Quiet Talks on John's Gospel

by S. D. Gordon

With a warmth of tenderness and patience, and a strength of gentle wise insistence, more than human, she broods. It takes the very strength of her life, far far more than in prenatal days. So there comes, slowly, but as she keeps true to the brooding spirit, surely, the strong gentle self-controlled life out of the warm womb of her brooding life. So comes the child's higher birth, so preparing the way for the yet higher.

Now all this is at its native best in God. There only does it reach finest fruitage. Some day we shall recognize the meaning of that modest but tremendous little sentence,—God is love. This warm brooding something that comes, gentle as the dawning light in the grey east, fragrant as the dew of the new morning, irresistible in its pervasive persuasive presence as the rays of the growing sun, giving to us warmth, and life, and drawing out from within us warmth and life and beauty and strength, all in its own image, this is the thing called love. This is the thing that God is. As we know it we are getting acquainted with Him.

And if a break comes, instantly love in its grief sets itself with warmth and renewed strength to the new harder brooding task. It gives itself out yet more, regardless of cost, until in place of the broken fragments there comes a finer sort of life out of the warm womb of love, brooding, redeeming, bringing-back-again love. This is God. This is Jesus. John shows us Jesus as a picture of the brooding God.

Five Pictures of Jesus.

There are five wondrous pictures of Jesus in these newer leaves of the old Book. Three of them hang on the walls of Paul's tent-weaving study-room. There's the Colossian picture, the Creator-Jesus, infinite in power, making all things above and below and around, and holding all things together.[7]

Close by it in wondrous contrast is seen the Philippian picture. It is the Man-Jesus, emptied of all the upper-glory native to Him, bowing down low and lower and lowest, till in the form of a slave He hangs on a cross.[8]

And in contrast yet more striking and startling, close by its side hangs the Ephesian picture. It is the Enthroned-Jesus, back again in the soft, blazing, blinding glory of the Father's presence, seated at His right hand, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named. And as you stand awed before this picture your eye is caught by the artist's remarque sketch at the bottom. It is a broken Roman seal, and an open tomb, and a bird with swelling throat singing joyously.[9]

Then there's John's later Patmos picture of the Present-Jesus, standing now down on the earth in the midst of His candle-holding Church, but seen only by opened eyes. There He is seen as a Man of Fire, ablaze with light, intently watching, with tender but omnipotent touch waiting, ever waiting; with a patience unknown except in Him, still waiting.[10]

But John's earlier Gospel picture is of the Brooding-Jesus. The word "brooding" here takes in its fine deep significance. Jesus is seen here as a brooding Lover, by the warmth of His wooing love drawing out the warmth of an answering love. This is peculiarly and distinctively the picture of John's Gospel. There is a Man walking towards you in these pages. Turn where you will there He is, and always facing you, with a gentle eagerness in His face and in the bend-forward of His body.

There is always a warmth, a gentle radiating comforting drawing warmth in His presence. This is the thing you feel most, the warmth. But it isn't the only thing. There's the purity. There are ideals that seem out of reach in their great height. There's the insistence on these ideals, rigid stern absolutely unbending insistence. You see these. You can't help it. You feel them tremendously. They seem to leave you clear out of reckoning, they are so high up. But there's the warmth, drawing arousing wooing, irresistible.