Lecture XLV

KNOWING THE TRUE ONE AND BEING IN HIM

THIS is the third and last “we know,” in these closing verses of the epistle (18–20). John insists, in leaving us, upon our being Gnostics, or knowing ones, as the heretics of his day professed to be; but in a better and safer sense. They affected to be knowing, in the lofty and transcendental region of abstract speculation about the divine nature; whereas John would have us to be knowing, in the humbler yet really higher and holier experience of real, direct, personal acquaintance and fellowship with the Divine Being, as coming down to us, poor sinners, in his Son, and taking us up, by his Spirit, to be sons and saints in his holy child Jesus.

That whosoever is born of God sinneth not, because he keepeth himself so that the wicked one touches him not; that we are thus of God, in contrast with the world which lies wholly in the wicked one; these are the two former “we know.” And now the third “we know” has respect, neither to our standing as being of God, nor to the world’s position as lying in the wicked one, but to him who causes or occasions the difference, “the Son of God.”

It would almost seem as if there was a regular syllogism here; an argument built up in three propositions; two premises and a conclusion. First there is the major premiss, in the general assertion, abstract and impersonal; “we know” that being born of God implies not sinning, inasmuch as “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one touches him not.” Then there is the minor premiss, in the assertion, particular and personal; “we know” that we individually “are of God,” and, therefore, separated from “the world that lieth wholly in the wicked one.” The strict logical conclusion would be; therefore “we know” that we do not sin. John, however, puts it somewhat differently, so as to place our not sinning on a surer footing; more humbling to us; more glorifying to God;—“We know that the Son of God is come.”

And yet this is a fair enough inference, and fits well enough into the argument when viewed in its full spiritual import. Nor is it inconsistent with the other. For if he that is born of God sinneth not; and if we consequently, being of God, sin not, it is all in virtue of “the Son of God being come;” come, in the first place, to “give us a knowledge of the True One;” come, secondly, to secure in that way our “being in the True One.”

I. “The Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding, that we may know him that is true,” or “the True One.” It is God who is to be known; and he is to be known as “the True One.”

The truth here ascribed to God is not truthfulness, as opposed to falsehood; but reality, as opposed to fiction or imagination. That we may know God, as truly real, as a truly real being, “the Real One,” strictly speaking, the only truly Real One, apart from whom all things and persons are shadowy and unreal; that is, in the first instance, the purpose for which his Son Jesus Christ is come, and “hath given us understanding” or insight “to know him that is true.”

The inward working of the Holy Ghost is here assumed, or asserted; that is the “understanding” or insight that is meant. Jesus Christ coming as the Son of God has given us, not merely new outer light, but a new inner eye; otherwise even his coming could not make us know “the True One.” His coming indeed may be said to be itself the outer light. His coming forth from the True One in whose bosom he dwells reveals the True One to us. But the discovery would be in vain if his coming did not secure to us, as his gift, “understanding to know” the True One when thus revealed. That is, we may say emphatically, his best gift; the best fruit of his “being come,” and of all the travail of soul on our behalf which his “being come” includes in it. For the worst of our miserable state, from which he is come to save us, is that we have no understanding, no spiritual sense in us, by which we can discern and recognise, so as truly to know, him who alone is true. And the best part of his salvation is his giving us that knowledge, not only by revelation from without, but by enlightenment within.

It is a great thing to know God as he is here named—“the True One;” to know him as true and real; no imagination or mere idea, but true and real. That, I say, is a very great thing. It is indeed all in all; the one thing needful. What is God to me? Ah, momentous question! And as searching as it is momentous! Is he true? Is he real? Do I apprehend him to be so?

I know my friend when I see him and take him by the hand. I know him as true and real; no shadow, no myth, no visionary ghost, but verily real. There he is before me, not a wraith such as Highland seer beholds in the misty vapour, but invested with unmistakable, palpable reality. Is God thus ever before me? Whenever I think of my friend, even when he is out of my sight, I think of him as true and real; as having a real and actual existence; a real and actual personality. Do I always thus think of God? Do I always thus know him?

