PROVISION FOR THE SINNING OF BELIEVERS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
FIRMLY does St. John declare that the Christian should not sin, and must not sin. But he clearly recognises that Christians do actually sin through frailty. And he presents the consolation which is found in the gracious provision for dealing with Christian sins, both in their relation to God, and in their effects upon Christians themselves.
1 John 2:1. Little children.—Suitable to such an aged and honoured teacher, such a father in Christ, as St. John. It is seen that it expresses his affectionate interest in them; it is not so often seen that it expresses also his sense of the immaturity, and consequent peril, of the disciples. These things.—Both those things which he has said, and those things which he is about to say. St. John’s one all-ruling anxiety was, to help Christians not to sin. His epistle can only be understood when that passion for righteousness in Christian professors is fully apprehended. This may be taken as St. John’s key-note, “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He [the Divine and human Son] is righteous.” Advocate.—Same word as St. John uses in his gospel. It is there translated “Comforter” (John 14:16; John 14:25; John 15:26; John 16:7). One who is ready to plead for us; and One who has peculiar power, and right, to plead. See our word “Intercessor.” With the Father.—With is literally towards. But the point is, that the Advocate is always with the Father, and His help is therefore always available. The name for God, Father, is intended to remind us that the apostle is not here speaking about anybody and everybody’s sins against God, but precisely about the sins of God’s children, which are sins against their spiritual and Divine Father. The righteous.—Or, the perfect, ideal, model Son, who never sins, but does always the things that please the Father. His standing before the Father as the righteous Son is the perpetual plea for merciful dealing with those who want to be such sons as He is, and cannot be by reason of their bodily and human frailties. Righteous sonship is the best of pleas with the righteous Father.
1 John 2:2. Propitiation.—Better, “And He Himself is a propitiation.” It is not something He does that propitiates, but He Himself standing ever before the Father as the righteous Son propitiates the Father, and, as it were, secures His kindly dealing with the other sons, who are working towards, but come short of, the same righteous sonship. Our sins.—Distinctly ours; the reference is precisely to those who are born of God into the spiritual sonship. Of the whole world.—This St. John adds, lest his precise setting of truth should be supposed to exclude the general truth of Christ’s redemptive work for the world. St. Paul presents a similar double truth when he writes of Christ as “the Saviour of all men, specially of those who believe.”
1 John 2:3. Know Him.—Compare chap. 1 John 1:6, “have fellowship with Him.” Better, know Him in the special spiritual relations of Divine Fatherhood. Sin disturbs the knowledge, and breaks the relations. Perfect son-like obedience, such as Christ’s, keeps for us the knowledge of the Father, and the close relations with the Father, which Christ has. His commandments.—Some think Christ’s are meant; but it is better to understand the Father’s commandments apprehended through Christ.
1 John 2:4. A liar.—We do not now use this word, save under special stress. Such a man as St. John speaks of we should call “self-deceived,” a man giving way to self-delusions. The two things, the new life unto righteousness, in Christ; and the old life unto iniquity, in self, can never by any possibility be made to go together. The one kills the other.
1 John 2:5. Love of God perfected.—Because the one thing that love is ever striving to do is, inspire obedience; and it only accomplishes its end when it secures obedience.
1 John 2:6. Abideth in Him.—The truth is applied to the Christian life which has already been applied to the Christian profession. A Christ-like obedience is the one all-sufficing test of reality and sincerity. Walk.—Compare “conversation,” terms that compass the whole Christian life and relations.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 2:1-6
The Remedy for Christian Sin a Reason for not sinning.—It has already been shown that fellowship with God must depend on our being kin with Him in light, which represents purity, righteousness, sinlessness. But that condition is practically unattainable by any who are placed in creaturely limitations, and in existing human conditions. Even when a man is right in will, and purpose, and endeavour, the fact remains that he falls into sins of frailty, and even sins of temporary self-willedness. If St. John had failed to recognise this fact, and had made unqualified the demand for perfection, as the absolutely essential condition of fellowship, he would have made the Christian life a hopeless and impossible thing: men would despairingly have said, “It is high; I cannot attain unto it; and I shall not try.” On the other hand, it was necessary to present the remedy for Christian frailty and sin in such a way that men could not presume upon it, and continue in sin that grace may abound. In the first two verses of this chapter, the remedy for Christian sin, which was partly stated in chap. 1 John 1:7, is further unfolded; or we may more correctly say, the one truth is seen from other sides, and other points of view.
