Quiet Talks on John's Gospel by S. D. Gordon

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Quiet Talks on _John's Gospel_

By

S. D. Gordon

1915

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 classical
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 space, 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 space or quantity, but by the finer
proportions of thought and quality.

It has been difficult to hold these homely talks down to the limit of
space 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 God on a wooing errand to
the earth; and that we may join the blest company of the won ones, and
become co-wooers with God of the others.

S. D. G.

Contents

I. John's Story

II. The Wooing Lover

Who it was that came.

III. The Lover Wooing

A group of pictures illustrating how the wooing was done and how
the Lover was received.

IV. Closer Wooing

An evening with opening hearts: the story of a supper and a walk in
the moonlight and the shadows.

V. The Greatest Wooing

A night and a day with hardening hearts: the story of tender
passion and of a terrible tragedy.

VI. An Appointed Tryst Unexpectedly Kept

A day of startling joyous surprises.

VII. Another Tryst

A story of fishing, of guests at breakfast, and of a walk and talk
by the edge of blue Galilee.

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 Titanic 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 God; and that believing ye may have life in his name."--_John xx.
31_.

I

John's Story

The Heart-strings of God.

There's a tense tugging at the heart of God. The heart-strings of God
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 God. 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 God 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,
God'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--God'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 God are the
shortest distance between two given points, the point of God'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 God; a
confused, unconscious, half-conscious, dust-blinded, slippery-road sort
of pulling, but one whose tight grip never slacks. Man needs God, but
does not know it. He knows he needs _some_thing. He feels that keenly.
But he does not know that it's God 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 God 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 passions 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 God 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 God.

The move at God'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 God 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 God 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 God-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 analyzed: it must be smelled and
felt. That's the only way you'll ever know it. The fine scholarly
analyses of John are helpful. But there's the subtler something that
cannot be diagramed or analyzed 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.

Of course each of the Gospel stories has a message of its own, quite
apart from the group of facts common to them all. And these four
messages together give us the fuller distinctive message of these four
little books. And a very winsome message it is, too, that takes hold of
one's heart, and takes a warm strong hold at that.

_Matthew_ tells us that Jesus is a _King_. For a great purpose He chose
to live as a peasant, as one of the common folks. But He was of the
blood royal. He has the long unbroken kingly lineage. He showed kingly
power in His actions, kingly wisdom in His teachings, and the fine
kingly spirit in His gracious kindliness of touch. He was gladly
accepted and served as King by those who understood Him best. He was
acknowledged as King by the Roman Governor; and He died as a King, and
as a King was laid in a newly hewn tomb.

_Mark_ adds a fine touch to this picture, a warm touch with colour in
it,--this King of ours is _a serving King_. This comes not only with a
warm feel, but it comes as a distinct surprise. Men's kings are _served_
kings. There have been kings, and are, who rendered their people a fine
high service, and do. But the overpowering impression given the common
crowd watching on the street is that kings are superior beings, to be
waited upon, humbly bowed to, and implicitly obeyed. They are to be
served.

Bat Mark's picture shows us a King whose passion is to serve. The
service which He draws out of His followers is drawn out by His warm
serving spirit towards us. The words on the royal coat-of-arms are, "Not
to be ministered unto, but to minister." And in the first meaning of the
words He Himself used that means "not to be _served_ but to _serve_." In
Mark the air is tense with rapid action. The quick executive movement of
a capable servant is felt in the terse words short sentences and swift
action of the story.

There's yet warmer colouring in _Luke's_ picture. This serving King is
_nearest of kin to us!_ He is not only of the blood royal, but of the
blood human. He is bone of our bone, blood of our blood, and life of our
common life. He came to us through a rare union of God's power with
human consent and human function, never known before nor repeated since.
This is the bit that Luke adds to the composite message of these four
little God-story books.

Here Jesus has a tenderness of human sympathy with us men, for He and we
are brothers. There's an outlook as broad as the race. No national
boundaries limit its reach. No sectional prejudices warp or shut Him off
from sympathetic touch with any. He shares our common life. He knows our
human temptations, and knows them with a reality that is painful, and
with an intensity that wets His brow and shuts His jaw hard.

This king who serves is _a man_. He _can_ be a king of men for He is a
_man_. He has the first qualification. I might use an old-fashioned word
in the first old-time meaning,--He is _a fellow_, one who shares the
bed and bread of our common experience. And so He is _kin to us_, both
in lineage and in experience, in blood and in spirit.

