Quiet Talks on John"s Gospel.
by S. D. Gordon.
Preface
_Everything depends on getting Jesus placed._ That lies at the root of all--living, serving, preaching, teaching. John had Jesus placed. He had Him up in His own place. This settles everything else. Then one gets himself placed, too, up on a level where the air is clear and bracing, the sun warm, and the outlook both steadying and stimulating. Get the centre fixed and things quickly adjust themselves about it to your eyes.
It will be seen very quickly that this little book makes no pretension to being a commentary on, or an exposition of, John"s Gospel. That is left to the scholarly folk who eat their meals in the sacred cla.s.sical languages of the past. It is simply a homely attempt to let out a little of what has been sifting in these years past of this wondrous miniature Bible from John"s pen.
The proportions of this homely little messenger of paper and type may seem a little odd at first. The longest chapter is devoted to only the opening eighteen verses of John, the prologue. While the whole of the first twelve chapters of John, excepting that prologue, is brought into one smaller chapter. It wasn"t planned so, though I felt it coming as the wondrous mood of this book came down over me. I think it mast be the effect of the atmosphere of John"s book.
Sometimes John packs so much in so little s.p.a.ce, and again he goes so particularly into the details of some one incident. The prologue is a miniature Bible. The whole Bible story is there in its cream. And on the other hand John spends five chapters (xiii.-xvii.), almost a fifth of the whole, on a single evening. He devotes seven chapters (xiii.-xix.), almost a third of all, on the events of twenty-four hours. John is controlled not by mere proportion of s.p.a.ce or quant.i.ty, but by the finer proportions of thought and quality.
It has been difficult to hold these homely talks down to the limit of s.p.a.ce they take here. So many veins of gold in this mine, showing clearly large nuggets of pure ore, lie just at hand untouched in this little mining venture. But it seemed clearly best to get the one clear grasp of the whole. That helps so much. But there"ll be strong temptation to get one"s pick and spade and go at this gold mine again.
But now these things are written that we common folk may understand a bit better, and in a warm way, that Jesus was G.o.d on a wooing errand to the earth; and that we may join the blest company of the won ones, and become co-wooers with G.o.d of the others.
S. D. G.
I
John"s Story
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes, I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown t.i.tanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after."
--_Francis Thompson, in "The Hound of Heaven_."
"These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of G.o.d; and that believing ye may have life in his name."--_John xx.
31_.
I
John"s Story
The Heart-strings of G.o.d.
There"s a tense tugging at the heart of G.o.d. The heart-strings of G.o.d are tight, as tight as tight can be. For there"s a tender heart that"s easily tugged at one end, and an insistent tugging at the other. The tugging never ceases. The strings never slack. They give no signs of easing or getting loose.
It"s the tug of man"s sore need at the down-end, the man-end, of the strings. And it"s the sore tug of grief over the way things are going on down here with men, at the other end, the up-end, the heart-end, of the strings. It"s the tense pull-up of a love that grows stronger with the growth of man"s misunderstanding.
But the heart-strings never snap. The heart itself breaks under the tension of love and grief, grieved and grieving love. But the strings only strengthen and tighten under the strain of use.
Those heart-strings are a bit of the heart they"re tied to, an inner bit, aye the innermost bit, the inner heart of the heart. They are the bit pulled, and pulled more, and pulled harder, till the strings grew.
Man was born in the warm heart of G.o.d. Was there ever such a womb! Was there ever such another borning, homing place!
It was man"s going away that stretched the heart out till the strings grew. The tragedy of sin revealed the toughness and tenderness of love.
For that heart never let go of the man whom it borned. Man tried to pull away, poor thing. In his foolish misunderstanding and heady wilfulness he tried to cut loose. If he had known G.o.d better he would never have tried that. He"d never have _started_ away; and he"d never have tried to _get_ away.
For love never faileth. A heart--the real thing of a heart, that is, G.o.d"s heart--never lets go. It breaks; but let go? not once: never yet.
The breaking only loosens the red that glues fast with a tighter hold than ever. The fibre of the heart--G.o.d"s heart--is made of too strong stuff to loosen or wear out or snap. Love never faileth. It can"t; because it"s love.
