PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II
Dods, Marcus · 118,818 words · 159 reading sections
_The Bequest Of Peace._
How, then, does Christ communicate to us His peace or any of His own qualities--qualities in some instances acquired by personal experience and personal effort? He gives us peace, first, by reconciling us to God by removing the burden of our past guilt and giving us access to God's favour. His work sheds quite a new li…
727 wordsSECTION 62_The Bequest Of Peace._
These words our Lord uttered at a time when, if ever, He was not likely to use words of course, to adopt traditional and misleading phrases. He loved the men He was speaking to, He knew He was after this to have few more opportunities of speaking with them, His love interpreted to Him the difficulties and troubles whic…
323 wordsSECTION 63_The Vine And The Branches._
[16] "In this designation of the teaching Spirit as holy, there lie lessons for two classes of people. All fanatical professions of possessing Divine illumination, which are not warranted and sealed by purity of life, are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand, cold-blooded intellectualism will never force the l…
778 wordsSECTION 64_The Vine And The Branches._
Doubtless our Lord's introduction of the word "true" or "real"--"I am the true Vine"--implies a comparison with other vines, but not necessarily with any vines then outwardly visible. Much more likely is it that as He saw the dependence of His disciples upon Him, He saw new meaning in the old and familiar idea that Isr…
779 wordsSECTION 65_The Vine And The Branches._
II. The second idea is that this unity of the tree is formed by unity _of life_. It is a unity brought about, not by mechanical juxtaposition, but by organic relationship. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, but must abide in the vine, so neither can ye except ye abide in Me." A ball of twine or a bag of shot c…
864 wordsSECTION 66_The Vine And The Branches._
On His side Christ has laid bare His deepest feelings and spirit. In His life and in His death He submitted to that severest operation which seemed to be a maiming of Him, but which in point of fact was the necessary preparation for His receiving fruitful branches. He did not hide the true springs of His life under a h…
680 wordsSECTION 67_The Vine And The Branches._
The husbandman's care is also needed that after the branch is grafted it may bring forth fruit increasingly. Stationariness is not to be tolerated. As for fruitlessness, that is out of the question. More fruit each season is looked for, and arranged for by the vigorous prunings of the husbandman. The branch is not left…
755 wordsSECTION 68_The Vine And The Branches._
Perhaps it is not pressing the figure too hard to remark that the fruit differs from timber in this respect--that it enters into and nourishes the life of man. No doubt in this allegory fruit-bearing primarily and chiefly indicates that God's purpose in creating man is satisfied. The tree He has planted is not barren, …
905 wordsSECTION 69_The Vine And The Branches._
How, then, is it with ourselves? By examining the results of our lives, would any one be prompted to exclaim, "These are trees of _righteousness_, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified"? For this examination is made, and made not by one who chances to pass, and who, being a novice in horticulture, might be …
559 wordsSECTION 70_Not Servants, But Friends._
[17] That the vine was a recognised symbol of the Messiah is shown by Delitzsch in the _Expositor_, 3rd series, vol. iii., pp. 68, 69. See also his _Iris_, pp. 180-190, E. Tr. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you…
1,021 wordsSECTION 71_Not Servants, But Friends._
This, then, is the point of this great utterance: Jesus takes our lives up into partnership with His own. He sets before us the same views and hopes which animated Himself, and gives us a prospect of being useful to Him and in His work. If we engage in the work of life with a dull and heartless feeling of its weariness…
653 wordsSECTION 72_Not Servants, But Friends._
That love is our true life is shown further by this--that it is its own reward. When a man's life is in any intelligible sense proceeding from love, when this is his chief motive, he is content with living, and looks for no reward. His joy is already full; he does not ask, What shall I be the better of thus sacrificing…
671 wordsSECTION 73_Not Servants, But Friends._
Sometimes, however, we find ourselves grieving at the prosperity of the wicked: we think that they should be unhappy, and yet they seem more satisfied than ourselves. They pay no regard whatever to the law of life laid down by our Lord; they never dream of living for others; they have never once proposed to themselves …
667 wordsSECTION 74_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
"If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord. I…
753 wordsSECTION 75_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
I. "If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." Persecution is thus turned into a joy, because it is the testimony paid by the wo…
793 wordsSECTION 76_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
