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Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




The word 'for' is a little singular. Of course it means _instead of,
in exchange for_; and the Evangelist's idea seems to be that as one
supply of grace is given and used, it is, as it were, given back to
the Bestower, who substitutes for it a fresh and unused vessel, filled
with new grace. He might have said, grace _upon_ grace; one supply
being piled upon the other. But his notion is, rather, one supply
given in substitution for the other, 'new lamps for old ones.'

Just as a careful gardener will stand over a plant that needs water,
and will pour the water on the surface until the earth has drunk it
up, and then add a little more; so He gives step by step, grace for
grace, an uninterrupted bestowal, yet regulated according to the
absorbing power of the heart that receives it. Underlying that great
thought are two things: the continuous communication of grace, and the
progressive communication of grace. We have here the continuous
communication of grace. God is always pouring Himself out upon us in
Christ. There is a perpetual out flow from Him to us: if there is not
a perpetual inflow into us from Him it is our fault, and not His. He
is always giving, and His intention is that our lives shall be a
continual reception. Are they? How many Christian men there are whose
Christian lives at the best are like some of those Australian or
Siberian rivers; in the dry season, a pond here, a stretch of sand,
waterless and barren there, then another place with a drop of muddy
water in some hollow, and then another stretch of sand, and so on. Why
should not the ponds be linked together by a flashing stream? God is
always pouring Himself out; why do we not always take Him in?

There is but one answer, and the answer is, that we do not fulfil the
condition, which condition is simple faith. 'As many as received Him,
to them gave He power to become the sons of God; even to them that
believed on His name.' Faith is the condition of receiving, and
wherever there is a continuous trust there will be an unbroken grace;
and wherever there are interrupted gifts it is because there has been
an intermitted trust in Him. Do not let your lives be like some dimly
lighted road, with a lamp here, and a stretch of darkness, and then
another twinkling light; let the light run all along the side of your
path, because at every moment your heart is turning to Christ with
trust. Make your faith continuous, and God will make His grace
incessant, and out of His fulness you will draw continual supplies of
needed strength.

But not only have we here the notion of continuous, but also, as it
seems to me, of progressive gifts. Each measure of Christ received, if
we use it aright, makes us capable of possessing more of Christ. And
the measure of our capacity is the measure of His gift, and the more
we can hold the more we shall get. The walls of our hearts are
elastic, the vessel expands by being filled out; it throbs itself
wider by desire and faith. The wider we open our mouths the larger
will be the gift that God puts into them. Each measure and stage of
grace utilised and honestly employed will make us capable and
desirous, and, therefore, possessors, of more and more of the grace
that He gives. So the ideal of the Christian life, and God's intention
concerning us, is not only that we should have an uninterrupted, but a
growing possession, of Christ and of His grace.

Is that the case with you, my friend? Can you hold more of God than
you could twenty years ago? Is there any more capacity in your soul
for more of Christ than there was long, long ago? If there is you have
more of Him; if you have not more of Him it is because you cannot
contain more; and you cannot contain more because you have not desired
more, and because you have been so wretchedly unfaithful in your use
of what you had. The ideal is, 'they go from strength to strength,'
and the end of that is, 'every one of them appeareth before God.'

So, dear brother, as the dash of the waves will hollow out some little
indentation on the coast, and make it larger and larger until there is
a great bay, with its headlands miles apart, and its deep bosom
stretching far into the interior, and all the expanse full of flashing
waters and leaping waves, so the giving Christ works a place for
Himself in a man's heart, and makes the spirit which receives and
faithfully uses the gifts which He brings, capable of more of Himself,
and fills the widened space with larger gifts and new grace.

Only remember the condition of having Him is trusting to His name and
longing for His presence. 'If any man open the door I will come in.'
We have Him if we trust Him. That trust is no mere passive reception,
such as is the case with some empty jar which lies open-mouthed on the
shore and lets the sea wash into it and out of it, as may happen. But
the 'receive' of our text might be as truly rendered 'take.' Faith is
an active taking, not a passive receiving. We must 'lay hold on
eternal life.' Faith is the hand that grasps the offered gift, the
mouth that feeds upon the bread of God, the voice that says to Christ,
'Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord; why standest Thou without?' Such a
faith alone brings us into vital connection with Jesus. Without it,
you will be none the richer for all His fulness, and may perish of
famine in the midst of plenty, like a man dying of hunger outside the
door of a granary. They who believe take the Saviour who is given, and
they who take receive, and they who receive obtain day by day growing
grace from the fulness of Christ, and so come ever nearer to the
realisation of the ultimate purpose of the Father, that they should be
'filled with all the fulness of God.'