Now all this explains Jesus. It was man"s pull on these heart-strings that brought Him down. The pull was so strong and steady. It grew tenser and more insistent. And straight down He came by the shortest way, the way of those same heart-strings. For the heart-strings of G.o.d are the shortest distance between two given points, the point of G.o.d"s giving, going love, and the point of man"s sore need, given a sharper-pointed end by its very soreness.
It is a sort of blind pull, this pull of man on the heart of G.o.d; a confused, unconscious, half-conscious, dust-blinded, slippery-road sort of pulling, but one whose tight grip never slacks. Man needs G.o.d, but does not know it. He knows he needs _some_thing. He feels that keenly.
But he does not know that it"s G.o.d whom he needs, with a very few rare exceptions. It doesn"t seem to have entered his head that he"ll never get out of his tight corner till G.o.d gets him out.
Down the street of life he goes, eyes blinded by the thick dust, ears deafened by the cries of the crowd, by the noise of the street without, and the noise of pa.s.sions and fevered ambitions within, heart a-wearied by the confusion of it all, groping, stumbling, jostled and jostling, hitting this way and that, with the fever high in his blood, and his feet aching and bleeding; sometimes the polish of culture on the surface; _some_times rags and dirt; but underneath the same thing.
Yet under all there"s a vague but very real feeling of that unceasing pull upward upon His heart-strings. But though blind and vague and confused that tugging is never the less tense, but ever more, and then yet more.
Jesus was G.o.d answering the tug of man"s need on His heart-strings. And so naturally there was an answering feel in man"s heart. Man felt the answer a-coming. There was a great stir in the spirit-currents of earth when Jesus came. A thrill of expectancy ran through the world, Roman, Greek, Barbarian, far and wide, as Jesus drew near. The book-makers of that time all speak of it. It was the vibration of those same heart-strings connecting man and G.o.d.
The move at G.o.d"s end was felt at man"s. The coming down along the highway of the strings thrilled and stirred and awed the hearts into which those strings led, and where they were so tightly knotted. The earth-currents spread the news. Man heard; he felt; he knew: vaguely, blindly, wearily, yet very really he heard and felt and recognized that help, a Friend, some One, was nearing.
And then when Jesus walked among men how He did pull upon their hearts!
So quietly He went about. So sympathetically He looked and listened. So warm was the human touch of His hand. So strong was the lift of His arm to ease their load. So potent was the spell of His unfailing power to give relief. How He did pull! And how men did answer to that pull!
Unresistingly, eagerly, as weary child in mother"s arms at close of day, they came crowding to Him.
The Fourfold Message.
It is fascinating to find one book in this old Book of G.o.d given up wholly to telling of this, John"s Gospel. Of course the whole of the Book is really given up to it, when one gets the whole simple view of it at one glance. But so many of us don"t get that whole simple glance.
So to make it easier for us simple common folk, and to make sure of our getting it, there is one little book, hardly big enough to call a book, just a few pages devoted wholly to letting us see this one thing. You can see the whole of the sun in a single drop of water. You can see the whole of the Book of G.o.d in this one little book that John wrote.
John"s Gospel is like the small tracing of the artist"s pen on the lower corner of an etching, the remarque, put there as a signature, the artist"s personal mark that the picture is genuine, the real thing. The whole consummate skill of the artist is revealed at a glance in the simple outline-tracing on the margin. The whole of the G.o.d-story in the larger picture of the whole Book is given in few simple clear lines in this exquisite little thing commonly called John"s Gospel.
It is striking to make the discovery that John"s little book has _a distinctive message as a book_. It is full of messages, of course. But I mean that there is a distinct story told by the book as a whole, by the very way it is put together. It is told by the very sort of language used, the words chosen as the leading words of the book. It is told by the picture that clearly fills John"s eye as he writes, and by the very spirit that floods the pages as a soft light, and that breaks out of them as the subtle fragrance of locust blossoms in the spring.
The fragrance of flowers cannot be a.n.a.lyzed: it must be smelled and felt. That"s the only way you"ll ever know it. The fine scholarly a.n.a.lyses of John are helpful. But there"s the subtler something that cannot be diagramed or a.n.a.lyzed or synthesized. It eludes the razor-edged knife, and the keenly critical survey. It is recognized only by one"s spirit, and then only when the spirit is warm, and in tune with John"s.