CHAPTER 5
[p. 325] CHAPTER 5
Verse 1. Brotherly love being established, the question arises: Who is my brother? We get for an answer, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” This is a brother, we owe him love.
Verse 2. But brotherly love is also in its turn submitted to a counter-test: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.” Let us notice that love of the brethren, which was adduced as a proof of our love to God in chapter 4: 20, is now the point to be proved. This is what the schoolmen would term reasoning in a vicious circle; but life and love are beyond their sphere. True love is accompanied by obedience. The love which leads us to love the children of God, for God’s sake, could not love them and at the same time incite them to things which displease their Father. Would it be love to a man to set his children an example of disobedience? It would be loving neither him nor his children. Disobedience is never love. Christ, who is perfect love, also shewed perfect obedience.
Verses 4, 5. But here is an obstacle; the world renders obedience difficult. When we feel its influence, the commandments of God seem grievous. But, on the other hand, love escapes that influence and remains obedient. Thus love is in conflict with the world, but faith is there to help. “This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.”
Unspeakable mystery of the knowledge of Jesus! a crucified One is the Son of God! Faith knows this Saviour rejected by the world, and clings to Him. The name of Jesus has an all-powerful attraction for faith; and finding a blessed portion in Jesus it joyfully accepts the place of the Saviour here below. What can the world do against the faith that sees things thus? It is not astonishing that faith in Jesus should be in conflict with the world; for if a crucified one be the Son of God, what an overthrow of the order of things in belonging to this world! But this rejected One has overcome the world and faith shares in His victory.
[p. 326] Verses 6-12. Up to this point of the epistle we have had to consider the great principles of the truth concerning life. Before ending John here touches upon the question of the testimony of God to which the communication of this life to sinners corresponds. We have first the witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood.
Verse 6. “This is he who came by (dia) water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by (en) water only, but by (en) water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness.” The testimony of the water and of the blood is twice expressed in this verse, but with a different Greek preposition each time. He came by (dia) water and blood; and then He came in (en) water and blood; that is to say, in the power of the water and of the blood. The former of these expressions (dia) indicates the character in which Jesus came here below; the latter (en), the power displayed by Him according to that character. Jesus came in a character of purification and expiation: “by water and blood.” He has wrought according to that character, and has accomplished purification and expiation in water and blood. Although the water and the blood both express the death of Christ, they set forth two results of that death. We are cleansed by the water of death (sanctification), and we are also cleansed by blood (justification). From this it follows that, the death of Christ giving its character and value to our sanctification, we reckon ourselves dead to sin even as Christ died for sin. I do not know if we pay sufficient heed to this purifying power of the death of Christ, whereby we are freed from the power of sin now.
“And it is the Spirit that beareth witness.” The Spirit of God, present here below, is also a witness of the grace of life which is in Jesus. But it is in virtue of the death of Christ that the Holy Ghost has come down. Thus purification, expiation, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, are privileges which exist for us only in virtue of a dead Christ.
Verses 7, 8 omit a portion of these two verses, and read, “For there are three that bear record, the Spirit and the water and the blood: and these three agree in one.”+ Three witnesses, but only one testimony.
+Several words included in verses 7 and 8 are not to be found in most MSS, and are not admitted in the best Greek editions of the New Testament. We follow these editions. These are the words to be suppressed: “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth.”
Verses 9, 10. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself”; for God imparts life to him who believes. As to the witness, we find again the two things which we have noticed throughout the Epistle: the internal and the external, the subjective and the objective side, experience and faith. Christ, who is the object of the testimony in the world, dwells in the saints. We thus understand how the witness of God is greater than that of men.
Verses 11, 12. After becoming acquainted with the witnesses, we learn what their testimony is. It is this: “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” Life was not in the first Adam; it is in Jesus only, but it comes to us through death; this the three witnesses — the Spirit, the water, and the blood — affirm.
Verse 13. “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.”+ I am not writing to you, says John, to bring you the blessings of the testimony of God, as though you were not in possession of them, but to remind you that you have them, in order that you may be forearmed against the false teachers when they call your privileges in question.
Verses 14, 15. “If we ask anything according to his will he heareth us.” Our souls are sometimes much exercised before God as to prayer; for God, who in His goodness grants us all things that are good for us, reserves to Himself the choice, the means, and the time. However we have the comfort of knowing that God always hears us. He is not absent nor too high to listen to our prayers. But more than this: “we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” What mercy! God is willing to hear the requests which such feeble creatures as ourselves send up to Him. God perhaps does not answer at once. This exercise of patience is blessed to our souls, and is often more salutary than an immediate answer. It acts upon our intercourse with God, it moulds it, and teaches us dependence. It is well for us to know that we should not pray with the idea of dictating to God. But the faith which has prayed nevertheless feels sure that God has heard, and this confidence consoles and sustains.
+Several editions of the New Testament, upon the authority of the principal manuscripts, reject the words we have omitted at the end of this verse; namely, “And that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”
[p. 328] Verses 16, 17. What is this sin unto death? It is sin, but sin aggravated by particular circumstances. The sin of Ananias was a lie which the surrounding circumstances rendered more serious. Every sin may become a sin unto death.
Verses 18, 20. These three verses comprise the great principles of the Epistle. They form a sort of conclusion. But here, as in the body of the Epistle, John expresses himself in a way calculated to sustain faith in spite of the sowers of doubts. “We know,” says he, what? We know what is the life which we have received from God. We know that the wicked one is in the world. We know that the Son of God is come, that He is true and that we are in Him. Yes! on all these points we know where we are. It is a last shaft which, in concluding, John levels at the corrupters of the faith. Verse 19. “For the whole world lieth in wickedness,” read “The whole world lieth in the wicked one.”
Verse 20. Notice the chain of thoughts in this verse. The Son has come and has given us to know God as “him that is true.” We are in Him that is true because we are in His Son Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ is God Himself, the true God. He is also eternal life.
Verse 21. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” that is, from all that might come in between you and God.
NOTE. The grace administered through John’s ministry appertains to the individual blessing of saints. It is the communication of divine life to man, a blessing which exists at all times, and which belongs to the saints, whatever may be the state of God’s people. This apostle is not occupied with the church, with that which as a whole, forms the body of Christ. This mystery was entrusted to Paul.
[p. 329] Compared with John, the apostle of the Gentiles is seen in different circumstances. Paul, being a chosen vessel for that work of sovereign grace, which by the power of the Holy Ghost, gathers a church here below composed of Jews and Gentiles, united in one body to Christ in heaven, manifested extraordinary energy which was crowned with success. But the testing time came, Paul was imprisoned, his ministry was cut short, all forsook him. Disaffection appeared, and later on the unity was broken. The decline, which commenced then, has continued and increased until our days.
What will be the end of it? The word holds out no hope of a return here below to the first state of blessing. The tares which have been sown in the field must remain until the harvest. But if there is no hope of restoration for the system, yet the grace of life remains and is not inactive. This life, the revelation and the resources of which were the chief object of John’s ministry, still flows on; and it may be said that it is by means of this life that the Lord has intervened when all was about to fail in Christianity.