Then John goes on quietly to explain about that glory, how it came. He says it was "_glory as of an only begotten of a father_." The common versions with which we are familiar, the old King James, the English and American revisions, all say "the," "_the_ only begotten of _the_ Father." I suppose the translators wanted to make it quite clear that Jesus was in an exceptional way the very Son of G.o.d. And so they don"t translate quite as John put it. They try to help him out a little in making his meaning clear.
But you will notice that this old Book of G.o.d never needs any helping out in making the truth quite clear. When you can sift through versions and languages down to what is really being said, you find it said in the simplest strongest way possible.
Here John is saying, "glory as of _an_ only begotten from _a_ father."
It is a family picture, so common in the East. Here in the West, the unit of society is the individual. The farther west you come the more p.r.o.nounced this becomes, until here in our own land individualism seems at times to run to extremes. Custom in the East is the very reverse of this. There the unit of action is not the individual, but the _family_.
The family controls the individual in everything. We Westerners think we can see where it runs to such extremes as to const.i.tute one of the great hindrances to progress there.
In the East, if a young man is to be married, he has actually nothing to do with it, except to be present in proper garb when the time comes. The fact that he should now be married, the choice of his bride, the betrothal, the time, all arrangements and adjustments,--all this is done by the families. The two that we Westerners think of as the princ.i.p.als have nothing to do, except to acquiesce in the arrangements of their elders. It is strictly a family affair.
Even so all that belongs to the family, of wealth, fame, inheritance, distinction, vests distinctly in the head of the family, the father. He stands for the whole family. And so, too, all of this descends directly from the father at his death to his eldest son. In some parts the father retires at a certain age, either really or nominally, and all becomes vested technically in his eldest son. And if the son be an only begotten son, then literally all that is in the father comes into the son. All the fame, the inheritance, the traditions, the obligations, the wealth, in short all the glory of the father comes of itself, by common action of events, to the son.
Now this is what John is thinking of as he writes, "we beheld His glory, glory as of _an_ only begotten of _a_ father." That is to say, all there is in the Father is in Jesus. When you see Jesus, you are seeing the Father. The whole of G.o.d is in this Jesus. This is what John is saying here.
Grace and Truth Coupled.
And then John does a bit of exquisite packing of much in little. He tells the whole story of the character, the revealed glory, of Jesus in such a few simple words,--"_full of grace and truth_." Not grace without truth. That would be a sort of weakly, sickly sentimentalism.
And not truth without grace. That would be a cold stern repellent insistence on certain high standards. But grace and truth coupled, intermingling.
Of course real grace and truth always are coupled. They tell the exquisite poise that is in everything G.o.d does. Truth is the back-bone of grace. Grace is the soft cushioning of flesh upon the bony framework of truth. It is the soft warm breath of life in truth. Truth is grace holding up the one only standard of purity and right and insisting upon it. And as we look we know within ourselves we never can reach it. Grace is truth reaching a strong warm hand down to where we are and _helping_ us reach it.
With G.o.d these things are always coupled. _We_ get them separated badly, or would I better say, imitations of them. There is a sort of thing we have called truth. It is not so common now as a generation or more ago.
It is a sort of stern elevated preaching of righteousness, but with no warm feel of life to it. I can remember hearing preaching in my immature boy days that made me feel that the man and the thing must be right, but neither had any attraction for me. It was as though a man went fishing with a carefully-made properly-labelled metallic-bait at the end of a long stout cord, and said, as he dangled it in the sinful waters to the elusive fish, "Now, bite; or be d.a.m.ned."
It was never put so baldly, of course, in words. And I was only a child with immature childish imaginations. Yet that was the feeling about the thing the child got. But it"s scarcely worth while talking of that now except to point the contrast; things have swung so far to the other extreme.
The current thing to-day is grace without truth, or what is supposed to be grace. It is a sort of man-made subst.i.tute. It"s something like this.
Here"s a man in the gutter, the moral gutter. It may be the actual gutter. Or, there may be the outer trappings of refinement that easy wealth provides; or, the real refinement that culture and inheritance bring. But morally and in spirit, it"s a gutter. The slime of sin and low pa.s.sion, of selfishness and indulgence and self-ambition, oozes over everything in full sight. The man"s in the gutter.