I. The provision made for Christian sin.—This is stated in very precise terms. We have an Advocate, and His advocacy is a propitiation.
1. We have an Advocate—παράκλητον ἔχομεν. The word is “Paraclete,” which we directly associate with the Holy Ghost, but which our Lord taught us could properly be applied to Himself; for He said, “I will send you another Comforter.” Would we then understand the Paraclete’s work with the Father, we must compare it with the Paraclete’s work in us. It is clearly a persuading, influencing work—a pleading of our cause, a securing of gracious and kindly dealing with our Christian sins. The figure in the word, both as applied to Christ and to the Spirit, is the pleading of a man’s cause at a court of justice, and the securing of an acquittal, or at least of a modification of sentence. But we may come much nearer to the case St. John presents if we fit his illustration to family life. One of the children in the family love may be led astray, and may do some wrong thing, which greatly grieves the parent, and for the time properly puts even the beloved child out of pleasant relations. What can be done to restore relations? Plainly enough, it is possible for another son—maybe the eldest son—to take all the burden upon himself, and resolve to do everything possible to set things right again. His first work will be with the erring brother; he must get him to see his sin, confess it, and be sorry for it. Then when he has got his brother restored to his right, child-like mind, he can be his “advocate with the father,” and can present such reasons as may persuade and propitiate him, and make it right for him to receive the erring son back again into the family life. And so Christ, our elder brother, undertakes to deal with His brothers’ sins. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sins.” When they are recovered to right-willedness, right-heartedness, He can become their “Advocate with the Father,” and with all becoming and effective persuasions propitiate Him, and secure their return to full son-like standing and relations.
2. The advocacy of Christ is a “propitiation.” There is no indication whatever that St. John had in his mind the sacrificial work of Christ. His mind was evidently occupied with the person of Christ, with, the living person of Christ—not with something He had done, but with something He was doing, the actual present relation in which He stands to believers, His present spiritual intercession and advocacy. A father ought to show his indignation and grief at the wrong-doing of his child. He ought to punish the child by putting him for a time out of pleasant relations. And such a father, in such a becoming state of mind, can be appeased, can be properly propitiated, if he can be assured that the erring child has been brought to penitence and confession, and, in the recovered spirit of son-like obedience and trust, longs to have loving relations restored. It should clearly be seen, that the pleading of the Advocate is with the Father, whose son has gone astray; and the propitiation is such as can be offered to a grieved Father. It is twofold:
1. It is the personal acceptableness of the Advocate (Christ the righteous) which gives power to His plea.
2. It is the work which the Advocate has done in the erring son which gives the Father full and sufficient ground for restoring him to favour.
II. The persuasion against Christian sinning.—“These things I write unto you, that ye may not sin.” To unfold such full and gracious provisions for a case of Christian sin might be used wrongly, and Christian people might become indifferent and careless. Because recovery was so easy and so complete, they might presume, and think lightly of frailties and stumblings. St. John reminds us how utterly wrong, and how unworthy, such a misuse of his teachings was. The grace in recovery should be a persuasion to the most watchful endeavour not to make occasion for the grace. There should be the most resolute effort to keep our Father’s commandments, and never grieve Him, or put ourselves out of loving relations with Him. And we shall be sure to keep right if only we will “walk even as Christ walked” (1 John 2:6). There is the Sonship that is always well-pleasing to the Father; and the very grace of that Son towards His frail brothers should be a constant persuasion to them to try, more and more, to live like Him, and think like Him, and keep all pleasant relations with the Father, even as He does, because He ever walks in the light, which is kin with the Father, who is light.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 2:1. St. John’s Little Children.—“My little children”—τεκνία. It is quite certain that St. John does not write his epistle to, or here address, mere children. His term is used figuratively. St. John may have in mind—
1. That the believers to whom he wrote were but in the young, early stages of Christian life, knowledge, and experience.
2. Or the term may only indicate his affectionate considertion for them, as an aged father in Christ. But it is more probable—
3. That the term was carefully chosen by St. John, in order to suggest to them that family associations would best explain to them his teachings. They would understand him if they thought of themselves as children—good children, but frail—and needing much training and discipline; and if they thought of God as their Father, who would surely be grieved at His Children’s wayward ways. “St. John’s conception of the Church is that of a family; in which all are children of God and brethren one of another, but in which also some who are elders stand in a parental relation to the younger brethren.” See chaps, 1 John 2:12; 1 John 2:28, 1 John 3:18, 1 John 4:4, 1 John 5:21.
