Children of God

Life in Christ: Volume Three

Studies in 1 John

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Copyright ©1993 by Elizabeth Catherford and Ann Desmond
Published by Crossway Books
a division of Good News Publishers
Wheaton, Illinois 60187, U.S.A.
 Contents
1. Children of God
2. Destined for Glory
3. Holiness
4. The Sinless Saviour
5. Victory over the Devil
6. Growing in Grace
7. From Death to Life
8. The Marks of a Christian
9. Love in Action
10. Condemnation, Confidence and Assurance
11. The Holy Spirit
 1. Children of God
If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of
God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 1 John 2:29–3:1

In these two verses we come to a new section in this letter of the Apostle
John, a section which starts at Chapter 2,verse 29. It is a new movement in
the argument which John presents to the Christians to whom he was
writing, and I think we may say, if such comparisons are at all possible and
legitimate in such matters, that in a sense the Apostle moves here to a
deeper argument, something still more profound. Let us, before we go any
further, try to get the connection clear in our minds by once more standing
back for a moment and looking at the general scheme, which is, I would
remind you, something like this:
The Apostle’s great object in writing is that these people might have a
full joy; that is the theme as announced in the fourth verse of the first
chapter—‘these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.’ There
is possible for the Christian, in this life and in this world, such as it is and
with all its troubles and its trials, a fulness of joy. And the desire of this old
man, as the Apostle was when he wrote his letter, is that these Christians
might enjoy it to the very full. So he is concerned to give them some
instruction as to how that is possible, and the first big thing he tells them in
this letter is that they must always bear in mind that they can have
fellowship with the Father and with the Son through the Holy Spirit.
Though we are here on earth, we can and do enjoy fellowship with God.
Then he goes on to show that if that is the first thing we must realise,
then we must at once also realise that there are certain conditions which are
absolutely vital and essential to the maintenance of that fellowship and that
walk with God. And we have been considering1 these conditions as they are
outlined in the first chapter and in the whole of the second chapter down to
the end of verse 28. We have taken them in detail one by one, these
conditions controlling fellowship and communion with God. They can all
be summed up, in a sense, in one word, and that is the word righteousness.
That is what John has been saying in different ways: ‘God is light, and in
him is no darkness at all’ (1 John 1:5 ), therefore we must ‘walk in the light’
(1 John 1:7); that is to be righteous. And in the same way we must ‘keep his
commandments’ (1 John 2:3 ); that is righteousness. Again, we must love
the brethren; that, too, is a manifestation of righteousness. He tells us,
‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world’ (1 John 2:15);
that is a negative manifestation of righteousness; and of course we must
avoid all these subtle, seducing temptations to go wrong in our central
belief because, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no righteousness at
all.
Righteousness, then, is the thing that is essential to fellowship with God;
in other words, the great stress of this epistle from beginning to end is the
ethical stress. John is anxious that they see that these conditions must be
observed. The great blessings come to us freely in Christ, but if we want to
enjoy and to continue enjoying them, then we must walk in this righteous
manner. That is the argument until the end of verse 28 of the second
chapter.
But here in verse 29 we come to one of those points of transition. You
see the connection; John takes it up like this: ‘If ye know that he is
righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.’
Now that is a new key. ‘In other words,’ says John, ‘I would have you
realise that as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ you are not
only in fellowship with God, you have also become children of God; you
are born of God. You are not only in a new relationship in an external
manner, there is a vital internal relationship. It is not merely that you are
having communion and association with God, but that you are in a vital
union with Him. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you, and this vital thing
has happened to you.’ Now that is the theme that occupies our attention in
this epistle until we reach the first verse of the fourth chapter. That is the
whole theme, especially of this third chapter and leading on into the fourth
—the fact that we are thus born of God and in this organic, internal
relationship to Him.
And here, of course, John is again producing another argument to show
us the all–importance of righteousness. If righteousness is essential to an
external relationship and walk with God, how much more so is it obviously
essential because of the relationship that obtains between us and God in this
vital organic sense. If as a companion of God I must live a righteous life,
how much more so must I as a child of God live a righteous life! You see,
that is why I suggest that the argument does go here to a deeper level.
Comparisons, as I have suggested, are almost ridiculous at this point,
because to be in communion and in fellowship with God is such a high
privilege that one can regard nothing as being greater and higher. Yet we are
here reminded that we are born of God, and therefore the argument for
righteousness is greatly reinforced. And as we shall see, the Apostle again
works out this argument of relationship to God, or being born of God, in
exactly the same terms as he has worked out the argument of fellowship.
We must keep the commandments; we must love the brethren; we must
avoid the things of the world and those seducing spirits that would take us
away from the central doctrine. It is another argument for righteous walking
and living based upon this internal relationship with God, rather than on
external fellowship with Him.
So that is the theme, and John announces it bluntly in his typical manner.
It is the point of the twenty–ninth verse of the second chapter, and he puts it
in a very interesting way. He says, ‘If ye know that he is righteous, ye know
[or perceive, or understand] that every one that doeth righteousness is born
of him.’ Now he does not say, ‘Ye know that every one that is born of him
doeth righteousness’; he puts it the other way round. By which he means
that if you see men and women who are living a truly righteous life in the
sense of the New Testament term ‘righteousness,’ you can be quite sure,
says John, that they are born of God.
Now righteousness obviously does not just mean morality, nor does it
just mean living a good life. There are plenty of people who are outside the
Christian church today who deny the elements of the Christian faith, but
who are quite moral and decent. They are quite good people, using the term
‘good’ in its moral or philosophical connotation, but they do not conform to
what the New Testament means by righteous. Righteous means the quality,
the kind of life that was lived by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
So John puts it like this: ‘Every one that doeth righteousness…’ If you
see people who are living the kind and quality of life that was lived by the
Lord Jesus Christ, you can know for certain, says John, that they are born of
God—they could not do it otherwise. No one can really live the Sermon on
the Mount until they are born again; the Sermon on the Mount is impossible
to the natural man or woman. Indeed, the Christian life as a whole is
impossible to them, and it does not matter how good people are, they cannot
live the Christian life. They can live a moral, ethical life up to a point, but
they cannot live the Christian life, and the New Testament does not even
ask them to. The New Testament standard of living for the Christian
condemns the natural man or woman, and it should drive them to see the
absolute necessity of the rebirth.
Now that is John’s theme in a sense, that is his great argument. And then
he takes it up like this: ‘If, then, we are born of God, does it not follow of
necessity that we must be living a certain quality and kind of life?’ That is
the argument that he works out from verse 3 in chapter 3 to the end of the
chapter. ‘It is inconsistent if we are not,’ he says; he ridicules it. He says, in
effect, ‘If you are breaking the commandments and are living in sin, you
cannot claim you are a child of God. If you live that sort of life, you are not
a child of God, you are a child of the devil. The child of God must be living
a different type of life.’ And he continues in the same way with the love of
the brethren and these other matters.
However, before he goes on to work out the argument which is
inevitable because we are children of God, he pauses for a moment in the
first three verses of chapter 3 just to contemplate what exactly it means
when we are told that we are the children of God. He has mentioned being
‘born of him,’ but it is as if he says to himself, ‘I cannot just leave it like
that as a closing, passing phrase. The whole thing is so wonderful and
amazing that we must stop for a moment to worship and adore as we realise
what we are talking about. Before I work out the argument, let me remind
you again of what you are and who you are.’
Now those who are interested in what we may describe as the mechanics
of Scripture, or the form of the composition as distinct from the message,
will recall that this is very typical of John. Do you remember how we had to
pause halfway through the second chapter and look together at verses 12,13
and 14 where John said, ‘I write unto you, little children, because your sins
are forgiven you…’ You remember how we pointed out that he interrupted
his argument in order to remind them who and what they were, and then he
made his argument inevitable. And he is doing the same thing again here; so
this is, as it were, the pause: ‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons [or children] of God:
therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now
are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we
know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him
as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as
he is pure.’ And then he goes on with the argument, but before he does so,
he asks us to pause for a little to contemplate this amazing, wonderful thing
that is true of us as Christian people. And now I want us to look at it only in
terms of the first verse; the three verses are perhaps the three most moving
verses in the entire epistle, and they do merit our detailed consideration.
Before we go on to do this, we must just refer to the fact that in the
Revised and other versions there is an additional phrase in verse 1: ‘Behold,
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be
called the sons of God and such we are …’ This phrase is to be found in
some of the best manuscripts, and probably, therefore, it was in the original
document. It is not, of course, a material point, because he says the same
thing in verse 2: ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God’; so it is, therefore,
just a matter of interest from the standpoint of textual criticism. So now,
having dealt with that, let us look at this first verse. First of all, let us look
for a moment at what we are, we who are Christians. According to John, we
are ‘the sons of God,’ or, better perhaps, ‘the children of God.’ What does
this mean exactly? Well, we can analyse it, I think, quite simply and
legitimately by putting it like this: As children we stand in a certain
position; a child is in a certain relationship to the parents—it has a certain
station and is therefore entitled to certain privileges. The word child or son,
especially at this point, carries with it a kind of legal statement which
defines the relationship and position and status. A child is one who is
related to a given parent in a way that no one else is; so you can look at it in
that external manner, from the pure standpoint of legal relationship.
And here John asks us to pause and contemplate this wonderful thing,
that you and I, such as we are, here in this world of time, are in that
position, in that relationship to God. We are ‘children of God’; we stand in
this unique and separate relationship to Him. ‘But surely,’ says someone,
‘are not all people children of God? Don’t you believe in the universal
Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man; isn’t that
something which is taught in Scripture?’ The reply is, of course, that there
is a sense in which all men and women are children of God, in the sense of
being the offspring of God; by which we mean that they have been created
by God and derived from Him. But at the same time, Scripture is very
careful to differentiate that from those who come into this special
relationship of sonship to God as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
John is going on in this chapter to differentiate between the children of
God and the children of the devil, and our Lord Himself did the same, as we
read in John’s Gospel where He turned to certain people and said, ‘Ye are of
your father the devil.’ You are not the children of God, he tells them, you
are the children of the devil, and ‘the lusts of your father ye will do’ (John
8:44). So that this idea of the universal Fatherhood of God and the universal
brotherhood of man is not a Scriptural statement at all. Indeed it violates, if
we stop at it, that which is the plain and clear teaching of the New
Testament. It is only those who are born again, who are in Christ and who
are truly the children of God, who have ‘the Spirit of adoption’ and cry out,
‘Abba, Father ’ (Romans 8:15); it is they who are in this intimate
relationship to God. The other is something that belongs to creation, not to
the realm of salvation, and the Bible says that those who are not in this new
relationship are outside the life of God. ‘This is life eternal,’ says Jesus
Christ, ‘that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent’ (John 17:3). Apart from that, we are outside the life
of God; we remain dead in trespasses and sins and have none of the
privileges of sonship. ‘But,’ says John, ‘we are called the children of God,’
and ‘called’ does not merely mean an external application or appellation—it
means that we are, we have become, the children of God.
But it does not only mean that, of course; it means also that we share the
very nature of God, and that is why the authorities are all careful to point
out that the right translation here is ‘children of God’ and not ‘sons of God.’
Is there a difference between a child and a son? Well, there is in this sense,
that the word son emphasises a legal, external relationship, whereas the
word child always puts the emphasis upon the common nature, that the
child is derived from the parent and shares the nature and the blood of the
parent. It emphasises this internal, vital, organic aspect of the relationship
rather than the legal position. And what John, therefore, is reminding us of
here is that we who are truly Christians are sharers of the very life of God.
Peter expresses this by saying that we have become ‘partakers of the divine
nature’ (2 Peter 1:4 ). It is difficult to put this into words, and yet it is
something that is taught everywhere in the New Testament. The figure of
the vine and the branches in John 15 puts it perfectly; the branch is in the
vine, and so the life of the vine, the sap, the vitality passes into the branches
—there is that organic relationship; and that is what John is emphasising
here, so that we share the nature of God.
Or we can put it like this: As children we are members of the family of
God. The Apostle Paul makes that point in writing to the Ephesians, where
he tells them, ‘At one time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel.’ But ‘now,’ he goes on, they have been made
‘fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God’ (Ephesians
2:12,19 ). We have become members of God’s family; we really are in that
relationship to Him because we have His nature. Because we have received
of His life, we, as children, belong to His family, we belong to his
household, and we are therefore in this unique relationship to Him. And
that, of course, in turn means that we are heirs of God; as Paul says in
Romans 8:17: ‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint—heirs with
Christ.’
Now these are some of the things that are immediately conjured up as we
just ask the question raised by the first verse—What are we? The answer is
that we are ‘called the children of God,’ and there is a sense in which this is
so staggering and so overwhelming that we find it almost impossible to
accept it, and to retain the idea in our minds. Yet that is what is said about
Christians everywhere in the New Testament. Let us never again think of
the Christian as just someone who is trying to live a good life, trying to be a
little bit better than somebody else, a person with a belief in doing certain
things, going through certain forms and ceremonials and keeping certain
regulations dictated by the church. Christians do all that, but before all that
is this vital fact that they are children of God. They have been born again,
born from above, born of the Spirit; they have received something of the
very nature and life of God Himself. They are transformed people, they are
a new creation, and they are thus absolutely, essentially different from those
who have not experienced that. That is the very basic thing which the New
Testament everywhere emphasises concerning the Christian.
Then the second question is, How have we become this—how have we
become children of God? John answers that in this way: ‘Behold, what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.’ This is a very interesting
way of putting it. John does not merely say that God has shown His love to
us, nor that He has revealed it or manifested it or indicated it. He does not
merely say that God loves us, though He does love us and He has shown
and displayed His love to us. ‘Yes,’ says John, ‘but He has gone further—
He has bestowed His love upon us.’ Now that means there is a sense in
which God has put His love into us, implanted Himself if you like, infused
or injected His love within us, and we must emphasise that, because what
really matters is the word that, which should be translated in order that.
‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us in order
that we may become, be made, the children of God’; that is what John
actually says. In other words, what really makes us children of God is that
God has put His own life into us. God’s nature is love, and he has put His
nature into us so that we have the love of God. We cannot be children of
God if we are not like God; the child is like the parent, the offspring
proclaims the parentage, and God in that way makes us His children. He
puts His own nature into us, and we become His children, and that nature
which is in God is in us, and it is acting and manifesting and expressing
itself. Paul says that ‘the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the
Holy Ghost’ (Romans 5:5). Here again, I say, is something that is so
wonderful and surpassingly strange that it is almost impossible for us to
receive and to hold on to it, and yet nothing less than that is true of the
Christian. John will make use of this argument later on in this chapter,
where he says that if you have the love of God in you, you are bound to
love one another. Even though your brother may be unworthy, you must
love him. Is that not the whole message of Christ’s death upon the cross?
He is in you, and He has made you children of God.
Let us now look at the third aspect of this matter; let me emphasise the
mystery of all this. ‘… therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew
him not.’ This is a mystery. This condition in which we find ourselves as
Christians, this being a child of God, is a great mystery. The world does not
understand it; it does not know what we are talking about. The world
ridicules it ‘because it knew him not’; the world does not understand this
sort of thing; it says, ‘You Christians claim that you are children of God,
that something of the divine nature is in you and that you are different,
separated from other people. Away with your suggestion!’ Says the world,
‘Do you mean that you people, as I see you to be, are children of God,
sharers and partakers of His divine nature? No; you are just ordinary people
like everybody else.’
‘It is all right,’ says John; ‘don’t be upset if the world says that to you—
“it knew him not.” The world said, “This fellow, this son of Joseph and
Mary, this carpenter of Galilee, that talks and says, ‘I and the Father are
one,’ who is He?” The world did not know Him; it saw nothing else; it did
not see the Godhead; it did not see the Trinity that was there, and it does not
see it in you,’ says John. ‘So don’t be surprised if you are misunderstood or
if you are laughed at. The world may say that you have religious mania and
count you soft or say that you have suddenly developed a psychological
complex, but don’t be surprised,’ continues John. ‘It did not know Him, and
it won’t know you. This thing of which I am speaking is only discerned
spiritually. It is something hidden, something within, in exactly the same
way as the Godhead was veiled by the flesh of Christ, hidden and revealed
at the same time—and so it is true of the Christian; we have the divine
nature within us, and yet it is veiled, and the world does not see through
that. But it is all right,’ says John; ‘this is a mystery, this is something
internal.’
You will find exactly the same idea in Revelation 2:17 where we are told
that a secret name is given to Christians, to the children of God who receive
a sign and a name, and no one understands this hidden name but the
Christians themselves; that is the same idea exactly. It is a great mystery; in
a sense it is one of the most glorious aspects of the Christian life. The world
does not know us, but we know Christ, and we know one another, and that
is proof of life. We are aware that something is happening to us; we are
aware that God has dealt with us and has done something to us; we know
that we are new creatures. We are aware that we cannot explain ourselves to
ourselves except in terms of Christ, and we know when we see it in another;
nobody else does, but we know one another. This is one of the most
mysterious aspects of Christian life and experience. Those who have the life
of God always know one another, and they feel an affinity and an attraction
which no one else can understand. Other people may mix with them, they
may know people very well, and yet there is something those others have
not got. There is a barrier; ours is a life which does not show itself in
external affairs, it does not show itself even in the mode and manner of
living, but it is a life which recognises itself in the other, and this is a great
mystery. But it is a great reality at the same time. ‘The world knoweth us
not’; it does not understand us; it says, ‘What have you people got—what is
this something you are always speaking about?’ It looks on from the outside
but cannot discern it. If you want a perfect commentary on what I am trying
to say, read 1 Corinthians 2, especially towards the end: ‘He that is spiritual
judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man’ (1 Corinthians 2:15).
That is it; we know one another, but no one else knows. We understand,
they do not, and ‘the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not’; this
is the mystery of this gift of life and of the life that is within us.
 But lastly, there is the marvel of it all. ‘Behold, what manner of love’!
Words, of course, become meaningless at this point; there is nothing to do
but to gaze upon it and to wonder at it all, to stand in amazement and in
astonishment. Oh, the quality of this love! Just realise what it means, the
freeness of it all, that you and I should be called and become children of
God! The freeness of this love that has looked upon us in spite of our sin, in
spite of our recalcitrance, in spite of our unworthiness, in spite of our
foulness as a result of the Fall and our own actions. Oh, the love that has
not merely forgiven us but has given itself to us, that has entered into us and
shared its own nature with us; stand in awe at the greatness of it all! Think
of what it cost Him, our Lord Jesus Christ, to come into the world, to live in
the world, suffering its treatment, staggering up Golgotha with that cross
upon His shoulders and being nailed to the tree. Think of Him dying,
suffering the agony and the shame of it all in order that you and I might
become children of God.
‘Behold, what manner of love’—you cannot understand it, you cannot
explain it. The only thing we can say is that it is the eternal love, it is the
love of God and is self—generated, produced by nothing but itself, so that
in spite of us and all that is true of us He came and died and suffered so
much. The Son of God became the Son of Man that we, the sons of men,
might become the children of God. It is true, we are that; we have been
made that. Amazing, incredible, yet true!
 2. Destined for Glory
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that,
when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2

