1 JOHN 1 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 368] 1 JOHN 1 (NOTES OF A READING)
Ques Is the report more general than the message, the message being more special?
CAC What was reported was the eternal life that was with the Father and manifested to us. I was thinking of the difference. There is a change in all the setting of what is introduced in verse 5. It is not a question now of the Father and the Son, but of what God is Himself.
Ques I suppose the “him” in verse 5 is God. Would you say so? It is no longer the truth which is involved in the Father and the Son.
CAC Yes, he comes to the moral basis of things. We could hardly enter into what lies between the Father and the Son without entering into every moral question as in the presence of God as light. It seems to me that he leaves the question of eternal life as standing in relation to the Father and the Son and he speaks of God, and God in His moral nature. I suppose that is the thought of light.
Rem The first “him”, I thought, was God. In Hebrews 1 we get God speaking in Son.
CAC In John’s writings it is not always easy to see which Person he is referring to, but this great message, I think, is being connected with what God is essentially. It must be taken as being heard from God in all His greatness as God, as it has reference to what God is essentially.
Rem So the greatness of the Person is connected with the news.
CAC Yes, and that statement is very wonderful, that God is light. It is not revelation or relationship, but what He is essentially, and so would be what He is eternally. If God had been pleased not to make a revelation, it would still be true. His motive is love, His moral nature is light. It must be so if darkness has come in. The very fact that God is light [p. 369] necessitates that, if He moves at all, it is as bringing in light.
Rem “Dwelling in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6: 16).
CAC That is different, showing the greatness of God as such. He dwells “in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor is able to see”. It marks the immense distance between God in His being and man, so if God had not come out in the way of revelation, we should never have known Him at all. This is a message, which it seems to me came directly from God to John and those identified with John in the service connected with revelation — a particular message that God is light, which men do not think of. They have a loose, casual way of thinking of, “God is love”. You do not often see the text up, “God is light”.
Ques Why does John take light first?
CAC Because light is what He is essentially, revelation or no revelation. “God is love” is that certain persons at any rate have so come to know Him that they can say, God is love. It is what the family of God can say — that is the setting of it. It is wonderful. It is as having experimental knowledge of Him and having come to this conclusion, and if we follow through this epistle we shall come to the same conclusion. Light and love are His moral nature and motive. What moves God always is His love. Light does not put God in motion. It is a great moral statement that endures for all eternity that God is light. There can never be connection between light and darkness, so “if we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practise the truth”.
Rem Fellowship with Him is a good slant.
CAC Well, the test has to be applied to it. We must not walk in darkness or we give the lie to it. John has in mind the possibility of certain things being said.
Rem He writes in the light of the last day.
CAC It is the time now of talk. The terms and phrases of christianity are taken up with no meaning to them.
Rem It supposes profession. It is a question of what we [p. 370] are and do, is it not? There is no ‘grey’ with John, but you get the extremes in his epistle.
CAC Walking in darkness is defined for us in the next chapter, “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in the darkness until now” (chapter 2: 9). So the brother is the great test.
Rem In verse 7 it is fellowship with one another that is brought in. “He that follows me shall not walk in darkness” (John 8: 12). It is a positive thing.
CAC He loved His saints and He walked in the light, and if we follow Him we shall love them too. John makes love the great test. “In the darkness” it says (1 John 2: 9), so that there is no knowledge of God at all. He treads in the world system.
Rem Public testimony is connected with it. “By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves” (John 13: 35). It shows how closely light and love come together, perfectly in God, and also in His people. But we are never said to be light and never said to be love.
CAC Well, I suppose there is something very absolute about love, but light is relative to darkness. This relative quality of light can be applied to the saints. “For ye were once darkness, but now light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5: 8). That can be said of the saints. Love is what God is absolutely.
Rem “Partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1: 4).
CAC But is must be reserved to God — love is His nature. In the creature everything is in measure, but in God there is a fulness, an absoluteness.
Rem We should apprehend God first as light, or we should not have a right thought of His love.
CAC Yes. I think that is so.
Ques We are more at home with God as love than as light. Why is that? Has it been presented to us more in the gospel and then after conversion we learn more?
