John 14:1

John 14:1

Consider the connection between believing in God and believing in Jesus Christ.

I. Note first that the difficulty which men find in their way when asked to believe in Christ arises from the supernatural character of His manifestation and working. Take this away and there would be no difficulty for them in believing in Christ, no more difficulty in believing in Him than they have in believing in Socrates or Plato. Admitting that Jesus Christ was no more than a man, that His birth was that of an ordinary mortal, that He lived and died as any other man might, and that being dead and buried, He rests in the grave and was never seen again upon earth; admitting all this, you remove the whole difficulty which the unbeliever says he finds in the way of His believing in Christ, and he will then perhaps join you, in extolling the virtues, in admiring the character and in praising the conduct of Jesus of Nazareth. But such admissions cannot be made. A Christ divested of the supernatural is not the Christ whom the Gospels invite us to believe in, no such being, in fact, ever existed. If these men profess to believe in God, they by that very profession bring themselves under obligation to examine carefully and impartially the historical evidence on which Christianity rests its claim. If God be what they say they believe Him to be, then with Him all things are possible, and nothing can be more probable than that He should reveal Himself to His intelligent creatures, and by many infallible proofs show them that it is indeed He who speaks unto them. They are thus by their own premisses bound to examine the evidences of Christianity, and if these are found to stand the test, they are bound as they believe in God to believe also in Jesus Christ.

II. Advancing a step further, I would now go on to affirm that apart from the revelation of God in and through Jesus Christ, it may be doubted if man can believe in God in any real sense, or as He is. Jesus Christ presents Himself as the Revealer of God to men. It is to Christ then that we are to look for instruction in the knowledge of God, and it is only as we believe in Him, and receive out of that fulness of wisdom and knowledge which is in Him, that we shall so acquaint ourselves with God as really and intelligently to believe in Him. It is only a little way that the light of nature can guide us in the search after God, and a man dependent solely upon that light can hardly be said to believe in God as He is.

III. It is Christ alone who supplies what is wanted for a religion for man. Man needs (1) an incarnation, (2) an atonement. Man, with his conscious weakness and his deep wants, and that sore hunger of the soul which no viands the earth furnishes can fill, and that terrible sense of guilt which oppresses the spirit and fills him with that fear which hath torment, finds in Christ at length that which meets his need and satisfies his convictions, and calms his fears, and gives peace to his conscience, and lifts him up from despair to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

W. L. Alexander, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 161.

Something is wanting then, till the believer in God is a believer also in Christ. This is our subject.

I. Now some one might say, Look at the saints of the Old Testament! What grace of reverence, of affiance, of holy aspiration, was lacking in the patriarch Abraham, or in the poet king of the Psalms? And yet Christ was not manifested to them. We venture to dispute the very fact taken for granted. The psalmist, the prophet, the patriarch, yea, the very first father himself, lived and prayed and worshipped in the shadow cast before of Him that should come.

II. Or you might come nearer home, and speak of men who, in this century or the last, have not only led good lives, but have had many pious feelings, and done many beneficent works, without realising what we should call the fulness of the Christian faith. In examples such as these, it is but truth to remember that men thus dispensing with Christ are yet unspeakably indebted to Him. The very idea of God as our Father comes from revelation. It is one ray of that Divine truth which is reflected now in a thousand unconscious or ungrateful intellects.

III. Still, you may say, having made this great revelation, may not Christ Himself disappear? It is an obvious answer, and surely a just one, to such reasonings as these: We cannot take Christ by halves; if Christ said one thing from God, He said all things.

IV. Observe too how the particular truth received, no less than the accompanying doctrine objected to, runs up into matters which we can neither dispute as facts nor yet, apart from God, settle. No man dispenses with or disparages the Cross without being a definite loser in some feature of the Christian character. Where there is a reluctance to rely on Christ alone for forgiveness, you will generally perceive one of two great deficiencies: (1) There is often a feeble sense of the sinfulness of sin; (2) there is often a want of true tenderness towards sinners.

V. Nor is it only in this negative aspect that we perceive the distinctive value of faith in Christ. God, in arranging that we should receive this greatest, this most profound of His gifts, forgiveness and reconciliation, through another, His Divine, His Incarnate Son, has not only made the Gospel of one piece with His dealing with us in this life, but has also given a charm and pathos to the Gospel which it could not otherwise have possessed. "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."

C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons,p. 11.

I. What do we mean, apart from the Christian revelation, when we say we believe in God? We mean that we believe in infinite thought, infinite intelligence, and that all things of which we are conscious, and especially all thought, are derived from this omnipresent thought; nay, are parts of it. We believe in absolute, eternal, infinite, intelligence, exercising itself in the incessant movement of thought, when we believe in God. But if that is all we believe we are only Pantheists. We believe in God not only as infinite thought and life, but as infinite goodness. He is a moral Being; He is absolute Holiness, Truth, Justice, and Beauty; and wherever these things are, in matters of the spirit or the intellect, they are there by Him and through Him. But where thought and life and moral character are, we have also a will, and where there is a will with these things, we have that which we call personality. We believe in God and conceive Him then as personal. Hence there springs up the idea of God as the moral Governor of the world and our personal King, and in God as such we believe.

II. All humanity is lifted by Christ's revelation into union with divinity. Fancy the power of that in life. It does not only exalt it, regenerate it, set it on fire, it makes it completely beautiful. And above all, it fills it with unspeakable love. It binds God and man together like husband and wife, like two beings who, loving one another with perfect sympathy, dwell in one another, and are not two, but one being. That is the faith of the Christian concerning God and man. Christ called God our Father, and made Fatherhood on His side and childhood on ours, the terms that expressed our relation of love to God, and His relation of love to us. God is still to us the infinite thought, and will, and life, and righteousness, by which the material and spiritual universe consists; but in His relation to us as Father, He thinks for us and lives in us, and wills in our behalf, and makes Himself our righteousness. Therefore we not only worship and reverence Him; we also love Him. How? With all our soul and mind and strength, with all the love of children. And now, in being loved by God, and in being able and joyous to love Him, our deepest need is satisfied, our deepest longing quenched. The very root of our heart is watered with the dew of this belief. God is love, and we love Him. It has transfigured all humanity. And that expanded and ennobled belief is the work of Christ. What wonder that He said, "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me."

S. A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life,p. 305.

References: John 14:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiii., No. 730; W. Roberts, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 40. John 14:1. D. Davies, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 10. John 14:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxix., No. 1741; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 244; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 200; C. Stanford, The Evening of our Lord's Ministry,p. 72. Joh 14:1-14. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 224; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 385.