PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 128,057 words · 183 reading sections
Contents
Produced by Charles Franks, John Hagerson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D. ST. JOHN Chaps. XV to XXI ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D. ST. JOHN Chaps. XV to XXI THE TRUE VINE (John xv. 1-4) THE TRUE BRANCHES OF THE TRUE VINE (John xv. 5-8) ABIDING IN LOVE (John x…
368 wordsSECTION 2The True Vine
'I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear frui…
669 wordsSECTION 3The True Vine
And then let me remind you that that living unity between Jesus Christ and all who love Him is a oneness which necessarily results in oneness of relation to God and men, in oneness of character, and in oneness of destiny. In relation to God, He is the Son, and we in Him receive the standing of sons. He has access ever …
675 wordsSECTION 4The True Vine
Thus, says Christ, the main thing that is needed--not, indeed, to improve the life in the branches, but to improve the branches in which the life is--is excision. There are two forms of it given here--absolutely dead wood has to be cut out; wood that has life in it, but which has also rank shoots, that do not come from…
719 wordsSECTION 5The True Vine
Union with Christ is the condition of all fruitfulness. There may be plenty of activity and yet barrenness. Works are not fruit. We can bring forth a great deal 'of ourselves,' and because it is of ourselves it is nought. Fruit is possible only on condition of union with Him. He is the productive source of it all. The…
669 wordsSECTION 6The True Branches Of The True Vine
Here is a lesson of solemn warning to professing Christians. The lofty mysticism and inward life in Jesus Christ all terminate at last in simple, practical obedience; and the fruit is the test of the life. 'Depart from Me, I never knew you, ye that work iniquity.' And here is a lesson of solemn appeal to us all. Our o…
755 wordsSECTION 7The True Branches Of The True Vine
'I am the Vine' is a general truth, with no clear personal application. 'Ye are the branches' brings each individual listener into connection with it. How many of us there are, as there are in every so-called Christian communion, that listen pleasedly, and, in a fitful sort of languid way, interestedly, to the most glo…
732 wordsSECTION 8The True Branches Of The True Vine
Our Lord is here not merely laying down a law, but giving a promise, and putting his veracity into pawn for the fulfilment of it. 'If a man will keep near Me,' He says, 'he shall bear fruit.' Notice that little word which now appears for the first time. 'He shall bear _much_ fruit.' We are not to be content with a lit…
760 wordsSECTION 9The True Branches Of The True Vine
And as for individuals, so for communities. The Church or the body of professing Christians that is separate from Jesus Christ dies to all noble life, to all high activity, to all Christlike conduct, and, being dead, rots. Withering means destruction. The language of our text is a description of what befalls the actua…
669 wordsSECTION 10The True Branches Of The True Vine
Christ loves us a great deal too well to give to our own foolish and selfish wills the keys of His treasure-house. The condition of our getting what we will is our willing what He desires; and unless our prayers are a great deal more the utterance of the submission of our wills to His than they are the attempt to impos…
591 wordsSECTION 11Abiding In Love
'As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you: continue ye In My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.'--JOHN xv. 9-11. …
824 wordsSECTION 12Abiding In Love
Now note that this continuance in Christ's love is a thing in our power, since it is commanded. Although it is His affection to us of which my text primarily speaks, I can so modify and regulate the flow of that divine love to my heart that it becomes my duty to continue in Christ's love to me. What a quiet, blessed h…
788 wordsSECTION 13Abiding In Love
The obedience which we render for love's sake will make us more capable of receiving, and more blessedly conscious of possessing, the love of Jesus Christ. The lightest cloud before the sun will prevent it from focussing its rays to a burning point on the convex glass. And the small, thin, fleeting, scarcely visible ac…
780 wordsSECTION 14The Oneness Of The Branches
Brother! there is only one gladness that is worth calling so--and that is, that which comes to us, when we give ourselves utterly away to Jesus Christ, and let Him do with us as He will. It is better to have a joy that is central and perennial--though there may be, as there will be, a surface of sorrow and care--than t…
821 wordsSECTION 15The Oneness Of The Branches
I dread talking mere sentiment about this matter, for there is perhaps no part of Christian duty which has been so vulgarised and pawed over by mere unctuous talk, as that of the fellowship that should subsist between all Christians. But I have one plain question to put,--Does anybody believe that the present condition…
