Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

We have seen, that like as the gospel according to John is a picture of the Father and the Son; so the epistle of John is, necessarily, the account of the Father and the sons—the Father and His family, and the picture is put before us thus —the first two chapters treat of the family along with their Father, and the last three chapters treat of the family-life in the world. It is the first part, of course, upon which we are still to speak to-night— the family with their Father. Then, upon examination, we find that the first part consists, again, of two divisions. The first division of the first part closes at the eleventh verse of the second chapter, and in that the family are seen in connection with their Father. In the second division of the first part, there is a glance at the various ages of the children composing the family.

We will now say a little upon the first division again. It consists of four distinct sections. The first is communion with the Father; the second, where the communion is—in God’s light; the third section, how it is possible for children who have sinned, and who have sin—both of these are clear from verses 8 and 10—to have communion with God in light; the answer is by the blood and by the living Christ; and then the fourth section of that part is the test of professors—“he that saith;” “he that saith;”—“he that saith;”—such are tested, as we shall see.

Now, in the first section it is seen that the overture proceeded from God. It was not that we wanted His fellowship; but He wanted our’s. What He wanted was our fellowship, our companionship; that is, He wanted us to be His children; or even that is not the whole truth. He makes us His children, and gives us His nature and His Spirit, in order that we may be able to have fellowship, companionship, and interest with Him. If there were no correspondence of spirit, we should not be able to enjoy Him and His love. So, every overture proceeded from Him; and hence we read, “That which was from the beginning”—the Son coming forth from God. It is not “He who was in the beginning;” but “that which was from the beginning;” and thus He is seen, I say, in the remote eternity beginning to come forth from God. As Micah puts it—His goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. But why? Because, as He says Himself—“My delights were with the sons of men before the world was.”

Well then, the next few words tell about His advances till He reaches us, and then the dogmatic statement is made, that “our companionship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Observe, that in the Epistles of John the statements are made in the most absolute manner. They are not spoken as if taking into account our failure. God does not look at things from our point of view, but from His. It is not our “companionship ought to be with the Father, and ought to be with His Son Jesus Christ;” but, if we are God’s children, if we are believers in Christ, our companionship is with the Father. We may not know it well. Through bad teaching, or through unbelief, we may have many doubts and fears, we may be unestablished in Christ, and so we may not know that our companionship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; but if we are believers in Christ, there it is. The moment we believe in Christ we are placed by God’s hand where Christ is, in His account. We live down here in the world, as a fact, as to our bodies; but in God’s account we are as good as at home; we are on God’s bosom; we are as near to Him now as ever we shall be; we are as dear to Him now as ever we shall be. Our partnership, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. We are all one family together. God is the Father; Christ is He to whom we owe it all, and we are the children. I say, Christ is He to whom we owe it all; because, although Christ is the elder Brother of the family, yet I never like to hear Christians speak of Him as the elder Brother. He is the elder Brother; but it is not right, I think, for us to call Him so; and on this ground I think it shows a wart of delicacy. If He chooses to call us His brethren, that is kindness and condescension on His part; but we do not call Him “brother;” we like to call Him “Lord.” We know His love; but if He speaks to us in affection, we do not forget that reverence is due to Him. We still remember that we owe Him everything, and we love Him all the more, and entertain, if possible, the higher thoughts of Him through His extreme grace in coming down to lift us up. So I speak of God as the Father, and of Christ as the Lord, and of ourselves as the little children; though it would rather more keep the idea of a family, to speak of Christ as the Elder Brother.

