1 John Chapter 3

But the very next verse shows that we need grace of the fullest kind. The more the conscience is meant to act freely and truly, the more we need the rest given by perfect grace. Here it is brought in with apparent abruptness, but in order to set out our new relationship in the Father's love. It is not merely to lay the requisite basis of our relationship for conduct; this relationship is also for enjoying His love beyond all thought of man, even to its most glorious results. Hence, though it may seem an abrupt transition as we sometimes find in the writings of our apostle, it is divinely wise and just what we ourselves need every day. "See what manner of love the Father hath given to us." It is not only the measure but the manner of it which are so wonderful. For it shows itself in this, that the Father has given to us this illimitable love "that we should be called children of God." "Children" is the correct term, not "sons." John regularly uses the word "son" only about Christ. Not only is it because he is jealous for the glory of the Son, but his God-given care for the truth revealed led him to say that we are God's children rather than to speak of our sonship. After all to be a child of the family is more intimate than the position of an adopted son. We are sons by adoption, but we are children by the nearest family tie to the Father, though both are through the Son. This wondrous manner of love then has been given to us that we should be called children of God.

"Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not" (verse 1). What an honour for us to share with Christ the world's ignorance! Our place and nature and nearness to God are unintelligible to the world. Perhaps it is well to say that some of the oldest manuscripts that are known agree in the addition "and we are" after "we should be called God's children." This small clause is not given in the Authorised version, nor am I prepared to speak with decision about it. Of many things one may judge with certainty; but I do not presume to speak so in this case. Only we may note this, that these very old manuscripts occasionally join in what is certainly wrong. There is however a peculiarity in this clause unlike their erratic readings. What they convey here is "that we should be called children of God; and we are (so)." Now this last is in itself certainly true, and in fact said with emphasis at the beginning of verse 2. Sometimes their readings, where they differ from others, are certainly false; but this at least is true. The only question is whether it is drawn from the next verse and put in here as a gloss of man.

But there seems enough importance in it to deserve a notice. It is remarkable enough that the Latin Vulgate, which, you may know, is accepted by the Romanists as authentic Scripture though only a translation, is here in error. It gives the clause like the old Greek Uncials, but goes wrong where they speak consistently with truth. But in this case it gives a natural thought "That we should be called the sons of God, and should be" (or, may we be). The Latin is not "we are," but that we "may, or should, be." Now this is not true; because it denies that we are now children of God, and seeks it as a future thing (perhaps it is to be supposed dependent on our good behaviour), inconsistent with what follows, and intrinsically indefensible and untrue.

So, without recounting many such instances, in Luke 2:14 very ancient copies read "in men of good will," a class hard to find in this world; and a strange gospel that peace on earth is for men of goodwill, glad tidings for such as He has nothing to find fault with. Where are these to be found? Surely this is a prodigious reading, hanging on one added letter, and accepted, not by Rome only, but by Alford, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, and others.

But, however this may be, the clause here is indisputably true in itself. Whether it is an actually inspired part of the text is an open question. But its statement stands at the beginning of the next verse.

"Beloved, now are we children of God," an assurance important for souls to know, and going beyond the questionable clause; for "now" is highly significant. It is not merely "we are," but "now are we," which is well worthy of our heed, as that immediately before it, "For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." What a striking identification with the Lord this imports! The world did not understand Christ, nor does it the Christian. Man never can truly comprehend Him, however he may pretend to it. None but the Father knows Him perfectly. But the world knew enough from His lips and from His life to hate Him. He was, for this reason and others, unknown to the world as an object of reverence, honour, and love. He was to it a mere nobody; and such is the way in which it regards the faithful Christian. Grace gives us His relation to the Father; and consequently we share His nothingness here below. As He was an unknown power in the world, so are we: ought we not to esteem it a high honour?

The world, all know, struggles exceedingly for its power and fame, Its ease and pleasure. What is there that most people value more than much money or somewhat of the world's honour? Is it harsh to say that so it is with too many Christians? Christ never did; not only did He never seek but He always refused it. He was always the true Servant here below, and could say, "As the living Father sent me, and I live," not "by" but "on account of the Father, he also that eateth me [the food of faith] shall live on account of me" (John 6:57). Hence the love of the Father is directly opposed to the love of the world. Where the love of the Father is not, there is the love of the world; and where the love of the Father abides, the love of the world is excluded. The world ignored Him; and so it does the faithful, as God's children should surely be. Could the world's feeling be more simply or strongly expressed than by completely ignoring? The world believes itself perfectly able to do without Him and His: they are really and only a trouble to the world.

"Beloved," for the word is again used significantly, as we saw it before. He is treating of our present high relationship, and our future glorious hope, which nothing short of the Father's love could bestow. "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it was not yet manifested what we shall be. But we know that, if he were manifested, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (ver. 2). There we have "if" again; it is not "when" but a different word; which it would be hard to show ever means "when" under any circumstances. But the word "if," though it may sound a little strange from lack of use, will be found exact. For instance here "When He shall appear" might give a wrong idea as to the time of our being like Him. Many, one may venture to say, may have been embarrassed by it. For we know from 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1, that our change will be at the moment of His coming or His presence for us. Then is our body conformed to His, and we become like Him. And if we become like Him at His presence, we shall certainly, or à fortiori, be so when He appears or is manifested. This is what is here said and meant. The world will see us manifested with Him and like Him. The manifestation in the same glory will be for all the world to see (John 17:22-23; Colossians 3:4), and when this manifestation takes place, we shall be with Him and like Him. But the change was not at that time but before it. There lies the importance of the change from "when" to "if." And this is not said in the least in order to assume anything which ought to be proved by Scripture, but simply because it is the meaning of the particle: If He be, as He surely will be, manifested, we shall be like Him. From elsewhere as cited we learn that we are to be like Him, before He brings us to heaven, and even to the Father's house. For He comes out of heaven with these saints following Him; and when thus manifested, we shall be like Him, yet not for the first time but when we saw Him coming for us. Thus the word "when" in this case might seriously mislead. We shall be like Him for entering heaven as well as for coming out.

What privileges these are, beloved brethren! What can we say of our fidelity and devotedness now? Yet our heart's decision is, hearing His voice, to follow Him; meanwhile transformed by the Holy Spirit, as we behold Christ by faith and are occupied with Him. But we are never said to be like Him now. We may imitate Him who suffered for us, leaving an example that we should follow in His steps; and the apostle Paul, as far is he imitated Christ, we are called to imitate; but we are never said to be like Christ yet. We shall be like Him when we are changed and caught up, not before. It is a great presumption to talk of anyone being like Christ now; by-and-by what is perfect will then have come for us, and we shall be in His glorified estate, and unlike Him in no way. It is therefore a very full and rich expression of the great change that awaits Christians when the Lord comes for us; and if He be manifested, as He surely will be, so will it be with us, for we are to be manifested in the same glory. All the world will see it then; but we are changed when we see Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Is it not clear that our seeing Him was not in the day of His manifestation to the world, but when, as the first stage of His presence, He came to receive us to Himself on high? Then we see Him as He is; then too we shall be like Him. But when He is manifested, and we with Him, in glory, it will be for every eye.

Yet there is a present spiritual effect of this hope that is here manifested, the importance of which for the Christian cannot be too deeply sought or urged. "And everyone that hath this hope on Him purifieth himself even as He is pure" (ver. 3). It does not mean hope in the man, but on (ἐπὶ) Christ, this hope founded upon Christ. For the word, properly speaking, is "upon" Him, not precisely in Him. It is a hope directed to Him and settled on Him. Thereby the Christian "purifieth himself." This very result shows that we are not like Him yet. Christ never had to purify Himself. He sanctified or set Himself apart in heaven, in order to be the great model for us on earth, that we too might be set apart to the Father by or in truth (John 17:19). But we have also to purify ourselves here below, because, besides having the life of Christ, we have what is natural to contend with, to mortify and keep down, that it shall not break out into its evil ways. We have therefore to purify ourselves from defilement through unwatchfulness and failure in prayer, and "even as He is pure," for Christ is the standard. He always was absolutely pure. This again is perfectly applicable to God, for God is light, purity itself, as no believer call doubt. But Christ here meant is pure too; and this is the more wonderful, however certain, because He was truly man. In spite of being born of woman, He is pure in the highest degree. A great deal is lost to all who do not apply it to Christ, and take away a little from the honour due to Him by denying Him in this place as learned and pious men have done.

This leads into the very opposite of purity, the grave and important discussion of what sin really is (ver. 4). One hardly knows a verse of the New Testament more perverted if one may so call it, or more productive of widespread misapprehension. Take the generally excellent Authorised Version for a plain and painful departure from the evident mind of God in its only legitimate meaning. The reason that led to the error, and gave to it general acceptance, was the prevalent Judaising of Christendom. Do not all its differing sections regard the law of Moses is the rule of Christian life? This Christ is really, and His word for every detail. Does not John 1:17 contrast with law "the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ "? The law, on the contrary, is the ministry of death and condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:7-9). It is the rule of death to a sinner, and so it proved to the Israelite; not the ceremonial only but expressly the ten words graven in stone, as the apostle Paul says.

But the fact is, as a question of rendering, there is nothing about transgressing the law in the verse; whereas there exists not perhaps a single catechism, no matter what its source, which, misdirected by this wrong rendering, does not define sin to be the "transgression of the law." But it is all entirely false definition, and not at all what the apostle says. Lawlessness is a great deal deeper and subtler and wider than violating the law; not wicked work merely but the activity of an ill-willed nature, which therefore fully applies to such as never even heard of the law. They yield to their evil will without restraint. How can you speak of people transgressing the law who never so much as heard of its existence? Their evil can hardly be called "transgression"; for this surely means violation of a known law. The fact is, however we may look at it, that "transgression of the law" is expressed by its own proper phrase, and quite distinct from "lawlessness," the only right rendering here, whilst the former misleads.

It is to be presumed that almost every intelligent Christian has heard what the real sense is, for many servants of God have insisted upon it for more than seventy years. Sin goes beyond the fleshly and worldly lusts warned against in 1 John 2:16. The sentence here is reciprocal: "sin is lawlessness," and "lawlessness is sin." It is self-will, whether ignorant, or regardless, of God's will. The meaning of verse 4 is "Everyone that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." This is its unadulterated and simple force. Some for "doeth" prefer the word "practiseth"; but, without insisting on that change of rendering here, it may be enough to say "do," if understood in much the same sense of practice, which one can hardly doubt to be its real meaning. It is not committing a sin but "doing" sin. It is what a sinner always does. If a man is a sinner, what can he do but sin? How avoid it so long as he remains simply a sinner? because sin is the state of his nature. Now that he is fallen and no more, he only sins. He does not do righteousness; he is as far as he can be from holiness; he does nothing but sin. "Everyone that doeth sin" says he, (whether he be a Jew or a Gentile, it makes no difference here) "doeth lawlessness." The Jew added to his guilt because he violated the law also; but the Gentile did lawlessness and thus was a sinner, though he knew nothing of the law and could not fairly be called a transgressor of the law. Scripture does not call them so, but "sinners of the Gentiles." Where are they ever called transgressors of the law, as the Jews were? But they were all guilty; they all did their own will, and this is the essence of lawlessness. It is leaving God altogether out of the case, and a man just doing what he pleases and because he likes it. Who is he to speak against God? But God is not mocked, and He will bring him into judgment for it. This he may close his ears to now; but it will be unutterably awful for him another day.

Thus "lawlessness," as it is the true mind of God, gives a far reaching sense to the word that is commonly rendered here "transgression of the law." It is quite a different expression and differently applied. Transgression of the law does occur in Scripture, as, for instance, in Romans 2:23 (translated "breaking the law" in the English Bible), and "transgression" in the same sense without "the law" is expressed in Romans 4:15, Galatians 3:19, Hebrews 2:2, Hebrews 9:15. But the word in our verse is "lawlessness" simply with a sense distinct from "transgression of the law."

The end of the verse makes this sense plain, as it takes in every sinful person and all his life. It is a course of lawlessness. But such evil was the exact opposite of Christ, who, in verse 5, is therefore brought in without naming Him. "And ye know that He" (emphatically) "was manifested that He might take away our sins;" not "bore," as in 1 Peter 2:24, but "take away," and both by one act totally. There can be no doubt who He was that thus suffered. It was not God the Father; but exclusively the Son, the Lord Jesus. He only, He for ever, bore and took away our sins on the cross. A prolonged action over His life is precluded: it was a transient act but of everlasting efficacy. "And in Him is no sin." This applied to His person all His life from His birth till He died and rose and went into heavenly glory.

There could be no question of it in His simply divine estate as the Son throughout all eternity. Doubts alas! have been raised because of His being born of Mary, and in spite of the miracle of the incarnation (Luke 1:35). But "in Him is no sin" - never was and never can be. In Christ here below we have the exact opposite of what the sinner is. The sinner has nothing but sin. Even in his affections God is not in his thoughts but himself. This is not the love that was in God and in Christ, from whom Christians derive it. That kind of amiable affection you share with even a dog or a cat; for some are truly amiable dogs and cats, they are not all spitfires. The immortal soul gives affection a higher nature in man; but man is sinful, which brutes are not! Yes, man has an immortal soul, no matter what he or she may be; and for that reason will surely come into judgment; which no dog, or cat, or other animal will - man only of earth. One does not speak of angels, though the fallen ones will be judged too; but of beings on the earth man is the only one so constituted, and directly responsible to God.

Here then we have this true and unique picture of Christ. He not only had no sin in Himself, but came at all costs to take away our sins. What then do we not owe Him? and what practice consists with the relationships of grace which are ours now? "Every one that abides in him sinneth not;" but if a man does not there abide but turns aside to devious paths, can we wonder that he sins? He is not walking as a Christian, if he does not abide in Christ. Nobody sins who thus enjoys conscious dependence and confidence and delight in the Son of God. What else can keep us so surely from sinning? "Every one that sinneth hath not seen Him nor yet known Him." Here he is speaking of the nature and the character: he looks at the man solely according to his new nature. The other, the old, nature is his shame and sorrow; he utterly condemns any allowance of it in himself or in fellow Christians. But the new nature is characterised by Christ, and does not, cannot sin.

"Every one that sinneth hath not seen Him, nor yet known Him." Sinning is incompatible with truly loving Christ. Sin is supposed to be a state that mere man lives in: what he does is to sin habitually. But the sinner has neither seen Christ nor known Him. Had he really received Him as the Son of God, he would have believed in Him. If he had thus known Him, he would have received life in Him, and hence would have hated sin; he, possessed of that new and holy nature, would have looked to and depended on Christ to keep him from evil, righteous even as He is. Apart from Him, one can do nothing, can bear no fruit Godward. A converted soul may be in bondage, weak and wretched, as in Romans 7:7-24; but when by grace he gives self up as utterly and hopelessly bad for Christ in His delivering power, he is freed from the law of sin and death into Christian liberty. The apostle Paul alone enters into the emancipating process. Our Epistle passes it by, and views all the family of God as having settled peace and on proper Christian ground, even the babes. The new life in Christ is the main theme.

