THE PRESERVATION OF THE SAINTS
In these passages we have read, John has the preservation of the saints before him.
He never speaks of himself as apostle. In the book of Revelation, he presents himself as a “brother”, and in this epistle, he takes the place of father, calling the saints “children”. When he says “children” in verse 12 and in chapter 2: 28, he is addressing all the saints, and really speaks to them all as his children. In chapter 3, he says that we are “children of God”, but he uses fatherly language on account of this love for all the saints. He considers them firstly as being together, and then classifies them according to their spiritual development, as fathers, young men, and little children.
His great preoccupation is that we should abide in Christ. It is a matter of great importance that we must always have in our minds. It signifies practically that we remain under His influence and we apply ourselves to learn of Him all that is for God’s pleasure in a man.
In the gospel of John, Jesus is presented as “the Word”, that is to say One in whom God has been perfectly expressed. But in the first epistle of John, He is spoken of as being “the word of life”. It is in Him that life according to God has been seen in perfection. John begins his epistle speaking of “the word of life” and of what he and the other apostles had heard and seen with their eyes, and contemplated, and their hands handled. They saw perfection in a Man, in a life spent down here in relation to God. It is said that this life was with the Father; it had this characteristic of being lived continually in relation with the Father. The Lord had His part in the sufferings of the testimony. Clearly, He had had the first place in it and knew them in a supreme way; but at the same time, His life was in relation with the Father, and so He always dwelt in His Father’s love. He said to His disciples, “If ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”. He set His abiding in His Father’s love, in His position as Man down here, on the ground of having kept His commandments, and He says elsewhere that He did always the things that pleased Him.
At the end of John 7, we read, “And every one went to his home. But Jesus went to the mount of Olives”. He retired on the mount of Olives in communion with His Father.
In one of the last chapters of the gospel of Luke, we read that He passed the days in the temple teaching, often finding Himself as the focus of opposition, and during the nights, He withdrew to the mount of Olives. That gives us in some way a view of what characterised the life of Jesus here. He devoted Himself entirely to His service to men, bringing them divine light, and suffering from those who were opposed to God, as it is said, “the reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me”; but at the same time His life was spent in relation with His Father.
John therefore addresses himself first to all the saints and says, “I write to you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake”. We might think that this is placed on a very simple foundation; but if the youngest believer can hold himself happily on this foundation, it is just as much the part of the oldest. It is a foundation on which we are established together, as having a common interest in Christ: “because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake”. Whatever age we reach, we never lose that view. We may have a lot more in our hearts in becoming old, and have a lot more experience, while always keeping this in us, to know that our sins have been given for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ. If we think of that applying to all the saints, and there are myriads of them, how that is fit to exalt Christ in our eyes! and His marvellous work! By His death, propitiation has been made for the sins of all the saints since Abel until the coming of the Lord. What an immense weight the Lord Jesus has taken upon Himself! Nobody else, unless He Himself is God, could have undertaken such a work. Let us think about that, so as to see the greatness of Christ, and to understand what was necessary that God should be glorified as to sin, and that propitiation should be made for all the sins of all those who will have part in the eternal world of glory. Whatever family they belong to in God’s wisdom, their blessing depends as to its moral basis on this marvellous work. It is the common basis on which all the saints can be together.
And let us say in passing that, in coming together on the first day of the week to break bread, we have to begin on a simple basis, at a point where all the saints can be together in a happy way, because then we can move together in the Spirit.
So, as I have said, John addresses himself first to all the saints, and then to fathers, saying, “I write to you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning”, that is to say Christ. This is not the beginning to which the first chapter of the gospel of John refers, or the one in the first chapter of Genesis; but it is really the beginning of Christianity, and Christianity must take its character from what marked the beginning; that is to say, what Christ has been as Man down here. The fathers are those who have known and know the One who is from the beginning, and John had nothing else to say to them; unless they are included again in verse 28, where it is said, “And now, children abide in him”. In the religious world that is around us, a lot of things demonstrate the disregard of what was at the beginning, but John’s pre-occupation is that we should be preserved by what was from the beginning, and that we should not be turned aside.
