Lecture XXIX

OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS EXERCISED IN TRYING THE SPIRITS; THE TEST, CONFESSING THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COME IN THE FLESH

THE appeal in the beginning of the fourth chapter springs out of the closing statement in the third: “Hereby we know that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” This evidently throws us back into ourselves; into some consciousness on our part of his having given us the Spirit. It is an inward or subjective test. Have we in us the Spirit as given to us by God? If so, we have the Spirit in us “confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” And by his confessing that truth, we may distinguish his indwelling in us from all attempts of any antichristian spirit, or any false prophets or teachers inspired by an antichristian spirit, to effect a lodgment in our hearts. For this is their characteristic; they refuse to “confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”

The meaning of that confession, objectively considered, has been already brought out in what John says of Antichrist as “denying that Jesus is the Christ;”—and so virtually “denying the Father and the Son” (2:21–25). I am inclined to think that we have now to deal with it more subjectively; as a matter of inward experience rather than of doctrinal statement. For the starting-point is our “knowing that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” It is the fact of the Spirit confessing in us, and not merely to us, that we have to ascertain and verify; and therefore the test must apply inwardly:—Have we in us “the Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?” As it stands here, therefore, I think we are called to deal with that formula rather experimentally than dogmatically; and so to make it all the more available for the searching of our hearts.

Taking that view, I shall consider, in the first place, what the inward confession of the Spirit in us that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh may be held to imply; and then, secondly, how our realising this in our experience secures our personal and practical victory over all antichristian spirits or prophets who deny that great and blessed fact.

I. It properly belongs to the Spirit to “confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” He had much to do with the flesh in which Jesus Christ came. He prepared for him a body in the Virgin’s womb, so as to secure that he came into the world pure and sinless. And all throughout his sojourn on earth the Spirit ministered to him as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” he could not minister to him otherwise. It is the flesh, or humanity, of Jesus Christ that brings him within the range of the Spirit’s gracious care. It was his human experience that the Spirit animated and sustained; and it is with his human experience also that the Spirit deals when he “takes of what is Christ’s and shows it unto us.” His object is to make us one with “Jesus Christ as come in the flesh.” That practically is his confession to us and in us. Let us see what it implies.

1. He identifies us with Jesus Christ in his humiliation. There is no real humiliation on the part of the Son if his coming in the flesh is denied. He might be conceived of as coming gloriously, graciously, condescendingly; in his own original and eternal nature alone; taking the mere semblance of a body, or a real body now and then, as the Gnostic dreamers taught. But there would have been no humbling of himself in that, and no room for any concurrent humbling testimony or work of the Spirit in us. It is Jesus Christ as come in the flesh, “made of a woman, made under the law,” that the Spirit owns and seals. And he confesses or witnesses this in us by making us one, and keeping us one, with our Lord in that character, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh.” In our divine regeneration he brings us to be,—what, through his interposition, Jesus Christ in his miraculous human generation became,—servants under the yoke; subject to the authority and commandment of God; willingly subject; our nature being renewed into the likeness of his.

2. The Spirit identifies us with Jesus Christ, not only in his humiliation but in its conditions and liabilities. For “to confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” is not merely to admit the fact of his incarnation, but to admit it with whatever consequences necessarily, in terms of law, flow from it. His coming in the flesh is not simply an incident or event in history; it has a special meaning in the moral government of God. It brought him, not merely into the position of one made under the law, but into the position, under the law, of those whose place he took.

The old deniers of his coming in the flesh saw this; and it was their chief objection to the doctrine. They might have allowed that the mysterious efflux or emanation of Deity that they seemed to own as a sort of Saviour did somehow identify himself with us, by making common cause with us, and even temporarily assuming our nature with a view to purge and elevate it. But they perceived that the literal incarnation of the Son of God, truly and fairly admitted, carried in its train the vicarious substitution and atonement. Modern teachers in the same line think that they may hold the first without the last. But I am mistaken if any incarnation they may thus hold does not slip insensibly, in their handling of it, into some modification, suited to modern turns of thought, of the old vague notion of a certain divinity being in every man; and in some one man perhaps pre-eminently as the type and model of perfect manhood. That, however, is not to “confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” for his coming in the flesh, accepted as a reality, implies his really putting himself alongside of those in whose flesh he comes, and serving himself heir to all the ills to which their flesh is heir.