776 wordsSECTION 16The Oneness Of The Branches
III. Note, further, the Pattern of love. 'As I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Christ sets Himself forward then, here and in this aspect, as He does in all aspects of human conduct and character, as being the realised Ideal of them all. And although th…
742 wordsSECTION 17The Oneness Of The Branches
Oh, let us bow down and confess how His word, which commands us, puts us to shame, when we think of how miserably we have obeyed. Remember, too, that the restriction which here seems to be cast around the flow of His love is not a restriction in reality, but rather a deepening of it. He says, 'Greater love hath no man…
829 wordsSECTION 18Christ'S Friends
'Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye sho…
678 wordsSECTION 19Christ'S Friends
This friendship lasts to-day. A peculiarity of Christianity is the strong personal tie of real love and intimacy which will bind men, to the end of time, to this Man that died nineteen hundred years ago. We look back into the wastes of antiquity: mighty names rise there that we reverence; there are great teachers from …
660 wordsSECTION 20Christ'S Friends
II. Secondly, note what Christ does for His friends. 'Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.' The slave may see what his lord does, but he does not know his purpose in his acts--'Theirs not to reason why.' In so far as the relation of master and servant goes, and still mor…
719 wordsSECTION 21Christ'S Friends
And that frankness may well teach us another lesson, viz., the obligation of keeping our ears open and our hearts prepared to receive the speech that does come from Him. Ah, brother! many a message from your Lord flits past you, like the idle wind through an archway, because you are not listening for His voice. If we k…
679 wordsSECTION 22Christ'S Friends
'That ye may bring forth fruit'--He goes back for a moment to the sweet emblem with which this chapter begins, and recurs to the imagery of the vine and the fruit. 'Keeping His commandments' does not explain the whole process by which we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. We must also take this other metapho…
599 wordsSECTION 23Sheep Among Wolves
'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If t…
695 wordsSECTION 24Sheep Among Wolves
If we share Christ's life, we must, necessarily, in some measure, share His fate. It is the typical example of what the world thinks of, and does to, goodness. And all who have 'the Spirit of life which was in Jesus Christ' for the animating principle of their lives, will, just in the measure in which they possess it, …
878 wordsSECTION 25Sheep Among Wolves
Still another fact masks the antagonism, and that is, that after all, the world, meaning thereby the aggregate of godless men, has a conscience that responds to goodness, though grumblingly and reluctantly. After all, men do know that it is better to be good, that it is better and wiser to be like Christ, that it is no…
825 wordsSECTION 26Sheep Among Wolves
Meet this antagonism by not dropping your standard one inch. Keep the flag right at the masthead. If you begin to haul it down, where are you going to stop? Nowhere, until you have got it draggling in the mud at the foot. It is of no use to try to conciliate by compromise. All that we shall gain by that will be, as I h…
595 wordsSECTION 27The World'S Hatred, As Christ Saw It
'But all these things will they do unto you for My name's sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. He that hateth Me, hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they …
760 wordsSECTION 28The World'S Hatred, As Christ Saw It
But there is a deeper meaning in that word than simply the possession of true thoughts concerning the divine nature. We know God as we know one another; because God is a Person, as we are persons, and the only way to know persons is through familiar acquaintance and sympathy. So the world which turns away from Christ h…
875 wordsSECTION 29The World'S Hatred, As Christ Saw It
III. The ignorance which is sin is the manifestation of hatred. Our Lord has sorrowfully contemplated the not knowing God, which in the blaze of His light can only come from wilful closing of the eyes, and is therefore the very sin of sins. But that, sad as it is, is not all which has to be said about that blindness o…
666 wordsSECTION 30The World'S Hatred, As Christ Saw It
'All this will they do that it might be fulfilled which is written in their law, They hated Me without a cause.' One hears sighing through these words the Master's meek wonder that His love should be so met, and that the requital which He receives at men's hands, for such an unexampled and lavish outpouring of it, shou…
429 wordsSECTION 31Our Ally
