“In the beginning was the Word.” “In the beginning God created.” The first of Genesis is a history of the other day, of yesterday, compared with John 1 In the beginning, which had no beginning (for we are out of our depths here, and in those of God—eternity and infinity), the Word was. If it is a question of place, it was where no place was; God only was there. Eternity and infinity are as incomprehensible to the mind of man as the idea of God Himself—a cause without a cause; God Himself is the only measure of each. But if you still ask, where? the Word was with God, stated in different terms in the epistle, as “that eternal life which was with the Father.” The Word was God, the Persons distinct. We read elsewhere that in the beginning He was God’s delight, His “treasured store,” the Lord “possessed” Him in the beginning of His way before His works of old, the All to Him of eternity and infinity. Created things were not there, divine affections were. The Father’s bosom was His dwelling-place; this best answers the question, Where? Eternal love looked out upon answering glory, as in the creation “day unto day uttereth speech.”
“In Thee, from everlasting,
The wonderful I AM
Found pleasures never wasting.”
But in our present state we understand divine unfoldings better in connection with the creature. In Micah He is presented as a Man ruling over the earthly kingdom in the strength and in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God, yet Himself the Eternal. In the new Jerusalem, where as Lamb He is the light of God’s glory, we feel Him nearer still in the power of that name, and the glory less distant, though truly feeling what we sometimes sing—
“But who that glorious blaze
Of living light shall tell,
Where all His brightness God displays,
And the Lamb’s glories dwell?”
These remarks refer, of course, to the present effect of these revealings. But besides divine affections, this mutual delight, counsels, promises, and grace were there, purpose and grace, given in Christ Jesus before the ages of time to us, who were, according to these counsels, then chosen in Him.
In Genesis 1:33And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Genesis 1:3) God creates, and time begins; the first of John tells me that the Word Himself was the great Creator. “The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Eternal power and Godhead may be known from the things that are made; other invisible things of Him, counsels and grace, and glory in the Son, are not learned by anything that was made, but by revelation. “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” All things were made for Him also (is not this truth, though connected with His personal and positional glory as Head over all things, forgotten in modern teaching?); thus He was the beginning and end (object) of creation, before all things and sustaining all things, as another Scripture tells us.
Thus in a few words the multitudinous speculations of the Gnostics, and other heretics, as to the origin of matter, the Godhead, an evil deity and a good one, are swept away forever. The secret of all that man speculated about could only be found in the knowledge of the Person of Him who is here called the Word (Creator and Redeemer, the Saviour and the Light of the world, Revealer of the Father as only begotten Son); but the key—was ever in the hand of God; He is His own interpreter. The things of God knows no one except the Spirit of God, but this is just what man will not allow.
At the very time that John was writing this gospel, men professing to be wise were teaching that the evil principle was the creator of matter, not all an irrational thought when they looked at it in connection with man. All flesh had corrupted its way; they merely reasoned from the phenomena before them without God or the revelation He had given. The world was full of evil, but evil could not come from a good source. They taught that the evil principle was the God of the Old Testament. They denied Jesus Christ come in the flesh; that Jesus was the Christ; that He was the Son of God; they denied, too, the Father and the Son, foundation truths in Judaism and Christianity. “The Messiah—the Father and the Son.” But all this was simply rationalism, the teaching of the “light within;” that “voice within,” as a doctor and bishop of our day tells us, “shall be our teacher when the best of books may fail us;” that is, the light within is a substitute for the light of revelation. “The word of God that lives and abides forever may fail us,” he says, “but not so the light within.” One remembers the words of our Lord: “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” and adores anew Him who has called us out of “darkness” to His wonderful light.
Another modern Gnostic, an ecclesiastical dignitary, teaches as follows: “The natural religious shadows, projected by the spiritual light within on the dark problems without, were all in reality systems of law given by God, though not given by revelation.” That is, the idolatrous systems of a worship, which was offered to the gods, or to devils rather, in which the practice of diabolical corruption formed an essential part, were in reality “laws given by God.” (See 1 Corinthians 12:22Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. (1 Corinthians 12:2).) “Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led.” What spirit was it that led them, the Spirit of God or of Satan? It is written, “The things which the Gentiles sacrificed, they sacrificed to devils and not to God, and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.” But if these idolatrous systems of religion, in which devils were the objects of worship, were given by God, then Christ has concord with Belial; light, communion with darkness!
