Faith is the Victory
DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN
By Professor E.M.BLAIKLOCK M.A.,Litt.D.
CHAPTER ONE
GOD IS LIGHT
THE TEXT: (1 John I: 1-2:11)
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we gazed upon, which our hands felt, concerning the life-giving Word--and the Life was made visible, and we have seen it, and bear witness and testify to you of the Life, the Eternal Life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us-that which we have seen and heard, I say, we announce to you also, that you may have fellowship with us. Yes, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things we write that our (less probably your) joy may be fulfilled.
And this is the message we have heard from Him and make known to you, that God is light, and there is no darkness at all in Him. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and go on walking in the darkness, we lie and are not doing the truth. But if we are walking in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are leading ourselves astray and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say we have not sinned we are making Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
CHAPTER TWO:
My little children, I am writing these things to you in order that you may not sin. And if anyone sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the whole world.
And in this we get to know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says: 'I know Him, and does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps His word, in this man truly is the love of God perfected. Thus we know that we are in Him.
The one who professes to abide in Him, is bound so to walk as He walked.
Beloved, it is not a new commandment I am writing to you, but an old commandment which you had from the be-ginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard. Again it is a new commandment I am writing to you—a thing which is true in Him and you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.
He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness still. He who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no stumbling-block in him. He who hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has made him blind.
I. THE OCCASION:
IT was towards the end of the first century, and the New Testament was approaching completion. The first three Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, Peter, Jude and James were already the cherished documents of a widely scattered Church. The history of evangelism, as far as the Acts of the Apostles recorded it, was a generation old. And now, with half a century of Christian experience to shape the life and sharpen the problems of the growing Church, with the sombre shadow of persecution darkening, and with a lifetime of pondering over those three glorious years in Israel to enrich his memory, the last of the apostles felt the deep urge to write his Gospel.
That arresting book was to close the New Testament. It was to show Christ afresh against the background of the years, and in relation to the body of developed Christian truth. The letter which is called in the New Testament the First Epistle General of John, was written to accompany and introduce the Gospel. That is why the two books should always be read side by side in mutual commentary. The letter dealt more directly with the spiritual problems of the hour, and attacked error in a manner which would have been out of place in the Gospel. The letter formed a sermon upon the Gospel.
The letter, like many others in the New Testament, was written in deep disturbance of spirit, and in an ardent desire to defend the faith. "Tall heresies and high" were abroad, and dire dangers beset the Church. The old struggle to convert the Church into a sect of Judaism had failed. When John wrote in extreme old age in Ephesus, Jerusalem was ashes and the pride of Judaism lay broken. But a second conflict had then confronted the Church. This challenge, which may be traced from the Corinthian epistles to the second and third chapter of the Revelation, was the attempt of some to work out a compromise with paganism, and to interpret the faith as a liberal philosophy. We should be glad to know more of the struggle, which involved problems of conduct and problems of doctrine, but we are left with little to aid speculation.
Perhaps this much may be said, as we endeavour to pierce the murk of the centuries, and read the mind of the last survivor of the Lord's band when he was moved to write in Ephesus: Ireneus, writing almost a century later when the battle was won, said, "John, the disciple of the Lord, desired by the declaration of his Gospel to remove the error which had been sown among men by Cerinthus, and much earlier by those who are called Nicolaitans." The same purpose applies to the covering letter.
Who were these sectaries? The Nicolaitans may be briefly dismissed. They are rather the earlier theme of Peter, Jude, and John's letters to the Seven Churches, his Asian circuit.
They were those who saw no need for separation from the pagan world, and thought to adapt Christianity to heathen society. They are not primarily in view in John's Epistle.
Cerinthus is. This man was a forerunner of those who were later called the Gnostics. The word means "those who know," and these theosophists taught that religion was for the enlightened few, a self-constituted spiritual aristocracy, exempt from the rules of human conduct observed by more simple souls a the person of the Lord, He disting wined, ri ac notiong from Jesus. Jesus was the human son of Joseph and Mary, into whom the divine Christ came at the Baptism, only to leave him on the Cross. It was Jesus who died, not Christ.
How sharply John has this pernicious error in mind is obvious in the first half of the letter.
2. THE LIVING CHRIST:
Consider the first four verses. John's elaborate repetition is the measure of his earnest desire to make his main point clear. And his main point is this: —in the Gospel he has just given to the Church, he has written, he insists, of the Son of God, a Person of the Trinity, who walked on earth in sinless beauty as Jesus Christ, the Lord, Master, and Friend of those who knew Him, those of whom he, John, is the last alive.
No less a Christ, no other Christ, could avail. The Apostolic Gospel was no new-fangled mystery, but a faith once given, clear-cut in doctrine, simple enough for all to grasp, and in fellowship to enjoy, a faith founded on a divine and living Lord, attested by eye-witnesses, and altogether true. And all this emphasis was in order that those who heard and read from then till now "might have fellowship" in Him. The word thus rendered is not easy to translate. "Partnership" is what it really means, if we can strip that rendering of its connotations of business—and partnership is what John offers, partnership with Himself and the company of those who knew God in Christ. "I have been vile myself," wrote Bunyan in a forgotten preface, "and have obtained mercy, and I would have my companions in sin partake of mercy too, and therefore I have writ this little book." John's little book was no less generously conceived. He shared the living Christ, whom some sought to filch from common men, and hide away. He sought also the fulfilment of joy, for "our" should surely be
read in v.4, the joy which Samuel Rutherford put into a verse :
Oh! if one soul from Anwoth Meet me at God's right hand, My Heaven will be two Heavens In Immanuel's land.