Lecture XVI

THE GUILELESS SPIRIT ABIDING THROUGH THE WORD IN THE SON AND IN THE FATHER, SO AS TO RECEIVE THE PROMISE OF ETERNAL LIFE

THIS practical appeal, concluding the previous argument, has a singularly close resemblance to the opening statement of the epistle. The same remarkable phraseology prevails. There is a “hearing from the beginning,” and a “declaration” or promise connected with it. “That which was from the beginning,” “that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you;” so the apostle speaks of the apostolic position and commission (1:1–3). “That which ye have heard from the beginning”—“the promise which he hath promised;”—so he speaks here of the standing of those to whom he writes. And as, in the former passage, it is the Word of life that is seen and heard and handled; it is “the life,” “the eternal life,” that is “manifested” and “declared;” so here, “this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.” The appeal runs exactly thus: “You, therefore, what ye have heard from the beginning, let it abide in you.” For you must now perceive that “if what ye have heard from the beginning shall abide in you,” then, and only then, shall ye “abide in the Son and in the Father.” And this is the secret of your having fellowship with us in what is common to both of us: “the promise of eternal life” (ver. 25).

I. “Let that therefore which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you.” The phrase “from the beginning” must here refer to the first preaching of the gospel. It cannot be understood in the same absolute sense in which it is used in the opening of the epistle. And yet John, I am persuaded, has that great thought in his mind. His object is to identify your position with that of himself and his fellow-apostles. You are to “have fellowship with us” (1:3). We would have you to be upon the same footing with us; in the same boat, as it were; the boat tossed on the Galilean sea, to whose troubled crew no phantom ghost but the living Jesus appears and says—“It is I; be not afraid.” It was given to us to see, to hear, to touch and handle, “that which was from the beginning”—“of the Word of life.” And this is that which we have declared unto you, and which “ye have heard from the beginning.” Let it abide in you.

For this end, that it may abide in you, let “that which ye have heard from the beginning” be not only known but felt; not only known as a matter of fact or doctrine, but felt as a matter of experience. Let it so lay hold of you, that it shall be the nature of God becoming in a sense part and parcel of your nature; the great heart of the Father entering in a measure into union with your heart.

The nature of God is light; the heart of the Father is love. Light, pure and unsullied, is the essence of God, and his dwelling-place. He is light and he dwells in light. It is light which no darkness can invade. It is light, moreover, in which nothing but love can be at home. It is light before which,—the true light shining,—the darkness of the world, and all that is in it, must be passing away, and only he that doeth the will of God can abide for ever. It is in Christ that this true light now shines. Without him you cannot come to the light, or dwell in the light, or walk in the light; without his blood which cleanseth from all sin, without himself as your advocate with the Father, the righteous one, the propitiation for your sins.

This is what “you have heard from the beginning;” and have believed; and have found experimentally to be true. Let it so “abide in you;” let it be “Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith” (Eph. 3:17).

For otherwise you cannot face the light; you cannot meet with clear and open eye the light of that clear and open eye of God; you quail beneath its truth and love. If at any moment you in any measure lose Christ, you so far lose both truth and love, the truth and love which alone can bear the light. You fall into darkness again, and come under its power, the power of its untrue and unloving ways. The old dark doubts and fears of guilt beset you: the old dark refuges of lies tempt you; the old dark devices of self-justification return upon you; the old dark habit of tampering with the world’s lusts, and listening to the world’s palliations of them, seduces you; and the old dark disquietudes of a peevish and angry discontent with yourselves, with your God, and with your fellow-men, begin again to rankle in your bosom. Instead of the light of truth, there is dark guile in your spirits. Instead of the light of love, there is dark suspicion and enmity and alienation.

Ah! if you would have all to be always clear and bright in the spiritual atmosphere around you; all open between your God and you; open truth and open love; “let that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you.” Let all of Christ you have ever known, seen, heard, handled, tasted, “abide in you.” Let all you have learned of Christ,—as being with the Father, from everlasting, in his bosom,—as coming forth from the Father to reveal and reconcile,—as purging your sin with blood, and bringing you to be all to the Father that he is himself to the Father,—let it all “abide in you;” always, everywhere.

II. So “ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father.”

First, “Ye shall abide in the Son.” What the Lord elsewhere enjoins as in itself a duty, “Abide in me” (John 15:4), the apostle describes as the consequence of another duty being rightly discharged. He points out the condition or the means of our abiding in the Son; as indeed Jesus also may be held to do when he says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will” (John 15:7). The meaning clearly is:—“Ye abide in me through my words abiding in you;”—the Lord’s expression, “my words,” being equivalent to the apostle’s, “that which ye have heard” of the word of life “from the beginning.”

