The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. IDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. I
Dods, Marcus
Bible. John; Bible. John -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
And to those who acknowledge in their hearts that this is Divine glory
which is seen in Christ, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father,
He gives Himself with all His fulness. “As many as received Him, to them
gave He the right to become children of God.” This is the immediate
result of the acceptance of Christ as the Revealer of the Father. In Him
we see what true glory is and what true sonship is; and as we behold the
glory of the Only-begotten, sent to declare the Father to us, we
acknowledge the unseen Father, and His Spirit brings us into the
relationship of children. That which is in God passes into us, and we
share in the life of God; and this through Christ. He is “full” of grace
and truth. In all He is and does, grace and truth overflowingly manifest
themselves. And “of His fulness have all we received, and grace upon
grace.”[7] John read this off his own experience and that of those for
whom he could confidently speak. What they had seen and valued in Christ
became their own character. The inexhaustible fulness of grace in Christ
renewed in them grace according to their need. They lived upon Him. It
was His life which maintained life in them. By communion with Him they
were formed in His likeness.
The presentation of Christ to men now divides them into two classes, as
at the first. There are always those who accept and those who reject
Him. His contemporaries showed, for the most part, a complete ignorance
of what might be expected of God, a native inability to understand
spiritual greatness, and to relish it when presented to them. And yet
Christ’s claims were made with such an air of authority and truth, and
His whole character and bearing were so consistent, that they were half
persuaded He was all He said. It is chiefly because we have not a
perfect sympathy with goodness, and do not know its value, that we do
not at once and universally acknowledge Christ. There is in men an
instinct that tells them what blessings Christ will secure to them, and
they decline connection with Him because they are conscious that their
ways are not His ways, nor their hopes His hopes. The very presentation
to men of the possibility of becoming perfectly pure reveals what at
heart they are. By the judgment each man passes on Christ he passes
judgment on himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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