Bible Commentaries
1 John 4

XXIX. Our Righteousness Exercised in Trying the Spirits; The Test, Confessing that Jesus Christ Is Come in the Flesh

“Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. 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 anti-Christ, 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.”—1 John 3:24 to 1 John 4:4

THE appeal in the beginning of the fourth chapter springs out of the closing statement in the third: “Hereby we know that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” This evidently throws us back into ourselves; into some consciousness on our part of his having given us the Spirit. It is an inward or subjective test. Have we in us the Spirit as given to us by God! If so, we have the Spirit in us “confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” And by his confessing that truth, we may distinguish his indwelling in us from all attempts of any anti-Christian spirit, or any false prophets or teachers inspired by an anti- Christian spirit, to effect a lodgment in our hearts. For this is their characteristic; they refuse to “confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”

The meaning of that confession, objectively considered, has been already brought out in what John says of Anti-Christ as “denying that Jesus is the Christ;”—and so virtually “denying the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:21-25). I am inclined to think that we have now to deal with it more subjectively; as a matter of inward experience rather than of doctrinal statement. For the starting-point is our “knowing that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” It is the fact of the Spirit confessing in us, and not merely to us, that we have to ascertain and verify; and therefore the test must apply inwardly;—Have we in us “the Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?” As it stands here, therefore, I think we are called to deal with that formula rather experimentally than dogmatically; and so to make it all the more available for the searching of our hearts.

Taking that view, I shall consider, in the first place, what the inward confession of the Spirit in us that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh may be held to imply; and then, secondly, how our realising this in our experience secures our personal and practical victory over all anti-Christian spirits or prophets who deny that great and blessed fact.

I. It properly belongs to the Spirit to “confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” He had much to do with the flesh in which Jesus Christ came. He prepared for him a body in the Virgin’s womb, so as to secure that he came into the world pure and sinless. And all throughout his sojourn on earth the Spirit ministered to him as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” he could not minister to him otherwise. It is the flesh, or humanity, of Jesus Christ that brings him within the range of the Spirit’s gracious care. It was his human experience that the Spirit animated and sustained; and it is with his human experience also that the Spirit deals when he “takes of what is Christ’s and shows it unto us.” His object is to make us one with “Jesus Christ as come in the flesh.” That practically is his confession to us and in us. Let us see what it implies.

1. He identifies us with Jesus Christ in his humiliation. There is no real humiliation on the part of the Son if his coming in the flesh is denied. He might be conceived of as coming gloriously, graciously, condescendingly, in his own original and eternal nature alone; taking the mere semblance of a body, or a real body now and then, as the Gnostic dreamers taught. But there would have been no humbling of himself in that, and no room for any concurrent humbling testimony or work of the Spirit in us. It is Jesus Christ as come in the flesh, “made of a woman, made under the law,” that the Spirit owns and seals. And he confesses or witnesses this in us by making us one, and keeping us one, with our Lord in that character, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh.” In our divine regeneration he brings us to be,—what, through his interposition, Jesus Christ in his miraculous human generation became,—servants under the yoke; subject to the authority and commandment of God; willingly subject; our nature being renewed into the likeness of his.

2. The Spirit identifies us with Jesus Christ, not only in his humiliation but in its conditions and liabilities. For “to confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” is not merely to admit the fact of his incarnation, but to admit it with whatever consequences necessarily, in terms of law, flow from it. His coming in the flesh is not simply an incident or .event in history; it has a special meaning in the moral government of God. It brought him, not merely into the position of one made under the law, but into the position, under the law, of those whose place he took.

The old deniers of his coming in the flesh saw this; and it was their chief objection to the doctrine. They might have allowed that the mysterious efflux or emanation of Deity that they seemed to own as a sort of Saviour did somehow identify himself with us, by making common cause with us, and even temporarily assuming our nature with a view to purge and elevate it. But they perceived that the literal incarnation of the Son of God, truly and fairly admitted, carried in its train the vicarious substitution and atonement. Modern teachers in the same line think that they may hold the first without the last. But I am mistaken if any incarnation they may thus hold does not slip insensibly, in their handling of it, into some modification, suited to modern turns of thought, of the old vague notion of a certain divinity being in every man; and in some one man perhaps pre-eminently as the type and model of perfect manhood. That, however, is not to “confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” for his coming in the flesh, accepted as a reality, implies his really putting himself alongside of those in whose flesh he comes, and serving himself heir to all the ills to which their flesh is heir.

Let us look, then, at “Jesus Christ coming in the flesh,” the Son of God taking our nature into oneness with himself. He takes it pure and sinless, so far as he is personally concerned; but he takes it with all the liabilities which our sin has entailed upon it, And the Spirit, confessing in us that he is come in the flesh, makes us one with him in this view of his coming; our guilt and condemnation being now his, and his taking our guilt and bearing our condemnation being ours. His coming in the flesh is his consenting to be crucified for us; the Spirit in us confessing him as come in the flesh makes us willing to be crucified with him. And so, by means of this confession, the true Spirit of God and of Christ opens to us a prospect of glory and joy such as no lying spirit of anti-Christ can hold out. If it was not really in the flesh that he came; or if, coming in the flesh, he failed to redeem by substitution those whose flesh he shared; then flesh, or human nature, can have little hope of reaching the blessedness of heaven. But having really come in the flesh, and in the flesh suffered for sin, he raises the flesh in which he suffered to the highest capacity of holy and happy being. “In my flesh I shall see God,” was the hope of the patriarch Job. It is made sure by Jesus Christ come in the flesh, and by the Spirit confessing in us that he is come.

II. This accordingly is the secret of our present victory over anti-Christian spirits and men: “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them” (1 John 4:4). The intimation (1 John 4:3) that the spirit of anti-Christ is already, even now, in the world, is fitted to make this assurance very welcome. For war is proclaimed; war that is to last as long as the world lasts. It is the old war, proclaimed long ago, between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s. But it has taken a new form; and that its final one. From the first manifestation of it,—from the day when Cain slew his brother—it might be seen to turn upon the question of the worship of God by atoning sacrifice. Is there, or is there not, to be the shedding of blood for the remission of sins? That, more or less clearly, with variations suited to the varied aspect of the church and the world, has ever since continued to be in substance the point at issue. Now that Christ has come in the flesh, it is so more than ever. “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” is its ultimate expression and embodiment. In the contest about this high theme, “you, little children, have overcome them.” The victory is already yours: for “you are of God.”

Two questions here occur;—1. What is the nature of the victory? 2. How is it connected with your being of God?

1. The victory is a real victory got over the false prophets or teachers, who are not of God, whom the spirit of anti-Christ inspires. And it is a victory over them personally; not over their doctrines and principles merely; but over themselves: “Ye have overcome them.” True, it is, in a sense, a war of doctrines or of principles that is waged; its field of battle is the field of argument and controversy. You and they meet in discussion and debate; and when you succeed in refuting their reasonings, you may feel the complacency of a personal triumph over them as, vanquished, they seem to quit the field. But even though vanquished they may argue still. They are silenced, merely, and not subdued; and their silence is only for a time. You may soon have the battle to fight over again; and in the incessant fighting of it, you may be doomed to suffer wounds, in your temper at least, if not in your faith; in your equanimity of spirit towards men, if not in your peace of mind within yourselves, or even your peace with God. I cannot think that that is the victory on which John congratulates his “little children” so affectionately.

No doubt such victory is valuable, as the sort of war in which it is won is inevitable. It is idle to effect to run down controversy, as long as there is error abroad among men. It is mere prudery to be always groaning over the symptoms of irritability which controversialists have exhibited, and bemoaning evermore their lack of a smooth and oily tongue. All honour to the champions of God’s holy word and blessed gospel, who have waxed valiant in fight against the adversaries of both! All sympathy with them in their indignant sense of what touches the glory and insults the majesty of him whose battles they fight; with large allowance for the heats into which, being but men, they may suffer their zeal to hurry them! And all thankful joy in the success with which they wield the weapons of their keen logic, their learned study, their burning eloquence, in baffling the sophistries of heresy and infidelity, and rearing an impregnable defence around the battlements on which the banner is planted which God “has given to them that fear him, that it may be displayed because of the truth!”

But that is not exactly the victory which is here meant when it is said, “ye have overcome them.” For what really is your contest with them? It is not about an abstract proposition, a mere article in a creed. It is not whether you can prove that Jesus of Nazareth was man as well as God, or God as well as man; or they can prove the reverse. No. “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” is not with you a mere matter of disputation. It is a pregnant and significant fact in God’s government of the universe, grasped by you as such, and apprehended as such in your experience. By faith you know and feel what it means. You identify yourself with him in his coming in the flesh; consciously and with entire community of mind and heart; and in the very doing of this you “have already overcome them.”

For it is the fact that they dislike; not argument about the fact. It is the actual “coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh,” and his actual accomplishment, in the flesh, of all that in the flesh he came for, that they resent and resist. It is that which Satan, the original spirit of anti-Christ, would fain have set himself to hinder; moving Herod to slay Jesus in his childhood, and Judas to betray him in his manhood; tempting Jesus himself to make shipwreck of his integrity. And it is your actual personal participation with him, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” your being really one with him in that wondrous humiliation, in its spirit and its fruit; that, so far as you are concerned, they seek to frustrate. In realising that, you get the better of them; confessing thus Jesus Christ come in the flesh, you have overcome them It is not that you are able to discuss with them, as debatable questions in argument, the reality and the meaning of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh. You may have to do so, and if you do so on a clear call of duty, you are sure of divine support and help; perhaps even of success and triumph. But that is not your having already overcome them. Very gladly would they often drag you into this snare; making you mistake the chance of overcoming them in a discussion about Jesus Christ come in the flesh, for the certainty of your having overcome them through your simply confessing him in that character. But be not drawn down to lower ground. Stand upon your position of oneness with him whom you confess as Jesus Christ come in the flesh. Meet thus any and all anti-Christs; anti-Christian spirits, anti-Christian prophets. They are not to be overcome. You have already overcome them.

2. Your having overcome them is connected with your “being of God” (1 John 4:4); which again is intimately connected with your” confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2). Your being of God is the intermediate link between your confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John 4:2), and your having overcome them who reject that truth (1 John 4:4).

“Ye are of God” (1 John 4:4). This, let it be observed, is what has previously been asserted of the Spirit that “confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” He “is of God” (1 John 4:3). And it is denied concerning any spirit refusing to confess that. Such a spirit “is not of God.”

Now what, as applied to the Holy Spirit, does this mean? How,—in what sense and to what effect,—is the Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh said to be “of God”?

He is of God essentially, being himself God; proceeding from the Father and the Son; one with them in the undivided essence of the Godhead. He is of God, if I may so say, officially; condescending in infinite love, to be the gift of the Father and the Son to guilty and sinful men. But here more particularly, he is of God as confessing, or in virtue of his confessing, that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. He is on the side of God, or in the interest of God; he consults and acts for God; he takes God’s part and is true to God. It is as being thus of God that the Spirit confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. He contemplates, if I may so say, that great fact with all its issues from the divine point of view; in its bearing on the divine character and nature, the divine government and law. He is “of God” in it; in that fact and in all its issues.

Do I take too great a liberty in speaking thus of the Holy Spirit? I scarcely think so when I call to mind how this phrase describes Christ’s own position in the world with reference to the Father. He was “of God;” he was so in a very emphatic and significant sense; not only as regards his origin and mission; his coming from God and being authorised by God; but also, and specially, as regards his end and aim all through his humiliation, obedience, and sacrifice. He was “of God;” on the side and in the interest of God. It was the zeal of God’s house that ate him up. It was the doing of God’s will, and the finishing of God’s work, that was his meat. It was the glorifying of his Father, and the finishing of the work which his Father gave him to do, that ministered to his satisfaction in his last farewell prayer. Of him pre-eminently it might be said: “He is of God.” And in his being thus “of God,” as to the whole mind and meaning of the phrase, the Holy Spirit is with him and in him. Jesus Christ come in the flesh is, in this sense emphatically, confessed by the Spirit. The Spirit is with him, and in him, as the Spirit that is of God; and as being to him the Spirit that is of God. He and the Spirit are at one in being both “of God.” And you, in the Son and by the Spirit are “of God;” as truly of God as is the Spirit, or as the Son was when God “gave not the Spirit by measure to him.”

