John 13

John 13:23

CHRIST AND A LOVABLE John 13:23. ON a recent Sabbath morning we led your thought for a while to the Prophet of God as illustrated in the life and character of John the Baptist, of whom Christ uttered that stirring eulogy, “He was a burning and a shining light”. If there is a better compliment paid to any man in the New Testament, this other John, the Disciple, the Apostle, the Author of the Gospel that wears his name, and of the Epistles which claim the same honor, has that higher honor, and it is found in the eulogy of this text. It is a great thing, beloved. Robert Ingersoll, in his eloquent bursts, sometimes declared that “no man has ever lived in vain who ever knows a true woman’s sincere love”. But I would prefer to say, “No man has lived in vain who so lived as to merit the genuine love of man or woman.” It is not an evidence of much to receive love; but it stands for something when a man or woman so lives as to win the warmest affections that throb through the clean heart of his fellow; and it means more when his character becomes the admiration of God’s Son, and starts into life such texts as this in which inspiration points out one man as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”.If there is any truth in the claim that a man’s writings reflect his most real and inner self, then the student of John’s Gospel and of his Epistles understands why Christ loved him with an ardent love.Theodore Cuyler, writing for the “Independent”, once said of the disciple of our text, “John might have sat for that portrait which Paul afterward painted when he described the Christian character as possessing ‘whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are honest’, and then adds as a finishing touch, ‘whatsoever things are lovely and are of good report’.” And among all the epithets employed in description of that character, no one would apply to his rich, mellow, saintly life so well as “lovely”.John was a lovable Christian. To be less than that may not mean irreligion, nor indeed Christlessness; but to be less than lovable is to miss the joy of religion’s experience, and to set in false perspective the true meaning of the Christian faith. Our task this morning, then, is the pleasant one of inquiring into the secret of John’s winsome religion. We all have had some better moments in which we have wished to be sweeter, saintlier; in which we have hated our cross, gruff selves, and determined by God’s help to be good and gracious.

How shall we go about it? What was there in John’s character that attracted the affection of his fellows and won the love of his Divine Lord?HE OF NATURE WITH OF SPIRIT Of his religious personality, it has been well said, “There is a false conception of him in many minds as if he were a mild, effeminate person, lacking in all the robust qualities of an athletic manhood. On the contrary, he was peculiarly bold and energetic and outspoken, one of the two ‘Sons of Thunder’, He was a man of flaming zeal for the Master’s glory, and of red-hot hatred for everything false and wicked. And yet he was the author of those marvelous love letters which have the effusive sweetness of the pressed honeycomb.” The combined strength of nature with sweetness of spirit proved to the righteously ambitious believer that such a feat was not only possible to a life of faith but the most natural resultant of the Christ forces. The idea is somewhat prevalent still, that lovable Christians cannot hold the sterner truths or practice the more exacting and self-crucifying virtues; that to be sweet one must be a stranger to sober thought, steadfast purpose, and solidness of soul. But the error of such a notion is laid bare by the most lovable men and women in all the company of the redeemed.Dr. Basil Manly, who died many years ago on the same night as did Mr.

Spurgeon, was in many respects the most mellow and lovable Christian character it has been my good fortune to know. In feelings he was as refined as the gentlest woman; in manners, no less so; in simplicity of character, charming, and in cheerfulness, akin to a May morning; and yet, back of it all was a manliness like the manliness of his Lord—a manliness that stood for the truth in noblest defense, that challenged the wrong to eternal combat, that knew no compromise with error in whatsoever form.I doubt if the Christian can be lovable except his nature is as strong as his temper is sweet.

One may be good-natured to a fault, cheery as a harvest morning, bright as a summer noon, and yet if he is vacillating or frivolous, men will only smile on him. They will never admire, much less will they love. It is character that wins us and warms all the fountains of an affection.Strength of nature and sweetness of temper are complementary in the sense that the possession of each helps to the development of the other. Some people excuse all bad temper on the plea of “high-strung”. They fall into fits of madness, do and say sharp things, hurt the feelings of their best friends, send their closest kin from them with bleeding hearts, and yet seek to excuse their words and deeds by saying, “I can’t help it. I am high-strung.”That is the very reason why one’s temper ought to be the sweetest, when it is touched and ripened by religion.

