STABILITY AND GROWTH
[p. 41] STABILITY AND GROWTH
It should be clear to every Christian that there is such a thing as spiritual growth. In the scripture before us some of the children of God are addressed as “little children” or “babes”, others as “young men”, and others again as “fathers”. In connection with this it should be noted that in verses 1, 12, 28 of chapter 2, and in verses 7, 18 of chapter 3, and in verse 4 of chapter 4 and in verse 21 of chapter 5 it should be simply “children”. In these verses the whole of the children of God are addressed. But in 2: 13, 18 the word used is rightly translated “little children”, and those addressed are the babes in the family.
Before the apostle addresses himself to the three different classes — babes, young men, and fathers — he states something that is common to all the children. “I write unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake” (verse 12). Precious statement! True of all the children of God — of every believer on the Lord Jesus Christ! There is no growth as to this. It is as true of the youngest babe in Christ as it is of the oldest father. Let me ask, Are you in the blessedness of this great remission? When you say, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins”, whose sins do you mean? Of course you believe that Peter, Paul, John, and the rest of the goodly fellowship of the apostles had their sins forgiven! But what benefit is this to you? You need the forgiveness of your sins. Can you say in the presence of God, My sins are all [p. 42] forgiven? It would be dreadful presumption for you to say this if it is not true. I advise you to be careful: it is an awful thing for a sinner to suppose that his sins are forgiven when they are not. But if God is proclaiming the remission of sins in the name of the Lord Jesus, and giving the assurance of pardon to all who believe, it must be because of indifference or unbelief if you cannot say that your sins are forgiven.
The Son of God — Jesus Christ the righteous — has been in the world to deal with sins. We could commit sins, but we could not put them away. A divine Person was needed to do that, and in love and grace He came to do it. “Jesus Christ the righteous ... is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”. Think of the mighty work accomplished when He “suffered for sins”! And for whose benefit was it accomplished? Were only the children of the promises to have title to this blood-bought pardon? Nay! the heart of God took in the whole world in thoughts of love and grace, and the atonement was equal to the mighty scope of that love and grace. “Not for ours only”, says the apostle, “but also for the whole world”. Oh! the divine greatness of that precious sin-atoning work!
Notice particularly how it is put. I think if we had written this we should have been likely to put it thus — “and he made propitiation for our sins”, but that is not what the Holy Ghost says. The blessed Spirit wishes to concentrate our thoughts rather upon THE PERSON who did the work than upon the work itself, and He says, “HE is the propitiation for our sins”. All the value of the work resides in the Person who did it, and if you want to have the benefit of the work [p. 43] you must go to HIM by faith — you must believe on His Name. A very simple illustration may help you to understand it. The medical student poring over his books, making his dissections, walking the hospitals, is working for his future practice. But when that work is done and he comes out as an M.D., all the value of the work resides in the person who has done it, and if you want the benefit of that long study and labour you must go to the person who did it. It is so in this matter of forgiveness. The great atoning work, which is its everlasting basis in righteousness, was finished — once for all — at Calvary; but all the value of that work resides today in the glorious Person who did it. “HE is the propitiation for our sins”. Never, from the moment in which He cried, “It is finished!” to all eternity, can one jot or tittle be added to the perfection of His atoning work. All the efficacy and value of that work is available for every sinner under heaven, and is to be secured by faith in the Person who did it. The Gospel Proclamation is surely plain enough. Listen to it! “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto YOU the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13: 38, 39).
The Son of God, once here in the humiliation of matchless grace, once in death upon the cross to make atonement for sin, but now glorified at the right hand of God, is set forth on God’s part as the propitiation for sins. And to every one who believes on His blessed Name it may be said, “Your sins are forgiven you for his Name’s sake”.
But this is not all. The forgiveness of sins does indeed settle every question connected with our [p. 44] responsible history as men and women in this world. It removes the burden of guilt from our consciences so that “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, and great is the blessedness of this. But faith in Christ not only secures this for us, but it introduces us to an entirely new position and relationship. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons [children, it should be] of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1: 12). Believers have the right to take the place of being children of God. The fact that they receive Christ by believing on His name, is the proof that they are born of God (see John 1: 13). They are of kindred nature with God, and they receive and appreciate what is of God. A babe is not a very important personage in itself; everything depends on the family it is born into. Think how great it is to be a child in the family of God. Young believer, great is your dignity, and many are your privileges, because of the greatness of the position and relationship to which divine love has called you. We may well exclaim, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God” (1 John 3: 1). The moral greatness of this infinitely surpasses every dignity that the world could confer. The apprehension of it makes the Christian bold to face contempt and rejection at the hands of men — makes him content to be despised and unknown by the world which “knew HIM not”.
