by Rev. S. Fraser Tallach, Retiring Moderator
“He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.” John 3: 29.
“Divide and conquer” is a strategy of simple, but well-proven success. Behind the rather indefinite statement of verse 25, that there arose a question between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying, there lurks such an intention, as the sequel shows. Doubtless, the Jews might have adopted an air of lofty principle when they raised this question. In all innocence, as it seemed they asked the question, “John, he baptises on one part of the Jordan; Jesus baptises on another part of the Jordan; which baptism truly purifies? Which has the stamp of divine authority?” The effect which they aimed at, and only too effectively achieved, was to nurse into an active flame the smouldering sense of grievance against Christ which John’s disciples had begun to cherish.
They, in turn, resolved to open their Master’s eyes to the hurt their cause was suffering. There, doubtless, was an element of frustration in the statement of the disciples. John was a simple man of the desert. He did not understand the ways of the world. Specifically he could not — ingenuous spirit that he was — recognise when another was supplanting his place.
It was a matter of particular discontent that it was to Jesus the disciples were departing. Time was when John’s name as a preacher was not merely the foremost name. His was the only name worth mentioning. “Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan.” Jesus, at that time, moved among the crowd, unnoticed. He even asked for baptism at John’s hands. Now, Jesus had developed an independent cause. He had even adopted the characteristic hall-mark of John’s ministry — that of baptism, (though, as the next chapter explains, it was the disciples of Jesus who baptised in His name). This baptism was practised, not on the Sea of Galilee, nor at the well of Sychar, nor in the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, but right on the very river which John had made his own, the river Jordan.
John, of course, had made the matter worse by witnessing to Christ. Was it any wonder that men would leave him when he openly declared that he was not worthy to untie the shoe-latchet of Christ? The gifts which, until now, John had sacrificed with such self-denial in the cause of eternal truth, he must now use in his own interest. The loyalty of his own disciples must be appealed to. John’s prestige was suffering. His influence was not what it once was. Indeed, his whole movement was running into a crisis of credibility. If he continued thus, his ministry would be remembered only as some nine-day wonder. He must act before it was too late.
Who had borne the burden and heat of the day? Who had won the hearts of the disciples by dint of toil and sweat? Who had courageously levelled the pride of the Pharisees, even when the temptation must have been strong to flatter them? Who had led a broad movement, spanning Jew and Gentile, publicans and religious leaders, soldiers and kings, proclaiming the tender mercy of our God and guiding their feet in the way of peace (Luke 1: 79)? Was John now to squander all?
There is no doubt that John’s disciples did speak with a certain kind of realism. Their advice was true to the facts as they saw them. Nevertheless, this realism savoured not of the things that be of God but of the things that be of men. The disciples had not even begun to address themselves to the proper question as to whose cause they represented. “He that hath the bride”, says John, “is the bridegroom”. The bride is the Church. The bridegroom is Christ. There is only one bride. There is only one Bridegroom. He has an exclusive right to the bride.
“You say that before Christ’s voice was heard on the banks of the Jordan, I was already there. If you wish to determine the question of priority, go back to the time before the mountains were settled. He, coming after me, was preferred before me, for He was before me. Even then He had his delights with the sons of men. In the light of the everlasting covenant, Christ can say of His bride, “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me”. Whoever might be the instrumental cause of drawing them, it is with Christ’s everlasting love that they have been loved.
“You say that so far as labour is concerned I have prior right. I have often taxed my strength. I have sweat under the mid-day sun. You say that my labour has won my disciples. You know nothing of true sacrifice. It is when you see — God so loving the world that He gives His only-begotten Son, and Christ so loving the world that He gives Himself, that He might be able to say to the church: ‘Thy Maker is thy Husband . . . thy Redeemer the holy One of Israel’, that you will know the meaning of sacrifice. Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing: but that it should be holy and without blemish.’ Here is travailing, not just with the elements, but saying of death, ‘I will be thy plagues’, and of the grave, ‘I will be thy destruction’. It is when you see that momentous, titanic labour of Christ in abolishing death and bringing life and immortality to light that you will know true labour. This is sweat of the soul, not merely of the body. Were any of you who were baptised by me washed, not only in symbolic fashion, but in truth? Did you take the prayer of David, “Me cleanse from sin and thoroughly wash from mine iniquity?” Then, you are not mine. The face you saw as you came out of the waters of baptism may have been mine, but it is HE who bought you by His own blood.”
