CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 John 2:12-17 indicate the things which the disciples must not love, if they would walk in the light, and be sons with the “Only Begotten.”
1 John 2:12. Sins are forgiven.—The reception of Divine forgiveness is our virtual pledge that we will not again sin. “The forgiveness of sins is the first condition of Christian morals.” His name’s sake.—His name is Son. The basis of forgiveness is the offering to God the Father of a perfect sonship—the sonship of a man tested in a human life and death. St. John has not in mind what we mean by “for the sake of His atonement.”
1 John 2:13. Fathers.—The older men among the disciples; regarded as having a prolonged personal experience. Young men.—Who have gained something like a personal hold of Divine things, but are in danger of being over-confident and over-positive. They have gained first victories over evil, and are in danger of being unduly proud of their success. In each case St. John recognises a certain maturity, in which there is hope, together with a certain immaturity, which exposes disciples to the powers of evil and temptation.
1 John 2:15. The world.—Compare our Lord’s words, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” By the “world” we may understand “that moral order which is antagonistic to God.” Or we may keep in the line of St. John’s thought and say, “It is all that sphere in which only self-interests are allowed to rule.” St. John personifies the self, and calls it the “evil one,” the “wicked one.” Things in the world.—The love of pleasure, money, glory. See James 1:27; James 4:4. Philo taught, “It is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God.”
1 John 2:16. Lust of the flesh.—The genitive after ἐπιθυμία is usually subjective. The lusts which have their agents in the flesh and in the eyes. Lust is desire that is not being held in wise and safe control. “The habit of a mind engrossed by sensual gratifications.” Pride of life.—This is well expressed by the term “braggadocio of life”; “wanton ostentation in gratifying the desires of sense and sight” (James 4:16). “All living up to a supposed social position, instead of as the responsible steward of undeserved bounties, is hereby condemned.”
1 John 2:17. Abideth for ever.—Because God is on the side of goodness, and there are no forces which can effectively stop it, or destroy it. In the nature of things evil is temporary, and good is permanent. For ever means, “unto the age to come.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 2:12-17
Types of Stages in Christian Experience.—We have piety here as it appears in individuals at different periods of life—its characters in each class, and the common danger of all. I. Little children. Their piety is characterised by much affection. II. Young men—and women too. Piety in manhood is—
1. Strong and courageous.
2. Full of enterprise and achievement. III. Old men, or fathers in Christ. The characteristic of these is knowledge—knowledge of men and things, but especially of Divine things (J. Leifchild, D.D.). It is, however, a fuller understanding of St. John to recognise in his three terms, “little children,” “young men,” “fathers,” figures of the three great stages of religious culture and experience which are represented in every Church. Sometimes the term “little children” is used to include all the believers, but at other times the threefold distinction is clear. In every Church there are always those who do but look on to Christian living, those who are in the actual strain of Christian living, and those who are able to look back on Christian living. Or to state the case in simple terms, there are united in the fellowship of every Church the immature, the prime, and the mature. And the blending of these classes, their mutual relations, responsibilities, and ministries, make the glory of Church life; and it is skilful and helpful mutual blending that we should try to secure. Let us see if we can recognise the distinctness of these types, and the ways in which each one may be the helper of the other.
I. “Little children” represent the “immature,” those who have no experience behind them, and do but look on to Christian living.—Of them St. John says, “I write unto you, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake”—“because ye know the Father.” The very first stage of Christian life is the thought of God which brings personal relations and the joy of forgiveness. The awakening of the soul is the sense of God that comes, the reality of God, the personal relation of God to the soul. No man is converted save as Jacob was, by a personal revelation of God to him. Express it in whatever form you may, the very essence of conversion is a man’s discovery that he is a child, and that God is his Father. A man cannot help becoming a new being, conscious of a new atmosphere and new relations, when once he has apprehended those two things. And there is no other possible beginning of the regenerate life. With that discovery there is bound to go another. He will feel his actual relations as a child with a father are not what they should be; and he cannot rest until they are made what they ought to be. And since he feels the wrong to be altogether on his side, he can but seek that Fatherly forgiveness which is so ready to be extended to every seeking child. There are always in the Church some persons who are at this first and simple stage of the Divine life. They are alive to the thought of God, and they have got their relations right with Him. But they have no experience. Christian living is an altogether unknown thing to them; they can but look on, and wonder what the long years will unfold. Such persons come into the fullest concern of Christian pastors, who, like St. John, will try to adapt their teaching and influence so as most efficiently to help and guide all such. The simplicity and strength of faith, the brightness and joy of first experience, in these “little children,” are a most gracious blessing to the spiritual life of our Churches, and it is well that every Church should have such representative cases always in it.
