ONE JOHN
PARTS 40 - 46
XLI. ETERNAL LIFE CONNECTED WITH
CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER.
"These things have I written unto you
that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have
eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this
is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to
his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we
know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." - 1 JOHN 5:
13-15.
This would seem to be the beginning of the end of the epistle.
Whether the "these things" which "I have written unto you" are simply the
things contained in the immediately preceding context, or must be held to reach
further back, is not material. John is evidently summing up; he is pointing his
discourse or argument to its close. And he points it very clearly and cogently.
He puts very strongly the final end he has in view. It is that you may "know"
certain things. Over and over again he uses that word "know;" not less than six
or seven times in the course of about as many verses. The knowledge meant is
evidently of a high order, in a spiritual point of view; not speculative and
intellectual merely, out experimental and practical. It is not simply faith,
although it is connected with faith, as flowing from it, and involved in it.
Still it is something more than faith. It is, if one may say so, faith
realised; faith proved inwardly or subjectively, by being acted out and acted
upon outwardly or objectively; the believer ascertaining, by actual trial and
experience, the truth and trustworthiness of his belief. It is not now with us
- we think, we are persuaded, we hope; but "we know."
Now one thing
which you are thus believingly to know is "that you have eternal life." And you
are to know this, not in the way of a mere reflex ascertaining of it, but in
the way of a direct acting of it out; for "this is the confidence that we have
in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if
we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions
that we desired of him." It is thus, in the actual use of it, that you are to
know your having eternal life. In plain terms, the outgoing or forthcoming of
our boldness, as having eternal life, is in prayer. Prayer is the exercise or
expression of it; as it has been said before to be: "Whatsoever we ask, we
receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are
pleasing in his sight" (3: 22).
I.
There is, however, as it might seem, a qualification here which is not there;
"according to his will." What that means it is important to see. It cannot well
mean that before asking anything we must know certainly that what we ask is
according to his will. This would really preclude us, in ordinary
circumstances, from asking anything, or at least from asking anything definite
and precise. I say in ordinary circumstances. For we may be situated as Daniel
was, when, upon an interpretation of Jeremiah's prophecy, he was infallibly led
by inspiration to the conclusion that the period of the Babylonian captivity
was expired, or expiring, and that Israel's restoration was certainly due.
Without claiming, or having any right to claim, inspiration or infallibility,
men have considered themselves entitled, on some extraordinary occasions, to
ask certain things to be done by God in his providence, in the full assurance
that they were according to his will. That there may be such instances of
confidence in asking, upon a clear and certain conviction beforehand that what
is asked is according to God's will, confidence, not given by fresh
inspiration, but reached by faith in exercise upon inspiration previously
recorded, may be admitted. But these exceptionable cases can scarcely be held
to meet the apostle's broad and general statement as to the efficacy of all
believing prayer. Nor will it do to make this seeming qualification, "according
to his will," a mere tag or appendix to all prayer and every prayer; as meaning
simply that whatever we ask, we are to ask with this proviso, expressed or
understood, "if it be according to thy will." No doubt, when we pray for
anything which implies that God should order his providence one way rather than
another, thus and not otherwise ;-and we can hardly pray for anything specific
or definite which does not imply that ; - we must, if we would not be guilty of
presumption or impiety, virtually attach always the reservation which that
formula implies. But this is so evidently indispensable, as a condition of all
genuine and reverential prayer, that it could hardly be needful for John to
state it. He must surely be pointing to some higher function of the prayer of
faith.
"If we ask anything according to his will" - may not this mean,
"If we ask anything as we believe that he wills it"? We ask it as he wills it.
In asking it, we put ourselves in the same position with him in willing it. He
and we look at it from the same point of view. We who ask identify ourselves
with him who wills. Whatever we ask, we ask as from within the circle of his
will; we being one in our asking with him in his willing. This may seem too
high a position for us to occupy or aim at; too divine a standpoint; that we in
asking, and God in willing, should be at one. And yet is it not the only fair,
the only possible, alternative or antithesis to what is the only notion of
prayer which the natural man can take in, the notion of bending God's will to
his? For that, unquestionably, is what, when tie prays, the natural man
desires.
The priests of Baal, when, in answer to Elijah's challenge,
"they cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner" sought by their fierce
and bloody importunity to bend the object of their mad worship to their
purpose, and make him subservient to their pleasure. The sailors in the ship
with Jonah, when they called every man upon his god, simply thought that they
might be. "heard for their much speaking." The instinct of physical pain in
acute disease, or of natural affection in an anxious crisis, or of blank
despair in sudden peril, may wring from unaccustomed lips a defiant or an
abject appeal to the Ruler over all. It is an unknown God who is invoked, on
the mere chance that he may be got to do their bidding. The heathen view of
prayer, like the heathen view of sacrifice, proceeds upon that notion of
subjecting God's determination to men's desire; the prayer and the sacrifice
being both alike intended to work upon the divine mind so as to change it into
accordance with that of the worshipper. The idea is that God needs to be
appeased, and that he may be persuaded; that he needs to be appeased by
sacrifice, so that wrath may give place to pity; and that he may be persuaded
by prayer to act otherwise than his inner nature might prompt, in compliance
with solicitations, or in deference to pressure, from without.
But a
right spiritual apprehension of God, as "having in himself eternal life" and
"giving us that eternal life in his Son" places both sacrifice and prayer in an
entirely different light. Eternal life must necessarily, in its nature as well
as in its duration, be independent of time, and consequently also of time's
changes and contingencies, its influences and motives. As it is in God himself,
it is self-moved, self-originated, self-inspired. He has within himself the
grounds and reasons of all his proceedings. In so far as it is communicable to
us through his Son and in his Son, it must possess substantially the same
character of self-containedness, if I may use such a term, or independence of
things without. Only, in our case, this life of ours is "hid with Christ in
God." It is his life in us.
How then does God himself, having life, this
eternal life, in himself, stand related to prayer, or to sacrifice and prayer
together? Both must be from within himself. They are alike and equally means of
his own appointment or ordination. Sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice of his Son
for us, is his own way of opening up communication between himself and us.
Prayer, our prayer to him in his Son's name, is his own way of carrying on and
carrying oat the communication. He, having eternal life in himself, moved from
within himself, gives to us this eternal life in his Son. And all the fruit or
benefit of it he is pleased to give through prayer. For the eternal life which
is now, in a sense, common to him and us, comes out in prayer. We meet in
prayer, he and we together. And we meet, be it said with reverence, on the
footing of our joint possession, in a measure, of the same eternal life; life
in ourselves; he and we thus meet together.
Thus prayer, as it is here
introduced, becomes a very solemn, because a very confidential, dealing with
God. It is asking. But it is asking upon the ground of a very close union and
thorough identity between God and us, as regards the life to which the asking
has respect, and of which it is the acting out. In plain terms, it is our
asking as one in interest, in sympathy, in character, in end and aim - one, in
short, m life or manner of living, with him whom we ask; through his giving us
eternal life; that life being in his Son, and being indeed the very life itself
of his Son.. This is not, however, to be regarded as of the essence of prayer,
so that none may appeal to the throne of grace without it. God forbid that I
should restrict the efficacy of prayer, however and whenever it is offered, out
of a smitten conscience and broken heart, Not merely as a sinner out of Christ,
but as a believer in Christ, I find my need, daily and hourly, of that liberty
of access, as it were from without, to my God and Father, which I have in and
with him who has taught me so to approach him. But it is a somewhat different
attitude that I am here called to assume ; different, and yet after all the
same. I pray as having eternal life; the very eternal life which God gives, and
which is in his Son Jesus Christ. What sort of prayer does that mean? Are we
not, in offering it, brought into the position of offering the prayer from the
very same standpoint, if one may say so, on which God himself stands, when he
answers the prayer? We offer our prayer as having eternal life; God's own
eternal life, made over to us as ours in his Son. And that is the ground of the
confidence which we have, "that if we ask anything according to his will, he
heareth us."
II. Hence we are to
"know that we have eternal life" through our thus asking, in this confidence;
for "if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions that we desired of him." We are to know our privilege in the using of
it; we are to know our position by taking advantage of it. We receive, in the
Son, as the Father's gift, a new life. In its nature and manner of acting, it
is analogous to the Father's own life, and indeed, in some sense, identical
with it. The identity manifests itself in this confidence of prayer. In so far
as my prayer is the working out of that identity, it must be confident,
confiding, free, and bold. It must be real and actual conversation with God
within his own holy place; in his own inmost chamber; upon the matter, whatever
it is, that is the subject of my prayer. I get in now within the veil. I am a
dweller in the secret place of the Most High. I am, as it were, behind the
scenes of his great providential drama, his great economy of grace and
judgment. I am with him; one with him; one with him in sympathy of mind and
heart as to the eternal principles and laws upon which the whole plan of his
moral administration proceeds. From that point of view I consider the question
at issue; the question to which my prayer relates; and my prayer regarding it
is framed accordingly. It is a setting forth of the matter, as, in all its
aspects, it presents itself to me. It is a spreading of it out before God, as
it appears to me - to me, however, as having God's gift to me of eternal life
in his Son. For the case is now under my eye, not as it might present itself to
me, judging after the flesh, looking at things in the light of merely natural
predilections and opinions - but as it presents itself to me, judging
spiritually; looking at things in the light of the eternal life which God gives
me in his Son. Whatever I so ask must be according to his will; and therefore I
may have absolute confidence that I have it.
I may possibly see my way,
upon this footing, to ask altogether unconditionally. I may so realise God's
giving to me eternal life in his Son, - and so clearly and unmistakably and
assuredly perceive how, in the view of that eternal life, the event at issue
might best be ordered - as to have the utmost boldness in preferring a specific
request, absolutely and without qualification. Eminent saints of God have felt
themselves entitled, and have warrantably felt themselves entitled, especially
in critical emergencies, to be thus precise and peremptory; all the more if a
brotherhood of them conferred and consulted together, under the guidance of
God's word, as applied by the Spirit's help to his providence. All of them
being led by the Spirit to the same conclusion, finding that the case presented
itself to them all in the same aspect, and being of one mind as to what would
best subserve the ends of the eternal life which they all have in common as
God's gift in his Son ; - they may have considered themselves at liberty to
condescend with great assurance upon the particular step which they would have
God to take. And therefore they might unhesitatingly ask him to take it, and
fearlessly reckon on his taking it. I suppose that this is partly the Lord's
meaning in that remarkable promise: "If two of you shall agree on earth as
touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father
which is in heaven."
Even in such a case, however, the prayer is not
mere importunate solicitation, as from without; it partakes more of the nature
of confidential conversation, within the circle of God's house and family. To
adopt a homely phrase, it is as if, using the liberty of trusted children, we
were telling our Father how the case under consideration strikes us; how it
strikes us when we are looking at it, or trying to look at it, from his point
of view; looking at it in the light of that "eternal life which he gives us in
his Son."
And what does it really matter, in such intercourse as this,
on such a footing as this, with the only wise God, if we should ordinarily
count it safer and more becoming to ask conditionally; under the reservation
and with the qualification of deference and submission to his better judgment?
Our asking anything thus conditionally, if only we ask in the spirit of the
eternal life which we have in his Son, is very eminently "according to his
will." He cannot but approve of it. Nor does it in the least detract from our
confidence in asking. There is room indeed here for different degrees, not of
our confidence in asking, but of the conditionality or un-conditionality, if I
may say so, with which we ask. Our confidence in asking is the same; the only
difference is as to our making up our mind what to ask. As to that, we may well
have some hesitation for the most part in being very definite and positive.
Even when we honestly and truly ask as having eternal life given to us by God
in his Son, we may be at a loss. Nay, the more we so ask, the more may we be at
a loss We try to look at the matter at issue as God looks at it; not under the
influence of things without, and the considerations which they might suggest;
but under the rule, and in the light, of that higher life which he has in
himself. We seek to judge as God judges; in the view, not of temporal interests
merely, but of eternal issues. Well may we pause and be very cautious; well may
there be a certain reserve in any judgment we form, and a certain reservation
in any prayer we frame upon that judgment; well may there be some dubiety, not
as to our having what we ask, but as to what we are to ask; what we would have
God to do.
But what then? Is this confidence in prayer a delusion, a
sort of juggle? I am told that in virtue of the eternal life which God gives me
in his Son, I may have whatever I choose to ask. And in the same breath I am
told that this very eternal life, which I thus have, may hinder me, mr the most
part, from ever asking almost anything definitely and positively. Is this not a
kind of double-dealing? Is it not putting me off as with the Barmecide's empty
feast, or the visionary mirage of the desert? Nay, it is far
otherwise.
