Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

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EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

ST. JOHN Chaps. XV to XXI

EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

ST. JOHN Chaps. XV to XXI

CONTENTS

THE TRUE VINE (John xv. 1-4)

THE TRUE BRANCHES OF THE TRUE VINE (John xv. 5-8)

ABIDING IN LOVE (John xv. 9-11)

THE ONENESS OF THE BRANCHES (John xv. 12, 13)

CHRIST'S FRIENDS (John xv. 14-17)

SHEEP AMONG WOLVES (John xv. 18-20)

THE WORLD'S HATRED, AS CHRIST SAW IT (John xv. 21-25)

OUR ALLY (John xv. 26, 27)

WHY CHRIST SPEAKS (John xvi. 1-6)

THE DEPARTING CHRIST AND THE COMING SPIRIT (John xvi. 7, 8)

THE CONVICTING FACTS (John xvi 9-11)

THE GUIDE INTO ALL TRUTH (John xvi. 12-15)

CHRIST'S 'LITTLE WHILES' (John xvi. 16-19)

SORROW TURNED INTO JOY (John xvi. 20-22)

'IN THAT DAY' (John xvi. 23, 24)

THE JOYS OP 'THAT DAY' (John xvi. 25-27)

'FROM' AND 'TO' (John xvi. 28)

GLAD CONFESSION AND SAD WARNING (John xvi. 29-32)

PEACE AND VICTORY (John xvi. 33)

THE INTERCESSOR (John xvii. 1-19)

'THE LORD THEE KEEPS' (John xvii. 14-16)

THE HIGH PRIEST'S PRAYER (John xvii. 20-26)

THE FOLDED FLOCK (John xvii. 24)

CHRIST'S SUMMARY OF HIS WORK (John xvii. 26)

CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS (John xviii. 6-9)

JESUS BEFORE CAIAPHAS (John xviii. 15-27)

'ART THOU A KING?' (John xviii. 28-40)

JESUS SENTENCED (John xix. 1-16)

AN EYE-WITNESS'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRUCIFIXION (John xix. 17-30)

THE TITLE ON THE CROSS (John xix. 19)

THE IRREVOCABLE PAST (John xix. 22)

CHRIST'S FINISHED AND UNFINISHED WORK (John xix. 30; Rev. xxi. 6)

CHRIST OUR PASSOVER (John xix. 36)

JOSEPH AND NICODEMUS (John xix. 38, 39)

THE GRAVE IN A GARDEN (John xix. 41, R.V.)

THE RESURRECTION MORNING (John xx. 1-18)

THE RISEN LORD'S CHARGE AND GIFT (John xx. 21-23)

THOMAS AND JESUS (John xx. 28)

THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE (John xx. 30, 31)

AN ELOQUENT CATALOGUE (John xxi. 2)

THE BEACH AND THE SEA (John xxi. 4)

'IT IS THE LORD' (John xxi. 7)

'LOVEST THOU ME?' (John xxi. 15)

YOUTH AND AGE, AND THE COMMAND FOR BOTH (John xxi. 18, 19)

'THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT' (John xxi. 21, 22)

THE TRUE VINE

'I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Every
branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every
branch that beareth fruit He purgeth it, that it may bring forth
more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken
unto you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye,
except ye abide in Me.'--JOHN xv. 14.

WHAT suggested this lovely parable of the vine and the branches is
equally unimportant and undiscoverable. Many guesses have been made,
and, no doubt, as was the case with almost all our Lord's parables,
some external object gave occasion for it. It is a significant token
of our Lord's calm collectedness, even at that supreme and heart-
shaking moment, that He should have been at leisure to observe, and
to use for His purposes of teaching, something that was present at
the instant. The deep and solemn lessons which He draws, perhaps from
some vine by the wayside, are the richest and sweetest clusters that
the vine has ever grown. The great truth in this chapter, applied in
manifold directions, and viewed in many aspects, is that of the
living union between Christ and those who believe on Him, and the
parable of the vine and the branches affords the foundation for all
which follows.

We take the first half of that parable now. It is somewhat difficult
to trace the course of thought in it, but there seems to be, first of
all, the similitude set forth, without explanation or interpretation,
in its most general terms, and then various aspects in which its
applications to Christian duty are taken up and reiterated, I simply
follow the words which I have read for my text.