The sweetest pippin that weighs the apple twig at autumn is the one that had the most acid in it before it was ripened by the alternate touch of the midnight dew and the midday sun; and so the dews of heaven and the sun of righteousness will take all the acidity from life by converting it into mellowness if only we open our hearts to the falling of the one and the shining of the other. Christ is just calculated to effect that change.

If temper is not better than before regeneration was professed, we should seriously question whether that change has ever occurred. It is all right to be high-strung, but a man will find himself held in and behaving better after he gives to Christ the reins. If he doesn’t, though he may be religious, it is certain he will never be a lovable Christian.But sweetness of spirit is not wholly a question of controlling temper. One may be in the absolute mastery of self, and yet show to the world such a stern, crabbed side that men will be repelled rather than won for the Cross. What minister, who has been in service for any considerable time, but can duplicate the experience of Cuyler, who says, “In my early ministry, I had a most conscientious and godly minded officer in my church who rigidly practiced whatsoever things were true, and whatsoever things were just and whatsoever things were honorable. He was honest to a farthing, and devout to the very core.

I never knew him to do a wrong deed, and I scarcely ever knew him to do a pleasant one. There was a deal of good, solid, and most excellent meat in him, but no one liked to prick his fingers in coming at it.

The rugged old chestnut-burr Christian might have been a great power in the church, but even the children in the streets were afraid to speak to him; and so he went sturdily on his way to Heaven, praying and working and growling as he went, reminding me constantly of his famous countryman, Thomas Carlyle. If there had been a few drops of the Epistle of St. John distilled into him, he would have made a grand specimen of a Christian, and probably he has become sweeter and mellower by this time in the warm atmosphere of Heaven.” It was such Christians that Dr. Henson had in mind, when in his lecture on grumbling, he said that there were people he would rather spend eternity in Heaven with than two hours on the earth. How one feels the stretch between such Christians and the lovable man, who like Victor Hugo’s good priest, makes a fete by his coming! Hugo writes of Myriel, “One would have said that he dispensed warmth and light as he passed along.

Old people and children would come to their doors for the Bishop as they did for the sun. He blessed and was blessed in return.” After all, it is as easy to dispense sunshine as shadow, and surely one feels the better for having done it.

Set it down then as one of the secrets of John’s superior religion—the combined strength of nature with sweetness of spirit.HE WAS PROUD OF THE LORD’S FAVOR WITHOUT BEING VAIN It is John who tells us that he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. Did it ever occur to you to note the number of times that this distinction is referred to in John’s Gospel? Besides our text, there are five other places in which John writes of himself in similar strain. In reporting the scenes on which the Master’s dying eyes looked, John says, “When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son” (John 19:26)! In relating the circumstance of Mary Magdalene’s visit to the sepulcher, He says, “Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). Referring to the incident of that morning when the Risen Christ appeared on the seashore and spoke to the tired, disappointed fishermen, John says, “Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord” (John 21:7).In the 20th verse of the last chapter of his Gospel, John reports again, “Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following”.

Yes, John was proud of it. Why shouldn’t he have been?

The best kinship known to life is not the blood-relation with nobles, lords, or kings and queens; it is an occasion of greater self-gratulation to be a favorite disciple of Christ’s and a son of God than to be a lineal descendant from the house of Hapsburg, Hanover, or Stewarts.And why shouldn’t one be even boastfully happy? I use the word in its better sense of ecstacy. Some people think the man an egotist of the first water who claims to be especially favored of the Son of God. But David was one of the humblest men that ever sat on a throne, and yet his Psalms are full of that claim. In that 23rd Psalm, we find the fountain of David’s serenity. All the dangers and turbulences that beset him round about could not drive away his peace or dispel the sunshine from his life, simply because he felt that God was interested in him, loved him, and delighted to honor him. Hear his boast in the Lord!“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. “Surely goodness and mercy shall’ follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Psalms 23:5-6). Do you think David took no pride in the Lord’s love for him? Does his boast sound vain? No! It is only a joyful burst of a trusting soul. I confess I have never quite enjoyed those religionists who groan about their sins, and grumble about the difficulties of doing right, and go growling to Heaven. That they are Christians we cannot doubt.

