1 John 1

1 John 1:1-2

Division 1. (1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-11.)God as Light and in the light, and the light in us. The division, as already said, in the very beginning carries us back to the Gospel. We are even. referred to “that beginning” which we find in the Gospel, not the beginning as we have it in Genesis, but the new beginning now, Christ having come into the world, the true Light for the first time manifestly shining, and God revealed in such a way as makes comparatively dim all former revelation. Light is evidently the characteristic all through this part of John. God is not only light, He is in the light; that is, He is revealed, and Christ who is the Life is the Light -the revelation. This light is in us by the communication of the life. The commandment that He gives is thus true in Him and in us.

Here we have, as is clear, one great characteristic of Christianity -the effect of the rent veil, although not exhibited after the same manner as in Hebrews. But God in the light means the veil rent, and it is striking that in the Gospel of John there is yet no reference to the rending of the veil at all. In fact, Christ being before us as He is in the Gospel, is already the Light, the revelation of God in the world. In this sense the veil is rent already; but it is rent that He may come among us; it is not yet rent so that we can be with Him in the full way for which love seeks us. Thus the commandment given by Christ in the Gospel, the commandment of love, becomes for us now in Christianity itself a new commandment -from the very fact that it is now true in Him and in us, manifestly so. We are brought into the light, and we have received the light within us.

1. In the first place, then, we find Christ as the Life, and the Life the Light of men. John carries us back to Christ upon earth as they had seen Him, contemplated Him, handled Him with their hands, and yet manifestly One in whom there was a divine fulness which could not be seen with the eyes, however fully contemplated, nor therefore handled. For him and for all else, recipients of the revelation, it was indeed a new beginning. All former ages had been but the history of man, fallen man even, though God had wrought and testified; but there was as yet no second man. Now the second Man had come, the Man according to the divine thought of man when God made him, but not the man that God first made, although the Son of Man; and thus in the nearest possible place of intimacy to us, nay of kinship in a sense, the Kinsman-Redeemer.

It is evident that this is the “beginning” of which John speaks, by his appeal to the old commandment which they had “from the beginning.” It is not, let us remember, His existence that could be spoken of in this way as from the beginning. He was in the beginning, as we know; but that is a different thing. When anything began, He was -did not begin; but on this very account one could not rightly say, “from the beginning.” It would not give the whole and suited truth. Moreover, he is speaking of One in the world, manifest to men’s eyes and ears; and that was not what had been in that primal beginning. Yet this was a more wondrous one, eclipsing the other, but only as brightness eclipses brightness, as stars and all else are eclipsed in the radiance of the day. He says: “That which was from the beginning,” not who, as we should expect. He is speaking, as he tells us, of the Word of life -the Word of God, according to the Gospel, and in whom was life; but in the presence of such an One he can only speak of “what we have heard and seen.” It was not, as it were, the whole Person fully told out, just because it was impossible that He should be fully told out; and this accounts for the peculiarity of the expression. Yet he allows of no distance in which they were from Him. Every expression here seems to be designed only to bring Him nearer, and to assure the soul more fully of its right, through grace, to Him. Thus, first it is, “We have heard;” but that, if it stood alone, might be a distant Voice, the Person Himself hidden. Therefore he goes on to say: “Which we have seen with our eyes;” but then that is not enough.

