The Oldest Family.
"But," John goes on. That was a steadying "but." It was hard on John to recall how they treated his Friend and Master. But there is a "but."
There"s another aide, an offset to what he"s been saying, a bright bit to offset the black bit. But as many as did receive Him. Some received.
Jesus was rejected, yes, abominably, contemptibly rejected. But He was also accepted, gladly, joyously, wholeheartedly accepted, even though it came to mean pain and shame.
_As many as received Him_, John says, _He received into His family_. The conception of a family and of a home where the family lives, runs all through underneath here. They would not receive this Jesus because He didn"t belong to the inner circle of the old families which they represented. They regarded themselves as the custodians of the exclusive aristocratic circles of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem was the upper circle of Israel.
And every one knew that Israel was the chiefest, the one uppermost nation, of the earth, with none near enough to be cla.s.sed second. They were the favourites of G.o.d, all the rest were "dogs of Gentiles,"
outsiders, not to be mentioned in the same breath. To these national leaders of Jesus" day, this was the very breath of their life.
"And _this Jesus_!" They spat on the ground to relieve the intensity of their contempt. "Who was He? A peasant! a Galilean! Nazareth!" Nazareth was put in as a sort of superlative degree of contempt. Of course, they could easily have found out about the lineage of Jesus. In the best meaning of the word, Jesus was an aristocrat. Apart from its philological derivation that word means one who traces his lineage back through a worthy line for a long way, and so one who has the n.o.ble traits of such lineage. In the best meaning of the word Jesus was an _aristocrat_. His line traced back without slip or break to the great house of David, and that meant clear back to Adam. The records were all there, carefully preserved, indisputable. They could easily have found this out.
I recall talking one day in London with a gentle lady of an old, t.i.tled Scottish family, an earnest Christian, trained in the Latin Church. In the course of the conversation she remarked, "Of course, Jesus was a _peasant_." And I replied as gently as I could so as not to seem to be arguing, "Of course, He was _not_ a peasant. He chose to _live_ as a peasant, for a great strong purpose. But He was an aristocrat in blood.
His family line traced directly back through the n.o.blest families clear to the beginning. No one living had a longer unbroken lineage. And that is the very essence of aristocracy."
In some circles, they count much, or most, on old families. In certain cities of our own country, east and south, this is reckoned as the hall-mark of highest distinction. When one goes across the water to England and the Continent, he finds the old families of America are rather young affairs. And as he pushes on into the East, some of the old families of Europe sometimes seem fairly recent. I remember in the Orient running across a family where the father had been a Shinto priest, father and son successively, through forty-five generations; and another where the father of the family has been successively a court-musician for thirty-eight generations. I thought maybe I had run into some really old families at last.
I come of a rather old family myself. It runs clear back without break or slip to Adam in Eden. I"ve not bothered much with tracing it, for there are some pretty plain evidences of ugly stains on the family escutcheon, running all through, and repeatedly. And then even more than that I"ve become intensely interested in another family, an older family, the oldest family of all. Arrangements have been made whereby I have been taken into this oldest family of all with full rights and privileges. My claims to aristocracy are now of the very highest, with all the n.o.ble obligations that go with it. That"s what John is talking of here. _As many as received Him, He received into His family, the oldest family of all._
These people refused Jesus because He didn"t belong to their set. In their utterly selfish prejudice and wilful ignorance, these leaders shut Him out from the circles they controlled. But with great graciousness He received into His circle any, of any circle, high or low, who would receive Him into their hearts. To as many as received Him into their hearts He opened the door into His own family. He gave them the technical right of becoming children of His Father.
Their part of the thing is put very simply in two ways. They _believed_.
They were told, they listened and thought, they accepted as true, they risked what they counted most precious, they loved. So they believed.
And so they _received._ The door opened, the inner door, the heart door.
He went in. That settled things for them. When He graciously entered their hearts, the inner citadel of their lives, that settled their place in this oldest family of all.
How We Don"t Get In, and How We Do.
It is of intensest interest in our day to have John go on to tell, in his own simple taking way, just how we get into this G.o.d-family. First of all, he tells us how we _don"t_ get in. Listen: "_not of blood_,"
that is, not by our natural generation; "_nor of the will of the flesh_," that is, not by anything we can do of ourselves, though this has a place, a distinctly secondary place; "_nor of the will of man_,"
that is, not by what somebody else can do for us, though this too has its place.
These are the three "_nots_"; the three ways we are _not_ saved. And it becomes of intensest interest to notice that these are the very three ways that the crowd is emphasizing to-day, some this, others that, as the way of being saved. The three modern words we commonly use for these three "nots" of John are, _family, culture_, and _influence_.
