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

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

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May it be so with us all!

THE WORLD'S HATRED, AS CHRIST SAW IT

'But all these things will they do unto you for My name's sake,
because they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and
spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no
cloke for their sin. He that hateth Me, hateth My Father also. If
I had not done among them the works which none other man did,
they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both
Me and My Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be
fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated Me without a
cause.'--JOHN XV. 21-25.

Our Lord has been speaking of the world's hostility to His followers,
and tracing that to its hostility to Himself. In these solemn words
of our text He goes still deeper, and parallels the relation which
His disciples bear to Him and the consequent hostility that falls on
them, with the relation which He bears to the Father and the
consequent hostility that falls on Him: 'They hate you because they
hate Me.' And then His words become sadder and pierce deeper, and
with a tone of wounded love and disappointed effort and almost
surprise at the world's requital to Him, He goes on to say, 'They
hate Me, because they hate the Father.'

So, then, here we have, in very pathetic and solemn words, Christ's
view of the relation of the world to Him and to God.

I. The first point that He signalises is the world's ignorance.

'These things they will do unto you,' and they will do them 'for My
name's sake'; they will do them 'because they know not Him that sent
Me.'

'The world,' in Christ's language, is the aggregate of godless men.
Or, to put it a little more sharply, our Lord, in this context, gives
in His full adhesion to that narrow view which divides those who have
come under the influence of His truth into two portions. There is no
mincing of the matter in the antithesis which Christ here draws; no
hesitation, as if there were a great central mass, too bad for a
blessing perhaps, but too good for a curse; which was neither black
nor white, but neutral grey. No! however it may be with the masses
beyond the reach of the dividing and revealing power of His truth,
the men that come into contact with Him, like a heap of metal filings
brought into contact with a magnet, mass themselves into two bunches,
the one those who yield to the attraction, and the other those who do
not. The one is 'My disciples,' and the other is 'the world.' And
now, says Jesus Christ, all that mass that stands apart from Him,
and, having looked upon Him with the superficial eye of those men
round about Him at that day, or of the men who hear of Him now, have
no real love to Him--have, as the underlying motive of their conduct
and their feelings, a real ignorance of God, 'They know not Him that
sent Me.'

Our Lord assumes that He is so completely the Copy and Revealer of
the divine nature as that any man that looks upon Him has had the
opportunity of becoming acquainted with God, and that any man who
turns away from Him has lost that opportunity. The God that the men
who do not love Jesus Christ believe in, is not the Father that sent
Him. It is a fragment, a distorted image tinted by the lens. The
world has its conception of God; but outside of Jesus Christ and His
manifestation of the whole divine nature, the world's God is but a
syllable, a fragment, a broken part of the perfect completeness. 'The
Father of an infinite majesty,' and of as infinite a tenderness, the
stooping God, the pitying God, the forgiving God, the loving God is
known only where Christ is accepted. In other hearts He may be dimly
hoped for, in other hearts He may be half believed in, in other
hearts He may be thought possible; but hopes and anticipations and
fears and doubts are not knowledge, and they who see not the light in
Christ see but the darkness. Out of Him God is not known, and they
that turn away from His beneficent manifestation turn their faces to
the black north, from which no sun can shine. Brother, do you know
God in Christ? Unless you do, you do not know the God who is.

But there is a deeper meaning in that word than simply the possession
of true thoughts concerning the divine nature. We know God as we know
one another; because God is a Person, as we are persons, and the only
way to know persons is through familiar acquaintance and sympathy. So
the world which turns away from Christ has no acquaintance with God.

This is a surface fact. Our Lord goes on to show what lies below it.

II. His second thought here is--the world's ignorance in the face of
Christ's light is worse than ignorance; it is sin.

Mark how He speaks: 'If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had
not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.' And then
again: 'If I had not done amongst them the works which none other men
did, they had not had sin.' So then He puts before us two forms of
His manifestation of the divine nature, by His words and His works.
Of these two He puts His words foremost, as being a deeper and more
precious and brilliant revelation of what God is than are His
miracles. The latter are subordinate, they come as a second source of
illumination. Men who will not see the beauty and listen to the truth
that lie in His word may perchance be led by His deed. But the word
towers in its nature high above the work, and the miracle to the word
is but like the picture in the child's book to the text, fit for
feeble eyes and infantile judgments, but containing far less of the
revelation of God than the sacred words which He speaks. First the
words, next the miracles.

