1 John II. 3—7.
And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning.
I am speaking to those who attend the Sunday evening class on the relation of the Law to the Gospel. Speaking is not the word I ought to use, if it conveys to any one the notion that I am giving lectures on this subject, or laying down certain maxims upon it. Our plan is, to read alternately the Pentateuch (what are called the five books of the Law) and the Evangelists (what we call the four Gospels). By considering them together we try to ascertain what are the characteristics of each, how they are related to each other.
For instance, it happened a Sunday or two ago that we read the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, which contains the repetition of the Ten Commandments. Either just before or just after, I forget which, we read of our Lord’s conversation with the young ruler, who came asking Him, ‘What good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?’ To his surprise, the young man who had fancied he was to do some great thing, which other people could not do, that he might attain some great prize which other people could not attain—who fancied that he certainly could and should do this great thing, if he only was told what it was—heard that the way to enter into life was to keep those commandments which had been addressed to all Israelites as well as himself, and which he said he had kept from his youth up. Such a doctrine, coming from such lips, forced us to ask how heeding the commandments which bore upon such ordinary works, which prohibited such ordinary crimes, could have anything to do with the eternal life which God is said to bestow, and to bestow freely? The question offered itself to us, in one shape or another, in all our readings; we could not avoid it if we tried; and as we wanted light upon it, of course we did not try. But I refer to this one example, because the very words which occupied us when we were considering the passage about the young ruler, in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, are those which present themselves to us in this Epistle of St. John. We have been hearing of life—of an eternal life—that was manifested in Jesus Christ. Of this life the Apostle says he and his disciples at Ephesus may partake; they may have fellowship with it. That is the highest blessing, the greatest reward he can hold out to them; if they had that, their joy would be full. And now he comes to speak of commandments. ‘And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.’
It is a curious phrase, ‘we do know that we know Him.’ But it is a familiar one to us in other applications. I say to a friend, ‘Are you sure that you know that man? I am aware that you meet him often. You see him, perhaps, every day; you work with him; you talk with him. But do you know that you know him? Have you got any real insight into his character? Have you any confidence that you are not thinking of him better or worse than he deserves?’ These are questions which we often ask, and to which we get various answers. Sometimes the answer is quite confident. ‘I am certain that he is, or that he is not, an honest, or a kind, or a wise man.’ And yet it may not inspire us with confidence. We may say, or we may think, ‘You are deceived in that man. You have been flattered or in some way taken in by him. In due time the mask will fall off, and you will find out your mistake.’ Or we may say, ‘You are not just to that man. You have distorted his acts. You have misinterpreted his purposes. There is a far truer mind in him than you give him credit for.’ But now and then one has a strong conviction that a friend does understand the man we are asking him about, does appreciate him. I cannot tell you how we arrive at the belief; I think it is generally because he helps us to understand and to appreciate that person. He throws light upon our own experiences of him; he corrects some wrong impressions we had formed. And when it is so, his report, especially if it is a favourable one, never satisfies us. We are determined to verify it. We must try to know him whom he praises for ourselves. We must be able to say, ‘We know that we know him.’
I have supposed the case of two men who are equals, and who associate on equal terms. But let us suppose the case of a youth and an old man; and to be more exact, let us suppose the one to be the son of the other. How does a child come to know his father? It has been my misfortune, I dare to say it has been yours, to meet with many sons who did not know their fathers, who did not the least understand what they were aiming at, either in the general work of their lives, or in the particular discipline of their families. I have also heard sons say, and sometimes I fear they spoke truly, that their fathers did not know them. They did not always mean that their fathers crossed them, or contradicted them, or laid heavy burdens upon them. That may be the complaint of many; but very indulgent fathers, who take little notice of the offences of their children, who easily pass them by, may exhibit what strikes them as want of comprehension. They do not perceive what their sons need, or what is leading them wrong. Their commands are seldom severe, but they appear as if they were arbitrary. They are not enforced with any consistency; a punishment sometimes follows the breach of them, sometimes not; the offender has a good chance of begging himself off; when he does suffer, he is apt to think that it was by accident, and not by law.
On the other hand, I have met, and I doubt not you have met, persons who could say honestly, ‘The rules which our father laid down for us often cut very disagreeably against our inclinations; but we had always a feeling that he was just, and that he cared for us as much when he punished us as when he commended us. And then, by degrees, we found that he was wise as well as just in his management of us. At last we are beginning to see what the principles of his conduct are; what he is in himself. We know that we know him.’