Let us consider practically our real position; let us take a
specific instance. Our brother Lazarus is sick; and the sickness seems to be
unto death. What are we to ask? What is to be our petition, and what our
request? If we have respect simply to life temporal; if we take account merely
of such considerations as this present earthly scene suggests; we cannot
hesitate a moment. Looking at the case from a human standpoint, we need no time
for deliberation. The instinct of natural affection will prompt, and many
reasons of Christian expediency will occur to enforce, the loud wailing cry to
the Lord to spare so precious and useful a life. But we feel that, as admitted
to a participation with the Son in the eternal life of God, we have a higher
standing and a weightier responsibility in this matter of prayer. We are lifted
up to the very footstool on which the throne of the hearer of prayer itself
rests; and from thence we look at the question, as he looks at it. Finding
ourselves thus placed, our first impulse may be to shrink and hang back
altogether. We refuse even to attempt to form a judgment, and to frame the
judgment into a prayer, however guarded. But that is not his will; nor on
second thoughts is it our wish. It is indeed a singularly high and holy
position, in respect of insight and sympathy, that we are called to occupy in
fellowship with God. But we are to occupy it boldly, and with all confidence.
And now from that position we apply our mind, as it were, along with him, to
the determination of what is best to be done; and we express our mind freely to
him all along as we do so. We talk the whole affair over with him; conversing
about it without reserve. We reason, we expostulate, we plead. We spread out
before him all the views and considerations, of whatever sort, that seem to us
to have any bearing on the case; not excluding those suggested by warm natural
affection and urgent earthly interests, but not limiting our regard to these.
We say whatever occurs to us, whatever it is in our heart to say.
What
though in all this close and confidential dealing with God we should not be
able to say positively what is best? Is it not a blessed intercourse
notwithstanding? We may be reduced to utter straits: "Now is my soul troubled,
and what shall I say?" In our anguish of spirit, distracted between conflicting
motives; altogether at a loss to decide what we would have God to do; driven
out of reasoning and speech; we may be reduced to groaning and weeping; to
"strong crying and tears." What then? Is our confidence in prayer gone? Nay, it
was when Jesus "in the days of his flesh made supplication with strong crying
and tears unto him that was able to save him from death" that he had the most
complete assurance of his being "heard in that he feared." And it is when "we
know not what to pray for as we ought, that the Spirit, helping our
infirmities, maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered."
Our unutterable groanings the blessed Spirit takes as his own, turning them
into prayers; prayers very specially acceptable to the hearer of prayer. For
"he who searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit when he"
thus "maketh intercession for the saints." His doing so is "according to the
will of God."
Let us look then at the light which John's teaching in
these verses casts on the privilege and duty of prayer.
I. In the first place, let us consider what prayer
is, as thus viewed, in all the fullness and variety of its confident assurance.
It is not simply petitioning; it is not monotonous reiteration; the incessant
sending up to heaven again and again of the same appeal, the same demand for
some specific deliverance, some precise and definite benefit, that may seem to
us indispensable, that we feel as if we could not do without. It is a far more
confidential dealing with God than that. It is our becoming "the men of his
secret." It is our getting into the inmost chamber of his house, and consulting
with him there; seeking to know his mind; ready to make his mind ours. I say it
is consulting with God. And the consultation may and must be full and free. It
will embrace as its topics whatever can be of interest to him or to us; to him
primarily, to us as under him. Hence everywhere and always, and with reference
to everything, we must be thus consulting with God; not only upon cases of
difficulty or distress, but upon all sorts of cases; common cases, everyday
cases; little cases, as well as cases of rare and grave
emergency.
Prayer of this kind may be short, like the Lord's strong cry
of agony in the garden; it may be silent, like his groaning and weeping at
Bethany. But it may be long, ever so long, without falling under the Lord's
censure of the long prayers of the Pharisees. In such prayer he himself often
spent the whole long night, He was at home then and there with his Father;
consulting with him about many things; about all things bearing on his Father's
glory and his own work; laying his own views and feelings and wishes
unreservedly before his Father; and reverently learning his.
Brethren,
pray thus without ceasing. "In everything, by such prayer and supplication,
make your requests known to God." Carry everything; literally everything;
everything that befalls you, or seems likely to befall you; every choice you
have to make ; whatever you have to say or do; every care, every duty, every
trial, every glad relief; carry everything to God. Converse with God about it.
Turn it over, as between God and you, in every possible way. Look at it from
every possible point of view. Do not be in haste to make up your mind as to
what is best; as to what you should definitely ask. Rather prolong the blessed
interview. The very suspending of your judgment,, as the consultation goes on,
may make the interview more blessed. And the issue will be the clear, calm
"peace of God keeping your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ your Lord;"
"the single eye, making the whole body full of light."
2. Then, secondly, let
us consider how close and intimate is the connection between life and prayer ;
between God's giving us eternal life in his Son, and our asking thus
confidently and confidentially. The two are really one; the eternal life is
realised and acted out in this asking. The life is prayer; and prayer is the
life. It is as partakers of the life which the Father has in himself, and
which, by his gift, the Son also has in himself, that we ask and pray. The
essential characteristic of that life is its self-contained-ness, if I may
repeat the phrase; its independence of things without; its drawing from within
itself the motives of all its voluntary determinations. So the Father lives;
not affected by impulses and influences of a temporal sort from without; but
purposing and decreeing, willing and acting, always from himself and for
himself. So the Son also lives, not as God merely, but as "the man Christ
Jesus;" being, as to his manhood as well as his Godhead, in an intimate sense
one with the Father; one in purpose and decree, in will and action; one in mind
and heart. So also in a measure we, having the Son, live. Our real life is
apart from the contingencies and accidents of time, being "hid with Christ in
God." It is as so living, living that hidden life, that we ask and pray. What
harmony, what concord and agreement, what entire oneness, between God and us,
does this imply! It is oneness of opinion, sentiment, feeling, desire; first,
on the great fundamental question, What is life? - life worthy of the name, -
life worth the living; and then, in subordination to that, upon every question
which can touch that life. We form the same idea of life that God has, and that
Christ has; the same idea of what it is worth while to live for. And it is
under that idea, fixed and fastened deep in our inmost spirit, that we ask and
pray. We settle in the Spirit with ourselves, - as well as with Christ and with
God, - what is the only true, the only perfect, the only desirable life, for
beings possessed of a divine faculty of intelligence, and destined to a divine
immortality. Having that life, we commune with the living One, as our Father in
Christ, upon all the great eternal aims and hopes which it contains, and all
the small temporal casualties by which, for a season, these aims and hopes may
be environed and beset. Such communing about eternity, and about time as
related to eternity, is prayer; the prayer which acts out "the eternal life
which we have as God's gift in his Son."
3- In the third place, let us consider how very holy this life is,
and how very holy therefore must be the prayer which acts it out. It is indeed
our being "partakers of God's holiness." For such living fellowship and
communion as is implied in the life and the prayer, sensitively shrinks from
all unholy handling. Sense may not mar it; sin may not pollute it; the touch of
earth's vanity or man's corruption breaks its sacred spell, and dissolves its
peaceful charm. For the charm of this life of prayer is peace; the peace of
God; the peace of conscious sympathy with the God of peace. But all
earthliness, worldliness, and selfishness, - all diversity of judgment or
feeling on any point between us and him whose eternal life we share, - in a
word, all unholiness, - disturbs that peace. No unsanctified bosom can be its
dwelling-place on earth, for its dwelling-place in heaven is the holy bosom of
God. Therefore, "as he who hath called us is holy, let us also be
holy."
4. For, in the fourth place,
this faculty of praying as having eternal life, is itself to be sought by
prayer. The life is God's gift in Christ, to be appropriated by faith; the
Spirit shutting us up into Christ, and making us one with Christ. The prayer is
in the Spirit and of the Spirit. It is the Spirit making intercession for us,
with us, in us. It is the Spirit of his Son sent forth by God into our hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. But the Spirit is given in answer to prayer. Therefore
let us ask, seek, knock, that we may receive the Spirit; that he may dwell in
us; that he may move us, as having eternal life in the Son, to pray, as the Son
himself was wont to pray, in the Spirit. So moved, we may be praying
confidently, as the Son prayed, in all sorts of ways; not only in prolonged
midnight meditations, but in brief ejaculations as occasion calls; in hasty
utterances; or when utterance fails, in sighs and tears and groans. For we have
all boldness to be ever praying, after whatever sort of prayer may suit the
times and seasons of our praying. Let us pray that we may receive the Spirit
thus to embolden us always to pray ; - to "ask according to his will" even as
the Spirit "maketh intercession for the saints, according to the will of
God."
PRAYER FOR A BROTHER'S SIN, BUT NOT FOR A
SIN UNTO DEATH.
"If any man see his brother sin a sin which is
not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not
unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
Ail unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death." 1 John 5:
16, 17.
John assumes that one chief use which you will be disposed to make
of your right and power to pray will be to pray for others. He puts a case. You
see your brother sinning. He is "your brother." This does not necessarily imply
that he who sins is a true brother in the Lord. It has been already made
manifest more than once in this epistle, that the relation of brotherhood, in
the apostle's sense of the term is of much wider reach and range. It arises not
so much out of the character and standing of him whom you call your brother, as
out of the nature of the affection with which you regard him. True, your
brother, in the highest point of view, is he who, being really to God a son, is
really to you on that account a brother. But whoever he may be whom you love
with a brotherly love; with a love that treats him as a brother; not as a mere
instrument to be used or companion to be enjoyed for a day, but as one having
an immortal soul to be saved for eternity; every one so loved by you is your
brother. When he sins, his sin vexes you as the sin of a brother. You cannot
look on and see him sinning with indifference or amusement or contempt, as if
he were a stranger, or a helot, or a dog. It is your brother whom you see
sinning. And therefore you speak to him as to a brother about his sin; not
harshly, with sharp reproach or cutting sarcasm, or cold magisterial severity.
With a brother's voice, coming out of the depths of a brother's bosom, you
earnestly expostulate and affectionately plead with him. Alas! he turns to you
a deaf ear, and you have no power to open it. But another ear is open to you,
the ear of your Father in heaven; and he can open your brother's ear. To your
Father in heaven you go. You deal with him about your sinning brother's case.
You ask that life may be given to him; the "eternal life" which the sin he is
committing justly forfeits. You grow importunate in asking; your importunity
being in proportion to the truth and warmth of your brotherly love; you feel
almost as if you could converse with God about nothing else. And you do
converse with God about it, - oh, how pathetically! In all this you do well;
using the liberty you have, as receiving "eternal life in his Son" to "ask
anything, knowing that he hears you."
But is there no risk of excess or
of error? May you not be too one-sided in looking at the case yourself, and in
representing it to God? May you not be so concerned about the one terrible
aspect of it, its bearing on your brother's doom, as to shut out the other
aspect of it, Which ought never to be lost sight of, its bearing on the
Father's throne; on the holy and righteous sovereignty of his government and
law? May not your sympathy with your sinning brother overbear somewhat your
sympathy with him against whom he is sinning? May you not thus be led to
overstep the limits of warrantable confidence, so as to ask that life may be
given to him, on any terms, at any cost, in any way, irrespectively altogether
of what, in your calmer moments, you would yourself recognise as the paramount
claims of the Most High? Thus your prayer for your sinning brother may slide
insensibly into an apologetic pleading for indulgence to his sin. You may be
tempted to represent as excusable what God regards as inexcusable; and to feel
as if, whatever your brother's criminality may be, there may still be favour
shown to him notwithstanding. It is to guard you against such a frame of mind
that the solemn warning is given: "If a man see his brother sin a sin which is
not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not
unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for
it."
I am persuaded that it is in the line of this train of thought that
the solution of the difficult problem here suggested is to be sought. The whole
analogy of the faith, as well as the bearing of the context, favours this view.
If I am right in this persuasion, some important consequences would seem to
follow.
In the first place, there is no warrant in this text for the
doctrine which Rome seeks to draw from it as to the distinction, in themselves,
- in their own nature or in their accompanying aggravations, - between venial
and mortal sins. Let the distinction be admitted as otherwise proved, it is
nothing to the purpose here. A Romanist, in his anxious prayer for his sinning
brother, may be tempted to put his sin into the wrong category, and to speak of
it to God as venial, whereas it is really mortal. It is a temptation of the
same sort that besets me; I admit it to be so. He, praying according to his
creed which allows the distinction, is admonished, precisely as I who deny it
am admonished. We are both warned against asking God to regard as venial what,
in the view of his righteous judgment and holy supremacy, is and must be
mortal. But this text itself does not decide between us. And if it appears from
all the rest of Scripture that the Romanist's idea is not only unproved but
disproved, the circumstance that this text might possibly be interpreted in
consistency with his idea avails him nothing; since it turns out that it can be
equally well, or even much better, interpreted in consistency with
mine.
Secondly, there is no occasion to be solicitous in attempting to
identify any particular sin, or any particular manner of sinning, as what is
here said to be "unto death." The attempt, as all experience shows, is as vain
as it is presumptuous. And yet, in spite of all experience, the attempt is ever
renewed. Morbid minds, or minds in a morbid state, become sensitive on the
point; but without warrant or reason. Even if there were "a sin unto death"
that might be ascertainable in a man's own consciousness, the mention of it
would not be to the purpose here, unless it were ascertainable also in the
judgment of his neighbour or his brother. For the question is as to your
praying for me. Even if I myself could know that I had sinned the sin unto
death, how could you know that I had? However it might affect my praying for
myself, how could it affect your praying for me? And as you have no right to
judge me to that effect, so neither have I any right to judge myself. Let it be
settled and fixed as a great truth, according to this and many other passages
of Scripture, that there cannot be any such thing as my sinning a sin unto
death, in such a sense as might warrant me, from my fear of my having committed
it, to cease to pray for myself ; - far less warrant you, from an opinion on
your part that I have committed it, to cease to pray for me.