I. We have then, first, the Vine in the vital unity of all its parts.

'I am the True Vine,' of which the material one to which He perhaps
points, is but a shadow and an emblem. The reality lies in Him. We
shall best understand the deep significance and beauty of this
thought if we recur in imagination to some of those great vines which
we sometimes see in royal conservatories, where for hundred of yards
the pliant branches stretch along the espaliers, and yet one life
pervades the whole, from the root, through the crooked stem, right
away to the last leaf at the top of the farthest branch, and reddens
and mellows every cluster, 'So,' says Christ, 'between Me and the
totality of them that hold by Me in faith there is one life, passing
ever from root through branches, and ever bearing fruit.'

Let me remind you that this great thought of the unity of life
between Jesus Christ and all that believe upon Him is the familiar
teaching of Scripture, and is set forth by other emblems besides that
of the vine, the queen of the vegetable world; for we have it in the
metaphor of the body and its members, where not only are the many
members declared to be parts of one body, but the name of the
collective body, made up of many members, is Christ. 'So also is'--
not as we might expect, 'the Church,' but--'Christ,' the whole
bearing the name of Him who is the Source of life to every part.
Personality remains, individuality remains: I am I, and He is He, and
thou art thou; but across the awful gulf of individual consciousness
which parts us from one another, Jesus Christ assumes the Divine
prerogative of passing and joining Himself to each of us, if we love
Him and trust Him, in a union so close, and with a communication of
life so real, that every other union which we know is but a faint and
far-off adumbration of it. A oneness of life from root to branch,
which is the sole cause of fruitfulness and growth, is taught us
here.

And then let me remind you that that living unity between Jesus
Christ and all who love Him is a oneness which necessarily results in
oneness of relation to God and men, in oneness of character, and in
oneness of destiny. In relation to God, He is the Son, and we in Him
receive the standing of sons. He has access ever into the Father's
presence, and we through Him and in Him have access with confidence
and are accepted in the Beloved. In relation to men, since He is
Light, we, touched with His light, are also, in our measure and
degree, the lights of the world; and in the proportion in which we
receive into our souls, by patient abiding in Jesus Christ, the very
power of His Spirit, we, too, become God's anointed, subordinately
but truly His messiahs, for He Himself says: 'As the Father hath sent
Me, even so I send you.'

In regard to character, the living union between Christ and His
members results in a similarity if not identity of character, and
with His righteousness we are clothed, and by that righteousness we
are justified, and by that righteousness we are sanctified. The
oneness between Christ and His children is the ground at once of
their forgiveness and acceptance, and of all virtue and nobleness of
life and conduct that can ever be theirs.

And, in like manner, we can look forward and be sure that we are so
closely joined with Him, if we love Him and trust Him, that it is
impossible but that where He is there shall also His servants be; and
that what He is that shall also His servants be. For the oneness of
life, by which we are delivered from the bondage of corruption and
the law of sin and death here, will never halt nor cease until it
brings us into the unity of His glory, 'the measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ.' And as He sits on the Father's throne, His
children must needs sit with Him, on His throne.

Therefore the name of the collective whole, of which the individual
Christian is part, is Christ. And as in the great Old Testament
prophecy of the Servant of the Lord, the figure that rises before
Isaiah's vision fluctuates between that which is clearly the
collective Israel and that which is, as clearly, the personal
Messiah; so the 'Christ' is not only the individual Redeemer who
bears the body of the flesh literally here upon earth, but the whole
of that redeemed Church, of which it is said, 'It is His body, the
fullness of Him that filleth all in all.'

II. Now note, secondly, the Husbandman, and the dressing of the vine.

The one tool that a vinedresser needs is a knife. The chief secret of
culture is merciless pruning. And so says my text, 'The Father is the
Husbandman.' Our Lord assumes that office in other of His parables.
But here the exigencies of the parabolic form require that the office
of Cultivator should be assigned only to the Father; although we are
not to forget that the Father, in that office, works through and in
His Son.

But we should note that the one kind of husbandry spoken of here is
pruning--not manuring, not digging, but simply the hacking away of
all that is rank and all that is dead.

