Was not Adam a son of God? Yes, he is so called. He lost this; are we to receive it? Yes, with advantage! Creation sonship, or the sonship of adoption—which is best? If my bad nature be not cured by the Gospel, I have got a new nature. It is the eater bringing forth meat! And as to the lost sonship, I would not take it back now. I have got something better, a richer enjoyment, and a more prized sonship. It is wonderful to see the recovery rising above the mischief! Why? “It doth not yet appear what we shall be;” the tale is not—could not be half told! You shall soon be glorified by the Holy Ghost. The world knows us not, why not? Why did Cain hate Abel? God loved him, and Cain could not stand that. Now, John says, “The world hated you.” It is not that your manners are peculiar, though they well might, but what the world cannot understand is acceptance! the saint’s confidence as a child, as an heir; this is what irritates the world. You are the sons of God, the world does not know it. You ought to let it be known, it would stir up much enmity. Let the heart be occupied with its high prerogative; let the lips utter it, and Cain will be provoked. Your habits ought to be peculiar. A living soul, invested with its high prerogative, satisfied that God has done all a child can wish, and the world knows him not!
Verse 3. —The “Him” of this verse means Jesus. “And every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” Nothing can be simpler. If you were expecting a friend, you would be busy getting the house ready to receive him. Both house and household must be made ready. This is common in human life, that your conditions should be answerable to your expectations. Can anything be simpler? I ask, then, both of you and of myself, Have we our house in order, in position to meet Jesus? And by this I mean, Have we our heart and affections waiting on Him? This third verse is just getting the heart into conditions answerable to its expectations. Does ambition? Does the love of gain? Does the gratification of lusts and vanities? Are these things answerable to the hope of Christ’s appearing? Would you not be ashamed to have your house dirty if your friend arrived? Jesus Christ only asks us to do for Him what we always do for our equals. Oh, the intimacy of Christianity, it is not dogmatism! If you regard Christianity as dogmatism (let me say it), you have mistaken the genus of it! Jesus comes and puts Himself before you, and merely requires of you that you treat Him as you treat one another.
Verse 4. —The Apostle now speaks of the two fountains, which are the spring of all moral being. At first there was but one fountain, and that the lie of the serpent defiled; it became the one common parent (morally) of the whole human family. All are children of wrath, lying in the wicked one. How the Son of God has come to take the spoils from the wicked one, and from the one or the other source every moral existence is derived. “Sin is lawlessness.” “In him is no sin.” You may say, “I know that without John telling it me.” True; but there is deep meaning in John’s giving this truth in this connection. It means, that if you draw your life from Jesus, you draw from an undefilable source, a life which is undefilable! If you draw your life from Satan, you draw that which is all unclean. If you are the creature of the lie, morally born of the liar, you have a life that cannot be improved, it is utterly corrupt. If you are born of the truth, you have a life that cannot be defiled. These are the two fountains of moral being, and they never co-mingle! “Can a fountain yield both sweet water and bitter?” No; the one is undefilable, the other cannot be cleansed. You all know that no river ever can ascend higher than its source. So the creature of lies is under pollution, but he that is born of the Spirit cannot be defiled. And now, may we not truly say, that by the loss of innocence we are gainers. Christ is more than the “Repairer of the Breach!” We can stand before Satan and say, “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came sweetness.” Ah it is a divine parable, and how beautifully this is exhibited here. If you have lost the life that was forfeitable, you have received the life that is eternal. You have lost a defilable nature, but you have got an undefilable nature. Would you go back to Adam’s state? Would you wish for a life that, when tested, was lost? You have a better life, you have regained God in a wonderful way, you have regained sonship in a wonderfully better way. Again, I say, it is not here judicial restoration; if you want the putting away of sins, Paul treats of it in Romans and Hebrews.
John makes it his business to show moral restoration, and that all that had been lost is regained with advantage. Everything is of a higher order than anything Adam enjoyed. Oh, beloved, there is a glory in Christianity that we have but slightly observed! Do we want anything besides this book? Do we want to be told that the sun is shining? No. And if the glories of this book do but dislodge themselves, we need no more ask for witness of its divine origin than for witness that the sun shines.