And John's share in this partnership message adds a simple bold touch of
colouring that makes the picture a masterpiece, _the_ masterpiece. This
King who serves, and is nearest of kin to us, is also _nearest of kin to
God_. He is not only of the blood royal, and the blood human, but of the
blood divine. He was with God before calendars came into use. He was the
God of that creative Genesis week. He came on an errand down to the
earth, and when the errand was done, and well done, He went back home,
bearing on His person the marks of His fidelity to the Father's errand.
This is John's bit of rich high colouring.

And so _we are nearest of kin to God_ through Jesus. Kinship is always a
matter of blood. There is a double kinship, through the blood of
inheritance, and the blood of sacrifice. Our _inherited_ kinship of
blood has been lost. But His blood of sacrifice has made a new kinship.
We had broken the entail of our inheritance clean beyond mending. We
were _outcasts_ by our own act. But He _cast in_. His lot with us, and
so drew us back and up and in. He made a new entail through His blood.
And that new entail is as unbreakable as the old broken one is
unmendable. And so we come into the family of a King. And we are
kingliest in character when we are Christliest in spirit and action. We
are most like the King when we are helping others.

Our true motto, in our relation to our fellows, is: "I am among you as
he that serveth." Towel and basin, bended knee and comforted
pilgrim-feet and refreshed spirit,--this is our family crest. We're kin
to all the race through Jesus. Black skin and white, yellow and brown;
round heads and long, slanting eyes and oval, in slum alley and palatial
home, below the equator and above it,--all are our kinsmen.

We are reaching highest when we are stooping lowest to help some one up.
We're nearest like God in character when we're getting nearest in touch
to those needing help. We are kingliest and Godliest and Christliest
when we're controlled by men's needs, but always under the higher
control of the Holy Spirit.

This is the composite message of the four Gospels; and this is its
practical human outworking.

God on a Wooing Errand.

But it's the other John message we are especially after just now.
There's another message of John's book quite distinct from this, though
naturally allied with it. And this other is the crowding message of his
book. Its thought crowds in upon you till every other is crowded into
second place. And as it gets hold of you it crowds your mind and heart
and life till every other is either crowded out, or crowded to a lower
place; _out_, if it jars; _lower place_, if it agrees, for every
agreeing bit yields to the lead of this tremendous message.

But one must get hold of John before John's message gets hold of him.
John was swayed by a passion. It was a fiery passion flaming through all
his life. It burned through him as the fierce forest fire burns through
the underbrush. Every base thing was eaten up by its flame. Every less
worthy thing came under its heat. It melted and mellowed and moulded his
whole being.

It was _the Jesus-passion_. It was kindled that memorable afternoon
early in his life down in the Jordan bottoms.[1] John's namesake, the
Herald, applied the kindling match. From then on the flames never
flickered nor burned low. They increased steadily, and they increased in
purity, until his whole life was under their holy heat.

John didn't always understand his Master. Sometimes he misunderstood.
But he never failed in his trust of Him, nor in his fidelity to Him. Of
the chosen inner circle John was the one who remained true through the
sorest test, that betrayal-night test. Judas betrayed; Peter denied; the
nine fled in terror down the road to save their cowardly lives; John
went in "_with_ Jesus." That fiery nature of his, that early won for him
the stormy name "son of thunder," came completely under the sway of this
holier tenderer stronger flame, and burned itself out in a passion of
love for Jesus.

The Jesus-passion swayed John completely. This explains the man, and his
career. It explains this little book of his ripe old age. And only this
can. One must read the book through John's own heart, then he begins to
understand it. This Jesus-passioned man is the key to the book, the
human key.

And the distinctive message of the book is simply this: _Jesus was God
on a wooing errand to the earth_. That simple sentence covers fully all
that is found in John's twenty-one chapters. Every line in these
fourteen or fifteen pages can be traced back into that brief statement.

Indeed this becomes an outline of the book. See: in the opening
paragraphs the wooing Lover is coming down to earth.[2] In the first
twelve chapters the Lover is pleading winsomely and earnestly for
acceptance.[3] Then He is seen in closest touch with the inner group of
those who have accepted, opening His heart yet more, wooing still
closer.[4] Then comes the last tragic pleading, pleading in intensest
action, with those who persist in rejecting.[5] And then the last close
heart-touches with the inner circle.[6]

The Water-Mark of John's Gospel.

The very words John so thoughtfully chooses as his leading words bear
the distinct impress of this, like the sharply indented stamp of the
mint on the new coin. Two such words stand out above all others,
"believe" and "witness." The first actually occurs oftenest, sounding
out like the dominant chord of music running throughout a symphony. The
second is like the chief warp-thread into which the fabric is being
woven.