GRACE AND TRUTH

'The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ.'--JOHN 1. 17.

There are scarcely any traces, in the writings of the Apostle John, of
that great controversy as to the relation of the Law and the Gospel
which occupied and embittered so much of the work of the Apostle Paul.
We have floated into an entirely different region in John's writings.
The old controversies are dead--settled, I suppose, mainly by Paul's
own words, and also to a large extent by the logic of events. This
verse is almost the only one in which John touches upon that extinct
controversy, and here the Law is introduced simply as a foil to set
off the brightness of the Gospel. All artists know the value of
contrast in giving prominence. A dark background flashes up brighter
colours into brilliancy. White is never so white as when it is
relieved against black. And so here the special preciousness and
distinctive peculiarities of what we receive in Christ are made more
vivid and more distinct by contrast with what in old days 'was given
by Moses.'

Every word in this verse is significant. 'Law' is set against 'grace
and truth.' It was 'given'; they 'came.' Moses is contrasted with
Christ. So we have a threefold antithesis as between Law and Gospel:
in reference to their respective contents; in reference to the manner
of their communication; and in reference to the person of their
Founders. And I think, if we look at these three points, we shall get
some clear apprehension of the glories of that Gospel which the
Apostle would thereby commend to our affection and to our faith.

I. First of all, then, we have here the special glory of the contents
of the Gospel heightened by the contrast with Law.

Law has no tenderness, no pity, no feeling. Tables of stone and a pen
of iron are its fitting vehicles. Flashing lightnings and rolling
thunders symbolise the fierce light which it casts upon men's duty and
the terrors of its retribution. Inflexible, and with no compassion for
human weakness, it tells us what we ought to be, but it does not help
us to be it. It 'binds heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne,' upon
men's consciences, but puts not forth 'the tip of a finger' to enable
men to bear them. And this is true about law in all forms, whether it
be the Mosaic Law, or whether it be the law of our own country, or
whether it be the laws written upon men's consciences. These all
partake of the one characteristic, that they help nothing to the
fulfilment of their own behests, and that they are barbed with
threatenings of retribution. Like some avenging goddess, law comes
down amongst men, terrible in her purity, awful in her beauty, with a
hard light in her clear grey eyes--in the one hand the tables of
stone, bearing the commandments which we have broken, and in the other
a sharp two-edged sword.

And this is the opposite of all that comes to us in the Gospel. The
contrast divides into two portions. The 'Law' is set against 'grace
and truth.' Let us look at these two in order.

What we have in Christ is not law, but grace. Law, as I said, has no
heart; the meaning of the Gospel is the unveiling of the heart of God.
Law commands and demands; it says: 'This shalt thou do, or else--';
and it has nothing more that it can say. What is the use of standing
beside a lame man, and pointing to a shining summit, and saying to
him, 'Get up there, and you will breathe a purer atmosphere'? He is
lying lame at the foot of it. There is no help for any soul in law.
Men are not perishing because they do not know what they ought to do.
Men are not bad because they doubt as to what their duty is. The worst
man in the world knows a great deal more of what he ought to do than
the best man in the world practises. So it is not for want of precepts
that so many of us are going to destruction, but it is for want of
power to fulfil the precepts.

Grace is love giving. Law demands, grace bestows. Law comes saying 'Do
this,' and our consciences respond to the imperativeness of the
obligation. But grace comes and says, 'I will help thee to do it.' Law
is God requiring; grace is God bestowing. 'Give what Thou commandest,
and then command what Thou wilt.'

