LECTURE 4
LECTURE 4
We have noticed, beloved friends, in the previous part of the epistle, the contrast between the way in which the same thing is in general presented to us in the gospel and in the epistle, and the principle applies, I think, to the other gospels and epistles. In the gospels you will commonly find that whatever blessing is presented,
[p. 191] it is referred to on the divine side, and hence in an absolute way: it is the grace or gift of God’s will, where properly speaking the idea of experience does not come in. It is specially the case in the gospel of John, in which the Saviour is presented to us as the only-begotten Son, revealing God, and Himself the Giver of the gift; He gives the living water, He gives eternal life to His sheep, and the gift is looked at in the absoluteness of the giving. It is not there a question of experience; to mix up the question of experience with gift would be to invalidate the giving.
When you come to the epistle, the case is different. There things are looked at on the experimental side; because the object of the epistles is, I suppose, to lead us into the present reality of what is given to us. We are formed by the revelation.
I have remarked on previous occasions that the first two chapters of the epistle are introductory, while the last is supplementary. The first chapter takes up the ground of our fellowship, and the second speaks of saints according to their spiritual progress. Both chapters look at saints practically as in the world. The closing chapter is supplementary to the apostle’s witness, introducing the three witness bearers, which prove that the gift that is given to us is in the last Adam and not in the first. But the substance of the epistle, as I might say, really lies in chapters 3 and 4.
Chapter 3 we had before us last time, and chapter 4 is so tonight. My first object is to point out the essential difference between chapters 3 and 4, and to show you that looked at on the experimental side (not the gift side), chapter 4 is an advance on chapter 3. Perhaps a person might say, You cannot have chapter 3 without chapter 4, and vice versa. Well, I admit that in a sense. Still, for all that, in the way in which the truth is unfolded here, chapter 4 presents to us an advance on chapter 3. It is really more objective in its bearing.
[p. 192] The Lord helping me, I will show you the leading features of chapter 4; but before I pass on to that, I will say a word or two further about chapter 3. The leading point in chapter 3, as we saw last time, is the truth of relationship; for relationship has come in. In chapter 1 we find the truth of forgiveness; but in our positive blessing as Christians, the first great feature and element is relationship; we are brought by the Father’s gift into a relationship which for man never had any existence before. There were in previous dispensations saints of God, and in a way there was relationship before; but the peculiar form of relationship which is referred to in chapter 3 had no existence here until Christ came. It is a relationship which is peculiar to John, and though intimately connected with the relationship of sons, is described as that of children. I have said often that the thought prominent in it is association with Christ, unknown and rejected here, because Christ is looked at in that way, and we as children are brought into association with Him; children of God, the objects of the Father’s affection, in a world from which Christ has been rejected. The world knows us not even as it knew Him not. We are associated with Him for glory as sons, that is the full height of the relationship to which we are called; but the idea of children, although sometimes presented in Paul, is more peculiar to John. It is what comes out in chapter 1 of the gospel, “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons [children] of God”.
That is one point in chapter 3, and another is the moral being which is suited to the relationship. And it is in virtue of these two points that we abide in God and God in us; as to the relationship, we abide in God, and as to the moral being, from which the character springs, God abides in us. I want to say a [p. 193] word about the moral being because, if you desire to understand Scripture, your minds must be capable of grasping the thought of moral being as something distinct from our present actual being as men upon earth, an inner man. We have part in a new moral being, which is really ourselves, but is not yet clothed in a suitable condition, a house out of heaven. We shall be clothed, but the new being exists now, and you could not have the new relationship without it.
It is remarkable to me that the new being is expressed in one word in chapter 3: 7, “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous”. The point here is not that you are accounted righteous, it is not a divine reckoning, but it is a being — I do not know a better term to use. He that doeth righteousness is righteous after the same order as Christ; as in the expression (I only use it as an illustration), “The new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness”.
