famine in the midst of plenty, like a man dying of hunger outside the
door of a granary. They who believe take the Saviour who is given, and
they who take receive, and they who receive obtain day by day growing
grace from the fulness of Christ, and so come ever nearer to the
realisation of the ultimate purpose of the Father, that they should be
'filled with all the fulness of God.'




GRACE AND TRUTH

'The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ.'--JOHN 1. 17.

There are scarcely any traces, in the writings of the Apostle John, of
that great controversy as to the relation of the Law and the Gospel
which occupied and embittered so much of the work of the Apostle Paul.
We have floated into an entirely different region in John's writings.
The old controversies are dead--settled, I suppose, mainly by Paul's
own words, and also to a large extent by the logic of events. This
verse is almost the only one in which John touches upon that extinct
controversy, and here the Law is introduced simply as a foil to set
off the brightness of the Gospel. All artists know the value of
contrast in giving prominence. A dark background flashes up brighter
colours into brilliancy. White is never so white as when it is
relieved against black. And so here the special preciousness and
distinctive peculiarities of what we receive in Christ are made more
vivid and more distinct by contrast with what in old days 'was given
by Moses.'