Love to the Uttermost / Expositions of John XIII.-XXI.

by F. B. Meyer

What a majestic thought is here! The world comes to us first with its fascinations and delights. She comes to us next with her frowns and tortures. Behind her is her prince. But since he has been cast out by a stronger than himself, and exists only on sufferance, his most potent bribes and lures, his most violent onsets, his most unscrupulous suggestions, must collapse. Believer, meet him as a discredited and fallen foe. He can have no power at all over thee. The Cross bruised his head. Thou hast no need to fear judgment. It awaits those only who are still in the devil's power. But thou mayest rejoice that for thee a victory waits, the measure of which will only be explored when thou seest the devil cast into the bottomless pit, and thence into the lake of fire.

XIX

Christ's Reticence Supplemented by the Spirit's Advent

"I have yet many things to say unto you; but ye cannot bear them now."—JOHN xvi. 12-15.

How confidently our Lord speaks of the Spirit's advent; not more so did the prophets foretell His own. Repeatedly He returns to the phrase, When He is come. The advent of the Spirit to the heart of the Church on the Day of Pentecost, was as distinct and marked an event as the advent of the Son of God Himself to the manger-bed of Bethlehem. Let every reader of these words be sure of having taken the full advantage of His Presence, just as we would wish to have availed ourselves to the uttermost of the physical presence of Christ, had our lot so befallen.

I. THE THEME OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS THE INCOMPLETENESS OF OUR LORD'S TEACHING.—For three and a half years He was perpetually pouring forth His wonderful words; in many different places—the market-place, the home at Bethany, the hillside, the Temple cloister; to many different audiences—now in thronging crowds, and again to the secret disciple whose footfall startled the night, or the lone woman drawing water from the well; on many different themes—to mention all of which would be impossible, though He never spoke on any subject, common as a wayside flower, without associating with it thoughts that can never die. We have but a small portion of His words recorded in the Gospels, it is therefore the more remarkable that He left anything unsaid, and that at the close of His ministry He should have to say, I have yet many things to say unto you. Many parables, fair as His tenderest, woven in the productive loom of His imagination, remained unuttered; many discourses, inimitable as the Sermon on the Mount, or as this in the upper room, unspoken; many revelations of heavenly mystery not made.

A comparison between the Gospels and the Epistles will indicate how much our Lord had left unsaid. The relation of the law of Moses to His finished work was left to the Epistle to the Romans: the relation between His Church and the usages of the heathen world, for the Epistle to Corinth: the effect of His resurrection on the sleeping saints for the Epistle to the Thessalonians. He said nothing about the union of Jew and Gentile on terms of equality in His Church; this mystery, hidden from ages and from generations, was only fully unveiled in the Epistle to the Ephesians. It was left for the Epistle to the Hebrews to disclose the superseding of the Temple and its ritual by the realities of the Christian dispensation. The practical precepts for the right ordering of the Churches were left for the pastoral Epistles; and the course of the Church through the ages of the world's history, for the Apocalypse of the beloved Apostle. When we perceive the many things, taught in the Epistles, which were not unfolded by the Lord, we discern a fresh meaning in His assurance that He left much unsaid.

We are perpetually assailed by the cry, "Back to Christ," which is significant of men's weariness of theological system, and organized ecclesiasticism, and of a desire to get away from the accretions of the Middle Ages and the dead hand of Church Tradition, into the pure, serene, and holy presence of Jesus of Nazareth. It always seems to us as if the cry should be Up to Christ, rather than Back to Him. To put it as men generally do, suggests the inference that Christ lies far in the wake of human progress, and behind the haze of eighteen centuries; that He was, but is no longer, a potent factor in the world's life; whereas He is here, now, with us, in us, leading us as of old through rugged passes, and to mountains of transfiguration.

If the endeavor to get back to Christ means the Synoptic Gospels to the exclusion of the fourth, or the Epistles; or the Sermon on the Mount to the exclusion of the Epistle to the Romans; or Jesus to the exclusion of His Apostles, we feel it is but half the truth. Our Lord Himself protested that His teachings were incomplete, that there was much left unsaid which would be said by the Comforter, as even He could not, because the Spirit of God speaks in the inner shrine of the soul, uttering to the inner ear, truths which no voice could speak or ear receive. Let us always remember therefore that the Gospels must be completed by the Epistles, and that the Spirit who spake in the Son, spake also in those whom the Son had prepared to be His mouthpieces to men.

II. THE PARTIAL MEASURE OF HUMAN ABILITY TO KNOW.—"Ye cannot bear them now." Our Lord's reticence did not arise from ignorance, He could have said so much had He not been able to say more. All things were naked and open to His eye, but He had a tender regard for these men whom He loved.