Verse 7.-We now have this new life in expression. If Christ is the head of our new life, it is and must be undefilable as far as it is active. It is impossible for it to sin. You can no more taint the new life than you can mend the old. But do you expect to mend the old life? and do you expect to taint the new? Let go such expectations; there is a middle wall of partition between these two lives, and they never can co-mingle. You may say, “What am I to do with my complex person?” You have both natures in you—one is the fallen creature, the other, the divine nature. A person once said, “As the apostle has said, I pray God to sanctify you, spirit, soul, and body.” Then I must be a perfectible ore dune, for what more is there in me than spirit, soul, and body? Yes; bat there is more in you. There was a time when man was only that, but now you have the “flesh” besides. Is the flesh perfectible? It is quite right to pray that “spirit, soul, and body” may be kept for Christ; but that villain flesh, what can you do but keep it down, mortify, reduce, and humble it? Ah! we want to have Scripture thoughts on these things; we want to get out of our own thoughts. We have no greater enemy than fleshy religiousness—the flesh shall perish. Tell me; what is it that is to be glorified? Isaiah in the flesh and the spirit? No. It is the new man in Christ. The complex person, is it to be glorified? No; the flesh shall perish, but the new man shall be clothed in glory. The new nature cannot sin, because it is born of God. If you say the new nature can sin, you say Christ can sin! What a horrible thought! Another has explained the seed of God to be the truth in the energy of the Holy Ghost. When the truth is inlaid in the soul by the energy of the Holy Ghost, it then becomes what is here called the seed of God. Of course it is easy to talk intellectually of truth and of God. but the less traffic about these things the better, if the intellect only be at work. But the more of the unctuous power of truth, the better for us.
Verse 10. —The living man is to manifest his life. How? Exactly in the opposite way to that in which Adam went. Adam was disobedient; you are to be obedient. Exactly opposite to the way of Cain. Cain hated his brother; you are to love your brother. It is to be righteousness and love in opposition to disobedience and hatred. These are manifestations of nature. The nature is first shown, and then the expression of it. The old nature expresses itself by sin and hatred, the new by righteousness and love. Is it difficult? Yet it is unfolded by patient thought.
We are here in company with the eleventh of Leviticus. Tins Epistle of John is the New Testament eleventh of Leviticus, and in this way the eleventh of Leviticus gives the marks of the clean animal—one, the inner energy, the other the outer walk. And here it is exactly so; the new nature has two divine Levitical marks—the chewing of the cud, expressing the inner energy of love, and the cloven hoof, the outer walk. We need not obliterate these marks; may we justify God in these things. Having implanted a new nature in us, is it not fitting He should tell us how that nature expresses itself? You may remark here that we are kept in company with Adam and with Cain, because John is so personal. John takes us beyond the time of Enoch and of Noah—of the heavenly and the earthly man—back to the deep personalities of Eve and Adam. So all John’s writings bring us back to primitive things.
Verse 11, &c. —The world is a Cain; yes, it is Cain, beaten. out and spread abroad. Cain was an atheist; he hated his brother because of the love and sympathy there was between his brother and God. The world is an atheist, and its lords many and gods many do not redeem it one whit from that character. It may have lords many and gods many, and be an atheist still; and now, do not you be wondering if the world hate you. The world does not know you any more than it knows Christ. As He said, “Because 1 have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you!” Marvel not.
We have got the principle that extricates us from the world-love,— and we love the brethren, else if we love not the brethren, we know not God. What profound thoughts we meet with, as calmly and dispassionately we pass along, very simple—very grand in Christ we have more than in Adam; nature, life, and God all regained, and with advantage. Christ is more than Repairer of the breach. “Out of the eater has come forth meat, and out of the strong, sweetness.” Nature, undefilable; life, unforfeitable, and by the expression of these, we know that we have escaped the pollutions of the world that Beth in the wicked one.
In the first chapter you have the message that “God is light.” Now you have another message that “God is love,” and we should love another.
