The Christian and the Truth of God
I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me (vv. 6–8).
We have seen that the teaching of the Bible is that finally nothing really matters in this world apart from the certain and sure knowledge that the Lord Jesus Christ is concerned about us at this moment and interceding on our behalf, and that God himself is concerned about us and caring for us. There are many other things with which we have to deal. We are citizens of earthly kingdoms, we live our life in the world like everybody else, and yet we know that all these things about which we are rightly and legitimately concerned are things that are passing and transient. We know that in addition to this life that we live and share with others, there is a unique, personal life of our own with which we shall finally be left. When all earthly scenes pass away and the kingdoms of this world and all their pomp and glory are as a mere nothing, we ourselves will still be there in a state of consciousness, taking that final journey. Surely the thing that matters, therefore, is that we should be prepared for that and should so understand this truth that we are enabled to live in the present and in the future, whatever may come to meet us, without being surprised, without being alarmed, without being baffled. But above all, there is nothing more important than that we should know for certain that we are the objects of God’s special care and interest, and it is because this section deals with that in such a glorious and perfect manner, that we are concerned about studying it together.
Now our Lord has been telling us in these verses that the first characteristic of the people for whom he is praying is that he has revealed the name of God to them. Having in that way told us what he has done for them, he also indicates what is true of these people themselves in the light of that knowledge. There are always these two aspects: he has revealed the truth, yes, but although he has revealed it to certain persons, it has in a sense also been revealed generally to the whole world, and some people are Christians and some are not. What exactly makes the difference? Well the answer is that there is a difference in the response that is made to the revelation which has been given, and we must now consider what it is that our Lord tells us about the response which is made by those who belong to him, those who are truly Christian. In other words, when we look at what exactly it is to be a Christian, we can see here another great distinction, and I make no apology for dealing further with this subject. It seems to me that of all the words which are misunderstood in this modern world, there is none which is so misunderstood as this word ‘Christian’. Some think of it purely in terms of a particular attitude towards war, others think of it in terms of a general friendliness, some vague emotion or feeling that one has on certain occasions. There are very many different views and there is indeed even a kind of paganism that often passes under the name of Christianity. This is truly appalling to contemplate, especially as one thinks of it all in the light of the Old and the New Testaments. It is vital, therefore, that we should be clear about these things, because we finally have no excuse: the revelation has been given, and we shall have to face it and give an account of what we have done with respect to it.
There is nothing, I repeat, which is more important for each one of us than to know for certain whether we are Christian or not. It is not only a matter of being able to face death, it is also a matter of being able to face life. According to the Scriptures, there is no real life apart from that which is given by the Lord Jesus Christ; everything else, apart from him, is mere existence. Though worldly success may be attached to our life and though it may lead to certain great things, ultimately it is utterly empty if it is without Christ. It does not satisfy the total personality, it leaves a great void, and there is a hunger and a thirst which nothing can satisfy save this life of God which comes to us through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That is why it is vital for us to know that we have this life. So here our Lord gives us one of his great distinctions.
These disciples, as we see very clearly from the records, were far from being perfect. They were guilty of many blunders and mistakes, they did many things which they should not have done, and they failed in a very pathetic manner right at the end when our Lord was facing the cross. Yet you notice that our Lord says certain things about them here. In spite of all their weakness and imperfection there is something about these people that differentiates them from everybody else, and it is this something that really makes them Christian. I suggest to you, therefore, that we have in these verses what we may call a kind of irreducible minimum of that which is essential for us before we have the right to apply the term Christian to ourselves.
There are certain things which are obvious on the very surface. Firstly, the thing that makes a man a Christian is something that is clearly defined and stated. People who have the idea that to be a Christian is something you cannot actually define are thereby proclaiming that they are not Christians. It is not a loose or indefinite term, it is perfectly clear and specific. The Scriptures themselves tell us to examine and prove ourselves whether we are in the faith or not, and, obviously, if we are exhorted to do that, then there must be some means by which we can do so. That is provided for us in the statement we are looking at now. It is one of the most clearly defined designations that you can ever consider.
Secondly, it is important to notice the way in which our Lord defines a Christian – it is not primarily a matter of experience. He does not talk about those people in terms of their having had a certain experience. They have had one but that is not what he puts first, that is not what he emphasizes and stresses. Neither, you observe, does he describe it in terms of some feelings which they have had. They certainly have had feelings – the Christian is aware of feelings – but that is not the way in which our Lord defines it. Neither does he put it in terms of their having taken a certain decision, or having arrived at some determination to live a better life or to do this or that. He does not define this basic demand, which is essential to being in the truly Christian position, in any one of those ways. Rather, he describes it as an attitude towards truth and especially towards the truth concerning himself.
