1 JOHN III. 11-23.
For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His Life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment, That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
I HAVE taken more verses to-day than I am wont to take for the subject of a single Lecture, not certainly because I think any of them unimportant, but because I do not know how to separate them without injuring their sense. The passage may seem at first sight to include many different topics which might be easily considered apart. But when we have carefully examined it, we perceive one principle unfolding itself gradually through the different clauses, which we might fail to apprehend, if we did not observe how each contributes to the illustration of it.
What that principle is, I hinted at the close of my last Lecture. St. John had joined together two signs of the birth which is not from above, but from beneath; of the birth that is not of God, but of the devil. Not doing righteousness, was one sign; not loving the brethren, was another. We often set these two signs in opposition. That man, we say, is rigidly just; he holds to the law, but he is not affectionate, not loving. That man, we say, is one of the kindest, most charitable, most tender-hearted creatures in the world; but he is sadly wanting in justice; he will always overlook evil rather than punish it. There may be a plea for such language; there are men, doubtless, who have cultivated the sterner virtues, and who have crushed what they think interferes with them; there are men who have been driven by the sight and experience of this severity into the temper which is most directly the reverse of it. But the contradiction is solely the effect of our imperfection; it has no existence in the nature of things. The proof that it has not, is that it does not last, even in those who appear to present the most remarkable specimens of it. The just man becomes unjust from the want of that sympathy which enables him to understand the degrees of criminality in different men; the merciful man becomes unmerciful, because he is without a standard to which he can refer his own acts, and to which he can raise those whom he spares. So it is shown that there is and must be a radical union between these two great human characteristics. And so it becomes a most important question in ethics to ascertain the ground of this union, and how it may bear upon our practice.
I spoke to you in my sixth Lecture of the contempt which some had thrown upon the Old Testament, as if it were set aside by the New, and of St. John’s assertion, that the word which they had heard from the beginning was that which he was declaring to them. I showed you, at the same time, how he justified the reverence for the New Testament as a higher revelation than the Old, on the ground that the true Brother of men had appeared; that the commandment that each man should love his neighbour as himself had become true in Him and in us; a law actually fulfilled; a law which could be obeyed. The question presents itself here under a new aspect. It is not whether the New Testament has superseded the Old; but whether, if the New Testament sets forth Love as the principle of human action, it does not contradict the Old, in which Righteousness and Law are so prominent. You shall hear St. John’s answer. He does not now speak of the commandments which were given on Sinai. He goes back to an earlier record still. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.’
Here is the oldest story almost in the Bible. You call it the story of a great transgression. A transgression implies something to be transgressed. What was that? There were no decrees then; no tables of stone. But there was God’s message to men in the very fact of these two men being brothers. ‘Ye shall love one another’ is involved in the fact of a family, Cain proved himself to be ‘of that wicked one,’—to be the servant of the rebel against Right and God,—by this act against his brother. Are Righteousness and Love, then, hostile principles? Is one the mitigation or softening of the other? Is not Love presupposed in Righteousness? Is not an outrage upon Love an outrage upon Righteousness? the very constitution of the universe, in the very existence
He enforces his argument in the second clause of the verse, ‘And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.’ The story represents the dislike of Cain to Abel as originating in anger against God, because his sacrifice had not been accepted. The Epistle to the Hebrews affirms the sacrifice of Abel to have been good, because it was offered in faith; the sacrifice of Cain to have been evil, because it was offered in unbelief or distrust. St. John asserts the same doctrine in different language. The righteous man of the Old and New Testament equally is the man who trusted in a righteous God; the unrighteous man is the distrustful man. The story represents God as arguing the case with Cain’s conscience, as saying, ‘If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?’ He refuses to listen to that voice. He turns from the righteous Lord; he hates Him; then he begins to hate his brother, for his faith, for his righteousness. What was the Gospel doctrine but the expansion of this primary history? What was it but the unfolding of a Law which that history had indicated? What were the experiences of those who accepted it, but this first experience multiplied?
