LOVE FINDS THE TRUTH; FEAR TAKES UP WITH ERROR
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
IN the first three verses the apostle guards his readers against being misled by false pretensions to the possession of the Spirit (see chap. 1 John 2:24).
1 John 4:1. Beloved.—Indicating the affectionate relations in which St. John and his disciples stood. Believe not.—Do not be carried away by loud professions. In all ages of the Church persons have arisen who claimed to possess supernatural powers, or to have received special revelations. St. John does not say that they all are insincere and time-serving; but he reminds us that they may be, and that their claims must always be submitted to careful examination and testing. They may be the delusions of fanatical enthusiasts; they may be the lies of fanatical impostors. Spirit.—That is, persons who pretend to have a spirit. Illustrate by Acts 8:9; Acts 16:16; Acts 21:9. Try the spirits.—R.V. prove. He bids them exercise the χάρισμα of διακρίσεις πνευματων (1 Corinthians 12:4: see also 1 Corinthians 10:15; 1 Corinthians 11:13; 1 Corinthians 12:10; Ephesians 5:10; 1 Thessalonians 5:21). False prophets.—Teachers, not foretellers. Men who pretend to have received a special revelation, which is out of harmony with that received through Christ and His apostles. Under the old dispensation prophets were to be tested by “the law and the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them” (Isaiah 8:20). Under the new dispensation all claimants to Divine inspiration must submit to be tested by the inspired words of Christ and His apostles. Whatever proposes to supersede the revelation given us, and whatever is out of harmony with that revelation, must be wrong and untrustworthy. Gone out.—Generally, are spread abroad. It is not meant that they had all once been Christian disciples. Some may have been, perhaps some of the most mischievous ones.
1 John 4:2. Know ye.—Prefer indicative “ye know.” Spirit of God.—That is, a spirit which has been given by God. A man may assume to have the Spirit; a man may have the Spirit: you will know which it is if you estimate aright what the spirit moves the man to say and do. St. John suggests one test as specially applicable to the delusions of his own age. Come in the flesh.—The strongest way of asserting the veritable humanity of Christ. It is important to notice that the heretics of the later apostolic age did not deny the Divinity, but the humanity, of Christ. See the Cerinthian and Docetic doctrines. That spirit of antichrist.—There is no word answering to spirit in the original, but it is necessary to the sense of the passage. Observe that the antichrist is not a person, but a sentiment, influence, point and tone of teaching. The essence of apostolic teaching is loyalty to Christ; the essence of the teaching of deceiving or self-deceived prophets was independence of Christ, or antagonism to Him. If any man wants to improve upon Christ, or teach otherwise than He did, we cannot be wrong in calling him antichrist. And so there are “many antichrists.” Should come.—It cometh.
1 John 4:4. Little children.—As before, conceiving disciples as in the immature, training stage, and therefore specially exposed to evil influences. He that is in you.—The Holy Spirit. In the world.—The spirit of self, or the devil.
1 John 4:6. Knoweth God.—Compare John 17:3. The knowing is that which comes by personal experience, not by merely mental effort. Let a man stand in right relations with God, that man will have right discernment of God’s servants, and be ever ready to receive their messages. Spirit of truth.—Not only the true spirit, but the spirit whose range is truth. Spirit of error.—Not only the false spirit, but the spirit whose range is error.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 4:1-6
Come in the Flesh—the True man.—Trench says, “Jesus took the name Son of Man, as He who alone realised the idea of man.” Philo calls the Logos, ὁ�. It is often shown that the purpose Christ had in view in coming to our world was to reveal the Father; to correct the mistakes into which men had fallen respecting the Divine Being; to convince us that He is no impassive Being, no mere embodiment of abstract justice or impersonation of law, but the Divine Father of spirits. Our Lord Jesus came into this world with one supreme aim—to save us by making the Father-God lovely to us, and lovable by us. But we should give heed to another great meaning and purpose of our Lord’s life on the earth. It was designed to be a revelation of humanity to men—of man to himself. The rays of light shine out from Christ both upwards, and all around. Upwards they pierce to some extent the darkness in which Deity is hidden from mortal eyes. All around they shine into our hearts, and dispel the mistakes that hide our true selves from our own view. Christ is Emmanuel, God and man; God with us, in our own flesh and blood. We cannot be said adequately to know Jesus Christ until we have seen the God that is in Him, and also the man that is in Him. He is come in the flesh. He is the second Adam. He represents ideal humanity, man as God thought him when He gave him breath and being. Over the old Grecian temple they put the words, “Know thyself.” An easy