He had told them that He had come from the Father; He had testified by acts what His Father was. He had shown them that the Father was working for them on common days and Sabbath-days to bless them. This act had begotten no faith in them; would the words, 'I am the Christ,' beget faith in them? Neither words nor acts, so long as they were not seeking as sheep for the true Shepherd. He had said to them before, that instead of looking for a shepherd who should point the way to them and the humblest Israelite,—who should fold them together,—they were aspiring to be independent shepherds; they were refusing to enter by the same door as the sheep. Those who were sheep,—those who needed a shepherd,—would own His voice. They did not want Him to tell them that He was the Christ. A sure and divine instinct would tell them, that He who gave up Himself, He who entered into their death, must be the guide they were created to follow,—that there could be no other. And He would justify their confidence. They were longing for life,—for the life of spirits,—for the life of God; nothing less would satisfy them. He would give them that life,—that eternal life of love, in which He had dwelt with the Father. They were surrounded by enemies who were seeking to rob them of life, to draw them into death. He was stronger than these enemies. They should not perish; neither man nor devil should take them out of His hands. The eternal will which He came to fulfil was on their side. The Father who gave them to Him was greater than all. Those who were seeking to separate them from their Lord and Shepherd were at war with this Father; for He had owned them, they were His.
To this mighty declaration all His discourse concerning the sheep and the shepherd has been tending; but at the ground of it lies a mightier still: 'I and my Father are one.' All that He has been teaching is without foundation, if it has not this foundation. The unity of the Father and the Son is the only ground of the unity between the shepherd and the sheep; undermine one, and you undermine both. And when I say this, I mean you undermine all unity among men, all the order and principles of human society. For if these do not rest upon certain temporary conventions; if they have not been devised to facilitate the exchange of commodities, and the operations of the money market; if there is not a lie at the root of all fellowship and all government, which will be detected one day, and which popular rage or the swords of armed men will cut in pieces;—we must recognise, at last, the spiritual constitution of men in one Head and Shepherd, who rules those wills which every other power has failed and shall fail to rule. We must recognise it. The existence of a Christendom either means this,—either affirms that such a constitution is, and that national unity and family unity imply it, and depend upon it;—or it means nothing, and will dissolve into a collection of sects and parties, which will become so intolerable to men, and so hateful to God, that He will sweep them from His earth. Do you think sects would last now for an hour, if there was not in the heart of each of them a witness for a fellowship, which combinations and shibboleths did not create, and which, thanks be to God, they cannot destroy? The true Shepherd makes His voice to be heard, through all the noise and clatter of earthly shepherds; the sheep hear that voice, and know that it is calling them to follow Him into a common fold where all may rest and dwell together. And when once they understand that still deeper message which He is uttering here, and which the old creeds of Christendom are repeating to us, 'I and my Father are one;' whenever they understand that the unity of the Church and the unity of mankind depends on this eternal distinction and unity in God Himself, and not upon the authority or decrees of any mortal pastor, the sects will crumble to pieces, and there will be, in very deed, 'one flock and one Shepherd.'
But, that we may enter thoroughly and deeply into the meaning of these words, we should meditate earnestly upon those which followed them, those especially in which our Lord justified what the Jews declared to be blasphemy. 'Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in Him.'
We are eager to quote these words of Jesus, as a proof that He is God. I fear that, very often, we only mean, that He took to Himself the name of God. We associate with that name a certain idea of power and absoluteness; we believe that He vindicated that power and absoluteness to Himself. No, brethren. He came—if we may believe His own words—to show us what God is; to deliver us from our crude, earthly, dark notions of Him; to prevent us from identifying His nature with mere power and sovereignty, as the heathens did, as the Jews in that day were doing. He came to show us the Father. Instead, therefore, of eagerly grasping at the divine name, and appropriating it to Himself, the method which He takes of proving His unity with the Father is, to humble Himself, to identify Himself with men, to refuse to be separate from them. 'You charge me with calling myself God. "But did not he call them gods, to whom the word of God came?"' We are startled at the defence. We ask ourselves whether He was not abandoning the very claim which He had put forward; whether He was not allowing others to share the incommunicable glory with Him? No! but He was showing that a dignity and a glory had been put upon men by the word of God itself, which proved that there must be a Son of Man who was indeed the Son of God.
It was not only heathen sages who had spoken of man's divine faculties, divine origin, divine destiny. The Scriptures had called those whom God had set over men, gods. Psalmists, who were most jealous for the honour of Jehovah, had not feared to use the language. Prophets could not maintain the truth of their own mission—could not declare that the word of God was speaking by them and in them—without falling into it. There was the greatest peril of men becoming Lucifers,—of their setting themselves up in the place of God. It is the very danger of which Christ has been speaking in this discourse,—the temptation into which kings, prophets, priests,—even teachers who pretended to no inspiration, who merely stood on the ground of their traditional greatness, or of men's preference for them,—had fallen. Nor was there any deliverance from such pretensions, and from the robberies and murders which were the consequence of them, unless One came who did not exalt Himself, who did the works of His Father, who simply glorified Him. Such a One could justify all the high words that had ever been spoken of our race, and yet could lay low the pride of those who had aspired to be the lords of it. He could show what the true man is; and, in doing so, could show what the true God is. By putting Himself into the position of the lowest of the sheep, by enduring the death to which each one of the sheep had been subjected, He could prove that the glory of man is to serve; He could show that the true sons of God had been the true servants of men; He could show that the perfect servant of all must be the Son of God. All titles, honours, dignities among men, had derived their virtue and efficacy from Him. Their virtue and efficacy lay in His Sonship. He was content to be a Son, to be nothing else than a Son. So He showed forth His eternal consubstantial union with the Father. If God is merely absolute Power, then all this Christian theology is a dream and a falsehood,—then there is no Son of God or Son of Man, in any real sense of the words. But if God is absolute Love, then He who died for the sheep must be His perfect image and likeness, the 'only-begotten, full of grace and truth;' then to separate Him from the Father, to seek for the Father in any but Him, must lead to the denial of both, ultimately to the glorification of an evil spirit, a being of absolute selfishness, in place of both. From which frightful consummation, brethren, may the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the one God, whose name is Love, preserve us and His whole Church!
DISCOURSE XX.
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
[Lincoln's Inn, 4th Sunday after Trinity, June 15th, 1856.]
St. John XI. 25.