That is, therefore, the first thing that we must emphasize: the basic, central thing about the Christian is that he is in a given relationship to the truth concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Now this is really one of the foundation truths and principles. Truth is obviously something that comes primarily to the mind and to the intellect, but it does not stop there, it ultimately affects the heart and the will. The Bible itself calls this particular message the truth, and clearly, therefore, it is something that comes to the whole person, to his mind and intellect, to his understanding, to his reason and to his ability to comprehend, and that is the way in which our Lord puts it here. The first thing he says about the Christian is that, ‘they have kept thy word’, and by using that expression ‘thy word’, he is describing the message, the truth, this presentation of doctrine. It comes to a man and it makes it possible for him to be a Christian.
The importance of that, of course, arises in this way: just to have a good feeling inside you does not make you a Christian. You can have that without being a Christian. Indeed, you can do a lot of good, you can hold very high and noble views and ideals and still not be a Christian, and there are many such people in the world today. They are not interested in God, nor do they believe in him; they are not interested in Christianity at all, but they are very good people. They spend much of their time trying to get rid of war and making this world a better place to live in and many other good things. I am not criticizing them. I am simply saying they are not Christians, because to have good feelings and sentiments and ideas and ambitions is not enough. The essential thing is to be definitely related to this message, to this word – ‘they have kept thy word’. Our Lord then goes on to say, ‘I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me.’ This, therefore, is something that must come in the first position. The Christian is in a given relationship to this ‘word’. This is the whole of the Christian revelation; it is the word of the gospel, the word of salvation; it is God’s message to mankind. So the first thing we have to do is to ask ourselves, ‘What is my relationship to that word?’
But what is this word, this message to which we are referring? Well, our Lord has analysed it into its component parts and divided it up for us, so that we shall be in no difficulty whatsoever with regard to our attitude in respect to it. He starts by telling us that the first essential message in that word which he has brought to us, is that he himself has come from God. He says, ‘They ... have known surely that I came out from thee.’ That is just another way of saying that the first thing that is true about the Christian is that he is clear about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ; he believes, he knows, that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God. That is our Lord’s own definition of it (and we have already seen that this is a central theme in this prayer). A man, therefore, who is not clear about the person of the Lord is not a Christian. My first concern is not what sort of life he is living. If he regards Jesus of Nazareth as only a man, he is not a Christian. The Christian believes in the incarnation, he believes that almost two thousand years ago the Son of God came into this world and entered into time, ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’ He does not say that that is irrelevant, or that he believes in the Christian dogma but that the great thing for him is how to get rid of this or that international problem. The Christian cannot speak like that because to the Christian the most momentous fact in the whole of history is the incarnation of the Son of God. It towers in importance over and above the conquest of Julius Caesar; it is altogether more important than all the world wars put together. These things have their significance, but when you put them in the light of the incarnation even they pale into nothing. This is the most vital thing in life and history.
The Christian is, of course, interested in those other things, but only in the light of this central fact, this momentous thing which took place when the eternal Son of God was born as a babe in a stable in Bethlehem and put in swaddling clothes there in a manger. That is the first thing in this word, that Christ speaks about. It is the word about himself, that he has come forth from God. He is not a man like other men, for he was not born in a natural manner. It was a virgin birth, a miraculous birth, the unique event of all history, the great watershed of time determining the whole of human existence. Are we quite certain about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we know for certain that he is the only begotten Son of God? Do we accept this record concerning him? Do we believe it, because, let me repeat, if we do not, we are not Christian, it is the first, absolute, essential.
Then he goes on to emphasize the second thing which is, ‘they believed also that thou didst send me’. Now that is a different thought from the one which we have been considering and our Lord separates them for a reason. Did you notice how he links up these various thoughts and concepts with the word ‘and’? There is a distinction, the word covers them all but these are the component parts. The Christian, having believed that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God, also believes that God has sent him and commissioned him to come into this world. We have already seen this from the standpoint of our Lord himself and his work, and how marvellous this is! And this again differentiates between the Christian and the non-Christian in this world. Everybody who is not a Christian looks at the problems of mankind and of the whole world just along the human level – what can be done about it? What arrangements can be made? What can be done at the next conference? What party are you going to put into office in order that these problems may be solved? They are looking at the problems from that level only and they are trusting to the ingenuity of man somehow to deal with the situation. But the Christian does not look at it like that; the Christian knows that God is interested in this world, and that he has done something about it, in that he has intervened in the history of mankind.