command to give, a most difficult command to obey. And that for one sufficient reason—the true standard of humanity is lost, and we have no one with whom we may safely compare ourselves. To know a picture, or a statue, or a building, we must judge it by the standard; and there are world-standards. But when we would know ourselves, where is our standard? If it ever was here amongst men, it is lost now, and has been lost for ages. That the ideal of humanity is lost is shown in the conceptions alike of old and of modern poets. They declare, in their word-pictures, the universal conviction that there was once a Golden Age. But they all mourn over it as a past and lost time. They do but tell us the Bible story of Eden—its innocency, its grace, its possibilities, and then its sin, its shame, and its desolation. Men have been seeking vainly for the true standard through all the ages since Eden was lost. God purposed, when He saw that the fitting time had come, to show men a man once again, a perfect, ideal, standard man. The fulness of time came, and He sent forth His Son “made of a woman, made under the law,” veritable partaker of our flesh and blood. There is the only perfect flower of manhood that has ever unfolded out of the root of humanity. How soon, and how easily, men can lose fitting and worthy conceptions of God! Give to any nation comparatively clear light on the nature and character and relations of God, and in a generation or two we shall find that the light is faded, and the image is blurred. Men began to worship the sun as if it were the brightness of God; then they thought of the nobler beasts of the earth as images of Him; presently they made symbols of reptiles and creeping things; and at last sunk to making idols which expressed, in their forms and features, the vilest human passions. But men have proved quite as ready to lose the truth about themselves. Indeed, if men will not keep the truth about God, they shall not keep the truth about anything else—at least about anything moral. How men sunk from the standard of humanity St. Paul has described in Romans 1. Then God sent forth His Son, the ideal man, the standard man. Other men, lost in their corruptions, shall see amongst them the true man, Christ Jesus. Looking upon Him men know themselves, and are humbled to find how low they have sunk from what they ought to be. Since Jesus came to the world there have been no great men, no standard men. All fall below His excellence. But that life Jesus lived was truly human. There are some things in which we may become true men like Christ.
I. It is possible for man to enjoy consciously near and happy fellowship with God, as Jesus did.—Into the Divine presence He seemed to be always easily going. He breathed in the Divine atmosphere. Carrying the thought of God always with Him, every place became a holy place, all work became holy work, all days holy days. His humanity was no hindrance to Him; it made no mists or cloud-shadows between Him and God. And it is light and hope for us thus to see, in Christ, that the thing which shuts us out from God is not our being men, but our being sinners. Christ was a man, but not a sinner, and so the holy place of communion was to Him as a home. And as we look on Christ, come in the flesh, we see the work of life set before us. We must be wholly freed from sin, and then God Himself shall become the dear love, and near friend, and cherished home of our soul.
II. It is possible for man to reach the abiding conquest of sin—of sin both without him and within.—Up to the time of Christ, that possibility was never known, it could never be realised. Man toiled on under the slavery of sin. There had never been seen such a thing as a man free from sin, a man proved through all the temptations of a human life to be mightier than evil. Men had never seen one human tree without some traces of the decaying worm; never seen the building of one human life without some bulgings and disfigurings of failure; never seen one human face without the care-look of a wounded conscience. So men might, with some show of reason, have said, “Sin is a part of humanity; we cannot be rid of it.” But in saying that man would have consummated his ruin; he would have, as it were, reached out his hand to the tree of life, and stamped immortality upon his sin. God would not let him do that. God would guard the tree of life with a flaming sword. God would send His Son into the world as a man without sin, to break the hopeless sameness of the past—as a man, surrounded with evil, attacked by temptations, and yet able to say, “Who convicteth Me of sin?” No stain upon the life, no pollution on the soul, one with men, separate from sinners,—there is hope for us in that. Sin is not man. Sin is not any necessary part of man. Sin may be put away from man. It is a fact now—a man has stood and walked and worked, in a world full of sin, with unsoiled garments, and unspotted soul, always clothed in pure white garments. Man has proved to be mightier than sin. It can no longer raise its head and boast, as if it were an unconquered and unconquerable foe. It is a beaten foe. Christ has beaten it. The shame and weakness of defeat lie on sin now. And our manhood, with God’s help, may renew the victory.