The two words are really twins, born at the same time, of the same
mother. They grow up together and work in perfect accord. The witnessing
is that men may understand and believe. It's the servant leading up to
the belief that shall become the mastering thing. The belief is servant,
too, in turn, leading up to the witnessing that becomes the mastering
passion in those who believe.

These words are worth digging into for the fine gold that lies hidden
within waiting the miner's pick. The word "believe" is a nugget of pure
gold, whether you take our English word or John's word lying underneath.
The underneath word, that John uses in his own mother tongue, runs a
sliding scale of meaning.

It's a ladder rising from bottom round to topmost. It means to be
persuaded that a thing is true; then to place confidence in it, to
trust. And _trust_ always contains the idea of _risk_. The heart-meaning
always is that you _risk_ something very precious to you, risk it to the
point of heart-breaking disaster if your trust proves wrong.

Our English word is of very close kin. It runs the same sort of sliding
scale, from something valuable and precious in itself, on to something
that _satisfies you_ regarding the matter in hand. You are not only
satisfied but pleased, content. And so there is the same trusting and
risking, the same leaning your whole weight upon the thing. Deep down
at its root, _believe_ is a close kinsman to _love_. They both spring
out of the same warm creative womb.

When we dig a bit into that word _believe_ in the usage of common life
it means three distinct things, each leading straight into the
other,--knowledge, belief, trust. That is, _facts_, facts _accepted_,
facts _trusted_ in regard to something that takes hold of your life. You
hear something. You believe it's true. But there must be the third
thing, risking something valuable. There's no belief in the
heart-meaning without this thing of _risking_. The trust that risks is
the life blood of faith. The rest is only the bony skeleton with tendons
and sinews and flesh. There's no life without the blood. There's no
belief without trust.

And the word _witness_ is the same pure-gold sort of nugget, assaying
full weight. John's native word and our own are just the same in
meaning. Their meaning is _to tell what you know_. We shall be running
across this word again, and digging a bit deeper into it. But this is
the thing that stands out in it. You tell something that you yourself
know. There's personal knowledge. There's a telling some one else this
thing you know. And yet more, there's the purpose in the telling, that
others may know what you know, and get all the good that comes with
knowing it.

The _witnessing_ is that others may _believe_. It is a striking thing in
John that the _thought_ of witness is more common than the _word_. The
word occurs several times, and always in a leading way. But the thought
of witnessing is the colouring of every page, and the chief colouring.

I said that these two words were twins, born at the same time, of the
same mother. That warm-hearted brooding mother is the word _wooing_.
Originally _wooing_ means bending towards, inclining forward or reaching
out towards another. And the purpose of the reaching out is to get the
other to reach forward towards you. And that purpose puts the warm feel
into the reaching out.

All words were pictures first. Here in this word _wooing_ is a picture,
by one of the old masters, waiting to be restored, with all the dusty
accumulations of the years carefully removed. And here's the picture: a
man standing, with the light of the morning shining in His eyes, body
bending forward, hands reaching out, with an eagerness, an expectancy in
every line of His body, and tender love glowing out of His face, and
sounding in the very tones with which the voice is calling.

This picture is really the water-mark on the paper of John's Gospel.
Hold up the paper of John's Gospel to the light. The best light for the
purpose is found on Mount Calvary. High altitudes have clearer light.
You see more distinctly. Now look. Hold still that you may see all the
outlines more distinctly. There's the form of a Man standing in pleading
attitude, with outstretched hands. His face combines all the fineness of
the finest woman's face, with all the strength of the strongest man's,
and more, immensely more, all the purity and tenderness and power of
_God's_ face. It _is_ God Himself in human form coming a-wooing to
earth, and we call His name Jesus. This conception is the very
atmosphere of John's Gospel.

Jesus is the witness of the Father to men. He knew the Father. He knew
Him by closest intimacy. He lived with Him. He came down to _tell_ what
He knew. He wanted others to know too. He wanted them to know _even as_
He knew. _Telling_ is the whole of Jesus; telling men of the Father.

His mere presence, His character, His warm sympathy, His practical
helpfulness, His words, His actions, most of all His dying and His
rising, all these were a _telling_, a witnessing, a wooing; telling the
Father's love, telling the damnableness of our sin by giving His very
life blood to get it out of us; so telling us how we might really know
the mother-heart of the Father.

Jesus the Dividing Line.

There are several contrasts between the first three Gospels and John's.
It is very striking to notice one in particular in this connection. One
reading the first three Gospels for the first time is impressed with the
fact of Jesus' _rejection_. This stands out peculiarly and dominantly.
It was the great fact, told most terribly in the death of Jesus. It was
the thing that stood out sharpest in the generation to which Jesus
belonged, the generation for whom these three Gospels were written at
the first.

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