Were you ever in a greenhouse or in a vineyard at the season of
cutting back the vines? What flagitious waste it would seem to an
ignorant person to see scattered on the floor the bright green leaves
and the incipient clusters, and to look up at the bare stem, bleeding
at a hundred points from the sharp steel. Yes! But there was not a
random stroke in it all, and there was nothing cut away which it was
not loss to keep and gain to lose; and it was all done artistically,
scientifically, for a set purpose--that the plant might bring forth
more fruit.

Thus, says Christ, the main thing that is needed--not, indeed, to
improve the life in the branches, but to improve the branches in
which the life is--is excision. There are two forms of it given here
--absolutely dead wood has to be cut out; wood that has life in it,
but which has also rank shoots, that do not come from the all-
pervading and hallowed life, has to be pruned back and deprived of
its shoots.

It seems to me that the very language of the metaphor before us
requires us to interpret the fruitless branches as meaning all those
who have a mere superficial, external adherence to the True Vine.
For, according to the whole teaching of the parable, if there be any
real union, there will be some life, and if there be any life, there
will be some fruit, and, therefore, the branch that has no fruit has
no life, because it has no real union. And so the application, as I
take it, is necessarily to those professing Christians, nominal
adherents to Christianity or to Christ's Church, people that come to
church and chapel, and if you ask them to put down in the census
paper what they are, will say that they are Christians--Churchmen or
Dissenters, as the case may be--but who have no real hold upon Jesus
Christ, and no real reception of anything from Him; and the 'taking
away' is simply that, somehow or other, God makes visible, what is a
fact, that they do not belong to Him with whom they have this nominal
connection.

The longer Christianity continues in any country, the more does the
Church get weighted and lowered in its temperature by the aggregation
round about it of people of that sort. And one sometimes longs and
prays for a storm to come, of some sort or other, to blow the dead
wood out of the tree, and to get rid of all this oppressive and
stifling weight of sham Christians that has come round every one of
our churches. 'His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge
His floor,' and every man that has any reality of Christian life in
him should pray that this pruning and cutting out of the dead wood
may be done, and that He would 'come as a refiner's fire and purify'
His priesthood.

Then there is the other side, the pruning of the fruitful branches.
We all, in our Christian life, carry with us the two natures--our own
poor miserable selves, and the better life of Jesus Christ within us.
The one flourishes at the expense of the other; and it is the
Husbandman's merciful, though painful work, to cut back unsparingly
the rank shoots that come from self, in order that all the force of
our lives may be flung into the growing of the cluster which is
acceptable to Him.

So, dear friends, let us understand the meaning of all that comes to
us. The knife is sharp and the tendrils bleed, and things that seem
very beautiful and very precious are unsparingly shorn away, and we
are left bare, and, as it seems to ourselves, impoverished. But Oh!
it is all sent that we may fling our force into the production of
fruit unto God. And no stroke will be a stroke too many or too deep
if it helps us to that. Only let us take care that we do not let
regrets for the vanished good harm us just as much as joy in the
present good did, and let us rather, in humble submission of will to
His merciful knife, say to Him, 'Cut to the quick, Lord, if only
thereby my fruit unto Thee may increase.'

III. Lastly, we have here the branches abiding in the Vine, and
therefore fruitful.

Our Lord deals with the little group of His disciples as incipiently
and imperfectly, but really, cleansed through 'the word which He has
spoken to them,' and gives them His exhortation towards that conduct
through which the cleansing and the union and the fruitfulness will
all be secured. 'Now ye are clean: abide in Me and I in you. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no
more can ye except ye abide in Me.'

Union with Christ is the condition of all fruitfulness. There may be
plenty of activity and yet barrenness. Works are not fruit. We can
bring forth a great deal 'of ourselves,' and because it is of
ourselves it is nought. Fruit is possible only on condition of union
with Him. He is the productive source of it all.

There is the great glory and distinctive blessedness of the Gospel.
Other teachers come to us and tell us how we ought to live, and give
us laws, patterns and examples, reasons and motives for pure and
noble lives. The Gospel comes and gives us life, if we will take it,
and unfolds itself in us into all the virtues that we have to
possess. What is the use of giving a man a copy if he cannot copy it?
Morality comes and stands over the cripple, and says to him, 'Look
here! This is how you ought to walk,' and he lies there, paralysed
and crippled, after as before the exhibition of what graceful
progression is. But Christianity comes and bends over him, and lays
hold of his hand, and says, 'In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
rise up and walk,' and his feet and ankle bones receive strength, and
'he leaps, and walks, and praises God.' Christ gives more than
commandments, patterns, motives; He gives the power to live soberly,
righteously, and godly, and in Him alone is that power to be found.