But here was the perplexity. If there were only an Adam and an Eve, a Cain and Abel, it might be easy enough to say that the loving man was the rule, and the unloving man the exception. How could this be said in an age when the majority—the world at large—was full of hatreds and murders, when there were only a few protestants on behalf of unity? St. John does not blink this difficulty. ‘Marvel not, my brethren,’ he says, ‘if the world hate you.’ Do not let this fact stagger your faith, that the proportion of haters to lovers seems so enormous. ‘We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.’ It is not a question to be decided by a poll. It is a question which each man may decide for himself, Is it not the state of Death to hate? Is it not the state of Life to love? Did we not hate because we had been separated from the life of God? Are we not able to love, because we are in communion with the life of God? What then if a frightful number are hating each other? ‘Whosoever hateth his brother, abideth in death.’ He is cutting himself off from the universe; he is at war with its law; at war with its Creator and Lawgiver. He goes on: ‘Every one that hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.’ The thought of the ‘primal eldest curse’ is still present to him. Murder, he says, as that story indicates, is hatred developed into act. Hatred is murder in the heart. But he has been occupied through his whole letter, with telling us that the life of God, the Eternal Life, which was implied in the divine code, but which no divine code could adequately express or make effectual, had been manifested in Jesus Christ. As the code fights with the act, this life fights with the principle. As the code deals out vengeance on the crime which is perpetrated by the murderer’s hand, this life is the contradiction of the hatred in the murderer’s heart. With that it cannot abide. What, then, must this life, this Eternal life, be?
Last week the question was raised, What does he mean by the Love of which he discourses so much? I said I felt sure that he would not cheat us of an answer, though I doubted whether it would take the form of a definition. In the first verse he produces the answer even in a more direct and formal manner than you would perhaps imagine from our version.
‘Hereby perceive we Love,’ (the words of God are added): ‘Because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’ He has been tracing the operation of the law of love, and the transgression of the law of love in former ages. He has fully vindicated the Old Testament from those who say that this law of love is not the one which it recognises. But he agrees with those who exalted the New Testament above the Old, to this extent: he admits that the love which was involved in every true act that had ever been done, which had been the hidden principle of every true life, which was seen in Joseph’s tenderness for the brethren who had sold him, in the care of Moses for the people who were ready to stone him, in the burning patriotism of every prophet whom his countrymen put in the stocks or the prison, or doomed to death,—had not yet fully revealed itself. A man of the old time could not say ‘I know it.’ He longed to know it; he looked forward to a time when it should be known. The time, says St. John, has come. The blessing is ours. The Son of God ‘has laid down His life for us.’ By this we know Love. This is the Divine interpretation of it; for Divine interpretations come in acts, not words. I might call it a Divine definition. So far as a definition excludes all that does not belong to the nature of that which it explains, Christ’s death is a definition of Love; for it shows what love is not; how unlike it is to that tolerance of evil which men have confounded with it. So far as a definition includes all that belongs to the nature of the thing which it explains, Christ’s death is a definition of Love. For there is no possible element of Love which men in their right minds have felt that they have need of, which they have recognised in the most heroic and the most sympathizing acts of their fellow men, that is not found in this act. Why, then, do I shrink from using that phrase, definition? Why would you feel it to be inappropriate? Because you must attach some notion of what is finite to definition. Because your conscience tells you that the Love which you see here is infinite. There can be no measure found for it in earth or Heaven. I am sorry that our translators inserted any words that are not in the original. It was both wrong and weak to do so. They left room for the thought, that we may learn what Love itself is somewhere else than at the Cross of Christ. They anticipated what St. John will tell us in better and fuller language hereafter. But I do not admit for an instant that they introduced any false doctrine. The Love, the infinite Love, must be God’s Love. If the death of Christ showed us what the infinite Love is, it showed us what God’s Love is.
He goes on—‘And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’ The taking away the life of a brother was proved, by the earliest experience of the world, to be the result of departure from the law on which God had formed His world. The laying down a life for others is proved, by the latest experience in the history of the world, to be the principle, the essence, of that law. The life of the Lawgiver - the life eternal—which had never been manifested till Christ was born, which had never been completely manifested till Christ died, was now shown to be the life of self-sacrifice. Love cannot exist apart from sacrifice; therefore he says, ‘We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’ It is startling language. We are wont to say, that one who lays down his life for another performs a transcendent deed of virtue, for which he may give himself credit. The Apostle says, ‘This is our ordinary duty.’ We are not to count it heroic at all; but simply obedience to the law under which we exist. And surely the conscience of mankind confirms his judgment, however the pride of men may rebel against it. The action in the heathen world, which has always inspired most of admiration in true minds, is the death of the 300 Spartans who guarded the pass of Thermopylæ against the army of Xerxes; and it was recorded on the graves of these 300, that they died in obedience to the laws of their country. They felt that it was their business to be there; that was their business. They did not choose the post for themselves; they only did not desert the posts which it behoved them to occupy. Our countrymen heartily respond to this doctrine. The notion of dying for glory is an altogether feeble one for them. They had rather stay by their comfortable or uncomfortable firesides, than suffer for what seems to them a fiction. But the words, ‘England expects every man to do his duty,’ are felt to be true and not fictitious words.