III. It is possible for men to reach the cherished spirit, and the abiding expression, of self-sacrifice.—If we know ourselves, we know this, that outward enemies are easily mastered, but the inward foe of self only with extreme difficulty. But the most marked feature in the life of Christ is His self-sacrifice. He was among us as one that serveth. But on what principle is all this possible to us, to humanity? The success of Christ was not due to any latent force which is in humanity itself, and which Christ alone succeeded in developing. Humanity has no independent energies. As a created thing it is a necessarily dependent thing. It has trailed on the ground, and soiled its flowers, because it tried to grow alone. In the forests of Madagascar may be seen a beautiful climbing-plant, twining itself about the larger trunks and branches, and singing out its strength in bright green leaves, and laughing out its gladness in large, abundant, and exquisite white flowers. It is so strong and so beautiful because it clasps the strong, twines about the strong, and drinks up ever new life from the strong. And so humanity is strong in God, holding a living dependence on Him, and a happy reliance on Him. The triumph which Christ gained was the result of a most near union between the Divine and the human, the man and God. The secret of His life is this—in Him the Spirit of God dwelt above measure. He was, in some wonderful way, God and man. At first that dashes down all our hopes. Then He is altogether other than we are. But if Christ won so perfect a life by having the Spirit above measure, we may win towards it by having the Spirit in measure. We can receive the Holy Ghost, and become temples of the Holy Ghost; in some degree at least, like Christ—men having God with them.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 4:1. The Trial of Spiritual Claims by Spiritual Men.—“Prove the spirits.” We have to take full account of the fact that error—false or imperfect presentation of truth—has a similar mission in the sphere of religious thought to that of affliction in the sphere of religious relations. There always has been in the Church testing, tempting, disciplining error, just as there always has been in the Christian experience testing, tempting, disciplining affliction. Had there been no error, the truth would neither have been preserved effective, nor would it have been elaborated, defined, or adapted. So many of the settings of Christian truth, in which the Church now rejoices, are the direct products of times of conflict. Look along the level lines, and error seems to be an unmitigated evil. But look down on it from above, see it with some fitting idea of the Divine over-ruling, and it is but one of the dark angels that are about the Father’s business; it is but as the emery that polishes the sword of truth. If we keep in thought a comparison between “errors” and “afflictions,” we may learn how to deal effectually and wisely with errors. Afflictions are overwhelming woes until their inmost mystery is opened, as it only can be opened, by the spiritually-minded man. And that is equally true of error. That it is error is always detected by the spiritually-minded man, because he can test every setting of truth by two infallible tests:
1. By the sense of its harmony with God, which in Him is most keen.
2. By the tendency of it to work towards righteousness; and of this the spiritual man has a quickened and cultured discernment. The error never lies in any particular form of words by which a side or aspect of truth is expressed. Error lies in the motive that shapes the setting, and in the moral or immoral influence which the setting may exert.
1 John 4:2-3. The Doctrine of Christ’s Humanity a Test Doctrine.—We live in times when the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity is usually made the test doctrine, and when much anxiety is felt lest the doctrine of Christ’s humanity should gain an exaggerated place, and an extravagant, and therefore mischievous, setting. In the early Church, the Divinity of Jesus seems to have been fully recognised. The Arian conflicts belong to a much later age. The union of the Divine and human in Christ is of necessity a mystery that can never gain precise statement in any limited, imperfect, and variable human language. But then that can with equal truth be said of the union of soul and body in man. Men will have a right to demand proof of the Divinity of Christ, when they have found it reasonable to demand proof of the existence of the soul. And it will be found that the arguments on which rest our belief in the one are of the same kind as those on which rest our belief in the other. In the early Church the test of orthodoxy was belief in the veritableness of Christ’s humanity, His real body of flesh and blood. The error of that day was a subtle distinction between a Divine Being and a human body which that Divine Being temporarily used. This made the “Man Christ Jesus” an unreal, unnatural Being—not such a man as we are; and if not, He could be no proper representative of us, to be sacrificed for us. But the error took even a more subtle form. Men taught that what seemed a human body, and could indeed be seen and touched, was in fact no body at all, but only such an appearance of a body as angels had taken for their earth-ministries in Old Testament times. Neither of these can possibly be consistent with the Christian revelation, which declares that Jesus is come in the flesh, and so is a bond-fide man, with body, soul, and spirit like every other man; and so able to be the race representative and Saviour.
