“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for he was before me. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”—JOHN i. 14-16.
IN considering these words, as the Lord may be pleased to enable me, I shall direct your attention, first, to the person spoken of here; in the second place, to the apprehension which the disciples here declare that they had of this person. “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth;” and, in the third place, to what we are to understand, when it is further declared that “of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” These are the three things to which I would like to direct your attention :—
I.—The Person;
II.—The apprehension of faith; and
III.—The exercise of faith in drawing out of this Person’s fulness.
Now, who is this Person? Well, the person is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will notice in this chapter the name under which John speaks of Him. He speaks of Him as the Word, and this name of the Saviour is a name that belonged to Him as the Creator. John is here careful to point Him out as the Creator, when he declares that “without him was not anything made that was made.” But this name, Word, belongs to Him also as the Revealer of the Father. Just as it is by speech we reveal our thoughts to one another, so it is by the revelation of Jesus Christ that the eternal God has revealed His inmost thoughts to the children of men. Therefore, Jesus says, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” and as it is written here, “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
But when John speaks of Him as equal with the Father and as the Creator, he goes on further and speaks of Him as “the light of the world.” In this connection he is careful to point out that, although there had not risen a greater than John the Baptist among men, John was not that Light, but was only a witness of that Light. And he is careful also to point out that He is above angels. “Without him was not anything made that was made,” whether the persons of men or of angels, or the material universe in general. Then, as the Jews were liable to think much about Moses, John, or the Holy Ghost, is careful to bring Moses with the two tables of the holy law to the feet of Jesus Christ, for he says here, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
Without enlarging further upon this matter, it is very clear from the opening verses of the chapter that the person to whom our attention is directed is none other than the eternal God, the second person of the Trinity. True, it was not the Father that assumed our nature; it was not the Holy Ghost that became incarnate; it was the second person of the Trinity that became incarnate. God is one as to His nature, but He is not one as to personalities. There are three distinct persons in the Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—and these three are one God with respect to their nature. This is then the person that is distinguished from the other persons of the Trinity. He was with God, and He is God.
The next thing to which our attention is directed here with regard to this person is that He became incarnate. “The Word was made flesh.” God performed many and wonderful miracles before the children of men in this world, but the miracle of the incarnation is the miracle of miracles, as the Apostle Paul, in writing to Timothy says, “And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God manifest in the flesh.” That the eternal Son of God should unite Himself with our nature, was the greatest wonder that ever appeared before any of the creatures that God ever created. This is the thing into which angels desire to look—that He who was from everlasting, the Ancient of Days, should become a “child born and a son given,” that He should tabernacle among us. That truly was the masterpiece—speaking after the manner of men—of the wisdom, love, mercy, and justice of the eternal God. But the question arises: Why did He become incarnate?
Well, I shall mention three reasons why He became incarnate, and the first is this: He could not, as the servant of the Father, undertake the work of redeeming the lost without assuming the nature that sinned. You and I trampled upon God’s law; we broke His law times without number; and if we have no consciousness of that, it is because we are dead in trespasses and sins. If there would be any life in us, if we would be awakened by the Holy Spirit, and if the love of Christ would be implanted in our souls, we would be conscious always of this terrible reality—that we sinned against God and that we trampled on His holy law. And the Lord Jesus had to assume our nature, had to become one with us, and in becoming one with us He did not cease to be what He was, although He became what He was not, as that complete and beautiful little book which we put into the hands of our children—the Shorter Catechism—says about the Redeemer: “He has two distinct natures and one person for ever.” The Lord Jesus did not cease to be divine when He became incarnate. The glory of His divine nature was veiled under the humanity that He assumed. He laid aside, we might say, the glory that adequately showed forth the brightness of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. “He took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” And all this He did in order that sinners, such as we are, should escape the wrath that will overtake the lost from among men and angels. For if the Bible is clear on any point from beginning to end, it is clear on this—that men and angels will be overtaken by a wrath which will eternally be “the wrath to come.” Jesus, the Word of God, who was with God from everlasting, assumed flesh, and that in order that the nature that sinned should give obedience to God’s law. He was made under the law to redeem those who were under the law, and He redeemed them, in the first place, by His obedience to that law. It was here that God’s people found a rock upon which they could stand—even the obedience of the God-man. This obedience is of such a nature that, although all mankind had continued to be obedient to God, their obedience would only be creature obedience. But the obedience of Jesus, being the obedience of a divine person, magnified the law and made it honourable. God loves His holy law, and He loves those who love His law, but He cannot but be angry with those who are rebels against such a law.