Hence the precious aspect in the apostle John's testimony is what he gives from our Lord in John 14:20: - "At that day [now come since Pentecost] ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." Now, when this is really our known portion, it is the new "I," no longer in the flesh and dreading judgment because of my failure, but Christ risen is my life in the Spirit. But we must beware of thinking that this change is only an apprehension of the mind; it is a real possession of the mind of the Spirit. Still less is it the law demanding what is right from me; but the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus which freed me from the law of sin and of death.

It is evident that our apostle in these verses goes beyond the lusts and the vainglory of men without Christ, as traced in the chapter before. Christ is set before all the saints in His absolute sinlessness, and in His work of taking away our sins. So also the root of sin is thoroughly laid bare, the personal chief of sin being therefore brought forward with all directness, whose pride and rebellious independence of God is reproduced in those who are said to be "of the devil" (ver. 8). He that was manifested to take away the sins of those that are His was no less manifested to destroy the works of the devil, an undoing which goes far beyond man's sins and includes all malicious energy in dishonouring God and injuring man. We cannot overlook that here the Son of God is opposed personally to the evil one; as in 1 John 2 the love of the world stands in manifest antagonism to the love of the Father.

In ver. 9 the secret cause of the radical difference comes to view. "Every one that is (or, hath been) begotten of God doeth not sin, because his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is (or, hath been) begotten of God." It is in no way a question of the first man, of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man. Flesh and blood have nothing in them to be a source of the new life. Moral suasion is as powerless as a religious ordinance; for "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." One must be born of God; but this is through faith in His Son objectively, and by the operation of His Spirit through His word livingly. Thus is the believer born of the Spirit; and here it is equally true that what is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). There is no interchange, no ameliorating, no modifying: each nature remains according to its source.

Thus it is no question only of being justified by faith, nor yet only of purifying the heart thereby. The atoning work of the Lord for the sinner, and the work of the Holy Spirit in him, are most true and real; but there is also a new life, not of the first man but of the Second, then for the first time communicated to his soul, dead spiritually as he had been till then, as the Lord clearly taught in John 5:24-25. It is this which explains the apostle's language here, how the begotten of God does not sin. He is regarded according to a divine nature of which grace had made him a partaker (2 Peter 1:4); and he is assumed to abhor his old self of sin, and to live of the new life which he has in the Son, on his guard against the wiles, temptations, and instigations of the devil in every form to act on the old man.

As having Christ's life, his responsibility is and must be to discern, hate, and disallow the working of the old. Here however it is not responsibility urged, but a nature true to itself, as natures are made to be. And as the new nature is his now from God, so he lives accordingly. It is doubtless wholly different from the old fallen creation; but his faith recognises that it is no less real and incomparably more momentous. On this ground, and it is most true, it is said not only that "he doeth not sin," but that "he cannot sin, because he hath been begotten of God." The reason is given why he does not sin, "because his seed remaineth in him," the life of Christ communicated by God's gracious power, which is not subject like the old creation to decay and death; it is his seed and remaineth in him. The new nature is incapable of sin, and he who has it in Christ is characterised by it only, sin in the flesh being here wholly ignored, as already condemned of God on his behalf in Christ made a sacrifice for it on the cross. But of this way of divine deliverance, nothing is here said any more than of our sinful nature. We only hear of the believer characterised by the new man. But the new man lives in and by dependence on Him who is its source. When the believer ceases to walk by faith, leaning on the Lord, the old nature slips or breaks out into sin.

Yet whilst we have life only in Christ, it is of all moment and interest to see the care which the Holy Spirit takes to keep the Son before us objectively, so as to guard us from mysticism and self-admiration, so prevalent a snare for pious souls. He fixes our eyes on the supreme hope of being like Christ when we shall see Him as He is; which certainly was not when Jerusalem fell, the fantastic and unholy dream of the J. S. Russell school, however important an event providentially. See too the emphatic statement "In Him is no sin"; so precious to the believer's heart as he looks on the Man, Christ Jesus, the bright contrast with every other. How abhorrent to his spirit the effort of Satan to found a pretended sympathy with us on the lying assumption that Christ was peccable because He, the true God, deigned to unite human nature with His Deity! Sin in His nature was a most wicked insinuation; but was it any better to teach that He was by birth of woman in a necessary relation of distance to God? Both the mother error and the daughter are incompatible, not only with true atonement but with His divine person.

ADDRESS 9

1 John 3:7-10.

"Dear children, let no one lead you astray: he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous. He that doeth sin is of the devil, for from [the] beginning the devil sinneth. To this end was manifested the Son of God that he might undo the works of the devil. Every one that hath been born of God doeth not sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he hath been begotten of God. Herein are manifest the children of God and the children of the devil."

The opportunity is here taken to review briefly what was last considered with the verses before us, in order to set forth its great principles more fully and less cumbered with detail. On every side they are of immense importance, though the manner in which the apostle brings in the second of the two seems peculiar; but it is in the wisdom of God. Only our ignorance makes it appear strange. What God does or says, we may be perfectly assured, must be the best way for either.

We have seen that, in the last verse of the chapter before, is first introduced the subject of our righteousness. For here begins our righteousness in principle and practice: because we have had God righteous in 1 John 1:9; and a wonderful truth it is that God is there declared faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness. Man's notion of His righteousness would be His strictness in condemning evil. But Christ has changed everything for the believer by His atoning death, and made it not merely a question of grace in God but of righteousness to forgive him. The ground of this is Himself - Jesus Christ the righteous, and His death for our sins; the effect of which is that God is able to act not merely graciously in our favour when we do not deserve it, but righteously to forgive that which is so offensive to Him as sins. It is true that when born of God we too abjure sins; we have learnt to condemn sin itself, and ourselves for having been guilty of sins. Is it not verified in the believer from his first turning to God? He abhors himself and his sins as before Him. He knows very little, but he knows it personally and truly by God's teaching. When the work of the Lord Jesus is received in the Spirit's power as well as His person, then even the young believer sees things clearly as they are in the sight of God. He begins to know not only things in God's sight, but God Himself in His feeling of perfect love towards those that are His.

Here however our righteousness is asserted as inseparable from our new birth. This often alarms any one immature in faith; because he at once naturally turns to look within. He does not find ground for satisfaction there, and, what is more, he never can. What we have to do is in the first place to rest on Christ made to us righteousness. This therefore is the direction of faith. There is no object of faith in looking at ourselves; it brings experience of our utter weakness. Only when Christ fills the spiritual eye is His strength made perfect in our weakness. Then indeed follows practical righteousness.

Now this is the part in which he returns to the whole family of God, laying down the principle that, "If ye know that He is righteous, know (or, ye know) that every one that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him." It has been already remarked that righteousness, in respect whether of God supremely or of ourselves as begotten of God in our little measure, is in every case consistency with the relationship. For this very reason, although in the last verse he had introduced righteousness, he immediately seems to turn away from it in the opening verses of 1 John 3, where he suddenly bursts out into those wonderful words, "See what manner of love the Father hath given to us," etc. Thus he takes in the Father's present love, and the future glory in the same surpassing favour to the children of God in being like Christ, "because we shall see Him as He is. And every one that hath this hope in Him" (Christ), founded on Him, "purifieth himself, even as He (Christ) is pure." It is clearly not the Christian pure, else he should not require to purify himself; but Christ being the standard, and He being absolutely pure, the incongruity of impurity in a follower of Christ, that is in one having Christ as his life and his righteousness, makes him feel that he cannot but purify himself from all unworthy of Him. Needless to say, that when we look into daily conversation, there is failure too often. But John is not occupied with the shortcoming as a general rule, but with the principle, and therefore he puts it in all its simplicity as he was entitled to do.

For this is the true way to look at a principle, apart from possible or actual complications. If we get into paring away on the right and the left and all round, we can never face a principle really. It is apt to be lost in our looking at the circumstances. But a principle is above all circumstances if it is a principle of grace, and a principle of grace made ours in Christ whilst here below. Does not this help us to see why he turns to the unfolding of the richest grace and glory after beginning on practical righteousness. "See what manner of love!" Why does he so speak here? Because all that grace is needed for practical righteousness. For how could this righteousness hold on its even way without that mighty spring? How could the Christian find adequate cheer, in the midst of the world without and the flesh within, to persevere in God's will with joy and confidence, unless he had the assurance of His perfect love? His wondrous love is brought in exactly at the right time and place, though it may seem a singular departure from the righteousness of which he had been speaking before. It is to supply in the Father's love what best strengthens practical righteousness.

We never perform our duties rightly to God or any other unless we are by grace above our duties. If you sink under your duties, you will always fail. There will necessarily in that case be something that you cannot reach. And many saints are content to jog on in that shambling way. They are quite satisfied if they can fairly hope they shall not be lost. "By God's mercy I humbly trust that He will not cast me into hell; I hope for Christ's sake to get to heaven." With this he goes on quietly, as if the gospel gave no more. But is this consistent with the child's relationship to his Father? How utterly short of what is here revealed to faith and meant to fill the Christian with unwavering delight and fulness of joy even now? A Christian is entitled to nothing less. Why? Christ! Everything turns upon Him for the believer. Consequently it is an appeal to his faith, and so it ought to be. Through no other channel have we ever derived any blessing Godward since sin came into the world. Who ever obtained testimony except from faith in what God in Christ is; and what God is in Him to the believer is a delivering God. Only He delivers, but never will He consent to deliver in any other way than through the Lord Jesus; and the Holy Spirit, who glorifies Christ, works in the Christian to make him realise it. For the truth, however blessed in itself, is outside of him without the indwelling power of the Spirit of God. But the Holy Spirit, if one rests on Christ and His redemption, makes it to be real internally, turning even the severest affliction to our exceeding joy. We are not to suppose that it was a privilege peculiar to the early Christians that they could have fellowship with the apostle Paul when he bids them "Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice." Little of this is now tasted by the children of God; but we do well to challenge our own souls whether we do. Let us seek that what we read in the word may be verified in us and our brethren, according to the grace of Christ both theirs and ours.

Hence then we find the new relationship glowingly urged, and to what does it amount? Is it merely that we are become strangers and pilgrims like Abraham? No; we are, or ought to be such, but is there not far beyond that measure? Abraham was separated from the nations because they were idolatrous. He and his family were called to walk apart to God. They required for this no small bulwark, to have Himself for their shield in the midst of enemies that hated them because of their separation to His name. If they had only intermarried with them like decent fellow-citizens, and entered into community of pursuits, taking their part in their friendships and their wars, it would have been all well! The same principle applies now. But Christians have lost immensely by association with the world, excited no less than worldly men by the Boers and the Germans, by the Japanese and about the Russians, and such like. What have we to do with such associations? If we were only Englishmen, we might and ought to have a great deal to do with it all. If only men in the flesh, it is a natural duty clearly, as far as one can talk about the duty of a sinful, guilty, and lost man. Now as Christians we are not our own but bought with a price; we are saved and brought to God for the purpose of living no longer to ourselves, but to Him who for us died and was raised. We are called to do God's will during the little while we are here on earth in the midst of an evil world. Consequently we have a relationship far superior.

Abraham needed protection, and Abraham had it in God with the blessed name of the "Almighty." What a suitable name of relationship for him and his! His enemies were all near and around him, it would easily leak out that his seed were to dispossess the Amorite and the rest. No doubt many an Israelite might report that God gave Canaan to the fathers and their line for ever. At the least the very fact of Abraham's coming and settling in that land must have been an omen to the Canaanites and the rest that were there. Was it not notice to quit, and a warning of judgment? Do you suppose they would take this quietly? The chosen race were long but few, but the truth would make itself felt as they increased and got stronger; more particularly after the mighty work of their deliverance out of Egypt, where their numbers multiplied in spite of all the efforts of the wicked king to destroy the males.

Next the sons of Israel were brought to Sinai; and indeed even before they reached it, in the process of their being redeemed out of Egypt - externally of course - God intimated that He was going to give Himself a new name. What He gave to Israel was the name of Jehovah. "Father" would not have been true, because the great nation for the most part consisted of unconverted men. It was not at all a question of renewal by grace. They were as a people taken up by God to govern; and government does not necessarily require that people should have divine life in them. Government supposes evil to be repressed; and God took the name of a divine governor, the God of their fathers but also now "Jehovah." At Sinai as His nation they undertook to obey His law as the condition of their standing and of His blessing. But He well knew that they would not be subject, but depart more and more into rebellion. Alas! the fleshly mind has but the principle of self-will and is never subject to God. On the contrary it is enmity against Him and dislikes His will. Therefore it was as certain as possible - and Moses was quite conscious of it - that all would go to ruin; that they would abandon Jehovah and follow greedily strange gods; so that they must be chased out of the goodly land. How solemn to all the nations the lesson of a people which once had God doing the mightiest and kindest things for them, but now become not rebels only but apostates and consequently punished in the most severe and public manner before all the world under their worst enemies the instrument of their degradation!

But all this was brought out in Jehovah's dealings with the Jews' relationship till the Son of God appeared; and more soon followed, and still more is yet to be fulfilled. But He appeared as Man, the only way in which He could appear in grace and to purpose; the way in which, according to scripture, it was absolutely necessary He should appear. For in that nature, which constantly and in every form in others had wrought evil, He came not merely to bring God into the world but to put sin out of it. Only in fact this was not all to be done at once. Meanwhile still worse was to be the display of the unbelieving wickedness of the Jews in refusing Jesus as Jehovah's Messiah; whereas He had given them overwhelming proofs of the truth. Nevertheless their inveterate and rebellious self-will would not have it. They were therefore the chief instruments in bringing Him to the cross. The idolatrous Romans even did not wish it. Pilate's name had been known for a name of hardness and severity even among Roman governors; but Pilate quite shines in comparison with the High Priest of the Jews, their elders and scribes and all the rest of them. Masses and classes made no difference; they were all full of enmity and spite against their own Messiah, blinded by fleshly will. Such is what people call "free will."

Yes, it is Satan's and the sinner's free will. As a man, what possible title can he have to a free will? Is he not bound, as an intelligent creature, to be a servant of God? Consequently the claim to exercise free will is really preposterous. As fallen, is he not a slave of Satan? And is not this the condition of what you and I and all other men were born and lived in till God gave us to take the place of the sentence of death for our souls, and to receive by faith a new life in Him that came down from heaven? And He, the Son of God and Son of man, made known to His disciples while He was ministering on earth, that there was a new name which God reveals as His to believers, the same name as He knew and loved Himself not only then but from all eternity - the Father; He in divine right, and we by sovereign grace.

