Turn to Christ with longing eyes, View His bleeding sacrifice. See through Him your sins forgiven, Pardon, holiness, and heaven. Glorify the King of kings! Take the peace the gospel brings.
_SINCERITY OF HEART NECESSARY TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE GOSPEL._
"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."--John vii. 17.
The Jews, marvelling at Christ's teaching in the temple, exclaim, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" They do not mean to ask whether Christ is competent to teach, for they _see_ that he is so clearly enough; but they thus express their astonishment at the authority and the ability with which He deals with the Scriptures, considering that He has never received the instruction of the Schools.
In His reply, Jesus fully enters into the thought of His questioners. That thought is this: "In order to teach, one must have been taught." He intimates to them that He meets this requirement. As though He had said: "It is true that I have not been in the schools of your Rabbis, but I have been taught in a better school than theirs. He who has given me my mission, has also given me my message. So that my teaching does not proceed originally from myself. I have only to lay hold of my Father's thought, and then to reproduce it faithfully to you."
But how is this to be verified? The answer to this question is found in the text: "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." Christ's teaching, in its highest aim, is a Divine method of sanctification. Whoever, then, earnestly seeks to "do the will of God"--that is, to be holy--will soon recognise the Divine adaptability of the gospel to its end. The meaning of the verse is the same as in chapter v. and verse 46: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me;" and also in chapter iii. and verse 21: "He that doeth truth cometh to the light." On the one hand, the holy sublimity of the gospel flashes irresistibly on the soul that longs for holiness; on the other hand, the soul, in its inability to attain its ideal, seeks peace and strength at the hands of the Saviour. Faith, therefore, is not the result of a logical operation; it appears to the soul as the best means of realising the satisfaction of its deepest want--holiness. The word "will" points to the loftiness of the aspiration and to the earnestness of the effort.