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
So, then, true Christian faith is the flight of the soul towards
Christ. Therein is one of the special blessednesses of the Christian
life, that it has for its object and aim absolutely infinite and
unattainable completeness and glory, so that unwearied freshness,
inexhaustible buoyancy, endless progress, are the dower of every spirit
that truly trusts in Christ. All other aims and objects are limited,
transient, and will be left behind. Every other landmark will sink
beneath the horizon, where so many of our landmarks have sunk already,
and where they will all disappear when the last moment comes. But we
may have, and if we are Christian people we shall have, bright before
us, sufficiently certain of being reached to make our efforts hopeful
and confident, sufficiently certain of never being reached to make our
efforts blessed with endless aspirations, the great light and love of
that dear Lord, to yearn after whom is better than to possess all
besides, and following hard after whom, even in the very motion there
is rest, and in the search there is finding. Religion is the flight of
the soul, the aspiration of the whole man after the unattainable
Attainable—'that I may know Him, and be found in Him.'
Oh, how such thoughts ought to shame us who call ourselves Christians!
Growth, progress, getting nearer to Christ, yearning ever with a great
desire after Him!—do not the words seem irony when applied to most of
us? Think of the average type of sluggish contentment with present
attainments that marks Christian people—tortoises in their crawling
rather than eagles in their flight. And let us take our portion of
shame, and remember that the faith which believes Him, and that which
believes on Him, both need to be crowned and perfected by that which
believes towards Him, of which the motto is, 'Forgetting the things
that are behind, I reach forward to the things that are before.'
But there is another side to this last phase of faith. That true
believing towards or unto Christ is the rest of the soul in Him. By
faith that deep and most real union of the believing soul with Jesus
Christ is effected which may be fitly described as our entrance into
and abode in Him. The believer is as if incorporated into Him in whom
he believes. Indeed, the Apostle ventures to use a more startling
expression than _incorporation_ when he says that 'he that is joined to
the Lord is one Spirit.' If by faith we press towards, by faith we
shall be in, Christ. Faith is at once motion and rest, search and
finding, desire and fruition. The felicity of this last form of the
phrase is its expression of both these ideas, which are united in fact
as in word. A rare construction of the verb _to believe_, with the
simple preposition _in_, coincides with this part of the meaning of
_believing unto_ or _into_, and need not be separately considered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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