It was not a momentary vision. It was not as when He appeared to the two going to Emmaus, when they knew Him and He vanished out of their sight. No, he says: we have “contemplated” Him. He has been before our eyes so that we could take in and dwell upon the blessed One before us. But that even is not enough; as He says to Thomas, for perfect conviction of who He is, “Handle Me and see,” so says the apostle here: “Our hands have handled.” Thus He is known in the most intimate way, the Word of Life, the Giver of it surely, but at the same time the One in whom it was, whose every act and word was the expression of it, “that Eternal Life which was with the Father.” This life, he adds, “was manifested.” It was, as he says in his Gospel, “the light of men” -light in the midst of surrounding darkness which knew it not and could not comprehend it; but a light, nevertheless, manifesting all else, a divine life in Man, a revelation of personal glory. And then it was not an exceptional one, simply to those meant to be distinguished from all else by receiving it. True, the One manifesting it has not remained among us, He is gone back where He was before; but those who have seen it are witnesses of the revelation, designed witnesses, sent to declare to others “that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.” We are to think of it as of a life lived actually upon earth, but manifesting the unseen energy which was beneath it all, divine and eternal. It was the Son of God in the world, as he delights to tell us, “The only-begotten Son,” with an excellency entirely His own, and which could not be communicated to others, and yet at the same time with a fulness of power and blessing in it such as could be communicated and enjoyed: thus producing a living fellowship which followed (for those who received it in faith) the report made, on the part of those who, whatever they had, they had for others also besides themselves, and whose joy it was to communicate to others that which only enriched themselves the more by the communication.*
This fellowship was “with the Father” Himself, and “with His Son Jesus Christ;” the Father revealing the Son, and the Son revealing the Father; the Son the object of the Father’s delight, and the Father He to manifest whom the Son wrought and spoke; nay, the Father who abode in Him, and, as He says, “did the works.” It is into this that we are brought -one fellowship with the apostles themselves, participation with them in the thoughts and purposes, the feelings and the affections, the whole mind of Christ. And in this fellowship, as he adds finally here, is fulness of joy to be found, -a joy which is in God Himself revealed, -not merely the fall done away, the distance produced by it annihilated, but, far more than that, the Revealer Himself Immanuel, God in Man, with men. Blessed it is to see the intensity of desire, as expressed by the apostle, that we should not only know such things, but that the whole blessing of them, if one might so say, should be enjoyed. There is, no doubt, infinity in it, but still not in such a way as to disappoint and check the eagerness of the soul, but to lead it on further and further, deeper and deeper, into that which, continually satisfying, yet draws it on ever by the satisfaction itself. Thus is the Life the light of men. 2. The apostle goes on to distinguish this from all former communications. The message heard of Him and now declared is that “God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” Clouds and darkness have been round about Him. The veil of separation, as in the temple of old, hid Him from sight; nay, under the conditions existing then, it was mercy to do so; no one could look upon Him and live. Even Moses says: “I exceedingly fear and quake;” and they that heard His voice desired that He would speak to them in that direct way no longer, lest they should die. The mere revelation of the glory in the face of Moses had to be hidden from them; and that was the characteristic of all that dispensation -glory there waiting to be manifested, but the veil over it, so that men could not see the very blessedness of which they spoke, and which was typified and foreshadowed in all around them.

Now, God is in the light, says the apostle: -“We walk in the light as He is in the light.” We could not walk in the light in this sense until He was in the light. The veil is rent, the glory of God is seen. It is this into which faith introduces us now, as even faith itself could never introduce men before. We “walk in the light as He is in the light;” and thus we have “fellowship one with another,” the fellowship of eyes that alike see, and of those brought into a common enjoyment of all that it manifests. But, again, it is in this circle of the light that “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” It is plain what the apostle is referring to here, that he is just in presence of that open holiest, opened by the rending of the veil when Christ died. The blood shed in propitiation for our sins has opened the way into the presence of God; the light into which we enter searches out sin, cannot leave it hidden but where this is true, the blood cleanses from the sin brought out. In Israel’s sanctuary the blood was upon the mercy-seat itself, under the full blaze of the overshining glory. Israel could not see it; but we see it; and the very light which will not suffer sin to be hidden shines in full brightness upon the blood which has been shed for it, the value of which the light, wherever it shines, carries with it. To walk in the light is what is characteristic of the Christian, of every Christian. It is this light in which God is perfectly revealed, into which faith introduces; and he that is outside of it is walking still in darkness, ignorant of God, and of all things besides.

