Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Well then, in the next verses, down some considerable part of our chapter, the life is developed in these two ways; first in the way of righteousness, down to the middle of the 10th verse, and then as to love. You know God’s character is two-fold. God’s character is light, and God’s character is love; and so His children too are children of the light, and they love, even as they have been loved. Thus the life that is in them is seen to be identical. I speak guardedly—identical with the life that is in Christ. The life which is in them shows itself in the workings of righteousness, and in the exhibitions of love.

We will ponder upon each of these for a moment.

“Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law. There again is another very bad translation. It should be—“for sin is lawlessness.” Man was made with his eye to look upwards, to receive direction from one above him. When he acts as if he had no superior—when his own will is his rule, there is lawlessness. Specially Christians have a Lora. To Him should our eye ever be directed, that we might learn and do His will. And if we know He loves us, we should let Him choose our path and direct our steps. With His eye He will guide us, if we abide in Him and keep close to Himself where He has placed us. Then, on purpose to put the truth in all shapes and sides, observe, he shows that if a man is not a child of God, he is a child of the devil. It is a very solemn matter. He shows that if a man does commit sin, he is of the devil; that either we have the nature of the devil, or we have the nature of God. “He that committeth sin is of the devil.” It is a very strong statement you see; but there it is, and it is put in a stronger form at the end of the fifth chapter, in a-very vivid form indeed. Even this is vivid enough, that if we have the nature of God, there will be the actings of God in righteousness, and on the other hand, if there are the actings of Satan, it is because the person is a child of Satan. “He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning,” I understand that expression, “from the beginning,” to refer to the fact, too abstruse to-enter upon here, that as soon as ever the blessed Lord Jesus began to be manifested as the Christ, Satan fell. The devil sinned from the beginning, and herein Christ and the devil are seen to be diametrically opposed as to their works. Christ was so set upon destroying the works of the devil, that He would come down here on purpose that He might destroy them.

Then there comes a verse which many ask the meaning of. “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.” I believe that the meaning is tolerably apparent on its surface. The idea is, that if you have the divine nature in you, it is just the same as it is in Christ, and it can not sin. First apply it to Christ Himself. You will admit that Christ was born of God. Will you not? Yes. Well, then, He could not sin. It is not merely that He did not sin; but He could not. It was one of the Irvingite doctrines, you remember, that Christ did not sin; but that He could have sinned if He had liked. I have often thought that this verse flatly contradicted Irving; for it says that He could not. This is absolutely true, to go back to the illustration I used just now—you could no more get that which is born of God to sin, than you could get the ray of light to be tainted by the water in the moat into which it shone. The ray of light is so dissimilar to the foetid atmosphere of the moat, that you could not, however you tried, blend the light of the sun with the atmosphere of the moat, so that the ray of light should be tarnished thereby. So with the matter we are speaking of. The nature of God is so abhorrent to sin, that it is impossible that He should have any complicity therewith. So, as Christ had the very nature of God, yea, was the very Son of God, co-equal with the Father, He not only did not sin; but He could not sin. Now, through Christ’s death and resurrection, in the three ways which I have before stated to you, that life of His is communicable. It was not communicable once; but it is communicable now. Christ is the Eternal Son; and by His taking human nature, and through His precious death, His nature is communicable, and He has communicated it to us; and through Him, and in Him we are sons; and therefore, if we are born of God, that which is divine in us can no more sin than that which was divine in Him could sin. Of course we have two natures, and He had but one. We alas! know that there is something in us that is not born of God; that of course not only will sin, but cannot do anything else but sin. All that we have to do with that, is to keep it down; to count it to be dead and buried, for it cannot be mended. The old nature cannot be mended; the old nature remains bad, as we shall daily find, until we are finally delivered from it. But the new nature which is in us cannot possibly have any complicity with sin. “He cannot sin, because he is born of God.” There, says the Holy Ghost, is the manifestation of the difference between the children of God and the children of the devil.

There, then, is the first thought, that the children of God do righteousness, answering to the same feature in the character of God. God is light, as we have seen in the first chapter, and therefore so is it with the children, as it says in Ephesians—“Ye are children of the light?” The very illustration helps us to see what is meant by that word—“cannot sin.” “Children of the light.” God is light; and then Christ is the ray of light; and then we, through Christ’s death and resurrection, become the children of God, and therefore children of the light-Nothing can make light into darkness—nothing. Light, as we all know, is essentially the very opposite of darkness; and so, if we have the nature of God, we are born of Him who is light, and therefore we practise righteousness.