There is power in them. The soldier or sailor who hears them ringing through his heart will meet a charge, or go down in his ship, without dreaming that he shall be ever spoken of or remembered, except by a mother or child or an old friend. So it is in private experience. Women are found sacrificing their lives, not under a sudden impulse of feeling, but through a long course of years, to children and their husbands, who often requite them very ill; whose words are surly; who spend what affection they have on other objects. The silent devotion goes on; only one here and there knows anything of it; it is quite as likely that the world in general spends its compassion upon those to whom they are ministering; none count their ministries so entirely matters of course as themselves. Christian ethics explain these facts by which so many are puzzled. There is a law of sacrifice throughout the universe. Some submit to it reluctantly. They try to set up another law, the law of self-pleasing. They try to accommodate all things to that. They cannot succeed. They do not please themselves. Earth and Heaven are at war with them. For the mind of the Ruler of Heaven and Earth is a mind of self sacrifice; it is revealed in the Cross of Christ. Some submit to the law of sacrifice cheerfully. They feel it to be a good law. They allow it to shape their acts. These are consciously or unconsciously yielding to Christ, confessing Him as their king, bearing His Cross. It is the privilege of those who live in Christian countries to yield to Him consciously. So they are freed from self-consciousness. Their acts may be perfectly simple. They need not be proud of their humility, for their humility is His. They need not glorify themselves upon the giving up of themselves, for they look upon no sacrifice as satisfactory but His; every other only derives its virtue from His.
St. John might have good reason to fear that his words, carefully as they were guarded, would still suggest some notions of a special martyrdom, such as many were permitted to undergo in that day for the name of Christ. An Ephesian might say, ‘Oh, yes, of course, I must lay down my life for the Church, if a persecution should arise, and I should be called either to renounce my profession, or endure the axe, the cross, or the fire. But I hope I may escape that alternative.’
The next verse shows that the principle he had asserted had no such limited application, and was reserved for no extreme case. ‘If any man hath this world’s goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion against him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?’ As if he had said, ‘The law of sacrifice is not a law for moments and crises of our existence; it is the law for the whole of it. The pettiest events and occasions will be tests whether you are subject to it or at war with it. You may have very ecstatic feelings about the Christian brotherhood at large; but are you ready to help that particular brother, who is lying destitute there, not with feelings, but with a little of the actual food and raiment that he is in need of?’
This would be a searching question. I do not know which of us might not sometimes quail at it. But what does St. John mean by putting it in this form: ’How dwelleth the love of God in you? Does he wish us to understand that the very love which is in God, is communicated to us, is to dwell in us? Does he blame us for not allowing this love to dwell in us? That must be what he is saying. It is impossible to explain his words in any other sense. You will see as we proceed, that he repudiates the other sense which is sometimes given to them, as if by the love of God he signified the love we bear to God. And without anticipating future passages of his discourse, I think we have read enough already to see that his whole method would be changed if he taught that we climb to Heaven by acts of love, and not Heaven comes down and declares itself to us in acts of love.
‘My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.’ That easy way of loving, by talking about love, was a way into which Christians might fall in Ephesus as well as in London, in the days of the Roman emperors as well as in the days of Queen Victoria. St. John warns his children of it with fatherly gentleness; but there is a sting in that very gentleness. He would not tell them not to commit this hypocrisy if he did not know that they were likely to commit it. No; nor would he tell them of it, if he could not also tell them how they might avoid it. If they had no love to draw upon but their own, I do not see how it could fail to run dry very soon, or what would be left but a sediment of word love and tongue love, which never clothed any human body or comforted any human soul yet. But if he could assure them that they were under a law of love, that God’s love was burning clearly and brightly always, and that it was their fault if it did not burn in them,—he might well add, ‘Why should we cheat ourselves of the greatest of all blessings by not yielding to the power of this love, by not allowing it to express itself in our acts?’
‘And hereby,’ he adds, ‘we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.’ This verse, like the last, seems to break down the barrier which separates the Apostle’s world from ours. How often we hear persons say, ‘Well, I hope I believe as I ought to believe. I hope I am holding the truth. But there is great uncertainty. Some people think one thing, some another. I should like to have some security. I wish I knew some one who could tell me, That is the opinion you should hold, that is the opinion you should reject; that is the thing you should do, that is the thing you should not do.’ Those who speak thus generally ask for some external dictator who shall relieve them of their responsibility. There are others who are craving for an inward assurance. They want to be able, as the hymn says, ‘to read their title clear to mansions in the skies;’ to have some authentic token that they shall be blessed hereafter.
