Lecture XXX

THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST IN US GREATER THAN THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST IN THE WORLD

THE security for our full and final victory over antichrist and his spirit lies in the emphatic declaration: “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” He that is in you is the Spirit of God; for “hereby we know that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us;” the Spirit that, being of God, “confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (3:24; 4:2). He that is in the world is the spirit of antichrist, “whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world” (4:3). Therefore you who “are of God have overcome them,”—“the spirits,” the false prophets, “that are gone out into the world” (4:1). They are of the world; what they speak is of the world and meets with the world’s acceptance (ver. 5). We, the true teachers, are of God; what we speak is of God; and meets with the acceptance, not of him who is not of God, but of him who, being of God, knows God (ver. 6). By this test the spirit of truth which is in us is to be distinguished from the spirit of error that is in them (ver. 6). From whom do we obtain a hearing?

“Ye are of God;” and your being of God raises you above the risk of being “seduced by false prophets;” for it enables you to “try the spirits.” “We too are of God.” And this is the proof of it,—that our teaching commends itself, not to the world, but to you who know God and are of God. Between you and us there is a blessed harmony; between your state of mind as you try the spirits, and our teaching as we stand the trial. You who are hearers, are secure in trying the spirits against all false prophets; for you have overcome them, being yourselves of God. We who are preachers, being of God as you are, have assurance that our spirit, the spirit of our teaching, is the Spirit of truth, when we see the world hearing them, and only you who are of God and know God hearing us. Thus you and we are both safe; you who try and we who are tried; you safe from being misled by false prophets, we safe from being confounded with them. And our joint safety lies in both you and us being “of God.”

Taken thus, this passage bears closely on a deeply interesting subject; the self-evidencing power of the gospel of Christ in the hands of the Spirit of God. There is a wonderfully gracious correspondence between the spiritual intelligence of the man who is of God and knows God; and the spiritual intelligibility and acceptability of the teaching which is of God. The two fit into one another; the state of mind and heart in the receiver who tests, and the character of what is submitted to him to be tested. You who test, and we who are tested, are in a close and intimate relation to one another. A common quality unites us; or a common agency; opening your eyes to try, and fashioning our doctrine for being tried. The same spirit is in you and in us; the Spirit that is “of God” the Spirit of truth.

There is something like this on the other side. There is the world; and there are the false prophets who are of the world. They are mutually related to one another, precisely as you and we are. What you are to us, that the world is to the false prophets. What we are to you, that they are to it. The world knows its own. The teaching which is of the world commends itself to the world. That teaching, therefore, must be antichristian; for the world is antichristian.

Here, then, are the opposite workings of two opposite powers; and here is the secret of their greatness. For both are great; and both are great, not only in themselves, but in their adaptation to those with whom they have to deal.

I. “He that is in the world is great.” And his greatness lies in this, that he operates in a twofold way. He forms and fashions the world spiritually; and he finds for it, or makes for it, appropriate and congenial spiritual food. He creates or moulds the world’s appetite for some sort of religious teaching; and he inspires for his own ends the religious teaching that is to suit his world and be accepted by it. Hence his false prophets are sure of their own measure of success; “they are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them” (ver. 5).

But he cannot succeed with you who are “of God;” for there is one in you who, great as he is, is greater still. And he also operates in a double way. He gives you inwardly spiritual intelligence, spiritual insight and sympathy, to try; and he gives you outwardly spiritual truth to be tried. You are yourselves of God, and therefore competent to judge what we speak. And we too, being of God, speak what cannot be acceptable to the world, but only to him who is of God, and knows God. Thus what you are prepared to apprehend and appreciate, and what we are moved to speak, harmonise and are at one. It is all the doing of “him who dwelleth in you,” and of whom “we know,” through your acceptance of our teaching, “that he is not the spirit of error, but the Spirit of truth.”