Another point comes before us in the chapter: that the righteous one loves. It is an interesting connection which has only lately been brought before me. The righteous person, that is, the person in whom God has His place, loves. The righteous one owns the obligation to love, for, “This is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another”; and finds power to carry it out, and in that way proves that he has “passed from death unto life”. I do not go further into the point tonight, because I do not know enough about it to unfold it thoroughly, but you may take it for granted — the righteous one loves. Christ was the righteous One; He is continually spoken of in that way in this epistle; and He loved. It is beautifully brought out at the close of chapter 3, “Hereby perceive we the love ... because he laid down his life for us”.
Lawlessness came in by Adam, hatred came out in [p. 194] Cain. Hatred could hardly come out in Adam, because Adam had no neighbour or brother to hate. Cain had a brother to hate, and Cain hated his brother. The two are intimately linked together, lawlessness and hatred. On the other hand, the righteous one loves. The height of our righteousness is that we are righteous as Christ is righteous. We have the being which is suited to the relationship, that is, are righteous, and love because we are righteous (we own our obligation), and it is a proof we have passed from death unto life. He that hateth his brother, the apostle goes on to say, abides in death, he abides in the world, and in death.
I have just referred to what is thus presented to us in chapter 3, because I did not feel I could pass on to chapter 4 without a few words on it. And you see, beloved friends, the great importance of that chapter, because it gives us the substance of the blessing.
Now what marks chapter 4 is first the Spirit, and secondly knowledge, but knowledge, I think, more in the sense of what I may call consciousness. I will go into detail presently, but I want those two points to be impressed upon your minds — the Spirit, and with the Spirit, knowledge. If you read chapter 4 attentively, you will find that knowledge has a great place; I look to the Lord to enable me to show you how it works out, and how extremely important it is. And it is that which makes me say that in a sense it is an advance on chapter 3; not morally exactly, because you can have nothing better than the relationship, and the being suited to the relationship, but in privilege. The Spirit and knowledge are of the greatest possible moment to us, for we do not get into the reality of our privilege apart from the Spirit and the knowledge which the Spirit brings. All real Christian knowledge is by the Holy Spirit. If we say “we know”, as in “we know that we have passed from death unto life”, “we know that he abideth in us”, and so on, it is all evidently by the Holy Spirit; you cannot talk about [p. 195] Christian knowledge really, apart from the Holy Spirit. “The spiritual discerns all things”. There is no such thought in Scripture as the knowledge of divine things, the knowledge of God, or what is of God, except in the power of the Holy Spirit.
But I want to enlarge upon those two great points — the Spirit, and knowledge which is consequent upon the possession of the Spirit. What you come to in the last verse of chapter 3, the point you begin with, is certainty; and you never get the idea of certainty apart from the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is the seal of God upon the believer, and, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”.
Just contrast with the last verse of chapter 3, verse 24 of chapter 2, “Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you” — ‘continue’ and ‘abide’ and ‘remain’ are the same word, but they are changed in the translation for the sake of euphony — “ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life”. In the latter part of verse 24, an ‘if’ is introduced, just as we find a similar ‘if’ in Colossians 1. “You ... now hath he reconciled ... if ye continue in the faith”. It does not call in question the reality of reconciliation, but as long as saints are down here an ‘if’ is attached to it, because you have to continue in the faith, continuance is the test. Now contrast that with what you get at the close of chapter 3: “He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him”; that is, as I understand it, we continue in God, as to our place and relationship, and God continues in us, as to what is presented in the way of moral being and character. And mark what follows: “And hereby we know that he abideth in us” — it is no longer an ‘if’, the thing is no longer put in connection with our responsibility; “hereby we know that [p. 196] he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” — there is certainty. The Spirit brings to the soul the sense of certainty in the new position and in the new connections in which the saints are found. The Spirit is in accord with, and the seal of, the blessing. That is the first point.
