Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

We now come to the second division of the first part— a glance at the various stages of growth in God’s family. You can imagine the children at home. You go to a man’s house, and you say: “I would like to see the family.” You are shown into the room where the family are, and there you see that he has so many children; and then, when you have seen that, you soon begin to take an account of their ages. You notice first, probably, the elder, and then a younger child, and so on. That is just what is done here. Hitherto the subject has been the fellowship of the Father with His family. Now it is a glance at the various members of that family—I mean at their various stages in spiritual growth.

“I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.” Now, I must mention one point, which I must beg of you to remember; and that is, there are two words in the original used for “little children,” and unfortunately they have both been translated “little children,” and the force, therefore, of the Apostle’s sentence has been somewhat dimmed and lost. One of the terms is a word which is meant to apply to the entire family, and the other is a term which is quite a different one in the original. I dare say there are some of you who know this, and you will quite admit what I am saying, that the other term denotes the actual babes in the family. I will only make the assertion, that the word for “little children,” in the 12th verse is not the same word as that which occurs in the 13th verse, or in the 18th verse. There are two words for “little children.” One is used as a term of endearment, to designate the entire family, and then another word, quite distinct, is used to designate a certain branch of that family that are very young, that do not know God as God wants to be known, and as God will be known by them. One is a term of endearment, referring to all the fathers, and to all the young men, as well as to all the babes; and the other is a term used contradistinctively from the fathers and the young men, and applied to the actual babes.

Now, when he says: “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake;” observe that before he begins to divide them, he speaks of the entire family. Before ever he looks at the stages of growth, he speaks of all the family— every one of them, and he comprehends them all in that first word for little children, and of the entire family of God he says that their sins are forgiven. That is the first word; that is the fundamental thought in this passage, that everyone in God’s family has his sins forgiven. It is not, they shall be forgiven; but, they are, and, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, the epistle is written on purpose that they might know the love that God has to them, that they might know that He has forgiven them. I do think that it is most appropriate in the epistle of John, where God shines out so much as the God whose name is Love—(“God is love”), and where we are seen to be one with God and in His family, that He should speak of us altogether as “little children;” that God would have us to be so at home with Him, as to know well the love that He has to us. If I may speak for you, I say that we are very dull scholars, very slow learners, for God to love us as He does, as we shall see in the fourth chapter, and for us to apprehend so little of that love, to be, all of us, still only little children, and as such, so little conscious of the greatness, the tenderness, the definiteness of His love to us.

I would like to mention that, having thus begun, so at the closing verse of this section, the 28th verse, there is a word again to all the family. “And now, little children, abide in Him.” That word also refers to the entire family. So that the plan now of the section is just this. First: God, about to give us a classification of His family, begins by speaking to them altogether as “little children.” Then He classifies them as “fathers,” “youngmen,” “babes,” and then, when He has spoken to them each twice, in the 28th verse, He gathers them altogether again, as the Greek shows, and says: “Little children, abide in Him.”