Let us look, then, at “Jesus Christ coming in the flesh,” the Son of God taking our nature into oneness with himself. He takes it pure and sinless, so far as he is personally concerned; but he takes it with all the liabilities which our sin has entailed upon it. And the Spirit, confessing in us that he is come in the flesh, makes us one with him in this view of his coming; our guilt and condemnation being now his, and his taking our guilt and bearing our condemnation being ours. His coming in the flesh is his consenting to be crucified for us; the Spirit in us confessing him as come in the flesh makes us willing to be crucified with him. And so, by means of this confession, the true Spirit of God and of Christ opens to us a prospect of glory and joy such as no lying spirit of antichrist can hold out. If it was not really in the flesh that he came; or if, coming in the flesh, he failed to redeem by substitution those whose flesh he shared; then flesh, or human nature, can have little hope of reaching the blessedness of heaven. But having really come in the flesh, and in the flesh suffered for sin, he raises the flesh in which he suffered to the highest capacity of holy and happy being. “In my flesh I shall see God,” was the hope of the patriarch Job. It is made sure by Jesus Christ come in the flesh, and by the Spirit confessing in us that he is come.

II. This accordingly is the secret of our present victory over antichristian spirits and men: “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them” (ver. 4). The intimation (ver. 3) that the spirit of antichrist is already, even now, in the world, is fitted to make this assurance very welcome. For war is proclaimed; war that is to last as long as the world lasts. It is the old war, proclaimed long ago, between the serpent’s seed and the woman’s. But it has taken a new form; and that its final one. From the first manifestation of it,—from the day when Cain slew his brother,—it might be seen to turn upon the question of the worship of God by atoning sacrifice. Is there, or is there not, to be the shedding of blood for the remission of sins? That, more or less clearly, with variations suited to the varied aspect of the church and the world, has ever since continued to be in substance the point at issue. Now that Christ has come in the flesh, it is so more than ever. “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” is its ultimate expression and embodiment. In the contest about this high theme, “you, little children, have overcome them.” The victory is already yours: for “you are of God.”

Two questions here occur:—1. What is the nature of the victory? 2. How is it connected with your being of God?

1. The victory is a real victory got over the false prophets or teachers, who are not of God, whom the spirit of antichrist inspires. And it is a victory over them personally; not over their doctrines and principles merely; but over themselves: “Ye have overcome them.” True, it is, in a sense, a war of doctrines or of principles that is waged; its field of battle is the field of argument and controversy. You and they meet in discussion and debate; and when you succeed in refuting their reasonings, you may feel the complacency of a personal triumph over them as, vanquished, they seem to quit the field. But even though vanquished they may argue still. They are silenced, merely, and not subdued; and their silence is only for a time. You may soon have the battle to fight over again; and in the incessant fighting of it, you may be doomed to suffer wounds, in your temper at least, if not in your faith; in your equanimity of spirit towards men, if not in your peace of mind within yourselves, or even your peace with God. I cannot think that that is the victory on which John congratulates his “little children” so affectionately.

No doubt such victory is valuable, as the sort of war in which it is won is inevitable. It is idle to effect to run down controversy, as long as there is error abroad among men. It is mere prudery to be always groaning over the symptoms of irritability which controversialists have exhibited, and bemoaning evermore their lack of a smooth and oily tongue. All honour to the champions of God’s holy word and blessed gospel, who have waxed valiant in fight against the adversaries of both! All sympathy with them in their indignant sense of what touches the glory and insults the majesty of him whose battles they fight; with large allowance for the heats into which, being but men, they may suffer their zeal to hurry them! And all thankful joy in the success with which they wield the weapons of their keen logic, their learned study, their burning eloquence, in baffling the sophistries of heresy and infidelity, and rearing an impregnable defence around the battlements on which the banner is planted which God “has given to them that fear him, that it may be displayed because of the truth!”

But that is not exactly the victory which is here meant when it is said, “ye have overcome them.” For what really is your contest with them? It is not about an abstract proposition, a mere article in a creed. It is not whether you can prove that Jesus of Nazareth was man as well as God, or God as well as man; or they can prove the reverse. No. “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” is not with you a mere matter of disputation. It is a pregnant and significant fact in God’s government of the universe, grasped by you as such, and apprehended as such in your experience. By faith you know and feel what it means. You identify yourself with him in his coming in the flesh; consciously and with entire community of mind and heart; and in the very doing of this you “have already overcome them.”

