The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 7

hum1tnity nnd or the Church, the realized presence of tlie Holy Spirit, a continual refer<>nce to Christ-to his character, to his death, and his blood, his resurrection, and ascension, his second ad,ent, and the judgment of quick and dead. Now, if Oh,-ist bo u reality, if the story of the synoptic Gospels can be trnet.ed, very much is explained. The generation was Ji-ring which had received from the lips of Jesus his own iden of himself, and hnd been face to face with God manifest in flesh. The sifting, burning words of tbe Master himself, circulating from home to home, from Church to Church -the living word of the Christ, the revelations made by him-were the life of the apostolic community. Men were 61\ting this mllnna which came down from heaven. St. Paul's Epistles are admitted to be the earliest fragments of what we call the New Testament; but they most obviously are built up on mutually accredited ideas-on tho "word of the truth of the gospel," which had spread with the rapidity of a prairie fire from Galilee to Antioch, from Galatia t.o Ephesus, from Dabylon to Corinth, from Alex- 1mdria and Athens to Rome. Men, not "filled with new wine," but saturated with Lhe Spirit, were then monng from land to land; wheresoever they went they proclaimed t,he word, the royal majesty, the saving might, of the Lord Jesus Christ. According to our narratives, "John" was one of the pillars of the Church (Gal. ii. 9), and was closely identified with Peter in the earliest victories of Christianity. He was one of the firi:t preachers of the gospel of Christ; and his memories of the Master contributed at least to the views which St. Paul entertained of the Person and ministry, the death and resurrection, of the Lord Jesus Christ, the powers of faith, the functions of love, and the relation between the body of Christ and its spiritual and exalted Heacl. May we not make the supposition that Jesus di,d speak to Nicodemus, to the Sama.ritaness, to the Jews, to the Galiheans, to the chief rulers, to the Greeks, to the company of the eleven, as the Fourth Gospel reports of him? Is it inconceivable and incredible that he who did, according to synoptic tradition, speak of himself as having the destiny of all men and nations in his hands, should also have said on another occasion that "the Father hath given all judgment into his hands;" that he who called upon all men to "repent," should have described the Divine side of this great human experience a.s a regeneration by the Spirit; that he who raised other dead mar have raised Lazarus from the grave; that he who said, "Come unto me," should also have said, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out"? Is not the astounding group and body of convictions concerning the place and power of the Lord Jesus best explained by the fact (not the mere supposition) that Jesus claimed a pre-existent glory with the Father, that he was one with the Father, and would be lifted up that he might draw all men to himself? Are not many events in the final week of the Lord's life best explained by the additional facts referred t.o by the fourth evangelist? Is it not rational to suppose that some at least of the disciples perceived the blending of the Divine and human in the perfect life of their Lord, and felt overpowered by the greatness of his con- descension and the unutterable sweetness of his sympathy? Without going into further details, let us for the sake of argument make the supposition that the eternal Son of God, who had been always the Life and Light of the world, did actually become man upon earth, and, by reason of his resurrection from the dead, became, as Paul said, "the first- fruits of them that sleep," and " was declared with power to be the Son of God ; " that this was not a mere after-thought, a dream of St. Paul, or a dogma of an Alexandrine sophist in the second century, but a positive event, which enacted itself in the life of Jesus; -then what more likely than that a disciple whom Jesus loved should have retained memories of his words and deeds which, when brought together in later years should have justified him in producing the proem of the Gospel? The supposition is that this same disciple should also have seen visions and dreamed dreams of Christ's supernal splendour of power and rnle, which justified and deepened his own older memories. 