Our Lord assures them that together with their witness-bearing there will be an all-powerful witness--"the Spirit of truth"; one who could find access to the hearts and minds to which they addressed themselves and carry truth home to conviction. It was on this account that it was "expedient" that their Lord should depa…
732 wordsSECTION 77_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
To discharge this function a twofold ministry is undertaken by the Spirit: He must enlighten the Apostles, and He must convince the world. He must enlighten the Apostles. From the nature of the case much had to be left unsaid by Christ. But this would not prevent the Apostles from understanding what Christ had done, a…
762 wordsSECTION 78_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
But it is apparent from our Lord's description of the subject-matter of the Spirit's witness that here He has especially in view the function of the Spirit as an inward teacher and strengthener of the moral powers. He is the fellow-witness of the Apostles, mainly and permanently, by enlightening men in the significance…
769 wordsSECTION 79_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
"In evil long I took delight, unawed by shame or fear, Till a new object struck my sight and stopped my wild career: I saw One hanging on a tree in agonies and blood. Who fixed His languid eyes on me as near His cross I stood. Sure never till my latest breath can I forget that look; It seemed to charge me with His…
684 wordsSECTION 80_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
For each of us it is of the utmost importance to have a fixed and intelligent persuasion that righteousness is what we are made for. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness and made us in His image to widen the joy of rational creatures. He waits for righteousness and cannot accept sin as an equally grateful fruit of m…
737 wordsSECTION 81_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
But it was open to those whom the Apostles addressed to deny that Jesus had thus lived; and therefore the conviction of righteousness is completed by the evidence of the resurrection and ascension of Christ. "Of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more." Without holiness no man shall see God. It …
661 wordsSECTION 82_The Spirit Christ'S Witness._
But it is in the death of Christ the prince of this world was especially judged. That death was brought about by the world's opposition to unworldliness. Had the world been seeking spiritual beauty and prosperity, Christ would not have been crucified. He was crucified because the world was seeking material gain and wor…
958 wordsSECTION 83_Last Words._
But, secondly, we must beware of disheartening ourselves by hastily concluding that in our case Christ's grace has failed. If we may accept the Book of Revelation as a true picture, not merely of the conflict of the Church, but also of the conflict of the individual, then only in the end can we look for quiet and achie…
658 wordsSECTION 84_Last Words._
In the intercourse of Jesus with His disciples He at all times showed one of the most delightful qualities of a friend--a quick and perfect apprehension of what was passing in their mind. They did not require to bring their mental condition before Him by laboured explanations. He knew what was in man, and He especially…
930 wordsSECTION 85_Last Words._
Lasting joy is the condition in which God desires us to be, and He has given us cause of joy. In Christ's victory we see all that is needed to give us hopefulness about the future. Each man finds for himself assurance of God's interest in us and in our actual condition: assurance that whatever is needful to secure for …
656 wordsSECTION 86_Last Words._
There are, however, some expressions which unquestionably affirm Christ's pre-existence, and convince us that before He appeared in this world He lived with God. And among these expressions the words He uses in this passage hold a place: "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the worl…
784 wordsSECTION 87_Last Words._
In revealing what sustained Himself Christ reveals the true stay of every soul of man. His trial was indeed severe. Brought without a single friend to the bar of unsympathetic and unscrupulous judges: the Friend of man, loving as no other has ever loved, and craving love and sympathy as no other has craved it, yet stan…
888 wordsSECTION 88_Last Words._
For really in our own life, as in the life of Christ, all is summed up in the conflict between Christ and the world; and therefore the last words of this His last conversation are: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good courage. I have overcome the world." When Christ speaks of "the world" as comprisin…
916 wordsSECTION 89_Christ'S Intercessory Prayer._
Christ has overcome the world, then, by resisting its influence upon Himself, by showing Himself actually superior to its most powerful influences; and His overcoming of the world is not merely a private victory availing for Himself alone, but it is a public good, because in His life the perfect beauty of a life devote…
745 wordsSECTION 90_Christ'S Intercessory Prayer._
This prayer of Christ is in some respects the most precious relic of the past. We have here the words which Christ addressed to God in the critical hour of His life--the words in which He uttered the deepest feeling and thought of His Spirit, clarified and concentrated by the prospect of death. What a revelation it wou…
