I. Admit the fact that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself," and then we can at once understand why when His ministry commenced the heavens were opened and the powers of hell disturbed. Admit that, when the Lord Jesus was going about doing good upon earth, the fulness of the Godhead was dwelling in Him bodily, and we can at once appreciate His assumption of all the moral and potential attributes of the Deity. Admit that the Lord Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, God manifest in the flesh, and instead of being surprised that, when He humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross, the sun should be darkened, and the rocks be rent, and the earth shaken, we shall rather marvel that all nature did not crumble into nothingness.
II. But yet further, if God were indeed incarnate when the Lord Jesus was born, we can understand why all nature was moved; but still we have only partially investigated the subject. How improbable is it that God should become incarnate only to do what mere man might accomplish: only to act as a Teacher, as a Preacher of the resurrection of the dead. No, He came to counteract and remedy the injury inflicted by the malignant powers of darkness; He came to bruise the serpent's heel; He came as a Deliverer. As such He was foreshadowed in the sacrificial rites, as such foretold by the prophets.
III. Here, then, was an object worthy of His coming, worthy of the coming of Him who is the Second Person of the blessed Godhead, whose most glorious attribute is love. He came with the intent that now, not merely to this world and its inhabitants, but unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, might be made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God; He came that by His death we might be reconciled to God and have redemption through His blood; He came to shed His blood for the remission of sins.
W. F. Hook, Sermons on Various Subjects,p. 307.
I. Let that be your aim: to "sin not." Let it be deliberately set before you as your fixed and settled purpose that you are not to sin, not merely that you are to sin as little as you can, but that you are not to sin at all.
II. But not only would I have you to make this your aim: I would have your aim accomplished and realised. And therefore I write these things unto you, that ye sin not. We must assume it to be possible not to sin when we walk in the open fellowship of God. We are brought into a position in relation to God in which holiness is no longer a desperate negative strife, but a blessed positive achievement.
III. Why, then, it may be asked, is provision made for our sinning still after all? "If any man" any of us "sin, we have an Advocate with the Father." Thus our Lord Jesus Christ cheers us on; He assures us that He is near us if we should stumble. There is the Intercessor ever pleading for us: "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father."
R. S. Candlish, Lectures on First John,p. 67.
References: 1 John 2:1. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 515; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 280; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. ii., p. 340; Homilist,1st series, vol. i., p. 407.