John’s great doctrine is the Son of God on earth, and eternal life in Him, and the revelation of God in and by Him. In his first Epistle he goes on to the manifestation of this same life in the disciple. He is the eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested unto us. Then “He that hath the Son, hath life,” and so “which thing is true in him and in you.” The details are the traits of this life, the knowledge of the love of God in it through the Spirit, and fellowship with the Father and the Son. In the Gospel, to which I will now confine myself, it is His person and the gift of the Comforter when He is gone.
I will run through the chapters of his Gospel to see if there be not a leading idea running all through, to which the peculiar facts recorded are subservient. That idea is the Son of God outside of and above all dispensational dealings, in the blessedness of His own person, though, as a man, and taking fully a man's place. But it is, as I think I have remarked, not man taken up to heaven, but a divine person come down to earth.
In chapter 1 There are three parts, 1-18, 19-34, and thence to the end; but this continued in chapter 2:1-22. The first is the abstract glory of His nature. He is God, but a distinct person with God, and that in eternity, life, light. John was His witness. There was this singular phenomenon—light shining in darkness, and the darkness remaining what it was; and then the Word made flesh and dwelling among us—the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father—who makes God known. Next we have what Christ does, His work, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the baptism with the Holy Ghost. We then find Christ the center and gatherer of the remnant of Israel. In the first of the two days John the Baptist's work to this end is spoken of; in the second, Christ's. This last, I doubt not (like Matt. 10), goes down in principle to His return.
I would note in passing, that we have here Christ as a divine center, for none can be such truly but God; next the one only path through a world in which there is none for man, for there can be none for children who have willfully abandoned their Father's house till they turn back to it; and then the heaven open, and man (in Christ) the object of divine favor, and the mighty ones, the most exalted of creatures, His servants. Nathanael owned Him according to Psa. 2. He takes His place according to Psa. 8. Here note, that the Jews and world, as such, are wholly outside (verses 10, 11), (the Jews are always treated as reprobates in this Gospel), and those born of God alone owned (verses 12, 13). In a word, we have not dispensational dealings, but the deep realities of the divine nature in relationship to men and the world, though it is fully owned that the Jews were God's people.
Chapter 2, called the third day, I have no doubt, intimates the double aspect of Christ's reunion with His earthly people—the marriage and the judgment. I can quite accept that such a figure (though to me, from the connection, undoubted) may not be admitted. I do not complain of this, but, as I am saying what I think, I would not omit it.
In chapters 2:23; 3:21 we have the great foundations of the new state of things—born of God, and the cross; the latter in the double aspect of, the Son of man must be lifted up, and the love of God has given His Son. The condemnation is the coming in of light. (Ver. 22-36.) Then the full aspect of the new state of things, and the absolutely heavenly character of the witness, are gone into.
After this introduction, for such it is (John was not yet cast into prison, and Christ had not yet presented Himself), He leaves Judaea (chap. 4), practically driven out by the Jews, and in Samaria, where no promise was (salvation, He declares in the chapter, was of the Jews), unfolds the living power of the Holy Ghost, which He could give as God—for God was giving, not requiring—and which He was humbled, so as to be the weary One craving a drink of water, that man might have; and then finds the way to man's unintelligent heart, as it ever must be, by the conscience. Nothing more lovely than this whole picture—the rejected and weary One finding His meat in showing grace to this wearied but guilty heart; but I must not dwell on it here. It opened to His view the fields white for harvest at the moment He was cast out.
In chapter 5 we have the Son of God giving life to whom He will. The general picture is man's incompetency to get healed by strength in himself; and Christ, in contrast, bringing life, and that eternal life, so as to escape judgment. The end of the chapter shows life in Him, with every evidence; and man would not come to have it. This is man's responsibility as to Christ.
In chapter 5 He is the life-giving Son of God. In chapter 6 He is the Son of man, the object of faith come into the world, and dying, so that faith feeds on Him. The general picture is Christ satisfying the poor with bread, according to Psa. 132; owned Prophet, refusing then to be King, going up on high alone, while His disciples were tossed and toiling in His absence; He rejoins them, and they are at land: a Christ, the true manna (ver. 2-9), incarnate, and dying (understood in spirit), their true food.
In chapter 7 He cannot show Himself at the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Passover is fulfilled in Him; the Pentecost, on the day so called. But the Tabernacles, where Israel celebrated their rest after the harvest and vintage (known figures of judgment), are not even yet. He promises the Spirit meanwhile, as Israel had the water out of the rock in the desert: only now it should be in him who came to Him to drink, and flow forth as rivers in this desert world. Thus we have the triple fruition of the Holy Ghost, giving life as born of Him, the spiritual power of life in us rising up to its full blessing as eternal life, and flowing forth in blessing from us as a river. This closed the direct communication of Christ as to His position on earth.