In other words, to the Christian there are two types of history, whereas to the non-Christian there is only one, and that is human history – what men do and arrange. But to the Christian there is another type of history, also, which is what God has been doing. You will find these two types of history in the Bible. Sometimes they have no connection with one another, then they come nearer, until they coincide. They coincide at the incarnation when eternity came into time and God was made flesh. But the great principle to hold on to is that God has sent his Son into this world, ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.’ We are not left with mere man, we are not just left with the world as it is. In addition to human history, there is this other dimension, and as you look at the whole course of history in the light of this event of God sending his Son, it gives you an entirely new view of the world of time, of the future, and of all things. It does not leave us on the horizontal level, but enables us to see a new possibility. The Christian believes that Christ came into the world because God sent him there.
But, thirdly, perhaps this is best put in terms of the statement in the seventh verse: ‘Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee’, which is just another way of stating that there is a great plan of salvation, and that the Christian is a man who knows something about this plan. The Christian is not someone who has a feeling in a meeting and then goes to the penitent form or to the decision room without knowing why he has done so. The apostle Peter says that as Christians we should be ready at all times to give a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Pet 3:15). The Christian, therefore, is not merely a man who says, ‘I feel wonderful, I have marvellous new life, and I am filled with hope.’ For if someone else asks him what his hope is based upon, or someone says, ‘Why do you feel like this? What has given you this feeling?’ and he cannot answer that question, he is not a Christian.
As I understand my New Testament, the Christian is able, however falteringly, to give a reason for the hope that is in him, because he knows the plan of salvation. He knows that God has appointed his Son to be the Saviour. These disciples for whom Christ was praying, and whom he described in this manner, were very imperfect and full of faults. But there was one thing they knew, and that was that he was the Messiah, the Saviour. On one occasion, when our Lord asked his disciples if they also were going to leave him, Peter replied, ‘To whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Jn 6:68–69). With all their faults and imperfections they knew that God had sent him to be the Saviour of the world, and that his words were not those of a mere man, but the words of eternal life. The Christian is the man who has come to see and to know that God sent his Son into this world to bear the sins of many, that he has come to give his life a ransom for many. There is only one way of knowing God and knowing that your sins can be forgiven. It can only be because the Son of God came into this world and took them upon himself. He bore their punishment – that is what the Christian knows.
And he knows likewise that Christ is the bread of life, that he gives him new life, new power, and a new understanding. He lives on Christ, who, himself, has told him that he must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. This means that he depends upon Christ and draws his life from him. He is in that intimate relationship with Christ. The Christian knows that and believes it, says our Lord. That is the word which the Christian believes – the whole plan of salvation.
If that, then, is the truth which the Christian is to believe, what is his peculiar relationship to that truth, for that, after all, is our basic definition of a Christian? Again, our Lord has answered the question in these three verses. What a perfect analysis this is of faith, what an incomparable analysis of the relationship of the Christian to truth. This is a great and profound subject. I merely note it to you, for your own meditation, but each word and each step is vital. The whole is there, of course, but our Lord breaks it up for us into these component parts.
Let me just give you the headings. What is the relationship of the Christian to this message, to this word of God that has come into the world? The first thing we are told about the Christian is that he is one who receives: ‘I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them.’ Our Lord was drawing a contrast here between the disciples and those who rejected the word, those who always criticized and ridiculed it, or who were always arguing about it – read the gospels and you will see what I mean. Our Lord there often uttered many gracious words, but the Pharisees’ response was to look at one another and say, Who is this man who is teaching in this way? He is only a carpenter’s son, the son of Joseph and Mary. He has no learning. He has not even been to the schools. And so they argued with him and tried to trap him. That is the opposite of receiving the word, because to receive it means to appropriate it in your heart.
There is a great illustration of this in Acts 17. We read there of certain people who lived in a place called Berea and who, when they heard the word, were ready to listen to it and went to the Scriptures to confirm it. That is the attitude of receiving, and obviously this is the first thing that is true about the Christian, the thing that differentiates him from the non-Christian. He accepts the word. He is not like others who are always trying to find holes in the argument, or to discover a contradiction in it, or who, if they hear that someone, some dignitary perhaps, has cast doubts upon the faith, are ready to believe him and to question the truth. No, Christians receive and accept. Often there may be things about the truth that they do not understand, but they believe that this is the Son of God, they listen to him, they receive his word, and give it a real place in their heart. They are open to it.
