LIGHT
LIGHT
JBS The subject in chapters 8 and 9 is light. Light comes to the greatest sinner. In chapter 8 the Pharisees went out one by one; the condemned woman stayed. The law finds you out, and it condemns you. Light exposes you down to the roots, but makes known to you forgiveness. The Lord exposed to the woman of Samaria what she was. The Lord does not take you up without knowing all about you. The law condemns. Light exposes, but brings salvation.
Light, as we see here (chapter 9), puts you outside everything that is reputable and respectable among men. You are prepared for a wonderful but solitary path. In the solitude of darkness the blind man saw nobody; in the solitude of light nobody would have him. Christians are not prepared for the peculiar solitude from all that is of man, in which one is placed on this earth in order to understand God.
His eyes are opened! What really brings him into light is washing in the pool of Siloam, which means, Sent. This man’s history is really the history of a soul. The first thing a soul gets positively is light, and that comes through receiving Christ as the Sent One of the Father. Everyone believes that Christ was a man on earth, but they do not believe in Him as the Sent One. The disciples ask, “Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” In Exodus 15: 26 every bodily affliction is looked at as the consequence of sin. Therefore their question. The Lord replies that it was not on that account he was blind, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
Ques What does His spitting on the ground signify?
[p. 350] JBS The clay set forth Christ in humanity. God manifest in the flesh was here. This christians do not really see. Faith was in the washing. I connect it with “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5: 1). God sent Him. He was the Sent One. It is not merely accepting the truth of incarnation, but seeing Him as the Sent from God.
The man’s troubles began with his neighbours - where he was best known. I do not believe any young convert knows what is before him in the path for God. You get no sympathy from the world, no one feels for you. The Lord said, “If any man ... hate not ... his own life ... he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14: 26). He wanted to give them a sense of the reality of the path. He is a happy man who accepts the path, however great the conflict in it.
The neighbours pass him over to the religious people - to the Pharisees, who at once condemn Christ. They say, “This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath”, as if anything could more honour the day than to give a great blessing. Religious people do not help you, they tell you to do. What you have to do is to receive. All is done for you, and you have now to get the good of it by the Spirit. He is now handed over to his parents. They make a spectacle of him; they will not confess that Jesus is the Christ, so much are they afraid of the religious element. He is now outside the three great circles of society. No christian can understand the new ground unless he travels this road. The devil tries to get you on to a by-road, and to make you think it is the right one. You get opposition on all sides till you are outside everything of man. The man who is standing in the favour of man is not advancing toward God. It is God we have to do with, not man.
Now the Jewish nation is against him. As he goes on, he is getting deeper and deeper in the assurance that he has to do with God. He says, “If this man [p. 351] were not of God, he could do nothing”. Then the nation cast him out; he is nationally outlawed. I do not believe anyone will find Christ’s place unless he goes this road. There is only one road to the assembly. In casting him out they fulfil the passage in John 10:4, “He putteth forth his own sheep”. Happy the christian who is completely free of the leaven of the fold. Here it is the Jewish position, but the effort of christendom now is to make a fold. Chapter 10 sets forth where this man is brought to. But in John 9:35 he is outside of everything with the Son of God. He is in a spot, free from everything of man - in the solitude of light. Look at the grace of the Lord! What does He say? “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” It loses all the force if you say Son of man. I compare it with Peter saying, “Thou art ... the Son of the living God”.
Rem He does not know Him?
JBS He knew the work that had been wrought on him; he was bold in the faith, he knew “Jesus”.). He had not seen Him at the first. Now the Lord says to him, “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee”. Intimacy has begun. Now are fulfilled verses 14, 15, of chapter 10: “I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father”. The two in this part of John’s gospel, to whom the Lord revealed Himself, were the woman of Samaria and this man. Both were outcasts. “He worshipped him”! he could not help it. The word ‘worship’ is taken from a dog fawning on his master; he is so charmed with his presence.
In chapter 10 He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. “The porter openeth” is God’s order, and the Lord entered the fold. according to it. You will never understand chapter 10 unless you understand chapter 9. No one was saved in the fold; they were safe in a way; a fold was enclosed with [p. 352] walls like a country pound. The best oriental idea of it is merely security from wolves.
Ques What takes the place of the fold now?
JBS His hand. “I give unto them eternal life; ... neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand”. No one can scatter them from Me.
Ques What was his warrant for being outside?
JBS They would not have him. Christ is outside and when he is cast out Christ finds him. I am not speaking of conversion. You are not in a position to know Him outside of everything unless you are on true christian ground. I have to come to Himself. He gives His life for the sheep: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”. Life outside of all the ruin. Then there is most peculiar intimacy between Him and the sheep.
Ques What is meant by “shall go in and out” (verse 9)?
JBS Liberty; no walls, nothing to prevent liberty and pasture. People do not understand what a terrible thing it is to break with the world. The woman who risked her life to save David is the woman who “despised him in her heart” when he danced before the Lord.
Ques What is the lesson in that?
JBS Where there is most natural affection there may be most aversion to you as a christian. Galatians 4 has been a deeper trial to me than Romans 7. The most cultivated idea that I have does not like Christ; that .is Ishmael. I do not know anything at all that has so brought me down. It was dreadful when I discovered that. The moment you bring in the human element, Christ is virtually displaced. In praying or preaching, if you bring man in you lose ground. I know it, because I have gone through the sorrowful experience of it.
In the solitude of light he was thrown out of a place to worship in, and he found a Person to worship.
[p. 353] There is a universality about a Person that no combination of circumstances can equal. No circumstances could make up for a Person. Do you understand that? It is lovely. The Lord meets Mary Magdalene in the garden. He does not tell her He will restore the old garden, but that she should have Himself in a new way. The more a man advances in grace, the less he will look for things here.
It has been said, ‘The expulsive power of a new affection’. I say, ‘The expulsive power of a new Person’. If a man could say he was the chosen friend of the sovereign, he would not want the company of others.
It was in a lonely place years ago that I read the last two verses of John 17, and I said, To think that I am the object of that love!
Chapters 11 and 12 have to do with Israel. Chapter 13 is entirely new ground - His side. Our side is, He had to die; His side, glory. In chapters 13 and 14 they were shut in with Him. It is the way John puts the assembly; it is not individual. Only three verses in chapter 14 refer to the individual as such. Chapters 15 and 16 are outside. In chapter 17 He first sets us as Himself in the presence of the Father, and then sets us as Himself in the presence of the world. The new Jerusalem will answer to it by and by, but it is present -now. My heart is not satisfied to postpone it till by and by. I want something now. When the bride in Canticles felt her loss (chapter 5) what comforted her was recounting the features of the one she did not see.