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Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




Note, too, the universality of the power of Christ's sacrificial work.
John does not say 'the _sins_,' as the Litany, following an imperfect
translation, makes him say. But he says, 'the _sin_ of the world,' as
if the whole mass of human transgression was bound together, in one
black and awful bundle, and laid upon the unshrinking shoulders of
this better Atlas who can bear it all, and bear it all away. Your sin,
and mine, and every man's, they were all laid upon Jesus Christ.

Now remember, dear brethren, that in this wondrous representation
there lie, plain and distinct, two things which to me, and I pray they
may be to you, are the very foundation of the Gospel to which we have
to trust. One is that on Christ Jesus, in His life and in His death,
were laid the guilt and the consequences of a world's sin. I do not
profess to be ready with an explanation of how that is possible. That
it is a fact I believe, on the authority of Christ Himself and of
Scripture; that it is inconsistent with the laws of human nature may
be asserted, but never can be proved. Theories manifold have been
invented in order to make it plain. I do not know that any of them
have gone to the bottom of the bottomless. But Christ in His perfect
manhood, wedded, as I believe it is, to true divinity, is capable of
entering into--not merely by sympathy, though that has much to do with
it--such closeness of relation with human kind, and with every man, as
that on Him can be laid the iniquity of us all.

Oh, brethren! what was the meaning of 'I have a baptism to be baptized
with,' unless the cold waters of the flood into which He unshrinkingly
stepped, and allowed to flow over Him, were made by the gathered
accumulation of the sins of the whole world? What was the meaning of
the agony in Gethsemane? What was the meaning of that most awful word
ever spoken by human lips, in which the consciousness of union with,
and of separation from, God, were so marvellously blended, 'My God! my
God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?' unless the Guiltless was then loaded
with the sins of the world, which rose between Him and God?

Dear friends, it seems to me that unless this transcendent element be
fairly recognised as existing in the passion and death of Jesus
Christ, His demeanour when He came to die was far less heroic and
noble and worthy of imitation than have been the deaths of hundreds of
people who drew all their strength to die from Him. I do not venture
to bring a theory, but I press upon you the fact, He bears the sins of
the world, and in that awful load are yours and mine.

There is the other truth here, as clearly, and perhaps more directly,
meant by the selection of the expression in my text, that the
Sin-bearer not only carries, but carries _away_, the burden that is
laid upon Him. Perhaps there may be a reference--in addition to the
other sources of the figure which I have indicated as existing in
ritual, and prophecy, and history--there may be a reference in the
words to yet another of the eloquent symbols of that ancient system
which enshrined truths that were not peculiar to any people, but were
the property of humanity. You remember, no doubt, the singular
ceremonial connected with the scapegoat, and many of you will recall
the wonderful embodiment of it given by the Christian genius of a
modern painter. The sins of the nation were symbolically laid upon its
head, and it was carried out to the edge of the wilderness and driven
forth to wander alone, bearing away upon itself into the darkness and
solitude--far from man and far from God--the whole burden of the
nation's sins. Jesus Christ takes away the sin which He bears, and
there is, as I believe, only one way by which individuals, or society,
or the world at large, can thoroughly get rid of the guilt and penal
consequences and of the dominion of sin, and that is, by beholding the
Lamb of God that takes upon Himself, that He may carry away out of
sight, the sin of the world. So much, then, for the first thought that
I wish to suggest to you.

II. Now let me ask you to look with me at a second thought, that such
a world's Sin-bearer is the world's deepest need.

The sacrifices of every land witness to the fact that humanity all
over the world, and through all the ages, and under all varieties of
culture, has been dimly conscious that its deepest need was that the
fact of sin should be dealt with. I know that there are plenty of
modern ingenious ways of explaining the universal prevalence of an
altar and a sacrifice, and the slaying of innocent creatures, on other
grounds, some of which I think it is not uncharitable to suppose are
in favour mainly because they weaken this branch of the evidence for
the conformity of Christian truth with human necessities. But
notwithstanding these, I venture to affirm, with all proper submission
to wiser men, that you cannot legitimately explain the universal
prevalence of sacrifice, unless you take into account as one--I should
say the main--element in it, this universally diffused sense that
things are wrong between man and the higher Power, and need to be set
right even by such a method.