Children’s Sin.—“That ye may not sin.” Ye, the children of the family, to which St. John, and the Lord Jesus, both belonged. The distinction between the sin of those in family relations, and the sin of those outside family relations, needs to be very carefully drawn. For one thing, the sins of the members of the family are wholly dealt with within the family. They are never taken to a court of justice. They can be quite effectively dealt with by the father, and the other children. For another thing, the idea of punishment for vindication of authority goes into the background in connection with a child’s sin; and the recovery of the child, and the discipline of the child through the way in which he is recovered, become the prominent and all-important things.
Our Lord as Paraclete.—παράκλητος πρὸς τὸν πατέρα. The Lord is our Paraclete—that is, not as it were with the Father, for the accusative must have its rights, as meaning over against or towards the Father. His advocacy turns towards the Father, and has to do with Him; while, on the other hand, He is, according to the gospel, ἐν ἡμῖν, our Paraclete, inasmuch as He stands by the side of the Christian, in all his conflict with the world and himself, as his Counsellor, and Advocate, and Helper. But as towards God, who is light, and a righteous Judge, the Lord can be regarded as a merciful Mediator only under a twofold presupposition:
1. He must Himself be well-pleasing to God through His moral qualification.
2. He must represent a cause which may commend itself to God as the righteous One. The first element is in our verse made prominent by the predicate δίκαιος; the second verse brings out the second element. The two united cannot be more tersely and precisely expressed than in the words of Calvin: “Justum et propitiationem vocat Christum; utroque præditum esse oportet; ut munus personamque advocati sustineat, quis enim peccator nobis Dei gratiam conciliet?” Hence it is not to be overlooked that we read, not παράκλητον δίκαιον ἔχομεν, but παράκλητον ἔχομεν ʼΙησοῦν Χριστὸν δίκαιον. The former statement would indeed mean that His agency as a Paraclete was a righteous one, that He is righteous in His proper function as a Paraclete—as Beda expresses it, “Patronus justus caussas injustas non accipit”; but it is not until the second verse that that element comes out. The order in the apostle’s own words gives prominence first to the righteousness of the person—by reason of which He is fitted generally, as over against God, to assume the part of a Mediator.—Eric Haupt.
Christ in Heaven.—St. John’s message can be put into a sentence. Fellowship with the Father may be enjoyed, but only by those who “walk in the light.” The full idea of the Christian life includes likeness to God in two essential things—light and love. In the perfect Christian life there is no sin, for there is no self-will. Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. But that ideal is seldom, if ever, actually attained. As a fact, Christian people do sin. Unless the statement is most carefully qualified, it is false for any man to say that he has reached conscious freedom from sin. The word of God provides for the fact of Christian sin. They who are clean every whit still need to wash their feet. There are two ways of dealing with the fact:
1. We may assume that sin is a necessity to the Christian life, and that there need be no grave anxiety about it. But to deal with it in this way would be to put our Christian life in peril, and nourish presumption. Dress a child in pure garments, and it will make all the difference in his conduct if he is expected to soil them. The child and the Christian should fully understand that they need not soil their garments: they may walk in white. But in case they unwittingly do, provision is duly made.
2. We may too greatly despond on account of Christian sins, and this we do when we wrongly estimate the provision which has been made for them. Despondency is a serious evil; it plucks away the joy and enterprise of Christian life. It is quite one thing for us to have some stains gather on the white garment of our acceptance, and quite another to strip our white garment off. Keeping it on, there is a most full and blessed provision made for the stains: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Deliverance from both forms of mistake lies in a proper apprehension of the truth gathering round Christ in heaven.