The essential characteristic of the spirit of anti-Christ is that it is, in the sense now explained, “not of God.” It does not look at the Saviour and the salvation as on the side of God; rather it takes an opposite view, and subjects God to man. It subordinates everything to human interests and human claims; looks at everything from a human and mundane point of view; measures everything by a human standard; submits everything to human opinion; in a word, conceives and judges of God after the manner of man. This, indeed, may be said to be the distinctive feature of all false religions, as well as of all corruptions of the true religion. They exalt man. They consider what man requires, what he would like, what is due to him. Even when they take the form of the most abject and degrading superstition, that is still their spirit. They aim at getting God, by whatever means of persuasion and prostration, to do the bidding of man. For it is the essence of our corrupt human nature, of which these corrupt worships are the expression, to care and consult for self, and not for God. This is the essence of the spirit of anti-Christ; the spirit that breathes and moves in the false notions that have gained currency in the church respecting “Jesus Christ come in the flesh.” Their advocates give man the first place in their scheme. Their real objection lies against those views of gospel truth which assert the absolute sovereignty of God, and put forward pre-eminently what he is entitled to demand,—what, with a due regard to his own character, government, and law, he cannot but demand. They dislike such representations as bring in the element of God’s holy name and righteous authority, and lay much stress upon that element, as one of primary consideration in the plan of saving mercy. Hence they naturally shrink from owning explicitly Jesus Christ as come in the flesh to make atonement by satisfying divine justice. They prefer some loose and vague way of putting the fact of his interposition, and the manner of it. Admitting in a sense its necessity, they are unwilling to define very precisely, either the nature of the necessity, or the way in which it is met. He came in the flesh, to redeem the flesh, to sanctify, elevate, and purify it. He came in the flesh, to be one with us, and to make us, in the flesh, one with him. So they speak and think of his coming in the flesh. Any higher aim, any prior and paramount design involved in this great fact, viewed in its relation to the nature and supremacy of God, his holiness and justice, as lawgiver and judge, they are slow to acknowledge. Hence their gospel is apt to be partial and one-sided; looking rather like an accommodation of heaven and heaven’s rights to earth and earth’s wishes and ways, than that perfect reconciliation and perfect assimilation of earth to heaven for which we hold it to have made provision;—our heavenly Father’s name being hallowed, his kingdom coming, his will being done, in earth as it is in heaven. Their system is not “of God” as the primary object of consideration; for they themselves are not out and out, in this sense, “of God.”

But “ye are of God, little children,” in this matter; in the view that you take, and the conception that you form of Jesus Christ come in the flesh; of the end of his coming, and the manner in which that end is attained. You look at that great fact, first and chiefly in its relation to God, and as on the side of God. It is from God and for God that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. So he always taught; and so you firmly believe. He placed God always first; the glory of God, the sovereignty of God, the will of God always took precedency. Man’s concerns and interests were subordinate to that. Nothing is more conspicuous in “Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” throughout his whole ministry, in all his life and in his death, than this loyalty to God his Father, prevailing even over his amazing tenderness and pity for men. He was truly of God, even when his being so might tell against men; tell to their destruction rather than their salvation. He does not shrink from the darkest issues which, in that view, his coming in the flesh carries in its bosom. He did not shrink from them when realised in his own person, and in his personal experience, as the suffering substitute of the guilty. He does not shrink from them as they are to be realised in the persons, and in the personal experience, of those who “will not come unto him that they may have life.”

If you are “of God,” you are of his mind. You approve of this principle; you recognise the propriety of what is due to God being first attended to and provided for, in preference even to what may be needed by man. What God, being such as he is, must require, since “he cannot deny himself,” that is the first question; then, and in subordination to that, what can be done for men. It is a great matter for you to view the whole plan of salvation, as being yourselves, in this sense, “of God.” It is your doing so that secures your having overcome all spirits of anti-Christ. If thus “you are of God,” you are already raised to a higher platform than they can occupy, so as to have a loftier and wider range of vision. Your profound reverence for the majesty of God; your loyal, loving recognition of his holy and righteous sovereignty; your deep, admiring esteem of his government and law; your calm conviction that the Lord reigneth; your intense desire that the Lord should reign; your determination, may I say, that the Lord shall reign; lifts you out of the region of human questionings and all doubtful disputations. It is your very humility that lifts you up. You sit at the feet of Jesus Christ come in the flesh. You stand beside his cross. You do not now stumble at the mystery of its bloody expiation; or quarrel with the great propitiation-sacrifice through unbelief of its necessity. The ideas of justice needing to be satisfied; punishment inevitably to be inflicted; one willing to bear it in your stead being found; that one being “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” do not now offend you. Nay, being “of God,” on his side and in his interest in the whole of this great transaction, you can meekly, in faith, commit to him and leave in his hands even the most terrible of those ultimate and eternal consequences, involving the aggravated guilt and final ruin of many, that you cannot but see to be inseparably mixed up with the confession that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”

Verses 4-6

XXX. The Spirit of Christ in Us Greater than the Spirit of Antichrist 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.”—1 John 4:4-6

THE security for our full and final victory over anti-Christ and his spirit lies in the emphatic declaration: “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” He that is in you is the Spirit of God; for “hereby we know that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us;” the Spirit that, being of God, “confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:2). He that is in the world is the spirit of anti-Christ, “whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3). Therefore you who “are of God have overcome them,”—“the spirits” the false prophets, “that are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). They are of the world; what they speak is of the world and meets with the world’s acceptance (1 John 4:5). We, the true teachers, are of God; what we speak is of God; and meets with the acceptance, not of him who is not of God, but of him who, being of God, knows God (1 John 4:6). By this test the spirit of truth which is in us is to be distinguished from the spirit of error that is in them (1 John 4:6). From whom do we obtain a hearing?

“Ye are of God;” and your being of God raises you above the risk of being “seduced by false prophets;” for it enables you to “try the spirits. We too are of God.” And this is the proof of it—that our teaching commends itself, not to the world, but to you who know God and are of God. Between you and us there is a blessed harmony; between your state of mind as you try the spirits, and our teaching as we stand the trial You who are hearers, are secure in trying the spirits against all false prophets; for you have overcome them, being yourselves of God. We who are preachers, being of God as you are, have assurance that our spirit, the spirit of our teaching, is the Spirit of truth, when we see the world hearing them, and only you who are of God and know God hearing us. Thus you and we are both safe; you who try and we who are tried; you safe from being misled by false prophets, we safe from being confounded with them. And our joint safety lies in both you and us being “of God.”

Taken thus, this passage bears closely on a deeply interesting subject; the self-evidencing power of the gospel of Christ in the hands of the Spirit of God. There is a wonderfully gracious correspondence between the spiritual intelligence of the man who is of God and knows God; and the spiritual intelligibility and acceptability of the teaching which is of God. The two fit into one another; the state of mind and heart in the receiver who tests, and the character of what is submitted to him to be tested. You who test, and we who are tested, are in a close and intimate relation to one another. A common quality unites us; or a common agency; opening your eyes to try, and fashioning our doctrine for being tried. The same spirit is in you and in us; the Spirit that is “of God” the Spirit of truth.

There is something like this on the other side. There is the world; and there are the false prophets who are of the world. They are mutually related to one another, precisely as you and we are. What you are to us, that the world is to the false prophets. What we are to you, that they are to it. The world knows its own. The teaching which is of the world commends itself to the world. That teaching, therefore, must be anti-Christian; for the world is anti-Christian. Here, then, are the opposite workings of two opposite powers; and here is the secret of their greatness. For both are great; and both are great, not only in themselves, but in their adaptation to those with whom they have to deal.

I. “He that is in the world is great.” And his greatness lies in this, that he operates in a twofold way. He forms and fashions the world spiritually; and he finds for it, or makes for it, appropriate and congenial spiritual food. He creates or moulds the world’s appetite for some sort of religious teaching; and he inspires for his own ends the religious teaching that is to suit his world and be accepted by it. Hence his false prophets are sure of their own measure of success; “they are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5).

But he cannot succeed with you who are “of God;” for there is one in you who, great as he is, is greater still. And he also operates in a double way. He gives you inwardly spiritual intelligence, spiritual insight and sympathy, to try; and he gives you outwardly spiritual truth to be tried. You are yourselves of God, and therefore competent to judge what we speak. And we too, being of God, speak what cannot be acceptable to the world, but only to him who is of God, and knows God. Thus what you are prepared to apprehend and appreciate, and what we are moved to speak, harmonise and are at one. It is all the doing of “him who dwelleth in you,” and of whom “we know,” through your acceptance of our teaching, “that he is not the spirit of error, but the Spirit of truth.”

Look for a little at the world, and him that is in the world. He is great, undeniably great; great in power and wisdom; in command of resources and subtlety in the use of them. He has largely, as to its moral and spiritual tastes and tendencies, the making of the world in which he is, and of which he is the moving soul. The world, in a sense, lives, and moves, and has its being, in him. He is in it as the spring of its activities, the dictator of its laws, the guider of its pursuits and pleasures; in a word, “the ruler of its darkness.” The darkness of its deep alienation from God, he rules. And he rules it very specially for the purpose of getting the world to be contented with an image, instead of the reality, of godliness. For he knows well enough that the world is, and must be, in a sense and after a fashion, religious. He cannot put it off with the “no God” which the fool would fain say in his heart. He is far too sagacious and shrewd to attempt that. What he does attempt is a much more plausible device. He takes advantage of whatever may be the world’s mood at the time, as regards God and his worship; throws himself into it; controlling or inflaming it, as he may see cause, so as to turn it to his own account. And then he contrives to bring under his sway prophets or teachers; not always consciously false; often meaning to be true; able men; holy men; men of God and of prayer; pre-eminently so it may be. And bringing into contact the world which he has doctored and the doctors whom he has tutored, he adjusts them skilfully to one another. He causes his teachers, perhaps insensibly, to draw much of their inspiration from the particular world which, as to its religious bias, he has influenced with an eye to their teaching. And so “they are of the world; therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.” Numberless instances and illustrations might be brought forward here; reaching from the grossest corruptions that have ever disgraced the name of religion, to the most refined forms of ingenious speculation that have ever imposed on the fancy of the most devout enthusiast, or the feelings of the most amiable. They might all, I believe, be explained on the principle now suggested. There is one in the world who is great; great in a religious point of view; great in his power and skill to master and manage, from age to age, the world’s ever-changing fits and fashions of religiousness; great in the strange and terrible command he often wields over the most gifted, and even the most godly, of the prophets or teachers who have to deal with them.

Thus, if the world, at his instigation, wants a golden calf, there is an Aaron, under his influence, ready to provide one. If the people, moved by him, will have smooth things spoken to them, he has prophets of smooth things prepared for them. If men are growing weary of the old wine; and he will be but too glad to make them more weary of it, and help them also to excuses for their weariness; it shall go hard but he will mix plenty of new wine for their use. It is not he who has to take up the complaint; nor his agents either;—“We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.” He is in and among the crowd of those to whom the children in the market-place are to cry. And the children who are to cry are his ministers. He can prepare the crowd to hear, and move the children to cry; according to his good pleasure; so that there shall be flock for pastor and pastor for flock; people for priest and priest for people; the times for the teaching and the teaching for the times; all in perfect harmony. Yes; he that is in the world is great; great in his ability to make the world,—the world in the church,—what he would have it to be; great in his ability to find and fit and fashion ministers and agents, who, being of the world, as regards its religious tastes and tendencies, will “speak of the world,” and whom, therefore, the “world will hear.”

There is, indeed, a power or law of action and reaction between the world and its prophets—the world in the church and its false prophets,—which, as indicating the greatness of him who is in the world, deserves very careful notice. The world in the church, I repeat. For I have nothing to do now,—John here takes nothing to do, with the world outside of the church, the world of those who do not even profess to be religious; his sole concern is with the church, and the spirits in the church that are to be tried, and the parties that are to try them. Satan, the spirit of anti-Christ, has within the church a world of his own, a world in which he is, and is great. And he is great in it, very much through his making skilful and sagacious use of this law of action and reaction, between what the world craves and what its false prophets give.

Do you suppose that if you have “itching ears,” there will not be found preachers who, catching perhaps unconsciously the contagion from you, will feed and foster the disease? If you incline to a gospel explaining away the atonement, and reducing the incarnation to a mere glorifying of humanity in the mass, instead of its being the redemption, by substitution, of individual men; a gospel of that vague sort will soon be forthcoming. If, in any church or congregation, there springs up a craving for excitement, a demand for novelty, which the old preaching of the cross fails to satisfy; if a certain restless prurience of spiritual taste begins to manifest itself; if a cry or a sigh for gifts and miracles, for signs and wonders, is heard; all experience, all history, proves that it will not be long before men appear who, carried away themselves and led off their feet by the strong tide, will prove apt and able agents in encouraging others to try the virtue of its flowing waves. It is not that they purposely or dishonestly accommodate their teaching and prophesying to the spirit that may be abroad in their world. They drink it in themselves; it intoxicates their own souls. “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.” Truly great is he that is in the world; great in adapting the world and its prophets very perfectly to one another.

II. But “greater is he that is in you, little children,” for he is the Lord God Almighty. He is strong; and he “strengthens you with might by his Spirit in the inner man; Christ dwelling in your heart by faith; and you being rooted and grounded in love.” He is strong; and he makes you strong; strong in holding fast the form of sound words, and contending earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the saints; strong in cleaving to the truth as it is in Jesus; strong in your real, personal, close, and loving acquaintance with him, “whom to know is life eternal.” He who is in you is God; God abiding in you; giving you the Spirit. He is in you; not merely on your side, at your right hand, around you; but within you. He is working in you; so working in you as to secure your safe triumph, in this great fight of truth against error, over the world and him who is in it. And his working in you is of the same sort as is the working of his great antagonist in and among those with whom he is so busy.

