CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 John 2:24.—Omit “therefore. “Which ye have heard.—Concerning Christ, and Christ’s truth, on the authority of His apostles. Remain … continue—In both cases prefer the word “abide.” Dr. Plummer paraphrases thus, “Let the truths which were first taught you have a home in your hearts: if these have a home in you, ye also shall have a home in the Son and in the Father.” Developments of the primary truths there must be, but all developments, adjustments, and adaptations must be in the strictest harmony with the primary truths.
1 John 2:27. Any man teach you.—That is, any man who claims personal authority to teach, and does not speak by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Anointing.—Which implies and involves that the Spirit is in you, leading you into all truth. St. John seems to suggest that the Spirit dwelling in the disciple will always make him sensitive to the recognition of the Spirit in his teacher. As he has shown that the new Divine life will keep us from sin, so now he shows that it will keep us from error.
1 John 2:28. Ashamed before Him.—Better, “shamed away from Him”; or, “shrink in shame from Him.”
1 John 2:29. Ye know.—Better, “know ye.” Doeth righteousness.—Note the emphasis on doing: see chap. 1 John 3:7. “A sober, righteous, and godly life is the fruit, and consequently the proof, of spiritual birth—the token by which the sons of God by adoption and grace are distinguished from other men.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 2:24-29
Persuasions to letting the Truth abide in us.—“Abiding” is one of St. John’s key-words. What had to be feared in the early Church has to be feared in every age of the Church. It is restlessness, that tends to shift men from their foundations. Nothing more effectually hinders Christian living than perpetual uncertainty about the grounds of our confidence and hope. Souls are like plants—they cannot thrive if their roots are continually being shaken. They grow in atmospheres of quietness and peace. They must abide as they have begun.
I. Abiding in Christ is holding fast the truth received concerning Him.—“That which ye have heard from the beginning.” Apostles, and all true teachers, never attempted to shift the foundations of primary truth concerning Christ which they had laid. They are willing enough to build on those foundations, but absolutely unwilling to alter the foundations. It would be useless and mischievous work for Englishmen now to try and alter Magna Charta, which is the basis of English liberty. “Holding fast the profession of our faith without wavering” is “abiding in Christ.” The primary truths about Christ concern His Divine-human person, and Divine-human mission: Son of God; Son of man; and God saving man.
II. Abiding in Christ is the guarantee of continuous spiritual life.—It brings the “eternal life.” That life can be ours only by vital union with Him. It is the communication of His own Divine life through the channels of our faith. Break the connection, and the life can but flag and fail. Our Lord Himself said, “Without Me ye can do nothing.”
III. Abiding in Christ is the work for us done by the Holy Spirit, who is with us.—This appears to be the idea St. John tries to express under the figure of the “anointing.” The believer is sealed by the anointing of the Spirit. That Spirit has, for His supreme mission in the believer, to keep him in vital relations with Christ—abiding in Christ.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 2:24. Jealousy concerning Primary Truths.—In our day it has been anxiously asked, “What is the minimum of evangelical truth which must be accepted to constitute a saving belief? “The answer is difficult, and will probably vary according to the religious school to which the answerer belongs. It is quite clear that there were some primary and essential truths to which apostles required full assent and absolute faithfulness; but they are much more simple truths than we usually admit, and they are sufficiently general to allow of various unfoldings and expressions. We may see how simple the truth required to be witnessed before baptism was in the case of Philip and the eunuch. If the words of Acts 8:37, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” are a later addition to the text, they meet our case by representing the earliest tradition. The primary truth, of which we must be supremely jealous, and which constitutes the minimum of the Christian demand, is this—Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God, the Son of the Father, sent by Him to be the Saviour of the world from sin.
