Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
But mark, again, that our Lord's life is the type of all victorious
life. The world conquers me when it draws me away from God, when it
makes me its slave, when it coaxes me to trust it, and urges to despair
if I lose it. The world conquers me when it comes between me and God,
when it fills my desires, when it absorbs my energies, when it blinds
my eyes to the things unseen and eternal. I conquer the world when I
put my foot upon its temptations, when I crush it down, when I shake
off its bonds, and when nothing that time and sense, with their
delights or their dreadfulnesses, can bring, prevents me from cleaving
to my Father with all my heart, and from living as His child here.
Whoso thus coerces Time and Sense to be the servants of his filial love
has conquered them both, and whoso lets them draw him away from God is
beaten, however successful he may dream himself to be and men may call
him.
My friends! there is a lesson for Manchester people. Jesus Christ was
not a very successful man according to the standard of Market Street
and the Exchange. He made but a poor thing of the world, and He was
going to be martyred on the cross the day after He said these words.
And yet that was victory. Ay! Many a man beaten down in the struggle of
daily life, and making very little of it, according to our vulgar
estimate, is the true conqueror. Success means making the world a
stepping-stone to God.
Still further, note our share in the Master's victory--'_I_ have
overcome the world. Be _ye_ of good cheer.' That seems an irrelevant
way of arguing. What does it matter to me though He has overcome? So
much the better for Him; but what good is it to me?
It may aid us somewhat to more strenuous fighting, if we know that a
brother has fought and conquered, and I do not under-estimate the
blessing and the benefit of the life of Jesus Christ, as recorded in
these Scriptures, even from that, as I conceive it, miserably
inadequate and imperfect point of view. But the victory of Jesus Christ
is of extremely little practical use to me, if all the use of it is to
show me how to fight. Ah! you must go a deal deeper than that. 'I have
overcome the world, and I will come and put My overcoming Spirit into
your weakness, and fill you with My own victorious life, and make your
hands strong to war and your fingers to fight; and be in you the
conquering and omnipotent Power.'
My friends! Jesus Christ's victory is ours, and we are victors in it,
because He is more than the pattern of brave warfare, He is even the
Son of God, who gave Himself for us, and gives Himself to us, and
dwells in us our Strength and our Righteousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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