Then note that our reception of that power depends upon our own
efforts. 'Abide in Me and I in you.' Is that last clause a
commandment as well as the first? How can His abiding in us be a duty
incumbent upon us? But it is. And we might paraphrase the intention
of this imperative in its two halves, by--Do you take care that you
abide in Christ, and that Christ abides in you. The two ideas are but
two sides of the one great sphere; they complement and do not
contradict each other. We dwell in Him as the part does in the whole,
as the branch does in the vine, recipient of its life and fruit-
bearing energy. He dwells in us as the whole does in the part, as the
vine dwells in the branch, communicating its energy to every part; or
as the soul does in the body, being alive equally in every part,
though it be sight in the eyeball, and hearing in the ear, and colour
in the cheek, and strength in the hand, and swiftness in the foot.

'Abide in Me and I in you.' So we come down to very plain, practical
exhortations. Dear brethren, suppress yourselves, and empty your
lives of self, that the life of Christ may come in. A lock upon a
canal, if it is empty, will have its gates pressed open by the water
in the canal and will be filled. Empty the heart and Christ will come
in. 'Abide in Him' by continual direction of thought, love, desire to
Him; by continual and reiterated submission of the will to Him, as
commanding and as appointing; by the honest reference to Him of daily
life and all petty duties which otherwise distract us and draw us
away from Him. Then, dwelling in Him we shall share in His life, and
shall bring forth fruit to His praise.

Here is encouragement for us all. To all of us, sometimes, our lives
seem barren and poor; and we feel as if we had brought forth no fruit
to perfection. Let us get nearer to Him and He will see to the fruit.
Some poor stranded sea-creature on the beach, vainly floundering in
the pools, is at the point of death; but the great tide comes,
leaping and rushing over the sands, and bears it away out into the
middle deeps for renewed activity and joyous life. Let the flood of
Christ's life bear you on its bosom, and you will rejoice and
expatiate therein.

Here is a lesson of solemn warning to professing Christians. The
lofty mysticism and inward life in Jesus Christ all terminate at last
in simple, practical obedience; and the fruit is the test of the
life. 'Depart from Me, I never knew you, ye that work iniquity.'

And here is a lesson of solemn appeal to us all. Our only opportunity
of bearing any fruit worthy of our natures and of God's purpose
concerning us is by vital union with Jesus Christ. If we have not
that, there may be plenty of activity and mountains of work in our
lives, but there will be no fruit. Only that is fruit which pleases
God and is conformed to His purpose concerning us, and all the rest
of our busy doings is no more the fruit a man should bear than
cankers are roses, or than oak-galls are acorns. They are but the
work of a creeping grub, and diseased excrescences that suck into
themselves the juices that should swell the fruit. Open your hearts
to Christ and let His life and His Spirit come into you, and then you
will have 'your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.'

THE TRUE BRANCHES OF THE TRUE VINE

'I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I
in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can
do nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a
branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into
the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in Me, and My words
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done
unto you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit;
so shall ye be My disciples.'--JOHN xv. 5-8.

No wise teacher is ever afraid of repeating himself. The average mind
requires the reiteration of truth before it can make that truth its
own. One coat of paint is not enough, it soon rubs off. Especially is
this true in regard to lofty spiritual and religious truth, remote
from men's ordinary thinkings, and in some senses unwelcome to them.
So our Lord, the great Teacher, never shrank from repeating His
lessons when He saw that they were but partially apprehended. It was
not grievous to Him to 'say the same things,' because for them it was
safe. He broke the bread of life into small pieces, and fed them
little and often.

So here, in the verses that we have to consider now, we have the
repetition, and yet not the mere repetition, of the great parable of
the vine, as teaching the union of Christians with Christ, and their
consequent fruitfulness. He saw, no doubt, that the truth was but
partially dawning upon His disciples' minds. Therefore He said it all
over again, with deepened meaning, following it out into new
applications, presenting further consequences, and, above all, giving
it a more sharp and definite personal application.

