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
What is meant by Christ's words abiding in us? Something a great deal
more than the mere intellectual acceptance of them. Something very
different from reading a verse of the Gospels of a morning before we go
to our work, and forgetting all about it all the day long; something
very different from coming in contact with Christian truth on a Sunday,
when somebody else preaches to us what he has found in the Bible, and
we take in a little of it. It means the whole of the conscious nature
of a man being, so to speak, saturated with Christ's words; his
desires, his understanding, his affections, his will, all being steeped
in these great truths which the Master spoke. Put a little bit of
colouring matter into the fountain at its source, and you will have the
stream dyed down its course for ever so far. See that Christ's words be
lodged in your inmost selves, by patient meditation upon them, by
continual recurrence to them, and all your life will be glorified and
flash into richness of colouring and beauty by their presence.
The main effect of such abiding of the Lord's words in us which our
Lord touches upon here is, that in such a case, if our whole inward
nature is influenced by the continual operation upon it of the words of
the Lord, then our desires will be granted. Do not so vulgarise and
lower the nobleness and the loftiness of this great promise as to
suppose that it only means--If you remember His words you will get
anything you like. It means something a great deal better than that. It
means that if Christ's words are the substratum, so to speak, of your
wishes, then your wishes will harmonise with His will, and so 'ye shall
ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'
Christ loves us a great deal too well to give to our own foolish and
selfish wills the keys of His treasure-house. The condition of our
getting what we will is our willing what He desires; and unless our
prayers are a great deal more the utterance of the submission of our
wills to His than they are the attempt to impose ours upon Him, they
will not be answered. We get our wishes when our wishes are moulded by
His word.
IV. The last thought that is here is that this union and fruitfulness
lead to the noble ends of glorifying God and increasing discipleship.
'Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.' Christ's life
was all for the glorifying of God. The lives which are ours in
name--but being drawn from Him, in their depths are much rather the
life of Christ in us than our lives--will have the same end and the
same issue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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