“Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” The precise form of the Evangelist's statement is to be carefully noted. He does not say that Jesus addresses these words to Nathanael, but only that He spoke them in his presence, so as to be overheard. In truth, Jesus was at this time exercising that marvellous power of looking into the past history and experience and character of men which the Spirit of God vouchsafed to Him at every great crisis in His career. Never did He need it more than when He was choosing the companions of His ministry and the agents for the propagation of His gospel all over the world. In letting Nathanael hear these words, He was only giving that earnest soul the encouragement he needed, and preparing the way for the closest fellowship with Himself.
1. “An Israelite indeed.” The reference is, no doubt, to the old story of the occasion on which Jacob's name was changed to Israel. Jacob had wrestled with God in that mysterious scene by the brook Jabbok, and had overcome, and had received instead of the name Jacob, “a supplanter,” the name Israel, “for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” And says Christ: This man also is a son of Israel, one of God's warriors, who has prevailed with Him by prayer.
Ruskin's fragmentary and hitherto unpublished “Notes on the Bible” contain the following references to the earliest recorded words of our Saviour:-
“Third recorded words of Christ to the two disciples, to Peter, and to Nathaniel [Joh_1:39; Joh_1:42; Joh_1:47]. To the disciples, the ‘Come and see' as well as the command to Philip, ‘Follow me' [Joh_1:43], are both commands of acts: addressed to persons beginning to seek the right; and which commands by obeying, they would gradually find leading to more light. Nathaniel is already an ‘Israelite indeed,' i.e., keeping the law perfectly, and wholly upright, and then a miracle is vouchsafed to him, that he may understand that Christ is indeed his Lord. This is just as it seems to me God deals with all His people.”1 [Note: Ruskin, Works, xxxiv. 680.]
2. “In whom is no guile”-Jacob in early life had been marked and marred by selfish craft. Subtlety and guile had been the very key-note of his character. To drive that out of him years of discipline and pain and sorrow had been needed. And not until it had been driven out of him could his name be changed from Jacob to Israel. This man has had the guile driven out of him. By what process? The words are a verbal quotation from Psa_32:1-11 : “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” Clear, candid openness of spirit, and the freedom of soul from all that corruption which the Psalmist calls “guile,” is the property of him only who has received it, by confession, by pardon, and by cleansing, from God. Thus Nathanael, in his wrestling, had won the great gift. His transgression had been forgiven; his iniquity had been covered; to him God had not imputed his sin; and in his spirit, therefore, there was no guile.
We felt-we could not but feel-the large, unhampered guilelessness in Mr. Gladstone which, in spite of obvious subtleties of intellectual dialectic in talk and discussion, still made itself known as the most radical and elemental characteristic of the man. He was transparent as a babe: even when he was most acute in framing puzzling distinctions, or hurrying us over the thinnest possible ice. You saw the man flinging himself into his case, with the keen abandonment of a child without reserves. You might hear endless stories of the versatilities and elasticities and shifts by which he had thrown his opponents in the public arena of debate; but nothing could ever shake your conviction that guilelessness was the main note of his character. Deep down in the life there was the untouched heart of a little child.1 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 31.]
“The childlike faith, that asks not sight,
Waits not for wonder or for sign,
Believes, because it loves, aright-
Shall see things greater, things divine.
“Heaven to that gaze shall open wide,
And brightest Angels to and fro
On messages of love shall glide
'Twixt God above, and Christ below.”
So still the guileless man is blest,
To him all crooked paths are straight,
Him on his way to endless rest
Fresh, ever-growing strengths await.2 [Note: Keble, The Christian Year (St. Bartholomew).]
3. In Nathanael's response to the salutation of our Lord we have a fine illustration of true, as distinguished from false, modesty. Jesus had greeted him, with wonder and delight, as a guileless Jacob, a genuine Israelite, as worthy therefore to receive the visions and gifts vouchsafed to his father Israel. And Nathanael does not disclaim the honour; he does not protest that he is unworthy of it. He feels, apparently, that the Rabbi of Nazareth has fairly summed up his spiritual history, that He has expressed his true character in a single phrase. And he does not, as surely false modesty would have done, pretend to put away the honour from him. He tacitly admits the truth of Christ's description. The only thing that puzzles him is how a stranger should know him so well. “Yes, Thou knowest me: but whence knowest Thou me?” And yet, on the other hand, there is a true and unfeigned modesty in this response. His words mean “Whence knowest Thou one so little known, so inconspicuous, so obscure, as I am.” He has but a poor opinion of himself. He is conscious that he has lived a quiet, retired, and meditative life, that he has not attracted the public eye, and has done nothing great enough to attract it; and it perplexes him to meet with One who seems to know him altogether. Moreover, it perhaps irks and a little frightens him to find his inward life laid bare, to stand in the presence of One from whom nothing seems to be hid. He feels that his secret has been read, and he shrinks back with a touch of fear from an inspection so searching; not because he has anything to hide, for he is without guile, but because it is as terrible to him to find himself utterly known by One whom he knows not as it would be to us. One can fancy his recoiling form, and catch the tone of alarm in his voice, as he looks on the Teacher who had read his every heart, and cries, “Whence knowest thou me?”
“What word is this? Whence know'st thou me?”
All wondering cries the humbled heart,
To hear Thee that deep mystery,
The knowledge of itself, impart.
The veil is raised: who runs may read,
By its own light the truth is seen,
And soon the Israelite indeed
Bows down t'adore the Nazarene.
So did Nathanael, guileless man,
At once, not shame-faced or afraid,
Owning Him God, who so could scan
His musings in the lonely shade;
In his own pleasant fig-tree's shade,
Which by his household fountain grew,
Where at noonday his prayer he made,
To know God better than he knew.1 [Note: Keble, The Christian Year (St. Bartholomew).]
