What makes the true manifestation possible.
I. THE QUESTION OF JUDAS. This question shows how much the disciples had yet to learn; for without doubt all shared the perplexity of the one. How one fundamental error stops a true understanding of all the words of Jesus! In a sense, Jesus had been seen of all men who had eyes to see, but what they had seen had just been the human form. That Jesus should have kingly honor and kingly power they had not discerned. But the disciples seem to have thought that one day he would assume outward royal pomps, and then everybody would be forced to recognize him for what he truly was. A glory that could be manifested to some and not to all was beyond the comprehension of the disciples. The question of Judas was only the world's own habitual and self-conceited question, amounting to this—that if there was anything in Christianity, the world would have seen it long ago. The world's delusive notion is that it can know everything that is to be known, if only the manifestation is made intense enough.
II. THE EXPLANATION OF JESUS. An explanation, indeed, and yet not an explanation to be understood in the moment of utterance. For these very disciples had yet to have stirred up in their hearts a true spiritual affection. They did love Jesus as human friend loves human friend; but doing this, what did they more than others? The mutual bond of friendship requires no high stretch of human virtue. But the disciples had yet to attain the ἀγαπῆ, that ἀγαπῆ which is specially affirmed as the crowning gift of the Holy Spirit. God so loved the world as to give his Son for the world's redemption, and there is a continual effort through many and ever multiplying agencies to manifest himself in saving power to the world. But this is done by all arts of persuasion and warning—by persistent shaking of those who are asleep till they open their eyes, which many of them never do. There is, of course, an increase of manifestation in the glory of God in Christ Jesus, so that those able to see the manifestation at all see more and more, and have an increase of joy the longer they look. But just as the same eye beholds the sun in its noonday glory and in its earliest dawn, so the same eye beholds all the manifestations of God in Jesus. If We cannot see the beginning, we cannot see the continuing. To those spiritually blind, all comforting manifestations of the Trinity are alike impossible. There must be a breaking down of selfishness, an opening up of the streams of love, and a gradual increase of them into copious flow. How many indulge selfishness, well knowing the claims that press on them from every side! Shut your eyes and keep them closed; it is true then that you cannot see; but you are not therefore reckoned blind. Only when you are penitent, and profoundly troubled because of deep-rooted selfishness, can the manifestation of Jesus begin to you. Selfishness is what makes the world the world; and as soon as a counter-current is set up in any human heart, that is a sign of salvation begun, and if only there be no Demas-lapse into the love of the temporal and the visible, then manifestations from above will more and more increase. The more we fit ourselves to see, the more we shall see.—Y.
How the teaching of Jesus becomes abiding and effectual.
I. THE POWERLESSNESS OF TRUTH. Jesus continually remembered this. No one, indeed, had more complete experience as to the inability of the natural man to receive spiritual things; and even here, when perhaps the disciples were unusually attentive, Jesus knew that they would be more than ever perplexed. And there was nothing in the mere lapse of time to make the meaning clearer, the promises more receivable, the duties more feasible. Persevering, indomitable students have, ere now, puzzled out some abstruse treatise usually made plain by a teacher who knows it thoroughly. They have not been able to get the teacher, and so they have managed to do without him. But the utterances of Jesus in the Gospels are sealed up, every one of them, to mere intellectual inquiry. The words are there, with a strange attractive power—unique words; and yet the very power that is to make them useful is somehow lacking, or at all events unavailable. No fresh words are needed; it may truly be said there is nothing in the Epistles which is not already in the Gospels, so far as principles are concerned; but something is needed to bring the human heart and the words of Jesus into living contact.
II. WHAT MAKES TRUTH VITAL The energy of the Holy Spirit. He will indeed be a Paraclete, ever coming in with ample and effectual guidance just at the needful moment. What riches have been got out of the Gospels by Spirit-guided men! What a serious accusation if we reject or neglect what has evidently been given to meet the emergency! God never gives anything unnecessary. Let it not be supposed that the Holy Spirit is for the difficulties of some, or for occasions when we cannot see our way to truth unaided. The Holy Spirit is for all and always. The truth as it is in Jesus can never become a real system to us, individually, unless as we accept this guidance provided by Jesus and his Father. How this guidance operates is another matter. That we may not be able to understand. But neither do we understand how the seed bursts into life and develops into plant and fruit. What we need is firm faith and an abiding recollection that the Holy Spirit which the Father sends in the Name of the Son is a real and a present power. The difference between the seed unsown and the seed springing up and moving onwards to fruit, is an analogue of the difference between an utterance of Jesus verbally lodged in the memory, and that same utterance opened up and filled with perennial power by the Holy Spirit.
III. THE TWOFOLD ASPECT OF THE SPIRIT'S WORK HERE PRESENTED.
1. Teaching. The death of Jesus had yet to come, and then the resurrection and ascension. Everything Jesus has ever spoken must be brought into proper relation with these marvelous experiences of his personal life. The Holy Spirit has to explain the sum total of the incarnation.
2. Reminding. To recollect what we know just when we want it, is one of the hardest of things. What is the value of knowledge unless it can be turned to practice just at the right time? The Holy Spirit may be a help to mere memory, far more than we think.—Y.