' A. Maclareu.
ST. JOHN XIII. I 13
John did not understand all that was taking place that night in the Upper Eoom, and all that happened so soon after, but his final testimony afterwards was, as the final explanation of it all : " Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end." ^
2. And He loves His own still. — In the glory, when He reached it. He poured out the same loving heart; and to-day He looks down upon us with the same face that bent over the table in the Upper Eoom, and the same tenderness flows to us. When St. John saw his Master next, after His Ascension, amidst the glories of the vision in his rocky Patmos, though His face was as the sun shineth in his strength, it was the old face. Though His hand bore the stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced with the nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which St. John's happy head had lain ; and though the voice was " as the sound of many waters," it soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless sea about him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, " Fear not ... I am the first and the last." Knowing that He goes to the Father, He loves to the uttermost, and being with the Father, He still so loves.
^ Having loved, He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies Divinity. About nothing human can we say that because it has been therefore it shall be. Alas ! about much that is human we have to say the converse, that because it has been, therefore it will cease to be. And though they are few and they are poor who have had no experience in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest, *' Having loved, he loves." But we can say so about Christ. There is no exhaustion in that great stream which pours out from His heart, no diminution in its flow.
"He loved His own unto the end,"
And asked their love ; He said, "I call you each My friend, And not My servant; and I send
One from above, Who shall reveal such grace and truth to you As in My sojourn here ye never knew."
^H. Black, Christ's Service of Love, 199.
14 THE LOVE OF JESUS FOR HIS OWN
" But why depart ? " they cry, " why will
To leave us here ? Thou sayest that Thou dost love us still; Can it be love if thus Thou fill
Our cup of fear ? 0 Master, Master, should'st Thou now depart All sorrow needs must overwhelm our heart."
Yet it is love : He said "I go ;
For could I stay, Your earth-bound thoughts would never know Love's fullest mysteries, which flow
From Me alway; My human heart might linger with you yet, But now affections must on heaven be set.
"You could not know Me more, unless
My Spirit came And taught the ways of righteousness. How sin and judgment to confess,
How learn to blame All clinging to inferior things of earth, Blind to the glory of your heavenly birth.
"My peace I leave with you, but not
As this world gives; My Spirit comes to you, yet what He teaches shows no earthly lot:
He ever lives, The world must learn. I hear the Father's call Away from earth ! — Awhile I leave you all,
" Arise ! let us go hence." He rose,
And, as He spake. Calmly He moved, as one who knows The coming onset of his foes.
The night winds shake With distant sounds, as through the olive grove "Let us depart" is echoed from above.^ ^ William Josiah Irons.
Regeneration and Renewal.
Literature.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, ii. 127.
Barrett (G. S.), Musings for Quiet Hours, 74.
Bonar (H.), Family Sermons, 87.
Farrar (F. W.), In the Days of thy Youth, 243.
Howatt (J. R.), Jesus the Poet, 272.
Jerdan (C), Gospel Milk and Honey, 285.
Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, iii. 239.
Selby (T. G.), The Divine Craftsman, 207.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 289.
Temple (F.), Sermons in Rughy School Chapel, ii. 116.
Waterston (R.), Thoughts on the Lord's Supper, 91.
Webster (F. S.), My Lord and I, 154.
Wordsworth (C), Christian Boyhood at a Public School, i. 438.
Expositor, 2nd Ser., iv. 146 (Cox).
Regeneration and Renewal.
Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. — John xiii. lO.
1. This answer of our Lord to Peter has naturally a double meaning. It is both literal and figurative. Just as one who, having bathed in the morning, considers himself clean and does not repeat this total ablution at meal-time, but is contented with washing his feet on entering, to remove such accidental defilement as he may have contracted by the way ; so he who, by sincerely attaching himself to Christ, has found pardon for his sins, needs nothing else than a daily and continual purification from the moral defilement of which he becomes conscious during the course of his life. Peter was clean because he sincerely believed in Christ. The purpose, then, of what Jesus was now doing for him was not to reconcile him to God, but to remove from him, by such an example of humility, that particular defilement, the desire for earthly power and greatness, which Jesus at that very moment observed in His own.