II. “Young men” represent the “prime,” those who are in the actual strain of Christian living.—“I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil one”—“because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one.” These members of the Church are such as have some experience of the Christian life, enough to fit them for dealing with the duties, difficulties, and temptations that may come. When a man has reached some thirty years of life, he is in a sense prepared for life, partly matured. The unexpected will still happen; but the round of experiences which the man has gone through will have prepared him to deal wisely with any circumstances that may arise. And so there are in a Church those whose experiences of the Divine life have been sufficiently prolonged and varied to give them efficiency and maturity. They are like young men in their prime. On them the strain of Church life and responsibility rests. They are fitted for it: their experiences are fresh; none have become so prolonged as to become wearisome, the sense of strength and wisdom makes Church life and work a delight to them. They have fought evil, in one shape and another. They have felt the thrill of joy in first victories, and a great sense of power is upon them. But they need the wisely adapted teachings of the apostle, and of faithful ministers, because in their conscious strength lies a subtle peril. These experiences are not complete; they have no experience of keeping on. There is too much excitement in their experience; they are too much in it themselves. It is more an experience of what they have been doing, than of what God has been doing in them. It gives them confidence and energy. They feel as if they could overcome all the evil ones, and so need to be reminded that “old Satan may prove too much for young Melancthon.”
III. “Fathers” represent the “mature,” those who are able to look back on Christian living.—“I write unto you, fathers, because ye know Him which is from the beginning.” This is the one thing in St. John’s mind concerning the fathers, and he repeats it a second time. Their experience was complete. It might be that in the Churches which St. John addressed some yet lingered who had been connected with Church life from the very beginning, from the days of the earthly manifestation of the Lord Jesus. Or the thought may be of a long life spent in Christian relations, and bringing not only every kind of experience, but such a repetition of experiences as involves the special experience of weariness through sameness. There are always “fathers” in this sense in Christian Churches; and they need apostolic counsels, for they are in danger of checking enterprise, by being quite sure that everything attempted will fail, because they have seen so many things fail, and because they know so well how many difficulties everything will have to contend against. A full experience is not an unqualified advantage. In Christian experience it is possible to know so much as to lose faith in anything. These types can be helpful to each other in Church life. The “little children” call for sympathy, and put the brightness of simple faith into Church relations. The “young men” bear the burden of Church duties and responsibilities. And the “fathers” temper enterprise with counsels of prudence. And what is the one message which St. John considers to have its precise adaptation to each of these classes? At first sight it seems to be suitable only for the “young men,” those in their prime. It is this, “Love not the world.” But if we understand St. John to mean by the world what we may call personified (or projected) self, we shall at once see how his advice becomes applicable to all the classes. The peril of the “little children” is making too much of what they have felt; and that is simply putting self into their experiences. The peril of the “young men” is in making too much of what they do, of what they are doing in their maturity and strength; and that is simply putting self into their experiences. The peril of the “fathers” is in making too much of what they know, presuming upon their length of years and their observations; and that is simply putting self into their complete experiences. “Love not the world” really is but, in a figurative way, saying, “Love not yourself.” And this is plain to view when we notice that it is not the “world,” but the love of the world, against which we are so carefully warned. That is, it is something in us, not something outside us; it is the self in us that is always—either in some secret or some open way—trying to be master of us. St. John is evidently very anxious to make this quite plain to us. So he tells us what he means by the “things that are in the world,” and we see at once that they are, all three, not things of the outside world at all, but things of the world of self, the world within us. The “lust of the flesh” is a bad side of the self. The “lust of the eyes” is a bad side of the self. The “vain-glory of life” is a bad side of the self. Those things will be found to prove sources of difficulty to Church members in all the stages of the Divine life. Beginners must beware of over-mastering self. Strong men must beware of over-mastering self. Aged men—our fathers in Christ—must beware of the subtle ways in which self can spoil their witness and their influence. And St. John suggests the safeguard that will defend us at every stage of the Divine life—defend us from the precise influence of the world of self upon us. It is this—Keep up the full sense of your child-relation to the Father, and in everything watch for and do His will.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 2:12. Forgiveness of Sins a First Experience.—It is remarkable that “forgiveness of sins” should be associated with the term “little children,” if children in age are meant by the apostle. The real sense of sin, and consequently the full joy of forgiveness, can only be known by those of mature age, who have intelligent understanding, and personal experience, of what wilful sin is and involves. A child’s experience of sin and forgiveness are right enough and important enough for the child-stage of life; but we must look to the larger, fuller life of manhood for real and deep experiences. When a man is awakened by the Spirit of God, he is brought to a sense of sin, and of the conditions into which sin has brought him. He is oppressed above everything by the conviction that it has put him out of pleasant relations with the Father-God, and brought on him the Divine disfavour and frown. Then it is clear that there can be no beginning of Christian life, without such a restoration of relations with God as must involve His forgiveness. Not a step can be taken in the Christian life until we know that we are forgiven and accepted.