'l'bese memories prepared him for the final conception of the place filled in the universe 11y the Lord Jesus Christ, and that conception enabled him to fall be.ck npon the earthly manifestations of love and of power by which he had been brought into the fellowship of the Father, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The asawmption of the occurrence of the facts dissipates all difficulty about the unity of the man John. The fact that he had insight enough to receive and retain the discourses of Jesus, and the fact that he saw the fulness or grace and truth, the glory of the only begotten Son, in the humanity of Jesus, are consonant with another fact in  TIIE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST..JOHN. ix ----------------------------- - --- his experience, that he should see the Shepherd of fsrnel, an,! the slain Lamb, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah open the book and loose its seals, and declare that, as" the King of ldngs and Lord of lords," bearing the name of" 'fhe Word of God," he should cl\st down all thllt resists his supreme power, and fulfil all the sublime hopes which were breathed in the solemn hush of the upper chamber. O. Critical difficulties of a literary kind, arising from some of the peculiarities of the several documents, d,o in our opinion largely depend on the a priMi supposition that such facts o.s these are incredible and unthinkable. The snpponed impossibility of the Incarnation, the fancied incredibility of the Resurrection, and the consequent rejection of all events which are not in harmony with physical o.nd psychologic laws of nature and mo.n, compel the critics to find some explanation of the mysterious and puzzlin~ phenomena which these docnments reveal. If the unreality of both groups of fact8 be a foregone conclusion, the Gospel is a romance and the Apocalypse a dream; and such a romance and such a dream could scarcely have been fashionerl in the same brain. On thE' other hand, the admission of BlICh facts, or the absence even of any prejudice against their possibility, reduces this discrepancy to very small limits. If it wns the beloved disciple who has given us this resume of his deepest religions experience, then the evidence becomes almost irresistible that Jesus is the Son of God. If Jesus did say and do the things herein recorded, then everything in the universe, every event in time, every fact in the history of the world, is affected by it. 10. The <Jliristianfaith is not dependent upon the Go.•pel of John. All the strenuous, wonderful ministry and correspondence of St. Paul were completed thirty (perhaps forty) years before this Gospel saw the light. The Churches of Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome were founded and grew to great importance without having read the conversation with Nico~emus or the valedictory discourse. "The faith of Christ the Lord of glory" prevailed in the synagogues of Judrea., as we may reasonably argue from the encyclical letter of James the Just, the servant and brother of Jesus. Judas also, the brother of James, taught his fellow-disciples to "keep themselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." The Christian Church existed, and was the scene of anxious controversy, developing a new form of human society and a new code of ethics. This society was linked by subtle bands of common faith and hope; it was troubled by unauthorized intruders; it was consecrated by the blood of many martyrs; it possessed a "faith once for all delivered to the saints," be/Me the Fourth Gospel was indited. Christianity is not dependent upon it. The existence of this faith in a potent form, so subtle that it abashed philosophy and sapped the foundations of idolatry and honeycombed the Grreco-Roman world, and did so befO'T'e this document saw the light, is one of the best- attested facts of past history. The spread, the force, the vitality, of the Christian com- munity, even in the days when the Epistle to Romans was written (say A.D. 58), is forced upon our minds by a perusal of any half-dozen verses of the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, or Corinthians. '!'he bare lines themselves bring a supernatural fact under our very eyes. That a born Jew should have preached in Corinth and Thessalonica the supreme majesty of a crucified Man-and this within twenty years of the death of Jesus -and that he sl1ould have been believed; and that ideas arising out of this stupendous claim should have created a new philosophy of heaven and earth, of morals and history; is undoubtedly one of the most astonishing facts in the history of the world. Modern criticism does not dispute the facts, and modem methods of research have not reduced them to the "natural order." We nre face to face with these facts now. They can never be abolished. They emit a lustre and exert e. spiritual force wherever they are pondered. The simple facts themselves e.re, in the judgment of the most widely read students of ancient history, absolutely unique, and they have about them the same kind of almost weird wonderfulness which we should have experienced if we bad seen and handled the Lord Jesus nfter he rose from the dead. We are compelled to believe, or at least to admit, this insoluble puzzle. History dates from this great crisis, from this commencement of a new world, this enthronement of e. new Adam, this conscious victory of man over sin and death, this upliftiag of the veil, this dawning of an eternal day. Christendom is practically independent of the Fourth Gospel and of thn Apocalypse, so that if we were deprived of both, or if, what would be equally deplor- able, we were robbed of all confidence in either, we should still have an indefeasible  X J:N"TRODUCTION TO