But notice, too, how decisively, and yet simply and humbly and
sorrowfully, our Lord here makes a claim which, on the lips of any
but Himself, would have been mere madness of presumption. Think of
any of us saying that our words made all the difference between
innocent ignorance and criminality! Think of any of us saying that to
listen to us, and not be persuaded, was the sin of sins! Think of any
of us pointing to our actions and saying, In these God is so manifest
that not to see Him augurs wickedness, and is condemnation! And yet
Jesus Christ says all this. And, what is more wonderful, nobody
wonders that He says it, and the world believes that He is saying the
truth when He says it.

How does that come? There is only one answer; only one. His words
were the illuminating manifestation of God, and His deeds were the
plain and unambiguous operation of the divine hand then and there,
only because He Himself was divine, and in Him 'God was manifested in
the flesh.'

But passing from that, notice how our Lord here declares that in
comparison with the sin of not listening to His words, and being
taught by His manifestation, all other sins dwindle into nothing. 'If
I had not spoken, they had not had sin.' That does not mean, of
course, that these men would have been clear of all moral
delinquency; it does not mean that there would not have been amongst
them crimes against their own consciences, crimes against the law
written on their own hearts, crimes against the law of revelation.
There were liars, impure men, selfish men, and men committing all the
ordinary forms of human transgression amongst them. And yet, says
Christ, black and bespattered as these natures are, they are white in
comparison with the blackness of the man who, looking into His face,
sees nothing there that he should desire. Beside the mountain
belching out its sulphurous flame the little pimple of a molehill is
nought. And so, says Christ, heaven heads the count of sins with
this--unbelief in Me.

Ah, brother, as light grows responsibility grows, and this is the
misery of all illumination that comes through Jesus Christ, that
where it does not draw a man into His sweet love, and fill him with
the knowledge of God which is eternal life, it darkens his nature and
aggravates his condemnation, and lays a heavier burden upon his soul.
The truth that the measure of light is the measure of guilt has many
aspects. It turns a face of alleviation to the dark places of the
earth; but just in the measure that it lightens the condemnation of
the heathen, it adds weight to the condemnation of you men and women
who are bathed in the light of Christianity, and all your days have
had it streaming in upon you. The measure of the guilt is the
brightness of the light. No shadows are so black as those which the
intense sunshine of the tropics casts. And you and I live in the very
tropical regions of divine revelation, and 'if we turn away from Him
that spoke on earth and speaketh from heaven, of how much sorer
punishment, think you, shall we be thought worthy' than those who
live away out in the glimmering twilight of an unevangelised
paganism, or who stood by the side of Jesus Christ when they had only
His earthly life to teach them?

III. The ignorance which is sin is the manifestation of hatred.

Our Lord has sorrowfully contemplated the not knowing God, which in
the blaze of His light can only come from wilful closing of the eyes,
and is therefore the very sin of sins. But that, sad as it is, is not
all which has to be said about that blindness of unbelief in Him. It
indicates a rooted alienation of heart and mind and will from God,
and is, in fact, the manifestation of an unconscious but real hatred.
It is an awful saying, and one which the lips 'into which grace was
poured' could not pronounce without a sigh. But it is our wisdom to
listen to what it was His mercy to say.

Observe our Lord's identification of Himself with the Father, so as
that the feelings with which men regard Him are, _ipso facto_, the
feelings with which they regard the Father God. 'He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father.' 'He that hath loved Me hath loved the Father.'
'He that hath hated Me hath hated the Father.' An ugly word--a word
that a great many of us think far too severe and harsh to be applied
to men who simply are indifferent to the divine love. Some say, 'I am
conscious of no hatred. I do not pretend to be a Christian, but I do
not hate God. Take the ordinary run of people round about us in the
world; if you say God is not in all their thoughts, I agree with you;
but if you say that they _hate_ God, I do not believe it.'