Well then, there is the other side of the character of God brought out. Let us look at that. “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” There is the second feature in the character of God. God is love —as we shall see plentifully enough in the fourth chapter. God is love; and we, as His children, have that nature of His; and the more we exhibit that divine love, the more the world will hate us notwithstanding. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death.” I just pause on that expression a moment. I cannot tell you how many ways there are in which the devil would get us to wrest that passage. We are very prone to read it thus: “He that loveth not his brother that holds the same truths as he does; he that loveth not his brother that goes to the same place of worship; he that loveth not his brother that is a churchman, or a dissenter, or is anything else, as he is; “whereas the Word of God has it, simply and plainly,—” He that loveth not his brother,”—that if there is divine life in me, and if there is divine life in you, as sure as there is, you may not love my crotchets, you may not love anything that is naughty in me; but if there is divine life in me, and there is divine life in you, you cannot help yourself, you must love that divine life in me. If you do not, it is because you are not born of God. I do not say that we should have these crotchets. On the contrary, we should seek to put them away. As a matter of fact, some of God’s people have sometimes many unpleasant traits in their character; but if they are God’s people, then, in proportion as you can see the divine life in them, you cannot help it—you must love them. It is comparatively easy to love a very holy man nearly sixty, or seventy, or eighty years of age—a ripe and mellow Christian. Let me give you an example, shewing that this is so. God made the world in six days, and on the sixth day He said that it was very good. And if you had stood with God on that sixth day, I suppose you would have agreed with what He said, that it was very good, would you not? But the truth is, that God said it was good on the first day. Now, if you had stood with God on that first day, and had seen all the chaos that there was then still in the world—the waters not separated from the land, you would have said, “I cannot see that it is very good yet.” When it was perfectly developed on the sixth day, you would have said, “It is very good.” Ah! but then if you had the eye of God, if you stood by the throne of God, and looked down from God’s height, you would have seen that not only was His work good, very good, on the sixth day of creation; but you would have said that it was very good on the first day of creation. It is very easy to love a man who has grown much in grace, and has mellowed much in the divine life, so that when you come across him, you feel that you are in contact with a holy man; but it is much harder to love a child of God when he is full of oddities, crotchets, whims, and naughty ways, and has a great deal of the flesh about him. When one sees a great deal of the flesh in youthful Christians, it is very easy to despise them; but we must not do so; for the Holy Ghost rules that this is the work of the divine life, that when we see the divine life in others, we love what we see of that divine life. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love”—not church-people, who are Christians; or dissenters, who are Christians; but “because we love the brethren.”

You observe, that there are the two forms of the divine life, and that as with the righteousness, so with the love—the standard is the highest. God cannot alter or lower His standard. The acting of the divine life in you is always the same as the acting of the divine life in Christ. Read the next verse but one. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us, and we ought,”—do you see how those words come in, how appropriate they are?—“and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Christ laid down His life for us. There was the acting of the divine life, the divine life which led Him to love us, so that nothing stopped Him. Then if we have the divine life, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. The word “ought” is put in there because the life in us is feebler, is not so fully developed, as it was in Christ. If the divine life in us was very strong, we should be willing to lay down our lives for the brethren. Thus you perceive, that whether it be in the first feature—righteousness, or light; or in the second feature, love, we are shown that we are to be like Christ. We shall be like Him, and until we are quite like Him, we are to purify ourselves, even as He is pure.

After this, there is a glance at the other side in contrast: “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?” And then be passes on to some additional details, illustrative of the workings of this divine life in us, and I ask you to look at these.

One is, that before God, as His children, we shall be quite free, and shall with heart-ease look up to Him. We shall not, as children of God in the world, feel any terror before Him. As we know that we are sons of God, we shall have heart-ease, perfect peace and joy before Him, and like as Christ could look up and say, “I thank Thee, O Father,” so His children are to do. It assumes that we should seek to be established in Christ, that we should seek to know how thoroughly God has loved us—which we shall see in the fourth chapter—how thoroughly He has put away our sins, how thoroughly He has blessed us, and will bless us still with the Holy Ghost. If, then, we are His children here in the wilderness, we look up to Him, we are not afraid of Him now; we do not dread Him now; we talk to Him, and assure our hearts before Him. There is again one of the details of the Christian’s life; namely, that conscious that we are His children, the knowledge that His eye is upon us, only causes us exquisite joy, because it makes us feel, as we sing sometimes in our hymn—

“Tis His great delight to bless us,
Oh! how He loves!”

