Lecture XLIII

THE BELIEVER AS BORN OF GOD KEEPING HIMSELF SO AS NOT TO SIN

THE last clause of the seventeenth verse may best be read without the negative. There is, I believe, preponderating manuscript authority for so reading it. And, as regards internal evidence, it seems easier to explain,—and this is a good criterion,—how, if not originally in the text, it might creep in, than how, if originally in the text, it could fall out. The insertion of it by copyists, perhaps first as a conjectural marginal reading, can easily be explained by their supposing it necessary to harmonise the statement in the seventeenth verse with that in the verse before, so as to bring in again the idea of the lawfulness of praying for life for them that sin not unto death. This seventeenth verse, however, rather points the thought, not backwards to the sixteenth, but onwards and forwards to the eighteenth. Do not imagine that in praying for a sinning brother, you may overlook the possibility of his sin being unto death. Do not pray for him as if you thought that in accommodation to his case God’s law might be relaxed, and he, though sinning so as to deserve to die, and continuing so to sin, might yet not surely die. Beware of that; for your own sake, as well as for his sake; for your own sake, even more than for his sake. For you are in danger of being led to tolerate in yourselves what you are inclined to palliate in a brother. You secretly hope that there may be impunity for him, even though he is continuing in sin. Is there no risk of your being tempted to cherish a similar hope for yourselves; and so to forget the great truth that “all unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin unto death”?

But you may be saying within yourselves, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (3:9). You, therefore, as born of God, may hold yourselves safe in extenuating sin in a brother, and deprecating on his behalf its terrible doom. Still beware! It is true that, as it has been explained, whosoever is born of God does not and cannot sin. “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not.” Yes, we know that. But we know also that his not sinning, however it may be connected with his being born of God, and secured by God’s seed, the seed of the divine nature and eternal life, remaining in him, —is not so connected with that fact, or so secured by it, as to preclude the necessity of care and watchfulness. He has “to keep himself;” and that too in the presence of a formidable enemy. “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not.” But why not? Because “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.”

He “keepeth himself.” The phrase might suggest two ideas: that of keeping, as if restraint were needed; or that of keeping, as if care and culture were intended. This last is probably to be regarded as the right sense, not however by any means to the exclusion of the other. He has to guard himself against the touch of “that wicked one” from without; and he has carefully to watch and foster the growth of the divine seed within. His thus keeping himself is the effect of his being born of God; and it is the cause, or means, of his not sinning. Not otherwise than in the way of his keeping himself, can one born of God be safe from sinning. In an important and practical point of view, he must be his own keeper. And his keeping himself will be earnest, sedulous, anxious, in proportion to the sense he has of the value of what is to be kept, on the one hand, and of its liability to sustain damage, or be lost, on the other.

I. What is to be kept, O child of God? Yourself! Not yourself as you are by nature, but yourself as born of God. Consider, first, what is implied in that solemn thought.

Even as regards the life that now is, you have to keep yourself. Self-preservation is both your right and your duty; your right, which you are to vindicate though your doing so may involve an assailant’s death; your duty, which, whatever you may think about your own worth or value, you are not at liberty to renounce or to neglect. You are not entitled to throw yourself away; you are bound to keep yourself. And that, not only in the sense of your not literally committing suicide; for you may abstain from suicide and yet be virtually a self-destroyer. You are bound to keep yourself as one,—whatever you are, and wherever you are,—that is too costly to be cast away, being still, as you are, within the reach of divine grace and eternal life. You have no more right, in any circumstances, or in any mood or frame of mind, to give yourself up to despair, than you have to give yourself up to death.

But it is as a child of God that you are here said to keep yourself. Consider, I say again, what that means.

Try for a moment to separate in imagination yourself as the keeper, from yourself as what is to be kept. Look upon yourself objectively; as if you were looking at another person. Or, to make this easier, look first at another person, as if he were yourself. Suppose yourself your brother’s keeper; keeping him as if he were yourself. And, to make the analogy a fair one, suppose yourself to be, under God, his only keeper. And suppose also that your are his keeper in the sense of having most intimate access to his inner man, as well as entire control over his outward actions.

