02.01.11. 1John 5:18-21 The three solemn final affermations . . .
§ 11. 1 John 5:18-21 THE THREE SOLEMN FINAL AFFIRMATIONS
St. John ends his Epistle with three great final affirmations, for which he appeals confidently to the consciousness of those to whom he writes and associates them with himself (“we know’’).
These in a way sum up-not his message, for his message is largely concerned with the ethical contents of the Christian religion, but the grounds of his message. First, and in spite of what he has just said about the experience of sins of infirmity and also of mortal sins among Christians, he makes a solemn affirmation that sin is inconsistent with the condition of divine regeneration; that the condition of each regenerate person is a condition of security against sin — because he is guarded by the Only-begotten Son and the wicked one cannot touch him.
Secondly, he affirms the great contrast between the Church and the world— that the Church is the family of God, and that the whole world — society, that is, as it organizes itself for its own ends apart from God — lies in the grasp of the evil one. Finally, he affirms the truthfulness and finality of God’s disclosure of Himself in His Son Jesus Christ. He who was to come in Him has come. There is no more to be expected. He has come and has given us what mankind of themselves never could arrive at — an intellectual understanding of God as He genuinely is: and more than understanding — a life lived in Him; that is to say, a life lived in His Son Jesus Christ, which is the same thing; for the Father and the Son are one, and dwelling in the Son is dwelling in the Father. This is the genuine God and the life we thus live is eternal life. There are many false gods, the product of men’s imagination, which have no genuine reality; there are many false aims towards which are directed lives that are worthless and transitory. These are idols. “Little children, guard yourselves from the idols.’*
We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know Um that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. My little children, guard yourselves from idols.
1. He that was begotten of God who is thus distinguished from the many who “are [or more strictly, “who have been] begotten,” must be “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). As He Himself is inaccessible to the devil, because the devil found in Him nothing that he can lay hold of (John 14:30), so also He renders secure against attack those whom He guards within the shelter of His own sonship.
2. The Church and the world. — What a tremendous contrast St. John draws between the two societies: the Church in its supremacy over the evil one and all his works, and the godless society which lies in his grasp! To give the contrast any point it must have been felt to be true — true, that is, on the whole, in spite of the unworthy lapses of individual members of the Church, such as St. John implies, and in spite of respectable and noble lives among those who were not Christians. In spite of these things, so long as becoming a Christian was a perilous venture which no one would make who was not in earnest, the moral level of the Church was very high and the contrast between the Church and the world continued sharp. And St. John, who, as we have seen, loves to represent things as they are in their ultimate principles and ultimate issues, states the contrast at its sharpest. At a later date “the conquest of the world’’ (so called) took place.
It cost nothing henceforth to be a Christian, rather, it cost much to be in name anything else. The Church then entered into the world as still a leaven possibly, but certainly no longer as “the salt,” or “the light,’“ or “ the city set on the hill” — all which metaphors involve the sharp contrast. The Church entered into the world, or, much more truly, it suffered the world to enter into the Church unchanged, unregenerated in character, and unashamed; and though it is still obvious that the worldly world lieth in the grip of the evil one, though our industrial organization and international relations are enough to convince one of this, yet there is no contrasted society visible and coherent, living over against the world, militant but attractive. We have compromised with the world. We have not been much in love with sanctity nor anxious to tear the veils off corruption.
We have preferred to discern a soul of good in things evil, and with good-humored satisfaction to point out that “these saints are not much better than the rest of us.” We have made for ourselves a drab world, neither very black (as we think) nor very white. Now, perhaps, there is an awakening. Perhaps, at least, we are more conscious than formerly that “the world lieth in the evil one.” But certainly the Church has still a long way to travel before men can recognize in it the society of the redeemed.
3. Understanding to know the real God. — Here, again, we observe St. John’s insistence upon the importance of right thinking about God. We are to love the Lord our God with all our understanding, as well as with all our heart and soul and strength. It is really shallowness, or what Butler calls shortness of thought, which causes so many to-day to talk as if “what exactly people believe “ is not of much importance so long as their hearts are right. The fact is that, however much inconsistency there may be between intellectual belief and practice at any particular moment or in any particular individual, in the long run how men behave — the character of their whole civilization, indeed — depends upon what exactly they really believe about God. Thus St. John has a very clear idea of the fellowship of mutual love which is to constitute Christian society; but he is clearly convinced that this sort of society can come into being and maintain itself only if men believe that the very being of God Himself is love, which must, therefore, be the law of the world.
And, again, he is convinced that this assurance about God’s nature has come to men, and can be maintained, in no other way than through the belief that the hidden Father has shown Himself, His real mind and being, in the historical person, Jesus, the Christ and the Son of God — so truly one with the Father that in knowing Him we know the Father, and in being joined to Him we are joined to the Father. This is the real God, he says, in contrast to all the idols of men’s ungoverned imagination.
Right religion is then, according to St. John, not a mere matter of our personal feeling or what we call our “experience,” but depends upon facts outside ourselves, what Jesus was, what He taught about God, how He suffered and rose again. And those facts can be apprehended by the understanding and (within limits) can be expressed in propositions which, if they are justified by the facts, can, like the propositions which St. John uses, constitute a standard of orthodoxy or right thinking in religion. It is not my business now to argue what the orthodox creed is or ought to be, only to insist that a religion such as Christianity claims to be — a religion of objective facts — must have a standard of orthodoxy appealing to the understanding.
4. Keep yourselves from the idols. — So the Old Testament prophets thundered often in deaf ears. And they meant by idolatry the worship of idols of wood and stone. But it was even then apparent that this idolatry is so sternly prohibited because it is a worship of false gods, or, if not that, because it misrepresents the true God. During the Captivity a great change came over Israel. They ceased, in the old sense, to be inclined to idolatry. The prophets after the Captivity have little need to denounce it. It has become the national characteristic of Israel to abhor idols. Nevertheless, the old prophets would have been disappointed in Israel, as was John the Baptist and as was our Lord.
Though in name they worshipped the true God and worshipped Him only by the authorized rites, yet in their hearts they had a perilously false idea of God. And the spiritual essence of idolatry is either to enthrone in our heart some other object than God (“covetousness which is idolatry”), or to entertain wrong ideas of Him. When St. John says, “Keep yourselves from Idols,” he is not surely warning the Christians against heathen idolatry — of such a danger the Epistle gives us no hint — but warning them against enthroning in their minds false ideas of God, something else than the real God, such false ideas as in this Epistle he has ascribed to the spirit of antichrist. And if we look around us to-day and take note of the ideas of God in man’s mind, often so strangely different from those which our Lord would teach us, we shall confess that we need to examine ourselves afresh under the heading of the second commandment; that we need to make sure that the God whom we are worshipping is not an idol of our imagination or of other men’s imagination, but “the real God.’’