1 John 2:25. The Promise of Eternal Life.—The term “eternal life” is a figurative one. Mere continuance is not the manifestly most desirable thing; and all time-measures are unsuitable to the after-life, “time” being strictly one of the present earthly conditions of thought. As a figure, the term “eternal” represents, in part, what we mean by “spiritual”; or perhaps it would be more precise to say that it stands for “the highest conceivable,” “the best that is attainable.” When applied to “life,” it suggests full, unhindered life in God, life unto God. From the point of view of the tripartite division of human nature into body, animal soul, and spirit, what is meant by “eternal life” can readily be apprehended. It is the Divine quickening, and consequently the holy activity, of the “spirit” which man really is. Much has been missed by the confounding of the “eternal life” with the “after-life.” It may be found in the after-spheres, but it may also be found in the present earthly spheres. A man may have the eternal life now. As soon as this is clearly seen, the figurative character of the word comes to view, and the impossibility of its being strictly descriptive is recognised. There are many passages in which the “time” idea is manifestly unsuitable; in them the idea of “quality” is prominent. As instances see Deuteronomy 33:27—“The eternal God is thy refuge”; where it is evidently intended to suggest high and inspiring estimates of God, as the infinitely trustworthy One. In Isaiah 60:15, the prophet, speaking in the name of God to Israel as a nation, says, “I will make of thee an eternal excellency.” Continuity of existence cannot be predicated of any nation. A supreme excellency is evidently meant. St. Paul, in Romans 1:20, refers to God’s “eternal power”; and in 2 Corinthians 4:17 he writes of an “exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Save as a figurative expression, “an eternal weight” can have no intelligible meaning. The following suggestion deserves consideration: One of our common “notes of value” is the length of time that a thing will last. Ephemeral things are regarded as worthless; enduring things are estimated as valuable. The nettle is worthless; the oak is valuable. The gnat of a summer evening is worthless; the elephant of a century is valuable. The coal that burns through in an hour is worthless; the diamond that outlasts all the generations is valuable. God, then, would impress on us the very highest conceivable value, as attaching to His gift to us in Christ Jesus. So He meets us on our own level, fits His figure to our usual thoughts and estimates, bids us realise what must be the value of a thing which can not only outlast all generations, but even outlast all world-stories, and so apprehend the infinite value of that gift which He gives to us, even “eternal life.” The “eternal life” is the life which cannot be measured by years or days, but is the enjoyment of the blessedness of virtue. This is a present fact, begun as soon as the believer begins to be in Christ, growing more and more as he walks more and more closely with God, secured for ever when he enters his rest, and perfected in the glory of heaven. But this life, depending on knowledge of God, as begun here, does not lessen the reasonableness of its being perfected hereafter, any more than its future completion prevents its present beginning. F. D. Maurice took a firm stand in resisting the association of the idea of “duration” with the term “eternal.” A striking passage from his Theological Essays may be given: “The word ‘eternal,’ if what I have said be true, is a key-word of the New Testament. To draw our minds from the temporal, to fix them on the eternal, is the very aim of the Divine economy. How much ought we then to dread any confusion between thoughts which our Lord has taken such pains to keep distinct—which our consciences tell us ought to be kept distinct! How dangerous to introduce the notion of duration into a word from which He has deliberately excluded it!” And yet this is precisely what we are in the habit of doing, and it is this which causes such infinite perplexity in our minds. “Try to conceive,” the teachers say, “a thousand years. Multiply these by a thousand, by twenty thousand, by a hundred thousand, by a million. Still you are as far from eternity as ever.” “Certainly I am quite as far. Why then did you give me that sum to work out? What could be the use of it, except to bewilder me, except to make me disbelieve in eternity altogether? Do you not see that this course must be utterly wrong and mischievous? If eternity is the great reality of all, and not a portentous fiction, how dare you impress such a notion of fictitiousness on my mind as your process of illustration conveys?” “But is it not the only one?” “Quite the only one, so far as I see, if you will bring time into the question—if you will have years and centuries to prevent you from taking in the sublime truth, ‘This is life eternal—to know God.’ The eternal life is the perception of His love, the capacity of loving; no greater reward can be attained by any, no higher or greater security. The eternal punishment is the loss of that power of perceiving His love, the incapacity of loving; no greater damnation can befall any.” Bishop Weslcott, writing of the phrases used in St. John’s epistles, says: “In considering these phrases it is necessary to premise that in spiritual things we must guard against all conclusions which rest upon the notion of succession and duration. ‘Eternal life’ is that which St. Paul speaks of as ἡ ὄντως ζωή, ‘the life which is life indeed’ (1 Timothy 6:10), and ἡ ζωὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ‘the life of God’ (Ephesians 4:18). It is not an endless duration of being in time, but being of which time is not a measure. We have, indeed, no power to grasp the idea except through forms and images of sense. These must be used, but we must not transfer them as realities to another order. The life which lies in fellowship with God and Christ is spoken of as ‘eternal life,’ in order to distinguish it from the life of sense and time, under which true human life is veiled at present. Such a life of phenomena may be ‘death,’ but ‘eternal life’ is beyond the limitations of time; it belongs to the being of God.”—From “Handbook of Scientific and Literary Bible Difficulties”.
1 John 2:26. False Teachings as Spiritual Seduction.—“Concerning them that seduce you.” The term which St. John uses brings out very prominently that the moral mischief of false teachings is of much more serious concern than the intellectual. We need not undervalue the importance of correct opinion on religious subjects. But as mere intellectual differences, keeping in the mental range, they are too often little more than logomachies. Every shape of opinion bears some direct relation to moral conduct, and every wrong setting of Christian truth has an evil influence on morals, and can be fairly judged in the light of that influence. Concerning all teaching submitted to us we can ask two questions:
1. Is it true? That question is often beyond all our power of solution.
2. Does it work out unto righteousness? That can always be answered.
CHAPTER 3