The Magnetism of the Uplifted Lord

“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” — John xii. 32.

The context gives us the needful illumination to see our way. ‘’Now there icere certain Greel’S among those that went up to worship at the feast: these therefore came to Philip... and asked him saying, Sir, we would see Jesus,” The personality of Jesus was already becoming attractive, the magnet was beginning to draw, the sons and daughters were coming from afar! But why were these Greeks drawn unto Him? Perhaps it was only curiosity, which nevertheless is often the mother of wonder and awe, and the minister of deathless devotion. Or, perhaps it was heart-hunger, the pangs of unsatisfied craving, an unrest which philosophy was unable to soothe, a vastness of desire for which eloquence, and music, and art had no bread. “Sir, we would see Jesus!’’ ‘’Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell Jesus,” And what will Jesus say when this first little gi’oup of enquirers from the outer world arc at His door? *’ And Jesus said. The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified!’’

Here is the beginning of the glory He seeks, the drawing of all men unto Him. Here is the little band of advance scouts which precede a host which no man can number. But this little company is only like a small handful of precocious blades of corn upon an otherwise barren field. They are almost before their time. Before the entire field can be covered with the promising verdure there must be a winter, and in the secret virtue of that winter shall the spring and autumn glory be found. Pirst a winter, and then, not a few straggling blades, but an uncounted number! Even now there is a little movement, some faint stirring of aspiring life, but wait until winter has added its mystic ministry, and the movement will be as the silent march of a vast army. Even now Jesus draws men. But wait until the winter is passed! First, let Jesus die! “If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’’ “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” The tendency of this little handful of Greeks shall become the drift of the race.

And so the magnet is to be the Lord Jesus in the wonderful energies of His transcendent sacrifice. ‘’ I, if I be lifted up.” “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” No one can really feel the pressing mystery of the cross who does not enter it possessed by the conviction of the sinlessness of Jesus, and realising something of the vast range of consciousness in which His spirit moved; His sense of the absolute oneness of Himself and God; His unwavering sense of the voluntariness of His surrender to the powers of men and the pains of earth, “No man taketh it from Me ‘^; His expressed consciousness, that, by the raising of the eyes, He could call to His aid legions of attendant forces which would make Him invincible; His calm assurance that ‘’ all things had been given into His hands,” His submission to the cross in that assurance; all these remove His death from the ranks of common martyrdom, and place Him in an awful and glorious isolation. His martyr Stephen was forced into death: Jesus walked into it. From the very beginning His steps were set towards it. ‘” He set His face steadfastly to go,” and with an irresistible stride He paced forward to the self -chosen consummation of sacrifice. He descended the entire slope of sacrifice, from grade to grade, until He touched death, and destroyed the power of death, until He tore out death’s sting, which is sin, and in one supreme victory triumphed over both.

Now, our Lord declares that it is in the energy of that transcendent sacrifice that His personal magnetism is to be found. The energy of His love as displayed in His life, compared with the energy of His love as displayed in His death, is as dispersed sunshine compared with focussed sunshine, sunshine concentrated in a burning heat. And it is this focussed sacrificial energy of His death, “The last pregnant syllable of God’s great utterance of love,” which our Lord declares is to be the ministry of attraction, by which all men are to be drawn unto Him. This teaching is not altogether strange, not altogether removed from the proof of human experience. Even upon the plane of common life, among men of narrow consciousness and sinful habit, the element of sacrifice is strangely magnetic, and allures the interest and admiration of men. We recall how the young Prince of the Netherlands, alien and unpopular, estranged from the people’s hearts, drew the people to him by the energies of sacrifice. And we recall the heroic skipper, who by a midnight sacrifice drew to him the homage of kings and the affectionate acclamation of the race. Yes, and sometimes a notoriously bad man is kindled into some conspicuous act of heroic sacrifice, and in the tremendous energy of the pure flame his unworthiness seems consumed, and his infamy is forgotten. So that we are familiar with the magnetism of sacrifice even amid our own defiled and narrow lives. But what shall be the energies when the sacrificial being is the sinless Lord Himself, with strength to confront everything and never be defiled, with power to break the double tyranny of sin and death — what shall be the energy, its quantity and its quality, when He shall go ‘^ without the camp,” to suffer and to die? “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” The energies of that self-sacrificing Redeemer constitute the mightiest magnet known among men. There is nothing like that magnet. Test it by the individual testimony. As a matter of common experience, what draws men like the uplifted Lord? You must have noticed, as I again and again have noticed, how a silent awe steals over an assembly, when the preacher consciously approaches the cross, and leads the contemplation to that stupendous sacrifice. If he turn to matters ecclesiastical, political, aesthetical, educational, the tension is relaxed, and we can assume an attitude of easy detachment. It is the uplifted Lord who tightens the strings, and makes us mentally and spiritually tense, and draws us to our knees. What has experience to tell us of His wonderful workings I It tells us this, that nothing so overcomes the deathlv and the deadly in man as” the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’^ It breaks up the frozen indifference of men. It makes them graciously uneasy. It disturbs them with promising disquietude. It awakes moral pains by restoring the moral circulation, and it accomplishes resurrection through the pangs of hell and the sorrows of death. But the sacrificial Lord does more than inspire initial unrest. He converts the imeasy stirrings into definite spiritual movement. He not only breaks up inertia. He determines direction. He awakes men, and He also draws them. He draws men towards Himself, and they move to a close and personal communion. There is nothing else which works in that way, and to such swift and personal devotion. You may proclaim the Lord as a great ethical teacher, but the ethics may generate no more energy than do the Ten Commandments painted upon the cold surface of the walls of a church. You may proclaim Him as a young reformer, but the programme will no more lift men out of their deadly grooves than a party programme will lift men out of their sins. Jesus, the young prophet, may draw cheers; the uplifted Lord draws men. The young Reformer may gain men’s signatures; the sacrificial Saviour wins their hearts. ‘’ I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.’^

“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me.
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come!”

