Lecture XL

THE SUBSTANCE OF THE TESTIMONY—ETERNAL LIFE GOD'S GIFT IN HIS SON

THESE two verses close what John has to say about the faith which overcometh the world, and they explain and apply the statement, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the testimony in himself” (ver. 10). It is the testimony of God that the believer has in himself; but he has it as not now God testifying to him, but God testifying in him. It is no longer objective and outward merely; it becomes subjective and inward. When it is believed or received, it enters into, and, as it were, passes through the receiving mind; effects a lodgment for itself behind, far back, deep down, in the innermost soul; and makes itself known and felt there, not as an external fact or proposition, but as an internal power or principle of activity. But what is it that gives this testimony of God its ability so to change its position? Is it not its having in it, not truth merely, but life? It is not mere truth-telling, it is life-giving also; for “this is the testimony, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (ver. 11). Therefore the receiving of it is not merely being convinced, as by evidence or authority from without or from above, but being quickened by a mighty agency and influence within. It is, in short, not merely truth admitted into the inner man, but life communicated to the inner man. It must therefore be inward; intimately and intensely inward: “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (ver. 12).

The testimony of God is first, that he bestows on us life as a gift; “he hath given to us eternal life;” and then secondly, that “this life is in his Son.” He gives us therefore this eternal life when he gives us his Son.

Consider in what sense and manner this eternal life is in his Son. It is in him, as being possessed by him as his own; he has it in himself. In his incarnate state he has it thus; not as God only, but as man also, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh.” Let us hear his own words: “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). That cannot surely be the life which, as the Son of God, he has from everlasting. It must be life belonging to him as man; life of which his human nature, as well as his divine nature, is capable. And yet it is strangely identified with the Father’s own life. It is connected with it and compared to it. And it is connected with it and compared to it, in respect of what might be thought to be the highest and most peculiar property of the everlasting God, his incommunicable attribute of self-existence.

What can this mean? Is it really self-existence that our Lord claims for himself as “the man Christ Jesus,” for his manhood as well as his Godhead? That can scarcely be his meaning; for he speaks of this life as derived. It is not his originally, like the life which he has with the Father and the Holy Ghost from everlasting to everlasting. It is his by the Father’s gift. It is life having necessarily, in that view, a beginning, though it may know no end. It is not therefore self-existence; it cannot be. And yet it must be something not quite unlike that manner of life which self-existence implies, and not far from being akin to it.

For the statement respecting the Father himself, that he hath “life in himself,” may have reference here, not to the abstract nature of his life as being underived and self-subsistent, but rather to the manner of its exercise. The Father lives, not simply as existing; but as existing ever consciously and actively, realising and enjoying existence, if one may dare to say so; thinking, feeling, doing. His life is thought, feeling, action. And what, under that aspect of it, must be held to be one chief characteristic of his life? What but this, that he does not adapt himself to things without, or draw from things without the grounds and reasons of his procedure; of his thinking, feeling, acting, in any case or instance, thus and not otherwise; that these are always found within his own holy mind and heart; that so he “has his life in himself?” Is not that, in truth, the perfection of the Father’s “eternal life?” Is it not thus that it is essentially eternal? It is not moved or moulded by what is seen and temporal. It is determined by his own indwelling purpose, which is unseen and eternal.

But, it may be asked, is any creature capable of a life like that? Can any creature, in that sense, have life in himself? Not certainly as a creature living apart from the Creator, or separate from the Creator. Assuredly fallen man has no such life. He does not live a life that is independent, as to its ongoings, of things without. Is he not, on the contrary, in large measure the creature and the child of circumstances? What, in fact, is his life but a struggle to accommodate himself to the state of matters that he finds pressing upon him, all around him, in the world? Selfish he may be to the heart’s core; consulting only for his own ease and pleasure. Or, in his philosophy, he may affect to rise above external influences, to bid defiance to all foreign forces, and consult no will but his own. It is all in vain. With all his selfishness, and all his philosophy, he cannot shake himself free from subjection to things seen and temporal. He cannot be, in that respect, “as God.” It would not be good for him if he could; not at least unless he was so united and allied to God as to be really and thoroughly one in mind and heart with God.

But was not that the case with the Son of God on the earth, “the man Christ Jesus”? He was united and allied to God as no other man ever was or could be. In him the human nature was perfectly one in character with the divine. He therefore, while living always as self-moved and self-regulated, altogether independently of things without, never could live otherwise than as the Father liveth. Therefore it was possible for him, as Son of man as well as Son of God, to have “life in himself” by the Father’s gift, exactly as “the Father hath life in himself.”

