It is a striking feature of the writing of the apostle John that whatever God is shown to have provided, in His love, for His own glory and the need of man, is also shown to be closely bound up in and with the Person of Christ.
Paul reasons and declaims, setting out the believer's blessing in the form of doctrinal statement. He, as it were, labors to instruct and convince by argument, formally refuting the objections as they arise. So the apostle of the Gentiles proceeds, for instance, in the Epistle to the Romans.
But in the Gospel and Epistles of John we feel ourselves to be in altogether a different atmosphere. We are not so much watching the unfolding of truth in its various details, as we are gathered into the presence-chamber of a Person of ineffable grace and glory.
Both these modes of revelation are essentially needful. If the one provides contemplation for the renewed mind, the other awakens the adoration of the renewed heart.
When Paul instructs as to the second coming of Christ, he gives many facts as to the manner of that return—how the dead saints will be raised, the living changed, the Lord's descent into the air, the rapture of those for whom He comes, the shout and the trumpet, while also carefully distinguishing this event from the Lord's public advent in glory. But John gives us only the general fact of His coming for us to be with Him and like Him. The Lord's own words to His disciples, as repeated by him, were, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” The all-sufficient fact of Christ and His company is presented that it may absorb our undivided desires.
Again, as is well known, Paul discusses the subject of the resurrection of the body very fully in a long chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, but a saying of the Lord Jesus sums up the doctrine in a phrase: “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:2525Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: (John 11:25)). We must duly receive the teaching of both, of course; but we therein see that distinction between the two parts of scripture, to which we are now inviting attention.
It is a propensity of the natural mind to become engaged in the consideration of the truth of God as if it were no more than some abstract proposition. The holy and divine side is thus altogether excluded. In such case the introduction of its connection with Christ's Person introduces a more becoming attitude.
It was so with Martha. She believed in the resurrection in a general way, and quite realized that the power of God would resuscitate the body of her dead brother at the last day. But the Lord's revelation of Himself as the Resurrection. and the Life completely overthrew her theory. There was the One immediately before her Who could raise Lazarus there and then by a word. It was no question of waiting for the last day. The question was whether Jesus was the Son of God Who “quickeneth whom he will” (John 5:2121For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. (John 5:21)). For every difficulty of the human mind vanishes in the august presence of the Son from heaven.
In like manner we may, see that propitiation is, by John, associated with the Lord's person. He does not present it as the work of the Lord; this we have elsewhere. But in the First Epistle of the apostle of love we read, “And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1, 21My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1‑2)); and, again, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:1010Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)). Jesus Christ, then, IS Himself the propitiation for our sins. This is as infinitely blessed as it is simple; for if I, as a poor sinner, needed a propitiation for my sins, and I am told that Christ is that propitiation (however little I may be able to explain the meaning of the term), I can rest assured in the fact that Christ being it, it will be more than adequate for my guilt.
But we may gather more than this from the manner of the usage of this truth in John's Epistle. The fact is first introduced in connection with the breach of a believer's communion by a sin. “If any man sin [or, shall have sinned], we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.” John had been showing the intimate place into which the child of God is brought into fellowship with the Father and the Son! But when we walk thus in the light, it gives us to see as nowhere else the fearful hideousness of sin. We are not to sin; but, if anyone does, and is then overwhelmed by the sense of the terrible nature of sin in the presence of the holy God, a provision has been made. Jesus Christ, as Advocate, undertakes our case with the Father, duly representing the confession of our sins on our behalf; moreover, He is the propitiation for our sins.
Thus, whatever satisfaction the righteous and holy nature of God demanded because of those sins, Jesus Christ is that satisfaction. And the value and efficacy of propitiation is, therefore, in effect, declared to be commensurate only with His Person. If, therefore, we wish to estimate rightly the basis of our restoration to communion, we must think of the eternal excellency of the Son. However we may magnify the heinousness of sin (and we shall never exceed the truth in this respect), we may be sure that it is more than covered by the propitiation of the Son of God. For He did, and He alone could, offer what our sins needed, and the glory of God demanded.
But we gather even more from these words in John; we see what a character of holiness is stamped upon propitiation. We are not left to invest it with whatever degree of sanctity we please. The Spirit of God has hallowed the truth in the highest possible way, and in a way that the veriest babe in Christ can but recognize. The Son of God is the propitiation for our sins. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son, the propitiation for our sins.” The work of propitiation is associated with all the Godhead glory of the Son. Can we attach too great importance to a doctrine that is set before us in such terms as these? In the mind of the Spirit, as expressed by John, the work is merged in the Person; and the value of the work is to be measured according to the intrinsic worth of the Son.
It is important for us to remember this, because the human mind is so apt to belittle the things of God. And how terrible to detract from the Person of the Son, Whom no one knoweth (Matt. 11:2727All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Matthew 11:27)). Israel in the wilderness sinned by limiting the Holy One in what He would do for them (Psa. 78:4141Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. (Psalm 78:41)). Shall the Christian with impunity set the bounds of time and space to the Son of God, Who is the propitiation for our sins, and especially by imposing human limitations upon Him in the performance of that particular work? If any would speak or think slightingly of propitiation, let them remember that “He is the propitiation for our sins.”
W. J. H.