It is this that he is speaking of when he puts the condition that it is “if we walk in the light,” the blood cleanses. It is not if we walk according to the light.

That is not here the question. It is where we walk, not how we walk, that he is speaking of. It is not a moral condition in us, however much this is produced by it. It is the power of a revelation made known to us, and which faith receives. Thus, “if we say that we have fellowship with Him (with God) and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practise truth.” The darkness, therefore is not simply moral, -although in this darkness all things evil abide, -but -but it is a darkness which is, first of all, ignorance of God Himself, and which is the great primal evil, the evil which entails all other evils. For fellowship with God, He must Himself be known; and this is what the Person and work of Christ have done for us. Our need has been completely met. Love has intervened for us.

Love has let out the light, and to enjoy the love we must be in the light. That will reveal us also to ourselves. That will reveal the world and all things else; and thus the holiness of truth is secured for us, sin becomes sin -stands out in all its hateful reality. We are brought into fellowship with God about it. The practical state necessarily answers, as the effect to the cause, to the revelation which has been made to us; and this is Christianity, and nothing else is. 3. The apostle immediately proceeds to test all Christian profession by these principles. He is always testing. He must have the truth, and nothing but the truth; and thus the conditions here apply to the whole of this profession, the true and the false. “If we say,” “if we confess.” The apostle puts himself along with all others. He distinguishes the true from the false simply as they are manifested by their fulfilment or not of the conditions. To walk in darkness, in ignorance of God, is to walk in ignorance of ourselves also. “If we say that we have no sin” (here is the ignorance belonging to the darkness), “we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” If, on the other hand, we are in the light, our sins are manifest.

There is neither possibility nor desire to hide them. “We confess our sins;” and “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” “If,” on the other hand, “we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar,” for God has positively told men that they have sinned, and therefore “His word is not in us.” We can see therefore a necessary difference between this assertion that “we have not sinned” and that “we have no sin.” The one speaks of acts committed; the other may go deeper, to search out the sin which is in our nature. How can we be ignorant of it if we are Christians indeed?

There are, alas, as we know, those who not only profess Christianity, and have, no doubt, more than the profession, who yet manage to deceive themselves in such a way as to seem to say what is here: “We have no sin.” Sin, they say, was indeed our past condition, and we needed grace to deliver us from it; but that grace has perfectly delivered us, and we have none of it remaining now. That is self-deception surely; and it is only by refusing to call sin what is really sin that they are able to carry it out. Evil thoughts, with them, are from the devil; they are something outside themselves, -the power of the enemy, -but not the corruption of their nature. Their standard is not what the scriptural standard is. Scripture makes no abatement in its demands upon us in answer to any plea as to damaged powers, and such like things. “He that saith he abideth in Him,” says the apostle, “ought himself so to walk even as also He walked.” Maintain this standard, and who will measure himself by it and say there is no coming short? Who will look down into the depths of his soul and say that there is positively no reflection of anything there but of Christ Himself, as in the purest of mirrors?

Let only such things be uttered, and they will soon meet their answer; nay, it will be impossible for themselves, if the light has indeed wrought upon them, to keep up the deception. They are justifying themselves with words, and their own conscience is against them when once they get the focus of their vision adjusted.