We will now just look a little at the classification. And first as to the order. It is, you will observe, “fathers,” “young men,” “babes;” and it is repeated: “fathers,” “young men,” “babes.” God has two arrangements of us. He proceeds with us in two different methods. Sometimes He begins with the least; sometimes, as here, He begins with the most advanced. When God begins with the least, it is the order of grace; when God begins with the most advanced, it is the order of responsibility. When God is dealing with us in free grace, He will always be sure to begin with the least. If Christ were to come into this room on purpose to show His grace, He would begin most certainly with the youngest, timidest, feeblest believer here. If Christ were to come into this room to judge the works of His servants—and He will judge the works of God’s children by and by, as you know—then He would begin with the greatest. I do not suppose I need give a case where He began with the least; but I will mention one. Christ appeared twelve times after His resurrection, and you will find in the cases, one after the other, that the circle went on widening and the movement was deepened. He ended with: appearing to Paul; but how did He begin? I suppose I need tell no one here that He began by appearing to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils. He began with one sinner, and gave that one sinner a private interview as a specimen of how, when a sinner, even the greatest sinner, comes to Him, He treats him. He has plenty of leisure. He does not say, “You are nobody; I cannot give you a private interview.” He began with Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils—seven, the number of perfection, as if she had been a perfectly abandoned sinner. He began with her, and then He appeared to two other women, and thus the circle widened and widened because it was the order of grace. But here it is the order of responsibility, if you like, of judgment, and therefore God begins with the highest. There is no doubt about it, that when the Lord Jesus begins the judgment of the works of His people in the clouds of heaven, He will begin with the greatest, and I will give you one proof of that, if you like. The judgment of works has already begun. God has judged the work of Christ, and lifted up His Son, and put Him on His throne, and by putting Him on His throne there, He has given His judgment already as to the value of that work done in His service. God has begun by the judgment of the work of Christ, and He is going on with it to this very day. Every time a sinner come and says, “Lord, I am a great sinner, but I plead the work of Jesus”—the judgment of God of the work of Christ is going on, and God, by at once welcoming that sinner to His heart, and making that sinner His child, is giving a judgment of the work of Christ, and He ends the judgment of the work of Christ before He begins the judgment of our works. This is an important thought, if you look at it a moment in this light. Some Christians are agitated as to whether they will pass through the tribulation. You may have heard a question as to whether such and such shall pass through the tribulation, or shall not. If you would only look at this principle, the matter would be perfectly clear to your minds. Before God can possibly begin with the judgment of any of our works, He must close with the judgment of Christ’s work. The judgment of the work of Christ is to be closed by the lifting of the entire church of God into the light of God. When the cemeteries have given up that that was loved of God, all those whose spirits within them trusted in Christ; when this room has been emptied of all that are Christ’s, and every other where there is a Christian gathering of God’s living people, and when they have been gathered right up into the clouds of heaven, and brought home close to God, bodily, where they are now spiritually, when they have been lifted up, and have been seen to be like Christ, and when they are made like Him in body, oh! the work of Christ is to be done very completely; we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is— and when I say the entire church of God has been lifted right up to God, and made like Christ, inside and outside, then God’s judgment of the work of Christ is finished, and then He will come down lower in the order of responsibility; but He begins with the judgment of the work of Christ, and He will close His judgment of the work of Christ before He can possibly begin His judgment upon the works of any of His children. We must be in the clouds of heaven when we are judged; we must be like Christ when we are judged. That shows us, beloved friends—does it not—that we need not be afraid of the judgment? It is not a judgment about our persons; the work of Christ settles that—it is only a judgment about our works. Why, you see, when Christ judges me, I am to be just like Him. I shall be like Him before He judges me. I shall be as beautiful as He is, although, indeed, if I could be separated from Him for a moment, I should perhaps cease to be like Him; but because I cannot be separated from Him, I shall be like Him, and then, when I am thoroughly like Him, He will stamp His judgment on my works, His judgment on what I am saying to you now, His judgment on whether I have sought my glory or His. The judgment of the person is past, as He saith in that grandest verse in the bible, for a sinner: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment (it should not be into condemnation); but is passed out of death into life.”

It is so important that believers should be perfectly established in the grace and love of God. When I am judged by the Lord Jesus, it does not refer to the work of my salvation at all. It cannot do; for then I am like Christ. I will give you an illustration of this, which I have sometimes used. Suppose that a mother has some children, and she goes out for the day, and then she comes home, and says, “Now, who has done the work best? Who has done her sampler best; or has done his sum best?” and she gives an apple to the child who has done the work best, or perhaps she has an apple for each one of the children. So the Lord will come with His crowns, and His rewards, to testify His delight in what we have done, as far as He can, and what He cannot say pleased Him will be burned up. Thus, you see, there is the order of grace, and there is the order of responsibility. In the order of responsibility, the judgment of works, He will begin with great saints—the great ones, as it were, in the family. “I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.”