The next point is this, that you are in a completely new order of things. It gives me the idea of being, as it were, in a vessel let down from heaven; that is, I am morally apart from the world, and supported from heaven. I abide in God, and God abides in me. I am independent in that sense of all here; I have no link with God as connected with the earth, but I abide in that blessed relationship with God which is of a heavenly character. And more than that, God abides in me, that is, I do not depend on man, or human resources, or my own ability; God abides in me. I do not know how better to illustrate it than by the idea of a person supported in a vessel let down from heaven. We are in entirely new associations, which are divine in character, for in John we have not only what is heavenly, but divine in character, and God abides in us. And now, I have come to this point, I am conscious of it. I have to learn it in a certain sense, and, having learnt it, I am conscious of it, I know it by the Spirit that dwells in me.
Now that is a wonderful place to be in, beloved friends. I would to God that everyone here might apprehend it. I will go on now to show the marks of it, how it works out. Because John is careful in every point of truth he brings out, to show how it works out in the life and testimony of saints. John is essentially practical, although so abstract. Whatever place and blessing we are brought into before God, with its consequent association and intimacy, all with John is to work out into practice here. And I want to show the way in which it is to work out.
I see in what follows that three things are contemplated,
[p. 197] first (in the beginning of chapter 4) we find the power to try spirits, the detection of spirits; secondly, that we come out as disciples of Christ; and thirdly, that we have part in the testimony of grace, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. These three points I want to speak of in detail.
The apostle says, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error”. That is the first point. And we get here that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world: that is, that we have no occasion to be afraid of the world, or of the influences at work there, of the spirits which act there, because we have got this principle now, the Holy Spirit is in the believer, “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world”.
Next, I get the power of detection, for things are resolved; in the eyes of the one that has the Spirit of God, all is traced back to its source. For instance, if I saw the world busy with so-called Christian literature, popular books which everybody was reading, I should conclude that it is of the world, and therefore the world heareth it. On the other hand, the apostle says, “He that knoweth God heareth us”, there is the test.
[p. 198] That is, if I want to know the people that are of God, I look for the people that hear the apostles. There are two great sources — the world of one class of literature, and the apostles who are of God of another; and the world hears what is of the world, and those who are of God hear what is of the apostles. “Hereby”, says the apostle, “know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error”. It is deplorable to see saints reading the books which are popular in the world. The world is not altogether averse to so-called religious books; but if they suit their taste, it proves the books are of the world.
And allow me here to offer a word of warning; and I would not attempt to warn anyone in regard to what I have not gone through in experience for myself. Our danger is in taking things second-hand, instead of from the source, the fountain; for after all, what you want to hear is the apostles. That is what the apostle says here, “We are of God”, and I believe great force is to be attached to that expression; none could say in the same sense as an apostle, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us”. And I advise everybody here, get your ideas direct from the fountain-head. I do not undervalue periodicals, and writings; but at the same time I would much prefer to see saints paying more attention to what comes direct from the fountainhead, from Scripture itself. That is what the apostle says, “He that knoweth God hears us”.
Thus the first point here is the ability to trace things to their source, to detect spirits, and thus not to be taken in by different things which present themselves to us in the world.
We come now to the next thing, to something more positive — we come out as disciples of Christ. “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of [p. 199] God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us”. Connect that with a passage in John 13: 33-35: “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”.
I desire to dwell upon this, for it is an excessively beautiful thought. The two great points in the latter part of John 13 are God glorified in the Son of man (I dare say most will remember the verse, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”), and the new commandment. That is, the Son of man was to take a new place in the glory of God; He was not to be publicly glorified yet, but glorified in God; Man, in the Person of the Son of man, was to have a completely new place with God. And the divine character was to come out in the saints down here; they were to be known as disciples of Christ, because they had love one to another. Do you understand what it is to be a disciple? I think discipleship is more than faith, because discipleship implies this, that I have learnt of my teacher. No man can teach what he does not know. And it is a fact, that the best teacher is the man most competent to teach the elements. Christ could teach perfectly because He knew what He taught. He knew perfectly the love of God. He was God, but as man He knew the love of God and therefore He could make it known. And if the disciples [p. 200] loved one another they would be manifestly disciples of Christ.