This, then, is what the apostle gives us as to the darkness; it is the effect of being in the darkness. On the other hand, if we are in the light, we confess our sins. It is a general principle, no doubt, which goes with us through our Christian lives; nevertheless, that is not exactly what is before the mind of the apostle here. He is thinking of the soul that has just come out of the darkness into the light, in whom the first element of fellowship with God is found in the realization of its own condition. Sins are there too plainly to be hidden, extenuated, or in any way got rid of. God is the only refuge. Blessed be His name, He receiveth sinners; and thus, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.” How near, in such a saying as this, does John come to Paul! He does not speak of justification as Paul does. He speaks of forgiveness simply. Justification, as we have seen elsewhere, is one of the truths characterizing Paul’s gospel, as to which he asserts himself that he had a special ministry; but if Paul says God is righteous to justify, John says here He is righteous to forgive. The one statement has not the fulness and boldness of the other, yet this fundamental element is in both, that it is God Himself who is manifested in the gospel to men, to sinners, and that He is not only merciful to forgive, but “faithful and righteous” in doing it. “Faithful,” notice; that must be to His pledged word, or rather, let us say, in view of what the apostle is putting before us here, faithful to Christ who has died for men -faithful to that precious blood which is here seen as on the mercy-seat. The blood declares His righteousness; to the blood, too, He is faithful; and thus the one who comes into His presence as a confessed sinner is met with perfect assurance. But there is more here, also, than the forgiveness of sins. He is faithful and righteous to cleanse as well as forgive us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness; that is, from all that lack of uprightness before Him which is of the essence of the natural, fallen condition. So could the psalmist say of the blessedness of the man “whose iniquity is forgiven, whose sin is covered,” “to whom the Lord will not impute sin, and in whom,” therefore, “there is no guile.” We can see by all that is stated here that he is giving us what is fundamental to the Christian condition. He is distinguishing between the one in darkness and the one in the light, between the true and the false in Christian profession; and thus he is not dealing with sin into which a Christian may fall, but with that which he brings to God as all that he can bring Him when he comes first to Him who has revealed Himself in Christ. We shall find that he goes on immediately to the question of sins that a Christian may commit after being that; and while there is confessedly here what as a principle will apply to the Christian through his Christian life, (because he never ceases to be in that light which dealt with him when he first entered it,) yet at the same time we shall find that the apostle deals with this in a different manner. 4. We come now immediately to this, the apostle distinguishing between what he has written and what he is now going to write: “My children,” he says, “these things write I unto you that ye may not sin.” It is the power of this revelation of God in Christ which is indeed to be power against sin for the future; yet he contemplates the possibility of a Christian sinning. “If any one sin,” he says. We might think, perhaps, that he would rather say, " when any one sins;" but he does not, for he will not put it as if it were necessary that one should sin, whatever the facts as to ourselves which we have to acknowledge. With the Spirit of God in us, is there not abundant power against all commission of sin, whatever it may be? We are witness to ourselves that we are responsible for every act of this kind. We can never say that we were left in helplessness to do this.

Not to condemn ourselves would be to dishonor God; so that he puts it conditionally altogether, “If any one sin;” but what then? What is the remedy?

That we confess our sins, so as to be forgiven? That will come in due place, but he cannot begin with that. The first and fundamental necessity here is Christ. It is Christ in whose hands are the basin and the towel. It is Christ who says: “Except I wash thee, thou hast no part with me.” Our necessary recourse, therefore, is first of all to Christ Himself. No cleansing of ourselves can there be, no accomplishment of anything in this way, until we have our feet in His hands; and back even of this the apostle goes here. “If any one sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins.” Thus, whatever the repentance needed, whatever the need of the confession of what we have done, the thing that the apostle would remind any one of who is conscious of wrong done is that “we have an Advocate with the Father.” It is not, if any one repents, we have an Advocate; but, “if any one sin.” How would it be with us if Christ held us not still in that embrace with which at first He received us?

If He did not hold us fast to God, how surely indeed should we drift away! The word “Advocate,” “Paraclete,” is the same as that used by the Lord Himself with regard to the Holy Spirit, and in the same sentence He speaks of Himself in the same character. “I will pray the Father,” He says, “and He shall send you another Advocate,” even the Spirit of God.

Thus we are intended to compare these. The Spirit is now the Advocate on earth, in place of Him who has gone from earth. Christ is the Advocate with the Father, the One ascended to Him and in His presence for us. If we think of the Spirit as the epistle to the Romans speaks of Him, we shall understand this term “Advocate” with more clearness. The apostle there tells us that “we know not what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” That does not mean that the whole prayer to which He leads us is such a groaning, but that there is something in the prayer to which He leads incapable of being uttered even by the person who prays. He cannot realize just what he needs.