Oh, brethren! we have all of us written upon the fleshly tablets of
our hearts solemn commandments which we know are binding upon us; and
which we sometimes would fain keep, but cannot. Is this not a message
of hope and blessedness that comes to us? Grace has drawn near in
Jesus Christ, and a giving God, who bestows upon us a life that will
unfold itself in accordance with the highest law, holds out the
fulness of His gift in that Incarnate Word. Law has no heart; the
Gospel is the unveiling of the heart of God. Law commands; grace is
God bestowing Himself.

And still further, law condemns. Grace is love that bends down to an
evildoer, and deals not on the footing of strict retribution with the
infirmities and the sins of us poor weaklings. And so, seeing that no
man that lives but hears in his heart an accusing voice, and that
every one of us knows what it is to gaze upon lofty duties that we
have shrunk from, upon plain obligations from the yoke of which we
have selfishly and cowardly withdrawn our necks; seeing that every
man, woman, and child listening to me now has, lurking in some corner
of their hearts, a memory that only needs to be quickened to be a
torture, and deeds that only need to have the veil drawn away from
them to terrify and shame them--oh! surely it ought to be a word of
gladness for every one of us that, in front of any law that condemns
us, stands forth the gentle, gracious form of the Christ that brings
pardon, and 'the grace of God that bringeth salvation unto all men.'
Thank God! law needed to be 'given,' but it was only the foundation on
which was to be reared a better thing. 'The law was given By
Moses'--'a schoolmaster,' as conscience is to-day, 'to bring us to
Christ' by whom comes the grace that loves, that stoops, that gives,
and that pardons.

Still further, there is another antithesis here. The Gospel which
comes by Christ is not law, but truth. The object of law is to
regulate conduct, and only subordinately to inform the mind or to
enlighten the understanding. The Mosaic Law had for its foundation, of
course, a revelation of God. But that revelation of God was less
prominent, proportionately, than the prescription for man's conduct.
The Gospel is the opposite of this. It has for its object the
regulation of conduct; but that object is less prominent,
proportionately, than the other, the manifestation and the revelation
of God. The Old Testament says 'Thou shalt'; the New Testament says
'God is.' The Old was Law; the New is Truth.

And so we may draw the inference, on which I do not need to dwell, how
miserably inadequate and shallow a conception of Christianity that is
which sets it forth as being mainly a means of regulating conduct, and
how false and foolish that loose talk is that we hear many a
time.--'Never mind about theological subtleties; conduct is the main
thing.' Not so. The Gospel is not law; the Gospel is truth. It is a
revelation of God to the understanding and to the heart, in order that
thereby the will may be subdued, and that then the conduct may be
shaped and moulded. But let us begin where it begins, and let us
remember that the morality of the New Testament has never long been
held up high and pure, where the theology of the New Testament has
been neglected and despised. 'The law came by Moses; truth came by
Jesus Christ.'

But, still further, let me remind you that, in the revelation of a God
who is gracious, giving to our emptiness and forgiving our sins--that
is to say, in the revelation of grace--we have a far deeper, nobler,
more blessed conception of the divine nature than in law. It is great
to think of a righteous God, it is great and ennobling to think of One
whose pure eyes cannot look upon sin, and who wills that men should
live pure and noble and Godlike lives. But it is far more and more
blessed, transcending all the old teaching, when we sit at the feet of
the Christ who gives, and who pardons, and look up into His deep eyes,
with the tears of compassion shining in them, and say: 'Lo! This is
our God! We have waited for Him and He will save us.' That is a better
truth, a deeper truth than prophets and righteous men of old
possessed; and to us there has come, borne on the wings of the mighty
angel of His grace, the precious revelation of the Father-God whose
heart is love. 'The law was given by Moses,' but brighter than the
gleam of the presence between the Cherubim is the lambent light of
gentle tenderness that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. Grace,
and therefore truth, a deeper truth, came by Him.

And, still further, let me remind you of how this contrast is borne
out by the fact that all that previous system was an adumbration, a
shadow and a premonition of the perfect revelation that was to come.
Temple, priest, sacrifice, law, the whole body of the Mosaic
constitution of things was, as it were, a shadow thrown along the road
in advance by the swiftly coming King. The shadow fell before Him, but
when He came the shadow disappeared. The former was a system of types,
symbols, pictures. Here is the reality that antiquates and fulfils and
transcends them all. 'The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ.'

