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
III. Lastly, in Jesus Christ any man may receive sustenance. 'They
shall find pasture.'
The imagery of the sheep and the fold is still, of course, present to
the Master's mind, and shapes the form in which this great promise is
set forth.
I need only remind you, in illustration of it, of two facts, one, that
in Jesus Christ Himself all the true needs of humanity are met and
satisfied. He is 'the Bread of God that came down from heaven to give
life to the world.' Do I want an outward object for my intellect? I
have it in Him. Does my heart feel with its tendrils, which have no
eyes at the ends of them, after something round which it may twine, and
not fear that the prop shall ever rot or be cut down or pulled up?
Jesus Christ is the home of love in which the dove may fold its wings
and be at rest. Do I want (and I do if I am not a fool) an absolute and
authoritative command to be laid upon my will; some one 'whose looks
enjoin, whose lightest words are spells'? I find absolute authority,
with no taint of tyranny, and no degradation to the subject, in that
Infinite Will of His. Does my conscience need some strong detergent to
be laid upon it which shall take out the stains that are most
indurated, inveterate, and ingrained? I find it only in the 'blood that
cleanseth from all sin.' Do my aspirations and desires seek for some
solid and substantial and unquestionable and imperishable good to
which, reaching out, they may be sure that they are not anchoring on
cloudland? Christ is our hope. For all this complicated and craving
commonwealth that I carry within my soul, there is but one
satisfaction, even Jesus Christ Himself. Nothing else nourishes the
whole man at once, but in Him are all the constituents that the human
system requires for its nutriment and its growth in every part. So in
and through Christ we find 'pasture.'
But beyond that, if we are knit to Him by simple and continual faith,
love, and obedience, then what is else barrenness becomes full of
nourishment, and the unsatisfying gifts of the world become rich and
precious. They are nought when they are put first, they are much when
they are put second.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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