He knows not what to pray for as he should. The Spirit not only brings him into the consciousness of needs which can be expressed, and are expressed, but adds to them, after all, as from Himself, that which is an intercession according to God: something which He who searches the hearts knows as the mind of the Spirit, while to the person who prays it is but an unintelligible groan.

How beautiful it is to see thus the Spirit becoming our Advocate, going beyond even all that we are capable of, in order that our prayers may be complete and according to His mind who is to answer them! In this way, although this does not cover all that is meant by the word, we can yet understand how the Spirit becomes an Advocate for us, how He takes up our cause and pleads it before God. We can see here that as to Christ, His advocacy has the same meaning. He is an Advocate with the Father, suited entirely to all that is in the Father’s heart. He is Jesus Christ the righteous, One who can never abate, therefore, that which is due to the character of God -to His glory. On the other hand, He is One completely for us, and having title to be for us by the propitiation which He has made for our sins.

Thus, we are completely provided. But notice that it is with the Father also that He is Advocate.

The apostle does not say, with God; but with One in definite known relationship to the people whose cause Christ has taken up; and this is the character of the epistle before us all the way through. Thus we have, as uniformly in Scripture, a living Person for all our necessities; not something to be done or gone through by us, but One who has undertaken our cause and in whose hands we are. There follows, as the corollary of this, that as we are in His hands, so, practically, the blessing lies for us in allowing ourselves to be in His hands -in realizing this in the way in which the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel presents Him to us. He is there the girded Servant of our need, with the basin and the towel. The absolute necessity for us is that He should wash us. Except He wash, we have no part with Him. Communion is necessarily interrupted if we are not washed according to that which is His thought, clean as He would have us, and thus He becomes our resource entirely.

We cannot wash ourselves. We are not to set ourselves right first, in order to come to Him.

We come as we are, not washed, but to be washed, surrendering ourselves into His blessed hands that He may show us all that is amiss with us -the secret roots and principles which have led to failure, as well as the failure itself. And the first thing for us is to realize this nearness to Him, to allow no distance, and, on the other hand, to realize that there must be the absolute putting ourselves into His hands, not dictating to Him as to what He is going to set right, but letting Him search us out, letting Him put His hand upon that which needs to be set right, not content with partial cleansing, but with that perfect one which alone can be according to His mind. Thus, there is perfect grace, but perfect holiness. The presence of the Lord is that by which alone we escape from the defilement of evil -that having to do with Him which is indeed a daily necessity for us. All this we have had indeed before us in the Gospel, as has been said, but we can realize by it that what has been already stated, -that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins,” -while it is a principle that always applies, yet at the same time it is not the proper remedy for failure, whatever the failure may be. Christ Himself is the remedy; but we need Him that the confession of our sins even, which will surely follow, may be according to His mind; that we may see in His light what sin is, what our sins are, and find in the grace of His presence that which is indeed ability to pour out all our hearts before Him.

Then we shall find that there is indeed a forgiveness governmentally, most necessary for communion, and for which we must have been with Him. But the first point, and in a true sense the whole matter, is to have had our feet really in His hands, with the understanding how thoroughly He is for us, and that He alone is capable of even making us aware of the failure, as in Him alone is the grace that meets it. It is added that “He is the propitiation for our sins;” and then, after John’s manner entirely, “Not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” There is not, as in our version, the “sins of the whole world.” Nevertheless, we need not hesitate to speak of this, as it is surely implied. When the apostle says: “Not for ours only,” he necessarily infers that it is for the sins of others also. This does not mean that they are put away. He is a propitiation, as is said in Romans, “through faith, by His blood.” It is for believers, therefore, that all this becomes effectual, and only for these. Yet so thoroughly sufficient is the perfect Sacrifice that has been offered, and so plainly is it available for every soul that honestly desires it that we can say: “For the sins of the whole world,” without the least trouble or question. Beautiful it is to realize that it is just in John’s Gospel, where the deepest things of divine grace are told out, that there is the fullest going out in heart to all.