I suppose we must agree that nothing more sublime than this has ever been
written, and any man who has to preach upon such a text or upon such a
word must be unusually conscious of his own smallness and inadequacy
and unworthiness. One’s tendency with a statement like this always is just
to stand in wonder and amazement at it. I have never chosen, in and of
myself, to preach upon this text. I have often felt that I would like to, but
there are certain great words like this in Scripture of which frankly I am, in
a sense, frightened; frightened as a preacher, lest anything that I say may
detract from them or may rob anyone of their greatness and their glory. That
may be wrong, but this is how it always affects me.
However, here we are, working through this first epistle of John and we
come to this magnificent and glorious statement. So we must look at it, for
it is to do violence to Scripture not to consider and examine it, and we must
not be content with some mere general effect as we read these words. They
are moving, and yet we must not let ourselves merely be moved in an
emotional, and still less in a sentimental, sense; so it behooves us to
examine the statement and to see something of its richness and its wonder.
Furthermore, it is when one confronts a text like this that one realises
what a privilege it is to be a Christian minister. I am rather sorry for anyone
who has not had to spend a week with a verse like this! I assure you it is a
very enriching experience, a humbling one and an uplifting one. There is
nothing surely in life that can be more wonderful or more glorious than to
have to spend a week or so with a word like this, looking at it, listening to
it, and considering what others have said about it. It is indeed something for
which one humbly thanks God.
What we have here is one of those great New Testament descriptions of
the Christian and of the Christian’s life in this world. A number of things
inevitably must strike us on the very surface before we come to any detailed
analysis. The first thing is how utterly inadequate are our ordinary,
customary ideas of ourselves as Christian people. When you read this, and
then when you think of yourself and what you generally see and observe
about yourself and about your life as a Christian in this world, oh, how
inadequate are all our ideas! Or take it as it was put in that hymn of the
great Richard Baxter:
Lord, it belongs not to my care
Whether I die or live;
To love and serve Thee is my share,
And this Thy grace must give.
If life be long, I will be glad
That I may long obey;
If short, yet why should I be sad
To soar to endless day?
Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than He went through before;
He that into God’s kingdom comes
Must enter by this door.
Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if Thy work on earth be sweet,
What will Thy glory be?
Then shall I end my sad complaints
And weary sinful days,
And join with the triumphant saints
Who sing Jehovah’s praise.
My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim:
But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with Him.
Can we really say those words from the heart? Is that our view of
ourselves and of our life as Christian people in this world? Is that our view
of the possibility of our life being short or of being long? Is that our view of
life and of death and of eternity? Well, according to this text we are looking
at in this chapter, that is the Christian view. ‘Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that,
when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.’
I do feel that this is perhaps the greatest weakness of all in the Christian
church, that we fail to realise what we are, or who we are. We spend our
time in arguing about the implications of the Christian truth or the
application of this, that and the other. But the central thing is to realise what
the Christian is. We grumble and complain, and it is all due to the fact that
we have not really seen ourselves in terms of this picture. Surely, as we read
these words, we must of necessity be humbled, indeed in a sense
humiliated, as we realise the inadequacy of our ideas and the unworthiness
of our view of ourselves as Christian people.
Or let me put it to you like this: is it not the honest truth that most of the
unhappiness that we experience in this life is due to our failure to realise
this truth? We are full of complaints and unhappiness. They arise partly
from our own faults, partly from what others do to us or from what the
world as a whole does to us. But all our unhappiness is ultimately to be
traced back to this, that we are looking at the things that are happening to
us, instead of looking at this vision that is held there before us. It is because
we do not see ourselves as the children of God and going through this life
and world in the way that this text indicates; that is why our unhappiness
tends to get us down. We do not relate it to the whole; we do not put it in its
context; we live too much with the things that are immediately in front of us
instead of putting everything into the context of our standing and of our
destiny.
In the same way we must at once realise, I think, that most of our failure
to live the Christian life as we should live it is also due to the same cause. If
only we realised who we are, then the problem of conduct would almost
automatically be solved. This is how parents often deal with this problem in
instructing their children. They say to them, ‘Now remember who you are.’
In other words it is our failure to realise who we are that causes us to
stumble on this whole question of moral conduct and behaviour. This
objection to the stringent demands of the gospel is due to one thing only,
namely that we do not realise who we are. If once we saw ourselves as we
are depicted here, there would be no need to persuade us to live the
Christian life. As the next verse tells us, we would feel that we have to, it is
inevitable, it is logical. The whole trouble is to be traced to a failure to
realise our true greatness and position and standing.
In other words, the more I read the New Testament, the more I am
impressed by the fact that every appeal for conduct and good living and
behaviour is always made in terms of our position. The Bible never asks us
to do anything without reminding us first of all who we are; you always get
doctrine before practical exhortation. Look at any epistle you like and you
will always find it; these men, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, first
of all tell us, ‘This is what you are as the result of the work of Christ—
therefore…’ It is never the other way round. To put it bluntly, the New
Testament is not interested in the conduct of people who are not Christians.
It has nothing to tell them except that they are destined for hell and for
perdition. That is its only statement. They must repent, and until they repent
and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ it is not interested in their behaviour—
that is its one message to them. But the moment they become Christians, it
is vitally interested in their conduct; it appeals to them because of what has
happened.
Or we can put it like this: there is no comfort or encouragement offered
in the Bible to anybody except those who are the children of God. When
things go wrong in the world, people tend to turn to religion. In times of
difficulty there is always a sort of turning to God; people pray to Him and
think of the gospel. But in the first instance, the one message of the gospel
to them is still the message of condemnation; it warns them to flee from the
wrath to come. The gospel is not some psychological agency just to tide
people over little troubles, nor is it meant to make us feel happy for the
moment. No, this consolation and comfort which is absolute and eternal is
always solidly based upon our understanding and realisation of who we are
and what we are. The key to the understanding of everything in the New
Testament is that we should realise what Christ has done for us and what we
are in Him as the result of His work.
Now that is the very thing that John is concerned about in this epistle.
His appeal at this point is based upon what we are. We have seen that John
is out to comfort these people, and he shows them that it is vitally
important, if they are really to reap the full benefits of the Christian gospel,
that they should be living the Christian life. This is a great appeal for
righteousness, keeping the commandments of God, loving the brethren,
hating the world. Someone says, ‘Why should I do these things?’ John
replies, ‘Beloved, realise what you are and who you are, and if you do, you
will see that these things follow automatically.’ That is what he does in this
second verse; so let us look at it together.
The first thing we must do with this word is to be careful we do not
misinterpret it. The very form of the words which are to be found,
especially in the Authorised Version, almost tend to make us misinterpret or
misunderstand them. There is a kind of suggested contrast in the text which
in reality is not there at all. The danger as you read this statement is that you
will contrast the ‘now’ and ‘not yet appear what we shall be.’ Furthermore
this word ‘but’ which you find in various versions is not in the best
manuscripts, and it should not be there.
So there is no contrast between ‘now’ and ‘shall be,’ and this word ‘but’
should be omitted—all these statements are positive. We must never read
this verse in such a way as to regard it as a kind of alternating series of
certainties and uncertainties. They are all a series of positive statements; the
Apostle in each case is telling us what he does know. Also this word
‘appear ’ which is used is not the best translation; it ought to be
‘manifested,’ so that we read our text like this: ‘Beloved, now are we the
sons [or, better, children] of God, and what we shall be has not yet been
manifested; we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for
we shall see him as he is.’ We are the children of God; we know what we
are going to be, but it has not been manifested; we know that when He shall
be manifested Himself, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
In other words, the text is a great series of positive statements. John says,
in effect, ‘Here we are—Christian people in this world, and the world does
not understand us. It may perhaps hate us; it may be unkind and cruel to us.
Very well,’ says John, ‘don’t be disturbed or upset by that; don’t think of
yourselves or estimate yourselves in terms of what the world says about
Christians because the world can know nothing at all about it. It did not
know Christ when He came; it has never known God; so the world, when it
laughs at you, is giving you a great confirmation of your faith.’
The Bible is very fond of saying something like that; it suggests that we
are in a very bad condition if all men speak well of us. ‘Yea,’ says Paul to
Timothy, ‘and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer
persecution’ (2 Timothy 3:12); we ought rather to be concerned about
ourselves if the world thinks highly of us and seems to think it does
understand us. No, the world knows us not because it knew Him not. ‘The
one thing that matters,’ says John, ‘is that you should know yourself, that
you should know what you are as a Christian, that you should know these
things and that you should know Him.’
Let me, therefore, divide up the verse like this: There are three main
statements made here by the Apostle. The first is that we know that we are
the children of God. The second is that we know we are destined for glory.
And the third thing we know is something concerning that glory. Those are
the three positive statements in the verse.
The first thing, then, is that we know that we are the children of God.
‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God.’ You notice that he does not say,
‘we shall be,’ but rather ‘we are.’ We have already dealt with this in a sense
in dealing with the first verse. I am just emphasising it once more. The
Christian is meant to know exactly where he is and where he stands. He is
not left groping in the dark, neither is he just meant to be hoping. The
Christian is someone who should be able to say, ‘I know, I am persuaded, I
am certain.’ These things are facts.
Let me put it strongly like this: we shall never be more the children of
God than we are now. I do not hesitate to make that statement. I am as
certainly a child of God now as I shall be in glory; I shall be a much better
man then, but I shall be no more a child of God. The human analogy puts
that perfectly; conduct does not determine relationship; relationship is
something vital, organic, internal. The prodigal son was as much the son of
his father as was the elder brother. Behaviour, conduct and appearance—all
these things do not determine relationship, thank God! Therefore we are
children of God now as much as we shall be throughout the countless ages
of eternity in glory. You are either a child of God or you are not, and once
you are a child of God you are His child for ever and ever in that divine and
eternal relationship. You cannot be a Christian one day and not the next day.
Once you are born of the Spirit and born of God, you are a child of God.
You may vary a lot in your conduct and behaviour, but we must never hold
the view of holiness or backsliding or any one of these doctrines which
gives the impression you can be in and out of the relationship. You cannot!
Relationship is something that is fixed and remains. Other things are
variable and come and go, but, ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God.’ So
again I ask the question, do we know this, are we quite certain about it? I
am not asking at the moment, ‘How do you live?’ I am not asking you your
views on various matters. No, my question is, do you know you are a child
of God?
But how does one know this—how is this knowledge obtainable and
possible? What indications do I have that I am a child of God? Well, here
are just some of the answers. Men and women who are children of God are
aware of a new life, a new nature within them. They can say, ‘I live; yet not
I’ (Galatians 2:20 ). They are aware that there is another factor, another
person, another presence. In a real sense, in a true sense, they are aware of a
kind of dualism—they themselves, and yet somebody else. And they can
only explain themselves to themselves in terms of this other life and this
other person—I, yet not I, but Christ. One like that is aware of a new nature,
another life, a different order of being from that which is merely natural.
Or let me put it like this: we know that we are children of God when we
are deeply aware of sin within. I emphasise that deliberately. It is only the
children of God who realise that they have a sinful nature. The
unregenerate, the natural men and women, are not aware of a sinful nature.
They may admit that they do certain things which they should not do, but
begin to tell them that they have a sinful nature, that they are dead in
trespasses and sins, and they will hate you and begin to defend themselves;
they hate preaching that condemns them.
No, it is only the children of God who realise that they have an utterly
sinful nature. It is only a saint like Charles Wesley who says, ‘Vile and full
of sin I am.’ It was Saint Paul who said, ‘For I know that in me (that is, in
my flesh), dwelleth no good thing’ (Romans 7:18). It is the Christian who
cries out and says, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?’ (Romans 7:24 ). An unregenerate believer has
never uttered such words and never can—it is impossible. It is the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit that exposes our sinful nature and the depths
of sin and iniquity that reside in our hearts. ‘The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’ says Jeremiah (Jeremiah
17:9). ‘I dare not trust my sweetest frame,’ says the hymn—writer. All these
things are indications of the new nature—an awareness of sin and above all
a desire to be rid of it. If you are hating the sin within you and longing to be
delivered and emancipated from it, I assure you, you are a child of God—it
is one of the best signs.
Next there is a desire for God and a desire for the things of God and a
desire to walk in the ways of God. Do you know what it is to long to know
God better, to long to know Him truly? Do you feel that you wish you really
could say those words of Richard Baxter from the depth of your being?
Have you felt that you are a child of God? Have you wished that you could
say this? Well, I can honestly tell you, that is never an unregenerate
person’s desire. His mind is enmity against God; he wants certain blessings
from God when it suits him. The people who delight in the things of God
and like to read the Bible and want to pray and are grieved that they do not
pray more—all these are indications of being children of God.
Then there is what the Apostle Paul calls ‘the Spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father ’ (Romans 8:15), the feeling that God is not
just some great potentate far away in some distant eternity, but that
somehow or another we do know that He loves us. We are aware of a filial
feeling with respect to Him, and there is something within us that cries out,
‘Father!’ We are aware that God is coming nearer to us and that we are
related to Him.
And then there is one other thing which I have already mentioned, the
love of the brethren. I say again, a very good and a very subtle test of
whether we are children of God is whether we really love and like God’s
people and whether we like to be amongst them. Do not misunderstand me
—that does not mean that there are not certain things in Christian people
which you may find objectionable! But do you feel instinctively drawn to a
good person? Do you feel an affinity with people who like to talk about
these things, and with those who are the children of God? Or are you still
fascinated by the glamour of the world? Which do you really like; which do
you prefer? The children of God love to realise that they are in the family;
they love the brethren; they feel, ‘These are my people—these are the
people with whom I want to spend eternity.’
These are just some of the tests which we apply to ourselves to prove
whether we are indeed the children of God.
Now let us go on to the second principle, which is that we know that we
are destined for glory. ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth
not yet appear what we shall be.’ What we are going to be has not yet been
revealed to us, but we know that we are destined for it. That is obviously
what John means. He is not here in a sort of uncertain state which says,
‘Well, we are the children of God. At the present time I do not quite know
what is going to happen to us, but no doubt it is going to be all right.’ Not at
all! John has seen something of the glory, and he says, it has not yet been
revealed to this world which does not understand it, but it will be revealed.
We can put it like this: Here we are in a state of humiliation, but we are
going to be in a state of glorification. Do you not see that as Christian
people we, in a sense, have to retrace the steps trodden before us by our
Lord? You remember how Richard Baxter puts that—we have to enter into
the room which He has already been through here on earth in a state of
humiliation—born in Bethlehem, working as a carpenter, people not
recognising Him—it was humiliation. While He was on the earth that was
His condition, and the world did not know Him. ‘He came unto his own,
and his own received him not’ (John 1:11 ); the world, His own world,
rejected Him; His own people rejected Him. Yes, but He is no longer in the
state of humiliation; He has passed on to glory, and He is in a state of
glorification. The Apostle Paul had a vision of Him there on the road to
Damascus; John had a vision on the island of Patmos; there He is in glory,
and you and I are to retrace those very steps. Here we are in a state of
humiliation, yes, but as certainly as He has gone before, we also shall go on
to glory.
‘Let not your heart be troubled,’ said our Lord, ‘ye believe in God,
believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not
so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself ’
(John 14:1–2). That is it! It is the same thing exactly.
Christians, therefore, know that they are destined for that state of glory;
it is part of their essential belief. It is as much a part of their belief as their
forgiveness of sins by the work of Christ upon the cross. So what the
Christian says is, ‘I am destined for glory. It has not come yet, but it is
coming, and I am going on to it.’ It will be manifested for certain, and so
they are full of confidence and assurance. Paul in that great eighth chapter
of the epistle to the Romans is in reality saying the same thing. This verse is
John’s way of saying, ‘For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate
us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:38–
39). Your glorification and mine is an absolute certainty. As certainly as our
Lord has entered into His glory, you and I who are children of God shall
enter into it also.
It does not look like it now—John agrees entirely—it ‘doth not yet
appear,’ and the world is against us—it does not understand it. That is
exactly how it was with Him, but the thing is certain.
On what grounds can I be sure of this? Here is my answer: the purposes
of God. Consider Paul again: ‘For whom he did foreknow, he also did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he [Christ] might
be the firstborn among many brethren’ (Romans 8:29). That is a perfect
statement of the whole thing. Your glorification and mine is a part of the
purpose of God in salvation, and when God has purposed and planned a
thing, it is certain and nothing can prevent it. Read again that mighty logic
of Romans 8 and you will see it put perfectly. I can therefore rest my
confidence of glorification upon the promises of God, and the promises of
God are based upon the character of God. God cannot, because He is God,
break His promises, and He has also given an oath, so we have a double
assurance. The promises are there with His purposes and His character at
the back of them.
If you are still uncertain, add the power of God. ‘For thy sake we are
killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter,’ but
what does it matter? ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors
through him that loved us’ (Romans 8:36–37). ‘Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ?’ (Romans 8:35). It is impossible; there is nothing that
can do so. We talk about the power of God, the One who made the world
and the One who could end it in a second. All the almighty, illimitable and
absolute power of God guarantees my glorification.
Indeed, I have an even further argument than that. What we are now is a
guarantee, in a sense, of what we are going to be. Our sonship is in itself a
guarantee of our glorification because God never starts a work and then
gives it up. ‘He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until
the day of Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 1:6). You and I start things and drop
them; that is typical of mankind as a result of sin. But whatever God begins,
God continues, and God will end it in absolute perfection. If therefore I am
but a child, insignificant, unworthy, immature, the fact that I am alive is
proof that I am going on to ultimate maturity; Christ is ‘the firstborn among
many brethren,’ and He is preparing and leading others, a great crowd of
brethren, until eventually we arrive in eternal glory. Do you know that you
are destined for glory, my friend; do you know within yourself that that is
something that is awaiting you, that you are being led and taken on to that
glory which awaits you? John says, ‘We know’ this.
But that brings me to my last point. What do we know concerning this
glory? These are the things that are indicated. We know that this glory is to
be ushered in by the appearing, or the manifestation, of the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself. ‘We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him.’
This is the great New Testament doctrine of the Second Coming, but God
forbid that we should immediately begin to think of our several theories of
this, that, or the other, of how it is going to happen. All I know is this, that
the Lord Jesus Christ will come again. Let us take the Scripture in its broad
statement, and let us beware of robbing ourselves, I say, of the life–giving
glorious doctrine by thus particularising these mere theories and
philosophies rather than accepting this true exposition of Scripture.
The Second Coming is a fact. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming again,
and there will be a judgment, and all that is sinful and evil will be
consigned to the lake of fire and destroyed throughout all eternity; and there
is to be ‘new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’ (2
Peter 3:13). When He comes, these things will take place; that is the way
the glory will be ushered in. The world is to be rid of everything that is
impure, foul and unworthy; ‘the elements shall melt with fervent heat’ (2
Peter 3:10); there is to be a renovation and a regeneration; there will be a
new world, and all evil will be banished. That is how the glory is to be
ushered in, and I know that whatever the appearances may be in this world,
as certainly as the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world the first time as a
babe in Bethlehem, He will come again as the King of kings and Lord of
lords, and He will wind up the affairs of this universe of time. I know that it
is certain.
Furthermore, ‘we shall see him as he is.’ ‘Now we see through a glass,
darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even
as also I am known’ (1 Corinthians 12:12). Do you know that you are
destined for that? We shall see Him as He is—blessed, glorious vision to
see the Son of God in all His glory, as He is, face to face—you standing and
looking at Him and enjoying Him for all eternity. It is only then that we will
begin to understand what He did for us, the price He paid, the cost of our
salvation. Oh, let us hold on to this! Shame on us for ever grumbling or
complaining; shame on us for ever saying that the lot of the Christian is
hard; shame on us for ever objecting to the demands of this glorious gospel;
shame on us for ever half—heartedly worshipping, praising and loving His
honour and His glory. You and I are destined for that vision glorious; we
shall see Him as He is, face to face.
But consider something still more amazing and incredible. We shall be
like Him. ‘We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we
shall see him as he is.’ This is John’s way of putting the whole doctrine of
the resurrection of our very bodies, the ultimate final resurrection, the
ultimate glorification of God’s people. What John is telling us, in other
words, is that when that great day comes we shall not only see Him, we
shall be made like Him. Paul says that God’s purpose is that we shall be
‘conformed to the image of his Son’ (Romans 8:29). That is the argument,
and that is the doctrine.
In other words, while we are here on earth, the Holy Spirit is working in
us, doing His work of holiness in us and ridding us of sin so that eventually
we shall be faultless, blameless, without spot and without rebuke. We shall
have been delivered from every sin and vestige and appearance of sin
within us, and in addition to that, our very bodies shall be changed and shall
be glorified. Paul says that we expect Christ to come from heaven for this
reason—that He shall change the body of our humiliation ‘that it may be
fashioned like unto his glorious body’ (Philippians 3:21). There will be an
amazing change then in those who love Him when He appears. Again, read
1 Corinthians 15 where Paul tells us that ‘we shall all be changed, in a
moment’ (1 Corinthians 15:51–52). Our bodies will be glorified; there will
be something of the radiance of His own glory in your body and mine, so
that in this new heaven and new earth we shall have bodies made fit for our
glorified spirits. We shall be like Him.
The New Testament does not tell us much more than that, because we
could not stand it; our language is inadequate, and if it were adequate, the
description would be so baffling we could not tolerate it, the thing is so
glorious and wonderful. When the three disciples were with our Lord on the
Mount of Transfiguration, they could not stand it; the magnificence of the
glory, the brightness of the appearance was too great. Consider too what
happened to Paul when he had one glimpse of that vision on the road to
Damascus—he was blinded. No, I could not stand it as I am as the result of
sin; but when I am delivered from sin and the bondage of corruption, and
when I have a new, glorified body, I will be able to stand it. I will look at
Him, I will see Him face to face, I will see Him as He is, I will be like Him.
If I were not like Him I could not stand it—that is John’s argument.
I believe there is another thing here, and that is that as we look at Him,
we become like Him; and as we continually look at Him, we shall be
perfected.
Changed from glory into glory
Till in heaven we take our place
Till we cast our crowns before Him,
Lost in wonder, love and praise.
Charles Wesley
We are changed into this same image, from glory into glory, as we look
at Him and contemplate Him; and when we see Him perfectly, it will be an
absolute change.
Those, then, are some of the things of which the Christian is sure,
according to the Apostle John. We know that we are the children of God,
we know that we are destined for glory, and we know that glory is to be
ushered in by His manifestation. We know that then we shall see Him as He
is, and, wonder of wonders, we shall be like Him! What blessed vision,
what glorious hope, that I, small, insignificant, fallible, sinful, unworthy,
shall be like Him, ‘the firstborn among many brethren,’ and made
conformable to His glorious nature. Beloved people, let us lay hold on this
hope and look upon it and meditate upon it day by day.
 3. Holiness
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. 1 John 3:3

This verse, as the very first word ‘and’ reminds us, is one that is intimately
connected with the previous verse. Now these two verses in their
relationship to one another remind me very forcibly of those incidents in the
life and ministry of our Lord which we find recorded in the Gospels, in
which we have two scenes, the one immediately following the other. The
first is the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration where our Lord went up
onto the Mount with Peter and James and John and was transfigured before
them. Then, after the amazing and extraordinary things that happened there,
they went down again onto the plain, where they were confronted by the
case of that poor lunatic boy who had been brought by his father to the
disciples in order that they might heal him. It is a familiar and well–known
contrast between the glory and the wonder of the Transfiguration and the
heavenly scene upon the Mount, and the scene of the problem and the
unhappiness and the misery which was found down on the plain; and the
interesting thing, of course, about the two incidents is how the one
immediately follows upon the other (Luke 9:28–43).
And there is a sense in which one is constrained to remember those two
incidents as one reads these two verses. We have been on the mountain of
God, and we were shown things unseen. We were given that glimpse of
glory, of the glory that awaits us and the astounding and amazing things to
which we are heirs. But here we are now, as it were, back to earth again. We
are reminded that before we enter into that glory and enjoy it in all its
fulness, certain things remain and abound. We are still men and women in
the flesh, in this world which, John has already told us, does not know us. It
does not understand us and, indeed, it is opposed to us and inimical to our
highest and best interests. Yet though we do feel that, we must be very
careful—and that is the point I want to emphasise most of all here—we
must be very careful lest we regard this third verse as some sort of
anticlimax after the second. It is not an anticlimax, and to regard it as such
is simply a manifestation of our sinful nature.
Indeed, not only is this verse not an anticlimax, it is not even a contrast
to the second verse; the very word and which connects the two verses
reminds us that these two things are indissolubly bound together and that
verse 3 follows verse 2 very directly and immediately and, indeed, of
necessity. There is a sense in which we can say that the whole object of
verse 2 is to lead to verse 3, and if we fail to regard the second verse in that
light, if we fail to see that its real object and purpose is to prepare the way
for this third verse, then we have abused the second verse entirely, and we
have failed to appreciate its true message to us.
I emphasise all this because knowing myself I think that such a warning
is very essential. We all of us, because of the effect that sin has upon us,
rather like reading verses like the second verse. People always like a
sermon or an address on a verse like that, and yet, if we do not realise that
John wrote the second verse in order to prepare the way for what he says in
this third verse, then we have not been using it aright. We have been using it
for the time being to forget our trials and problems; we have been enjoying
ourselves and having a spiritual feast. Like Peter on the Mount of
Transfiguration, we have been rather tending to say, ‘Let us make three
tabernacles’ and spend the rest of our lives here in the wonder and
enjoyment of the feast of the glory. But we must not do that; we are not
meant to; we were taken up by John to the top of the mountain in order that
we might descend onto the plain and do this essential work that is waiting
there for us—in exactly the same way as our Lord came down from the
mountain to deal with the problem which had baffled and defeated his poor
disciples. You and I, having had a vision of glory, have to come down and
translate it into practise and put it into daily operation, and if it does not
lead to that, then we are abusing the Scripture.
Now there is a logical connection between these two verses. John does
not argue about it, he just states it—‘every man that hath this hope in him
purifieth himself, even as he is pure.’ There is no need to discuss it; the one
thing follows the other as the night follows the day. Therefore this third
verse is one which comes to us as a very real and a very sure test; the extent
to which I have really grasped the teaching of verse 2 is proved by the
extent to which I implement verse 3. We can put it this way: it is what we
are and what we do that really proclaims our belief and our profession.
That is the great theme in the epistle of James which has been so
misunderstood—‘faith without works is dead’ (James 2:20)—and no one
must dispute it. There is no disputation between James and John; both are
saying the same thing—namely, that the profession of faith is of no avail
unless it leads to this particular practise. Therefore we can put it the other
way round with James and say that the real test of our profession is not so
much what we are as what we do. Whatever I may have felt as I
contemplated that second verse, if it does not lead me inevitably to the
position which is described in the third verse, then it has been a false view
because, according to John, this is pure logic. There is no discussion about
it—‘every man that hath…’ He does not say, he ought to purify himself, he
says that he does, and therefore it becomes a very thorough test of what we
truly are.
In other words, is it not the case once more that our failure, most of us, is
in the realm of belief, because this belief, says John, leads inevitably to that
practise. Why do we therefore fail so much in practise? The answer, it
seems to me, is that our belief is defective; if only we really did see
ourselves as we are depicted in the New Testament, the problem of conduct
would immediately be solved. So the real trouble with most Christian
people is not so much in the realm of their conduct and practise as in the
realm of their belief, and that is why the Church, whenever she puts too
much emphasis upon conduct and behaviour and ethics, always leads
eventually to a state and condition in which Christian people fail most of all
in that respect.
This is a very subtle matter. Of course the tendency is for people to argue
like this: ‘Ah,’ they say, ‘there is not much point in talking to us about
doctrine; you have to remind people of their practical duty.’ So holiness
teaching not infrequently becomes a constant repetition of certain duties
which we are to carry out. I agree that we do have to do these things, but I
say that the ultimate way of carrying out these duties, and really practising
these things, is to have such a grasp and understanding of the doctrine that
the practise becomes inevitable. And that is, of course, precisely what the
New Testament always does. In other words, we cannot very well look at
this verse without observing the way in which the New Testament always
presents its teaching with regard to this whole question of holiness.
Here, I think, is a great corrective to what has so often taken place, and
still does take place, in connection with this matter. Holiness, according to
the New Testament, is an inevitable deduction from doctrine; it must never
be regarded as something in and of itself. In other words, we must never
approach the holy life simply in terms of living the holy life. And that, I
think, is where the whole idea of monasticism and asceticism went astray.
But the monastic conception of holiness is not, of course, confined to
Roman Catholicism by any means. There are large numbers of evangelical
people who clearly have a false idea of holiness; it is regarded as something
in and of itself, something one has to go in for because of its nature,
because it is a particular kind of life.
But that is never the teaching of the New Testament. Holiness is
something that follows and is an inevitable deduction from doctrine, from
an understanding of our position as Christian people. And especially, I
think, we must admit that the New Testament presents its teaching and
doctrine of holiness in terms of this great truth concerning the blessed hope.
It is after it has told us what we are and who we are and of the hope that lies
before us that the New Testament brings in this doctrine of holiness and
sanctification and Christian behaviour. I must therefore never talk about this
idea of living the holy life because it is a good life in and of itself. Rather,
my only reason for being holy is that I am a child of God and that I am
destined for glory, and if I do not practise holiness in those terms I will
sooner or later inevitably go astray.
That is, of course, what has happened with this other teaching of
holiness. When you make holiness a thing of itself, you then produce your
rules and regulations. You begin to pay too much attention to little details;
you become legalistic without realising it; you become self–righteous
because you have carried out your duties, and you forget the real objective
for which you have originally set out.
Secondly, holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order
that we may become something; it is something we are to do because of
what we already are. Take this whole question of Lent.1 There is a great
deal of teaching on this subject which really amounts to this: that we are to
be holy and live the holy life in order that we may become truly Christian.
Every phase or aspect of the doctrine of justification by works really
teaches that; so any suggestion we may have in ourselves that we are to
deny ourselves certain things, that we are not to do certain things, and that
we are to discipline ourselves in order that we may become Christian is a
denial of the doctrine of justification by faith. But I am not to live a good
and holy life in order that I may become a Christian; I am to live the holy
life because I am a Christian. I am not to live this holy life in order that I
may enter heaven; it is because I know I am going to enter heaven that I
must live this holy life.
 That is the emphasis here—‘Every man that hath this hope in him
purifieth himself, even as he is pure.’ I am not to strive and sweat and pray
in order that at the end I may enter into heaven. No; I start rather from the
standpoint that I have been made a child of God by the grace of God in the
Lord Jesus Christ. I am destined for heaven; I have an assurance that I have
been called to go there and that God is going to take me there, and it is
because I know this that I am preparing now. I must never regard that as
contingent and uncertain in order that I may make it certain. It is exactly the
other way round: it is because I know I am going to meet God that I must
prepare to meet Him.
Thirdly, I must never conceive of holiness or sanctification as a kind of
higher or happier or holier life which we are meant to enjoy as Christians
and into which I ought to be entering. I must regard it rather as a life to
which all Christians are inevitably called and which every Christian ought
therefore automatically to be living. Now far too often the subject of
holiness is handled like this: We are told that there is a wonderful life which
you can live—a life with a capital L—a life of happiness and joy and peace.
‘Why don’t you enter into this life?’ we are asked. Indeed, we are told that
there are two types of Christians, the ordinary Christian and then the
Christian who has had some kind of double blessing. You can be a Christian
without that, but how foolish you are not to take this higher something
which is there for you. I say there is no such definition in the New
Testament at all. Holiness is something that is applicable to every Christian,
not something which is some kind of extra. It is the norm of the Christian
life, the life that everyone who has truly seen the doctrine is doing his or her
utmost to live and to practise, with none of this division or dichotomy. All
Christians, if they understand the doctrine truly, may be, and are, living this
kind of life. It is not something in a separate category and department; it is
something that flows out of the life that is in them; it is an inevitable
expression of what they have received.
Or, lastly, let me put it like this: The holiness of which the New
Testament speaks and the holy life, the life of sanctification which John
talks of, is not so much something which we receive as a gift—it is rather
something which we work out. Now here again I think this correction is
needed. How often is the holiness doctrine presented in that form. We are
told that as you have received your justification by faith as a gift, so you
must now receive this gift of sanctification and holiness as a gift. So people
get the idea that this life of holiness is something which comes to you
perhaps in a meeting or a convention. You suddenly get it; you went to the
meeting without it and then suddenly you got it.
But surely this is a denial of this very teaching which John is holding
before us. No; the position is rather this—not that it suddenly comes to me
and I receive some special or exceptional blessing; the position, rather, is
that I am reminded of the doctrine, I am reminded that I am a child of God,
I am told of the inheritance that awaits me. I have been given a glimpse of
the vision of the glory that awaits me beyond death and the grave, and
having seen it I am told, ‘Now then, in the light of that, proceed to work this
out, purify yourselves even as he is pure.’ It is not a gift received but
something which I must work out and put into practise. Consider how the
Apostle Paul puts the same thing in Philippians 2:12–13: ‘Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling: for it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to do.…’ And because of that you work it out. It is not
some mystical experience that suddenly comes to us, but the outworking of
the doctrine and the truth which we claim to believe.
Now all that is surely something of which we are reminded as we take a
superficial glance at this third verse in its connection with the second verse,
and we can put the teaching like this: If I really believe what that second
verse has told me, if I really know that I am a child of God, with all that that
means, if I believe and know that I am destined for eternal glory in the
presence of God the Father, if I really believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is
going to return again, to be ‘manifested,’ as John puts it, in this world as the
King of kings and Lord of lords, if I believe He is coming to judge the
world and to destroy everything that is evil and vile out of the universe as a
whole, if I believe that I am going to be with Him in that glory, if
furthermore I believe that I am going to see Him as he is, if I really believe
that I am going to be like Him, that my very body shall be glorified, and
that I shall be faultless and blameless and spend my eternity in His holy
presence, if I really believe all that, says John, then of necessity this must
follow.
What is it, then, that follows? The first thing that John tells us is that
anyone who really believes that and has ‘this hope in him purifieth himself.’
Now it is very important that we should realise that ‘him’ does not refer to
the man himself, but to Christ. John does not say, ‘Every man that hath this
hope within himself,’ but ‘Every man that hath this hope in him,’ in the
Christ of whom he has just been speaking in verse 2, in the Second Coming
and in the power of our Lord to change our vile body so that it may be
fashioned like unto His glorious body. It is the hope that is in Christ, in all
that He is going to bring into the world and in all that He will do.
So, then, men and women who have this hope purify themselves, and
this is a very interesting and a most important word. It is a very positive
word; we must never think of it as negative. There is a difference between
purifying and cleansing. We have considered 1 John 1:9,2 ‘If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness,’ and the main difference between the two words is that
between an external action and an internal action. To cleanse is to deliver,
on the surface, from evil and pollution and all that is unworthy; purification
is something that happens within, in the spirit and in the mind and in the
essential nature. Therefore to purify means, in a sense, not only to get rid of
the tarnishing effect of sin upon me, but also to avoid sin in my whole
nature and in my whole being; so what I am told is that, as a Christian, I
inevitably purify myself.
This means not only that I try to separate myself from the sins which I
have committed in the past; it includes that, but it goes well beyond it. It
means that with the whole of my being I shun sin, I avoid it. I have a desire
within me to be like Christ; I am striving to be like the Lord Himself. It is
not just that I do not sin, but that I am positively and actively pure even as
He was pure. That is the whole idea of this word; it is a deeper and more
profound word than just the idea of cleansing and of getting rid of the
effects of sin upon the surface.
It is indeed perfectly expressed in just one phrase; people who are
concerned about purifying themselves are those who want to be like the
Lord Jesus Christ. They do not any longer merely think of just being a little
bit better than obvious sinners in the world, nor a little bit better than they
once were. Their whole idea is intensely positive and active. They say, ‘I
want my nature to be such that I shall love the light and hate the darkness
instead of loving the darkness and hating the light. I want my whole being
to be a positive desire to be like Christ and to be well—pleasing in His
sight.’ That, according to John, is the feeling of the men and women who
truly understand this promise of the glory that yet awaits them.
 Secondly, how do I do this? And here again we have to put it in the form
perhaps of a criticism of a particular teaching. How am I to purify myself?
Well, according to John, it is an active process, not a passive one; ‘Every
man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself.’ He does not submit to
purification; he purifies himself. The whole emphasis is upon the activity.
In other words, the New Testament teaching about holiness is not one which
tells me that all I have to do is to let myself go and to surrender myself, to
give up effort and striving. It is not just telling me that all I have to do is to
die and get rid of myself and forget myself and then life will come in. No! It
is active, and I am told to purify myself ‘even as he is pure.’
Now that is a doctrine which is not confined to John; you will find it
everywhere in the New Testament. Take, for instance, the Apostle Paul in 2
Corinthians 7:1: ‘Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all
filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.’ That
is an identical statement with the verse that we are considering here. Let us
‘ cleanse ourselves,’ not submit passively to some process which will
cleanse us. Take also Hebrews 6:11–12 where we are exhorted to show
some diligence in this matter of ‘the full assurance of hope unto the end’;
we are not to be slothful, but, like those who have gone before us, we must
be diligent and press on and strive to perfect ourselves because of the hope
that is set before us.
There are many other terms in the New Testament which suggest the
same thing. Take those words which are used by the Apostle Paul in various
places: ‘Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth’
(Colossians 3:5). I have to do that; these members will not agree to be
mortified; I have to take them, and I have to punish my body. I am enabled
to do that by the Holy Spirit who has been given to me; yes, and that is
included in the fact that I am a child of God. I have been born again, I have
received a new nature, and the Holy Spirit is in me. Therefore, because of
that, I must do this, I must purify myself even as He is pure.
But, still more in detail, how am I to do this? Well, this is the way in
which the New Testament indicates that the process must be followed up: I
purify myself by considering Him, by looking at Him and His perfect life;
that is the pattern I am to follow. We are reminded of that by the Apostle
Paul. God has called us that we may be ‘conformed to the image of his Son’
(Romans 8:29). So if that is God’s plan and purpose for me, then the first
thing I must do is to look at the Lord Jesus Christ, to look at the way He
conducted Himself in this life and world. I am to be like Him, so I consider
Him. I realise that is what I am destined for, so I begin to put it into
practise.
The other way in which it is put is this: we are told to ‘set your affection
on things above, not on things on the earth’ (Colossians 3:2). Again observe
the activity—set your affections on things above. Read your Bible every
day; meditate upon eternity and the glory that awaits you; think about these
things; reflect upon the glory. Do not let your mind be set upon things that
are on the earth; deliberately refuse to do so.
Or consider again: ‘for our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we
look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:
for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen
are eternal’ (2 Corinthians 4:17–18). We must look at the things that are not
seen, so we meditate upon them; and having looked at Him and having
followed Him, and while we are looking and setting our affection on the
things which are above, we must do our utmost to see that vision of glory
more and more clearly. We must not love the world. We must mortify our
members that are upon the earth. We must crucify the flesh. And as we do
all these things we shall be purifying ourselves even as He is pure. That is
how it is to be done.
Then, lastly, what are the encouragements and the motives for Christians
to purify themselves in this way? I think they are quite self–evident. Is it not
a matter of what we might call Christian common sense? If I believe that I
am a child of God and that I am really going to heaven and to glory, if I
believe that this uncertain life of mine may suddenly come to an end at any
moment and then I shall be with the Lord in all the glory and perfection, is
it surely not common sense that I ought to be preparing myself for that? Is it
not hopelessly illogical and unreasonable to go on living in antithesis to that
to which I am called? It is not a matter to be argued; there is a sense in
which we should never have to appeal to Christian people to live a holy life.
What John does is what we all ought to do. If we believe this, if we claim
this, then it is consistent, it is a matter of common sense, it is a matter of
logic, it is a matter of being reasonable that we should do so.
But there are further inducements given us in the Bible. Because of our
frailty, another great reason for purifying ourselves is that we may not find
ourselves feeling ashamed when we arrive in glory. John has told us that in
the previous chapter and the twenty–eighth verse: ‘And now, little children,
abide in him; that when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not
be ashamed before him at his coming.’ This means that if you are a child of
God, you are going to see Him when he comes; you will see Him as He is,
for the first time. You will really understand what your salvation meant to
Him and what it cost Him when you look into His face and into His blessed
eyes. ‘And if you do not want to feel ashamed,’ says John, ‘if you do not
want to feel you are a cad and that you have been a fool because you have
kept your gaze fixed upon the little things of earth with their foulness and
their unworthiness, then prepare for the vision now; be ready for its coming,
and avoid that sense of shame.’
But that is negative. An even stronger reason for purifying ourselves is
that we all ought to have a positive desire to be like Him. We ought to be
filled with a yearning and a longing to live this glorious, wondrous life that
Christ has made possible for us by His death and resurrection. Should not
we all be animated by a desire to please Him if we really believe He came
from heaven to earth? If we really believe that He suffered the agony of the
cross and shed His holy blood that we might be redeemed and rescued, if
we really believe that and love Him, should not our greatest desire be to
please Him?
That is the reason for holy living, that is the New Testament appeal for
holiness; it is an appeal to our sense of honour, to our sense of love and
gratitude. But if you want a final appeal, let me appeal to you in terms of
the time element. ‘He that hath this hope in him,’ those who believe they
are going to see Him and be like Him and be with Him, purify themselves
even as He is pure, and they feel there is not a moment to be lost. Oh, the
unworthiness that is in me! Not only the sins I have committed and still
commit, but the evil nature, the unworthiness in me, all these things which I
have to mortify. There is so much to be done, and time is uncertain. We do
not have a moment to spare or to waste. We may find ourselves with Him,
facing Him, at any moment.
That is the spirit of the New Testament—people pressing on towards the
mark, straining at the leash, looking forward, going forward with all their
might. And because they are looking at the vision of glory for which they
are destined, they are pressing on towards it and towards Him, forgetting
the things that are behind, redeeming the time, buying up the opportunity,
using every second because of the certainty that they will see Him as He is
and that they will be like Him. God grant that this inevitable logic may be
plain and clear to each and every one.
 4. The Sinless Saviour
And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin. 1 John 3:5