1 John 2:13. The Young Man’s “Wicked One.”—“Ye, young men, have overcome the wicked one.” It is very easy to assume that there is a Satan, and then say that Satan is meant by the “wicked one” here. But the verse needs some careful and precise thinking about. Personifying moral or immoral qualities, influences, or forces is constantly done, and constantly occasions difficulty. Joubert very wisely says, “The trick of personifying words is a fatal source of mischief in theology.” It is not intended here to present any arguments for or against the idea of a personal devil—only to direct attention to the suggestive fact, with which preachers may effectively deal, that the “young man’s wicked one” is nothing outside him, but is himself, in the untried and unrestrained strength of his intensity and passion. It is his undue “self-centredness,” “self-interest.” There can be no “wicked one” so wicked to him as his own weak, untested, over-confident self.
Knowing the Father.—“Ye know the Father.” We may learn from the case of the apostles—those first disciples—what is the Christian way of getting to see and know the Father.
I. The disciples were filled with the thought of Christ.—They had their Master in the sphere of the senses. They spent day by day with Him. They watched every deed, and listened for every word, and their whole thought was occupied with His personality. We can hardly imagine what it must have been to spend three years in the fascination of Christ’s daily presence. Those disciples could think of nothing but Jesus, and talk of nothing but Jesus. And this was so far good and right. Since Christ is God, we can never make too much of Him; we may fearlessly fill our heart and thought with Him. His individuality can never be too forcibly impressed upon us. And yet Christ will be grieved if we stop with His earthly manifestation, and fail to enter into His greater mystery. He does not want to be seen only with men’s bodily eyes. We may not—the disciples may not—stop with the fascination of the “Man Christ Jesus.” He does indeed strongly impress His human presence, but only with an ultimate design, only as a stepping-stone to something further and better. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh,” says St. Paul, “yet now henceforth know we Him [thus] no more.” Christ would neither have His disciples, nor us, rest in Him, if we can only see His earthly features. Disciples must see God in Him, even the Father-God in Him. We may not stay with the outward show of the Christ of the gospels: we too must find God in Him, even the Father-God in Him. The earthly and the human are but stepping-stones; and yet it is only with our feet on them that we can rise to higher and better things. The way to all else, and bettor, is to be, like the first disciples, full of the thought of Christ, and setting all our affection and hope on Him. But, on the other hand—
II. Christ was filled with the thought of His Father.—All His life was seen by Him in its relation to the Father, and to the Father’s will. He was absorbed with the thought of the Father. He was always talking of the Father. It was the word for God that was characteristic of Him, the sacred name that was continually upon His lips. He seemed to be always putting Himself back into the second place, that He might fill men’s thoughts with the holy, righteous Father. So thoroughly characteristic is this of His teaching, that we are almost justified in calling it “Jesus Christ’s name for God,” and in saying that it is the very point and essence of the revelation which He brought to men. He seemed only to live among men that, in His character, and by His conduct, He might “show us the Father.” Was He pure, with a strict and yet winsome purity? He was but bringing closely home to our thought and feeling the holiness of God. Was He gentle, and pitying, and merciful? He was but persuasively making all the “goodness of God to pass before us,” and proclaiming the Father-name of God before us. Was He personally touched by human sorrows? Did He really take up our human woes as burdens on His own sympathy? He was but convincing us that “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” Look at His mighty works, His miracles of love and power. Are they mere! wonderful events—merely demonstrations of almightiness? Nay, surely, better far is their purpose. They are signs of the Father. There are the Father’s great works seen in miniature, that men may recognise the Father-hand that is in all the great things. Christ healed the sick, with a word and a touch, to reveal the living Father, who is watching by all sickbeds, raising up them that are bowed down, restoring, and healing, and comforting, every day and everywhere. Christ stood up to quell the sudden storm on little Galilee, to show His disciples the Father, who holdeth “the winds in His fists, and the waters in the hollow of His hand”; who can say, even to the winter-driven waves of the great ocean, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further”; who is the all-controlling Father even of the whirlwind and the tempest. Christ took the few loaves, and multiplied them into a full feast for the seated thousands, to show the Father-God, who, each returning year, multiplies the scattered seeds of the spring-time into the rich and waving autumn harvests from which all His children are fed. The miracles are not simply acts that glorify Christ’s power; the Father who sent Him, He doeth the works, and He stands out to view in all those miracles. They were all wrought with this for their supreme aim—to “shew us the Father.” All that Christ did, all that Christ said, all that Christ suffered, has for its one object the glorifying of the Father; and His closing prayer revealed the great purpose of His life: “Now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self.”