Such is the fruit of the love that has reached to our once dark hearts which is here referred to: not merely that we should be forgiven and justified, but that we should be called children of God. The second verse, if not the first, distinctly says that we are so now. It is not only a name that will be made good in heaven or in the resurrection state. "Now are we" children of God. It has been already pointed out that "sons" is not the term that the apostle here applies to us, but "children." Our translators were admirable scholars; but we require the truth in our soul to translate scripture properly, and constant dependence on the same Spirit who wrote it. If they had had to do with any other book, they would have translated it correctly; but their theological prejudices hampered them here and there as to the Bible. Their mistakes seem to have chiefly arisen out of habit. Their failure lay not in lack of learning but in traditional bias. They had found others of name before them translating in a certain way, and they followed in the same rut. "Children of God" - what can be a nearer relationship to Him? Man could not make a stranger outside himself to be his child

God can, and this is what He does. Such is now the relationship of grace. It is not only that Christ called God His Father, but His Father is our Father; and He adds that "His God is our God," after He had borne atoningly the judgment of our sins and rose from out of the dead. For it is full of interest that Christ did not speak ordinarily to Him as God but as Father. When He rose from the dead, the work of redemption being accomplished, He says not merely "your Father" but "your God." The force is made exceedingly striking by comparison with the time when the Lord said "My God, My God." In the days of His flesh, and before this on the cross, it was always "Father" whether He spoke of Him or to Him. After being made sin, and hence forsaken by God, He comes to the "Father" again, even before death, that we might know that all against us was settled. For He had gone down with our sins laid on Him under that infinite judgment; and in His spirit He had the consciousness that it was finished and accepted so that He could say "Father" before the moment of death, because it was virtually ended. The resurrection was the public proof that all was peace; but before He departed, He said "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Accordingly here we have this wondrous privilege, "The Father hath given us" the title of "children of God." There we have its character; and to make it more plain that it is a really given nature and not merely a title, he adds, "Beloved, now are we children of God." In a general way it was said before that the righteous one, as He is righteous, is "born of God."

This is all exceedingly important in order to lay a firm and sure basis for our righteousness; for it is not at all that certain duties have to be fulfilled in order to our attaining righteousness. This was the ground of an Israelite. The law set before him certain duties that he was bound to accomplish to gain life. Nevertheless these he never fulfilled. The law therefore could only condemn him. It is altogether a different thing with the Christian. This is made plain when we are assured that we are children of God, and that He is our Father according to the way in which Christ knew Him; He in the right of His own divine person, we solely by grace. But have we no duties of ours? and what are they? They are the duties of children of God. We are brought into a relationship higher than any duties. What can we accomplish by any fulfilment of duty comparable with the place of a child of God? We are therefore always above our duties. We are brought into a nearness to God which no duty done by us could ever gain. We received the title by sovereign grace when we were at our worst, children of wrath even as others. He gave us life in the Son.

This for many is a blessed truth to learn, that our duties flow out of an existing relationship, instead of being done to win it. Our duties do not bring its into the relationship; but the relationship decides the kind of duties which become it and are owing to it. Our near and blessed relationship - and we could have none nearer - flows out of our being now His children. It is a standing fact which nothing can alter, except when one who has professed to be a Christian shows that there was no root of the matter in him, because he has given Christ up; even then it will tell against him in the judgment. But evidently it is a general principle and easily understood by looking at natural duties. Hence the world is always wrong in its ethical notions, because they do not at all base duty upon relationship. On the contrary they make duty to flow from the man's moral power. They suppose that man is able to do his duty if he will; and therefore there is nothing in a man's duty but what he can do if he choose. The sorrowful fact certainly is that man fails in his Godward duties utterly; but philosophers think little of that. The error shows how the system of ethics has no source in revelation but is merely of fallen man. There is neither the truth of God nor the reality of man, as in His sight.

Look, for illustration, at a parent. What is it that is the ground of the child's duty to the parents? It is the relationship. It is because he is the child of his father that he is bound to love him who begat him, and to obey him. No other can stand in a father's place. Should the child begin to regard others as equally near with his father, or to let them usurp his place, it is clear all must be false and wrong. There is again the relationship of a husband and wife; and here what more evident? The man's duty is to love her, as is due to none else, though she may be sometimes a little trying; and it is the woman's duty to obey him, though doubtless she may have to endure sometimes.

Duties are quite independent of mere passing circumstances. Nor are they a question of the man's will or of the woman's. Whatever be their thoughts or their feelings, the obligation of duty flows out of the relationship. Whether one does the duty or not, relationship is what creates and calls for it. In a servant there is a little of the same principle, but more distant and feeble from its nature, especially in our day when they are prone to getting tired of their masters, as the masters and mistresses are not at all unwilling to part with their servants, sometimes on small occasions. In itself it is indeed, as we read in John 8, not an abiding but a temporary relationship. But the others abide for this life, and therefore they can better illustrate the relationships which grace has established never to end.

We are entitled by God's word to believe this. But while the flesh remains in us, we need grace,("but He giveth more grace") to accomplish the duties proper to our relationship whether to God or between us and our brethren. The least one involves corresponding duty. But the all-important depend on the supreme rights of God. And here God has taken the place of incomparable love: "See what manner of love." It is entirely beyond any affection that man ever conceives. It was only possible for God; and He gives to us under the Father's name, as the Lord Jesus knew Him and communicated after He died and rose, not more truly His than ours. Therefore the blessing, above all thought of man, being ours now encourages us to fulfil the obligations which that relationship calls into being.

Has not the relationship then a great deal to do with righteousness? If so, cannot one perceive at once the great propriety and beauty as well as the peculiar force thereby given to sustain righteousness - that is, our consistency with our relationship? For here if anywhere the relationship is brought out in all its reality, and its present rich grace; also carried right through to the presence of the Lord, when we seeing Him as He is shall be like Him. Thus it furnishes a very complete and divine light on the subject, and in a way as unexpected as indispensable, meant and adapted to give energy to the duty of practical righteousness, and to minister unfailing joy and comfort under all circumstances.

Take the danger that ensues when we give up our relationship and begin to doubt whether we are children of God: are we not ripe for the world, for indulgence in sin? No wonder that we should turn into evil ways if we do not enjoy present, living, and everlasting relationship with God; but if we do, there is no excuse for sin. There is the new nature, the near tie, and the love of the most powerful kind as the motive. For the new nature may be viewed in connection with relationship, or as it acts by itself apart from it. But the full and proper way is to bring both nature and relationship to bear on our conversation in this connection; and this is what our apostle is doing in his own remarkable manner in the parenthesis of these three verses between the first and the renewed treatment of righteousness.

Having thus brought in the Father's love and our relationship as children, with its bright hope, he turns again to the moral side and probes sin to its root, as he had not yet done. He does not call sin "the transgression of the law," and for the best of all reasons. He is going to treat it in a far larger way than in connection with the law or the Jews. They were accustomed to unrighteousness or righteousness in a measure, although they superficially misunderstood it through their unbelief. Still they read of it habitually in their Scriptures; and they could but wonder at the depth of the word of righteousness from the Lord Himself as He the true light shone when here.

But the heathen, what did they know about righteousness? They had no conscious relationship with God who was to them an unknown God. If they had any moral feeling in the presence of their spurious objects of veneration, it was fear. But they had not the smallest idea that God was a God of love. Their gods were patrons of vice and villainy, never rising above selfishness. If ever they came down to the earth to man, it was perhaps to make a pet of this one or that one, and it might be something far worse than a pet; because they were really disgraceful in their immoral ways. Did Hellenism ever attain to anything in religion higher than disgraceful gods, without a particle of either holiness or love? Which of them was not bad from Zeus down to the lowest of them? Their gods were just the exaggerated reflection of themselves. But here we have the truth of God, and that truth working in the way of sovereign grace to bless us without the smallest desert on our part. The Christian can only take the ground of utter ruin and evil in the first man, and of perfect righteousness and grace in Christ. All the virtue, efficacy, and blessing came from God who gives all freely to faith in Christ. What could our God and Father do so well to the believer for renouncing self and every hindrance, as to confess the name of his Lord and Saviour, and to enjoy the blessed nearness of his relationship to the Father, in a new life given by grace?

That the believer is righteous as being born of God, and consequently sharing with Christ God's hatred of sin, was much; for doing follows being. And every one that doeth righteousness is born of God, and thus knows that he has nearness of relationship from being the object of the Father's spontaneous and perfect love. Thus the nature and the relationship join hands and go together, and this is what the apostle here explains to us. But now, having brought in all the bright side, and alike its present reality and its surpassing hope also, he proceeds to insist on the necessary contrariety of God's nature, whether in Christ or in us, to all sin.

"Whosoever doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness" (ver. 4). "Committing sin" is generally used for a particular act, as when one says that a man has committed a sin. But "doing sin" as here means that it is both the principle of the man and his practice too; for there is nothing else really but the man's doing sin. It is his nature. Of whom does he speak? Of every man naturally. This is exactly what man does as in God's sight. It is not merely the Gentile but the Jew; for in that light there was no difference, though they might ever so much oppose one another, and habitually indulge in mutual hate and scorn. Before God fully revealed in Christ what possible room for any thought of pride? Man's place is in the dust as a sinner.

Who then is the sinner but every man as such in his natural state? Was not this your life and mine before we learned Christ? God was unknown to our souls except in a certain dread of Him - a fear that He would cast us into hell some day. If God was not in our thoughts, sin was. What is its true character then? Lawlessness, the principle of self-will and of total independence of God. Man finds it not so easy now to be independent of his fellow; he has no difficulty in being thoroughly indifferent to God. How mad, wicked, awful a state! God is in none of his thoughts; this is sin. The moment you bring in such a definition of sin as is here revealed, it applies to everybody whether Jew or Gentile. The Jew had a claim of righteousness, because he was under law; but the consequence if he sinned was the additional guilt of breaking a known law, and that law the law of God. He was therefore a "transgressor," which the Gentile could not be, because the Gentile knew nothing about the law as a general rule; most of them had not even heard of it. it would be therefore quite a misapplication of terms to talk about the Gentiles as if they were transgressors. Scripture never does so speak, but calls them lawless or sinners; as for instance Galatians 2:15 says, "sinners of the Gentiles."

But now we have lawlessness brought to bear upon the Jew, and if he believed not on Christ, he also was lawless with all his boast in the law, because his sinning proved him to be really living without God. While the temple stood, he went up and brought his offering; any Jew might do that. Men, even the worst of them, like to have a little bit of religion. Cain had not merely the world to love as he began it, but he had the world's religion in man's idea. He was not at all one of the sort that have no church or chapel of their own. He was strict in bringing an offering of his particular device to the Lord; but there was nothing in it except a real insult to Him who alone can say how He is to be worshipped, with an absolute ignoring of his own sinfulness. He brought the fruits and flowers of the earth. People do something like this at funerals. It is a great day for flowers, as we know, even at the grave; and a more monstrous thing than flowers on a coffin it is hardly possible to conceive as far as principle is concerned. It utterly blots out the solemnity and the consequences of death. What is death for the saint but departing to be with Christ? And what is death to the sinner but the knell of inevitable and righteous judgment) And what for either are flowers? Can one wonder that even sensible people of the world now give notice to their friends "No flowers by request"? At any rate it is hard to conceive any fashion more heartless or foolish, though it is natural enough for the gardeners, and good for taste perhaps and trade but for nothing else.

"Whosoever doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness?" This is a very different rendering from that of the A.V.; but as it was dwelt on previously, little more is called for now. Sin is not breach of law but lawlessness. This is the true sense. No other rendering is possible legitimately. What has ruled here is an utter mistake, founded on making the law instead of Christ the rule of life for the Christian, as people do who understand not the scriptures. "And ye know that He was manifested that He might take away our sins; and in Him is no sin." The apostle introduces at once the exact opposite. Where shall we look for one utterly free from lawlessness? There was but One, and He so evident that it was needless to name Him. Yes, we know that the Lord Jesus was manifested to take away our sins. How suited to a divine person, but withal truly man! He indeed abhorred sin; and, as is said immediately after His work, "In Him is no sin." It is not only "was" before His advent, and "will be" now that He is risen, but "in Him is no sin." It is an absolute truth. As it never was at any time, so it never could be. Yet the sinless One was just the One whom God made sin, that we - who were indeed sinners might become God's righteousness in Him. The one refers to the unique act and aim of His atoning death; the other refers to the immutable and holy character of His life, so peculiarly displayed and tested particularly in this world. There it was manifest to every eye, unless they were blind or saw crooked.

"Every one that abideth in Him sinneth not." There is no other remedy against sin than abiding in Him, constantly dependent and confiding. The guard or preservative is not in that one has called on the name of the Lord. This is excellent to begin with; but many that today say "Lord, Lord," must be ignored in that day. To abide in Christ is the test of living faith in Christ, which is not empty or vain but works by love, as the law-affecting Galatians were told. Nor could it be otherwise. "I am crucified with Christ, but live, no longer I (the old man) but Christ liveth in me; and that which I now live in flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, that loved me and gave Himself for me." He is not ashamed to call us brethren; He has proved His love for us to the uttermost in a way proper neither to the Father nor to the Holy Spirit, yet essential. They never became incarnate to display absolute obedience in life, and in death to endure the judgment of our sins at God's hand. He did. Therein is for us a motive of exceeding power, particularly as there is a righteous nature communicated, as well as a relationship of such nearness to God, as only the supreme love of the Father could conceive and confer.

Then we come to the verses not before cleared. "Dear children, let no man lead you astray." Where is the subject on which there is more frequent mistake? Where any in which men are more apt not only to err, but to mislead others who trust them? There is no help for it but in Christ, His word, and His spirit. What can learning avail herein? Even piety can do little unless there is also true abiding in Him. "Apart from Him we can do nothing." Hence it is that if we so abide, the wicked one cannot harm us, though we are always exposed to his wiles, yet not ignorant of his devices. Not of us is he afraid, but of Christ his vanquisher. But our faith and abiding in Christ puts Him between us and the devil, who thus resisted will flee from us. It is not our old nature, the flesh, turned by grace and truth into a good nature. The flesh, the very mind of the flesh, is incurably evil; and on this God executed condemnation on our behalf who believe in Christ a sacrifice for sin. And now that He is dead and risen, He gives us of His own risen life, a new creation, not the old improved but set aside for ever and judged in Christ's cross. What is His life? Was there ever a single sin to tarnish it? Did the smallest defilement ever enter Him? This is the life that we now have; and hence the joy of the Father's love rests upon us as His children - children of God the Father. We have therefore the new nature, which is a righteous one, before we are to do righteousness which is the course of that nature, as unrighteousness is alien to it.

With the Israelite it was a man addressed in the law as having a sinful nature. The law supposed such proclivities in him; he was therefore surrounded by prohibition on every side. He was not to own false gods, nor to have an image of the true God. Worship was exclusively due to the unseen but only true God that brought Israel out of Egypt, whose name he might not take in vain. He was not to take another's property, nor even to covet any one or thing that belonged to his neighbour. He was to keep the Sabbath on the seventh day, and to honour his parents, all under the severest sanction. Why? Because having aversion to God's will in his nature he was unrighteous. The law held out life and death - life to the obedient, death to the disobedient. Cursed be the man that confirmeth not the words of this law to do them; and all the people shall say, Amen! Accordingly death passed upon Israel long ago. But the day is coming when they too shall live; and "doing righteousness" will follow. The soul that does righteousness, the nature that loves it, has a new life in Christ which God gives of His grace independently of anything on our part. His Spirit it is that works in us to repent and believe the gospel. With this new life the new and Christian responsibility begins. We are called to walk consistently with Christ, whose is the righteous life given to our soul. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous" (verse 7). It is His nature, just as a mere fallen man sins.