But now it is seen, that if God have fellowship with us, that fellowship must be in perfect light. God cannot love our darkness. I do not say He cannot come into our darkness. He has done that; but if He comes into our darkness, it is not that He may stay there; nor will He be content in going back to His light by Himself. He wants to bring us to His own light. He tells us, for instance, that “God hath called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.” Erst God came to man’s home; but now He is going to bring man to His home. Once God visited man in man’s paradise; but now Christ promises that “he that overcometh shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

We might learn a lesson for ourselves, beloved friends, from the fact that God, if He wants our companionship, only wants it in His own light;—namely, that whenever we want to have communion with a fellow Christian, that communion should be in full light. What I mean is this. Supposing that you are on terms of intimacy with some Christian—but you have got some little private pique against him— do not nurse that little pique. If you believe that you are the aggrieved party, tell it him, and out with it; but do not sulk about it; do not wait till he comes to make it up with you. That is not what Christ did with you. He did not wait till you came and begged His pardon; He came and made it up with you Himself. And listen to what the word says to you: “Moreover, if thy brother trespass against thee”—What? Wait till he conies and begs your pardon? No; but “if thy brother trespass against thee, go.” You are to go to him. That is God’s way—that is the way of grace. If you have had grace shown to you, you must show grace to others. If you are a child of God, walk as a child of God. Not by standing on your rights. God came down to you in grace. “If thy brother trespass against thee, go”—commune in light. I believe you would find, that if that were adhered to, if we followed our heavenly Father in that practice, there would be a great difference in our conduct to one another. You know there are oftentimes little heart-burnings between Christians, and when one has gone, the other will say something about it; whereas if he had said it to his face, it might have been that he would have explained it and cleared it all up. As we are children of the same Father, then let us have communion in the light.

Well, then, how is it possible for us to have partnership with such a God? Because, observe the difficulty. We are told in the eighth verse that we must not say we have no sin. Compare the eighth verse with the tenth verse. In the eighth verse we read: “If we say we have no sin;” and in the tenth verse it is: “If we say that we have not sinned.” So that, you see, there is a reference both to sin past and to sin felt at present. We must not deny either of these. Why, how can we have fellowship with such a Father, with a God in perfect light, while God says: “You must not say you have not sinned, or that you have no sin,” and while we ourselves know and feel that we have? How is it possible? Then there comes in that which brings us into the light, and sustains us in the light. It is the blood that cleanses us; it is the blood that lifts us to God, and if I am washed in the blood of Christ, I am brought nigh to God by the blood. And then, observe, that as it is the blood that lifts me into light, so it is not only the blood that sustains me in the light; but the more I stand in the light, the more I shall see the value of the blood. The reason why I prize the blood so little is because I stand in the light so little; but if I knew more of abiding in the light of God, I should know more of the security of the foundation upon which I stood. It does seem to me to be such an admirable provision on the part of God, that the farther into the light of God I get, the more vividly do I see my security. It is not that the farther I get the less shall I feel at home. On the contrary, nothing tests the value of the blood as the eye of God does. Christ, as our High Priest, has gone under the very eye of God. Going up there with the blood into the holiest of all, He does, as it were, challenge God. “Is it not that which Thy glory desireth?” And there, when God looks upon it, He now beholds us with delight; and the more we come right into where God is, the more shall we feel the stability of the place in which God has put us The blood lifts you into the light, and then, observe, the light shows you the infinite preciousness of the blood. Like as of old, in the extremity of the tabernacle there was a mercy-seat; so now, as Christ has gone up into the very highest heaven, Christ and God are pledged and bound to mercy through the precious blood-shedding of the Lord Jesus.

But that is not all. Another point is, that we have a living Christ, as well as His blood. We must not so think of the blood of Christ as to forget the living Christ. Oh! to think that it is His death saves, and then that I have got a living Christ over and beyond that. I am not to stay at the cross. Christ is the door, and by the slain Christ I am to draw nigh to God, and then I may see that I have a living Christ over and above salvation. Beloved friends, it is not every Christian that sees this. It is not the cross that stands between you and God. The cross is between you and the world. The cross is behind you. It has snapped your connection with the world; but now the cross has lifted you into a new position, and made you a child, and trade you clean every whit, and then there is a living Christ over and above that; and all that we have to do whenever we sin, (I mean whenever there is anything that troubles our minds, that interferes with our enjoyment of our position,) is to confess it. That is God’s simple receipt—confess it. You and I cannot pass through the world without tripping sometimes. It may be a little ebullition of passion in one way or another; there may be some little thing which we may be guilty of—(not little in one sense, indeed)—but when we do anything that would interfere with our saying, “Abba, Father,” anything that would check us at all, then we have to confess it, and then, when you confess it, it is forgiven; it is carried away at once on confessing it. The standing is not then interfered with; but when we give way to the flesh, it interferes with our enjoyment of the standing, and then our Father says—“Confess it.”

