No part of God’s Word is more precious to the believer than the first Epistle of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It would be difficult to say whether one is more struck by its sweetness or its solemnity, by its simplicity or its depth. It is indeed quite inexhaustible in its fullness, and each time we read it we are impressed by a divine freshness, and some new applicability undiscerned before.
And one can discover, I think, a wonderful fitness in the apostle to write the closing words of revelation, by reason of his age and his character. Of course God knew how to select the proper instrument for each book of the Bible, and to adapt the shape of the vessel, so to speak, to the particular water of life that was to flow through his lips. And in the writings of St. John, “son of thunder” though he was, and though none of the New Testament writers could be more unsparing, we find accordingly a calm and mellow maturity in keeping with the spirit of one who had leaned on Jesus’ bosom, who for many years apparently had written nothing but pondered deeply, and who at length was inspired by the Holy Ghost to write three Epistles as well as the Gospel and Apocalypse that bear his name.
Had he not had a long preparation, when at length he began his Gospel with that lofty peal of spiritual thunder (John 1:11In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)) as Augustine of Hippo so strikingly called it? I grant that we must be careful not to attribute aught of the divineness of scripture to man, however blest and favored. All is of God, without Whom even St. John could do nothing. Yet no doubt that long period of silent preparation was not without its purpose and its result.
In the case of St. Paul how different it was. At once God set him to his appointed work of oral ministry and with no great delay to write also—witness the 1St and 2nd Epistles to the Thessalonians.
Equally blessed for both apostles to be thus chosen by the Master for their allotted service; though one was called to fervent, energetic, and at times even agitated labor; while the other was interested with the calm unfolding of the doctrine of the eternal life and all its blessed consequences. And the manner of his writing is singularly different from the closely reasoned argument of Paul, although there are in John divine links between utterances that at first sight seem diverse, if not inconsequent. No doubt it often calls for much spiritual intelligence to discover the links and to grasp the “characteristic gliding” (as the Editor of the Bible Treasury has termed it) from one aspect of the truth to another.
To apprehend all this is of the highest importance. But my task is easier and is concerned simply with the text that heads these few remarks.
“Love is of God.” We needed God to tell us this, though the truth when known proclaims itself divine, and we can appreciate its exclusive claims. We are concerned with no counterfeit, but with that blessed principle, of which pure human love is but a faint adumbration. And how infinitely love surpasses intellect, even as intellect surpasses matter, was admirably expressed by that Marvelous genius and true saint, Blaise Pascal, who has been called the greatest of Frenchmen.
“Love” then is “of God,” for “God is love.” He is equally light, and it is fatal to forget this. But God is love—this is the point of the present paper.
Never can we dwell too much on this great fact. Nay, not if we thought of nothing else for a whole week. And this divine love is the highest thing, though never to be divorced from light. Love and light indeed are the only principles (the word is inadequate) which God is declared to be. He is never called righteousness or truth even (Christ is the truth, and the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of truth). Though our Lord by His “holy Incarnation” made truth and righteousness “liable to love,” this was indeed the strongest proof of love, on God’s part that “the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” Are we not in some danger of forgetting this aspect of the faith? Impossible to make enough of the blessed Saviour, Who was and is God. But “the Father Himself loveth you” said our Lord, and we should be studious to enter into all truth. It is so easy to be one-sided; we are so by the make of our being.
Thus the apostle exhorts believers to love one another for the all-sufficient reason that “love is of God.” No danger that love will make us weak-kneed, or loose, or careless as to ourselves or as to others. The very reverse is the case. For who was so loving as the Saviour, yet who so uncompromising in His insistence on a holy walk? In truth these divine virtues go together, and he who is most jealous for God’s honor and glory will have most love both for the converted and for the unconverted. It is otherwise where self appears, for there are envy and strife and every evil work.
But I do not pursue the subject further, having wished simply to call attention to one out of a long series of blessed sayings in this sublime Epistle, where all is as searching as it is precious and divine. At one time we need correction, and its grave words of warning arrest us; at another comfort which. God graciously gives us through the written word, of which the sweetness is as pronounced as the solemnity. R. B.