III. When disciples see Christ truly, they go past Him, and know the Father, see the Father, even as He did.—Seeing Christ truly! What is the true seeing of anything, or of any one? Is it ever so minute and exact a tracing of his doings or his sayings? Nay, it must be reading the heart—sympathetically entering into the very motive and spirit. Seeing is not a mere matter of bodily vision. What can any man who has only eyes in his body see of Christ? True seeing is soul-seeing,—apprehending the inner life of thought, principle, motive; seeing a man’s secret. What then may we see in Christ? He tells us Himself: “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” We may see the wise God as we trace the long and chequered history of our race, and note how “all things have been working together for good.” We can see the strong God as we look upon the everlasting mountains, and hear the mighty storm-voice echoing among the hills. We can know the beautiful and good God as we gaze upon the jewelled lake in its mountain setting, see the threading of the silver streamlet, or watch the golden-flowered fields. Goodness is revealed to all who can read nature’s heart. But how everything seems to pale, and fade, and pass out of vision, when we find that we can see and know our Father-God, in the human manifestation of Christ the Son, when we can read its heart aright! Simple souls, Christ’s “little children,” can “know the Father.”
1 John 2:14-16. An Old Man’s Message to the Young.—The writer of these words was an old man, a very old man, a very noble old man,—one more than usually rich in the experiences of life; one whose work for many years had been to watch the influences for good or for evil affecting the people, so that he might duly warn and guide. We read of “Paul the aged,” but the man of whom we now speak was “John the Beloved,” who lived to be nearly a hundred years old. What a wonderful century of life his must have been! Born into Jewish privileges, but at a time when Jewish ceremonial had lost its ever-present Jehovah, and had become a vain formalism—born at a time when Jewish liberty was crushed under the heel of Roman supremacy—St. John must have had a hard youth-time and early manhood. For a soul with any bigness in it, any great wants in it, any yearnings after high and Divine things in it, those few years before the birth of Christ must have been a weary time—the cry of the soul ever stifled, the out-reaching hand smitten back, the empty soul left empty still. Manhood had fully dawned when St. John came into the illuminations of the “Light” God had sent into the world. Prepared by the repentance which John the Baptist demanded, he came to Jesus, “found in Him a resting-place,” and for some three years knew a kind of joy unspeakable in the daily fellowship of “God manifest in the flesh.” When he lost his Lord out of hand-grasp, there came years of loving service to the risen and living One—years of travel, of preaching, of teaching, of suffering, of practical dealing with varieties of character, and of opposing both subtle and open evils. Who can tell what care and what work were crowded into those long years! He must have come to know young men well. He watched the eagerness with which they received the gospel-message. He mourned over the devices by which they were so often enticed back into the world again. Surely the young may wisely sit at the feet of this reverend, this saintly, this experienced old man. Consider then—
I. The old man’s kindly description of young men.—“Ye are strong.” If this description were not given by an inspired teacher, we might suspect flattery, or at least such an effort to say kindly things as would open the young man’s heart to receive his counsels. But, in truth, St. John gives us a careful, an almost philosophical estimate of the young man. No single word could more exactly describe him. He is “strong.” “The glory of young men is their strength.” The prophet exclaims, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” The word is a fitting one to describe the bodily, physical vigour of the young. At no other time in life is the frame so perfect, the energy so abundant, the vitality so strong. Oftentimes there is such a flow of purely physical power, as cannot be exhausted in the toil of life, and must flow over into athletic sports. To the strong man labour is joy, not toil; it is only with the wearying years that a man finds his work grow toilsome and hard. But St. John means more than bodily strength; he applies his word to the whole man, to the moral and spiritual nature, as well as the physical. We never love as we love in youth. We never desire as as we desire in youth. We never battle with obstacles and difficulties as we battle with them in youth. Perhaps it is even true to say, that we never “hunger and thirst after righteousness” as we do in youth. There is an intensity in all that the young folks do. Sometimes, indeed, it needs checking; sometimes it is not ruled by prudence. Sometimes the young man’s glory becomes his shame. The very energy put into worldly pursuits may result in bringing into the soul the “love of the world,” and pushing out the “love of the Father.” And St. John says of the young men, “the word of God abideth in you.” Only just started in life, the cares, and toils, and sorrows that make