Thus it is by faith that we “abide in the Son;” for it is by faith that what we have heard of him from the beginning abides in us. The manner, therefore, of our abiding in the Son is neither sacramental on the one hand, nor mystical on the other;—neither physically ritual, nor metaphysically transcendental.

We do not “abide in the Son” by any sacramental act on our part, or any sacramental grace or virtue on his. The Lord’s Supper may be a help to our abiding in the Son; but only indirectly, through its being a help to our having “that which we have heard of him from the beginning abiding in us.” It is the expressive sign and sure seal of it, and therefore may contribute to its abiding in us, and so to our abiding in the Son. But that is all. There is no charm or efficacy in the rite itself to secure our abiding in the Son. The relation described by our abiding in the Son is not of such a sort as can be kept up by any act or process apart from intelligence, consciousness, and volition.

And therefore this abiding in the Son cannot be mystical or transcendental, any more than it can be ritual or sacramental. It cannot be such as the visionaries of John’s day imagined in their splendid dreams; in which abiding in the Christ, or in the Son, considered as an emanation or efflux of Deity, was a kind of absorption; a height of self-identification with some portion or manifestation of the Divine essence, or self-annihilation in it, to be reached by a long course of abstract musing on the first principles of things, or deep but vague contemplation of the eternal, infinite Being.

John’s idea of abiding in the Son is much humbler and more practical. We abide in the Son, as we may be said to abide in any one when his words abide in us,—or when that which we have heard of him, or from him, from the beginning, abides in us; when we understand and know him, by what he says and what we hear; when what we thus understand and know of him takes hold of us, carries our conviction, commands our confidence and love, fastens and rivets itself in our mind and heart, and so abides in us. Thus we abide in the Son precisely as we abide in a friend whom we know, and trust, and love.

Doubtless the Son in whom we abide transcends infinitely any such friend. In him are excellencies which are to be found in no other. In himself personally, and in his relation as the Son to the Father, there are riches of wisdom, knowledge, goodness, grace, and glory, which our “abiding in him” through eternity will not enable us thoroughly to search or ransack. Not when myriads of blessed ages in yonder realms of light have rolled over our heads will one tithe of all the wonders of him whose “name is Wonderful” have been discovered; no, not though our abiding in him there will be without a break and without a cloud. And what shall I say of the raptures of that personal intercourse and interchange of thought, feeling, and affection, in which our abiding in the Son then must mainly consist? Can any limit be set to the ravishing joy of our walking with him and his walking with us in Paradise,—when we go in and out together,—we seeing him without a vail,—and he, as he talks with us without reserve, causing our hearts to burn within us? And what comparison can there be, even now, between our abiding in him and our abiding in any other, even the best of friends?

Still it is important to remember, that we do abide in the Son very much as we abide in any other friend; it is important now, as well as in the apostle’s time. For there is a fancy abroad of a sort of abiding in the Son that may be to a large extent independent of his words, or words about him, abiding in us. There is a tendency to put a sort of sentimental pietism, itself undefined and hating definition, gazing with rapt and fascinated eye on a soul-melting “Agnus Dei” or “Ecce Homo,” seen in dim religious light, in the place of intelligent faith, or the engagement of mind and heart in personal converse with one who speaks and would be spoken to; of whom and from whom and about whom we hear and read, in the teaching of his own apostles, in the Scriptures of his own Spirit’s inspiration. These are practically set aside; or, at least, any attempt to make their statements yield precise information concerning Christ and his work is disparaged. A Son of God and Son of man, rising out of some deep soundings of divinity and humanity, is substituted for the Son of whom apostles spoke and disciples heard from the beginning. And abiding in him is not a plain, practical, personal dealing with him about that for which he came into the world, and has been manifested to us, to us as individuals one by one; but an attempt somehow to grasp the notion of abstract divinity and universal humanity being in him mysteriously at one. Let no such speculations beguile us. Rather “let that which we have heard from the beginning abide in us;” and let us thereby “abide in the Son;” using as the means of our abiding in him the Scriptures which we search, and which testify of him. Let us thus turn all that we learn into the materials of that personal communing of him with us and us with him, which is indeed the essence of our abiding in the Son.

