CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 John 5:13-21 may be treated as a summary and conclusion. They divide into three parts:
1. Faith in the Son of God, eternal life, and love of the brethren showing itself in intercession, are recalled to mind.
2. Three great facts which believers know are restated.
3. A last practical warning is given. In the first part the new thought is, the association of boldness in prayer with the love of the brethren (1 John 5:14-17).
1 John 5:16. Sin not unto death … sin unto death.—The usual distinction between sins of frailty and sins of will. Sins of frailty are possible to the child of God; sins of will indicate that, for the time, the child-spirit is dead—he cannot sin wilfully who is born of God. St. John deals very carefully with the latter case. “Not concerning that do I say that he should make request.” Wilful sin in one claiming to have the Divine life does not come into the range of Christian prayer for the brethren, because such a case is not regarded as possible. St. John does not go so far as to say that it is not a subject for prayer at all.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 5:13-17
The Rights of the New-begotten Sons.— 1 John 5:13 recalls to mind the explanation St. John gives of his purpose in writing his gospel. “But these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye may have life in His name.” Life is St. John’s great word, and by it he means that life as a son of God, in loving and obedient relations with the eternal Father, which is seen in Christ the Son, and becomes ours as by faith we are linked with that Son so as to receive His life. When we are thus made sons, we enter upon the possession of three rights or privileges, and we ought thankfully to use them.
I. The right to eternal life.—The right to live a higher kind of life than can be attained by other men,—a spiritual life, a human-divine life like that which the Lord Jesus lived; for His life on the earth is precisely described as the “eternal life.” That is not life in heaven: it is the Christ-life lived on earth. But the right to this life involves the right to everything that is needed for sustaining, developing, and perfecting the life. If God calls any one into being, His creative act implies a continuous providential act, for the well-being of the creature made. So St. Paul tells us that all things are at the command and use of the sons of God.
II. The right to expect answers to prayers (1 John 5:14-15).—The prayers here thought of are those bearing relation to the believer’s own life, circumstance, and need. Answer to prayer, following on attention to prayer, is involved in Fatherhood and sonship. A father who neither hears, nor heeds, nor answers, his Children’s requests is no father at all. If God be our Father, He must heed and answer all who keep child-like souls.
III. The right to intercede for others (1 John 5:16-17).—The very fact that there is a limit to Christian intercession asserts the right to intercede within the limits. And this is the right which belongs to the brotherhood. Brothers ought to be concerned with brothers’ welfare, and be ready with all sympathy and help in times of frailty and trouble.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 5:13. Knowing that we have Life.—The arguments and persuasions of St. John were intended to bring a personal confidence and assurance to the believers. He wanted them to know that they had the eternal life.
I. Personal assurance is possible.—But too often it is assurance founded on mere feelings. St. John’s assurance is founded on facts and truths. Emotional assurance is of but little value: it seldom does more than soothe the soul to a sleep of self-satisfaction and indifference; and it has a strangely evil tendency to make men think themselves the special favourites of God, and to despise others. Assurance founded on facts and truths has a graciously bracing influence; it ennobles a man, makes him feel like a co-worker with God, and want to be an active co-worker. And it brings the man nearer to his fellows, because, taking form as assurance of sonship, it cannot fail to bring on the responsibility of brotherhood.
II. Personal assurance is to be sought.—It is not only a desirable attainment; it is a necessary one. Upon it the strength of the Christian life depends. But it is even more important to see that upon it the brightness and cheeriness of the Christian life depend. The uncertain man is depressed, and can put no joy into his work. No man should rest anywhere short of the “full assurance of faith.”
III. Personal assurance is gained through apprehension of higher truth.—Not in the most hopeful way through experience, because experience always has too much of the variableness of self in it. Assurance comes by soul-growth, through spiritual and mental apprehensions of the higher truth. And that can be fully apprehended when we recognise that the higher truth brings the fuller knowledge of God, and in the going out of ourselves to ever higher and worthier thoughts of God we gain our best confidences and satisfactions.