So then we find that we have not only the blood; but we have a living Christ. Now, the living Christ is here called “an Advocate.” You will remember that it is not “an Advocate with God;” but it is “an Advocate with the Father;” because it is impossible for there to be anything like advocacy with, God; it would imply that the question between my soul and God about sin was not settled. Either the question with God about sin is settled, or it is not settled. Either it is settled legally, judicially, righteously, on a broad basis, such as the omniscient God can look at, and say it is, or it is not. If it is not, I need a Saviour. If it is, He who undertook my case is a complete Saviour for me, and I do not need an advocate with God. There cannot be an advocate with God, because God never can see sin in His people; as we read in the epistle to the Hebrews: “Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Did He do it? Let me be understood. I do not deny that we do sin constantly; I do not deny that our Father sees sin: but there is all the difference in the world between our Father seeing our sin, and God seeing our sin. Matters between God and the man in Christ are settled for ever. “We may grieve our Father; we may go astray; we may be unhappy, erring children; but with God all things are done as regards sin. The whole question of sin for the people of God, and those who trust in His name, is done with and settled by the Lord Jesus; and now it is “an Advocate with the Father,” not “an Advocate with God.”

Mark for a moment or two that word “Advocate.” The word “Advocate” is a very precious word. You should bear in mind that, strictly speaking, there are two advocates. The word “advocate “here, is the same word which, in the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel, is translated “Comforter.” Hence the verse in the gospel, if the word had been rendered there, as it is here, would have read—“I will send you another Advocate, that He may abide with you for ever.” And then again in the 15th chapter—“But when the Advocate is come.” Or, conversely, this word here might have been rendered —“If any man sin, we have a Comforter with the Father.” The word translated “Comforter” in one place and “Advocate” in the other, is the same word in the original. When Christ says: “I will send you another Comforter;” it implies that He is “the first.” You see how He puts it—“another Comforter.” The idea, strictly speaking, is that of one who undertakes one’s case, to conduct it legally. It really means a solictor, or lawyer, one who will take up one’s case and conduct it to a happy issue. We are in a wretched plight. The first Solicitor takes up our case. He does not deny anything that we have done. What He does is to take the culprit’s place, and stand instead of the culprit. You never heard it said of any legal trial on earth, I suppose, that when a man was arraigned for any crime, his solicitor would be willing to stand in the felon’s dock in order that his client might be free. That is what the Son of God did in the character of an advocate. He stood in the felon’s dock; He took the sin; the punishment of it was visited upon Him. I won’t use the word solicitor, as it may offend some—the punishment of it was visited upon our Advocate’s head. Then when He has done it, and has finished it, God in proof that the judgment had been perfectly visited upon our Advocate’s head, raises Him from the dead. Then down comes the other Advocate. “I will send you another Advocate, that He may abide with you for ever.” Then that Advocate proceeds upon the understanding, that the first Solicitor took our place. He then begins with teaching us not to deny what we have been accused of. That is what we are prone to do by nature, either to deny it, or to excuse and extenuate it, or to blink the fact in some way or other. The Holy Ghost shows us that the plea which we are prone to take by nature, is a very unsafe one, and He tells us of another plea which we may take up; and what is that? That our Advocate took our place, that our Advocate has borne our sin, that our Advocate, in proof that He has put away sin, is raised and seated at the Father’s throne, and thus by the Spirit we are led to take up the new standing, to abandon our own. “I, A, B, stand on my own foundation.” No, we dare not do it. The Holy Ghost says, “Do not do it; it is very dangerous, very unsafe; take Christ; Christ endured wrath, that you might not; you will find Christ’s standing a safe one, for Himself, and for you too.” Then, when we take Him, the Holy Ghost, the other Advocate, enters into our hears in person; the Holy Ghost dwells in us. Now observe, then; there are the two Advocates, both understanding one another; the one Advocate there, the other Advocate here within one, and the very fact that it is the same word which is used both by the Lord Jesus and the Holy Ghost, shows that there is a correspondence, a connection, between their two works. The Holy Ghost within me now, as one of the Comforters, keeps me a Christian, and will keep me in the standing of a Christian. We have taken the ground of being in Christ; let us walk in Him, and keep on that ground in Christ. Then, whenever we fail, whenever we come short, the other Advocate sees it up there, where He carries on the work. He carries on the work up there, and then whenever we forget our standing in Christ, whether by sin or by