He makes you, who are of God, to be men of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; quick to apprehend what they who are of God are moved by him to speak. He takes these two things: the mind or heart of the learner or inquirer who is of God, and what is spoken by the apostle or teacher who also is of God. He adapts them to one another, brings them together, welds them into one. So he insures that what we who are of God speak, however it may be received by the world, shall prove acceptable to you who know God and are of God. He imparts to you, in whom he is, a certain spiritual tact or taste,—call it spiritual intelligence, spiritual insight, spiritual discernment,—by means of which he enables you to recognise, in what you hear or read or remember, the very truth of the true and living God, sanctifying and saving to your own souls. He brings out in you, palpably to your own consciousness, the marvellous correspondence that there is between the heart with which he is inwardly dealing and the word or doctrine which, through the teaching of men of God, he is outwardly presenting. He is in you; breaking your heart in deep conviction of sin, and then healing the broken heart, oh! how tenderly, by the sprinkling of atoning blood. He is in you; causing the commandment so to come home to you that you die, helplessly condemned, under the righteous sentence of the law, and then bringing near to you, oh! how lovingly, the life-giving assurance that “there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” He is in you; causing you to see and feel that instead of “being rich and having need of nothing, you are poor, and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked,” and then pressing upon you, oh! how graciously, the Lord’s affectionate counsel to buy of him “freely,” without money and without price, “gold tried in the fire, that you may be rich; and white raiment, that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness do not appear; and to anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that you may see.” He is in you; forming you for Christ and forming Christ in you. He is in you; fitting your whole inner man for Christ, and fitting Christ into your whole inner man. He is in you; so as to cause to spring up from the very depths of your spirit a sense of intimate oneness, not to be broken, between you and Christ,—between your highest faculty of belief and thought, and his doctrine, which now “you know to be of God.” What precisely the bond of this oneness may be, in what exactly it consists,—you may not be able to define. Probably, at bottom, it is the recognition in your heart now, as in Christ’s doctrine always, of the high and holy sovereignty of God; his just supremacy. It is the joint owning, in your heart and in Christ’s doctrine, of the great truth—“The Lord reigneth.” But be it what it may, you feel it. And the feeling of it is your assured confidence and satisfying rest.

I cannot now pursue the subject further. Let me simply, in closing, exhort you to consider well in what it is that your security lies, when you are called to try the spirits—what it is that alone can give you certain and decisive victory over the false prophets. It is God being in you; abiding in you; giving you the Spirit. The spirit of anti-Christ is in the world; in the church’s world; in the worldly materials of which, in too large a measure, the church is composed.”Many false prophets are gone out into the world.” The spirit of error, as well as the spirit of truth, is abroad; and it may be that sifting, trying, critical days are at hand. What is to be your protection? How are you to be prepared? Let me warn you that it is not head knowledge that will do; not logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or theology; not creeds, or catechisms, or confessions; not early training in the soundest manual; not familiarity with the ablest and most orthodox writings; not skill in argument and debate;—no; nothing will do but God being in you; in your heart, your heart of hearts; God in Christ dwelling in you; God giving you the Spirit. An experimental assurance alone will keep you safe. But that will keep you safe. For as he that is not of God will not hear us who speak as being of God; so he that knoweth God will not hear the false prophets. So the Good Shepherd himself assures us. He “goeth before the sheep, and they follow him, for they know his voice; and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.”“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and none is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.”

Verses 7-10

Part Third. Ultimate Condition of the Divine Fellowship—Love

XXXI. Love Is of God—God Is Love

“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 God towards 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.”—1 John 4:7-10

LIGHT, Righteousness, Love;—these are the three conditions or elements of that fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ in which John would have us to be joint partakers with himself and the other apostles (1 John 1:3). Of the three, Light and Righteousness have been the heads, or leading thoughts, of the two previous parts of this Exposition (1 John 4:3-10 and 1 John 4:18-21.). Love is the ruling idea in the third part (1john 31-34.); love being the end to which the others are means; the consummation of the fellowship being in love. Hence there has been some anticipation of this last theme, Love, in the two preceding ones, Light and Righteousness; especially in the latter. For the righteousness meant being chiefly subjective, denoting singleness of eye, uprightness, honesty of purpose, a guileless spirit, truth in the inward parts, necessarily refers to the matters about which it is objectively exercised, the manner of dealing with God in light, and with our fellow-men in love, which it prompts and regulates. Hence that second part, having Righteousness for its keynote, carries on the line of thought begun in the first part under the idea of Light, and encroaches on the line of thought in the third, which brings out the crowning aspect of the whole in Love. Still it is manifestly Love that is now purely and simply the reigning principle.

“Beloved, let us love one another.” The distinction of the personal pronouns is here dropped. It was proper when the trying of the spirits by a sort of doctrinal test was the matter in hand. John must then speak of himself and his fellow-teachers in the first person, and to us in the second. Now, however, when love is the test, all are one. It is the trial of the spirits that still is on hand, in pursuance of the intimation formerly given (1 John 3:24):—“Hereby we know that God abideth in us, by the spirit which he hath given us.” That intimation is connected with the double commandment in the previous verse (1 John 3:23), “that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he has given us commandment.” The question is about assurance; our “assuring our hearts before God;” our “having confidence toward God:” our “having boldness in the day of judgment” (1 John 3:19, 1 John 3:21; and 1 John 4:17). The indispensable condition of this confidence is righteousness, or “our own hearts not condemning us” of insincerity or guile (1 John 3:20-21). But though that is an essential preliminary, it is not itself the ground or warrant of the confidence. The real ground or warrant is “our abiding in God and his abiding in us” (1 John 3:24). But how is this mutual abiding of us in God and of God in us to be ascertained and verified, to the satisfaction of our own consciousness, as a trustworthy ground and warrant of assured confidence before God? On our part there is “the keeping of his commandments;” his double “commandment, to believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another in obedience to him.” On his part, there is “his giving us the Spirit.” And the last is tested by the first. His giving us the Spirit is not to be lightly taken for granted. There must be a trial; and the trial is in accordance with the twofold commandment, to believe and to love. It is first a trial turning upon the confession or denial that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John 4:1-6). It is next a trial turning on the possession or the want of love (4:7-12). And the result of the trial is announced: “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13);—almost in the same terms in which the trial is, as it were, instituted:” Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (1 John 3:24).

Thus it plainly appears that these two things,—righteousness in owning the true doctrine concerning Christ and righteousness in mutual brotherly love,—are closely bound together. And thus, by a natural and simple transition, the discourse passes from the first of these topics to the second: “Beloved, let us love one another.”

This exhortation is here enforced both positively and negatively;—positively, by the statement that “love is of God,” and therefore “every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7);—negatively, by the opposite statement: “he that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John 4:8).

I. “Love is of God.” This does not mean merely that love comes from God, and has its source in God; that he is the author or creator of it. All created things are of God, for by him all things were made, and on him they all depend. But love is not a created thing. No doubt, in the heart even of an unfallen intelligence, it may be said to be created, inasmuch as the being in whose heart it dwells is himself created. And in the heart of a fallen man it is in that sense a new creation; for he himself must be created anew or born again if he is to love. Still, the love to which he is created anew or born again is not itself created. It is not of God, as made by him; as a new thing called into existence by the fiat of his word.

In this respect love differs from light. It is not asserted of love as of light: And God said, Let there be love, and there was love. In a higher sense than that, I apprehend, it is true that love, wherever it exists, is of God. It is communicated, not created; begotten, one might say, not made. It is a divine property, a divine affection. And it is of its essence to be communicative and begetting; to communicate itself, and, as it were, beget its own likeness. “Love is of God.” It is not merely of God, as every good gift is of God. It is of God, as being his own property, his own affection, his own love. It is, wherever it is found, the very love wherewith God loveth. If it is found in me, it is my loving with the very love with which God loves; it is my loving with a divine love, a love that is thus emphatically of God. Hence the sufficiency and certainty of the test: “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”

1. None but one born of God can thus love, with the love which, in this sense, is of God; therefore one who so loves must needs be one who is born of God. This is almost self-evident. If the love in question is not, like any of the constituent parts of the created universe, whether of matter or of mind, a thing made, called into being out of nothing, or a thing made over again, formed out of chaos into order; but part and parcel of the Divine Being himself, of his very essence: then its existence in me cannot be explained on any other supposition than that of my being born of him; born of him too in a very close and intimate manner; in a manner implying that I become “partaker of his nature;” “his seed abiding in me.” I doubt, therefore, if this love formed an element in that image of God in which man was originally created. I take it to be something more. It is communicated,—it is of God in such a sense that it can be communicated,—not by creation, but only by generation. It is not as a creature that I can have it, in virtue of any mere creative fiat or let it be. I can have it only as a Son,—adopted? Nay, not adopted only, but begotten. Many excellent endowments I may have as a mere creature; endowments reflecting the likeness of God’s own attributes; intelligence resembling his; a sense of right and wrong resembling his; benevolence and kindliness resembling his. As to these, God has merely, in creating me, or creating me anew, to speak and it is done. But this love is something quite peculiar. It is something, as I take it, different from the love enjoined in the “royal law,”—“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is the very love with which the Father loves, the love manifested in his not sparing his beloved Son. It is the very love with which the Son loves, the love proved by his laying down his life for us. That is the love, the love of the “new commandment,” which is here in question. Respecting that love I think it may be said that God alone is originally capable of it. Others are capable of it, only in so far as God communicates himself to them; not by a process of mere creative power; but by begetting them into participation with himself in his own very life.

There is one thus eternally begotten; begotten before all worlds; the eternal Son of the everlasting Father. He is God of God; very God of very God; light of light:” nay, rather, love of love. He is the manifestation of this love which is of God;—“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.” It shines forth in him; not through him, or by him, merely; but in him. God sent his Son to manifest this love. How? Evidently by his showing that he shared it; approving himself to be born of God by himself loving with the love which is of God. God sent his only begotten Son into the world to give us a specimen, an illustration, perhaps the only possible perfect specimen, the only possible perfect illlustration, of “the love which is of God.” None but his only begotten Son could be sent to manifest it; for none but he could fully feel it. No created being, not the highest of the elect and unfallen angels, even when perfected by their trial, could adequately feel it. And therefore none of them could manifest it. But the only begotten Son, dwelling from everlasting in the Father’s bosom, of one nature with the Father, loves with “the love which is of God.” Therefore he is sent to manifest that love. He is sent to manifest a love essentially different from any love of which we are naturally capable, or of which we can naturally form any conception, a love peculiarly and distinctively divine.

Now, as it is his being the only begotten Son of the Father that qualifies him for being sent to manifest the love which is thus “of God,” inasmuch as it is that which ensures his feeling it, it is that alone which makes him capable of it; so it is only your being in the Son, being born of God by the Spirit, that can make you capable of this love which is of God, and can ensure your feeling it. None can love with that love which is of God, none can love as God loves, save only first his only begotten Son, whom on that very account he sends to manifest this love, and then you who in him receive the adoption of sons, and are begotten by the Spirit into participation with the Son in his filial oneness and sympathy with the Father. Therefore, if we love one another with that love which is of God, if we love as God loves, we must be born of God. We must have become his children, his sons; begotten of him in time, through believing union with the Son who is begotten of him from eternity; the Spirit making us, as thus born of God, in the only begotten Son, really “partakers,” in respect of this love, “of the divine nature.”

2. Being born of God implies knowing God. This consideration still further explains and illustrates the point before us:—“Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” He loves with God’s own love, because, being born of God, he knows God. He knows God, as none but one born of God can know him. It is a knowledge of God altogether peculiar; belonging exclusively to the relation constituted by, and realised in, your being born of God. It is a kind of knowledge of God of which, as I think, one who is simply a creature of God’s hand, a subject of his moral administration, however intelligent and however informed, is not really capable. He is not in a condition, he lacks the capacity, to take it in. He must be a child, a son, born of God, if he is to have it. For, in a word, it is the very knowledge of God which his Son has; his only begotten Son, whom he sent into the world to manifest his love. He, being of God, as his only begotten Son, knows God; he, and he alone. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). “No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). It is as his only begotten Son that Jesus knows God. And it is as born of God that you know God; know him even as his only begotten Son knows him. He, as the only begotten Son, knows God; he knows the love which is of God, of what sort it is; he has himself, from everlasting, been the object of it; he has been ever experiencing it. All that is in the great heart of God the Father, the only begotten Son knows intimately, and experimentally, if I may dare to say so. With a filial knowledge he knows God. With filial insight and filial sympathy, he knows all the overflowing of that love which is of God as it gushes forth in deep, full flood, from everlasting, first towards himself, and then through him towards the family of man; according to his own glorious word, “The Lord possessed ms in the beginning of his ways. When he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was with him as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:22-31).

Now it is with the same knowledge with which he, as the only begotten Son, knows God, that you, as born of God, know him; with a knowledge the same in kind, however far short it may come in measure or degree. Yours, like his, is a filial knowledge; implying filial insight and filial sympathy. Your being born of God makes you capable of this knowledge, and places you in the only position in which you can have it. Born of God, you occupy the very filial position that he who is the only begotten Son occupies; you have the very filial heart that he has. You are born of the very Spirit of which he, in your nature, was born. You have in you the very Spirit that dwelt, not by measure, in him. Thus, born of God, you are one with him who is his only begotten Son. To you as to him, to you in him, God is known,—and the love which is of God is known,—by close personal acquaintance; by blessed personal experience. How God loves; how it is ‘the manner of God to love; what sort of love his is; love going out of self; love sacrificing self; love imparting and communicating self; love unsought and unbought; unconditional and unreserved;—what kind of being, in respect of love, God is; you who are born of God know, even as the only begotten Son knows. Therefore you can love with that “love which is of God,” even as he loves with that love which is of God. He and you alone can so love; for he that loves as God loves must needs be one who “is born of God and knoweth God.”