The first thing that is said of the “babes” is that they have “known the Father” (2: 13). In this we have the very essence of Christian blessing. “The Father” is the blessed Name in which God has revealed Himself in His beloved Son in all the fulness of infinite [p. 45] grace. There is nothing which enters more slowly into human hearts than the thought of Grace. Indeed, many truly converted persons are very far from having reached the knowledge of the Father. We are, ofttimes, slow to believe that we may come by faith into all the privilege and joy of infinite grace without an atom of goodness, or merit of any kind, in ourselves. Then again, many seem thankful to hear of deliverance from death and judgment and of the remission of sins, but they do not seem interested in the grace from which all these blessings flow. Some may call it humility to be content with just that measure of blessing which will relieve the guilty conscience, and remove the fears of the soul, but it is really selfishness and indifference to grace. The prodigal in the far country may have thought it humility to ask to be made a hired servant in his father’s house, but no such desire could escape his lips when the father fell on his neck and kissed him. It is the humility of faith to accept with joy and praise the fulness of blessing which Grace delights to bestow. When the prodigal found himself seated at the father’s table, robed, ringed, sandalled, and feasted, it could have been said to him, Thou hast known the Father. He had come into the circle of Grace. His reception was altogether according to the father’s heart, and in no wise according to his own deserts.
The moment we turn to God everything depends upon what God is, and the grace in which He receives us can only be measured by the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen and glorified One at His right hand. Nothing would suit the heart of God but that we should have the place and acceptance of sons before Him. He has marked us out for sonship “according to the good [p. 46] pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1: 5, 6). What a triumphant answer God has thus given to the slander of the serpent and to the unbelieving thoughts of fallen man! He has shown what He is in the blessedness of grace, that has undertaken to secure infinite blessing for man in spite of every obstacle which sin placed in the way. He loves to be known and trusted in this character, and the gospel makes Him known in this glory of grace. The babes know the Father — they know God in His infinite grace.
Then in verses 18 - 27 the babes are warned against the seductions of many antichrists. As to the world, it is “the last time”. The manifestation of Christ has ended in His rejection, and the world has taken the character of antichrist. The coming of Christ — the Anointed and Holy One of God — into the world has brought out the true character of the world and its prince. The fact that God has revealed Himself in Christ, and set forth all His good pleasure in a Man in this world, has caused the power of darkness and evil to take the form of subtle — but definite and malignant — opposition to that Blessed One. All this opposition will in a fast-approaching day find its head and centre in the personal antichrist, but “even now are there many antichrists”. The principles which will characterize the personal antichrist are being spread abroad in a secret and seductive way by the “many antichrists”, so as to divert men — and especially those who have had the light of Christianity — from the true knowledge of God.
The babes are warned against two forms of opposition to Christ — the denial that Jesus is the Christ, and the [p. 47] denial of the Father and the Son. The first is more especially the Jewish form of unbelief. Deluded by the father of lies, the Jews denied that Jesus was the Christ, and persist in that denial to this day. “The Christ” is the One in whom all the pleasure of God is found, and in whom is established every blessing for man. The denial that Jesus is the Christ is the effort of the enemy to divert men from Him as the One in whom God’s pleasure and man’s blessing are both fully established.
But in the denial of the Father and the Son lies the very essence of antichrist’s work within the pale of Christianity. In Christendom it is not so much Satan’s effort to represent Jesus as an imposter and blasphemer. The spirit of antichrist works in a more subtle way. Much is professedly made of Jesus as the greatest Teacher and Example the world has ever seen. He is held up as the Desire of nations, and the ideal of humanity. But under cover of this the whole truth of Christianity — the revelation of the Father in the Son — is denied. Christ is made into the greatest of men, in order to rob Him of His personal glory as the Son of the Father. One must speak plainly as to this, for there is hardly any body of professing Christians today which is not largely imbued with the leaven of Unitarianism. Unitarians are often anxious to be called Christians, but they are really the unhappy dupes and tools of antichrist. In the apostles’ days there was power in the Church, and fidelity to Christ, so that the antichrists could not remain amongst the saints. “They went out from us”. It was from without that they attempted to carry on their evil work of seducing the babes. But in our days many of these antichrists [p. 48] are highly esteemed as teachers of Christianity, and the whole profession is more or less leavened by their influence.
