It is only when we begin to “behold the glory of the Lord” in one light and another by the four evangelists, and especially as presented throughout this gospel of John, that our souls gather up, and at last concentrate all their rays in the one great confession of His person as “the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The knowledge of this glory will then prepare us for its blessed counterpart; namely, “the Son in the bosom of the Father” come to declare Him to us.
On our part we thankfully and gladly own, as taught of God, “He that cometh from above is above all;” and in happy keeping with this glorious manifestation of His person, one loves to hear the forerunner say of Him at the outset of this gospel, “There standeth one among you, whom ye know not; He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” Consistently too with this testimony, and the further unfolding of Christ’s glory from first to last, one loves the sweet savor of Mary’s spikenard at the close, when in the maturity of her faith and ripening affection she anointed the feet of Jesus for “His burial,” and wiped them with the hair of her head. Between these varying appreciations of John the Baptist and Mary of Bethany, the mother of Jesus likewise holds her place at “the marriage of Cana,” and in the full satisfaction and confidence of her heart bids the servants do “whatsoever He saith unto you.”
Happy and encouraging as these and other such experiences of personal love to the Lord from one and another are to us in our day, yet we only advance in it individually as we are led on by the Word, and our own anointing through the Spirit to Himself, in the deepening knowledge of who, and what He is. We shall find ourselves thus drawn into the circle “of His own glory” by His acts and deeds, and shall be detained there by the immensity of the objects which brought Him down from above, and the weighty words which He spoke, and the mighty work of redemption which He began and finished for the glorious and holy majesty of God upon this earth, ere He departed into the heavens.
In the beginning of His loving ways and intercourse with men and women day by day as “He who cometh from above,” we recall likewise with delight those two disciples whom He attracted into the place where He dwelt, and who abode with Him that day. Indeed, from His own dwelling below in the first chapter of John, on and up to “the Father’s house” above in the fourteenth, which He is gone to prepare, and into which He is presently coming to receive us, these various habitations could only suit and serve Him as they were owned or shared by “the excellent of the earth,” in whom was all His delight. His divine errand in grace to us, was to draw men out of the world to Himself, and attach them by a love which made them feel it was past all finding out, but which nevertheless had them for its object, and found its satisfaction with them and in their company. “His delights were with the sons of men;” and his whole life long was but one gathering-time, in which the whole multitudes who pressed upon Him, either to be taught or to be fed, were His welcome guests. Much more if we add to this His love, which was stronger than death, and by which He saved us on the cross, and brought us to God.
Still, as an example of its varying manner and measure, it may be helpful and certainly refreshing to recall the two extremes—of Nathanael drawn out from under the fig-tree to Him; and John, the beloved disciple, drawn to Him in the confidence of loving assurance at the supper table to repose upon His breast. So again, as “the Son of Man which is in heaven,” He drew Nicodemus on, that He might, through the cross, give him a title to life, and show him how to see and enter into the kingdom of heaven. How lovingly too He did this by the way of Moses, and the serpent lifted up upon the pole, as foreshadowed in the hour of Israel’s calamity at Hormah, and their sore rebuke under the hand of Jehovah! But in His rich grace He descended further down into the depths of human misery than this, that by impassable gulfs and distances from God (to every one else) He might draw sinners out of their distresses and ruin, and attach them by redemption through His blood eternally to Himself and to God. Who does not over and over again recall the day when He sat upon Jacob’s well, and tarried for the woman of Samaria to come for its water, that He might give to her guilty conscience and troubled heart, a drink from the springs of life in glory? How too He loved to reveal Himself, and who He was that drew the living water, as He handed it to her, and bade her thirst no more, neither come thither again to draw! Higher and mightier than the angel of Bethesda, as He traveled on He declined to trouble the water for the first who could step in, but drew forth the man—to Himself who was the last—that one who had been bound thirty and eight years, and had no friend to put him in, Immediately He takes the place as “above all,” and gave him the power to carry the bed which had hitherto held him as its captive, and in virtue of a transmitted energy which was from above, to take it up and walk, as the everyday witness of the One who had made him free.
After all, this living water to the woman of Samaria, and this loving power to the impotent man at Bethesda, are only some of the droppings out of “the fullness” which dwells in Him. In the greatness of His own glory, which He had with the Father before the world was, He had come down into this valley of Baca, as the Lamb of God, to make it a well, and even be in it as He passed along, like the rain which “filleth the pools.” He is come who alone could reach the very core of its misery, and heal it at the fountain-head of its corruption, as “the taker away of the sin of the world.” Moreover, in Him was life, and the life was the light of men; and to “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” Life and light have issued out from divine love in the bosom of the Father, and are brought into the midst of men by “the Word made flesh,” who dwelt among us in the veiled, and yet the unveiled, glory of His mysterious manhood.
“He that cometh from above is above all” was manifested in every thought and deed of His life. This brightness of the Father, is the unfailing sun of the new creation of God; and it is in “this glory” He passes along by the well and the pool in this groaning creation.
“The glory” of the One in the eternal Sonship, which He had with His Father and the Holy Ghost before ever the world was, accepted the body prepared for Him; and in this manhood-glory it is that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” He it is moreover who has thus entered into the palace of the strong man and spoiled his goods, and taken away the armor wherein he trusted. The height of His own person in the glory of the Godhead, and the depth of His own grace in the humiliation-glory of the body He assumed, were necessary for the accomplishment of the work which was given Him to do—a work which in its result reached to the highest heavens, and delivered from the lowest hell. But whatever the skill and love of the potter, “the flesh profiteth nothing;” for though He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, yet the world knew Him not.
A lapsed world and the usurper were in question before God; and therefore a world that lieth in the wicked one, in its alienation and enmity against Christ the Son. Besides this He had come “to His own” (according to the flesh), “and His own received Him not.” Where was He to turn now in such a world, when even these were against Him on whose behalf He came? Could He count upon the excited multitude who ate of the loaves and were filled, and who were moved towards Him in favor every now and then, when they saw the miracles which He wrought in Jerusalem? No! Jesus would not commit Himself to their selfishness and pride, because He knew all men, and “needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man.” Their highest thought would be to take Him by force, and make Him a king for their own political ends, and by popular will. Everything on His side with the Father was perfect, and shone out in its brightest and best; and yet at such a moment all was at its very worst with men, and pointing at the greatest moral distance from God. These extremes are manifest as we come forth to stand upon the threshold of this wonderful gospel by John. On the one hand we measure all by Him who cometh from above as the Savior of the world, and who “is above all;” or view the awful chaos, and confusion, and enmity which came from beneath, and with which sin, and Satan, and death filled it, and wrapped it around.
J. E. B.