For,
thirdly, the real and only object of the apostle is to put in a caveat and
lodge a protest against the intrusion into the sacred province of confidential
prayer, especially when it is prayer for a sinning brothel of a tendency which
is too natural and too apt to prevail, even in one having the eternal life
which the Father gives in his Son; the tendency, I mean, to subordinate the
divine claims to considerations of human expediency or human pity. It is the
same tendency which, when the case is our own, is apt to bias and mislead us.
Let us trace its working.
I. It is
of course strongest in the unrenewed mind and unreconciled heart. While under
their dominion, we cannot be expected to consult for God at all; we consult
only for ourselves. In forming a notion as to how God may, and as we think,
ought to deal with us, we take little or no account of what may be due to him,
to the honour of his holy name and the glorious majesty of his throne and law.
We pay little or no regard to what the principles of his righteous moral
administration and the interests of his loyal subjects may require. We think
only of our own relief and safety; our own convenience and accommodation. And
hence we see no difficulty in our slight offences being overlooked and our
infirmities indulged, upon our making certain formal submissions, and going
through some routine of service. Thus we accept the serpent's lie: "Ye shall
not surely die" no sin of ours being, in our view, if all extenuating
circumstances are taken into account "a sin unto death."
2. It should be otherwise with us now; now that
"having the Son we have life." We surely ought to be, as. the Son is, on the
Father's side; one in interest and sympathy with him; ready to give him the
pre-eminence in alt things, and to subordinate even what most pertains to our
own welfare to the glorifying of his name and the doing of his will. We may be
thankful that this does not entail on us the suffering and sacrifice which it
entailed on him, when he, in the matter of the cup given him to drink,
submitted his own will to the Father's. Well may we be thankful that, through
his taking our death as his and our having his life as ours, we may have the
same mind that was in him, without its bringing such pain on us. Nay, for us,
our putting God and his claims first, and putting ourselves and our concerns
second, is in fact the secret of our safety and our rest.
All the more
on that account is it reasonable to expect that in whatever we ask of God for
ourselves, in our closest communing with him about our own affairs, whether
temporal or spiritual, we should allow this principle to have full scope. But
is it so? Alas! the old selfish spirit is ever apt to come back and come out
again. It comes out, perhaps almost unconsciously, in our secret pleading that
something in us or about us may be spared which God has doomed to destruction;
be it some unmortified lust in the heart, or some doubtful practice of worldly
conformity in the life. If indeed we are honestly communing with God about it,
placing his honour first and our case only second, we can be at no loss what to
ask. We can ask but one thing; the grace of instant decision to deal with what
offends, as we know that God would have it dealt with. Are we asking that,
asking it in faith, and acting accordingly? Or are we still irresolute, putting
in a plea for some slight indulgence, some short delay; as if, after all, the
evil were not so very serious, nor the danger of tolerating it for a little
longer so very great?. Brother, let me solemnly and affectionately warn you, -
or rather, let the beloved apostle warn you "All unrighteousness is sin: and
there is a sin unto death."
3. In
intercessory prayer, the tendency of which I speak operates powerfully and
painfully. A rude and vulgar notion prevails amongst those who reject, the
gospel which we embrace, that we who embrace it, hugging ourselves in our own
security, have a sort of pleasure in consigning all outside of our circle to
inevitable and everlasting ruin. Alas! they know not, either the weakness of
our filial faith, or the strength, if not of our brotherly love, yet of our
natural affection. The temptation is all the other way. It is all in the
direction of our tampering and taking liberties with the sovereign authority
and grace of God, in accommodation to the weakness, and even the wickedness, of
men. We do not say, abstractly and absolutely, that there is not a sin unto
death; but we fondly hope that our brother's sin may not be held to be so. It
is not hoping that he may repent of it. Such hope cannot well be too strong;
nor can our asking in terms of it be too confident. But here lies the danger.
Our asking that he may repent of it, if his repenting of it is delayed, is apt,
- oh, how apt - apt in proportion as we love him, to slide unawares into our
virtually asking that, though not repented of, it may be overlooked; that at
least it may not be reckoned to him as "a sin unto death."
It is often a
very terrible test of our loyalty to God our Father, and our allegiance to his
crown and his commandments, that is in such a case to be applied. 4. Take an
extreme instance. One whom you loved with truest brotherly love, with most
intense longing to welcome him as a brother in Christ to your heart, has gone
without affording you that joy; he has died, giving no sign. lie was lovely,
amiable, pleasant. You and he were one in kin; still more one in kind and in
kindness. But he has passed away, continuing to the last in a course of life
scarcely, if at all, reconcilable with even the profession of godliness. What
is your temptation in such a case? Ah, it is a very awful one! It is to prefer
his interest to the gospel of God, and the law of God. It is to think that,
culpable as he may have been, his culpability may not have proved fatal. It is
to cherish the fond imagination that, in spite of the law which he has broken
and the gospel which he has rejected, he may still, on the ground of qualities
which won your admiration, or sufferings which moved your compassion, find some
measure of mercy in the end. It is very tender ground on which I tread; I know
it; experimentally I know it. Far, very far, be it from me, to insist on your
judging a departed brother, however he may have sinned, and continued in his
sin to the last. He is in the hands of God. Leave him there without
questioning. Think of the old rhyming adage -
"Between the stirrup and the
ground, Mercy I sought, mercy I found."
Think too of the more authentic
instance of the thief on the cross; by all means think of that, and take what
comfort you can from that. But beware! Sorely, - oh, how sorely! - are you
tempted first to wish that there were some room for such as he was, even
continuing still the same, within the holy city of the most high God; and then
to hope that there may be. It is, I repeat, a very sore temptation. Many a
brokenhearted mourner in Zion has felt it; you and I have felt it; and we have
felt that, under the influence of it, we have been beginning to underrate the
need of regeneration, and conversion, and a living faith, and a holy walk; to
dream of men who gave no evidence here of anything like such grace, being
possibly safe without it hereafter. And What next? We become insensibly more
tolerant than we were of sin in ourselves; less alive to the necessity of
immediate repentance and faith; more inclined to temporise and compromise; to
look at things not from God's point of view but from our own; as if he had not
"given to us his own eternal life in his Son."
Let us see to it above
all things, though it may cost us often many a struggle and many a tear, that
we do not suffer our firm faith in God, and our loving loyalty to him, to fall
a sacrifice to the fond relentings of our own weak hearts. Whatever may be its
bearing on the fate of any brother, let us, for God's sake and our own, for
God's honour and our own salvation, accept it as a great and solemn fact, that
"all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto
death."
5. You do not pray for the
dead; you do not think it lawful. It is in the indulgence of a trembling hope
concerning them that the temptation of which I speak besets you. But the same
temptation besets you also when you pray for the living. It is the temptation
to wish that, in its application to the sin which you see your brother sinning,
God's holy law were not so very uncompromising, nor his righteous judgment so
very unrelenting, as they are declared to be. No doubt you ask that your
brother may receive grace to repent of his sin. But what if he should not? You
have a sort of reserved notion that, even in that case and upon that
supposition, there may be some chance of safety for him. That is the
temptation. And it is often a most severe and stern trial of your faith to
resist it; to ask life for your sinning brother ; but to ask it evermore under
the deep conviction that "all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin
unto death."
Let us see, once for all, what the apostle's solemn
statement really implies. In the first place, let it be very specially noted
that this is the one only limitation which John puts upon the liberty of
intercessory prayer. And let us mark well where the limitation applies. It does
not really touch our privilege of asking life for our brother, in the true and
full sense of life ; - the eternal life which God gives, and which is in his
Son. We may not ask for him this life, if we ask it for him as sinning, and
contemplated by us as possibly sinning unto death. And for the best of all
reasons we may not thus ask; for it is asking what, even with God, is an
impossibility. But, short of that impossibility, there is no restriction laid
on our asking; we may ask life for him, to the utmost of our heart's desire. We
may use the utmost freedom in asking life for him, provided only we do not ask
it for him as sinning: and continuing to sin, unto death. Be his sin ever so
heinous, let it be the sin of a whole long lifetime of ungodliness, we may ask
life for him, in the line of his repenting and believing the gospel, provided
only, I repeat, that we do not ask it as if life could be given him in any
other way.
I know that a question may be raised even here, as to the
extent to which we may absolutely and unconditionally ask for our sinning
brother faith and repentance, and having asked, may positively know that "we
have the petition that we have desired of God." I know that there are
difficulties in the direction now indicated. They are difficulties connected
with that decree of election which alone secures the salvation of any sinner ;
- but they are difficulties which we may conceive of as possibly hindering the
salvation of some sinner for whom we pray. They are difficulties, however,
which do not touch such intercessory prayer more than they touch any other sort
of prayer ; - and indeed all prayer, generally and universally. The decree of
election can no more hinder my praying confidently for my sinning brother, than
it can hinder my praying confidently for my sinning self. In either case, it is
one of "the secret things belonging to the Lord our God" not one of" the
revealed things belonging to us and to our children." At all events, this text
has nothing to do with that. It imposes no restriction on our prayer arising
out of God's eternal purpose. The only restriction which it does impose is one
rendered necessary by our own infirmity, and the temptation to which it exposes
us. We are not to ask., what we are tempted to ask, that our brother,
continuing in sin, may yet be saved; that while still sinning unto death, he
may nevertheless somehow live. But under that reservation, reasonable surely,
and necessary, we have all liberty, so far as this text is concerned ; - and it
is the only text in all the Bible that can by any possibility be supposed to
fetter or abridge our liberty ; - we have all liberty, I say, to ask life for
our brother. It is a wide charter, altogether broad and free.
But,
secondly, there is an obvious practical application suggested by the
reservation. If we ask life for our brother, knowing that he cannot have it
while sinning unto death; or, in other words, that he cannot have it otherwise
than in the way of believing and repenting; our prayer for him, if sincere,
must imply our personal dealing with him with a view to his believing and
repenting. If what we asked for him were simply life, - life in any sense and
on any terms,-we might let him alone. Having asked, we might think that we
could do nothing more to help in bringing about the desired result. But it is
not so; it is far otherwise. We may take part along with him whom we ask, the
hearer of prayer, in what we ask him to do; we must take part along with him,
if our asking is real and earnest. To ask God to give life to our sinning
brother while we ourselves "suffer sin upon him" - not warning him even with
tears; - sin, the very sin that is hurrying him on to death ;-what mockery! -
how insulting to our God, and oh, how cruel to our poor brother
himself!
Finally, in the third place, let our conviction be clear,
strong and deep, that "all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto
death." Let us see that there is no faltering, no hesitancy as to that great
fact or truth. Upon both the parts of this solemn declaration let our faith be
firm, and let our trumpet give no uncertain sound. It is at this point that a
stand is to be resolutely made against all antinomian licence in religion; for
it is at this point that the enemy has always pressed the church most hardly,
and alas! the church has too often shown herself weak. The knowing ones who
corrupted the gospel in John's own day undermined the citadel at this very
point. They held and taught that unrighteousness, unholiness, uncleanness,
which would be sin in any one else, might be no sin in the spiritual man It
could only defile the body. And what of that, the body being perishable? It
could not touch the essence of the living and immortal soul. Sin therefore,
even when persevered in to the end, might yet be not unto death: John does not
reason with these wicked men; it is not a case for reasoning. He meets their
vile, foul, base imagination with the stern assertion of law and appeal to
conscience: "All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin unto death." Ever
and anon, from age to age, the same abominable devil's creed has troubled and
polluted the church of God. Nay, even when the church is undisturbed by it,
still, ever and anon, it troubles and pollutes the child of God, in some one or
other of its insidious temptations.
For alas! alas! it is but too
congenial to the sloth and selfishness and sensuality that still prevail too
much within him.. Ah me! how apt am I to cherish the secret, half-unconscious
notion, that flush , or that infirmity besetting me, or besetting my much-loved
brotherinfirmity which, if I saw it attached to any one else, I would not
scruple for a moment to denounce as sin, - may somehow in my case, or in my
brother's, be more mildly characterised and more gently dealt with! How apt am
I to hope that this or that little secret sin which I feel cleaving still to
me, or see cleaving still to my brother, may after all, and in the long run,
not prove fatal! Ah, if there be but the faintest taint of this damnable heresy
lurking in your inner man, how can you be prosecuting, with anything like
earnestness, the work of your own personal sanctification, or seeking, with
anything like faithfulness, the sanctification of your brother; - asking God to
give you life, or to give him life? Be very sure that if you would be safe
yourself, and if you would save him, you need to shun, as you would a
pestilential blast, or the very breath of hell, whatever tends, however
remotely, to confound the everlasting distinctions of right and wrong, or shake
the foundations of truth and virtue which are the very pillars of the universe
and of the throne of God. It is a "word which doth eat as a canker." Beware,
and again I say beware, of scepticism on the great eternal principles of moral
duty - of the moral law. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked." "The unrighteous
shall not inherit the kingdom of God." "All unrighteousness is sin: and there
is a sin unto death. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto
death. We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is
begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." - 1
John 5: 17-18.