Well, you keep him; you, as born of God, keep him, as born of God;—would that we were all thus keeping one another! But what sort of keeping will it be? That will depend on the vividness of the apprehension which you have of your own sonship, and of his; of your being born of God, and his being born of God. He whom you have to keep is no ordinary piece of goods. He may have been once vile; a condemned criminal; and as such, unclean. But “what God has cleansed you cannot call common or unclean.” He is very precious now, and very pure. He has the seed of God abiding in him; the germ and principle of an absolutely sinless character and life. It is in that view, and upon that supposition, that you have to “keep” him. Your whole treatment of him must be accommodated to that fact. Need I bid you ask yourself what your treatment of him would, or at any rate should, be if you had to keep him as thus “born of God”?

Now if your keeping yourself is to be at all such as you feel that your keeping of your brother ought to be in the case supposed, it must proceed upon as clear and explicit a recognition of your own standing as, in that case, there would be of his. If you are really to keep yourself, you must distinctly understand, and strongly realise, what it is about you that is to be kept; what is the character in which, and what the standard by which, and what the end for which, you are to keep yourself.

For instance, I may feel that I have to keep myself as a good worldly man, or a good moral man, or a good man of business, or a good man of society, or a good neighbour and friend; a good husband, father, brother, son. I can only keep myself, in any of these characters, by first making it thoroughly, inwardly, intensely, my own, and then thoroughly acting it out. It will not do to assume it, or to imagine it; neither will it do to admit it in any doubtful or hesitating way. If I am to keep myself, I must know and apprehend myself actually to be what I mean, by keeping myself, to continue to be.

In keeping myself as born of God, this personal and realising faith is especially needful. The secret of my not keeping myself, with enough of watchfulness and prayer, is too often to be found in the want of it. I keep myself, perhaps, with tolerably decent consistency, as a professing member of the church; I keep myself as an upright, charitable, and correctly religious man. But do I take home to myself the obligation of keeping myself as more than that? Do I adequately apprehend the fact that I am more than that; that I am really and truly “born of God”? Do I sufficiently apprehend what that means? Nothing else will ensure my “keeping myself.”

I do not speak now of assurance, in a doctrinal point of view. No question is raised here as to a believing man being assured, for his own comfort, of his present standing and of his final salvation. The whole strain of John’s teaching is practical. Whether or not he that is born of God is to sit down and conclude reflexly that he is born of God, is not said. It is not even said that he is to raise the question. All that is said is, that he is to treat himself; he is to keep himself; as born of God. He is so to use and deal with himself, as he would use and deal with what is born of God. It is not to any reflex or subjective exercise of faith, ascertaining itself simply for its own confirmation and confidence, that he is called, but to the direct, objective acting out of his faith. And that is all in the line of his practically keeping himself, as he feels that what is born of God ought to be and must be kept.

What sort of keeping of one’s self should grow out of such a vivid and realising sense as this implies of what being born of God means, it is not necessary to describe minutely or at large. The working out of the problem may well be left to our own consciences and hearts. The main thing is to secure here, as everywhere, singleness of eye. Only let us settle it decidedly, firmly, unequivocally, as the deep conviction of our souls, that it is as “born of God” that we are to “keep ourselves.”

Ah! if we did so, would there be so much careless living among us; so much unsteadfast walking; so much indifference to the way in which our customary manner of spending our time and occupying our thoughts tells on our spiritual state? Would there not be more of earnest prayer, of secret fellowship with God, of diligent study of his word, of anxious watchfulness; more of an eager pressing on to higher attainments in divine insight and sympathy, in holiness and love?

For to keep ourselves as born of God, is to aim at exhausting experimentally all that the privilege involves. It is to keep ourselves, as sons and heirs, in the full enjoyment of our Father’s love and in the full view of the many mansions of our Father’s house.

II. This keeping of ourselves, as born of God, will be felt to be the more necessary, when we consider, secondly, how liable that which is to be kept is to suffer damage and be lost. If we are born of God, and if it is in that character that we are to keep ourselves; let us remember how apt that character is to be marred and injured by the outer world with which we are ever coming in contact; how apt it is to lose its marked distinctiveness and fresh life in our own souls.

As born of God, we have to “keep ourselves unspotted from the world;” we have to keep ourselves also unspotted from the evil that is in us, as born in iniquity and conceived in sin. In both views, what is above all things needed is to cherish a deep, abiding, personal, practical persuasion that “all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death.”