Look for a little at the world, and him that is in the world. He is great, undeniably great; great in power and wisdom; in command of resources and subtlety in the use of them. He has largely, as to its moral and spiritual tastes and tendencies, the making of the world in which he is, and of which he is the moving soul. The world, in a sense, lives, and moves, and has its being, in him. He is in it as the spring of its activities, the dictator of its laws, the guider of its pursuits and pleasures; in a word, “the ruler of its darkness.” The darkness of its deep alienation from God, he rules. And he rules it very specially for the purpose of getting the world to be contented with an image, instead of the reality, of godliness. For he knows well enough that the world is, and must be, in a sense and after a fashion, religious. He cannot put it off with the “no God” which the fool would fain say in his heart. He is far too sagacious and shrewd to attempt that. What he does attempt is a much more plausible device. He takes advantage of whatever may be the world’s mood at the time, as regards God and his worship; throws himself into it; controlling or inflaming it, as he may see cause, so as to turn it to his own account. And then he contrives to bring under his sway prophets or teachers; not always consciously false; often meaning to be true; able men; holy men; men of God and of prayer; pre-eminently so it may be. And bringing into contact the world which he has doctored and the doctors whom he has tutored, he adjusts them skilfully to one another. He causes his teachers, perhaps insensibly, to draw much of their inspiration from the particular world which, as to its religious bias, he has influenced with an eye to their teaching. And so “they are of the world; therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.”

Numberless instances and illustrations might be brought forward here; reaching from the grossest corruptions that have ever disgraced the name of religion, to the most refined forms of ingenious speculation that have ever imposed on the fancy of the most devout enthusiast, or the feelings of the most amiable. They might all, I believe, be explained on the principle now suggested. There is one in the world who is great; great in a religious point of view; great in his power and skill to master and manage, from age to age, the world’s ever-changing fits and fashions of religiousness; great in the strange and terrible command he often wields over the most gifted, and even the most godly, of the prophets or teachers who have to deal with them.

Thus, if the world, at his instigation, wants a golden calf, there is an Aaron, under his influence, ready to provide one. If the people, moved by him, will have smooth things spoken to them, he has prophets of smooth things prepared for them. If men are growing weary of the old wine; and he will be but too glad to make them more weary of it, and help them also to excuses for their weariness; it shall go hard but he will mix plenty of new wine for their use. It is not he who has to take up the complaint; nor his agents either;—“We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.” He is in and among the crowd of those to whom the children in the market-place are to cry. And the children who are to cry are his ministers. He can prepare the crowd to hear, and move the children to cry, according to his good pleasure; so that there shall be flock for pastor and pastor for flock; people for priest and priest for people; the times for the teaching and the teaching for the times; all in perfect harmony. Yes; he that is in the world is great; great in his ability to make the world,—the world in the church,—what he would have it to be; great in his ability to find and fit and fashion ministers and agents, who, being of the world, as regards its religious tastes and tendencies, will “speak of the world,” and whom, therefore, the “world will hear.”

There is, indeed, a power or law of action and reaction between the world and its prophets—the world in the church and its false prophets,—which, as indicating the greatness of him who is in the world, deserves very careful notice. The world in the church, I repeat. For I have nothing to do now,—John here takes nothing to do,—with the world outside of the church, the world of those who do not even profess to be religious; his sole concern is with the church, and the spirits in the church that are to be tried, and the parties that are to try them. Satan, the spirit of antichrist, has within the church a world of his own, a world in which he is, and is great. And he is great in it, very much through his making skilful and sagacious use of this law of action and reaction, between what the world craves and what its false prophets give.

Do you suppose that if you have “itching ears,” there will not be found preachers who, catching perhaps unconsciously the contagion from you, will feed and foster the disease? If you incline to a gospel explaining away the atonement, and reducing the incarnation to a mere glorifying of humanity in the mass, instead of its being the redemption, by substitution, of individual men; a gospel of that vague sort will soon be forthcoming. If, in any church or congregation, there springs up a craving for excitement, a demand for novelty, which the old preaching of the cross fails to satisfy; if a certain restless prurience of spiritual taste begins to manifest itself; if a cry or a sigh for gifts and miracles, for signs and wonders, is heard; all experience, all history, proves that it will not be long before men appear who, carried away themselves and led off their feet by the strong tide, will prove apt and able agents in encouraging others to try the virtue of its flowing waves. It is not that they purposely or dishonestly accommodate their teaching and prophesying to the spirit that may be abroad in their world. They drink it in themselves; it intoxicates their own souls. “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.” Truly great is he that is in the world; great in adapting the world and its prophets very perfectly to one another.