That they are far from lovely is equally certain.That plain man had caught the better spirit who came to Mr. Spurgeon and said, “What a wonderful Book, sir, the Bible is!” “Yes,” replied Mr. Spurgeon, “it is wonderful. How have you found that out?” “Well, sir,” he answered, “I can’t read except very slowly. I have to spell all the words, and one day I got to John and came to this, ‘Henceforth, I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends.’ Friends! That He should call me a friend!

Why, that knocked me all to bits! So I took the Book into the shop, and I said to my wife, ‘Here, can you read? I’m afraid I have made a mistake here. You read it to me.’ And she read out, ‘I have called you friends’. Well, for Him to call me a friend! It melts me!” It ought to melt a man.

It ought to mellow him too, and fill him with love for everybody and everything except sin. If God loves us, and Christ feels toward us as He did toward John, oh, how easy it ought to be to be lovely and lovable! Did you never notice how; much better you could behave; how easy it was to smile; how full of sweetness your heart was, and how natural to do and say the gracious thing when your lover was around, and you were radiant in the reflection of his smiles? Well, come now! Can’t we be gracious when we know Christ loves us?“I am so glad that our Father in Heaven Tells of His love in the Book He has given; Wonderful things in the Bible I see; This is the dearest, that Jesus loves me. “Though I forget Him and wander away, Still He doth love me wherever I stray; Back to His dear, loving arms would I flee, When I remember that Jesus loves me. “Oh, if there’s only one song I can sing, When in His beauty I see the great King, This shall my song in eternity be: Oh, what a wonder that Jesus loves me!” I appreciate that and it must melt and mellow the man into a lovable Christian.Such a thought is destructive to vanity rather than generative of it. John referred often to the favoritism that Jesus showed, but he did it in all modesty. Even his own name he concealed, so entranced was he with the better appellation, “That disciple whom Jesus loved”. He makes no claim to superior character; he makes no boast of personal merit; he does not say, “Jesus loved me because I was more intellectual than Andrew and more spiritual than James.” Such vanity is always a fly in the ointment of religious life. If a man were a Thomas a Kempis for devotion, or a Paul for intellectual force, and he became pretentious and egotistical and concluded that even Christ could not withhold admiration from him, the world would turn away in disgust, and the Church would mingle pity with its contempt, and leave him to his bragging, doubting if indeed he knew the Christ of ineffable sweetness. Remembering as we do that the best and bravest of men have been like Moses, proverbially meek, to see some mediocre soul bestrutting itself reminds one of the peacock fable, and you are seized with a consuming desire to say, “Look at your feet and your feathers will fall.”You have heard of the boy whose father was forever telling of his exploits at Bull Run, and Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor, who listened one day while the sire waxed eloquent afresh over the same tales.

When he had concluded, the astonished, admiring son said, “Father, did any one help you put down the rebellion?” Hear some men talk, and you might imagine that Christ was not present when the rebellion was crushed out of their hearts, and the flag of godliness raised over its entire field. Well, egotists may be Christians, but lovable Christians, never!John was not vainly boasting when he wrote of himself, “That disciple whom Jesus loved”. He was doubtless thinking of his Saviour’s sweetness and not his own, for religion like beauty has lost half its charm when it becomes self-conscious. The brightest, sunniest, sweetest souls have felt about personal attainments much as Mark Guy Pearce expressed it when of personal perfection he said, “My faith in perfection is very weak when I look at others ; it is extinguished altogether when I look at myself.” John was grateful for the Lord’s love, but John was never vain. John was a lovable Christian becauseHE LEARNED LIFE FROM HIM ON WHOSE BOSOM HE LEANED Jesus was the Teacher. John was the student. The lesson was not only that of thought to be read out or spelled over. It was a lesson in character and truth to be understood, copied, and appropriated. This text suggests an explanation of John’s great progress in those more gracious truths of soul.He loved his Teacher. Judas kissed Him in the garden for purposes of betrayal. Beneath his smirking face lay the dark plot that hell had whispered into his unregenerate heart. John leaned on His bosom because John loved Him as the little child loves her from whom its own existence came.