And along comes the modern philosopher of grace, so-called. He looks down compa.s.sionately, and says, "Poor fellow, I"m so sorry for you. Too bad you should have gotten down there. Let me help you a bit, my brother." So he puts some flowering plants down in the slime of the gutter, and he brushes the man"s clothes a bit, and his hair, and sprinkles the latest-labelled cologne-water over him, and pats him on the shoulder, and says, "Now, you feel better, my man, don"t you?" And the man sniffs the perfume, and is quite sure he does. _But he is still in the gutter._
There seems to be an increasing amount of this sort of thing over in my neighbourhood. How is it in your corner of the planet? There"s an intense stress on environment; that means the _outside_ of things.
Better sanitation, improved housing, purer milk supply, and segregation of vice which seems to mean putting some of the viler smelling slime of the gutter, the slimer slime, all over in one guttered section by itself. But there can be no health there. It"s a _change of location_ that is needed!
The wondrous Jesus-plan is different. It holds things in poise. Grace _and_ truth. Truth is Jesus stretching His hand up high, up to the limit of arm"s length, and saying, "Here is the standard, purity, righteousness, utter honesty of heart and rigid purity of motive and life. You _must_ reach this standard. It can"t be lowered by the half thickness of a paper-thin shaving. You must come to this standard. The standard never comes down to you."
And the man in the gutter says, "I"ll never reach it." And he is right.
_He_ never will--of himself, alone. Yet that"s truth, true truth. "A hopeless case" you say; "utter impractical idealizing! Case ruled out of court." Just wait, that"s only half the case, and not the warm half either.
Grace is Jesus going down into the gutter, the gutterest gutter, and taking the man by his outstretching hand, and _lifting_ him _clean up_ out of the gutter, up, and up, _till the man reaches the standard_, and is never content till he does. That was a tremendous going down, and a yet more tremendous lifting up. Jesus broke His heart and lost His life in the going down.
But out from the broken heart came running the blood that proved both cleansing and a salve. And out of the grave of that lost life came a new life that proved an incentive, and a tremendous dynamic. The blood cleanseth the _inside_ of the man in the gutter, and heals his sores, restores his sight and hearing and sensitiveness of touch. The new life put inside the man makes him rise up and _walk determinedly_ out of the gutter to a _new location_. He is a new man, with a new inside, in a new location. That threefold cord is ahead of Solomon"s--it _can"t_ be broken.
And, if you"ll mark it keenly, a new _in_side includes a new _out_side.
The thing that in religious talk is called conversion is a sociological factor that cannot be ignored by the thoughtful student. The drunkard goes down to the old-fashioned sort of mission where they insist on teaching that the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin, and that the Holy Spirit will make a new man of you, and burn the sin out.
And _something_ happens to the drunkard. He kneels a drunkard, drunk; he rises a man, sober. He goes to the hole he calls home. And at once a change begins to work gradually out. He treats his wife and children differently. He works. They are fed better and clothed warmer. He gets a better house in a better neighbourhood. The new sociological factor is at work. It began inside; it revolutionizes the outside.
Settlement houses, better environment, improved outer conditions of every sort, are blessed, and only blessed, after the inside is fixed or in helping to get it fixed. If that isn"t done, they are simply as a lovely bit of pink-coloured court-plaster skilfully adjusted over an ugly incurable ulcer. The man is befooled while the ulcer eats into his vitals.
It"s only the blood-power of a Jesus, _the Jesus,_ that can fix the inside. He cuts out the ulcer and puts in a new strain of blood. Then the inner includes the outer. And the most grateful of all is the man.
This is the Jesus-plan, John says, "_full of grace and truth._"
Grace is named first. It _comes_ first. That is a bit of the graciousness of it. That"s love"s exquisite diplomacy. We feel the grateful warmth of the sun in the winter"s air, and are drawn by it. We smell the fragrance of the roses and come eagerly nearer. We hear the winsomeness of a gentle wooing voice a-calling, and instinctively answer to it. And then we find the sun"s power to heal and cleanse and its insistence on burning up what can"t stand its heat.
We find the inspiring, purifying uplift of the flowers, drawing us up the hillside to the top. We find the voice--the Man--gently but with unflinching unbending determination that never yields a hairbreadth, insisting on our coming clear up to the topmost level. That"s a wondrous order of words, and coupling of helps, grace and truth.
And this is Jesus. This is John"s simple tremendous picture. This Man comes down into our neighbourhood, on our earth. He sticks up His stretch of tent-canvas right next ours. He insists on being His own true self in the midst of the unlikeliest surroundings. The glow of His presence shines out over all the neighbourhood of human tents. There"s a purity of air that stimulates. Men take deep breaths. There"s a fragrance breathing subtly out from His tent that draws and delights.