II. The opposite statement follows as a matter of course:—“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” The connecting link here is all-important; it is “knowing God;” all turns on that. Every one that loveth knoweth God: he that loveth not knoweth not God; these are the antagonist statements. The stress of the contrast is made to rest on knowing or not knowing God; he who loveth knoweth God, being born of him; “he who loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.”

“God is love;” therefore, not to love is not to know God. That is a very clear and simple inference. But why this change? Why is it said, on the first or positive side of the dilemma, “Love is of God;” and on the second or negative side of it, “God is love”? Simply because the question now turns on knowing God; not anything of God, but God himself. To love with the love which is of God, is to know God; not to love thus, is not to know God; for God is love. In this view, the proposition, “God is love,” really applies to both of the alternative ways of putting the case; the positive and the negative alike. It assigns the reason why it may be said, on the one hand, “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God;” and why it may also be said, on the other hand, “He that loveth not knoweth not God.”

“God is love.” It is a necessity of his nature, it is his very nature, to love. He cannot exist without loving. He cannot but love. He is, he has ever been, love. From all eternity, from before all worlds, God is love. Love never is or can be, never was or could be, absent from his being. He never is or can be God,—he never was or could be God,—without being also love; without loving. I say without loving; actually loving.

For this love, which is thus identified with his very being, is not dormant or quiescent, potential merely, in posse, and not in esse. Love in God never is, never has been, like a latent germ, needing outward influences to make it spring up; or like a slumbering power, waiting for occasions to call it forth. If it were so, it could not truly be said that in himself, in his very manner of being, “God is love.” It is, it has ever been, active, forth-going, self-manifesting, self-communicating. It is, it has ever been, in exercise. Before creation it is so. In the bosom of the everlasting Father is his eternal, only begotten Son; and with the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. So “God is love” before all creation; love in exercise; love not possible merely but actual; love forth-going and communicative of itself; from the Father, the fountain of deity, to the Son; from the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit. In creation, this love is seen forth-going and communicative in a new way towards new objects. The love which from everlasting has been in exercise evermore within the mysterious circle of the Three-One God; which especially has been evermore passing from the Father to his only-begotten Son; now seeks and finds new means of manifesting itself among created beings. It is still really the same love. For all creation is the manifestation of God’s love to his only begotten Son. He “made all things by him and for him.” He has “appointed him to be heir of all things.” Specially when that wondrous council was held in heaven from whence issued the decree, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” this love was manifested. The only begotten Son is to be the first born among many brethren. Not, however, by creation merely is that end to be reached; another manifestation of this same love must intervene. Created innocence is not enough to secure the issue on which God’s heart of love is set; for created innocence may and does give way. Sin enters, and death by sin; all sin, and all are doomed. Still “God is love;” the same love as ever. And “in this now is manifested the love of God towards 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.”

It is, I say, the same love still; the love which from everlasting goes forth from God to his only begotten Son dwelling in his bosom, the love which in the beginning of creation goes forth in God’s making all things by and for his only begotten Son, and especially making godlike men to be his brethren; it is the very same love that goes forth in God’s sending his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him; sending his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It is wondrous love; love passing knowledge; love of which God alone is capable; love proper to his great heart alone. It is not such love as we may feel to him; for “herein is love, not that we have loved him, but that he has loved us.” He has loved us with the very love which is his own essential nature; which has been going forth from everlasting, self-manifesting, self-communicating, from the Father to his only begotten Son, by the Spirit; and has been going forth in time, through his only begotten Son, by the same Spirit, to the world of creation at first, and now also to the world that is to be saved.

This is its crowning glory; the saving mission from God of his only begotten Son. It is consummated in our “living through him,” through his “being the propitiation for our sins.” For now, effectual atonement being made for our guilt, our redemption and reconciliation being righteously and therefore surely effected by his being the propitiation for our sins; we, living through him, are his brethren indeed. The love wherewith God loves him dwells in us. God loves us even as he loves him. And so at last the love which, from all eternity, it is of the very nature of God’s essential being to feel and exercise, finds its full fruition in the “mighty multitude of all kindreds, and peoples, and nations, and tongues, who stand before the throne and give glory to him who sitteth thereon and to the Lamb for ever and ever.”

If this is anything like a true account of the sense in which, and the effect to which, it is said that “God is love,” the statement becomes almost axiomatic,—“He that loveth not knoweth not God.” The fact of his not loving plainly proves that he knows not God; and his not knowing God explains and accounts for the fact of his not loving. How indeed can he know God; know him as being love? To know God thus, as being love, implies some measure of congeniality, sympathy, and fellowship. I cannot so know him if there is still a great gulf between him and me; between his heart and my heart; his nature and my nature. There must be community of heart and nature between him and me; I must be “born of God.”

We thus come back to the previous positive declaration: “Love is of God; and he that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.” And we see what manner of love it is that must be the test of our being born of God, how it is that we are to love one another. We are to love with the love which is of God, the love which is his nature. We are to love as he loves; to love all whom he loves; and to love them with his own love.

First and chiefly, we are to love, as he loves his only begotten Son. Our thus loving him is one primary criterion and touchstone of our being born of God. So he himself intimates when he says to the Jews,—“If God were your Father ye would love me” (John 8:42). There would be this feature of family resemblance, this community of heart and nature, between him whom you claim as your Father and you who say you are his children, that you would love me because he loves me, and love me as he loves me;—love me as sent by him to be the Saviour of the world. Hence the force of that awful apostolic denunciation; “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha.”

Then we are to love, as God loves it, and because God loves it, the world which he sent his Son to save. We are to love thus one another; with what intensity of longing, like God’s own longing and yearning, for one another’s salvation, that all may turn and live; and with what intensity of delight in all who are really in Christ, who “live through him,” and live so as to be indeed our brethren and his, ours because they are his!

Verses 10-12

XXXII. Love Going Forth Towards what Is Seen

“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.”—1 John 4:10-12

THERE is very close and compressed reasoning here. The steps in the process, the links in the chain, are not all patent or obvious on the surface; some intermediate bonds of connection need to be supplied. Thus, the assertion (1 John 4:12), “No man hath seen God at any time,” seems intended to answer by anticipation a question that might be put, as to the omission of love to God in the preceding verse (1 John 4:11). Otherwise it is, so far as one can see, irrelevant. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love”—God;—that is what we might naturally expect to be the logical inference; but it is not so; it is “we ought also to love one another.” And why? “Because no man hath seen God at any time.” Therefore, love to one another is made the test of “God dwelling in us.” And it is so, all the rather, because it is “the perfecting of his love in us” (1 John 4:12).

Two general principles are here indicated as regards this divine love; I. It must have a visible object; or, in other words, it must be real and practical, and not merely ideal and sentimental. II. It is thus not only proved but perfected; it has its free course and is consummated.

I. Love, if it is to be a sufficient and satisfactory test of our “knowing God and being born of God,” must have a visible object; it cannot otherwise be verified to our own consciousness as real In a sense, it may be said even of God’s own love, the love which is his nature, that it thus verifies as well as manifests itself. It goes forth towards created beings; it seeks created beings towards whom it may go forth. A visible created universe is its object: and so also, in a peculiar manner and degree, is a visible new created church. Only in its exercise toward such objects can its true character, its communicative and self-sacrificing character, be thoroughly brought out.

It exists, no doubt, and is in exercise, before all creation, the first creation as well as the new. In the mystery of the Trinity, in the ineffable fellowship of the three persons in the one divine essence, from everlasting, “God is love.” There is love; felt love; inconceivable mutual complacency; love in exercise, mutually interchanging and reciprocating endearments;—there is such love implied in the very nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In particular, from before all worlds, the Father thus, in the Spirit, loves the Son, “dwelling in his bosom.” But it is love, however exercised, that is resting and not giving; it is the repose rather than the activity of love. If it is to be manifested as a love that gives, that is active, that actually magnifies or benefits its object, it would seem that there must be creation.

Indeed it is only in creation that the Son himself can become practically the object of this love. If God, because of his love to him, has “appointed him to be heir of all things,” the “all things” of which he is to be “heir” must be made; made by him and for him. There must be “goings forth” on his part from the Father; there must be, on the Father’s part, “the bringing in of the first begotten into the world.” Then, and only then, when he appears as “the beginning of the creation of God,” “the first born of every creature,” is the Son in a position in which he can receive gifts from the Father, or in which he can have bestowed on him the inheritance of all things. The Father’s love to him may now take the form of bountifullness, liberality, lavish giving; it may now express itself in deeds. And, overflowing from him to the creatures called into being by his hand and for his sake, especially to those who, being made in God’s image, can know his nature, this divine love finds vent in those tender mercies which are over all his works. So, in the beginning of the creation, God in his Son loved the goodly universe of which his Son had become the head; with a love to him and to it that could never weary of bestowing favours. So, when this earth was made, in whose habitable parts the Son as the eternal Wisdom rejoiced; and when this race of ours was formed, the sons of men, with whom were his delights: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.” His love then filled our cup of innocent and pure happiness to the brim, if only we had been content to hold it straight.

Thus, for a season, one quality of the love which is God’s nature, which God is,—its simple bountifullness, its being “ready to distribute, willing to communicate,”—had room to expatiate, and if I may dare to say so, to indulge and enjoy itself, in the teeming earth, and in man, its godlike proprietor and lord, for whom he bade it bring forth all its fullness.

But there is a quality of this love for which that first creation provided no outlet; a quality more wonderful than all its bountifullness; the quality for whose exercise the fall gave occasion. To creatures innocent and pure, God, for the love he has to his Son, by whom and for whom they are made, may give all sorts of good things, the good things with which earth is stored, and better things still if they will but obey his word. To guilty creatures alone can he “give his Son to be the propitiation for their sins.”

Still, however, it is now as always to the visible creation, to what he sees and whom he sees, that God’s love goes forth in exercise. The objects of it are seen.

Seen! And how seen? Can it be said now, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good”? To bless and benefit a world and a race seen by him in that light, might be almost said to be self-gratification, rather than self-sacrifice. But it comes to be self-sacrifice when its objects are seen to be corrupt and vile; guilty and deserving only of wrath; polluted and unclean; with nothing to attract, but everything to repel; alike unloving and unlovely. To continue to love creatures thus seen;—not only so, but to love them with a love that does not spare his own Son,—a love that, when law and justice demand a victim, will rather that he should be the victim than they;—that is a manner of love implying something else and something more than bountifullness. And that is God’s manner of love to those whom he now sees, to “the world lying in wickedness.”

Now our “loving him whom we have not seen,” never could be a test of our having in us this “love which is of God.” If the thing to be proved is the identity, in kind or nature, of our love and God’s love:—its being with the very same love with which he loves that we also love;—that never can be proved by an appeal to our love to him. It must turn upon the consideration of his love to the world, and the likeness of our love to that.

Mark here only one point of difference between God’s love to us and any love we may have to him; look at the object in either case. On our part, when we love God, the object is the all-good, the all-amiable. Nay, more. It is the God who “first loved us.” When he loves us, he loves the evil, the unamiable. And he loves us with a love which does not grudge the surrender of his own beloved Son to our state and our doom, that we in his Son may become acceptable and well-pleasing in his eyes. Even if, therefore, our love to God were all that could be desired, all that could be looked for, all that our knowledge of his glorious excellency and our experience of the riches of his grace might well be expected to call forth; still it would not suffice for proof that our love is God’s love; that we love with the love which is of God; that we love as he loves.

This accordingly seems to me to be the true sense and import of that statement of the apostle, often misunderstood, which, however, when rightly apprehended is very suggestive: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” One is apt to think that there is here a disavowal or denial of our love to God altogether; in which case the reference must be to our unconverted state. Or else it must be such a disparagement of our love to God, even in our converted state, as would represent it to be nothing in comparison with his love to us. Both of these thoughts are no doubt true. But I am persuaded that there is a deeper meaning in the statement; more appropriate to the context; more to the purpose of the argument. It is assumed that we love God. And much is made of that, as we may soon see, in what follows. But it is not our loving God, however sincerely and warmly, that can prove our love to be the same with his. Were we loving him even as the angels love him, were we loving him even as the Son loves him, that would not suffice. It would still be love on our part of a very different sort from that love of his; having a very different kind of object, and acting in a very different way. The Son himself proved his oneness with the Father, in respect of the love now in question, by his voluntarily coming to seek and to save the lost. The angels prove theirs by the “joy that there is among them over one sinner that repenteth,” and by their being “all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.”