John’s disciples might rejoin and claim that in terms of brotherly concord he could claim them as his own. “Do you not remember how you expounded to this one and that about Elijah in whose spirit you yourself came; how you showed that the sacrifice of the Lamb of God would be a magnifying of the law and a making it honourable? How can you be indifferent to the breaking of the bonds of such warm and intimate fellowship?” Once again, John says, “You look on things from the outward appearance. I judge righteous judgment. What is it that truly binds both me and my disciples in fellowship to the Lamb of God? In Hosea, when Israel is restored, the Lord will say to them, ‘I will betroth you unto Me in faithfulness, loving kindness and mercies, and you shall know the Lord.’ In that day Israel will call the Lord, ‘Ishi’, that is, ‘My Husband’.” This is an exclusive right, not only in terms of the eternal covenant, not only in the terms of the purchase of Christ’s blood, but also in terms of the call of Christ, whoever the preacher may be. It might be such a man as C. H. Spurgeon heard when he was in concern of soul. Preaching on the words, “Look unto Me and be ye saved”, he exhausted all that he could think of saying on the text, and concluded with “Look, young man, look.” Christ said these words. Christ called Spurgeon into living fellowship with Himself. So close, so intimate is this fellowship that it is likened to the union between the head and the members of the body. Every pain, right out of the extremities of the limbs is felt by the head. Conversely, every muscle, even the smallest, acts under command of the head.
Finally, he who has the bride in prospect is the bridegroom. Do we see Christ from a past eternity look forward to His entry into this world? Then, the moment He thinks of the horror of darkness of Gethsemane and Calvary, that moment He looks forward to the fruit of this travail of soul.” The marriage of the Lamb is come, and the bride hath made herself ready.” That day, as a fruit of all that He has done for her, she will be without spot, wrinkle or any such thing.
Christ came and joined the crowds who heard John at the Jordan. He was indistinguishable from any other. It was John’s face that their eyes were riveted upon as he spoke to them. “There standeth One among you whom ye know not,” said John. What a change there will be on that final day! “Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.” He shall be the centre. John might well say, “I will be swallowed up among the nations that keep the truth, who, together make up the bride. My voice will be swallowed up in the sound of that united chorus, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive honour, dominion and power.’ Why do you speak of any honour due to me? He must increase; I must decrease. You say of me that I am a burning and shining light, but a man can receive nothing except it be given him from above. As was true of the prophets in whom the Spirit of Christ testified, so it is true of Me. All I have, it is from heaven it comes.”
As the rising sun picks out individual points and pinacles on the ridges of the Alps, these seem to shine with independent power and independent life. When the sun has actually risen, however, one realises that every shaft of light radiates out from the one centre: so will it be at that day. “The Lamb will be all the glory in Immanuel’s land”. Looking back from that day, we will see that of Him have been all things, through Him have been all things; to Him, to all eternity shall be all the glory. This is the doctrine that has been very dear to the Scottish Church, i.e. the sole headship of Christ over his church. How zealous the Reformers were that no vicar of Christ, such as the Pope, should come between Christ and His bride. Even as opposed to the admittedly Protestant Reformation in England, no “Defender of the Faith”, such as King Henry VIII and his successors must be allowed to intrude. As Sir Henry Moncrieff says in his book, “The Free Church Principle”, “There is no such head of the Church on earth — no power, either civil or ecclesiastical, that can interfere between my conscience and the mind of Christ, as I see it in his Word. Christ alone is the Head of the Church, so as to command my religious faith and conduct.”
The devotion of the Church must go straight to Christ; “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine”. The Church’s worship must go straight to Christ; “He is thy Lord and worship thou Him”. The Church’s conscience is subject to Him and to Him alone; “One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.” Permit me to say in passing that we must watch when we speak in terms of “our people”, “our loyal people”, or “our faithful people”, that we do not seem to cut the joints and bands that unite the Head of the Church directly with each member of the Church, and, if it is not too bold a term, by some kind of unholy surgery, that we seek to unite them to us as though with us is the fountain of life; as though in our light they will see light. Let us act in the spirit of Paul when he said, “I have espoused you, a chaste virgin to Christ”. And when men come to us and say, “Be my conscience”, whatever advice we see fit to render, we must respond as Eli did to Samuel and say “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.” Even Paul, the apostle took it as no insult, but a sign of superior nobility when men searched the Scriptures to see if what he taught was indeed so. He did not claim dominion over his disciples’ faith. Christ alone had that privilege. Paul claimed only the position of “the helper of their joy”.