II. Now, secondly, look at the other contrast that is here, between
giving and coming.

I do not know that I have quite succeeded in making clear to my own
mind the precise force of this antithesis. Certainly there is a
profound meaning if one can fathom it; perhaps one might put it best
in something like the following fashion.

The word rendered 'came' might be more correctly translated 'became,'
or 'came into being.' The law was _given_; grace and truth _came to
be_.

Now, what do we mean when we talk about a law being given? We simply
mean, I suppose, that it is promulgated, either in oral or in written
words. It is, after all, no more than so many words. It is given when
it is spoken or published. It is a verbal communication at the best.
'But grace and truth came to be.' They are realities; they are not
words. They are not communicated by sentences, they are actual
existences; and they spring into being as far as man's historical
possession and experience of them are concerned--they spring into
being in Jesus Christ, and through Him they belong to us all. Not that
there was no grace, no manifest lore of God, in the world, nor any
true knowledge of Him before the Incarnation, but the earlier portions
of this chapter remind us that all of grace, however restrained and
partial, that all of truth, however imperfect and shadowy it may have
been, which were in the world before Christ came, were owing to the
operation of that Eternal Word 'Who became flesh and dwelt among us,'
and that these, in comparison with the affluence and the fulness and
the nearness of grace and truth after Christ's coming, were so small
and remote that it is not an exaggeration to say that, as far as man's
possession and experience of them are concerned, the giving love of
God and the clear and true knowledge of His deep heart of tenderness
and grace, sprang into being with the historical manifestation of
Jesus Christ the Lord.

He comes to reveal by no words. His gift is not like the gift that
Moses brought down from the mountain, merely a writing upon tables;
His gift is not the letter of an outward commandment, nor the letter
of an outward revelation. It is the thing itself which He reveals by
being it. He does not speak about grace, He brings it; He does not
show us God by His words, He shows us God by His acts. He does not
preach about Him, but He lives Him, He manifests Him. His gentleness,
His compassion, His miracles, His wisdom, His patience, His tears, His
promises; all these are the very Deity in action before our eyes; and
instead of a mere verbal revelation, which is so imperfect and so
worthless, grace and truth, the living realities, are flashed upon a
darkened world in the face of Jesus Christ. How cold, how hard, how
superficial, in comparison with that fleshly table of the heart of
Christ on which grace and truth were written, are the stony tables of
law, which bore after all, for all their majesty, only words which are
breath and nothing besides.

III. And so, lastly, look at the contrast that is drawn here between
the persons of the Founders.

I do not suppose that we are to take into consideration the difference
between the limitations of the one and the completeness of the other.
I do not suppose that the Apostle was thinking about the difference
between the reluctant service of the Lawgiver and the glad obedience
of the Son; or between the passion and the pride that sometimes marred
Moses' work, and the continual calmness and patient meekness that
perfected the sacrifice of Jesus. Nor do I suppose that there flashed
before his memory the difference between that strange tomb where God
buried the prophet, unknown of men, in the stern solitude of the
desert, true symbol of the solemn mystery and awful solitude with
which the law which we have broken invests death, to our trembling
consciences, and the grave in the garden with the spring flowers
bursting round it, and visited by white-robed angels, who spoke
comfort to weeping friends, true picture of what His death makes the
grave for all His followers.

But I suppose he was mainly thinking of the contrast between the
relation of Moses to his law, and of Christ to His Gospel. Moses was
but a medium. His personality had nothing to do with his message. You
may take away Moses, and the law stands all the same. But Christ is so
interwoven with Christ's message that you cannot rend the two apart;
you cannot have the figure of Christ melt away, and the gift that
Christ brought remain. If you extinguish the sun you cannot keep the
sunlight; if you put away Christ in the fulness of His manhood and of
His divinity, in the power of His Incarnation and the omnipotence of
His cross--if you put away Christ from Christianity, it collapses into
dust and nothingness.

