Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIVMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIV
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
For that highest condition there is set forth this as the all-sufficing
light upon it. 'Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and He will
tabernacle with them.' The climax and the goal of all the divine
working, and the long processes of God's love for, and discipline of,
the world, are to be this, that He and men shall abide together in
unity and concord. That is God's wish from the beginning. We read in
one of the profound utterances of the Book of Proverbs how from of old
the 'delights' of the Incarnate Wisdom which foreshadowed the Incarnate
Word 'were with the sons of men.' And, at the close of all things, when
the vision of this final chapter shall be fulfilled, God will say,
settling Himself in the midst of a redeemed humanity, 'Lo! here will I
dwell, for I have desired it. This is My rest for ever.' He will
tabernacle with men, and men with Him.
We know not, and never shall know until experience strips the bandages
from our eyes, what new methods of participation of the divine nature,
and new possibilities of intimacy and intercourse with Him may be ours
when the veils of flesh and sense and time have all dropped away. New
windows may be opened in our spirits, from which we shall perceive new
aspects of the divine character. New doors may be opened in our souls,
from out of which we may pass to touch parts of His nature, all
impalpable and inconceivable to us now. And when all the veils of a
discordant moral nature are taken away, and we are pure, then we shall
see, then we shall draw nigh to God. The thing that chiefly separates
man from God is man's sin. When that is removed, the centrifugal force
which kept our tiny orb apart from the great central sun being
withdrawn, we shall, as it were, fall into the brightness and be one,
not losing our sense of individuality, which would be to lose all the
blessedness, but united with Him in a union far more intimate than
earth can parallel. 'The Tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He
will tabernacle with them.'
Do not let us forget that this highest and ultimate hope that is held
forth here, of the union and communion, perfect and perpetual, of
humanity with God, does not sweep aside Jesus Christ. For through all
eternity the Everlasting Word, the Christ who bears our nature in its
glorified form, or, rather, whose nature in its glorified form we shall
bear, is the Medium of Revelation, and the Medium of communication
between man and God.
'I saw no Temple therein,' says this final vision of the Apocalypse,
but 'God Almighty and the Lamb,' and these are the Temples thereof.
Therefore through eternity God shall tabernacle with men, as He does
tabernacle with us now through Him, in whom dwelleth as in its
perennial habitation, 'all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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