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
We do not know the laws that regulated the dwelling of the Godhead,
bodily, within that human frame, but we do know that at one other time
there came upon His features a transfiguration, and over His very
garments a lustre which was not thrown upon them from without, but rose
up from within. And I am inclined to think that here, as there, though
under such widely different circumstances and to such various issues,
there was for a moment a little rending of the veil of His flesh, and
an emission of some flash of the brightness that always tabernacled
within Him; and that, therefore, just as Isaiah, when He saw the King
in His glory, said, 'Woe is me, for I am undone!' and just as Moses
could not look upon the Face, but could only see the back parts, so
here the one stray beam of manifest divinity that shot through the
crevice, as it were, for an instant, was enough to prostrate with a
strange awe even those rude and insensitive men. When He had said 'I am
He,' there was something that made them feel, 'This is One before whom
violence cowers abashed, and in whose presence impurity has to hide its
face.' I do not assert that this is the explanation of that panic
terror. I only ask, May it not be?
But whatever we may think was the reason, at all events the incident
brings out very strikingly the elevation and dignity of Christ, and the
powerful impressions made by His personality, even at such a time of
humiliation. This Evangelist is always careful to bring out the glory
of Christ, especially when that glory lies side by side with His
lowliness. The blending of these two is one of the remarkable features
in the New Testament portraiture of Jesus Christ. Wherever in our
Lord's life any incident indicates more emphatically than usual the
lowliness of His humiliation, there, by the side of it, you get
something that indicates the majesty of His glory. For instance, He is
born a weak infant, but angels herald His birth; He lies in a manger,
but a star hangs trembling above it, and leads sages from afar, with
their myrrh, and incense, and gold. He submits Himself to the baptism
of repentance, but the heavens open and a voice proclaims, 'This is My
beloved Son!' He sits wearied, on the stone coping of the well, and
craves for water from a peasant woman; but He gives her the Water of
Life. He lies down and sleeps, from pure exhaustion, in the stern of
the little fishing-boat, but He wakes to command the storm, and it is
still. He weeps beside the grave, but He flings His voice into its
inmost recesses, and the sheeted dead comes forth. He well-nigh faints
under the agony in the garden, but an angel from Heaven strengthens
Him. He stands a prisoner at a human bar, but He judges and condemns
His judges. He dies, and that hour of defeat is His hour of triumph,
and the union of shame and glory is most conspicuous in that hour when
on the Cross the 'Son of Man is _glorified_, and God is glorified in
Him.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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