The last clause of the seventeenth verse may best be read
without the negative. There is, I believe, preponderating manuscript authority
for so reading it. And, as regards internal evidence, it seems easier to
explain, - and this is a good criterion, - how, if not originally in the text,
it might creep in, than how, if originally in the text, it could fall out. The
insertion of it by copyists, perhaps first as a conjectural marginal reading,
can easily be explained by their supposing it necessary to harmonise the
statement in the seventeenth verse with that in the verse before, so as to
bring in again the idea of the lawfullness of praying for life for them that
sin not unto death. This seventeenth verse, how-ewer, rather points the
thought, not backwards to the sixteenth, but onwards and forwards to the
eighteenth. Do not imagine that in praying for a sinning brother, you may
overlook the possibility of his sin being unto death. Do not pray for him as if
you thought that in accommodation to ibis case God's law might be relaxed, and
he, though sinning so as to deserve to die, and continuing so to sin, might yet
not surely die. Beware of that; for your own sake, as well as for his sake; for
your own sake, even more than for his sake. For you are in danger of being led
to tolerate in yourselves what you are inclined to palliate in a brother. You
secretly hope that there may be impunity for him, even though he is continuing
in sin. Is there no risk of your being tempted to cherish a similar hope for
yourselves; and so to forget the great truth that "all unrighteousness is sin:
and there is a sin unto death"
But you may be saying within yourselves,
"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (3: 9). You, therefore, as born
of God, may hold yourselves safe in extenuating sin and deprecating on his
behalf its terrible doom. Still beware! It is true that, as it has been
explained, whosoever is born of God does not and cannot sin. "We know that
whosoever is born of God sinneth not." Yes, we know that. But we know also that
his not sinning, however it may be connected with his being born of God, and
secured by God's seed, the seed of the divine nature and eternal life,
remaining in him, - is not so connected with that fact, or so secured by it, as
to preclude the necessity of care and watchfullness. He has "to keep himself;"
and that too in the presence of a formidable enemy. "We know that whosoever is
born of God sinneth not." But why not?. Because "he that is begotten of God
keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." He "keepeth himself."
The phrase might suggest two ideas: that of keeping, as if restraint were
needed; or that of keeping, as if care and culture were intended. This last is
probably to be regarded as the right sense, not however by any means to the
exclusion of the other. He has to guard himself against the touch of "that
wicked one" from without; and he has carefully to watch and foster the growth
of the divine seed within. His thus keeping himself is the effect of his being
born of God; and it is the cause, or means, of his not sinning. Not otherwise
than in the way of his keeping himself, can one born of God be safe from
sinning. In an important and practical point of view, he must be his own
keeper. And his keeping himself will be earnest, sedulous, anxious, in
proportion to the sense he has of the value of what is to be kept, on the one
hand, and of its liability to sustain damage, or be lost, on the other.
I. What is to be kept, O child of God?
Yourself! Not yourself as you are by nature, but yourself as born of God.
Consider, first, what is implied in that solemn thought. Even as regards the
life that now is, you have to keep yourself. Self-preservation is both your
right and your duty; your right, which you are to vindicate though your doing
so may involve an assailant's death; your duty, which, whatever you may think
about your own worth or value, you are not at liberty to renounce or to
neglect. You are not entitled to throw yourself away; you are bound to keep
yourself. And that, not only in the sense of your not literally committing
suicide; for you may abstain from suicide and yet be virtually a selfdestroyer.
You are bound to keep yourself as one, - whatever you are, and wherever you
are, - that is too costly to be cast away, being still, as you are, within the
reach of divine grace and eternal life. You have no more right, in any
circumstances, or in any mood or frame of mind, to give yourself up to despair,
than you have to give yourself up to death. But it is as a child of God that
you are here said to keep yourself. Consider, I say again, what that
means.
Try for a moment to separate in imagination yourself as the,
keeper, from yourself as what is to be kept. Look upon yourself objectively; as
if you were looking at another person. Or, to make this easier, look first at
another person, as if he were yourself. Suppose yourself your brother's keeper;
keeping him as if he were yourself. And, to make the analogy a fair one,
suppose yourself to be, under God, his only keeper. And suppose also that your
are his keeper in the sense of having most intimate access to his inner man, as
well as entire control over his outward actions.
Well, you keep him;
you, as born of God, keep him, as born of God ; - would that we were all thus
keeping one another! But what sort of keeping will it be? That will depend on
the vividness of the apprehension which you have of your own sonship, and of
his; of your being born of God, and his being born of God. He whom you have to
keep is no ordinary piece of goods. He may have been once vile ; a condemned
criminal; and as such, unclean. But "what God has cleansed you cannot call
common or unclean." He is very precious now, and very pure. He has the seed of
God abiding in him; the germ and principle of au absolutely sinless character
and life. It is in that view, and upon that supposition, that you have to
"keep" him. Your whole treatment of him must be accommodated to that fact. Need
I bid you ask yourself what your treatment of him would, or at any rate should,
be if you had to keep him as thus "born of God"?
Now if your keeping
yourself is to be at all such as you feel that your keeping of your brother
ought to be in the case supposed, it must proceed upon as clear and explicit a
recognition of your own standing as, in that case, there would be of his. If
you are really to keep yourself, you must distinctly understand, and strongly
realise, what it is about you that is to be kept; what is the character in
which, and what the standard by which, and what the end for which, you are to
keep yourself.
For instance, I may feel that I have to keep myself as a
good worldly man, or a good moral man, or a good man of business, or a good man
of society, or a good neighbour and friend; a good husband, father, brother,
son. I can only keep myself, in any of these characters, by first making it
thoroughly, inwardly, intensely, my own, and then thoroughly acting it out. It
will not do to assume it, or to imagine it; neither will it do to admit it in
any doubtful or hesitating way. If I am to keep myself, I must know and
apprehend myself actually to be what I mean, by keeping myself, to continue to
be.
In keeping myself as born of God, this personal and realising faith
is especially needful. The secret of my not keeping myself, with enough of
watchfullness and prayer, is too often to be found in the want of it. I keep
myself, perhaps, with tolerably decent consistency, as a professing member of
the church; I keep myself as an upright, charitable, and correctly religious
man. But do I take home to myself the obligation of keeping myself as more than
that? Do I adequately apprehend the fact that t am more than that; that I am
really and truly "born of God"? Do I sufficiently apprehend what that means?
Nothing else will ensure my "keeping myself."
I do not speak now of
assurance, in a doctrinal point of view. No question is raised here as to a
believing man being assured, for his own comfort, of his present standing and
of his final salvation. The whole strain of John's teaching is practical.
Whether or not he that is born of God is to sit down and conclude reflexly that
he is born of God, is not said. It is not even said that he is to raise the
question. All that is said is, that he is to treat himself; he is to keep
himself; as born of God. He is so to use and deal with himself, as he would use
and deal with what is born of God. It is not to any reflex or subjective
exercise of faith, ascertaining itself simply for its own confirmation and
confidence, that he is called, but to the direct, objective acting out of his
faith. And that is all in the line of his practically keeping himself, as he
feels that what is born of God ought to be and must be kept.
What sort
of keeping of one's self should grow out of such a vivid and realising sense as
this implies of what being born of God means, it is not necessary to describe
minutely or at large. The working out of the problem may well be left to our
own consciences and hearts. The main thing is to secure here, as everywhere,
singleness of eye. Only let us settle it decidedly, firmly, unequivocally, as
the deep conviction of our souls, that it is as "born of God" that we are to
"keep ourselves."
Ah! if we did so, would there be so-much careless
living among us; so much unsteadfast walking; so much indifference to the way
in which our customary manner of spending our time and occupying our thoughts
tells on our spiritual state? Would there not be more of earnest prayer, of
secret fellowship with God, of diligent study of his word, of anxious
watchfullness; more of an eager pressing on to higher attainments in divine
insight and sympathy, in holiness and love? For to keep ourselves as born of
God, is to aim at exhausting experimentally all that the privilege involves. It
is to keep ourselves, as sons and heirs, in the full enjoyment of our Father's
love and in the full view of the many mansions of our Father's house.
II. This keeping of
ourselves, as born of God, will be felt to be the more necessary, when we
consider, secondly, how liable that which is to be kept is to suffer damage and
be lost. If we are born of God, and if it is in that character that we are to
keep ourselves; let us remember how apt that character is to be marred and
injured by the outer world with which we are ever coming in contact; how apt it
is to lose its marked distinctiveness and fresh life in our own
souls.
As born of God, we have to "keep ourselves unspotted from the
world;" we have to keep ourselves also unspotted from the evil that is in us,
as born in iniquity and conceived in sin. In both views, what is above all
things needed is to cherish a deep, abiding, personal, practical persuasion
that "all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death." The risk
of relaxed diligence in "keeping ourselves as born of God" lies mainly in our
ceasing, more or less consciously, to regard sin as exceeding sinful, and the
doom of sin as inevitably certain. Hence, in order to our keeping ourselves, it
is of the utmost consequence, .first of all, that we truly and fully apprehend
that we are to keep ourselves as being born of God. And it is of equal
consequence, secondly, that we truly and fully apprehend the absolute
incompatibility of our sinning with our being born of God. Sin from without and
from within is ever besetting us. And the temptation is very strong to begin to
think that, in some form or degree, it may not be altogether damaging to our
spiritual life, as born of God, or altogether fatal to our heavenly prospects,
as having eternal life. The instant such a thought finds harbour in our bosom,
all our faithfulness in keeping ourselves is gone. "Whosoever is born of God
keepeth himself" - only when he realises his own sacredness as "born of God;"
and when moreover he realises, - and that too with special reference, not
merely to the world with which he is ever in contact, but also to himself and
his own tendencies and liabilities, - the solemn truth that "all
unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death." There is no room
for any question being raised here ag to the certainty of his final salvation,
or the security for his preservation in grace to the end. That is not the
point. Be it that God keeps him, and will keep him, infallibly safe: God does
so, and can do so, only through his keeping himself. And his keeping himself
implies a constant sense of his liability, after all, so far as he is himself
concerned, to be lost. So Paul kept himself: "I keep under my body, and bring
it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I
myself should be a cast-away." So will every one that is born of God keep
himself; remembering the exhortations, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take
heed lest he fall;" "Thou standeth by faith; be not highminded, but
fear."
And this fear, not slavish fear of an angry God, but filial fear
of a loving Father, the fear of filial love, will grow, and will become more
and more "fear and trembling." It will do so in proportion as I apprehend, with
growing vividness, on the one hand, all the holy blessedness that there is in
being born of God, and on the other hand, all that there is in sin; in any sin;
in every sin; of deep and deadly malignity, making it the very bane of that
blessedness. Thus, with increasing sensitiveness, will I be keeping myself "as
born of God, and not sinning." Thus will I be "working out my own salvation
with fear and trembling, because it is God which worketh in me both to will and
to do of his good pleasure."
I do not now enter on the consideration of
the promise annexed to this self-keeping: "The wicked one toucheth him not." I
prefer to take that promise in connection with what follows. I content myself
with one observation on its connection with what precedes. "The wicked one"
seeks to touch you; to touch you at the tenderest and most sensitive point,
where alone lies your security against sinning; your being "born of
God."
For it is only as born of God that you sin not. It is in your
filial standing thoroughly realised, and in your filial spirit thoroughly
cherished and exercised, that the secret of your not sinning lie, The wicked
one knows that right well; he quite understands it. Full well he knows and
understands that if he can get you, be it only for a brief hour or moment, to
step off from the platform of your sonship ; - or if he can insinuate into your
breast at arty time a single unchildlike thought of God ; - he has you at his
mercy. And you sin. You listen to his whispered suggestion that this or that
commandment of God is grievous. You suffer his wily insinuation - "Yea, hath
God said that ye shall not?" - to poison your ear, to poison your soul. You let
in the spirit of bondage again. The light and liberty of your loving cry,
"Abba, Father" are gone. Shorn of your strength, you repine, you murmur, you
sin.
Ah, friends, "keep yourselves." And see to it that you keep
yourselves as "born of God." Keep yourselves in your conscious sonship, and in
the spirit of it. Then "the wicked one toucheth you not." Be very sure that it
is sonship believingly apprehended and realised, it is the spirit of sonship
faithfully cherished and exercised, that is ;your only real shield and defence
against the touch of the wicked one. For his touch, his stinging touch, is the
suggestion of the poor servile thought that God's commandments are grievous.
The filial, loving confidence of one keeping himself as a child of God
instinctively and indignantly casts away the insinuation. The wicked one
therefore cannot touch one living as a son of God. He could not touch, terribly
as he tried to touch, the Son of God while he lived on earth; for never did he
live otherwise than as the Son of God. He cannot touch any one to whom God
gives "the Spirit of his Son, crying, Abba, Father." For no one can be, at any
moment, crying, in the Spirit, Abba, Father, and at the same moment counting
any of God's commandments grievous. Therefore when "he that is begotten of God"
keepeth himself as so begotten, "the wicked one toucheth him not."
XLIV. OUR BEING OF GOD. - THE WORLD LYING IN THE
WICKED ONE.
