Grace AND Truth

Quiet Talks on John's Gospel by Samuel Dickey Gordon written over a hundred years ago in 1915, still rings true today.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

~~~

The current thing today is grace without truth, or what is supposed to be grace. It is a sort of man-made substitute. 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 passion, 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 compassionately, 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's an intense stress on 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. 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 out-stretching 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. 

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 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." 

Only Begotten Son

Quiet Talks on John's Gospel by Samuel Dickey Gordon written over a hundred years ago in 1915, and still rings true today.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

~~~

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

fames, 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 God. 

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 God 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 pronounced this becomes, until here in our own laud 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. 

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 commonaction 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 God is in this Jesus. This is what John is saying here.

He Comes To His Own

Quiet Talks on John's Gospel by Samuel Dickey Gordon written over a hundred years ago in 1915, yet still ringing true today.

He came to that which was his own, but His own did not receive Him.

John 1:11

~~~

He comes to His own. That's you and myself. We belong to Him. He gave His breath to us in Eden. He gave His breath to you and me at our birth. He gave His blood for us on Calvary. We belong to Him. The image of His kinship is stamped upon us. We may not acknowledge it, but that can't change the fact. 

He came to His own front door, and they whose very image revealed their close kinship to Him, received Him not into the home, but kept the door fast in His face.

Or; He comes to His own, and His own—puts a chair outside the door on the top-step. It's a large armchair with a cushion in, perhaps. And then His own talks about Him through the crack of the door, or likelier, the window. It's reckoned safer to keep the door fast. Listen to what he says:

"He's a wonderful man this Jesus; great teacher, the greatest; the greatest man of the race; His philosophy, His moral standards are the ideals; wonderful life; great example." 

They fairly exhaust the language in talking about this Man. But notice. It seems a bit queer. The Man they're talking about is outside the door. His own claim is left severely outside. 

Some make it read like this: He comes to His own, and they who are His own open the door a crack; maybe a fairly respectably wide crack. We all like the word Saviour. Yes, we cling tenaciously to that. Selfishly, would you say? We want to be saved from a certain place we think of as down, that we've been taught about, and don't want to go to—if it's there; the way men talk about it today.

And we want to be saved into another certain place we think of as up, and where we surely want to go after we get through down on the earth, and must go away somewhere else; with that ''after" and "must" carefully underscored. And we want to be saved from all the inconveniences possible along the way, and to secure all the advantages and help available: yes, yes, open the door a crack.

But be careful about the width of the opened crack. Let it be just the proper conventionalized width. Let there be no extremeism about the wideness of that opening. Things must be proper. For what would the other crack-open-door-owners think? 

And then, too, yet more serious, this Jesus has a way, a most inconsiderate way of coming in as far as you let Him, and of taking things into His own hands. Certain people use that word "inconsiderate" to themselves, in secret. Jesus changes some things when He is allowed all the way in. He might change your personal habits, your home arrangements, some of your social customs and your business plans.

Of course He changes only what needs changing, as He sees it. But then you well, some

things can be carried too far to suit you. 

This Jesus has the all habit. He gave all. And He has a way of coming in all the way, and of reaching in His pierced hand and taking all. He might even put His hand in on that most sacred thing, that holiest of all, that you guard most jealously—that box. It has heavy hinges, and double padlocks, and the keys are held hard under the thumb of your will. Of course there may really not be much in it; and again there may be very much. But much or little, it is securely kept uuder that thick broad thumb of yours. 

Oh! you give; of course; yes, yes, we're all good proper Christian folk here. We give a tenth, aud even much more. We support an aggressive missionary propaganda. That's the thing, you know, in our day, for good church people. We give to all the good things. Yes, no doubt. Aud we are very careful, too, that

that inconsiderate Hand shall not disturb the greater bulk that remains between hinge and lock. That's yours. 

Of course you are His, redeemed, saved by His blood. But through it all we hold hard to that key, we don't let go even to Him, though it is He who entrusts all to our temporary keeping. We do guard the

width of that opening crack, do we not ? 

One day I looked through that crack and caught a glimpse of His face looking through full in my own, with those eyes of His. And I wanted to take the door clear off of its hinges and stand it outside against the bricks, and leave the whole door-space wide for Him.

He comes to His own, and His own opens the door wide, and holds it wide open, that He may come in all the way, and cleanse, and change, readjust, and then shape over on the shape of His own presence.

The Red Tinged Light

Quiet Talks on John's Gospel by Samuel Dickey Gordon written over a hundred years ago in 1915, yet still ringing true today.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

John 1:9

~~~

Every man in the world is lighted by this Light. Through nature, the nightly twinklers in the wondrous blue overhead, the unfailing freshness of the green out of the brown under foot; through the never-ceasing wonders of these bodies of ours, so awesomely and skilfully made, and kept going; through that clear quiet inner voice that does speak in every human heart amidst all the noises of earth and of passion;  through these the Light is shining, noiselessly, softly, endlessly, by day and night.

