From this passage some lessons of great importance come to us. As
I. That we should not try to live in the past, or by means of the past. As distinct from the present, we should not try to get a living, present nourishment out of states and frames and feelings, all dead and gone. You would not go roaming the woods on a bright summer day to gather the withered leaves of last autumn. Let them be. Let them sink into the soil, and resolve themselves back to dust. Trust Nature to get all the good out of them that is in them now, and to send it up and put it forth once more in leaf or flower or corn. If you want leaves, look at the summer trees; how they wave in the light, and quiver, and gleam millions of them! If you had all the leaves that were green last year, you could not out of them all make one green leaf today. So, if you had your old states at command, if you could find them and go into them, they would not be at all what you think them. They would not fit you now, and you would not be satisfied with them. Is there not the living grace of the living day? a living Saviour, and a living quickening Spirit, to meet your living soul?
II. That, as Christian men, Christian communities, we ought to be much afraid of stagnation, of settling on our lees, hiding our Lord's money, sinking into a base contentment with what comes by the least effort, instead of still endeavouring after all that is attainable of higher and better. We should be afraid if we have not always something new on hand. The reason some men die spiritually, or sink into a slumberous, bedridden state, that leaves them as useless to the world as if they were actually dead, is, that they do not devise and execute new things.
III. There are those who have never had grace at all in the true, full sense. You have only had sin. You can exchange it for grace. And then farewell, sin! For grace shall "reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 85.
Notice:
I. The one ever full Source. The whole infinite majesty and inexhaustible resources of the Divine Nature were incorporated and insphered in that Incarnate Word from whom all men may draw. There are involved in that thought two ideas. One is, the unmistakable assertion of the whole fulness of the Divine Nature as being in the Incarnate Word; and the other is, that the whole fulness of the Divine Nature dwells in the Incarnate Word in order that men may get at it.
II. Consider, again, the many receivers from the one Source. "Of His fulness have all we received." The blessing that we receive may be stated in many different ways. You may say we get pardon, purity, hope, joy, the prospect of heaven, power for service; all these and a hundred more designations by which we might call the one gift all these are but the consequence of our having got the Christ within our hearts. He is like His own miracle: the thousands are gathered on the grass they do all eat and are filled. As their necessities required the bread was multiplied, and at the last there was more left than there had seemed to be at the beginning. So, "of His fulness have all we received," and after a universe has drawn from it, for an eternity, the fulness is not turned into scantiness or emptiness.
III. Notice the continuous flow from the inexhaustible Source. "Grace for grace." The word "for" is a little singular; of course, it means instead of, in exchange for,and the Evangelist's idea seems to be that, as one supply of grace is given and used, it is, as it were, given back to the Bestower, who substitutes for it a fresh and unused vessel, filled with new grace. He might have said grace upongrace, one supply being piled upon another. But his notion is, rather, one supply given in substitution for the other "new lamps for old ones."
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,Dec. 10th, 1885.
I. The doctrines of Scripture concerning the Person of Jesus Christ reveal His fulness.
II. The poetry and metaphors employed by the sacred writers to describe Jesus Christ all exhibit His fulness.
III. The characteristics which His first followers most appreciated were His truth and grace, and these were manifested in fulness.
IV. The experience of all His disciples confirms the observation of His first followers.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit,3rd series, p. 21.
References: John 1:16. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 257; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 282; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 27; Ibid., Sermons,vol. xv., No. 858; vol. vii., No. 415; vol. xx., No. 1,169.