The call and the provision are for all. The sin of rejection is upon him who rejects, and he shall never be able to say that there was not a remedy, or that he was not able to avail himself of the remedy. The apostle proceeds now to that which he is constantly about, the practical testing of those who by profession are in the light. Every Christian is really there, and we must not understand the “if we walk in the light” as if it meant something less than this. The opposition to walking in light is the walking in darkness, and the walking in the darkness is in no sense Christian, as we see all through here. It is not even an exceptional state into which a Christian may get. That is not the way in which it is presented here. It is not true that a Christian may be practically in darkness.

There may be a want of singleness in his eye which causes this, but the walking in the light points out where he walks, not how he walks. It is walking, indeed, of which John speaks: walking on the one hand in the light, or, on the other, in the darkness.

He has always the idea of living activity, whether the life be true life from God or not; still, it is a living, active, responsible man of whom he is speaking, who, in fact, is moving in some direction. If in the darkness, how great the peril of it! If in the light, there is a responsibility attaching also to this, not as to being in the light, but as to having it practically in him, because he is in the light. If we are in the daylight, we are responsible to see our way. If we are in the darkness, that is not exactly the responsibility. We can see no better with our eyes open than with our eyes shut; but if we are in the light, then we have the responsibility, and the privilege also, of knowing that we are to have our eyes open in order to be able to discern the path before us, not without exercise, necessarily.

That is not implied. We may have to use our eyes to find the path, in the light as we may be; but we must be in the light to find it.

John has before him, as we have seen, from the beginning of his epistle, the opened holiest, and the light streaming out through the rent veil, the light carrying with it the power of the blood which has let it out. Thus the whole question for us is, if we are in the light. At least, that is the fundamental question with which he is here concerning himself. All the way through we shall find that he is testing profession. He does not hesitate to test it thoroughly. He is not putting us upon the ground of the blood as shed for our sins, but testing whether we are on the ground.

If we are in the light, he has already said, the blood avails for us. If we are in the light, the consequences of being in the light will be seen, and there will be for those who consciously are walking there the assurance which results of necessity from a practical walk with God.

It is the first great primary assurance, which we find as sinners, not as saints; but it is one very necessary for us to know, and which we need exhortation about. As the apostle Peter has said, we need to make our calling and election sure, not to God, but to ourselves. We need to walk in such a way that the witness of the Spirit can be clear and positive with us. The apostle is writing to those who profess to have this confidence of which we are speaking. He is not afraid, therefore, of producing legality by testing it. “Hereby,” he says, “we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” The apostle has no idea of separating these things from one another -the knowledge and its practical results.

As he says afterwards, “He that sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him.” He is clearly not thinking of that which a Christian may fall into or be overcome by. He is thinking of what is the characteristic state.

If we have not this character of keeping His commandments, then it is simply a false profession with us, and not the truth. “Whosoever keepeth His Word, in him verily is the love of God perfected.” That is to say, that love which he has had manifested to him in Christ has come to fruition. And here he says, let us notice, not simply, “whoso keepeth His commandments,” but “whoso keepeth His Word.” There is a difference which we have already had before us in the Lord’s last discourse with His disciples, as John himself has given it to us. We cannot but see how, all through the epistle, his heart goes back to those last words of his Lord -how he reproduces and emphasizes them. The very style and language are those of the Gospel, a sweet and wonderful characteristic of the one who was the disciple whom Jesus loved, who lay on His breast and drank in His words. So he says here, “keepeth His Word,” because the true believer is not under a code of commandments simply, and he does not ask himself, what must I do? which the command implies; but rather, what may I do? how can I show to Him the desire I have to serve and please Him? Thus all Scripture becomes, in reality, a necessity to such. Alas, it is at best but feebly realized, that is true; nevertheless, he that knows Christ aright can not do other than understand that the whole Word of God is what has been provided for him, to form in him the mind of Christ, and that he may realize communion as God would have it.

