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
Well, what do you think the fact that men go through their days and
weeks and months and years, and have not God in all their thoughts,
indicates as to the central feeling of their hearts towards God?
Granted that there is not actual antagonism, because there is no
thought at all, do you think it would be possible for a man who loved
God to go on for a twelvemonth and never think of, or care to please,
or desire to be near, the object that he loved? And inasmuch as, deep
down at the bottom of our moral being, there is no such thing possible
as indifference and a perfect equipoise in reference to God, it is
clear enough, I think, that--although the word must not be pressed as
if it meant conscious and active antagonism,--where there is no love
there is hate.
If a man does not love God as He is revealed to him in Jesus Christ, he
neither cares to please Him nor to think about Him, nor does he order
his life in obedience to His commands. And if it be true that obedience
is the very life-breath of love, disobedience or non-obedience is the
manifestation of antagonism, and antagonism towards God is the same
thing as hate.
Dear friends, I want some of my hearers to-day who have never honestly
asked themselves the question of what their relation to God is, to go
down into the deep places of their hearts and test themselves by this
simple inquiry: 'Do I do anything to please Him? Do I try to serve Him?
Is it a joy to me to be near Him? Is the thought of Him a delight, like
a fountain in the desert or the cool shadow of a great rock in the
blazing wilderness? Do I turn to Him as my Home, my Friend, my All? If
I do not, am I not deceiving myself by fancying that I stand neutral?'
There is no neutrality in a man's relation to God. It is one thing or
other. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' 'The friendship of the world
is enmity against God.'
IV. And now, lastly, note how our Lord here touches the deep thought
that this ignorance, which is sin, and is more properly named hatred,
is utterly irrational and causeless.
'All this will they do that it might be fulfilled which is written in
their law, They hated Me without a cause.' One hears sighing through
these words the Master's meek wonder that His love should be so met,
and that the requital which He receives at men's hands, for such an
unexampled and lavish outpouring of it, should be such a carelessness,
reposing upon a hidden basis of such a rooted alienation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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