That your joy may be full.— "That the divine life may be so improved in your souls, and your meetness for the heavenly inheritance may be so apparent, and so advanced, that your joy may, as far as possible, be fulfilled; and no circumstance which this mortal life will admit, may be wanting to complete it."
1 John 1:5. Which we have heard of him, &c.— Of him, means, "From Jesus Christ;" for St. John evidently refers to what he had said in some of the preceding verses, concerning his seeing Christ in the flesh, and hearing him preach the word of life; what that apostle had heard from Him, he delivered faithfully unto the Christians. Light is in several texts put for knowledge or felicity; and darkness for ignorance or misery. But here light is put for purity or holiness, and darkness for moral impurity, or vice and wickedness. God is a pure and spotless Being, without any dark stain of impurity whatever. The phraseology of this verse, of affirming one thing, and immediately denying the contrary, or of denying one thing and affirming the contrary, was very common with the Hebrews, and St. John has often made use of that idiom. See 1 John 1:6; 1 John 1:8; 1 John 2:4; 1 John 2:7; 1 John 2:10, &c. Dr. Bates says, that the phrase, God is Light, expresses his most clear and perfect knowledge; for light discovers all things: his unspotted holiness; for light is incapable of any pollution: and sovereign goodness and happiness; for light, joined with vital heat, inspires pleasure into universal nat