Alas for the failure and the imperfections! Still, the merely legal soul is either one that is not truly in the grace which is our whole sanctification, or he does not understand the sweetness and the power of that grace. We cannot but remember that in that epistle to the church of Philadelphia, communicated once more by John himself, and the very last discourse, as we may say, to His now fully Christian disciples, the emphasis of our Lord’s approval is in this: “Thou hast kept My Word.” Whatever is in Christ’s mind for us, it is ours honestly, as He enables us, to act upon and carry out; and it is as we are thus practically walking with Him that we learn the full reality of knowing that we are in Him, for “He that saith he abideth in Him,” says the apostle, “ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.” No less a measure is laid down -no less perfect a standard must be accepted. Here is again the testing of profession. “He that saith he abideth in Him;” but the abiding in Him itself is what is absolutely necessary to Christianity. It is the branch abiding in the vine, so that the sap abides in the branch, and we rightly look in such a case for flower and fruit. The apostle is not afraid of the word “commandment.” He knows well that is not a word uncongenial to the heart of a true disciple. He would not be without commandments -the manifestation of an authority to which he is subject, and subject in delight, finding it his truest freedom. Thus, then, what he is writing is “no new commandment,” as he says. It is but an old commandment, which they had from the beginning. We see at once that he is dating here, as ever, from Christ’s life and words on earth. The old commandment is the word which he heard.

What he says now is nothing new in that sense, and yet there is something new about it, and in a very important way new: “Again a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light already shineth.” That is what makes the commandment “new.” It is a commandment written now in the heart, according to the full character of the new covenant, and with all the power of the true light come, before which every element of darkness is passing away. He does not say here that it is passed, but it is passing.

We are all conscious, however desirous in our hearts to be true to Him, that there is, after all, obscurity remaining with us; that there are things in ourselves which hinder the light, and which we have never been able yet to detect so that they should have perfect removal; but the true light shineth, and the soul, conscious of this, draws ever more fully into its beams, rejoicing in the light, willingly hiding nothing of it from itself; for it is in the light that all things get their true character; evil is seen in it with horror, and all the loveliness of that which is right and true comes out. Thus, to be in the light is no mere cold, clear knowledge. It has the blessing of warmth in it, and the vitalizing power under which all the precious fruits of the earth spring up and ripen. Thus the “thing is true in Him and in you.” Christ is the light; and this light is in us also, by His grace. We are in communion with Him, as He has already assured us. On the other hand, “he who saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness until now.” Notice, he does not say merely, as some would seem to have it, that he is in the darkness now. That is true, but not the whole truth. He is in the darkness, and he never was out of it. He is in the darkness until now. That does not allow the possibility of a soul having been in the light, in the sense in which John is speaking here, and getting out of it again. On the other hand: “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light.” He stays there, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him; but, “He that hateth his brother (notice that it is profession ever, and therefore he tests it as such; the brother by profession is counted as a brother, there is responsibility of the relationship professed, whether true or not true, and he that hateth his brother then) is in the darkness, and walketh in the darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes” -a terrible condition, surely, and which seems by the language used to be distinguished from that of which the prophet speaks where men “sit in darkness, and have no light.” In this case the truth has not been known, and there is nothing that one can speak of as activity at all; although surely there is in another way activity, as we all know, and plenty of evil deeds that go with such a condition. But here the light has come; the soul has the responsibility of that light; he has a walk which is estimated in its character as in the light or in the darkness, as the apostle has said in Philippians, “even weeping,” of those (many they were) who walk, yet as “enemies of the cross of Christ,” “whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” Here is the darkness in which already many professing believers were found according to the testimony of the apostle; and this is it of which John is speaking here.* \