INCARNATE TRUTH
Benjamin B. Warfield
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us full
of ... truth"
(John
The
obvious resemblance between the prologue to John's Gospel and the proem of Genesis
is not a matter of mere phraseology and external form. As the one, in the brief
compass of a few verses, paints the whole history of the creation of a universe
with a vividness which makes the quickened imagination a witness of the
process, so the other in still briefer compass traces the whole history of the
re-creation of a dead world into newness of life. In both we are first pointed
back into the depths of eternity, when only God was. In both we are bidden to
look upon the chaotic darkness of lawless matter or of lawless souls, over
which the brooding Spirit was yet to move. In both, as the tremendous pageants
are unrolled before our eyes, we are made to see the Living God; and to see him
as the Light and the Life of the world, the Destroyer of all darkness, the
Author of all good. Here too, however, the Old Testament revelation is the
preparation for the better to come. In it we see God as the God of power and of
wisdom, the Author and Orderer of all; in this we see him as the God of
goodness and mercy, the Restorer and Redeemer of the lost. Law was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Through what a sublime sweep does the apostle lead our
panting thought as he strives to tell us who and what the Word is, and what he
has done for men. He lifts the veil of time, that we may peer into the
changeless abyss of eternity and see him as he is, in the mystery of his being,
along with God and yet one with God--in some deep sense distinct from God, in
some higher sense identical with God. Then he shows us the divine work which he
has wrought in time. He is the All-Creator--"all things were made by him,
and without him was not anything made that hath been made." He is the
All-Illuminator--he "was the true Light that lighteth every man that
cometh into the world." And now in these last days he has become the
All-Redeemer--prepared for by his prophet, he came to his own, and his own
received him not; but "as many as received him," without regard to
race or previous preparation, "he gave to them the right to become
children of God, to them that believe on his name, who were born not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Then
the climax of this great discourse breaks on us as we are told how the Word,
when he came to his own, manifested himself to flesh. It was by himself
becoming flesh, and tabernacling among us, full of grace and truth. He came as
Creator, as Revealer, as Redeemer: as Creator, preparing a body for his
habitation; as Revealer, "trailing clouds of glory as he came"; as
Redeemer, heaping grace on grace.
It is clear that it is primarily in its aspect as a
revelation of God that John is here contemplating the incarnation. Accordingly,
he bears his personal witness to it as such: "The Word was made flesh, and
tabernacled among us, and we beheld his
glory, a glory as of an only-begotten of the Father."
Accordingly, too, he summons the prophetic witness of the forerunner. And
accordingly, still further, he closes the whole with a declaration of the
nature of the revelation made, and its guarantee in the relation of the
incarnated Word to the Father: "No man hath seen God at any time; God
only-begotten which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
In the special verse from which we have taken our text
we perceive, then, that John is bearing his personal witness: "And the
Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we
beheld his glory." He is telling us what of his own immediate
knowledge he knows--testifying what he had heard, what he had seen with his
eyes, what he had beheld and his hands had handled. An eye-witness to Christ's
majesty, he had seen his glory and bears his willing witness to it. Nor must we
fancy that he gives us merely a subjective opinion of his own, as if he were
telling us only that the man Jesus was so full of grace and truth in his daily
walk that he, looking upon him admiringly, had been led to conjecture that he
was more than man. He testifies not to subjective opinion but to objective
fact. We observe that the testimony is made up of three assertions. First, we
have the fact, the objective fact, of the incarnation asserted "And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Second, we have the
self-evidencing glory of the incarnation asserted: "and we beheld his
glory, a glory as of an only begotten of the Father." And third, we have
the characteristic elements which entered into and constituted the glory which
he brought from heaven with him and exhibited to men, as serted: "full of
grace and truth." Jesus Christ was incarnated love and truth. And
precisely what John witnesses is, that the Word did become flesh, and dwelt
among men, full of grace and truth, and that the blaze of this his glory was
manifest to every seeing eye that looked upon him.
Now it seems evident, further, that John had a special
form of the manifestation of love and truth before his mind when he wrote these
words. He is thinking of the covenant God, who proclaimed himself to Moses on
the mount when he descended on the cloud as "Jehovah, Jehovah, a God full
of compassion. and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
truth." He is thinking of David's prayer, "0 prepare lovingkindness
and truth"; and his heart burns within him as he sees them now prepared.
