NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 34
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 [p. 78] NO. 34
It is important to see when the man in this chapter becomes acquainted with Christ. He had received his sight, and he knew something of the work and the power of the light. The more he maintained that it was Jesus who had opened his eyes, and that it was the work of God, the more he was refused by his neighbours, the Pharisees, by his parents, and eventually by the Jews. He is cast out of the synagogue; he is outside everything of man; he is in the solitude of light. Divine light leads to this. Now the Lord comes to him, and says, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” and further, “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped Him”. This man knows Christ now, according to John 10: 14, 15: “I ... know my sheep, and am known of mine”. Verse 15 explains the character of this acquaintance or intimacy. It is of the same character as that which exists between the Father and the Son: “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father”. Hence it is by seeing Him as the Son of God that we are led into it. This man had never seen Him until now, and now he knows Him; he has come to the living Stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious; he believes and he worships. The greatness and the blessedness of the Person of Christ absorbs his heart, now that he has seen Him and known Him.
The sense of the immensity of His grace impresses you before you comprehend it in any degree; but the more you are occupied with it the more you acquire. In John 14: 20 we read, “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”. You may not understand much of this, and I could not explain much of it to you; but are you interested [p. 79] in it? Is it before your heart? I commend to you two verses of a hymn:
‘Yet sure, if in Thy presence
My soul still constant were,
Mine eye would, more familiar,
Its brighter glories bear.
And thus Thy deep perfections
Much better should I know,
And with adoring fervour
In this Thy nature grow’. (51:4)