There is at this crisis of time a parallel to be found between the creation in the book of Genesis, and this beginning of the new creation in the gospel of John; and it lies in this one thing, that when God began to act in each for His own glory, everything was either in a material chaos; or else morally under sin and the curse, and was at its very worst. In Adam’s world the darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the earth was without. form, and void. We must remember too that it was this very world, made by Him four thousand years before, into which He came as “God manifest in the flesh”—a world which had lost the knowledge of God, and which now knows Him not. Moreover, it is “His own” according to the flesh, with whom He had journeyed by “the angel,” and which He had redeemed out of Egypt by the hands of Moses and Aaron, that now received Him not. How vast these differences are seen to be, between the original description in Genesis of “the beginning” of this creation, where man was only seen and known in happy relationship with the Creator, and standing before God in His own likeness too, and the Creator walking with him! In this beginning of the new creation of God in John, after the first had been “made subject to vanity,” and when the Word that was with God came forth into this ruined world in grace, it was swarming with millions of hearts which knew Him not, or would only hate Him, even if He revealed Himself to them in the mystery of flesh and blood! Who but He that came from above could bring “life and light” into it, as He did in Himself by His incarnation? Who but He could proclaim “grace and truth” in its streets as He loved to do, so long as they would let Him live to do it? Who but He could “fall into the ground and die” as a corn of wheat, that through His death He might be waved before God in resurrection on the first day of a new week, in triumph, as the first ripe sheaf from off this harvest-field that would eventually fill the heavenly garner? Who but He “could breathe upon His disciples” after He was risen from the dead, and say, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted”?
“He that cometh from above is above all;” for who but He could redeem us to God by His blood, and put us in present relationship with Himself as the ascended One with His Father and our Father, His God and our God? Who, save this Son of the bosom, could thus bring back the Father into a world from which as Creator He had withdrawn in righteous judgment, leaving the cherubim with the flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of life in proof of His holy grief against sin, and of His hot displeasure against the liar and murderer? Who else than this Son from the beginning could walk, though in unknown paths as yet, but still in conscious power, amidst all the ruin of mankind, to meet it and hush it, and call those who felt its heavy pressure the most, to come unto Him for relief, and find rest to their souls? Again, who but He could come forth from behind the cloud that concealed Him to mere flesh and blood (and yet that revealed Him to the eye of faith) in company with the Father, in that work of all other works—as “the quickener” and raiser of the dead? “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
If challenged in all these glories by the men of the Pharisees, who made a fair show of themselves in the flesh, and who refused Him in all His own characters; who but He could gird Himself with power, yea, step into another position, and as the Son of Man declare that “God had given Him authority” to execute judgment also? Have to do with the Son of God they must, for “He that cometh from above is above all;” and if they would not take eternal life and forgiveness of sins, by faith in Him while they lived upon the earth, and talked with Him in the day of grace; He would call them out of their graves to be judged by Him for their sins, and for their refusal of eternal life, in the day of the vengeance of Almighty God. They shall come forth unto the “resurrection of damnation;” for He is to be “the Judge of the quick and the dead.” In the meanwhile, He could pass along day by day in this world as through a valley of dry bones, and speak a quickening word, by which all those who heard should live, through “the incorruptible seed” dropped into the hearts that received Him. The heavenly source and springs of sovereign grace and almighty power in the Father and the Son must needs be uncovered, and flow forth in power by the Holy Ghost. The time was come to set aside the flesh, and to refuse the six waterpots of purification at Cana in Galilee, or the well at Sychar, or the pool of Bethesda, and the angel of the Lord; for these were but remedial measures, and were neither the fullness of life nor of grace. The ministry of the Son who came from above, and which is now before us, is of a totally different order, and takes its rise in “the bosom of the Father,” and flows forth through the unfailing and loving channel of Him who dwelt there; and is dispensed according to no other rule, and given out in no scant or uncertain measure to us who are its recipients. There is but one love, and this love dwells in the fullness of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and is the well from whence the living and healing waters spring forth in our gospel, where all is “from above,” and brought to us by Him who is “above all.” Sing ye unto it; for this is the well of which Jehovah spake typically to Moses— “Gather the people together, and I will give them drink.”