There are two conditions of this knowledge.

In the first place, if I am to know any one as true and real, I must have a distinct and well-defined conception of him in my mind. He must present himself to me as having a certain special individuality of his own, marking him out to me as separate from others. I thus identify him as true and real. But how confused and incoherent is my conception of God apt to be! A number of vague notions about him and his ways may be floating hazily, as it were, before me. But they lack unity, and are therefore unreal. A heap or bundle of attributes, such as I can name, enumerate, and define, may be all that I have for my God. If so, it is a heap or bundle of rags. It has no life, no living personality, no oneness, no reality, no truth. To know any person as real and true, I must know him as one; one living personality; living and true.

But, secondly, can I so know any one otherwise than by personal intercourse and personal acquaintanceship? It is in that way that I know an actual living friend as true. When our eyes meet and our hands join and our tongues exchange words, I know him as true and real. I know him better thus, than when he and I communicate by letter merely, or by message at second-hand. My knowledge of him has in it a truth and reality, a true and vivid realisation, that does not belong to the notion I have of any hero or martyr; however graphic may be the history, however lifelike the picture, by means of which I am to set him before my mind’s eye.

Now “the Son of God has come, and given us understanding that we may know the True One;” that we may truly and really know, know as a living person, the Father whose Son he is. The very object of his “coming and giving us understanding,” is to put truth and reality into our knowledge of God. He does so by bringing God and us personally together. His “coming” provides for that on the part of God; his “giving us understanding” provides for it on our part.

It is indeed, I repeat, a great thing thus to know “him that is true;” to have a true personal knowledge of him; such as you have of the friend you converse with every day about everything or anything that turns up, or of the father to whom you go every day and every hour for deeper counsel or for a passing embrace. The friend, the father, is a reality; a real and true friend, a real and true father. You feel him to be so. He is no dead, historical personage, exhibited on the stage of the historical drama. He is to you a real and living person: for there is life and reality in your present intercourse with him. And it is that there may be this present living intercourse with God as a living person, that “the Son of God is come,” to make that possible on God’s side; “and hath given us an understanding,” to make it possible on ours. Only in that way, by his revelation of himself to us in the Son and by our fellowship with him in the Spirit, can we know “him that is true.” Only thus can we know God personally; as “the True One;” a real person and not a mere abstraction or generalisation.

II. Knowing thus “him that is true,” we are “in him.” But we are so, only as being “in his Son Jesus Christ.” The apostle’s statement thus fits into the Lord’s own saying, in his farewell prayer, “I in them and thou in me” (John 17:23). Both of them rest on that higher appeal which the Lord makes to his Father:—“As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (ver. 21). Thou in me, I in them, and so thou in them;—they in me, I in thee, and so they in thee;—such is the wondrous reciprocal line or chain between God and us. We are in the True One, as being in his Son Jesus Christ, who is himself in him. We are therefore in the True One as his Son Jesus Christ himself is in him.

Thus our being in the True One rests on very sure ground, since it is in his Son Jesus Christ that we are in him. And it implies a very high ideal of what being in the True One means, and what it is.

1. It is in his Son Jesus Christ that we are in the True One. We are in him, not directly or immediately, but by mediation; through and in a mediator. It is only thus that we can be in God, as the one only living and true God. It must be so. If the God whom our conscience indicates and owns is indeed true and real; a real, true, living person; we cannot dream of being in him, in any sense implying rest and peace, or a refuge and home, otherwise than through and in a mediator.

No doubt, if there are many gods, all alike true, or all alike fabulous, though still imagined to be true; I may find among them one so congenial that I can conceive of his drawing me into his embrace, so that I may be in him. Or if the only true God is the universe, or universal being; all things and persons being but his parts; and all actions and events the unfoldings of his own self-consciousness: then necessarily I am in him; or rather I am he and he is I; there is no personal distinction between us. Or if God, admitted to be a real, true, and living person, is not known by me as such, I may amuse or soothe myself with some name or notion of my being in him, so far as to secure my safety, if I do but say a prayer occasionally, no matter though my saying it is really little better than speaking to vacancy, addressing idle words to the empty air.