Now he gets much stronger, and looks at the source of the mischief. "He that doeth sin is of the devil." He had shown the source of the blessing; now he looks at the ultimate source of sin. It is not merely what Adam and Eve did but what the serpent infused into their hearts. What has the devil been about ever since but adding to the sin of the head fresh unrighteousness for each of the race? Here, it is said, "He that doeth sin is of the devil." He is the leader that man belongs to. He may boast of his ancestors, but there is another who was not literally his father; but fallen man has made Satan practically his god. So scripture calls him the god of this age, and the prince of the world. How true it is "He that doeth sin is of the devil"; not as flung out in man's haste, but nothing less than the truth of God. Not only is he a sinful man, but "he is of the devil." "For the devil sinneth from the beginning," that is, from the time that he was not content to be an angel of God but set up independently of God in his pride. From that moment was his beginning as the devil. This of course was after the time when he was created an angel. Here again we see that

"From the beginning, "does not mean" In the beginning." This is said of the Word, the Son, in eternity before the creation, or as "In the beginning" of Genesis 1:1, pointing to God's action, not His being. "From the beginning," no matter how or where it occurs, is from the time that the person spoken of manifests himself. "From the beginning" of Christ was from the time when Christ manifested Himself. "From the beginning" of the devil was when he manifested not his angelic qualities but his pride against God first, and his malice afterward, the sure effect of pride in others also.

"To this end the Son of God was manifested, that he might undo the works of the devil." This does not seem to mean exactly the same thing as to take away our sins. It is not to be doubted that this great object also points to the self-same time; but we must remember that the death of Christ had far more in it than simply taking away our sins. This is everything to us; or at any rate everything of God's grace practically begins with His work to take away our sins. But He became the bondman of God, and so His champion against Satan, the ceaseless adversary of both God and man; and Christ was manifested not only to reconcile us to God by His death, but to undo everything that Satan had wrought in all his malignant history. And so He will. Satan has a great deal to do with wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilences, etc., as is to be learnt from the early part of Job and elsewhere. Meanwhile God overrules for good all these things that Satan does for evil. But there is mischief in him at all times, restless mischief to injure; as there is the unceasing love of God to do good to all that listen to Him, especially in what He reveals of the Lord Jesus. "Every one that is born of God doeth not sin." Righteousness is his life for practice, as it is for piety. The believer is characterised by the new nature that does not sin. Supposing a man had been a slave from the time that he was born, but that in the course of time some kindly Englishman interposed and delivered him from his captors. The man becomes a free man directly, by the law of this country, no small boon to the slave. When he thinks or talks of himself after that moment, does he still think of himself as a slave? Not at all: this is far from his thought. Such he was once; but now he is a free man. It may be objected that the old man still exists in the Christian; but the answer is that God set him free from it by Christ's death. So that there remains enough true in this illustration to justify its use here. Alas! what is spiritual is not so easy to understand and feel as the natural.

"Every one that hath been begotten of God." This is the starting-point. To be born of Him is the real beginning, not in divine counsels but of His effectual work in the soul. Of the other life he does not speak, but distinctly of every one born with a nature that never sins. Our business is not to let the old nature out but to keep it under the power of Christ's death, mortifying all that belongs to it, and never by grace allowing it to work actively. We may fail, and we do through our own fault; for we have the Spirit dwelling in us to oppose the flesh, and are always inexcusable when we thus break down. But righteousness is our principle from the first, and a blessed fact too, because we have it as our new nature. We are not waiting for it as a prize outside us, like an Israelite. Sovereign grace has already made it ours, not only for us as to justification as the apostle Paul says, but in us a new nature as we see here. God has given us the blessing; and therefore we are to act consistently with it, looking up to God the source, and the Lord Jesus through whom we have it to abide in Him, that we may bear much fruit to the Father's glory all the way through.

"Every one that hath been begotten of God doeth not sin, because his seed remaineth in him." It is not merely that he ought not, but he does not. Every creature acts according to its nature; and the Christian's new nature is that he cannot sin; for judging by that new nature, it assuredly never sins. sin is the sad inconsistency of allowing the depraved nature to work its way; which was clearly contrary to God's will, who would have it kept under Christ's death. Did we not die to it from the first, when we passed out of death into life? Did not our baptism testify to this? The unclean and dead thing ought to be out of sight, even completely put away from us. "And he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God." It is clearly in virtue of the new nature that he thus speaks so peremptorily.

"In this are manifest the children of God and the children of the devil: everyone that doeth not righteousness is not of God." But there is the further test of love, and he adds, "Neither he that loveth not his brother" (ver. 10). If this absence of love be one's character, it shows that he never had the new nature which loves righteousness and lives in it.

Let me call attention to the language of extreme decision in speaking of these two classes. It is the habit of many an excellent Christian to deny the title of saints to exercise such a judgment; and to this they cite our Lord's prohibition in Matthew 7:1-2: "Judge not, that ye may not be judged; for with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you." Now in this application they are not wise; for the Lord here does not at all blame spiritual discernment of persons or things, which is a clear and weighty privilege of the Christian for his own guidance and the help or warning of others. And so the apostle lays it down (1 Corinthians 2:15) that the spiritual (in contrast with the natural) man judges, or examines, all things, and he is judged by no one. What the Lord warned the disciples against is the bad habit of censoriousness, which so often leads to suspecting evil motives without ground and contrary to the holy instincts of love. But love would be stifled by the notion that we ought not to judge who God's children are. If we are debarred from discerning them, how can we love them? Yet the very context proves that we can and ought to judge; for the Lord supposes it not only practicable but right and necessary when He says, "Give not what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before the swine." If we are thus bound to discern the unclean, how much more is it our happy place to recognise the sheep and the lambs of God's pasture, and help them lovingly in their need according to our measure!

But we need not go beyond the verse before us to see where the truth lies in this matter. "In this are manifest the children of God and the children of the devil." The apostle regarded the difference as plain enough. He looks as usual at broad, clear, and practical proofs; he does not encumber his aim with a hypocrite here or there who might for a while be allowed to evade detection; he is earnest in drawing the heed of God's family to what is of constant moment and interest for them all. There is no real difficulty in forming a sound judgment among those whose conduct is known to us, whether these are walking righteously or those unrighteously. It is unwarrantable to suspect of a hidden evil where no evil is apparent; as it is to accredit others with an excellence which is imaginary. Righteous judgment proceeds, especially in an application so general as this, on grounds which no upright and gracious soul could question.

Though man walks uncertainly and with vain show, it is not, it ought not to be, so with the Christian, who has the clearest duty from his own relationship to God and his brethren for suitable action. For he has to do, as the rule every day, with men who are either the children of God or the children of the devil. Divine love that works in him cannot be indifferent about either; but it takes a wholly different shape to each. The apostle at any rate saw no obstacle in the way, and encourages him to act for God as well as for them, and would keep him from the rashness of framing a judgment on obscure and uncertain grounds. "In this are manifest the children of God and the children of the devil." Righteousness and love are not without visible effects before all. They are both manifest in the children of God; and it is equally manifest that they are not in the child of the devil, but rather their opposites.

It is of painful interest to inquire how saints should slip into so serious a mistake as to draw them into perverting one scripture and neglecting others. For how many are the words of God which take for granted that even the simplest believers recognise their brethren, as also they love them; whilst they also feel bound to win the heedless from their fatal insecurity, and to warn those who scorn and mock. It is the ruin of the Christian profession which accounts for an assumption so destructive of the Christian's duty. The world is churchy, and the church is yet more worldly; so that confusion is stamped on the actual state of the saints mixed up with those who, necessarily having nothing spiritual in common, cannot but drag down into more or less of their own darkness those who ought to be clear and free for the Lord. For who can doubt that the saint cannot lift his unconverted associate into communion with God's mind? Or what is more certain and common than that, if the natural be yoked with the spiritual, the dead weight of the former must sink the latter into more or less conformity with his own bad thoughts and ways?

ADDRESS 10

1 John 3:11-17.

For this is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another: not as Cain was of the wicked one, and slew his brother; and for what did he slay him? Because his works were wicked, and those of his brother righteous. Wonder not,* brethren, if the world hateth you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not the brother abideth in death. Every one that hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath life eternal abiding in him. Herein we know love, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives. But whoso may have the world's means of living, and behold his brother having need, and shut up his bowels from him, how abideth the love of God in him?"

* "My," of the common text, is wanting in the best copies.

The last clause, as was noticed, is the link of transition from righteousness to love. Men set these two things in opposition one to another: but they are perfectly united in Christ, the perfection of both righteousness and love. Hence it is thoroughly applicable to the Christian, since Christ is the life of the Christian. We really and truly receive by faith that life which was in the Lord Himself; not the life of Adam that all men have, but a new life possessed by none of us until we believed in the Lord Jesus. Being life, it is not capable of any outward mark of a sensible nature; still less is there a visible presentation of itself to us, though we know where it exists by its operations and effects. If this be so with the natural life, how much less could it be expected of the supernatural or spiritual life? We ought not to ask for it, and thereby show that we do not know what life is; yet however difficult it may be to define life, everybody knows that, when life departs, death sets in. There may be the working of death before we depart, and there is, since sin came into the world. There is mortality, but death is when mortality has come to its issue. Everyone can tell is the general rule when a man, or any other animal, is dead. We know exceptions occur now and then: there are exceptions to every rule probably, and there are difficulties as to all truths. But there is no difficulty about God's word to make any real hindrance to spiritual intelligence. Doubtless an insuperable difficulty exists for those who have no knowledge of God; but this knowledge is communicated by the faith of Christ. "This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou didst send."

Who have got the new nature? Every Christian, and from the beginning; and now in the fullest form for Christians, for even our Lord here below spoke about our having life abundantly. "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it abundantly." There is no need to say "more abundantly abundantly" is all that the Lord really did say. But what a. difference that makes! The life that the disciples possessed when our Lord was here never tended openly to break with the temple and with the Jewish system. But when our Lord Jesus, Who deigned to be, subject to the Jewish system as to the law generally, died and rose, what had He to do with the law? It would have been an absurdity to speak of the risen Christ going up to the temple, or partaking in any ceremonial of the Jew, such as the feasts or anything whatever. This is, exactly what was intended in doctrine for the disciples. They did not realise it all at once. We are apt to be slow in learning these great changes. But the risen life of Christ was in the believer, whereby he died to all these things. Christ died not merely for our sins but died to sin which He never had in Himself, but in which we were deeply concerned. He had no more to do with it; He died to it once for all. Himself was all the while perfectly unaffected by its working. All that it drew out in His life was His grief and pity for those that were misled. But when He died, the mightiest work that God could do was done by the Lord Jesus.

Even when He comes again in His glory, it will be only drawing out, as it were, for that day in a public and powerful way the virtues involved in Him crucified. So this new life, although not at all of an outwardly sensible nature, is a life of indissoluble power. And power is given to it by the Holy Ghost. He is a spirit, not of cowardice, but of power and love, and of sound mind. The apostles were to receive power. They were to be not only witnesses to others, but they had to learn for themselves also much greater things which they could not then bear. These things came out when there was not merely risen life but the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. We ought never to confound these two things, nor confine His action to tongues, miracles, or any of these powers, which were only outward vouchers. The inward power of the Spirit was much greater than any of the external signs that accompanied it. The external signs were withdrawn as the church failed and broke down in love, truth, and light. How could God continue His stamp of approval on an unworthy state of things? We find that even the church in Ephesus was threatened, for it had fallen from its first love when John wrote. This was really what became the general state after John departed. For the apostles were a great cheek upon the declension which was setting in so strongly.

We may well dwell on the new life thus, for it is what unites the practical righteousness and the active love of the believer. He is here speaking not of God's love, though this comes in, but of our love; just as he speaks not of righteousness in Christ, which is outside ourselves for justification, but of our righteousness. It is clear that this righteousness consists of good fruit. And how can there be good fruit without a good tree? Certainly in our natural state there was anything but a good tree; ours then was only a bad tree which bore bad fruit. For good fruit we must have a divine nature communicated to us, as it is with the bad tree, by introducing a good graft, in order to produce good fruit. It cannot be otherwise, and with this life, life eternal, John is occupied. It is not righteousness for us who had none, which we become in Christ, but righteousness within which produces our righteousness day by day. People may not like the truth, but here it is in the apostle's words.

After all it is too solemn for any to trifle with, because no man is a real Christian without both righteousness outside us in Christ, and the righteous nature within us, which is the new nature in virtue of what is proper to Christ. We have therefore the two things; what is called "objective" outside, and "subjective," or what we are; and this because Christians have necessarily the life of Christ. And this life does not differ from Himself. It is life He gives us to live in and by, the very same life that Christ had and was.

Thus he begins, "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning." You will remember perhaps, that in verse 5 of the first chapter we had the same phrase: "This then is the message which we have heard from him." Here it is still more precise. It was not before the beginning, but "from the beginning." Both make it decisive. What men added is of no account. This abides, the unchangeable truth of practical Christianity, and it is all the more important, because it is dead opposed to the prevalent ideas of men. In particular it openly contradicts the notion of what is called development. And development is utterly false, and more evil in divine things than in natural. It is a heathen guess reproduced of late as to nature. It denies God's power and will in determining species. For species, as fixed as in other natural laws so-called, is the true principle of Zoology, not human classification on superficial resemblance. It therefore is at issue with creation in any real sense - that is, with the rights of God in creation; but how humbling that such a daring idea of the heathen should revive It was quite natural to the benighted "who knew not God." They had it long before Darwin or his coadjutors. It now seems to be the craze of the so-called "philosophers" and their hangers on, the humble servants of a purely fanciful idea. But if bad in the lower creatures, it would not much matter, unless for the rights of God, how a mouse or a monkey or any like creature was thought to be developed. But when it touches man and man's relationship to God, the idea that he could have come out of seaweed or anything else they are pleased to make primary in nature, it is serious so to swamp conscience and responsibility, and God's claims in mankind, His offspring. The infidelity of the theory makes it intolerable, and therefore it is far better to speak out plainly.

