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
That is all that the sight of sorrow does for some people. It leads to
censorious judgments, or to mere idle and curious speculations. Christ
lets us see what it did for Him, and what it is meant to do for us.
'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but he is born blind
that the works of God may be made manifest in him.' That is to say,
human sorrow is to be looked at by us as an opportunity for the
manifestation through us of God's mercy in relieving and stanching the
wounds through which the lifeblood is ebbing away. Do not stand coldly
curious or uncharitably censorious. Do not make miserable men
theological problems, but see in them a call for service. See in them
an opportunity for letting the light of God, so much of it as is in
you, shine from you, and your hands move in works of mercy.
And then the Master goes on to state still more distinctly the law
which dominated His life, and which ought to dominate ours: 'I must
work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh
when no man can work.' Then poor men's misery is an occasion for the
love of God manifesting itself. Yes. But the love of God manifests
itself through human media, through persons; and if we adopt the
reading of these words which you will find in the Revised Version, and
instead of saying '_I_ must work,' read '_We_ must work,' then we have
Christ extending the law which ruled over His own life to all His
followers, and making it supremely obligatory and binding upon each of
us. He for His part, as I have said, moves through this Gospel as the
Son of God, whose mercy, and all whose doings are self-originated. But
the other side of that is that He moves through this Gospel in the
humble attitude of filial obedience, ever recognising that the Father's
will is supreme in His life; and that He is bound, with an obligation
in which He rejoices, to do the will of Him that sent Him. The
consciousness of a mission, the sense of filial obedience, the joyful
surrender and harmonising of the will of the Son with the will of the
Father; these things were the secret of the Master's life.
And coupled with them, even in Him there was the consciousness that
time was short; and although beyond the Cross and the grave there
stretched for Him an eternity in which He would work for the blessing
of the world, yet the special work which He had to do, while wearing
the veil and weakness of flesh, had but few days and hours in which it
could be done. Therefore, as we ought to do, He worked under the
limitations of mortality, and recognised in the brevity of life another
call to eager and continuous service.
These were His motives which, in common with Him, we may share. But He
adds another in which we have no share; and declares the unique
consciousness which ever stirred Him to His self-manifesting and
God-manifesting acts: 'As long as I am in the world I am the Light of
the world.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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