Then the next thing is ‘they have believed’. There is a difference between receiving and believing. Believing is, I would say, a step forward. It means that not only is there an openness to the word and a general state of receptivity, but, beyond that, it has been literally taken hold of – which is much more specifically faith. Belief, then, appropriates the word, it grasps it and says, ‘I believe it. I am not only open to receive it, I listen, and I accept it. I commit myself to it because I know it is right.’ ‘They have believed,’ says our Lord, ‘that thou didst send me.’ That was even used as a confession in the early church, like the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi. People were saying that our Lord was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets, so he asked his disciples, ‘Whom say ye that I am?’ And Peter’s answer was, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Mt 16:13–17) – we believe that.
Then the next term he uses is the term ‘know’. ‘Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.’ He says, ‘They have received them [the words], and have known surely that I came out from thee.’ This again is obviously another stage forward. There is a sense, of course, in which faith and knowledge cannot be separated. The relationship between them is a great question for discussion and in one sense they cannot be separated. There is always a kind of certainty about faith, not a certainty that you can prove scientifically, but an absolute certainty – ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for’ (Heb 11:1). Paul uses the great word ‘I am persuaded’ – I am sure – and there is, therefore, this kind of sequence in the attitude of the Christian towards truth. He receives it, he believes it and then he comes to know it. From believing he gets assurance, and he is as certain of the truth as he is of anything in existence, if not more so. It is very difficult to put these things into words but one of the greatest blessings of being in the Christian position is that one is really assured about these things. It is not an assurance that you can generate for yourself, but one that is always produced by the Holy Spirit. It is his peculiar work to do that, and to the man who wants to believe he will give the knowledge. Then he will give the assurance and so we advance from reception, to belief, to knowledge and to assurance.
And that brings me to my last point, a wonderful description of faith which our Lord puts first because it includes all the others: ‘they have kept thy word.’ What does it mean? In the first place, it means an intent watching, an observing of the whole revelation. You cannot keep a thing unless you have your eye on it, as it were, and therefore a good definition of the Christian is that he is a man who has always kept his eye on the truth. In every realm and department of life this is the thing that really controls him. He does not merely think of it and try to concentrate on it, and then forget it – not at all! His eye is always on the truth. The revelation is to him the great thing in life and he keeps it ever before him. It is a fundamental attitude which is always true of the Christian, always looking at the whole truth and meditating upon it – the word carries the meaning of watching. ‘They have kept thy word.’
There were many who seemed to have received it but who did not keep it, as we see in John 6. These people were following our Lord in crowds because they had seen his miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. They thought it was wonderful and they had never seen anything like it before; our Lord had become ‘the latest craze’. Having seen the miracle, they crowded after him and then he began to preach to them. But when he began to tell them that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood and live on him, they stood back and said, ‘This is an hard saying; who can hear it?’ And they went back and walked no more with him – they had not kept his word. But his disciples were different and, as we saw earlier, it was then that Peter made his great statement – ‘To whom shall we go? ...’ There is no one to go to, says Peter. We cannot always understand you, you are an enigma, but we will not leave you. They had kept the word, they held on to it through thick and thin. They did not allow others and their difficulties to loose their hold of him; they did not allow the devil to shake their belief, nor did they allow the detraction of the world to keep them away. They put the word in their heart, as the psalmist said, ‘Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee’ (Ps 119:11). Those people were guarding it, watching it, so that nothing should succeed in an attempt to take it from them.
And the last meaning of this word – you will find this rendering in other translations – is that they obeyed God’s word, because finally you do not really keep the word of God unless you obey it. It is a word that cannot be kept only in your intellect; it has to be put in your heart and in your will also. The man who keeps the word of God is the man whose whole personality is keeping it, the man who is meditating and rejoicing in it, whose heart warms to it, and so he obeys it.
I sum it all up, therefore, by putting it like this: ultimately the Christian is a man who realizes that in this life and world nothing really matters but this truth of God, this truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows that Christ is the Saviour of his soul, the Saviour of the world, the one who has been, the one who has gone, the one who will come again. He is the one who will come on the clouds of heaven as King of kings and Lord of lords and rout his every enemy and rid the world of sin and evil and introduce that blessed, glorious state in which there shall be ‘new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’ (2 Pet 3:13). That is the Christian, the man whose life is dominated and controlled by that truth, who keeps himself in every realm by that word, which comes to his mind, moves his heart and exercises his will. He lives by the truth of God as it is to be found only in our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
My beloved friends, are you keeping this word? Are you safeguarding it, holding on to it, practising and living it? That is the one thing that matters. And if you have kept this word – well, then, blessed be his name, you can be certain that he will keep you.