Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,
Lofty ideals perilous unless applied
Even the world sees that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ has very practical results.
Even the Christmas which the world keeps is fruitful in two of these results--forgiving and giving. Love, charity (as we rather prefer to say), in its effects upon all our relations to others, is the beautiful subject of this section of our Epistle.
I. We have here love in its idea. “Hereby know we the love.” It is continuous unselfishness, to be crowned by voluntary death, if death is necessary. The beautiful old Church tradition shows that this language was the language of St. John’s life. Who has forgotten how the apostle in his old age is said to have gone on a journey to find the young man who had fled from Ephesus and joined a band of robbers; and to have appealed to the fugitive in words which are the pathetic echo of these--“if needs be I would die for thee as He for us”?
II. The idea of charity is then practically illustrated by an incident of its opposite (verse 17). The reason for this descent in thought is wise and sound. High abstract ideas expressed in lofty language are at once necessary and dangerous for creatures like us. They are necessary, because without these grand conceptions our moral language and our moral life would be wanting in dignity, in amplitude, in the inspiration and impulse which are often necessary for duty and always for restoration. But they are dangerous in proportion to their grandeur. Men are apt to mistake the emotion awakened by the very sound of these magnificent expressions of duty for the discharge of the duty itself. Every large speculative ideal then is liable to this danger; and he who contemplates it requires to be brought down from his transcendental region to the test of some commonplace duty. It is helpful compassion to a brother who is known to be in need, manifested by giving to him something of this world’s “good”--of the “living” of this world which he possesses.
III. We have next the characteristics of love in action. “My sons, let us not love in word nor with the tongue; but in work and truth.” There is love in its energy and reality; in its effort and sincerity--active and honest, without indolence and without pretence.
IV. This passage supplies an argument against mutilated views, fragmentary versions of the Christian life.
1. The first of these is emotionalism, which makes the entire Christian life consist in a series or bundle of emotions. This reliance upon feelings is in the last analysis reliance upon self. It is a form of salvation by works, for feelings are inward actions.
2. The next of these mutilated views of the Christian life is doctrinalism--which makes it consist of a series or bundle of doctrines apprehended and expressed correctly, at least according to certain formulas, generally of a narrow and unauthorised character. According to this view the question to be answered is--has one quite correctly understood, can one verbally formulate certain almost scholastic distinctions in the doctrine of justification?
3. The third mutilated view of the Christian life is humanitarianism--which makes it a series or bundle of philanthropic actions. There are some who work for hospitals or try to bring more light and sweetness into crowded dwelling houses. Their lives are pure and noble. But the one article of their creed is humanity. Altruism is their highest duty. With others the case is different. Certain forms of this busy helpfulness--especially in the laudable provision of recreations for the poor--are an innocent interlude in fashionable life; sometimes, alas! a kind of work of supererogation, to atone for the want of devotion or of purity--possibly an untheological survival of a belief in justification by works.
4. Another fragmentary view of the Christian life is observationism, which makes it to consist in a bundle or series of observances. Frequent services and communions, perhaps with exquisite forms and in beautifully decorated churches, have their dangers as well as their blessings. However closely linked these observances may be, there must still in every life be interstices between them. How are these filled up? What spirit within connects together, vivifies, and unifies this series of external acts of devotion? Now, in distinction from all these fragmentary views, St. John’s Epistle is a survey of the completed Christian life, founded upon his gospel. It is a consummate fruit ripened in the long summers of his experience. It is not a treatise upon the Christian affections, nor a system of doctrine, nor an essay upon works of charity, nor a companion to services. Yet this wonderful Epistle presupposes at least much that is most precious of all these elements.
(1) It is far from being a burst of emotionalism. Yet almost at the outset it speaks of an emotion as being the natural result of rightly received objective truth (1 John 1:4).
(2) This Epistle is no dogmatic summary. Yet combining its proemium with the other of the fourth Gospel, we have the most perfect statement of the dogma of the Incarnation.
(3) If the apostle’s Christianity is no mere humanitarian sentiment to encourage the cultivation of miscellaneous acts of good nature, yet it is deeply pervaded by a sense of the integral connection of practical love of man with the love of God.
(4) No one can suppose that for St. John religion was a mere string of observances. This Epistle, with its calm, unhesitating conviction of the sonship of all to whom it is addressed; with its view of the Christian life as in idea a continuous growth from a birth the secret of whose origin is given in the gospel; with its expressive hints of sources of grace and power and of a continual presence of Christ; with its deep mystical realisation of the double flow from the pierced side upon the Cross, and its thrice-repeated exchange of the sacramental order “water and blood,” for the historical order, “blood and water”; unquestionably has the sacramental sense diffused throughout it. The sacraments are not in obtrusive prominence; yet for those who have eyes to see they lie in deep and tender distances. Such is the view of the Christian life in this letter--a life in which Christ’s truth is blended with Christ’s love; assimilated by thought, exhaling in worship, softening into sympathy with man’s suffering and sorrow. It calls for the believing soul, the devout heart, the helping hand. It is the perfect balance in a saintly soul of feeling, creed, communion, and work. (Bp. Wm. Alexander.)
