CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 John 5:9. Receive.—λαμβάνομεν; admit as valid. The testimony of two human witnesses is admitted; here is the threefold testimony of God—the voice at baptism, the acceptance in resurrection, the Spirit in our hearts.
1 John 5:10. Witness in himself.—In two ways—in having the permanently abiding Spirit, and in having a personal experience. Made Him a liar.—Because to fail to trust a person is really to declare him untrustworthy.
1 John 5:11. Record.—Statement or declaration which we are required to believe. “The Christian creed is here reduced to a very small compass—the gift of eternal life, and the dependence of that life upon His Son.” Eternal life.—Not merely continuing life, but that new life we have by spiritual birth. Eternal life is that which we now understand by spiritual life. That is in its nature continuous. On it the “second death” can have no power. It depends on our relation to Jesus Christ. To have Christ by faith is to breathe the first breath of the eternal life. The life is in Christ for impartation to us, and the receptivity in us is our faith.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 5:9-12
God’s Gift in a Person.—All the mystery of redemption will not go into a sentence. And yet very helpful sentences are graciously given. If we would know, as briefly as possible, what are the essentials of salvation, this paragraph answers, “Having the Son.” How limited this is! It confines human hope to one absolute condition. How comprehensive it is! It concerns man as man, recognising no merely intellectual, or social, or sectarian distinctions. Anywhere, everywhere, the man who has the Son has life. There is full, free, present salvation for all in Christ the Son.
I. God’s gift to us—“eternal life.”—The young rich ruler asked, “What good thing can I do that I may inherit eternal life?” He had the Pharisaic notion, that it was the reward of doing some extraordinary thing. It is often regarded as only continuous, never-ending life. But the Scriptures put other and larger meanings into the term. The word is applied to God: “the eternal God is thy refuge.” To the power of God: “His eternal power and Godhead.” To Israel: “an eternal excellency.” Unseen things are eternal. We read of “an eternal weight of glory”; “an eternal purpose”; “eternal salvation”; “eternal judgment”; “eternal redemption”; “the eternal Spirit”; “eternal inheritance”; “eternal fire.” And the Revised Version has “an eternal sin.” Evidently the word chiefly means what we mean by “spiritual,” “divine,” or perhaps “the highest, intensest, conceivable.” Quality is indicated by the term, and not mere size or length. There is a time-figure in the word, as there is a material figure in all words, e.g. Spirit, God. The length of time that a thing will last is a well-recognised note of value. So the term “eternal life” makes us think of the highest form of life that is possible to man. Our thought of life is a gradual ascent—vegetable, animal, human, mental, social, political, then spiritual, which is the life of God so far as it can be man’s. We vainly try to conceive of Divine life, the life of God, which is the top of the ascent. What thoughts may we have concerning the gift God bestows?
1. If He arranges to give it, we must supremely need it. As men we cannot be content to stop short of the best that is possible to us. What is within the limit of human attainment? Culture of body; culture of mind; culture of character. Nothing more. Something more is attainable as the gift of God. He seals our faith with the gift of Divine, spiritual life.
2. If He arranges to give it, we cannot otherwise get it. The young rich ruler a type. What could he get by means of works? Life is only quickened by the contact of life. Regeneration. The best possible—the Divine in man—is a gift of God as truly as was the first life for Adam.
II. God’s gift in a person.—“This life is in His Son.” Not merely entrusted to Him, but actually in Him. If so, we can see it in Him. We can know it by watching Him. Can we then know what the Divine, eternal life in the soul of man is? There it is, in Christ. That life is in the Son. If so, there is a mystery in Christ. The life in Him is for us. It is a life that imparts life, a life that quickens life. Illustrate how we change into the spirit of those with whom we live. What, then, is that soul-contact that brings to us Christ’s eternal life? Illustrate by grafting or budding trees.
III. That person imparting the gift.—“He that hath the Son hath life.” Having Christ—what can that mean?
1. In what senses are we said to have things?
(1) We have material things, by the personal use of them.
(2) We have persons, by the pleasure of their affection and intercourse.
(3) We have knowledge, when our mind for itself grasps truth.
(4) We have principles, when they act within us as motives. So the idea of “having Christ” is appropriation, personal relation.
2. In what sense did the disciples “have Christ”? Daily and hourly He was in the circle of their life and thought, the shaper of their life and thought. Illustrate from Bethany. Martha had Christ to serve. Mary had Christ to love and listen to. Lazarus had Christ to receive life from. See the test presented to the young rich ruler. “You have much wealth. Give it up, and have Me.”
