John 1:18 No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. Jesus Christ declared — I. THE UNITY OF GOD. By this we do not understand that this truth was absolutely unknown before His advent, but that it received new importance and fresh vitality in the religion He established. 1. There is but one God — a very vital truth. Whence came it? From nature? Let us ask the pupils of nature, the numerous nations of antiquity. How many gods are there? "There are gods many," not that nature taught polytheism, but her pupils learnt it in her school. The mildest departure from the monotheistic faith was that of Persia and the adjoining countries. Their populations looked around, and beheld, as we behold, the presence of light and darkness, of good and evil. These two powers were in perpetual antagonism. How did they account for them? By the adoption of a creed in which there were two gods, Ormuzd and Ahriman, a god of good and a god of evil. 2. Turn from nature to philosophy. Philosophy and idolatry were attached twins. The capital of the one was the centre of the other (Acts 17:16). There were a few there who dared to ridicule the graven images; but what had they to offer instead? Nothing. The alternative lay between polytheism and atheism. One here and there gave utterance to lofty truths about God. But to their thinking the existence of inferior deities was not inconsistent with that of the Lord of all. Socrates on his deathbed ordered a fowl to be sacrificed on his behalf to the god AEsculapius. Besides, the idea of one God, supreme among the many, was counteracted in its influence by the absurd notion that in proportion to His greatness was He removed from the ordinary affairs of mankind. 3. This truth, absent from every other, is prominent in the literature of the Hebrews. The Jewish creed teaches it, but its Author is God. 4. This Old Testament truth Christ appropriated, and made it the cardinal doctrine of the new religion. He amplified it and gave it a vitality it never had before. Its novelty on Christ's lips consist in its representation that God is near man and interested in his concerns. Judaism showed men a great God, but he was distant. Paganism showed them a near god, but he was small. In Christianity, however, we see the great God of the Jews without being far, and the near god of the Greek without being small. II. THE SPIRITUALITY OF GOD. Not that this was totally unknown to the ancient leaders of thought, but that it received from Christ a new impulse, power, and application. 1. That God is a Spirit is a thought than which there is none more familiar to the modern mind. Whence came it? From nature? Decidedly not. Matter does not give the idea of spirit; it cannot give an idea which is not in it. 2. Whence then came it? We are conscious of mind, a substance essentially different from matter; but the most influential modern school denies that mind is different from matter, being only the natural result of the happy organisation of matter. And this was practically the doctrine of ancient stoicism, whose God was refined matter. 3. Let us turn to the Hebrew Scriptures, where we find very Spiritual views of God; but the ideas in the Jewish mind were low and carnal. Hence the proneness of the nation to idolatry, which is materialism of the grossest kind. 4. At this crisis Jesus Christ makes His appearance on the arena of history, and proclaims, with an emphasis and a fulness of meaning before unknown, "God is a Spirit," etc. This declaration overwhelms us with its simplicity, purity, and grandeur. III. THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 1. The prominent idea of the god of nature is power. But the idea of bare power would create dismay rather than trust. God is mighty, but I have offended Him. Will He forgive? Nature cannot say? 2. The main excellence of the god of philosophy is wisdom; but such a god can make no appeal to the heart of humanity. 3. Christ declares that "God is love:" His love and His essence are so interwoven that the cessation of the one would be the destruction of the other. Being always in His bosom, the Lord Jesus knows perfectly the contents of God's heart; and in His life, death, and ministry that heart is unfolded to the world. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. |
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