Well then, there is another. The other side is assumed, that sometimes the children of God are not acting up to their light, or are sometimes doing what their conscience reprehends them for. Then there will not be that same freedom and ease before God that there should he, and will be when the divine life in them is unchecked. I suppose we all of us understand that sometimes we allow ourselves to do what conscience says is wrong, and then of course it is not so easy to look up to God and say, “My dear, good, heavenly Father.” Thus you see there is in everything the acting of the divine life. “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.”

Then there is the next thing, that when we talk to Him in prayer, we know that we are heard. Oh! what a beautiful thing that is! How we let the devil cheat us when we would pray to God! Think how God would have us to pray, to talk to Him as His children, to see that there is no veil between Him and us, that there is no distance between Him and us, that there is no reserve on His part, that there is no separation between us, that we are near to Him, that we are very dear to Him, that we are of His own blessed people. What a beautiful picture that is of the way in which His children talk to Him, that is given in this next verse: “And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.” I shall speak of His new commands directly. I only want you to see that there is such a beautiful picture there of the Christian, not merely praying, but knowing that he is heard; and he speaks to God, he tells God all that he does, in prayer, and knows that he is heard, because he knows that he is very near to God, and can say, as His Son said when He was upon earth—“I know that Thou hearest Me always.” I wish, beloved friends, that you and I did more enjoy this consciousness of communion with Christ, even when we talk to Him. If we only did but see what a full Christ we have, what a full salvation we have, what a living Christ we have, how we are brought so near to God, and God has so much love to us, oh! our few moments of prayer would be so much more enjoyable to us than they are. Take one instance. Often and often I have heard these words quoted upside down; I have heard Christians quote these words so many times entirely wrong. “Oh, Thou that art in the clefts of the rock, let me see Thy countenance, let me hear Thy voice.” I have often heard these words quoted thus: “Let me hear Thy voice, let me see Thy countenance.” Now, that is not what Christ says. Christ says: “Dove of mine, dove of mine, thou that art in the clefts of the rock,” and then mark the order—He does not say, “Let me hear Thy voice.” That is not what He says. What He says is—“Let Me see thy countenance.” That is what He wants “Come near to Me first.” Just as if you have a child, you do not always like him to talk to you outside the door, and speak to you from the passage. You would like him to come in, and be close to you before he begins to speak. That is what God says. “Let Me see thy countenance,” first; then, “Let Me hear thy voice.” We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. Why should we not come close to God? Christians are oftentimes not aware of the devices of the devil to keep them, as far as experience is concerned, at a distance from their Father. Oh! come close to God. Be sure of this, that God wants us, whenever we talk to Him, to come very close to Him before we begin, not to gradually work ourselves up into a frame, into a glow, and then think—“Now God will hear me;” but to see that God has put us nigh to Him, has put us in His presence, has made us accepted in the Beloved, has made us one with Christ; to see that before we open our mouths, it is His great delight to bless us; and then, when our hearts are assured before Him, to tell Him whatever Ave want.

Now we come to His commandments. Do not be afraid. I think, if you will just study the passage a little, you will see that there is some very blessed gospel in these commandments. We shall see, I think, if we look at these commandments, how appropriately they occur here. That is what I want to show you, that this reference to God’s new commandments occurs very appropriately here. I want you to see, in the first place, that the commandments here are exactly the antipodes of the ten commandments. Now I have spoken strongly, and if I can prove it, you will he satisfied. What are the ten commandments? If you sum them up into two, they are these—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.” These are the ten commandments epitomised into two. Christ says so. Now, it is singular that there are here two commandments, and if you will but ponder them you will see that they are exactly the reverse of Moses’ commandments; for now, what is the first commandment? The first commandment is, “That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ;” in other words, believe that God so loved the world, that He sent His Son. Now look at the contrast. The old commandment was, “Love Me.” The new commandment is, “Believe in My love to you.” Is not that a difference? Surely this is a very different command; surely it is the very opposite. The old commandment was, “Give to me your love;” the new commandment is, “Take My love into your heart.” Surely that is a very different thing; surely it is the very antipodes. Look now at the other. The old commandment was to love our neighbour; the new commandment is to love one another. That is, the people then were viewed as a nation—Israel, and therefore each one of the nation was viewed as in God’s family; now they are viewed as an election, and it is not everyone of any nation; but it is some out of every nation; and so it is not now to love the neighbour; but it is to love the brethren, to love one another. Do you not see again, that there is here a remarkable contrast between the Old Testament command and the New? If you have followed me in this rapid exposition of these two commands, you will see that they are exactly the opposite of Moses; and I think the more they are studied, the more the fact of their being the opposite of Moses’ commands comes out. I do not know whether it is designed, or undesigned, that the word “commandment” occurs four times, as if in allusion to the first table of the law, which, as we know, consisted of four commands. God begins here with “See My love to you,” and He never in the New Testament—I am going to say something which may startle you—He never in our epistle says, “Love Me.” He does say so in the Old; but He does not now here; because, I suppose it is, that we are sure to love Him if we are born of God. “We love Him because He first loved us.” We cannot help ourselves there; but the divine life of Christ in a believer is often so feebly developed, that you will sometimes find it most difficult to love the Christ in some poor believer, where there is a deal of flesh manifest in him, so that God gives the command to love the Christ that is in a believer; still there is no command to love the Christ of God, or to love God, here. The New Testament command is not, “Love Me; “but “Believe in My love to you,” and that one command is called a commandment four times.