We should read verses 1 John 3:4–10 to get this verse in context, because it
is essential that we should bear all this in mind as we come to look together
at the message and at the statement of this particular fifth verse. We see that
here in this verse, and in this entire section, the Apostle is continuing the
discussion of what he had begun to deal with in the third verse. In the first
two chapters he has written about our fulness of joy as Christians, about our
fellowship with God and how that fellowship is to be maintained. That is
his first great theme. Then, you remember, here in this chapter he is dealing
with the whole position of the Christian as a child of God, and this is his
second great appeal. He has shown us that another great secret of living this
Christian life thoroughly in this world is to realise this whole standing and
position of ours.
But here he goes on to his other theme, and the first thing he wants to
emphasise again is that this whole question of righteousness and of holy
living is an essential and vital part of this whole position and of our
understanding of the position, and he feels that he must make this so
abundantly plain and clear that we can never go astray about it. He again
warns them: ‘Little children, let no man deceive you’ (v.7). As there are
heresies that would lead us astray about the person of our Lord and His
work, so there are heresies with regard to sin, and that is the subject with
which he deals in this great and familiar passage.
Now it is again interesting to observe in passing that his method of
handling this whole question of holiness and righteousness is so typical, not
only of him, but also of all the New Testament writers. The appeal for
holiness, as we have seen, is always made in terms of doctrine. Holiness
must never be isolated; it is always deduced from something that has gone
before. It is an inevitable consequence of a true understanding of our
position in Christ Jesus. And John goes on to show us once more that that is
his method. Holiness is a matter of working out what we claim to believe;
therefore failure in practise does suggest a failure truly to understand the
doctrine, and is an indication that there is something essentially and
fundamentally wrong with one’s view of the Christian life.
 Now the particular failure with which he is concerned here is the failure
really to understand the nature of sin. There are many tendencies with
regard to this; John has already dealt with one of them in chapter 1,1where
he showed us the danger of the false perfectionist ideas. People have such
an inadequate view of sin that they think they are already perfect; they
regard sin in terms of particular actions and so fail to realise its pollution as
well as its power within them.
Now here he seems to be pointing out quite a different danger and heresy
with regard to sin—that of regarding it lightly, dismissing it in some
inadequate way as if it were something that really does not matter very
much so long as one is a Christian. But John is careful to guard very
strongly against that. He says, ‘Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth
also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law’ (v.4). ‘You must be
right, therefore,’ says the Apostle, ‘about this whole question of the real
nature of sin, because if you are wrong there, you must be wrong on your
doctrine of salvation, and then you are wrong everywhere.’ And so his great
emphasis at this point is that sin is lawlessness, the breaking of God’s law,
rebellion against God, disobedience, a failure to live our lives as God would
have us live them.
That is the very essence of sin. It must not be thought of as just a sort of
weakness or failure on our part; it must not be regarded as some sort of
bestial past which we have not yet sloughed off. No, John says, sin is not
negative, it is positive. It is the transgression of the law; it is disobedience
to God and His holy will with respect to us. ‘So if you fail to realise this,’
says the Apostle in effect, ‘then it does just show that you are muddled and
confused in your thinking about the whole principle of the coming of the
Lord Jesus Christ into this world. And it seems clear that your whole
conception of salvation must be entirely false and erroneous’—and then he
proceeds to deal with that.
‘Man’s essential trouble,’ says the Apostle, ‘is that he is guilty and
condemned by the law of God. Sin was introduced into this world by the
devil; the devil came at the very beginning and tempted man to disobey
God. That is lawlessness: he tempted him to break God’s holy law, and man
in his folly listened to him and did so. That is a part of the work of the
devil, and its effect has been to make us break the law of God and to render
us guilty in the sight of God and His holy law. There we are, under the
wrath of God, meriting and awaiting punishment. That is the position,’ says
John, ‘so that if you do not view your sin in that way, then it is quite
obvious that you cannot understand anything else because the Lord Jesus
Christ was manifested, or appeared, in this world because of that.’
John, you notice, makes two separate statements with regard to the
object of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘Ye know that he was
manifested to take away our sins’ (v.5), and ‘For this purpose the Son of
God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil’ (v.8).
That is the whole purpose, and we must view His coming in the light of
those two great statements.
So let us consider now this first statement in verse 5. Let us pause and
ask this most vital question: why did the Son of God ever come into this
world? We know that He was ‘manifested,’ and we have reminded
ourselves how John likes to put it in this way. He says, ‘That which was
from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word
of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it…)’ (1 John 1:1–2),
and here he says it again. So why was this?
When we think about the Lord Jesus Christ and especially about His
death on that cross on Calvary’s hill, what is its purpose?2 Is it just
something about which we sentimentalise? What does it represent to us?
We have to ask, Why was the Son of God born into this world as a baby in
Bethlehem? What is the meaning of the Incarnation? Why did He ever
leave the courts of heaven and come in that way into this world? Then, why
did He spend His life as He did those first thirty years? What is the meaning
of His preaching and His teaching and His miracles? What is the purpose of
His life here on earth, and above all, why that cross? Why this
manifestation and demonstration; why the burial and the rising again and
the appearance and the Ascension? What is the explanation of it all?
That is the question that John answers here, and let me first put the
answer in its negative form. Our Lord did not only come to give us a
revelation of God, though that is a part of the purpose. He said, ‘He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father ’ (John 14:9), and we also read, ‘No man
hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of
the Father, he hath declared him’ (John 1:18). But that is not all, though He
has indeed revealed the Father and has come to do that. In the same way, He
has not only come to teach us about God. There is incomparable teaching
there, such as the world has never known before and has not known since,
but He did not come only to do that. There is also, of course, the example of
His life, a matchless one, but He has not come only to give us an example
of how we should live in this world. He is not just a teacher or a moral
exemplar; he has not come to give us some kind of picture as to the nature
and being of God. All that is there, but that is not the real reason, says John.
He has really come, he says, because of our sins, because of the
predicament and the position of men and women, because of this whole
question of law. He has not come only to instruct us and to give us
encouragement in our endeavour and a great example. No, there is a
fundamental problem at the back of it all, and that is our relationship to God
in the light of God’s holy law. We are under the law, and He has really come
because of that. ‘Ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and
in him is no sin.’ So it is only as we understand this whole question of sin in
terms of law that we can possibly understand why He came and especially
why He ever went to that cruel death upon the cross. He came, as the New
Testament tells us everywhere, because in a sense He had to come if we
were to be delivered. He came because there was no other way whereby we
could be redeemed and rescued. He came ‘to seek and to save that which
was lost’ (Luke 19:10). He came because of this whole question of what sin
has done to us and the position in which it has landed us with respect to
God and His holy law. And here John puts all that to us in this particularly
striking manner.
So let us see what God has done with regard to this predicament in
which we find ourselves. The first thing John tells us is that we do not
understand the Lord Jesus Christ properly apart from ourselves and our
sinful condition, apart from this whole question of the law. So the first
statement that John makes is that He Himself is without sin. There was no
sin in the Lord Jesus Christ; He was perfect, spotless, blameless; He was
born without sin. So, you see, it is looking at Him in terms of law that really
shows us that we must not only accept the biblical statement with regard to
the virgin birth of our Lord, but also why this is essential. The Holy Ghost
came upon Mary, and He was born. He became man; He took unto Himself
this human nature, yes, but He was without sin. In the miracle that took
place there He received the perfect human nature.
 ‘In him is no sin.’ We have to start with that for the reasons which will
emerge as we continue, but that is always the starting point. There can be no
true view of salvation and of the redemption that is possible for us in the
Lord Jesus Christ unless we are right about the person. That is why John,
you remember, used such strong and striking language in chapter 23 when
he talked about those people who were leading them astray by denying the
person of our Lord. ‘Those antichrists,’ he said, ‘are liars, and they must be
called such because they are robbing us of the whole of our salvation.’ If we
are wrong about the person, we shall be wrong everywhere. So as we look
at this person we are reminded again in this verse that here is one who has
been in this world of ours with all its sin and its shame, but who was
without sin. He ‘was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’
(Hebrews 4:15). He remains there unique and separate. He is the Son of
God, and none other. He is not just a great moral teacher, nor just a great
religious genius. He is not one who has gone a little bit further than all
others in this quest for God and for truth. No, He is the Son of God
incarnate—‘in him is no sin.’
But not only was there no sin in Him and in His birth—He committed no
act of sin. He always honoured God’s holy law; He obeyed it fully and
carried it out perfectly. God gave His law to man. He intended that that law
should be carried out, that it should be honoured and obeyed. Let me go
further and say this: no one can ever be with God and spend eternity with
Him unless they have honoured the law. God’s law must be kept, and
without fulfilling it there is no fellowship with Him and no hope of
spending eternity with Him. And here is One who has kept the law, who
lived in this world exactly as you and I have to live in it. He worked as a
carpenter. He had been a child, yet no one was ever able to convict Him of
sin. He defied them to do so; He rendered a perfect obedience to God and to
His holy law. What God has demanded from man and man has failed to do,
here is One who does it. He fulfils it. ‘In him is no sin’; He has satisfied the
law of God. He has actively and positively obeyed it and rendered it fully.
This, I say again, is something which is absolutely essential to our
salvation, for the problem of man with respect to God is not only the
problem of the guilt of sin. Merely to be forgiven is not enough; we have to
keep the law of God. Notice how Paul puts that in Romans 8, where he says
that in Christ Jesus God has ‘condemned sin in the flesh: that the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us’ (vv.3-4). We have to keep
that law, but we have not kept it; we cannot do so, and we can only keep it
in Him. He has kept the law for us; He has rendered this obedience and
satisfied this demand of the law of God.
But let us go on another step. In addition to that He has dealt with the
problem of the guilt of our sin, because He has provided a perfect sacrifice
and offering for our sin. In the Old Testament we read of all the burnt
offerings and sacrifices, those types and shadows which God gave the
ancient people of Israel in order to show them how sacrifice must be made
for sin. ‘Without shedding of blood is no remission’ of sin (Hebrews 9:22),
and the sacrifice and offering had to be perfect. It had to be ‘without
blemish’—that was all a type and a shadow of the perfect offering. It must
be human, it must be a man, and here is the perfect sacrifice for sin, for ‘in
him is no sin.’
You see, it is all in terms of the law. While the law demands perfection, it
cannot admit any blemish; you cannot offer a perfect sacrifice for sin if
there is any defect. If the Lord Jesus Christ had sinned once, He could no
longer have been that perfect offering for our sins; but ‘in him is no sin,’
and therefore He is the sacrifice. ‘There was no other good enough to pay
the price of sin.’4 He has come in the flesh, He has been born as a man, and
yet He is without sin; therefore He can offer Himself, and it is a perfect
offering.
And that leads us to the next step. By doing that, says John, He has taken
away our sins—‘Ye know he was manifested to take away our sins.’ We are
reminded of the words of John the Baptist when he looked at Jesus at the
beginning and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of
the world’ (John 1:29 ). That is the meaning of Good Friday, that is the
explanation of the Cross—our sins have been laid upon Him, and they have
been dealt with there in Him; He has taken them away. Your sins and mine
do not any longer belong to us; they have been taken from us; He has made
Himself responsible for them. The ideas here are those of the lamb that was
slain, and also of the scapegoat, on whom was placed the sin of the people
and then he was sent away into the wilderness (Leviticus 16). That is what
the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. That is why He came, that is the
whole purpose of His Incarnation, that is why He staggered up Golgotha,
that is why He was nailed to the tree. He is bearing away my sins and yours.
 But it was the law that demanded that; it would never have happened
were it not for the law, and that is why we must never regard sin as
something light and trivial. That is why we must never refer to it as some
sort of weakness and say, ‘It does not matter very much now that I am a
Christian.’ Sin is a transgression of the law. It is such a terrible thing that it
led to the death of Christ, and one sin is enough to demand that. ‘Let no
man deceive you,’ says John. Do you not see that if you are wrong in your
outlook upon sin, then it just means that you have never seen its enormity,
you have never seen the problem it has created for man and, in a sense, I
say it with reverence, for God Himself. This holy law, this expression of
God’s being and character, condemns sin utterly. The condemnation is
death, and without the sacrificial atonement there is no forgiveness. But,
wonder of wonders, God has provided and found the way there on the cross.
My sins are no longer imputed to me, they are no longer on record against
me, and as my sinful story is there revealed in the Book of Life, it is all
cancelled by Christ.
So those who believe that cannot regard sin lightly. They cannot say that
a righteous life is a matter of indifference. Those who really believe this and
are governed by it and who are truly holy in the New Testament sense are
not holy just because they believe it is a ‘good life.’ They see it all in the
light of the law of God and of the cross and of the Christ who came as the
Lamb of God; the argument and the logic are inescapable. So the New
Testament does not just appeal to us to be holy for the sake of being holy—
it puts it into this context.
But lastly, there is one further step. It is obvious that in this context and
setting, when John says that ‘he was manifested to take away our sins,’ he
is not stopping at the guilt of our sins, for salvation goes beyond that. We
are delivered from the guilt—it is the first thing that is essential—but, thank
God, the process does not stop there. He delivers us also from the power
and from the pollution of sin. His work is such that he takes away our sin in
a more vital sense. We are growing in grace and in the knowledge of the
Lord; we are increasingly being made to conform to the image of His Son.
We are being delivered—we have been, we are, and we shall be ultimately.
The glorification is coming when He will take away our sin altogether, so
that we shall be blameless and faultless and spotless and perfect in His holy
presence.
 That hymn which tells us, ‘There was no other good enough to pay the
price of sin’ also tells us this: ‘He died that we might be forgiven’; yes, but
‘He died to make us good’ is equally true. The Apostle Paul, writing to
Titus, says: ‘[He] gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar [separate] people, zealous of
good works’ (Titus 2:14).
So we must never separate sanctification from justification; we must
never separate holiness and forgiveness; we must never talk about a kind of
series of separate blessings; all is one—it all belongs together. And it is all a
matter of this law that condemns us and from which he delivers us through
the cross and by the gift of new life. He went to that cruel death on the cross
not only that you and I might have pardon. Thank God, that does come out
of it, that is the first thing. But He did it really to separate, to put aside, a
people for Himself as an especial treasure and possession, who, as Paul puts
it, should be ‘zealous of good works,’ who would live a righteous, holy life,
a people who would be a demonstration and manifestation to the whole
world, and, yes, to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, of this
wondrous Christ of God who has been able to do so much and to make so
much of sinful, fallen men and women.
That, then, is what we know. ‘Ye know that he was manifested to take
away our sins; and in him is no sin.’ I do hope that you know that you are
forgiven, that the guilt of your sin has been taken away. I trust you know
also that He is delivering you increasingly from the power of sin and from
its pollution and that you look forward to ‘that blessed hope, and the
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ’ (Titus
2:13), when He shall finally come back and wind up the affairs of earth and
of time and destroy evil in its every manifestation and usher in that eternal
glory in which we, as the children of God, shall share.
God grant that that may be our position and our experience.
 5. Victory over the Devil
For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. 1 John
3:8