Under such circumstances how are the babes to be preserved? To answer this question let us read verse 27, “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him”. The babes have received the Holy Ghost as a divine anointing that they may be taught of God, and they are thus divinely taught to find all truth in Christ the Son of God. The anointing abides in us, and ever teaches us to find all truth in the Blessed Person of whom we have heard from the beginning, and thus, as we are divinely taught, we “abide in him”. We find everything in Him, and we abide in Him. To leave Him would be to leave the truth and every blessing. We may well say, with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6: 68).
The Holy Ghost will never teach us anything that is not set forth in Christ. He leads us on by unfolding that Blessed One to our hearts in an ever-deepening fulness of grace and truth. If we have begun to know Christ, we have begun with that which will fill our eternity with blessedness and joy. Every earthly joy —even the sweet and holy joys of natural relationships and affections — will pass away, but the joy which our hearts have in Christ is eternal in its character — it is a bit of what will fill our eternity. Satan seeks to divert us by a thousand things which are “not after Christ” (Colossians 2: 8), but the unction we have received [p. 49] from the Holy One ever teaches us to “abide in him”. The fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, and it is our true blessedness to be filled full in Him who is the Head of all principality and power. The unction would turn our hearts to Christ with the same constancy as the magnetic influence turns the needle to the pole.
In John 14 we read, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (verse 26). In John 15 we read, “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (verse 26). In John 16 we read, “He will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (verse 13, 14). The Holy Ghost is thus the Remembrancer of Christ as He was here, the Testifier of Christ as being now with the Father, and the Unfolder of those “things to come” when everything in heaven and on earth will find its Centre in Christ according to the Father’s counsels. Thus, whether the Spirit takes account of the past, the present, or the future, Christ is the substance of His ministry and the theme of His teaching. So that as we are taught by the unction which we have received, we “abide in him”. May it indeed be so with each one of us!
One might know every verse in the Bible and yet be entirely unacquainted with the truth. It is not possible to acquire a knowledge of the truth by mental study of the letter of Scripture. The truth is presented in a Person, and it is as we know Him and abide in Him, that we know the truth. The Holy Ghost would make [p. 50] Christ everything to us. He comes to be in us as “the Spirit of the truth”, so that the truth as set forth in Christ might dwell in us and be with us for ever (2 John 2).
I now pass on to say a few words about “the young men”. They are addressed as being strong, and as having the Word of God abiding in them, and as having overcome the wicked one (1 John 2: 14). If the “babe” be steadfast in the grace of God, and taught by the Spirit to abide in Christ as the One in whom all truth is set forth, he will soon be found possessed of the characteristics of the “young man”. Being “strong” would result from knowing the Father; that is, it would be the effect of having the heart “established with grace”. Then the effect of being taught by the unction to abide in Christ, as finding all truth set forth in Him, would be that the word, or testimony, of God would abide in the saints. Thus the efforts of the wicked one to seduce them would be frustrated. They would refuse to be diverted from Christ as The Truth, and they would continue in the Son and in the Father. They would overcome the wicked one. To such the solemn warning is addressed, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2: 15, 16).
It is sometimes assumed that “babes” are in most danger of being drawn into the world and its things, but the Holy Ghost addresses this solemn warning to the “young men” and not to the “babes”. The special effort of the enemy with the “babes” seems to [p. 51] be to corrupt them as to the truth — to divert them from grace, and from the knowledge of the Father and the Son — by what may be called religious error or false doctrine. But if his efforts are resisted, and the Word of God gets an abiding place in the saints, he takes a different line. Many have been able to detect and resist false doctrine, who have afterwards been ensnared by the world. It is of all-importance that we should accept the warning here given, and also that we should see how saints are divinely preserved from the world and its things.
Let us consider for a moment what “the world” is. It is the whole system of things which has come into existence consequent upon the entrance of sin. A vast and complex system, in which everything can be found that ministers to the tastes, desires, and vanity of man as a fallen and sinful creature. There are three great types of the world in Scripture which answer to the three things that are in the world. Sodom is a type of the world as characterized by the lust of the flesh; Egypt represents it as marked by the lust of the eyes; and Babylon sets it forth as displaying the pride of life. In addition to these, I think Tyre and Sidon are typical of the commercial world, while “Jerusalem which now is” has become the symbol of the religious world. But as to their moral character, the commercial world and the religious world only present different phases of the three principles which are here said to be “all that is in the world”.
“The lust of the flesh” refers to the baser and coarser appetites of men — sensuality, intemperance in eating or drinking, self-indulgence as to the body in every way. Indeed, it is pretty well summed up in what is said of Sodom. “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16: 49). It is still true that Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do, as David found to his cost (2 Samuel 11: 1).