Well then, another point here is, that those commands of Moses occur at the very beginning, as it were, of the Old Testament. As soon as ever God brought His people out of Egypt He gave them these ten commandments; whereas these commandments now stand right at the end of the New Testament— right at the very end, in the picture of the family of God in the world in this epistle of John. And, now, I want you to see how appropriately they occur here. You observe that the line of thought in this chapter is the working of the divine life in God’s people. They are the children of light, and so do righteousness; they are born of God, and so love one another; and then there is one more feature which I have to speak upon in a minute,—they have the same Holy Ghost as Christ has. As the Holy Ghost rests on Christ, and in Christ; so the Holy Ghost rests in us, and therefore, with such an utterly new state of things the old commands of Moses would not avail, and thus there are new commands. They occur so very beautifully in this place—“Believe in My love to you, and love one another.” That He says to us all. Supposing that you or I do believe in God’s love to us; then God still says, “Continue to believe in My love to you.” It is not a command merely for others, and not for you. If you do believe in God’s love, you must believe in it more, take it more into your heart, take it more into the very depths of your spirit; and if you were to take it in, as God wants you to take it in, I believe you would never sin once, because you would be so occupied with the love of God. If we sin, it is because we believe that the sin in which we indulge will gratify us more than the love of God, and that is because we are not taking the love of God into our hearts at that moment. God is saying to us, and He is saying to any unconverted man here, “Believe in My love; I have put My Son upon the cross to show that love; could I do more?” If any unconverted man is here, that is what God is saying—“I have put My Son upon the cross; believe in My love; see how very much I love you.” I shall show you that that thought is worked out more in the fourth chapter; I shall show you there the working out of the love of God, and the believer being perfected in that love; but even here you see the preparation for it, that we are commanded to believe in the love which God has to us.

I just draw one lesson from the exposition of these commands in the New Testament. I do not suppose that anybody can but see that the drift of these two commands shows that we are not under law, but under grace; that we are not under Moses, but in Christ.

Oh! it does seem to me to be such a mistake, for people to rehearse the commandments given by Moses, and even to persist in making that a part of God’s worship, to be putting themselves under Moses; when God, by giving us this marked, this perfect contrast between His commands now and His commands before Christ came, shows us, as I say, that we are not under law, but under grace.

And then do, beloved friends, observe how beautifully this allusion to these two commands occurs just here. “We have got the divine life, showing itself in righteousness and in love; we are looking up to God with confidence, waiting for Christ without terror; we are speaking to God, and knowing that He hears us, and then God says, “Here are my commands; I shall not tell you not to go and do this, that, and the other; if you have got the divine life, you will not want to do them; what I tell you now is to go and love one another, and to live in the enjoyment of My love to you.”

Now, who could suppose that the ten commandments were, as some will have it, “the perfect expression of the mind of God,” as they are called; when, if you come to look at them, they are ten “nots;” that is what I often call these ten commands—“ten nots.” “Thou shalt not have any other gods but Me.” “Thou shalt not worship any graven image.” “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” “Thou shalt not steal,” and so on. They are “ten nots,” negatives, negatives, negatives. Surely, surely, that cannot be the expression of the mind of God. They are all very well as far as they go; I am not speaking against them; but they are only “ten nots.” Twenty “nots “would be better still. Ten candles are very good; but twenty candles are better still. But who needs ten candles, or twenty candles, when we have the light of the sun? We are not Ritualists; we do not need ten candles, when we have the light of the sun. Beloved friends, we are not under law. There is a negative for you; if you will have negatives, have that. We are not under the law, but under grace.