So, dear brethren, do not let any of us try that perilous experiment.
You cannot melt away Jesus and keep grace and truth. You cannot tamper
with His character, with His nature, with the mystery of His passion,
with the atoning power of His cross, and preserve the blessings that
He has brought to the world. If you want the grace which is the
unveiling of the heart of God, the gift of a giving God and the pardon
of a forgiving Judge; or if you want the truth, the reality of the
knowledge of Him, you can only get them by accepting Christ. 'I _am_
the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.' There _is_ a 'law given which
gives life,' and 'righteousness _is_ by that law.' There is a Person
who is the Truth, and our knowledge of the truth is through that
Person, and through Him alone. By humble faith receive Him into your
hearts, and He will come bringing to you the fulness of grace and
truth.




THE WORLD'S SIN-BEARER

'The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'--JOHN i. 29.

Our Lord, on returning from His temptation in the wilderness, came
straight to John the Baptist. He was welcomed with these wonderful and
rapturous words, familiarity with which has deadened our sense of
their greatness. How audacious they would sound to some of their first
hearers! Think of these two, one of them a young Galilean carpenter,
to whom His companion witnesses and declares that He is of worldwide
and infinite significance. It was the first public designation of
Jesus Christ, and it throws into exclusive prominence one aspect of
His work.

John the Baptist summing up the whole of former revelation which
concentrated in Him, pointed a designating finger to Jesus and said,
'That is He!' My text is the sum of all Christian teaching ever since.
My task, and that of all preachers, if we understand it aright, is but
to repeat the same message, and to concentrate attention on the same
fact--'The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.' It is
the one thing needful for you, dear friend, to believe. It is the
truth that we all need most of all. There is no reason for our being
gathered together now, except that I may beseech you to behold for
yourselves the Lamb of God which takes away the world's sin.

I. Now let me ask you to note, first, that Jesus Christ is the world's
sin-bearer.

The significance of the first clause of my text, 'the Lamb of God,' is
deplorably weakened if it is taken to mean only, or mainly, that Jesus
Christ, in the sweetness of His human nature, is gentle and meek and
patient and innocent and pure. It _does_ mean all that, thank God! But
it was no mere description of Christ's disposition which John the
Baptist conceived himself to be uttering, as is clear by the words
that follow in the next clause. His reason for selecting (under divine
guidance, as I believe) that image of 'the Lamb of God,' went a great
deal deeper than anything in the temper of the Person of whom he was
speaking. Many streams of ancient prophecy and ritual converge upon
this emblem, and if we want to understand what is meant by the
designation 'the Lamb of God,' we must not content ourselves with the
sentimentalisms which some superficial teachers have supposed to
exhaust the significance of the expression; but we must submit to be
led back by John, who was the summing up of all the ancient
Revelation, to the sources in that Revelation from which he drew this
metaphor.

First and chiefest of these, as I take it, are the words which no Jew
ever doubted referred to the Messiah, until after He had come, and the
Rabbis would not believe in Him, and so were bound to hunt up another
interpretation--I mean the great words in the prophecy which, I
suppose, is familiar to most of us, where there are found two
representations, one, 'He was led as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a
sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'; and
the other, still more germane to the purpose of my text, 'the Lord
hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.... By His knowledge shall He
justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.' John the Baptist,
looking back through the ages to that ancient prophetic utterance,
points to the young Man standing by his side, and says, 'There it is
fulfilled.'

But the prophetic symbol of the Lamb, and the thought that He bore the
iniquity of the many, had their roots in the past, and pointed back to
the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of the daily sacrifice, and especially
to the lamb slain at the Passover, which was an emblem and sacrament
of deliverance from bondage. Thus the conceptions of vicarious
suffering, and of a death which is a deliverance, and of blood which,
sprinkled on the doorposts, guards the house from the destroying
angel, are all gathered into these words.

Nor do these exhaust the sources of this figure, as it comes from the
venerable and sacred past. For when we read 'the Lamb _of God_,' who
is there that does not recognise, unless his eyes are blinded by
obstinate prejudice, a glance backward to that sweet and pathetic
story when the father went up with his son to the top of Mount Moriah,
and to the boy's question, 'Where is the lamb?' answered, 'My son, God
Himself will provide the lamb!' John says, 'Behold the Lamb that God
_has_ provided, the Sacrifice, on whom is laid a world's sins, and who
bears them away.'

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