up our human lot have not yet proved strong enough to efface the impressions of the word of God, as they have been made on your hearts by early teachings and associations. By and by this may be true of you: the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches may choke the word. By-and-by you may refuse the invitations of Divine grace, using the poor excuses, “I have bought a piece of land”; “I have bought live yoke of oxen.” But it is not so with you now. The hallowing impressions of the early years abide. Holy memories of mother’s prayers abide. Relics of influence from days of sickness abide. Thoughts come back that were started in the Sabbath class. Warm feelings fill the heart sometimes, renewing the sacred impressions of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. There is on your heart to-day a strong grip of Christian truth and Christian claim. As yet, you have your souls, your memories, filled up with the word of God, the desire for God. In that the beloved apostle finds a basis for his warning: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” And, again, St. John describes young men as those who have “overcome the wicked one.” How graciously God must have put the hedge of His protection round you, if this can be said truly of you! Up to this hour you have been kept from “that wicked one”—from young men’s sins, the sins that come in the line of bodily indulgence and passion. Up to this hour you stand in God’s all-searching presence, pure from these defiling and debasing forms of evil. A stained and erring man, in the shame and weariness of old age, once said to a young brother, “John, bless God every day you live, if, by His grace, you have been kept from youthful sins.” Up to this time you have overcome “that wicked one.” You have, then, begun the great conflict: you have begun to understand what life means and involves. Consider—
II. The old man’s estimate of young men’s dangers.—“The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” The old man knows what things there really are in the world, and what are their different values and influences. The young man can know very little of the world, and what he does know is largely disguised to deceive. There is an important difference between the old man’s “I know,” and the young man’s “I know.” When the old man says “I know,” he means, “I have been there,” “I have had to do with it,” “I have battled through it.” When the young man says “I know,” he only means, “I think so,” “I have heard so,” “I hope so.” Young folk often think that the dangers of life are magnified by the old people: they cannot see such pitfalls, such carefully concealed nets and gins, such gaily decked temptations, as they hear of. And yet the truth is with the old man, not with the young. It is a glorious thing to live, but it is a very responsible thing. It is a blessed thing to be in this wonderful world of God’s, with all these surroundings of pleasure, and all these possible achievements opening before us. But it is a highly perilous thing; and every earnest soul will want to ask, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way,” and be ready to pray, “Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins.” Aged St. John could see that the world appeals to three faculties, or capacities, in us; and that, if our controlling power be the love of the world, rather than the love of the Father, then the world will be sure to lead us away from all that is true and good, and put us into the power of the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” Everybody’s danger and temptation bear relation to these three things. The first, “the lust of the flesh,” embraces all the indulgences of the natural passions and depraved inclinations of our bodily nature—all the excesses in eating, and drinking, and sensuality to which fallen humanity is liable. And how appalling is the ruin wrought by these lusts of the flesh! Every day we may see, on the street, the leering side-glance of the sensualist, the bloated face and figure of the drunkard; and as we see them, we can scarcely admit the possibility of our ever becoming as they are. Yet St. John, with his full experience of life and temptation, sees danger even for us. “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong.” True of the powers of good in us, that is also true of the powers of evil. The “lusts of the flesh” in the young are strong. The passions and desires of our fallen nature are strong—stronger in youth-time than they ever again will be; and in their strength lies our peril. Remember, I beseech you, that the “lusts of the flesh” are not of the Father; they do not belong to the holy Father, they do not suit the great Father’s thoughts and hopes for you. If you would be the Son of the holy Father, then “flee youthful lusts.” The second danger comes out of the “lust of the eye.” This is a peril affecting nobler kinds of men. The eye is one of the most honourable of our senses. The “eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing,” and God is graciously pleased to give us exquisite pleasure in the things on which we may gaze. But the Father made them all, gave them all, speaks by them all to our hearts. St. John, however, says that, for you young men, there is some danger. You are strong; the “lust of the eye” is strong: in