Lecture XV

THE GUILELESS SPIRIT, AMID ANTICHRISTIAN DENIAL OF THE SON, ACKNOWLEDGING THE SON SO AS TO HAVE THE FATHER ALSO

THE last part of the 23d verse, although considered doubtful by our translators, and therefore put by them in italics and within brackets, is now admitted to be genuine. It completes the sense of the passage. To deny the Son is not to have the Father; to acknowledge the Son is to have the Father. And this is the ultimate difference between an antichrist and a joint-christ; between those who are against the Anointed One, and you who share his anointing; “having unction from the Holy One and knowing all things.” By that unction or anointing, which passes to you from the anointed Holy One, you know all things; all the truth; the truth in all its bearings; and therefore you can discriminate between the truth and every lie. If it were not so, it would be needless for me to write to you (ver. 21). I cannot expect you to detect a liar unless you know the truth yourselves. For the test by which you detect a liar, or the liar, is the truth which you know. He contradicts the truth; he denies that Jesus is the Christ; and that denial is enough to mark the liar. It marks him also as an antichrist, or, in spirit, the antichrist. For it amounts to what is the criterion or characteristic of antichrist, a denial of the Father and the Son (ver. 22). The denial, indeed, so far at least as the Father is concerned, is not express and avowed, but virtual rather and by implication. The lie touches immediately the Son alone; and reaches the Father only through the Son. It is not, however, on that account, less really a denial of the Father as well as of the Son. For the Father and the Son are one; and therefore, he that “denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father,” while “he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.”

Two questions naturally occur here. I. How is a denial that Jesus is the Christ equivalent to a denial of the Son? And II. How is a denial of the Son a denial of the Father, so that to deny the Son is not to have the Father; and how, on the other hand, does the acknowledgment of the Son secure our having the Father?

I. Plainly, in John’s view, to deny that Jesus is the Christ is to deny the Son; the two denials are declared to be one and the same. And yet there is a difference. The object of the one denial is a proposition; the object of the other is a person. Nor is the difference accidental or unimportant; on the contrary, it is very significant.

One thing, at least, is very clear. If the denial of a proposition concerning any person is to be viewed as identical with the denial of the person himself, the proposition must be one that vitally affects his nature and character. Take any illustrious personage who may be supposed to occupy my thoughts; the heir-apparent to the throne, for instance. If I choose to deny that he is what you believe, or even know him to be, as to his height, or complexion, or turn of mind, or habit of body, you may charge me with falsehood, or even say that I lie. But you would scarcely allege that in denying any affirmation of that sort about him, I deny the prince. It must be something far more deeply touching his birth, or his birthright, or his worthiness of either, that I deny, before you can construe my denial of it, into a disloyal and traitorous denial of himself. So here, if to deny the proposition that “Jesus is the Christ” is to deny the Son; the proposition itself must mean more than at first appears.

1. It cannot mean simply that he is the person foretold in the Old Testament under the name of the Messiah; there is more in it than a mere identification of the individual. The official designation, Christ, or Messiah, or Anointed, marks not only a certain relation to the Jewish Scriptures, but also and still more a certain relation to God, whose Christ he is.

In the dreamy and misty theosophy of the Gnostic antichrists, any Christ whom they would acknowledge at all could be nothing else than a sort of efflux or emanation of Deity, a detached portion of the divine nature, or a mysterious outgoing of the divine power, or wisdom, or love; altogether visionary and unsubstantial; but withal very sublime. The idea of such a transcendental Christ being identical with the historical man, the man of “flesh and bones,” Jesus, was an outrage on their philosophy. They might admit an occasional and temporary illapse. Now and then, or perhaps generally, all through his life and ministry, Jesus might be in a certain spiritual relation to this Christ. There might be upon him, and in him, moving and inspiring him, what of God they thought proper to call the Christ. But that he was truly and personally himself the Christ,—in his manhood and in his manhood’s history and experience,—especially in his birth and in his death, their subtle notions of spirit and matter compelled them strenuously to deny. This denial necessarily reduced Jesus to the level of a mere man; a representative man perhaps, the ground and type and head of restored or perfected humanity; a divine man too, in some vague use of the phrase; but still really not more than a man; his birth no real incarnation; his death no real propitiation. It is this which stamps value on the confession that “Jesus is the Christ;” that from his being born of the Virgin to his expiring on Calvary, he is the Christ. And it is this which makes the denial of the proposition so serious. It is the denial of his vicarious character and position; his being in any fair sense, or to any substantial effect, the substitute of men; of men viewed as guilty, condemned, and lost.

