Lecture XXIII

THE SECRET OF SINLESSNESS—THE CONTRASTED "DOINGS"—DOING RIGHTEOUSNESS AND DOING SIN—THEIR INCOMPATIBILITY IN RESPECT OF THEIR OPPOSITE ORIGINS OR PARENTAGES—GOD AND THE DEVIL

THESE verses are embedded, as it were, between the two already considered (6 and 9); which teach what may be called the secret of sinlessness as a possible attainment, and one that a child of God must apprehend and realise. They fit into that theme, placing in marked contrast the two opposite lines of conduct,—“doing righteousness and doing sin,”—and tracing them up to their respective sources, a righteous nature on the one hand, indicating a divine birth; and a sinful nature on the other, betraying a devilish origin. Thus they shut out the very idea of any mixture of the two characters, or anything intermediate between the two. Thus also they connect the argument with the introductory statement at the beginning of this second part of the epistle, “If ye know that God is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of God” (2:29). For this doing righteousness, which at once implies and tests our being born of him who is righteous, must evince a family likeness to him, or a participation of nature with him. It must, therefore, be very thorough and complete, and cannot be compatible with doing sin. For that, evincing an opposite family likeness and participation in an opposite nature, points not to a divine birth or our being born of God, but to a very different parentage, our being of the devil.

The passage before us opens accordingly with a very solemn warning: “Little children, let no man deceive you.” It assumes an urgent and serious danger. There are those who will do their utmost to deceive you, and the point on which they will try to deceive you is a very vital one. It is so all the rather because it is one on which your own hearts may be but too willing to be deceived. It turns upon the indissoluble connection that there is between being and doing; between character and conduct; between what a man is and how he acts.

The false teachers of John’s day held that one might reach in some mysterious way a height of serene, inviolable, inward purity and peace, such as no things without, not even his own actions, could stain. In a less transcendental form, the same sort of notion practically prevails in the world. It used perhaps to be more common than it is now to give a person credit for having right principles, though his practice might be often wrong; to admit his claim to a good heart, in spite of his habits being to a large extent bad. But the delusion is one against which we still need to be cautioned.

John meets it by bringing out in marked contrast the two opposite natures, one or other of which we must all share; that of God and that of the devil. As it is the nature of God to be righteous, so it is the nature of every one who is born of God to be righteous also. So he who is pre-eminently the Son of God is righteous; and we who are children of God in him are righteous as he is righteous. But his being righteous necessitates his doing righteousness; to imagine otherwise in his case would be a profane calumny. So also to think that we can be righteous as he is righteous, if our being righteous does not necessitate our doing righteousness, must be a gross and grievous delusion. On the other hand, it is the devil’s nature to be evil; and being evil, he cannot but be doing evil. If we are doing evil, doing sin; that proves our identity of nature with the devil; we are of the devil. And being of the devil, the originator of sin,—sinning from the beginning,—we cannot be children of God as Christ is his Son. For he was manifested for this very purpose, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Let us consider the three steps in this argument, as thus adjusted.

I. “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as Christ is righteous.” It is clearly moral character that is here in question, not legal standing. There is no reference to Christ’s vicarious righteousness; its imputation to us through our oneness with him by faith, and our consequent justification in the sight of God. That doctrine, so clearly revealed elsewhere underlies, as we have already seen, the whole of John’s teaching in this epistle. But to import it into this passage is to destroy the sense. Of course it is equally destructive of the sense to use the passage as a support to the doctrine of justification by works, as if it meant that the doer of righteousness is thereby, on the ground of his personal doing of righteousness, justified or accounted righteous before God. John is not thinking of justification at all, but rather of sanctification; of holiness of life being inseparable from holiness of nature. The precise lesson taught, the great principle asserted, is that righteousness, moral righteousness, cannot possibly exist in a quiescent or inactive state; that it never can be a latent power or undeveloped quality; that wherever it is it must be operative. It must be working, and working according to its own essential nature. Moreover, it must be working, not partially but universally; working everywhere and always; working in and upon whatever it comes in contact with, in the mind within and the world without. Otherwise, it is not righteousness at all; certainly not such as we see in Jesus; it is not “being righteous as he is righteous.” Therefore being righteous and doing righteousness are not twain, but one; one in the very nature of things, by divine ordination and arrangement. God has joined them; and what God has joined man may not put asunder. The attempt to separate them on either side, or to confound them, is a fatal error.

Hence those err who would sink the being in the doing as if the doing were all in all,—quite as much as those who would divorce the doing from the being, and leave the being all alone.