Are we any swifter scholars than these first ones were? Have we
absorbed into our own thinking this truth so thoroughly and
constantly, and wrought it out in our lives so completely, that we do
not need to be reminded of it any more? Shall we not be wise if we
faithfully listen to His repeated teachings?

The verses which I have read give us four aspects of this great truth
of union with Jesus Christ; or of its converse, separation from Him.
There is, first, the fruitfulness of union; second, the withering and
destruction of separation; third, the satisfaction of desire which
comes from abiding in Christ; and, lastly, the great, noble issue of
fruitfulness, in God's glory, and our own increasing discipleship.
Now let me touch upon these briefly.

I. First, then, our Lord sets forth, with no mere repetition, the
same broad idea which He has already been insisting upon--viz., that
union with Him is sure to issue in fruitfulness. He repeats the
theme, 'I am the Vine'; but He points its application by the next
clause, 'Ye are the branches.' That had been implied before, but it
needed to be said more definitely. For are we not all too apt to
think of religious truth as swinging _in vacuo_ as it were, with no
personal application to ourselves, and is not the one thing needful
in regard to the truths which are most familiar to us, to bring them
into close connection with our own personal life and experience?

'I am the Vine' is a general truth, with no clear personal
application. 'Ye are the branches' brings each individual listener
into connection with it. How many of us there are, as there are in
every so-called Christian communion, that listen pleasedly, and, in a
fitful sort of languid way, interestedly, to the most glorious and
most solemn words that come from a preacher's lips, and never dream
that what he has been saying has any bearing upon themselves! And the
one thing that is most of all needed with people like some of you,
who have been listening to the truth all your days, is that it should
be sharpened to a point, and the conviction driven into you, that
_you_ have some personal concern in this great message. 'Ye are the
branches' is the one side of that sharpening and making definite of
the truth in its personal application, and the other side is, 'Thou
art the man.' All preaching and religious teaching is toothless
generality, utterly useless, unless we can manage somehow or other to
force it through the wall of indifference and vague assent to a
general proposition, with which 'Gospel-hardened hearers' surround
themselves, and make them feel that the thing has got a point, and
that the point is touching their own consciousness. '_Ye_ are the
branches.'

Note next the great promise of fruitfulness. 'He that abideth in Me,
and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.'

I need not repeat what I have said in former sermons as to the plain,
practical duties which are included in that abiding in Christ, and
Christ's consequent abiding in us. It means, on the part of
professedly Christian people, a temper and tone of mind very far
remote from the noisy, bustling distractions too common in our
present Christianity. We want quiet, patient waiting within the veil.
We want stillness of heart, brought about by our own distinct effort
to put away from ourselves the strife of tongues and the pride of
life. We want activity, no doubt, but we want a wise passiveness as
its foundation.

'Think you, midst all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?'

Get away into the 'secret place of the Most High,' and rise into a
higher altitude and atmosphere than the region of work and effort;
and sitting still with Christ, let His love and His power pour
themselves into your hearts. 'Come, My people, enter thou into thy
chambers and shut thy doors about thee.' Get away from the jangling
of politics, and empty controversies and busy distractions of daily
duty. The harder our toil necessarily is, the more let us see to it
that we keep a little cell within the central life where in silence
we hold communion with the Master. 'Abide in Me and I in you.'

That is the way to be fruitful, rather than by efforts after
individual acts of conformity and obedience, howsoever needful and
precious these are. There is a deeper thing wanted than these. The
best way to secure Christian conduct is to cultivate communion with
Christ. It is better to work at the increase of the central force
than at the improvement of the circumferential manifestations of it.
Get more of the sap into the branch, and there will be more fruit.
Have more of the life of Christ in the soul, and the conduct and the
speech will be more Christlike. We may cultivate individual graces at
the expense of the harmony and beauty of the whole character. We may
grow them artificially and they will be of little worth--by imitation
of others, by special efforts after special excellence, rather than
by general effort after the central improvement of our nature and
therefore of our life. But the true way to influence conduct is to
influence the springs of conduct; and to make a man's life better,
the true way is to make the man better. First of all be, and then do;
first of all receive, and then give forth; first of all draw near to
Christ, and then there will be fruit to His praise. That is the
Christian way of mending men, not tinkering at this, that, and the
other individual excellence, but grasping the secret of total
excellence in communion with Him.

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