The second reason why He became incarnate was that He had to die. You and I, friend, owe not only obedience to God’s law, but the curse of the law rests upon us as disobedient rebels, and, therefore, justice demands that we should die. The Lamb of God had not only to obey the law, but He had to die: as it is written, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Have the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus become your hope, your refuge in view of eternity? Although you were the blackest sinner out of hell, yet if Christ would become your hope, you would require no more. Law and justice are well satisfied with the obedience and death of Jesus, and this was declared when He rose from the dead. When He died, the grave claimed Him as a hostage, but the grave could not keep the Lord Jesus, for an angel came down and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it. Who sent the angel down? It was law and justice. Now the grave is open, and will be for ever for everyone who is united to Him. The grave will never close its mouth upon such. It will only be, as one put it, like a “robing-room” for the people of God. We are apt to think of the grave as a terrible, gloomy dungeon. We close it upon those who were near and dear to us, but, if they were united to Christ, it is only the place where the weary traveller lays aside, so to speak, the soiled robe of the body until the blast of the last trumpet. Then they shall come forth clothed in robes of glory and beauty in which they will shine for ever and ever.
The third reason why He became incarnate was that He might come very near to us, so as to sympathise with us. We think of God as being very far away from us, but He has come near to us in His Son, who has bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. It is written that He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh—not in the likeness of flesh. If you consider Jesus as brought before us in the Gospels, you will see how near He came to poor sinners. With whom does He mingle? Is it with the great and the rich? Sometimes He goes with such, for He is the Saviour of all classes of men, but you find Him almost always among the poor, the maimed, the halt, the outcasts and dregs of humanity. He was, and is, the Friend of publicans and sinners. He receiveth such.
II.—The apprehension of faith, “We have seen his glory,” etc.
What does John mean here? Does he mean the glory of the miracles of Jesus, such, for instance, as the feeding of the five thousand, the raising of the dead, the stilling of the winds and the waves? He means this, no doubt; but, others saw these things, and yet rejected Him. Many saw all these miracles, yet they did not see His glory as that glory is spoken of here. Does this mean the glory that they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration? John was one of the privileged three who were with Him on the Mount, when His raiment became white as snow, when the glory of His divine nature began to manifest itself through His humanity. Well, that may be included, but it is not what is particularly meant here. There are some here present who saw His glory in the sense in which John declares “We have seen his glory.” It is no: at all seeing miracles, for although you would see Lazarus coming out of the grave with the grave clothes about him, and the friends loosing him and letting him go, the man who had been just a few minutes before then seeing corruption in the grave, you would not see the glory of the Redeemer in the sense in which John speaks of it here, unless an operation was performed on your understanding and heart, and that by the Holy Ghost. What then do you need? Oh, you need this, that you would get a new heart and a right spirit, the teaching of the Holy Ghost in your minds, and that through the Word of God being made spirit and life to your souls.