I. Christ in heaven—in general, His work in the heavenly places.—The mediatorial work of Christ is represented as having three stages, when viewed historically. A stage of preparation running through some four thousand years, in which man was permitted to exhaust every scheme of self-recovery. Then followed a stage of manifestation, comprising the brief human life of the Lord Jesus. Perfect virtue, incarnate love, was then exhibited as the object of man’s trust, imitation, and love. To this succeeds a stage of spiritual relations. Christ is conceived as exalted to the right hand of the Father, as passed beyond body limitations, as become a spiritual power, aiding the development of the godly life in those who believe. New Testament Scriptures frequently present the vision of Christ in heaven, in His glorified humanity—in that glorified humanity which He showed us for forty days after His resurrection. Thus exalted, and spiritualised, our Lord bears now actual, present, direct, and most intimate relations to all the varying phases of our personal and our associated life. Often we read the deep meanings of the Sacrifice and Resurrection. We should be oftener searching into the deep meanings of the Ascension. The Christian disciple may stand steadfastly gazing into heaven, watching the shining way up which the Saviour went, and trying to pierce the cloud-veil that hides His glory from view. In the moments of opened vision, which holy souls sometimes know, Stephen looked through, and saw “Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Saul of Tarsus heard the voice of Him he was persecuting speaking out of the heavenly places; and St. John saw Christ, in the sublime visions of Patmos, standing before the throne, and, as the “Angel of the covenant,” waving the golden censer wherein are the “prayers of the saints.” There, in the glory, “on His vesture, and on His thigh, is this name written, King of kings, and Lord of lords.” “We have a great High Priest who is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” John “beheld, and lo! in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.” We need not, however, think of Him as exhibiting His wounds in heaven, and using persuasions with God on our behalf by pointing to the marks of nails and spear. He is God’s beloved Son, infinitely acceptable on the ground of a spiritual obedience, of which the Father can never need any such material remindings. The natural body has become the glorified body; even the earth-marks are glorified, and lie now only as tender memorials of a past to quicken the redeemed to new love and thankfulness. In addition to Scripture teachings, we can discover the necessity for thinking of Christ as in heaven by the place left for that truth in the circle of Christian doctrine, and in the demand made for it by the Christian heart. We can see this—
1. God can never be rightly known by man except through humanity. The very point of Christ’s taking our nature upon Him, actually coming in the flesh, being born of a woman, and in all points tempted like as we are, lies in the necessity for revealing the knowledge of God through man’s nature. Man can never know God sufficiently and savingly until he can see Him as if He were a fellow-man. Therefore false religions always dream of incarnations. Therefore the true religion declares that “He who was in the form of God … was found in fashion as a man.” It is still as true as it ever was, that man can only know God through the forms and figures that belong to man. So when he lifts his eyes to the heavenly, and through the veil of Christ would see God, it can only be by realising the humanity, the brotherhood, of the glorified and exalted Son. All visions of the spiritual and the heavenly would become unreal to us, would be vague, dim, dreamy, unpractical, if we lost from the ascended Christ His bodily and human associations. Our living and spiritual Saviour is the “Man Christ Jesus.”
2. Men would be, all down through the ages, and all over the world, seeking the Saviour with their various burdens of suffering and sin. They would want the sympathy of the “Man of sorrows.” They would need a Saviour in heaven. Kept in the limitations of a human body, He could not speak with voice that should reach all seekers; but exalted, ascended, spiritual, He can be the dear friend of every soul; from the east, and west, and north, and south they may come, and do come, to sit down in the kingdom of the Son, because He is the risen, glorified, living Song of Song of Solomon 3. And the work of sanctification which has to be wrought in the renewed assures us that Christ is in heaven. There are three stages in His work as carried on in the hearts of His people. Entire recovery is not effected by the first act of faith. That enthrones the new principle. But much has to be done in giving that principle its full sway. And the one condition of progressive sanctification is that we maintain fellowship with the Father. And the fellowship is kept up by this—Jesus, our elder Brother, is maintaining the fellowship, as representing us, and pledging us. Is a Christian asked whether he is keeping up fellowship with God, he replies, “Do you mean I by myself, or I in Christ?”