All the rather let us do so because, secondly, this abiding in the Son is abiding in the Father; for the Father and the Son are one. Abiding in the Son, we enter into his relation to the Father, into the whole of it and into all its fruits. We enter into all that the Son is to the Father, as his chosen servant, as the man of his right hand, as his anointed, as his lamb, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, as his fellow, against whom his sword of justice awakes, as his smitten shepherd, as his victorious king set on his holy hill of Zion, as his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased, declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead. Into all that the Son is to the Father, in these and other similar views of his mediatorial character and ministry as the Son, we enter, when we abide in the Son. And so we come to be to the Father all that the Son is to the Father. We abide in the Father as the Son abides in the Father. So we abide in the Son and in the Father.

And still all this depends on our letting “that which we have heard from the beginning abide in us.” It depends on that faith which cometh by hearing, as hearing cometh by the word of God. In vain we look for any other mode of indwelling in God than that which is through the Spirit giving us a sympathising insight into what we have heard and may always hear in the gospel,—into what we have read and may always read in the Scriptures,—of the great transaction between the Father and the Son on which depend the expiation of our guilt, the forgiveness of our sin, the ending of our long estrangement, and the ratifying of our reconciliation and peace. By study, meditation and prayer, let us get more and more,—the Spirit helping us in our musings,—into the very heart of all “that we have heard from the beginning,” from the Father, of the Son; from the Son, of the Father. So we abide, more and more intelligently, more and more consciously, more and more believingly, lovingly, rejoicingly, “in the Son and in the Father.”

III. Of all this “the fruit is unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” For “this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.”

The meaning here may be that “the promise of eternal life” is superadded to the privilege or condition of our “abiding in the Son and in the Father,” that it is something over and above that, held out to us in prospect; or it may be that our “abiding in the Son and in the Father” is itself the very “life eternal” that is promised. The difference is not material; the two thoughts, or rather the two modifications of the same thought, run into one. “The promise that he hath promised us is eternal life.” And “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

Hence we need inquire no farther at present into the nature of eternal life; nor need we conceive of it as an unknown boon held out in dim and distant prospect before us. We have only to work out what is implied in our “knowing the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.” We have only to prove and realise more and more, in our experience, what it is to “abide in the Son and in the Father.” And that is the promise already fulfilled. That is “eternal life.” It is in a real and valid sense, the very life of God himself made ours.

For the life of God alone can be truly said to be life at all; it alone can be “life eternal.” All other life is but death; either death possibly impending, or death actually inflicted. At the very best, the life of an intelligent and responsible creature is, as it was in unfallen Adam, precarious; and if not doomed, at least liable, to death. In fallen Adam and his race, it is simply death; “the wages of sin is death,” “in the day thou eatest thou diest.” “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord;” “God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” For the Son liveth. It is “given to the Son to have life in himself, even as the Father hath life in himself.” This is a gift even to the Son, in our nature and in our stead. It is given to him, as one with us, our kinsman-redeemer; for he says, “Because I live ye shall live also.” Let us enter then into the life which the Son has by the gift of the Father; his past life of obedience to the Father and acceptance with the Father, on earth, his present life of fellowship with the Father in heaven. Let us apprehend that life as a reality. Let us apprehend the essence of it, which is really intercourse, blessed intercourse, between the Father and the Son; converse, communion conversation.

We have materials for this in “that which we have heard from the beginning,” if we let it “abide in us.” We have the Father speaking of and to the Son, and the Son speaking of and to the Father. That is the life of the Father and the Son; that is “life eternal.” And it is that which he has promised to us, even that very “life eternal;” the Father so speaking of and to us as he speaks of and to the Son; and we speaking of and to the Father as the Son speaks of and to the Father. It is that very life that is promised to us when we, “letting that which we have heard from the beginning abide in us, ourselves abide in the Father and the Son.”²

Hence the Lord says (John 15:7): “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.” To ask; to be ever asking, and asking freely, confidently, boldly; is one way in which “eternal life,” or “abiding in the Son,” acts itself out. The very breath of that life is prayer. Hence also the Lord says (ver. 5): “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit;” for he partakes of my life; and my life is fruitful, abundantly, richly fruitful. The life which I have with God my Father is fruitful in all good works, to the praise of his glory. And if that very life is yours, through your abiding in me and in my Father; if your life is hid with me in God; then it must now be fruitful in you, as it was in me when I was as you now are; fruitful in all the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”