But I do not need to appeal only to this world-wide fact as being a
declaration of what man's deepest need is. I would appeal to every
man's own consciousness--hard though it be to get at it; buried as it
is, with some of us, under mountains of indifference and neglect; and
callous as it is with many of us by reason of indulgence in habits of
evil. I believe that in every one of us, if we will be honest, and
give heed to the inward voice, there does echo a response and an amen
to the Scripture declaration, 'God hath shut up all under sin.' I ask
you about yourselves, is it not so? Do you not know that, however you
may gloss over the thing, or forget it amidst a whirl of engagements
and occupations, or try to divert your thoughts into more or less
noble or ignoble channels of pleasures and pursuits, there does lie,
in each of our hearts, the sense, dormant often, but sometimes like a
snake in its hybernation, waking up enough to move, and sometimes
enough to sting--there does lie, in each of us, the consciousness that
we are wrong with God, and need something to put us right?

And, brethren, let modern philanthropists of all sorts take this
lesson: The thing that the world wants is to have sin dealt
with--dealt with in the way of conscious forgiveness; dealt with in
the way of drying up its source, and delivering men from the power of
it. Unless you do that, I do not say you do nothing, but you pour a
bottle full of cold water into Vesuvius, and try to put the fire out
with that. You may educate, you may cultivate, you may refine; you may
set political and economical arrangements right in accordance with the
newest notions of the century, and what then? Why! the old thing will
just begin over again, and the old miseries will appear again, because
the old grandmother of them all is there, the sin that has led to
them.

Now do not misunderstand me, as if I were warring against good and
noble men who are trying to remedy the world's evils by less thorough
methods than Christ's Gospel. They will do a great deal. But you may
have high education, beautiful refinement of culture and manners; you
may divide out political power in accordance with the most democratic
notions; you may give everybody 'a living wage,' however extravagant
his notions of a living wage may be. You may carry out all these
panaceas and the world will groan still, because you have not dealt
with the tap-root of all the mischief. You cannot cure an internal
cancer with a plaster upon the little finger, and you will never
stanch the world's wounds until you go to the Physician that has balm
and bandage, even Jesus Christ, that takes away the sins of the world.
I profoundly distrust all these remedies for the world's misery as in
themselves inadequate, even whilst I would help them all, and regard
them all as then blessed and powerful, when they are consequences and
secondary results of the Gospel, the first task of which is to deal by
forgiveness and by cleansing with individual transgression.

And if I might venture to go a step further, I would like to say that
this aspect of our Lord's work on which John the Baptist concentrated
all our attention is the only one which gives Him power to sway men,
and which makes the Gospel--the record of His work--the kingly power
in the world that it is meant to be. Depend upon it, that in the
measure in which Christian teachers fail to give supreme importance to
that aspect of Christ's work they fail altogether. There are many
other aspects which, as I have just said, follow in my conception from
this first one; but if, as is obviously the tendency in many quarters
to-day, Christianity be thought of as being mainly a means of social
improvement, or if its principles of action be applied to life without
that basis of them all, in the Cross which takes away the world's
iniquity, then it needs no prophet to foretell that such a
Christianity will only have superficial effects, and that, in losing
sight of this central thought, it will have cast away all its power.

I beseech you, dear brethren, remember that Jesus Christ is something
more than a social reformer, though He is the first of them, and the
only one whose work will last. Jesus Christ is something more than a
lovely pattern of human conduct, though He is that. Jesus Christ is
something more than a great religious genius who set forth the
Fatherhood of God as it had never been set forth before. The Gospel of
Jesus Christ is the record not only of what He said but of what He
did, not only that He lived but that He died; and all His other
powers, and all His other benefits and blessings to society, come as
results of His dealing with the individual soul when He takes away its
guilt and reconciles it to God.

III. And so, lastly, let me ask you to notice that this Sin-bearer of
the world is our Sin-bearer if we 'behold' Him.

John was simply summoning ignorant eyes to look, and telling of what
they would see. But his call is susceptible, without violence, of a
far deeper meaning. This is really the one truth that I want to press
upon you, dear friends--'Behold the Lamb of God!'

