John 5:44 How can you believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that comes from God only? 1. All its attendant circumstances add weight to this remarkable utterance. It is the statement of the hidden reasons for Jewish wilfulness. There was a deep moral incapacity which made Christ's words and works powerless. 2. That which made belief powerless in the Jews makes it powerless in us. 3. In a very few touches He shows the real character of this evil — the allowing man's estimate to become the measure of what is to be honoured. I. WHAT THIS DANGER IS THE EFFECT OF WHICH IS TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO SAVINGLY RECEIVE THE TRUTH. 1. Pride. Take, e.g., a man of high intellectual power. Poor as it is held by God's standard, yet when judged according to the low measures many propose to themselves, the man has a right to be proud. Accordingly, he becomes a law unto himself and looks on others with a calm sense of superiority. By degrees he has a secret pleasure in going against the common forms of belief. His greater acuteness shows him errors in creeds, and then perhaps he stoops to be a leader of babes and grows into a heresiarch, or sinks, if truth be too strong for him, into the sadder honours of a spurious martyrdom. But for some overpowering work of grace, belief is impossible to such a man. Wrapped up in the superiority cf a Pharisee, or embittered into a scoffing Sadducee, how can he believe? 2. Self-conceit — a bastard growth of the same evil root. There is scarcely any peculiarity on which such may not ground a high estimate of themselves. Singularities of dress, bodily defect, a lisp, etc., show the workings of this lesser devil. What is there in this empty, inflated, irritating soul on which the gospel can lay hold when a strange dress, etc., is enough to satisfy his desire for greatness? 3. Vanity — closely related to the two former and yet widely different. It is a diseased desire for the good opinion of others to mend or bolster up our good opinion of ourselves. There is no humiliation to which a vain man will not stoop; he would rather be laughed at than left unnoticed. His itching desire to bring himself into notice spreads into his religion, and shows itself in small instances of ridiculous manner or rite. How can such an one believe? 4. Self-consciousness.is a struggling form of the same evil. The self-conscious man is ever tormented with an ever-present vision of self in what he is doing. He cannot confess sin without thinking how well he is doing it, nor pray without thinking how others, if they only saw him, would applaud. All of these forms have about them this deadly element, that they substitute some lower object for the one true end of a man's being — to do the will of God. II. WHERE IS OUR DELIVERANCE? 1. We cannot find it in ourselves. The proud man cannot reason himself out of his pride; self-conceit will survive all disgrace; vanity will go on all through life blemishing everything, and self-consciousness will poison a life of active exertion and contemplative piety. 2. Self in this deceitful form can only be cast out by our Maker. In His presence only can we see our littleness. There all self-delusions fade. It is well, then, to get there from time to time in a solemn and especial manner. 3. But then you must watch in detail against the temptation. (1) Think as little as possible about any good in yourself; turn your eyes from self and speak as little as possible about yourself, and specially be on your guard against the little tricks by which the vain man seeks to secure attention. (2) Take meekly the humiliations which God in His providence deals out to you. (3) Place yourself often beneath the Cross. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.) Parallel Verses KJV: How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? |
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