JOHN'S GOSPEL
JOHN’S GOSPEL
In John’s gospel comes in distinctly the new order of the glorious Man.
In chapter 2 we find the utter ruin of the first man.
Chapter 3. He has to be born again, to be of a new order.
Chapter 4. He gets a new power upon earth, apart from, above and beyond anything that is on earth; he is made practically independent of everything on earth. “Shall never thirst”. (John 4: 14) There is the new order, new line of things, and starting with the new power.
Chapter 5. He has passed out of death into another life.
Chapter 6. He feeds upon the living bread, the bread that came down from heaven.
Chapter 7. He receives the Spirit of God from the glorified Man. “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7: 39) - until there was a glorified Man.
Chapter 8. The law supposed a certain amount of good in man. You cannot talk of good now; the new order is absolutely distinct from the old. The great thing to insist upon is the entire newness of it, no improvement of the old, though a man still. (This is [p. 236] a sort of preface to chapter 8.) Now in chapter 8 light draws the line, discloses what is of God and exposes what is merely of man, a very beautiful line. Light discloses that there is a new kind of man, a glorified man, not a fallen man; John 7:39. The fallen man is shut out and a new order of man brought in. The great point of the gospel is that the offending man is cleared away, not even improved; and a Man after a new order is now before God.
In chapter 9 you find that you cannot know light except in the solitude of light; the blind man is outside everything that is recognised by man on earth, and it is there he makes acquaintance with the Light; he is morally in a place outside of everything with the Light - the Son of God; and it is there he is made to understand the new place for the sheep, which chapter 10 opens out; so that what comes out is, that the same character of intimacy that exists between the Father and the Son is to be known by the sheep; John 10: 14,15. It is a wonderful thought, that this is the common portion of all the sheep of the one flock looking at them here on earth. Though we have not yet a glorified body we are in association with Him who is the glorious One. In association with Him you appropriate the taste for glory, so that you would do a thing according to that taste even in the smallest duty down here. You are not improved, but your taste is altered. You like a thing that is according to the glorified Man better than the thing that is according to the most reformed or the best cultivated man. It is the difference between keeping the law and getting into the company of the glorious One; you imbibe the taste for what suits Him. (This prepares for chapter 12, our new place with Him.) I want to show the gain of glory for the present moment - it is from it we derive. As we look at it we are transformed into the same image; you first see that you belong to glory, the Spirit of God connects you with glory; and [p. 237] then you get the taste, and you act in correspondence with your tastes, which are new, and in one sense inconceivable. You ought to do everything according to the glorified Man - not that the old man is improved, but because you have the Spirit of God.
Chapter 11. The Son of God is glorified. Resurrection is come in. Lazarus is raised from the dead.
Chapter 12. He receives all the glory which is given to man - King of Israel and Son of man anticipatively, as the One raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (verse 28).
Chapters 13 to 17 anticipate that He is gone to glory, and that He administrates everything here through His own - from glory through the church.
Chapter 20. The first day of the week - the beginning of the new creation, He appears in the assembly; and in chapter 21 He comes Himself.