I have said that he might be owned, after a fashion, as a representative man, or the representative man. Humanity in its best state, whether of development or of recovery,—perfect humanity, if you will,—might have its culminating grace and glory in him. And as the model man, or something more, as the man in whom human nature and the human race, as such, are elevated, he might be so visited by the overshadowing of a divine energy as to be in some sense partaker of the divine nature. But as to what he is himself personally, he differs in no material or essential respect from other men. Born like them, like them he dies. Not only has he all in common with them; but he has nothing in him or about him but what is in common. He is not “separate from sinners.”¹ For there the stress of this great controversy lies, in our own day, as well as in that of John.

Jesus must be acknowledged as not only one with us, but “separate from us.” Not otherwise can he save us by being our substitute; redeem us by being our ransom! reconcile us to God by the sacrifice of himself in our stead. He must be “separate from us” in his birth; exempt, by special miracle, from all participation in the sin of humanity, whose guilt he is to expiate. He must be “separate from us” in his death; his death being what no other death ever was, or ever can be, a real satisfaction to offended justice; a valid atonement for the offence; an actual enduring and exhausting of what the penal severity of law requires; a true and literal “suffering, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.”

The denial of the proposition that “Jesus is the Christ,” according to the notions then current, precluded all such views of the way in which he saves sinners. Under a different form, a similar mysticism precludes them now.

There has always indeed been a school in the church tending in that direction; willing to exalt Jesus as high as any one would wish, in one aspect of his mediatorship, his being one with us, and so qualified to represent us; but ever stopping short of that other aspect of it, his being “separate from us,” and so qualified to atone for us. Of Jesus personally much appears to be made. Not too much certainly; for that is impossible. Jesus, personally, the real, living Jesus, cannot be too much thought of. His very name is as ointment poured forth. He is the chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely. The church, the spouse,—every soul that as a chaste virgin is espoused to Jesus,—is ravished with the beauty of his person and the endearments of his fellowship. But it is a snare to forget, it is a sin to deny, that he is the Christ; or, in other words, to overlook or set aside that real and actual work of substitution and satisfaction, of vicarious suffering and obedience, in respect of which he is the Christ. Ah! will not every true lover of Jesus feel that, apart from his being thus the Christ, he has in fact no Jesus at all to love? “Dear, dying Lamb!” is his adoring and grateful invocation; “Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us,” is his song; “Thou hast redeemed us with thy blood,” is his worship. He, therefore, is at no loss to see how the denial of the proposition that “Jesus is the Christ,” thus viewed in its bearing on his work, is substantially and most sadly a denial of the person.

2. This will appear still more clearly when we consider that the person is the Son. As the Son he stands in a distinct and definite relation to the Father. He must be owned in that relation if he is to be owned at all; otherwise he is to all intents and purposes denied.

The Gnostic dreamers fancied that they could get a notion of a Son of God from a mere contemplation of the divine nature in the abstract. By a sort of effort of imagination they personified a divine attribute or emanation, calling it the Son; sometimes distinguishing that idea from the idea of the Christ, sometimes identifying them. Nor did they hesitate to allow the title Son of God to Jesus, considered as the representative man, or type of perfect humanity, who, as such, enjoyed the presence of somewhat of the Divinity with him and in him. Between these two conceptions of a Son of God they may be said to have oscillated; the one high, but indistinct; the other, more distinct perhaps, and intelligible, but comparatively low. They are the two conceptions, on this great theme of the Sonship, between which, as opposite extremes, I am apt to be tossed to and fro.