“Herein then is love,” “the love which is of God,” the love whose reproduction in us is to be tested;—“not that we have loved God,”—which, thanks to his grace, we do; not by that, even though it were all that it ought to be, which, alas! It is far from being;—“but that he loved us” that he loved us when we were yet sinners; that he saw us then, and pitied us, and “sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That is the model, the exemplar, the pattern, of the love which is to test our being “born of God.”

Two things are thus apparent. In the first place, this love in us, if it is to verify itself as being God’s very love, must be love, not to the unseen but to the seen; to a world that is seen; to men and women in it that are seen; to one another, to our brethren, to our fellow-men, as seen. And, moreover, it must be love to them, seen by us as God sees them. The objects of love must be the same to us as to God; and seen to be the same; seen in the same light; from the same point of view. “No man hath seen God at any time;” but God has always seen, and always sees, every man; he has seen, and sees you. And, seeing you such as you are, he has loved you. Do you love your brother, your neighbor; seeing him, I do not say as God sees him, but as God has seen and sees you when he loves you? There must be identity in the object of this common love, God’s and yours; you and he must love the same object, the same person. But that is not all. He is, both to God and to you, visible; he is seen. And as seen by God and by you he must be the same; the same in your eyes, in your judgment, in your esteem, as he is in God’s. Or, as I have hinted, it may serve the same purpose, and be more profitable, to put the matter thus: he must be seen by you as you are seen by God when he loveth you. He must be the same in your eyes, in your judgment, in your esteem, as you are in God’s. That will do as well.

Who is it who is the object of your love? One seen, of course. But is he seen by you with God’s eye, or with the world’s eye; or with the eye of your own natural prepossession, your own natural liking? I am far from saying that this last kind of love is always necessarily wrong. But it is not “the love which is of God:” which identifies you as “born of God, and knowing God.” Is he to you what he is to God? He must be either one whom God with most intense compassion pities, and yearns in his inmost bowels to save; or one whom God welcomes and embraces, not because he is naturally amiable, but because in him the Son of his love sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied. In either view, is he the same to you that he is to God?

But I must press the question further. Does what you see in your fellow-men cool or quench your love to them, more than what God sees in them cools or quenches his love to them? All that is unattractive, all that is unamiable, all that is repelling in them is seen by him as well as by you; seen by him infinitely better than by you. Does it affect him as it affects you? Does it hinder him from loving them, as it seems to hinder you? Still further I must press the question. Is it the same thing, or the same sort of thing, seen in them, which draws God’s love to them, that commends them also to your love? What is that? Either it is the misery, be it splendid or squalid, of a doomed soul, or it is the broken heart of a child of God. These call forth the love of God; these alone; these always. Do they always call forth yours? Wherever a sinner still in his sin is seen, does your heart go forth towards him in earnest longing and striving for his salvation, as does the heart of God? When the poor prodigal returns, and is clasped in forgiving arms, is your sympathy with the loving father or with the jealous brother? Or, to bring the question home again to your personal experience, is it because you see other men as God sees you that you love them? You see them, too many of them, alas! in the same state and of the same character that were yours when God seeing you loved you; polluted, as you were polluted; perishing, as you were perishing. Do you love them on that account, as on that account God loved you, when he had pity upon you? Again, you see them, some of them, like yourselves now, by his grace, dear in God’s sight as his ransomed and saved ones. Do you love them on that account, as on that account God loves you?

For, secondly, this love in us must be the same with God’s love, in respect of its character, as well as in respect of its objects. It must be what we have seen that that love is, communicative and self-sacrificing. Our love to God cannot be of that nature. We cannot impart anything of ours to him; we cannot sacrifice anything of ours for him; he is beyond the reach of any loving offices of that sort from us. “He is our Lord; our goodness reacheth not to him.” If our love is his love, it must be proved to be so by its going forth in active service, not to him whom we cannot see, but to those whom we do see; God’s creatures, to whom his own love goes forth; the love manifested in creation’s bounties, the love manifested in redemption’s grace,—in his “sending his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

And here, in point of fact, is the real practical test. Love, when its exclusive object is unseen, is sometimes apt to become ideal, shadowy, and merely sentimental. Even when God himself is, or is imagined to be, its object, it has not unfrequently taken that form and aspect. Meditative musing on the nature of God, the rapt gaze of solitary contemplation, the fixed eye of secluded devotion filling itself with great thoughts of the divine majesty, excellency, and beauty, has had the effect of begetting in the soul a certain mingled emotion of solemn awe and melting tenderness, which is apt to pass for divine love. It is akin to the feeling which the hero or the victim of an affecting tale may call forth; though deeper far and more intense. In real life, in church history, this kinship has been but too terribly exemplified. Love to God has been spiritualised and sublimated, as it were, into a passion; such a passion as may, and must, end in one of two ways; either in a sort of mystical and rapturous absorption of the human in the divine, or in a still more dangerous substitution of the human for the divine.

But, short of that extreme, there are tendencies against which sensitive natures, of an emotional and impulsive character, must be on their guard. There is the tendency to put imagination in the room of reality. For instance, it is far easier to smile or weep over a narrative that must consist of the sayings and doings of unseen, because imaginary, actors and sufferers, than to go out among the real parties in life’s drama, and meet in close contact their actual cases. Hence the meaning, in another view of it, of this solemn intimation, brought in at this stage, and in this connection: “No man hath seen God at any time.” There is, there can be, no safe way of proving that we are born of God and know God, except our loving what is seen. No love to the unseen can suffice; nay, love to the unseen alone may almost be made too much of; it may become deceptive and delusive, or unwholesome and unsafe. Our love, if it is to be God’s very love in us, must be love like his, to what is seen by both alike; to real, actual, living men, seen by us as by him. In that channel, our love to the unseen may always safely run. For—

II. In this human love, in our thus loving one another, the divine love has its consummation or perfection. “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

It is a very solemn position which we are thus called to occupy. In us God’s love is to be perfected. We are to be the means of its being perfected; the instruments and agents in effecting that result. Not only so. In us it takes end; in us it is finished. Nothing beyond us remains; no chance, no opportunity, of any manifestation of God’s love, that can be at all available for the world lying in wickedness. That love has reached us, and it should, through us, reach the whole world. If not, it cannot otherwise avail. “His love is perfected in us.”

There is indeed another sense in which these words may be understood. They may mean that God’s love, the love which is of God, the love which is his very nature, reproduces itself in us perfectly, only when, with his own very love, we love one another. That is true. But the inspired meaning here is, I think, somewhat deeper. It seems to indicate that our love to one another, if it is indeed of the same sort with his love to us, the love manifested in his sending his Son to save us, is really on his part the last act, the crowning or final exercise, of his love. It is as if he told us that his love was exhausted in begetting or reproducing itself in us. And it may well be so. No higher instance of love is possible than his sending his Son; no stronger sort of love can be imagined. And if that very love passes from him to us; having the same objects and cherishing towards them the same affection; if we love one another as God loves us; is not his love perfected in us? What more can be done to let it have “its perfect work”?

Ah, then, what responsibility is ours! What an office or duty is laid upon us! To perfect, to complete, the manifestation of God’s love for the saving of the world! Through us, his love, the very love manifested in his sending his Son to be the propitiation for Our sins, is to pass on to our fellow-men. We are, as it were, in his stead. Nay, he is himself in us. He who is love dwelleth in us; he who dwelleth in us is love. It is not so much we who love, as God who loveth in us. It is his own very love that has now in us its full expression, if we love as he is love. It is ours to see to it that it is and shall be so.

The subject is not ended; but I pause, and offer some practical inferences that may well be pondered.

I. Very plainly the love to one another here enjoined is of such a sort that none but a child of God can be capable of it, or can feel it. None other, in fact, can comprehend what it is. We must first be ourselves the receivers of it, before we can be the dispensers or transmitters of it; before it can have its perfect work in us towards others. We must be taught by the Spirit to know what we are, as seen by God, when we are the objects of his love; what we are, in his sight, when he loves us with a saving love. We must be made by the Spirit experimentally to feel what manner of love it is that, instead of being repelled, is attracted, by our unloveliness; that instead of smiting us, lays the stroke on his own beloved Son; that now, in him, lavishes on us all saving benefits and blessings. This then clearly is our first concern; to see to it that this love of God is really ours; embraced by us; apprehended and appropriated by us; enjoyed by us richly.

2. This love which is of God, when perfected in us, must contemplate its objects in the same light in which they are seen by God. It is comparatively easy to love the lovable, to love them that love us. If we look only at men’s amiable qualities, if we surround ourselves with a circle of friends, all decent, worthy, and upright; if, shutting our eyes to what they are before him who searches the heart, and judging according to the outward appearance, we perceive only what is fair. and charming in their winning ways; if, in a word, keeping out of view their spiritual state and character, we dwell exclusively on their natural gifts and graces;—if it is thus that we love them, our love is not God’s love perfected in us. For to be God’s love perfected in us, our love must see its objects as God’s Love sees its objects. What we see in them of guilt and sin, of enmity against God and insubordination to his law, must be offensive to us as it is to him. Men estranged from God, whatever may be their other excellencies, must be to us what they are to God. Then, and only then, can we test the identity of our love with God’s love. Then, and only then, can we have some idea of what it is to love those whom God loves, with his own very love; his love, not of indifference to evil or complacency in evil, but of deep compassion to the evil-doer and earnest longing that he may be saved.

Hence the Lord says, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.” In that way, and only in that way, can we prove ourselves, by our family likeness, to be the children of our heavenly Father. So are we perfect, in this way of loving; according to the command: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

For it is not absolute or general perfection that is here meant; perfection in the wide and universal sense of that term. The command, so understood, would be irrelevant as well as impracticable. It is perfection or completeness, thorough simplicity and uprightness, as regards the particular grace referred to; according to a use of the word very common in the Old Testament Scriptures. The perfection indicated is the perfection of honesty or righteousness in loving our “seen,” as God loves his “seen;” loving our enemies with the very love with which our Heavenly Father loved us when we were his.

Verses 13-16

XXXIII. Love the Means of Mutual Indwelling; God in Us and We in God

“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. And 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.”—1 John 4:13-16

THE statement, “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit,” carries us back to a previous statement (1 John 3:24), “Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” We are thus reminded of the scope and design of the whole passage. The question is about the mutual indwelling of God in us and of us in God; and more particularly about his abiding in us. How are we to know this? By the Spirit which he hath given us, is the answer. But that raises another question. Every spirit is not to be believed; there must be a trial of the spirits. By what test or tests are they to be tried? How is the Spirit that is of God to be distinguished from the spirit of anti-Christ? First, by his confessing in us that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John 4:2-5); and secondly, by our loving, with the love which is of God (1 John 4:7-12). And now, connecting the two, John brings us back substantially to the original statement, as to our knowing that we dwell in God, and God in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. For the two tests are now brought closely together, and shown to be not so much two as one; or at least not two independent tests, each separately valid in itself, but so intimately related to one another that they mutually involve one another, and thus combine together to make up one cogent and irrefragable proof. It is this virtual unity of the two tests that forms the theme or subject of the verses now before us.

I. The first of the two tests is recapitulated: “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” (1 John 4:15-16). There is a slight difference here from the language of the second verse; and the difference is evidently designed. It is intended to impregnate, if I may so speak, and vivify the truth confessed, with the love whose origin and nature John has been unfolding. The two ideas,—his being “sent” to be “the Saviour of the world,” and “his being the Son,”—are evidently suggested by what has been said of that divine love in the intermediate verses (1 John 4:9)

It is interesting in this view, to trace the growth and development of the thought. The confession which is to be the sign of its being the Spirit that is of God, or the Spirit of truth, that we receive, is first put as if it were the mere acknowledgment of a bare historical fact. It is much more by implication; but, so far as the actual expression goes, it is not anything more. But see to what fullness of warm gushing life it has now attained. And how? It has been passing through an atmosphere of love, and has thus got to be impressed with a certain teeming warmth and quickening power. What is to be confessed, when we first look at it and lay it aside, might seem to be, so far as the mere wording of it is concerned, scarcely more significant and affecting than the notice of a birth, or any other common fact, of which we read in old annals, or in the current news of the day. Now, when we take it up to look at it again, after it has been steeped in the rich dew of heaven’s love, it glows and is instinct with meaning. “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh;” come to be “the Saviour of the world;” come as “the Son, whom the Father hath sent;”—that is the full confession now.

Hence the real reason of that first test, and of its being so closely interwoven with the other. How should the confession of a mere matter of fact be so certain a token of God’s “giving us of his Spirit,” and of his “dwelling in us”? For it is a simple matter of fact, to be known and ascertained like other ordinary facts in history; to be received on the very same ground and warrant of historical evidence and testimony. The apostle admits as much, both before (1 John 1:1-3) and now (1 John 4:14). You have our testimony for it; and our testimony may be relied on; “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you;” “We have seen and do testify” what we ask you to confess. The question therefore recurs: How should my confessing a mere and simple matter of fact, especially considering that, however wonderful it may be, I have it attested to me by sufficient evidence, prove that “God giveth me of his Spirit,” and so “dwelleth in me”?