It is the thought of Christ's redeeming work which is filling his mind, and
which leads him to sum up the revelation of the incarnation in the revelation
of love and truth. Therefore he says, not "love," but
"grace"--undeserved love to sinners. And in "truth" he is thinking
chiefly of Christ's "faithfulness." The divine glory that rested as a
nimbus on the Lord's head was compounded before all else of his ineffable love
for the unlovely, of his changeless faithfulness to the unfaithful For in
Christ, God commended his love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us.
Nevertheless, it would be a serious error to confine
the words as here used to this single implication. This is rather the
culmination and climax of their meaning than the whole extent and impletion of
it. Christ is not only love as manifested in grace, but as the God of love
manifest in the flesh he is love itself in all its height and breadth. Not only
the loftiest reaches of love, love for the undeserving, find their model in
him, but all the love that is in the world finds its source and must seek its
support in him. His was the love that wept at the grave of a friend and over
the earthly sorrows of Jerusalem that yearned with the bereaved mother at Nain,
and took the little children into his arms to bless them; as well as the love
that availed to offer himself a sacrifice for sin. In like manner that John has
especially in mind here the highest manifestations of truth--our Lord's
trustworthiness in the great work of salvation--in no way empties the word of
its lower connotations. He is still the true Light that lighteth every man that
cometh into the world; and all the truth that is in the world comes from him
and must seek its strength in him. "We beheld his glory," says the
apostle, "full"--complete,
perfect--of grace and truth." And perfection of love and truth avails for
all their manifestations. This man, the man Christ Jesus, could not act in any
relation otherwise than lovingly, could not speak on any subject otherwise than
truly. He is the pure fountain of love and truth.
I.
We confine ourselves on the present occasion to the latter of the two
characteristics here brought together. And doing so, the first message which
the declaration brings us is one so obvious that, in circumstances other than
those in which we are now standing, it would seem an insult to our intelligence
to direct attention to it. It is this, that since Jesus Christ our Lord, the
manifested Jehovah, was as such the incarnation of truth, no statement which ever
fell from his lips can have contained any admixture of error. This is John's
testimony. For let us remind ourselves again that he is here bearing his
witness, not to the essential truth of the divine nature incarnated in our Lord
prior to its incarnation, but to the fulness of truth which dwelt in the
God-man: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his
glory, full of . . . truth." More--it is the testimony of our Lord
himself. "I," he declared, with his majestic and pregnant brevity,
"I am the Truth." Nor dare we fancy that his plenitude of truth is
exhausted in his witness to the great and eternal verities of religion, while
the pettier affairs of earth and man are beyond its reach. His own norm of
judgment is that only he that is faithful in the least may be trusted with the
great. And it was testified of him not only that he knew whence he came and
whither he went, but equally that he knew all men and needed not that any
should bear witness of man, for he himself knew what was in man. He himself
suspends his trustworthiness as to heavenly things upon his trustworthiness as
to earthly things: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, We speak that we do
know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I told
you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you
heavenly things?"
Are we beating the air when we remind ourselves of such
things? Would that we were! But alas! we are fallen on evil days, when we need
to defend the truth of incarnate truth itself against the aspersions of even
its professed friends. 0, the unimaginable lengths to which the intellectual
pride of men will carry them! Has one spun out some flimsy fancy as to the
origin and composition of certain Old Testament books, which is found to clash
with Jesus' testimony to their authorship and trustworthiness? We are coolly
told that "as a teacher of spiritual truth sent from God and full of God
he is universal," but "as a logician and critic he belongs to his
times," and therefore had "a definite restricted outfit and outlook,
which could be only those of his own day and generation." "Why should
he be supposed to know the science of the criticism of the Old Testament,"
we are asked,"which began to exist centuries after his death?" Does
another cherish opinions as to the interpretation of certain Old Testament
passages which will not square with the use that Christ makes of them? He tells
us at once that "interpretation is essentially a scientific function, and
one conditioned by the existence of scientific means, which, in relation to the
Old Testament, were only imperfectly at the command of Jesus." Has another
adopted preconceptions which render our Lord's dealings with the demoniacs
distasteful to him? He too reminds us that the habit of ascribing disease to
demoniacal influences was universal in Jesus' day, and that we can scarcely
expect him to be free from the current errors of his time. Let us cut even
deeper. When one desires to break out a "larger hope" for those who
die impenitent than Christ's teachings will allow, he suggests that in his
efforts to lead his hearers to repentance Jesus spoke habitually as a popular
preacher, and far more strongly than he could have permitted himself to do had
he been an exact theologian. When another burns with a zeal for moral reform
which is certainly not according to knowledge, he suggests that we have reached
a stage of ethical development when "new and larger perceptions of
truth" have brought "new and larger perceptions of duty" than were
attainable in Christ's day, and are accordingly bound to govern our lives by
stricter rules than would apply to him in that darker age. Or, to sum up the
whole, we have been recently told plainly that "Christ in his manhood was
not the equal of Newton in mathematical knowledge," and not "the
equal of Welihausen in literary criticism," because--so we are actually
told--the pursuit of such sciences requires "much exercise of mind."