Now St. John assumes that the knowledge of God is as possible, is as real for human beings, as any knowledge they can have of each other. Nay, he goes farther than this. There are impediments to our knowledge of each other, which he says do not exist with reference to that higher knowledge. There is an uncertainty, a capriciousness, a mixture of darkness with light, in every human being, which make us hesitate a little, even when we think he has given us the clearest evidence of what he is. We dismiss the suspicion; we say we are sure that he is substantially right—right in intention—though he has done some things which puzzle us, and which appear wrong. But still there is something that bewilders us, in him as well as in our own perceptions. And sometimes we are utterly at fault: we say such and such a person has entirely disappointed us. I think that on the whole this happens most rarely with those that have been under the government of a person, as their commanding officer, their schoolmaster—above all, their father. When you hear a person say, ‘I can speak to the temper and character of that man, for I have been a long time under him,’ you rely more upon his word than if his acquaintance had been of another kind; because you reflect that the superior had continual opportunities for exhibiting tyranny, vacillation, incapacity for guidance; and that if he did exhibit those qualities, the inferior was sure to take notice of them, and to smart under them. The testimony that he did not—the assurance of his subaltern that the service was a free and honourable service, one in which there was no favouritism, one which acted upon his own life, and made him wiser and better—is the highest testimony and assurance that we can demand or receive.
And it is just this test which St. John says we may have in its highest perfection in our relations with Him whom we cannot see. We may know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. I sometimes suspect that we give too loose a sense to that word ‘keep.’ No doubt it means to ‘obey;’ it does not mean more than that; for obedience is very comprehensive, a little too comprehensive for slow and narrow creatures such as we are. The word ‘keep,’ if we consider it, may help us to know what obedience is, and what it is not. A friend gives me a token to keep for him; he wishes that it should remind me of him, that it should recall days which we have spent together. Perhaps it may be only a flower or a weed that was gathered in a certain place where we were walking or botanizing; perhaps it is something precious in itself. If instead of giving me anything, he enjoins me to do a certain act, or not to do a certain act, I may be said as truly to keep that injunction as to keep the flower. To fulfil it is to remember him; it is a token of my fellowship to him, of my relation with him. The injunction may be one which is in itself indifferent. We are told by the prophet Jeremiah that Jonadab, the son of Rechab, had desired his sons to drink no wine. His descendants kept the tradition; it was a homage to their ancestor’s memory. The prophet set before them flagons of wine. He did not count it a criminal act to taste the liquor; but when they refused, he commended and admired them, for they were keeping their father’s commandment; it was a holy pledge and token of their reverence for one whom they could not see; it kept them as a family together. But the knowledge you obtain of the person who gives the commandment depends upon the nature of the commandment. Jonadab’s descendants might get a certain knowledge of their ancestor from this precept about wine. They might fairly conclude that he was a self-restraining man, who had preserved himself, and wished to preserve them, from temptations. Those commandments of which St. John speaks, are not of this limited or arbitrary kind; they are not mere signs or tokens. Still if they are kept, if they are watched over and thought about, and cherished as the commandments of a friend; if they are done as His commandments, they will give us an acquaintance with Him which we can obtain in no other way.
Let us consider this point a little more. Let us take the Ten Commandments; for St. John was an Israelite, a hearty Israelite, and of course would think first about the commands which were given to his nation, whatever else he connected with them. Some of you may have gone over this ground with me before; but I am less afraid of repeating myself than of passing lightly over a topic which is connected with the most practical part of Christian ethics.
The commandments open with the words, ‘I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me.’ How could a Jew keep this commandment? He must break it—he must acknowledge another lord than the one who was speaking to him—if he did not think within himself, ‘My God is a Deliverer, a deliverer of slaves from the hand of a tyrant. That is the name by which He wishes me to remember Him; that must denote what His character is.’