He nestled close to the Lord because the earth presented no pillow, beside, so sweet as the Master’s breast.Love of the pupil for the teacher is one of the fundamental necessities of best progress in that which is being imparted. In reading “Imago Christi”, I learned the secret of Prof. Tholuck’s success in winning young men to his Lord. First of all he made them love him, not by commanding it but by discovering such traits of character as compelled the sincerest affection. He gathered about him a group of noble young scholars whose faith in God and His Word eventually overthrew German rationalism to a great extent. They became much like him in their ideas, their faith, their work.

The great professor might be found now in a student’s room, talking with him after the manner of a chum; now in the street, walking with another arm in arm; now in their meeting for prayer or study of Scripture; everywhere, everywhere, if by being there he could fasten more deeply the hooks of his personal and powerful influence upon the heart of young life. Hence it happened that Tholuck became the spiritual father of multitudes of men, and they copied, or better, caught the spirit of the man and went out into the world to show the same intellectual force, spiritual power, and soulful seriousness.

Oh, if only we leaned more often on the bosom that invites every warm heart and trustful head, how much we might learn of loveliness from Him!The teacher has a rare chance to inspire love. How many lessons John learned while reclining on Jesus’ bosom, we can never know, but when one reads his Epistles, he cannot help thinking of those wondrous passages of Divine sweetness. Surely Christ told John that, and He must have imparted it while John leaned on His bosom. The very heartbeat of the Son of God is in some of the passages of the first and second Epistles. It was because Abelard was a teacher and Heloise an open-hearted, quick-witted student that each of them found their ecclesiastical vows hard to keep against the mutual love that sprang up between them, and grew into a consuming passion on the part of both. Surely we need a teacher in our study of life, and is there another who can inspire so much affection, and so advance the soul as the blessed Christ?

Henry Drummond in “Pax Vobiscum” has declared that the purpose of Christianity is to teach men the art of life, and adds, “Its whole curriculum lies in one phrase, ‘Learn of Me’. Unlike most education, this is almost purely personal; it is not to be had from books or lectures on creeds or doctrines; it is a study from the life.“Christ never said much in mere words about the Christian graces; He lived them.

He was them. Yet we do not merely copy Him. We learn His art by living with Him, like the old apprentices with their masters.”Among all the lessons learned, what one is so important as the lesson of love. To give it, and compel it, is to grow in the direction of Divinity, for “God is love”. If then we want to be more lovable Christians, let us seek the bosom of Jesus often and lean on Him. The more we fellowship with Him, the more men will be drawn to us. Those who gathered about the Apostles and saw in them a power that unsaved men knew not and could not know, said of them, “They have been with Jesus.” Men can tell with whom we company. Go down on the street yonder and pick out of the crowd the men who keep company with drunkards and harlots.

You can do it! Sin leaves its mark. No less so does the better associate of virtue. Our most intimate friends we favor most. The “Daily News”, June 12th, 1892, contained an article that served to illustrate the transforming power of intimate association. It was giving an article to the Photographic Society for Geneva, when it said, “From photographs of seventy-eight old couples, and of as many adult brothers and sisters, it was found that twenty-four of the former resembled each other much more strongly than as many of the latter, although the judges selected those twenty-four brothers and sisters who most resembled.” All the world knows that the most lovable Christian is the one most like his Lord. If you want to look like Christ, you must be with Him. You must lean on His bosom.