That brings us to consider from this text what the function of the ministry is, though in many ways, John was unique and lived and served at a unique juncture in the history of salvation, in other ways John was no different in his central message from those who went before and came after him. Isaiah preached repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and every true gospel minister since that time has done the same. If Christ alone is Lord, what is the function of John? His disciples would make him a centre of influence which competed with Christ. John himself answers: “I am the friend of the Bridegroom. I have a mission, but that mission comes from Christ. I have authority and gifts, but these again come alone from Christ. I have an invitation to give to sinners, but that also comes from Christ.” Eliezer, when he went out to gain a bride for Isaac was armed with a mission, authority, gifts, and invitation also. They all came from Abraham and Isaac. So we go with power delegated from God and His Christ. That is described by George Gillespie in terms of the gift of the keys. “There are four keys which the servants of Christ have to exercise. These are the keys of knowledge, of order and decency, the key of discipline and the key of ordination.” Yet you will immediately see that it is as sanctioned by Christ we do these things. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given . . . the government shall be upon His shoulders.” It is as we fulfil the directions of Christ; it is as we exercise a rule which, to quote the Claim, Declaration and Protest, is “not lordly, but ministerial, and to be exercised in accordance with the laws of Christ and the liberties of His people.” It is as we exercise that rule directly under Christ, that we will truly fulfil our commission. Indeed, the Disruption gives an illustration of that. There is a power, the Disruption fathers taught, that goes directly from Christ to every member of the Church to appoint their own pastors. Not only may not pastors assume this right, but the courts of the church itself assert themselves properly (apart from judging whether any candidate is properly qualified or not) only when they safeguard this liberty. This is Christ directly calling His people to act according to His own mind and will. There are other cases, of course, in which the Church itself has to act in the place of Christ, as in ordination; but is it not evident, even in ordination itself that the government remains on Christ’s shoulders? He is the one who has given gifts to the Church as the 4th chapter of Ephesians reminds us. He has given pastors, teachers, evangelists. It is as we act under His commission, not in a lordly way, hearing the voice of Christ and fulfilling the will of Christ, that we will be acceptable. And hence, to quote from Cunningham’s Historical Theology “The rights of conscience are secured within the Church itself by an honest and faithful adherence to the great Scriptural principle which, in the Church of Rome and in the canon law, is trampled under foot, viz., that Church power is not lordly, but only ministerial; that ecclesiastical office-bearers, even within their own province, have no right to be making laws or pronouncing decisions merely according to their own judgment and discretion, but that they should do nothing on these matters except what the Word of God requires them to do in the discharge of the necessary duties of their place, and are bound to do it all according to the standard which Christ has prescribed, their decisions being entitled to respect and obedience only if consonant to the word of God; and all men and rulers and private individuals, being not only entitled but bound to judge for themselves, with a view to the regulation of their own conduct, and upon their own responsibility, whether they are so or not.”
We have been emphasising the caution that must be observed because the ministers of the church are not independent rulers, but are called, as friends, to communicate the mind of Christ. Yet, in another way, the whole power of the authority they exercise flows from this friendship. You will notice that when Gillespie details the keys given to the Church, he says the key of knowledge — not of legislation — was given to the Church. “There is one lawgiver, and one only who is able to save and to destroy.” The key of knowledge given to the Church permits them to expound, not to change the lively oracles He gives them. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away.” When the Church is acting according to her proper role, then love and friendship is shown to Christ, not when she tampers and tinkers with that Word, but when she receives it in faith. She must, in reverence, take the shoes from off her feet, for the ground she stands on is holy ground. Even under the greatest pressure of temptation she must say, “Here I stand; I can do no other; so help me, God”.
“John, what did they go out to see in you?” Did they go to see a reed shaken in the wind? There were may different kinds of doctrine current at that time. There were Scribes and Pharisees. There were Essenes and Sadducees. There were zealots and Herodians. The zealots sought by revolution to bring in a new age. The Sadducees sought by rationalistic means to remould Scripture. “What went ye out to see?” Was it a reed which, in order to gain cheap popularity would bend to every wind of doctrine? Far from it. John had received the lively oracles from God. From that Word in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, he had received his commission. Before the Word he stood and said to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God.” Must we not be thankful that when, in the middle of the last century there came in under the influence of what Dr. Rainy called, in moving the motion to pass the Declaratory Act in 1892 “… a certain heave going on in the method of human thought, with reference to all subjects, and especially, I may say, to those subjects which are related to the highest interests and destiny of human beings,” that those who formed our Church stood firm on this basic principle. Nearly all the cults which overspread the world at the present day originated then. There came in new sciences, such as psychology, which, whatever may be said of the rightful use of it, in the hands of men like Freud, was calculated to eliminate religion altogether as a mere neurosis. From the pen of Marx came views which said, “Have done with this opium of the people. Let us have social revolution, and religion will wither away of its own accord.” Men like Darwin said, “We must remould Scripture. We must see it in an evolutionary context.” Free Church professors like Henry Drummond were quick to oblige.
These pressures did not find those who were responsible for initiating the movement which led to the formation of our Church ready to bend. They felt responsible to a higher court than the court of public opinion. Christ had said, “The Scripture cannot be broken.” As friends of the bridegroom, they adopted the same stance. It would seem, now that we stand a century from that time, that so far as this issue is concerned, they were in the right. What fools they were thought in their own day! In the 1894 Assembly, a year after the separation, a number of ministers spoke in a mocking, patronising way of the new movement. I give two illustrations, one from Dr. Rainy, and another from Dr. Balfour: “This declaratory Act had been with great activity brought before the minds of a jury in the North, a jury consisting in many districts of persons who spoke only the Gaelic language, who were not accessible to literature on the subject, and who could not read their debates, which was no fault of theirs. They were people, who were, some of them, earnest Christian people, and thus, at least, were disposed to take a lively interest in Church questions. (Laughter).”