This is the second of the two great statements which John makes in this first
section of chapter 3 with regard to the whole object and purpose of the
coming of the Son of God into this world of time. We have been
considering the first statement in verse 5: ‘And ye know that he was
manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.’
These two statements together remind us of what the Fathers were very
fond of describing as the ‘Drama of Redemption.’ This is a very good
phrase, a phrase which helps us to look at the gospel in the right way and
manner and which reminds us immediately of the very essence of the
gospel message. It is astounding that in spite of the records which we have
in the New Testament, our tendency always is to turn the gospel into a point
of view, into an idea and a teaching, and to forget that it was first and
foremost a series of events and of facts which actually took place.
That, it seems to me, is the inevitable result of sin. The Apostle Paul tells
us in his letters to the Corinthians and to the Colossians that he was aware
of that very subtle danger. He was always afraid of somehow or another
nullifying the whole message of the Cross by turning it into a philosophy.
For the very essence of the gospel message is that it is not first and foremost
a teaching, but a proclamation, an announcement of certain things that have
happened. When you read the book of Acts you will find that the first
preachers travelled around and were heralds of the message. They told that
ancient world of certain things which had happened; they talked about a
person, and they reported what had happened to Him. And with a very
special emphasis, they told people of the amazing fact of the Resurrection;
how this person, Jesus of Nazareth—who had been completely
misunderstood, not only by the common people, but by the rulers and elders
of the people—how He had been put to death. But, they said, God had
raised Him from the dead, and He had manifested Himself to them, His
chosen witnesses, and to certain other people. And they told how, after He
had spent forty days on the earth, they had seen Him rising into the
heavens; and now they were preaching in the power of the amazing gift He
had sent to them, a person they called the Holy Spirit.
 And we are reminded of all that by these words that we are now
considering. We see that our Lord did not come into the world only to teach.
He did do that, and He gave incomparable teaching, but before we ever
come to consider His teaching—at any rate before it can be of any value to
us at all in any practical sense—we must first realise what He came
primarily to do. ‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifested,’ not that
He might teach us, not that He might give us a glorious example to follow,
not that He might give us some transcendent idea which would illumine our
minds and thrill us—not at all!
He came, He was manifested, He appeared that He might ‘destroy the
works of the devil.’ He came to do something, and our salvation is
dependent upon what He Himself has done. He does not just come and call
upon us to do something. The first and the most essential message of the
gospel is to ask us to recognise and then to receive what He has done. That
is why salvation is a gift, and that is why the business of preaching is to
offer men and women this gift of salvation and to hold it before them.
And that is what John here emphasises in these two striking statements.
Now you observe that in both instances he puts it in terms of sin. Whether
we like it or not, that is always the context and the background to this
presentation of the truth. Our Lord really came, says John, and had to come,
because of sin, and that is what he is outlining in this whole section.
First of all he looks at sin as it brings us under the condemnation of
God’s holy law, and secondly he looks at sin as it puts us under the
dominion and under the government of Satan and makes us become a part
of Satan’s work. ‘He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth
from the beginning…,’ but ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.
… In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil’
(vv.8–10). So there are two ways of looking at sin and at the effects of sin
on us.
The first way is to see that sin is unrighteous, that it is a transgression of
the law, and that sin means we are violating God’s holy will for us and
God’s holy purpose with respect to us. But this is the other way: ‘To
continue in a life of sin and evil,’ says John, ‘is just to identify yourself at
once with the devil and his ways and with everything that belongs to him,’
and it is that which is emphasised in this eighth verse.
 Now two things stand out very clearly in the particular way in which
John puts it. The first is that our Lord came into this world to wage a great
fight; He entered into a mighty battle. The second is the way in which he
was victorious in the fight, the way in which He overcame for us the
adversary and his approaches. That is the thing that is celebrated especially
on Easter Day;1 this is the day that reminds us of Christ’s victory, of a fact.
It is not a day that reminds us of certain principles in life. You often hear
people thank God for this whole ‘principle of resurrection,’ how the flowers
begin to appear, and how the trees and life come into being in the Spring.
Now, that has nothing to do with this blessed message of the Resurrection.
We are concerned about a fact, not a principle of nature, and the fact is that
there, in the Resurrection, our Lord ultimately established His conquest
over the devil.
So realising this, realising, as John says, that Christ came that He might
destroy the works of the devil, let us begin by considering this ‘adversary,’
as he is described, the devil. The Son of God came because there was a
certain state and condition in this world that had been produced by the
devil. Now whether we like it or not, the fact is that the whole drama of
redemption, as it is outlined in the Bible, simply cannot be understood at all
unless you accept the Biblical doctrine with regard to the devil. It is an
essential part of this message; it is here from the very beginning and right
through to the end.
And this is the Biblical teaching. The explanation of the problem of
mankind and the whole state of our world is to be traced back to this fact
about the devil. According to the Bible, God made the world perfect; so
what has gone wrong with it? And here is the answer. Someone, who is
described in various terms and to whom various names are given in the
Bible, came and spoke to the man and the woman whom God had placed in
that perfect world. He is called ‘Lucifer,’ ‘the son of the morning’ and ‘the
god of this world.’ He is called ‘the serpent,’ ‘the prince of the power of the
air,’ and ‘the strong man armed.’ There are various names given in the
Scriptures, but they all describe the same person. And according to this
teaching, this is the explanation of evil and of sin and of all our miseries in
this world. The devil came and spoke to man, and he enticed him to sin; so
man went against God; and the result of all that is the state of the world as it
has been from the moment that man fell.
 Summing it up we can put it like this: This world has become the
kingdom of Satan; Satan has produced certain results which we shall
consider together—these ‘works of the devil’ about which our text speaks.
And our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came into this world because of that
fact. Men and women need to be delivered from the law of God that
condemns them; and thereby they need to be delivered from the punishment
of their sin. But they also need to be delivered out of this kingdom of the
devil, out of the kingdom of Satan; and they need to be translated into the
kingdom of God. And the Son of God came, according to this whole
biblical teaching, because of that kingdom which Satan had established.
Christ came into this world in order to conquer Satan and his kingdom and
in order to introduce His own kingdom. So what you have in the Bible, in a
sense, is the story of the conflict of the two kingdoms—the kingdom of God
and the kingdom of the devil, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of
Satan, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of
the Son of God and the kingdom of this world. It is the conflict between
heaven and hell and between light and darkness—that is the Biblical
terminology.
Now that being the statement in general, let us look at it a little more in
particular. Evil has come in through the devil, this great adversary of God
and of man. So what are the works of the devil; what has he been trying to
do? Well, his great endeavour is to separate men and women from God; that
is what he is really concerned to bring about. He was jealous of man’s
obedience and allegiance to God, and in his very hatred of God his one
desire is to ruin, to mar and to destroy the glorious works of God in this
world.
Now he has proceeded to do that work, according to the Scriptures, in a
very deceptive manner. He is often described as ‘subtle,’ and he is also
described as a ‘liar.’ You will find that our Lord Himself in speaking of him
says of him that he is ‘a liar, and the father of it’ (John 8:44), and all his
works have just been, in some shape or form, the repetition of some kind of
a lie. He has persuaded men and women to believe and to accept these
various lies, and all our unhappiness in this world is the result of our folly
in believing the subtlety and the lies of Satan. That is the essence of the
biblical explanation of our predicament. There would be no unhappiness in
the world but for this. Evil and sin, according to the Bible, would not be
here. There would be no drunkenness, no quarrelling; there would be no
infidelity and divorce, there would be no threats of war, and no confusion
and disturbances, were it not that people in their folly have believed the lie
of Satan.
There are various forms which that lie has taken. The essence of the lie
which Satan has persuaded man to believe is the lie about God Himself; it is
the old lie about God’s attitude towards man. God made man and woman
perfect and gave them a perfect world to live in; and God gave them the
supreme privilege of holding communion with Him. He gave them
everything that they needed. They did not have to work to make a living at
the beginning; there was the fruit, and they had but to take it and enjoy it.
God showered His blessings upon them, but the devil came and said, ‘Are
you foolish enough to believe that God really loves you? Can’t you see He
is making slaves of you? This one thing He is prohibiting you is just a mark
of His hostility with respect to you.’ So the lie of Satan is the lie against
God at the beginning. And is that not true of all of us? Have we not known
in our hearts that when things go wrong, our first hatred is a feeling of
hatred against God? This enmity against God is the work of Satan, who lies
to us about God, about His attitude towards us, about His love to us, and
about His concern for our happiness and well—being.
And that in turn leads to the second lie which is, as we have just seen,
the lie about God’s holy will. God gives laws to man, and He gives us these
laws for our good and for our benefit. It is because God made men and
women that He knows what is good for them, and when He gave them
conditions at the beginning it was for their good. But they did not see it, and
they believed the lie of Satan that the laws of God were against them. How
fond people are of saying that the gospel is narrow, and how many reject it
for that reason—as if to live a life like the Lord Jesus Christ is to be so
small and petty and narrow! No, that is the lie about God’s law, God’s way
of life, God’s holiness. By nature we all instinctively dislike the holy life
because we believe the lie of sin.
Then, of course, the next lie was the lie about the consequences of sin
and of disobedience. ‘God has told you,’ said Satan to the first man and
woman, ‘that if you disobey and break His law, then certain consequences
will come upon you and you will die. Don’t believe Him,’ said Satan. ‘If
you do this which is prohibited, your eyes will be opened and you will
become like gods. God doesn’t want you to be like Him, so He is holding
you down and repressing you. But do this thing and I tell you, you will be
greater than you are now.’ So he lied to them about the consequences of sin
and disobedience, and that produced all the terrible consequences of
the Fall.
And Satan still does this self–same thing. He whispers to us all and tells
us to disobey God and to break His holy law; and he assures us that we can
do that with impunity and nothing will go wrong. And in our folly we all
tend to believe him. But later we come to understand that the way of the
transgressor is hard and that though for a moment we may go against God
and imagine we have wonderful freedom, sooner or later we begin to
discover that ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap’ and ‘he that
soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption’ (Galatians 6:7–8). The
devil lies about the consequences, and men and women in their folly believe
the lie.
So the question arises, Why does Satan do all this? Why did he do it at
the beginning, and why has he continued to do so? The answer is that he
was anxious to get the man and woman under his own power and dominion.
His motive and desire was to make them sin and to live a sinful life, and he
succeeded. They did sin, and they began to live that sinful life. Not only
that, Satan is also anxious to prevent us from living the godly and good life.
He is anxious to rob us of all the benefits that God has for us, and the result
of all this is that, having listened to the lie of Satan, we have put ourselves
under his domination.
Our Lord put that in a very memorable picture when he said, ‘When a
strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace’ (Luke 11:21).
‘That is the result of sin,’ says our Lord. ‘You have made yourselves the
slaves and the serfs of Satan. You are in the stronghold, the castle, of Satan,
and he won’t let you get out; nor will he let you live the godly, holy life. If
you try, he will strike you down; you are under his power and dominion.’
And that, according to the Bible, is the whole state of the world today. The
results of the activity and the works of Satan are that men and women are
under the rule of Satan. They have disobeyed God and offended Him. They
have broken God’s holy law and have been condemned. They had been told
what not to do, but they deliberately did it; so they are left with no excuse
and are under the wrath of God.
Not only that, their very nature is sinful—they prefer evil to good. There
is an instinct in them that takes them astray; there is that within them which
lusts and gives way to passion. Their very nature has become twisted and
perverted, and as a result of this, they experience misery and unhappiness.
Indeed their world has become a place of woe and trouble. It is no use
pretending otherwise; it is a fact, and we in this century have experienced it
in an exceptional manner—wars and confusion and despair and
unhappiness. All this is the result of the work of Satan.
And standing at the end of it all is the fact of death itself. By listening to
the lie of Satan, men and women have put themselves under the power of
death. As the Scripture is so fond of teaching us, whether we explain it
away to our own satisfaction or not, we all in this world by nature live
under the tyranny and the fear of death. It is ever present, always advancing
towards us, spoiling our greatest and best pleasures. It is the last enemy, it is
inevitable, and it is tyrannising the whole of life.
Finally, and perhaps the greatest of all the results of the works of the
devil, is the state of the world apart from Christ. That is the sort of world
into which Christ came, in which the Son of God was manifested. He
appeared in a world that was under the dominion of Satan, a world
miserable, unhappy, sinful, perverted, alienated from God, under the wrath
of God and with death ever facing it. So why did He ever leave the courts of
heaven and the glory which He shared with his Father from the beginning;
why did He come?
Here is the answer: ‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifested,
that he might destroy the works of the devil.’ Thank God for this message!
By doing all that He has come to do, the Son of God has fulfilled the
ancient promise which was given to man and woman immediately after the
Fall. Into the chaos that resulted from evil and sin the promise came: The
seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. ‘Satan has got you down,
the serpent has misled you in his subtlety,’ said God to Adam and Eve, ‘but
it is all right—I will send someone who will bruise his head, the seed of the
woman’ (Genesis 3:15)—and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we must
view His coming into this world in terms of all that Satan had done and had
produced. Christ has come to fight it; He has come with a mighty sword.
‘Think not,’ he said, ‘that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to
send peace, but a sword’ (Matthew 10:34). He has come to destroy and to
undo the works of the devil.
 And He has done it like this: His very incarnation undoes the lie of
Satan, for if the Incarnation tells us one thing more than anything else, it is
that God is love and that God has loved us with an everlasting love. ‘God is
against you,’ says the devil. ‘God hates you, and He delights to keep you
down. He wants to rob you of everything that is yours by right.’ ‘No,’ says
the Incarnation, ‘God is love.’ Here is a world that has rebelled against
God. It spat into His holy face; in arrogance it lifted itself up against Him; it
said, ‘I have a right to be equal with God.’ Now, a world like that deserves
nothing but punishment; it deserves perdition. Yet into that very world that I
have been describing God sent His Son—‘God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son’ (John 3:16). The babe in Bethlehem is a denial
of the lie of Satan. He says, ‘I am here because God loves you.’ He has
come to undo the works of the devil; He has come to contradict the lies of
Satan, and His very appearing and coming, let me emphasise it again, is in
itself an undoing of the original lie—it is proof that God loves us.
But look at His life, look at His way of living. Think of Him as He
stands before us in the Gospels; look at that perfect, spotless life. Can you
still say the holy life is a small, narrow one? Do you believe He was just an
apology of a man because He did not drink and curse and swear and gamble
and do the various things that men claim are ‘life’ in a real sense today?
Look at Him; look at Him in all His virtue and all His utter sinlessness. He
has established there, once and for ever, that the only life worthy to be
called life is one which is lived in utter, absolute conformity to the
commands of the holy God; in His life He denies the lie of the devil.
Listen, then, to His teaching as He exposes in its utter depths the evil
nature of sin and of wrongdoing. Listen to His interpretation and exposition
of the law of Moses. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, He says,
‘You do not have to commit sin; just to look with lust in your eyes is
sufficient’ (Matthew 5:28); that is the exposure of sin. He gets down to the
depth and says that ‘out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries’ and other evils (Matthew 15:19). He exposes the perversion and
the twistedness of evil—the foulness and ugliness of sin. In His teaching He
is undoing the lie, the works of Satan.
But watch Him as He works His miracles and His mighty deeds; what is
He doing there? Well, He is just doing this great work of destroying or
undoing the works of Satan. Take the occasion when He healed a poor
woman who was not only a cripple but was utterly doubled up and indeed
had been like that for eighteen years. He spoke to her, and immediately she
stood erect. What has He done here? This in effect is what He says: ‘Satan
has bound this woman for eighteen years, and I am undoing the chains
which Satan has forged around her; I am setting her free.’ (Luke 13:10–13).
‘When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: But
when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh
from him all his armor wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils’ (Luke
21:22). He sets the captive free. That is what He is doing in His miracles;
He is undoing the works of Satan. He is breaking the chains that had been
forged in various ways; He is setting the captive at liberty.
Look thus right through His life and then come to His death. What is He
doing on that cross on Calvary’s hill? He is dealing there with the guilt; He
is undoing there the condemnation of the lie. He is wiping away the guilt;
He is setting us right with God; He is reconciling us to God. He has undone
the condemnation of sin that results from listening to the lie of Satan.
Let us come to the Resurrection. There He is giving us the final proof
that God is pleased with His work; He is proclaiming to us that we can be
sure of our salvation. There He says, ‘Now is the judgment of this world:
now shall the prince of this world be cast out’ (John 12:31). He is showing
there that He has conquered even death itself, the very ‘last enemy’ as Paul
described it (1 Corinthians 15:26). There, by rising from the dead, He has
established that He has conquered every single enemy. On His cross He has
exposed Satan himself and all the principalities and powers. He has shown
that He has conquered the ultimate consequence of death itself. All the
works of Satan have finally been undone by the Lord Jesus Christ. If we
believe in Him, we have been raised with Him. He has ‘made us sit together
in the heavenly places’ with Him (Ephesians 2:6). We have been raised, we
have risen again, we are in Him, we have conquered death and the grave,
and we know we shall rise incorruptible and be with Him for all eternity.
In addition to all this, in the light of the Resurrection we know that we
can have life anew. He has not only brought life and immortality to light
through His Resurrection, He gives us His own life. He took upon Him our
human need, He died for our sins, He has taken the guilt away. But more,
He has engrafted us into Himself, and He has given unto us—we have
received—the divine nature. We have risen with Him as new men and
women, a new creation. The works of the devil have thus been destroyed
and undone.
 But there is more. This work is still being carried on; that is His method.
He takes hold of us one by one; He rescues and delivers us out of this world
and from Satan one by one. As we believe the message of this gospel, we
are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light—the
kingdom of God’s dear Son. He is building up His own kingdom; he is
drawing men and women unto Himself out of the world; He is going on
with the work. He is in glory seated at the right hand of God, and He must
reign until His enemies shall be made His footstool; He is going on until the
number of the elect shall have been gathered in. And when that has
happened, He will come again. He will return into this world as King and
Lord, and He will finally finish the work. He will come with a mighty
sword, and not only evil and sin but Satan himself and all his cohorts shall
be cast into the lake of fire and will finally be banished from the sight of
God for all eternity. And our guarantee of all this is the glorious fact of the
Resurrection: He ‘was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the
devil.’
Remember then what He has already destroyed, and look forward in
anticipation; the blessed hope that faces us as Christian people is that He
will destroy these works of the devil utterly, completely and finally; evil
and sin will be finally destroyed out of existence, burnt, destroyed for ever.
God shall be all and in all, and if we are in the army of the mighty Victor
who has already risen from the grave and thereby conquered death, if we
belong to Him, we shall behold that final judgment of Satan, and we shall
dwell for all eternity in a perfect state with no sin and no sorrow, with no
sighing and no tears. There will be no need even for the sun itself, for the
light of the glory will be the face of this self–same Lord who was born as a
babe in Bethlehem, and we shall bask in that glorious sunshine entirely free
from sin for ever and ever. ‘The Son of God was manifested’—appeared,
came into this world—‘that he might destroy the works of the devil.’ Thank
God for the Victor who came who could conquer even the last enemy, death
itself, and give us life which is life indeed.
 6. Growing in Grace
Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.
Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is
righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is
born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is
born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth
not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. 1 John 3:6–10

