CHRIST THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF MEN.

(John i:1-18.)

I. The Analysis.

1. The Eternal Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. —The words of John's sublime introduction admit of no qualification nor evasion. They assert in the most positive terms not only His preexistence, which some amongst Unitarians accept, but His absolute Deity (verses 1-4).

2. The Uncomprehended One (verses 5, 10, 11).—What a proof of the total alienation of the world from God, that it did not know the Creator when He appeared. And this, be it remembered, was the religious world—the very people who had the Scriptures! Just as the world of culture knew not God by ''wisdom," so the Jewish world knew not God by religion.

3. The Forerunner and His Mission (verses 6, 7, 8, 15). —It cannot be too clearly held that John the Baptist was not a preacher of the Gospel, but a herald of Him who was to create the Gospel.

4. The Conditions of the New Sonship (verses 12, 13). —If no other passage or teaching of Scripture contradicted the current teaching that all men are sons of God, these verses would suffice. That all men are by creation the "offspring" of God, that is, different essentially from the beasts, is most true (Acts xvii:20), but "sonship" is a word of position and of relationship. All the born ones are ''offspring of God"—only the born again ones are the sons of God.

5. The Incarnation (verse 14).—The modern teaching is that in the incarnation "flesh" was first, and that afterward this Man became one in whom God became manifest in a larger sense than had ever been true of any other man. But the Scripture says that the Word was first, and "became" flesh.

6. The New Dispensation (verse 17).—The disjunctive conjunction "but" shows the relation of the Mosaic to the Christian dispensation. The latter is in contrast to the first.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

What mortal shall assume to say what is the heart of things in this lesson? Bengel called these verses "the sanctum sanctorum of the Bible." They hold such great doctrines as the personality and transcendence of God, as against pantheism; His unity, as against polytheism; His plurality, as against unitarianism; His true incarnation, as against all forms of gnosticism, whether ancient or modern; and His power of self-revelation, as against agnosticism.

But all of these stupendous truths are also taught elsewhere in Scripture. We are not, therefore, to find the cure of this lesson in the fact of their restatement here. Is it not to be found in the one word, revelation? And, since the revelation is unto the end that God may be known and worshipped, must we not say that the heart of this lesson is the personal revelation of God?

There are, then, three thoughts for our learning:

First. The revelation of a personal God. Our God is neither a theological abstraction, a mere bundle of attributes, nor yet a scientific abstraction, a mere form of Force; nor yet a philosophical abstraction, a Somewhat coextensive with, and indistinguishable from, matter. He is a Person, and we were made in His likeness and image.

Secondly. He reveals Himself in this final and supreme way in a Person. The Word, who in the beginning was (not became, or began) God, incarnated Himself in a Man who began a human life as we began ours, and lived for thirty-three years a divine life in human conditions, not heavenly conditions.

Thirdly. This divine life, under human conditions, was to the end that we who are persons might know, love, worship and obey the divine Person God. Now, any reverent human person may thus come into personal relations with the divine Person. In no other way could we really know Him. All previous revelations were about Him, the personal revelation was Himself. But in revealing Himself He also revealed the perfect man. What is God like? Like Christ. What is perfected humanity like? Like Christ. Ah, how limited and poor is our vision of divine truth! Have we really believed that redemption is not only from the immeasurable debasement of humanity in hell, but unto the conformation of humanity to Christlikeness in glory?