This new wine must be put into new bottles, and with our evangelist the bottles are as new as the wine, and “both are preserved.” Mere probation and relief imply help, and mere help is only human support; but quickening into life, is divine power. The vessel itself was in question with Nicodemus; for “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Thus in like manner “the wine for the marriage” was drawn from another vintage, and the fruit of grapes which never grew under this material sun. The bottles and the wine were by new creative power. Who does not bow before the Son of the eternal counsels, when presented in this gospel in His grandest act, as “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world”—He who will eventually bring back and put all the tempted, strayed, and lost, but “elect ones,” into correspondence with God? Yea, more than this, bring them into relationship with the Father by means of redemption through His own most precious blood, as the “Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world”? Who has not stood and wondered at the love of God which surmounted its greatest sin, and only took occasion by it to come down into its darkest hour, and send forth the dove with its olive-branch, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved?
Moreover, what was this in figure but “the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost,” that in a new nature, and under this anointing, and as sons of God, we might enter upon our new fellowship with the Father and with His Son in the light where God dwells? “The only-begotten of the Father” is thus declared to us by John, and from His first introduction by incarnation, till He comes up out of death in resurrection, and breathes out the Holy Spirit on His disciples, He passes along in His glories “full of grace and truth.” He was thus seen, and handled, and felt; so that one and another could say to us, Out “of His fullness have all we received,” and grace “answering to the grace that is in Him.” If we group the persons together of whom we have spoken, it is only to add that Nathanael received of this “fullness” when he left his place under the fig-tree, and confessed Jesus to be “the Son of God,” and “the King of Israel.” Likewise the wedding of Cana changed its character under this “fullness” to gain another and a divine one, by becoming the scene for the “beginning of miracles,” and the place where Jesus “manifested forth His glory.” So also Nicodemus, master of Israel, turned his back upon himself and the law of Moses, in order to receive “grace for grace” through faith in “the Son of Man lifted up” upon the cross; and, as we well know, the woman left her water-pot to receive from the “fullness,” and drink at the spring-head of life eternal. Again, the impotent man left the pool which he had clung to for its healing virtue, and the angel which descended at a certain season; to receive out of the “fullness” that quickening and raising and overcoming “power of life” by which he took up that whereon he lay, and walked.
Sin and transgression, violence and corruption, had ripened the world for the judgment of God in righteousness; but their existence and growth upon the earth, had likewise suited it for the fullness of quickening power and the grace of Christ. It was this turned it into a cornfield “white already to harvest,” and fitted for the reaper. The true Boaz had come “in the fullness of time” into His barley-field, and was gathering His sheaves into His bosom, as we have seen in these blessed ways of His with the elect; or else ordering those whom He had sent into harvest to let fall “handfuls of purpose” for the stranger, that the man of the Jews, and the woman of Samaria, and the cripple of Bethesda, and we, might rejoice together with the sower and reapers, and gather the fruit thereof unto life eternal. Jesus does not know this world as God created it for a resting-place, but He accepts it as sin and the devil have marred it. He found it fitted only for another sowing and another reaping, and so He uses it “as the sower” who brought the good seed to scatter broadcast over the earth.
Beautiful and suited is it for us in this our day, according to these and other patterns than the sower, to work with Jesus in His loving ways of emptying the vessels, and then filling them up to the brim, as He passed in and out amongst the sons and daughters of men, with whom “were all His delights” when on earth. Nor is He changed a whit, now that He is in the heavens; for what is the “still small voice,” if we listen to the gospel of God from the right hand of the Majesty on high, but “bring me yet a vessel,” and in the fullness and freeness of His grace adding, “borrow not a few”? Better still, if when we pass into the depths of His delights, and understand Him when He bids us to “draw out now, and bear to the governor of the feast.” And “the ruler of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.”
Blessed Jesus! and this is what thou art doing for thine own glory, and the delight of God with the sons of men—the redeemed! Well may we have this scripture engraven on the fleshy table of our hearts: “He that cometh from above is above all,” till He come again to receive us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also!
J. E. B.
(Continued from page 140)