And now observe the last of these workings of the divine life. “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 He hath given us.” We have the Holy Ghost. Oh! if I have the Holy Ghost, do I need to be limited to ten “nots?” If I have the Holy Ghost, I shall live like as Christ lived, in so far as I am led of the Spirit. This is the meaning of those next verses in the next chapter. It is the mention of the Holy Ghost that leads the apostle to say, “Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God; and this is that spirit of Antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.” The idea is this:—A man may say, “Oh! but how may I be sure that I have the Holy Ghost?” and God, whilst He answers the question, gives a caution. God says, “Bear in mind there are two spirits in the world.” We must not forget that. It is being impressed upon believers, thank God, just now, that the Holy Ghost is in the church, that the Holy Ghost is in the believer; but this passage shows us that there is also another spirit in the world, besides the Holy Ghost, and that the two spirits go counter to one another. There is the spirit of Antichrist, as well as the Spirit of Christ. How may I know, when I am led to do a certain thing, whether I am being led by the Spirit of Christ, or by the spirit of Antichrist? Why, look and see how Christ was led. We all know that Christ was led of the Holy Ghost. If the spirit that is in us leads us to live and to act utterly dissimilarly to the way in which Christ lived and acted, you may be sure that that is not the leading of the Holy Ghost. I do not need to dwell upon it, because it is much the same teaching that we were considering before with regard to Antichrist. I only just say that the spirit of Antichrist is that which leads a man not to be contented with the favour of God’s smile, not to delight in God, and wait patiently for God’s time for glory; but seeks for glory here, seeks for the praise of men, seeks to attract the eye of men, seeks for glory and honour from men in this world. Christ did not do this. “He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets.” There are thus two spirits. The spirit of the world leads men to seek more and more the glare of day, the éclat of life; that is the spirit of Antichrist. But if you are led of the Holy Spirit, you will not care how lowly you are; you will not find much jostling down in the low place; there are very few that struggle to be little; there are many that struggle to be great. If you are led of the Spirit, you will be led to tread the path that Christ trod, and that is the mark which God gives as to the leading of the Holy Ghost. “And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us.” And then He shows us how the Holy Ghost works by showing us how the Holy Ghost worked in Christ. You see the path which the Holy Ghost led Christ to take, and if the Holy Ghost is in you He will lead you to take, in your measure, the same path, and to follow in Christ’s steps. “If any man serve Me, let Him follow Me.” That is the meaning of that expression which says that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” That the blessed Lord Jesus was here in this world, despised and rejected as He was. Oh! it is a wonderful thing that the blessed Lord Jesus hung upon a cross. “Who wants this world, its glories, its applause, when Christ found nothing here? Who wants it? We do not want it, if we are Christians. We are contented to be strangers and pilgrims here, and to wait for our time of manifestation when the Lord Jesus comes. That is the idea, that in the confession that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, there is the Spirit of Christ. So, as you see that He who trod the lowly path, and went on taking the lower place, was Christ, and that that was the working of the Holy Ghost in Christ, and as you confess that, you will follow Christ, and then you are being surely led of the Holy Ghost in your day, like as Christ was led of the Holy Ghost in His day.

Now, this is what a great many Christians will not see; but, beloved friends, I want to be faithful to you. A great many Christians shut their eyes to the path in which the Holy Ghost calls them to walk, to seek to be little, to seek for nothing save the favour, and smile, and love of God, to be contented with God, and to wait for the time of glory when Christ comes. That is the meaning of those words, “They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us: he that is not of God heareth not us.” The meaning of that expression is this:—” We, who are the apostles of God, testify how Christ lived; we testify what was Christ’s path; we testify that the path of Christ was the path of self-abasement; the world will not hear us.” I have sometimes heard these words commented on, thus:—“No one is inspired now, and therefore no one may speak so authoritatively as John did.” That is true enough; but that hardly touches the sentiment of the passage; it has a deal more in it than that. The meaning is, that the inspired apostles of the Lord and Saviour testify that the path of the Lord Jesus was a path, from up to down, a path of self-abasement, a path of taking the lower place, looking for God to exalt Him in His time. “They that are of the world will not hear us; they that are of God will hear us.” That is the meaning of the passage.