Well, what do you think the fact that men go through their days and
weeks and months and years, and have not God in all their thoughts,
indicates as to the central feeling of their hearts towards God?
Granted that there is not actual antagonism, because there is no
thought at all, do you think it would be possible for a man who loved
God to go on for a twelvemonth and never think of, or care to please,
or desire to be near, the object that he loved? And inasmuch as, deep
down at the bottom of our moral being, there is no such thing
possible as indifference and a perfect equipoise in reference to God,
it is clear enough, I think, that--although the word must not be
pressed as if it meant conscious and active antagonism,--where there
is no love there is hate.

If a man does not love God as He is revealed to him in Jesus Christ,
he neither cares to please Him nor to think about Him, nor does he
order his life in obedience to His commands. And if it be true that
obedience is the very life-breath of love, disobedience or non-
obedience is the manifestation of antagonism, and antagonism towards
God is the same thing as hate.

Dear friends, I want some of my hearers to-day who have never
honestly asked themselves the question of what their relation to God
is, to go down into the deep places of their hearts and test
themselves by this simple inquiry: 'Do I do anything to please Him?
Do I try to serve Him? Is it a joy to me to be near Him? Is the
thought of Him a delight, like a fountain in the desert or the cool
shadow of a great rock in the blazing wilderness? Do I turn to Him as
my Home, my Friend, my All? If I do not, am I not deceiving myself by
fancying that I stand neutral?' There is no neutrality in a man's
relation to God. It is one thing or other. 'Ye cannot serve God and
Mammon.' 'The friendship of the world is enmity against God.'

IV. And now, lastly, note how our Lord here touches the deep thought
that this ignorance, which is sin, and is more properly named hatred,
is utterly irrational and causeless.

'All this will they do that it might be fulfilled which is written in
their law, They hated Me without a cause.' One hears sighing through
these words the Master's meek wonder that His love should be so met,
and that the requital which He receives at men's hands, for such an
unexampled and lavish outpouring of it, should be such a
carelessness, reposing upon a hidden basis of such a rooted
alienation.

'Without a cause'; yes! that suggests the deep thought that the most
mysterious and irrational thing in men's whole history and experience
is the way in which they recompense God in Christ for what He has
done for them. 'Be astonished, O ye heavens! and wonder, O ye earth!'
said one of the old prophets; the mystery of mysteries, which can
give no account of itself to satisfy reason, which has no apology,
excuse, or vindication, is just that when God loves me I do not love
Him back again; and that when Christ pours out the whole fullness of
His heart upon me, nay dull and obstinate heart gives back so little
to Him who has given me so much.

'Without a cause.' Think of that Cross; think, as every poor creature
on earth has a right to think, that he and she individually were in
the mind and heart of the Saviour when He suffered and died, and then
think of what we have brought Him for it. De we not stand ashamed at-
if I might use so trivial a word,--the absurdity as well as at the
criminality of our requital? Causeless love on the one side,
occasioned by nothing but itself, and causeless indifference on the
other, occasioned by nothing but itself, are the two powers that meet
in this mystery-men's rejection of the infinite love of God.

My friend, come away from the unreasonable people, come away from the
men who can give no account of their attitude. Come away from those
who pay benefits by carelessness, and a Love that died by an
indifference that will not cast an eye upon that miracle of mercy,
and let His love kindle the answering flame in your hearts. Then you
will know God as only they who love Christ know Him, and in the
sweetness of a mutual bond will lose the misery of self, and escape
the deepening condemnation of those who see Christ on the Cross and
do not care for the sight, nor learn by it to know the infinite
tenderness and holiness of the Father that sent Him.

OUR ALLY

'But when the Comforter Is come, whom I will send unto you from
the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the
Father, He shall testify of Me: And ye also shall bear witness,
because ye have been with Me from the beginning.'--JOHN xv. 26,
27.

Our Lord has been speaking of a world hostile to His followers and to
Him. He proceeds, in the words which immediately follow our text, to
paint that hostility as aggravated even to the pitch of religious
murder. But here He lets a beam of light in upon the darkness. These
forlorn Twelve, listening to Him, might well have said, 'Thou art
about to leave us; how can we alone face this world in arms, with
which Thou dost terrify us?' And here He lets them see that they will
not be left alone, but have a great Champion, clad in celestial
armour, who, coming straight from God, will be with them and put into
their hands a weapon, with which they may conquer the world, and turn
it into a friend, and with which alone they must meet the world's
hate.