Next he is told, ‘Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands in them that love me and keep my commandments.’ How could this commandment be kept? The words the Lord thy God which were used in the former, here acquire a more distinct signification. ‘I am not to worship things that I make, for He is the Lord. He has created me in His image. I cannot create Him in my image, or in the image of any of these things I see. No! I must not fancy Him like the most glorious of them. He is the Lord my God. He has more to do with me than with them. He is nearer to me than to them. He cares for me more than for them. He says He is jealous over me. He keeps hold of my heart; He will not let me give it away to some meaner thing. And as it is with me, it will be with my children and my children’s children; He will be the Lord their God, as He is the Lord my God. He will love us from generation to generation; and each generation will be worse than the last, if it sets up some visible thing in place of Him; and each generation will be better than the last, so far as it remembers that He, the Deliverer, our God, is the Lord.’
Next comes, ‘Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain. for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain.’ How could a Jew keep this commandment? He would have learnt from the first two commandments, that he was in the presence of a Deliverer, an unseen Being who was watching over him, whom he must not imagine to be like even the best of the things which his eyes saw and his hands handled. The Name of this Being was that which denoted Him to be a real Person, that by which one could tell another of Him. To fear the Name was to fear the presence, the Person; to recollect, ‘A true God, a living God is taking account of my acts, and of my words.’ To take the name in vain, was to act and speak as if there were no such presence, no such Person; as if a man’s words were his own, and there was no lord over him. He who did this would not be held guiltless; he would have the sense of guilt in him; he would feel as if the friend whom he had trifled with was pursuing him. To keep the Name in the heart as its special treasure, would be to keep this commandment.
The fourth says, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and all that therein is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore, the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.’ How was an Israelite to keep this commandment? According to the very terms of it, remembrance or recollection was involved in the act of observing it; there could be no sanctification of the Sabbath without this. Merely to do certain things on the Sabbath, or to leave certain things undone, would not be keeping it. Unless the Jew said to himself, ‘God has appointed the six days, God has appointed the seventh day; I am to work because He works, I am to rest because He rests,’ he would in vain strive to obey even the letter of the precept. The command is nothing apart from the divine reason for it. The man who thought most of that, who considered most why the Lord his God had ordained rest for him, and work for him; what one had to do with the other; why the man-servant and the maid-servant and the cattle were to share in both; why the ground of both was said to be in the creation of heaven and earth—he would be most filled with delight and wonder at the order in which he found himself placed; he would most devoutly ask God to teach him so to behave himself, that he might not follow his own pleasure and his own foolish notions, either about working or resting, but might conform himself to the divine purpose in each; he would be most afraid of judging his neighbours.
Next comes, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’ How was an Israelite to keep this commandment? The very word ‘honour’ indicates a certain temper or habit of mind. I do not honour a person to whom I make certain presents—on whom I bestow some customary ceremonious respect. The command to honour involves, therefore, a recollection of this father and mother; a recollection of them in this character; a recollection of the bond which unites me to them. It involves too, as the latter part of it shows, a recollection of God as the giver of the soil on which my home is placed; a recollection of Him as the preserver of families on that soil; a recollection of Him as the cause of their continuance upon it from age to age; of my continuance on it from day to day; a recollection of this continuance as in some way inseparable from the reverence to parents.
‘Thou shalt not kill.’ How might a Jew keep this commandment? No doubt he might abstain from taking the life of his neighbour, having either no strong temptation to do it, or being hindered from yielding to the temptation by the terror of the punishment which the avenger of blood would inflict upon him. But how might he keep it as if it were not man’s commandment, but God’s; as if it were not enforced by man’s terrors, but by the thunder and lightning which are in His hand? Only while he thought of God as the author and preserver of life, only while he remembered, ‘He watches over the life of me and of every one of these my fellows. I may take their life at His bidding. I am not to gratify any instinct of mine.’
‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ How was a Jew to keep this commandment? Perhaps, he might never be tempted to pollute the marriage bed; perhaps, he might overcome the impulse by thinking of exposure and disgrace and probable punishment. But, to keep it as God’s commandment, to say, as Joseph did, ‘How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God!’ he must surely recollect that God is the author of wedlock; that He binds man and wife together; that He protects this union; that it expresses some truth in His own nature which I am to be acquainted with. And so obedience to this precept serves the same purpose as obedience to all the others serves; that purpose of which St. John speaks, when he says, ‘We do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.’