Now let us get the lesson taught in the passage. I can understand the question, How can we walk in love, how can we practise love? The answer is, Because we have found out the love of God. And that is why the apostle speaks in this way. He says, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another”. You see the cardinal point here is this, that “we know”, we have made discovery of the way in which the love of God has come out towards us. I dwell upon that only to show that God was completely first with us. The two points brought out in verses 9 and 10 are that the condition in which we were was that of being spiritually dead as regards God, and sinners, and when that was the case the love of God was toward us; He loved us and sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him, that He might be the propitiation for our sins. Now we can look that blessed truth in the face. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. It is not that I am discovering these wonderful things for the first time, but I now enjoy them. And I find in this blessed truth, that which has given me a motive for my own practice, for it is positive unrighteousness in me to act differently from what God has acted to me. That I lay down as an unquestionable principle. It was that which brought upon the man who owed ten thousand talents the exaction of all the debt, because he did not act as he had been acted to. God has shown to us the most boundless love, and “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another”. And we make manifest in that way that we are disciples of Christ, in that we have love one to another.
It is a blessed thing to come out as a disciple of Christ, because it proves that I know God, not only have I made discovery of the goodness of God, but I can now enjoy the wonderful revelation of God. At the first I had to find out the grace of God when I was a sinner; but thank God, it is not that now. I can now see how God was beforehand with us, and that we owe everything to the sovereign love of God. “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another”.
And we have a further word, still connecting itself with our coming out as disciples of Christ. The apostle uses the same form of expression here as in the gospel of John. There it is, “No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. Here it is, “No one hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us”.
I pass on now to the third point, “Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us” — we have this “we know” again; it is almost a repetition of the passage at the close of chapter 3, but a little fuller, because it includes the thought of our abiding in Him. “Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God”. Now we have part in the blessed testimony of grace. But you are not really clear for it unless you understand the new, and blessed, and divine character of the association into which you are brought. I believe the man who would be the most effective evangelist is the man who is most clear of the world, because he then really approaches the world [p. 202] from the divine side. As we have seen, we have the ability to judge of the character of things, to test spirits. We come out as disciples of Christ, and approach the world with the blessed testimony that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. And you cannot in a certain sense go higher. We may be led by the grace of God into the enjoyment of our own portion — that is perfectly true — but as to the moral height of things, you cannot go beyond the gospel, the testimony of divine love to the world. It is the witness of the sovereignty of that love in which God has been pleased to approach the world, to send His Son to be the Saviour of the world; “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
We see thus, in some measure, the effect of the consciousness of the new and blessed association into which we are brought, in our ability to go through the world superior to it, because greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world, to come out here shining brightly in the blessed character of disciples of Christ, having learnt from Him of the love of God, and to bear our part too in the testimony of grace.
Everybody will agree with me as to the mode in which the apostle brings everything out in a practical shape in the Christian. But how is it we come out in this way? Because, by the grace of God, we know how completely we are free of all that is here. We abide in God and God in us, and know it by the Holy Spirit.
If there is one thing I am ashamed of as to myself, it is the little degree in which Christianity takes practical shape with me. I honestly own it, because whatever faults one may have, one would not care to be a hypocrite. I have a sort of consciousness of the blessing into which we are brought by the grace of God, but it fills me often with shame to think in how [p. 203] little measure it takes a practical shape and character in me. And it is that which the apostle insists largely upon.