'But when the Comforter Is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.'--JOHN xv. 26, 27. Our Lord has been speaking of a world hostile to His follow…
733 wordsSECTION 32Our Ally
Then, still further, there is a twofold description here of the mission of this divine Champion, as 'sent' by Christ, and 'proceeding from the Father.' In regard to the former, I need only remind you that, in a previous part of this wonderful discourse, our Lord speaks of that divine Spirit as being sent by the Father…
668 wordsSECTION 33Our Ally
II. And so note, secondly, the witness of the Spirit which fortifies against the world. 'He shall bear witness of Me.' Now we must especially observe here that little phrase, 'unto you.' For that tells us at once that the witness which our Lord has in mind here is something which is done within the circle of the Chris…
661 wordsSECTION 34Our Ally
So, dear friends, whilst here we have a promise which specially applies, no doubt, to these twelve Apostles, and the result of which in them was different from its result in us, inasmuch as the Spirit's teaching, recorded in the New Testament, becomes for us the authoritative rule of faith and practice, the promise sti…
743 wordsSECTION 35Our Ally
And there must be moral discipline too. Laziness, worldliness, the absorption of attention with other things, self-conceit, prejudice, and, I was going to say, almost above all, the taking of our religion and religious opinions at secondhand from men and teachers and books--all these stand in the way of our hearing the…
567 wordsSECTION 36Why Christ Speaks
'These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me. But these things have I told you,…
691 wordsSECTION 37Why Christ Speaks
But that is all parenthetical in the present section, and so I say nothing more about it; and ask you, rather, just to look at the loving reasons which Christ here suggests for His present speech--'that ye should not be offended,' or stumble. He warns them of the storm before it bursts, lest, when it bursts, it should …
738 wordsSECTION 38Why Christ Speaks
And the way by which all these troubles and cares, whether they be those incident and peculiar to Christian life, or those common to humanity, can best be met and overcome, is precisely by this thought, 'The Master has told us before.' Sorrows anticipated are more easily met. It is when the vessel is caught with all it…
837 wordsSECTION 39Why Christ Speaks
That, too, yields for us, dear brethren, truths that apply to us quite as much as to that little group of silent listeners. For us, too, difficulties and sorrows, though foretold in general terms, are largely hidden till they are near. It would have been of little use for Christ to have spoken more plainly in those ear…
670 wordsSECTION 40Why Christ Speaks
'E'en let the unknown to-morrow Bring with it what it may.' III. Lastly, I must touch, for the sake of completeness, upon the final thought in these pregnant verses, and that is, the imperfect apprehension of our Lord's words, which leads to sorrow instead of joy. 'Now I go My way to Him that sent Me; and none of yo…
590 wordsSECTION 41The Departing Christ And The Coming Spirit
'Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will _convince_ the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.'--JOHN xvi. 7, 8. We read these words in th…
672 wordsSECTION 42The Departing Christ And The Coming Spirit
Now if we would feel the full force and singularity of this saying of our Lord's, let us put side by side with it that other one, 'I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.' Why is it that the Apostle says, 'Though I want to go I a…
739 wordsSECTION 43The Departing Christ And The Coming Spirit
II. Note, secondly, the coming for which Christ's going was needful, and which makes that going a gain. 'If I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart I will send Him unto you.' Now we have already, in former sermons, touched upon many of the themes which would naturally be suggested by these …
706 wordsSECTION 44The Departing Christ And The Coming Spirit
'He shall convict the world of sin.' The outstanding first characteristic of the whole Gospel message is the new gravity which it attaches to the fact of sin, the deeper meaning which it gives to the word, and the larger scope which it shows its blighting influences to have had in humanity. Apart from the conviction of…
822 wordsSECTION 45The Departing Christ And The Coming Spirit
The world as a world has but dim and inadequate conceptions of what righteousness is. A Pharisee is its type, or a man that keeps a clean life in regard to great transgressions; a whited sepulchre of some sort or other. The world apart from Christ has but languid desires after even the poor righteousness that it unders…
508 wordsSECTION 46The Convicting Facts