Look at Jesus Christ come in the flesh; the Father’s own Son given to be the Saviour of the world. What was his life? Was it not all from within? He was not insensible to things without; they deeply and powerfully affected him; he felt them keenly. But his life; his real life; the life he lived by purpose and determination, by ultimate choice of will; was not outwardly dictated, but inwardly originated. He had it in himself. Take a testing instance, his saying, “Not my will, but thine be done.” “My will!” That was the effect of an impression from without; it was the outer world and its prince pressing him very closely; it was the horror of the cross brought to bear upon him very vehemently. And he had in him sensibilities and susceptibilities that laid his inner man very open to the pressure. His very holiness, his holy love to God and holy hatred of sin, made the thought of his being forsaken of God and enduring the penal curse inconceivably terrible. “Father, let the cup pass,” is what his will would be if it were moved from without. But no. Even in his worst straits he will not yield altogether, he will not yield at all, to his will being moved from without. He will give utterance indeed to what his will as so moved would be, if he were to yield to it. Thanks that for our sakes he does so! But it is not as if he were yielding to it. “If it be possible” is still the qualification. And then he falls back upon his real inmost self; his real inner life: “Nevertheless, Father, not my will, but thine be done.”

That is surely something like “having life in himself;” having power to pass over, or pass through, the will which outward circumstances of suffering or temptation would prompt; to get far back, far down, within; and to find and feel there an inward impulse overbearing the impression from without and moving the real inward choice; “Not my will, but thine be done.”

Is this “eternal life”? Is it “the eternal life which is in the Son”? Is it the power, or privilege, or prerogative of living from within himself, because it is living from within the Father, in whose bosom he dwells; from within the Father’s nature, with which his own is always in harmony; from within the Father’s will, to which his own is always thoroughly conformed? It is a life quite compatible with the obligation of subjection to authoritative rule or law; and that too in the utmost severity of penal infliction, as well as in the strictest bond of holy requirement. It was so in Jesus as “made under the law.” He still had this life in himself, even when he took our death as his own. If it had not been so; if his life had been not from within but from without; if he had been one who lived according to he stress and strain of the external world; he never would have taken our death as his own. But “having life in himself,” as one with the Father, he “finished the work which the Father gave him to do.”

Now therefore, in an eminent and blessed sense, this life is in the Son for us. There is in him for us such a life as even the death of criminality and condemnation which for us he takes as his own cannot destroy. It would be ruin to us, that death; but it is not ruin to him. If the sentence takes effect upon us, it is without our choice, and against our consent; we cannot walk up to it as “having life in ourselves,” or as moved from within ourselves to bear it, as the Father is necessarily moved from within himself to inflict it. But Jesus can, and does (John 10:17, 18). Even in dying for us he has therefore “life in himself.” “Eternal life is thus in the Son” as “sent by the Father to be the propitiation for our sins.”

And this life is something more than his surviving the endurance of our death. It is a living apprehension and appropriation for us of the Father’s life. For it is as the Father hath life in himself, that he, on our behalf and as our head and representative, has life in himself. In that capacity he shares the Father’s life; his manner of living is the same as the Father’s. It is not a life of shifts and expedients; a life contingent and conditional on the chances of time and tide; a life of afterthoughts, altering the course to suit every current, setting the sails to every change in the fickle wind. It is a calm serene purpose; working itself out steadily “without variableness or shadow of turning.” It is living for that for which God lives; living therefore as God lives. Is not that the eternal life of which God testifies as being in his Son? It is in his Son alone; and in him inalienably. It is in him in such a sense that he cannot part with it or give it away. We do not receive this eternal life of God from his Son; we share it with him. The Father’s testimony is that the eternal life which he gives us is in his Son.

Here let me remind you that it is the Spirit who bears this testimony on the Father’s behalf; the Spirit, with the water and the blood by which Jesus Christ came. The Father’s gift of eternal life to you is in his Son; that is the testimony. And it is the Spirit that bears the testimony; the Spirit who takes of what is Christ’s and shows it to you; the Spirit making you Christ’s and Christ yours; the Spirit making you partakers of Christ’s own very life, “the eternal life which is in the Son.” Because he lives, you live; as he lives, you live. In him the Father gave, has given, and is giving you, “eternal life;” life that, in and with Christ, can undergo and survive the death of guilt and wrath; life that, in and with Christ, can in a sense become identical in character with God’s own life; sharing, in a measure, its inward, self-moving energy, and its independence of things without. For that, and nothing short of that, is the eternal life that he gives; the life that is in his Son. So he is testifying to us; testifying to us by his Spirit; by his Spirit striving with us, and shutting us up into Christ. This eternal life in his Son is his gift to us; already bestowed; assured to us by his own testimony; awaiting our acceptance; ours if we will but have it to be ours, if we will have him in whom it is ours.