682 wordsSECTION 91_Christ'S Intercessory Prayer._
How immeasurably beneath this level is the vaunted equanimity of the thinker who says, "Death can be no evil because it is universal"! How immeasurably beneath it is the habit of most of us! Which of us can stand in that clear air on that high point which separates life from what is beyond and can say, "I have finished…
960 wordsSECTION 92_Christ'S Intercessory Prayer._
The earthly work of Christ, then, being finished, He asks the Father to glorify Him with His own self, with the glory He had with Him before the world was. It seems to me vain to deny that this petition implies on Christ's part a consciousness of a life which He had before He appeared on earth. His mind turns from the …
747 wordsSECTION 93_Christ'S Intercessory Prayer._
But these realities are obscured and thrust aside by a thousand pretentious frivolities which claim our immediate attention and interest. We are in the world, and day by day the world insists that we shall consider it the great reality. Christ had conquered it and was leaving it. Why, then, did He not take with Him all…
836 wordsSECTION 94_Christ'S Intercessory Prayer._
But why should unity be the ultimate desire of Christ, the highest point to which the Saviour's wishes for mankind can reach? Because spirit is that which rules; and if we be one with God in spirit the future is ours. This mighty universe in which we find ourselves, apparently governed by forces compared to which the m…
957 wordsSECTION 95_The Arrest._
"When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Kidron, where was a garden, into the which He entered, Himself and His disciples. Now Judas also, which betrayed Him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His disciples. Judas then, having received the band of so…
798 wordsSECTION 96_The Arrest._
But this proof of His superiority was lost upon His disciples. They thought that armed force should be met by armed force. Recovering from their discomfiture, and being ashamed of it, the soldiers and servants of the Sanhedrim advance to bind Jesus. Peter, who had with some dim presentiment of what was coming possessed…
820 wordsSECTION 97_The Arrest._
When thus treated, men are apt to be embittered towards their fellows. When all their efforts to do good are made the very ground of accusation against them, there is the strongest provocation to give up all such attempts and to arrange for one's own comfort and safety. This world has few more sufficient tests to apply…
836 wordsSECTION 98_The Arrest._
It is not without surprise that we read that when Jesus was arrested all the disciples forsook Him and fled. John, indeed, and Peter speedily recovered themselves and followed to the hall of judgment; and the others may not only have felt that they were in danger so long as they remained in His company, but also that b…
667 wordsSECTION 99_The Arrest._
The reason of this is obvious. Christ's life was to be all sacrifice, because self-sacrifice is the essence of holiness and of love. From beginning to end the moving spring of all His actions was deliberate self-devotement to the good of men or to the fulfilment of God's will; for these are equivalents. And His death a…
696 wordsSECTION 100_The Arrest._
It is, I think, well that we should occasionally put to ourselves such questions and train ourselves to look at the events of Christ's life as actual occurrences, and to distinguish between what is fanciful and what is real. So much has been said and written regarding His work, it has been the subject of so much sentim…
822 wordsSECTION 101_Peter'S Denial And Repentance._
We can certainly say that Christ suffered our penalties in so far as a perfectly holy person can suffer them. The gnawing anguish of remorse He never knew; the haunting anxieties of the wrong-doer were impossible to Him; the torment of ungratified desire, eternal severance from God, He could not suffer; but other resul…
823 wordsSECTION 102_Peter'S Denial And Repentance._
Yet the third denial is more guilty than the first. Many persons are conscious that they have sometimes acted under what seems an infatuation. They do not plead this in excuse for the wrong they have done. They are quite aware that what has come out of them must have been in them, and that their acts, unaccountable as …
837 wordsSECTION 103_Peter'S Denial And Repentance._
Had Peter distrusted himself and seriously accepted his Lord's warning, he would have gone with the rest; but ever thinking of himself as able to do more than other men, faithful where others were faithless, convinced where others hesitated, daring where others shrank, he once again thrust himself forward, and so fell.…
699 wordsSECTION 104_Peter'S Denial And Repentance._
And it is obvious that if we are to rise clear above the sin that has betrayed us we can do so only by as lowly a penitence. We are all alike in this: that we have fallen; we cannot any more with justice think highly of ourselves; we have sinned and are disgraced in our own eyes. In this, I say, we are all alike; that …
694 wordsSECTION 105_Peter'S Denial And Repentance._
It may be worth while to note the characteristics and danger of that special form of weakness which Peter here exhibited. We commonly call it moral cowardice. It is originally a weakness rather than a positive sin, and yet it is probably as prolific of sin and even of great crime as any of the more definite and vigorou…
