 |  |
6. The epistles of the mystery do not speak of Christ as the Son of Abraham, or the
Son of man, but go back behind all these to the wondrous title of the Image of the
invisible God, Who is, moreover, the Creator of all things visible and invisible. This
revelation of His Person will colour the message that is addressed to the outer circle
to-day.
7. We shall find in that message the great desire expressed by the Lord, that, though
He was rejected by His own, the world might yet believe and know that He was the Sent
One of God.
8. There will be an indication that the gift of "miracles" possessed by the church, as at
Corinth, no longer obtains.
By common consent the Gospel according to John was written when Paul's ministry
was finished, and corresponds fully to the conditions suggested above, as well as to many
more to be entered into later. Let us for the present, however, confine ourselves to
noticing how John's Gospel deals with these peculiar conditions.
1.
The world.
"The world was made by Him" (John 1: 10).
"The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1: 29).
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3: 16).
"The Christ, the Saviour of the world" (John 4: 42).
"Giveth life unto the world" (John 6: 33).
"I am the light of the world" (John 9: 5).
These and many more come immediately to the mind, and it is common knowledge
with students of the Word that John's Gospel is pre-eminently the presentation of Christ
to the world.
Kosmos (world) occurs in Matthew's Gospel nine times, in Mark three times, in Luke
three times, but in John it occurs about seventy-nine times. Matthew's Gospel tells us
concerning the Lord that He was called "Jesus, for He shall save His people from their
sins" (Matt. 1: 21). Luke's Gospel records the Lord's instructions to His disciples that
"remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations beginning at
Jerusalem" (Luke 24: 47). John, however, speaks of, "sin" not "sins", "the sin of the
world" and "the sins of His people".
The reader will remember the wide scope in the standpoint of the first Epistle of John:
"He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world"
(I John 2: 2). John's Epistles account for another twenty-one occurrences of kosmos, so
that out of a total of one hundred and eighty-eight occurrences in the whole N.T., John's
Gospels and Epistles use one hundred of them. If we seek for a message that has the
world in view, can we find one more suitable than this Gospel according to John?