The sacrifice of love
The laws of nature and the laws of grace come from the same Lawgiver, and they have the same fundamental quality. All life depends on this--that some one is willing to lay down his life for another. From the very earliest stages to the very oldest and highest this is the condition not only of progress but of the continuance of life. The tree grows, produces its leaf, its bud, its blossom, its fruit, in order that it may drop seeds upon the wings of the wind, or give them to the birds, that those seeds may be carried to the soil and from them other trees may spring up. And when the tree has given forth this consummation of its life, its year’s work is over, and it goes to sleep that it may get ready to repeat the operation next year. The annual dies in giving its life to another; the perennial does not die, but it gives its life, then ceases for a little while, gathers up its forces, and resumes its life the next year in order to repeat the gift. The babe is not dropped out of the clouds into the life of the waiting family. The mother hazards her own life that she may give a new life to the world; and when she has given it, then she begins to devote her life to it; her thoughts concentrate on it, her life flows out to it. It is for this child that the father does his work; it is for this child that the mother gives her prayers, her night watchings, her energies. Her own life is laid down for another life. The child, we say, grows older, wiser. How does it grow older? how does it grow wiser? how does it grow in wisdom and in stature? In stature, because a hundred lives are busy all over the world gathering fruit for it, and food for it, and ministering to it; and wiser, because a hundred brains are thinking for it and a hundred hearts are gathering equipment of love and pouring into it. The teacher is giving her life to her pupils, laying down her life for them. If she does not care for them, if she simply goes into the schoolroom for her six or eight hours to earn her salary, and then goes away, and no life flows out from her, she is a mere perfunctory thing and no true teacher. We build a fence around a tribe of Indians and shut them up by themselves and say, “Now grow.” A hundred years go by, and they are the same barbarians they were a hundred years before. Then we say, “Let civilisation see what it can do with them”--a selfish civilisation. “We will let in the railroad, we will let in the trader, the whisky dealer, we will let in selfishness.” And barbarism simply grows more barbaric; the growth is degeneracy. Not until you can find an Armstrong or a Pratt who will lay down his life for them, not until you can find men and women who will devote their lives to pouring truth and purity and life into these barbaric minds, is there growth; and the moment you find such life given, true growth begins. Life goes by transmission, and there is no hope for a lower race except as some higher race will transmit its life thereto. This is the significance of, the fundamental principle underlying, all foreign missionary service. Now, the Bible takes this generic law and carries it up a little higher. Follow up the stream to its source and you will find the springs among the hills; and these, you say, fed it. But where did these springs come from? You must look up, and there in the blue above sails the clouds; and the rainfall from these clouds has first fed the springs that fed the rills that fed the streams that made the river. So all life, its progress, its development, come from the One above all, who pours out His life that others may live. This is what love means. Love is life giving. Love is not caress. The mother does not love her child simply because she folds it to her arms and caresses it with her kisses. This is but the expression of love. Love is not joy. The mother does not love her child because a strange joy thrills her heart as she looks into baby’s eyes. This is simply the fruit of love. Love is giving one’s life to another. To lay down one’s life for another is not, then, the same as to die for another. That is very clear. “Hereby we know love, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Ought we all to die for the brethren? Not at all. No man thinks that. But we all ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. That is another matter. To live for another may involve with it dying for another, and certainly does involve willingness to die for another, but the value is in laying down the life, not in dying. Here are two nurses going out into a city that is plague stricken. One catches the plague, dies, is buried in a nameless grave under a nameless headstone in the cemetery. The other lives through the plague and goes back to her home. One has laid down her life for the plague stricken city as truly as the other. To lay down one’s life is not to die; it is only to be willing to die. But no man does lay down his life truly and really for another unless he is willing to die. If a young man goes into the medical profession, and, when pestilence appears in a house, he says, “I cannot go there; I should risk my life and the life of my children,” he has not laid down his life. The value of Christ’s life was not in the crucifixion. It was not by His death that He saved the world. I know how that sentence will be picked out, and perhaps sent abroad, and I misinterpreted; nevertheless, I repeat it--it is not by His death He saves the world, but by laying down His life for the world. Passion week began when He was born. From the beginning to the end His life was laid down for humanity. So to lay down one’s life does not necessarily involve pain and suffering. It may or may not. You may be a lover without pain; you cannot be a saviour without pain. And when the Christ came into the world, bringing the message of infinite and eternal love, it was not the spear thrust that made Him the Saviour--it was the spear thrust that proved Him the Saviour; it was the spear thrust that showed that there was such love in this heart of the Christ that He was willing to die for love’s sake. The Cross is the glory of Christ, because it shows how far love would carry Him in laying down His life for sinful man. Christ’s Cross is witness of the Divine life that is saving the world. Christ lays down His life for us. We are to lay down our lives for one another. This is the simple lesson of this communion Sunday--Life poured out from one full heart into another empty heart; from one joyous heart into an aching heart; from one pure heart into a sinful and shameful heart. (Lyman Abbott, D. D.)