'Of sin, because they believe not on Me; Of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.'--JOHN xvi. 9-11. Our Lord has just been telling His disciples how He will equip them, as His champions, for their conflict with the world. A divine Spir…
696 wordsSECTION 47The Convicting Facts
And if this be true, if unbelief in Jesus Christ be indeed all this that I have sketched out, another question arises, What does such an attitude and act indicate as to the rejector? He stands in the presence of the loveliest revelation of the divine nature and heart, and he sees no light in it. Why, but because he has…
770 wordsSECTION 48The Convicting Facts
Brother, it is no exaggeration to say that, when you have summoned up before you the ugliest forms of man's sins that you can fancy, this one overtops them all, because it presents in the simplest form the mother-tincture of all sins, which, variously coloured and perfumed and combined, makes the evil of them all. A he…
902 wordsSECTION 49The Convicting Facts
My brother, wed yourself to that dear Lord by faith in Him, and His righteousness will become yours, and you will be 'found in Him without spot and blameless,' clothed with white raiment like His own, and sharing in the Throne which belongs to the righteous Christ. III. Lastly, notice the judgment of the world's princ…
759 wordsSECTION 50The Guide Into All Truth
It ought to be a hope; it is a fear; and there are some of us who do not like to have the conviction driven home to us, that the end of the strife between sin and righteousness is that Jesus Christ shall judge the world and take unto Himself His eternal kingdom. But, my friends, hope or fear, it is a fact, as certain …
760 wordsSECTION 51The Guide Into All Truth
Of course we find in them, as I believe, hints profound and pregnant, which only need to be unfolded and smoothed out, as it were, and their depths fathomed, in order to lead to all that is worthy of being called Christian truth. But upon many points we cannot but contrast the desultory, brief, obscure references which…
762 wordsSECTION 52The Guide Into All Truth
II. So, secondly, mark here the completeness of the truth into which the Spirit guides. I must trouble you with just a word or two of remark as to the language of our text. Note the personality, designation, and office of this new Teacher. 'He,' not '_it_,' He, is the Spirit of truth whose characteristic and weapon is…
728 wordsSECTION 53The Guide Into All Truth
Now, dear friends, this great principle of my text has a modified application also to us all. For that divine Spirit is given to each of us if we will use Him, is given to any and every man who desires Him, does dwell in Christian hearts, though, alas! so many of us are so little conscious of Him, and does teach us the…
699 wordsSECTION 54The Guide Into All Truth
'All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I that He shall take of Mine and show it unto you.' What awful words! A divine, teaching Spirit can only teach concerning God. Christ here explains the paradox of His words preceding, in which, if He were but human, He seems to have given that teaching Spirit an…
440 wordsSECTION 55Christ'S 'Little Whiles'
'A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father. Then said some of His disciples among themselves, What is this that He saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me: and, Because I go to the Fa…
713 wordsSECTION 56Christ'S 'Little Whiles'
If we might venture to suppose that in our text the second of the periods to which He refers, when they did not see Him, was not coterminous with, but preceded, the second 'little while,' all would be clear. Then the first 'little while' would be the few hours before the Cross. 'Ye shall not see Me' would refer to the …
704 wordsSECTION 57Christ'S 'Little Whiles'
If you want to see Christ, do His will. One act of obedience has more power to clear a man's eyes than hours of idle contemplation; and one act of disobedience has more power to dim his eyes than anything besides. It is in the dusty common road that He draws near to us, and the experience of those disciples that journe…
693 wordsSECTION 58Christ'S 'Little Whiles'
Now is not that exactly like us, and does not the Christianity of this day very much want the hint to pay most attention to the greatest truths, and let the little difficulties fall into their subordinate place? The central truths of Christianity are the incarnation and atonement of Jesus Christ. And yet outside questi…
794 wordsSECTION 59Christ'S 'Little Whiles'
Ah, brethren! for ourselves, for our own intellectual difficulties, and for the difficulties of the world, there is nothing like time and patience. The mysteries that used to plague us when we were boys melted away when we grew up. And many questions which trouble me to-day, and through which I cannot find my way, if I…
756 wordsSECTION 60Sorrow Turned Into Joy
'Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for j…
767 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.