Then he addresses the young men, as those who have “overcome the wicked one”. We understand, I think, in reading this passage that “overcome the wicked one” is a reference to the fact that they were sound in the faith; they had not been diverted by antichristian teaching as the little children were in danger of. The young men were sound in the faith, the wicked one had no power over them as to what concerned doctrine. On the contrary, the danger for them was the world, and perhaps a still greater danger, the things of the world. It may be found sometimes, dear brethren, that while being saved from the world in a general way, and not giving room to such a system, while we find our life in the assembly and in the family of God, there could however be in some of us the danger of bringing the things of the world into the position; and John says: “Love not the world, nor the things in the world”. The children of Israel were led out of Egypt and it was never God’s intention that they should go back there. In the course of their journey, they came to the brazen serpent and the springing well. Then in the power of these things, it could be said, they crossed the Jordan, and this spoke typically of the enjoyment of all that God has prepared for us in the purpose of His love. But at the beginning of the book of Joshua, we see a man called Achan, attracted by a bar of gold, two hundred shekels of silver, and a mantle of Shinar, and he hid them in his tent. It was not that he wanted to go back to Egypt, but he coveted the things that practically belonged to Egypt, and that is why he had to go and hide them. He knew that they were not in accord with Canaan, and did not belong to the people of God, so he hid them in his tent. We can say I suppose that his wife and children agreed with him on this matter, because when the matter was exposed publicly and judged, he and all his own were stoned. I only mention this to show the danger, although being apart from the world, of nevertheless bringing into the position where we are certain things belonging to the world. In contrast with that, John presents the Father’s love. It is remarkable that, in addressing the “fathers” he says to them that they knew Him that was from the beginning, that is to say Christ as being their object and their life, and then he presents the Father’s love to the young men: “If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”. I believe there are the two sides to consider: on the one hand, what the Father loves and what is enjoyed by one who is loved, and on the other, the question of our love for the Father. If we know what the Father loves, we know that He loves Christ perfectly, and at the end of John 17, the Lord says, “that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them”. There is this possibility in a certain sense, that we learn to love Christ as the Father loves Him. We will come to this result as we seek to understand why the Father loves Him. We might well say, ‘obviously, I love Him’, and that is true, but there is more. The Father says to men, at the Jordan according to Matthew’s account: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”, and again to Peter, James and John on the holy mountain: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight: hear him”. Have we ever asked the Father to show us what it is in Christ that has secured Him such pleasure, and who is so worthy that we should be attached to Him? It is not simply a matter of accepting as a fact that the Father loves the Son, but of asking Him to show us what it was in Christ that brought out such an expression of delight from the Father; for the more we understand it, the better we will see the complete contrast with this world. What is around us is marked by principles and features that are hateful to the Father, as it also says, “If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”. It could not be said that one can love the world and the Father at the same time. In principle, if one is a true believer and possesses the Holy Spirit, one has some measure of love for the Father, because the Holy Spirit teaches us to cry “Abba, Father”; but characteristically, if someone loves the world, it could not be said that they love the Father, because the Father and the world are in absolute contrast. The Father has His own world, of which the beginning is Christ in resurrection. He has raised Christ from among the dead by His glory. The Father’s glory is, I believe, an allusion to His power and to His love acting together, bringing Christ up from among the dead, and establishing Him beyond death as being “the beginning”. Faith understands that the Father has His own world, drawing its character from Christ, to which we are called. And John says, “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. And the world is passing, and its lust …”. That is like a moral judgment expressed by the Spirit of God. If the world is passing and its lust, it is not worth being concerned with, while “he that does the will of God abides for eternity”.
When he addresses the little children, he has a lot to say to them. It is to be noticed that if the fathers are characterised by the knowledge of Christ, and the young men established in relation to the Father, what is said to the little children relates to what the Holy Spirit is for them. It is not that the Spirit is not much for the young men and the fathers, for He certainly is a lot for the fathers and a lot for the young men, in the measure in which they have judged the world. The Lord has shown in the course of recent years the place of the Holy Spirit, what He must have in our hearts. He is the great power by which we can live according to God, the only power greater than that of the flesh, so that we must live by the Spirit. Paul was a man who knew in a full measure what the Spirit was for him as the power of life. He says, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death”. That is what the Spirit was for him; that maintained his soul in living relation with Christ, so that his life was characterised and influenced by Christ; drawing its character from Christ Jesus, it was really life “in Christ Jesus”.
