Robert S. Candlish · 1 John 3:24–4:1
“And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth [abideth] in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”—1 JOHN 3:24; 4:1.
THIS is another fruit of the keeping of God’s commandments; or another view of the blessedness of doing so. It ensures our abiding in God, and his abiding in us; and that in a manner that may be ascertained and verified. Two practical questions are thus virtually put and answered. I. How may we abide in God?—so abide in him as to have him abiding in us? By keeping his commandments. How may we know that he abides in us? By the Spirit which he giveth us,—and giveth us in a way that admits of the gift being verified by trial.
I. In the keeping of God’s commandments there is this great reward, that he that doeth so “dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Negatively, it has been already shown that there can be no such mutual indwelling if there is on our part disobedience to God’s commandments. Sin, as “the transgression of the law,” is incompatible with such high and holy communion (3:6). It is the positive form of the statement that is now before us. Obedience, or the keeping of God’s commandments, actively promotes this communion. It is more than the condition of it; it is of its very essence. If this mutual indwelling is not to be mere absorption, which some dreamers in John’s day held it to be;—if it is not to be the swallowing up of our conscious individual personality in the infinite mind or intelligence of God;—if it is to conserve the distinct relationship of God to man, the Creator to the creature, the Ruler to the subject, the Father to the child;—it must be realised and must develop itself, or act itself out, through the means of authority or law on the one side, and obedience or the keeping of the commandments on the other. It is, in fact, the very consummation and crown of man’s old, original relation to God; as that relation is not only restored, but perfected and gloriously fulfilled, in the new economy of grace.
For consider the divine ideal, if I may so speak, involved in the creation of man after the image of God, and in the footing on which it pleased God to place man towards himself. Evidently God contemplated obedience, or the keeping of his commandments, as the normal state or character of man. While that state or character continued, there was the best understanding between the parties; between God and man; they were on the best of terms with one another. There was entire complacency on both sides; each resting and dwelling in the other with full and unalloyed satisfaction. You would not say, in these circumstances, that this mutual indwelling of man in God and God in man was, in any proper sense, procured or obtained by man’s obedience, by his keeping the commandments of God. You would rather say that it had in that way its proper outgoing or forthgoing, its conscious realisation. It is man’s method of intercourse with God; the only competent, the only conceivable method, if God and man respectively are to keep their relative positions as distinct intelligences. It is only along the line of God ruling and man obeying, that the two, as separate persons or individuals, can so walk together as to get into one another’s minds and hearts, and thus abide in one another. Such mutual indwelling of God in man and of man in God, becoming day by day more close, confidential, loving; through man’s increasing insight into the exceeding excellency of the commandments he is keeping, or rather of him whose nature and will they discover, and through God’s increasing delight in the growing intelligence and sympathy with which man keeps them; might seem to be complete; having in it all the elements of perfection, as regards both the holiness and the happiness of man. Can God and man be more to one another?
Alas! the drawback of a conditional standing, and a possible fall, is fatal. It leaves an opening for suspicion creeping in, upon the hint of a seeming friend, who would insinuate that restraint is irksome and independence sweet. Then all mutual indwelling is over. God and man must dwell apart. There may indeed be some sort of formal dealing between them; at least man fondly imagines that there may. He thinks that he can so far keep God’s commandments as thereby to right himself with God; to the extent at least to which he cares to be righted. He will make certain terms with God, or conceive of God as making certain terms with him; and he will be punctilious in the fulfilment of these terms. But that is not really keeping God’s commandments. It is the keeping of a paction, if you will; the doing of his part in a bargain. And if the two parties concerned were equals, or if the relation between them were one of mutual independence, this might lay a foundation for some sort of mutual indwelling, by faith and love, in one another. Even in that case, however, the foundation is too narrow and precarious. If the mutual indwelling is to be real and thorough, there must be something more than the fulfilment of certain stipulated conditions between the parties. They must submit themselves, each to the other, cordially and without reserve; they must study to obey and please one another. Between God and man especially, the introduction of the conditional element, of anything that savours of the striking of a bargain or the making of terms, is and must be destructive of all real fellowship or intercommunion. No obedience rendered on that footing or in that spirit can ever secure your dwelling in God and his dwelling in you. In point of fact, it is apt,—if not from the first to occasion a breach,—yet ever afterwards, when a breach occurs, to widen, deepen, and perpetuate it, however it may be meant, and may seem to bridge it over.
The practical value of a free gospel is, that it places your “keeping of God’s commandments” on a different footing, and breathes into it a different spirit. You look to Jesus, and are one with him. You are in the same position of advantage for keeping God’s commandments in which he was. You start, as he did, on the walk and work of obedience, not as seeking acceptance, but as already accepted; not as a servant on trial, but as a son abiding in the house evermore. You are not only what unfallen Adam was when the task of keeping God’s commandments was set before him; you are as Christ was when the same task was set before him.