1 John 4:3. Spirit of Antichrist.—Man after man, rich in gifts, endowed often with far larger and nobler faculties than the people that oppose him, with indomitable perseverance, a martyr to his error, sets himself up against the truth that is sphered in Jesus Christ; and the great Divine message simply goes on its way, and all the battlement and noise is like so many bats flying against a light, or the wild sea-birds that come sweeping up in the tempest and the night, against the hospitable Pharos that is upon the rock, and smite themselves dead against it.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
1 John 4:4. The True Secret of the Mastery of Error.—“Because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” Canon Liddon says: “St. John constantly teaches that the Christian’s work in this state of probation is to ‘conquer the world.’ It is, in other words, to fight successfully against that view of life which ignores God, against that complex system of attractive moral evil and specious intellectual falsehood which is organised and marshalled by the great enemy of God, and which permeates and inspires non-Christianised society.” To be “of God” implies that God is in us; dwelling in us as the spiritual presence and power of the Holy Ghost. So our Lord promised and assured His disciples (John 14:16-17; John 14:23). If we may suggest a distinction between our apprehensions of the presences with us of the Son and of the Spirit, we may say—the living Christ is God with us in order that He may be for us; the Holy Ghost is God with us in order that He may be in us, ever at the springs of thought, and feeling, and motive, and action. Then we can fill St. John’s assertion in this text with a double meaning, and so assure our hearts that we have all-sufficing strength unto ever-renewed victory over all forms of moral evil.
I. God with us as the living Christ is greater than all the evil forces that may seek to injure us.—In some such sense as the human Christ was with His apostles, defending, preserving, guiding them—with them in the sphere of their circumstances, shaping, controlling, overruling them, so as to secure for His disciples triumph over all evil—the living Christ is with His people now, with His Church now, “walking amid the candlesticks,” working the safety of His people and His Church, by His control of all their circumstances. He is for them as a living Helper and Friend; for them in the exertion of Divine power.
II. God with us as the Holy Ghost is greater than all the subtle influences that can act upon us.—What the Holy Ghost was in the early Church as defence against error, taking the most subtle forms against the malign influence of subtle men, spirits, antichrist, that the Holy Spirit is in every age to the believer—the absolutely secure defence against intellectual and moral evil, as Divine wisdom and strength abiding in us.
1 John 4:6. All inspired by God will be in Essential Harmony.—“He that knoweth God heareth us.” The more careful and strict, the more critical, examination of Holy Scripture has brought to view, in a very impressive way, the fact that wherever there is a Divine inspiration there is essential harmony with all other Divine inspiration. Of this we are now so well assured, that we are even prepared to say this—if there is any inspiration of God outside the Scriptures, then that inspiration will certainly be found in essential harmony with all that is in them. But the statements properly occasion surprise and stimulate thought. The Scriptures represent different ages, different types of mind, different social and intellectual conditions; and in the Scriptures is found an ever-refreshing variety in the settings and shapings of truth; and yet take any vital, primary, fundamental verity concerning God, or man, or the relations between God and man, and it is not possible to find anything out of the general harmony. The inspired word of God never contradicts itself. St. John says that what is true of the inspired word is also true of the inspired man. Assume that God is in the teacher, inspiring his words; then it is certain that whenever God is in the hearer, inspiring him for hearing, he will receive the message which the inspired teacher delivers. Safety against the false teacher, the uninspired teacher, is found in the hearer being inspired for hearing. Such an one is in no moral danger. He cannot live and thrive on the uninspired teaching. He finds himself out of harmony with it. But his inspiration brings him into full harmony with everything that is also inspired. It is of course to be understood that the term “inspiration” is here used, not of a precise and limited definition of inspiration, such as may be characteristic of a particular school of thought, but of that general experience of Divine inspiration, which the believer knows as the moving, impelling, directing, restraining influence of the Holy Ghost that dwelleth in him. Inspiration is the proper word for the inward work of God the Holy Ghost.