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

by Frederick Denison Maurice

'But when His brethren were gone up, then went He also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, Where is He? And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but He deceiveth the people. Howbeit no man spake openly of Him for fear of the Jews.'

We are carried at once into the bustle of the feast. Two or three lines give a clearer and livelier impression of the feelings of the crowds who were assembled at it, than the longest description could have given. They wonder if the Teacher from Galilee is there, or is coming. There are various thoughts about Him. 'He has done many kind acts; surely He is a good man.' So says this man and that, as they talk in the streets. 'Yes; but the multitude,—the ignorant people, who are expecting a king,—what strange, dangerous notions He is filling them with! Can you doubt that He is plotting to be their chief?' So others whisper, correcting the charitable judgments of their neighbours. But it is a hum of voices. There is a fear of something, the people do not well know of what. It is a fear of the Jews, the Apostle says. Each fears the other. There is a concentrated Jewish feeling in the Sanhedrim, among the rulers, which all tremble at. Till that has been pronounced—above all, while there is a suspicion that it will come forth in condemnation—it is not wise for any to commit themselves. Brethren, do we not know that this is a true story? Must it not have happened in Jerusalem then; for would it not happen in London now?

'Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me.'

He went up to the feast in secret; but He goes into the Temple openly. He has as little wish to hide His doctrine as He has to display Himself. His testimony is to the world. It is borne at this time to a letter-worshipping world,—to a world which believed that certain letters had come long ago from God, but which utterly disbelieved that God could hold converse with men in their day. Such people have lost all sense of the meaning of letters. They are no longer the blessed media of intercourse between soul and soul, witnesses of spiritual communication; they are dead things, to be committed to memory, to be learnt most readily by those to whom they express least. How natural their wonder was that He who spoke with authority,—He who uttered living words, and adopted all the living symbols of nature to illustrate them,—should know letters, when there was no evidence that He had gone to any school! And though a scribe may have first spoken of His ignorance, it is quite probable that the crowd will quickly have caught the phrase, and have manifested the same astonishment that one of themselves should dare to teach them. The answer is in accordance with all that He has said before. There is a fountain within, from which His words flow. They are not His own. He speaks what He has heard. He is a Messenger from the Unseen; He is a Messenger to human beings. He can make Himself understood by them; He can prove His commission to them. And this is the way He will prove it. 'If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh His glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?'

I have taken these three verses together. I believe we lose the force of the first, if we separate it from the other two. Oftentimes we hear the first clause of the 17th verse quoted without the second. By that violent proceeding this meaning is extracted from our Lord's words,—that if a man keeps God's commandments, he arrives at a correct apprehension of doctrinal propositions: an assertion which is surely not always borne out by evidence, and which is likely to produce quite as much self-righteousness as humility. Nay, it leads to far more doubt than satisfaction. The question is raised, whether A, or B, or C keeps God's commandments best, and therefore which may be trusted best as an expositor of doctrine. The unknown is to be ascertained by the more unknown: for who, except the Judge of all, can answer this question? Who would attempt to answer it that reverenced Christ's words,—'Judge not, that ye be not judged?'

Our Lord most carefully guarded His sentence against this construction. Our translators have honestly and righteously preserved the singular phrase,—'If any man will (or wills to) do His will.' Supposing a man really recognises a will as higher than his own, and wishes, above all things, to be conformed to that will, then Christ's words about His coming to do a Father's will,—His whole doctrine, which is grounded upon His relation to His Father, and His fulfilment of His will,—must become by degrees intelligible to that man. He may be confused about phrases, he may blunder in his statements, but he will enter into the meaning of the teaching; there will be a continual interpretation of it in his own thoughts and acts. For self-glorying, self-seeking, self-will is that which he will be continually dreading in himself, from which he will be continually flying in himself. He will know that that has been and is the cause of all falsehood in his words, his deeds, his thoughts; and therefore he will acknowledge that One in whom there is no such self-seeking, self-glorying, self-willing, who was entirely seeking the glory of another, and doing the will of another, must be true altogether, must be right altogether,—that there can be no falsehood, no wrong in Him.

Here is our Lord's famous test, which has never been superseded,—which has never failed in the case of any generation or of any man. Jesus applies it at once to those who were about Him. They had a law,—they boasted of a law. But did they bow to the law, as expressing the will of One higher than themselves? No; it was a document which they could call theirs, which belonged to them—not a power which was to rule them; therefore this law which forbade killing was to be the very excuse for killing. They went about to kill Jesus, out of love to the law. A more tremendous illustration of a principle—tremendous, because its force has not been spent in eighteen centuries—cannot be conceived. It is possible to make God's commandments an occasion for boasting over others, for self-glorying; and so it is possible to make God's law a perpetual barrier between us and all knowledge of His will—even a reason for resisting it in our acts.

Perhaps the people at large were not aware that there had been any plot to kill Jesus at the former feast; for 'the multitude answered, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?' Without apparently heeding the interruption—addressing Himself to those who did know what had happened at the Pool of Bethesda, and what charge had been brought against Him for healing on the Sabbath-day—'Jesus answered and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel. Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath-day circumcise a man. If a man on the sabbath-day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath-day? Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.'

He was enforcing in these words what He had said at the other feast. The feeling of the Jews about the Fourth Commandment illustrated their feeling about the whole law. They were glorying in it as their day,—they were not receiving it as God's day; and, therefore, they were not perceiving the will of God in reference to that day. Nay, they were contradicting the very customs which they were themselves practising. They believed they were obeying Moses when they circumcised a man on the Sabbath-day; they believed they should be breaking the law if they failed to do so. Circumcision was the sign of a covenant which God had made with their fathers before He gave them the law—a covenant of grace and blessing. And yet so much were they misled by mere appearances, that they thought it an actual sin to make a man whole on the Sabbath-day. The act which inflicted pain must please God; that which gave health must offend Him!

There is more in the contradiction which He thus brought home to their minds than it is possible to express by any commentary upon His words. This misunderstanding of the very meaning of all God's dealings with them—this degradation of the law into a cruel letter—of the covenant into the mere sign or form of the covenant—was that proof of inward radical atheism (nay, as we shall find in the next chapter, of something worse than atheism) which our Lord was convicting them of in His discourses, which they were hereafter to manifest by the wickedest deeds that had ever been done upon the earth. But, besides this witness against them, He was giving a lesson to all ages and to all teachers respecting the duty and the method of piercing through the outward shell of an institution into the principle which is embodied in it—respecting the danger and the sin of omitting to do this through any affected reverence for the institution itself. In the two pregnant instances of the Sabbath-day and of circumcision, He showed that if, in any case whatever, we judge according to appearances, instead of seeking for the meaning and purport of the divine signs, we shall be likely to repeat the sin of the Jews, and to deny God when we fancy we are honouring Him most.