Now I have only a few words more to say, and that is as to the succeeding verses, in which you will find some wonderful truth unfolded, for the apostle will not stop until he has fully shown the way in which the love of God connects itself with the saint through the whole of his responsible course. It is striking how the apostle connects every thought with us as saints down here, not as saints in glory. It is true that when He is manifested we shall be like Him. But in this chapter he shows us divine love in connection with us in our course down here, and therefore goes on to the day of judgment. He begins with the time when we were spiritually dead, and sinners, for we were responsible because we were sinners; then he shows the connection of the love with us as saints, and then speaks of the day of judgment, which is the wind-up and end of the entire chapter of our responsibility.
I will just point it out, because I had much rather your attention were fastened on the scripture than on anything I can say. He says, “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”. Now, beloved friends, that is the love which God has to us as saints, the love in which we abide. We abide in God, and to abide in God is to abide in the sense that I am in the blessed place of relationship before Him, and loved as Christ was loved. That is the consciousness in which we are entitled to be. It is the answer to the closing prayer of the Lord in John 17, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me” — that is, as a man upon earth — “may be in them, and I in them”. Now, says the apostle, “we have known and believed the love that God has to us”.
[p. 204] It is the greatest joy and delight to know that upon earth we are the objects of the Father’s love, of love such as that with which the Son was loved as a man down here. The apostle could say, “We have known and believed the love that God has to us” — that is as saints. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” — I abide in the consciousness of the love of God toward me; and more than that, God abides in me, so that the character of God comes out in my relations to the saints down here.
And then we come to what closes up this subject. He says, “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment”. I think why he carries the thought on to the day of judgment is that he is still looking at the saint in connection with his course here upon earth; and therefore he says, “That we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is” — though there is responsibility, and must be Christian responsibility so long as we are here, yet it cannot invalidate the truth for a moment — “as he is” — that is, as the Judge is — “so are we in this world”. Whatever He is to the Father, as Man, the object of the Father’s delight, and affections, and favour, I say that is true to the saint, although there be at the same time the question of responsibility, which will be closed for ever at the day of judgment. “As he is, so are we in this world”. The object with which he introduces it is that all fear may be dispelled from the hearts of saints, because “fear hath torment”, and “he that feareth is not made perfect in love”.
And we come back at the close of the passage to this, “We love him, because he first loved us”. I believe that the last and most difficult thing for a saint to learn is that God first loved him. We sometimes think that God loves us as we love Him. Scripture puts it the other way, “We love him, because he first loved us”. When I am free of self, and of the thought of what I am for God, then I learn this blessed truth, that after all, if I love God at all, it is because He first loved me.
I do not think I have strained the truth before us. I return to what I started with in the chapter, that I think it introduces the two great thoughts, of the Spirit, and of the knowledge and certainty which are connected with the presence of the Spirit. I am completely marked off from the world, because by the Spirit I am conscious of being in this new and blessed association, dwelling in God and God in me. I have power to go through the world, and to detect the form and character of evil which is presented to me there, and to come out in testimony for God as a disciple of Christ, and as bearing a part in the blessed gospel of grace, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. And then, beloved friends, we have nothing to fear. What a great thing it would be for the mind and spirit to get free of all restlessness and effort, and to come to this — to sit down and meditate when no eye is upon me but the eye of God — here I am the object of the Father’s perfect love, as the apostle says, “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us”. God’s love will never be greater to you than at this moment. You may have more entrance into it, you may see what that love brings to you, but God’s love will never be more perfect to you than it is now. “Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world”.
May it have the effect, beloved friends, with every one of us, of producing the sense of certainty in the soul — I do not mean a dogged kind of certainty, I think that is a bad kind of certainty — but the certainty which flows from the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the saints; to be really settled and assured in the blessed consciousness of what the love of God is,
[p. 206] and in the assurance that if there be still responsibility, as there must be so long as we are down here upon earth, it cannot invalidate or touch for one instant the truth that “as he is, so are we in this world”, and that love is made perfect with us in that way.
May God establish all our hearts in His great grace, that we may know what it is to feast and to revel in the consciousness of what the love of God is toward us, who are brought into this blessed place of children in the Father’s presence.