But let me know God as true, as a reality. Let me be confronted face to face with God, as no far-off vision, but a real, present, living person. Let my inner sense be quickened; and let there flash from heaven a light making clear as day the features of him in whose real presence I stand. Ah! what cry escapes me?—“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!”

Now I see clearly; now I feel deeply; the full difficulty of the case. If God is true and real, my sin is true and real; and I, the sinner, am true and real. Guilt is real. Wrath is real. Judgment is real. Punishment is real.

Ah! this knowing of the True One, as the True One, by the spiritual understanding which the Son of God is come to give! It imparts to all things in heaven and earth and hell a terrible distinctness, an altogether new air of truth, an intense, vivid, burning reality, such as I cannot long stand without being maddened, if I am to stand alone; a real sinner before a real God.

For me to be in him! How utterly hopeless! Nay, but let me consider. Who is he who has come to give me understanding thus to know the True One? The Son of God; his Son Jesus Christ. It is he who by his coming makes the True One known as he really is; for he is himself “the image of the invisible God.” It is he who by his Spirit gives me understanding that I may know the True One. And placing himself between the True One, whom now at last I truly know, and me, whom that knowledge must otherwise utterly appal, he, the very Son of this True One, his Son Jesus Christ, calls me to himself; to be one with him; to be “in him.” It is not that he would again hide the True One from me, or hide me from the True One. No. But he makes it possible for me, if I will but consent to be in him, to be “in the True One,” as he is himself in the True One.

For he says, I am a reality; the real Son of God, really come to you, in your real flesh. As his true and very Son, I give you understanding to know him who is true and very God. And in me you know him, not so as to be a castaway from him; but so as to be in him, as I am in him. For in me, whatever in you might seem to stand in the way, and did stand in the way, of your being in the True One, is met and obviated. In the Son of God, his Son Jesus Christ, you can be in God, known as the True One, and can have perfect peace.

Out of Christ, I can have peace only by not knowing truly the True One, not knowing him as he is, or by keeping away from him among the trees of the garden, and under the veil of some apron of fig-leaves. Satan belies him to me, and I hide or cover myself from him. But there is no need now of guile, or concealment, or disguise; no room for evasion or compromise. The True One may be truly known, and I, the chief of sinners, may be in him, truly known as the True One, “in his Son Jesus Christ.”

2. If it is thus that in his Son Jesus Christ we are in the True One, it is after a high ideal or model that we are so. For our being in the True One in his Son Jesus Christ, must be after the manner of his Son Jesus Christ’s being himself in him. What a manner of being in the True One is that! What truth, what reality is there in it!

I would keep fast hold of the apostle’s ground-thought or leading idea in this passage; which is truth, reality, fact. There are other views that may be taken of the Son of God, his Son Jesus Christ, being in the True One, as the type and model, as well as the cause, of our being in the True One in him. But I fix on this one as chiefly relevant here; “we are in the True One in his Son Jesus Christ;” and therefore in him as truly as his Son Jesus Christ is in him. How truly then, how really, is his Son Jesus Christ in him!

His Son Jesus Christ! For it is not his Son, as being in him from everlasting, that is here presented to us. It is with his Son as “being come,” that we have to do. It is in his Son Jesus Christ as “being come,” that we are in the True One. Let us look well and see how his Son Jesus Christ is in the True One; how, in the days of his flesh, “he is in him that is true!” How truly, really, thoroughly! How naturally too! He is in his native element when he is in the True One.