4. And Christ’s own are ever passing into the glorified state, where they will want Him. If the marks of His manhood do not still appear, our passing friends will feel strange in their new home. Surely it must be the soul’s recognition of its long-loved Brother, and Friend, and Saviour that will unseal the eyes, and bring recognition of glorified mothers, and children, and friends. Call it what you may, the Christian heart clings to the conviction that “Jesus lives”: He is in heaven. He still reveals the Father. He still welcomes the seeker. He still sanctifies those who believe. He will be the glorified Man until all the elect are gathered in, and all the ends of His redemption reached. Then He shall “see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.”
II. Christ in heaven—in particular, His relation to Christian sins, and to the states of mind into which we are brought by sins.—The word translated “Advocate” is the word “Paraclete,” with which we are familiar as describing the Holy Spirit. It exactly means, “One who may be called upon for help.” And in calling Christ our “Advocate” attention is directed to His relation to us as a Helper. It is not designed, by the use of this word, to indicate the exact nature of His relationship to God. He is our Advocate, appearing in the presence of God for us. It is needful to point this out, because, having the idea of the barrister and lawyer in our minds, we too easily transfer our legal fictions to God, and thereby sadly misconceive His relations both with Christ and with men. Then He is Advocate with the Father: not with a Judge; not before the Father, but with Him. Not using persuasions before the Father, or arguments to guide the Judge, but the Father’s own Helper, provided by the Father in His great love for the helping of His redeemed family. Moreover, it is Jesus Christ the righteous who is Advocate. Not Jesus Christ the priest. Not Jesus Christ the sacrifice, or the atonement, but Jesus Christ the righteous. His fellowship with the Father, as representing us, is based on His merit, His righteousness—the righteousness of His Sonship, the obedience of the Divine will unto and through death. His righteousness is perfect; therefore the fellowship is never broken, and He can use all the privileges belonging to that fellowship for the helping, comforting, teaching, saving, of His people.
1. Christ in heaven ensures the abiding forgiveness of Christian sins. In Christ the righteous we stand ever before the Father as accepted, righteous sons. Every act of sin breaks our fellowship. The holy Father could not pass by even the least sin in the children He loves so well. If every act of Christian sin actually broke up our fellowship with the Father, how hopeless our condition would be! Our elder Brother keeps up the fellowship for us.
2. Christ in heaven is the living Friend by whose help we are delivered from the power of Christian sins. He covers with His righteousness all our wrong; but He can never cover any unrepented wrong. Christ supposes that we really want to put the sin away, and comes in the power of His Spirit to help us. Every one who honestly struggles against sin may be sure of the presence of Jesus to root out of his soul the very love and desire of it. Under this most inspiring truth shall we
(1) dare to presume, or
(2) dare to despond?
The Advocate in the Court of Mercy. This opening sentence reminds us—
I. Of the speaker’s venerable age.—Sixty years before he had clasped the hand of Christ, drooped his head on the breast of incarnate Love. He had stood by the cross, witnessed the Ascension, seen Jerusalem in its glory and final ruin. Last of apostles who had stood face to face with Jesus.
II. It reveals his tender love.—His love glows in the epithet of endearment with which he habitually addresses his younger companions in the faith.
III. His authority as a teacher.—All inspired men speak with equal authority of office, but not with equal authority of knowledge—with equal accuracy, but not with equal range of light. His writings are marked by simplicity, gentleness, and love.
1. Consider the fact. “We have an Advocate.”
(1) Such a mediatorial office can only exist by the appointment of the absolute Ruler. Behind the great mystery of the Redemption there is the love of a Father contriving it all, inspiring it all, explaining it all.
(2) It proves our need of an Advocate. There is a wise and exact economy in all the works, and ways, and words of the Divine Father. He never grants a needless gift, never founds a needless institution.
(3) He pleads for us in the court of mercy. Propitiation, in its meaning, includes the idea of mercy. The propitiatory was the mercy-seat. “Be propitious to me” is fitly rendered “Be merciful to me.”
(4) “Advocate” is the title of a helper whose aid must be invoked. An advocate is one who is called to the aid of a client. Christ is silent until we invoke Him. A cry to Him will bring Him to our side as a kind and faithful Pleader.