In chapter 8 His word is rejected; there He is light.
In chapter 9 His works; here He gives eyes to see. He gives eyes to a poor sheep cast out, who, having owned Him as a prophet, finds He is the Son of God. Then comes all He is for His sheep, from His entering in Himself by the door as a subject man, then laying down His life for them (of infinite value in itself also), to His being one with the Father.
In chapters 11 and 12, being thus rejected, He receives just testimony, in spite of men, to His being Son of God (resurrection and life), in Lazarus' resurrection; to His being Son of David, in riding on the ass; to His being Son of man, by the Greeks coming up. But He declares that, to take this place, He must die or abide alone. He must be lifted up to draw (not Israel as a living Messiah, but) all men. The evangelist then unfolds how it stood with Israel, and Christ how it stood with the world at large in respect of Himself.
He is now owned, so to speak, as crucified—i.e., His teaching takes up what is beyond it. He was come from God and went to God. The Father had delivered all into His hand. And now, if He could not abide with His disciples as a companion upon earth, He would make them fit to be with Him in heaven—to have a part with Him. They were washed, as completely regenerated by the word; but, as priests connected with the sanctuary and holy service, they must have their feet washed as to daily conversation: this He was their servant still to do. He then refers to His betrayal and Peter's denial of Him—the perfect wickedness of flesh and its weakness; He declares the value Godward of the death of the Son of man and its fruit in His then entering into divine glory, and being no more (bodily) for any in the world.
In chapter 14 He unfolds His disciples' position in consequence. He was not going to be alone on high, He was going to prepare a place for them; but, having revealed the Father in Himself, they knew where He was going, for He was going to the Father, and they had seen Him in Him: and they knew the way, for they had come to the Father in coming to Him. This was as already there; but on going away He would obtain another Comforter for them. In spirit He would come to them, manifest Himself to them, and the Father and Himself make their abode with them. The path of obedience and responsibility on Christian (not on Adam) ground is in this chapter and the following fully set out. He left what He could only give in leaving—for He made it by the cross—peace; He gave them His own peace; but He was truly a man and cared for their love; if they loved Him, they would be glad He was going to His Father, to rest and glory.
But there was a difficulty. What about the vine that God brought out of Egypt and planted? This He meets in the following chapter. Israel was not the vine, though as a people it was so. He Himself was the true Vine, they were the branches. He was not, as they thought of Messiah, the best branch of the old vine; He was the Vine, and they the branches. He then enlarges upon the way of bearing due fruit, dependence and obedience, and, if His words abode in them, asking what they would; most important instructions, which I regret passing over so rapidly, only that I must confine myself to my present object—the general idea. As He has returned to this rejection of the old provisional vine, so to speak, He shows that to be without excuse, and as really having seen and hated (not Messiah, though He was such, but) Him and His Father. It is laid on its intrinsic moral grounds. Hence, when the Comforter was come—before, He had spoken of the Father's sending Him, now of His sending Him from the Father to testify of Him glorified (as before, to bring to remembrance what He had said upon earth), they also having to bear testimony as with Him from the beginning.
In chapter xvi., when the Comforter was come, He would bear witness in the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, in connection with His rejection and going away to His Father; and guide the disciples into all truth, show them things to come, and glorify Christ (all that the Father had being His); and then places them in immediate confidant relationship with the Father. For the moment they were to be in sorrow, and scattered.
In chapter 17, addressing His Father (wonderful thought that we should be admitted to hear!) He looks to taking His own place as Son on high, to glorify Him in virtue of His work which He had finished; the one our place, the other our title to it. He puts them in it, having manifested His Father's name to them, and gives to them all the communications made to Him in it on earth, and prays for them, on the ground of their being the Father's, and on the ground of His being glorified in them. He prays they may be kept in the name of the Holy Father; and divine names are the power of the thing named. Holiness, His holiness, and children: these are our place—this, that Christ's own joy might be fulfilled in them. Then He gives, not the words, but the word, the testimony, and the world hates them. They are completely put in Christ's place on earth in every respect, sanctified by the truth, and He Himself set apart, away from men, on high, to be the source of this their setting apart, by the revelation of what He was to their hearts. Next, He gives them the glory the Father had given Him, but beyond all, will have them with Himself where He is; and as partaking of His glory hereafter, He will prove to the world they were loved as He was; so that He manifests the Father's name now, that the Father's love to Him may be in them on earth, and He in them.
Having thus completed the disciples' place in His absence, and even to their heavenly rest—of which John speaks little, barely in the beginning of chapter 14 and at the end of chapter 17, and this only in the full result—in chapter 18 he enters on the final history of the Lord's days on earth. But this, even more than any other part, shows the divine person who is above all circumstances. John was one of the three present—as near as any could be—in the agony in Gethsemane. He gives not a word of it; while Matthew, who was present at what John recounts, tells nothing of that, but does of the agony.