We have seen that from the end of the second chapter and right through this
third chapter, John is showing us that the second great thing we must realise
as Christians in this world is that we are children of God. ‘Beloved, now are
we the sons of God’—not, we are going to be, but we are. Now you must
hold on to that, says John. You must always retain a firm grasp of it if you
want to rejoice while in this world. You are the children of God, and you
have a glorious destiny awaiting you.
But, obviously, if you really believe that, you must see that certain things
follow of necessity; you cannot claim to be a child of God and still go on
living as if you had not been born again. In other words, one of the first
implications of this realisation of our sonship is the realisation of the
absolute necessity of living a holy life, and that is the theme of this section
from verse 4 to verse 10. We have already looked at this section twice, and I
have picked out those two striking statements which are to be found in the
fifth and eighth verses. But now we come back to it again, and we shall
look in particular at verses 6 and 7, the first part of verse 8 and then verses
9 and 10.
This is notoriously one of the most controversial passages in the New
Testament. Of course, no passage in and of itself is controversial, but there
has certainly been great controversy over these verses. Anybody who is at
all interested in Christian theology, or who has even the faintest interest in
doctrine, or indeed anyone who is concerned about living the Christian life,
must at some time or another have confronted these statements. The great
question which is asked is: do they teach sinless perfection? Do they mean
that the Christian in this life can be perfect, delivered altogether from sin
not only in act, but also in thought, in desire, in mind, and in every other
respect? Anyone who has ever read anything at all on this question of
sanctification has at some point come across people who have used these
various statements on one side or on the other. So, bearing all that in mind,
there are, surely, certain warnings which should be uttered before we
attempt to expound a statement such as this one.
First of all, as we look at statements like these, we must try to rid our
minds of prejudice. We are all creatures of prejudice; we are born like that
as the result of sin, and we tend to start with minds which are biased. One
of the most difficult things in life in any realm is to get rid of such
prejudice, but surely if we would understand the message of Scripture, we
must try to rid our minds of it. Or, to put it another way, we must avoid
theories, especially those with respect to sanctification. Again, this is a very
difficult thing to do because we all rather like theories; we like to have truth
in tabloid form. It seems much easier, it avoids a lot of trouble and mental
effort; our natural laziness as the result of sin rather makes us hunger after
such easy tabloid thinking, and it is the particular danger in this day and age
in which we happen to live. But we must try to avoid theories, and we must
try as far as we can to come and look at the Word itself as it is; and above
all we must avoid a controversial spirit.
By that I mean that when we come across some of these statements,
immediately they become battle cries! Immediately we hear these words,
we take sides; we are either going to be for or against sanctification or
sinless perfection, and so we become impervious to the message of the
Scripture itself. So whenever we come to a passage like this that has so
often been discussed in the past, we must make an unusual effort to rid our
minds of a mere controversial spirit or a desire to prove that we are right
and that somebody else is wrong. Rather, we should have a desire to
discover the truth in order that we may apply it in our lives.
If you read the history of the Church you will find that oftentimes, in
contending about a passage of Scripture like this, people on both sides have
denied the real teaching of the passage. In their desire to prove that they
were right they have been guilty of bitterness. Sometimes those who argued
for sinless perfection contended in such a way that they proved they were
not sinless and indeed not perfect! The spirit of controversy was such that
they forgot the truth about which they were arguing and debating. Therefore
it is necessary that we should bear this in mind. I suppose the classic
discussion of this matter is really to be found in the eighteenth century. I do
not want to discuss it historically here, but those who are familiar with the
great story of the Evangelical Awakening of that century will remember
how there was a very striking cleavage between John Wesley and his
followers on the one hand, and the followers of Whitefield and others on
the other. There was a great discussion which went on for many decades on
this whole question of sinless perfection, and these words which we are
considering here were to be found prominently at the heart and centre of the
discussions.
Now the great question for us to face is this: Do these statements, which
are made here about the Christian, refer to individual, particular acts of sin,
or is the Apostle referring to something else? Let me remind you again of
some of these statements: ‘Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not’—does
that mean particular acts of sin or does it not? ‘Whosoever sinneth hath not
seen him, neither known him’—again we must ask the same question. ‘He
that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous,’ ‘He that
committeth sin is of the devil,’ ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit
sin’—do those mean individual acts of sin? ‘For his seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin.’ Does that mean that a person cannot perform or do
individual acts of sin because he or she is born of God? ‘In this the children
of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; whosoever doeth not
righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.’ So that is
the question we have to face. Are these statements referring to separate,
particular acts of sin? If they do, then I think it is perfectly clear that the
Apostle is teaching sinless perfection, but the question is, do they mean
that?
Let us look at it in this way: First of all, I think we must understand the
grammar, and although we are approaching a passage of Scripture, surely
the first and the obvious thing to do is to make certain of the exact
statement which is before us. We believe that the Word of God is definitely
inspired, but that does not mean that every translation is definitely inspired.
We must be sure we have understood the true meaning of the Word. So
what does the grammar tell us? Well, I think that all the authorities are
agreed that all the verbs which are used in this section are present and
continuous. In other words, they describe character and prevailing habit
rather than particular acts.
Now that applies to all the verbs from verse 4 to verse 10. Verse 4 reads
like this: ‘Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is
the transgression of the law.’ But a better way of translating that would be:
‘Every one who keeps on doing sin keeps on breaking the law, or doing
lawlessness.’ These verbs all carry that meaning of keeping on, so that we
render the sixth verse like this: ‘Whosoever keeps on doing sin hath not
seen him, neither known him.’ Therefore when we come to the ninth verse
we read: ‘The one begotten of God does not keep on sinning because God’s
seed abides in him and he is not able to keep on sinning.’ So John is talking
about those who keep on doing sin, who keep on being guilty of
lawlessness, and therefore, on the other side, he says that, ‘Whosoever is
born of God does not keep on doing sin.’ That is the first consideration.
But let me also put this consideration to you: Take, for instance, the full
implication of the statement made in verses 6 and 9. We must take the
statement as a whole and observe exactly what is stated; and we must also
bear in mind the other passages of Scripture and make sure that our
exposition of one section of Scripture will never contradict another section.
So take the whole of verse 6 and see the position into which it lands you
if you regard John as speaking about individual acts of sin. ‘Whosoever
abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither
known him.’ Now if that means particular acts of sin, then John is saying,
‘Whosoever abides in Him does not commit acts of sin; whosoever commits
acts of sin has not seen Him nor known Him.’ And that means that a person
who is guilty of individual acts of sin is not a Christian: ‘he hath not seen
him, neither known him.’ So if you are conscious of having committed acts
of sin, then according to this statement, you are not a Christian at all! That
is the implication if we say that John here is referring to individual acts of
sin.
But consider his words in the ninth verse: ‘Whosoever is born of God
doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin,
because he is born of God.’ Now if John is referring to individual acts of
sin, then he is saying that the man who is born of God, the man who is truly
a Christian, does not commit any acts of sin at all; so that, again, if you do
commit acts of sin you are not a Christian.
So it is important that we should take the whole statement. What
happens generally in discussions about this matter is that people only want
one half of the verse. They say, ‘Doesn’t John say, “Whosoever abideth in
him sinneth not”? As long as you abide in Him, you don’t commit acts of
sin.’ But they forget the second part, ‘Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him,
neither known him.’ Then again, they quote the first part of verse 9:
‘Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.’ ‘There,’ they say, ‘it is
quite plain,’ but they forget the statement, ‘for his seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.’ It seems to me that there,
again, is a powerful consideration which must force us to the conclusion
that John is not talking about individual acts of sin. He is talking about a
state or habit, about people who keep on doing sin.
Or we can put it another way, like this: Take the positive statements of
verses 7 and 8—‘Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth
righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is
of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning’; and then the tenth
verse, ‘In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the
devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that
loveth not his brother.’ Now I think that the positive statements in those
verses are again of vital importance, and we must observe very carefully the
way in which the Apostle makes them. You would have imagined that he
would have put the statement the other way round—‘He that is righteous
doeth righteousness,’ but John does not put it like that. He says, ‘He that
doeth righteousness is righteous,’ and I think his object is to impress upon
our minds the point that what he really is concerned about is our state or
condition. He is really comparing people who are righteous with those who
are unrighteous, and obviously he does that because he has started the
chapter by talking about our being children, referring to our sonship.
So what he is saying is that what really matters is what we are. The man
or woman who is righteous will show that by living a righteous life; the one
who is not righteous shows it by not living a righteous life. That is where
his reference to the devil is so significant—‘He that committeth sin is of the
devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.’ That is his characteristic,
his nature, his habit; that is his way of living. That is the thing that is so true
of the devil: he sins from the beginning; he goes on sinning. ‘And the man,’
John says, ‘who goes on sinning is, therefore, the man who is proclaiming
that he has the kind of nature that the devil has. He does not have the new
nature that the Christian has.’
I suggest to you, therefore, that those considerations taken together
surely should persuade us that the Apostle is not here considering individual
acts of sin at all, because that would be a doctrine of sinless perfection. It
would also prove that there was no such thing as a Christian at all, because
we have this clear statement that the Christian cannot sin—if he means that.
So what the Apostle is dealing with is the general state and prevailing
condition.
But perhaps we can reinforce this conclusion by putting certain other
considerations also before us. We must remember that the Apostle here is
speaking about all Christians. Now some of the people who believe in
sinless perfection tell us that the Apostle here is only talking about some
Christians. But at this point they become inconsistent, because they forget
the message of verse 6; they say he is only speaking about some, but John is
speaking about all Christians: ‘Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not.’ If a
man does not abide in Christ, he is not a Christian at all; to be a Christian
means to be abiding in Christ. Now there are some who would have us
believe that you can be a Christian without abiding in Christ, but surely that
denies the whole doctrine of the rebirth. We are either in Christ or we are
not, and if we are not in Christ we are not Christians at all. ‘If any man hath
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his’ (Romans 8:9); if we have not been
born of the Spirit we are not Christians. You cannot be in Christ one day
and out the next; every Christian is in Christ and abides in Him. No, John is
not only speaking to certain Christians—he is speaking to all Christians.
Neither is he speaking of some ideal which is set before us or of some
object to which we might attain; nor is he speaking only of the new nature
that is in us. Let me remind you, there are some who would interpret this
statement in that way; they say, ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not
commit sin,’ and when you ask them what that means, they reply that John
is talking about the new nature. They say that he is saying that the ‘new
man’ in the Christian cannot sin. But John is not talking about the new man
only—he is talking of Christians as they were and as they are; he is talking
about us just as we are, as human personalities. He does not say that the
new nature of the Christian cannot sin; he says, ‘Whosoever is born of God’
cannot sin, and it is I, as a believer, who am born of God; it is the individual
who is born again. My new nature is not born again. I have a new nature
because I am born again, and the statement is about me and not the new
nature. Indeed, there is nothing more dangerous than this, to divide up the
personality like that, and it is also a very false piece of psychology just to
say that these statements have reference only to the new nature.
So let me try to sum all this up. The Apostle is referring to the general
tenor of life of Christian people, and in effect this is what he teaches: If you
are truly born of God, if you are a child of God, if the seed of God has
entered into you, if you are truly a partaker of the divine nature, then it is
bound to affect your life in a profound sense. You will be unlike the man or
woman who has not been born again. The characteristic of men and women
in their natural state is that they are like the devil; and the characteristic of
the evil nature is that they go on sinning, they dwell in sin. The whole
atmosphere of that life is one of sin continuing.
But that is not any longer the case with those who have been born again
and who have received the divine seed in their nature. They have been
made different; they have been lifted out of the realm of sin and have been
put into a new realm. They have been taken out of the kingdom of darkness
and are now citizens of the kingdom of light; they are people who are
walking in the light. That does not mean that they are sinless or perfect; no,
but they are walking in the light and not in the darkness. The general
condition and appointment of their life, the whole level of their existence, is
one of righteousness; they are righteous people, holy people, not perfect
people. They are saved, but the fact that they are saved does not mean that
they are sinless and absolutely perfect. Yet they are essentially different
from the men and women who are still sinners.
That, surely, is the teaching of the apostle at this point. It is the only way
in which it can be interpreted which can avoid these contradictions and
those false claims that inevitably result if we teach that the Apostle is
referring to individual acts of sin. What he says is that he who ‘abideth in
him’ does not keep on committing sin. He tells us that those who abide in
Christ do righteousness; they do not go on being guilty of doing that which
is wrong. The whole tone and level and attitude of their life has become
entirely different, and it is in that sense that it is true to say of them that they
literally cannot go on doing sin. Is that not true to experience? The seed of
God abides in these people; the new nature that is in them makes it quite
impossible.
Let me put it like this: It is the whole question of levels. Those who are
not Christians, though they may be morally able to raise their heads, are
essentially on a low level. What is the position of Christians? We can put it
like this: Their lives are on a different level; they are up on that high level.
Alas, they fall into sin occasionally, but they do not stay on the ground—
they get back to the high level. They know that they have sinned; they hate
sin and repent and confess their sin, and the blood of Jesus Christ again
covers them, and back they go walking in the light. It does not mean that
they are in a state of sinless perfection, but, thank God, it does mean they
know that they are new men and women; they know there is a seed of
righteousness in them; they cannot live as they lived before; they have been
translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
But now when I say something like that, I am quite sure that there are
those who want to raise certain objections. ‘Are you not implying,’ they
ask, ‘that there is imperfection in God’s great plan of salvation? Aren’t you
there suggesting that God does not deliver us entirely from sin? Aren’t you
putting a limit on the power of the Lord? Surely,’ they say, ‘you cannot
teach that, because it implies this imperfection!’
Well, my way of answering these objections is to ask some further
questions. Why was it that God did not destroy Satan entirely and
completely when our Lord was here on the earth? He could have done so;
why didn’t He? Why is Satan allowed to live and persist and continue?
What is the answer to that question? Or let me ask another. Why is it that
the moment any person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ as his or her
personal Saviour and Redeemer he is not from then onwards entirely
delivered from sin and made perfect? God could do it. There is no limit to
His power; all things are possible with Him. I put it like that to show that
merely to ask such questions is surely an irrelevance, and it is not for us to
ask why God does not do this and that. What we must do is to face the facts
of experience and the plain teaching of Scripture.
Is it not perfectly clear, therefore, that God in His own wisdom and
eternal will has chosen that the plan of salvation shall work out in this way?
Satan has been left. The power of sin is not immediately destroyed in us.
God has chosen to do this work gradually. This word ‘seed’ (v.9) is rather
significant. Does that not simply mean God’s method and plan in every
realm? In the realm of nature you sow the seed, but it may be weeks and
months and perhaps years before you get the full bloom. Why does God do
it like that? My answer is, I do not know, but that is God’s method; it is His
way, and it seems to me that is what we are taught in the Scriptures. We are
taught about being ‘babes in Christ,’ we are taught about growing and
developing, we are taught about ‘growing in grace.’ John has already dealt
with that when he said, ‘Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth
himself, even as he is pure’ (v.3). It is a process, a development, and surely
if we do not interpret a section like this in that way, then it means that we
are denying what he has already told us in the first chapter—‘If we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (v.8).
John’s object in writing is ‘that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have
an advocate with the Father…’ (1 John 2:1). But why is that, if the
Christian is immediately delivered and made perfect? No, this is a great
mystery. It is not for us to understand, but we must face the facts. Is there
anyone who would like to claim that he or she is perfect? Well, if you
interpret this passage as referring to individual acts of sin, then if you are
not perfect, you are not a Christian. No, we must avoid that; we must realise
that experience, the experience of the greatest saints, denies this teaching of
sinless perfection, and we see that that is not in accordance with the
teaching of Scripture.
Lastly, this exhorts us to strive to purify and cleanse ourselves and to
interpret Scripture in our daily lives. No, we do not just have to submit and
resign ourselves in order to be made perfect; we are to understand the
Scriptures and their doctrine. We are to see their implication and to
implement them in our daily lives. Is this discouraging? To me it is the
height of encouragement, for what I am told is that if I am a Christian at all,
if I am a child of God and the divine seed is in me, then God has started to
work in me. He will go on, and He will bring it to perfection. But He does
so by opening my mind and understanding; He reveals sin to me; He tells
me to put these things into practise, to press on and to strive; and He gives
the final assurance that if I confess my sin He is faithful and just to forgive
my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). And
experience confirms that. I cannot continue in sin. I cannot live that life of
sin; my very new nature objects to it, and I rise out of it. I confess, I
acknowledge my sin, I go back, and I strive to walk in the light.
Let us all examine ourselves. Do you find it possible to continue in sin,
to keep doing sin? If you do not, it is because you have been born again; the
seed of God remains in you, and you cannot go on doing sin because you
are a child of God and an heir of eternal bliss. If, therefore, we say that we
are the children of God, let us go on to prove it; let us demonstrate it by
living that righteous life, even as the Son of God Himself lived it and
exemplified it when he was here on earth. ‘Every man that hath this hope in
him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.’
 7. From Death to Life
In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not
righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye
heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one,
and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his
brother’s righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed
from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in
him. 1 John 3:10–15

In these verses and in those that follow, we find ourselves facing the next
great appeal and exhortation which this Apostle addresses to these first
Christians in terms of their wonderful position as children of God. The first
point we saw was that if we are truly the children of God, then we must live
a righteous life, and now here, starting at the end of the tenth verse, John
takes up the second argument under this question of sonship. It is that as
children of God we are not only to obey God’s laws and live the righteous
life, we are also to love one another. The very fact that we are children in
and of itself presupposes this, but because we are so slow to realise that in
practise, the Apostle provides us with certain arguments, and again his logic
is surely quite irresistible. Reading these words we are left in the position
that this is not a matter to be debated. It is quite inevitable; certain things
lead inevitably to certain conclusions, and John is showing us how this
question of loving one another as brothers and sisters in Christ is inevitably
the outcome of our being children of God.
So we must consider carefully the argument which the apostle provides
us. It is not enough merely to say that we are children of God; we must give
proof of that fact, and John therefore puts it in this manner which is so
characteristic of him. We have already seen, as we have worked our way
through this epistle, that he almost invariably puts his truth in a double
form. It is first and foremost an exhortation, and yet his exhortation is at the
same time a test.
Take, for instance, this eleventh verse: ‘This is the message that ye heard
from the beginning, that we should love one another ’; that is the
exhortation, and yet he puts it in such a way that it becomes quite plain to
us that this question of loving one another is not only a duty, it is also a test,
for as he goes on to say, if we do not love one another, we are not children
of God. He has already said this in verse 10: ‘Whosoever doeth not
righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.’ The man
who does not love his brother is not a child of God; it puts him out of court
in exactly the same way as his failure to do righteousness puts him out.
Here, then, once more we have this great principle which John goes on
repeating chapter after chapter; what we are inevitably expresses itself in
our lives. The great thing, therefore, that Christians have to concentrate
upon is a full realisation of what they are.
Now we can never be tired of repeating this; the New Testament never
calls upon us to do anything without first of all reminding us of who we are.
That is its invariable method: doctrine—practise; the whole doctrinal
position—the inevitable practical outlook. And John does exactly the same
thing here. In other words, he does not ask people to love one another
before he has reminded them of the fact that they are children of God. He is
right, and therefore he can make his appeal, and that is the New Testament
method. It comes to us and says, in effect, ‘If you claim to be this, don’t you
see that it inevitably follows that you ought to behave like that.’ There is a
kind of inevitable logic in the argument as it is always presented. Mere
claims, then, are of no value; it is, rather, our practise that ultimately
proclaims what we are.
Now there can be no doubt at all but that John originally wrote this
because of certain people in the early church—and there have been people
like them ever since—who took the kind of position that nothing matters
but our understanding of the truth. This is a position that very often leads to
carelessness in practise. It is possible for people to be highly orthodox and
yet to be loose in their living. That is what is called antinomianism—I am
saved, and therefore what I do does not matter at all. And it is the same with
this question of brotherly love. There are people who are sometimes so
intent upon the cultivation of their own spiritual state that they are lacking
in love. They are unconcerned about their brethren; they are so absorbed in
their own moods and condition that they forget the practical, obvious duty
of the Christian life.
Now John is here showing that that is something which is a self—
contradiction; true Christians, being what they are, are people who of
necessity must ‘love one another.’ ‘This,’ says John, ‘is the message—you
have heard it from the beginning: we are to love one another ’; and you
cannot read the New Testament, even in a cursory and superficial manner,
without seeing that this is one of the great messages that is impressed upon
us and repeated everywhere. If you read especially those tender passages in
John’s Gospel, from chapters 13 to 17, where our Lord addresses His
followers just under the shadow of the cross and gives them His last
message, you will find that this is His final appeal. This is the message that
He keeps on repeating—‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye
love one another ’ (John 13:34); ‘By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye have love one to another ’ (John 13:35). John therefore has a
right to say, ‘This is the message that ye heard from the beginning,’ because
our Lord repeated and emphasised it.
Then if you read the various New Testament epistles you will find that it
is everywhere. It does not matter who the writer is—they all repeat this
message. They never forget the impression that was made upon their minds
by those statements of our Lord, so they go on appealing for love. Think of
1 Corinthians 13 and various other notable passages. You must not be
jealous and envious of one another, ‘rendering evil for evil’ (1 Peter. 3:9).
‘That is the old life,’ they say, ‘but you are in a new life; so you must love
one another.’ And this kind of exhortation goes on even beyond the New
Testament canon. We know as a literal fact of history that there was nothing
that so impressed the ancient world as the way in which Christians loved
one another—this great process of demolishing ‘the middle wall of
partition’ (Ephesians 2:14), the way in which Jews and Gentiles were one in
Christ. They showed it in practise, in the way in which they were ready to
sacrifice for one another, in the way they shared their goods with one
another, and in the way they prayed for one another. These were the things
that amazed the ancient world, and they were perhaps more productive in
turning people to Christ than anything else. It was said, you remember,
‘Behold, how these Christians love one another.’ So we are entitled to say
that in many ways this is the one great differentiating characteristic of
Christian people.
Now we are concerned about this not from a theoretical standpoint, but
from an intensely practical one. The argument works in two ways. If we are
to experience the full blessing of this Christian salvation, we must love one
another; we cannot experience this life without doing it. But I call attention
to it not merely from the standpoint of our own personal enjoyment. There
is another and greater reason for repeating this exhortation, which is that it
is still the way in which the Christian church is going to affect and influence
the world. The world in its darkness and blindness still expects something
different from the Christian. It expects to see something in the Christian
community which no one else can show; so to the extent that we fail to
practise and exemplify this great virtue, the whole testimony and witness of
the church will be correspondingly weak.
So I want to put this whole question to you in exactly the same way as
John does in this section. First of all, he says that if we realise what we are
as Christians we will do this. Then, secondly, he says that the proof that we
are truly Christians is that we love one another. So let us consider now his
first argument. The first thing that is of vital importance, says John, is that
we should realise what it means to be a Christian. What is a Christian?
What is happening to the Christian? What is it that makes Christians what
they are? What is the ground or the basis on which this great superstructure
of brotherly love can be erected?
Well, here John tells us three things about the Christian, and I pause at
them because they are so wonderful. It does seem to me more and more that
what accounts for most of our failures in Christian living is our failure to
realise what we are. It is our failure to realise what God has done to us,
what has happened to us. Our whole tendency always is to rush to practical
applications before we have truly grasped what we are. I have already
reminded you that the whole emphasis of the New Testament is put in that
way. We must think less and less of doing and more and more of being. If
we only are what we ought to be, then the doing will more or less look after
itself; and John here reminds us in these wonderful verses of what we are as
Christians and what has happened to us.
Let me note these three things. The first we find in verse 14—‘We know
that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.’
What then is the Christian? The first thing we are told is that the Christian is
someone who has passed from death unto life. What is it that makes
Christians primarily different from those who are not Christians? Christians
are not just those who go to a place of worship on a Sunday. No, according
to the New Testament they are essentially different; they have ‘passed from
death unto life.’
Now, what does this great conception have to give us? Let me put it like
this: According to the teaching of the New Testament everywhere, we all by
nature are in a state of spiritual death. I am not only referring to those who
are guilty of gross and violent and obvious sins. No, this is true of
everybody born into this world. We are born in sin and ‘shapen in iniquity’;
by nature, by birth we are all ‘the children of wrath.’ We are born into the
realm of death, and we exist in that realm as we are by nature. This is, of
course, the result of the Fall; that is the result of man’s sin at the beginning.
When God made man He said to him, ‘If you obey these laws of Mine, you
will go on living; if you break them, then you will die.’ Man broke God’s
law and sinned against Him, and he died; and the result, as Paul puts it in
Romans 5, is that death reigns. The world has become a world of death, and
we are born into a condition in which we are dead—dead spiritually—dead
in trespasses and in sins. We are born into the realm of death, and we live in
that atmosphere and condition of death.
‘From death unto life’—what does this state of death mean? Let me
summarise for you what the Bible tells us in various places about this state
in which we are by nature. The first thing it means is that we do not know
God, that we are outside the life of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ. At the
end of His life our Lord said, ‘This is life eternal, that they may know thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent’ (John 17:3). So if
that is life, then death is the exact opposite. It means not to know God, to be
outside the life of God, to have no fellowship with Him, to receive nothing
from Him, to be living a life entirely apart from Him.
And that is what the New Testament, and indeed the Bible everywhere,
tells us about the state of men and women as they are by nature—they are
without life, in death. They do not know God, they have no trafficking or
business with Him, and their life is not centred upon Him. To them, God is
just some terrible force or power or some philosophical category, or
someone to be hated. They are living altogether apart from God. God does
not enter into their calculations, and they do not experience anything of the
joy that comes from an intimate knowledge of Him. They are, as Paul puts
it, ‘without God in the world’ (Ephesians 2:12). That is the first thing that
characterises this state of death.
But another characteristic, and one which follows of necessity from the
first one, is that such people are entirely dead to spiritual things. ‘We,’ says
John, ‘have passed from death unto life.’ ‘You hath he quickened, who were
dead in trespasses and sins,’ said Paul in writing to the Ephesians
(Ephesians 2:1). Those who are dead are dead to the value of their soul;
they are quite oblivious of the importance of life in this world and its
relationship to their eternal destiny. They do not know why God has given
them the gift of life; they are unconcerned about these things. Their interest
lies in eating and drinking and enjoying themselves, living for this life and
world; and they do not realise that there is within them something which is
imperishable. They do not realise that God has made them body, soul, and
spirit. They forget the highest category of all; they are living only in the
lower realm, utterly dead to spiritual things.
Furthermore, they are not aware of the nature of sin and of evil. They do
not realise the terrible spiritual conflict that is going on in this life and
world between God and Satan, the powers of heaven and of hell. When you
talk to them about sin they laugh at you. They say, ‘Surely nobody
nowadays believes in sin! That is the old thing that people burdened
themselves with a hundred years ago; it is just some kind of imagination
that people conjure up out of the past.’ They do not understand the nature of
the spiritual conflict and the whole position in this world, through which
they are rapidly moving to an ultimate end which they cannot avoid. They
are spiritually dead; they live to the material and physical, to the seen and
temporal, and the unseen and eternal are outside their ken and interest.
Of course the inevitable result of that is that they live a certain type of
life, and the type of life that is lived by the person who is thus spiritually
dead is perfectly described in Ephesians 2. They walk, says the Apostle
there, according to ‘the prince of the power of the air ’; they are subject to
‘the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind’
(Ephesians 2:2–3). That is it. And is it not obvious in the world in which we
find ourselves? Being dead to God and the life and the things of God, men
and women live according to these lusts and desires, and it leads to all the
miserable, wretched kind of life that you see depicted in the morning
newspapers, in the proceedings in the courts, and in all the loudness and
clamour and ugliness of life at this moment.
And the last thing we see about such a life is that it is a life which
becomes more and more dead as you go on in it. ‘The wages of sin is death’
(Romans 6:23) and in that life of death, men and women go on dying. That
is one of the most terrible things about it. Trace the life stories of those who
never become Christians, and you will find a gradual degeneration and
decline. In their earlier years, perhaps, they were interested in ideals and
idealism, proposing to do certain things. But watch them as they go on.
They gradually shed one thing after another; a kind of cirrhosis enters into
the soul and imagination, and they go down and down and lose everything
that is uplifting and ennobling. There is a kind of hardening process, dying
in death, putrefying in a state of sin.
Now that, according to this description which is given here and
everywhere else in the Bible, is the state of everybody born into the world
by nature, a state of death. ‘Thank God,’ says the Apostle here, ‘that is no
longer our position.’ To be a Christian means that you pass from death unto
life and nothing less than that. Though we were dead in trespasses and in
sins, we have been quickened. God in His mercy has looked upon us and by
His Spirit has begun to deal with us. He has awakened and aroused us; He
has put into us the principles of life, and we are passed from death into
another realm altogether. That is what it means to be a Christian—not just
deciding to live a better life than you lived before, not just establishing
certain moral maxims and principles and making a great effort to keep
them. No; it is a change in nature, a translation. These are the terms of the
New Testament: we have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into
the kingdom of His dear Son. Or, as Peter puts it, ‘which in time past were
not a people, but are now the people of God… who hath called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light’ (1 Peter 2:10,9). It is the same idea, and it
is everywhere in the New Testament.
How, then, do we know that we are in this realm of light, the realm of
life? Well, this means the exact opposite of everything I have been
describing. The people who have passed from death unto life are those who
can say that they know God. ‘This is life eternal, that they may know thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent’ (John 17:3). Do
you know God, my friend? This is life eternal; have you life? I am not
asking whether you believe certain things; that is possible intellectually.
Rather, I am asking, have you life, are you in the realm of life, do you know
God, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Those who have life do know
this, for this is life eternal. When you pray, do you know that you are
speaking to God? Is it just a question of dropping on your knees and
offering up a number of pious hopes and aspirations, or do you know that
God is there? Is there something happening between you and God; are you
in real communion with Him?
The only people who know that are those who have life within them.
They are no longer dead in trespasses and sins; they have been quickened,
born again. They have been given a new life, and they are aware of this life
within them. They can say, ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’
(Galatians 2:20). They are aware of certain things in which they were not
interested before and to which they paid no attention. They are aware of
their own spiritual being and nature; they begin to take an interest in
spiritual things. Paul says that those who are Christians are those who
‘mind… the things of the Spirit’ (Romans 8:5). They take an interest in
them; whereas before they were interested only in this world and its affairs,
they now become interested in the spiritual kingdom of God. They are
concerned about the propagation of the gospel; they pray for the world and
its people; they mind spiritual things.
Not only that; they are aware of the fact that there is indeed this principle
of life in them. We saw that the others were dying and sinking in death; but
these men and women who have been brought from death unto life are
aware of growth and development. Life cannot remain static. Look at the
flowers; look at the trees during the Spring. Do you not see everything
growing and developing? Life must go on; it must develop if you have
passed from death unto life. Are you growing in grace; are you developing
in the Christian life? Are you further forward than you were a year ago?
This life principle must manifest itself.
And perhaps the greatest test of all is that such people desire holiness;
they delight in God and in His holy law, and their supreme ambition is to be
living this new life with its wondrous principles. They know that God has
come to them in His infinite love. I am loath to leave this verse, but we
must, so I repeat its message once again: You, beloved Christians, have
passed from death unto life; you have been taken out of that grave into
which you were born. You are in a new realm; you are new men and women
with new principles within you, and you are in a new realm altogether, and
you are growing into the likeness of Christ. Do you think of yourself like
that? When you think of yourself as a Christian, do you do it in that way?
Or is it as just a member of a particular church or denomination, or that you
are just a little bit better than somebody else who is a profligate sinner
living in the gutters of this world? Do you think of yourself like this: I have
passed from death unto life! What a glorious, wonderful thing it is to be a
Christian!
But let me just mention the other two things which John tells us here. We
have, in a sense, already dealt with the one in the tenth verse. ‘In this the
children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever
doeth not righteousness is not of God.’ That is it—the second thing that is
true of the Christians—that they are of God; they are children of God.
Christians not only know God, they have received something of God’s own
nature; they have become ‘partakers of the divine nature.’ They are born
again of the Spirit—that is to say, of God Himself. He has become kin to us,
says Paul to the Ephesians; we are members of ‘the household of God’
(Ephesians 2:19). So Christians belong to the family of God, and of course
they are bound to manifest something of the traits and characteristics of that
family life.
Once again, can you fail to be impressed by the fact that you can never
make yourself a Christian? You cannot produce the characteristics of God
and His family; but if you are a Christian, you do so—you are of God,
children of God. Our Lord put this clearly in a verse in the Sermon on the
Mount: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). He was talking about the very theme that John is
handling in this section: loving people, loving your enemies, doing good to
them that hate you, blessing them that use you despitefully and malign you.
Do not only love those who love you—anybody can do that; the whole test
of your position is that you love your enemies. You who are of God, you
who are children of God, you are to reproduce God in your lives.
That is what the Christian is. Christians are new men and women, not
just people who are better than anybody else. They are essentially different,
they are made on a new pattern, they have a new nature within them, they
are of God. Therefore you can turn to them and say, ‘Be like God; “Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”’
But let me just mention the third thing which John tells us in this section
about the Christian. It is in verse 15: ‘Whosoever hateth his brother is a
murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.’
But I want to put that in a positive form. The third characteristic of
Christian men and women is that they have eternal life abiding in them. I
am amazed at times at the fact that I, or anybody else who is a Christian,
can remain so silent, can live such a poor, unworthy life. Was I not right
when I said at the beginning that the whole trouble with us all is that we do
not realise what we are? We insist on thinking about this Christian life as
some great height which we have to climb. But before we are asked to do
anything, we have been made something; we have eternal life abiding in us,
otherwise we are not Christians at all.
 John has given us the same idea in verse 9: ‘Whosoever is born of God
doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him.’ The life of the
Christian is one which is mastered, governed, controlled by a new principle
of life. God is working in the Christian. ‘Work out your own salvation,’
says Paul, ‘for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his
good pleasure’ (Philippians 2:13). That is it—eternal life abiding in us. He
has implanted it in us, He has put it into us; it is like a ferment working and
developing and influencing, and it is irresistible. Ultimately it is producing
a new man or woman, forming us according to the image and pattern of life;
this principle of life abides in us and goes on. It is the kind of thing that one
sees in the Spring. You notice this about the leaves that were on the trees in
the winter. What is it that takes them away? People do not pull them off!
No; the new leaf comes and pushes the old leaf off. It is the same here. It is
what Thomas Chalmers called ‘the expulsive power of the new affection’—
eternal life abiding in us.
I cannot do better than put it in verses of Scripture: ‘Now unto him that
is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according
to the power that worketh in us…’ (Ephesians 3:20). Or again: ‘whom we
preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we
may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus; whereunto I also labour,
striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily’
(Colossians 1:28–29).
So I put it in the form of a question again: are you aware of a mighty
power working within you? Do you know there is a new life principle in
you? Are you aware of a ferment in your own nature, something pushing
you on, urging you forward, making you desire holiness, making you desire
to be able to pray in a more worthy manner, longing to know Christ better?
Are you aware of something disturbing you; has something been put into
you that will not let you remain in that existence of death? We are not
Christians unless we know something of that disturbance and turmoil and
working within—eternal life abiding in us, going on, moving us and leading
us on to other and greater things.
 8. The Marks of a Christian
For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as
Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his
own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We
know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his
brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer
hath eternal life abiding in him. 1 John 3:11–15

