Lecture XVIII

GROUND OR REASON OF THIS CONDITION IN THE RIGHTEOUS NATURE OF GOD—THE NEW BIRTH UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE apostle passes to a new thought or theme; a new view of the fellowship in which he would have us to be partakers with himself and all the apostles. It is “fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” He has viewed it as a fellowship of light. He now views it as a fellowship of righteousness. “God is light,”—that is the key-note to the former view. “God is righteous,”—that is the keynote to the present view. It is introductory to the third,—“God is love.”

For it is an indispensable condition of this fellowship with God that we realise in ourselves, and in our doings, what is in accordance with his nature. If therefore it is his nature to be righteous, it must be our nature to do righteousness. But that to us is a new nature. It implies that we are born of him to whose nature ours is to be conformed; that we are “born of God.”¹

“Born of God!” The idea seems to strike John’s mind with fresh astonishment. Familiar as it is, he sees in it, as it here occurs to him, new cause of wonder; “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!” For this rapturous exclamation in the beginning of the third chapter is based on the principle of sonship brought out in the last verse of the second; “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.”

The starting-point in this new line of argument is the statement that “God is righteous.” It is analogous to that given before, that “God is light.” And as there, so here, the inference is obvious. Only the doer of righteousness can be really born of him, and the doer of righteousness certainly is so.

For to be born of God implies community of nature between him and us. I cannot be really his child unless I am possessed of the same nature with him. So the Lord Jesus himself teaches in two remarkable passages (Matt. 5:43–45, John 8:38–44). In both of these passages, but especially in the last, there is a general principle involved. A family likeness, in features of character as well as of countenance, will betray an evil paternity, and must prove a good one; “I speak that which I have seen with my Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.” You say that you are Abraham’s children. If that were true, you would do the works of Abraham. He would not like you have sought to kill me, for telling the truth which I have heard of God. But I will tell you whose children you are, and who is your father. It is he whose deeds you do. You reply, We have one Father, even God. Nay; if God were your Father, you would do the work of your Father, which is “loving me;” for he loveth me. But you reject me, and so prove that, in spite of your claim to be God’s children, your actual paternity is very different; “Ye are of your father the devil.”

John may have had these words of his Master in his mind when he wrote down the brief and pithy maxim, “God is righteous, and every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.” His object is to supply a searching test by which our abiding in God may be surely tried. For our abiding in God is our abiding in the Son; and through our abiding in the Son, abiding in the Father, as the Son abides in the Father. But that implies our being “born of God.” It is as “born of God” that the Son abides in the Father. And it must be as “born of God” that we, abiding in the Son, abide in the Father as he does.

The practical way of proving so high and holy a filiation is very simple: “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.”

It is a mode of proof which may, without irreverence, be applied in the first instance to the Son himself. We have his own warrant for so applying it (John 15:9, 10). It is by keeping his Father’s commandments that he, as the Son, born of the Father, abides in the Father’s love. As the Father is known by him as righteous, so he, doing righteousness, is proved to be born of him. He doeth the works of his Father, and so evinces his sonship.

All through, the stress is laid on righteousness. That is the distinguishing characteristic which identifies him that is born of God; the common quality connecting what he does as born of God with the nature of him of whom he is born. Already this attribute of righteousness has been brought prominently forward in this epistle. God is righteous in forgiving sin (1:9). Jesus Christ is righteous as our advocate with the Father (2:1). But it is in the section on which we are now entering that righteousness bulks most largely.

“God is righteous;” that is his perfection. We are to “know that he is righteous.” His Son, born of him, knew this; “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee.” I have known that thou art righteous. It is a great matter to know that, in the midst of a world that knows it not.

For does the world know that God is righteous? Have “the workers of iniquity” that knowledge, when “they eat up God’s people like bread, and say God seeth not”? when they call not upon the name of the Lord? when they do deeds of darkness, and, because he keeps silence, think that he is altogether such an one as themselves? Do we know that God is righteous? That God is kind, compassionate, merciful, bountiful,—all that we can easily know. Such knowledge is not too wonderful for us; it is not high or unattainable. But that he is righteous! Have we a fixed and firm knowledge of that? Do we understand what it means? Do we grasp the meaning of it and hold it fast?

Ah! it is not natural for us to do so. That God is righteous, absolutely and perfectly righteous;—that he thinks and feels and purposes and acts, always according to what ought to be, and never in accommodation to what is; that he makes uncompromising rectitude the rule of all his judgments and proceedings in all his dealings with men;—that he is not facile and bending, open to appeals and appliances from without, but inherently and unalterably righteous;—to know that; really to know it as a fact, and a great fact; true now and true for eternity; ah! such knowledge is not easy for me, a guilty and fallen man. It is not possible, unless I am “born of God.”