Who that ever followed Jesus in his earthly life could for a moment doubt that God was to him a reality, and that his being in God was a reality too? It was a true God that he served; and he himself was truly in him. My Father! he is ever saying; and so saying it as to show that it is a real and true Father he means; and that he is really and truly in him, as a real and true Son. Yes! his Son Jesus Christ is truly in the True One; never out of him; never away from him; never at home but with him; never thinking a thought, or feeling an emotion, that he did not think and feel in him; never speaking a word or doing a work but as having his Father with him. Truly, all through his real and true humiliation, and obedience, and sacrifice, “he is in him that is true;” in him, with a depth and intensity of real inness, if I may use the word, that the devout study of a lifetime will not suffice to fathom. Nay, the devout study of eternity will not suffice to exhaust the full truth of that ineffable complacency of the Everlasting Father of which his Son Jesus Christ, for his obedience unto the death in our stead even more than for his original relation to him, has become the object.

Yes! “I in thee,” says Jesus, as he leaves the world and goes to the Father Oh! that word “I in thee!” What a word, as spoken then and there! Who can understand its significancy, its intense reality, its living truth? “I in thee!”

Can it be that I, a sinner, of sinners the chief, am to be in the True One as his Son Jesus Christ is thus in him? It must be so, at least in measure, if it is in his Son Jesus Christ that I am to be in the True One. My being in the True One must be after the model and manner of his being in the True One. It must at all events be as real and true as that. To me, as to him, God must be a reality; and my being in God must be a reality too.

Is this too high an aim? Does it seem to be beyond my reach? Nay, let me look again at the way in which God comes down to me that I may rise to him. “Thou in me; I in them,” is the language of the Son. So “he that is true,” the True One, first condescends to us. He is in the Son, in his Son Jesus Christ; all his fulness dwells in him bodily; —“Thou in me.” And the Son is in us;—“I in them.” The Holy Spirit takes of what is his and shows it to us; he forms Christ in us. So the Father, the True One, comes down to us; he in Christ; Christ in us. Let Christ then be in us. Let us open our hearts to him. Let us welcome, receive, embrace him; and the Father in him. Then we are in the Son as the Son is in the Father. “We are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Let me make a twofold practical appeal, in two opposite directions.

1. If you will not know the True One now, by the understanding which the Son of God is come to give; know him so as to be in him, in his Son Jesus Christ; the day is coming when you must be compelled, by another sort of awakening, to know the True One; and to know him terribly as a reality, as a real God dealing with a real sinner about real sin!

Here, for a little longer, God may be to you as if he were not. You may live on as you would live if he were not; almost as if, like the fool, you said in your heart, There is no God. You may live as you would live if you believed God to be no real being at all, but a mere creature of the imagination; like a character in fiction; an airy nothing. Have you no apprehension that it may be far otherwise soon? It will not always be possible for you thus to ignore God. For he exists.

Yes! He does indeed exist. You may find that out to your cost sooner than you think; too soon for you. It is a great fact, however little you may make of it, or it may make of you. Were it not better for you to know it now; to take account of it now; to accommodate yourselves to it now? “It is hard for you to kick against the pricks.” The Son of God is come to make God known to you now, in all his glorious reality, as “light” and “love.” He gives you understanding now that you may thus “know God.” Better surely that, than to go on darkly, as in a dream, until there comes a shock. And lo! there is God! No shadow, but too truly real! And there is the Son of God; real also; too truly real! “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” Yes! God, and the Son of God, are realities then, when men “hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?” (Rev. 6:15–17.)

2. Let me remind you who believe of the main end for which John would have you to “know the True One, and be in him, in his Son Jesus Christ.” It is that “you may not sin;” that you may “keep yourselves so that the wicked one, in whom the whole world lieth, may not touch you.” Mark the contrast here. The world lieth wholly in the wicked one; you are in the True One; in God truly known, in his Son Jesus Christ. Let that contrast be ever vividly realised by you. It is your great and only security. Look well to it that your being in the True One, in his Son Jesus Christ, is a reality. Let it be a true experience. Be evermore “dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, and abiding under the shadow of the Almighty.” “Let him cover thee with his feathers, for under his wings you may trust.” Is it not his Son Jesus Christ who thus addresses you—“Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling”?