Therefore “he that hath the Son hath life.” If only he has the Son, he has the very life which is in the Son. Thus the way is made plain and simple; God the Father has made it so. Very wonderfully has he made it so. The end is very high. It is our living as God lives. It is our living as God lives, from within; not as acted upon, but as acting; and that from some inward motive, or impulse, or principle, common to both, to God and to us. And the common motive or impulse or principle, that which is common to God and to us as regards this eternal life,—what is it? Is it not Christ? Is it not Christ having in him this life? God in Christ; we in Christ; is it not thus that God and we meet in a common life?

1. Hence, in the first place, an essential preliminary or condition of this life, nay one chief part of it so far as we are concerned, is the abolishing of death. No one can have this life; a life self-possessed and self-contained, being a life God-possessed and God-contained; who is not consciously and believingly right with himself, because right with God; right in law and judgment; on a right footing; unimpeached and uncondemned. The conscience must be pacified and the heart reconciled. With a sense of sin upon the conscience and enmity in the heart, it is impossible for me to have anything like that free and independent life, in and with himself, which God means me to have, as his gift to me. If he is to give me that life of his, he must first give me deliverance from this death of mine, from my conscious guilt and felt liability to wrath, and the consequent dread, discomfort, and dislike, with which that life of his is wholly incompatible. And so he does; for if I have the Son, I have life, in the sense and to the effect of complete and final deliverance from death. I pass from death to life.

2. But, secondly, the life to which I pass is something more than the undoing of my death; the reversal of the sentence and destruction of the power of my death. It is a new endowment; it is the imparting to me of a new power, or privilege, or capacity; it is the accession or addition of a new faculty of life, over and above any I ever naturally possessed, or ever could have got for myself, even though the blight of sin’s guilt and curse had never come upon me.

For he whom I have is the Son; and I have him, if I have him at all, as the Son. I have him, not merely as he is set before me in his relation to sinners, and to me, of sinners the chief; himself made sin for me and making me righteous in his righteousness. I must indeed first have him in that character and capacity. But I have him also as the Son, in his filial relation to the Father; as the Son to whom “the Father hath given to have life in himself.” I speak not of what he was to the Father from before all worlds, in the past eternity, ere he came into this world: it is not the life he then had that the Father gives me. I speak of him as he has been since his incarnation, and as he will continue to be all through the eternity that is to come. When I have him, I have him thus; as he now is and ever will be. I have the Son; and in him I have the very life which the Father has given him.

And that life is “life eternal;” it is “having life in himself.” It is having life in himself because it is having life in God his Father. For he and the Father are one; and their life is one. Whatever constitutes the Father’s life; whatever the everlasting Father may be said to live in, or to live for; that is the life of the Son. And it is the life which you have, if you have the Son. It is your having life in yourself. It is so most emphatically when it is viewed in contrast with any life you may be supposed, or may suppose yourself, to have when you have not the Son.

What is your life out of Christ? What is your life in your unconverted state; when you are unrenewed and unreconciled? Is it anything like your having life in yourselves? Is it independent of things without? Take it in any sense you choose. Take it secularly, as the life you live in the world. What keeps you alive, alert, interested, not dull and drowsy, as you too often are, but lively? Is it an inherent inward principle of activity? Or are you conscious that you depend almost entirely on outward stimulants, outward means of occupation, or excitement, outward events or news of company, for what you can really reckon the life of the day; and that without these you flag and droop, and for the time are as good as dead? You can bestir yourself on occasion. You can be roused to sentimental interest or energetic exertion, bodily or mental, when some appliance from without is brought to bear upon you. But when you are left to yourself and your own inward resources, what stagnation is apt to come upon you! Or take the life you live religiously, in the sense of your trust and hope before God! What is it? What is it that ministers to your quiet and peace? Is it an indwelling and abiding assurance, an outgoing and out-flowing affection? Or is it an observance of formal rites and a compliance with devout customs? Is it as being alone with God, or is it as one of a company, lost in a crowd or admitted into a coterie, that you feel yourself to be safe enough and comfortable enough? Certainly, if you are out of Christ, if you have not the Son; your life, in either view of it, whatever real vitality you have, is contingent upon things without; bound up, more or less, with what passes away and is not eternal. For the world, the religious as well as the secular world, passes away; and any life to which it ministers must be fleeting and not eternal.