"And that [the] wicked one toucheth him not We know
that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" [the wicked one].
- 1 John 5: 18, 19. INSTEAD of "wickedness" in the nineteenth verse, we may
rather read "the wicked one." There is now a general agreement among critics
and interpreters to that effect. There is no good reason for any change in this
verse from the rendering in the verse before. There it must unavoidably be
personal, "the wicked one toucheth him not." It is quite unnecessary and
unwarrantable to make it impersonal and abstract here, "the whole world lieth
in wickedness." It is the same expression and should be translated in the same
way, "the whole world lieth in the wicked one." For the change mars the sense,
and destroys the obvious contrast that there is between the child of God, whom
that wicked one does not touch, and the world which, so far from being safe
from his touch, lies wholly in him. We know this last fact, as knowing
ourselves to be of God; and it is our thus knowing it that mainly contributes
to our security.
For that is the precise point and purpose of the
statement, "the whole world lieth in the wicked one." It is a statement
introduced for a purely practical end; an end or purpose personal to us, as
begotten of God, and, in that character, "keeping ourselves." It has no
reference to any other persons besides ourselves; it is strictly applicable,
and meant to be applied, to ourselves alone. There is no contrast intended
between us and the rest of mankind. There is no emphasis in the "we" - " we are
of God" - as in contradistinction to those of our fellow-men who may be classed
as "the world." In fact the "we" is not in the original at all. It is supplied,
and of course necessarily supplied, in our translation. But its not being
expressed in the original is plain proof, as all scholars know, that it is not
intended to be emphatic, or to suggest any contrast between us and any other
body of men. We have nothing here to do with any but ourselves; the text is
written solely for our learning, for our warning. It bids us remember that we,
being of God, are not of that world which lies wholly in the wicked one. It
bids us do so, in order that, being begotten of God, we may so "keep ourselves"
as being begotten of God, that the "wicked one shall not touch us."
Thus
the world is here to be viewed rather as a system than as a society; with
reference not so much to the question who constitute the world, as to the
question what the world is; what is its character and constitution; what are
its arrangements; its habits of thought, feeling, and action; its pursuits,
occupations, and pleasures. One common feature is brought out, helping us to
identify and characterise it. The whole of it "lieth in the wicked
one."
It is a strong expression; going beyond any of John's previous
intimations on this subject. He makes early mention of "the wicked one" {2:
13-14). Believers are represented as, in the strength of their mature and
vigorous spiritual youth, overcoming, or having overcome, "the wicked one."
Thereafter, when "the wicked one" comes up again (3: 12), he is plainly
identified with the devil (3: 8-10), in respect of his murderous hatred of God
and of whatever is born of God; he kills or seeks to kill whatever and whoever
is of God. Next, he appears as that "spirit of anti-Christ" which is in the
world, as "the spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh" (4: 3). Here it is said, not that he is in the world, but that the world
lies in him. It lies, and lies wholly in him. He has got the world into his
arms; the whole world.
I. "The
world lieth in the wicked one." .The figure may suggest several different
ideas. A stranded vessel lying embedded in the sand; a lost sheep lying
engulphed in the treacherous swamp; a sow contented to lie wallowing in the
mire; a Samson, lying bewitched in Delilah's lap ;-these are the images called
forth; and they are all but too appropriate. Considered in its origin, this
lying of the world in the wicked one may be taken in a very literal and
personal sense.
The fall is a fall out of the arms of God into the
embrace of' the wicked one. He is ready to receive the fallen; and, in a
measure, to break their fall. He has a bed of his own prepared on which the
fallen may lie in him. It is shrewdly and plausibly framed. It is like himself.
It is the embodiment of his mind and spirit; the acting out of his very self.
It is a couch composed of the very materials he had before woven into the
subtle cord of that temptation which drew the unfallen out of God's hold into
his. The same elements of unbelief which he turned to such cunning account in
his work of seduction, he employs with equal skill in getting the seduced to
lie, and to lie quiet, in him. For the most part, he finds this an easy task.
The world listens willingly to its seducer, now become its comforter and guide
3 and frames its creed and constitution according to his teaching and under his
inspiration. faith, worship, discipline, and government are dictated by him. So
"the world lies in him ;" dependent on him and his theology for such assumed
licence and imaginary peace as it affects to use and to enjoy. For the essence
of worldliness is at bottom the feeling that "God's commandments are grievous;"
that his service is hard, and himself austere; but yet that somehow his
indulgence may be largely reckoned upon in the end. It is as "lying in the
wicked one" that the world so conceives of God, and acts upon that conception
of him. It is as "lying in the wicked one" that it peevishly asks, "Who is the
Almighty that we should serve him, and what profit shall we have if we bow down
unto him?" - while at the same time it confidently presumes, "The Lord seeth
not, the Lord regardeth not."
II.
"The whole world thus lieth in the wicked one" he has it all in his embrace.
There is nothing in or about the world that is not thus lying in the wicked
one; so lying in the wicked one as to be infected with the contagion of his
hard thoughts of God, and his affected bravery in defying God's righteous
judgment.
Take the world at its very best; all its grossness put away ;
no vile lust or passion polluting it; much pure virtue adorning it; many pious
sentiments coming forth from it, not altogether insincerely. What trace is
there here of the wicked one's poisonous touch? What necessity for your being
warned to be on your guard against it or him? Nay, but look deeper into the
heart of what is so seeming fair. Do you not see, do you not instinctively
feel, that there is throughout its sphere of influence a sad want of that
entire surrender of self to God, that unreserved owning of his sovereignty, the
sovereignty of his throne, his law, his grace, that full, loyal, loving trust,
which alone cam baffle Satan's wiles? Instead of that, is there not a hidden
fear of coming to too close quarters and too confidential dealings with God; a
disposition to stand aloof and make terms of compromise; a willingness to be
persuaded that some questionable things may be tolerated and some slight
liberties allowed? Is not all this what "lying in the wicked one" may best
explain We are not safe unless we realise it as a fact that "the whole world
lieth in the wicked one ;" all of it; the best of it as well as the worst of
it. Only thus can we "so keep ourselves that the wicked one shall not touch
us." It is a sad fact, but we must realise it. And in the firm and full
realisation of it, we must "keep ourselves."
For it is not with a view
to our condemning or judging the world, but only in order to our "keeping
ourselves" that we are to have this fact always before our eyes; it is in order
to our so "keeping ourselves that the wicked one shall not touch us." For it is
through the world which is lying in him that he seeks to touch us. We are
coming constantly into contact with the world; we cannot help it; and yet we
are to keep ourselves "unspotted from the world." Iknow better may we hope,
through grace, to do so, than by knowing, in the sense of always and everywhere
acting upon the knowledge, that "we are of God and the whole world lieth in the
wicked one "?
Let us recognise our own standing in God, and the world's
lying in the wicked one. We are of God, born of God; his sons in his Son Jesus
Christ. That is our character and position. It is in that character, and with
reference to that position, that we are to "keep ourselves." Let us be ever
mindful of our high and holy calling. And that we may be ever mindful of it,
let us be ever sensitively alive to the risk of the wicked one's contamination.
True, "the wicked one toucheth us not." But "the whole world lieth in him." And
the world touches us, for we are in the world.
Ah! does not our danger
spring from our practically forgetting that tho world in which we are lieth
wholly in the wicked one? Have not we found it so? We begin to think, or to
live as if we thought, that after all the world does not lie absolutely and
altogether in the wicked one; that it is not so thoroughly evil as that would
imply. We find, or fancy that we find, some of it at least, such as we would
not choose to characterise so offensively. The world may be mostly, or for the
most part, lying in the wicked one. But surely some exception may be made in
favour of this or that about it that looks so harmless and so good.
O
child of God, beware. The wicked one is touching you very closely, through the
world that lieth in him, when he gets you thus to plead. The Spirit teaches you
a safer and better lesson when he moves you to say: "We know that we are of
God, and the whole world "all of it" lieth in the wicked one."
This
teaching of John, concerning the world as lying in the wicked one, is in
striking accordance with that of Paul in two remarkable passages of his Epistle
to the Ephesians (2: 1, 6: 12). One would almost think indeed that John had
Paul's teaching in his view. At all events, it may be interesting and useful to
notice the parallelism and harmony between the two apostles.
I. Consider the first of the two passages (Ephes.
2: 1) "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in
time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of
disobedience." Writing to the Ephesians as now believers, Paul reminds them of
their former walk. It was "according to the course of this world." But "the
world, the whole world, lieth in the wicked one." Therefore, walking according
to the course of this world, they walked according to the wicked one in whom
the world lies. How the world lies in him, so that walking according to the
world's course is really walking according to him, is explained in two ways. .
He is "the prince of the power of the air." He rules, as a powerful prince, the
world's atmosphere; its moral and spiritual atmosphere; impregnating it with
his own venom; the poisonous vapour of his own dark and godless hell. The air
which the world breathes is under his control; he is the prince of the power of
it; its powerful prince. It is, as it were, compounded, concocted, and
manufactured by him. Very wisely does he use his power; very cunningly does he
compose the air which he would have his subjects and victims to breathe. He
mingles in it many good ingredients. For the worst of men he does so; and
indeed he must do so, if he is to make it palatable and seductive even to them.
For the lowest company, he must needs prepare an atmosphere with something good
in it; good fellowship at the least, and a large measure of good humour and
good feeling. Then, as he rises to higher circles, how does he contrive, in the
exercise of his princely power, to make the air that is to intoxicate his
votaries, or lull them to unsuspecting sleep, all redolent, as it might seem,
of good; good sense, good taste, good temper; good breeding and behaviour; good
habits and good-heartedness! Many noisome vapours also that might offend he
carefully excludes; so that the inhaling organ perceives nothing but what is
pure and simple in what it imbibes and absorbs. But it is the wicked one's air
or atmosphere after all; he is the prince of the power of it. He contrives to
have it all pervaded with the latent influence of his own ungodliness; his
godless spirit is in it all through. The whole world is lying in that subtle
atmosphere of his; the air of which he is the powerful prince.
Have you
not felt something of what it is to breathe the air of which the wicked one is
thus the powerful prince, to breathe it at the time almost unconsciously, and
afterwards to find the fruit of your having breathed it all but inexplicable?
You come home from a business engagement, or a party of pleasure. You feel an
unwonted indisposition to serious thought; you are less inclined than usual to
prayer and meditation; anxious calculations or frivolous fancies, and vain if
not vicious imaginations, intrude into the sanctuary of your inner worship; you
are not so much at home as you were before in your closet-fellowship with your
Father in heaven. You are at a loss to account for this. You have not been
anywhere, or done anything, in known or conscious opposition to his will. But
you have been living in an unwholesome atmosphere. You have been in scenes or
societies; all decent and proper no doubt; but yet imbued with as thorough a
spirit of indifference or alienation as the wicked one would care to inspire.
You have forgotten that "the whole world lieth in the wicked one" as "the
prince of the power of its air."
2.
Nor is this all. He is "the spirit that now worketh in the children of
disobedience." He is not content with exercising his power in concocting and
compounding the world's atmosphere; he is busily moving to and fro, and up and
down, in the ranks of those who breathe it, He prepares for them the air he
would like them to inhale, making it as soothing and seductive as he can. And
then. while they are inhaling it, he deals with them personally; going in and
out among them; whispering his suggestions; speaking low into their ears ;
insinuating into their hearts such thoughts of God, and of his service, and of
his gospel, as fit into the pervading godless spirit of the region into which
he has got them to venture. In this view, he very specially works among them as
"the children of disobedience." He takes advantage of every rising feeling of
distrust and disaffection; he watches for the first beginnings of discontent.
Wherever there is any disposition to count any of God's appointments or
commandments grievous, he is at hand; to fan the flame; to irritate the sore;
to widen the breach between the loving Father and his undutiful child,
beginning to question and rebel.
So the whole world doubly, or in a
double sense, lies in the wicked one; inasmuch as he is the prince of the power
of its air on the one hand, and inasmuch as, on the other hand, he is ever
working in it among the children of disobedience. And in both views, it
concerns you deeply, as "knowing yourselves to be of God" and called to keep
yourselves accordingly, to know that "the whole world lieth in the wicked one."
Know this, that you may beware of its seductive atmosphere, of which he is the
powerful prince. Know it, that you may beware of the first rising in you of
that insubordinate and impatient spirit of which he avails himself so skilfully
in his "working among the children of disobedience." If you would keep
yourselves, as being of God, so that in respect of your being begotten of God
the wicked one may not touch you, you must be ever alive to this double risk;
the risk of your forgetting how thoroughly he controls the world's atmosphere;
and the risk also of your forgetting how busily and persuasively he works among
the children of disobedience in it.
Keep yourselves, in both views;
unspotted from the world. Keep yourselves, as born of God, in the atmosphere
into which your new birth introduces you; the atmosphere of pure light and love
; the Father's own light; the Father's own love. And keep yourselves, as
"obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in
your ignorance; but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all
manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am
holy."
II. Look now for a little at
the second of the two passages in Ephesians (6: 12.): "We wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
There is a double view here given of the influence which the wicked one, with
his principalities and powers, exerts. On the one hand, he "rules the darkness
of this world." On the other hand, he is "spiritual wickedness in high
places."
