“You have observed, perhaps, how the Lord in John’s Gospel acts on the ground of this, that the world had not known Him; and Israel had not received Him—according to ch. 1:10, 11.
“It is a matter of great beauty and interest to see this—how simply and yet distinctly and fully He acts on these great facts, how He turns, as it were, away from both the world and Israel, and as the Son imparts Himself and His life to sinners who would (though the world and Israel had thus refused Him) receive Him in His grace as Son of God.
“He is seen as a solitary one in the course of the first chapter: But in His solitude He is ‘the Lamb of God,’ i.e. in the character and place of imparting life to all who seek Him as sinners. And being sought and found in that character, He promises the kingdom to those who become associated with Him (v. 51). These are fine witnesses of what I am speaking of, Jesus has done with the world and with Israel, He takes His separated place, but it is the separated place of Him who can give life and a kingdom to sinners.
“So in chapter 2, He refuses the world. He refuses to shine in the eye of man, according to the desire of the mother. But while He does so, He is seen opening His glories in the sight of His disciples (v. 11). He is the separated One, but His separation tells who He is, and that He has divine virtues and powers to impart or display.
“In the 3 chapter, He has His face again turned away from the world. He would not yield to the flattering approach of Nicodemus any more than to the worldly suggestions of the mother—but taking a place apart from all that, He shows that it is the place of the life-giving Son of God.
“In chap. 4, He has His back turned upon Israel. He knows them not, nor recognizes them in their place or rights at all. He has done with Israel as completely as He has done with the world—but He opens the view of God in His separated place. If separated from the world or from Israel, it is to give life to all who would receive Him or come to Him in His separated place.
“Just so in chap. 5. He is annulling the prerogatives of Israel, but this is only that He may introduce Himself in all His life-giving virtue to the needy and helpless.
“So in chap. 6, He will not be a King. He is a stranger in the earth, and has done with the world, given up all expectations from it, will not even be sought or desired as a patron, or worker of miracles, or as one that has power and resources for this world and this life—but He presents Himself as the help and eternal life of poor dead and ruined children of men, as the One in whom and in whom alone, they can be saved.
“And not to pursue this further, in chap. 7 you find the two things again strikingly exhibited. In the opening of that chapter you see Him with the clearest and firmest decision turning His back upon the world, and then at the close of it, in some of the most precious features of it unfolding His Person as the Son of God in the separated place. He will not go up to the Feast to show Himself to the world as His brethren desired, but being separated, He reveals Himself as the source of the river of God, the Imparter of the Holy Ghost to all who would follow Him by faith, and meet Him in His separated place and character.
“Very fine this way, this picture of the Son of God is. He is apart from the world, because the world knew Him not; He is apart from Israel or His own, because His own received Him not, but in the separated place He is the Son of God, in conscious divine glory, imparting healing, life, the indwelling Spirit, and the Kingdom to all who received Him.
“Now has He, beloved, the pre-eminence in all things? Yea, and in a great sense, not only the pre-eminence, but that character of glory in which He is and must be alone.”
“You and I are to be separated from the world, as Jesus was—but we are separated to the place of saints merely, while He is separated to the place of the Son. We are separated from the world and from Israel that we may walk in the power of heavenly citizenship; He is separated that He may impart the life and the rights of heaven.
“The Lord is breaking up in these days, and man is building up. But His ruined and waste places shall sing like a garden by and by.”