What is that beholding? Surely it is nothing else than our recognising
in Him the great and blessed work which I have been trying to
describe, and then resting ourselves upon that great Lord and
sufficient Sacrifice. And such an exercise of simple trust is well
named beholding, because they who believe do see, with a deeper and a
truer vision than sense can give. You and I can see Christ more really
than these men who stood round Him, and to whom His flesh was 'a
veil'--as the Epistle to the Hebrews calls it--hiding His true
divinity and work. They who thus behold by faith lack nothing either
of the directness or of the certitude that belong to vision. 'Seeing
is believing,' says the cynical proverb. The Christian version inverts
its terms, 'Believing is seeing.' 'Whom having not seen ye love, in
whom though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice.'

And your simple act of 'beholding,' by the recognition of His work and
the resting of yourself upon it, makes the world's Sin-bearer your
Sin-bearer. You appropriate the general blessing, like a man taking in
a little piece of a boundless prairie for his very own. Your
possession does not make my possession of Him less, for every eye gets
its own beam, and however many eyes wait upon Him, they all receive
the light on to their happy eyeballs. You can make Christ your own,
and have all that He has done for the world as your possession, and
can experience in your own hearts the sense of your own forgiveness
and deliverance from the power and guilt of your own sin, on the
simple condition of looking unto Jesus. The serpent is lifted on the
pole, the dying camp cannot go to it, but the filming eyes of the man
in his last gasp may turn to the gleaming image hanging on high; and
as he looks the health begins to tingle back into his veins, and he is
healed.

And so, dear brethren, behold Him; for unless you do, though He has
borne the world's sin, your sin will not be there, but will remain on
your back to crush you down. 'O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins
of the world, have mercy upon _me_!'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: I. JOHN AND ANDREW

'And the two disciples heard Him speak, and they followed Jesus. 38.
Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What
seek ye? They said unto Him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being
interpreted, Master,) where dwellest Thou? 39. He saith unto them,
Come and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him
that day: for it was about the tenth hour.'--JOHN i. 37-39.

In these verses we see the head waters of a great river, for we have
before us nothing less than the beginnings of the Christian Church. So
simply were the first disciples made. The great society of believers
was born like its Master, unostentatiously and in a corner.

Jesus has come back from His conflict in the wilderness after His
baptism, and has presented Himself before John the Baptist for his
final attestation. It was a great historical moment when the last of
the Prophets stood face to face with the Fulfilment of all prophecy.
In his words, 'Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world!' Jewish prophecy sang its swan-song, uttered its last
rejoicing, 'Eureka! I have found Him!' and died as it spoke.

We do not sufficiently estimate the magnificent self-suppression and
unselfishness of the Baptist, in that he, with his own lips, here
repeats his testimony in order to point his disciples away from
himself, and to attach them to Jesus. If he could have been touched by
envy he would not so gladly have recognised it as his lot to decrease
while Jesus increased. Bare magnanimity that in a teacher! The two who
hear John's words are Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, and an anonymous
man. The latter is probably the Evangelist. For it is remarkable that
we never find the names of James and John in this Gospel (though from
the other Gospels we know how closely they were associated with our
Lord), and that we only find them referred to as 'the sons of
Zebedee,' once near the close of the book. That fact points, I think,
in the direction of John's authorship of this Gospel.

These two, then, follow behind Jesus, fancying themselves unobserved,
not desiring to speak to Him, and probably with some notion of
tracking Him to His home, in order that they may seek an interview at
a later period. But He who notices the first beginnings of return to
Him, and always comes to meet men, and is better to them than their
wishes, will not let them steal behind Him uncheered, nor leave them
to struggle with diffidence and delay. So He turns to them, and the
events ensue which I have read in the verses that follow as my text.

We have, I think, three things especially to notice here. First, the
Master's question to the whole world, 'What seek ye?' Second, the
Master's invitation to the whole world, 'Come and see!' Lastly, the
personal communion which brings men's hearts to Him, 'They came and
saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day.'

