The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

John the Baptist is represented throughout this chapter as speaking of One who had been before him, though He was coming after him. This is the burden of his discourse. It has been asked by the bold critics of another country, whether such language does not presume a belief in the preexistence of our Lord, which might belong to one of his apostles, but could scarcely belong to his forerunner. English divines ordinarily reply, that the question is one which cannot be entertained. 'How can we dispute the right of the Divine Wisdom to make a special revelation of this doctrine to one person or to another?'

This may be the right method of treating such an objection; but if the remarks which I made in my two last sermons were true, we are not under any necessity of resorting to it. I endeavoured to show you that the principle which St. John asserts in the opening verses of his Gospel, was far from being characteristically a doctrine of the New Testament. It belongs to the Old. It is involved in the words, acts, lives of the Jewish Prophets. It could not indeed be enunciated by them as it is enunciated by the beloved disciple. There is a largeness in it which could not be fully realized till the barrier between Jews and Gentiles had been broken down. Still it was as a Jew—as an interpreter of the Jewish records—that the writer of the fourth Gospel spoke of the Word of God. He was not using new language, which would have startled his hearers. He was expressing, in simple and familiar language, what others of his countrymen had hidden from the vulgar under learned phrases and dark conceits. Why is it difficult to believe that, in doing so, he was recording some of the lessons which he had first received from the preacher in the wilderness? Was it strange that he, the last of the Prophets, should utter in more distinct terms that which all the Prophets before him had been imperfectly uttering? External evidence would be in favour of such a supposition. The Baptist was a contemporary of teachers who notoriously spoke of the light in men's hearts and of the Word from whom it issued. Many of his disciples became, we know, afterwards blended with their disciples. There was, however, one all-important distinction between him and them. He spoke to the hearts of the multitude,—to the publicans and the soldiers; they spoke to students. He appealed to those who were conscious of folly and sin; they spoke of the illumination which was granted to the righteous and the wise. And that is just the difference which we have recognised between the statements of the Apostle, the disciple of the Baptist, and those Alexandrian teachers whom some suppose him to have imitated. It is not only that his style is simple and childlike. Throughout he speaks of the light as making men aware of the darkness that is in them. Throughout he speaks of the light as lightening all men.

Are these reports of the Baptist inconsistent with those which we derive from the other Evangelists? Are we not told that he came to level the hills, and exalt the valleys? Are we not told that he bade his countrymen not say within themselves that they had Abraham to their father, because God was able of the stones to raise up children to Abraham? What finer commentary can we find on these announcements than the words, 'He testified of the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world'?

Still the reader of St. John's Gospel will continue to ask himself, 'Is not the lesson which I am taught here, in some sense or other, a more advanced lesson than that which was imparted even by the first Evangelists,—à fortiori, than that which was imparted before the day of Pentecost, before the resurrection, the death, even the preaching, of Jesus Christ?' I think, my brethren, that there is a confusion latent in this word 'advanced'—a confusion which besets other studies as well as theological. We speak of Bacon's discovery of the true method of physical investigation, as the greatest step in advance which it was possible for the man of science to take. But in another sense that discovery involved a retrogression. The schoolman, who had proceeded with the greatest satisfaction to himself in building a tower of speculations respecting nature, is stopped in his work and bidden to look back to his foundations. Classifications and generalizations, which had appeared convenient and indispensable, are disallowed, because they hinder direct intercourse with the facts. And the laborious collector of facts, though he is commended for his diligence, is told that every one of them must be submitted to tests before we can know what it is worth. Is it not true, in this and in all similar instances, that the greatest progress consists in the assertion and elucidation of first principles; that when they are asserted and elucidated, all faithful effort is seen to have been directed to the search for them,—all unfaithful, self-seeking efforts, to the construction of systems on hypothetical sand?

Applying this remark to the case before us, I conceive we may freely say, as some of the early Fathers said, that St. John's Gospel is the most spiritual and divine of all the Gospels. And we may maintain its claim to that honour, by showing that it leads us to a grand primary truth, affecting all human beings, capable of being apprehended by those who have least of what is called culture, capable of making itself manifest to the consciences of the most guilty. Does not his Gospel, for this reason, establish the truth of the other Gospels and Epistles, which had been unfolding the ways of God to men? May it not, for the same reason, have brought a number of false gospels to the test, and have scattered a number of windy theories and popular systems, which, under philosophical or theological pretences, were separating God from His creatures? Nor can I find anything inconsistent with reason and probability—or with the doctrine of Scripture that the Spirit of God brings back to the remembrance of those whom He is teaching the lessons they received, the states of mind they passed through in days long past—in the supposition that the Apostle owed his clear perception of this universal truth, in a great measure, to the vividness with which the experiences of his youth were revived in him; the sixty or seventy wonderful years which had passed over his head since he stood by the Jordan, and saw the shaggy form and awful eye of him who first spoke to him of a kingdom of heaven, helping him to take in the meaning of the words which seized and possessed him then, though he was not able to seize and possess them.

