JESUS THE TRUE GOD
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 v. 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 fulness, 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 in 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. I 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).
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 Chaldean gazed had a real and living significancy, 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 fuhiess; 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 grosser 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 overall, 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 livuig 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 invoked 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 virgin-mother 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 virgin-mother. 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 stifi, 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 in 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."

II. 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 significancy. It denotes a very close, real, and personal connection; and indeed almost, as it were, an identification ; - so much so that it may be said to be as impossible for me to 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. I 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 an 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 1 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 or 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 all, 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.
THE END.

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