FAITH THE SOURCE OF LOVE, AND LOVE THE FRUIT OF FAITH
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
GENUINE faith in Christ is the sure sign of the new life—faith in the sense of living, daily trust. The faith which links us with Christ in sonship carries with it a twofold love: love to the Father, which is shown in keeping His commandments; and love to the brethren—the other sons—which is shown in self-denying service. “The very object of the Divine birth is the conquest of all that is opposed to God and to His commandments, and the instrument of the conquest is faith.” “There is an historical faith, or receiving of Christ, which precedes the new birth. But the sure and certain persuasion that Jesus is the Christ, the Mediator, Prophet, Priest, and King, with a practical and personal trust in Him as such for salvation, is the principal fruit of the new birth.”
1 John 5:1. Born.—Better, as R.V., “begotten.” Him that begat.—God. See chap. 1 John 4:7. So our Lord pleaded that men could not really love God, if they did not receive and love the Son whom He had sent.
1 John 5:2. Keep His commandments.—A reminiscence of our Lord’s teachings (John 14:15; John 14:21; John 14:23; John 15:10: see also 2 John 1:6).
1 John 5:3. Not grievous.—It is never a strain to obey those whom we love. It is of the very nature of love to make obedience easy. Were we perfect, we should not find God’s requirements to be commands at all; they would be our natural impulses. Commands indeed are only helps from outside us towards our being what we ourselves would wish to be, if we were our free, best selves.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 5:1-3
The Love of the Father involves the Love of His Sons.—“Whosoever loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.” These words give the point of this paragraph. It is a common delusion of Christian professors, that they can keep in saving relations with God while they persist in keeping unloving relations with men. The delusion is based upon the failure to recognise the essential family element in Christianity. The supreme mission of the Christian revelation, the very essence of the work of Christ, is the full restoration of the family relation in which God designed to stand with His creatures, and still wishes to stand. It was that family relationship which the wilful sin of the children broke up. Men ceased to be sons; they persisted in being men. God might be King, but they refused to recognise Him as the “eternal Father.” And there was no hope for humanity until, maybe through a bitter experience, the self-willed prodigal turned his thoughts to Father and home. And turning his thoughts to Father and home is just the work which the Lord Jesus did, by the manifestation of His own Sonship, and by the holy persuasion of His teachings. It is the fashion of our day to insist that all the social, and political, and national woes of humanity would be cured, if men did but fully believe in, and heartily carry out, the “brotherhood of humanity.” They do not see that, standing by itself, with no common love, or common interest, beyond its own interest, human brotherhood never has been, and never can be, anything but selfish, and, being selfish, it never can be a real brotherhood. No brotherhood is possible save out of a common fatherhood. And so Christ brought men together, as nobody else has ever brought them, because He has revealed the Father-God, who is the Father of them all. “Whosoever loveth [the Father] who begat loveth also [the sons and brothers] who are begotten of Him.” It is missing the point to say that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is one of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It is the first, it is the foundation, it is the essential doctrine. It has nothing whatever to say to men about themselves or their relations until it has put them right with God—made them think rightly of God, and brought them into gracious reconciliations with Him.
I. Loving the Father.—“Him that begat.” The love required is precisely that which is characteristic of good children, and is the law of their life. St. John tells us that believing the only begotten Son wakens the sonship in us, and makes us feel like those who are “born of God.” And that is the actual fact of our experience. When we believe in Christ the Son, we begin to feel that we are sons with Him, and like Him. And He adds, that as soon as the feeling of sonship comes to us, the signs of sonship will appear in our life and conduct. We shall do just as Jesus did; we shall “keep our Father’s commandments.” In our limited human measures we shall say, what the Divine Son could say, “My meat and My drink is to do the will of My Father.” The question of our being sons is settled if we are sonlike, as Christ was.
II. When we love the Father, everything else will come right.—All the human relationships will be rightly toned; all the human responsibilities will be rightly borne. Was the Lord Jesus the very ideal of sacrificing brotherhood? It was but His Sonship getting expression in the family sphere. It will be thus with all who share His Sonship. They cannot help it—they cannot be true to themselves and help it—they must be brothers and brotherly. The love of the Father is the source of love to His children. And Maurice wisely says, “That is the natural order; that, we may say it confidently, is the universal order.” “If love of God is absent, then our love of our fellows is not genuine—is earthly, is a mockery. If love of our fellows is absent, then have we no love for God. All friendship must be tested by loyalty to God; all love to Him must be tested by charity.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 5:1. Faith and the New Birth.—“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God.” What appears to be asserted is, that faith is at once the condition and the sign of the new life. Confusion comes by limiting faith to the acceptance of some particular proposition concerning Christ. Men are said to be saved when they declare their belief in some statement about Christ which is made to them. What we need to see clearly is, that faith is the very essence of the child-spirit. A child cannot be a child without faith. And wherever there is faith there is a child-spirit. So faith is the condition of the new birth. There never yet was a soul alive unto God that did not believe and trust. And being the condition, it becomes also the sign. See what a man is toward God, toward God manifested in Christ, and you can tell whether he is a child. If he is born of God, he will as surely believe and trust as the new-born babe will cry.
1 John 5:3. A Misapprehension of the Commandments.—“And His commandments are not grievous.” They seem to be sometimes, because they put us into limitations and restraints. But of one thing we can be absolutely sure—the commandments are no abstract or arbitrary things. They are Fatherly arrangements, precisely adapted to secure the truest welfare of the children. And this we can see plainly—the commandments never were in any sense grievous to Christ. If we ever feel them to be grievous, it must be because we are failing from that perfect love which always carries with it perfect trust and perfect submission. Two reasons have been given as explaining why the Father’s commandments are not grievous.
1. He gives us strength to bear them and do them.
2. Love makes the Father’s yoke (which Christ called His) feel light and easy. The commandments are only grievous when we resist them.