Notes of an Address on John 13:1-23.
It is a fact with which many are familiar, that the account of our Lord’s washing His disciples’ feet, and the four following chapters, are found in the gospel by John, and in no other portion of the Holy Scriptures. The time was exceedingly and peculiarly solemn. The blessed Lord had ere this openly taken His farewell of Jewish things. The beautiful temple was soon to be a heap of ruins— “not one stone left upon another;” and a new order of things of a spiritual and heavenly character was to be brought in. Hence the washing of the disciples’ feet, the disclosure to His own of the Father’s house, the promise of the descent and abiding of the Holy Ghost the other Comforter, and His marvelous operations, as also the blessed hope of our Lord’s coming to receive us unto Himself, now have their place. It can easily be perceived how fundamentally important such instruction is to us, but how entirely foreign to Jewish ideas! We do not find here the declaration of the mystery of the church, the body of Christ, because, according to the counsels of God, it was reserved for a subsequent revelation; yet these chapters clearly announce lines of deeply precious instruction suitable to us during the whole period of our Lord’s rejection until He come again.
These chapters, therefore, contain lessons of richest worth, which could not have been brought out while the Lord was presenting Himself as the Messiah to the nation of Israel; but, having been rejected, He could only leave them in desolation, darkness, and unbelief, until they shall say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23:38, 39). The time, therefore, was now come for setting forth great and precious doctrines for us, in this kind of transition period, between the giving up of the Jewish nation, and the calling and formation of the Church of God.
In the verses which we have just read, there are three points of instruction to which I would direct attention—the believer’s security, communion with the Lord, and confidence of faith. This is the order in which these subjects are here presented, and no doubt it is divine. For until the believer is established as to his everlasting security in Christ, how can he enjoy communion with the Lord? And if not walking with the Lord, can he expect to have confidence in the Lord when adversity comes?
1. As to the question of THE BELIEVER’S SECURITY, several remarkable points are clustered together in the beginning of the chapter. In the first verse we read, “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” Love, divine love, is certainly the source of all our blessings. Our everlasting security, therefore, flows from divine love. It is His love to us which is first, for “we love Him, because He first loved us.” It is His love, not ours, which is the spring— “Not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” This love then has been manifested in all its fullness, perfectness, and suitability— “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.” (1 John 4:9,10,19). Most souls when anxious and awakened to a sense of their obligations to God as His creatures, think that all their blessings are based on their love to God. They therefore try, and try again, most sincerely, to love God; when, after a constant sense of failure and sin, they learn the precious truth that God’s love in the gift of His Son is the source of peace and salvation, and not their love to God. They say, “I am trying to love God,” but until they know how marvelously God’s love has come out to us, while we were yet sinners, they never get peace. All believers in the Lord Jesus, therefore, can say, “We have known and believed the love which God hath to us.” This love, too, is unchanging, for “whom He loved when He was in the world He loved them unto the end;” that is, He loved them through all their failings, mistakes, and ignorance.
“His love’s unchangeably the same,
And as enduring as His name.”
It is divine love, the love of God to us in Christ in all its fullness, perfectness, and unchangeableness, which is then the spring of our eternal salvation, and therefore imparts to us the first sense of our everlasting security. And let us ever remember that it is not God’s providential kindness to us in our circumstances, gracious as He may be in these things, but it is His love to us in the gift of His only-begotten Son that tells us of His infinite grace. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting live” (John 3:16). There can, therefore, be no peace, no sense of security, where the spring of our eternal blessings is not known as flowing to us in the gift of Christ; and until that is the case, souls, if truly awakened and earnest, will be looking to their own love to God, their feelings, their doings, the performance of their promised resolutions, and the like, which only increases their misery, and can never impart rest and peace. Happy those who can so perceive the love of God in the person and work of Christ, and its suitability to us, as to enable them to realize in their own souls the preciousness of the truth, “Perfect love casteth out fear”!
Then we have brought before us that which sets forth the death of Christ— “the supper,” (v. 2); for nothing less than the death and blood-shedding of the Son of God could meet our need, or satisfy the claims of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Nothing less than the unsparing condemnation of our sins could satisfy divine justice, and nothing less than our having everlasting life and salvation could satisfy divine love. The death of Christ, then, was absolutely necessary, and is the alone ground of peace and everlasting security. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). Precious love, that could thus manifest itself in cleansing and saving us, and bringing eternal glory to God! By the death of Christ, the question of our sins is forever settled, according to the strictest claims of justice and truth as well as love. We are told that “He bare our sins in His own body on the tree,” that “He suffered for sins,” “died for our sins,” “shed His blood for many for remission of sins;” that “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities... and with His stripes we are healed.” We have thus in the death of Christ an immoveable ground of peace, and that which purges the conscience, because of remission of sins, on the ground of sins having been judged by God in unsparing wrath in the person of His beloved Son, who was “made sin” and “made a curse” for us on the tree. If the love of God is the source of all our blessings, the death of Christ is the foundation of our everlasting peace and security, for “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Here we see the demands of holiness vindicated, the claims of righteousness met, justice satisfied, love manifested, sins judged, the sinner that believes saved, and God glorified. God, who condemned sin, now justifies the sinner on the principle of faith. “Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father,” and “the Supper” tell us of His death. It is the death of Christ then that has justly answered for us every charge of sin and guilt, and which sets our conscience at rest before God; for if the question be asked, Who is he that condemneth? the answer is, It is Christ that died, and it is God which justifieth. Thus we sing:
“The Lord of life in death hath lain,
To clear me from all charge of sin,
And, Lord, from guilt of crimson stain,
Thy precious blood hath made me clean.”
But more than this. The Lord is in spirit at this moment on the other side of death. The language is very remarkable— “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God.” Here we have the Lord presented to us in spirit on resurrection and ascension ground, “knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands.” We need a Saviour who could bring us to God—bring many sons to glory; a Saviour therefore who should not only save us from our sins, but be the Conqueror of satan, and rise victoriously over death and the grave. This Christ did when He rose from among the dead; for, through death, He annulled him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and thus set free those who, through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to bondage. In the resurrection of Christ, we see not only God’s testimony to the finished work of Jesus on the cross, but we also see satan, who had the power of death, completely triumphed over, and a new and living way made for us into the presence of God. And further, being now in the place of power at the right hand of God, we have life, righteousness, and acceptance in Him. Thus, if a doubt arises as to our having eternal life, it is met by the scripture that “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” If it be a question of righteousness, we are told, “God hath made Christ to be unto us righteousness.” If an inquiry as to our acceptance is raised, we are told that we are “accepted in the Beloved;” that is, are before God in all the acceptability of Christ himself. If nearness to God be considered, we are thus as near to God as Christ is, and this always, for “in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Thus the believer, who was dead in sins, has been made alive, raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ, in whom the Father hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings. So that not a question remains unanswered as to our everlasting security and blessing.
(To be continued.)