anything else, He takes up the matter there; and observe what is the issue. Presently, in God’s time, the Holy Ghost here will lift up the entire church. As with a pair of compasses: so our one Paraclete is there and for us, and the other Paraclete here and in us. And still the Holy Ghost is one with Christ and with God. So He will lift us up to Him. The two parts of the pair of compasses shall come together. As Rebecca of old was led by Eliezer into the presence of Isaac, so the Comforter here, who is to abide with us for ever, will lift up the entire church, first the dead departed saints, and then, a very short moment afterwards, the living saints, and they all rise together into the presence of the Lord Jesus, and then the two Advocates’ works become merged in one, and Christ presents us to the Father. If you catch the thought about having this Advocate, you will see that provision is made for all the failures of the children, and that His work as an Advocate is continued until you and I, by the other Advocate, or Comforter, the Holy Ghost, are actually and bodily lifted into the presence of God, not of the Father only, but of God; because as we are brought to God through the precious blood of Christ, God eventually must have the gratification of His heart in having the children bodily brought home to Him. It is the costliest love that even God could have, to have the children, sinners, brought quite home to Him, and you know the cost of it. There is one very precious word here; it does not say, “If any man repent, we have an Advocate with the Father;” if we are children that is always required; but, “If any man sin.” It is in the past tense in Greek, showing that it does not mean that we may go and sin in the future but that it refers to a thing of the past. Well, if you are conscious that you had a tumble, do not forget that you have got an Advocate. If you are conscious that you have been tripped up and betrayed, do not forget that still He is interested in you. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate.” When did the blessed Lord Jesus pray for Peter? When he repented? No! When did the blessed Lord Jesus pray for His disciples? After their recovery? “Satan hath desired you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you.” When did the Lord Jesus wash their feet? Did He wash them when they asked Him? No, He washed their feet before they asked Him. Ah, we little know the number of secret pardons coming from the heart of our Father every time we fail; and when are we not failing? When are we walking in the full sunlight of God’s love? When are we so quite happy and at home with God as He wants us to be? Whenever we are not, there is unbelief, and what sin is there like unbelief? So, then, we see that there is this constant advocacy of the Lord Jesus with our Father until we are brought into the presence of God.

Then it says, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” There is a little remark worth making here, that wherever the word “Advocate” or “Comforter” is used—and bear in mind that it is the same word in the original—there is always some adjective used to remind us of the holiness of our counsel. Thus, if it is the Holy Ghost, the words are added, “the Spirit of truth.” You will never find the expression Paraclete used, either of Christ or of the Holy Ghost, without some little expression being added suggestive of their perfect holiness; that though they will take up our case, that though they are determined to bring matters to a successful issue, yet it shall be with the full maintenance of the rights, and of the purity, and of the law of God. So here, characteristically, as the word “Advocate” is used, it is added “Jesus Christ the righteous;” and then there is the little clause, “and He is the propitiation for our sins.” There is another very precious thought in connection with Christ as our propitiation, and that is, that Christ is our Advocate with the Father, and that Christ is our Mercy-seat down here. I suppose you are aware that the word “propitiation “is the same word radically as the word “mercy-seat.” You remember that when the children of Israel journeyed of old in the wilderness, supposing they went to a given place, the mercy-seat had to be carried to that given place; and then, if they went to another place, the mercy-seat had to be carried there; and thus by the mercy-seat being carried about wherever the children of Israel were, they could always, through their priests, have recourse to God upon the mercy-seat. Now, Christ is our Advocate there, and He is our Mercy-seat here. Wherever we are, we do not need a mercy-seat to be carried about. If you feel that you have sinned as you have been sitting on that form, if you feel that you have sinned as you have been coming to this room, the Mercy-seat is close to you, just close to you; for it is close to anybody in the world. That is the simple meaning of that last clause, about which Calvinists and Arminians have so quarrelled, that the Mercy-seat is close to anybody in the wide wide world. There it is, so that anybody can just go and touch that Mercy-seat, and say, “O God, I am a great sinner!” and it is near to any sinner in the world, without any carrying about whatever. So that as Christ our Advocate sees our failures with the Father, so Christ as our Mercy-seat is to be touched by the lost sinner, or by the failing saint down here.

