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 that name of God which the revealing Son declares? Not the mere
syllables by which we call Him, but the manifested character of the
Father. That one name, in the narrower sense of the word, carries the
whole revelation that Jesus Christ has to make; for it speaks of
tenderness, of kindred, of paternal care, of the transmission of a
nature, of the embrace of a divine love. And it delivers men from all
their creeping dreads, from all their dark peradventures, from all
their stinging fears, from all the paralysing uncertainties which, like
clouds, always misty and often thunder-bearing, have shut out the sight
of the divine face. If this Christ, in His weakness and humanity, with
pity welling from His eyes, and making music of His voice, with the
swift help streaming from His fingers-tips to every pain and weariness,
and the gracious righteousness that drew little children and did not
repel publicans and harlots, is our best image of God, then love is the
centre of divinity, and all the rest that we call God is but
circumference and fringe of that central brightness.
'So through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made! a heart beats here."'
He has declared God's name, His last best name of Love.
Need I dwell for one moment on the fact that that name is only declared
by this Son? There is no need to deny the presence of manifold other
precious sources in men's experience and lives from which something may
be inferred of what God truly is. But all these, rich and manifold as
they are, fall into nothingness before the life of Jesus Christ,
considered as the making visible of God. For all the rest are partial
and incomplete. 'At sundry times and in divers manners' God flung forth
syllables of the name, and 'fragments of that mighty voice came rolling
down the wind.' But in Jesus Christ the whole name, in all its
syllables, is spoken. Other sources of knowledge are ambiguous, and
need the interpretation of Christ's life and Cross ere they can be
construed into a harmonious whole. Life, nature, our inmost being,
history, all these sources speak with two voices; and it is only when
we hear the deep note that underlies them in the word of Christ that
their discord becomes a harmony. Other sources lack authority. They
come at the most with a 'may be.' He comes with a 'Verily, verily.'
Other sources speak to the understanding, or the conscience, or to
fear. Christ speaks to the heart. Other sources leave the man who
accepts them unaffected. Christ's message penetrates to the
transforming and assimilation of the whole being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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