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
Now that same principle is true in a modified form about us. How many
things there are which we sometimes feel we should like to know, that
God has not told us, because we have not yet grown up to the point at
which we could apprehend them! Compassed with these veils of flesh and
weakness, groping amidst the shadows of time, bewildered by the
cross-lights that fall upon us from so many surrounding objects, we
have not yet eyes able to behold the ineffable glory. He has many
things to say to us about that blessed future, and that strange and
awful life into which we are to step when we leave this poor world, but
'ye cannot bear them now.' Let us wait with patience until we are ready
for the illumination. For two things go to make revelation, the light
that reveals and the eye that beholds.
Now one remark before I go further. People tell us, 'Your modern
theology is not in the Gospels.' And they say to us, as if they had
administered a knockdown blow, 'We stick by Jesus, not Paul.' Well, as
I said, I do not admit that there is no 'Pauline' teaching in the
Gospels, but I do confess there is not much. And I say, 'What then?'
Why, this, then--it is exactly what we were to expect; and people who
reject the apostolic form of Christian teaching because it is not found
in the Gospels are flying in the face of Christ's own teaching. You say
you will take His words as the only source of religious truth. You are
going clean contrary to His own words in saying so. Remember that He
proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us, for the fuller
knowledge of the truth of God, to a subsequent Teacher.
II. So, secondly, mark here the completeness of the truth into which
the Spirit guides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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