I. So, then, first look at this question of Christ to the whole world,
'What seek ye?'

As it stands, on its surface, and in its primary application, it is
the most natural of questions. Our Lord hears footsteps behind Him,
and, as any one would do, turns about, with the question which any one
would ask, 'What is it that you want?' That question would derive all
its meaning from the look with which it was accompanied, and the tone
in which it was spoken. It might mean either annoyance and rude
repulsion of a request, even before it was presented, or it might mean
a glad wish to draw out the petition, and more than half a pledge to
bestow it. All depends on the smile with which it was asked and the
intonation of voice which carried it to their ears. And if we had been
there we should have felt, as these two evidently felt, that though in
form a question, it was in reality a promise, and that it drew out
their shy wishes, made them conscious to themselves of what they
desired, and gave them confidence that their desire would be granted.
Clearly it had sunk very deep into the Evangelist's mind; and now, at
the end of his life, when his course is nearly run, the never-to-be-
forgotten voice sounds still in his memory, and he sees again, in
sunny clearness, all the scene that had transpired on that day by the
fords of the Jordan. The first words and the last words of those whom
we have learned to love are cut deep on our hearts.

It was not an accident that the first words which the Master spoke in
His Messianic office were this profoundly significant question, 'What
seek ye?' He asks it of us all, He asks it of us to-day. Well for them
who can answer, 'Rabbi! where dwellest _Thou_?' 'It is Thou whom we
seek!' So, venturing to take the words in that somewhat wider
application, let me just suggest to you two or three directions in
which they seem to point.

First, the question suggests to us this: the need of having a clear
consciousness of what is our object in life. The most of men have
never answered that question. They live from hand to mouth, driven by
circumstances, guided by accidents, impelled by unreflecting passions
and desires, knowing what they want for the moment, but never having
tried to shape the course of their lives into a consistent whole, so
as to stand up before God in Christ when He puts the question to them,
'What seek ye?' and to answer the question.

These incoherent, instinctive, unreflective lives that so many of you
are living are a shame to your manhood, to say nothing more. God has
made us for something else than that we should thus be the sport of
circumstances. It is a disgrace to any of us that our lives should be
like some little fishing-boat, with an unskilful or feeble hand at the
tiller, yawing from one point of the compass to another, and not
keeping a straight and direct course. I pray you, dear brethren, to
front this question: 'After all, and at bottom, what is it I am living
for? Can I formulate the aims and purposes of my life in any
intelligible statement of which I should not be ashamed?' Some of you
are not ashamed to do what you would be very much ashamed to say, and
you practically answer the question, 'What are you seeking?' by
pursuits that you durst not call by their own ugly names.

There may be many of us who are living for our lusts, for our
passions, for our ambitions, for avarice, who are living in all
uncleanness and godlessness. I do not know. There are plenty of
shabby, low aims in all of us which do not bear being dragged out into
the light of day. I beseech you to try and get hold of the ugly things
and bring them up to the surface, however much they may seek to hide
in the congenial obscurity and twist their slimy coils round something
in the dark. If you dare not put your life's object into words,
bethink yourselves whether it ought to be your life's object at all.

Ah, brethren! if we would ask ourselves this question, and answer it
with any thoroughness, we should not make so many mistakes as to the
places where we look for the things for which we are seeking. If we
knew what we were really seeking, we should know where to go to look
for it. Let me tell you what you are seeking, whether you know it or
not. You are seeking for rest for your heart, a home for your spirits;
you are seeking for perfect truth for your understandings, perfect
beauty for your affections, perfect goodness for your conscience. You
are seeking for all these three, gathered into one white beam of
light, and you are seeking for it all in a Person. Many of you do not
know this, and so you go hunting in all manner of impossible places
for that which you can only find in one. To the question, 'What seek
ye?' the deepest of all answers, the only real answer, is, 'My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God.' If you know that, you know
where to look for what you need! 'Do men gather grapes of thorns?' If
these are really the things that you are seeking after, in all your
mistaken search--oh! how mistaken is the search! Do men look for
pearls in cockle-shells, or for gold in coal-pits; and why should you
look for rest of heart, mind, conscience, spirit, anywhere and in
anything short of God? 'What seek ye?'--the only answer is, 'We seek
_Thee_!'