“From the beginning” means that which is essentially true, that which could not be anything but true. The message to walk in light and love is essentially divine. John’s writings thus takes you back to the early part of Genesis, because, as we have seen, he deals not in dispensational but in personal truth—no heavenly rapture; no renewed earth, but something beautiful, even beyond these things. It is the Lord’s close, personal dealing with the sinner in the Gospel of John, and in the Epistles His dealings with the saint.
Long has this been the comfort of my soul. I do not care how things around may go on (as far as my state before God is concerned), you are disappointed everywhere! Well, what can that do but throw you more completely upon God The sinner is outside the camp with Jesus, as in the fourth, eighth, and ninth chapters of the Gospel; and it neither matters as to the number of his sins or of his accusers. These would but press the individual more closely on Jesus. You find the state of things around confused, shameful, painful. It is all these; yet, it never can touch your connection and communion with God. You must know where you are yourself, of course. Do you take care of your place in the Church, and God will take care of your place in Christ.
Cain was the expression of hatred; Adam of disobedience. Now these two Levitical marks of love and righteousness are the exact contradictions of Cain and Adam. When the message says, “Love one another,” it looks in the face of Cain. There is plenty of murder abroad now, murder for revenge and robbery; but these are not Cain murders. Cain’s was a martyr murder. It was religious persecution, hatred of one whom God loved, and it expresses the world’s hatred of the Church. “I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”
Matthew may tell you of a rejected Messiah, John tells you of the atheist world; and this is religious malevolence. “They think they do God service.” It is the way of Christendom to shed blood on religious principle; and that gives you the world in the company of Cain. Just look at the seventh of John, and do mark it. “Go ye up unto the feast: I go not yet up unto this feast.” You may go, but the world hates me; and this is uttered in the face of the world’s religion. The world is going to keep the feast, yet hates God’s representative in the world. Exactly so, the world is full of the Cain principle. Marvel not if the world hate you. The world hates you with an atheist hatred, because it knows neither the Father nor the Son.
These are the deep truths we find in John’s writings. And do you think the worship of deities, of lords many and gods many, redeems the character of this world from the charge of atheism? No, it never can relieve man from the charge— “Ye know neither me nor my Father.” To know God in the face of Jesus Christ is true religion; all other is idolatry. If you do not see God in the face of Jesus Christ, you are without God. Jesus was not only God in His person, as the second person of the Godhead, but was morally God; God manifest in the flesh. Not only is it that the second person of the Godhead has become incarnate, taking flesh and blood, but as such Jesus is the moral representative of God. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” But this is a form of manifestation of which we do not often think. Every action and look of Jesus was perfection, and presented the perfection of man to God, and of God to man. The world did not know this, nor does it know that while worshipping Jupiter and Juno, and rejecting God in the face of Jesus Christ, it is as much an atheist as ever. If I can deny God, who can raise the dead; if I have not an eye to discern God in the face of Jesus Christ, I know nothing about God.
It is this manifestation of God in the ways of Jesus that John is so full of! May our hearts hangover it! Has God been here? Yes! He has come down in flesh, and dwelt in moral beauty amid the scenes of our daily life. We speak not as touching other truths, but of this, as the foundation of all. And what is the world doing this moment? The Protestant world has been making an exhibition of itself in one way, and the Roman Catholic world in another. A secular exhibition in one place, a religious exhibition in the other. Ah, beloved! God has exhibited Himself; He is exhibiting His unseen glory, and shall I gaze on man’s exhibitions, whether secular or religious! The Lord helping me, I shall gaze at Him. I shall enter into the Holiest and worship God, as His glory shines in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now, what is the exhibition of God to us? Love to the brethren. If we love the brethren we have escaped the Cain condition, and the Spirit draws the contrast strongly in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses. In the fifteenth verse we have the taking away of life from another; in the sixteenth the laying down of life for another. Hatred takes away life; love lays down its own life. In the fourteenth the eye of the Spirit is set exclusively on Christian brethren; here it is more abstract the principle of love and hatred. Love is exhibited in God, by the laying down of life; but there is great beauty in the Spirit not having given the words “of God.” It is “of God” surely; but there is a great delicacy in the way of the Holy Ghost in this passage. We have the truth that Christ indeed was God, and laid down His life for us. In Rom. 5:8, “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” If Christ was not God, this would be a vain argument without effect. And again, “God so loved the world,” &c., but there is a harshness in the reading given in the supplying of the words “of God.”