Now, when sinners are enabled to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, they see, first, the glory of His divinity. And you are here present who saw this glory—that He is a divine person; and you also saw the glory of His humanity—that the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, who was so rich, became poor, that sinners, through His poverty, might become rich. You see, the Christ that faith lays hold of is not a Christ that is God only, and He is not a Christ that is man only, but He is God and man. And I believe, friends, that this was the Christ the faith of Abel embraced, and that the faith of Job laid hold of, as he says, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” That was the Christ that faith has had in all ages—the Christ who is God on the one hand and man on the other. And as I said already, you are here who have seen that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the co-equal of the Father, became one with yourselves. He took your place, He took your position, to satisfy justice on behalf of the lost, to magnify the law in the room of sinners. The world was offended in Him. Why? Because they did not see His glory—the glory that was associated with the “Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.” What a glory John saw in Him as He went about healing all manner of diseases, when he saw the eternal fountain of sympathy that was in the Lamb of God going out by way of exercising itself upon all manner of sinners! “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” It was in His lowliness they apprehended Him as being the only-begotten of the Father, and the nature of this apprehension is just faith beholding, in Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of publicans and sinners, the Lamb of God, the co-equal with the Father, and at the same time, the Son of Man—the just suffering in room of the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
III.—Let us consider, now, the exercise of faith in drawing out of the fulness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the first thing I want to direct your attention to under this head is that, in apprehending His fulness, they apprehend that everyone that ever received out of Him must have received out of Him as empty sinners in themselves. Mark the word, “receive.” “Of his fulness have all we received.” That is the prerogative or the work of faith, even to receive; and “without faith it is impossible to please God.” What is the most difficult thing—speaking after the manner of men—that the Holy Ghost finds to do in making a place for Jesus Christ in the heart of man? It is this: to empty the sinner, to deprive him of what he clings to by nature in the way of every hope in himself. You cannot believe God as long as you have one rag of your own righteousness to which you are trusting and looking. And those who received out of His fulness, first became empty—so empty that they had not so much as one prayer, so much as one good deed, one good thought, or one good desire. “Oh, we are not so poor as that.” No; unfortunately. Oh, if you were all as poor as this, how easy it would be to preach Christ to you. That is where the difficulty comes in—that men are rich in their own estimation. They have this, and they have that, to recommend them to God. Well, not one with a farthing of man’s own goodness in his pocket ever received out of the fulness that is in Jesus Christ.
And the second thing that is true about them is this, they see that salvation is a matter of receiving out of the fulness that is treasured up in Christ. Did that ever become to you a heaven upon earth? Did ever your heart leap within you for joy when you discovered this great reality, this great truth, that salvation consists in this, an empty sinner receiving out of what is in Jesus Christ, receiving His righteousness, receiving His merits, receiving His goodness, receiving His love—receiving His blood to cleanse you, His Spirit to enlighten you, and His love to heal your broken heart and to raise you up to have your affections set on the things that are above? Well, then, all who behold His glory discovered, first, that they were empty, and that emptiness was really what qualified for the Saviour. They had not a good thought, or word, or deed, or desire, or anything else, but were ruined, lost and undone; and then they discovered that salvation was a matter of receiving out of the fulness of Jesus Christ, and grace for grace.
What is the meaning of these words, “grace for grace?” They appear to me to mean grace upon grace, grace always from beginning to end, not only a little at the outside of your career, and then work your own passage to heaven. Ah! that is not how Jesus Christ deals with His people; that is not how they have found Him; but they have found that, after the grace which they receive at the beginning is spent, they have to come back to His fulness to receive more grace. That is the Gospel that we preach, friends, that we understand and that we hope in, and, if we did not hope in it, we would have given up long ago. “And of his fulness,” that is, we may say, the riches of His obedience, the riches of His suffering, the riches of the treasures that are in Him, “have all we received, and grace for grace.” As the Apostle Paul puts it, “That as sin has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord;” the grace that reigns through righteousness, that is to say, through the obedience and death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, you who have seen His glory, is not this what you have come to find out, that you are always empty: that you came empty at the beginning, and that you received grace? You found out that receiving was the God-glorifying way, and you found out afterwards that you were emptiness again, and, coming to His fulness again, you received grace again; always empty, receiving as a beggar always. This is the life of faith upon the Son of God. Oh, then, will you not come to this person, this great God and Saviour, for grace? Will you not come to Him empty, ruined and undone? Will you not put your empty mouth to the fountain that hath been opened? Will you not drink your fill of the grace that reigns through righteousness unto eternal life? “Why will ye die?” says God to the children of men. Why will you perish, when there is a Saviour, and this Saviour is free to you, and offered to you. He is inviting you, digging about you by His word and providence, to see if you will come to Him and bear fruit? And what is it to bear fruit? Just to exercise faith upon Him, for “without faith it is impossible to please God.” And when you begin to exercise faith, you begin to live, and not till then.
May He bless His Word.