“He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right,” is a perilous half-truth. Doing righteousness, in the sense of merely leading what is called a virtuous life, being irreproachable in manners, and performing acts of kindness, may thus be made to constitute the sum and substance of religion and morality. Evidently that is not John’s teaching. On the contrary, it is with the inward frame of mind that he is chiefly occupied; it is about the heart being right with God that he is concerned. The very righteousness, pure and holy, which is the distinguishing characteristic or attribute of the moral character of God, is to become the attribute of ours, as it is of Christ’s. Far from undervaluing, or as it were postponing, the inward, or being righteous; he lays on that the whole stress of his appeal about the outward, or doing righteousness. For the very reason of his appeal is this, that if there be not the being there cannot be the doing; and therefore, on the other hand, if there be the doing, it proves and insures the being.

This last is the important practical consideration here. But it is so only when we rightly understand what doing righteousness, in John’s notion of it, really is. It is not merely performing righteous actions; doing things that are in themselves, or in their own essential nature, right and good. The abstract form righteousness is significant and all-important. To do a righteous deed is one thing: to be doing righteousness in the doing of it is another. The difference may be immense.

Jesus “went about doing good.” And in doing good he was ever doing righteousness. For he did good because he knew that to do good is to do what is righteous in the judgment of the righteous Father. He did good, not as doing himself a pleasure or his fellow-men a service, but as doing the Father’s righteous will. To do good thus is to do righteousness indeed. Viewing it in that light, we cannot err, or go too far, in the way of identifying it with being righteous. So to do righteousness is really to be righteous; in the highest and holiest sense; according to the most perfect type and model; “even as Christ is righteous.” It is a vain dream, a fond imagination, for any of us to aspire to being righteous in any other manner or after any other fashion. The humble path of obedience to the righteous Father,—the consistent doing of righteousness as we know, and because we know, that God is righteous (2:29),—is practically being righteous. So Christ, the Son of God, is the Father’s righteous servant, doing the Father’s righteousness. So let us, as born of God, be the Father’s righteous servants in Christ; doing righteousness as Christ does righteousness, and being righteous as Christ is righteous.

II. As “doing righteousness,”—through its being thus associated or identified with “being righteous as the Son is righteous,”—proves our being “born of God;” so “doing sin” proves a very different relationship, a very different paternity. “He that committeth” or doeth “sin is of the devil.” That is his genealogy or pedigree. And the reason is plain. The devil is the author of sin; it is he who “sinneth from the beginning.” The “doer of sin” cannot, as such, have any other father than the originator of sin. And he cannot repudiate the ancestry. It is fastened upon him by the same law or principle which enables “the doer of righteousness” to claim kindred with the righteous Father, in respect of his “being righteous as his own Son is righteous.” The medium of proof is the same. It is this, that what one does is really what one is; the doing being the index or identification of the being. “He that committeth” or doeth “sin is of the devil;” for, by doing sin, he shows his identity of nature with him who is a sinner from the beginning. And it is upon identity of nature, proved practically, that the question of moral and spiritual parentage must ultimately turn.

That is the question which John raises here, and to which he afterwards returns (ver. 10). It is with a view to that question that he lays down the essential moral truth involved in his two contrasted propositions or arguments; first, “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he, the Son, is righteous,” and so, as “born of God,” may assert a divine paternity; secondly, “He that doeth sin is of the devil,” the original and archetypal sinner: he must consent, therefore, to trace his genealogical line from a devilish beginning and in a devilish stream.

And still the test is the consistency or identity of the doing with the being. The doer of righteousness is righteous, as Christ the Son, who is one in nature with the Father, is righteous. The doer of sin is not so, but on the contrary is of the same nature with the devil, who “sinneth from the beginning.” He who is born of God, knowing that God is righteous, can do nothing but righteousness, in so far as he realises his position; being himself righteous as Christ is righteous. He that is of the devil can do nothing but sin, as the devil has been doing all along from the beginning. So far as his nature is allowed full development, that is its working. But that proves a paternity the opposite of divine.

Thus two parentages are here contrasted. Two fathers, as it were, desire to have us as children. They are wide as the poles asunder. Of the one relationship it is the characteristic not to sin; of the other, to be always sinning. The one father never has sinned, never could sin, being the “righteous Father.” The other has been always a sinner; sinning from the beginning; his first act being to sin. Each father imparts his own character to his children. The virtue or the vice; the wholesome purity or the poisonous matter; the sweet charm or the sour taint; runs in the blood. The children of the one father have infused into them the seed or germ of his impeccability; his being of such a nature that it is impossible for him to sin. The children of the other inherit his absolute incapacity of not sinning; his being of such a nature that it is morally impossible for him not to sin.