2. The qualifications of the Person to whom this advocacy is entrusted Our Pleader is “Jesus Christ the righteous.”
(1) His character, “the righteous.” The rectitude of Jesus is emphatically perfect. Theorists confess their faith in the spotless splendour of His humanity.
(2) His plea. God saves transgressors on the ground of righteous substitution. Jesus is the second Adam, the Sponsor for those who believe. “He, for us, has fulfilled the law; we, in Him, are fulfillers of the law.”
(3) His nature. He has all natural qualifications for the undertaking. He is God and man.
(4) His acquaintance with your case. Before you confide to Him a single secret, His acquaintance with your whole life is intimate and perfect. “He knew what was in man.” Christ knows the worst of us.
3. Trace the influence which these things are to have upon our lives.
(1) You are to avoid presumption. “That ye sin not.” We must not so hold the doctrine of Christ’s substitutionary work that the thought of it will make us less alive to the enormity of sin, and less afraid of its defilement, than we should otherwise have been. The merit of Christ justifies none but those whom His Spirit sanctifies.
(2) You are to avoid despondency. “If any man sin.” The men whose spiritual life is most faint and wavering are most in danger of presumption; and the men whose spiritual life is most advanced are sometimes in danger of despondency. Keen perception of sin, leading to despondency, is not always caused by growing holiness. The backslider may feel it. Almost every awakened sinner has felt it. Whoever feels it, here is a revelation that furnishes an antidote to all despair: “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”—Charles Stanford, D.D.
Christ the Righteous.—The Armenian translation adds to the term “righteous,” “and blameless”; and it is evident that what we may properly call our Lord’s moral and religious character is the thing upon which attention is fixed. The Son, the “Man Christ Jesus,” does actually stand in full and perfect acceptance with the Father, with God, on the ground of His personal righteousness as a Son, and as a man. That personal acceptance gives Him the place, the right, and the power for His advocacy in our behalf. It is most important to the understanding of St. John that we should realise how entirely his mind and heart were absorbed in the contemplation of the person of Christ, even to the exclusion of direct references to Christ’s work. To understand our Lord’s redemptive work, we must seek the guidance of St. Paul; to understand our Lord’s redemptive power, we must seek the guidance of St. John. Our Lord presents the only blameless example of human nature. He is “righteous.” He is human nature entirely recovered, absolutely delivered from the effects of the Fall; He is God’s idea of a human son realised; and there can therefore be no conceivable hindrance to His acceptance with the Father. Scripture writers are exceedingly jealous over not the merely negative “sinlessness,” but over the positive “righteousness,” of Christ. (See John 16:8-10; Hebrews 7:26; 1 Peter 3:18.) And the righteousness of Christ is a distinctly human righteousness, because it has been gained through the testing of a human body and an earthly experience. It is not an innocent condition in which Christ was set, but a righteousness which Christ has won under the conditions in which we have to win our righteousness. It is therefore distinctly relative to us. It is a leadership of us. It can be a representative of us. Christ before the throne, Christ the Son before the Father, standing in the acceptance of His own humanly won righteousness, is our Advocate, and pleads for us on the ground of that righteousness.
1 John 2:1-2. Propitiation for Sin.—Let us not be afraid of a theory of the Atonement. Vagueness in this matter is spiritual weakness. The word “propitiation” has a well-defined meaning, and in itself embodies a theory; and when we read it with what else Scripture teaches, we cannot be wrong in saying that the death of the Lord Jesus is the one means by which God extends His favour to sinful men.
I. The need of propitiation.—To propitiate is to turn away wrath. Propitiation implies wrath. Words occur all through Scripture which indicate more than Divine sorrow, even Divine displeasure, Divine wrath. So there is Divine wrath to be turned away; whilst that wrath remains God cannot receive man, and man cannot go to God. And Divine forgiveness must be legal. God is not only Father, He is Sovereign; sin is the rejection of His law, rebellion against His majesty, and its forgiveness must be in harmony with law, and the inviolable claims of His throne. Before God can receive back the sinner there is wrath to be averted in some way by which righteousness shall be equally honoured with mercy. And man needs such propitiation too; his moral sense must be satisfied in any adequate redemption.
