All of you who have any familiarity with the language of Scripture will know that a characteristic of all the writings which are ascribed to the Apostle John, viz., his Gospel, his Epistles, and the book of the Revelation, is their free and remarkable use of that expression, Witness.' It runs through all of them, and is one of the many threads of connection which tie them all together, and which constitute a very strong argument for the common authorship of the three sets of writings, vehemently as that has of late been denied.
But where did John get this word? According to his own teaching he got it from the lips of the Master, who began His career with these words, We speak that we do know, and bear witness to that we have seen,' and who all but ended it with these royal words, Thou sayest that I am a King! For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the Truth.' Christ Himself, then, claimed to be in an eminent and special sense the witness to the world.
The witness of what? What was the substance of His testimony? It was a testimony mainly about God. The words of my text substantially cover the same ground as His own words, I have declared Thy name unto My brethren,' and as those of the Apostle: The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.' And they involve the same ideas as lie in the great name by which He is called in John's Gospel, the Word of God.'
That is to say, all our highest and purest and best knowledge of God comes from the life and conduct and character of Jesus Christ. His revelation is no mere revelation by words. Plenty of men have talked about God, and said noble and true and blessed things about Him. Scattered through the darkness of heathenism, and embedded in the sinfulness of every man's heart, there are great and lofty and pure thoughts about Him, which to cleave to and follow out would bring strength and purity. It is one thing to speak about God in words, maxims, precepts; it is another thing to show us God in act and life. The one is theology, the other is gospel. The one is the work of man, the other is the exclusive prerogative of God manifested in the flesh.
It is not Christ's words only that make Him the Amen,' the faithful and true Witness,' but in addition to these, He witnesses by all His deeds of grace, and truth, and gentleness, and pity; by all His yearnings over wickedness, and sorrow, and sinfulness; by all His drawings of the profligate and the outcast and the guilty to Himself, His life of loneliness, His death of shame. In all these, He is showing us not only the sweetness of a perfect human character, but in the sweetness of a perfect human character, the sweeter sweetness of our Father, God. The substance of His testimony is the Name, the revelation of the character of His Father and our Father.
This name of witness' bears likewise strongly upon the characteristic and remarkable manner of our Lord's testimony. The task of a witness is to affirm; his business is to tell his story--not to argue about it, simply to state it. And there is nothing more characteristic of our Lord's words than the way in which, without attempt at proof or argumentation, He makes them stand on their own evidence; or, rather, depend upon His veracity. All His teaching is characterised by what would be insane presumption in any of us, and would at once rule us out of court as unfit to be listened to on any grave subject, most of all on religious truth. For His method is this: Verily, verily,! say to you! Take it on My word. You ask Me for proof of My saying: I am the proof of it; I assert it. That is enough for you!' Not so do men speak. So does the faithful Witness speak; and instead of the conscience and common-sense of the world rising up and saying, This is the presumption of a religious madman and dictator,' they have bowed before Him and said, Thou art fairer than the children of men! Grace is poured into Thy lips.' He is the faithful Witness, who lays His own character and veracity as the basis of what He has to say, and has no mightier word by which to back His testimony than His own sovereign Verily! verily!'
The name bears, too, on the ground of His testimony. A faithful witness is an eye-witness. And that is what Christ claims when He witnesses about God. We speak that we do know, we testify that we have seen.' I speak that which I have seen with My Father!' There is nothing more remarkable about the oral portion of our Lord's witness than the absence of any appearance, such as marks all the wisest words of great men, of having come to them as the result of patient thought. We never see Him in the act of arriving at a truth, nor detect any traces of the process of forming opinions in Him. He speaks as if He had seen, and His tone is that of one who is not thinking out truth or grasping at it, but simply narrating that which lies plain and clear ever before His eyes. I do not ask you what that involves, but I quote His own statement of what it involves: No man hath ascended up into Heaven save He that came down from Heaven, even the Son of man which is in Heaven.'
There have been plenty of great and gracious words about God, and there have been plenty of black and blasphemous thoughts of Him. They rise in our own hearts, and they come from our brothers' tongues. Men have worshipped gods gracious, gods loving, gods angry, gods petulant, gods capricious; but God after the fashion of the God whom Jesus Christ avouches to us, we have nowhere else, a God of absolute love, who so loved the world'--that is, you and me--that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.'
And now I ask, is there not grace and peace brought to us all from that faithful Witness, and from His credible testimony? Surely the one thing that the world wants is to have the question answered whether there really is a God in Heaven that cares anything about me, and to whom I can trust myself wholly; believing that He will lift me out of all my meannesses and sins, and make me clean and pure and blessed like Himself. Surely that is the deepest of all human needs, howsoever little men may know it. And sure I am that none of us can find the certitude of such a Father unless we give credence to the message of Jesus Christ our Lord.
This day needs that witness as much as any other; sometimes in our unbelieving moments, we think more than any other. There is a wave--I believe it is only a wave--passing over the cultivated thought of Europe at present which will make short work of all belief in a God that does not grip fast to Jesus Christ. As far as I can read the signs of the times, and the tendency of modern thinking, it is this:--either an absolute Silence, a Heaven stretching above us, blue and clear, and cold, and far away, and dumb; or else a Christ that speaks--He or none! The Theism that has shaken itself loose from Him will be crushed, I am sure, in the encounter with the agnosticism and the materialism of this day. And the one refuge is to lay fast hold of the old truth:--The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.'
Oh! you orphan children that have forgotten your Father, and have turned prodigals and rebels; you that have begun to doubt if there is any one above this low earth that cares for you; you that have got bewildered and befogged amidst the manifold denials and controversies of this day; come back to the one voice that speaks to us in tones of confident certainty as from personal knowledge of a Father. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' says Jesus to us all: hearken unto Me, and know God, whom to know in Me is eternal life.' Listen to Him. Without His testimony you will be the sport of fears, and doubts, and errors. With it in your hearts you will be at rest. Grace and peace come from the faithful Witness.