The risk of relaxed diligence in “keeping ourselves as born of God” lies mainly in our ceasing, more or less consciously, to regard sin as exceeding sinful, and the doom of sin as inevitably certain. Hence, in order to our keeping ourselves, it is of the utmost consequence, first of all, that we truly and fully apprehend that we are to keep ourselves as being born of God. And it is of equal consequence, secondly, that we truly and fully apprehend the absolute incompatibility of our sinning with our being born of God. Sin from without and from within is ever besetting us. And the temptation is very strong to begin to think that, in some form or degree, it may not be altogether damaging to our spiritual life, as born of God, or altogether fatal to our heavenly prospects, as having eternal life. The instant such a thought finds harbour in our bosom, all our faithfulness in keeping ourselves is gone. “Whosoever is born of God keepeth himself,”—only when he realises his own sacredness as “born of God;” and when moreover he realises,—and that too with special reference, not merely to the world with which he is ever in contact, but also to himself and his own tendencies and liabilities,—the solemn truth that “all unrighteousness is sin, and that there is a sin unto death.”

There is no room for any question being raised here as to the certainty of his final salvation, or the security for his preservation in grace to the end. That is not the point. Be it that God keeps him, and will keep him, infallibly safe: God does so, and can do so, only through his keeping himself. And his keeping himself implies a constant sense of his liability, after all, so far as he is himself concerned, to be lost. So Paul kept himself: “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away.” So will every one that is born of God keep himself; remembering the exhortations, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;” “Thou standeth by faith; be not highminded, but fear.”

And this fear, not slavish fear of an angry God, but filial fear of a loving Father, the fear of filial love, will grow, and will become more and more “fear and trembling.” It will do so in proportion as I apprehend, with growing vividness, on the one hand, all the holy blessedness that there is in being born of God, and on the other hand, all that there is in sin; in any sin; in every sin; of deep and deadly malignity, making it the very bane of that blessedness. Thus, with increasing sensitiveness, will I be keeping myself “as born of God, and not sinning.” Thus will I be “working out my own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God which worketh in me both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

I do not now enter on the consideration of the promise annexed to this self-keeping: “The wicked one toucheth him not.” I prefer to take that promise in connection with what follows. I content myself with one observation on its connection with what precedes.

“The wicked one” seeks to touch you; to touch you at the tenderest and most sensitive point, where alone lies your security against sinning; your being “born of God.” For it is only as born of God that you sin not. It is in your filial standing thoroughly realised, and in your filial spirit thoroughly cherished and exercised, that the secret of your not sinning lies. The wicked one knows that right well; he quite understands it. Full well he knows and understands that if he can get you, be it only for a brief hour or moment, to step off from the platform of your sonship;—or if he can insinuate into your breast at any time a single unchildlike thought of God;—he has you at his mercy. And you sin. You listen to his whispered suggestion that this or that commandment of God is grievous. You suffer his wily insinuation,—“Yea, hath God said that ye shall not?”—to poison your ear, to poison your soul. You let in the spirit of bondage again. The light and liberty of your loving cry, “Abba, Father,” are gone. Shorn of your strength, you repine, you murmur, you sin.

Ah, friends! “keep yourselves.” And see to it that you keep yourselves as “born of God.” Keep yourselves in your conscious sonship, and in the spirit of it. Then “the wicked one toucheth you not.” Be very sure that it is sonship believingly apprehended and realised, it is the spirit of sonship faithfully cherished and exercised, that is your only real shield and defence against the touch of the wicked one. For his touch, his stinging touch, is the suggestion of the poor servile thought that God’s commandments are grievous. The filial, loving confidence of one keeping himself as a child of God instinctively and indignantly casts away the insinuation. The wicked one therefore cannot touch one living as a son of God. He could not touch, terribly as he tried to touch, the Son of God while he lived on earth; for never did he live otherwise than as the Son of God. He cannot touch any one to whom God gives “the Spirit of his Son, crying, Abba, Father.” For no one can be, at any moment, crying, in the Spirit, Abba, Father, and at the same moment counting any of God’s commandments grievous. Therefore when “he that is begotten of God” keepeth himself as so begotten, “the wicked one toucheth him not.”