It is the same identical Light that John is tell- ing us of here that so shines in upon every man, and always has. There is no light but His. His name is Jesus. From the first, and everywhere still, it is the Light that shines from Him that lights men. He was with the Father in the beginning. He acted for the Father in that creation week. He gave and sustained all life of every sort everywhere, and does, though only a third of us know His Name—Jesus. 

But the light was obscured, terribly beclouded and bedimmed, hindered by earth-fogs, and swampy clouds rising up, until we are apt to think there was no light, and is none; only darkness. Then He came closer, and yet closer. He came in nearer form so as to get the Light closer, and let it shine through fog and cloud, for the sake of the befogged, beswamped crowd.

And then—ah! hold your heart still—then He let the Light-holder, the great human Lantern, be broken, utterly broken, that so the Light might flash out through broken lantern in its sweet soft wondrous clearness into our blinded blinking eyes, and show us the real way back home. 

It was in that breaking that it got that wondrous exquisite red tingeing that becomes the unfailing

hall-mark, the unmistakable evidence of the real thing of light. And it's only as men know of this latest coming of the Light, this tremendous tragic Jesus-coming of the Light, that they can come into the
full light. That's the reason He came in the way He did. That's the reason when He gets possession of us there's the passion to take the full Jesus-Light out to every one. 

And this passion burns in us and through us, and ours, and sweeps all in the sweep of its tender holy

flame. In this way every man may be fully lit, and so in following the Jesus-Light he shall not walk in the darkness where he has been, but in the sweet clear light of life.

A Candlestick

Part 3 of excerpts from Quiet Talks on John's Gospel by Samuel Dickey Gordon written over a hundred years ago in 1915, yet still ringing true today. 

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

John 1:6-8

~~~

And John keeps driving in on the point in his mind : ''that all might believe through Him"; that they might listen, stop to think, agree as to the thing being believable, then trust it ; then trust Him, the Light, risk something, risk themselves to Sim, then love, love with a passionate devotion. This was John's objective. It was the bull's-eye of his target never out of his keen Spirit-opened eye. Nothing else figured in. This is the thing in all our living and serving and doing and giving, that men may know Jesus to the trusting, risking, loving point, the glad point.

Everything that we can bring of gold and learning and labour and skill is precious, it is as purest gold, if it lead men into heart-touch with Jesus. And it clean misses the mark if it does less.

Who would be content to give a Belgian or Polish starveling a bare bit of bread, and a lonely stick of wood, and a rag of cloth. Things are good, provided by money and skill and research and painstaking efforts. They do good. 

But it's Jesus men need. It's the warm touch that lets Him fully in with all of His human sympathy and
all of His God-power, that's what they need. Given the sun and quickly come warmth and food and shelter, health and vigour and increase of life. Given Jesus, and the warm touch with Him, in His simple fullness, just as He is, and surely and not slowly, there come flooding in all the rest of an abundant life, physical and mental and of the spirit.

John "was not the light." He was only the candlestick. And he was content to be that. He was a good candlestick. The light was held up. It could shine out. How grateful the crowd was. The road had been so dark. 

It is a bad thing when light and candlestick change places. The crowd seems to get the two confused sometimes. We get to thinking that the candlestick is the light, and the light is lost sight of. We
gather about the candlestick. It'll surely lead the way out through the dark night into day. It's such a good candlestick, so highly polished.

And sometimes the human candlestick itself gets things a bit mixed. It thinks, then it feels, then it knows, with a peculiar quality of self-assertive certainty, that after all it is the light that lighteth every one that is so blessed as to come within the radius of its shining. And brass does take a high polish, and makes an attractive appearance. 

It does send out a sparkle and radiance if only it is somewhere within range of some real light, patient enough to keep on shining in the dark, regardless of non-appreciation or misrepresentation or misunderstanding.

Is it any wonder the road is so full of people wandering in the night gathered about candlesticks? Is it surprising that the ditches are so full of menand candlesticks mixed up and mired up together? Yet it is always heart-breaking. There may be talent and training of the highest and best, and scholarship and culture, eloquence and skill, institutions and philanthropies. And there is so much of these. And these are good in themselves, and of priceless practical worth whenseen and held in their right relation to the thing.

But it needs to be said often and earnestly: these are not the light. They are given to point men better to the Light. They're road-signs, index-fingers. And they are seen at their best when they point to the Light so clearly that the crowd quite forgets them in hastening to the Light they point out. They serve their true purpose in being so forgotten. They are still serving and serving best even while forgotten.