Is, then, the Light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world gone out in darkness? What is left us of the Truth Indeed, who
proclaims himself no more the Way and the Life than the Truth, if his testimony
cannot be trusted as to the nature, origin, authority, and meaning of the
Scriptures of which his own Spirit was the inspirer; as to the constitution of
that spiritual world of which he is the Creator and the King; as to the nature
of that future state which it is his to determine as Judge; or as to the moral
Jife of which he is the sole author? Yet these are devout men who are
propagating such teachings; and each has of course his own way of saving
himself from conscious blasphemy in erecting his own thought above the thought
of the God-man. The most popular way at present is to suggest that when God
became man he so surrendered the attributes of divinity as that, though God, he
had shrunk to the capacity of man, and, accepting the weaknesses, become
subject also to the limitations of a purely human life in the world. Thus it is
sought to save the veracity of the Lord at the expense of his knowledge, his
truthfulness at the expense of his truth. But who can fail to see that, were
this true, the sorrowing world would be left like Mary standing weeping in the
garden and crying, "They have taken away my Lord"? Where then would
be Christ our Prophet? Who could assure us of his trustworthiness in his
witness to his oneness with God, to his mission from God, to the completeness
of his work for our salvation? Faith has received a serious wound, as it has
been well phrased, if we are to believe that Jesus Christ could have been
deceived; if we are to believe that he could--wittingly or
unwittingly--deceive, faith has received its death blow.
Let us bless the Lord, then, that he has left us little
excuse for doubting in so important a matter. To the law and the testimony. Is
the man Christ Jesus dramatized before us in the length and breadth of that
marvelous history which fills these four Gospels, as a child of his times,
limited by the intellectual out]ook of his times, or rather as a teacher to his
times, sent from God as no more the power of God than the wisdom of God? Is he
represented to us as learning what he taught us from men, or, as he himself
bore witness, from God?--"My teaching is not mine, but his that sent
me"; "I am come down out of heaven," and "he that hath sent
me is true"; and "the things that I have heard from him, these speak
1 unto the world." Did he even in his boyhood amaze the doctors in the
temple by his understanding (Luke 2:47)? Did he know even "letters,"
not having learned them from man (John 7:15)? Did he see Nathanael when, under
the fig tree, he bowed in secret prayer (John 1:47)? Did he know without human
informant all the things that ever the Samaritan woman did (John 4:29)? Did he
so search the heart of man that he saw the thoughts of his enemies (Matt. 9:4);
knew that one of the twelve whom he had chosen was a "devil" (John
6:70); led Peter to cry in his adoring distress, "Lord, thou knowest all
things, thou knowest that I love thee" (John 20:17); and called out the
testimony of John that "he knew all men, and needed not that any should
bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man" (John
2:25); as well as the testimony of all the disciples that they knew that he came
from God, because "he knew all things" (John16:30)?
But why need we go into the details that are spread
from one end to the other of these Gospels? In our text itself John bears
witness that the fulness of truth which dwelt in the in carnate Word so
glorified all his life as to mark him out as the Son of God: "The Word
became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of an
only-begotten of the Father, full of truth." We surely need not fear to
take our stand not only by the truthfulness but by the truth of our Lord. We
surely need not shrink from, with the utmost simplicity, embracing,
proclaiming, and living by his views of God and the universe, of man and the
world. It was he that made the world; and without him was not anything made that
hath been made. Who shall teach him how its beams were laid or how its
structure has grown? It was he that revealed the Word. Who shall teach him how
were written or what is intended by the words which he himself gave through his
servants the prophets? It is he who is at once the Source and Standard of the
moral law, and the Fount and Origin of all compassion for sinful man. Who shall
teach him what it is right to do, or how it is loving to deal with the children
of men? We need not fear lest we be asked to credit Jesus against the truth; we
may confide wholly in him, because he is the Truth.