The Knowledge of Eternal Life.—This being the declared object of this epistle, we are not surprised to find the words “know” and “eternal life” conspicuous. The whole epistle is occupied with the signs of sonship. Light, love, and life are the grand words which interpret the epistle, and under which all these evidences of the new nature may be arranged. God is here directly declared to be light and to be love, and it is everywhere implied that He is also life. Hence His own children must partake of His light, and love, and life, because partakers of His nature.
I. Light is here used as the equivalent for higher knowledge, as darkness is for ignorance. The child of God walks in light. Light is a revealer. Hence he knows God, knows himself and his sin, and knows the truth. He that is in darkness knows not God, denies his sin, denies Jesus, and denies the truth, embraces a lie, etc. The signs of being in the light are mainly these three: recognition of sin, belief and confession of Jesus, and knowledge of God. Of many truths we may yet be in ignorance or doubt, but of these the true child of God must be assured.
II. Love, this is the synonym for a pure, unselfish affection and benevolence. Love is found in the world—natural affection, selfish affection, the love of sympathy and of complacency. But this love is not of this world; like the warmth of the sun, it is the outgoing of something that aims to bless others rather than benefit ourselves. “He that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.” This love is expansive, expulsive, and explosive. It enlarges the heart, it expels evil, and it demands expression and action. It expels the love of sin, the love of the world, and the hatred of man. It demands vent in benevolent action and in confession of Jesus as Lord.
III. Life. Here we touch another class of mysteries. The life-principle of God is in the believer, and is opposed to death. Hence there is:
1. A quickening power—obedience.
2. A sanctifying power—purification. He that is born of God doth not commit sin, and cannot sin—observe the force of the Greek present tense, continued action—doth not go on sinning. There is that in him which constrains him to do righteousness and put away iniquity. He has affinity with God. He purifies himself, even as Christ is pure. No sinner ought to be in ignorance of the way of salvation with the gospel of John before him. No saint should be in doubt about his saved state with the first epistle of John before him. To be saved one has only to believe on Jesus as the Saviour, to receive the gift of God’s love. The disciple has only to examine himself as to whether he is in the light, the love, the life of God. If he sees and confesses his sin; if he accepts Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God; if he finds a love of God and of the brethren which expels the love of sin, of the world, and of self; if he feels the life of God impelling him to obey the commands of God, to renounce sin, and to live for God,—all this is the work of God, and of Him alone.—Anon.
1 John 5:14. The Condition of all Answers to Prayer.—The one condition is repeated again and again, as if St. John foresaw with what difficulty Christians through all the ages would realise it. All his effort was directed to persuading men to believe fully in the Sonship of Christ. He says that he wrote to them precisely as those who professed to believe on the name of the Son of God. He wrote to them in order that he might persuade them really to believe on the name of the Son of God. The life is in the Son. It is not “he that hath Christ hath life.” It is, “he that hath the Sort hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” And this is the ground of our confidence in prayer—we have the Son; and when a man has the Son, he has the sonship; and in the quiet, happy trust of his sonship, he is as sure that his heavenly Father hears and answers prayer, as any happy loving child is in an earthly father’s home. Does God answer prayer?’ That child, who is a child indeed, never asks the question, and never likes to have such questions asked. He says, with deepest feeling, “Don’t ask. He is my Father.” “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him? “But there is a particular matter in St. John’s mind. The one thing he is urging is the “love of the brethren,” which we must feel if we love the Father, and have in us the mind of the only begotten Son. If we love them, we shall want to do something for them; and then we shall be sure to intercede for them, to ask things of God in their behalf. And we may ask with confidence of answer, if we have the spirit of sons, because we shall only ask what is in harmony with God’s will, and only ask in a becoming spirit. The prayer of the brotherhood, the prayer of the family for one another, is evidently in St. John’s mind, as is clear from 1 John 5:16-17. It is true that answer to prayers for ourselves rests on the same condition; but it comes freshly to us to find that our intercessions are conditioned on our maintaining our sonship.