Test the energies of this magnet by the testimony of history as to what is the power which has most conspicuously swayed great masses of mankind. Whenever the multitudes have been profoundly moved, whenever stagnant peoples have been stirred into newness and freshness of life, it has been by the energies of the uplifted Lord. Let us confine the range of vision to our own country, and to our own country within the limited circle of the last hundred and fifty years. I am not aware of any vast upheaval of the national sentiment which has taken place within that season which was not directly occasioned by the energies of the uplifted Lord. What we call the Evangelical Revival carries its interpretation in its name. When the England of the eighteenth century — so superficial, so cruel, so soddened in immoral indifference — began to move toward a cleaner and a sweeter and more enlightened life, the magnet that drew her was the Lamb of God. The miner in Cornwall and iSTorthumbria, the workman in the potteries, the shepherd on the northern moors, the poor cotter in Scotland and in Ireland, all felt the pull of the magnet, and sped with eager feet toward their Lord. Let any one turn to John Wesley’s journal, and read the inner story of that wonderful revival, and he will be in no doubt as to what was the quickening ministry that created it. From shepherd and fisherman and miner alike this was the common cry, “O Lamb of God, I come! ‘^ And it has not been otherwise in a nearer day. ‘No one has ever moved the multitudes except the men with the magnet of the uplifted Lord. K’ay, it is passing strange that only the men with the uplifted Lord seem to seek the multitudes at all! Have you known of any Moody, with similar passion and similar aim, but with another magnet than this of the crucified God, who has moved the masses of our countrymen, and drawn them into the holy paths of higher life and service? If such there be, I should like to know of them, for as yet they have never passed across my sight. No, when the multitudes are swayed, they are swayed by the Lamb. I am not now asking you to account for it, or to accept any theory concerning it, but to accept the plain testimony of experience, that some marvellous magnetic energy attaches to the uplifted Lord, and that there is nothing to be named alongside it in its power to grip and draw the multitudes. With all my heart I believe in what Mr. Spurgeon said — and altogether apart from his supreme genius his own ministry afforded abundant proof — that there is nothing in this world which so impresses men, and nothing which at bottom they are so eager to hear, as just” the old, old story,” told by men who know its power, ‘’ of Jesus and His love.” That is where the Labour Church is most assuredly doomed to fail and to die, and many who are reading these words will live to see it.

“I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” Then in the energies of this sacrificed Christ we are not only to find the dynamic of redemption, but the secret of human brotherhood. If men are drawn to Him they will be drawn nearer to one another. It will be like moving from the isolated suburbs of a great circumference down the many radii to a common centre, and as we approach that centre we shall draw near to one another. The central Magnet will communicate something of its own attractive energy to every approaching soul, and by the common energy shall souls be drawn together. The secret of brotherhood is found in common nearness to the Lord. But how dare I say that when I look round upon the Churches of to-day? Is there anything less like brotherhood than the spectacle which they present to the world? So far from being possessed by some common energy of mutual attraction, we seem to be possessed by an energy which occasions mutual repulsion. If by some happy chance we find ourselves on a common platform, we either half apologise for our relationship, or we indulge in outbursts of mutual eulogy and surprise which reveal how infrequent and unreal is our communion. If it be true that by drawing near the centre we assuredly draw near to one another, what has happened to explain our position? This has happened: we have forgotten the Centre, or we have made centres of our own. We have made a theory a centre, a form of ecclesiastical government a centre, and because all men will not travel toward our self-made centre, there is antagonism and repulsion, and mutual throwing of stones, and the religion which was purposed to be a minister of brotherly union becomes the embittered agent of division and strife. But I tell you that wherever, in any and all denominations, men get their eyes clearly fixed upon the face of the sacrificial Lord, upon the uplifted Christ of God, they do most assuredly move and draw together, and these men, even at the present time, are living and working in co-operative service and in brotherly concord and peace. It is the man who strikes his spear and plants his standard in his own self-chosen and self-created centre, and who will not look beyond his formal creed, his rigid polity, and his fleshly succession, it is this man, wherever he may be found, who is the foe of human fellowship and Christian intimacy, and who retards the gracious oneness for which our Saviour lived and bled and died. When we get our eager eyes fixed upon the Lord, the Lord uplifted in superlative sacrifice, when we pierce through every secondary medium, and contemplate the primary glory, we shall move down the different radii of our Church relationships — Episcopalian, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Friend — and we shall emerge in the fair light of the oneness of a common love, and in the full, sweet harmony of a common confession, “My Lord and my God! ‘^ ‘’ I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’’ “I, if I be lifted up!” There is energy there to redeem us all. There is energy there to lift us out of the cold prison-house of guilt, out of the cruel tyranny of sin, out of the bitterness of death. ‘’ I will draw! ‘’ No one else can do it. ‘^ I,’’ and this in contrast to “the prince of this world ‘’ in the previous verse. These are the combatants:” the prince of this world “versus the uplifted Lord! I place my reliance on the Lord!” Whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.’’

“Drawn to the Cross which Thou hast blessed
With healing gifts for souls distressed
To find in Thee my life, my rest,
Christ crucified, I come!”

“To be what Thou wouldst have me be,
Accepted, sanctified in Thee,
Through what Thy grace shall work in me,
Christ crucified, I come! ‘’