We have begun our consideration of these verses, and we have seen that if
we are to experience sonship and its benefit to the full, we must obey God’s
commandments, we must live as children of God. In a sense, John’s
argument is that as we are children of God we are therefore like the Lord
Jesus Christ; and being like Him, we must live as He lived. He went
through this world, which was so cruel to Him, without faltering and
without failing because of ‘the joy that was set before him’ (Hebrews 12:2).
It was that communion and that knowledge which enabled Him, and
therefore He always obeyed God. His life was a life full of perfect
obedience; as a son He rendered perfect obedience of God’s holy will and
law. And, secondly, the great characteristic which we see in Him is this
quality of love. So John says, ‘As you are like Him, you are to display and
manifest these things in your daily lives; you are to keep the
commandments.’ That is the argument up to the middle of the tenth verse,
and at the end of that verse he says, ‘Whosoever doeth not righteousness is
not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.’ He introduces there the
theme that is now occupying our attention, and he proceeds to deal with it
from verse 11 well on towards the end of this particular chapter.
Now the Apostle’s method is one which is full of interest. It is his
statement that if we are children of God and realise what that means, then
we must of necessity be like the Lord Jesus Christ in our conduct. And the
point that I want to make is that this is not so much an argument which John
deduces, as a statement of something which is absolutely inevitable. John is
not asking us here to deduce certain things from our position of sonship. He
says, ‘If you are God’s children, then you must do so—and—so, and if you
do not, you are not His children.’ It is the inevitability that I wish to
emphasise. This is his argument with regard to this question of loving one
another, exactly as it was with regard to conduct. He says, ‘Whosoever is
born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he
cannot sin, because he is born of God’ (1 John 3:9). We have already looked
at that, and it is just the same with this question of sonship.
In other words, we must again point out that John puts his whole
exhortation to us, that we should love one another, in terms of our position.
It cannot be said too frequently that the New Testament never asks us to do
anything without first of all reminding us of who we are. It does so because
its doctrine is that we cannot do the things we are asked to do unless we are
children of God. Therefore, let me remind you that the New Testament has
no general indication to the world as to how it shall live. Its only message to
the world is to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But it has a
great deal to say to the believer. It starts with our position and then it says,
‘Because you are what you are, does it not inevitably follow that you must
produce these works?’
We have considered the description that is given of us. There are three
things: Christians are those who have ‘passed from death unto life’;
secondly, they are ‘of God’; and lastly, they have eternal life abiding in
them. ‘Therefore,’ says John, ‘the vital question you have to ask yourself is
this: are you such a person? Can you say that you have passed from death
unto life? Do you know that you are of God? Do you know that there is
eternal life abiding in you; is that your claim? That should be the claim of
every Christian and nothing less. Now,’ says John, ‘there is, in a sense, no
need for you to make a statement about it. What you are will demonstrate
very clearly whether there is any substance in your claim or not. You life
will prove and demonstrate whether you really are a child of God or
whether you are not.’
There is something glorious and yet terrible about the Christian position.
We are all the time proclaiming what we are; the world in a sense is right
when it tells us that it is more interested in our life than in our statements.
Let us never forget that as Christian people, we are the whole time
proclaiming what we are. We are bound to. It is inevitable—that is the
whole argument at this point. Life and nature simply cannot be hidden.
What we are, we are bound to express. It does not matter what our clothing
or our disguise may be. Life or nature will show; or as it is sometimes put,
‘breeding will out.’ The blood that is in us will show itself; we cannot help
it. We may even try to conceal it, but it will be there.
 Our Lord Himself put this perfectly in the Sermon on the Mount when
he said, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;
but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth
evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit’ (Matthew 7:16–
19). It is not a matter to be argued about; people may try to talk as
Christians, but they show very clearly in their lives whether they are
Christians or not. These are absolutes, and this is precisely the argument of
the Apostle at this particular point.
Let us be quite clear about this—the doctrine is not that we make
ourselves Christian by loving the brethren and so on. No, rather it is the
other way round—that we prove we are Christians by loving the brethren.
That is why it seems to me always to be so utterly fatuous and ridiculous to
say that there is conflict between the doctrine of James and that of the
Apostle Paul. That is the very thing that James said: ‘Show me thy faith
without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works… faith
without works is dead’ (James 2:18,20). It is this very doctrine, the doctrine
of this chapter, the doctrine, as we have seen, of the Sermon on the Mount,
the doctrine to be found everywhere throughout the New Testament.
Let me put it like this: We have said that what we are and what we claim
to be can be checked and proved by our conduct and by our behaviour.
‘Very well,’ says someone, ‘if it is as inevitable as that, what is the point of
John’s exhorting these people to love the brethren?’ There are many
answers to that question. One is that while John wants to remind us of our
nature and of the life within us, he also wants to encourage us to live life in
conformity with that nature, and he also wants to increase our joy by
stimulating us to produce still more fruit.
It is, if you like, similar to this: You see a tree bearing fruit, but if you
dig round the roots and feed it, you will help to bring forth more fruit. John
is just aiding and assisting and stimulating these people. It is exactly the
same as when we exhort the child to behave himself and remind him that
the whole dignity of the family is in his hands; it is a good thing to remind
him what he is in order that he may represent the family in a still better
manner.
As Christian people, we should make the claim that we have ‘passed
from death unto life’ and that we are ‘of God’ and that we have ‘eternal life
abiding’ in us. ‘Now,’ says John, ‘there are absolute proofs of whether this
claim of ours is true or not. Here is the first: if we want to know for certain
that we are children of God, and therefore Christians, then here is the first
test—we have become unlike the world.’ That is the first argument in verse
12: ‘Not as Cain.’ John always starts with the negative—‘Not as Cain, who
was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him?
Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.’ Cain stands
once and for ever in the Bible as the type of the worldly person, the person
who is not of God, the unspiritual person; therefore everything that is true
of the world, in contradistinction to the Christian, is to be seen in Cain.
What are the characteristics of this worldly type? The answer is that such
people are the exact opposite of the Christian. The Christian, as we have
seen, is of God, and what we are told about the worldly man here is that he
is of the devil—‘of that wicked one.’
The second thing we are told about him in verse 14 is that he ‘abideth in
death,’ while the Christian has ‘passed from death unto life’ and has
‘eternal life abiding in him.’
And the third thing, going along with the second, about this worldly man
is that he does not have ‘eternal life abiding in him’; that is the statement of
verse 15. So there is a general description of the worldly person. He is of
the wicked one; he belongs to the devil, Satan. He is of the kingdom of
darkness, under the tyranny and dominion and thraldom of the god of this
world. That is the realm in which he lives; that is the person to whom he
belongs. As we have seen, Christ said to such people, ‘Ye are of your father
the devil’ (John 8:44). That is it. And they abide in death. They have not
been quickened; the Holy Spirit has not given them life. They are still dead
in trespasses and sins, and the awful thing is that they have no principle of
eternal life abiding in them.
But let us work this out a little more in particular, for that is only a
general description. What in particular do we find to be the characteristics
of this life? They are seen clearly in the devil himself and in the kind of life
that belongs to him. The great characteristic of such a life is that it is self—
centred, a life of self–will and of selfishness. That is what produced the
original fall of Satan. He was a perfect being created by God, so why did he
fall? It was because he became self—centred. He was not content with
spending his eternity in worshipping and glorifying God. He began to think
of himself, and he began to feel that he was worthy of more attention. He
wanted to live life in his own way and in selfishness, and that is the
characteristic of this kind of life. It is an ugly, foul, hateful thing, but you
see how it is the great thing in life today—the sheer selfishness of it all,
people living for themselves.
And of course the other characteristic is that it is a life of hatred of God
and a hatred of good. ‘Wherefore,’ asks John, referring to Cain and Abel,
‘slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s
righteous.’ And that, also, is the second great characteristic of the devil. He
hated God, he hated the power and the glory of God, and he turned against
all that; and everyone who belongs to the devil does the same thing. The
Apostle Paul says, ‘The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be’ (Romans 8:7). ‘Ah, but,’
we say, ‘surely that is not true of good people who are not Christians; there
are so many nice people.’ But however nice they may be, the carnal mind is
enmity against God, it is of the devil, it is of the wicked one, and it
manifests itself in some shape or form.
The results of these wrong attitudes are seen clearly in the case of Cain.
This evil life of hatred of God and of His holy law, this self—centred, self
—willed, selfish life, always is a perverted and an unnatural life, and you
see what it did in Cain. Here are two brothers, Cain and Abel, and you see
what sin does to a man. A brother should love a brother, but Cain became
jealous of his brother, and he hated him to such an extent that he killed him.
What made him do it? The two brothers took offerings to God, and God
praised the offering of Abel, but He did not praise the offering of Cain, and
that made Cain so angry with his brother that he killed him. This is the self–
centred life. ‘I am so desirous of praise—what is my brother when I am
being hated!’
And that is the spirit that rules the world today. That is what produces
the horrors of the law courts; that is what produces wars between nations. It
is men and women in their self–centredness hating anyone who seems to
have something that they have not. Murder is but the logical conclusion of
all this. But this is the principle that is in all who are not Christians. Paul
has given us a terrible description of this in writing to Titus, ‘For we
ourselves also were sometime [that is, before we became Christians]
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in
malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another ’ (Titus 3:3).
 That is the life of the world. I need not press it; is it not true? Listen to
people’s conversations. You do not know them, but listen to them as they
are talking about somebody else. Listen to the spite and the malice and the
envy. Look at their eyes; there is murder in them. They may not actually
commit murder, but the principle is there. I am not condemning such poor
people; I am sorry for them. Look at the faces of the people who are always
criticising somebody else. Look at them; they cannot see themselves. That
is the tragedy. If only they saw the ugliness and the venom! Pray for them;
have pity on them; they are of the devil, and they are living in malice,
hating and hateful. What a terrible, horrible life that is.
Are we like that? It does not need any argument. It is impossible that we
have the divine nature abiding in us if we are like that. What we are is
proclaimed by what we do and how we behave, and the thing that is
essentially and obviously true of Christians is that they are not like the
world, ‘not as Cain.’ They do not have this hateful, horrid spirit in them of
jealousy and envy and malice, hating and criticising. Oh, the ugliness!
Thank God for the passing from death unto life, from such a world into the
kingdom of light, the kingdom of love, the kingdom of God!
The second proof that we are Christians is that the world hates us. Verse
13 says, ‘Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.’ Again, we do not
need any proof; this is absolutely inevitable in view of the first proposition
—it is bound to happen. As John puts it here, do not be surprised if the
world hates you. It is not surprising in view of what we have been saying.
Let me put this as an historical fact. This is one of the great principles
which we find in the Bible from the beginning. There are many people who
are in difficulty about this verse. If this is true of you, then you have
somehow failed to understand the first great essential divisions of the Bible.
The difference between Cain and Abel was in Cain, not Abel. Cain (the
world) hates Abel (the Christian). Look at Joseph and his brethren. Look at
David and Saul; read the story of how King Saul treated David and tried to
get rid of him—the jealousy, envy and malice. Look at the treatment that
was meted out to the prophets, those men of God who were trying to save
the nation. It is there everywhere.
Look at the supreme example of our Lord Himself. Here is the Son of
God incarnate; here is the eternal life in the flesh. Look at the world
sneering at Him, how they picked up stones to cast at Him, how they
shouted, ‘Crucify Him, away with Him!’ The world crucified the very Son
of God who had come to save it! ‘Marvel not, my friends, if the world hate
you.’ The world does not hate you because you are hateful people; the case
of Cain and Abel proves that. Cain did not hate his brother because there
was something hateful about him. There was nothing to be hated in Abel,
but Cain hated him in spite of that.
Neither does the world hate us because we are good. Let us be quite
clear about that. The world does not hate good people; the world only hates
Christian people; that is the subtle, vital distinction. If you are just a good
person, the world, far from hating you, will admire you; it will cheer you.
And what is true of the individual is true of the whole Church. The
psychological explanation is quite simple. The world likes good people
because it feels that they are a compliment to itself. So the world applauds
them. But the world, we are told, hates Christians, not because they are
hateful, not because they are good, not because they do good, but
specifically because they are Christians, because they are of God, because
they have Christ within them.
I think this does not need any demonstration. If anyone did good in this
world, it was the Lord Jesus Christ; but as I have shown you, the world
hated Him. It is not goodness—it is this specific thing that makes us
Christian that does it. Now I believe that this is one of the most profound
and thorough proofs of the new life within us that we can ever have. Our
Lord put it like this: ‘Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth: I
came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance
against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter—
in—law against her mother—in—law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his
own household’ (Matthew 10:34–36). Our Lord has prophesied and
predicted this very thing.
Now being good does not divide families. Here is something, and the
only thing, that should upset the family relationship. The family will not
hate you if you are good and do good. The family will not even hate you if
you do wrong; it will forgive things in you that it would not forgive in
anybody else—it always has a soft spot for the prodigal son. But become a
Christian and live like the Lord Jesus Christ and ‘a man’s foes shall be they
of his own household.’ This is an amazing thing, but this is where the true
perversion of sin begins to emerge.
 What is the explanation? Well, I think it is quite simple if you read your
Bible. To be born again means that you become essentially different from
what you were, and you no longer belong to the family as you did before. I
can best put this to you by way of an illustration. I knew a man and his
wife, indeed I had the pleasure of taking the service when they got married
—two highly respectable, moral people. At first they lived a happy married
life together. Then the husband was converted and became a Christian. His
entire life became different, especially when he began to know this great
fondness for the things of God. He attended all the meetings of the church,
weeknights as well as Sundays, and he lived for these. On one occasion
when he went home from a meeting in the church, his wife (I repeat, a very
good, respectable, nice woman, even a member of the church) received him
with this greeting: ‘I had sooner see you carried helplessly drunk into the
house than see you perpetually coming home from these prayer meetings!’
She would sooner see him helplessly drunk! Why? Because she had the
feeling that he now belonged to someone else; Christ came even before
her.1
Christ demands that. He said, ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26). And, you
see, the world thus pays tribute to the fact that we are born again and have
become children of God. It realises that we have been taken out of the realm
of the world and we are in a new family. We cannot enjoy the things it
enjoys, and it is offended by this. It says, ‘This thing has taken him from
me, and I hate it.’ Sin does not divide in that sense. The only thing that
divides in the very depths is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the new life. But this
divides absolutely, and soon a Cain murders even his own brother.
The world hates us because it does not understand us or the life we have.
It does not share this life with us, and it feels we are condemning it, even
though we may not say a word. But because we are so different, it feels
condemned. It feels lost, and it hates the feeling of condemnation, so it
hates us. That was why the world hated our Lord. He never did any wrong,
He was without sin, He preached that perfect message, He went about doing
good, and yet they snarled at Him, the Pharisees especially. This was
because by just being what He was, He condemned them. He showed them
that He belonged to a different order, a different realm. He was God in the
flesh, and everyone who reproduces this will get the same response and
reaction from the world. Make sure, my friends, that you are not just good.
Make sure you are Christians.
The final proof of the fact that we are Christians is positive—we love the
brethren. We are unlike the world, we are hated by it, but verse 14 tells us,
‘We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the
brethren.’ It is the final proof, the glorious proof, the positive proof,
something again which is quite inevitable; and what John is saying is that
we now love Christians as Christians and because they are Christians. Is
this not inevitable? Our new nature is one of love; that is what we have
been given by the Holy Spirit—the fruit of the Spirit is love. So, having this
new nature, there is the principle of life in us which was never there before.
It is natural to love members of the family; the world has become unnatural
in sin and does not do that, but this is natural, to love members of the
family, to love those that are in it as we are.
But the real explanation is that we love the brethren because they are ‘of
God.’ We see God in them, Christ in them; it is the expression of our love to
God. As our Lord put it, they share the life of God, which being interpreted
is this: if you love God like that, you are bound to love your neighbour as
yourself; it is an expression of your love for God.
Let me put it practically, like this: Christians rejoice in the work of God
in themselves, and they rejoice to see the same thing in others. So when we
see people who have been born again, we want to praise God. We love them
because they are in the hands of God, because they are God’s workmanship,
because we detect this principle of Christlikeness in them. We love them;
we rejoice with them in that they also have what we ourselves have got.
But not only that—we love the brethren because we share the same
interests; we have been brought out of darkness into light, separated from
the world into this new kingdom. We are sharing and are interested in the
same thing, in this glorious Word, in this praise of God. We have the same
enjoyments as we go through this world of time. And back and beyond it
all, we are facing the same destination. We are making for the same glory,
we are travellers together through this weary pilgrimage, and we look
forward to the glorious day that is coming. We know that our eternity is to
be spent together there, beyond time, beyond death. There in the everlasting
and eternal glory we are going to bask together in the sunshine of His
wondrous peace and all His glory and His grace.
 Is it not inevitable that we love one another? We are marching together
to Zion; we are going together to the Promised Land. ‘Brother clasps the
hand of brother,’ through being the same in nature, the same in outlook, the
same in desires, the same in interests, having the same blessed hope, and
seeing the same work in us all. It is not a matter of argument or of
deduction; it is something that is absolutely inevitable—‘We know that we
have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.’ There are
certain people we now love whom we would not love if we were not
Christians; as natural people we would not love them, but we now see them
in a different way, and we love that in them—we love the brethren.
God grant that as we examine ourselves in the light of these things, we
may be able to say together and individually, ‘I know that I have passed
from death unto life.’
 9. Love in Action
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. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little
children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. 1 John 3:16–18

