easy
for us to believe. His telling of the story is so strong and convincing,
though so simple and short, that believing is the natural thing. Jesus
Himself, as He conies to us through John's eyes and speech, is so
believable, so trustworthy, so lovable.

Now we _may_ believe. It's the thing to do after a thoughtful kneeful
study of the case as put by John. We _may believe_ clear into and
through intellect and emotions and will, right down into the depths of
heart and love, clear out into every action of the life.

And John sweeps in the whole crowd of the world in the way he puts it
here. Listen: "that you may believe that Jesus is _the Christ_." That
was for the Jew peculiarly in the first instance. The Jew had been
taught through generations that there was One coming who was God's
chosen One for the Hebrew nation. He was the _Anointed One_. The Hebrew
said _Messiah_. The Greek said _Christ_. Both mean the same, the One
chosen of God, anointed by Him as the King and Leader of His chosen
people, and through them of all the race.

Listen further: "that Jesus is _the Son of God." That_ is for all of us,
Jew and foreigner, insider and outsider. This Jesus is in a distinctive
sense _the_ Son of God, the only begotten Son. This pure loving pleading
wooing suffering dying rising-again Jesus, this is the only begotten Son
of the Father. All there is in a Father comes to, and is in, an only
begotten son. This is God Himself coming to us in His Son.

Once let this sift into thought and heart, then who would _not_ believe,
_and_ trust, _and_ love, _and_ fall on his face in the utter devotion of
a voluntary slave before such a God!

And so believing, trusting, loving, touching, His life flows in and
fills up and floods out. We have it _now_. That word _eternal_, used so
often by John with the word _life_, is not a mere _length_ word. It is
not a calendar word. It tells the sort of life, the quality of life,
that comes in through the opening door of our believing. This is John's
back-door key, but it lets you clear in through the whole house.

Then there is _the side-door key_. It hangs at the side, a bit towards
the back. It is in the Thursday night talk, as we commonly call it, that
last heart-talk with the inner group on the betrayal night. It is in
chapter sixteen, verse twenty-eight: "_I came out from the Father, and
am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go unto the
Father_."

Run through this Gospel w