FAITH IS THE VICTORY
By Professor E M Blaiklock MA., Litt.D.
In the midst of this repetition, John lets fall the third of his great announcements about God: “God is spirit. “ (John 4:24):
"God is light (I: 5) and now, “God is love” of the three great truths the last is chief. It shows the Spirit to be personal, and it fills His glory with a warmth and life which brings it near to the heart of man. The idea has conquered the world, and coloured non-Christian thinking. The savagery, the terror, the cruelty and caprice of pagan theologies have been banished.
Indeed a subtlety of temptation today lies in the attitude which presumes on the love of God and forgets God's justice and stern condemnation of sin. Fitzgerald's Omar touches the note in a quatrain from his version of The Potter's Shop. The Pots speak, and,
Said one-"Folks of a surly tapster tell
And daub his visage with the smoke of Hell;
They talk of some strict testing of us—Ah!
He's a good fellow and 'twill all be well."
All of which is far removed from the mighty truth of John's immortal sentence. The love of God is the love of Christ, and when that is said all is said.
It is wrong to state, as some commentators do, that the idea of God's love was unknown in the Old Testament. The love of father and husband appears in too many figures for anyone to believe that the Jew of the old dispensation had no inkling of the truth which became clear and glorious in Christ.
But it is true that in the New Testament the love of God became the dominant theme, all-embracing, and complete. And in the New Testament, as if for last and final emphasis, th closing words, stressed and restressed the idea.
To "abide in love", the central thought of v. 16, contains no touch or taint of the sentimental; it certainly does not mean that anyone who feels for another a liking, attraction, or affection, is by that fact in living union with God. If John's writings are examined, and they are their own best commentary, it will become clear that the phrase involves three conditions: "to continue to live as the objects of God's love" (this is basic, for He first loved us); "to continue to love God;"
"to continue to love our brethren." As Dodd aptly puts it; "The energy of love discharges itself along the lines which form a triangle, whose points are God, self, and neighbour; but the source of all love is God, of whom alone it can be said that He is love." This great and noble verse is the central thought of the Epistle.
In it is the secret of fruitful living, the source of assurance, and the basis of all morality.
On the rest of the chapter little need be said. But note how it ends on the theme of fearlessness and confidence before God—the thought of 2:28. How evil is fear! It mars our bodies and paralyses our minds. Under its shadow, selfishness, cruelty, and all manner of evil grow. Fear numbs pity, and excludes all love, for none can love the object of fear. The fear of the Lord enjoined by Scripture is reverence, not terror; it is compounded of gratitude, humility, and independence, and does not cancel love. The fear which is terror, the fear which God has no wish that we should harbour, is a disease of the mind which stunts the personality, for a fearful man is something less than human. The diabolical brain-washing of evil tyrannies has this end in view. It is designed to break humanity, to paralyse, corrupt, and destroy all vestige of the image of God, and the heritage of free-will. And there is no worse torment than fear, as the spirit of Antichrist which prowls abroad well knows. Fear respects no persons. In the mountains of Asia Minor, where the archaeologists put together the records of the Hittite Empire, the book of prayers of Myrsilis the Second, who ruled from 1336 to 1304 B.C., has come to light. The royal suppliant prays: "From my heart drive out the pain, O God, from my mind lift the fear." The words have a familiar ring, and which of us has never framed such supplication? And yet this is not God's intention. Reposing in the love of God, she says John again, the child of God need never fear. Redeemed by Christ, he can rest in the secret place of the Most Hign, unabashed and unashamed.