I. He rules the dark world
which lies wholly in him; rules it as the prince of the power of its air, and
as the spirit now working in the children of disobedience. If he finds you
there, he finds you within his own territory; at once breathing the worldly
atmosphere he has mixed; and open at the same time to his influence as he is
busy in his vocation, plying all his wiles among those whom he finds harbouring
thoughts of insubordination. He has an advantage over you on his own ground;
you cannot there cope with him; your only safety is in flight. "Come out and be
separate." Flee to the stronghold; "the heavenly places." The wicked one's
world is not your home.. You are not to know it at all; or to know it only as
lying wholly in the wicked one; to beware of it; to renounce it; to keep
yourself unspotted from it. Your home is in "the heavenly places" in which "you
sit with Christ." Abide there, and "the wicked one toucheth you
not."
2. Nay, but even into "the
heavenly places" the wicked one may find access; and even in "the heavenly
places" he may seek to touch you. But he does not, he cannot, really touch you
there. He crept indeed into Paradise, which was "the heavenly places" before
the fall; and touched fatally our first parents there. But in "the heavenly
places" now, in your "heavenly places" you have a defence which they had not.
You "sit with Christ in the heavenly places" being "begotten of God in his
Son." You "know that you are of God" in a sense and to an effect that Adam and
Eve, with all their innocence, could not realise. By redemption, by adoption,
by regeneration; as bought and begotten; you are of God; his own very sons, as
Jesus is. The wicked one may come to you in your heavenlies, as he came to them
in theirs. He may come as "spiritual wickedness;" plying his old wicked
spiritual arts of temptation, suggesting his old doubts of the love and equity
and truth of God. But he "touches you not." He could touch you only by
appealing to something in you of what he finds in the children of disobedience
among whom he works in the world; something in you of their disobedience, some
incipient leaning towards insubordination, some aptness to count the
commandments of God grievous.
Is there at any time anything of that
spirit in you? Is there any rising within you of the old feeling of impatience,
of suspicion, in a word, of unbelief?. Ah, then, even "in the heavenlies" you
are not safe from the touch of the wicked one. Remember that you have to
"wrestle against him even in the heavenlies ;" to wrestle against him, not only
as "ruling the world's darkness" but as "spiritual wickedness in the
heavenlies."
For he comes into the secret place where you dwell with God
as his children; transformed perhaps into an angel of light; insinuating his
old doubts, surmises, questionings again; putting in his old cavils between
your Father's loving heart and your simple trust. Let him not, O my brother!
let him not succeed in his attempt. Stand against him by faith. Bid him begone.
He has no right to be in your heavenlies, whatever right he may have to "rule
in the world's darkness." If you have faith you may cast him out. Keep
yourself, as "born of God" keep yourself in the vivid realising sense of all
that your "sitting with Christ in the heavenlies" involves. So keep yourself in
the heavenlies, and that wicked one touches you not.
What shall I say,
in closing, to you who are not of God, but of the world; of the world that is
altogether lying in the wicked one. Ah! do you not know that the prince of the
world is judged; that for this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he
might destroy the works of the devil? Are you still listening to the gospel of
the wicked one: "Ye shall not surely die"? Nay rather, hear another gospel:
"God is love; in this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that
God sent his Son into the world, that we might live through
him."
XLV. KNOWING THE TRUE ONE AND BEING IN
HIM.
"And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us
an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is
true, even in his Son Jesus Christ." 1 JOHN 5: 20.
THIS is the third and
last "we know" in these closing verses of the epistle (18-20). John insists, in
leaving us. upon our being Gnostics, or knowing ones, as the heretics of his
day professed to be ; but in a better and safer sense. They affected to be
knowing, in the lofty and transcendental region of abstract speculation about
the divine nature; whereas John would have us to be knowing, in the humbler yet
really higher and holier experience of real, direct, personal acquaintance and
fellowship with the Divine Being, as coming down to us, poor sinners, in his
Son, and taking us up, by his Spirit, to be sons and saints in his holy child
Jesus.
That whosoever is born of God sinneth not, because he keepeth
himself so that the wicked one touches him not; that we are thus of God, in
contrast with the world which lies wholly in the wicked one; these are the two
former "we know." And now the third "we know" has respect, neither to our
standing as being of God, nor to the world's position as lying in the wicked
one, but to him who causes or occasions the difference, "the Son of God." It
would almost seem as if there was a regular syllogism here; an argument built
up in three propositions; two premises and a conclusion. First there is the
major premiss, in the general assertion, abstract and impersonal; "we know"
that being born of God implies not sinning, inasmuch as "he that is begotten of
God keepeth himself, and the wicked one touches him not." Then there is the
minor premiss, in the assertion, particular and personal; "we know" that we
individually "are of God" and, there fore, separated from "the world that lieth
wholly in the wicked one." The strict logical conclusion would be; therefore
"we know" that we do not sin. John, however, puts it somewhat differently, so
as to place our not sinning on a surer footing; more humbling to us; more
glorifying to God "We know that the Son of God is come."
And yet this is
a fair enough inference, and fits well enough into the argument when viewed in
its full spiritual import. Nor is it inconsistent with the other. For if he
that is born of God sinneth not; and if we consequently, being of God, sin not,
it is all in virtue of "the Son of God being come" come, in the first place, to
"give us a knowledge of the True One" come, secondly, to secure in that way our
"being in the True One."
I. "The
Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding, that we may know him that
is true" or "the True One." It is God who is to be known; and he is to be known
as "the True One."
The truth here ascribed to God is not truthfullness,
as opposed to falsehood; but reality, as opposed to fiction or imagination.
That we may know God, as truly real, as a truly real being, "the Real One"
strictly speaking, the only truly Real One, apart from whom all things and
persons are shadowy and unreal; that is, in the first instance, the purpose for
which his Son Jesus Christ is come, and "hath given us understanding" or
insight "to know him that is true." The inward working of the Holy Spirit is
here assumed, or asserted; that is the "understanding" or insight that is
meant. Jesus Christ coming as the Son of God has given us, not merely new outer
light, but a new inner eye; otherwise even his coming could not make us know
"the True One." His coming indeed may be said to be itself the outer light. His
coming forth from the True One in whose bosom he dwells reveals the True One to
us. But the discovery would be in vain if his coming did not secure to us, as
his gift, "understanding to know" the True One when thus revealed. That is, we
may say emphatically, his best gift; the best fruit of his "being come" and of
all the travail of soul on our behalf which his "being come" includes in it.
For the worst of our miserable state, from which he is come to save us, is that
we have no understanding, no spiritual sense in us, by which we can discern and
recognise, so as truly to know, him who alone is true. And the best part of his
salvation is his giving us that knowledge, not only by revelation from without,
but by enlightenment within. It is a great thing to know God as he is here
named" the True One ;" to know him as true and real; no imagination or mere
idea, but true and real. That I say, is a very great thing. It is indeed all in
all; the one thing needful. What is God to me? Ah, momentous question! And as
searching as it is momentous! Is he true? Is he real? Do I apprehend him to be
so?
I know my friend when I see him and take him by the hand. I know him
as true and real; no shadow, no myth, no visionary ghost, but verily real.
There he is before me, not a wraith such as Highland seer beholds in the misty
vapour, but invested with unmistakable, palpable reality. Is God thus ever
before me? Whenever I think of my friend, even when he is out of my sight, I
think of him as true and real; as having a real and actual existence; a real
and actual personality. Do I always thus think of God? Do I always thus know
him? There are two conditions of this knowledge.
In the first place, if
I am to know any one as true and real, I must have a distinct and well-defined
conception of him in my mind. He must present himself to me as having a certain
special individuality of his own, marking him out to me as separate from
others. I thus identify him as true and real. But. how confused and incoherent
is my conception of God apt to be! A number of vague notions about him and his
ways may be floating hazily, as it were, before me. But they lack unity, and
are therefore unreal. A heap or bundle of attributes, such as I can name,
enumerate, and define, may be all that I have for my God. If so, it is a heap
or bundle of rags. It has no life, no living personality, no oneness, no
reality, no truth. To know any person as real and true, I must know him as one;
one living personality; living and true. But, secondly, can I so know any one
otherwise than by personal intercourse and personal acquaintanceship? It is in
that way that I know an actual living friend as true. When our eyes meet and
our hands join and our tongues exchange words, I know him as true and real. I
know him better thus, than when he and I communicate by letter merely, or by
message at second-hand. My knowledge of him has in it a truth and reality, a
true and vivid realisation, that does not belong to the notion I have of any
hero or martyr; however graphic may be the history, however lifelike the
picture, by means of which I am to set him before my mind's eye.
Now
"the Son of God has come, and given us understanding that we may know the True
One;" that we may truly and really know, know as a living person, the Father
whose Son he is. The very object of his "coming and giving us understanding" is
to put truth and reality into our knowledge of God. He does so by bringing God
and us personally together. His "coming" provides for that on the part of God;
his "giving us understanding" provides for it on our part.
It is indeed,
I repeat, a great thing thus to know "him that is true" to have a true personal
knowledge of him; such as you have of the friend you converse with every day
about everything or anything that turns up, or of the father to whom you go
every day and every hour for deeper counsel or for a passing embrace. The
friend, the father, is a reality; a real and true friend, a real and true
father. You feel him to be so. He is no dead, historical personage, exhibited
on the stage of the historical drama. He is to you a real and living person:
for there is life and reality in your present intercourse with him. And it is
that there may be this present living intercourse with God as a living person,
that "the Son of God is come" to make that possible on God's side; "and hath
given us an understanding" to make it possible on ours. Only in that way, by
his revelation of himself to us in the Son and by our fellowship with him in
the Spirit, can we know "him that is true." Only thus can we know God
personally; as "the True One;" a real person and not a mere abstraction or
generalisation. II. Knowing thus "him that is true" we are "in him." But we are
so, only as being "in his Son Jesus Christ." The apostle's statement thus fits
into the Lord's own saying, in his farewell prayer, "I in them and thou in me"
(John 17: 53). Both of them rest on that higher appeal which the Lord makes to
his Father : - " As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be one in us" (ver. 21). Thou in me, I in them, and so thou in them - they in
me, I in thee, and so they in thee - such is the wondrous reciprocal line or
chain between God and us. We are in the True One, as being in his Son Jesus
Christ, who is himself in him. We are therefore in the True One as his Son
Jesus Christ himself is in him. Thus our being in the True One rests on very
sure ground, since it is in his Son Jesus Christ that we are in him. And it
implies a very high ideal of what being in the True One means, and what it
is.
I. It is in his Son Jesus
Christ that we are in the True One. We are in him, not directly or immediately,
but by mediation; through and in a mediator. It is only thus that we can be in
God, as the one only living and true God. It must be so. If the God whom our
conscience indicates and owns is indeed true and real; a real, true, living
person; we cannot dream of being in him, in any sense implying rest and peace,
or a refuge and home, otherwise than through and in a mediator. No doubt, if
there are many gods, alike fabulous, though still imagined to among them one so
congenial that I drawing me into his embrace, so that I all alike true, or all
be ; I may find can conceive of his may be in him. Or if the only true God is
the universe, or universal being; all things and persons being but his parrs;
and all actions and events the unfoldings of his own self-consciousness: then
necessarily I am in him; or rather I am he and he is!; there is no personal
distinction between us. Or if God, admitted to be a real, true, and living
person, is not known by me as such, I may amuse or soothe myself with some name
or notion of my being in him, so far as to secure my safety, if I do but say a
prayer occasionally, no matter though my saying it is really little better than
speaking to vacancy, addressing idle words to the empty air.
But let me
know God as true, as a reality. Let me be confronted face to face with God, as
no far-off vision, but a real, present, living person. Let my inner sense be
quickened; and let there flash from heaven a light making clear as day the
features of him in whose real presence I stand. Ah! what cry escapes me? - " I
have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee;
wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!" Now I see clearly; now
I feel deeply; the full difficulty of the case. If God is true and real, my sin
is true and real; and I, the sinner, am true and real. Guilt is real. Wrath is
real. Judgment is real. Punishment is real.
Ah! this knowing of the True
One, as the True One, by the spiritual understanding which the Son of God is
come to give! It imparts to all things in heaven and earth and hell a terrible
distinctness, an altogether new air of truth, an intense, vivid, burning
reality, such as I cannot long stand without being maddened, if I am to stand
alone; a real sinner before a real God. For me to be in him! How utterly
hopeless! Nay, but let me consider. Who is he who has come to give me
understanding thus to know the True One? The Son of God; his Son Jesus Christ.
It is he who by his coming makes the True One known as he really is; for he is
himself "the image of the invisible God." It is he who by his Spirit gives me
understanding that I may know the True One. And placing himself between the
True One, whom now at last I truly know, and me, whom that knowledge must
otherwise utterly appal, he, the very Son of this True One, his Son Jesus
Christ, calls me to himself; to be one with him; to be "in him." It is not that
he would again hide the True One from me, or hide me from the True One. No. But
he makes it possible for me, if I will but consent to be in him, to be "in the
True One" as he is himself in the True One.