Jesus knew it; he knew the righteous Father. Born of God, he knew that God is righteous; and he did righteousness accordingly. How thoroughly he did so, let some cases in which he might have been tempted to do otherwise attest.

1. I cite an instance already referred to in a somewhat different connection. A young man comes to him asking the way to eternal life. He is rich, amiable, good; a keeper of the commandments from his youth; ingenuous, attractive, sincere; so that Jesus beholding him loveth him. May he not stretch a point in this goodly youth’s favour? May he not accept his goodness as being, if not all that strict law requires, yet on the whole sufficient? No. He knows that God is righteous. And, knowing that, he doeth righteousness, though his doing it drives the youth away, with what issue who can tell?

2. He draws near Jerusalem, and beholds the city. It is inexpressibly dear to him. If other Israelites hailed it as beautiful for situation, and boasted of it as the joy of the whole earth, the city of the great king; the great king himself may well have a favour for it. The anguish of his human soul, as he contemplates its present security and coming desolation, must be all but intolerable. Can there be no help? Is no indulgence possible for his own chosen city’s sin? May no miracle be wrought sufficient to rouse it to repentance? He knows that God is righteous; and he doeth righteousness. He weeps in the doing of it. The city’s fate rings his heart. But what can he say? What but “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!”

3. He is in the garden; praying the prayer of agony; sweating great drops of blood. The cup is handed to him; the cup of woe; the cup of wrath; the cup of his Father’s judicial reckoning with him as answerable for all his people’s sins. “Father, if it be possible!” May it not be possible? Is there no way of salvation but through the shedding of my blood? No. He knows that God is righteous; and he doeth righteousness. “Father, thy will be done!”

Thus it is plainly seen that he is born of God. He knows the righteous Father. And knowing him as the righteous Father, he doeth righteousness as his only begotten Son.

You who believe are born of God as he is. I speak of his human birth; in which you, in your new birth, are partakers with him; the same Spirit of God being the agent in both, and originating in both the same new life. His birth was humiliation to him, though it was of God: your new birth is exaltation to you, because it is of God. His being born of God by the Spirit made him partaker of your human nature;—your being born again of God by the Spirit makes you partakers of his “divine nature.” You, thus born of God, come to be of the same mind with him who is the first begotten of the Father; especially as regards your knowing that God is righteous, and that it is, therefore, and must be, the impulse and characteristic of every one that is born of him to do righteousness. For if you are thus born of God, must you not be as thoroughly on his side, as unreservedly in his interest, in the great outstanding controversy between his righteousness and man’s sin, as is his well-beloved Son himself?

Is it really so? Was he ever seen as infirm and irresolute, as weak and wavering, in his moral judgments, as you too frequently are in yours? Was he ever equivocal or feeble in his utterances about God’s claims, and man’s duty, and man’s guilt? Did he ever hesitate to act upon the principle: “Let God be true and every man a liar?”

Nor will it do to say that he had not so much inducement as you have to tamper with God’s righteousness, and be disloyal to his throne. Personally, it is true that he had no need to have recourse to any expedient of accommodation or compromise. God’s judicial righteousness and his acceptance in God’s sight never could come into collision. Never could he have occasion to desire that God were less righteous than he is, in order that there might be hope for him. But when I think of him as taking my place, bearing my sin, receiving in his bosom the sword that should have smitten me; can I say that he had no cause to wish, had it been possible, that God might be less inflexibly and inexorably righteous than he there and then found him to be? And when I think of the exquisite tenderness of his sensibility; how he could not witness human suffering unmoved, or see a human soul perish, or run the hazard of perishing, without a tear;—I can scarcely fancy it less difficult for him than for me to acquiesce complacently in God’s righteousness reigning, as it must reign, not only “through grace unto eternal life,” but through wrath unto everlasting death. But that is what is implied in knowing that God is righteous. And to do righteousness, is to think and speak and act accordingly. It is to be unflinching and unfaltering in preferring God’s righteousness to man’s sin. It is to justify God’s righteousness and condemn man’s sin, with an entire and utter abandonment of all attempts, and even of all desire, to make terms between them. It is to proclaim internecine war between them; yes, even though the issue should be the triumph of God’s righteousness in the sinner’s inevitable ruin.

A hard saying this! who can hear it? A heavy burden! who can bear it? Who that is not born of God? Who but one who reaches, by the new birth, the position which the Son, in his birth, took as his? Who but one who, born again of the Spirit as he was born of the Spirit, comes to occupy the same point of view that he did; to see righteousness and sin, God’s righteousness and man’s sin, as he saw them; and to deal with them as he dealt with them in all his ministry, and especially on the cross?

