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
The utterance further expresses Christ's consciousness of having
completed the revelation of God. Jesus Christ has made known the
Father, and the generations since have added nothing to His revelation.
The very people, to-day, that turn away from Christianity, in the name
of higher conceptions of the divine nature, owe their conceptions of it
to the Christ from whom they turn. Not in broken syllables; not 'at
sundry times and in divers manners,' but with the one perfect,
full-toned name of God on His lips, and vocal in His life, He has
declared the Father unto us. In the course of His career He said, 'He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father'; and, looking back on His life
of manifestation of God, He proclaimed, 'It is finished!' And the world
has since, with all its thinking, added nothing to the name which
Christ has declared.
The utterance farther expresses His consciousness of having made a
completed, atoning Sacrifice. Remember that the words of my first text
followed that awful cry that came from the darkness, and as by one
lightning flash, show us the waves and billows rolling over His head.
'My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?' In that infinitely
pathetic and profound utterance, to the interpretation of which our
powers go but a little way, Jesus Christ blends together, in the most
marvellous fashion, desolation and trust, the consciousness that God is
His God, and the consciousness that He is bereft of the light of His
presence. Brethren! I know of no explanation of these words which does
justice to both the elements that are intertwined so intimately in
them, except the old one, which listens to Him as they come from His
quivering lip, and says, 'The Lord hath made to meet on Him the
iniquity of us all.'
Ah, brethren! unless there was something a great deal more than the
physical shrinking from physical death in that piteous cry, Jesus
Christ did not die nearly as bravely as many a poor, trembling woman
who, at the stake or the block, has owed her fortitude to Him. Many a
blood-stained criminal has gone out of life with less tremor than that
which, unless you take the explanation that Scripture suggests of the
cry, marred the last hours of Jesus Christ. Having drained the cup, He
held it up inverted when He said 'It is finished!' and not a drop
trickled down the edge. He drank it that we might never need to drink
it; and so His dying voice proclaimed that 'by one offering for sin for
ever,' He 'obtained eternal redemption' for us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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