The knowledge of the fathers is not in every sense the knowledge of the children. They seem alike, but notice the difference. “I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning.” That sounds at first very much like—“I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.” What is the difference between the matured father’s knowledge, and the actual baby’s knowledge of God? “Him that is from the beginning.” Surely that is God. Well, the actual babies do not know as much as the others. I do not mean, do not know as much of doctrine; but do not know as much of love and of God. Doctrine may be a help, will be, in the hand of the Holy Spirit, a help to the knowledge of God; it is very precious in its place. But if we put knowledge of doctrine in the place of the knowledge of the love of God, it is a fearful thing. To have all the knowledge worth knowing, is the knowledge of God. What do you and I actually know of the love of God? The fathers know “Him that is from the beginning;” the babes know “the Father.” The expression, “Him that is from the beginning,” refers to Christ, as is plain from the first verse of the epistle. It is an allusion to the first verse of the epistle; it is an allusion, too, to the first verse of the gospel by John—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The fathers have been so taught of God, that they see that Christ is the centre of the divine counsels—the Foundation of the new creation; the full outcome and manifestation of God’s character; His great lesson-book by which we may know God. I will give an illustration, which will perhaps convey the idea better than otherwise. Supposing two stars appear close together in the sky. If I take a telescope and look at the two, they appear wider apart; or if I were to go ever so far towards them, I should begin to see that they were not so close together as they appeared. Or, even if I am walking down the street, two lamps appear close together when I am some distance off; but when I go farther down the street, the lamps appear to divide, and I see that though they appeared one, they are not one. In other words, the more we know of anything in creation, the more we see that it is complex, and divisible. Not so with God and Christ. Whilst we know little of God, we shall not see the wonderful, the divine oneness there is between the Father and the Son. The more you come to know God—not the less, the more—the nearer actually and experimentally you come to God, the more you find that as the Father is in Christ, so Christ is in the Father. You will find that what He said to His disciples in the 14th of John is true: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou, then, Shew us the Father?”

In the epistle of John the Lord Jesus is seen so thoroughly one with His Father, that the names are used almost interchangeably. Thus, turn to the last chapter and the last verse but one: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.” The words seem to be used, as though they could not dissociate in thought the Father from the Son, nor the Son from the Father. Of course, no one can deny that there is a Son, and that there is a Father, or else we should come to the doctrine, that the Father suffered on the cross, which would be blasphemy. But still we must not, in our endeavours and desires to keep the distinction in idea between the Son and the Father, forget that there is only one God. We must not forget what He says Himself, “Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee.” A man can easily distinguish parts of his nature. There is a human trinity in man—a spirit, a soul, and a body. But the more you know of God, the more you can see that Christ is the manifestation of God. As some one has put it thus: “All that has come from God is of the Father; all that can be seen from God is of the Son; all that can be felt of God is of the Holy Ghost.” What I am trying to impress is this wonderful, mysterious, perfect union between the Father and the Son.

Well then, if you want any more proof, look in this very chapter—2nd chapter, 28th and 29th verses:—“Now, little children, abide in Him,”— that is clearly Christ—“that when He shall appear we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” That is clearly Christ. Now read the next verse—“If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is horn of Him,”—that is clearly God. And the next verse goes on—“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.”

I will close with one more remark; that whilst in the gospel of John we fully see that Christ is in the Father, and the Father is in Christ; in the epistle of John an advance is made; and that advance is this—that Christ is in the believer, and the believer is in God. “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Once, when I was preaching, I made a remark that a believer was brought so close to God, that there was not the shadow of a shade of distance between him and God. A person wrote me a letter the next day, suggesting whether I had not exceeded the truth—for that he thought “it seemed to disparage the Son of God.” There was not the shadow of a shade of an interval, I said, between the believer and God; he was close to Him. Now, what I maintain is that I had not even got up to the truth. I did not state the full truth. I am giving you now an illustration of how slow we are to comprehend God’s love; for now, through Christ and in Christ, it is not merely that we are brought to God; but the language is—“dwelleth in God,”—in, that is more than being brought to God. “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”