II. The propitiation provided.—
1. This is a propitiation provided and made by God Himself.
2. This propitiation is by the substitutionary offering of God the Son. Sin cannot be transferred, but penalty Song of Song of Solomon 3. This propitiation is sufficient for the sins of the world.
III. The propitiation made use of.—Propitiation does not save; it makes it possible for us to go to God; it enables Him to throw His door wide open, and to receive graciously and love freely all who come; but we must tread that open way, we must go to Him. That is where faith comes in. “We are saved through faith.” The end of the propitiation is the filial relationship fulfilled, and that is salvation.—Charles New.
1 John 2:2. The Ends Attained by Propitiation.—
1. It is the fullest revelation of the Divine character. It sets before us, in one great act, the righteousness and the mercy of God. The cross proclaims the pardon for which infinite love solicits. The heart of God yields to itself. But how can this be? It is because the pardon solicited by love is obtained by a sacrifice which equally exhibits God’s righteousness.
2. If men are to be saved at all, they must be saved to holiness; they must be sanctified as well as forgiven. The result cannot be otherwise for those who truly believe in the sacrifice of Christ as thus explained. Holiness and love, the two great elements of the character of God—these are expressed in the cross, and they must be reproduced in the character of those for whom the cross does its appointed work.—C. Bailhache.
Christ’s Death.
I. Christ’s death was vicarious.—He did not merely die for our benefit, in order to our good; He died in our stead. Christ the sinless One suffered for the sinful in the place of the sinful.
II. Christ’s death was propitiatory.—When parties are at variance with each other, we speak of the offended party, especially if he be a superior, as becoming propitious, or propitiated, when the displeasure is removed, and the variance gives place to favour.
III. Christ’s death is expiatory.—Propitiation and expiation are constantly used as synonymous terms.
IV. In our Lord’s death God’s righteousness is manifested in inseparable union with His grace.
V. Christ’s death is fraught with moral benefit to mankind.—Its great object is to bring us back to God, the fountain of all goodness. When we come under its power, our character is transformed; we are delivered from the tyranny of sin, and come under the sway of holy principle, which permeates and controls our life in all the relations we bear, and in all the circumstances in which we can be placed.—James Kennedy, M.A.
Propitiation for Christian Sins.—“For our sins.” Whatever may be the meaning of the word “propitiation” in the New Testament generally, it is quite clear that in this passage it is directly connected with the sins of Christians. In only a very indirect way can this passage be connected with the sins of the whole world. That at least is the large and general truth, and St. John is laying emphasis on the particular and precise truth. Propitiation, as connected with Christian sins, must be represented most effectively by the restoration of peace in a home that has been broken up by the Children’s wrong-doing. The word cannot here mean propitiatory sacrifice, because it is the Person Christ, and not the work of Christ, that is referred to in the passage. It is Jesus Christ the righteous; and His personal righteousness is evidently the ground or basis of the propitiation. He is—He Himself is—the propitiation for our sins. He, standing before God in His righteousness, is the basis of God’s gracious and peaceful relations with us. Christ, as it were, pledges the family obedience, and so wins and keeps the peace of the home.
The World’s Propitiation.—“But also for the whole world.” This expression requires us to recognise at once a sameness, and a difference, in the senses in which propitiation is to be applied to the sin-frailties of Christians, and the sin-wilfulnesses of the world. It reminds us of the expression of St. Paul, “The living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.” What is presented to thought is, that God the Son has undertaken a twofold work of grace. He has undertaken to deal with, in order to secure their removal, the difficulties occasioned by “our sins,” i.e. our Christian frailties, imperfections, and temporary wilfulnesses. And He has also undertaken to deal with all the difficulties, disabilities, and penalties which have come through the world’s wilful sin. Christ bears brotherly and helpful relations to those who are sons indeed, and also to those who are sons, though headless of the fact.
1 John 2:3. Obedience the Secret of the Higher Knowledge.—“And hereby know we that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.” The reference is to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to that full apprehension of Him which is so entirely different from mere acquaintance. There may be only one way in which we can get to know things. The laws of mind may be as absolute and universal as the laws of nature. But there are many ways in which we can get to know persons.