Here is matter of fresh interest, because this is "the message," as well as that in the introductory words of 1 John 1, which follow the manifestation of divine love and life in the Son of man on earth. There it was a message that God is light, bringing this to bear upon us, which is as certainly the truth of Christianity as that God is love; indeed it was so stated before the actual announcement that God is love. Yet that God is love was clearly implied in the early four verses; still it was not announced in actual terms till later. But it was all important that man, if brought to God in sovereign grace, should never forget that God is light. Our receiving life eternal in Christ was not to make our practical holiness an optional matter. Our new blessing from God was intended to make sin as hateful to our souls as God proved it to be when He forsook the Lord Jesus bearing that intolerable burden. If He has given us already inestimable blessing, we cannot escape the moral responsibility of walking as in the light. It is a great privilege too. How blessed that, as we were creatures of darkness through sin we are translated into that marvellous light, not when we get to heaven but now in this world, and are called to walk accordingly. Were we sent forth to walk without the constant watching of our Father over us, it would be quite beyond us, because we should break away from God every time we sinned. Sin does interrupt communion, but it does not destroy the life of Christ. His life differs from all other life in that it cannot come to nought. It is of its own nature eternal. Herein we have the greatest comfort, although we have a solemn appeal to our hearts and our consciences.

Again the apostle says, "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning." Then Christ came in love; then He gave us life; and the call followed, not only that we should believe in God's love in Him to us, but that we should love one another as He did.

It was a blessing, and a wonderful call worthy of Christ; and it supposes a complete change for and in us. If there is any one thing which stamps a fallen man, it is that he is always the centre of his thoughts and feelings. We are what we seek and value. Self certainly is not love. Therefore what the world calls it in its own slang is "Number one." For man "Number one" is not God, but poor wretched fallen self every man his own god. For the One, the Supreme is and ought to be God. "Number one" ought to be assuredly God's place to my soul; and it would be if I were not a fallen, sinful man. Now the Lord puts an end to all that distance by the call of grace. At any rate it is the fruit of God coming down in Him to be our Blesser; and our Blesser not only by a work done for us but in a life given to us. Thus practical Christianity becomes a living to God and according to His word, not only resting on Christ and His work outside but having Christ in us also. Both are true, and true from the earliest days. From this no change can be but for evil. But "from the beginning" this message was heard. How plainly "from" is not "in the beginning" when the Godhead alone existed! There was not even an angel to hear them, much less a man. But "from the beginning" ye heard it, evidently from the time Christ was here. Yet neither was it a mere call to love one's neighbour as one's self. This was the law.

"Our neighbour" then, as it must be interpreted, meant the Jew primarily. They did not love the Gentiles. They might perhaps have a little difficulty about the Gentile that came to take refuge under the wings of the God of Israel. Such might be counted their neighbours in grace. These Gentile neighbours were comparatively few, putting them all together, in comparison with the rest of mankind. Ruth came under the protection of the God of Israel. Though she was not of the stock of Abraham, she was married to a not inconsiderable Israelite, and one too who gave her part with himself in the very line from whence was to come the Shepherd of Israel, the Lord Himself. Such persons were practically Israelites. However we need not discuss that. For all know that "loving our neighbour" till the Lord came was made sadly narrow. The Lord gave it enlargement when the scribe to whom He spoke started the difficulty, "Who is my neighbour?" So it is, when the truth is made plain and the hearers cannot easily get rid of it, they ask questions which they think will perplex. The Lord therefore uttered the beautiful parable of the good Samaritan. How cutting to Jewish pride! Not the "Good Israelite," but the "Good Samaritan!" Wherein lay its force? It was not another Samaritan that he saw needing his help, but an Israelite from whom every one turned away except the Samaritan. Even if a Levite beheld the sufferer, or if a priest, - Oh! it was not his business. These quite ignored their neighbour; and they did so because the distress called for love and compassion. But not so the Samaritan. He bound up his wounds and provided for him. Was it not the apt figure of the Lord Himself? and how blessed if the Lord in giving it meant it so to be! He that came down to be a "bondman" did not mind couching under the guise of a "Samaritan." He had come to bear their sins in His body on the tree, alone to bear them, to suffer for them, Just for unjust, and to blot them out for ever. No wonder He was not ashamed to be a Samaritan in the parable: what baseness for Jews to call Him so!

But now it is another kind of love. It savours of God's own love. To whom is His love fully shown? To His children. The little perception of such loving as this shows how far souls in Christendom have departed. The most feeble of Christians have no little feeling for sinners in danger of perishing. But they are very little concerned about the saints of God, whether they are glorifying God and His Son or not. That sinners should be converted is the great desideratum: all else is quite secondary. How sad to stop so short! Is this what God feels? Was this all that His own Son cared for when upon earth? He was the revealed object of divine love and favour all through, before He bore our sins on the cross; but how did not He love the children of God?

And now, save in atonement, we have His place. We are children of God, and the love that rested upon Him rests upon us, as our Lord tells us in the end of John 17. That is entirely beyond what most of the children of God contemplate for themselves. Of course they do not deny the words; but do they seem to understand them, or speak and act as if they felt them, as conveying the model of their privilege and duty? And the consciousness of being so loved goes out in love to those who are as much its object as ourselves.

But it is also important that we should understand that such love as His was an entirely new thing. Only then was it charged that the children of God should love one another. The Lord laid it down as the "new commandment." Indeed it was a, new thing to learn that God was now to form a family, and a family to be gathered together in one - the children of God that were scattered abroad. This had never been till now. But it is what God does in two particular forms. In the writings of John it is family unity; in those of Paul, the one body of Christ. Both at any rate coalesce in being divine unity in two different ways: the one because Christ brought God's nature to give it down here, and those that receive it His children to be gathered together in one, the other, of the body because Christ is glorified in heaven, and we are by the Spirit united with Him on high. It is the unity of the Head and the body. The Head of the body is the glorified Man, and the centre of the family is Jesus the Son of God; and Christ above is both.

Here then we have the limits of that love - loving one another. It is not love in the gospel going out to man as lost; it has nothing whatever to do with the law, or with one's neighbour; it is love in divine relationship towards God's family. Love to God's children is equally valid for the ends of the earth, as it is for those that surround as in England. They are alike members of Christ's body. These truths are meant to be carried out in one far off as truly as in another near; and you cannot set them aside except at the peril of fighting against or slighting the word of God, and of grieving the Holy Spirit who is in us in order that God's will should be carried out thenceforward.

Now this gives an opportunity for the apostle to pierce more deeply. He contrasts the children of God and the children of the devil strongly, tracing both to the root of the matter. Not content with calling them evil, children of wrath like others, he says here "children of the devil." This comes to a decided point of awful significance. And, singular to say, he points to the earliest days of fallen man on earth, after the children were born to Adam and Eve, and begins with the very eldest one of the two sons. "Not as Cain was of that wicked one," for this is the proper way to render it. The "who" has no business there, and only weakens. Cain is not to be our pattern but to be shunned. And wherefore? He "slew his brother." There his wickedness carried him. Certainly this was not love but hatred; and it is what John wants to show. He will not allow any middle ground between love and hatred. He will not endorse any mixed thoughts with which some seem to be greatly charmed. All such sentiment to excuse Cain is a compromise of the truth; and it is of the greatest moment that we should know that there must be a clean breach between what is of God and what is of the devil. This is where we are brought here.

Now it is remarkable as showing the far-reaching truth here, that Cain was the one who took the lead in two innovations. He was the first to set up natural religion. Gain was not what people call an irreligious man, if thereby be meant that he had no religion. He was what answers in our day to a man that goes regularly to his church or his chapel. It was simply the religion of nature, and raised no question in his soul whether his offering became his own state or was according to the mind of God. People generally do not consider this at all. "Their fathers went there that is enough for most. They were christened, confirmed, and took the sacrament; or they became members, as others call it, of the church and congregation. It was all assumed to be the proper thing for a decent man. The Jesuits go rather farther, as they say, for God's greater glory: the alleged ground for their heartless, unscrupulous, and wicked ambitions. For they are sworn to obey their General, if he declares that any means promote that object; as the General acts for, and not merely with, the pope; sometimes far in advance of the pope, but still it is all nominally to promote their lord the pope's glory.

So Cain for an act of homage had his idea of what befitted himself in approaching God. "Well," he seems to have thought, "there is nothing so fine here as the flowers and fruits that God has made in this fair world." Yet it was already a fallen world; and all were outcasts from paradise. Oh how soon this was forgotten; and still more its cause! Cain forgot the rebellious sin which morally compelled God to pronounce exile on the first pair. Was it not his religious duty then to offer what he thought the very best of earth's produce? No doubt he was horrified at his brother Abel's sacrifice. "Think of him; only think what a stupid he is. Why, he is going to offer a little lamb and kill it before Jehovah! Think of that! How shocking to Him, how cruel in itself! What harm has the lamb ever done? Why the firstlings of the flock, and of their fat? Surely he has quite mistaken Jehovah's character. Has He any pleasure in blood or fat? Has He any delight in the slaughter of a poor innocent creature to which He gave being?

There was here in particular, what there is generally, a great deal to reason on; and this is exactly the basis of natural religion of any kind and at any time. It is a religion that man reasons out as becoming himself and others with God. But as man is its only source, there is nothing of God in it, only man's pretension and profession.

And how about Abel? In faith Abel had pondered these things deeply. He at least had found out the awful fact of being a sinner in the sight of God; for Abel, we may be very sure, had learnt from his father and mother what God said about the fall. He learnt too that God spoke of another who was to intervene, the woman's Seed to accomplish the work that no creature could do: the destruction of the serpent and of his seed, enemies too. But more than this; it was not a light thing for Abel to hear that God clothed his parents with coats of skins, instead of fig-leaves. This was of no moment to Cain. But Abel assuredly recognised that there is a great truth in it. Death! therein he saw its bearings. Death! to be clothed with the fruit of death; and not my own death, wages of sin, but the death of another and such a mysterious other! For, as we too believe, Jehovah in His grace pointed to the only clothing for fallen sinful man and woman, who in spite of fig-leaves (nature's clothing) were in every sense naked in their sin. Before that their nakedness was in all innocence, but now their daring transgression lay bare. Their quick repairing to the covering of fig-leaves betrayed that they too were at a device no better than Cain's. Only God corrected it for them; and they accepted the correction. "Jehovah Elohim made Adam and his wife coats of skin, and clothed them": a clothing founded upon death. Hence Abel was taught by faith to put these things together, and brought accordingly the firstlings of his flock. Without faith it is impossible to please God; faith rests on God's testimony. It is not for me or you to define how far Abel's faith carried him; but his was the intelligence of faith, and Cain had none. It may be small but distinct as far as is revealed; and this is the great point: that faith should be real and of God.

There was great simplicity in Abel's faith, but spiritual perception. He brought of the firstlings of his flock, a lamb to die. It was no offering of power, not a wolf nor a lion nor a bear to fight the serpent; but on the contrary a little lamb to die. "And Jehovah looked upon Abel and on his offering." Did not He see, as ever before, what was as yet dim in the sight of any believer even? The Lamb without blemish and without spot, foreknown before the world's foundation, but to be manifested in Christ and His blood for our sakes? There and then the germ of divine truth appears, to this Abel held, abjuring human notions; but Jehovah had no respect to Cain or his offering of the fruit of the ground.

A little before it was noticed how Cain gave the first impulse to the world; but much more than the outside is hinted at also, for he introduced the world's religion. This last seems to be very prominent to the mind of the Spirit in the Epistle of Jude, which is more akin to the First Epistle of John than any, even bearing in mind its remarkable analogy in the way of contrast with 2 Peter. The strong resemblance is with John in this respect, that they are alike Epistles of the apostasy. Such is the dark, the ominously dark, streak which marks both of them, that evil at the core, apostasy working in spirit (which could not be hidden from Him who abides in the church), the harbinger of the future apostasy; and in our apostle's letters many antichrists, the harbinger of the antichrist.

But Jude, the brother of James and bondman of Jesus, speaks of "the way of Cain." One does not confine this to his murder of his brother, but sees rather religious wickedness in it as well as in Balaam and Korah, especially as this was the immediate occasion of the murder. Besides he was a bold, presumptuous, and wicked man in his general character. "His works were wicked, and his brother's righteous." He was just the man to become founder of "the world" and of natural religion. What wonder that he was not content to live in his own home! "No, no! union is strength: we must combine." Being a man of energy, he got people to agree. His will was more powerful than theirs. He was the first builder of a city; and you may depend upon it that he ruled the city too when it began to rise. Such is the nature of man and of his will. He likes power; and so it seems with Cain. But before that he pretended to religion too; and this was more particularly the open occasion of his downfall. For it was the great breach with God, and its murderous result which is now before us. Indeed the world's religion and its civilization pretty well march together. Adam and Eve were very far from being savages, as bad men say, but who would speak of their state as a type of civilization It is a reality incomparably above civilization to live according to the will of God. And what is the worth in His sight, or for the soul and spirit, of all the progress men boast of?

The world is jubilant as to progress nowadays. There it began; and ere long in the same family the invention of wind and stringed instruments of music, and of all kinds of tools or cutting things in brass and iron: luxury and convenience in the earthly life. Progress could not well be without metallurgy, and Cain's family was in active work soon enough. In Lamech's day polygamy came, and the first verse of which we hear was addressed, not to God in praise or in penitence, but to his wives. A little bit of song goes forth to Adah and Zillah, to excuse and to exalt himself, and to quiet their fears, in sufficiently defiant strain, and not without impious claim of God's sanction. If Cain was to be avenged sevenfold, Lamech surely seven-and-seventyfold. Lamech turns all to his haughty self-reliance.

Such is the world, and such the world's religion in its early buddings. But here the truth comes plainly out. "And wherefore slew he him? Because his works were evil, and his brother's righteous." It does not say exactly "own": "his" is quite enough. The moral condition of both is stated before either the offering or the city. Cain's works were "wicked" (for that is the proper rendering), and his brother's "righteous." "Wicked" has a stronger force than "evil" in some respects; it implies purpose and toil in them. There is here assiduity in evil; not merely bad acts, but an activity therein that is not necessarily implied in "evil." His works were wicked; his brother's, on the contrary, righteous. Both these things were habitual before the occasion which roused Cain's resentment. Yet it is instructive to note why this broke out. Jehovah accepted Abel and his offering, and rejected Cain's offering. Cain could not endure this. His pride fired up at it; his resentment had no bounds. As he could not do anything against Jehovah personally, he flew at his own brother. It was striking really at Jehovah. God's rejecting him was far worse in his eyes than his brother's acceptance, though this inflamed his rage. Sin was no more in the conscience of Cain than God was: therein in fact and principle they both go together. For it is the sense of sin that brings God before the soul, and God as judge of sin. What then must be the issue of our guilt in His eyes? But is there not mercy for the sinner? Yes, His mercy endureth for ever, as the Christian knows, and Israel will surely learn through His grace. And this Cain had never believed, and so turned from obduracy to despair. Wicked himself, he had no notion of goodness in God even to a wicked man who turns to God at the call of grace. He knew very well if anyone offended him, there was small hope of mercy from himself. And as he never felt his need of a Saviour, and gave God no credit for grace in the woman's Seed, he judged God by his own thoughts to be like himself, or even more, implacable to the guilty.