Again, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ How might a Jew keep this commandment? He might be a rich man like the young ruler. The motive to rob might be as far as possible from him; or he might be poor, and the fear of the prison might deter him from meddling with that which is not his. But how might it be God’s commandment to him? How might it be God’s presence which held back his hand? If he thought of God as fixing what was his and what was another’s; if he looked up to God to set right what man’s fraud or violence had made wrong; if he committed his cause and the cause of all people to Him as the just God, and the upholder of order; then he would delight in this law in his inner man, however strong might be the inclination of his bad nature to break it. And every observance of it and victory over that inclination would be a step in the knowledge of God.
‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.’ How could an Israelite keep this commandment? Outward and open perjury was dangerous—it might be detected—a righteous recompense awaited the offender. The lies which pass from mouth to mouth in companies of men, slanders and private whispers, are not so easily found out. They may circulate further and further, and each new utterer may keep the last and the original forger in countenance. Still, a man may, through prudence or good nature, abstain even from this kind of false witness. But to abstain, because God has commanded it, how may he do that? Only if he thinks of God continually, as a God of Truth, as the hater of every false way and false word, as pledged to destroy lies as well as to lay them bare. Must not those who kept this thought in their mind, who turned it into act, grow in the knowledge of Him, who was keeping them from that which He hated?
Once more, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife; nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.’ How may an Israelite keep this commandment? Think what it is! Not to covet! What law can take hold of me there? What public or private accuser, what quick-sighted judge, can bring that charge home to me? Surely not one. And, therefore, if it is brought home to me, if my inmost heart does confess it, I know who must be saying this to me, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ I know it must be an unselfish and uncovetous Being. I know it must be one who desires that I should not covet; who is willing to deliver me from my covetousness; who can impart to me that unselfish, uncovetous life of His. So then, I have to interpret, ‘Thou shalt not,’ to mean, ‘If thou trustest thyself to me, I will not let thee do the things which I hate.’ So then I come to know by that which He would not have me do and be, what He himself is.
But here a question arises, which I must treat before I go further. St. Paul appears to speak of these commandments very differently from St. John. It would seem not from a few passages in his Epistles, but from the whole tenor of them, as if the commandments had been to him great burdens, as if he had turned to the Gospel of Christ that he might find deliverance from them. Especially he says of this last commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ that it wrought in him all manner of concupiscence; that he was alive before he heard it; that with the commandment sin came to life, and he died. What is the reason of this diversity of language? Were these apostles in very deed at issue with each other? They both taught the Ephesians. Did they bring to them contradictory tidings?
I am certain that they did not preach opposing doctrines; that their lessons are essentially harmonious; that we cannot enter into the one unless we enter also into the other. Saul of Tarsus had reverenced these commandments as the peculiar treasure of his nation; he had considered all other nations accursed, for not possessing them. Saul of Tarsus believed, as the young ruler who came to our Lord believed, that he had kept these commandments from his youth up. Had he kept them as treasures committed to him by a Friend? Had he learnt the nature and character of that Friend by means of them? Had he learnt from the very first of them, that he was to worship a Deliverer, and none else? No such thing. He had read the commandments as letters written in stone, laid up in the Temple; he had read them as the decrees of an arbitrary Being who was determined that they should be obeyed, and who would have his satisfaction in punishing to the death those who did not obey them. And the discovery came to him, with dreadful power, that he himself, the pure Israelite, the strict Pharisee, was at war with the Being who made these laws. He says, ‘Thou shalt not covet, And I do covet! Yes! I covet more since I have been told not to do it than I did before.’ What did this mean? These commandments were not condemning others, but him; they were not cursing the Heathen; they were cursing him who had believed himself to be separated from the Heathen, to be the object of God’s especial favour. There was no escaping from this conviction. The more he tried to obey the law, the more it forced itself upon him. There was a deep covetousness down in the very depths of his nature; it seemed as if it was a part of his very self. And God was proclaiming this to be evil; this to be hateful in His sight. How did he arise out of this misery, which seemed to draw all the past and the present and the future into it? ‘It pleased God,’ he says, ‘to reveal His Son in me, that is, it pleased God to show me the Lord of my spirit, the Lord of all men; to show me that though in myself there dwelt this deep, radical covetousness,—though in myself there dwelt no good thing,—yet that in Him I might claim God as my Father; in Him I might claim men as my brethren.’ Yes, claim men as his brethren; for this discovery made him no longer a mere Israelite, though he could thank God more than ever for being an Israelite; though he could feel more than ever the responsibility of his calling and his education. But he was raised to be a Man; he had been taught what is the condition and glory of a man; and his calling and responsibility as an Israelite were, to tell all people—to tell those Heathens whom he had hated—that this condition and this glory were theirs as well as his. He could preach to them the Gospel, or good news, that Christ was revealed as their Lord, as the root of their life; that in Him they might call God their Father; that in Him they might renounce their selfish, covetous nature. Therefore, St. Paul having had this terrible experience himself, having this commission to mankind, could say once for all, ‘The law shows us our sins; the law makes us aware of the evil nature that is in us. It is not something to boast of; if we look at it as separate creatures, whether we be Jews or not, it simply curses us, it simply drives us to despair. But if it is our schoolmaster to teach us of one true Lord, of Him in whom we are created, of Him in whom we have a new and true life, then indeed it is a blessing to us; for then we give up boasting altogether of ourselves; then we can surrender ourselves freely and heartily to God as our Friend and our Deliverer; then we can become His ministers to carry the news of Him to those whom He knows, though they know not Him.’
