John 3, 4, 6
To apprehend the light or truth of the Lord is needful to our safe conduct through the scene around us; but to discern His spirit, His tastes, habits of thought, sympathies and aversions, all pure and perfect as they were, so many expressions of the divine mind, gives elevation to our conduct.
Something of His sympathies and aversions may be discovered from His different method with Nicodemus, the Samaritan, and the multitude, in John 3, 4, 6.
There is this common purpose in all these scenes—the Lord is pulling the soul upon a sinner’s ground.
This, however, is done in a different method in each case; and in this different method His spirit, His taste, His sympathies or aversions, as we have expressed it, manifest themselves.
Nicodemus was “a master in Israel,” a religious “ruler of the Jews.” He was of the Pharisees, one therefore of a party that had set itself boldly against Jesus. But at this time there was evidently some working of conscience in him.
He comes to Christ as a pupil, to learn lessons and mysteries. The Lord transfers him from that ground, and puts him under the uplifted Serpent—that is, instructs him to come to Him as a bitten Israelite, or as a poor sinner that needed life.
He does this, as we might say, shortly or at once, stopping him at the first utterance of his lips. But withal patiently, and with evident interest in him personally.
The Samaritan woman was one of the thoughtless children of the world. Life and its enjoyments and occupations were all to her. She was shrewd, and a woman of a good understanding, and, as far as that led her, not ignorant of the religion of the day. But life in the world was her object. She was on the ground where the common fallen nature had put her. She had not, therefore, sought the Lord, like Nicodemus, but one of the ordinary circumstances of human life had thrown them together.
Such an one, I may say, was just the one for the Son of God. He meets her, therefore, in her place, and speaks in her own language to her. But from that place, without rebuke, without abruptness, He removes her on the ground of a convicted sinner, and then reveals Himself to her.
She had not assumed a place as the ruler had; and Christ allows the whole passage from darkness to light to be made more rapidly. The same occasion witnesses the whole journey, as it does not in the case of Nicodemus. The Lord at first only turns him towards the right road.
The multitude are distinct from both. There was no working of conscience in them, as in Nicodemus, nor were they simply on the ground, or in the place of nature, like the Samaritan. They were in the religious activity of the day, and were making their profit by it. They followed Jesus, “not because they saw the miracles, but because they did eat of the loaves and were filled.” They followed Him for what they could get.
Such a material is very offensive to the mind of Christ. Nothing more so. But He does not at once cast it aside. He can bear with anything in the patience of His grace towards sinners. He does not, therefore, cast the multitude aside, though they did thus form a material so repulsive to Him. He was decisive and yet patient with the Jewish master. He was leading the poor Samaritan from first to last, without a strong or relenting word—and now in a long discourse He strives with the multitude, and would fain put them on paschal ground, or in the place of sinners who needed the life of His flesh and blood, evidently, however, throughout with a mind much averted from the place and character in which they were showing themselves, and begins His answer to them rebukingly (6:26).
How perfect in patience and grace, and yet in the various expressions of taste and of sympathy, all these ways and methods are! But let me say, there is no joy like that of learning our lessons from the Lord in the place and character of sinners, that place which the Lord is putting us all into, ere He will teach us any thing.
Peter was on that ground to which the Lord was here either turning, or seeking to turn Nicodemus, the Samaritan, and the multitude (see 6:62, 69). His soul dealt with Jesus as its life—that was the true apprehension, the apprehension of one who stood in the place, to which the drawings of the Father always lead.
“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, it shall be the first month of the year unto you” (Ex. 12:22This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. (Exodus 12:2)). The beginning of the year was changed, to let Israel know, that their life was not the life of creatures, but of ransomed sinners, that eternity with God is to be spent in that character. The passover was the moment in this history, when they formally entered on that character, being then sheltered from destruction by blood sprinkled on the door poets. And, therefore, that moment was made the beginning of the year to them.
The early chapters in John’s Gospel, as we have now seen, have this object—to show how the Lord put all those who came to Him on the ground of sinners. He would receive them (whether Nicodemus, the Samaritan, or the multitude) only as sinners. None others really came to Him.
I ask, was not this the echo of Ex. 12:22This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. (Exodus 12:2)? Was not this a telling of them, as they had already been told by that ordinance, that they must begin as poor sinners?
Most happy for our souls is it, to see, and see so clearly, this way of the Lord. He cannot welcome us, if we bring not our sins with us, if we come not as to a Saviour.