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 5:21. Idols.—Better, “the idols”; or “your idols.” “This parting word is suggested by the thought of the ‘true God.’ Every scheme of thought, every object of affection, which is not of Him, is a rival of His empire, a false god, a delusive appearance only, without solidity or truth.” “Every street through which St. John’s readers walked, and every heathen house they visited, swarmed with idols in the literal sense; and magnificent temples and groves, and seductive idolatrous rites, constituted some of the chief attractions at Ephesus.” “Of the strictness which was necessary in order to preserve Christians from the attractions of idolatry the history of the first four centuries is full.” St. John hints that Jesus is no idol. The Son of God, who was manifested in the flesh as the Son of man, was a Being not only altogether worthy to be worshipped and served, but a Being whose worship and service are supremely ennobling.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 5:18-21
Things about which we ought to be sure.—The expression “we know,” as indicating something that is unquestionable, something that is settled and indisputable, something which has been so confirmed by evidence, observation, and experience, that it has become a persuasive power on our life, is applied to three things:
1. The actual fact that, the children of God do not sin wilfully.
2. The actual fact, that those who have not the new life in Christ do sin wilfully.
3. The spiritual fact, that the new life we have is a spiritual life communicated to us through faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. St. John states these three things that we ought to know, as a kind of summary of his epistle. We ought then to know—
I. The actual fact that the children of God do not sin wilfully.—“We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not.” If we treat this expression with simple common sense, it will occasion no difficulty. No doctrine of human sinlessness is suggested. It can be said of every child who is in right relations in a Christian home that he “sinneth not.” Such a child has no sort of disposition to do any wrong thing, and, wilfully, never does any wrong thing. He must lose the sweet spirit of his sonship ere it can be possible for him to do anything to grieve his father or his mother. And he who is born of God, and stands fully in the sonship, never wants to do wrong, to grieve the heavenly Father. He wants to find fitting expression for his life, and he never can find it save in submissive and loving obediences, and kindly services, and righteous-doing. He cannot sin, for that would be to be unnatural. The Revised Version gives an alteration of the second clause of 1 John 5:18 which seems to explain how it is that the man born of God does not commit sin. “But he that was begotten of God keepeth him [margin, himself], and the evil one toucheth him not.” This, however, introduces quite a new subject, and the watchfulness of a man over himself is much more in the line of St. John’s thought here, than any reference to the preserving power of Christ. “The child of God keeps himself in the estate of a child of God simply.” “The true ideal frame is the absence of wilful sin.”
II. The actual fact that those who have not the new life in Christ do sin wilfully.— 1 John 5:19: “The whole world lieth in the evil one.” Lieth in his power, because, there being no new life, there is no steadfastly set will towards obedience and righteousness. It is just as natural for the man with only the earthly life to please himself, as it is for the man with the spiritual life to please God. Then St. John says, if it is thus natural for everybody to act wilfully, and to please themselves, then we may assure our hearts that we have experienced the great change, and are of God, if we never can think of acting wilfully or wickedly, if we cannot bear the idea of pleasing ourselves, when so doing can in any way be unpleasing to God. “We know that we are of God,” because our contrast with the world is so strongly marked.
III. The spiritual fact, that the new life we have is a spiritual life communicated to us through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.— 1 John 5:20: “And we are in Him that is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ.” The idea of St. John may be made somewhat clearer by recalling what St. Paul could say he knew. “I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me.” “I knew a man in Christ.” It is the Christian mystery that a Divine life was in Christ, and found its expression through all human activities and relations, guaranteeing a life in absolute conformity with the will of God. That Divine life is imparted to believers, and they become, within the creaturely limitations, what Christ was, men in whom is a spiritual and Divine life, which, finding expression in all the details, of life, enables them to live lives free from wilful sin. “We have in these last verses a final emphasis laid on the fundamental principles on which the epistle rests: that we through the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ have fellowship with God; that this fellowship protects us from sin, and establishes us in a relation of perfect opposition to the world.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 5:18. Keeping Ourselves.—The Revised Version reads this verse thus, “But he that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not,” with the marginal addition “himself,” instead of “him.” The idea may therefore be either “the Son of God preserves him,” or “he watchfully keepeth himself.” The latter seems more precisely in the line of St. John’s teaching here. He is speaking of the virtue that lies in the new Divine life of the soul. “Whosoever is born of God sinneth not”; for it is in the very nature of that life to be jealous of its own integrity and purity. This point may be opened out and illustrated on the following lines.