For it is the fact that they dislike; not argument about the fact. It is the actual “coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh,” and his actual accomplishment, in the flesh, of all that in the flesh he came for, that they resent and resist. It is that which Satan, the original spirit of antichrist, would fain have set himself to hinder; moving Herod to slay Jesus in his childhood, and Judas to betray him in his manhood; tempting Jesus himself to make shipwreck of his integrity. And it is your actual personal participation with him, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” your being really one with him in that wondrous humiliation, in its spirit and its fruit; that, so far as you are concerned, they seek to frustrate. In realising that, you get the better of them; confessing thus Jesus Christ come in the flesh, you have overcome them. It is not that you are able to discuss with them, as debatable questions in argument, the reality and the meaning of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh. You may have to do so, and if you do so on a clear call of duty, you are sure of divine support and help; perhaps even of success and triumph. But that is not your having already overcome them. Very gladly would they often drag you into this snare; making you mistake the chance of overcoming them in a discussion about Jesus Christ come in the flesh, for the certainty of your having overcome them through your simply confessing him in that character. But be not drawn down to lower ground. Stand upon your position of oneness with him whom you confess as Jesus Christ come in the flesh. Meet thus any and all antichrists; antichristian spirits, antichristian prophets. They are not to be overcome. You have already overcome them.

2. Your having overcome them is connected with your “being of God” (ver. 4); which again is intimately connected with your “confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (ver. 2). Your being of God is the intermediate link between your confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (ver. 2), and your having overcome them who reject that truth (ver. 4).

“Ye are of God” (ver. 4). This, let it be observed, is what has previously been asserted of the Spirit that “confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” He “is of God” (ver. 3). And it is denied concerning any spirit refusing to confess that. Such a spirit “is not of God.”

Now what, as applied to the Holy Spirit, does this mean? How,—in what sense and to what effect,—is the Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh said to be “of God”?

He is of God essentially, being himself God; proceeding from the Father and the Son; one with them in the undivided essence of the Godhead. He is of God, if I may so say, officially; condescending in infinite love, to be the gift of the Father and the Son to guilty and sinful men. But here more particularly, he is of God as confessing, or in virtue of his confessing, that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. He is on the side of God, or in the interest of God; he consults and acts for God; he takes God’s part and is true to God. It is as being thus of God that the Spirit confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. He contemplates, if I may so say, that great fact with all its issues from the divine point of view; in its bearing on the divine character and nature, the divine government and law. He is “of God” in it; in that fact and in all its issues.

Do I take too great a liberty in speaking thus of the Holy Ghost? I scarcely think so when I call to mind how this phrase describes Christ’s own position in the world with reference to the Father. He was “of God;” he was so in a very emphatic and significant sense; not only as regards his origin and mission; his coming from God and being authorised by God; but also, and specially, as regards his end and aim all through his humiliation, obedience, and sacrifice. He was “of God;” on the side and in the interest of God. It was the zeal of God’s house that ate him up. It was the doing of God’s will, and the finishing of God’s work, that was his meat. It was the glorifying of his Father, and the finishing of the work which his Father gave him to do, that ministered to his satisfaction in his last farewell prayer. Of him pre-eminently it might be said: “He is of God.” And in his being thus “of God,” as to the whole mind and meaning of the phrase, the Holy Ghost is with him and in him. Jesus Christ come in the flesh is, in this sense emphatically, confessed by the Spirit. The Spirit is with him, and in him, as the Spirit that is of God; and as being to him the Spirit that is of God. He and the Spirit are at one in being both “of God.” And you, in the Son and by the Spirit are “of God;” as truly of God as is the Spirit, or as the Son was when God “gave not the Spirit by measure to him.”