And now we come to the next section of this division. You say, “But is not this rather lax teaching? Does not this make some little indulgence for sin? Does it not give some little licence for an unholy walk? “That is at once guarded against. And now we come to the fourth section. Bear in mind the four sections of this division. The first was, communion; the second was, with God in light; thirdly, through the blood and the living Christ; and now, fourthly, the profession of any one tested. You might say, “I am a Christian; I quite admit I do not care how I walk; but there is the blood, and there is the living Christ, and I am a Christian.” So, here now the profession of the man is tested. “And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.” Now observe, you will find, if you look down, how the professed believer is tested; you will see three “he that saiths.” There is the first “he that saith “in the fourth verse; there is the second “he that saith” in the sixth verse; there is the third “he that saith” in the ninth verse. If we look at these we shall find that the professing believer is tested by the character of God, by the walk of Christ, and by the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Look at the first: “He that saith I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” If you want to know who is meant by—“I know Him,” read the next verse: “But whoso keepeth His Word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him.” That is, that we are in God; so that the “Him” refers to God. If a man says, “I know Him,” and yet walks in sin, God says that he is a liar, and for this simple fact: if you really do know God, the first thing that the Holy Ghost teaches you is the love of God. There is nothing that is more impressed upon a soul coming to Christ than God’s love to him. If he loves sin, that is as good as saying, and if he indulges constantly in sin, that is a way of practically saying, that he does not believe the love of God; because the love of God is something that so draws a man that he cannot have the appetite to sin. I do confess, though I do not know God well, yet with the little I do know of God, I do feel that the good God so loves me that I have not a greater grief in the world than to think that I ever sinned against Him. It must be the joy of my heart to enjoy Him, and what can interfere with the enjoyment of the-love of God like sin? Nothing! Oh! a Christian cannot want to give up the enjoyment of the love of God for his sin. No, no! he would rather give up the sin than give up the enjoyment of the love of God. If a man say, “I know Him,” and yet does not care for His love, he is a liar. He does not care for His love, whatever he says, if he prefer sin. There is the simple test. It is searching enough, I think.

I will reserve my remarks upon “In Him verily is the love of God perfected,” till we come to the fourth chapter.