Men come a-running with childlike eagerness.
Grace Flooding.
And now as Jesus comes quietly down the river road where John"s crowd is gathered, John the witness points his finger tensely out, and eagerly cries out: _There He is! This is the man I"ve been telling you about! He that cometh after me in point of time is become first in relation to me in point of preeminence: for He was before me both in time and in preeminence._
And then John adds a tremendous bit. He had just been talking about Jesus being _full_ of that great combination of grace and truth. Now his thought runs back to that. Listen: "Of _His fullness_ have we all received."
There"s another translation of this sentence that I have run across several times. It reads in this way: "Of His _skimpiness_ have we all received." I never found that in common print; only in the larger print of men"s lives. But in that printing it seems to have run into a large edition, with very wide circulation. Men don"t read this old Book of G.o.d much; less than ever. They get their impression of G.o.d wholly from those who call themselves His followers.
They watch the procession go by. Here they come crippled diseased maimed weakened in body, piteously pathetically crutching along, singed and burned with the flames of the same low pa.s.sion that the onlooking crowds know so well, struggling, limping, crutching along bodily and in every other way.
And that"s a crowd with very keen logic, those onlookers. It judges G.o.d by those bearing His name, very properly. And it says more or less _unconsciously_,--"What a poor sort of G.o.d He must be those people have.
No doubt He has a great job of management on His hands. There are so many of them to provide for. And apparently there can"t be any abundance, certainly no overflow, no surplus. He has to piece it out the best He can to make it go as far as possible."
"I think maybe I needn"t be in any hurry to join that crowd, at least till I have to, along towards the end of things here. There would only be one more to carry. He has such a crowd now. And the resources are pretty badly strained, judging by appearances." So the crowd talks. Poor G.o.d! How He is misrepresented by some walking translations. "Of His _skimpiness_---!" Be careful. Don"t take too much. Be grateful for the crumbs.
Please clean your spectacles, and readjust them carefully, and if you are afflicted with the small-print Bible that seems in such common use, get a reading-gla.s.s and look here at the proper translation. That crutching, leather-bound translation is grossly inaccurate, if it _is_ in such big print, and in such wide circulation. Look here. Can you see the words? This is the only correct reading: "Of His _fullness_ have all we received." Put that into the print of your life, for your own sake and for the crowd"s sake, yes, and for G.o.d"s sake, too, that the crowd may know the kind of a G.o.d G.o.d is.
And as if John had a suspicion about possible bad translations, he did a bit of underscoring. That word _fullness_ is underscored in John"s original copy. It"s a heavy underscoring, in red. The underscoring is in three words he adds: "Grace for grace." That is, grace _in place of_ grace. It"s a sort of picture. Some grace has been received. And it is so wondrous that nothing seems so good. And the man is singing as he goes about his work.
Then comes a sudden soft inrushing of a flood of grace so great that it seems to displace all that was there. Oh! the man didn"t know there was such grace as this. It seems as if he had never known grace before. And the work-song is hushed into a great stillness, though the wondrous rhythm of peace is greater than before.
And then before he quite knows how it happens in comes another soft subtle inrushing flood-tide of grace that seems to displace all again.
Some temptation comes, some sore need, some tight corner. You look to Him; lean on Him; risk all on His response. He _responds_; and in comes the fresh inrush.
And then this sort of thing becomes a habit, G.o.d"s habit of responding to your need, need of every sort. It becomes the commonplace, the blessed commonplace that can never be common. That"s John"s underscoring of the word "fullness." May the crowds whose elbows we jostle get this underscored translation, bound in shoe-leather, _your_ shoe-leather.
Then in his eagerness to make us understand the thing really, John makes a contrast. "The law was _given_ through Moses; grace and truth _came_ through Jesus Christ." The law was a thing, _given_, through a man.
Grace and truth was _a man coming_, the very embodiment in Himself of what the two words stand for.
The law, the old Mosaic law, was not a statement of the _full_ message of G.o.d. That was given much earlier. It was given to all. It came directly. It was given first in Eden, in its flood; and then continuously to every man wherever he was. It was given within each man"s own heart, and through the unfailing flooding light in nature above and below and all around. The tide of its coming has never ceased in volume nor in steadiness of flow; and does not cease. That tide came to flood in Jesus. And that flood has never known an ebb.
But men"s eyes got badly affected. They didn"t let the light in, either clearly or fully. The light was there, but it was not getting in.
Something had to be done to help out those eyes. So the law was given.
It was merely a mirror to let a man see his face, what it was like.