Next this is applied. "Marvel not, brethren;" not exactly "my" brethren. "Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you." This is a turn to be well weighed. We have had "little children" in general, and twice also "babes." Then we had "beloved" and now we have "brethren." It is not hard to see the propriety of each of these. He is going to speak about love of the brethren, and he appropriately addresses them as "brethren." We ought never to pass over a word of Scripture without consideration, and seeking to learn why God uses that word rather than any other. Faith can say that it is always the best. One does not of course forget the carelessness of man and its effect. Thus we understand how it arises; we can account for its slipping in, and in general have full evidence to correct it, though this may not be possible in every case.

Here then comes what is very plain. Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you." Now, who composed the world; and who were these haters in particular that the apostle had in mind? Chiefly at least those that had once been in the communion of the church and had abandoned it. These are always the worst. Such as go back from the truth particularly hate not only the truth itself but those who hold fast to it. They cannot bear either, and why? For the same reason as Cain could not. It is self-condemnation. There is nothing so provocative to a wicked apostate as that he should be condemned; for he tries to banish all suspicion of his own wickedness, being utterly blinded by the enemy. And as he is under Satan's lie, he also shares his murderous spirit.

This then is the spirit of the world; and more particularly of those in it that have given up the truth they once professed. Such are the persons so painfully prominent throughout this Epistle. They had once, as it seemed, left the world behind; they now went back to that world which they had outwardly denounced. It was only a superficial severance; the bond was not really broken; and they went back where their heart no longer attracted by the novelty of the truth led to its old love. The name of Jesus never had won them to God. Yet it has apparent influence sometimes even on the unconverted.

It is remarkable just to show the effect of the Saviour upon what is most worldly. Take the case of artists. Piety is not what distinguishes them as a class. On the contrary in general they are singularly given up to self-indulgence and worldliness of every kind. Of course one knows there have been not a few Christian painters; so that there is no thought of going beyond indisputable fact in thus speaking of painters as a class. Our excellent friend W. Cowper, the poet, had a very bad opinion of his fellows; he said poets were a bad lot as the rule, and nobody is better entitled to characterise them than Cowper. Though he was a genuine poet, he was glad to clear himself from any kind of complicity with his unpleasant associates. They, like the painters, are apt to flatter the vanity of men and women, and in fact many live by it, for parents have of course great care for the pictures of their children. Yet painters were immensely affected by even the tradition of the Lord Jesus. If anyone knows the statuary of the ancients, he admits that the sculptures of the Greeks were sensuous. They were like themselves. But the paintings of the Middle Ages, and particularly later ones of fame which have come down to our own day, were affected surprisingly by such a poor representation of Christ as Popery affords. What a difference there is between theirs and those of the ancients! Even there the beauty of holiness is reflected as far as a worldly man could set it forth in idea. There you have the meekness of humility, and the expression of dependence on the invisible God. There too the woman no longer represented as a trap for man, nor man in his will and lust on the other side. There is not a trace of the Aphrodite or the Apollo which so carried away the Greek and played into nature's corrupt ways. The Virgin and the Child drew out homage to purity never before conceived by such men. Far from me to think of this effect as more than superficial. On the contrary such is the evil heart of man that it fell in with the idolatry of the mother to the dishonour of the Son of God. It was the powerful but outward effect of the name of Jesus upon those that rose not above the human without real faith in the Father and the Son.

We cannot therefore be surprised that the self-deceived who entered the church were yet more deeply affected by all their surroundings, and by the spiritual influence of that blessed Name; but it never pierced deeper than their mind. Christ was not their life, else they had never left Him; still less would He have left them. "For if they had been of us, they would have abode with us," and if they did not so abide, what was the issue? That they gradually rose up implacably when outside, especially when the Christians refused the name of Christianity to such renegades as these? "Marvel not, if the world hateth you." They were just part of that Cain-world, which ever began with religious pretension and ended with murder.

But here is the striking contrast of true Christianity. "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren." That is a sentence the more to be weighed because it at once connects itself with words of the greatest weight in the Gospel. In John 5:24 the Lord Himself employed, without the emphatic "we" and to the individual believer, the same words in its last clause. "Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life." I am giving it with more precision than in our Authorised version. But this is the real import of that wonderful verse which has been blessed to so many souls, even when a little obscured.

Yet we must never be too much affected by resemblance. They say that what shows a wit is that he finds resemblance between things that differ, to the surprise and pleasure of many. But there is another quality far better than wit, even a sound judgment. Now a sound judgment is marked by seeing difference in things which seem to resemble. This is just the opposite of wit; and there people generally fail.

What then is the difference between the two texts? Is it not that the Lord is there showing how a man receives eternal life now through believing God about His Son; so that he does not come into judgment, as everyone without Christ must. So He says. For in truth whoever comes into judgment can never come out of it. The reason is plain; because "judgment" means that one incurs what he deserves. Now what do you or I really deserve? Were we not guilty, powerless for good and ungodly, till saved by grace? Do not think then that any man as he is can go into judgment and come out. No; it can only be into the lake of fire. But it is not so that God deals with those that believe. They have life eternal, and they do not come into judgment. It is not merely that they do not come into "condemnation" for this is not the word any more than the thought intended by it. The Lord declares in the plainest terms that the believer does not come into judgment; it was He that bore the judgment of our sins on the cross. The notion of judgment with life eternal is perfectly monstrous, and really has no sense. To confirm this grace yet more, He said that he "hath passed out of death into life." Death was his lost condition through sin; but he now lives of His life. This change has taken place already for the soul, though not yet for the body which is assured in the resurrection of life as ver. 29 tells us.

Ver. 24 is therefore a very blessed word for the poor sinner that wants to know how he is to get life eternal. But this is not at all the case here in the Epistle. It is not a question of believing in order to gain the blessing. It is what "we," the brethren, know, and their loving the brethren is the practical proof. Of this they were incapable without life eternal, as the divine nature which loves according to God. Hence he says "we," and speaks of brethren only, and of such emphatically. It is therefore quite distinct from John 5:24. Not that this is always the sense of "we." The context alone decides what the "we" means. For "we" is so differently applied in scripture, that to make a canon of its being always the same is mere ignorance of its use there. Here too "we" is emphatic. "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren." How plainly the difference must strike when both are weighed "We know (Consciously)."

What does the unbeliever know of this change? How could he possibly know it? The unbeliever is in death and sins, and he goes into judgment. Faith alone receives the blessing which Christ here gives. But the brethren as such love one another as of God's family and as having already believed. "We" are not therefore called to believe here. It is assumed that we who believed unto life eternal love our brethren and, having passed out of death into life, our love to them confirms that fact. We have this conscious knowledge, and ought to have it, in contrast with those who made empty knowledge of high speculation without one divine affection. Of all men on the earth only believers, only brethren in the Lord, only "we" can say that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. This love is the testimony to it and the practical evidence of it; but faith alone through Christ's grace brought us into the blessing. We neither received life eternal, nor passed out of death into life, because of loving the brethren. At that time we hated the brethren, being dead in sins; but, believing God, we passed out of death into eternal life, and only then knew the brethren to love them ever after.

Hence the apostle lays down as an axiom of Christianity, "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." How solemn the conclusion! There is no life, nor passing out of death, if one does not thus love. But why does he say "brother"? It is an abstract statement, because of his profession of course. The apostle delights in that kind of statement which pedants carefully avoid: but the apostle is far from mere letter. The apostle takes the man on his profession, and pronounces that "he who does not love his brother abideth in death;" which proves that he is no true brother by that very hatred. Remark the pointedness of his language. He does not say merely that he is dead, but that he abideth in death. Whatever was his profession, he was always dead spiritually, and he abides in death. The proof is that he never loved the one he was called to love as of God's family. He had no love; but he must have if he possessed the life of Christ in his soul.

He next puts the case even more strongly. "Every one that hateth his brother is a murderer." There he comes down with greater severity. It is not merely one that does not love, but the positive activity of hating. More outspoken in word and outrageous in conduct, he betrays his hatred, and is called a "murderer." The apostle here goes down to the root of things. As hatred is found to mark his spirit when tried, he is a murderer in principle; just as the Lord pronounces a man to be an adulterer in principle who indulged in lust which he ought not to allow, but to judge and be ashamed and humbled for it. God deals with the heart and not the externals only in Christianity. It is the inward working, as well as what comes out, which stamps the professor, however inadmissible and impossible in a court of law. "And ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." It is the very opposite of Christ, and the closest correspondence with the devil. For what can be more like our adversary, the liar and murderer from the beginning?

"Herein we have known love, or the love, because he laid down his life for us." The words do not in fact go beyond "love." He does not say "of God." It was with good intention put in; but it is best to cleave to the simple truth. "Because He laid down His life for us." Here again the "He" is remarkable. Without doubt it is the love of God too; but he purposely mixes up God and Christ, although Christ alone laid down His life for us. That is what we have repeatedly found before, as another has pointed out. This is the great and irrefutable proof of infinite love, and of a love that was clearly of God, though Christ was the One who alone manifested it. He laid down His life for us. It is mere illusion, and to miss its force, to compare with it a man's dying out of his great affection for his friend, or risking it to, save a stranger. Only consider the One who for us was dying thus! who became man that it might be done in the most harrowing of sufferings! and this for us when we were lost and had nothing but sins!

"And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." His was the unfathomable depth, and nothing can match it in any way. Still it becomes the model for those that are His, however short of atonement. What limit can be set to it? Love is intended to surmount every difficulty now. God's love to us in our sins creates love not only to God but to His children, our brethren. "And we ought." He does not say that "we do": though there have been saints that have died not only for Christ's sake but for their brethren. He is content to say "we ought"; our love, being of God, is capable of doing it. And in point of fact, if our dying would be of real use to our brother, we ought to be willing. It is however a rare complication that would make it a duty.

But we are also taught that without pressing this extreme proof there is an appeal to our hearts at the door. We have not to go far without finding calls on the exercise of the love that is in our hearts. Come now; look at everyday matters. To lay down our lives for the brethren might befall us rarely here below; but there is all ordinary lack that often occurs, and we know it frequently where our lot lies: a brother or sister in abject need. How does it present itself to your soul? How does our love answer to the suffering of the poor brother or sister?

"Whoso may have the world's means of living" is what is called here its "good." Nor does he say merely "seeth," but contemplateth, beholdeth, hath a full view of his brother's need. He perhaps has not made the slightest sign, has not complained at all, nor mentioned his trial to another. This silence ought to be all the stronger appeal to our hearts. He has been bearing the pressure without a murmur; she has been enduring and only telling God about it. But there with our eyes wide open, beholding our brother's affliction, we hesitate. One has the means of helping and relieving, but instead of this he "shutteth up his bowels" from him, the sufferer. There is no need to add "of compassion," which is plainly enough implied. "How abideth the love of God in him?" The apostle puts it cautiously and calmly but earnestly and searchingly: "How dwelleth the love of God in him?" He does not ask me to die for my brother; he does ask me that my love should go out, with means beyond my own real wants, to one who is suffering whether from the cold or sickness, hunger, or other pains. One can relieve the brother, and one does not: "how abideth the love of God in him?"

Love, as it is the energy of God's nature, so it is of the new nature of His children, and meant to be in constant flow to others, not only on great occasions but in the least things of this life. Let us not miss the exquisite propriety of the apostle's language. In ver. 16 it was quite enough to say love, or the love, and to leave it thus open, when the words that followed made evident whose love it was that laid down His life for us. Again, in 1 John 2 it is not "love" only that is contrasted with the world, nor yet "the love of God," but "the love of the Father." But here "the love of the Father" would not have suited. It is "the love of God" so considerate of the least of His creatures, which so deeply rebukes His child that shuts up his compassion from his tried fellow.

In conclusion note how variously the chapter applies Christ's death. In ver. 4 it was that He might take away our sins sacrificially; in ver. 8 it was that He might undo the works of the devil; and in ver. 16 He laid down His life for us as the model of love to us and for us. All this united in His death; as we may see yet more in Hebrews 2:9-10; Heb 2:14; Heb 2:17.

ADDRESS 11

1 John 3:18-24.

"Dear children, let us not love with word nor with the tongue, but in deed and truth. And herein we shall know that we are of the truth, and shall persuade our hearts before him, that if our heart condemn us, [it is] that God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not. we have boldness toward God, and whatsoever we ask we receive from him, because we keep hi,; commandments, and do the things pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, that we believe the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and that we love one another, even as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in him, and he in him. And herein we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he gave to us."

We now enter on a new subject not touched before, but connected with the mutual love of the children of God which we have had already. The apostle appeals first to them in the quality of dear children, meaning here as always the entire family. There is no need for "My": it is not supplied by the Spirit of God, and therefore is illegitimate. "Dear children" is his general term of endearment, and this is the reason why he calls them not merely children, but "dear children." Both terms took in fathers, young men and babes, the whole family of God.

Here then he calls us to love not with word nor with the tongue, but in deed and truth. He is thus leading forward into the new subject. He adds "herein we shall know." It is not "know" but "shall know." This has its importance, because it does not refer to what they already were in Christ. For instance the eternal life which they now possessed in Him was settled knowledge; but here he looks on to the boldness or confidence of heart given by walking uprightly before God in daily practice, and very particularly in love. For this is a duty as to which many deceive themselves. Nothing is easier than to call for love and complain of others wanting it; but some that are loudest in the complaint are very short of it themselves. They are or count themselves desirous of being objects of love; but the right way is for ourselves to love, if indeed we would be loved. The going out of heart in goodness without a selfish aim draws out other hearts, whereas the lip too readily learns to talk about love and ends there. The Epistle is therefore guarded in these words that serve as a connecting link between what went before and that which follows. "Dear children, let us not love with word nor with the tongue." This of course a Christian, no matter what may be his state, would know he ought to detest; but if not in a practically good state with God, his love must be shallow and powerless. Therefore it is here said "not with word nor with the tongue" - to give it as exactly as one can. There is a slight difference in losing the "with" in both places and the article in the second. We are to love, "but in deed and truth." The natural man in Christendom talks of love in his way. Christ proved it in all its genuineness, and we who confess Him have to walk in the same simplicity and reality.

All this evidently flows out of the life eternal which we have if we believe on Him. This it is which is called in an unusual expression "the life of God" in Ephesians 4:18, but "Christ our life" in Colossians 3:3-4, and similar language in Galatians 2:20. For that matter John so remarkably intermingles God and Christ, that one can hardly say which of the two is precisely intended. But this is done expressly and for excellent reason: the Son is as truly God as the Father; and we are not allowed to forget it. His so writing is not from any want of care. The apostle John knew well what he was doing, and meant to say as he wrote. Only foolish men that have great confidence in themselves would dare to think otherwise of an inspired man. It is because the Father and the Son are God. Christ though become man remains just as truly God as any other in the Godhead. By His humiliation to vindicate God and bless man He never forfeited His divine glory for an instant. He was the true God when He deigned to be born of woman. Yet we know what a new-born child is, how entirely dependent upon its mother or its nurse. Is there any creature in the world so indebted to loving care as a human babe? But Christ even then was the true God just as much as when He raised Lazarus or any other from the dead. And when He died He was just the same, though on the opposite side of circumstances. He could not cease to be true God; this was not touched, nor at all affected by His dying. Even in a man the soul and the spirit are not affected by death; it is but severing the link between the body and the inner man. So for the Lord Jesus, He was always the Son. Jesus Christ no doubt was His name after He became man; but He is over all, God blessed for ever, Amen; just as truly as the Father and the Holy Spirit, Who never became incarnate.