Then there is the second test. “He that saith he abideth in Him,”—(that is, in Christ; the context shows that)—“ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.” That is to say—the divine life in us is subdivided in the 15th of the gospel of John into two parts; one part is your being in Christ; the other part is Christ being in you. If you are really a believer, both are true; you are in Christ, and Christ is in you. Now, I must explain what is meant by these two. To be in Christ, and to abide in Christ, is to stand in the position i i which God has placed Him; to stand in the consciousness that you are a wretched, lost, and ruined sinner in yourself; but that in Christ you are an accepted child, a dearly beloved son, one with Christ, one with God, and as you enjoy that, so you are abiding in Christ. Then there is the other truth, that Christ will abide in you. Think of what that means. How would Christ live if He were here now? Would He not live again as He lived before? Surely so. No one can maintain that Christ would live a different life from what He did when He was here before, if He had to live His life over again; because if he did, he would then assert that the life of Christ could be amended, that the life of Christ could be a better life than the life He lived. Therefore, if Christ were here now—and mind you this is a very searching thing—He would live again as He lived before. But Christ is here. He is in you—is in me; and if Christ be in me, if the life of Christ be in me, in proportion as I have that life of Christ, that life must manifest itself in following the footsteps of my Lord Jesus. In any way in which I in my life diverge from the life of the Lord Jesus, it must be the life of the flesh; for if Christ is in me, Christ could not mend His life; His life was a perfect life, and if I have Christ in me, His life is being lived over again. Even this is scarcely the full truth. For Christ is risen and glorified; and the life I have is from that Christ risen. Hence it is resurrection life which I have from Christ, by which I feel quite at home—already there; but utterly a stranger here, I am one with that glorious Christ who is on the throne of God. Surely that is searching enough, and if you want me to confirm what I am saying, read the next verse. There you will see, as if you might have some difficulty in accepting this position, that there are these words added, on purpose to show you that that is the meaning of it. “Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” Now, I think there is an obscurity about those words in the minds of some, and therefore you will thank me to make them a little plainer. What is meant by this “old commandment?” What is meant by this “new commandment?” What is meant by not writing a new commandment, and by writing a new commandment? What is designed by this varied language? The force of it is this. The old commandment is—“God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” Christ is God. Very well. If Christ is God. then when Christ was here, the path of Christ in the midst of this world was the path of light in a world of darkness. It was the path of One with whom there could be no alliance whatever on His part, any more than of light with darkness. The light just passed through the darkness untouched by it. That is the old commandment. Then the new commandment is—“Which thing is true in Him, and”—now, mark the “and”—and in you.” Surely this seems to me very solemn and searching. I believe, dear friends, that Christian professors need a verse like this. I do not want to hurry over a verse like this. There is such a mass of profession now-a-days. We had better know for certain that we are the Lord’s, than to be exposed too late when the Lord takes up his true saints. The mass of profession, ay, the mass of evangelic profession, the mass of profession which consists in belonging to some sect or party, in glorying in certain views of truth, in saying,—“I am a Calvinist,” “I am an Arminian,” “I am a Millennarian,” “I am this, that, and the other,”—I say, the mass, of all this, whilst there is the absence of following Christ, is something fearful, is something that no one can deny. I think we all need, whoever we are, however much we may be established in grace—we all need these words of warning. The new commandment is true in Him and in you. The difference between the two commandments is—the old commandment is true in Him; the new commandment is true in Him and in you. Why, not to mention any other failures which are made by many professors, whom we must believe and hope are Christians, only just think of the sins of the tongue. Think of the amount of scandal in which some true Christians allow themselves to indulge. Only think that they will drop on their knees and pray most scripturally, most evangelically, aye, and I trust most truly in many cases, and then they will get up and say the most cruel and biting words, and do not seem to have any fightings of conscience about it! Is that the flesh, or is that the new life in Christ?

This leads me to the third test. “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.” There is the test of the Holy Ghost. “He that saith he is in the light”—through the Spirit, for it is by the Holy Ghost that we are in the light—“and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.” Mind the force of the word “hate.” The word “hate “in Scripture does not only mean what we signify by it. Hatred does not only mean that thorough, settled, undisguised, purpose of malice towards a person. That is not the use of the word “hate” in Scripture. It takes in that; but it covers a great deal more than that. What more is in the word? The word “hate,” means “not to love.” Thus when God says: “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated,” He does not imply that He really felt malice towards Esau; the sentiment conveyed is that He loved Esau less. “Jacob have I loved more, and Esau have I loved less.” I could bring Scripture in proof of that, as the meaning. It is a Hebrew phrase for “to love less.” And that is the idea here. It does not mean that we feel a thoroughly settled malice, and that if we can have an opportunity of doing a man an ill turn, we will do it; but it means the absence of affection towards him. This is a solemn thing; because if a man has Christ in him, though he may have a great deal of the flesh in him; yet he has Christ in him, and you say you love Christ, and you believe in your heart that that man has Christ—well, putting away all the flesh there is about him, there must be something in that man which you must love if you are born of God.