all things through Christ which strengthened them. The offices of the Church—Apostle, Bishop, Deacon, Evangelist—call them by what names you will—were simply forms of service to Him as Master; the doctrines of the Church were simply unfoldings of what she had received from Him as Teacher; the worship of the Church, as distinguished from that of the Jewish synagogue and the heathen temple, was the adoration of Christ as Lord.”You remember the story that Henry Drummond told of the young lady whose beautiful life was the subject of such admiration that her friends often inquired the secret of it. One day she opened a locket that hung at her neck, and let a confidential friend look into it and read, “Whom having not seen I love.” And, in so far as Christianity characterizes us, in so far as we feel its force, in so far as it shapes character and determines conduct, Christ Jesus is Himself the secret.CHRIST IS ’S PROMISE OF Because He lives, Christianity lives. Dr. Watson in “The Mind of the Master”, says, “The life-blood of Christianity is Christ. As Louis said, ‘I am my army,’ so may Jesus say, ‘I am My religion.’ What Napoleon was to his soldiers on the battlefield, Jesus has been to millions separated from Him by the chasm of centuries. No emotion in human experience has been so masterful, none so fruitful, as the passion for Jesus. It has inspired the Church.

It has half saved the world.” If we may believe the prophecies of Scriptures, it will yet result in the world’s redemption, for the text is, “I, if I be lifted up * * will draw all men unto Me”. And while that exaltation looked primarily to His crucifixion, it looked ultimately to His enthronement at God’s right hand, from which position of power, He should, through the Holy Spirit, pour His life into the life of Christianity.

And because He lives, it is immortal.Again, because Christ works, Christianity grows. His reply to the carping Jews is this, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work”. There are men on the earth who feel that their tasks are heavy and their accomplishments great. Luther undertook a difficult problem and brought to it prodigious service when he attempted the reformation of the corrupt church, but that work is small as compared with the endeavor to redeem a world. Luther and all of his successors but partially accomplished it, and much of what they did reform has lapsed. The very faith for which the great reformer contended and by his Herculean efforts rescued, is today largely forgotten by the folks who wear the great reformer’s name.

The difficulty with Luther’s reformation was Luther’s death. That which he had so nobly undertaken, he was compelled too shortly to resign.But Christianity moves on with ever-widening circles and ever-increasing power, because Christ lives and works.

As John Watson says, “Faith may languish; creeds may be changed; churches may be dissolved; society may be shattered. But one cannot imagine the time when Jesus will hot be the fair image of perfection, or the circumstances wherein He will not be loved. He can never be superseded; He can never be exceeded. Religions will come and go, the passing shapes of an eternal instinct, but Jesus will remain in the standard of the conscience and the satisfaction of the heart whom all men seek, in whom all men will yet meet.”