For he says, I am a reality;
the real Son of God, really come to you, in your real flesh. As his true and
very Son, I give you understanding to know him who is true and very God. And in
me you know him, not so as to be a castaway from him; but so as to be in him,
as I am in him. For in me, whatever in you might seem to stand in the way, and
did stand in the way, of your being in the True One, is met and obviated. In
the Son of God, his Son Jesus Christ, you can be in God, known as the True One,
and can have perfect peace.
Out of Christ, I can have peace only by not
knowing truly the True One, not knowing him as he is, or by keeping away from
him among the trees of the garden, and under the veil of some apron of
fig-leaves. Satan belies him to me, and I hide or cover myself from him. But
there is no need now of guile, or concealment, or disguise; no room for evasion
or compromise. The True One may be truly known, and I, the chief of sinners,
may be in him, truly known as the True One, "in his Son Jesus
Christ."
2. If it is thus that in
his Son Jesus Christ we are in the True One, it is after a high ideal or model
that we are so. For our being in the True One in his Son Jesus Christ, must be
after the manner of his Son Jesus Christ's being himself in him. What a manner
of being in the True One is that! What truth, what reality is there in
it!
I would keep fast hold of the apostle's ground-thought or leading
idea in this passage; which is truth, reality, fact. There are other views that
may be taken of the Son of God, his Son Jesus Christ, being in the True One, as
the type and model, as well as the cause, of our being in the True One in him.
But I fix on this one as chiefly relevant here; "we are in the True One in his
Son Jesus Christ;" and therefore in him as truly as his Son Jesus Christ is in
him. How truly then, how really, is his Son Jesus Christ in him!
His Son
Jesus Christ! For it is not his Son, as being in him from everlasting, that is
here presented to us. It is with his Son as "being come" that we have to do. It
is in his Son Jesus Christ as "being come" that we are in the True One. Let us
look well and see how his Son Jesus Christ is in the True One; how, in the days
of his flesh, "he is in him that is true!" How truly, really, thoroughly! How
naturally too! He is in his native element when he is in the True
One.
Who that ever followed Jesus in his earthly life could for a moment
doubt that God was to him a reality, and that his being in God was a reality
too? It was a true God that he served; and he himself was truly in him. My
Father! he is ever saying; and so saying it as to show that it is a real and
true Father he means; and that he is really and truly in him, as a real and
true Son. Yes! his Son Jesus Christ is truly in the True One; never out of him;
never away from him; never at home but with him; never thinking a thought, or
feeling an emotion, that he did not think and feel in him; never speaking a
word or doing a work but as having his Father with him. Truly, all through his
real and true humiliation, and obedience, and sacrifice, "he is in him that is
true;" in him, with a depth and intensity of real inness, if I may use the
word, that the devout study of a lifetime will not suffice to fathom. Nay, the
devout study of eternity will not suffice to exhaust the full truth of that
ineffable complacency of the Everlasting Father of which his Son Jesus Christ,
for his obedience unto the death in our stead even more than for his original
relation to him, has become the object. Yes! "I in thee" says Jesus, as he
leaves the world and goes to the Father Oh! that word "I in thee!" What a word,
as spoken then and there! Who can understand its significance, its intense
reality, its living truth? "I in thee!"
Can it be that I, a sinner, of
sinners the chief, am to be in the True One as his Son Jesus Christ is thus in
him? It must be so, at least in measure, if it is in his Son Jesus Christ that
I am to be in the True One. My being in the True One must be after the model
and manner of his being in the True One. It must at all events be as real and
true as that. To me, as to him, God must be a reality; and my being in God must
be a reality too.
Is this too high an aim? Does it seem to be beyond my
reach? Nay, let me look again at the way in which God comes down to me that I
may rise to him. "Thou in me; I in them" is the language of the Son. So "he
that is true" the True One, first condescends to ns. He is in the Son, in his
Son Jesus Christ; all his fullness dwells in him bodily - "Thou in me." And the
Son is in us "I in them." The Holy Spirit takes of what is his and shows it to
us; he forms Christ in us. So the Father, the True One, comes down to us; he in
Christ; Christ in us. Let Christ then be in us. Let us open our hearts to him.
Let us welcome, receive, embrace him; and the Father in him. Then we are in the
Son as the Son is in the Father. "We are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus
Christ our Lord."
Let me make a twofold practical appeal, in two
opposite directions. I. If you will not know the True One now, by the
understanding which the Son of God is come to give; know him so as to be in
him, in his Son Jesus Christ; the day is coming when you must be compelled, by
another sort of awakening, to know the True One; and to know him terribly as a
reality, as a real God dealing with a real sinner about real sin! Here, for a
little longer, God may be to you as if he were not. You may live on as you
would live if he were not; almost as if, like the fool, you said in your heart,
There is no God. You may live as you would live if you believed God to be no
real being at all, but a mere creature of the imagination; like a character in
fiction; an airy nothing. Have you no apprehension that it may be far otherwise
soon? It will not always be possible for you thus to ignore God. For he
exists.
Yes! He does indeed exist. You may find that out to your cost
sooner than you think; too soon for you. It is a great fact, however little you
may make of it, or it may make of you. Were it not better for you to know it
now; to take account of it now; to accommodate yourselves to it now? "It is
hard for you to kick against the pricks." The Son of God is come to make God
known to you now, in all his glorious reality, as "light" and "love." He gives
you understanding now that you may thus "know God." Better surely that, than to
go on darkly, as in a dream, until there comes a shock. And lo! there is God!
No shadow, but too truly real! And there is the Son of God; real also; too
truly real! "Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him; and all
kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." Yes! God, and the Son of God,
are realities then, when men "hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of
the mountains, and say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from
the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For
the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev. 6:
15-17.)
2. Let me remind you who
believe of the main end for which John would have you to "know the True One,
and be in him, in his Son Jesus Christ." It is that "you may not sin ;" that
you may "keep yourselves so that the wicked one, in whom the whole world lieth,
may not touch you." Mark the contrast here. The world lieth wholly in the
wicked one; you are in the True One; in God truly known, in his Son Jesus
Christ. Let that contrast be ever vividly realised by you. It is your great and
only security. Look well to it that your being in the True One, in his Son
Jesus Christ, is a reality. Let it be a true experience. Be evermore "dwelling
in the secret place of the Most High, and abiding under the shadow of the
Almighty." "Let him cover thee with his feathers, for under his wings you may
trust." Is it not his Son Jesus Christ who thus addresses you - " Because thou
hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High thy habitation,
there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
dwelling"?
XLVI. JESUS THE TRUE GOD AND ETERNAL
LIFE AGAINST ALL IDOLS.
"This is the true God and the eternal
life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols." 1 John 5: 20,
21.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the person here meant. Such seems to be the
fair inference from the use of the pronoun "this;" which naturally and usually
indicates the nearest person spoken of in the context; and therefore, in this
instance, not "him that is true" but "his Son Jesus Christ."
That
inference indeed is so clear, in a merely grammatical and exegetical point of
view, that there would not probably have been any doubt about it, were it not
for its implying an assertion of our Lord's supreme divinity; an assertion
which no sophistry or special pleading can evade or explain away. It is true
that some who strongly hold that doctrine have professed, on critical
considerations, to take the same view which the deniers of it take. But there
is room for suspecting that they have been half unconsciously influenced by a
sort of chivalrous desire to concede debatable ground, rather than by a strict
regard to the real merits of the question. It is a forced construction only
that can get us past "his Son Jesus Christ" so as to send us back to him whose
Son he is. Certainly the simple and natural reading of the words is, that "he
who is come and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is
true," he in whom "we are in him that is true, his Son Jesus Christ" is "the
true God, and eternal life."
He is "the true God" and as such he is
"eternal life" or rather the eternal life. It is our realisation of him in that
character, as" the true God and the eternal life" which constitutes our best
and only security against idolatry, the idolatry which John exhorts us in his
closing admonition to shun - "Little children, keep yourselves from
idols."
"This is the true God and the eternal life." First, he is the
true God. That may be said of each of the three persons in the Godhead
separately, as well as of the "three in one" unitedly, "the Triune." The entire
Godhead, in all its reality and fullness, is in each one of the persons; each
therefore is in himself really and verily "the true God." The mystery of the
Holy Trinity involves this seeming paradox. But there is a peculiar
significance in the Son's being thus designated here. He is "the Son of God"
who "is come ;" come in the flesh by water and blood; attested by the Spirit as
come by water and blood; giving us an understanding that we may know the True
One, and in him and with him may be in the True One. In that character and
capacity, and with a view to these functions, he is declared to be "the true
God." Again, secondly, in the same character and capacity, and with a view to
the same functions, he is declared to be "eternal life" or "the eternal
life."
Eternal life! How much is there in this little phrase! It
suggests the ever awful idea of endless duration; existence, if not from
everlasting, yet to everlasting; conscious existence running on for ever. But
that is the least part of its meaning. The manner, rather than the term or
duration, of the life is indicated; not so much the continuance of the life, as
its kind, its character, its nature. It is life independent of time and its
changes ; of earth and its history; of the created universe itself. It is the
life that God lives as the True One; in himself, from himself, for or to
himself. His Son Jesus Christ is "this eternal life." As being "the true God"
he is so. As the true God he is the eternally living one; in such sense the
eternally living one that all who are m him are eternally living ones as he is
himself. If I am one with him, then as he is "the eternal life" so also am I in
him. My own life is not eternal In a sense, indeed it is so as regards its
duration, for it is to have no end. But it is not, as to its character, eternal
life. On the contrary, it is eternal death. The life which I have naturally is
the life of a doomed criminal, sentenced to perpetual servitude; bound over to
penal suffering for the entire period of his existence. Such is the eternal
death, of which the eternal life is the opposite. For that is the life which he
who dooms the criminal to perpetual servitude has himself; the very life of him
who binds the criminal over to penal suffering for ever. It must be, therefore,
as being "the true God" that Jesus Christ is "the eternal life." He is so, and
can only be so, as being one with that righteous Father whose judicial
condemnation of us is our eternal death.
But if so, must not his being
"the eternal life" be eternal death to us? Not so. For if, on the one hand, he
is one with "him that is true" being his Son, and therefore, like his Father,
"the eternal life" - he is one, on the other hand, with us, as his Son Jesus
Christ. He becomes, with us and for us, "the eternal death" which is our
portion and characteristic; which indeed we are, for it is our very nature. As
he shares always his father's eternal life, so he shares once for all our
eternal death; takes it as his; makes it his own. Yes; he dies our eternal
death, that we may live his eternal life. Not otherwise, even as "the true God"
could he be, in any sense that could be available for us, "the eternal life;"
not otherwise than by being "made sin" and "made a curse "for us; which means
his taking upon himself as his our "eternal death."
And let it be well
noted that not even his being thus made sin and made a curse for us; not even
his becoming our partner and our substitute, in our eternal death; could have
been of any benefit to us, or of any use, but for his being, in that very act
and experience, "the true God" and as such "the eternal life." It is his being
"the true God" that alone can make that eternal death terminable in his case,
which it cannot be in ours. His becoming our eternal death for us must involve
him in its terrible endlessness, but for his being still in himself "the true
God" and as such "the eternal life." We cannot die the eternal death and yet
live; but he can; because he is "the true God and the eternal life." Therefore
he says, "I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive for
evermore;" and again he says, "Because I live ye shall live also."
I
have died your eternal death that I may share with you my eternal life.! can
share with you this eternal life of mine, for it is as the true God that I have
it ; - " I am the true God and the eternal life." It is as the true God that I
am the eternal life; as the true God; truly and verily the Son of "him that is
true." For "this eternal life" is to know him and to be in him. I am the
eternal life because I know him and am in him; being, as I am, myself "the true
God." Were I not so, were I anything less than that; I might tell you about the
eternal life; I might unfold it to you; I might show you the way to it. But I
could not myself be that eternal life to you. I could not say to you, that
having me you have the eternal life. But I do say that. I give you the
assurance that having me you have the eternal life; that being in me you
are in the eternal life. All that you can imagine of peace, rest, joy; pure and
holy love; perfect, endless, uninterrupted blessedness and glory ; - and
whatever else you may connect with that most pregnant phrase "the eternal life
; " - you have it all when you have me; you are in it all when you are in me.
For all that I am to the Father you are to the Father; all that I have from the
Father you have from the Father; all that the Father is to me the Father is to
you. Thus I am, for you and to you, "the true God and the eternal life." This
statement about Christ, - his being "the true God and the eternal life" - has a
very intimate connection with what is said of him as being come to give us
knowledge of his Father, as the True One, and to secure our being in his
Father, as the True One, in virtue of our being in him (ver. 20). And viewed in
that light, it explains the earnest, emphatic, and affectionate appeal with
which John closes his epistle - "Little children, keep yourselves from idols"
(Ver 21).