I fix my thoughts on the everlasting God considered abstractly as he is in himself. I try to body forth in my imagination the idea of there being in the essence of the Divine nature, from all eternity, a Son of the Father; “God of God; light of light; very God of very God; begotten, not made; of one substance with the Father;” his only begotten. Abstracting my mind from earth and time, I gaze on the Eternal Three in One; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I would pierce the mystery of high heaven; how “the Son is of the Father;” and “the Holy Ghost is of the Father and the Son.” Alas! it is impenetrable. The distinction of persons in the Godhead I may believe, though I cannot comprehend. The second person I may be taught to call the Word, or the Son. But the name tells me nothing. I am lost in the dark sublimity of the infinite unknown. Coming down from heaven to earth and time, I see Jesus, “a man approved of God, who went about doing good;” and I can understand why, as a good and holy man, the perfect model of human goodness, the restorer and perfecter of all humanity’s excellence, after the divine ideal,—he should be specially and above all others honoured with the title of Son of God. Such a view of sonship, however, scarcely rises above what is matter of mere figure or sentiment. Thus, on the one hand, considering the nature of God apart, in the deep, dark wonder of the eternal generation, the Son being eternally begotten of the Father; or, on the other hand, considering the nature of man apart, in the clear light of the history of Jesus, and his being found pre-eminently and exclusively worthy to be called God’s Son; I am either soaring up to what is too high for me, or I am apt to acquiesce in what is too low for him.

But let me fully realise the fact that Jesus is the Christ. And let me fully enter into the great transaction between the Father and the Son, of which that fact is the expression. Then a new and blessed sight of this divine sonship breaks upon my soul. For now, as I am carried back, in rapt musing, to the remotest point of possible retrospection, along the vista of the ages of a past eternity, before all worlds, the Father and the Son are seen, not in repose, but in counsel at least, if not in action. A momentous consultation is going on. A great covenant is negotiated. The Father and the Son, with the Spirit, are, if one may dare to say so, in solemn conference together. From the bosom of the Father, in which he is dwelling evermore, the Son receives a commission to come forth. He is appointed heir of all things. Creation is assigned to him as his proper work. All providence is to be his care; and above all the providence of this spot of earth. Here, on this earth, from among a fallen race, he is to purchase for himself, and for his Father, at a great price, a seed given him by the Father, to share with him in the blessedness of his being the Son. So it is arranged between the Father and the Son from everlasting; the Holy Spirit being a party to the arrangement, as he is to have a large share in carrying it out. And so, accordingly, in the fulness of time, the Son appears among men. He appears as the Son; on his Father’s behalf; entrusted with his Father’s commission; to be about his Father’s business. Thus Jesus is seen as the Son. And it is in the character of the Christ that he is seen to be the Son. He is the Son, not merely in respect of his being the holy Jesus, receiving proofs and tokens of God’s fatherly presence and approval, as any holy being might. He is the Son also, and chiefly, in respect of the work or office with a view to which he is the Christ. He is the Son consenting to be the Father’s servant, and as such anointed of the Father for the accomplishment of the Father’s purpose. Only, therefore, in so far as you acknowledge Jesus as the Christ do you really receive him as the Son. Any denial, whether practical or doctrinal, of the proposition that Jesus is the Christ, is tantamount to a disowning of him personally as the Son. It is only when you recognise him as anointed to do his Father’s will in the sacrifice of himself that you really own him, in any distinct sense, as the Son.

Such, then, is the import and significancy of the proposition that Jesus is the Christ, considered in itself; and such its bearing on the owning of him personally as the Saviour and as the Son. It is a proposition which so vitally affects the essential character of him to whom it relates, that the denial of it is virtually a denial of himself. For the completeness of this illustrious personage depends on a full and adequate recognition of his double relation; to us sinners, as our Jesus, and to God the Father, as his Son. And neither of these relations can be fully and adequately recognised, unless his being the Christ is recognised, with all that his being the Christ must be held fairly to imply. Neither what he is to us as our Jesus, nor what he is to God as his Son, can be otherwise known than by what he is anointed to do, and actually does, as the Christ. Set aside his being the Christ; the anointed sacrificer and anointed sacrifice; the anointed priest and anointed victim; set aside his actual work for which he is anointed, the work of redeeming us by his obedience, and the shedding of his blood, or the giving of his life, in our stead; and we have neither any Jesus fit to be our saviour, nor any Son of God worth the owning. The stress must always, for practical purposes, be laid upon his office and ministry as the Christ.²

Hence he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ is not only a liar; he is antichrist. And being antichrist, setting himself against the Christ, thrusting him aside from his blessed office and ministry of real and effectual reconciliation for which he is anointed,—he, as antichrist, denies the Father and the Son.

