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
And so, dear brethren! when our Lord said, 'Do this in remembrance of
Me,' I pray you to ask yourselves, What did that involve in regard to
His nature and the source of His authority over us? And what did it
involve in regard to His relation to that ancient Revelation?
II. And now another point that I would suggest is--we have, in this
substitution of the new rite for the old, our Lord's clear declaration
of what was the very heart of His work in the world.
'This do in remembrance of Me.' What is it, then, to which He points?
Is it to the wisdom, the tenderness, the deep beauty, the flashing
moral purity that gleamed and shone lambent in His words? No! Is it to
the gracious self--oblivion, the gentle accessibility, the loving pity,
the leisurely heart always ready to help, the eye ready to fill with
tears, the hand ever outstretched and ever laden with blessings? No! It
is the death on the Cross which He, if I might so say, isolates, at
least which He underscores with red lines, and which He would have us
remember, as we remember nothing else. Brethren, rites are
insignificant in many aspects, but are often of enormous importance as
witnesses to truths. And I point to the Lord's Supper, the one rite of
the Christian Church, which is to be repeated over and over and over
again, and see in it the great barrier which has rendered it
impossible, and will render it impossible, as I believe, for evermore,
that a Christianity, which obscures the atoning sacrifice of Christ on
the Cross, should ever pose as the full representation of the Master's
mind, or as the full expression of the Saviour's word.
What do men and churches that falter in their allegiance to the truth
of Christ's redemptive death do with the Lord's Supper? Nothing! For
the most part they ignore it, or if they retain it, do not, for the
life of them, know how to explain it, or why it should be there. The
explanation of why it is there is the great truth, of which it is the
clear utterance and the strong defence, the truth that 'Jesus Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures,' and that 'the Son of
Man came... to give His life a ransom for the many.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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