But now, if you have the Son, how different is your life! First and chiefly, in a spiritual sense, how is it that you now live? What is the seat, what the source, of your life; your confidence; your fellowship; your worship; your joy in God? Is it not Christ in you? Having him as the Son, you are complete in him. You have his life, the life which he has with God, communicated to you and shared with you. Your life, in the sense of your standing with God and your relation to God, is identical with his. Having the Son, you have the Son’s life, as being sons yourselves. And now, therefore, the ruling, active, moving principle of your life is identical with his. You live for that for which he, as the Son, lived and lives. And what was, what is that? Not certainly anything out of himself, save only God. He lived here on earth, not for things external, any more than he lived by things external. He drew no inspiration from without himself. He owned no rule without or outside of himself. He said, “Lo, I come; to do thy will, O God. Yea thy law is within my heart.” He, being the Son, walked abroad as the Son on his Father’s earth, “having life in himself,” because he lived with the Father and for the Father; the Father living in him and giving him without measure the Spirit. That was his life. And you have it as yours, if you have the Son himself as yours. You also walk abroad on this earth, which is your Father’s, having your Father’s love abiding in you, as it abode in him; receiving, as he did, the Spirit.

If then you realise your position, if really and truly, consciously and constantly, you “have the Son;” if you have him as yours, your own very portion and possession, yours now, to hold, to grasp, to identify with yourself; if you thus have the Son and his sonship, what ought to be your port and bearing towards things without, things seen and temporal? Are you still to be the sport of circumstances, swayed to and fro by accidents, dependent on chances and contingencies, leaning on props that an hour may overthrow, fain to snatch a trembling joy from the brief and troubled sunshine of a wintry noon? Nay rather, having the Son, live as having in you “life eternal;” life that can defy the vicissitudes, as it will outlast the limits, of time; life standing, not in the world’s or the church’s fleeting forms, but in the favour, love, fellowship; in the law, commandments, ordinances: of the everlasting Father, “his Father and your Father, his God and your God.”

Let a few words of practical application be allowed.

1. “He that hath the Son hath life;” he has this life, and no other. Hence a searching question: Are you willing upon that condition to have the Son? You may be willing to have the Son, and along with him, and through him, some sort of life. You would have him as providing for you life, in the sense of mere safety from death; securing your ultimate impunity in the day of judgment. But you cannot have him thus; for “he that hath the Son hath life,” “eternal life;” the life meant when it is said, “as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have in himself.” If you have the Son at all, you must have him in all the fulness of his filial oneness with the Father; for that is his life: that alone is “life eternal.”

2. “He that hath not the Son of God hath not life;” he has not this life. Eternal life, in a sense, he has—life without end; and after death, life without change. Life also in himself it will then be in a very terrible sense: for then all external accessories and alleviations are gone; the world is not. But the soul not having the Son is. It continues to exist, and that for ever. It lives, with nothing out of itself to lean on, or look to! There is no congenial earthly system or sphere around to mitigate its pain; no Saviour waiting to be gracious; no Holy Spirit striving any more! For him there is, and that for ever, eternal death, instead of eternal life. It must be so because he has not the Son.

3. Eternal life is the gift of God, his present gift; his present gift to all, to all unreservedly, to all unconditionally. It is the life that is in his Son; the life which his Son lives now, and lives for evermore. This, and nothing short of this, is God’s gift. It is a gift; a mere gift; a free gratuitous gift. It is not a prize; “the prize of your high calling of God in Christ.” That is the consummation of this life; for which you have to wait and work, to wrestle in the fight and run the race that is set before you. But the life itself, in the full sense of its being not only deliverance from the criminal’s curse through the Son being made a curse for you, but also oneness with the Son, as in his atoning death and justifying resurrection, so also in his filial oneness with the Father,—this life is God’s gift, his gift now; not to be waited for; not to be worked for; not to be paid for; but to be accepted and appropriated by faith alone. He gives freely this eternal life.

4. Still he gives it only as life in his Son. He cannot separate this life from his Son; it is so precious, so divine. It is a filial life, and therefore it is in his Son. And it cannot be otherwise. You must have the Son if you would have it. But is that a painful or an irksome condition? Is it any objection, can you feel it to be any objection, that God insists on giving you his Son? Not a boon, a benefit, a blessing through his Son, but that Son himself, his own very Son, Jesus whom he loveth? Would you indeed have it otherwise? Would you rather not have the Son himself, if only you could get the good of his coming between you and eternal death? Oh, be not so ungrateful! Refuse not to receive and embrace him whom the Father is bringing near to you now. Obey the Father’s gracious command and call; “This is my beloved Son, hear him.”