John 5:31-40 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.… You have read the lives of wise and good men, and yet without any conception that they were anything else, and that with all their excellences they had corresponding defects. Now, if Jesus Christ was a mere man you would have the same impression on reading His memoirs. But this is not the case. Who can read our text and feel that Christ was merely a wise and good man? I. THE FINAL SALVATION OF MAN IS MADE DEPENDENT ON HIS COMING TO CHRIST. 1. Christ is a unique Being who exists in a condition unlike any other, not a condition of simple humanity or simple Divinity, but one who combines the attributes of both. 2. To sustain the character of Saviour it was necessary that He should suffer the just for the unjust, and that He should have the power to remit sin and confer eternal life. 3. To secure the benefits the sinner is required to come to Christ, not corporeally, speculatively, but by personal application of enlightened faith. 4. This Christ required in the days of His flesh, and He requires it now. (1) There must be an acknowledgment cf His power to confer the blessing — just the same as when you apply for a favour to your friend. You insult him if you disbelieve in his power. (2) You must renounce your trust in everything else but your own need and His clemency. Does the pauper require a little wealth to qualify him for asking relief? 5. Coming in contact accidentally or designedly with others sometimes leads to unanticipated and important results. Chance meetings have been full of weal or woe. But no meeting was ever fraught with such effects as the meeting of a sinner with his Saviour. Take the case of the impotent man; that of any saved man. (1) Internal: guilt removed, conscience allayed, passions quelled, apprehension destroyed, and. instead peace, joy, hope, etc. (2) External: the drunkard is made sober, etc. 6. Not only are the results extraordinary, they are satisfactory. The mind is at ease, and sometimes rises to transport; and there is not the slightest wish to have this occurrence undone. II. Strange as it may appear MEN WILL NOT COME TO CHRIST THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE LIFE. 1. Why? (1) Some are too proud to come. There is nothing more offensive to the pride of a man of intellect or social virtue to be told that he must come in the same way as the publicans and the harlots. (2) Some say they cannot, and wait for Divine assistance. That is conveyed with the command. Come, and you will have power to come, as the withered hand was bestowed by stretching it forth. 2. This refusal is extraordinary. (1) Man in all his stages — as child, youth, man — regards the temporal future with growing solicitude. Why not, then, the eternal? (2) This eternal future is vastly more important, and is forfeited by not coming to Christ. Imagine a condemned criminal not accepting an offer like this! 3. This refusal is so extraordinary that it deserves to be recorded. Write down, then, solemnly — "I will not come to Christ," etc. (T. East.) Parallel Verses KJV: If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. |
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