passionate satisfying of the senses, even the sense of the beautiful, you may pass by the Father; you may fail to see Him, and find Him; you may be carried away by the love of the world. Your very strength may make you love even the higher pleasures of life for their own sakes; and your soul, with all its noble possibilities, will stop short of God, our only true end. The third danger comes out of the “pride of life”—a still higher kind of peril, connected with our intelligence, our thought, our ambitions, our aspirations. Many a man has fled youthful lusts, has conquered the desire for pleasure through the senses, and then has fallen before this “pride of life.” We know well what is meant by that term. We watch, we envy, those above us in society; we want to have houses such as they have, to be as free with wealth as they are, to be able to enjoy what they enjoy, to take the position in society which they are able to take. And St. John reminds us of our peril. We need to step carefully, and to walk watchfully. The “pride of life” is not wholly wrong; the desire to rise must till every noble breast; it is the feebler sphere of the yearning of our souls for God. But the “pride of life” must be kept in, curbed, moulded, well-possessed, and inspired with higher principle, or it will surely overwhelm us and degrade us. The danger for the young is that they are strong. Fill the “pride of life” with all your youthful strength, and you will surely find it is not “of the Father”; it is “of the world,” and the “world passeth away, and the lust thereof”; only “he who doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” Consider—
III. The old man’s counsel for the guidance of the young man’s way.—“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” St. John would say, “Young men, take care of yourselves; consider where your love is set, and what is its object.” Love is always nobler and mightier than lust. Love is the holy, God-like power within us. Lust is the low, grovelling earth-power. Nothing can really conquer lust and pride but love. Then you will be safe, quite safe, if your love is right. The whole life is endangered if the love be wrong. A man always is according as he loves. A man may drive the evil spirit out, and have his house empty, swept, and garnished. But he is not safe until holy love fills the empty house. There is always the danger that the evil spirit may come back to the empty place, and bring with him seven other spirits worse than himself. The sanctifying capacity in us is love. Then “love not the world.” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” The love in us can never rest in anything; it must set itself upon a person. Our lust can do with things, but our love cannot. And our love to a person can never fully satisfy itself with any other person than our “Father who is in heaven.” Then let your youthful strength go out in love to God, of whom John Tauler so expressively says, “Rightly is He called the Master of love, for He rewards nothing but love; He rewards only out of love; and He rewards with love.” Love God, and then you shall keep down all lusts, all pride; you shall make such things servants to serve you, not temptations to triumph over you, nor tyrants to enslave you. Love God! What God? Why, “God manifest in the flesh,”—God shadowed to your view in your own humanity, that your eyes may see Him, your ears may hear Him, and your arms twine with a life-clasp about Him,—the God whom St. John loved and lived for; the God whom St. Paul loved, and would have died to honour; the God whom Mary loved, and at whose feet she sat up-looking, with those eyes which Tennyson so exquisitely calls “homes of silent prayer.” Set your hearts upon loving, trusting, following, serving, that brother-man, that manifested God, Jesus Christ. Relying on the man Christ Jesus, you are trusting the God of love. Loving Christ Jesus, on your hearts will be set that love of the Father which alone can keep you, through all the long years, from the love of the world.
1 John 2:15. The Love of the Father as the Law of Life.—A fragment from Philo declares that “it is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God.” By writing “the love of the Father,” rather than “the love of God,” the apostle points to the duty of Christians as children of God. The “love of the Father” means man’s love to Him, not His to man. “The love of the Father is the true posture of the soul towards God. If the soul is evenly balanced between love of God and of the world, it is negative and colourless. If the balance incline towards the things that distract from the pure and simple walk with God, then the emotion for Him has died away; if the balance be for Him, the expulsive power of the new affection “makes the contrary attractions insignificant and increasingly powerless.” A man must have a “law of life” to be a man at all. Manhood is life under intelligent rule. The law of his life will be the thing which he supremely loves. A man may love the world, which is precisely this—himself projected outside himself, and made a circle round himself. That self will present the entire series of considerations that rules his conduct. Or a man may love the Father; and that is man going out beyond himself, outside his own circle, and living under the most sanctifying rule of love.