Now love is what characterises the energy of God: how blessed in itself and for us! Judgment is not His nature neither had it any exercise on man till sin appeared; there was no question of such a dealing but through sin. But He was always love. And when the fit moment came for Him to put in action His love, particularly in the incarnation of Christ and the work of Christ, all came out in ways beyond parallel. His beneficence to the creature was left far behind; His wise and kind arrangements, from the greatest to the meanest of animals, wondrous as they all are, were eclipsed; still more evident it became as we consider the goodness of His provision for man.

We do well to consider what surrounds us. The Lord sometimes pointed to objects outside with an à fortiori to us. Witness the weighty lessons even for the disciples from what was seen in the birds of the sky, or in the lilies of the field. They do indeed show not merely divine power but wisdom, benevolence, and oversight that thinks of them to the least degree, goodness that pervades and abides in the face of man's sin and wickedness. For when man fell, God might have turned the green of the field to an offensive red as an alarming sign of the judgment that was coming; but there was no such change. The green field remains the green field, and the flowers are still beautiful and sweet. We do not say that they are all that they were in paradise, for certainly all things here below were profoundly affected by the fall; but incontestably there remains an ideal beyond anything that ever man can reach. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the flowers of the field without any cultivation of man whatever.

But it is important to see that divine love is an affection entirely outside creation, and essentially above mere human nature. It is just as supernatural as the life which is the new nature on which the Spirit of God acts. There must be a nature to bear fruit fit for God's acceptance. Indeed, you cannot have any fruit without a living spring. Whence comes this source of such new feeling and action as wholly to transcend in the exercises of the soul anything of which man as man is capable? What is the spring in the believer of all that is love Godward or manward? It is eternal life. Without this there is no nature to bear good fruit. Are not we ourselves ample witnesses of its truth? We once were men in the surprising qualities which God confers on man; for they are very great, apart from the new creation and its special privileges. Of these we had none then; and we could not have understood what has been spoken of grace. It would have seemed rant and nonsense to the natural man, as it always does, though there may be sense enough to hold the tongue and not to say so. But men feel that they do not enter into God's mind, and cannot. Not even man's spirit, the best part of man, can take it in. His spirit soars far above the lower nature of man, but the highest part of man's nature cannot enter into the things of God (John 3:3-6).

The spirit of man cannot rise above the things of man (1 Corinthians 2:9-11), any more than a dog can understand the working, say, of a watch. For the dog has only the nature of a dog, not the nature of a man, who has far superior intelligence improving itself, profiting by others, working to a new but definite end, and guided by reasons as well as mechanical power in the making of a watch. In course of time it may become mechanical enough; but there was no little exercise of thought and skill on the part of him who made the first watch. Probably it was big and clumsy too, and often required mending. Still the first was a greater effort of mind than the later skill which wrought up the best watch that England could produce. For its maker has the advantage of all the numberless improvements made ever since in this detail or that to make a record watch. Yet with all this activity of mind there is a consciousness of responsibility to God and a far higher moral sense than that of intellect, which belongs to man alone on earth.

The gist then is that the things of God are as much above the best man after the flesh and the highest part of that man as a watch or other such work is above the nature of a dog or any instinct it possesses. How morally debasing to forget it! This is surely an all-important difference, and cannot but, where it is truly felt, draw out our thanksgiving, whilst it also vindicates and displays the depths of God's grace. For He has given us who believe a life capable of entering into His thoughts and His affections, into His counsels and His mind, enabling us by His Spirit to search all things, yea, the deep things of God.

For it is admitted that we need for this the Spirit of God also. It is not enough to be born of the Spirit. The Old Testament saints were so born; but they could not as yet receive the indwelling Spirit from on high. To no saints was He given till Christ's redemption was effected. And only when the converted soul rests on redemption does one now receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The lack of this is the reason why converted persons are found spiritually dull. They cannot go beyond the elements of divine truth because, though having the new nature, they have not yet the power of the Spirit; and if probed, they would be found not to have settled peace yet. The real fact is that they are not really resting on Christ's redemption, and so have not that fruit of redemption. They are looking for what they want. They are, as they say, striving earnestly to get what they have not got. They have to learn that liberty in Christ is only to be had by giving up altogether self and its efforts, to rest only and altogether on Christ and His work of redemption. The atoning work is done.

This shortcoming or shallowness of faith came in as a flood after the apostles passed away. In the early days it was not for anyone to enter the church except those sealed by the Holy Spirit. But when the church began to settle down in the world, and persecution became only a temporary outburst, when many wise and rich people came in, powerful and noble, there was an object in consequence to become acquainted with personages who in Christian love became more intimate than they ever would as in the world. It was an inducement to not a few to follow them; as some of late found from the same cause in their little history. Love soon decays in such circumstances. So that we readily understand the necessity for the words, "Let us love, not with word, nor with the tongue, but in deed and truth."

"And herein we shall know that we are of the truth;" that is, if walking in love. This is immense comfort to the believer; but what a mistake to put it before an unconverted soul as the way to get forgiveness! Who that knows the gospel could ask such to show these fruits of love? But it is what saints ought to feel in what is justly called the moral government of God. For, when brought to God, we become objects of God as Father to judge us every day (1 Peter 1:17). The Lord presented it figuratively in John 15, and declared Himself the true Vine, as the disciples were the branches. This is not the figure of being born again (which is really in John 3:3-6); nor still less has it to do with union, as many mistakenly imagine. In neither case is there such thing as losing life eternal or Christ's members cut off. This difference suffices to disprove such misapplications. The Vine teaches the necessity of communion with Christ practically. To abide in Him, and He in us, is the power of fruit-bearing. For what enables the disciple to bring forth fruit? Is it not dependence on Christ, His words abiding in us, and prayer (ver. 7)? It is Christ who is the source of all the fruit, and the branches bear it by hanging on Him. Apart from Him they can do nothing. And it is the Father who prunes the branch that it may bear more fruit. But it is the Vine that supplies all the sap to the branches that attach to Him.

Our Lord did a great deal more; but for fruit-bearing this is what He does. If you disconnect the branch from the vine, what then? Will it bear grapes again? Can there be any more fruit? Not the least. There were those once following Christ who walked no more with Him. They cut themselves off. They were no longer branches of the Vine. It is not denied that one here and another there might repent and seek restoration. Far be it from us to deny or discourage a soul. But those that leave Christ in general become hard and antagonistic to a decree. In fact, it is comparatively rare for such as turn their back on the Lord to return to Him again. If real repentance work, who so ready to receive? There is no limit to His love. But those contemplated here, instead of self-judgment, have hard thoughts of Christ, and abandon all reverence, lowering His person, and trifling with His work, so as to manifest that they had only notions, and not life eternal.

Therefore it is of deep importance to remember that the moral government of God foes on with souls now and has a double action. On the one hand God watches over every saint, and judges every fault, but in faithful love. On the other hand, there are those who, distrusting Him, cannot bear His dealings. They resist or despise the trials which God employs as a means of recovery. For He chastens; and no chastening at the time seems pleasant. Joy would altogether deny His character; but it is for profit, and afterwards yields peaceful fruit of righteousness to those exercised thereby. It is God as Father now judging according to the work of each; in short, His moral government. He thus deals with those that are His children, or at most those that profess so to be. For God concerns Himself thus according to men's profession; and in a way quite different with those who have never borne the Lord's name.

It is therefore incumbent on everyone that names the name of the Lord to withdraw from iniquity, and thus wake up out of the snare of the devil lest he get a constant advantage over his soul, and an overwhelming advantage. The longer any wait the worse it becomes. It is bad enough for those who believe to remain units; and it is to be feared that not a few are content with isolation, as if they escaped responsibility, in the present growing disorder here below. They look at the faults of other Christians to justify their isolation, and shun the trials of walking together as brethren, whose shortcomings they are very quick to discern, and without mercy. But there is no real conscience as to God's glory in their own state. How wretched it is to justify ourselves by the faults of others! But is their own walk really better than that of such as never made profession of Christ? Is it not sadly like walking in the light of their own fire and in the sparks of their own kindling? Let them beware lest they lie down in sorrow. Their course is one neither of righteousness nor of love; and Christianity unites both according to the truth of Christ.

Now, in our walk when we are brought to God, the secret of power is dependence on Christ. Does not the vine teach us this more than any other figure? It would be hard to find in all the realm of nature a tree so impressive as the vine to mark the need for the branches to keep up their place in the vine in order to bear fruit. And as certainly it is the same principle between Christ and the Christian. So it is here. If love be merely with word and with the tongue, if not in deed and truth, can it but displease God? Is it not an insult to the Spirit of God? If we walk as children of light, we also carry out the divine principle of love, i.e., we seek the good of one another without a selfish purpose. Such is the love we know in God; and Christ became man to show it in a way that even God as such could not. And who can wonder that He so deeply feels any slight to the name of His Son, Jesus our Lord? It was the humiliation of Christ in becoming a man, and bearing the sufferings which His sacrifice of Himself entailed, even to enduring God's judgment of sin laid on Him. This could not be in God as God; but it is exactly what we have from God in Christ's propitiation for our sins. Therein all the light and the love and the truth of God shine in a way beyond thought of man; and this is Christianity.

But a necessary part of practical Christianity is not merely righteousness, as we have been seeing, or obedience. It is love; only let it be real, he says; and if it be so, "we shall know." In this he classes himself with the rest, which contributes to the beauty of his words. "Herein we shall know that we" - you and I, the apostle and the saints - "are of the truth." But when there is a bad conscience, the exercise of love and of everything else which flows from divine life, dwindles away. One does not in this refer to those who are not children of God, but only to those who are. It is they that are crippled by it; it is they that suffer from what they have lost; and there is always a suspension of enjoyment when communion with Him is thus interrupted. Some might think it remarkable that, while the life that God gives In Christ is eternal, the communion that we enjoy by it is most sensitive to any evil on our part; it immediately ceases through indulging in ever so little a folly. And why? Communion means that the blessing is shared in common. How could God share even a little folly with us? With any sins He cannot possibly have communion; nor can we be walking in Christ. Enjoyment of communion is "broken at once. Far from Him to say that it is so lost that it cannot be regained. But we can praise Him that there is no regaining life eternal, because it is eternal; yet there is the necessity that we be restored to the communion interrupted by evil of any kind. It might be only a bad thought or feeling; but communion is broken till it is judged. If it is allowed, it hinders no less than any outward or open evil.

So he says, "Herein we shall know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him." To be "of the truth" is the basis of truthfulness in practice; to lose or neglect the truth is soon followed by untruthful ways, which expose one to love with word and with the tongue, instead of in deed and truth. It was not looking back to see that they were converted, still less that they were baptized. Neither is meant of God to give us comfort when He is thus dishonoured in such circumstances, but rather to put us to shame. Is it not grievous that I, who have been brought to God and not merely have its outward mark, should have behaved so ill? If on the contrary we are kept watchful and earnest before God, loving too and lowly withal, "we shall know that we are of the truth." This inspires boldness or confidence before God. And such really is the sense here. The force intended is not standing, nor assurance of faith; but the heart's boldness before God in a walk of unaffected and active love. "Therein we shall know that we are of the truth, and shall" - not exactly assure, but "persuade our hearts before Him." This is the simple and literal meaning; which seems to me better to take as it is, seeking to understand what the Spirit meant by it. A different form of this word and other words express assurance, one of which would have been employed if "assurance" had been meant here; but "we shall persuade our hearts before Him" seems well suited to act powerfully on our souls, and to express the boldness inspired by simple-hearted sincerity in a living Christian walk.

There is much in these words to encourage and strengthen a godly Methodist. Their weak point is in not apprehending life eternal in Christ, and assigning too much to their own emotions. The grace of God in the gospel leaves ample room for the warmest and deepest affections. Spiritual feelings have a just place, but far more the grace and truth through Christ which create and elicit them; yet all saints should be sound according to the word and Spirit of God. Nor ought we to be like a rigid Calvinist, who thinks the one thing is to have come to the conclusion that we are the elect, and therefore entitled to all comfort. Thus he swamps the moral government of God before us by his absorption with election. Now election is an admirable truth for which to praise our God; but it is not meant to serve as security against the unhappy certainty that we have dishonoured God. Why should we want to be comforted in presence of the fact that we have displeased Him? He wants us to be humbled on that account; and this is what is brought in immediately after. "For if our heart condemn us"; this is just what our heart does, when we walk badly, and there is that which grieves the Spirit of God, and we have not duly judged ourselves before Him. And if we know that our heart condemns us, we infer rightly how much more God knew to blame. "God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." Some of the Calvinists turn it in this way: if our heart condemn us, God in His grace does not. How sad it is to lose the profit of His word by any systematic departure from its plain sense! His mind is that if I condemn myself, God is greater than I, He knows all where we only know in part.

They fear to shake our standing thereby. Now this has nothing whatever to do with our standing in Christ, but with our state day by day. It is a question of loss of communion; and we are called to judge ourselves in His sight, instead of falling back on election or standing. Election as well as standing abide; it is all wrong for a believer to doubt of either. But if his heart condemn him, we may be sure that God knows far more: he should be in the dust before Him, and thus have divine help to search all out and hate his carelessness, because he is an object of such grace. We are to judge our bad state while holding fast the standing in Christ which God has given us. This remains firm; but our state has been wrong, and God would have us, not to hide from it nor excuse it, but condemn ourselves unsparingly.

What a pity to fall under these systems of men, as one may call the peculiarities of Calvinists or Arminians! For one only blames their peculiarities, not the truth which they hold as Christians. There are dear saints of God among both; but they both suffer not a little, from the Arminian not giving sufficient glory to God's grace in life eternal, and from the Calvinist not leaving sufficient value to communion, which is often followed by uncertainty about his own election. As one of them said, "If you do not doubt about yourself, I doubt about you." Their tendency is to slur their sins or to set up a school of doubt. It was a pious man who so spoke, and he wrote many hymns; and I can but hope the hymns are better than the doctrine. For such doubting is abominable, unworthy not only of a Christian but of Christ still more. It practically denies the gospel, which proclaims salvation by God's grace, and calls for our peaceful enjoyment of it. Hence in point of fact Calvinists generally, though with bright exceptions, are weak. as to the gospel. They are occupied with election, rather than with God's love to the world, to say nothing of the provision of grace for their own souls. Election has a too absorbing place in their creed, which makes it a sort of servant-of-all-work. But all this falls miserably short of God's grace and truth. In Christ there is room for everything true that both Calvinists and Arminians hold, and for a good deal more which neither holds. It is a pity that saints of God do not drop these partial schemes of doctrine, cleaving only to God's revelation, accepting it wholly, and eschewing every substitute for it. Christianity has ample room for the widest feeling and for the soundest judgment, and in short for everything that faith is bound to receive from God, or that love is free to achieve for His glory.