1. We can make them a subject of study, watch their conduct under varying circumstances, and form our impressions, which will be more or less correct and complete. In that way, however, we can never come to know more than the surface of a man. The spiritual being, who is the real man, makes only a very imperfect impression upon us, in that way. No amount of study will ever do more than give us apprehension of a man from the outside.
2. We can come into direct, constant, personal associations with a man, and thus come to know him through daily intercourse. The persons on earth whom we know best we know in this way, and the knowledge comes by feeling rather than by thinking. The good son never thinks of studying his mother, but he knows her well.
3. We can yield ourselves in personal service to a man, and thus come to the very fullest and highest knowledge of him. It is said that “No man is a hero to his own valet.” And it is so because a man opens up his real and true self to him who serves him. And our Lord said concerning the intimacy given to trusted servants, “Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends.” It is but presenting this truth from one point of view to say that through our obedience to Christ, our keeping His commandments, our serving Him, come into our souls the fullest, highest, most spiritual, apprehensions of Him. We can know Christ by study, and by ordinary relations of life with Him. But we can never know Christ fully until we have entered into personal relations of obedient service to Him.
1 John 2:6. Fellowship dependent on Like-mindedness.—“Ought himself also to walk, even as He walked.” A man’s walk is the expression of his real mind and purpose, but not necessarily of the profession he may make. The distinction between a man’s profession and a man’s mind needs to be clearly and sharply drawn. They ought to be in absolute correspondence; they need not be; and they often are not. What measure of fellowship can be obtained on the basis of men’s professions?—
1. When they do not carry men’s minds, and find fitting expression for them. Such fellowship must of necessity be surface fellowship, uncertain, untrustworthy, and wholly unable to stand any sort of strain.
2. When they do carry and express men’s settled minds and purposes. Then the fellowship is soundly and safely based; the man himself is in it. But it remains to be shown that for the full joy of the fellowship the man’s mind must be fully kin with him whose fellowship he seeks. The man himself must be in it; and he must be like-minded with the other party in the fellowship.
Knowledge through Obedience.—There is no real knowledge of God, no fellowship with Him, without practical conformity to His will. St. John is again condemning that Gnostic doctrine which made excellence to consist in mere intellectual enlightenment. Divorced from holiness of life, St. John says, no enlightenment can be a knowledge of God. In his system of Christian ethics the apostle insists, no less than Aristotle, that in morals knowledge without practice is worthless: “not speculation, but conduct,” is the aim of both the Christian and the heathen philosopher. Mere knowledge will not do; nor will knowledge “touched by emotion” do. It is possible to know, and admire, and in a sort of way love, and yet act as if we had not known. But St. John gives no encouragement to devotion without a moral life (compare chap. 1 John 1:6). There is only one way of proving to ourselves that we know God, and that is by loving obedience to His will. Compare the very high standard of virtue set by Aristotle: he only is a virtuous man who does virtuous acts,—“first, knowingly; secondly, from deliberate preference, and deliberate preference for the sake of the acts (and not any advantages resulting from them), and, thirdly, with firm and unvarying purpose” (Nico. Eth., II. iv. 3).—A. Plummer, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
1 John 2:1. Intercession.—An ancient historian records the history of two brothers, one of whom was a gallant hero, and bad lost his arm in the defence of his native country; the other, an infamous profligate, who for capital crimes was condemned to die. The hero appeared before the judges as an advocate for his brother; he spoke not, but only held up his arm. This act pleaded so powerfully that the guilt was forgiven, on account of the services rendered by his brother. Sacred history also gives an account of the debt or guilt of one being charged to another. Onesimus was Philemon’s bond-slave, but had stolen his master’s goods, and deserted his service. In his wanderings he met with Paul, and became a convert to the gospel; being useful to the apostle during his imprisonment at Rome, he took him under his protection, and endeavoured to bring about a reconciliation between the master and slave. Accordingly, he wrote a letter to the rich citizen of Colossæ, and sent it by the criminal himself, in which he insisted that the slave might be forgiven, and that, if he had been injured by him, or was in his debt, to charge it to his, Paul’s, account (Philemon 1:18). Pardon and forgiveness were thus obtained, not from any merits in the recipients, but in consideration of the merits of others.