But as to the little children, it is not suggested that they know the Spirit quite completely. His presence with them has a preservative effect, because He produces holy feelings as to the truth and gives rise to instincts and right feelings in the believer in whom He dwells that make him detect what is contrary to the truth; not necessarily in an intelligent way but intuitively. That is what verse 20 refers to when it says, “And ye have the unction from the holy one, and ye know all things”, and a little further on, it is added, “the unction which ye have received from him abides in you, and ye have not need that any one should teach you; but as the same unction teaches you as to all things, and is true and is not a lie, and even as it has taught you, ye shall abide in him”, v 27. That evidently does not mean that we have no need of those whom the Lord has given to the assembly to teach us, but refers simply to the fact that, in possessing the Spirit, we are independent of the teaching of men and of all that is around us in the religious world, whatever intelligence there may be that marks men. Even the youngest believer is independent of all that because of the presence of the Spirit in him. He has the capacity to discern all things which may be dishonouring to Christ, and he has the energy by the Spirit to refuse it.
The apostle comes then to his great subject and says, “And now, children, abide in him”. We must keep near to Christ and under His influence, learn from Him what is agreeable to God; and doing so, we will be preserved from the world. John says, “if he be manifested”. He looks to the day of manifestation, when the work of God will appear in all its glory. This work is tested by present conditions in the world, and is continually attacked by the enemy, but the saints have the power to keep themselves. This epistle says, “he that has been begotten of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him”; but we must keep ourselves in the condition of abiding in Christ.
And now, as to the beginning of chapter 3, the apostle draws our attention to the greatness of the Father’s love, which is witnessed in our being called “children of God”. In the first chapter of the gospel of John, we read that we have been given the right to occupy such a position, being born of Him. It is said, “born, not of blood, nor of flesh’s will, nor of man’s will, but of God”. Having received Christ makes it clear that we are born of God. It is something that the young people must take into consideration, and each of us as well, to know that we are really God’s children, born of Him, and thus we have the right to occupy this place in relation with Him, knowing Him as Father. Our confidence is in Him, and His faithful care for us, and in all that He has established in His perfect wisdom and love for the good of His children. What father would not do what he could for his children? and the Father will certainly do the best possible, and everything is possible to Him, as to His children; so can we not be quite at peace in this world!
Besides, this position implies the resemblance of the children with the father, and that comes to light here, as to the children of God. They are morally like the Father, and on that account, they have the privilege to know something of the rejection of Christ. It is said: “For this reason the world knows us not, because it knew him not”. When the Lord was here, he was the perfect expression of God, and those who hated God, being able to do nothing against Him, turned their hatred upon Christ, as it is said, “The reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me”. Now, in the measure in which we manifest what we are, as God’s children, we will know something of the way in which Christ has been treated, because God’s children are down here as His representatives. This world has not the least appreciation of God, or what is expressed of Him in His children, as it is said “the world knows us not, because it knew him not”.
Then John says one more time: “now are we children of God, and what we shall be has not yet been manifested”. That is not because we do not know ourselves; the point is that it has not yet been publicly manifested. We know that we are also “sons of God”, and what belongs to the sons of God is that they are like Christ in glory, like to Himself, the Son of God. This has not yet been manifested but “if it is manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. Mr F E Raven has said9 that we must be like Him to see Him. We could not see Him as He is without being like Him. But when He is manifested, we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. This must therefore be the hope of our hearts, a hope, the effects of which are such as to purify us, for it is said, “And every one that has this hope in him” (that is in Christ) “purifies himself, even as he is pure”.
Well! John places these truths before us so that we should be preserved in this world for God’s pleasure, and the secret is “abide in him”.
May the Lord bless the word.
BRONAC
2nd November 1957
Translated from the French magazine, ‘Ondées’,
July-August 1958
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