First, in him, and with him,—born of God into fellowship with him in his birth,—you enter into that doing of righteousness on his part, which was the main design of his being born; which brings into perfect harmony, not God’s righteousness and man’s sin, but God’s righteousness and man’s salvation from sin. This is your first step, as born of God; and it is all-important for yourselves, and for your fellow-men. It places you on the very vantage-ground on which the Son himself stood, when, coming into the world, he surveyed its sad, sinful case, in the light of the will of God which he came to do, and the righteousness of God which he came to vindicate and fulfil. It enables you to draw the line sharp and clear, as he did, between that loving embrace of him and his cross which wins salvation for the chief of sinners from a righteous God, and in a way of perfect righteousness,—and that rejection of him which seals the fate of the very best of those who, refusing his righteous justifying mercy, brave his righteous retributive wrath. Thus, knowing for yourselves, in and with Christ, that God is righteous, you do righteousness, as he did.

And thus also, in your customary intercourse with other men, you act upon the deep conviction that God is righteous; that his righteousness admits of no relaxation; that there is between it and all manner of iniquity a terrible incompatibility; that there is one only way in which the workers of iniquity can be righteously delivered; and that all who are not found in that way, be they ever so respectable, ever so amiable, are righteously condemned.

Fully to realise that assurance, and to act upon it, without any wavering;—as if you still regarded being in Christ of little moment or being out of Christ of little peril;—so to live in your closet and in the world, at home and abroad, under the constant urgent sense of there being safety only in Christ, and only ruin out of Christ, for you, for all, for any;—that is to do righteousness, in the knowledge that God is righteous.

Ah! what an insight into the righteous nature and character of God; what a measure of cordial oneness of principle and sentiment with him; entering into his very mind and heart; does all this involve! How far removed is it from that loose, easy-going sort of Christian virtue which would not itself do iniquity, but is very tolerant of those who do it; not, like Lot’s righteous soul, vexed with evil; nor, like Lot, preaching righteousness; but rather prone to look on sin with indifference or complacency, and to let the sinner go on, without warning or entreaty, to his doom. If you know that God is righteous, and make conscience of doing righteousness accordingly, you cannot be thus tame and acquiescent; thus cold and callous. To you, righteousness, God’s righteousness, is not a name but a reality. To be conformed to it, to submit to it, is life. To be ignorant of it, or opposed to it, or far from it, is death. Do you know that? Do you know it so as to feel it for others as well as for yourselves? Can you look out upon the world that knows not the righteous Father, and not be more in earnest than you are?

“Who is on the Lord’s side—who?” Who is in the interest of the “righteous Father”? Who is he whose soul burns within him at the thought of the righteous Father being so little known?—whose bowels of compassion melt at the sight of men perishing in the world that know him not? Truly he is “born of God.” None but one born of God can be so like his only-begotten Son.

Is not this a position eminently high and holy? Is it not a position, our occupancy of which may well be matter of surprise even to ourselves? Does it not imply a wondrous manner of love bestowed on us by the Father, that on such a footing, in such a sense, and for such an end, “we should be called the sons of God?”—born of him; so born of him as to do righteousness, even as he is righteous; to uphold practically the very righteousness which is his essential characteristic, the peculiar and consummate glory of his infinitely perfect nature?

I do not speak now, at least not yet, of the amazing love manifested by the Father in the provision made for our being called or constituted his sons, through the giving up of his own dear Son for us, to bear our guilt as criminals, that we may share with him his grace and glory as the Son. What at present we have to consider is, not how we become sons of God, but rather what it is to be sons of God; what oneness of nature and character, of sentiment and sympathy, of feeling and action, between God and us,—especially in respect of that righteousness of his which we thus come to know,—our being his sons, or being born of him, implies. He would have us to be his sons, as he had Jesus to be his Son, when he was on the earth; knowing him as the “righteous Father,” and doing righteousness as he is righteous. He would have us, as his sons, to be true and loyal to him, as Jesus his Son was, in the great outstanding controversy of his righteousness with the world’s sin; as faithful; and as tender too. He would have us, as his sons, to go on the very errand on which his Son, as his righteous servant, went; and in his very spirit; with the law of God in our heart, and rivers of water running down our eyes because men will not keep that law.

Ah! to be thus the sons of God; as thoroughly at one with God as Jesus his Son was; witnessing everywhere and evermore that God is righteous; righteous to punish; righteous to forgive and save! What an attainment! What a responsibility! What a rank! Well may it prompt the abrupt ejaculation,—“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God.”