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (vs. 4.) We have seen that without Him nothing was made that was made. Jesus of Nazareth was the Creator, glorious truth! Here we are taught that in Him was life, eternal life, and in Him only. This is the witness that God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in the Son; it is not in the creature, save as a stream flowing in from unfathomable and eternal depths, God’s gift in His own endless grace to once lost sinners. Elsewhere He is revealed as the Light—the lamp of the glory that lightens the heavenly city. The Lamb’s effulgence is the light of the glory of God. In Him are all the promises, in Him all the counsels of God, as through Him also is their fulfillment. “The life was the light of men.” This is what is called a reciprocal proposition; nothing else was the light of men. This was the true light. The “light within” is not that, but the power of darkness in the human soul. “Ye shall not surely die,” said the serpent; “but your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God.” The “light within” begins with the reception of “the lie,” develops in rationalism (when they “saw that the tree was good for food”) and Gnosticism (“a thing to be desired to make one wise”). A Gnostic is one whose wisdom is the fruit of the “light within;” he is proud of it, because he thinks it is his own. In reality it “comes not from above; it is devilish.”
“Be as God,” the devil said; this was the bait; but when the man of sin appears, coming according to the energy of Satan, he exalts himself above God; this is development in iniquity. The wisdom thus acquired did not profit them; the first thing they saw was their own nakedness; the first thing they did was to hide this nakedness from their own sight, and themselves from the presence of the Lord God, putting those very trees which He had planted for their use, “pleasant to the sight, and good for food,” between themselves and Him. Thus innocence, man’s first estate, was lost, and natural life forfeited; the pleasant fruits of the trees of the garden no more to be enjoyed; thorns and briars were the product of a cursed earth, which they were doomed to till with toil and sweat until dust unto dust returned. Exclusion from Paradise, the way to the tree of life barred up, its virtue a mystery all unknown, the reign of sin unto death commenced in the moral darkness in which they sought to hide themselves from God, now deepened into rejection of the Light itself. “The darkness comprehended it not;” such were the results as to this world of the exercise of the “natural faculties,” and of the “light within.”
Time had wrought no change in the creature when John wrote this gospel; civilization had but strengthened the force of the “natural faculties” for the will of the god of this world. The long-suffering and patience of God had altered nothing in man’s state. See what Stephen says of the favored nation—the Holy Ghost resisted, the law broken, angelic ministry despised, prophets persecuted, those who showed beforehand the coming of the Just One slain; they were only doing then what their fathers had done, their iniquity culminating in the betrayal and murder of the Righteous One.
“He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” For the history of the Gentile world see Romans 1. “They did not think good to have God in their knowledge.” “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” When sin, thus brought into the world, is seen in all but its last development (it was perfected at the cross), the “man of sin” revealed is found to be simply the development of the sinful man of Genesis 3; he exalts himself above all that is called God, sitting in his temple showing himself that he is God. He comes according to the working of Satan; for in the garden the working of evil had its beginning and source in the power and wiles of the adversary. Com pare also the history of the lamblike beast who spake as a dragon, and caused all who dwelt on the earth to worship the first beast. When I reflect on the rapid dissemination of false teachings, and the true nature of this fatal error of the “light within,” and competency of the “natural faculties” in the things of God, I feel that I have not said too much on this serious subject.
“The light shineth in darkness.” (vs. 5.) The light that shines in darkness on earth is the light that shines as the glory of God Himself in the heavenly city. He had made good that glory on earth (God was glorified in Him), and He will shine as the light of that glory in the New Jerusalem. “The darkness comprehended it not.” This is God’s history of the result. The darkness within could have no fellowship with light; for “from within, out of the heart of man, proceed” all that is opposed to the nature and glory of God. All these evil things come from “within.”
“The light of men.” How precious to the heart to find that word “man” associated with the thoughts of God, which are to usward in grace and love “The light of men.” “The head of every man is Christ.” His “delights were with the sons of men.” “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” Made lower than the angels, then crowned with glory and honor, where we have its mystery explained. “The tabernacle of God is with men,” this for eternity, as the destruction of the veil that is spread over all the nations introduces the millennial reign, which is the reign of man in the person of Christ. R. E.