The essential characteristic of the spirit of antichrist is that it is, in the sense now explained, “not of God.” It does not look at the Saviour and the salvation as on the side of God; rather it takes an opposite view, and subjects God to man. It subordinates everything to human interests and human claims; looks at everything from a human and mundane point of view; measures everything by a human standard; submits everything to human opinion; in a word, conceives and judges of God after the manner of man. This, indeed, may be said to be the distinctive feature of all false religions, as well as of all corruptions of the true religion. They exalt man. They consider what man requires, what he would like, what is due to him. Even when they take the form of the most abject and degrading superstition, that is still their spirit. They aim at getting God, by whatever means of persuasion and prostration, to do the bidding of man. For it is the essence of our corrupt human nature, of which these corrupt worships are the expression, to care and consult for self, and not for God. This is the essence of the spirit of antichrist; the spirit that breathes and moves in the false notions that have gained currency in the church respecting “Jesus Christ come in the flesh.” Their advocates give man the first place in their scheme. Their real objection lies against those views of gospel truth which assert the absolute sovereignty of God, and put forward pre-eminently what he is entitled to demand,—what, with a due regard to his own character, government, and law, he cannot but demand. They dislike such representations as bring in the element of God’s holy name and righteous authority, and lay much stress upon that element, as one of primary consideration in the plan of saving mercy. Hence they naturally shrink from owning explicitly Jesus Christ as come in the flesh to make atonement by satisfying divine justice. They prefer some loose and vague way of putting the fact of his interposition, and the manner of it. Admitting in a sense its necessity, they are unwilling to define very precisely, either the nature of the necessity, or the way in which it is met. He came in the flesh, to redeem the flesh, to sanctify, elevate, and purify it. He came in the flesh, to be one with us, and to make us, in the flesh, one with him. So they speak and think of his coming in the flesh. Any higher aim, any prior and paramount design involved in this great fact, viewed in its relation to the nature and supremacy of God, his holiness and justice, as lawgiver and judge, they are slow to acknowledge. Hence their gospel is apt to be partial and one-sided; looking rather like an accommodation of heaven and heaven’s rights to earth and earth’s wishes and ways, than that perfect reconciliation and perfect assimilation of earth to heaven for which we hold it to have made provision;—our heavenly Father’s name being hallowed, his kingdom coming, his will being done, in earth as it is in heaven. Their system is not “of God” as the primary object of consideration; for they themselves are not out and out, in this sense, “of God.”

But “ye are of God, little children,” in this matter; in the view that you take, and the conception that you form of Jesus Christ come in the flesh; of the end of his coming, and the manner in which that end is attained. You look at that great fact, first and chiefly in its relation to God, and as on the side of God. It is from God and for God that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. So he always taught; and so you firmly believe. He placed God always first; the glory of God, the sovereignty of God, the will of God, always took precedency. Man’s concerns and interests were subordinate to that. Nothing is more conspicuous in “Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” throughout his whole ministry, in all his life and in his death, than this loyalty to God his Father, prevailing even over his amazing tenderness and pity for men. He was truly of God, even when his being so might tell against men; tell to their destruction rather than their salvation. He does not shrink from the darkest issues which, in that view, his coming in the flesh carries in its bosom. He did not shrink from them when realised in his own person, and in his personal experience, as the suffering substitute of the guilty. He does not shrink from them as they are to be realised in the persons, and in the personal experience, of those who “will not come unto him that they may have life.”

If you are “of God,” you are of his mind. You approve of this principle; you recognise the propriety of what is due to God being first attended to and provided for, in preference even to what may be needed by man. What God, being such as he is, must require, since “he cannot deny himself,” that is the first question; then, and in subordination to that, what can be done for men. It is a great matter for you to view the whole plan of salvation, as being yourselves, in this sense, “of God.” It is your doing so that secures your having overcome all spirits of antichrist. If thus “you are of God,” you are already raised to a higher platform than they can occupy, so as to have a loftier and wider range of vision. Your profound reverence for the majesty of God; your loyal, loving recognition of his holy and righteous sovereignty; your deep, admiring esteem of his government and law; your calm conviction that the Lord reigneth; your intense desire that the Lord should reign; your determination, may I say, that the Lord shall reign; lifts you out of the region of human questionings and all doubtful disputations. It is your very humility that lifts you up. You sit at the feet of Jesus Christ come in the flesh. You stand beside his cross. You do not now stumble at the mystery of its bloody expiation; or quarrel with the great propitiation-sacrifice through unbelief of its necessity. The ideas of justice needing to be satisfied; punishment inevitably to be inflicted; one willing to bear it in your stead being found; that one being “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” do not now offend you. Nay, being “of God,” on his side and in his interest in the whole of this great transaction, you can meekly, in faith, commit to him and leave in his hands even the most terrible of those ultimate and eternal consequences, involving the aggravated guilt and final ruin of many, that you cannot but see to be inseparably mixed up with the confession that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”