867 wordsSECTION 106_Peter'S Denial And Repentance._
Such persons we aid and abet when we do either of two things: when we either cleave to what is old as unreasoningly as they take up with what is new, refusing to look for fresh light and better ways and acting as if we were already perfect; or when we yield to the current and adopt a hesitating way of speaking about ma…
261 wordsSECTION 107_Jesus Before Pilate._
[22] There is a difficulty in tracing the movements of Jesus at this point. John tells us He was led to Annas first, and at ver. 24 he says that Annas sent Him to Caiaphas. We should naturally conclude, therefore, that the preceding examination was conducted by Annas. But Caiaphas has been expressly indicated as chief …
854 wordsSECTION 108_Jesus Before Pilate._
John tells us very little of the examination of Jesus by Annas and Caiaphas, but he dwells at considerable length on His trial by Pilate. The reason of this different treatment is probably to be found in the fact that the trial before the Sanhedrim was ineffective until the decision had been ratified by Pilate, as well…
683 wordsSECTION 109_Jesus Before Pilate._
Pilate was present in Jerusalem at this time in accordance with the custom of the Roman procurators of Judaea, who came up annually from their usual residence at Caesarea to the Jewish capital for the double purpose of keeping order while the city was crowded with all kinds of persons who came up to the feast, and of t…
864 wordsSECTION 110_Jesus Before Pilate._
It is possible that Jesus by His question meant to suggest to Pilate the actual relation in which this present trial stood to His previous trial by Caiaphas. For nothing could more distinctly mark the baseness and malignity of the Jews than their manner of shifting ground when they brought Jesus before Pilate. The Sanh…
778 wordsSECTION 111_Jesus Before Pilate._
His second attempt to save Jesus from death was more unjust and as futile as the first. He scourges the Prisoner whose innocence he had himself declared, possibly under the idea that if nothing was confessed by Jesus under this torture it might convince the Jews of His innocence, but more probably under the impression …
750 wordsSECTION 112_Jesus Before Pilate._
Besides--and this probably is the main reason of the silence--Pilate was now forgetting altogether the relation between himself and his Prisoner. Jesus had been accused before him on a definite charge which he had found to be baseless. He ought therefore to have released Him. This new charge of the Jews was one of whic…
825 wordsSECTION 113_Jesus Before Pilate._
The very thing that Pilate feared, and to avoid which he sacrificed the life of our Lord, came upon him six years after. Complaints against him were sent to the Emperor; he was deposed from his office, and so stripped of all that made life endurable to him, that, "wearied with misfortunes," he died by his own hand. Per…
911 wordsSECTION 114_Jesus Before Pilate._
Could Pilate really persuade himself he made everything right with a basin of water and a theatrical transference of his responsibility to the Jews? Could he persuade himself that by merely giving up the contest he was playing the part of a judge and of a man? Could he persuade himself that the mere words, "I am innoce…
727 wordsSECTION 115_Mary At The Cross._
[24] See note to chapter xviii. [25] The cry according to the best reading was simply "Crucify, crucify," or as it might be rendered, "The cross, the cross." [26] Philo, _Ad Caium_, c. 38. [27] Mark xv. 12. "They took Jesus therefore: and He went out, bearing the cross for Himself, unto the place called The place …
797 wordsSECTION 116_Mary At The Cross._
Now, of course it was very possible that many members of the Sanhedrim should sincerely believe that blasphemy had been uttered. The unity of God was the distinctive creed of the Jew, that which had made his nation, and for any human lips to claim equality with the one infinite God was not to be thought of. It must hav…
835 wordsSECTION 117_Mary At The Cross._
Another reflection which is forced upon the reader of this narrative is, that disaster waits upon stifled inquiry. The Jews honestly convicted Christ as a blasphemer because they had dishonestly denied Him to be a good man. The little spark which would have grown into a blazing light they put their heel upon. Had they …
750 wordsSECTION 118_Mary At The Cross._
These hours of suffering, as the sword was slowly driven through Mary's soul, according to Simeon's word, who shall measure? Hers was not a hysterical, noisy sorrow, but quiet and silent. There was nothing wild, nothing extravagant, in it. There was no sign of feminine weakness, no outcry, no fainting, no wild gesture …
971 wordsSECTION 119_Mary At The Cross._
Those who witnessed the hurried events of the morning when Christ was crucified might be pardoned if their minds were filled with what their eyes saw, and if little but the outward objects were discernible to them. We are in different circumstances, and may be expected to look more deeply into what was happening. To se…
291 wordsSECTION 120_The Crucifixion._
[28] See Faber's _Bethlehem_. "The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose…
937 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.