II. This raises the second question: How is it that to deny the Son is to deny the Father, so that “whosoever denieth the Son the same hath not the Father; but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also?”

1. “Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not,” and cannot have, “the Father.” This may be regarded in one view as matter of positive appointment. In the exercise of his absolute sovereignty, God is entitled to say upon what terms and in what way any of his creatures shall have him;—have him, that is, as theirs; have him so as to have an interest in him, a hold upon him, and a bond of union with him. He may set forth any one he pleases, and say, If you deny him you cannot have me. In this case however he sets forth his Son, and therefore the appointment must be allowed to be in the highest degree reasonable and fair. One would say even, it is natural that this law should be in force;—You cannot have the Father otherwise than through your owning the Son. The disowning or denial of the Son cannot but be an offence to the Father; deeply wounding and grieving his heart. It will be so all the more if the Son is disowned or denied, not merely in a personal, but, if one may so say, in an official capacity; not merely in respect of something connected with his own manner of being with the Father, but in respect of his exercising a great ministry, as bearing the Father’s commission and executing the Father’s purpose.

If the Son remained at home with the Father, in the inscrutable privacy of inaccessible light, which to us is impenetrable darkness,—so that beyond the fact of the Father having a Son of his own nature, dwelling in his bosom for ever, nothing of what they are to one another was ever to be known,—then to deny, or not to acknowledge the Son, might not be so culpable in us, or so justly displeasing to the Father. In that case we might possibly have the Father irrespectively of our knowing and owning the Son. It is otherwise when the Father “bringeth in the first-begotten into the world,” with the proclamation, “Let all the angels of God worship him.” It is otherwise still when to you, perishing in your sins, the Father sends the Son on a mission of richest grace. Now it must be very palpable that if you deny the Son you cannot have the Father; especially if your denial of the Son take the form of a denial that Jesus is the Christ. For that is a denial of the Son in the very character in which he comes to you from the Father, sent, sealed, and anointed, to save you from your sins, by his being “separate from sinners;” separate in the manner of his holy birth, in the merit of his vicarious obedience, and in the efficacy of his atoning death and justifying resurrection.

Here it becomes especially important to observe that the object of your denial is not a proposition merely, but a person. It is not with a statement about Jesus that you deal; but with himself personally. And he with whom you deal is the Son. And he is the Son in the very act of coming, as he says, “to do the Father’s will;” which will is “your being sanctified or cleansed by the offering of himself, once for all, a sacrifice to take away your sins” (Heb. 10:10).

Yes! it is a living person who is now before you; showing himself to you; addressing you. You see him as he was when Pilate brought him out, his head all bleeding from the crown of thorns, and exclaimed, Behold the man! or when John saw his side pierced, and blood and water coming forth; or when the Roman soldier gazed on his meek pale face of agony, and murmured, “Truly this was the Son of God;” or when the dying thief prayed, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” The same now as then, he draws near to you; bleeding still; his freshly-pierced side still giving forth fresh blood and water; his face as woful as when he cried, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? his voice as calm as when he bowed his head and gave up the ghost, and said, It is finished. He draws near, “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.” And you deny him. He tells you he is the Son in all this, doing the Father’s will, carrying out the Father’s purpose of infinite compassion and benignity toward you a miserable sinner. And you deny him; you deny the Son. He stands still beside you, knocking at the door of your conscience, of your heart; assuring you that he is the Son; that at the Father’s bidding he takes your place, and bears your sin; that for the Father’s love to you he is with you to take you home with him to the Father; now; immediately; this very instant; as you are; altogether vile and polluted, and helpless in your guilty state. He pledges himself to you that you have nothing now to fear; that a full pardon is freely yours; and a perfect peace; and a new heart; and a right spirit. And you deny him; you deny the Son. How can you have the Father? Is it not in the very nature of things an impossibility? It is no abstract truth that you deny; but the true and living Son; and that too in the very execution of his commission from the Father on your behalf. It cannot be that so denying the Son you can have, or ever hope to have, the Father.