CAC Well, that may be so. Things begin in a very [p. 371] infantile state, and bit by bit the knowledge of God comes in, then enlargement and adjustment morally. It is a question of learning to walk in the light. It is the position God has taken up. In revealing Himself He has come into the light. God is not now in darkness.
Ques Is it in relation to Sinai?
CAC I think it is a certain contrast to that; thick clouds and darkness were about Him, but now God is in the light.
Ques Is there a difference between “darkness” and “thick darkness”?
CAC Thick darkness is being enshrouded in a darkness that man’s eye cannot penetrate. Darkness is what marks the world, where there is no light as to God, no knowledge of Him; properly it belongs to the heathen world. So that christianity is to walk in the light as God is in the light.
There is nothing to be made known of God that has not been made known. He is declared. It is not a question of men seeking after God, but He is in the light. It is something for us to walk in all day long. It is the light in which the children of God are set, all that is made known of God in His beloved Son. We have no other light, we walk in that light. We have no uncertainties about God. The believer’s uncertainties are all connected with himself, not with God. Nothing can be added to or taken from that light. The wonderfulness of Jesus in His outshining is that every ray of light is there, and we walk in the light; we have nowhere else to walk.
Rem If we do.
CAC Well, yes. His face means His Person; it is all set forth in Him.
Rem “No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1: 18).
CAC That is the idea. God is declared, so we are not at all in a fog about God, but in the full light of His motives and acts, and that is the basis of fellowship. As walking in [p. 372] the light we must have fellowship with one another. It is what we know of God that is the real basis of fellowship, and we all have the same character of knowledge of God, as it is in Jesus.
Ques How does the last clause of verse 7 come in, “And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”?
CAC I think that comes in very beautifully. The Darby Translation note is ‘every sin’.
Rem It would not be exactly on gospel lines, but more in connection with our walking with one another.
CAC It is a great basic fact which is always true, that if we walk in the light of God’s revelation we have fellowship because all are walking in the same line, and if a moral question is raised this settles everything judicially: “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”. It is always in your soul, you never get away from the ground of your being in the light. It is very good gospel, but it is gospel for the saints. Cleansed from your own individual sin, ‘every sin’, it says.
Rem You would not mind it used as a subject for the gospel.
CAC No, because it is an absolute statement, always true whether for saint or sinner. F.E.R. once illustrated it by, ‘Such a medicine cures the ague’. It is the efficacy of the blood. It is so efficacious that it cleanses under the eye of God every sin. It is a sense of cleansing judicially, so every sin is washed away. He has “washed us from our sins in his blood”, John says (Revelation 1: 5).
Ques How would it compare with verse 9?
CAC Oh, that is practical; you confess it, and God is righteous to forgive when it is confessed, but you are not to do it again. Repentance is a moral process, so that you do not do it again. The difficulty is that we are not genuine enough in confession. If we were genuine enough in confession of sin we should never do it again. I am convinced God would cleanse us from the unrighteousness. People confess [p. 373] and sin again and confess again and so on, but there is something wrong on our side if this is so. If I confess, and realise that nothing but the blood of Christ can cleanse, and see the seriousness of it, then I do not do it again. It is judged in the light of the necessity of Christ’s death — His blood had to be shed. I may say anything against a brother or sister, and forget that without the shedding of His blood I should be eternally damned — a much more serious matter than most of us think. We are never on the ground of self-righteousness. The only christian ground is that God has come out into the light, having revealed Himself in Jesus, and we all walk in the same light and have the same thoughts of God; everyone who has received the gospel has, so there is fellowship, and the blood of Christ cleanses — there is complete settlement of every sin.
There is the abiding consciousness in the soul of the efficacy of the blood of Christ, and God would not have us move away from it. We stay put, as people say. Satan often does raise questions, especially with people who have very tender consciences. A tender conscience is a very good thing, but it exposes them to Satan, making them the more assailable by Satan.
Luther relates a vision where Satan brought him a long roll of his sins. ‘Is that all?’ Luther asked, and the devil brought him a second and third roll in answer. Then at length said Luther, ‘Write at the bottom, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin”’. Well, that is right, we are never going to be on any other footing with God. I think the reason many people have not peace is lack of knowledge of these things. A tender conscience is to be coveted, but you can soon lose it.