I. He "is come, and hath
given us an understanding that we may know him that is true;" and, so coming,
he is "the true God and the eternal life." In him the true God becomes really
true to us. In his person God stands forth before our eyes as a reality,
and is felt in our inmost hearts to be a reality. This is what we need
and often crave for; that the true and living God should be to us, not a
notion, but a reality. He is so to us, and is so known by us, in the person of
his Son Jesus Christ, because his Son Jesus Christ is "the true God and eternal
life." We need not seek elsewhere for what we want. We may "keep ourselves from
idols." For what is the use of an idol? What is the design and aim of those who
frame or fancy visible images of the invisible God, grotesque figures, in wood,
or stone, or metal;the heavenly orbs; deified heroes; personified divine
attributes and influences? Is it not to bring God more within the range of
their actual and sensible apprehension than otherwise he would be, and so to
have him before them as a true and palpable reality?
The idols are real,
and, in a sense, even living. The hideous, misshapen block before which yonder
dark Hindoo bows and worships has for him a certain real life, akin to his own.
The beasts so sacred in old Egypt's eyes were real and living emblems of divine
powers and qualities of some sort. The suns and stars on which rapt Chaldaean
gazed had a real and living significance, as representative of deity. The men
and women whom a more earthly superstition turned into gods and goddesses were
real and living flesh and blood while on earth, and continued to be to their
votaries much the same when they were gone. Even the strange, dreamy,
mysterious spiritualities, with which the early heretics and Gnostic corrupters
of Christianity peopled the divine fullness; the divine essences and emanations
which they named as in some sense persons; had for their imaginative minds a
living reality that they could grasp and feel. These last were the idols of
John's day, within the church; from which, even more than from grosset idols
outside, it concerned him to warn "his little children to keep themselves."
They were the forerunners, as his prophetic eye partly saw, of idols still more
seductive, with which Christendom was to be ere long tried; canonised martyrs
and saints, with their images and pictures and relics; and high over all, alone
in her glory, the blessed Virgin.
Now all these idolatries, however
widely differing in their nature, and in their effects upon their devotees,
have this principle in common, that they are all attempts to give actual form
and substance, true and living embodiment and realisation, as it were, to men's
conceptions of deity; those conceptions which otherwise are apt to be so
indistinct, indefinite, misty, shadowy, as to be for the most part practically
all but uninfluential. They bring what is divine within the range and grasp of
humanity. The abstract becomes personal; the ideal becomes real. The infinite
takes the clear and sharp outline of a form or a face that can be pictured to
the mind's eye at least, if not to that of the body. And what is apt to be
little more than a great blank vacancy, becomes instinct with living
personality. Hence, even for refined natures, the more refined kinds of
idol-worship have a strong fascination; witness the hold which Mariolatry has
over intellects the highest and hearts the tenderest and purest.
It is
indeed the crown and masterpiece of idolatry, this worship of the Virgin.
Fairer, holier, more lovely and lovable idol was never formed or fancied. Never
idol like her, the ideal mother of our Lord.
I say the ideal mother of
our Lord. For it is an idealised Mary that is idolised. And yet we see and can
understand how intensely real, even as thus idealised, she is and must be to
her believing worshippers. In her they feel that they have a real mother, a
real sister, a true and very woman; with all of woman's warm love and none of
woman's weakness. And she has to them divinity about her, being, as they put
it, "the mother of God." That Mary, thus ideal and yet real, should be adored
and loved, chivalrously and yet devoutly, with human passion rising into divine
enthusiasm, is so far from seeming to me strange, that I doubt if any of us
have not sometimes had some secret sympathy, if not with the superstitious
homage, at least with the frame of mind that prompts it. I take this highest
instance of the charm that there is in idolatry, because it comes nearest to
what John puts as a safeguard against it. The virgin-mother of our Lord is
alone in the created universe of God. No other being ever has occupied, or ever
can occupy, the same position with her. She stands in a relation to deity
altogether peculiar; absolutely singular. It is a natural thought that she may
be invoked as well as her Son; nay, that she may be inyoked instead of her Son;
as, in fact, a most persuasive pleader with her Son. And she grows to be so
very true and real, as a genuine woman, kind and pitying and relenting; while
her divine Son, as well as his heavenly Father, fades away in the dim distance
of a sort of undefined and misty majesty; that knowing her, as it seems, so
thoroughly and personally, one is fain to rest in her, and leave all to her,
and be satisfied with her as virtually all in all. And it must be so, if we
take her as our mediator. For she is not "the true God and eternal life." She
is, when thus viewed, simply an idol. Now no idol brings us into communication
with God as true and real. We accept the idol as real; but God, whose image he
may profess to be, between whom and us he ought to mediate, is as unreal as
ever, or more so. The virginmother I know; in her I can lie. But as for the Son
and the Father, I look to her to deal with them for me. To me they are but
names.
Nothing like that can happen when he through whom I am to know
God truly, is himself, as his Son Jesus Christ, "the true God and the eternal
life." He is as human as is his virginmother. He is, as much as she is, a real
and living human person; as truly set before me as such. Nay, I have him, as a
real and living person, more clearly and fully, with more of personal
individuality, in my mind's eye, than ever I can have her.
The notices
of Mary are few and far between; vague also and indefinite. We have nothing
beyond the merest generalities to give us a notion of what sort of woman she
was. But her divine Son, the Son of the Highest, the Son of the True One, his
Son Jesus Christ, is as a living man amongst us, a real person. He is more
truly, vividly, intensely real to us than even his mother Mary. And if more so
than she, then more by far than any saints or martyrs that ever were canonised
; any heroes that ever were deified; any representatives of deity, dead or
alive, that ever were worshipped; any effluxes or emanations of deity that the
highest imagination ever invested with the property of personality. Yes; here
is Jesus Christ the Son of God, truly, vividly, intensely real; a real and
living person; going in and out among us; one of whom we can really form a
truer, fuller, more intimate conception, than we can form of our dearest and
most familiar associate and intimate ; whose hand we clasp in ours more really,
because more inwardly, than we can clasp the hand of any friend; with whom we
can talk more confidentially than we can with any brother. Here he is. And it
is through and in him that I am to "know God as the True One." He is to
represent God to me; it is with him that I have directly and immediately to do;
in him I am to know "the True One."
But does not this arrangement really
put aside "the True One" and substitute in his stead "his Son Jesus Christ"?
Doubtless he is the best possible or conceivable substitute. But still, is it
not a substitution? Does it not tend in the direction of making Jesus Christ,
the Son of "the True One" the real and living "True One" to me; while God, his
Father, the absolute and ultimate "True One" becomes to me a dim and far-off
vision? Is there no danger of idolatry here? Am I not on the point of falling
into that sin, by setting him up instead of God? And is not that equivalent to
making him an idol.
It has been so often; and it would be so always;
were it not for the great and blessed fact that he is "the true God and the
eternal life." But I cannot make an idol of him if I believe that. I cannot
worship him in an idolatrous manner, or after an idolatrous fashion, if I
really own him as being "the true God and the eternal life" and in that view
take in the full meaning of his own words: "Whosoever hath seen me hath seen
the Father."
Is it not a blessed thing to know that there can be no
idolatry in your closest fellowship with Jesus, if only you bear in mind that
he is "the true God and the eternal life?" Your warmest love to him, your most
familiar intercourse with him, your most affectionate clinging to him, your
most tender and trusting embrace of him, never can be idolatry for he is "the
true God and the eternal life." You need have no fear of your making too much
of him, or making an idol of him; as you must have in the case of any other
being, real or imaginary, whom you let ia between God and you; for "he is the
true God and the eternal life." You may admire others to excess, but you never
can admire him to excess; for "he is the true God and the eternal life." You
may be too devoted to others, but you can never be too devoted to him; for "he
is the true God and the eternal life."
What ease and freedom may this
thought impart to all your dealings with him, as come especially to "give you
an understanding that you may know the True One ;" that you may know him as
true and real.
The most perfect of God's creatures, the highest angel,
if he had come on such an errand, must have bid you look away from him. You may
listen to my voice, he might say; you may hear what I have to tell you about
God. I will do my best to set him before you as a reality, in as lifelike a
representation as I can give. But beware of fixing your eyes too much, or
indeed at all, on me. You may imagine that I am so like him, as living so near
him and seeing so much of him, that when you have formed a clear notion of me
you really know him. But it is not so ; it is far otherwise. Your very
knowledge of me may mislead you as to him; tempting you to form inadequate, if
not erroneous, conceptions of him; to enshrine him in my frame and clothe him
in my vesture; the frame and vesture of a mere creature at the best. But no
such caution is needed on the part of Jesus ; for he is the true God and the
eternal life. Therefore let not Jesus, the Son of God, be a name or a notion to
you; if he is so, much more will God his Father be so. Let him be a true,
present, living reality. Be sitting at his feet as really as did Mary of
Bethany. Be welcoming him to your house and table as really as did Zaccheus. Be
leaning on his bosom as really as did John. Be grasping his hand, when you are
sinking in the stormy sea, as really as did Peter when he cried, Lord, save me,
I perish. You may do so with all safety, and with no risk of idolatry; for he
is "the true God and the eternal life."
But not only are we "in his Son
Jesus Christ so as to know him that is true" we are to be "in him so as to be
in him that is true." In that view also it is all-important thoroughly to
apprehend and feel that "he is the true God and the eternal life." For were he
not so, we could not really be in the True One by being in him. Nay, our being
in him, so far from a help, might be a hindrance. We might be in the True One
through him, but scarcely in him, unless he were himself "the true God and the
eternal life."
This word "in" be it observed, though small in size, is
very great in significance. It denotes a very close, real, and personal
connection; and indeed almost, as it were, au identification; so much so that
it may be said to be as impossible for me $o be in the True One, and at the
same time to be in any one else who is not "the true God and the eternal life"
as it is for me to serve two masters, to serve God and Mammon. For what is this
"inness" if I may so say, when it is spoken of a real and living person to whom
I may sustain real and personal relations? Surely at the very least it implies
that I give myself up entirely to him, and become wholly his. I consent to his
taking me to be one with himself. It is a real unity, corresponding in its
nature and character to the nature and character of him in whom I am; but still
real; and intimate as real; so intimate as to be engrossing, absorbing,
exclusive. He in whom I am is to me all in all. In a sense, I lose myself in
him. I have no separate standing from him.! see, as it were, through his eyes;
I judge with his understanding; I make his will my will; I make himself my
supreme good, and my chiefest joy. Now if, in any such sense, I am in one who
is not "the true God and the eternal life ;" can that be compatible with my
being also "in him that is true"
It is not needful here to suppose that
it is ah enemy of God in whom I thus am, and with whom I am thus identified.
The case is better put when he is supposed to be a friend of God. For then I
look to him to deal with God for me. I am in him as being his; so thoroughly
his, that I have nothing of my own; I myself am not my own. He has made me part
and parcel of his own very self. It belongs to him to make terms with God for
himself; and for me as being in him. He has to do with God; not I. So it must
be with me, if he in whom I am is not "the true God and the eternal life;" if
he and the True One are separate and distinct; if he and the Father are not
one. The higher he is, the nearer he is to God, the more does my "being in him"
supersede and supplant my "being in God."
But Jesus Christ is "the true
God and the eternal life." I may be "in him" as much as ever I choose, as much
as ever I can; his own good Spirit helping me; the more the better. For "in him
I am in the True One." In the Son I am in the Father, even as he is in the
Father. And all this is so, because "he is the True God and the eternal
life."
It could not otherwise be so. I could not be in him as I long to
be in him, without being not in, but out of, the True One, were he not himself
"the true God and the eternal life." For how do I long to be in him, if I am at
all awakened to a sense of what I am in myself? How do I long to be in Christ.?
How thoroughly would I be hidden, and, as it were, swallowed up in him! A poor,
naked, shelterless, child of sin and wrath, shrinking from the presence of "him
that is true" shrinking from the glance of his true eye and the searching
scrutiny of his true judgment, - ah! how fain would I be lost and merged
altogether in that holy, righteous, loving Saviour, who has come to answer for
me; to take my place; to fulfil my righteousness; to bear my guilt; to die for
me, and yet live, so that I may live in him. Oh! to be in him; shut up into
him; lost and merged altogether, I repeat, in him; and because lost and merged
in him, therefore also safe in him.
Safe? From whom? From the True One?.
Am I to be in his Son Jesus Christ so as to be away from himself? No. For he in
whom I am is "the true God and the eternal life." Therefore, being in him, I am
in the True One, "in him that is true." I would be in Christ incarnate. I would
be in Christ crucified. I must be in Christ both incarnate and crucified. I
must be in him as he becomes bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I must be
in him as dying, yet not "given over to death" but rising again; the living
one; who, having once died, dieth no more; who living, though he was dead,
liveth for ever. I would be, I must be, thus in Christ. Is it as against God?.
Is it as if I were to be out of and away from God the True One? No!
Emphatically no! For he in whom I am is himself "the true God and the eternal
life."
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." And let this be
the test or criterion of what an idol is. Whatever worship or fellowship or
companionship, whatever System or society, whatever work or way, whatever habit
or pursuit or occupation, is of such a sort in itself, or has such influence
over you, that you cannot be in it and at the same time be in God, or that you
may be in it and yet not be in God, as little children in a loving Father; that
to you is idolatry, be the object of your regard what it may. From all such
idols keep yourselves. And that you may keep yourselves from them ail, abide
evermore in the Son of God, your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To be in him is
your only security, to be always "found in him." For to be in him is to be in
the Father, even as he is in the Father. And there can be no idolatry in that.
AMEN.
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