I. Every creature having life has life in trust.—It is the one thing which every animal and every man properly regards as his chief treasure. “Skin after skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” How much more must the spiritual and Divine life be a trust.
II. Keeping here means guarding, but much more than guarding.—It is quite true that the Christian is “kept by the power of God,” but it is also true that God’s keeping is effective when it goes along with his keeping himself. How little a parent can do for his boy if the boy will do nothing for himself.
III. Guarding must be the man’s own work, but for it he may accept auxiliary aids.—He must “work out his own salvation,” but he may and should realise how fully the Divine help is at his command.
IV. He only knows his particular perils, and the self-weaknesses that bear such relation to his perils.—It is in the spiritual as in the physical world. A man gets to know his own body, and learns how to preserve health, by the wise management of himself. But the question may be asked, Is there usually such self-knowledge in the spiritual life as inspires a man to this “keeping himself.”
1 John 5:20. The Gospel of the Incarnation.—St. John simply mentions the great things that lie inside this fact: “The Son of God is come.”
I. By His coming He has “given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true.”—This does not mean that Christ gives men any new intellectual power, that He adds to the faculties of the mind any more than to the senses of the body. “Understanding” here signifies rather the means of knowing, the power of understanding. The Son of God has given us the means of knowing God. By word and life He has given us ideas about Fatherhood, holiness, purity, kindness, and love, that we had not before. The horizon of language has been widened, and its heaven lifted higher than before.
II. For what purpose has Christ given us these new ideas and opened the eyes of our understanding?—That we may “know Him that is true,” even God. It is needful that we should know God. In Christ you will find the truth about God.
III. We know that the Son of God is come, and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ—i.e. in Christ we are in God.—Union with Christ by faith, obedience, and love is perfect union with God.
IV. The Son of God is come, and to be in Him is to have eternal life.—“This is the true God [the God in Christ], and eternal life.” Christ tells the truth: believe Him. Christ is the life: accept Him.—J. Morgan Gibbon.
1 John 5:21. The Ever-recurring Temptation to Idolatry.—“As the epistle is addressed to Christians, this last exhortation to keep themselves from idols could not refer to gross idolatry; such a dehortation would most inharmoniously fit the tenor of the whole document. The εἴδωλα are rather the ideas of God entertained by the false prophets of whom the apostle has spoken, the antichrists, who, because they have not the Son, have not the Father also, without therefore being atheists in the common meaning of the word. All the heretics of that time would serve God. Against them is held up the proposition that οὗτος, that is, this God revealed in Christ, is alone the true God; all else is an εἴδωλον. But not only is God robbed of His honour, not only does man serve a false god when he seeks another god than the God revealed in Christ, but he also trifles away his own salvation, for this only is eternal life—he that hath Him hath thereby life” (Eric Haupt). But while it may be helpful thus to follow the precise meaning and allusion of St. John, it is permissible, for homiletic purposes, to follow the suggestions of his words, and we may therefore recognise the fact that the temptation to idol-service in some form has been the temptation of men in every age, and is their temptation still.
Striking Contrasts.—This is the last of the contrasts of which the epistle is so full. We have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, God and the world, Christ and antichrist, life and death, doing righteousness and doing sin, the children of God and the children of the devil, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, the believer untouched by the evil one, and the world lying in the evil one; and now at the close we have what in that age was the ever-present and pressing contrast between the true God and the idols. There is no need to seek far-fetched, figurative explanations of “the idols” when the literal meaning lies close at hand, is suggested by the contrast, and is in harmony with the known circumstances of the time.—A. Plunmer, D.D.