The answer must be found in the character of the fact or truth confessed; or in the aspect in which it is presented, or presents itself to me. What is it in itself? What is it to me? If it is a fact or truth of a merely historical sort, and is so apprehended by me, my admission and avowal of it will be no proof or presumption of God’s having “given me of his Spirit, and dwelling in me,” any more than my admission and avowal of any well-attested event that ever happened in the world. That may be my case; if so, it is s, sad one. It may be to me a mere fact or truth of history; not only in its original form, naked and bald, “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh:” but even in the more warm and living substance which it takes, when it is, as it were, clothed upon with the love which is from heaven. For whatever can be stated in words about that love, and the measure and the manifestation of it, can all be comprehended by the natural understanding. I can put it all in propositions intelligible enough to myself and others; and I can honestly accept these propositions, and confess my acceptance of them. But it may be head-work and not heart, work with me after all. So long as it is so, it is my work merely; the work of my own mind, not of the Spirit. For his work is mainly in the heart. It is spirit dealing with spirit; not mere intellect dealing with intellect. It is God’s Spirit dealing intimately and lovingly with my spirit, and that too upon a special theme; a specific subject; “Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” as “the very Son of God, sent by the Father to be the Saviour of the world.”

Now if God thus communes with me, his Spirit with my spirit, not mind with mind merely, but heart with heart, upon this special theme or subject; if the fact of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh thus starts from the page of history, and fixes and rivets itself in my inner man, becoming part and parcel of my most inward experience; if:, in short, the truth comes home to me, as not simply a historical event, but, as it were, a honey-filled bee, full fraught with all the love that is in the Father’s heart of hearts and is poured out in the saving mission of his Son;—if I take this in, and let this heaven-laden bee pierce me, and fill the wound it makes with what itself is full of;—love, this love of God;—then I have something to confess, which may well be an evidence of “God’s having given me of his Spirit, and so dwelling in me.” Yes! I may humbly appropriate the Lord’s words to Peter; “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”

II. The second test is thus in large measure anticipated, and all but swallowed up, in the first. The confession of truth is now seen to be identical with the sense and experience of love: “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” (1 John 4:16). “We have known and believed.” This is quite John’s manner; to unite in one knowledge and faith; we have intelligently believed; we have believingly understood. We have thus known and believed “the love that God hath to us;”—or rather, “the love which God hath in us.” (This is the literal rendering in the verse before us (16), as it is also in a previous verse (9). There perhaps it can be more easily explained than here as meaning merely God’s love to us; though even there more may be implied. In both verses an indefinite mode of rendering the phrase may be adopted—“his love in regard to us,” or “with respect to us.” But that is not satisfactory in either case; certainly not in that now in question. What we are said to have known and believed is God’s love; his manner of loving. And we know and believe it as having it, in some real sense, in us.) For the expression is very peculiar and emphatical; and, as used here, can scarcely mean anything else than that his love to us has become his love in us; and that we have known and believed it as such. Of course it is his love to us; but it is his love to us, transferred, as it were, or transplanted, from the gospel, where it is a matter of revelation from without, to our own hearts, where it becomes a moving principle and power from within. There, in the gospel, it is his love manifested to us;here, in our hearts, it is his love actually existing in us;—not merely felt by us as his love to us; but felt by us as his love in us;—in us, so truly and literally in us, that we become the conscious storekeepers or depositories of it, as it were, and the dispensers of it to others who are as much its objects as we are ourselves. The love of God, having us for its objects, passes from God’s outer record into our inner life. It enters into us; it finds access to the innermost recesses of our moral and spiritual being; it is therefore now “the love which God has in us.” He pours into as, he puts and plants in us, his own love. He has it in us; his own very love; reproduced by himself in us; communicated, if one may dare to say so, by himself, from his own heart to ours. It is the love of which we ourselves, in the first instance, are the objects; of which it was our first relief and joy, when we were convinced of sin, to find ourselves the objects. It is the love of which, when all but despairing, we laid trembling hold, and of which we are still fain to lay hold continually;—not love to the holy, the pure, the penitent, the believing, the chosen; but love to the world as such, of which we are part; love to men as sinners, “of whom I am chief.” But that love is in us now. “God has it in us.” It is not merely that we have it in us, as a ground of confidence for ourselves; God has it in us as on his behalf a treasury of love available for others. It is in us,—not merely as what we ourselves grasp and count to be all our salvation, but as what springs up in us, and is outgoing towards others; being thus God’s own very love, dwelling and working in our whole inner man. That, I am persuaded, and nothing short of that, is the great thought involved in these wondrous words, “we have known and believed the love that God hath in us.” Not only have we known and believed his love, so as to apprehend and appropriate it, as it comes from without and from above;—not only so as to take it and make it available for our own spiritual life and comfort; but also, and especially, so as to imbibe it;—to drink it into the very essence of our renovated nature, our renewed selves. In us who know it and believe it, God has his own love in actual existence and in active exercise.

Herein lies that community of nature between God and us which the Spirit works or effects. Love is God’s nature; “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Again that great truth is here proclaimed. And, as it would seem, it is now proclaimed again for the purpose of bringing out what it is of God that we can share with him; that he can “have in us.” Much there is about God that must continue always altogether incommunicable to us; much that must remain for ever outward and objective to us, and never can become inward and subjective in us. All that pertains to him as lawgiver, ruler, judge,—all that he is as, seated on the throne of his high majesty and universal empire, he carries on the government of the universe,—is and must be exclusively his own; it is only in a very secondary sense, and in a very subordinate capacity, that we can have any of his authority delegated to us when, besides dealing with us as his subjects, he uses us as his ministers. But it would seem to be otherwise with his holiness and his love. Paul speaks of our being made “partakers of his holiness;”—John speaks of “the love he has in us.” The two indeed are one, for his holiness is loving and his love is holy. His holy love therefore is not incommunicable; it passes from him to us. Not only are we its objects; more than that; it begets itself anew, if one may say so, in us. It is God’s very love, his holy love, in us, and it is to be known and believed, to be felt and manifested, by us accordingly.

What is this but our “dwelling in love” (1 John 4:16), in God’s own love? Love; the holy love of God; of the Father sending the Son to be the Saviour of the world; is now the habitual home of our hearts. We remain, we abide, we stay in it. We would not quit it, or let it go; we cannot, for it alone is our peace. Away from that love; that holy love; that love with all its holiness; reaching us and saving us, the most worldly of the world, the very chief of sinners; what hope, what health, can we have. Neither can we quit it, or let it go, as a principle of life and activity, going out from ourselves to others. If it is to be God’s love to us, known and believed by us, for our own peace and comfort and holy spiritual quickening; it must be God’s love in us, his own love, which “he has in us,” known and believed by us for outward use, as well as for inward assurance and rest. Only in so far as we constantly realise this love of God, both as the love he has to us and as the love he has in us, do we really dwell in love. But dwelling thus in this love, we do indeed dwell in God. For God is this love; and as such he dwelleth in us. In respect of this love, of which we are now both the grateful receivers and the glad transmitters, there is a blessed oneness between God and us. He dwells in this love; for he is love; and we now dwell in this love also. It becomes our nature, as it is his, thus to love. Therefore this love is the bond of union between him and us;—the meeting-place, the habitation, the home, in which we dwell together; he in us and we in him. This love, this holy love, is that which God and we may have in common. And therefore it is the element or quality in respect of which there may be mutual indwelling of us in God and of God in us.

Hence the two tests of God’s “giving us of his Spirit and dwelling in us,” coalesce, as it were, and become essentially one. To confess, on the testimony of the apostles as eyewitnesses, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world (1 John 4:14); that Jesus is the Son of God (1 John 4:15); and to know and believe the love that God has to us and in us (1 John 4:16); is really one and the same thing. For the confession is not the cold assent of the understanding to a formal article in a creed. It is the warm and cordial embracing of the Father’s love, incarnate in the Son whom he sends to be the Saviour of the world. It is the letting into our hearts of the love which is God’s nature; for God is love. It is our dwelling with him in love. For, as Paul teaches, in entire and perfect harmony with John;—“In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision availeth anything, but faith which worketh by love:” faith confessing Christ; faith knowing and believing the love that God has in us; faith loving as it sees and feels that God himself loves.

Verses 17-19

XXXIV. The Boldness of Perfected Love

“Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love [him], because he first loved us.”—1 John 4:17-19

THE leading idea here is “boldness in the day of judgment; not boldness prospectively when the day comes, but present boldness in the view of it now. It is much the same thing as we have in a previous section of the epistle (1 John 3:19-21), our assuring our hearts before God; our having confidence toward God. This boldness is connected with the perfecting of love; “Herein is our love made perfect;” or as in the margin, “Herein is love with us made perfect, (The exact literal rendering is, “Herein is perfected the love with us.” In the twelfth verse, the expression is different, “His love is perfected in us.” There, I think, it must be the perfection or completeness of his love to us, as realised by us in our consciousness and experience, that is meant. In that verse (12) the participle is used: “His love is in us as a perfected thing, a consummated fact.” Here (ver. 17) it is the verb that is used, and so used as to denote a work or process brought to a full or final issue; the perfecting of the love with us, as a treaty or transaction of some sort. The textual rendering, indeed, of the 17th verse: “Herein is our love made perfect,” is apt to mislead in another way, by suggesting the idea that we have here the counterpart of the statement in the 12th verse: “This love is perfected in us.” There it is God’s love that is said to be perfected, his love to us; here we are apt to suppose that it is our love that is made perfect, our love to God. But the subject of our love to God has not yet come up for consideration; it does not really come up till the 20th verse. For, by consent of the best critics, the pronoun “him” is to be omitted in the 19th verse, as not having been in the original; so that the assertion is there quite general: “We love, because he first loved us.” How much better this suits the scope of the apostle’s reasoning, my exposition of the verse may partly show. Again, if we adopt the textual rendering of the 17th verse: “Herein is our love made perfect,” we miss the emphatic article “the,” or “this;” “the love,” or “this love;” referring to a love previously spoken of. And “our love” is an awkward and unwarrantable substitute for “love with us,” or “the love with us,”—“this love with us.” On every ground the marginal translation is to be preferred, or the still more literal one which I have suggested above: “Herein is perfected this love with us.” And let it be borne in mind, as I have stated, that the preposition is not the same in the two verses, the 12th and the 17th. In the 12th it is ἐν ἡμῖν; in the 17th μεθʼ ἡμῶν.) that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” Love then, or the love before indicated, is perfected with us; and the perfecting of this love with us is bound up with our having boldness in the day of judgment. The bond or connecting link is our oneness with Christ; our being in this world as he is now. What is perfected is love; not love indefinitely; but the love which is God’s nature, and which comes out in the saving gift of his Son. It is to be perfected as “love with us.” It is not merely, as in the twelfth verse, to be perfected in us, as love to us; it is to be perfected in us, as “love with us.” It is God’s love so shared by him with us as to constitute a love relationship, or love-fellowship, between him and us. This is indispensable to our having boldness in the prospect of the day of judgment, And it is realised through oneness with Christ, through our “being as he is:” not as he was before he came into the world; nor merely as he was in the world; but as he is now. It is our “being as he is,” that connects in us, in our consciousness and experience, the perfecting of God’s love with us, and our having boldness to face the final account (1 John 4:17).

The boldness must be very complete; for it must exclude whatever is incompatible with the ground on which it rests. Now it rests on love; on God’s love shared with us. But love shared between the lover and the loved, in a mutual fellowship of love, excludes or “casts out fear.” It must do so, for “fear hath torment.” A relationship or fellowship based on fear is of course quite conceivable; but it has torment. It cannot therefore consist with a relationship or fellowship of love. “He that feareth is not made perfect in love:” in this love; the love, or covenant of love, here spoken of or referred to (1 John 4:18). But “we love.” We may not be made perfect in love,—the love or loving treaty in question. But we do love; and our love is a reality; it may be relied on as a reality; for it is love springing out of his love to us; it is his own very love in us “We love, because he first loved us.”

Having offered these exegetical explanations, I now take up the topics suggested in their order.

I. (1 John 4:17) “Herein is our love”—God’s love with us—“made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.” The perfecting of “God’s love with us,” so that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, depends on our being as Christ is,—and that too “in this world.” We are in this world, not as he was when he was in it, but as he is now.

In a very eminent and emphatic sense, God’s love with him is now made perfect; in a sense in which that could not be said of him as he was when in this world. The Father’s covenant of love with him, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh”—“the Son sent by him to be the propitiation for our sins”—is now perfectly ratified, so that he may have boldness in the view of any day of judgment.

That, I repeat, could scarcely be said of him as he was when in this world. Personally, no doubt, he was then the object of the Father’s love; and that divine love, as communicated and shared with him, in his human nature and earthly condition, was absolutely perfect. Personally, therefore, he might have boldness,—he had nothing to fear,—in any judicial reckoning. But consider him as “sent to be the propitiation for our sins.”