Now if these contrasted circumstances were not characteristic, they might not prove much; but they are most strikingly characteristic. I will briefly recall to you those mentioned by John. All point out the Son of God wholly above circumstances; the free offering up of Himself. Judas comes; the Lord advances and names Himself. They all go backward and fall to the ground. Had He sought escape, He had only to go away; but He asks again, and then says, “If ye seek me, let these go their way” —the blessed sign, as the apostle witnesses, how He stood in the gap, and, however poor and weak, the disciples escaped untouched. With this love we have perfect love to His Father, and perfect obedience. “The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” —and no more. The miracle of healing, even, is not noticed by John, though he can give the servant's name. So all His answers to the chief priest are in the calm superiority of one above all that surrounded Him, while the full guilt and madness of the Jews are fully brought out, as they are seen in all the Gospel. And in rejecting Him they deny their own place: “We have no king but Caesar.” Christ's answers before Pilate bear the same stamp as one above all.
As we had no agony in the garden, so no “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” on the cross. Finally, Jesus, knowing now all was finished, a single passage remaining to be fulfilled, says, “I thirst,” and having drunk the vinegar says, “It is finished.” He then bows His head, and gives up His own spirit. Meanwhile, in perfect calmness, He committed His mother to John, and charged John with the care of her. No bone is broken, but Joseph and Nicodemus make Him to be with the rich in His death. Now, in all this—and John, mark, was with Him, as near as any could be in His agony, and standing by at the cross; all that marked the anguished Man is omitted, and all that presents the Son of God is introduced—I find design; that is, a blessed and beautiful appearing, as a true, lowly, and obedient man, no doubt, but an appearing of the Son of God as such for faith on earth; revealing His Father all His life, and even in the circumstances of His death, Son of God still.
Two chapters remain to consider, relating His history after the resurrection. These are throughout, I do not doubt, significative as to the dispensational dealings consequent on the truths already brought out. Such applications are not like doctrines: we must leave them to the judgment of others. But I will state them here. Their orderly completeness, I have no doubt, proves the truth of the view I suggest. The fact of Christ's resurrection known only by sight, without the testimony of God in the word that He must rise, produces no effect. They go home. But Mary, out of whom seven devils had been cast, wants Jesus Himself—in ignorance, no doubt, but in true affection. When this had been fully and most beautifully brought out—the world had nothing for her but Him—Jesus reveals Himself to her, and makes her the messenger of the witness of the believer's position. He was not come back to be corporeally present for the kingdom, and reign over Israel. He could, through redemption, call His disciples brethren; and they were in the same relationship to His God and Father as He was. This gathers them, and He is in their midst, and pronounces peace—for He had now made it; then sends them forth, breathing into them the living power of the Holy Ghost. Afterward Thomas believes on seeing: but full blessing arose from believing now without seeing. Now, I have no doubt, while this put the disciples historically in their true place and relationship to God, yet we have a picture of the whole period from Christ's resurrection to the time of His return: first the remnant who had known Him before; then the assembly formed without seeing Him, and in possession of peace with God, and His presence, as assembled, then sent forth in the power of the Holy Ghost with remission of sins for others. Next is the remnant of Israel in the latter days, who will believe by seeing. This introduces the millennium. The last chapter has avowedly in it that which is mysterious, and evidently intentionally so. I have no doubt myself that it follows on consecutively after the Lord's return—seen on earth, seen in resurrection, seen now the third time, i.e., when He returns. He puts Himself on the original ground of His associations with Israel—only in power. The nets do not break, the ships do not sink. He has already gathered fish; but the great haul is then taken, and without the ensuing failure, as it was in previous service.
Remark, too, we are in Galilee, and there is no ascension. This suits John; it is divine manifestation on earth, not man's going to heaven; hence, it links on to the future display of power, not to Christ's coming to receive the assembly which is united to Him while in heaven. Peter follows Christ, and is to be cut off, and, I believe, the whole Jewish church system with him. John is left in testimony to connect it with that which is to come, so that the disciples thought he was not to die; but this was not said. Now these last points I leave to the Christian perception of every one who examines the Gospel with care: but the facts prove the coordinated character of the history, from one end of the Gospel to the other, completing one distinct and clear exhibition of Christ outside legal Judaism, in every chapter up to His taking His sheep, which closed all recognition of the fold, being Christ in contrast with that Judaism, and presenting the setting up of a new thing in Him. Peter's ministry, who served in the circumcision, like Jesus, would end like His; but John's, who represented ministry outside it, but not heavenly though leading individuals there, would go on till Christ came.