II.
Nor let us do this timidly. Trust is never timid. Just because Jesus is the
Truth, while we without reserve accept, proclaim, and live by every word which
he has spoken, not fearing that after all it may prove to be false, we may with
equal confidence accept, proclaim, and live by every other truth that may be
made known to us, not fearing that after a while it may prove to contradict the
Truth himself. Thus we may be led to the formulation of a second message which
the text brings us: that since Jesus Christ our Lord, the Founder of our
religion, was the very incarnation of truth, no truth can be antagonistic to
the religion which he founded. John tells us that he was the true Light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and we may read this as meaning
that as the Word of God, the great Revealer, it is he that leads man by
whatever path to the attainment of whatever truth. There is, then, no truth in
the world which does not come from him. It matters not through what channel it
finds its struggling way into our consciousness or to our recognition--whether
our darkened eyes are enabled to catch their glimpse of it by the light of
nature, as we say, by the light of reason, by the light of history, or by the
light of criticism. These may be but broken lights; but they are broken lights
of that one Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Every
fragment of truth which they reveal to us comes from him who is the Truth, and
is rendered great and holy as a revelation from and of him.
We must not, then, as Christians, assume an attitude of
antagonism toward the truths of reason, or the truths of philosophy, or the
truths of science, or the truths of history, or the truths of criticism. As
children of the light, we must be careful to keep ourselves open to every ray
of light. If it is light, its source must be sought in him who is the true
Light; if it is truth, it belongs of right to him who is the plenitude of
truth. All natural truths must be--in varying degrees indeed, but all truly--in
some sense commentaries on the supernaturally revealed truth; and by them we
may be led to fuller and more accurate comprehension of it. Nature is the handiwork
of God in space; history marks his pathway through time. And both nature and
history are as infallible teachers as revelation itself, could we but skill to
read their message aright. It is distressingly easy to misinterpret them; but
their employment in the elucidation of Scripture is, in principle, closely
analogous to the interpretation of one Scripture by another, though written by
another human hand and at an interval of an age of time. God speaks through his
instruments. Prediction interprets prediction; doctrine, doctrine; and fact,
fact. Wherever a gleam of light is caught, it illuminates. The true Light, from
whatsoever reflected, lighteth.
Let us, then, cultivate an attitude of courage as over
against the investigations of the day. None should be more zealous in them than
we. None should be more quick to discern truth in every field, more hospitable
to receive it, more loyal to follow it whithersoever it leads. It is not for
Christians to be lukewarm in regard to the investigations and discoveries of
the time. Rather, the followers of the Truth Indeed can have no safety, in
science or in philosophy, save in the arms of truth. It is for us, therefore,
as Christians, to push investigation to the utmost; to be leaders in every
science; to stand in the van of criticism; to be the first to catch in every
field the voice of the Revealer of truth, who is also our Redeemer. The curse
of the Church has been her apathy to truth, in which she has too often left to
her enemies that study of nature and of history and philosophy, and even that
investigation of her own peculiar treasures, the Scriptures of God, which
should have been her chief corcern. Thus she has often been forced to learn
from the inadvertent or unwilling testimony of her foes the facts she has
needed to protect herself from their assaults. And thus she has been led to
borrow from them false theories in philosophy, science, and criticism, to make
unnecessary concessions to them, and to expose herself, as they changed their
positions from time to time, to unnecessary disgrace. What has the Church not
suffered from her unwillingness to engage in truly scientific work! She has
nothing to fear from truth; but she has everything to fear, and she has already
suffered nearly everything, from ignorance. All truth belongs to us as
followers of Christ, the Truth; let us at length enter into our inheritance.
III.
In so speaking, we have already touched somewhat upon a third message which our
text brings us: that since Christ Jesus our Lord and Master is incarnate Truth,
we as his children must love the truth. Like him, we must be so single of eye,
so steadfast in purpose, so honest in word, that no guile can be found in our
mouth. The philosophers have sought variously for the sanction of truth. Kant
found it in the respect a man owes to the dignity of his own moral nature: the
liar must despise himself because lying is partial suicide--it is the
renunciation of what we are and the substitution of a feigned man in our place.