1 John 2:15-17. Worldliness.—Religion differs from morality in the value which it places on the affections. Morality requires that an act be done on principle. Religion goes deeper, and inquires into the state of the heart. In the eye of Christianity he is a Christian who loves the Father. He who loves the world may be in his way a good man, respecting whose eternal destiny we pronounce no opinion; but one of the children of the kingdom he is not. The boundary lines of this love of the world, or worldliness, are exceedingly difficult to define.
I. The nature of the forbidden world.—There are three ways in which we learn to know God:
1. By the working of our minds. Love, justice, tenderness: if we would know what they mean in God, we must gain the conception from their existence in ourselves.
2. By the representation which God has given us of Himself in Christ.
3. The world is but manifested Deity—God shown to eye, and ear, and sense. Then to forbid the love of all this world is to forbid the love of that by which God is known to us. The sounds and sights of this lovely world are but the drapery of the robe in which the Invisible has clothed Himself. By the world is sometimes meant the men that are in the world—as if we could love God the more by loving man the less. This is not St. John’s forbidden world. By the world is often understood the worldly occupation, trade, or profession which a man exercises. It is no uncommon thing to hear this spoken of as something which, if not actually anti-religious, so far as it goes, is time taken away from the religious life. A man’s profession or trade is his religion. And this is true even of those callings which at first sight appear to have in them something hard to reconcile with religiousness, such as that of the lawyer. Worldliness consists in these three things: attachment to the outward; attachment to the transitory; attachment to the unreal, in opposition to love of the inward, the eternal, and the true.
II. The reasons for which the love of the world is forbidden.—
1. It is incompatible with the love of God. St. John takes it for granted that we must love something. Every man must go out of himself for enjoyment.
2. Its transitoriness. It is transitory in itself—the world passeth away. It is transitory in its power of exciting desire—the lust thereof passeth away. Man becomes satiated with the world. There is something in earthly rapture that cloys.
3. The solitary permanence of Christian action. Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts—lasts in you. Distinguish, however, between the act and the actor: it is not the thing done, but the doer who lasts. The thing done often is a failure. Two lessons:
1. Learn from earthly changefulness a lesson of cheerful activity.
2. The love of this world is only unlearned by the love of the Father. It were a desolate thing, indeed, to forbid the love of earth, if there were nothing to fill the vacant space in the heart. But it is just for this purpose, that a sublimer affection may find room, that the lower is to be expelled.—F. W. Robertson.
1 John 2:16. The Pride of Life.—This is one of the great frailties of humanity in every age, and it gains expression in every class of society. The forms it took in the days of the apostle John, and in the Christian Churches to which he wrote, may be studied, and used to give point to his counsels and warnings. Attention is now fixed on this—that the “pride of life” is a self-toned circle of which the centre is self. The essence of it is self-superiority: it is the Pharisaic “I thank thee that I am not as other men are.” It is pride of the peculiarities that mark our lives off from the lives of others. It may be pride of superior intellect, or superior acquirements, or superior birth, or superior station, or superior tastes. Our differences from others are no moral temptations to us while we regard them as a Divine trust committed to us, as an agency for service to others. “Who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou hast not received?”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
1 John 2:16. Love of Dress.—A forcible instance occurs in Ten Years of a Preacher’s Life. A man following the occupation of wood-cutting wrought with exemplary zeal the six working days, hoarding every cent not required to furnish him with the most frugal fare. As his “pile” increased, he invested it in gold ornaments,—watch-chain of massive links, shirt and sleeve buttons, shoe buckles, then buttons for vest and coat, a hat-band of the precious metal, a heavy gold-headed cane; and, in short, wherever an ounce of it could be bestowed upon his person, in or out of taste, it was done. The glory of his life, his sole ambition, was to don this curious attire, which was deposited for safe keeping during the week in one of the banks, on Sunday morning, and then spend the day, the “observed of all observers,” lounging about the office or bar-room of the St. Charles. He never drank, and rarely spoke. Mystery seemed to envelop him. No one knew whence he came, or the origin of his innocent whim. Old citizens assured you that year after year his narrow savings were measured by the increase of his ornaments, until at length the value of the anomalous garments came to be estimated by thousands of dollars. By ten o’clock on Sunday night the exhibition was closed—his one day of self-gratification enjoyed—his costly wardrobe was returned to the bank vault, and he came back into the obscurity of a wood-chopper.