Oh, what a cloud comes in between him and his Father’s love! What a cloud, charged with fiery wrath, about to burst on his devoted head! And what trembling is there in the prospect of that judicial reckoning with him for our transgression of the law which he has to stand! It was not then altogether a fellowship of love with him on the part of God. The things that passed between God and him, as he hung on the accursed tree, were not all love-tokens and love-caresses! Love was with him still, divine love, even then and there; love, if possible, more than ever, for the very death he was dying, in fulfilment of the divine purpose of salvation. But something else was with him too; something that for a season terribly shaded that love. Divine justice was with him justice inexorably demanding, in the interests of law and government, the stem execution of the penal sentence. And that must first be perfected; that must have its perfect work; before the love can be made perfect. He feels, he affects, no boldness in meeting that day of judgment. He knows its terror; he shrinks; he cries; he “is crucified through weakness.” For us to be as he then was, would give us little boldness in view of the day of judgment awaiting us.

But to be as he is now! Ah, that is a very different matter! Now that his dark agony is over, and all his groans are past; now that there is no more present with him, on the part of God, any wrath at all, but only perfect love; now that, no longer bearing condemnation, but accepted for his righteousness’ sake, he has boldness to set any day of judgment at defiance; now that the Father need have no other dealings with him any more for ever but only dealings of perfect love; now that, being raised from the dead, he dieth no more; death, judicial death, having no more dominion over him! May this privilege indeed be ours? Nay, it is; “we are as he is.” When and where? Now “in this world.” It is not the blessedness of the future state; it is blessedness to be got here and now. Do you ask how? Look to Jesus; to “Jesus Christ come in the flesh:” “the Son sent by the Father to be the propitiation for your sins.” How was it possible for him, when he took that position, to be as he now is? On one only condition. He must consent first to be as you are, in the full sense and to the full extent of enduring and exhausting all the pains and penalties which your being as you are entails on you. Not otherwise could he come to be as he is now. And not otherwise can you come to be as he is now; not otherwise than by first consenting to be as he was then; to die as he died; to be “crucified with him.” Is this a hard preliminary? Nay, it is altogether reasonable as well as necessary; it is eminently gracious. It is his own free gift of himself to you; of himself as the propitiation for your sins.

I take your death as mine, he cries; the death which as sinners you deserve to die. I die that death in your stead. You cannot die that death yourselves and ever live again, But! can. “I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore.” How much better is it for you to make my death yours than to die eternally yourselves!

Can you refuse to be as he then was, in the exercise of realising, appropriating, uniting faith; “knowing the fellowship of his sufferings?”—especially when you consider how this not only secures your never again being, as you naturally are, under condemnation; but secures also your being as he now is. God’s love is with you; as truly “perfected with you,” as it is with him. You may have the same boldness that he might have in facing any day of judgment. To you, as to him, death as the wages of sin is really past. There is no more any judicial reckoning with you on God’s part, no more with you than with him; but only dealings of love, of love made perfect, love having free course, love unfettered and unrestrained. So you have boldness as regards the day of judgment.

II. This love with us, thus perfected, is inconsistent with fear. It founds or establishes a love-relationship, a love-fellowship, with which fear cannot co-exist:—“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment; he that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

The love here meant is not our love to God; neither is it, strictly speaking, God’s love to us, or our apprehension of it. In a sense, it may be said to be the mutual love that subsists between God and us, when, “as Christ is, so are we, in this world.” Or, still more exactly, it may be understood as denoting the terms of loving agreement, of good understanding and endearment, on which God would have us to be with him, in virtue of “his love with us being made perfect.” The great practical truth taught is that our faith, when we “confess that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 4:15), and when “we have known and believed the love that God hath to us” (1 John 4:16), brings us into a position, as regards God, in which there is not only no occasion, but no room, for fear.

Love and fear are diametrically opposite principles and they imply opposite modes of treatment on the part of God towards us, and opposite relations on our part towards him. If God deals with us in the way of strict law and righteous judgment, then the footing on which we are with him is one simply of fear. His fear is with us; not his love. And it is so with us that, however it may be lulled for a time, it will one day be perfected,, or have its perfect work, in “a fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversary.” If, again, God deals with us in the way of rich and free grace, then the footing on which we are with him is one of love. He no longer holds over us the threat of punishment; the fear of it is not with us any more. It cannot be, for this fear hath torment.

Mark the reason here assigned for fear being cast out; it hath torment; the torment of anticipated judgment; for that is exactly what is meant. It echoes the voice of the demons:—“Art thou come to torment us before the time?” But we with whom “God’s love is perfected,” have boldness in reference to the day of judgment; not torment, but boldness. Therefore “there is no fear in that love,” thus perfected; for fear introduces an element the reverse of what a state of loving fellowship implies. Hence “he that feareth is not made perfect in that love;” he does not fully realise the standing or position which it gives him; he does not enter completely into the faith and fellowship of “God’s love with us,” as a love that “is made perfect.”

Here let us consider, first, the evil and danger of confounding these two opposite footings, of fear and of love, on which we may be with God; and, secondly, the careful provision which God has made for keeping them separate.

1. I take the case of one who is still in the relation to God in which fear reigns; who yet, at the same time, assumes that, even in his case, there may be something of the opposite relation, of which love is the exponent and expression. He is still under wrath; he has no real boldness as regards the day of judgment; he is subject to the power of the fear which has torment. But he has a notion that God’s love may yet somehow be with him after all; he has a dream of mercy; he welcomes the idea of indulgence and impunity; it abates his torment. It does not really bring him into the region of love, but it mitigates fear. Is that a good thing for him? Were it not better far that he should be left, naked and shelterless, to the full experience of all the torment which fear has? He might thus be shut up to try “a more excellent way.”

But I take, with John, the opposite case. I suppose that you are within the realm and domain of love. Love; the love which is God’s very nature; the love “manifested in his sending his only begotten Son into the world that you might live through him;” that love is the atmosphere of the region in which you now dwell. You are on loving terms with God; his love being with you; and being “made perfect with you.” Nay; not quite made perfect. It should be so, but it is not so. For you let into your heart something of what is proper to the opposite relation; your being on the old terms with God to which fear belongs. And the practical effect of this is very disastrous. Not to dwell upon its sure tendency to mar your peace and joy: it thoroughly cramps your free walk with God in light; it has a sad bearing on your manner of serving God. For no two things can be more opposite than service rendered on the footing of love, and service rendered on the footing of fear. Not only are the motives different; the kinds of service which they prompt are different. If I am under the influence of the fear which has torment, and so far as I am under its influence, I am inevitably inclined to evasion and compromise. I must do some things and leave some things undone; my conscience, moved by fear, will not otherwise let me alone. But I sail as near the wind as possible, if only I may keep barely on the safe side of the law. I venture on occasional omissions of duty and compliances with temptation; stealthily, as it were, “snatching a trembling joy.” The service is all task-work, slave-work. As such I grudge it always, and get off from it when I can on any plea. That is my way with God under the torment of fear. It should be otherwise when I move in the sphere, and breathe the air, of love; of divine love; “God’s love with me made perfect.” There should be no guile in my spirit now; no inclination to unfair dealing any more. Alas! Is it always so with me? Even if I have some sense and experience of the new and better footing of love on which it is my privilege to be with my God, am I not too often visited with questionings and misgivings proper only to the old footing of fear? Do I not find myself ever and anon asking, Must I positively renounce this?—may I not, for once, venture upon that? And does not all such asking indicate something of the old servile mind? What uneasiness is there in such a way of living with God, and what unfaithfulness too! What “unsteadfastness and perfidiousness in his covenant” of love! Surely it is true that he who in any measure thus acts from mere fear, under the pressure of felt necessity, is not “made perfect in love.”

2. But why should it be so? God would not have it so. His will is that there should be a sharp line of separation between the two incompatible relations; that of love and that of fear. He would shut you up, completely and exclusively, into one or other of them.

Are you in that relation to which fear is appropriate Then let it be fear alone; fear in the view of the judgment-day. By all means let fear operate alone; unmitigated, unrelieved, by any vague notion of mercy; any dream of love. That is the way in which it should operate. So operating, let it deter you from crime; let it impel you to duty. Or, better far, let it drive you to despair; to despair of yourselves, not, God forbid, of him! You have nothing to do with love as you are, and continuing as you are;—you have to do only with fear. Oh that it were, in the first instance, perfect fear!—fear, pure and simple, casting out, I say not love, but the idle imagination of love! Yes; it is yours to fear; and only to fear! Would to God that your fear had torment enough, not merely to set you on doing some things and avoiding some things, to soothe it or set it to sleep; but to set you on crying, with the deep voice of true conviction: “Who shall deliver me?” “What must I do to be saved?”

Are you, on the other hand, in the relation of which love, divine love, is the characteristic? Is it not a relation of love in which full provision is made, if you will only realist it, for the entire and absolute casting out of all fear? I call upon you so to realise it. Have you, in very truth, “known and believed the love that God hath in you”? Have you considered this love, its nature, its manifestation, its effect and issue? Have you asked yourself, O my brother! this simple, but very serious, question: On what footing does this loving God; this God whose very nature is love, and whose love is with me and in me mine in actual possession; mine in all its fullness;—on what footing does he intend and wish me to be with him? Ah! is it, a footing that will still admit of the miserable suspicions and subterfuges of one driven by a tormenting dread of the lash? Is it not rather a footing that precludes them all? Not a vestige of the old state of liability to judgment remains, if “as Christ is, so you now are in this world.” Not a vestige of the old grudging and guileful frame of mind, congenial to that state, should remain. Not for your own comfort merely, but for your single-eyed, and simpleminded, and honest-hearted walking with God, and serving of God, I beseech you to let his perfect love cast out your slavish fear. For fear hath torment; it is torture; and your God and Father is not a torturing inquisitor.

III. That it may be so; that “this love with you” may be so “perfected” as to “cast out fear;” see that you love with a love that springs out of God’s love, and is of the same sort. “We love,” says the apostle, on behalf of himself and you who believe through his word; passing now from God’s love to ours; “we love, because he first loved us.” (See note at the beginning of this discourse, page 412.)

“We love.” We can take home to ourselves personally and individually what has been said abstractly of love casting out fear. For we love, and do not fear. “He that feareth is not made perfect in love:” he does not perfectly realise the love relationship, the love-fellowship, the love-state, as it were, which God’s “love with us made perfect,” involves. But that is not our case; “we love.”

“We love.” It is the first time John has ventured to say so in this passage. Here first he brings in expressly our subjective experience or consciousness, as bearing upon the assured footing of love on which we are to be with God. Hitherto, it has all turned on God’s love; manifested by him; known and believed by us; communicated to us; present with us; and as present with us, made perfect; so perfect as to cast out fear. Now, it is our love that is asserted;—“We love.” For this must be the issue. It is idle to imagine that anything of the loving relationship and fellowship of which John speaks can be ours, unless we can say with him, humbly, but with some measure of confidence; “We love.” And it is no light thing to say so. It is significant of much.

“We love.” It is not merely that we have a natural faculty of loving, and exercise it by letting it go forth on things and persons naturally attractive to us. But we have now a divine faculty of loving; we love with the Love which is of God; which is God’s very nature. We love with a love that goes forth towards things and persons, as they are attractive, not to us, but to him. In particular, as regards our life with God, our walk with God, our fellowship with God, our service of God, our obedience to God; as regards all that pertains to the relation that is to subsist between him and us; “we love.” Not fear, but love, is now, on our part as well as on his part, the ruling principle and living spirit of it all.

“We love.” And in loving, we do but reciprocate God’s love; and respond to it. “We love, because he first loved us.” For our love would be but a poor and sorry thing unless it were linked on to God’s love, as the consequence, or as it were the continuation of it, the reflection or reproduction of it. Always, it must be ultimately, in the last resort, God’s love on which we fall back. “God first loved us.” This wondrous economy of love, in virtue of which he would have us to be on such a loving footing with him as to have fear utterly cast out, originates in him, and is all his own. If we love at all with the love which is of God, it is only because “we have known and believed the love which he hath to us.” For it is “faith alone that worketh by love;”—to that principle we are brought back. If we are to realise, in our experience, the relationship and fellowship of love, as one in which there is no fear, it must be by faith. Therefore I call on you to believe; to believe always; to believe more and more. Believe in God as first loving you;—yes, I say, as first loving you. Be very sure that that must be first; not your loving; but God’s loving you. You cannot really know what love is until you believe in God as first loving you. You must first lay open your whole hearts to the free, frank acceptance of the love with which he first loveth you, as the plant opens its bosom to the rain and sunshine of heaven. Then, from that love with which God first loveth you,—known, believed, accepted, embraced,—there will spring up love in you; such love as will make your whole intercourse with God an intercourse altogether loving, and not fearful at all; such love as will cordially welcome the assurance that God means you to be to him,—not trembling, disaffected slaves,—but loving, loyal, and confiding sons.

I close with two practical observations.