Consider then what sort of keeping of God’s commandments his was; and how it must have conduced to his abiding in the Father, and the Father’s abiding in him. Of course that mutual indwelling never could, through all his keeping of the Father’s commandments, become more full and complete, in principle and essence, than it was before he began to keep them. But we may well imagine that to his human consciousness, and in his human experience, the sense of it must have been growing more intense, and more intensely soothing and beatific, as his keeping of them went on, and on, to its terrible and triumphant close. Among the things about obedience which he learned by suffering, surely this was one, that it has a mighty power to promote, enhance, and intensify the indwelling of man in God, and of God in man. He learned the grief and pain which such obedience as he had undertaken to render involved. Did he not learn something of its joy and pleasure too, the joy and pleasure of apprehending and feeling, more and more, in his human soul, his dwelling in the Father and the Father’s dwelling in him throughout it all?
I dare not venture upon particular illustration here. But I ask you, in any hour of deep and private meditation, and after you have prayed, or while you are praying, for the help of the Spirit, to put yourself alongside of Christ, in the sorest and hardest of the experiences which his keeping the Father’s commandments entailed upon him. Try to enter into what his soul was feeling when it was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” There was anguish, agony; the anguish and agony of having guilt to answer for, and a penal death to die. But was he not then and there, in his keeping of the Father’s most dread and awful commandments, and through his keeping of them, dwelling in the Father and the Father in him, in a sense and with a depth and force of meaning, of which that human soul of his could not otherwise have had any experience? What insight, what sympathy, what rest, repose, and peace,—the rest, repose, and peace of unutterable complacency, on his part, in the Father and on the Father’s part in him, must there have been in his utterance of these simple words, “It is finished;” “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!”
Let our keeping of God’s commandments be like his. Let us seek grace that it may be so. In our case, as in his, this may imply a bitter cup to be drunk; a heavy cross to be borne. Like him, we have to learn obedience by suffering. Let the obedience we thus learn be of the same sort as his. Let it be the giving up of our own will, always, everywhere, that God’s will may be done. We shall then prove how good and acceptable and perfect that will of God is. We dwell thus in God when our will is merged in his will; we have rest and repose in him; our will in his will; our thoughts in his thoughts; our ways in his ways. And he dwells in us; his will in our will; his thoughts in our thoughts; his ways in our ways. We enter into his mind and heart; and he enters into ours.
II. The manner of God’s abiding in us, or at least the way in which we may know that he abides in us, is specified:—“Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” We are to distinguish here between our dwelling in God and his dwelling in us. Both are to be known as facts of our own consciousness; not as revealed truths merely, but as realised experiences. The one, however, our dwelling in God, is to be thus known by our “keeping his commandments;” the other, God’s dwelling in us, by “the spirit which he giveth us.” The one we know by what we do to God;—the other, by what God does in us. And yet, the two means of knowledge are not far apart. They are not only strictly consistent with one another; they really come together in one point.
For the Spirit is here said to be given to us;—not in order to our knowing that God abideth in us, in the sense of his opening our spiritual eye and quickening our spiritual apprehension;—but rather, as the medium of our knowing it, the evidence or proof by which we know it. He giveth us the Spirit; and by that token, his giving us the Spirit, we are taught by the Spirit to know that God dwelleth in us. The question therefore as to what this gift of the Spirit may be, is thus narrowed to a precise point.
Is it the gift of the Spirit enabling men to perform supernatural works that is meant? That can scarcely be; the gift of the Spirit for such works was never a sure sign of God’s really and savingly dwelling in those who did them. Surely it must be the gift of the Spirit for the ordinary purposes of the Christian life and walk that John has in view; the gift of the Spirit common to all believers in all ages. God giveth us the Spirit in order that, by the Spirit being given, we may know that he dwelleth in us. He means us, therefore, to recognise this gift as a sure evidence of that fact. And how are we to recognise the Spirit as given to us? How otherwise than by recognising the fruit of the gift? The Spirit given to us is, as to his movement or operation, unseen and unfelt. But the fruit of the Spirit is palpable and patent. “It is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” For “against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:22, 23).
