Faith Is The Victory
By
E M Blaiklock MA., Litt.D.
Re 1 John
Looking at the self-willed evil of those who made havoc of his gospel, and at the subtle wickedness of those who perverted the simplicity of the message, the Apostle saw sin so calculated and deliberate that he felt prayer for the sinner die on his lips, and felt he could not ask his "children" to intercede for those who plotted such cynical ruin for their souls.
Applying his words to our own life and testimony, let us beware of too hasty decision. There are those today for whom it would be idle to pray. In this age of monumental sin, there are those for whom the Church at large has raised no supplication. For the "many antichrists," who still afflict us, it is useless to intercede. We can but pray that their plans find confusion, and that the judgment of Him who alone judges shall fall upon them. In the narrower circle of our more immediate experience, we sometimes find it impossible to frame a prayer for this one or that, especially perhaps in cases of open-eyed apostasy. Nevertheless, have we not also been at times rebuked by the restoration or conversion of one whom we have too hastily judged to be beyond the pale? It is obvious that the matter is one for which no rules can be drawn up, least of all rules of casuistry with tabulations of mortal' and 'venial' sins, and one only to be considered in the clear light of unselfish love.
From the whole sad question emerges a solemn warning which touches all of us. The starved body becomes less and less able to receive food. And the soul likewise, which stifles all spiritual impulses, can little by little become unable to respond. The malady, furthermore, is one which can afflict the Christian, destroy joy and usefulness, and damage testimony, exempt though the Christian is from the ultimate death which such atrophy brings.
The Expositor's Greek Testament, whose commentary on this letter is extremely good, illustrates the point by two telling quotations. The first is from Charles Darwin in a letter to
J. D. Hooker, of June 17, 1868. "I am glad you were at the Messiah, it is the one thing I should like to hear again, but I dare say I should find my soul too dried up to appreciate it as in old days; and then I should feel very flat, for it is a horrid bore to feel as I constantly do, that I am a withered leaf for every subject except science."
The second quotation is from Richard Baxter, the great preacher whose statue stands in the busy square of the little Worcestershire town of Kidderminster. A score of miles up the lovely Severn valley is the town of Bridgnorth of which Baxter wrote: "Bridgnorth had made me resolve that I should never go among a people that had been hardened in unprofit-ableness under an awakening ministry; but either to such as had never had a convincing preacher, or to such as had profited by him." The quotations are reproduced, as the lawyers say, "without prejudice." We are forbidden to judge, and should look to our own response to God's Spirit rather than elsewhere. Above all let us beware of usurping a place which is not ours, and of circumscribing the grace and power of God by "false limits of our own."
"Let us finally," the writer seems to say, "turn from the dark mysteries of sin, apostasy and perdition, and close with the splendid certainties of the faith which is ours. And let me sum up all I have said to you in three confident assertions." These follow in vv. 18, 19 and 20, each introduced by an assured "we know". The first combines what was said in 3: 9 and 2: 3; the second contains the essence of 1:6, 2: 18 and I5, 3: 10 and 13; the third summarises 4:9-11 and 5: 1-12.
Together they sum up the central message of the Epistle, that throiugh the coming of God's Son we have fellowship with God, and that in that fellowship we have salvation from sin and are set in complete and total opposition to the world.
We have already remarked on the nature of the Greek present tense. To translate v. 18 "We know that everyone who is born of God does not sin," is both to contradict fact, to destroy the assurance which this letter sets out to give, and to run counter to other statements of the same writer.
The present tense implies continuity, habit, permanence. A Christian may sin, and John has recognised the fact as lately as v. 16, but his normal state is detestation of sin, and opposition to it. "Two things," remarked Liddon, "a genuine Christian never does. He never makes light of any known sin, and he never admits it to be invincible." Hence the translation suggested above.