2. “But he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.” He hath the Father; how surely, how fully, may partly appear, if we consider, not only what Jesus is to us, as our anointed Saviour, but also what he is to the Father as his beloved Son.

For whatever is implied in his being the Son, in so far as it is compatible with human nature and a human condition,—whatever of grace, whatever of glory there is in the relation in which he who is the Christ stands as the Son to the Father,—he shares with you who acknowledge him. The Father makes you partakers of it all with the Son. You therefore have the Father as he has the Father; after the same manner, and largely after the same measure too.

How would you say that Jesus, as the Son, when he was as you are now, had the Father? All through his humiliation, how has he the Father? On what footing is he with the Father? What is his habit of intercourse with the Father? The Father’s love he has; his love of boundless complacency, approval, delight. He is sure of it. The assurance of it is never lost or interrupted; not even when he is made to taste the bitterness of the cup of wrath, and know the doom of a God-forsaken soul. He has the Father’s gracious presence with him always. He has the Father’s consolation and support, in the ministry of angels sent to comfort him, and in the constant abiding of the Spirit with him. He has the Father; having right of access and appeal to him always; and using that right always. “Abba Father” is on his lips always, and in his heart always. It is “Abba Father when there is work to do; when there is contradiction of sinners against himself to bear; when there is resisting unto death in the strife against sin; when the voice is heard, Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd; it is “Abba Father” still always. It is “Abba Father” when he for once rejoices in spirit,—“I thank thee, O Father.” It is “Abba Father” when he soothes the sisters and gives them back their brother,—“Father! I thank thee.” It is “Abba Father” when he takes leave of his sorrowing followers, and commends them to the Father. It is “Abba Father” when hanging on the cross he prays for his murderers,—“Father, forgive them,”—and for himself, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

So he, as the Son, had the Father, when he was as you are. So he would have you, acknowledging him, to have the Father also. You own him as Jesus, the Christ of God, the Son of the Father; the Christ of God, washing you in his blood, clothing you with his righteousness, and presenting you with acceptance to God whose Christ he is; the Son of the Father; your own elder brother; come out to seek you in the far country, and to bring you home to his Father and yours. Nor will he be satisfied unless you have the Father even as he has the Father. He shows you what it is to have the Father in the state in which you now are; amid the trials of earth, the enmity of the world, the very pains of hell. He shows you how even here you can have the Father as, in a work and warfare infinitely harder than yours, he had the Father; how you, in all your toil and tribulation, can rest in the consciousness of the Father’s favour; and rejoice in the doing of the Father’s will; and resign yourself contentedly to the Father’s disposal; and quietly wait the Father’s pleasure to call you hence when the time comes.

And what shall I say of your having the Father then?—not as the Son on earth had, but as the Son in heaven now has, the Father? Even now he says, “If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” So you have the Father now. But more, far more, is yours. “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” He comes to receive you to himself; to take you to be with him where he is, that you may have the Father as he has the Father.

O glorious day! O blessed consummation! Is this indeed the end of your not denying but acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ, and so not denying but acknowledging the Son?

Low he stoops,—how low none but a holy God and lost souls can tell, —as Jesus who is the Christ. Down into the depths of sin’s guilt and doom he goes. Over the head of the anointed righteous One, the obedient servant, the billows of wrath roll. And you deny him not, but acknowledge him, as thus redeeming you. You confess that “Jesus is the Christ.” You are not ashamed of his cross. It is your glory. And well it may be. For what fruit is yours through your not denying, but acknowledging, the Son, in his coming forth from the Father as his Christ to such humiliation for you? Is it that you escape punishment merely, and are saved from hell? That would be no mean boon. But what privilege is yours now,—what hope hereafter? It is the Son whom you acknowledge. He has the Father. He has the Father’s kingdom; the Father’s riches; the Father’s joys. He has the Father’s heart. He has the Father himself. And nothing will content him but that you, who acknowledge him, shall have the Father as he has the Father. Surely of the future, as well as of the present fruit of your acknowledging the Son, it may be said: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” And surely, beyond question, the whole plan and system of saving mercy is surpassingly gracious and glorious,—according to which, “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”