“Against such there is no law.” That is an important addition or explanation here. There is nothing in the gift of the Spirit, or in the fruit of the Spirit as given, that is contrary to law; nothing, therefore, that can again bring us under the risks and liabilities of law. On the contrary, the Spirit being given, with such fruit, is precisely what secures that kind of keeping of the commandments on our part, by which we “dwell in him.” For, I must repeat, it is as the Spirit of adoption that he is given; “God sendeth forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”
Thus the two elements and conditions, the two means and evidences, of this mutual indwelling of us in God and of God in us meet together. We dwell in God by keeping his commandments; he dwells in us by giving us his Spirit. But our keeping his commandments and his giving us his Spirit are really one; one and the same fact viewed on opposite sides. It is not any sort of keeping his commandments on our part that will ensure or attest our dwelling in him. It is not any way of giving us his Spirit on his part that will ensure or attest his dwelling in us. Our keeping his commandments in the spirit of bondage; in a legal, self-righteous, formal, and servile frame of mind; is not our dwelling in God. God’s enabling us, by the power of his Spirit, to work miracles, would not be his dwelling in us. Our dwelling in him is our keeping his commandments, as his Son did, on the same filial footing and with the same filial heart. His dwelling in us is his “sending forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”
III. From all this it follows that the counsel or warning, “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God” (4:1), is as needful for us as it was for those to whom John wrote. We may think that it is the Spirit of God whom we are receiving into our hearts and cherishing there, when it may really be another spirit altogether: one of the many spirits inspiring the “many false prophets that are gone out into the world.” Therefore we must “try the spirits.”
Do you ask how, or by what test?—“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.”
The full meaning of this pregnant and searching test will be afterwards considered. Meanwhile, as bearing on the subject now in hand, it admits of at least one obvious application.
The Spirit that is of God will ever honour Christ; and especially Christ come in the flesh; which means not only Christ incarnate, but also and emphatically Christ crucified. The person and work of Christ, as the outward object of our faith, the ground of our confidence before God outside of us and apart from us, the true Spirit of God will ever magnify and glorify. He will not consent to substitute for that any inward experience, however heavenly, as superseding it or setting it aside. That is what false prophets, moved by an antichristian spirit, are apt to do. It was a very marked characteristic of their teaching in John’s own day. An inward light, an inward sense, something, or much of a Christ in them; an inward revelation, or rapture, or elevation, a sort of mystical indwelling of God or of Christ in them, they extolled and cried up; making it the sum and substance of all Christianity, the whole gospel of the grace of God. Now any spirit that fosters such a tendency is not of God. Any spirit that would encourage us to look in upon ourselves and not out to Christ for peace or holiness is not of God. Inward experience is very precious; it is indispensable. A growing inward consciousness of our “keeping God’s commandments,” or, in other words, of our conformity of mind and heart and will to God’s character and law,—a growing inward consciousness of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace—we must have; and we must seek to have it more and more, if we would have real communion with God. But if we are rightly exercised, how will this affect our views of “Christ come in the flesh,” our feeling of our need of him and of his exclusive sufficiency for us? Will it make us at all the less inclined to be ever looking to Christ, ever leaning on Christ, ever laying hold of Christ, ever having recourse to Christ, and that blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin? Nay, on the contrary, our growing acquaintance with God, our growing delight in his law, our growing apprehension of the blessedness of perfect oneness, in nature and in will, with him, will only give us deeper convictions of sin, and open up to us new and fresh discoveries of our corruption and our guilt, and lead us to be ever saying, with reference not to past but to present evil in us: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”—and to be ever taking refuge in Paul’s last stronghold—“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”
Let us then, acting upon the belief that “whatsoever we ask, we receive of him,” be ever asking God to give us the Holy Spirit, that we may know experimentally his dwelling in us. We cannot have too much of this gift of the Spirit, if it is indeed the Spirit “confessing Christ” that we ask God to give. We need not be afraid of having too much of the inward fruit of the Spirit; nor need we shrink from recognising the Spirit given to us by God as the spirit of assurance; “the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” If indeed we find ourselves leaning to the imagination that we have got past the stage at which we need to be living, as sinners, upon Christ the Saviour, and are tempted to live upon inward frames and feelings; putting the Spirit’s work in us instead of Christ’s work for us; then we do well to beware. But there is really no incompatibility between the two; our coveting, asking and obtaining more and more of the inward testimony of the Spirit, and our being by that very testimony—as it unfolds to us more and more God’s high ideal and our sad coming short of it—shut up more and more into Christ as the Lamb of God; with whose atoning blood and justifying righteousness we feel more and more that we can never for a single moment dispense.
Finally, let us remember that it is in the actual “keeping of God’s commandments” that we find all this great mystery of “our dwelling in God and his dwelling in us,” practically cleared up. In the onward path of the just, which is as the shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day, we come to know the Spirit given to us, by his “confessing Jesus Christ as come in the flesh.” Let us therefore so keep God’s commandments as not to vex or grieve the Holy Spirit. For we do vex and grieve him when our keeping them is either ungracious on the one hand; or, on the other hand, becomes to us a ground of confidence before God. As the Spirit of God, he is vexed by our submission to God being any other than a submission of the whole heart; filial altogether, and not servile at all. And as “the Spirit confessing Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” he cannot but be vexed if we unduly lean even on his own work in us, to the disparagement of what is the one only ground of a sinner’s hope, from first to last, “Christ and him crucified.” But let us keep the commandments of God simply, humbly, lovingly; not as doing any great thing, but only as doing his will, and content that his will be done. So keeping his commandments, we abide in God, and so also we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.