We come here, obviously, to the practical side and to the application of

what John has already been telling us about ‘lov[ing] the brethren.’ He has
been talking about this love, but, wise teacher and pastor as he is, now an
old man who has had a long experience, he realises that you cannot just live
these things as general statements, so he comes right down to the practical
level. He gives us illustrations in order that we may be perfectly clear in our
minds as to what he means, and in order that we may not be deceiving
ourselves, because, as he goes on to tell us from verse 19 onwards, this is a
matter which is of the most vital importance from the standpoint of
Christian experience. It affects our whole condition as we go to God in
prayer and our whole thought about ultimately meeting God in the
judgment. So it is intensely important from our own personal standpoint
and well—being, as well as from the greater standpoint of the testimony
and the witness of Christian people in a gainsaying world.
So John comes down to practicalities, and of course in doing this he is
doing something that is very characteristic of the New Testament, indeed of
the whole Bible. It always becomes practical, it never leaves us a loophole,
and that is why we are always without excuse if we do not live this
Christian life as we ought. It comes down to details, details which we feel at
times to be almost ridiculous, but the Bible knows us so well and it
recognises that nothing can be taken for granted. You have to come down to
the smallest detail, and John gives us a perfect example of that in these
three verses. It takes us from the heights where we have considered the
death of Christ on the cross, to humdrum details—the matter of either
giving or not giving to a brother in need. We are brought right down to that
practical level, and John tells us why he does so.
Now as we address ourselves to the practical aspect of loving the
brethren, there is one preliminary point which I feel constrained to make
because I believe that there is often a good deal of confusion in people’s
minds with regard to this question of loving, and I think the confusion can
be put most conveniently like this: There are many people who are troubled
about this matter and who rather feel in the light of that great statement in
verse 14—‘we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we
love the brethren’—that they are not Christians at all. They confess that
they cannot honestly say that they like certain Christian people, and
therefore they ask in the light of that text, ‘Am I a Christian at all? If I am
quite honest, I have to admit that I do not like certain people, and yet I am
told that if I do not love the brethren, then I am not a Christian.’
Now I think that the point here is that we have to be careful to draw the
distinction between loving and liking, and this is by no means an artificial
distinction. It is a very vital one which I could illustrate at great length from
the Bible itself. So let me put it at once like this: we are not called to like
the brethren, but we are called and commanded to love them. Furthermore, I
would assert that loving and liking are not degrees of the same thing but are
essentially different. What is liking? What is it to like a person? Well, I
would say that liking is something natural, something instinctive or
elemental, something that is not the result of effort; you find yourself liking
or not liking. In other words, liking is something physical and
unintelligible.
Now do not misunderstand that. When I say that something is
unintelligible, I mean that it does not happen as the result of the operation
and the use of the intelligence. Liking is something that belongs to the
animal part of life and nature. You find it in the animal world itself; there is
something instinctive, something that is just an expression of nature, and it
is not intelligent in the sense that it can give reasons for its like or dislike.
Or, to put it further, the state of liking is one in which we are naturally
interested in the person as such. It is certain qualities of that person, certain
things about them which we like or dislike. In other words, liking does not
penetrate to the central height of personality; it is an interest in superficial
things, appearance, colour, temperament, behaviour or certain mannerisms.
Indeed it is something still more physical—almost, we might say, some
kind of physical emanation that goes from one to another. If you think of it
in terms of the animal kingdom, I think you will see very clearly what I am
trying to convey.
But loving is something entirely different. Loving is something which
we must think of in terms of God. Now when I talk about love, I obviously
do so in the way in which the Bible talks about it, and not in the way in
which modern books and articles think about it, which is generally
infatuation or some intense form of liking rather than true loving. We will
agree, I am sure, that one of the real tragedies of the age in which we live is
that this great word has become so debased and misused. I am talking about
love, not about infatuation. Love is that which we must always think of in
terms of God, because we are told that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8), and that
is the thing about love, as John proceeds to tell us in these three verses.
Therefore, we can give this kind of preliminary definition: love is always
highly intelligent; nature is not the greatest thing in love; the intellectual
and intelligent aspects are indeed the most prominent. Love is never
elemental or instinctive, because love is something that penetrates to the
person; it goes beyond the superficial and the visible, the carnal and
physical attraction, to something bigger and deeper. Indeed, it is an essential
part of love that it goes out of its way to do that. Love overcomes obstacles
and excuses; it sees beyond what it does not like and minimises it, in order
to see the person who is at the back of it.
Now all this inevitably becomes a part of our definition of love,
otherwise it would be impossible for God to love the sinner. We draw a
distinction often, and we say God loves the sinner in spite of his sin. Love
penetrates beyond the ugliness and the unattractiveness; it seeks out
something. It is highly intelligent, it is thoughtful, and it is understanding. It
is discriminating, and that is why I thus emphasised and stressed the
intelligent aspect of love.
Therefore, we can arrive at a further definition: To love those whom we
do not like means that we treat them as if we did like them—to choose to
act kindly toward them even though we do not like them. Now I trust that
will help those who are in difficulty about this matter. The Bible does not
ask us to like the brethren, it asks us to love them, and that means,
therefore, something like this: From the animal standpoint—and men and
women have an animal part of their nature, let us never forget it—we may
not like certain Christians. I mean by that, there is none of this instinctive,
elemental attraction; they are not the people whom we naturally like; yet
what we are told is that to love them means that we treat them exactly as if
we did like them.
Now the men and women of the world do not do that; if they do not like
people, they treat them accordingly and have nothing to do with them. But
Christian love means that we look beyond that. We see the Christian in
them, the brother or sister, and we even go beyond what we do not like, and
we help that person. Love your brethren—that is the exhortation with which
we are concerned.
Having dealt with that preliminary, practical point, let me now go on to
call attention more directly to the points which John himself emphasises
and stresses in these three verses. But before we consider them in detail, I
must point out that it is generally agreed that in verse 16 the words ‘of God’
should not be there; so the verse should run: ‘Hereby perceive we love’ or
‘Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us.…’
So then as we come to consider the verses, I shall vary the order in
which John puts them, and my only reason for that is that I think it will
enable us to end with the grand appeal. John’s exhortation, in a sense, is that
which is found in verse 18: ‘My little children, let us not love in word,
neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.’
Now here we have first of all the danger of being theoretical only. I do
not think we need stay long with this; we must all surely know this
dangerous possibility in our own lives and experience. What an easy thing it
is, not only in this matter of love, but in the whole question of practising
and living the Christian life, how easy it is to be content only with thoughts
and with feelings and with expressions of what we believe and feel, and to
fail utterly and entirely to put it into practise. How easy it is to fall in love
with loving instead of actually loving! How easy it is, when we are alone in
our room, perhaps reading a wonderful book about love and about the
actions of some great saint, how we seem to be thrilled and captivated and
lifted up as it were into the heaven of heavens. We say, ‘Thank God for
this,’ and then the next minute we go out and we are annoyed or bad–
tempered or we fail in some simple elementary duty.
We all know about this. How easy it is to be in love with love; how easy
it is to be content with elevating thoughts, to feel on Sunday, in church, that
having contemplated the love of God in Christ, we can go back into the
world and be absolutely different. Then something annoys us in the church
porch or on the street and, almost before we have left the place, suddenly
we go down and fail. Now that is what John is concerned about. ‘My little
children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.’
John is very concerned about this because, as he goes on to show,
misbehavior here is a denial of God. There is a sense in which you cannot
love in word and in thought only, as I am going to show you. So this is the
danger which we must constantly keep in mind, and I wonder whether it
would not be true to say that this is perhaps a greater danger with regard to
the whole matter of love and love for one another than it is with regard to
any other aspect of the Christian life and practise.
I suppose that this is so because ‘the greatest of these is charity [love]’ (1
Corinthians 13:13); love is, as it were, the ultimate, because of its very
nature and delicacy. I do not know whether my experience has been yours,
but I do find that this is one of the more difficult things—and not only for
myself; I am referring especially to my experience with others. I think it is
the simple, honest truth for me to say that the two most difficult men with
whom I have ever had to cooperate were two men who were concerned
about the question of pacifism. I remember one of these two brethren
making a most impassioned statement with regard to it; he was one of those
people who would die for their pacifist principles, and he was delivering an
address on loving our enemies. After I had listened to him, I was
constrained to point out in the discussion later on that some of us might
have to remember that before we talk about loving our enemies, we may
have to start with loving our brethren! It is possible for us to say and to talk
a great deal about these things and yet to be jealous and envious of one
another and to be harsh and critical of one another.
This is one of the paradoxes of love. I would say that people who
emphasise love for others in their teaching are those who of all others must
watch that they are not bitter in their spirit. They may be more bitter in their
spirit than those who are not pacifists, because that is the central thing on
which they concentrate. Now that is the point which John is making; the
more we consider this question of love, the more careful have we to be that
we are not just in love with an idea and utterly fail to put it into practise. I
think that the ultimate explanation is probably that if we set ourselves up,
especially as exemplars of this question of loving the brethren, then we can
be sure that the devil will make a special target of us. It is in the greatest
meeting that we have to be most careful; it is when we have been unusually
drawn out in prayer, whether in private or in public, that we have to watch
ourselves. It is when we talk about our faith to others, it is when we are
nearest to God ourselves, that the devil will be most active. It was after the
baptism and when the Holy Ghost descended upon Him in the Jordan in the
form of a dove that our Lord was led into the wilderness to be tempted of
the devil.
Let us, therefore, bear that general point in mind; but we must enforce it
by some of the solemn warnings about it which are to be found in the New
Testament. Let me mention some of them. Take, for instance, what our Lord
says towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount. He talks about those
people who will say, ‘Lord, Lord, haven’t we done this, that and the other
because of our love for You?,’ and He will say to them, ‘I never knew you:
depart from me, ye that work iniquity’ (Matthew 7:23). He goes on to say
that there is no point in saying, ‘Lord, Lord,’ unless you do His
commandments, and then He ends it all with the terrible picture of the two
houses—the house built on the rock and the house built upon the sand. He
portrays the man who hears our Lord’s sayings and does them as being
controlled by them and lifted up by them; he is the man who builds his
house upon a rock, a house which stands in the storm and in the flood. But
the other man, hearing these sayings of our Lord, says, ‘It is marvellous, it
is wonderful!’ He is moved, but he does not do them; he is like the man
who builds his house upon the sand. This is no good, and it does not stand
in the storm. No; the doing, says our Lord, is absolutely vital and essential.
And then think of the same point as He makes it in the three pictures in
Matthew 25. The first is that of the ten virgins, five of whom were wise and
five foolish, the latter being the people who did not make sure and who did
not take a supply of oil. Then take the parable of the talents and the man
who hid his talent in the ground. He did not use it, he did not do what he
was told to do. And then lastly comes the picture at the end—the great
judgment of the sheep and the goats. Those who are compared to the goats
are condemned—what was the matter with them? The trouble with them
was that they had not put this supposed love of theirs into practise in the
matter of helping one of the ‘least of these my brethren.’ ‘I was in trouble
and in prison,’ said our Lord, ‘and you did nothing for Me.’ ‘But,’ they
said, ‘Master, when did we either see You in prison or without food or
naked, and when did we fail to do these things?’ Our Lord’s reply is,
‘Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me’
(Matthew 25:45). There, you see, is this same solemn warning about being
content only with some vague, general feeling of love and with some
precepts which we do not put into practise. Here, surely, is one of the
greatest dangers concerning ourselves.
 Now perhaps there are those who are in difficulty at this point because of
a misunderstanding of the New Testament teaching with regard to this
whole matter. The very Scriptures which I have been quoting seem to some
to suggest an apparent contradiction. They say, ‘We read our New
Testament, and we really are confused, because it seems at one time to
emphasise the spirit only, then the next time it is pressing the actions only.
Which is it?’ And they spend their whole time in oscillating between one
and the other.
Let me illustrate what I mean. Take for instance 1 Corinthians 13. There
the great emphasis is all the time upon the spirit—‘Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’ Here is the man who may give his
body to be burned, and yet if he has not love, it is of no avail whatsoever.
Here is a man constantly doing things, putting it into practise, giving his
goods to the poor, a wonderful man in action, and yet we are told that this is
utterly useless because his spirit and motive are wrong.
But then there is another side to this that seems to put all its emphasis
upon the action. We saw in Matthew 7 that our Lord, in talking about the
response to His sayings, spoke about the man who ‘doeth them not’; and
that is the thing that condemns; it is the doing that matters. Consider also
His parable about the two sons in Matthew 21, how the father went to one
of his sons and said, ‘Son, go work today in my vineyard. He answered and
said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the
second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir; and went
not. Whether of them twain,’ asks our Lord, ‘did the will of his father?
They say unto him, The first’ (Matthew 25:28–31), and that is absolutely
right. There again the emphasis is not on saying to your father, ‘Yes, father,
I will go and work in the vineyard.’ ‘The question is,’ says our Lord, ‘will
you go and work in the vineyard’; the whole emphasis is on the doing.
And you remember, too, our Lord’s solemn words just before the end as
they are recorded in John 14:21–24. Let me pick out the salient words: ‘He
that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me;… if
a man love me, he will keep my words.… He that loveth me not keepeth not
my sayings.’ ‘That is the test,’ says our Lord. It is not the people who spend
hours before the cross or before a picture or who spend their time in some
mystical state. Love must not be thought of in that way: ‘He that keepeth
my commandments, he it is that loveth me’—that is the way.
 Well, what is the explanation of the apparent contradiction? It is to be
found in the nature of love. I feel that all our troubles arise because of our
loose and sentimental thoughts about love. The nature of love is surely
shown us perfectly in Luke 7, in the story of what happened in the house of
the Pharisee who invited our Lord in for a meal. When our Lord was seated
at the table, an immoral woman came in and fell at his feet; weeping, she
washed his feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head and
anointed them with ointment. And then you remember what the Pharisee
thought, and the surprise of the other people. And what our Lord said to
them all in effect was this: ‘Simon, love is something which by its nature
always expresses itself. Love is something which by its very nature has got
to go into action. This woman loves Me, and she shows it by washing My
feet and drying them and anointing them with ointment.’ Love is always
active; if there is no expression, there is no love.
There is another illustration of the same thing in our Lord’s teaching in
Matthew 18, where He talks about that servant who had been forgiven by
his lord and then refused to forgive one of his own servants. Our Lord said,
‘Unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven’ (Matthew 18:23–35).
‘Well, doesn’t that teach that we merit salvation?’ asks someone.
‘Doesn’t that say that if I can forgive I shall be forgiven?’ Nothing of the
sort! What it teaches is that the men and women who truly believe and
know that they are forgiven by God as the result of God’s infinite grace are
the people who have the love of God in their hearts, and that love is bound
to show itself. Unforgiving people have not been forgiven themselves; those
who are forgiven are so broken by it that they cannot but forgive others.
They are children of God, and they act like God. In other words the New
Testament does not merely exhort us to do things; it does not merely tell us
to obey the rules. Rather, what the New Testament does is to ask us a
question: ‘Are you sure that the love of God is in you?’ Or, as an
exhortation it says, ‘Make sure that the love of God is in you; and the way
to know whether it is in you or not is this: if it is in you, you will love your
brethren.’
Now this is the very nature of love. It must express itself; it is always
active; and if our love does not do that, I say it is not true love. You see, the
real trouble with the person who is seated there in his study reading
beautiful poems or books about love and who feels that he is controlled by
it and that he is a fine Christian is this: What is really happening to that
person is that he is simply in love with himself, because he appreciates
these elevating thoughts. He is loving himself because he thinks he is in
love. He has turned in upon himself, and that is the very antithesis to love;
love does not look at itself—it is absorbed in the object of its love.
However, we need not remain in mere theory. John brings us right down
to the practical level. He gives us an abundant illustration in the case of this
man who shuts up his ‘bowels of compassion’—who has no pity. Here is a
man who has received this world’s goods; then he sees a brother in Christ
who is in need, and he has no pity on him. He does not do anything about it,
and he goes on as if he had not seen it. Now there is no need to argue; there
is no love of God in that man, because he is thinking only of himself. ‘He
may be thinking beautiful thoughts about the love of God, but it is
valueless,’ says John. ‘If he had the love of God in him, he would have to
do something about it.’
But finally John puts it in the positive form of the royal pattern, the royal
example: ‘Hereby we know the love of God, because he laid down his life
for us.’ The great commentary on this is to be found in the second chapter
of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. What was the characteristic of that
perfect life? Here are headings. He saw our predicament, and He had
compassion. There in the bosom of God, in eternity, from eternity to
eternity, He looked down upon us, and He saw our tragedy, our
predicament, our trouble, our sin and condemnation under the wrath of
God. He saw it all, and He had compassion—that is the first thing.
Secondly, He did not think of Himself; He did not think of His rights. He
did not say to Himself, ‘I am the eternal Son of God, co–equal with the
Father, co–eternal, sharing in all this splendour and absolute eternal glory.’
‘He did not clutch at that,’ said Paul—that is the meaning of He ‘thought it
not robbery to be equal.’ He did not insist upon His rights; He did not think
of Himself because He was so concerned about us. He thought of us; He
was interested in our good. He was concerned about our being delivered
and our being saved, and because of that He laid aside the insignia and the
signs of His eternal glory. He placed that limitation upon Himself. He was
born and laid in a manger as a baby; He was misunderstood; He worked as
a carpenter—the One by whom the whole world was made making simple
little things; and He endured the contradiction of sinners. ‘Yet,’ said Paul,
‘He went on humbling Himself, down, down. He went even to the death
and the shame of the cross. He was not thinking about Himself, nor about
His rights and His possessions. He thought of nothing but us and our need.
He pitied our position, the hopelessness and the despair, so He laid down
His life for us.’
That is the essence of love. It acts, it gives, it expresses itself; it cannot
help itself—it must. May I suggest, in reverence, that it was because God is
love that He created the world, something to love, in order to express this
love because love must express itself. I may be wrong, I do not know, but it
seems to me to be a necessity. True love is always active, and there we see
it to perfection: God giving Himself for the evil, the perfect for the vile and
the condemned.
‘Let this mind be in you,’ says the Apostle Paul (Philippians. 2:5). John
puts it like this: ‘Hereby we perceive the love of God, because he laid down
his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’ If the
need should ever arise, there will be no hesitation if there is real love. If we
love God, we will be ready to die for Him. The first Christians died by the
thousands; they counted not their lives dear unto them, even unto death.
They died for Him gladly, and they died for one another. If He did that for
us and we say His love is in us, we shall do that for the brethren. And
obviously if we are prepared to die for the brethren, we surely cannot refuse
them when there is some little temporal, physical need. If we are called to
the greater, surely the lesser, the smaller, the infinitesimal must be
something that we do automatically.
‘Herein we know love,’ and this is how you get the whole of the doctrine
of the Atonement in these few words: He laid down His life for us. Beloved
friends, let us meditate upon these things; let us look at them; let us realise
the nature of love and the implication of claiming that the love of God is in
us. And then let us proceed to prove that we have it by loving one another,
not in word, not in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
 10. Condemnation, Confidence and
Assurance
And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart
condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us
not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we
keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his
commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as
he gave us commandment. 1 John 3:19–23

The word ‘hereby’ at the beginning of the nineteenth verse reminds us that
the Apostle is here continuing the subject, the theme, with which he has
been dealing in the preceding verses; he has not finished with the subject
yet. He presses the vital importance of really loving the brethren wholly,
and he does it in this particular way in these verses that we are now
considering.
First of all, he reminds us again that the subject under consideration—
loving the brethren—is the proof that we are ‘of the truth.’ ‘Hereby,’ he
says, ‘we know that we are of the truth,’ so that once more we just hold on
to that. It is a final proof of the fact that the truth of God is really in us and
is abiding in us. But, and this is his main theme in this verse, this actual
loving of the brethren is also, he says, of tremendous importance in a very
practical sense, and that is from the standpoint of our own experience, and
especially our experience of communion with God in prayer. John now
comes right down and says something like this: ‘If for no other reason, love
the brethren were it merely for your own sake, for the sake of your own
experience and especially for your experience in this matter of prayer.’
Here again we are reminded of something that is always, it seems to me,
so plain in the Bible from beginning to end if we look at it with a spiritual
eye. There are certain laws in the spiritual life, and they must be observed;
sooner or later the truth will insist upon having its place in us. Sooner or
later, as the Bible puts it, our sins will ‘find us out,’ however long we may
go on apparently living a kind of double life, subscribing intellectually to a
body of doctrine but failing in practise; sooner or later it will come home to
us. We cannot play fast and loose, according to John’s argument here,
because a position will arise, and especially in this matter of prayer, when
we shall find ourselves denied perhaps the greatest thing of all in our
Christian experience.
 That is the theme with which he deals in these verses—the place of
prayer in the life of the Christian in this world. Nothing is more important
than this in our worldly pilgrimage. Our Lord Himself put that once and
forever in a memorable verse. He said that ‘Men ought always to pray, and
not to faint’ (Luke 18:1); in other words, if you do not pray, you will faint.
The thing that keeps one going in the Christian life is prayer—communion
and fellowship with God; it is something which is absolutely essential. I
would go further and say that the Christian life is really impossible without
it. Read the Bible again with this in mind, and you will find that everywhere
this is the thing that is emphasised. Look at the Psalms, for instance. How
often does the psalmist tell us that his friends had let him down, his enemies
were attacking him, and the people he had relied upon most of all had
forsaken him, but he thanks God that the gate is still open. ‘When my father
and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up’ (Psalms 27:10).
As you listen to the men of God in their trouble, you hear that the one thing
that keeps them going is their access to God in prayer. You find it in the Old
Testament, and in the same way you see it in the New Testament. You see it
in our Lord Himself; in the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was
praying to God, and Hebrews 5:7 is a comment on that. Read the
biographies of God’s people throughout the centuries, and you will find that
this is something that stands out in an unmistakable manner. They were
conscious of their dependence upon God, and they relied upon this access
which they had to Him in prayer.
Now that is the matter with which John is dealing here, and his point is
that we must be perfectly certain in our minds as to the conditions which
control this whole question of prayer and access to God. So here he puts it
in terms of this question of our loving the brethren, loving one another.
Let us take the matter in this way. The first question that John seems to
raise is this: what is prayer? I wonder how often we stop to consider that,
and yet it seems to me that it is a question which should always be
uppermost in our minds. What exactly am I doing when I pray? Is it not our
tendency to rush into prayer without considering what we are doing? Is it
not our tendency to regard it as something automatic? Are we not always in
danger of talking too easily about ‘saying our prayers’?
There are many things which tend to encourage us to do that. Those who
are more liturgical in their outlook have a habit of talking about ‘saying a
prayer,’ and it seems to me that that is very different from the New
Testament teaching on this whole subject. We do not ‘say a prayer.’ There is
nothing automatic in it; indeed, I think a case should be made for saying
that the most difficult thing of all is to pray. Prayer is not just a repetition of
certain phrases, nor is it merely emitting certain desires or giving
expression to certain beautiful thoughts. Prayer is not some process of auto–
suggestion or of treating oneself by means of psychology, nor is it
something that ought to make us feel better. It is not something, as I once
remember hearing a man describe it, you do five minutes a day for your
health’s sake, so that you always feel better when you utter these beautiful
thoughts. That is not the New Testament idea of prayer, nor that of the Old
Testament.
What is prayer? Well, I cannot think of a better way of describing it than
these two words which we have at the end of verse 19: ‘Hereby we know
that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.’ That is
prayer; prayer is coming before Him. Now, we are always in the presence of
God—‘in him we live, and move, and have our being’ (Acts 17:28)—and
we are always under His eye. But prayer is something still more special.
Prayer is having a special audience and going immediately and directly to
Him—‘before him.’ Prayer is something in which we turn our backs upon
everything else, excluding everything else, while, for the time being, we
find ourselves face to face with God alone. There is a sense in which one
cannot expound it further; it is just that.
The first thing, then, that we have to realise always in this matter of
prayer is that that is exactly and precisely what we do when we pray.
Obviously, therefore, in a sense the most vital thing in prayer is just that
realisation that we are before Him. And you will find that the saints have
always talked a great deal about this. That is the difficulty; thoughts will
keep on obtruding themselves, and our imaginations will wander all over
the world, and certain ideas and proposals and wants and needs will intrude,
but all that must be dismissed, and we must just start by realising that we
are actually and literally in the presence of the living God. ‘Before him’!
Now, says John, this whole question of brotherly love is of importance
because of that. It is when you come there, when you are before Him, that
you begin to realise the importance of what you are doing with the rest of
your life and with the rest of your time. It is when you come there that you
begin to see the relevance of this.
 That is the very essence of prayer, so that always and at all times,
whether alone or together in the house of God, that is the thing that should
be uppermost and predominant. I think we would say less at times if we
realised that. There would certainly be no room whatever for any cleverness
or mere effort to try to utter beautiful thoughts and phrases; we would not
be concerned about things like that. Realising His presence, we would be
lost to all such things; we would be intent upon this communion and this
fellowship with Him.
That, then, is the general idea, but let us come right down to the
particular as John here expounds it. If that is what is meant by prayer, what
are the conditions of true prayer, or what is essential to it? The matters that
John expounds here are of vital importance. The first thing that is absolutely
vital and essential to true prayer is freedom from a sense of condemnation.
‘Hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts’—or
reassure, or persuade, our hearts—‘before him. For if our heart condemn
us…’—that is it! If your heart is condemning you, or if your heart is against
you, there will be no true prayer. The first thing that is essential is a
deliverance, a freedom, from a sense of condemnation.
I suppose there is nothing which really tests us so much as being in the
position or the attitude of prayer. It is when we are truly praying before Him
that we actually realise what we are. This is a much more thorough test than
a talk or a discussion. We can be tested by talking to people about spiritual
things, or as we discuss them together; even preaching an address or a
sermon should be a means of testing. It is meant that all these things should
test us, but I suggest they do not test us in the same way that prayer does. I
suggest that prayer is a more thorough test also than thought or meditation.
These too should test us, and we should spend time in thinking and
meditating. Indeed, we go on to self—examination, but I say that prayer
tests us in a way that even self—examination does not test us. Self–
examination can be a very painful process as we look at the New Testament
description of the Christian and examine ourselves in the light of this Word.
But, I suggest, nothing makes us so see ourselves as we are as being there in
prayer before Him.
This is so for this reason, that when we are in this attitude of prayer, we
are no longer in control. The very fact that I get on my knees in prayer (and
that is the value of kneeling), that very fact in and of itself is a submission. I
am there submitting myself, I am abandoning myself. Now while I am
talking, I am in control, and while I am discussing I am in control. Someone
may be examining me, but I am still able to defend myself. When I am
engaged in thought and meditation, I am still in control. But when I get on
my knees in prayer, then, in a sense, I am doing nothing, I am submitting
myself, I am abandoning myself before Him. It is He who is in control, it is
He who is doing everything, and that is why prayer tests us in a way which
nothing else can possibly do.
Now this is not theory. I am sure I am speaking to the experience of
many. Is this not what happens when you truly pray? I do not mean when
you repeat the Lord’s Prayer or some mechanical prayer you have made for
yourself. Nor do I mean when you rush and offer a number of petitions
when you need something very desperately. I mean when you shut the door
and are alone in your room, or wherever it is, and you kneel down and you
realise that you are before Him.
Is this not what happens? Something within you begins to speak; it is
what John here calls the ‘heart.’ It is the conscience, but it is something
more than the conscience. The conscience begins to act and to speak, and
this is what happens: We remember certain things we have done and said.
We had forgotten them, we would never have reminded ourselves of them,
but back they come. The angry expression, the unworthy thought, the
unkind deed—as you are there alone with God, these things—the things
you failed to do, the broken vows and pledges and so on—come back, and
they condemn. We remember how when, perhaps, the last time we were like
that alone with God we protested our love and we promised Him we would
go out to serve Him, but we have not. We have forgotten our promise, and a
voice within us says, ‘You are a cad; you have no right to pray to God. Who
are you to come into the presence of God?’ We are made conscious of our
utter unworthiness and our failure and our smallness and our foulness; our
hearts condemn us. They bring up all these things against us, and there they
say, ‘Look at yourself—compare yourself to the saints—what right have
you to ask God anything—what right have you to submit your petitions to
God?’ Do we not know about this?
But that is not all. There is something further, and that brings me to the
twentieth verse: ‘For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart,
and knoweth all things.’ Now I suppose that there has been more
controversy over the exact meaning of this verse than over many verses in
the Bible. I am seriously tempted to give you a list of the great
commentators of the centuries and to show you how they have taken
different sides with regard to the interpretation of this verse; all equally
good Christians, and yet they have taken different views. There are two
main views which have been advocated. One view says that this is a great
verse of comfort, and that what John is really saying is that if, there in the
presence of God—before Him—your heart does condemn you, do not be
downcast. It is all right, for God is greater than our heart. He knows our
desires in spite of our failure in practise; all things are open unto Him; He
knows everything, and with Him there is mercy and grace and compassion.
Though your heart condemns you, God beholds and forgives you; be
confident in your prayer. That is one view.
The other view is the exact opposite. ‘If our heart condemn us,’ if my
own heart makes me feel and know I am a sinner and that I am a cad, if my
own heart does that, how much more shall God, for God is greater than my
heart and ‘knoweth all things.’ I do not know everything about myself; at
that point there before Him, I know enough. Alas, I know more than I like
to know, and I know that even then I do not know half the truth about
myself and my sinful nature. There are secret faults of which I am unaware.
God sees me in a way I do not see myself; He sees into the innermost
recesses. If my heart condemns me, what must be my position in the sight
of God?
Now I am not going to give a list of the great names, but let it suffice to
say that two great Reformers took different sides; Luther took one side and
John Calvin the other, and other men have been divided through the
centuries. Bengel agreed with Luther, and Charles Simeon agreed with
Calvin; so the division has been manifested from the beginning. Obviously,
then, we cannot hope to decide this matter conclusively, and it seems to me
that we must all decide this for ourselves, but for myself I cannot but take
the view that this verse is not meant to comfort us, and my reasons for that
will be given in the paragraphs to follow.
It seems to me that to interpret this verse as one of comfort is to
contradict the whole purpose of the passage, which is to warn us, to exhort
us. Read the whole passage on brotherly love again, and you will find that
its whole purpose is to search us and to make us examine ourselves and to
warn us against assuming glibly that all is well when it is not. It is to warn;
and not only that, it seems to me that if we regard this as comfort, we are
doing something which is very dangerous. We are silencing the voice of
conscience and of the heart by talking about ‘the love of God.’ We are all
very ready to do that; we are all very ready to avoid the point of conviction
by saying, ‘God loves me, and all is well.’ To me that is a dangerous thing
to do. Indeed, does it not lead directly to antinomianism? Is not the
argument for antinomianism just that? The love of God covers me;
therefore I can do anything I like. I say I am forgiven and all is well and I
become slack about my conduct. To me that is surely the height of danger,
and I argue that the ultimate proof is to be found again in the beginning of
the nineteenth verse: ‘Hereby we know that we are of the truth.’ That is
John’s argument, which is a reference to what he has been saying. The way
I am to reassure my heart when it does condemn me is not to say, ‘God
knows everything, and God therefore loves me.’ No, it is something that I
myself have been doing—‘hereby,’ by loving my brethren in deed and in
truth and not merely in word and in thought. If you do that, says John, you
will be able to reassure your heart.
So I put the argument like this: Here we are on our knees in prayer; we
are ‘before him,’ and we are conscious of the presence of God. Our lives
are being searched and examined as by some invisible searchlight, some X–
ray; the eye of God is upon us, all these things are brought to the surface,
and our hearts are condemning us. Well, while we are in that state we
cannot pray, we are condemned; we do not know what to do with ourselves.
Now we have to talk to ourselves; we must reassure these hearts of ours; we
must persuade them that we have this access and that all is well.
So how do we do it? ‘You do it like this,’ says John; ‘your heart is there
reminding you of all these things, condemning you. You say to your heart,
“It is all right; I admit that all that is absolutely true of me, and I bemoan
and regret it. Yes, but I do find that I love the brethren. I find myself drawn
out to them. I love their society and their company; I cannot look and see
my brother or sister suffer without helping them. I find myself loving them,
thus, in practise, and because I do that, I must be a child of God—I would
not do it otherwise. The fact that I am thus loving the brethren is a proof
that I have passed from death unto life. It means that I no longer belong to
the world; it means I am a child of God. By nature I would not love such
people, I would not be interested in them, I would not be concerned to help
them, but I find the desire in me to do so and I am doing it; and though what
you say against me is true, I say that this is a proof that I am a child of God.
So I can reassure my heart, and that is why I do it.”’ Have you not known
yourself having to do that kind of thing? Have you not known this argument
with yourself there in the presence of God, and have you not had to find this
confidence in terms of Scripture and to prove to yourself that you are a
child of God and therefore can pray to Him?
The interesting point to me here is that John puts the argument in that
particular way. Why does he not tell us, I wonder, that the way to reassure
our hearts before Him is to think of the Cross and to remind ourselves of the
death of our Lord for us? Now here, I think, we see the very depth and
profundity of John’s teaching. You see, he is concerned about people who
are much too ready to fly to the Cross. John knows that the human heart is
desperately wicked, and he knows the danger of men and women referring
everything to the Cross, in order that they may have ease and peace of mind
and conscience and then go on with their sin. We find the same thing
exactly in Hebrews chapter 10, but this test of John’s—I say it with
reverence—is even stronger than the other. I have known a drunken man
tell me that he is relying upon the Cross; I have known people speak of the
Cross with tears and then continue in their drunken, unworthy life. There is
a terrible danger here; men and women may make intellectual assent to
truth and then fail, but John’s test makes that impossible.
If I am truly loving the brethren, that is not something intellectual;
people who really do love and prove it in practise are not those who are
merely giving intellectual assent; their lives are proof of the fact that they
are born again. And if they are born again, they must be forgiven, and the
Cross is covering them. John puts a more thoroughgoing test, the test not
only of experience but of experience proving itself in practise—‘Hereby we
know that we are of the truth because we love the brethren.’ That is the first
thing—we must be utterly and entirely free from a sense of condemnation.
Let me say a word on the second condition, which is confidence (v.21):
‘Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward
God.’ Now that first stage of which we have been speaking is not enough in
and of itself. It is negative because, as I have emphasised, we have to get rid
of the sense of condemnation, because while we are unhappy about
ourselves and our whole position we cannot pray with confidence; the sense
of condemnation holds us down, and we cannot bring our petitions and our
requests to God.
 Again I put that to you in terms of your own experience. Have you not
known what it is to have an experience like this? You suddenly find
yourself in a crisis—perhaps you are ill, perhaps someone dear to you is ill,
or you may be confronted by some critical position owing to something that
has happened to you, and you are at the end of your tether. So you say, ‘I
will pray to God,’ and you get on your knees, and the moment you do so
comes this thought: ‘But you have no right to pray; you are a cad, you have
forgotten God, you only turn to God when you are in trouble.’ So you
somehow have no confidence in your prayer; you are uncertain. ‘Now,’ says
John, ‘you cannot pray truly and you cannot have fellowship unless you
have confidence.’ So you settle that first thing; you must get rid of the sense
of condemnation, but then, having done that, you go on to this second step.
Now this matter of confidence is absolutely vital to true prevailing
prayer. Let me remind you how the Scripture puts it. Have you noticed that
word ‘boldness’ that is used in connection with prayer in the Scriptures?
You often find it in the epistle to the Hebrews: ‘Let us come boldly unto the
throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of
need’ (Hebrews 4:16), or again, ‘Having therefore, brethren, boldness to
enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus’ (Hebrews 10:19), or, ‘let us
draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith’ (Hebrews 10:22). Or
consider what Paul says in Ephesians 3: ‘In whom we have boldness and
access with confidence by the faith of him’ (Ephesians 3:12). That is the
way to pray; if our petitions are to be of any value, we must have boldness
and assurance and confidence in our access.
How is this to be obtained? Well, it seems to me that we are here dealing
with the answer, and it is still this question of sonship. The consciousness of
our sonship and the assurance of our sonship is again something to be
determined by our love of the brethren. It works like this: if I am truly
loving the brethren, then I remember that I am a child of God. Therefore,
when I am before God in prayer I argue like this: I must think of God now
not as my Judge but as my Father. John goes on to remind us of that in the
next chapter. I do not come to God, therefore, in a spirit of fear, because
‘fear hath torment’ (1 John 4:18). But I go rather in the spirit of love, and
‘perfect love casteth out fear ’ (1 John 4:18). So, assured of my sonship, I
know that God delights in me, that God indeed is much more ready to bless
me than I am to ask to be blessed. I know He is ready and willing and
waiting to grant me everything that is for my good; assured of my sonship, I
know that ‘all things work together for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose’ (Romans 8:28). In other words,
the only thing that really can give me confidence in prayer before God is
this utter, absolute assurance that I am a child of God, and I go as a child to
my Father—that is the basis of confidence. So you see the same thing gives
me confidence as has already, negatively, delivered me from a sense of
condemnation.
But that brings me to the third and last condition, and that is what we
must call assurance. ‘Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we
confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him,
because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing
in his sight.’ He has already put it in terms of assuring our hearts before
Him. Now this is the final statement. Over and above my confidence is my
right of access; I must have assurance with regard to my petitions.
James puts it like this: ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God…’
But notice this: ‘But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering: for he that
wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let
not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord’ (James 1:5–
7). If you are uncertain, doubtful or hesitant and lacking assurance in your
petition, you will not get your request, says James. Listen to the psalmist in
Psalms 66:18: ‘If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.’
If I go to God with a double mind, holding on to my sin and knowing that I
am living a wrong life, I will have no confidence in my prayer. ‘God is
greater than my heart and knoweth all things’; yes, if I am condemning
myself and know I am wrong, how much more so must God.
Now I think that our Lord Himself has answered this question in certain
teaching which you will find recorded in the Gospel according to St. John.
He put it like this: ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall
ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you’ (John 15:7). Or again: ‘I
have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go forth and bear fruit,
and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father
in my name, he may give it you’ (John 15:16). Now John puts that like this:
‘Whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we go on keeping His
commandments and we go on doing those things that are pleasing in His
sight.’
 ‘Does he mean,’ asks someone, ‘that as long as I live a good life,
anything I may ask God in prayer I am certain and guaranteed to receive?’
Oh, no! What it means is this: if I am keeping His commandments, if I am
really doing His will, if I love God and my neighbour as myself, if I really
am living the Christian life in that way, then I can be certain that my life is a
life which is being controlled by the Holy Spirit, and therefore I know that
any petitions and desires I may have, have been created within me by the
Holy Spirit. And because my petitions and my desires are produced by the
Holy Spirit, I can be certain that they will be answered. ‘We know not what
we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for
us with groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Romans 8:26). We do not
always understand what we are saying, but ‘He that searcheth the hearts
knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for
the saints according to the will of God’ (Romans 8:27)—that is it.
In other words, if I live the life, keeping the commandments and loving
my brethren, that is proof that I am being controlled by the Holy Spirit, and
in that state the Holy Spirit is dictating my prayer to me, and that prayer
will be answered. But if I am not living the life, then my petitions are
probably arising from the flesh, from my own carnal nature, and I must not
be surprised and disappointed if my requests are not answered and granted
to me.
We see prayer perfectly again in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself. Look at Him. He obeyed God’s commandments perfectly, and He
received the Holy Spirit without measure. He was led and guided of the
Spirit. He had put aside His own eternal glory, and He came to live as man.
Then He received the Spirit and was guided and led by the Spirit and thus
He lived this life of prayer. Remember how He prayed, ‘Father, if thou be
willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be
done’ (Luke 22:42).
His supreme object and desire was to do the will of His Father, and as
long as that is our supreme will and desire, as long as we are concerned
about that and are submitting to the leading of the Spirit, our requests will
be granted as His requests were granted. God answered Him and granted
His requests, and the nearer we approximate to Him, in the same way we
can be certain that our requests will be granted. ‘Whatsoever we ask, we
receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things
that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, that we should
believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he
gave us commandment’ (v.23).
So there you are ‘before him.’ Have you confidence in your prayer? Do
your prayers avail; have you assurance about them? These are the things
that are necessary; you reassure your heart, you get rid of condemnation,
you are confident as a child of God, and above it all you have the assurance
which is given alone by the Holy Spirit, by His indwelling within you and
by His life in your life and in your very petitions. What a glorious,
wondrous thing this is—we come before Him, we have audience with the
King, we speak to the living God.
 11. The Holy Spirit
And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he
abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. 1 John 3:24