And then, still further, let me remind you how these words are not
only a question, but are really a veiled and implied promise. The
question, 'What do you want of Me?' may either strike an intending
suppliant like a blow, and drive him away with his prayer sticking in
his throat unspoken, or it may sound like a merciful invitation, 'What
is thy petition, and what is thy request, and it shall be granted unto
thee?' We know which of the two it was here. Christ asks all such
questions as this (and there are many of them in the New Testament),
not for His information, but for our strengthening. He asks people,
not because He does not know before they answer, but that, on the one
hand, their own minds may be clear as to their wishes, and so they may
wish the more earnestly because of the clearness; and that, on the
other hand, their desires being expressed, they may be the more able
to receive the gift which He is willing to bestow. So He here turns to
these men, whose purpose He knew well enough, and says to them, 'What
seek ye?' Herein He is doing the very same thing on a lower level, and
in an outer sphere, as is done when He appoints that we shall pray for
the blessings which He is yearning to bestow, but which He makes
conditional on our supplications, only because by these supplications
our hearts are opened to a capacity for receiving them.

We have, then, in the words before us, thus understood, our Lord's
gracious promise to give what is desired on the simple condition that
the suppliant is conscious of his own wants, and turns to Him for the
supply of them. 'What seek ye?' It is a blank cheque that He puts into
their hands to fill up. It is the key of His treasure-house which He
offers to us all, with the assured confidence that if we open it we
shall find all that we need.

Who is He that thus stands up before a whole world of seeking,
restless spirits, and fronts them with the question which is a pledge,
conscious of His capacity to give to each of them what each of them
requires? Who is this that professes to be able to give all these men
and women and children bread here in the wilderness? There is only one
answer--the Christ of God.

And He has done what He promises. No man or woman ever went to Him,
and answered this question, and presented their petition for any real
good, and was refused. No man can ask from Christ what Christ cannot
bestow. No man can ask from Christ what Christ will not bestow. In the
loftiest region, the region of inward and spiritual gifts, which are
the best gifts, we can get everything that we want, and our only limit
is, not His boundless omnipotence and willingness, but our own poor,
narrow, and shrivelled desires. 'Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and
ye shall find.'

Christ stands before us, if I may so say, like some of those fountains
erected at some great national festival, out of which pour for all the
multitude every variety of draught which they desire, and each man
that goes with his empty cup gets it filled, and gets it filled with
that which he wishes. 'What seek ye?' Wisdom? You students, you
thinkers, you young men that are fighting with intellectual
difficulties and perplexities, 'What seek ye?' Truth? He gives us
that. You others, 'What seek ye?' Love, peace, victory, self-control,
hope, anodyne for sorrow? Whatever you desire, you will find in Jesus
Christ. The first words with which He broke the silence when He spake
to men as the Messias, were at once a searching question, probing
their aims and purposes, and a gracious promise pledging Him to a task
not beyond His power, however far beyond that of all others, even the
task of giving to each man his heart's desire. 'What seek ye?' 'Seek,
and ye shall find.'

II. Then, still further, notice how, in a similar fashion, we may
regard here the second words which our Lord speaks as being His
merciful invitation to the world. 'Come and see.'

The disciples' answer was simple and timid. They did not venture to
say, 'May we talk to you?' 'Will you take us to be your disciples?'
All they can muster courage to ask now is, 'Where dwellest Thou?' At
another time, perhaps, we will go to this Rabbi and speak with Him.
His answer is, 'Come, come now; come, and by intercourse with Me learn
to know Me.' His temporary home was probably nothing more than some
selected place on the river's bank, for 'He had not where to lay His
head'; but such as it was, He welcomes them to it. 'Come and see!'

Take a plain, simple truth out of that. Christ is always glad when
people resort to Him. When He was here in the world, no hour was
inconvenient or inopportune; no moment was too much occupied; no
physical wants of hunger, or thirst, or slumber were ever permitted to
come between Him and seeking hearts. He was never impatient. He was
never wearied of speaking, though He was often wearied in speaking. He
never denied Himself to any one or said, 'I have something else to do
than to attend to you.' And just as in literal fact, whilst He was
here upon earth, nothing was ever permitted to hinder His drawing near
to any man who wanted to draw near to Him, so nothing now hinders it;
and He is glad when any of us resort to Him and ask Him to let us
speak to Him and be with Him. His weariness or occupation never shut
men out from Him then. His glory does not shut them out now.

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