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
One may well say, 'How can it be that love should be transferred? How
can it be that the love of God to me shall be identical with the love
of God to Christ?' There is only one answer. If Christ dwells in me,
then God's love to Him falls upon me by no transference, but by my
incorporation into Him. And I would urge that this great truth of the
actual indwelling of Christ in the soul is no mere piece of rhetorical
exaggeration, nor a wild and enthusiastic way of putting the fact that
the influence of His teaching and the beauty of His example can sway
us; but it is a plain and absolute truth that the divine Christ can
come into and abide in the narrow room of our poor hearts. And if He
does this, then 'he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit'; and the
Christ in me receives the sunshine of the divine love. That does not
destroy, but heightens, my individuality. I am more and not less myself
because 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
So, dear brethren! it all comes to this--we may each of us, if we will,
have Jesus Christ for Guest and Inhabitant in our hearts. If we have,
then, since God loves Him, He must love me who have Him within me, and
as long as God loves Christ He cannot cease to love me, nor can I cease
to be conscious of His love to me, and whatsoever gifts His love
bestows upon Jesus, pass over in measure, and partially, to myself.
Thus immortality, heaven, glory, all blessedness in heaven and earth,
are the fruit and crystallisation, so to speak, of that oneness with
Christ which is possible for us. And the conditions are simply that we
shall with joyful trust accept His declaration of the Father's name,
and see God manifest in Him; and welcome in our inmost hearts that
great Gospel. Then His prayer, and the travail of His soul, will reach
their end even in me, and 'the love wherewith the Father loved the Son
shall be in me,' and the Son Himself shall dwell in my heart.
CHRIST AND HIS CAPTORS
'As soon then as He had said unto them, I am He, they went backward,
and fell to the ground. Then asked He them again, Whom seek ye? And
they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am
He: if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way: That the saying
might be fulfilled, which He spake, Of them which Thou gayest Me have I
lost none.'--JOHN xviii. 6-9.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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