1. There is surely much here, in this glorious description of the fellowship of love which God desires to have with us, and desires us to have with him, that should encourage earnest though anxious souls. I can conceive indeed that some may be inclined to question this. They may feel as if the view now given of the position which God would have them to occupy places it beyond their reach; high above their utmost aspirations. It may seem to them a perfection quite unattainable; an ideal that they can never dream of realising. If something far short of it,—some far more ordinary and commonplace walk and service,—will not suffice or be accepted, it is all over, they may be saying, with them. But let me ask,—In what spirit are you saying so? Is it with regret? Is it with a feeling of disappointment? Would you be upon this footing with God if you could? I must assume that you would; that you see it to be above all things desirable; that you really long and pray to be to God all that you now perceive he would have you to be. Then, if so, I beseech you to remember that this whole business of the adjustment of your relation to God as one of perfect love, is his and not yours. It is not you that have to go to him; he comes to you. It is not you who have to get up, by a painful process of inward working, love in yourselves; it is he who “first loveth you.” It is with his love you have to do, and not with your own. And his love is not far to seek,—or long to wait for. It is with you; embodied, enshrined, impersonated, in the Son of his love, sent by him to be the propitiation for your sin. Look to him; believe on him; consent to be now, in this world, as he is. And remember that “the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

2. Let sinners be warned against presumptuous confidence with reference to the day of judgment. Whatever may be our boldness, if “as he is, so are we in this world,” it does not spring from any questioning of the certainty, or any abating of the alarm, of that great and dreadful day. On the contrary, we have reached that boldness in a way that gives us an insight we never can forget into the reality and intensity of the pains of hell. “We know the terror of the Lord;” we know it by our “being crucified with Christ.” What we see of it in the cross,—in Jesus hanging there, bearing guilt, bearing wrath;—what we feel of it in ourselves, when we take his death of condemnation as ours;—deepens our sense of God’s love in saving us from it, and fills us evermore with sensitive apprehension at the very thought of our being again “castaways.” And knowing thus this terror of the Lord, we would fain “persuade men.” Snatched ourselves as brands from the burning, going softly all our days in the remembrance of our narrow escape, our most seasonable deliverance, we cannot contemplate unmoved their going down into the pit. We beseech them to lay no flattering unction to their souls, as if judgment were not both absolutely certain and inconceivably terrible. We bid them fix their eyes on Jesus suffering judicially on the accursed tree, and hear his voice:—“If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”

“Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” For “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Who shall be able to “stand before the face of him that sitteth on the throne,” and brave “the wrath of the Lamb, when the great day of his wrath is come?” “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

XXXV. The Objects of Our Love—The Children of God and God Himself

“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.”—1 John 4:20 to 1 John 5:3

THE apostle has just announced the law of love: “We love, because he first loved us.” He has still in his mind the twofold test of God’s giving us his Spirit;—our “believing on the name of his Son Jesus Christ,” and our “loving one another” (1 John 3:23). The Spirit in us confesses,—we by the Spirit confess,—that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh; that he is the Son of God. It is a confession implying the believing recognition of all God’s love to us in him. It implies therefore also the perfecting of God’s love with us, so as to exclude fear, and insure our loving as he has first loved us. We respond to his love and reciprocate it; it reproduces itself in us. And it does so, as love going forth to the seen, not the unseen; otherwise it would not be our loving with God’s very love to us; it would not be our loving because God first loved us.

I. “We love, because he first loved us.” Whom do we thus love? “Him who first loved us,” we say. And we say well. But let us beware. Our saying so may be deceptive; in saying it we may lie; not perhaps deliberately, but deceiving ourselves. There is less risk when the question is made to turn upon loving our brother; for we cannot so readily say falsely or mistakenly that we love the visible, as we can say falsely or mistakenly that we love the invisible. Hence the reasonableness of this test: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20).

But it may be asked: Wherein precisely consists the impossibility? Is it merely that it is easier and more natural to love one whom we see than one whom we have not seen; that the first is a lower attainment, more within our reach, while the other is more transcendental, spiritual, and sublime; so that if we cannot acquire the terrestrial virtue of loving our brother whom we have seen, it is vain for us to aspire to the heavenly elevation of loving God whom we have not seen? Nay, to put the matter on that footing is to degrade the grace of brotherly love, and wholly to destroy and overthrow the apostle’s noble argument. It is by no means clear that our seeing or not seeing the object of the affection, makes any real serious difference as regards our faculty or capacity of loving. There is no reason why one whom we have never seen, whom we have known only by report and fame, or by his friendly offices towards us, should not draw our hearts out towards him more even than the most familiar friend whom we see every day. Nay, in this very case it must be so. The unseen God, known only through the discoveries of himself which he makes to us in his word, and the communications of himself which he shares with us by his Spirit, must command our affections more than the best of created beings our eyes can ever light on, if the due order of the two great commandments is to be observed. Nor will it do to hold that our loving our brother is in the least degree more easy or more natural than our loving God; as if, beginning with loving our brother, because he, being nearest us, is the most palpably manifest object of our regard, we might through that means hope to find our love rising to the more remote and less palpably manifest object, even God. No. This love of our brother is not a natural attainment, but a divine gift or qualification, and therefore has this testing-place assigned to it here. Consider again what it is for us to “love because God first loved us.” It is loving as he first loved us; loving with the very same sort of love. But the only person whom I can love with that sort of love with which God has loved me is my brother. It is vain for me to say, in this view, that I love God. I cannot love God, in the sense and on the ground required, otherwise than through the intervention of my brother.

For the unseen God cannot possibly be to me the object of the kind of love with which he first loved me. That is surely love, not to the unseen, but to the seen. It was when he saw me in my original state, like “an unpitied child, cast out in the open field, to the loathing of its person, in that day that it was born,” that he first loved me. “When I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live.” To me, if I am the conscious object of that love, it must ever seem so marvellous as to be all but incredible, that, seeing me as I was, he should have so loved me; nay more, that, seeing me as I am, under all his gracious dealing with me, he should so love me still. It is because he is God and not man. Well may I, whom, thus seeing me, he so loves, love him warmly, gratefully, in return. It appears almost natural that I Should spontaneously love him; I feel almost as if I could not help it. But how apt is such a frame of mind, especially in a highly sensitive and excitable temperament, to grow into a sort of vague, dreamy, mystical or sentimental pietism, such as may be really little better than a refined form of solitary self-indulgence! At all events, it is not the love wherewith he has first loved me; it is not my loving as he has loved me. If I am so to love, I must love, not the unseen, but the seen. My love must go forth toward those whom I see, as God saw me when he first loved me. And my love must be what his love is; no idle sentiment or barren sympathy, but a love that seeks them, and bears long with them, and knocks, and waits, and longs, and prays, for their salvation; a love that gives freely, and without upbraiding; a love self-sacrificing, self-denying; a love that will lay down life itself to save them. And when they become by grace, what by grace I am, I must love them, as God loves me, for what I see in them;—yes and in spite of what I see in them too. I may still see many things about them to offend me. But what does God see about me? Do I not try my loving Father’s patience far more than any brother can ever try mine? But still he first loveth me. He is ever first in loving me; notwithstanding my being often last in loving him. And shall I not be loving my brother, first loving him, and that continually? Shall I withhold my love until he is all in my eyes that I would like him to be? How would it be with me if God so postponed his love to me? Surely, “if I say I love God, and thus hate my brother, I am a liar;” what I profess is an impossibility. Let me rather give heed to his own announcement of his will: “This commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:21).

II. This commandment of God still further explains the importance attached to our loving our brother, as a sign of the Spirit being given to us. And it does so in two ways.

In the first place, I may be apt to think that this setting of me upon loving my brother, as the test of my “loving, because God has first loved me” disparages the prior claim which God has on me, that I should love him. But it is not so. For I am now told that it is his special good pleasure that the love I have to him should, as it were, expend itself upon my brother. I need have no fear therefore of my love to my brother on earth interfering with my love to my Father in heaven; or being imagined to be a substitute for it. There is indeed a spurious sort of brotherly love; a vague philanthropy; which is sometimes put in the place of what God is entitled to claim. People substitute a certain easy constitutional good nature, instead of piety towards God; and even quote the loving apostle as an authority for doing so. They little know the heart of the man they quote, or the real spirit of his writings. Whatever importance he assigns to your loving your brother, it is to your loving him, because God has first loved you; loving him with the very love with which God has first loved you. And more than that. He appeals to the express commandment of God requiring you in this way to manifest and prove your love to him.

For, secondly, love to God is not ignored, or set aside. On the contrary, the very reason why loving your brother is insisted on so peremptorily is, that it is loving your brother in obedience to God, and out of love to God. In loving your brother, you keep God’s commandment; and you keep it under a very solemn appeal, as it were, from him to you.

Let us hear his voice. You “say that you love me.” You have good cause to love me, and I give you credit for loving me. But first, I have to remind you generally, that if “you love because I have first loved you,” your love, like mine, must. flow out upon visible objects; on your brethren, such as they are seen in the world and in the church. And next, I tell you that this is my commandment:—If you love me, and as you love me, love your brother. I do not ask that your love to me, which I willingly accept, should manifest itself in any other way than that.

Ah! what a constant tendency is there in my heart to think that I can love God otherwise, and manifest my love to him otherwise, than in the way of loving my brother, and loving him simply at God’s command. I would fain try to lavish upon God directly proofs of my affection, such as, if he were man and not God, might please him. I would fain make him the object of immediate familiar and affectionate acts and offices of endearment; as if I might return and reciprocate his love, as I would that of an equal. But he checks me. “He is my Lord; my goodness reacheth not to him.” It is not thus that you can really act out the very love with which I have first loved you. To do so, you must deal as I do with the seen, not the unseen. Nay more. It is not thus that I would have you to act out the very love with ‘which I have first loved you, assuming that you return and reciprocate it to the full. For this is my commandment to you, that loving me you love your brother also. It is my commandment now, and will be the criterion, the test of my judgment, in the great day. For, hear the words of my beloved Son, who is then to sit on the throne of judgment: “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me;”—“Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”

III. There is yet another view of the connection between love to the brethren and love to God suggested in the next verse, which seems to bring out the real explanation and ultimate principle of John’s teaching as to the law of divine love “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him” (1 John 5:1).

Let the precise point of the argument be once more observed. It is that God’s love to us should work in us love to our brother; and that in fact its working in us love to our brother is a better test of our knowing and believing it, than our professing any amount of love to God himself. It is so, first, because it is only in loving our brother whom we see, not in loving God whom we do not see, that we can exercise the very love wherewith God has first loved us. It is so, secondly, because in loving our brother we are obeying the commandment of him whom we profess to love; and so proving our love. And it is so, thirdly, because in loving our brother we love one who is begotten of God; and we love him as begotten of God; on the ground of his filial relationship to him who first loved us, and on account of whose first love to us we love.

My brother whom I love, let it be noted, is now viewed as a believer, a child of God. He was not always so, when I loved him with a brother’s yearning pity and a brother’s desire to save him, any more than I was always so, when God loved me with a Father’s yearning pity and a Father’s desire to save me. But he is so now; and I love him as such. Why? Because he is born or “begotten of God.” I, as begotten of God, love him, as begotten of God. The bond of love is our being both of us begotten of God, and it is a bond which God owns and sanctions; for the essence of it is love to himself. It is love to him, but it is love to him in a special aspect or character; as a Father—as one who begets. Is not that, however, the very aspect, the very character, in which he best loves to be loved? Is he not from the beginning bent on being loved as a Father, as one begetting? Is it not in that aspect and character, as a Father, as one begetting, that he would be known and loved, when, “bringing in the first begotten into the world, he says, Let all the angels of God worship him”? Is it otherwise than as a Father, as one begetting, that he would be known and loved, when a voice from heaven proclaims, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”? He cares not to receive honour or worship or affection at our hands, unless it is rendered to him as a Father begetting; as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yes; he cries: if you would love me, as I choose to beloved, you must love me as a Father begetting. And the only sure proof of your so loving me, is your loving him who is begotten of me.

First and primarily that must imply your loving Jesus, the Christ, who alone is my only begotten, well-beloved Son. Hear him;—worship him;—if you would love me;—love me as the eternal Father begetting him from everlasting; love me as sending him to save, and raising him from the dead with this acknowledgment, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. But now in him I am begetting others to be my sons; so begetting them by the power of my Spirit, as to make them one with him who is my only begotten Son, that he may be the first-born among many brethren.” One after another, I am thus begetting children to myself. And every one of them is to me what my only begotten Son is. Can you say that he is so to you? He will be so, if you love me;—“For every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him” (1 John 5:1).

It is at this point exactly that these two affections, or rather these two modes of the same affection of love,—our loving because God first loved us, loving God as our Father and men as our brethren,—come to be welded, as it were, together; and the mode of reasoning seems to be reversed. For whereas before, our loving our brother is made the proof of our loving God in obedience to his commandment, now the matter is put in the very opposite way: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God” (1 John 5:2).

It is a seasonable and salutary turn that is here given to the train of thought. It ushers in a new subject. But first, it fitly finishes off the present one. It is a useful closing caution. Much stress has been laid upon your loving your brother; loving him as you see him; loving him because God commands you; loving him as begotten of God. But your love to your brethren needs to be carefully watched. Is it really love to them, as brethren, as children of God? Is it love to them with a view to their being children of God? Is it love to them because they are children of God? For it may be on other grounds and for other reasons that you love them. It may be a love of mere natural sentiment and affection; a love merely human; having little or nothing in common with the love with which God first loved you. To be trustworthy at all, as a test of God’s giving you of his Spirit, and so dwelling in you, it must be love having in it the element of godliness; love having respect to God; love to them because God loves them and you love God. “By this we know that we love the children of God,” as the children of God, when we love them because “we love God, and keep his commandments” (1 John 5:2).