So, then, we have three things in this text; the great promise of an
Ally in the conflict with the world; the witness which that Ally
bears, to fortify against the world; and the consequent witness with
which Christians may win the world.

I. Now consider briefly the first of these points, the great promise
of an Ally in the conflict with the world.

I may touch, very lightly, upon the wonderful designation of this
Champion-Friend whom Christ sends, because on former occasions in
this course of sermons we have had to deal with the same thoughts,
and there will be subsequent opportunities of recurring to them. But
I may just emphasise in a few sentences the points which our Lord
here signalises in regard to the Champion whom He sends. There is a
double designation of that Spirit, 'the Comforter' and 'the Spirit of
truth.' There is a double description of His mission, as being 'sent'
by Jesus, and as 'proceeding from the Father,' and there is a single
statement as to the position from which He comes to us. A word about
each of these things.

I have already explained in former sermons that the notion of
'Comforter,' as it is understood in modern English, is a great deal
too restricted and narrow to cover the whole ground of this great and
blessed promise. The Comforter whom Christ sends is no mere drier of
men's tears and gentle Consoler of human sorrows, but He is a
mightier Spirit than that, and the word by which He is described in
our text, which means 'one who is summoned to the side of another,'
conveys the idea of a helper who is brought to the man to be helped,
in order to render whatever aid and succour that man's weakness and
circumstances may require. The verses before our text suggest what
sort of aid and succour the disciples will need. They are to be as
sheep in the midst of wolves. Their defenceless purity will need a
Protector, a strong Shepherd. They stand alone amongst enemies. There
must be some one beside them to fight for them, to shield and to
encourage them, to be their Safety and their Peace. And that
Paraclete, who is called to our side, comes for the special help
which these special circumstances require, and is a strong Spirit who
will be our Champion and our Ally, whatever antagonism may storm
against us, and however strong and well-armed may be the assaulting
legions of the world's hate.

Then, still further, the other designation here of this strong
Succourer and Friend is 'the Spirit of truth,' by which is
designated, not so much His characteristic attribute, as rather the
weapon which He wields, or the material with which He works. The
'truth' is His instrument; that is to say, the Spirit of God sent by
Jesus Christ is the Strengthener, the Encourager, the Comforter, the
Fighter for us and with us, because He wields that great body of
truth, the perfect revelation of God, and man, and duty, and
salvation, which is embodied in the incarnation and work of Jesus
Christ our Lord. The truth is His weapon, and it is by it that He
makes us strong.

Then, still further, there is a twofold description here of the
mission of this divine Champion, as 'sent' by Christ, and 'proceeding
from the Father.'

In regard to the former, I need only remind you that, in a previous
part of this wonderful discourse, our Lord speaks of that divine
Spirit as being sent by the Father in His name and in answer to His
prayer. The representation here is by no means antagonistic to, or
diverse from, that other representation, but rather the fact that the
Father and the Son, according to the deep teaching of Scripture, are
in so far one as that 'whatsoever the Son seeth the Father do that
also the Son doeth likewise,' makes it possible to attribute to Him
the work which, in another place, is ascribed to the Father. In
speaking of the _Persons_ of the Deity, let us never forget that that
word is only partially applicable to that ineffable Being, and that
whilst with us it implies absolute separation of individuals, it does
not mean such separation in the case of its imperfect transference to
the mysteries of the divine nature; but rather, the Son doeth what
the Father doeth, and therefore the Spirit is sent forth by the
Father, and also the Son sends the Spirit.

But, on the other hand, we are not to regard that divine Spirit as
merely a Messenger sent by another. He 'proceeds from the Father.'
That word has been the battlefield of theological controversy, with
which I do not purpose to trouble you now. For I do not suppose that
in its use here it refers at all to the subject to which it has been
sometimes applied, nor contains any kind of revelation of the eternal
depths of the divine Nature and its relations to itself. What is
meant here is the historical coming forth into human life of that
divine Spirit. And, possibly, the word 'proceeds' is chosen in order
to contrast with the word 'sent,' and to give the idea of a voluntary
and personal action of the Messenger, who not only is _sent_ by the
Father, but of Himself _proceeds_ on the mighty work to which He is
destined.