Verse 17. —This is a necessary truth. What place has the love of God in my heart, such love as God has shown, if I refuse to sympathize with my brother? You had better confess it at once, that in so much as you act on narrow principles, you have not the love of God in you. Could narrow thoughts occupy that heart in which the love of God dwelleth? No, this is simple argument, and if I refuse to share my goods with my brother, God’s love does not dwell in me. One has beautifully said, “If you love in word, it is idle; or in tongue, it is deceitful—not so to love in deed and in truth, so to love is the opposite of deceit and idleness—it is love in reality.”
Verse 19. —There is great force in this passage. “Hereby we know that we are of the truth.” Adam accepting the lie was morally ruined; but we were not of the lie, but of the truth: we have returned to God. To be of the truth is to be a new creature, born of God, begotten of His own will. If you take your place amongst those who are of the truth, you are a new creature in Jesus. The truth is the seed of God forming you anew and with power.
Verse 20. — “If our heart condemn its, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” Conscience may indeed be severe, a fine filter to pass your actions through, but there is a finer, there is a subtler sieve than your deceitful heart. If your heart condemns you, God is greater than your heart; many a thing passes through the coarse sieve of your conscience, which cannot pass the eye of God. You may be satisfied about your ways, still Paul says though I do not condemn myself, yet am I not thereby justified. It is not my own judgment that can justify.
Verse 21. — “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.” As I have said, this is moral and not judicial justification. It is not judicial position, but moral nature. John occupies himself with our moral recovery. You have the judicial recovery in Hebrews, and boldness to enter into the Holiest. You stand justified in Christ Jesus, in Divine Righteousness in Romans; but that is not the confidence here in John. This confidence is from another source-it is because the heart does not condemn. And what more shall I say to this marvelous variety? Look at the floor of the world studded with various beauties, and then at the moral world, and see a more exquisite variety. If I go into the Holiest, because the blood is on the mercy seat, I can go again, because net, heart does not condemn.
Verse 22. — “And whatsoever we ask we receive of ‘him, because we keep his commandments.” Marie says, “Whatsoever things ye desire.” John says, “If my word abide in you,” and here again, “because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”
Is there any collision between these things? None! The three things are necessary, faith, abiding, and obedience. Lay your requests before God as an obedient child, with a beating heart! Oh! what it would be to be simple in our intimacy with Christ. Little we know of it; therefore, we must speak of it. But oh! to be going in and out, and finding pasture, as the flock of a well-known land. And now love one another, as He gave us commandment, and believe in Jesus Christ, and you shall take, in moral power, a better position than Adam lost. He lost Eden, Eve, himself, and God; when new created, you get God in a richer way than Adam had Him; you get a better nature, a better life, and a better portion. May you believe that, as a sinner now accepted, you enjoy yourself in a way that innocent Adam never enjoyed himself! Are you conscious of having regained yourself in a higher character than ever? Is it not more blessed to pass ages with Christ, as a pardoned sinner, than to have the delights of Eden?
Verse 24. —In Paul’s Epistles the simple statement is made, “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” But here we have the Spirit distinguishing Himself. God gives His own blessed Spirit to dwell in the believer, and then the Spirit characterizes Himself. We have seen Him, as unction, earnest, and seal, and now He displays a new characteristic, but this would take us into the fourth chapter. These profound thoughts are not like the beautiful flow of Luke, to whom the eye so often turns and finds all its human desires answered. Here, chastened, we linger over every line, and as we do so, a world unknown peeps out upon us. We are not borne along a flowing, easy current with sensible delight, but, stopping at every undulation, we find unknown worlds opening themselves before us. Truly it is a wealthy place into which we are brought!