Some of us seem to be fully expecting to walk into the presence of G.o.d, and to get all there is to be gotten there, because of the family we belong to. This is probably stronger in some of us than we are conscious of. It"s a matter of blood with us, our blood, our natural generation.
We take greatest pride in showing what blood it is that runs in our veins. We trace the line far back to those whose names are well known.
And this sort of thing has overpowering influence in our human affairs down here.
His gracious majesty King George is King of England, because he is the child of Edward and Alexandra. His one and only claim to the English throne is that at the time of accession he was their oldest living son.
But that won"t figure a farthing"s worth when he comes up to the hearthfire of G.o.d"s family. And I think he understands this full well.
I"m expecting to see him there; not as King of England, but as a brother.
It is not a matter of blood. It"s a blessed thing to be well-born. It makes a tremendous difference to have the blood of an old n.o.ble family in one"s veins, if it is good clean blood. But it"ll never save us.
Salvation is not by lineal descent, not by family line. It is "not of blood." John clears that ground.
Some of us put great stress on what we are in ourselves. This looms big with a great crowd scattered throughout the earth. We know so much. We have gotten it by dint of hard work. We can do some things so skilfully.
We have worked into positions of great power among men. Our names are known. Sometimes they are spelled in large letters.
The broad word for this is _culture_, what we have gained and gotten by our effort, of that which is reckoned good, and which _is_ good. Culture is one of the chief words in our language to-day. Whether spelled the English way or the German, it looms big. It is one of our modern tidbits. It is chewed on much, and pleases our palate greatly. And culture is good, if it is good culture.
But, have you noticed, that you have to have a thing before you can culture it? No amount of the choicest culture will get an apple out of a turnip, nor a Bartlett pear out of a potato, nor make a Chinese into an Englishman, nor an American into a j.a.panese. Culture can improve the stock, but _it can"t change it_. It takes some other power than culture to change the kind. Here we have to be made of the same kind as they are up in the old family of G.o.d. There must be a change at the core. Then culture of that new stock is only good and blessed.
This is John"s second "not." It seems rather radical. It completely undercuts so much of our present day notions. If John is right, some of us are wrong, radically, dangerously wrong. Yet John had a wonderful Teacher whom he lived with for a while. And after He had gone, John had another Teacher, unseen but very real, who guided, especially in the writing of the old Jesus-story. The whole presumption is in favour of John"s way of it being wholly right. And if that makes us wrong, we would better be grateful to find it out _now_, while there"s time to change. Being saved is not a matter of what we can do, of our culture, though this has its proper place.
And some of us put tremendous stress to-day on _influence_, what we can command from others, in furtherance of our desires. Influence is spelled in biggest type and printed in blackest ink. Whether in political matters at Washington or at London; in financial, whether Lombard Street or Wall Street; or in the all-important social matters, or even in the educational, the university world, the chief question is, "Whose influence can you get?" "What name can you quote?" "Whose backing have you?" Influence and culture are the twin G.o.ds to-day. The smoke of their incense goeth up continuously. Their places of worship are crowded, with bent knees and prostrate forms and reverential hush.
Have you noticed that _Jesus_ hadn"t enough influence with the officials of His day to keep from the cross? No: but He had enough _power_ to break the official emblem of earth"s greatest authority, the Roman seal on the Joseph tomb. Rather striking that; intensely significant for us moderns. _Peter_ hadn"t enough _influence_ with the authorities to keep out of jail. Sounds rather disgraceful that, does it not? Aye, but he had enough _power_ with G.o.d to open jail-doors and walk quietly out against the wish of those highest in authority.
Influence has its proper place. It"s good, _if_ it is. But we are not saved by it. We are not saved by what some one else can do for us; "not of the will of man." Your mother"s prayers and your wife"s, and the influence of their G.o.dly lives will have great weight. It"s a great blessing to have them. They help enormously. But the thing itself that takes a man into the presence of G.o.d, saved and redeemed, is something immensely more than this, some action of his own that goes to the roots as none of these other things do.
One time a deputation waited on Lincoln to press a matter of public concern. But his keenly logical mind discerned flaws in their impa.s.sioned and carefully worked out arguments. He waited patiently till their case was complete. And then in that quiet way for which he was famous, he said, "How many legs would a sheep have if you called its tail a leg?" As he expected, they promptly answered "Five." "No," he said, "it wouldn"t; it would have only four. _Calling_ a tail a leg does not make it one." So a simple bit of his homely sense and accurate logic scattered their finely spun argument.