Be that as it may, mark only, for the last thought here about the
details of this great promise, that wonderful phrase, twice repeated
in our Lord's words, and emphasised by its verbal repetition in the
two clauses, which in all other respects are so different--'from the
Father.' The word translated '_from_' is not the ordinary word so
rendered, but rather designates _a position at the side of_ than an
_origin from_, and suggests much rather the intimate and ineffable
union between Father, Son, and Spirit, than the source from which the
Spirit comes. I touch upon these things very lightly, and gather them
up into one sentence. Here, then, are the points. A Person who is
spoken of as 'He'--a divine Person whose home from of old has been
close by the Father's side--a Person whose instrument is the revealed
truth ensphered and in germ in the facts of Christ's incarnation and
life--a divine Person, wielding the truth, who is sent by Christ as
His Representative, and in some sense a continuance of His personal
Presence--a divine, personal Spirit coming from the Father, wielding
the truth, sent by Christ, and at the side of all the persecuted and
the weak, all world-hated and Christian men, as their Champion, their
Combatant, their Ally, their Inspiration, and their Power. Is not
that enough to make the weakest strong? Is not that enough to make us
'more than conquerors through Him that loved us'? All nations have
legends of the gods fighting at the head of their armies, and through
the dust of battle the white horses and the shining armour of the
celestial champions have been seen. The childish dream is a
historical reality. It is not we that fight, it is the Spirit of God
that fighteth in us.

II. And so note, secondly, the witness of the Spirit which fortifies
against the world.

'He shall bear witness of Me.' Now we must especially observe here
that little phrase, 'unto you.' For that tells us at once that the
witness which our Lord has in mind here is something which is done
within the circle of the Christian believers, and not in the wide
field of the world's history or in nature. Of course it is a great
truth that long before Jesus Christ, and to-day far beyond the limits
of His name and knowledge, to say nothing of His faith and obedience,
the Spirit of God is working. As of old He brooded over the chaotic
darkness, ever labouring to turn chaos into order, and darkness into
light, and deformity into beauty; so today, all over the field of
humanity, He is operating. Grand as that truth is, it is not the
truth here. What is spoken of here is something that is done in and
on Christian men, and not even through them on the world, but in them
for themselves. 'He shall testify of Me' to you.

Now it is to be noted, also, that the first and special application
of these words is to the little group listening to Him. Never were
men more desolate and beaten down than these were, in the prospect of
Christ's departure. Never were men more utterly bewildered and
dispirited than these were, in the days between His crucifixion and
His resurrection. Think of them during His earthly life, their narrow
understandings, their manifold faults, moral as well as intellectual.
How little perception they had of anything that He said to them, as
their own foolish questions abundantly show! How little they had
drunk in His spirit, as their selfish and ambitious janglings amongst
themselves abundantly show! They were but Jews like their brethren,
believing, indeed, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, but not knowing
what it was that they believed, or of what kind the Messiah was in
whom they were thus partially trusting. But they loved Him and were
led by Him, and so they were brought into a larger place by the
Spirit whom Christ sent.

What was it that made these dwarfs into giants in six weeks? What was
it that turned their narrowness into breadth; that made them start up
all at once as heroes, and that so swiftly matured them, as the
fruits and flowers are ripened under tropical sunshine? The
resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ had a great deal to do
with the change; but they were not its whole cause. There is no
explanation of the extraordinary transformation of these men as we
see them in the pages of the Gospels, and as we find them on the
pages of the Acts of the Apostles, except this--the resurrection and
the ascension of Jesus Christ as facts, and the Spirit on Pentecost
as an indwelling Interpreter of the facts. He came, and the weak
became strong, and the foolish wise, and the blind enlightened, and
they began to understand--though it needed all their lives to perfect
the teaching,--what it was that their ignorant hands had grasped and
their dim perceptions had seen, when they touched the hands and
looked upon the face of Jesus Christ. The witness of the Spirit of
God working within them, working upon what they knew of the
historical facts of Christ's life, and interpreting these to them,
was the explanation of their change and growth. And the New Testament
is the product of that change. Christ's life was the truth which the
Spirit used, and a product of His teaching was these Epistles which
we have, and which for us step into the place which the historical
facts held for them, and become the instrument with which the Spirit
of God will deepen our understanding of Christ and enlarge our
knowledge of what He is to us.

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