Fichte found it in our sense of justice toward our fellowmen: to lie is to lead
others astray and subject their freedom to our selfish ends--it is ultimately
to destroy society by destroying trust among men. From each of these points of
view a powerful motive to truth may be developed. It is unmanly to lie; it is
unneighborly to lie. It will destroy both our self-respect and all social life.
But for us as Christians no sanction can approach in power that derived from
the simple fact that as Christians we are "of the Truth"; that we are
not of him who when he speaketh a lie speaketh of his own, who is a liar and
the father thereof, but of him who is the fulness of truth--who is light and in
whom is no darkness at all. As the children of truth, truth is our essential
nature; and to lie is to sin against that incarnate Truth who is also our Lord
and Redeemer--in whom, we are told, no liar can have part or share.
Bare avoidance of falsehood is far, however, from
fulfilling our whole duty as lovers of truth. There is a positive duty, of
course, as well as this negative one beckoning us. We have already noted the
impulse which should thence arise to investigation and research. If all truth
is a revelation of our Lord, what zeal we should have to possess it, that we
may the better know him! As children of the truth we must love the truth, every
truth in its own order, and therefore especially and above all others those
truths which have been revealed by God for the salvation of the world. How
tenacious we should be in holding them, how persistent in propagating them, how
insistent in bearing our witness to them! "To this end was I born,"
said our Lord himself, "and for this cause came I into the world, that I
should bear witness unto the truth." And we too, as his servants, must be,
each in his place, witnesses of the truth. This is the high function that has
been given us as followers of Jesus: as the Father sent him into the world, so
he has sent us into the world, to bear witness of the truth.
We all know in the midst of what dangers, in the midst
of what deaths, those who have gone before us have fulfilled this trust.
"Martyrs," we call them; and we call them such truly. For
"martyrs" means "witnesses"; and they bore their witness
despite cross and sword, fire and raging beast. So constant was their witness,
so undismayed, that this proverb has enshrined their eulogy for all time, that
"the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church." They were our
fathers: have we inherited their spirit? If we be Christians at all, must not we
too be "martyrs," "witnesses"? must not we too steadfastly
bear our witness to the truth assailed in our time? There may be no more fires
lighted for our quivering flesh: are there no more temptations to a guilty
silence or a weak evasion? Surely there is witness still to be borne, and we
are they to bear it. The popular poet of the day sings against "the hard
God served in Jerusalem," and all the world goes after him. But we--do we
not know him to be the God of our salvation? the God who hath lovingly predestinated
us unto the adoption of sons, through Jesus Christ, unto himself, according to
the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace? May God
grant that in times like these, when men will not endure the sound doctrine, we
may be enabled by his grace to bear unwavering witness to the glory of the Lord
God Almighty, who "hath made everything for its own purpose, yea, even the
wicked for the day of evil."
Need we pause further to enforce that highest form of
the love of the truth, the love of the gospel of God's grace, which braves all
things for the pure joy of making known the riches of his love to fallen men?
The missionary spirit is the noblest fruit of the love of truth; the
missionary's simple proclamation the highest form of witness-bearing to the
truth. This spirit is no stranger among you. And I am persuaded that your
hearts are burning within you as you think that to you "this grace has
been given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and
to make all men see what is the stewardship of the mystery which from all ages
hath been hid in God." You need not that I should exhort you to remember
that above all else "it is required in stewards that a man be found
faithful." May God grant that while you may ask in wonder, as you
contemplate the work of your ministry, Who is sufficient for these things? you
may be able to say, like Paul, "We are not as the many, corrupting the
Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we
in Christ." May God grant that the desire which flamed in Paul may burn in
you too:
O
could I tell ye surely would believe it!
O
could I only say what I have seen!
How
could I tell or how can ye receive it,
How
till he bringeth you where I have been?
Give
me a voice, a cry and a complaining-
O
let my sound be stormy in their ears!
Throat
that would shout but cannot stay for straining,
Eyes
that would weep but cannot wait for tears.
from Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 2, Edited by John
E. Meeter, published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970.
originally from Princeton Sermons,
1893, pp/ 94-114