II. But “greater is he that is in you, little children,” for he is the Lord God Almighty. He is strong; and he “strengthens you with might by his Spirit in the inner man; Christ dwelling in your heart by faith; and you being rooted and grounded in love.” He is strong; and he makes you strong; strong in holding fast the form of sound words, and contending earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the saints; strong in cleaving to the truth as it is in Jesus; strong in your real, personal, close, and loving acquaintance with him, “whom to know is life eternal.” He who is in you is God; God abiding in you; giving you the Spirit. He is in you; not merely on your side, at your right hand, around you; but within you. He is working in you; so working in you as to secure your safe triumph, in this great fight of truth against error, over the world and him who is in it. And his working in you is of the same sort as is the working of his great antagonist in and among those with whom he is so busy.

He makes you, who are of God, to be men of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; quick to apprehend what they who are of God are moved by him to speak. He takes these two things: the mind or heart of the learner or inquirer who is of God, and what is spoken by the apostle or teacher who also is of God. He adapts them to one another, brings them together, welds them into one. So he insures that what we who are of God speak, however it may be received by the world, shall prove acceptable to you who know God and are of God. He imparts to you, in whom he is, a certain spiritual tact or taste,—call it spiritual intelligence, spiritual insight, spiritual discernment,—by means of which he enables you to recognise, in what you hear or read or remember, the very truth of the true and living God, sanctifying and saving to your own souls. He brings out in you, palpably to your own consciousness, the marvellous correspondence that there is between the heart with which he is inwardly dealing and the word or doctrine which, through the teaching of men of God, he is outwardly presenting. He is in you; breaking your heart in deep conviction of sin, and then healing the broken heart, oh! how tenderly, by the sprinkling of atoning blood. He is in you; causing the commandment so to come home to you that you die, helplessly condemned, under the righteous sentence of the law, and then bringing near to you, oh! how lovingly, the life-giving assurance that “there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” He is in you; causing you to see and feel that instead of “being rich and having need of nothing, you are poor, and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked,” and then pressing upon you, oh! how graciously, the Lord’s affectionate counsel to buy of him “freely,” without money and without price, “gold tried in the fire, that you may be rich; and white raiment, that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness do not appear; and to anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that you may see.” He is in you; forming you for Christ and forming Christ in you. He is in you; fitting your whole inner man for Christ, and fitting Christ into your whole inner man. He is in you; so as to cause to spring up from the very depths of your spirit a sense of intimate oneness, not to be broken, between you and Christ,—between your highest faculty of belief and thought, and his doctrine, which now “you know to be of God.” What precisely the bond of this oneness may be,—in what exactly it consists,—you may not be able to define. Probably, at bottom, it is the recognition in your heart now, as in Christ’s doctrine always, of the high and holy sovereignty of God; his just supremacy. It is the joint owning, in your heart and in Christ’s doctrine, of the great truth—“The Lord reigneth.” But be it what it may, you feel it. And the feeling of it is your assured confidence and satisfying rest.

I cannot now pursue the subject further. Let me simply, in closing, exhort you to consider well in what it is that your security lies, when you are called to try the spirits—what it is that alone can give you certain and decisive victory over the false prophets. It is God being in you; abiding in you; giving you the Spirit. The spirit of antichrist is in the world; in the church’s world; in the worldly materials of which, in too large a measure, the church is composed. “Many false prophets are gone out into the world.” The spirit of error, as well as the spirit of truth, is abroad; and it may be that sifting, trying, critical days are at hand. What is to be your protection? How are you to be prepared? Let me warn you that it is not head knowledge that will do; not logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or theology; not creeds, or catechisms, or confessions; not early training in the soundest manual; not familiarity with the ablest and most orthodox writings; not skill in argument and debate;—no; nothing will do but God being in you; in your heart, your heart of hearts; God in Christ dwelling in you; God giving you the Spirit. An experimental assurance alone will keep you safe. But that will keep you safe. For as he that is not of God will not hear us who speak as being of God; so he that knoweth God will not hear the false prophets. So the Good Shepherd himself assures us. He “goeth before the sheep, and they follow him, for they know his voice; and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.” “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and none is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.”