Well; St. John, we saw, began with this revelation of God to men in His Son. It was the ground of all his teaching. He had told the Ephesians already that there was that darkness, that covetousness, in them which St. Paul had found in himself, which had caused him so much horror. But he had told them also, as St. Paul had also told them, that they were not created to walk in this darkness; that they might walk in the light which Christ had revealed, and have fellowship with it. So now, taking this for granted, he can tell them that these commandments might be kept as the commandments of a God who was at one with them in His Son, and that the more they kept them the more they would know of Him.
I have been speaking to you of one of the most difficult of all questions in Christian ethics; one with which some of the greatest troubles in the lives of individuals and in the history of Christianity have been connected. But the confusion is not in the doctrine; it is in us; and it is a confusion out of which we can be delivered, I think, only in the way St. John speaks of here. He says in the next verse, ‘He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.’ The Apostle uses strong language, for this lie was spreading in the church of his own day, and would spread, he knew, further and further in the times that were coming. There were many in that time who used this very phrase, ‘We know God,’ and used it for the purpose of self-exaltation; therefore for an immoral, destructive purpose. ‘There are a set of common Christians,’ they said, ‘vulgar people, who may learn certain lower lessons; they are capable of nothing better. The law is very good for them. But we can enter into the divine mysteries; we can have the most magnificent conceptions about the spiritual world which Christ has opened; we can talk about angels, and emanations, and divine essences and properties; we can give them names, and trace their relations to each other. What are the commandments—what is common earthly morality—to us?’ ‘I tell you,’ says St. John, broadly and simply, ‘that if they are nothing to you, God is nothing to you. You may use what fine language you will; you may have what fine speculations you like; but it is in practice, in that daily vulgar practice of life, in the struggle with the temptations to cheat and slander, to be unchaste and to be covetous, which beset us all in different ways and forms; it is in revering parents, and the name of God; it is in heeding God’s rest and God’s work; it is in keeping ourselves from idols; it is in worshipping Him as the common Deliverer, that we come to know Him; thus, and only thus.’ And he adds words which, if understood rightly, were even more crushing to the pride of these haughty men than those which were aimed at themselves. ‘But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily the love of God is perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him.’ As if he had said, ‘You talk about the perfect, the initiated man, and the mere beginners or novices. I will tell you who is the perfect or initiated man. Look at that poor creature who is studying hard in the midst of all opposition from his own ignorance, to be right and to do right; who is trying to hold fast that Word which is speaking to him in his heart, though he can form no high notions at all about things in earth or heaven. There is the initiated man; he is the one who is learning the perfect lore; for God’s own love is working in him; God’s own love is perfecting itself in him. He is keeping the commandments, and they are teaching him that in himself he is nothing; that in God he has everything that he wants.’
It was so then; it is so now. I have seen hard fighters among poor men and rich men; some on sick beds and some in the world, in whom I am sure the love of God was perfecting itself. One longed to sit at their feet and learn their wisdom. But it was the wisdom of life, not the wisdom of letters; and in life it must be learnt. They were striving according to St. John’s precept to walk even as Christ walked; to live, by daily trust and daily self-renunciation, as He lived. And since they could not do this by any efforts of their own—since all their efforts only showed them their own weakness—they learned to abide in Him; they learned the deepest of all secrets, by learning more than others of their own shallowness; they came to know God by finding that they could not be honest men without knowing Him.