Christian Idolatry.—The first commandment forbids us to have any god, but the one true God. The second forbids us to make any image or likeness of any created thing, for the purpose of bowing down to it and worshipping it. These two commandments may be regarded in a manner as parts of one and the same commandment. For there is hardly any way in which mankind have been drawn off from the worship of the one true God to the worship of false gods, so much as by the setting up of images, and the falling down to them, and worshipping them. (See book of Wis. 14:12, “The devising of idols was the beginning of spiritual fornication, and the invention of them the corruption of life.”) In the time of our Lord every nation, except the Jews, was sunk in idol-worship. The yoke of idolatry lay heavy upon every people, and nation, and language. After our Saviour’s teaching, one might have thought things would have gone on better, at least in His own Church. But the same causes will ever produce the same effects. Instead of the images of heathen gods, which had been overthrown, the Churches after a time were again filled with the images of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, and other holy men. These were not introduced with any design of worshipping them. Yet they came to be worshipped. We may not be falling into this error, but we may have set up idols in our hearts, and this may prove to be a worse evil than bowing down before images. It is if, instead of keeping our souls pure, as befits temples of the Holy Ghost, we profane and pollute them to vain and perishable, or, as too many do, to abominable, things. The root and essence of idolatry is the worshipping and serving God’s creatures more than God Himself. Whoever then serves any one of God’s creatures more than he serves God—whoever loves any one of God’s creatures more than he loves God—whoever makes any of God’s creatures more an object of his thoughts, and allows it to fill a greater space in his mind than God fills—that man is guilty of idolatry, in the spiritual and Christian sense of the word. When it is said, God’s creatures, it is meant, not living creatures merely, but creatures of every kind—everything which God has made for us, or enabled us to make for ourselves—all the sweet and relishing things we can enjoy in this world—pleasures, honours, riches, comforts of every kind. Therefore, if any man is foolish and wicked enough to give up his heart to any one of these creatures, and suffers himself to be drawn away from serving God by it, he is an idolater in the sight of heaven. Then if the goods of this world may all become so many idols, luring our hearts away from God, then is the land full of idols of a thousand kinds—idols for all ages, for all classes, for all tempers, for all hearts. There are idols for the worldly-minded, and idols for the generous; idols for the intemperate, and idols for the prudent; there are idols for the affectionate; and again there are idols for the selfish. Young and old have their idols; married and unmarried have their idols; rich and poor have their idols. The covetous man is an idolater (Colossians 3:5). The insatiable and greedy man is an idolater. Mammon is not the only heathen god whose worship is carried on in the hearts of men to-day. What shall we say of Belial, the fleshliest spirit that ever seduced man to sin? He is the god of lust, of riot, of uncleanness, of unruliness. Or look at Moloch, the god of hatred and every fierce passion: has he no children, no worshippers, nowadays? Men who pay him the service he is best pleased with—the service of an envious, rancorous, malicious, and festered heart. But the commonest idol of all, which has the most constant, the devoutest worshippers, which reigns indeed in every heart, unless it has been cast out by the Spirit of God, is the idol of self. It is almost impossible to get rid of him, unless we starve him out. So long as we feed him and strengthen him by gratifying his wilfulness and whim, so long will he continue in possession. Nor will even starving him out be enough of itself, unless we add frequent prayer thereto. For this is the spirit of which our Lord said, that it goeth not out, except by prayer and fasting. Mortify yourselves therefore, brethren: strive to crush every feeling within you that would lift up its head against the will of God: strive to break the neck of your own will, and to make it bend meekly and patiently under the yoke of Christ.—A. W. Hare, A.M.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
1 John 5:20. The Deity of Christ.—Two gentlemen were once disputing on the Divinity of Christ. One of them, who argued against it, said, “If it were true, it certainly could have been expressed in more clear and unequivocal terms.” “Well,” said the other, “admitting that you believed it, were you authorised to teach it, and allowed to use your own language, how would you express the doctrine to make it indubitable?” “I would say,” said he, “that Jesus is the true God.” “You are very happy, sir,” rejoined the other, “in the choice of your words; for you have happened to hit upon the very words of inspiration. The apostle John, speaking of the Son, says, ‘This is the true God, and eternal life.’ ” The Rev. Charles Buck says, “I was once arguing with a person on the same subject; and when I quoted the scripture, he was quite confounded, and said he was not previously aware that there was any such passage.”