3. How is “having” related to “believing”? “Having” fixes thought on one part of believing—the last part. Believing includes:
(1) intellectual apprehension of a statement;
(2) heart-feeling of the importance of the statement;
(3) active effort to realise personal interest in it. Take the statement, “Christ died for sinners.” “Having” sets out prominently the third element—the effort to appropriate. “Having” says “He died for me.” See then that no faith in a creed will do; no works will do; only trust in, and love to, a person brings us life. The life we supremely need is just that life of sonship that was in Christ. The life of sonship to God is the eternal life. To have Christ is to have life, i.e. to have Divine acceptance, with Him—to have the spirit of sonship with Him. Not to have Christ is death. Dead in trespasses and sins. Dead in self-will. Dead as in the wrath of God.
The Life in God.—“The Christian creed is here reduced to a very small compass: the gift of eternal life, and the dependence of that life upon His Son. Eternal life does not here mean the mere continuance of life after death, whether for good or evil: it is the expression used throughout St. John’s writings for that life in God, thought of without reference to time, which can have no end, which implies heaven, and every possible variety of blessedness, and which consists in believing in God the Father, and in His Son. Its opposite is not annihilation, Out the second death, existence in exclusion from God.” “Having the Son is His dwelling in the heart by faith—a conscious difference to human life which transforms its whole character. “Having life” is the birth of the new man within, which can never die.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 5:10. The Dishonouring Character of Unbelief.—It makes God to seem a liar, a deceiver, one who makes statements for which there is no ground, and promises which can but disappoint. We can do no greater dishonour to a brother-man than fail to trust him, to believe his word, to rely upon his promise. Human unbelief is sometimes presented as the source of moral mischief in a man’s character and life, and as the cause of his deprivation of privilege. There are a thousand things that man “cannot enter into” “because of his unbelief.” But here quite another side of the evil influence of unbelief is presented. It dishonours God. It prevents men from putting that trust in Him which He seeks, which is the invitation and persuasion of His love, and which is so firmly based on His goodness and faithfulness. Unbelief proclaims God to be untrustworthy. But this brings up the question, whether the evidences of God’s truth, and righteousness, and goodness, are sufficiently abundant, and clear, and impressive, to make absolutely unreasonable all human unbelief. And this ground may reasonably be taken. The appeals for God may be made—
(1) to every part of man’s nature;
(2) to every matter of man’s concern;
(3) to every page of man’s history. Take the best men who have appeared in all the ages; they have believed in God. Take the most perplexing and involved circumstances of God’s people; He has always fulfilled His promise, and led them safely through. Take the promises which lie thick on the page of the word, like stars in the midnight sky; there cannot one be found which stands unfulfilled in the history of God’s people. He always “remembers His word.”
The Method of Faith.—Court of justice, judge, jury, counsels, reporters, listeners. The culprit—his trial will come on. His fate depends on the evidence which will be adduced—not on public opinion or feeling. There is a tribunal in every breast. “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the works of the law written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.”
I. The process which transfers the gospel and all its living, saving power into the soul.—“He that believeth.”
1. Our attention must be thoroughly arrested. This is done by two distinct methods—by striking and forcible means, by gradual influence and development. A mirage—a whole scene pictured in the heavens. Gradual influence—father’s prayers, Saul of Tarsus and Timothy.
2. We must realise in ourselves and for ourselves the gospel and its influence. Every man is intensely individual, and the things which affect us so are the most real. Reading of the dangers of others will produce an impression, but when in danger ourselves the feeling is most intense. The father whose five little children were in the railway carriages which broke loose was most anxious for their safety. “I am crucified with Christ to the world.” “Fellowship with His sufferings.” Look into that great soul, and you will see Golgotha, the cross, the suffering Saviour. Again, “Christ in you the hope of glory.” Resurrection, ascension, intercession, benediction.
3. There must be felt an abiding presence and influence. There are momentous things engraved on our minds, but they only come up occasionally. “Abide in Me, and I in you, so that ye be My disciples.” “Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning.” Not a passing breath, but the functions of breathing; not the drop of blood which passes through the veins, but the heart which circulates it. “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.”
II. The inward testimony to our salvation.—
1. The accord of truth with the moral demands of our nature. Let us not treat our souls as if they were blank or empty, but as morally sentient. Our whole nature, physical and mental, is based on the same principle. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life.” Repent, believe, pray, obey, love; the soul says “Amen” to all these.
2. The presence of the Spirit and the attestation. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” The appeal of the loving, confiding child to the witnessing of the father. “And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” The Spirit gives the assurance of faith.
III. The accord of the verdict with the soul.—We shall stand soon before the judgment-seat of Christ. “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel.” “Also now behold my witness is in heaven, my record is on high.”—Anon.