Lecture XXXIII

LOVE THE MEANS OF MUTUAL INDWELLING; GOD IN US AND WE IN GOD

THE statement, “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit,” carries us back to a previous statement (3:24), “Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” We are thus reminded of the scope and design of the whole passage. The question is about the mutual indwelling of God in us and of us in God; and more particularly about his abiding in us. How are we to know this? By the Spirit which he hath given us, is the answer. But that raises another question. Every spirit is not to be believed; there must be a trial of the spirits. By what test or tests are they to be tried? How is the Spirit that is of God to be distinguished from the spirit of antichrist? First, by his confessing in us that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (ver. 2–6); and secondly, by our loving, with the love which is of God (ver. 7–12). And now, connecting the two, John brings us back substantially to the original statement, as to our knowing that we dwell in God, and God in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. For the two tests are now brought closely together, and shown to be not so much two as one; or at least not two independent tests, each separately valid in itself, but so intimately related to one another that they mutually involve one another, and thus combine together to make up one cogent and irrefragable proof. It is this virtual unity of the two tests that forms the theme or subject of the verses now before us.

I. The first of the two tests is recapitulated: “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world; whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (ver. 14, 15). There is a slight difference here from the language of the second verse; and the difference is evidently designed. It is intended to impregnate, if I may so speak, and vivify the truth confessed, with the love whose origin and nature John has been unfolding. The two ideas,—his being “sent” to be “the Saviour of the world,” and “his being the Son,”—are evidently suggested by what has been said of that divine love in the intermediate verses (ver. 9, 10).

It is interesting in this view, to trace the growth and development of the thought. The confession which is to be the sign of its being the Spirit that is of God, or the Spirit of truth, that we receive, is first put as if it were the mere acknowledgment of a bare historical fact. It is much more by implication; but, so far as the actual expression goes, it is not anything more. But see to what fulness of warm gushing life it has now attained. And how? It has been passing through an atmosphere of love, and has thus got to be impressed with a certain teeming warmth and quickening power. What is to be confessed, when we first look at it and lay it aside, might seem to be, so far as the mere wording of it is concerned, scarcely more significant and affecting than the notice of a birth, or any other common fact, of which we read in old annals, or in the current news of the day. Now, when we take it up to look at it again, after it has been steeped in the rich dew of heaven’s love, it glows and is instinct with meaning. “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh;” come to be “the Saviour of the world;” come as “the Son, whom the Father hath sent;”—that is the full confession now.

Hence the real reason of that first test, and of its being so closely interwoven with the other. How should the confession of a mere matter of fact be so certain a token of God’s “giving us of his Spirit,” and of his “dwelling in us”? For it is a simple matter of fact, to be known and ascertained like other ordinary facts in history; to be received on the very same ground and warrant of historical evidence and testimony. The apostle admits as much, both before (1:1–3) and now (4:14). You have our testimony for it; and our testimony may be relied on; “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you;” “We have seen and do testify” what we ask you to confess. The question therefore recurs: How should my confessing a mere and simple matter of fact, especially considering that, however wonderful it may be, I have it attested to me by sufficient evidence, prove that “God giveth me of his Spirit,” and so “dwelleth in me”?

The answer must be found in the character of the fact or truth confessed; or in the aspect in which it is presented, or presents itself to me. What is it in itself? What is it to me? If it is a fact or truth of a merely historical sort, and is so apprehended by me, my admission and avowal of it will be no proof or presumption of God’s having “given me of his Spirit, and dwelling in me,” any more than my admission and avowal of any well-attested event that ever happened in the world. That may be my case; if so, it is a sad one. It may be to me a mere fact or truth of history; not only in its original form, naked and bald, “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh;” but even in the more warm and living substance which it takes, when it is, as it were, clothed upon with the love which is from heaven. For whatever can be stated in words about that love, and the measure and the manifestation of it, can all be comprehended by the natural understanding. I can put it all in propositions intelligible enough to myself and others; and I can honestly accept these propositions, and confess my acceptance of them. But it may be head-work and not heart-work with me after all. So long as it is so, it is my work merely; the work of my own mind, not of the Spirit. For his work is mainly in the heart. It is spirit dealing with spirit; not mere intellect dealing with intellect. It is God’s Spirit dealing intimately and lovingly with my spirit, and that too upon a special theme; a specific subject; “Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” as “the very Son of God, sent by the Father to be the Saviour of the world.”

Now if God thus communes with me, his Spirit with my spirit, not mind with mind merely, but heart with heart, upon this special theme or subject; if the fact of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh thus starts from the page of history, and fixes and rivets itself in my inner man, becoming part and parcel of my most inward experience; if, in short, the truth comes home to me, as not simply a historical event, but, as it were, a honey-filled bee, full fraught with all the love that is in the Father’s heart of hearts and is poured out in the saving mission of his Son;—if I take this in, and let this heaven-laden bee pierce me, and fill the wound it makes with what itself is full of;—love, this love of God;—then I have something to confess, which may well be an evidence of “God’s having given me of his Spirit, and so dwelling in me.” Yes! I may humbly appropriate the Lord’s words to Peter; “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”