“The lust of the eyes” refers to self-indulgence in a more refined form. The eyes are figurative of intelligence, and there are an immense number of things in the world that afford gratification to the mind of man. Egypt is a type of the world in this aspect; we read of “the wisdom of the Egyptians”. Science, literature, music, theatrical and other entertainments, present different forms of gratification suited to the tastes of different minds. It is by such things the “young men” are in danger of being ensnared. The heart may be drawn away by things which seem interesting and innocent in themselves. You do not “see any harm” in this or that? Perhaps not, but is it of the Father or of the world? Many things look very harmless, but their effect is to narrow the breach between your heart and the world, and to bring you nearer to men in the flesh. Perhaps nothing has done more to blight the souls of young Christians than the habit of reading fiction. Do you think you can retain spiritual health if you gratify the flesh by feeding on the very essence of the world, for this is what novels are? Religious novels are worse than the ordinary sort, for they connect divine things with unhealthy mental excitement.
“The pride of life” is that vainglorious lust which loves to be something in this world — to have a place and a name here. This lust will find its full expression [p. 53] in Babylon, where all the glory and magnificence of man and his works will come into display. Every ornate religious building and every lofty spire is a bit of Babylon. Men have taken up Christianity in name, but they do not desire to take up the reproach of Christ; so they have done their best to give Christianity greatness and glory in this world, so that the pride of man might have the fullest display under cover of the name of Christ.
Now how are we to be preserved from the world and its things? Verse 15 suggests the answer, for we read, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”. If the love of the Father is in us it becomes a divine preservative from the world. We are formed in, and become characterized by, the divine nature, whose holy tastes and desires find no gratification in the things of the world. The divine nature cannot be attracted by things which “are not of the Father”. Our spiritual growth is not to be measured by our knowledge of Scripture, but by the degree of our formation in the divine nature. Scriptural intelligence is often far in advance of spiritual formation, and where this is the case there is great danger of the soul being ensnared by the world.
The babes have the knowledge of grace, but they have to grow in grace. The anointing has taught them to find all truth in Jesus Christ the Son of God, but they have to “abide in him”. And “if that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father”. As we grow in the blessed grace of God, and abide in the Son of God, we are spiritually formed according to God. It is not only that we become more familiar with [p. 54] the letter and doctrine of things, but the truth forms our affections so that we are enlarged in our knowledge and appreciation of the Father and the Son. Thus coming up to the stature of “young men”, we become capable of intelligent discernment, and we recognize that the world and its things are not of the Father. We do not need to go into the merits or demerits of things in detail. We have a judgment of the whole system, and of all that it contains. It is “not of the Father”. Through grace we find our blessedness and joy in another system of things where everything is of the Father — things that have their eternal Centre in Christ glorified at the right hand of God. We cannot have both the things of the world and the things of the Father and the Son. There is no such thing as being half-and-half in this matter. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”.
Those who withstand the seductions of the many antichrists, and overcome the world, reach a third stage of spiritual growth. “I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning”. This is all he has to say to the “fathers”, but it is infinitely blessed. They have found the rest and satisfaction of their hearts in the knowledge of Christ. The experience of Paul, as set forth in his letter to the Philippians, is that of a “father”. Walking in self-judgment and in absolute distrust of the flesh, he had one Object before him. No seductive voice had been able to allure him from the light of heavenly grace which long years before had broken in upon him. The cross had become his cherished glory, as an impassable barrier between his heart and the world. Christ attracted and absorbed him. For Christ he had suffered [p. 55] the loss of all things, and counted the best things of earth but filth that Christ might be his gain. “That I may know him” was the pervading desire of his heart, and to be with and like Christ the goal to which he pressed on with unwavering purpose. He had “known him that is from the beginning”, and his heart had found everything in that Blessed One. But was this only for an apostle? Surely not. It is instructive to note that he does not write in this epistle as an apostle, but as a servant of Jesus Christ (1: 1). I am sure we are all perfectly conscious how small we are in comparison with Paul, and how far behind him in the race, but I trust many of us have our faces in the same direction. There is but one great Object in Christianity, and that is Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Revealer of the Father. All spiritual growth is growth in the knowledge of Him. He is precious to the “babes”, and as they abide in Him and grow up to the stature of “young men” they know Him better, but to the “fathers” He has become practically everything. May God graciously lead us on in the knowledge of Himself and His beloved Son, and give us grace to keep ourselves from idols!