In this verse we have the first specific and explicit mention of the Holy
Spirit in this particular passage. We have had in the second chapter an
indirect reference to Him, where the Apostle has reminded us of the unction
which we have from the Holy One and the anointing which we have
received of Him. But here is the actual expression, the Spirit with a capital
S. It is not a reference to some vague spirit that is in man, in the sense in
which we often use the word when we speak of man’s nature or
temperament or character. It is a reference to the gift of the Holy Spirit, and
here John is introducing a further proof of our sonship. The theme which
has been occupying him right through this third chapter has been that we
are the children of God. That, he says, is one of the most vital things which
we can ever grasp in this life and in this world.
Now John, you remember, is writing to Christian people in the first
century who were having a very difficult time, knowing persecution and
suffering and misunderstanding. The world then was remarkably like the
world today, and John sums it all up in this phrase: ‘We know that we are of
God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness’ (1 John 5:19). That is his
object—to help, to comfort and to encourage these Christian people who
were living their Christian lives in such a difficult and gainsaying world.
There are certain things, he says, which they must hold in their minds. The
first is that they are in fellowship with God and are walking with Him. Then
the second great theme is that of sonship, that we are the children of God.
The Christian is nothing less than that—you cannot be a Christian without
being a child of God. John holds up this glorious concept, you remember, in
those three noble verses at the beginning of this chapter, with their almost
incomparable statement of the Christian position.
But John, with his practical pastoral mind and intent, was most
concerned that these people should show it. It is no use talking about being
children of God unless we really are giving practical proof of that fact now.
Unless we give that practical proof, we will not have the assurance—that is
his theme. And let me remind you, he says, that there are certain things that
we must never lose sight of in that connection. The first is, we must keep
the commandments: ‘He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is
righteous’ (1 John 3:7). Then he comes on to the second great proof of our
sonship—that is, our love for one another, love of the brethren: ‘We know
that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren’ (1
John 3:14).
And now here he tells us that there is still an additional proof of our
sonship, and that is the reception of the Holy Spirit: ‘Hereby we know that
he abideth in us.’ If we are children, it means that He is in us and we are in
Him; and if you want proof of that fact, says John, here it is—‘by the Spirit
which he hath given us.’ So, we are face to face with this great doctrine and
truth concerning the Holy Spirit. It is to be found everywhere in the New
Testament, and it is absolutely vital and essential to the true Christian
position and to Christian experience. And here, in this one verse, John
presents the doctrine to us in what seems to me to be a most interesting
manner. He combines what we may call the objective and the subjective in
one verse. He reminds us of the great fact, and yet he reminds us at the
same time of the complement of the fact in personal experience.
It is to this that I am anxious to call your attention now, and I think that
the best division of our subject is this: First of all we must consider the gift
or the place of the Holy Spirit in the plan of salvation, and we look at that in
this way: First, we must look at the fact, about which we can read in Acts 2.
We are confronted there with a fact of which we must never lose sight. That
is history, and if we do not realise that it is history, quite as much as the
various other facts that are recorded in the Bible, then our whole position is
wrong.
There in Jerusalem on that Day of Pentecost so long ago, this astounding
and amazing thing happened. There that group of people met together in the
upper room, and suddenly this tremendous thing happened. The Holy Ghost
descended upon them as ‘cloven tongues like as of fire’ (Acts 2:3); the
whole place was shaken, and these people were transformed. This
wonderful thing happened to them, and they began to speak; they had the
gift of speaking in other languages, so that the people, who had come
together at Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost from the various parts of the
then inhabited and civilised world, all heard these men speaking in their
own languages and telling about the wonderful works of God. That is just
literal, actual history, and this day on which I am preaching to you1 does
insist upon our emphasising that fact. Of course, we do have to deal with it
subjectively, but the big thing we must start with is this objective fact, this
historical event that there in Jerusalem, literally and actually, the Holy
Ghost came down upon the early church—the gift was given.
Now many authorities believe that this verse is a reference to that and
that only, that it is a direct pointer to the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem.
Well, to say the very least, that is included, and that must always come first.
We realise that from that moment onwards the Christian Church was
constituted in a new sense and began to function as the Christian Church in
a way which it had never done before, and we realise too that we today are
just a continuation of that which began there so long ago. It is, I say, a fact
—a mighty fact, one of the great turning points of history, one of the most
significant events in the whole story of the human race.
That, then, is the fact, but let us also consider something of the meaning
of this fact. We are still discussing the place of the Holy Spirit in the plan of
salvation. What was the significance and the meaning of that which
happened there on the Day of Pentecost? Here are some of the things.
That was the last step in the series of great acts or enactments in
connection with the plan of salvation. Now, the glory of our position as
Christians is that we do not so much believe a teaching as that we believe
truths which result from events and happenings. Christianity is not a
philosophy; it includes philosophy, but it is not just that. You are not a
Christian in the sense that you may be a Platonist or an Aristotelian. It must
not be thought of like that. We are saved not by believing a truth; we are
saved because of what God has done for us.
Therefore this event on the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem is an event
that you must put into a certain series. You start way back in the Garden of
Eden when man fell and when God spoke and gave a promise. Then you
come on to all the history that is recorded in the Old Testament. The Flood,
the call of Abraham, the isolation of that man and the turning of him into a
nation—that is all God doing something, it is God acting. Then you go on
right through the Old Testament history; the going down into Egypt, the
going out of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea—all these are events, part
of the great plan of salvation.
And when you turn to the New Testament, there are crucial facts which
we must always hold on to. Consider the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem
—that fact is absolutely essential. He, the Son of God, was there born as a
babe and placed in a manger; this is the Incarnation, that shattering,
cataclysmic event when God came on earth in the form and in the likeness
of human flesh. Then you go on and you see certain other crucial facts and
events. They are all of vital importance, but some we obviously must single
out.
You come especially to the Crucifixion. There is something which is
basic to our salvation. In other words, as Christians we do not just speak
about the love of God which forgives us. We say God’s love forgives us
because He did something there on the cross of Calvary. Without Calvary
there is no forgiveness—an event, a fact, that which took place literally
upon that hill, upon that tree—the Crucifixion. Then the next great fact is
the Resurrection. He rose from the grave—He could not be held by it, and
He literally came out of that tomb on the morning of the third day; it is a
fact, it is history. Then the Ascension; He actually rose from amongst those
disciples and went into Heaven. Again it is an event, a fact. And here, at
Pentecost, we have what we may well call the last great step in the series of
acts or enactments or events which made our salvation possible.
That is the way in which we must understand what happened there at
Jerusalem on that day. It was God again doing something; it was an event; it
was essential to our receiving this great salvation. That is the series into
which it must go and to which it belongs.
The second thing is that the sending of the Holy Ghost thus upon the
early church on the Day of Pentecost is the final proof of our Lord’s claim
for Himself. It is this because it proves that Jesus of Nazareth is in reality
the only begotten Son of God. That was Peter’s argument in the sermon
which he preached to the people on that day; that is what he set out to
prove. He said, ‘You crucified Jesus of Nazareth. You did not realise who
He was; you felt Him to be an imposter and a blasphemer, and that is why
you put Him away. But there are certain things which prove that He is what
He claimed to be, the Son of God. The Resurrection proved it. But,’ says
Peter, ‘here is something further. You have looked at me and at my brethren
and you have said, “These men are drunk and full of new wine. They are
talking in languages we can understand, and they seem to be possessed.”
No, no,’ says Peter, ‘I will tell you what this is. This means that Jesus,
whom you rejected, is, as He claimed to be, the Son of God. And when He
died and arose from the grave and ascended into Heaven, God, according to
His ancient promise, gave Him the gift of the Holy Ghost to give to His
people; and He has given that gift, and that is what has happened to us. God
has fulfilled His promise; He has given to Him the gift of the Holy Spirit,
and He, Christ, has sent the Holy Spirit. And that proves that He must be
the Son of God, the Christ, the Saviour of the world.’
So this event, this fact, is of crucial importance in this whole matter of
salvation. That is—let me emphasise this again—the final, ultimate proof of
the unique Deity and Sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is there we have
this final statement of the fact that He is the Son of the eternal Father. The
Father gives Him the gift, and He passes it on to us; so the gift comes from
the Father and the Son.
But let us also look at it like this: The gift of the Holy Ghost to the
Church is also, then, the absolute proof of the sufficiency of the work of
Christ and of its acceptance with God. The crucial question in a sense is
whether that work of Christ on the cross is indeed sufficient. The problem
is, how can God forgive sinful men? How can this Holy God conceivably or
possibly forgive sin? The answer is, the death of Jesus Christ upon the
cross; but is that sufficient? How can we know that God has accepted that
work? How do we know that God has accepted the offer of Christ when He
went into heaven and offered Himself and His own blood and said, ‘Here is
the sacrifice that I offer for sin’? What proof have we of the acceptance of
it?
Again the Resurrection is partly the answer, but the New Testament
constantly tells us that, in a sense, the ultimate proof of that action is the
coming and the sending of the Holy Spirit, for that means that God the
Father said to the Son, ‘I accept your work, it is sufficient; You have died
for the redeemed, they are Your people. So I will give you My Spirit to give
to them, and then they will know that they are Your people and My people.
I forgive them freely, and here I will give proof of it.’ Therefore, the event
that took place on the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem is of tremendous and
vital importance in giving us this assurance of the acceptance and the
sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ for us.
I can put it still further like this: The coming of the Holy Spirit is the
means whereby salvation is mediated to us. Do you remember what our
Lord said to His disciples just before His death? They were crestfallen and
unhappy as He was talking to them increasingly of His departure and about
His going away. He said to them, ‘It is expedient for you that I go away’—it
is a good thing, it is beneficial to you that I go away—‘for if I go not away,
the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto
you’ (John 16:7).
Now that means this, and I say it with reverence—do we always realise,
Christian people, that you and I who have never seen the Lord Jesus Christ
with the eye of flesh are in a much more advantageous position than were
His own disciples who looked into His face? Are we not often guilty, in our
folly and misunderstanding of the Scriptures, of saying, ‘Oh, if only I had
been alive when He was here, if only I could have seen Him with my eyes,
then I would have believed in a way that I do not now.’ But that is utterly
unscriptural. He said, ‘It is expedient for you that I go away’—by which he
meant that it is only because He has gone away, because He has done His
work and has sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, that the result of His
work really becomes part of our life and experience. It is through the work
of the Holy Spirit that the perfect, finished work of Christ upon the cross
and His mediation is transmitted to us and enters our lives; so it means that.
And then the last thing I would say about it in this connection is that, of
course, the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church on the Day of
Pentecost was the ultimate fulfilment of the promise of God. Can you not
hear the thrill in the voice of Peter as he speaks those words: ‘This is that
which was spoken by the prophet Joel’? It is one of God’s ancient promises,
one of the most glorious of all. God has said that He is going to pour out
His Spirit; the young men shall dream dreams, and even the unenlightened
will understand truth. It will no longer be only a certain few, select people
who will know the truth. The common people shall understand. ‘I will pour
out my Spirit,’ and the great salvation will come to all and sundry. And here
God has fulfilled the old promises; He has sent and has given the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
We have, then, looked briefly at the gift of the Holy Spirit in the plan of
salvation. That is its place, and that is the real way to look at it, so that as
Christian people we must never be guilty of stopping either at Calvary or at
the Resurrection. I put it like that because I often fear that we do that. We
give a place to the cross, and to the Resurrection, but we do not always
come to the Day of Pentecost, and that shows that we have not known the
relevance of this. This is the ultimate step, the last step in the great series
and one which is essential and vital to our salvation.
 So, having looked at it objectively, let us become a little more subjective.
My second principle is that the Christian is one who has received the gift of
the Holy Ghost. ‘Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which
he hath given us.’ What is a Christian? I am never tired of putting forward
that question, because I think that of all the things that are misunderstood in
the world today this is the one that is most misunderstood. What is a
Christian—a good person, a moral person, a formal member of a church,
one who pays an occasional visit to God’s house? Is that a Christian?
Shame upon us if ever we have given that impression! No, a Christian is
pneumatic, spiritual. Is that not the statement of the New Testament
everywhere—a spiritual man or woman?
A spiritual person is one who has received the Holy Spirit—that is New
Testament terminology. Christians are people who are altogether different
from those who are not Christians. They are not just a little bit better, or
people who do certain things. No, they themselves are different; they are
spiritual. ‘We have received,’ says Paul, ‘not the spirit of the world, but the
Spirit which is of God; that we may know the things that are freely given to
us of God.… He that is spiritual judgeth all things’ (1 Corinthians 2:12,15);
but not the natural man—that is the difference, naturally and spiritually.
Now, there are some people who say that you become a Christian and
then later you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. But you cannot be a
Christian unless you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is that, in a
sense, that makes you a Christian. It means this new birth; it means being
born again; it means, to use the language of Peter, to be ‘partakers of the
divine nature’ (2 Peter. 1:4). It means, to use the language of our blessed
Lord Himself, that God is abiding in us. ‘He that keepeth his
commandments,’ says John, ‘dwelleth in him, and he in him.’ And if you
want the best commentary on that, read for yourselves John 14, those great
words of our Lord: ‘I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you’
(v.18); or, as some would translate it, ‘I will not leave you orphans, I will
come again.’ ‘I will come through the gift of the Holy Spirit; I will send
another Comforter, and the result of His coming will be that He will dwell
in you—I and the Father will dwell in you.’
These are the amazing words describing the mystical union of the
believer and Christ and God, and here it all is in a phrase in 1 John 3. Surely
if all of us who claim the name of Christian only realised that and what it
means to be a Christian, not only would the whole church on earth be
transformed, but I think the world would be shaken. If we but realised that
this is the Christian, the spiritual man or woman with the Holy Spirit, with
God dwelling in us, if we but realised that, I think our world would rather
look at us and say, ‘What is the matter with these people—what is this?’
And we would be able to give the same answer as Peter gave way back so
long ago in Jerusalem: ‘This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.’
We have received the Holy Spirit, and we are therefore what we are. That is
the Christian.
Let me come to my last principle. How may we know that we have the
Spirit? That is obviously the vital question. That is the basis of my
assurance; that is how I know that He dwells in me; that is the practical
question. How do we know that the Holy Spirit has come to us, that we
have received the gift of the Holy Ghost? I shall simply suggest a number
of headings by way of an answer.
Here are the things that are taught by the New Testament. Those who
have received the Holy Spirit are aware of a power dealing with them and
working in them. ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: for
it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure’
(Philippians 2:12–13). A disturbance, something, someone interfering in
our lives. We are going along, and suddenly we are arrested and pulled up,
and we find ourselves different. That is the beginning; that is what always
happens when the Holy Ghost begins to work in a human being. There is a
disturbance, an interruption to the normal ordinary tenor of life. There is
something different, an awareness of being dealt with—I cannot put it
better; that is the essence of the Holy Spirit dealing with us.
Then it leads to this, that we find ourselves beginning to take an interest
in these things, in a spiritual sense. Paul says that they who are carnal ‘mind
the things of the flesh,’ but the Christian, he says, is the one who minds ‘the
things of the Spirit’ (Romans 8:5)—he is interested in them. Non–
Christians say that the Bible is a terribly boring book, and when you talk
about spiritual things, they do not know what you are talking about. I am
not criticising them; I rather pity them. They just do not understand, and the
whole thing is boring and has no relevance to life.
If you feel like that about these things, you have not received the Spirit,
because when people receive the Spirit, they find themselves curiously
interested in these things. They are amazed at the fact that they could ever
have lived without them. This, they say, is the most wonderful thing of all.
They are no longer interested in the mechanics of religion. You can be
interested in that, in the work of the church or in your work in the church,
without being interested in the Spirit. That is not what I am talking about;
those who have received the Spirit are spiritually interested in truth.
And that leads to the next thing, which is the conviction of sin. They are
men and women who see themselves unworthy and guilty before God. They
begin to see that their nature is wrong, and they hate it. That is the Spirit—
He leads them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and to understand the
truth. John has already told us: ‘This is the commandment, that we should
believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ’ (v.23). Only the Holy Spirit
can enable us to see Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of our
souls. You will dismiss Him entirely until the Spirit enlightens you; but
once He works, you begin to see and understand the truth. Then you are
aware of a new life within you; you are conscious of a new being, and a
new nature. ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Galatians 2:20). I
cannot understand myself; there is ‘the old man’ still—the man that I do
understand, but there is someone else, because I have become a new
creature.
And then there are the fruits of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, love of the brethren. Once the Spirit comes in, the fruits of the
Spirit begin to show themselves—hatred of sin, desires for holiness. We
love God’s commandments, as John says in chapter 5: ‘His commandments
are not grievous.’ Christians begin to love them, and they want to show the
fruit of the Spirit in that way.This is that ‘Spirit of adoption, whereby we
cry, Abba, Father ’ (Romans 8:15), and we know what the Scripture means
when it says, ‘the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God’ (Romans 8:16). Those are some of the things that you
recognise. It means holiness is in you. Do you recognise all of these things?
These are the proofs of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There were also
those gifts which God gave on the Day of Pentecost; they may still be
given. Yes, I may, in His sovereign will, still get these. The gifts of the
Spirit also are a proof of the indwelling of the Spirit.
Take, then, all those things together and there are the proofs of the fact
that we have received the Holy Ghost. Oh, the marvel and the wonder of
such a gift, the free gift. In spite of our sin and shame, in spite of our
unworthiness and all that is so true of us, this amazing God has given us His
own Spirit, and with the Spirit He comes to dwell and to abide in us. What a
wondrous gift! What an amazing gift that God, the eternal, should come and
dwell in us and enable us to dwell in Him. ‘Hereby we know that he abideth
in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.’