These anxieties which are at work now, have been at work always, though they may have presented themselves in different aspects. St. John addresses himself to them, and turns them to the most practical account. You want to know that you are of the truth? Ask the God of truth to keep you from loving in word and tongue, and not in deed and in truth. You want to assure your hearts respecting your relation to God? Ask the God of love Himself to dwell in you, and to direct your thoughts and acts according to His will. You will not need dictators to tell you what the truth is, if the Source of all truth is leading you into it. You will not need assurances about a future heaven, if you have heaven within you now.
‘For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.’ What tricks that we have all practised upon ourselves does this sentence lay bare! What webs of theological and ethical sophistry does it cut through! A man wants some comfortable assurance that he is right with God. And yet his heart is not right with itself. There is uneasiness and bitterness in his conscience. He feels that he has not been loving in deed and truth, but only in word and tongue. His heart tells him so. ‘Well,’ says the Apostle, ‘you must be right with that heart, if you wish to be right with God. You are not at peace with yourself, because you know that you are wrong. Do you really think God does not know you are wrong? What is this verdict of your heart but His verdict? Can you get Him to reverse it, if it is, as you feel it is, a true verdict?’
The argument is very plain, the doctrine indisputable. And yet by practically admitting it, by accepting it as the rule of our lives, what trouble, what a multitude of complicated calculations, what infinite distress, we shall save ourselves! At first, perhaps, it begets a kind of despair. ‘Whatever my heart says, God says first, and with greater emphasis. He knows more against me than I know against myself. How terrible to encounter His scrutiny! ’Hills and mountains, fall on me, and hide me from Him!’ But look again. ‘God is greater than my heart, and knoweth all things. He knows what has set me wrong, as I do not know it. He can set me right, though I cannot set myself right.’ This is the comfort of not merely believing in a conscience, but in a God who speaks through my conscience; this is the comfort of not thinking that it is my lawgiver, but that He is my lawgiver; this is the comfort of being able to say to Him who is my Judge, Search me, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
And so we are brought to peace with the adversary who is within us. When we turn round to the light from which we have been turning away, our heart no longer condemns us; it tells us we are right. ‘And if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.’ We can look cheerfully up to Him who has reconciled us to Himself, and wishes us to be at one with Him. We can be sure that His will is the right will, the blessed will, and that to be in subjection to it is our right and our blessedness. Or, as St. John expresses it more fully and satisfactorily, ‘And whatever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.’ I have endeavoured before to explain that phrase, ‘keep His commandments.’ What we have heard to-day has thrown further light upon it. To keep God’s commandments is to remember what that law is which He has established for the universe; what the law of His own mind, of His own life, is. When we submit to that law, His life acts upon our life. As St. John says, ’He dwells in us, and so we are able to do the things that He would have us to do, “the things that are pleasing in His sight.”
But a question might still occur to some person who had been used to hear the doing or keeping of the commandments set in opposition to faith in Christ, ‘All you want us, then, is to do right. You do not care so much what we believe.’ Nay, he says, ‘If you ask me what God’s first commandment is, I should say, that we should believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ. For have not I told you that the perfect law of God, because the perfect life of God, is set forth in Him; specially in His death? Have I not said that there we see Love, and how inseparable it is from the giving up of self? How, then, can we keep God’s commandment, how can we come under His law so completely, as by acknowledging this Son as the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person; by trusting in Him as our elder brother and Mediator and Advocate? ’For by doing so we are able to keep that commandment which He Himself gave us, which He gave us because He had fulfilled it and embodied it in His life, that we should love one another.’
Thus we arrive at the two counter-signs to those of the devilish birth with which we began. Doing righteousness and loving the brethren are the signs of the heavenly birth. They denote the adopted child of God; because they denote the only-begotten Son of God. He was perfectly righteous, for He perfectly trusted His Father, and would not glorify Himself. He perfectly loved men. That love came forth in the sacrifice of Himself. But this sacrifice set forth, as nothing else could, the character, the righteousness of God. When we come into this region, all the seeming contradiction between Righteousness and Love disappears. They must be one if the Father is one with the Son; they must be one if the Son is the perfect image of the Father; they must be one if the Son is He in whose image Man is created.
I reserve the last verse for the next Lecture. It might be a very beautiful conclusion to the subject which we have been considering to-day. I think it is still more important as an introduction to the subject of the fourth chapter.