II. The second test is thus in large measure anticipated, and all but swallowed up, in the first. The confession of truth is now seen to be identical with the sense and experience of love: “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (ver. 16) “We have known and believed.” This is quite John’s manner; to unite in one knowledge and faith; we have intelligently believed; we have believingly understood. We have thus known and believed “the love that God hath to us;”—or rather, “the love which God hath in us.”¹ For the expression is very peculiar and emphatical; and, as used here, can scarcely mean anything else than that his love to us has become his love in us; and that we have known and believed it as such. Of course it is his love to us; but it is his love to us, transferred, as it were, or transplanted, from the gospel, where it is a matter of revelation from without, to our own hearts, where it becomes a moving principle and power from within. There, in the gospel, it is his love manifested to us: here, in our hearts, it is his love actually existing in us;—not merely felt by us as his love to us; but felt by us as his love in us;—in us, so truly and literally in us, that we become the conscious storekeepers or depositories of it, as it were, and the dispensers of it to others who are as much its objects as we are ourselves. The love of God, having us for its objects, passes from God’s outer record into our inner life. It enters into us; it finds access to the innermost recesses of our moral and spiritual being; it is therefore now “the love which God has in us.” He pours into us, he puts and plants in us, his own love. He has it in us; his own very love; reproduced by himself in us; communicated, if one may dare to say so, by himself, from his own heart to ours. It is the love of which we ourselves, in the first instance, are the objects; of which it was our first relief and joy, when we were convinced of sin, to find ourselves the objects. It is the love of which, when all but despairing, we laid trembling hold, and of which we are still fain to lay hold continually; —not love to the holy, the pure, the penitent, the believing, the chosen; but love to the world as such, of which we are part; love to men as sinners, “of whom I am chief.” But that love is in us now. “God has it in us.” It is not merely that we have it in us, as a ground of confidence for ourselves; God has it in us as on his behalf a treasury of love available for others. It is in us,—not merely as what we ourselves grasp and count to be all our salvation, but as what springs up in us, and is outgoing towards others; being thus God’s own very love, dwelling and working in our whole inner man. That, I am persuaded, and nothing short of that, is the great thought involved in these wondrous words, “we have known and believed the love that God hath in us.” Not only have we known and believed his love, so as to apprehend and appropriate it, as it comes from without and from above;—not only so as to take it and make it available for our own spiritual life and comfort; but also, and especially, so as to imbibe it;—to drink it into the very essence of our renovated nature, our renewed selves. In us who know it and believe it, God has his own love in actual existence and in active exercise.

Herein lies that community of nature between God and us which the Spirit works or effects. Love is God’s nature; “God is love” (ver. 16). Again that great truth is here proclaimed. And, as it would seem, it is now proclaimed again for the purpose of bringing out what it is of God that we can share with him; that he can “have in us.” Much there is about God that must continue always altogether incommunicable to us; much that must remain for ever outward and objective to us, and never can become inward and subjective in us. All that pertains to him as lawgiver, ruler, judge,—all that he is as, seated on the throne of his high majesty and universal empire, he carries on the government of the universe,—is and must be exclusively his own; it is only in a very secondary sense, and in a very subordinate capacity, that we can have any of his authority delegated to us when, besides dealing with us as his subjects, he uses us as his ministers. But it would seem to be otherwise with his holiness and his love. Paul speaks of our being made “partakers of his holiness;”—John speaks of “the love he has in us.” The two indeed are one, for his holiness is loving and his love is holy. His holy love therefore is not incommunicable; it passes from him to us. Not only are we its objects; more than that; it begets itself anew, if one may say so, in us. It is God’s very love, his holy love, in us, and it is to be known and believed, to be felt and manifested, by us accordingly.

What is this but our “dwelling in love” (ver. 16), in God’s own love? Love; the holy love of God; of the Father sending the Son to be the Saviour of the world; is now the habitual home of our hearts. We remain, we abide, we stay in it. We would not quit it, or let it go; we cannot, for it alone is our peace. Away from that love; that holy love; that love with all its holiness; reaching us and saving us, the most worldly of the world, the very chief of sinners; what hope, what health, can we have? Neither can we quit it, or let it go, as a principle of life and activity, going out from ourselves to others. If it is to be God’s love to us, known and believed by us, for our own peace and comfort and holy spiritual quickening; it must be God’s love in us, his own love, which “he has in us,” known and believed by us for outward use, as well as for inward assurance and rest. Only in so far as we constantly realise this love of God, both as the love he has to us and as the love he has in us, do we really dwell in love. But dwelling thus in this love, we do indeed dwell in God. For God is this love; and as such he dwelleth in us. In respect of this love, of which we are now both the grateful receivers and the glad transmitters, there is a blessed oneness between God and us. He dwells in this love; for he is love; and we now dwell in this love also. It becomes our nature, as it is his, thus to love. Therefore this love is the bond of union between him and us;—the meeting-place, the habitation, the home, in which we dwell together; he in us and we in him. This love, this holy love, is that which God and we may have in common. And therefore it is the element or quality in respect of which there may be mutual indwelling of us in God and of God in us.

Hence the two tests of God’s “giving us of his Spirit and dwelling in us,” coalesce, as it were, and become essentially one. To confess, on the testimony of the apostles as eye-witnesses, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world (ver. 14); that Jesus is the Son of God (ver. 15); and to know and believe the love that God has to us and in us (ver. 16); is really one and the same thing. For the confession is not the cold assent of the understanding to a formal article in a creed. It is the warm and cordial embracing of the Father’s love, incarnate in the Son whom he sends to be the Saviour of the world. It is the letting into our hearts of the love which is God’s nature; for God is love. It is our dwelling with him in love. For, as Paul teaches, in entire and perfect harmony with John;—“In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision availeth anything, but faith which worketh by love;” faith confessing Christ; faith knowing and believing the love that God has in us; faith loving as it sees and feels that God himself loves.