It is a terrible inheritance. It is the devil’s nature to sin. When we sin we give proof of its being our nature too. And it is a nature which we derive from him. It was he that communicated it to us. Our relation to him, therefore, in respect of our thus sharing his nature, is very close. It may be true that it is only in a figurative sense that we can be called “children of the devil,” or said to be “of the devil.” Still the figure has in it a sad reality. If it is natural for us to sin, he is the father of that nature in us. His seed is in us; the seed of his nature, his natural life, which is to sin, to do nothing but commit sin.

And let us remember John’s definition of sin (ver. 4), and Paul’s (Rom. 8:7). The essence of sin is refusing to be subject to law. That is the sin which “the devil sinneth from the beginning;” he sinneth by insubordination. That is his nature, his natural life. And he put the seed of it in us when he said to Eve, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden?”

This phrase, therefore,—“being of the devil,”—as used here and elsewhere in Scripture, does not imply what in human opinion would be accounted great criminality or gross immorality. To call any one a devil, or a child of the devil, is to impute to him, according to ordinary notions, an extreme depravity. We paint the great Apostate Spirit in the blackest colours of foul pollution, rancorous hate, and wanton cruelty; and it is only monsters of vice among ourselves that we characterise as satanic. Thus we extricate ourselves from the shame of so discreditable a lineage as is involved in being of the devil. But neither John nor his Master will let us off so easily. The sin which lost Satan heaven was neither lust nor murder. It was not carnal at all, but merely spiritual. It was not even lying, at least not at first,—though “he is a liar, and the father of it.” It was pure and simple insubordination and rebellion; the setting of his will against God’s; the proud refusal, at the Father’s bidding, to worship the Son. So “the devil sinneth from the beginning.” And when you so sin, you are of your father the devil. Peter was sinning in that way when Jesus called him Satan. There was nothing of what we might be inclined to stigmatise as satanic in his very natural wish to arrest his Master’s fatal journey. It was an impulse of generous affection which burst out in the expostulation, “Be it far from thee.” But he was “of the devil” then, notwithstanding. Therefore Jesus said to him, “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me” (Matt. 16:23). Not saying it thyself, thou wouldst hinder me from saying to my Father, “Thy will be done.” And that is devil’s work.

In order then to enter into the full meaning of John’s solemn testimony, it is not needful to wait till some horrid access of diabolic fury or frenzy seizes us. It is enough if “the tongue speaketh proud things,” or the heart conceives them. “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” Or, why are they not our own? May they not at least occasionally be our own,—this once; for singing one vain song, or uttering one idle word, or joining in an hour’s not very profitable, but yet not very objectionable, talk? Is there any rising up in us of such a feeling as this, as if it were hard that we may not occasionally take our own way and be our own masters? It is the devil’s seed abiding in us; the seed of the devil’s sin, and of his sinful nature.

Thus this testimony is of wide range and searching power, when the Spirit brings it home. The law says—Thou shalt love God with all thy heart; thou shalt not covet. Let that commandment come to me, in its real spiritual force; and how thoroughly, how helplessly, how miserably, does it make me out to be a very child of the devil! Many laws I cannot charge myself with breaking; I do not feel them to be irksome; the laws of my country and of society, for example; the laws of just dealing between man and man; the laws of kindness, courtesy, good breeding, good taste and feeling; the law of chivalry; the law of honour. Of all such laws I can cheerfully acknowledge the authority. But this law,—the law binding me by peremptory statute to love God supremely, and not to covet, not to love at all except as he loves, I feel that I cannot own. There is that in me which makes me rebel against what it enjoins being made matter of law at all. I would have it left to my own discretion. I object to love upon compulsion, or to worship, or to obey. Yes, there it is! That is it! I have in me the seed, the root, the germ, of the satanic spirit and the satanic nature. I cannot bring myself to be thoroughly under authority and law, when the authority and law are God’s. And why? Why but “because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be?”