I have been anxious to make these observations, because it seems to me that the passage of St. John's Gospel of which I am to speak to-day will be utterly obscure to us—nay, that the whole Gospel will be obscure—if we forget them. St. John can in nowise separate the idea of the Baptist from that of a witness concerning the Light, a messenger to declare the divine Word that in Him all men might believe. This he considers the fundamental, radical meaning of his mission, apart from which his baptism of repentance had no sense or purpose whatever. But to identify a man as connected with this teaching—as the subject of it—this was the difficulty. To do this the Baptist needed a special, formal revelation, accompanied by an outward sign. The baptism of Jesus, and the visible token that the Spirit was given Him, are said to have been the assurance which was required. While he was without it, he was a preacher of the Word who was with God and was God. He was a preacher of a light of men. He was announcing, as the prophets of old had announced, that a day of the Lord was at hand; that there would be a manifestation of the light. Thenceforth he began to mingle his previous message with announcements concerning the Word made flesh. These announcements are not repeated as if they were parts of a continuous discourse, like his words to the crowds that had flocked to him from every part of Palestine. They come forth as if they were the effect of sudden intuitions—lightning flashes which must often have been followed by periods of dimness and darkness. John knew that a crisis was at hand which would try the hearts of all men. He knew that he was sent by God to speak to their hearts of Him, as being the same now that He had been in the days of their fathers. He knew that whatever good was awaiting his countrymen must come from a fuller revelation of God. This was the preparation, the only possible preparation in his own mind, for the recognition of Jesus as the Christ,—the only way in which he could prepare his countrymen for such a Christ.

We are all aware—we dwell upon the assertion—that the Jews were at this time expecting a Christ, but that their expectations were of a wrong kind; that they pointed to a deliverer different in most respects from the One who had been promised them. We cannot, perhaps, exaggerate this error, but we may make considerable mistakes when we try to state in what it consisted. We sometimes say that the Jews were looking for a great Prince. Undoubtedly they were. If they read the Prophets, they must have looked for a king. The other Evangelists say that Jesus proved Himself to be a King, and so fulfilled the words of the Prophets. We shall find that St John says the same. 'Yes,' we go on, 'a King in a certain sense, but not a temporal king' What! is not our Lord said to have been born in the days of Herod—to have been baptized when He was about thirty years old—to have been tempted forty days—to have kept annual feasts—to have risen the third day—to have tarried forty days among His disciples after the resurrection? All the acts which are recorded of Him in the Gospels were acts done in time. 'Yes,' we resume, 'if you define temporal in this exact manner. But the Jews thought He was to be an "earthly" king.' And were not all the powers by which He showed Himself to be a king, exercised upon earth for the sons of earth, for the removal of the plagues and diseases to which earth is liable? We make another experiment. We say, they supposed that He was to be a Jewish king. Could they suppose otherwise? Was not David to have an heir to his throne? Do not the Evangelists take pains to speak of their Master as the Son of David?

The Jews of that time cannot be fairly condemned on these grounds; and yet our conviction that they were under some grievous mistake, gains strength from all we read of them—nay, from our very failures to define the quality of it. May not St. John himself explain the error which had caused him such unspeakable sorrow, better than we can? Have we not the explanation here?

The Jews looked for one who was coming to be a leader and deliverer. He might come with the manifest tokens of royalty. He might come as one of the old prophets had come. It was not impossible that he might be born in some humble station, for David had been a shepherd. It was probable that he would be born in a lowly village, for Bethlehem was associated with the name of David. He might be this John, for his coarse food and raiment certainly did not show him not to be an Elijah, or an Isaiah, or a Daniel. And John had given this proof of power, that he was drawing multitudes to hear discourses that had no apparent charm—that were stern and terrible. It was not at all impossible, nay, it might be presumed, that when the Christ came, He would introduce some new ordinance, or give a new force to one already in use. The river of Jordan had a sacred historical importance; to wash men in that might denote that he was preparing Israelites for conquests like those of Joshua. No doubt, other signs might be added to this in due time; there would probably be strange appearances in the heavens,—some of the tokens which had accompanied the rare visits of angels that are recorded in the Old Testament. For who could tell whether the Christ might not be an angel, the visitant from another region? Who could tell whether He might not be an old seer returning to the earth again? There were all these possibilities. One was stronger in this mind, and one in that. Which was the truest, the scribes hoped in due time to discover, by studying the letter of the divine oracles, and ascertaining what particulars of time and place were indicated in them as necessary conditions of the deliverer.

What was there faulty in such speculations? What was there to complain of in the test which was applied to ascertain their worth? St. John suggests this answer to us. They were expecting one that should come after all prophets, not one that had been before all. They were looking for a son of David, a prophet, an angel; they were not looking for One who had been with God, and was God. They were looking for one whom they should recognise with their eyes; they were not looking for One whose light had been always shining in their hearts. They were looking for a king who should reign over men; they did not think that that King must be One who had from the beginning been the Light of men. They thought of one who should be born into the world; they did not think that He who was to be born into the world was One who was in the world, and by whom the world was made, though the world knew Him not.