The last chapter speaks of another thing. Here I must be brief indeed. It is connected with the charge at the end of 1 John 4 to love one’s brother. The apostle had shown the various displays of divine love, with the falsehood of professing to love God while one hated a brother. But this might elicit the question, who my brother is. We need simplicity, as with our God, so with His children. It is in vain to pretend that this is hard to find out. The Spirit of God does lay down unsparingly and in all their fullness the tests of divine life; but now let the question be raised, who my brother is, and the answer is as plain as possible: “Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”
Is it not sweet that after all the fullness of truth had been revealed, after all the display of Christ in glory had been made by the Apostle Paul, after the apostle John had set us in presence of the divine nature and eternal life in His person, we have here such a proof of the unchangeable testimony to the Lord Jesus as Christ? What was the truth that Peter and the rest preached at Pentecost? That Jesus is the Christ. What is the truth with which the epistle of John concludes? That Jesus is the Christ. There is no wavering in what is divine.
No doubt there is the unfolding of truth admirably suited to all the varying needs of the church; but when you come to the question after all—who and what is God’s child and my brother?—this is what he is: the man that believes that Jesus is the Christ. I grant you it is the very lowest confession that the Holy Spirit could accept; and it would be a very poor thing if the Christian only believed that Jesus was the Christ. If made exclusive, what an unworthy dealing with all the glory of Jesus! But it is to me a blessed thing that the Holy Spirit maintains to the end the value of what He began with; not that more was not made known, but that this abides in freshness and power. No doubt such a confession might be most unintelligent, but at least there is this divine reality in his soul—he does believe that Jesus is the Christ. That this should be said at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles we can all understand; but it seems to me that none but God would have thought of insisting on it at the end of the Christian testimony; as if, among the last words that the Holy Spirit uttered, He should say—I have been leading you into all depths and all heights; I have laid open in fresh scriptures the full circle of revealed truth, but I stand to what I began with. Learn the truth, have it developed in your souls, not by the truth developing, but by your growing up into it; but never give up first principles. “Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.” It is not now loving God only, but His children; and thus your love is proved to be divine, and that you really love God Himself. But there is another query often put: How am I to know that I do love the children of God? Be sure you are in the right path. Here it is—“By this we know that we love the children of God.” It is not by gratifying them, or going where they go perhaps, or forcing them where you go. You might be totally mistaken; you might hurry souls, or be drawn away by them yourself. There is no love in either one or other, but there is in this—“when we love God and keep His commandments.” If my soul goes out to Him in love, and I show it by unreserved fidelity to His will, there is nothing that is more truly an exercise of love to His children. You may seem to the careless not thinking of them, but you are then loving them best. When you make an object of the children of God, there is no real love. When you are really devoted to God and to His will, you truly love the children of God.
“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and His commandments are not grievous.” The law was a yoke so grievous that neither their fathers nor they were able to bear; but it is not so with the truth of God. The law of God was for the punishing as well as testing of the old man; the word of God is the food and directory of the new man. But is not the world a great hindrance? No doubt; but there is a something that overcomes the world; and what is this? Faith. But mark, he does not say that “every one who believeth that Jesus is the Christ” overcomes the world. Perhaps you may see some whom you cannot doubt are the real children of God, but they do not overcome the world. What then will enable them to overcome the world? Believing that Jesus is the Son of God. “The Christ,” I might perhaps say, connects Him with the world, with the Jews and the nations He is to govern; “the Son of God” connects Him with the Father above the world. Such is the difference. Thus, while holding fast and giving all its value to the confession that Jesus is the Christ of God, I am not to be tied to it. We need a growing sense of what Christ is, and of His glory, in order to resist the downward tendency and the ensnaring power of the world around; and true power over the world is by advancing in the knowledge of Christ. There is no other thing that will wear so well. “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”
“This is He that came by (διὰ) water and blood.” John keeps us fully in the consciousness of our deliverance, but also of our responsibility (that is, as God’s children). “This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by (ἐν) water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” This, and no more here, is genuine scripture. A good deal of the two verses is and ought to be left out, if all legitimate authority is heeded by us.
The historical fact, which becomes the basis of the teaching, is that recorded in the Gospel, John 19:3434But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. (John 19:34), to which special attention is drawn in the following verse, as recorded by John who saw it; “and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” Here, instead of putting that inspired witness forward, the Spirit takes this place, the greatest of all present witnesses for Christ. The idea of baptism here is as childish for “the water” as the Lord’s Supper is confessed to be for “the blood.” Purification, propitiation, and power answer to the three, all flowing to us in or consequent on the death of Christ, the Son of God.
“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which He hath witnessed concerning His Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not hath made Him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness which God hath witnessed concerning His Son,” and so forth. That is, God bears His testimony in this wondrous triad—the Spirit, the water, and the blood,—three witnesses, yet only one testimony: namely, that there is no life in the first man at all, and that all the blessing is in the Second; that He it is who by His death expiates my sins and purges me, and that the Holy Spirit gives me the joy of both by faith. The Holy Spirit is come not to bear witness to the first man—He has only to convict him of sin—but He testifies to the glory of the Second man, the riches of God’s grace in Him, and the efficacy of His work in death for the believer. The church was becoming a ruin; but the believer has the witness in himself. Eternal life is superior to all change; and that he has—even Christ—an object of outward testimony, but also by grace in himself.
This is farther pursued, showing that it is in the Son of God. “He that hath the Son hath life”; and if a man has not the Son of God, it does not matter what else he may have, he has not life. It is in the Son, and only in Him.
Then comes the conclusion. “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 there he stops. What is added as the last clause of verse 13 only spoils the verse. It was put in by man. “And this is the confidence,”—it is not a question of life only, but of confidence. “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.” Thus after life conies confidence, and then the formal close of all follows, as we see in verses 18-21. “And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” But is there not such a thing as sin? Yes. “If any one 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: concerning that I do not say that he should make request. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.”
Let me make a brief remark on this. The “sin unto death” has nothing to do with eternal death, but with the close of this life. It means not some extraordinarily grievous act, but any sin whatever under special circumstances. For instance, when Ananias and Sapphira lied in presence of the grace that the Holy Spirit was then bestowing on the church, this was “sin unto death.” Many a man since then has told a lie which has not been so judged: it was not therefore a “sin unto death.” The circumstances of the case have an important influence in modifying it and giving it character. So with any other sin. I mention this because it is there precisely where spiritual power is necessary very often; and all children of God might not see the bearing of a sin and its peculiar heinousness under a given state of things; but when once it is shown, they can understand it perfectly, because they have the life of Christ in them, and the Holy Spirit too. “All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not unto death.” We must not think that all sin is unto death; but any sin under peculiar circumstances might be.
And then the last verses sum up the whole matter. “We know that every one that is born of God sinneth not.” We saw that to be born of God, to have life, is the great doctrine of the epistle. Here is its character. Such an one does not sin, “but he that has been born of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth him not.” Here we have not merely its character, but its source. The character was Christ; the source is God. “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” This is the other sphere. “And we know that the Son of God hath come.” Now we have the object given. “The Son of God hath come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols”—objects apt to rise with blinding power between their eyes and Christ.