The heart's condemnation here is from the consciousness of failure in our ways, and the conviction of still more known to God in His moral government of our souls. This too is implied in "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgave our debtors." Here too it is a question, not of plenary forgiveness in faith of the gospel, but of God's watchful and constant oversight of His children's ways. This has nothing at all to do with the poor sinner's need; for it is plain that the gospel offers no forgiveness of sins on the condition of a forgiving spirit to others. Grace gives remission of sins on the faith of the Lord Jesus. Here is nothing to do with that; but if you - a Christian - fail to walk in a forgiving spirit with others, God is displeased with you. Thereby you no longer enjoy communion with Him, and He will not restore it till you truly judge yourself for the wrong. This lack is what produced the saint's self-condemnation, and the indication of censure on God's part.

Evidently then it is of great importance to distinguish between the ground of grace on which we stand for life eternal and redemption, and the application of God's moral dealing with us every day, where He must judge our faulty ways, and He is chastising us that we may become partakers of His holiness. This leads us truly to condemn our inconsistencies and conform our practice to God's mind in His hatred of sin, and in furtherance of what is loving, righteous, and true.

The apostle says, "Beloved, if our heart condemn not, we have boldness toward God" (ver. 21). His heart responds to those who walk normally before Him. It is no longer merely "'Dear children." He delights in seeing love realised, and encourages the activity of love in prayer where things thus go well. Where the Spirit of God has to occupy us with our failure, we cannot be free to ask new favours. We must submit to the humiliating sense, that if we condemn ourselves about our ways, God condemns us yet more. Where by His power there is quiet enjoyment of communion, our hearts can earnestly ask for more grace. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward him, and whatsoever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments, and do the things pleasing in his sight." There is nothing in this case to arrest the activity of love. Grace has its unhindered way in what is good, because we are walking happily in the light of God, so that the heart turns not to self-reproach. We can freely have done with self to enjoy Christ.

Such is clearly the right state for every Christian to walk in day by day. It is what we have to seek; but alas! where we sadly fall short perhaps; but assuredly it is that to which we are called by grace. A peaceful, single-eyed and confiding state can only be by walking before God according to our life in Christ. To comfort ourselves under failure, because we have life eternal, does not rightly meet what is due to God, any more than to our own state. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. There is not only faith but experimental reality in the soul's following what the apostle tells us of what was wrought in him. "I am crucified with Christ, and no longer do I live, but Christ liveth in me; but that which I now live in flesh I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Tradition is vain, ordinances fall. The power of Christ's cross is brought home. He for his old life was identified by faith with Him - who actually suffered it; and he now lives in Him who is alive for evermore; and it is a life of faith in His love. This individualising is not a very common phase in Scripture. Generally "Christ loving" and "Christ giving Himself" is said for Christians as a whole as in Ephesians 5:1-2. But it is very precious to have it personally also, though short indeed to have it no more than personal, whereby we fail to appreciate our communion with the Father and with the Son in the blessedness of all the family of God.

Peace with God, peace of conscience, indispensable as it may be, is not all the blessing that His grace would have us enjoy; still less is the assurance that we are forgiven all our offences. This we have as believing God's glad tidings; but it is not what is spoken of in vers. 19-22. It was a very necessary and great mercy for each soul at his beginning. Then in faith it is wrong to allow a question whether he really believes or not. Scripture knows nothing of such a doubt in one who believes in Christ; he is nowhere thrown back on what he finds within. It is because he is lost that God points to His Son as Saviour, as to whom no question of failure could arise with him. Here it is for Christians in their walk of every day; and the question now is of practical confidence in the heart. We are in such nearness by grace that anything unsuitable in us toward our God and Father is intolerable, and provided against with all care.

Many of us know in our own families what it is to have a child sometimes naughty. Does not this make a difference if the child has real affection? Even if the father and mother do not know why, the child is ill at ease. Instead of being able happily to meet its parents as usual, something has gone wrong; and the more upright the child, the more that is felt. It is just so with our God and Father; save that He never fails, and all is known to Him. Hence the vast importance of self-judgment, which we need because of what we are. Where this is applied to our failure, the soul returns into the enjoyment of the communion, which to our sorrow had been lost. The right state is the boldness toward God. It is not the standing which the Christian has permanently; but the heart's state liable to interruption by carelessness. While we walk in the Spirit, this boldness God-ward is our happy state; and it is the only becoming state for a Christian. How sad to settle down into the lack of it habitually! Surely there ought to be an earnest crying to God to find what has taken it from the heart; if so, one will not have to cry long. It flows from the love of the Father that He would have us taste its comfort, and feel its deprivation through any unjudged fault. But we have in Jesus as Advocate with the Father the provided resource, instead of seeking an earthly director who supplants the Lord and cannot suffice for a function so delicate and difficult. It is our privilege readily and at once to repair through Christ to the throne of grace, nay to the Father's love, assured that no failure can be there.

Hence here it is beautifully added, "Whatsoever we ask, we receive from Him." It is another sample of the absolute way in which John loves to speak. He does not speak of any modification through occasional circumstances, or of any particular hindrance that may arise. He does not allude to a possibly inconsistent state. He assumes here that the heart does not condemn; that one has boldness toward God; that we are in the enjoyment of communion with Him. And what is the effect of communion? It excludes wrong petitions. We do not then seek anything alien to the will of God. We ask for that which is according to His will; and He grudges us nothing good. He delights in our enjoyment of all that is for His glory; and all this we have found in Christ; for He is the ever attractive and sustaining link. It is Christ who chooses everything for us. There is no light nor spring in our heart without Christ thus depended on. Accordingly this is just what God has given us. Whatsoever we ask we receive; for in that state we shall never ask anything amiss. Our apostle supplies here the reason, "because we keep His commandments." Those who fail to see that it is a question of God's moral government of the Christian's state fall into the error of confounding it with the ground of salvation, and make it conditional. But this annuls sovereign grace in saving sinners. Here it is not grace, but government. And government is necessarily conditional. But God's grace which saves our souls and effaces our sins is absolute, free, and sovereign. The only condition here, if it is to be called a condition, is to give up ourselves as ungodly, and receive what His love gives us freely in Christ.

Here is another subject altogether; and its mixture with grace is the common vice of so-called "theology." Who can wonder therefore, that simple, sound, and intelligent Christians distrust and repudiate so unreliable a guide. They have good reason to beware, for it habitually darkens and perplexes many believers who, immature in the truth, thought themselves on the right line by listening to it. But systematic divinity is like what is called a hortus siccus; that is, flowers and leaves, or the like, plucked from the plant and dried, so that not a particle remains of freshness or life in one of them.

Such is "theology"; whereas Scripture is "spirit and life." So is the Lord Jesus, the living One who died but is alive again for evermore; and again the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of truth that quickens, the One given not only for life but to keep every truth fresh and powerful; and so it is in the ever-flowing love of God the Father. Man makes, or strives to make, revelation into a science. Can two things more thoroughly differ? Who ever found life or peace in systematic divinity? It is always guarding this and guarding that with human weapons, and framing its uncertain and defective doctrines into imaginary fortresses of the faith, which must be Christ's working in us by the word and Spirit of God. Only in the Bible we have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and we have the Holy Spirit who wrote all to guide us into all the truth. Therefore we have confidence in God and the word of His grace.

Scripture is the standard, and the Holy Spirit is the power sent down to abide in and with us for ever. What ample privileges, to say nothing of the gifts of Christ's grace in ministry from the highest to the least! We are commended to this, and God would have us judge everything that hinders; and this is what occupies the apostle in these verses. And if we profit in faith and love, he says, "Whatsoever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight." Only think of applying this to the gospel! The last clause is just what our blessed Lord said He always did (John 8:29). He is the perfection of all He undertook. "I do always the things that are pleasing to him." But there is where we fall. We neither do nor say always the things that please Him. As God sees and hears everything, He takes special notice of His children, not as against us but for us; and if God be for us, who against us? Therefore, as He slurs over no fault, we need not take up John 17 or Rom. 8 as a hiding place, but do well to humble ourselves for all that has grieved the Holy Spirit of God by whom we were sealed for redemption's day. Our hearts thus return to the enjoyment of boldness toward God. This gives liberty and impulse to prayer, as it is said here, "Whatsoever we ask." Surely, if we ask for dependence on Christ God will hear, seeking more continuance in prayer, more profiting by His word: these are according to God's will, as well as the means of exercising and enjoying eternal life. For that life is the substratum of all this Epistle.

"And this is His commandment, that we should believe the name of His Son." This is here rendered "on"; but the Greek admits of no "on." Now it maybe more difficult to understand it according to what the Spirit of God unquestionably wrote; but if we do not understand the phrase, are we not to receive it implicitly as written? We need not force a meaning on it, but be content to accept what is His word without understanding it, and wait till we do. But there it is written to the family of God, though it be an unusual phrase. In Scripture ordinarily it is "believing God and believing God about His Son; and, when Christ is introduced, it is "believing on or in Christ." Such is the general language of Scripture. Here the form used, is "believing the name." When it is said one believes God about Christ, it is believing God's record of Christ; it is believing what God tells me of Christ. When then it is said "believe the name of His Son," does it not mean believing what that Name imports? The Name is God's revelation of the Lord, that is, of what He is, and has done, and a beautiful expression it is. It is not merely that His name as a man was Jesus, one need scarcely say, nor only His title is the Lord, or any of His offices. Here it is believing the Name, the divine revelation, or God's testimony to His Son Jesus Christ. For He pre-eminently is the object of faith; and here and now it is that we shall believe His name, as if it personified Himself. It is not only what we begin with when once we believed. We believed on the Lord then; but the apostle loves to speak of the person and all that comes in and through Him is believed. Hence he employs this singular expression, "believe the name of His Son Jesus Christ." There is dependence upon Christ; but here it is believing the Name of His Son Jesus Christ, what that blessed name conveys as revealed by God in His word. We believe His Name.

There is a difference of reading nearly balanced that is worthy of notice. The form of the word "believe" in the ordinary text with high authority implies continuance in faith; in others of great weight, it is believing once for all, the fact summed up in its conclusion. But when we come to "love," it is the actual loving of every day. This is plain and sure. But the two things are blended into one commandment. It is the great commandment of Christianity in contrast with the commandment of the law. There it was to love God and one's neighbour. Now it is to believe the name of His Son Jesus Christ and to love one another, even God's children. How deplorable the blunder to confound the children of God with our neighbour! This is not its meaning; but those are to be loved whom the world knows not, as it knew Him not whose Name is believed. All this was far beyond the thoughts of man, What would you think of one who told you to love all the children in London in the same way as you love your own children? You would think such a person demented. This may help to show how much higher is "His commandment" here. As we said before, there is all possible difference between the children of God and the children of the devil. A man might be my next door neighbour and the greatest enemy to Christ. To such a one the command that I am here to love has no application. One ought to have the love of compassion for him, to desire and to seek from God that he might receive the word of truth, the gospel of salvation. His hardened opposition, his very defiance of God, might only the more draw out our supplication that he might become a monument of mercy. And God has hearkened to prayer in such a case, and has honoured the persistent cry that entreated in faith and humility for a guilty soul. It would require no little courage to enable one so to seek and labour for our next-door neighbour of such a character. Yet even so this neighbour in no way falls under the commandment before us, which applies only to loving "one another, as He gave us commandment." It is strictly and solely mutual Christian love.

Here again is another example of the way in which John mixes up God and Christ. In the beginning of the verse the last person spoken of is God; and we were to ask and receive of Him, and to do those things that are pleasing in His sight. "And this is His commandment, that we should believe the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment." Now we know very well it was Christ who gave the commandment. Yet it is the same "He" apparently all through. Such a style could never have become possible unless Christ were as truly God as the Father. This is the secret of its peculiarity. And John's writing is done purposely in honour of the Son even as of the Father, instead of a negligent slip. There is no inadvertence in Scripture; as there may be in the most celebrated classic. Divine purpose and perfect wisdom reign in the written word.

"And he that keepeth His commandments abideth in Him." It is one of the drawbacks of our beautiful authorised version that the translators cannot let the same word go on unaltered even in the same context; so fond are they of, ringing the change on the same word. Most who know only the English version would suppose that there must be some shade of difference between "dwell" and "abide." But the Greek gives only the same word. It is the more regrettable because there is a distinct word for "dwell" which has its own propriety of application. Is it not far better for the English reader also to have the same word? Here it signifies little save to remember that the "dwelling" and the "abiding" mean the same thing. In John 5 it is of much consequence to adhere to "judgment" all through, and not allow "condemnation" or "damnation" unless distinctly expressed.

Here we have the transition to the new subject of abiding in God, and God in us. There is no vagueness as to it. Without obedience this wondrous privilege cannot be. "And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in him, and he in him." Exegetically, he abides in God, and God in him. But it is applicable to Christ also, and is so said elsewhere. In itself therefore it is perfectly true whether you say "abide in Christ" or "abide in God." When you abide in Christ you abide in God; and when you abide in God you abide no less in Christ. But there may be a contextual propriety which chooses one rather than the other in strict interpretation. That is often important to see; yet it is simple. But it is helpful to avoid mistakes as to Scripture and seeing distinctions without a difference.

"And herein we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he gave us." There the gift of the Spirit is the power and proof of God's abiding in the Christian. It is in this way that God abides in him. He gave him the Spirit. But abiding in God is a matter of spiritual dependence on Him in practice; and it could not be unless the Spirit abiding in the saint wrought so as to keep in ungrieved looking to Him, and drawing from Him. If I were grieving the Lord at the time, I am no longer abiding in Him; I have slipped away out of His presence, and am for awhile perhaps pursuing my own thought and way and will. But whether it be but a passing slip, or for a certain time, I am out of the enjoyment of His presence, and not abiding in Him.

Yet it may be noticed that in the last half we hear, not as in the first half of the two truths, but only of God's abiding in us, which is simply by the Spirit given to us. On this alone depends God's abiding in us. It is founded on redemption, and abides as redemption also abides. But our abiding in Him is a question of spiritual state; and is only taken up for full explanation in the latter part of 1 John 4. The early verses, 1-6 are a parenthesis of the utmost moment as a basis for both the one and the other.

It is in 1 John 3:23-24 that the apostle enters on the exposition of the proper and full place of the Christian, and this with the least reference possible to the negative side, which had such prominence in the previous discussion. Here the positive blessedness of our privileges is set before all the saints with the same simplicity, but depth also, characteristic of his letter from first to last. In verse 23 it is the plain and easily recognised trait of the Christian; in verse. 24 it is the less cognisable but no less real inner exercise of life by the power of the indwelling Spirit of God working on or rather in that life. And special notice, as we have seen, is taken of the blighting influence of a careless walk on the enjoyment of the heart's boldness before God which ought to be our portion habitually.