John 13:7

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH

‘What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.’

John 13:7

These words sum up the whole mystery of faith. In a sense, though faith is the true knowledge of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, so far as it can be had now, yet it is also, in a sense, partly obscure knowledge. We know in part; hereafter we shall know even as we are known. We see through a glass, darkly; hereafter we shall see face to face. This is why faith, if it is firm, is the very grounds of hope.

I. The mystery of faith.—The wondrous humiliation of Jesus in washing the feet of His Apostles was to test their absolute acceptance of Himself, and prepare them for the yet more terrible test their faith in Him had to be put to in the Garden, and throughout the horror and apparent failure of His Passion and Death. We, whose faith is so weak, can hardly realise what that must have been. That faith in Him which did not waver, if it did not fail altogether, throughout that tremendous catastrophe, would indeed have been strong. Yet nothing less than that was what He demanded, and what at this very hour He demands of you and me. ‘What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.’

II. This act of deep humility was the symbol, if it were not indeed the outward sign to the Apostles themselves, of that wondrous act of Divine mercy by which the sinful soul is made ‘clean every whit.’ For there is no greater mystery than the forgiveness of sin. The reconciliation to Himself of the soul in sin, helpless by thought or act to so much as approach Him in repentance without His grace, is from first to last a mystery. It is a mystery of God’s infinite love, which passeth knowledge. In each of its stages it is a mystery of His wisdom, which is unsearchable. In its effect it is a more wonderful thing than anything else He does in our souls. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. It is, then, the act of a Creator. It was a far easier thing to heal the sick, and a thing far easier to understand, for human skill prevails to do it day after day all the world over, than to say, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee,’ for that is a Divine work. To raise us from the death of sin unto a life of righteousness is a far more mysterious act of the Divine power than that God should raise the dead. It is those above all who feel most deeply and keenly their sinfulness who best know this. The sinfulness of despair of the Divine mercy in fact consists in this, that it implies a doubt or a denial of the love or of the power of Almighty God. But even the peace of heart, which comes with the assurance of His pardoning love, and faith in His promise of remission, falls far short of what the soul will know afterwards in His Presence of all that meant, the real malice of sin, the immensity of the Divine love, the resistless force of the Divine Hands stretched forth to rescue and save. ‘What I do thou knowest not now; thou shalt know hereafter.’ God grant to us that we may, and to the full!

III. We pass, then, to a yet deeper mystery, to one which as the great memorial of the love of Jesus is in our midst to this day the wide world over. For somewhere on this earth, from the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, as this mighty orb turns eastward, there is probably no hour in which that memorial of His precious death, until His coming again, is not being made. His own most sacred words are uttered in countless languages, His own actions recalled by His appointed ministers. The offering, says John Chrysostom, is the self-same, because the words and actions are His. He is in the midst of His own, though unseen, yet as truly as He was in the midst of His Apostles in the upper chamber on that night. We know this because He has bidden us do what He had done, ‘in remembrance of Him.’ How this is we cannot know now, but we shall know hereafter.

Rev. C. F. G. Turner.

Illustration

‘People often fall into the mistake of imagining that the Apostles were at this time fully instructed Christians. It is a very strange error, because nothing is so clear from Holy Scripture as that they were not, and, indeed, were very far from being so. The writer can vouch for the absolute accuracy of the following beautiful story, which may serve to illustrate these thoughts, and, indeed, suggested them to him. A poor London waif had come somehow under the care of the late Cardinal Manning. The man was utterly uninstructed and religionless. He was dying, and the Cardinal asked a layman, whom he knew (and from whom the writer heard the story), to prepare the man to become a Christian. Shortly after he reported that all he had been able to teach the man, or he was ever likely to take in, was that God created him, and that in God there are three Persons, and that the Son of God became Man, and died for his salvation. The Cardinal at once said, “Very well, then I’ll baptize him” (which he did); “ he’ll learn the rest in heaven.” ’