III. “But for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”

The expression,—“to destroy the works of the devil,”—if it is to meet the previous statement, must be understood as meaning, in substance, that the Son of God was manifested to undo what the devil has done and is doing; to counteract and counterwork him, in respect of all his doings generally; but especially in respect of his imparting to us, as his children, the germ or seed of his own sin of insubordination to the authority and law of God. The phrase, indeed, might be taken in a wide sense; and might lead us to consider the many various ways in which the gospel tends to redress, and has actually to a large extent redressed, the manifold wrongs and mischiefs that the devil, by introducing moral evil and turning it to account, has wrought in the earth. But evidently the reference here is rather to the one inherent quality, than to the various effects, of the devil’s working. The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil—to destroy in you that sort of doing, or working, which you have derived from the devil; that sinning, or committing sin, which is his nature, and of which he has implanted in you the seed.

It is a work of destruction which he is manifested to do, or which his being manifested does; for we need not be very particular as to which of these ways of putting the matter is to be preferred: they are virtually the same. Execution is to be done upon what is the essence of all the devil’s works, so far as our sharing in them as his children is concerned; the spirit of suspicion, impatience, and rankling discontent, under God’s loving rule, which the devil insinuates into our hearts, and fosters, inflames, and irritates there.

In thus destroying the works of the devil, in this sense and to this effect, his being manifested as the Son of God was, in itself alone, a great step. For he was manifested, in the very form, in the very position, which the devil had himself felt, and had persuaded us to feel, to be grievous, irksome, and intolerable. He, being the Son, “took upon him the form of a servant.” He was so manifested as to make it plain, beyond all question, that there is no such root of bitterness as the devil would insinuate that there is, in a creature’s subjection as a servant to the law of God his Creator, in a Son’s subjection as a servant to the law of God his Father. The Son of God is manifested as submitting to that place of subordination to authority which the devil and his angels spurned; giving himself to a service infinitely more humiliating than they were called to when they were commanded to worship him. It was a great blow to the works of the devil; it cut up by the roots the very pith and staple of his power to work at all; when the Son of God was thus manifested; when it was made patent to all the universe that it was no degradation or bondage for the Son himself to be the servant of the Father; when it was seen that his being so was not incompatible with sonship, but was in fact its very perfection.¹

This, however, is not all; it is only a small part of what he does in destroying, to me and to all his people, the works of the devil. The Son of God might have been manifested as sustaining the very character of a servant, under authority and law, which the devil found, and which the devil makes me find, so provocative of an inward sense of impatience and spirit of rebellion; and he might have been manifested as sustaining that character in such a way as to win me over to the conviction that it is, if I can but reach it, my highest freedom and joy. But what of that, if I cannot reach it? And I cannot reach it, unless the Son of God, thus manifested, does two things on my behalf.

In the first place, he must make my relation to the Father such as his own is. In order to that, and as an indispensable preliminary to that, he must abolish and destroy the relation in which the devil has got me, along with himself, to stand to God; the relation of a guilty criminal to a righteous and avenging judge. Fain would the devil keep me in that relation to my God; scowling impotent defiance, or writhing under the lashings of despair. Or he would set me to the task of painfully working out for myself deliverance; and all in vain. The Son of God is manifested to make short work of all that. I see him taking my relation to God as his, that I may take his relation to God as mine. And I have literally nothing to do but say Yes! Yes; I allow him to take my relation to God as his, the relation of a condemned criminal, a sentenced transgressor of the law!—to take it, so as to exhaust all the curse of it, and destroy it, as the devil’s work, for so it is, utterly and for ever! Wondrous condescension, is it not, on my part! And I accept his relation to God, the relation of a beloved son and faithful servant, as mine! More wondrous condescension still! Ah! let me be ashamed to hesitate here. Let me be willing to be to the Father all that his own Son is, in both views of this wonderful substitution and most blessed union.

But, secondly, that I may be willing, he must put within me his own heart towards God, as well as place me in his own relation to God. For this purpose also the Son of God is manifested; not only that through his entering into my guilty relation to God the righteous judge, and making an end of it for me, I may enter into his relation to God the righteous Father, and make full proof of it, in him; but also that, through the Spirit dwelling in me, as in him, I may have the same heart that he has to cry, “Abba, Father.”

Let me never forget that it is for this double purpose that the Son of God is manifested. Root and branch, the works of the devil must be destroyed. The seed, the germ, the principle of all his works must be eradicated. Suspicion, dislike, servile dread, criminal sullenness, self-justifying pride, must all be scotched and killed. These are the devil’s works. They must be all destroyed. Let me look to the Son of God as he has been and is manifested; and are they not, through my so looking, destroyed? I cannot think and feel, with reference to God and his authority and law, as the devil does, when I look to the Son of God manifested for this very purpose, that I may think and feel as he does; that God may be to me what he is to him, and his law to me what it is to him; that thus in me he may “destroy the works of the devil.”