1 John 5:21. Christian Idols.—This idea is a general and very comprehensive one: it embraces all things and everything which may be opposed to the God revealed in Christ, and to His worship in spirit and in truth. Pre-eminently, therefore, it embraces the delusive and vain idols of the Cerinthian Gnosticism, whether ancient or modern; but it includes also the idols and false mediators of superstition, to whom the confidence is transferred which is due only to God in Christ—be their name Madonna, or saints, or Pope, or priesthood, or good works, or pictures, or office, or church, or sacraments. The one Being in whom we have the “life eternal “is Christ.… And this Christ we possess through the Spirit of God, whose marks and tokens are not priestly vestments, but faith and love. In this meaning the apostle’s cry sounds forth through all the ages in the ears of all Christians, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” The holiest things may become a snare, if their letter is regarded, and not their spirit. Every Christian Church has a tendency to worship its own brazen serpents. Happy are they who have a Hezekiah to call them Nehushtan (a piece of worthless brass).—Ebrard.
Modern Forms of Idolatry.—In the Russo-Greek Church solid images are not permitted, and the symbols of faith are generally worthless pictures, made to represent images as much as permissible, by having stuffs wrought in thin gold or silver stuck upon the painting. The celebrated gate in the wall of the Kremlin is famous because a picture of this sort. “The Redeemer of Smolensk,” as it is called, is suspended above the high archway of brick. With an opera-glass one can discern a representation of the typical face of Christ decked in golden garb and nimbus. Even in these degenerate days it is scarcely permitted that any one shall pass under this archway except uncovered. Jews and Mohammedans generally find some less sacred gate when they wish to enter the Kremlin—the Acropolis of Moscow. The Czar himself never passes by any other way, and never with his hat upon his head. But it is upon the outer side of the Voskreneski Gate, in the Kitai-Gorodi, or “Chinese town “of Moscow, that the most. remarkable exhibition of religious feeling may be witnessed. Before the stout wall of brickwork which separates the outgoing from the incoming way is the Iberian Chapel (Iverskaya Chasovnia), architecturally nothing but a large-sized hut of stone, on a platform raised by two steps above the roadway. From morning till night this platform is thronged, and the chapel overflows with a crowd, chiefly composed of men, pressing, all bareheaded, and all with money in their hands, toward the narrow doorway of the little sanctuary. We were some time getting into the chapel, which will hold about ten people abreast, and is lighted by the flickering glare of a score of candles. There is a step at the farther end, and the wall opposite the door is resplendent with shining metal, except where the object of this extravagant devotion looks grimy through its framework of gold. On the left side of “the Iberian Mother of God,” which is the name given to this commonplace daub, supposed to possess miraculous powers, stands a long-haired priest—now and then relieved by another long-haired priest—who, hour by hour, in the name of the tinselled and jewelled picture, and with blessings, consecrates the prayers and offerings of the faithful. Only the face of the Madonna is visible, and it is not easy to distinguish her features beneath the dust of years. But not a minute passes in which the rattle of money falling to the uses of the Russian Church is not heard, or in which lips are not pressed upon the framework, or upon the rudely wrought robes of beaten gold which conceal the picture to the neck. Surely no lower depth of superstitious degradation was ever reached in connection with Christian worship! One cannot be surprised that to a Turk a Russian seems to be an idolatrous worshipper of pictures. The refining explanation which the most enlightened fathers of the Greek Church offer concerning this exhibition is precisely of the sort, and differs only in degree, from that which might be offered for the idol-worshippers of more southern and eastern lands. The picture has no historic reputation. It was brought from Mount Athos, that pleasant wooded hill peopled with monkish drones. A sum of about £12,000 a year is collected, and from this the salary of the Metropolitan of Moscow is paid. Time was when in the ceremonies which precede Easter the Czar used to lead the donkey upon which the Patriarch of Moscow rode, carrying a sacred chalice, and a copy of the four gospels. Nowadays that ceremony is neglected, but we are given to understand that the Czar never enters Moscow without assisting the revenues of this high ecclesiastical officer by praying at the shrine of this “Iberian Mother of God.”—Fraser’s Magazine.