3. Quite as astonishing are these words from another point of view. Not only does the Lord associate Himself uniquely with God, but in a wonderful way He associates Christians with Himself. What an honourable vocation He assigns to His people ! He sends us as He Himself was sent. He classes His disciples with Himself. He who said " the Father — I," says, " Me — you," Ours is a task analogous to His, What He thus declares to His disciples He expressly declares to God the Father,
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in that high-priestly prayer of His : " As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I them into the world." This immutable word which puts such honour upon Christians Christ asseverates alike to God and to man. " What a word is this ! "
4. What is the real and permanent value of that message ? It reveals His conception of the meaning of our mission ; it unveils before us the truth concerning the responsibility of the Church of Jesus Christ, the truth concerning the responsibility of all the Churches of Jesus Christ, the truth concerning the responsibility of every individual member thereof.
I.
The Son and the Disciples.
1. There is a series of remarkable utterances, found only in St. John, in which our Lord draws a parallel between the relation He bears to the Father and the relation the believer bears to Himself. In these passages our Lord asserts that He is the central and connecting link in a dual relationship the upper and lower sides of which exactly correspond to each other. What the Father is to the Son, that Christ is to him who believes in Him. And thus Jesus Christ stands midway between the Father and us, and the lines of communication between earth and heaven pass through Him. All that the Father has to communicate is first received by Him and then transmitted to us, while on the other hand He receives the love and trust and obedience of His disciples and passes it all on in turn to the Father.
(1) "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father ; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me " (John vi. 57). The whole series of utterances now under con- sideration is cast in this parallel form. There is something more than similarity of relationship implied in these words ; they also imply that the great principle of life is an identical principle both on the upper and on the lower side of this relationship. Life is the same in us as in God ; and wonderful as the thought may be, it is nevertheless true that when we believe in Christ and through Him are made partakers of spiritual life, we enter into communion
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with the life of God Himself. When one thinks of life in man as one thing and life in God as another, one has lost the key to the science of life. Spiritual life is not a series of isolated springs, but an ocean laving every shore.
(2) "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you" (John XV. 9). Here again we have the same passing on from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the disciple. The love of the Father to the Son is beyond human comprehension. It is frequently referred to in the Gospel narratives, but always as a sacred and mystical thing which it is almost a sacrilege to unveil to the common gaze. Christ Himself says, "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." But love, like life, is the same throughout the universe; the same bond that unites God and Christ unites Christ and the disciple, and the disciple and his fellow-disciple, and the heart of the humblest believer thrills with the same love that dwells in the heart of God. " I have declared unto them thy name," says Christ, " that the love where- with thou hast loved me may be in them."
(3) " I know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father " (John x. 14, 15). These two verses belong to one sentence, and must not be separ- ated as in the Authorized Version. They are two sides of a comparison. Christ is speaking of Himself as the Good Shepherd, and of the perfect understanding there is between Him and His sheep. There is an instinctive recognition by which the sheep know the shepherd, and the shepherd knows the sheep. And our Lord declares that this reciprocal knowledge and intimacy is of the same kind as that which exists between Him and His Father.
(4) " 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 " (John xv. 10). That obedience is the true test of love is a commonplace of Christian thought ; Christ has taught us this in His familiar admonition, " If ye love me keep my command- ments." But here our Lord shows us how this principle runs up into the higher sphere, and forms the basis of the love which exists between Him and God. It is a law that operates univers- ally, in heaven as well as on earth ; it is not peculiar to the sphere of earthly discipleship but rules also in the heavenly places ; an ordinance whose sway is felt throughout the whole circle of being.