“He did not know what they had done in Gaelic (laughter). People said things in Gaelic which he sometimes thought they did not well understand themselves (laughter). They must allow a great deal for that. They were a very generous, noble, and sound-principled people, very steadfast in defending their views of what they believed to be the truth.”
Seldom has there been a more evident case of laughter turned into mourning. The Church of Scotland in due course adopted the same expedient as the Free Church as a means of easing consciences burdened with scruples. Hence, ministers were required only to subscribe to the substance of the Reformed Faith contained in the Confession. The fruit is evident in the following quotation from the Report of the Panel of Doctrine (1970): “The Presbytery of Glasgow has had under consideration a Petition from members of a kirk session within its bounds, expressing concern at the confusion and distress in the minds of many Church members arising from uncertainty about what the Church’s official belief is, and asking that the Church should reaffirm in some prominent manner the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, and impress upon the Church’s ministers and teachers the obligation to maintain a consistent testimony thereanent.”
There could be no more eloquent testimony to the fruit of the destruction of the foundations.
Let us pass on finally to consider what was the ambition of John. Was it merely that John might be able to say, “I have the truth”, while others had departed from it either by addition or subtraction or by total rejection? “I have the truth”. Does that not have a very dead sound to it? It sounds as though the truth hangs limply in our hands; as though we have the truth totally under our control. Where the truth is known in living power, it is not we who have the truth. The truth has us. It is not so much we who know God. We are known of God and this will always have the effect in some degree that the truth had on Jeremiah, “Thy word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.” John had, at least twice before, heard the voice of Christ speak through the truth. He had heard it so far as his own salvation is concerned. It would seem that he was sanctified from a very early period. He had heard it so far as his call to the ministry was concerned. He knew that he must go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way. Did John say “It is enough that I stand by this truth? We have this truth inscribed in scrolls of Scripture.” No! John must hear the living voice of a living Christ. Only this can fulfil his joy since he realises only this can be the means of anointing the Church with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.
Let us set the same ambition before us. Let us not say, “We have the truth encapsulated in the tomes of our theology. We have maintained a consistent testimony to it.” That may well be true. But let us go down on our knees and pray, “O Redeemer of the Church of the living God, come Thou, and let us hear Thy voice as we speak the words of truth.” It is of no value to have orthodoxy in itself. The Pharisees themselves had this. They sat in the seat of Moses, and Jesus counsels, “All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do. . . .” We must hear the voice of a living Christ speaking through His word, bringing in sinners to be part of the bride of Christ. Why, even John himself, when he faced up to Herod with his wily heart, and Herodias with her vindictive heart, and Salome with her pleasure-loving heart, found his attempts to convict their consciences were in vain. But what were we singing in the 45th Psalm? “Thine arrows, O heavenly Bridegroom, shot from Thy throne of might, sharply pierce the hearts of the enemies of the King, and bring them into subjection to Thee”. That is equally true so far as the Gospel is concerned. The fountain of grace is not with us, but “grace in Thy lips doth flow.” We must hear that same voice as spoke out in Nazareth, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek”. Hugh Millar said at one time — “Dead forms of truth cannot contend with living principles, be the principles as base or erroneous as they may. Living socialism (and we might add in our day, Islam, communism, humanism) is an overmatch for dead Christianity.”
If Isaiah mourned in his day that there were none who stirred up themselves to lay hold on God, that He would come and that the mountains might flow down at His presence, let us in our day not be found wanting.
“John, do you want to be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the guard?” “No, I could have had that many a time. Herod would have decked me in fine raiment, and kept me as a toy in his palace.” “Do you want your name to go down in the records of history?” “What I want is that when God Himself writes the people it will be said, “This and that one was born; I may have been the channel, but it is with Him that plenteous redemption is ever found. He it is who saves Israel from all their transgressions.” Let us seek that same blessing.
John Livingston says, “There is sometimes somewhat in preaching that cannot be ascribed either to the matter or expression, and cannot be described what it is, or whence it cometh, but with a sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections, and cometh immediately from the Lord.”
Again, David Brainard says, “When ministers feel these special gracious influences on their hearts, it wonderfully assists them to come at the consciences of men, and as it were to handle them. Whereas, without them, whatever reason or oratory we make use of, we do but make use of stumps and not of hands.”
Let us, brethren, seek these gracious influences; whatever stands in the way of these blessings, let us ask that the Lord would so cleanse our hearts that we would be vessels meet for the Master’s use.