Calling either family or culture or influence the chief thing doesn"t make it so. These are John"s three tremendous "nots." They rather cut straight across the common current of thought and belief and conduct to-day. We may indeed be grateful if a single homely drop of black ink from John"s pen put into the beautifully cloudy-grey solution of modern thought clears the liquid and makes a precipitate of sharply defined truth that any eye can plainly see.
This is how we _won"t_ be saved. This is how we _don"t_ get into the family of G.o.d. It is "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man"; not through family connection, nor by what we can do of ourselves simply, nor by what we can get some of our fellows to do for us, simply.
"_But of G.o.d_," John says. It is by Someone else, outside of us, above us, reaching down from a higher level, and putting the germ of a new life within us, and lifting us up to His own level. He puts His hand _through_ the open door of our will, what we do in opening up to Him, _through_ "the will of the flesh." He walks along the pathway of the earnest desire of those who would help us up, "the will of man." But it is what _He_ does that does the one thing that all depends upon. His is the decisive action, _through_ our choosing and our friends" helping.
I said it isn"t a matter of blood, of lineage. Yet it is. That statement must be modified. Family relationship is of necessity a matter of blood.
That"s the very blood of it. This _is_ a matter of blood; but not _our_ blood; _His._ There has to be a new strain of blood. Our blood is stained. It is at fault. It is impure. There"s been a bad break far back there in the family record, a complete break. We were powerless either to purify the stock, or to get over that gap, even if we admitted the need.
There had to be a bridging of that gap. It had to be from the upper side. The other fell short. The gap was still there. There had to be a new strain of blood. This was, this _is_, the only way. We get into that old first family only by the Father of the family reaching over the break and putting in the new strain of blood, the germ of the family life, and so lifting us up to the new level. And Jesus was G.o.d doing just that.
Our Tented Neighbour.
Then John begins a new paragraph. He goes back to tell just how the thing was done. Listen: _the Word, this wondrous One, became a man, one of ourselves, and pitched His tent in close amongst our tents._There"s only a stretch of canvas between Him and any of us. He wanted to get close, close enough to help, yet never infringing upon the privacy of our tents, only coming in as He was invited. But He has remarkable ears. A whisper reaches Him at once. And He is out of His tent into ours to help at the faintest call. That was why He pitched His tent in amongst ours, to be one of ourselves, and to be at hand in our need.
And then a touch of awe creeps into John"s spirit as he writes, and the light flashes out of his eye with the intensity of an old picture surging to the front of his imagination again. There was more than a _tent_ here, more than a _man_. Out of the man, out through the tent doorway, and tent canvas, flashes a wondrous, soft, clear light, that transfigures canvas and tent and man. John"s face glows as he writes, "and we beheld His _glory_."
I suppose he is thinking chiefly of that still night on white Hermon.
This despised Man had called the inner three away from the crowd, in the dark of night, and had gently drawn aside the exquisite drapery of His humanity, and let some of the inner glory shine out before their eyes.
So the way was lightened for them as their feet were turned with His down towards the dark valley of the cross. I suppose John is thinking chiefly of this.
But this is not all, I am very sure. There"s more, even though this may have been most. Glory is the character of goodness. It is not something tacked on the outside. It is some native thing looking out from within.
So much of what we think of as glory and splendour in scenes of magnificence is a something in the externals, the outer arrangements.
Splendid garbing, brilliant colours, dazzling shining of lights, seats removed a distance apart and up, magnificent outer appointments,--these seem connected in our thought with an occasion and a scene being glorious.
But John is using the word in its simple true first meaning. Glory is something within shining out. It is the inner native light that goodness gives out. "We beheld _His glory_." I think John must have been thinking of Nazareth. Thirty out of thirty-three years were spent in homely Nazareth. Ten-elevenths of Jesus" life was spent in--_living_, simply living the true pure strong gentle life amid ordinary circ.u.mstances, homely surroundings. This was the greatest thing Jesus did short of dying. He _lived_. Next to Calvary where the glory shined out incomparably, it shined out most in Nazareth. He hallowed the common round of life by living an uncommon life there. This was a revealing of His glory. So He revealed the inner spirit of simple full obedience to His Father"s plan for His earth-life.
If we would only rise to His level! The way up is down. We are likest Him when we live the true Jesus-life _regardless of where it is lived_, on the street, in the house, amidst the ideals--or lack of ideals--of those we touch closest. It was a wondrous glory John beheld. And the crowd--no wonder that crowd couldn"t resist Jesus. They can"t even yet, when He is _lived_.