Expositions of Holy Scripture Volume III Part 41

There is also the hindrance of mere indolence, and there is the hindrance arising from absorption in the world and its concerns.

If all your strength is going thither, there is none left to grow with.

Many professing Christians take such deep draughts of the intoxicating cup of this world's pleasures that it stunts their growth. People sometimes give children gin in order to keep them from growing. Some of you do that for your Christian character by the deep draughts that you take of the Circean cup of this world's pleasures and cares.

And not unfrequently, some one favourite evil, some l.u.s.t or pa.s.sion, or weakness, or desire, which you have not the strength to cast out, will kill all aspirations and destroy all possibilities of growth; and will be like an iron band round a little sapling, which will confine it and utterly prevent all expansion. Is that the case with any of us? We all need--and I pray you suffer--the word of exhortation.

III. Now, again, consider the method of growth.

There are two things essential to the growth of animal life. One is food, the other is exercise; and your Christian character will grow by no other means.

Now as to the first. The true means by which we shall grow in Christian grace is by holding continual intercourse and communion with Jesus Christ. It is from Him that all come. He is the Fountain of Life; He gives the life, He nourishes the life, He increases the life. And whilst I have been saying, in an earlier part of this discourse, that we are not to expect an effortless growth, I must here say that we shall very much mistake what Christian progress requires if we suppose that the effort is most profitably directed to the cultivation of specific and single acts of goodness and purity. Our efforts are best when directed to keeping ourselves in union with our Lord. The heart united to Him will certainly be advancing in all things fair and lovely and of good report. Keep yourselves in touch with Christ; and Christ will make you grow. That is to say, occupy heart and mind with Him, let your thoughts go to Him. Do you ever, from morning to night, on a week-day, think about your Master, about His truth, about the principles of His Gospel, about His great love to you? Keep your heart in union with Him, in the midst of the rush and hurry of your daily life. Are your desires turning to Him? Do they go out towards Him and feel after Him? It will take an effort to keep up the union with Him, but without the effort there will be no contact, and without the contact there will be no growth. As soon may you expect a plant, wrenched from the soil and shut out from the suns.h.i.+ne to grow, as expect any Christian progress in the hearts which are disjoined from Jesus Christ. But rooted in that soil, smiled upon by that sun, watered by the perpetual dew from His Heaven, we shall 'grow like the lily, and cast forth our roots like Lebanon. The secret of real Christian progress and the direction in which the effort of Christian progress can most profitably and effectually be made, is simply in keeping close to our Lord and Master. He is the food of the Spirit. 'I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'

Communion with Christ includes prayer. Desire to grow will help our growth. We tend to become what we long to be. Desire which impels to effort will not be in vain if it likewise impels to prayer. We may have the answer to our pet.i.tion for growth in set ways; we may be but partially conscious of the answer, nor know that our faces s.h.i.+ne when we go among men. But certainly if we pray for what is in such accordance with His will as 'growth in grace' is, we shall have the pet.i.tion that we desire. That longing to know Him better and to possess more of His grace, like the tendrils of some climbing plant, will always find the support round which it may twine, and by which it may ascend.

The other condition of growth is exercise. Use the grace which you have, and it increases. Practice the truth which you know, and many things will become clearer. The blacksmith's muscles are strengthened by wielding the forge-hammer, but unused they waste. The child grows by exercise. To him that hath--truly possesses with that possession which only use secures--shall be given.

Communion with Christ, including prayer, and exercise are the means of growth.

IV. Lastly, observe the solemn alternative to growth.

It is not a question of either growing or not growing, and there an end; but if you will look at the context you will see that the exhortation of my text comes in in a very significant connection. 'Behold! beware, lest being led away ... ye fall from your own steadfastness.' 'But grow in grace.' That is to say, the only preventive of falling away from steadfastness is continual progress. The alternative of advance is retrogression. There is no standing still upon the inclined plane. If you are not going up, gravity begins to act, and down you go. There must either be continual advance or there will be certain decay and corruption. As soon as growth ceases in this physiology _disintegration_ commences. Just as the graces exercised are strengthened, so the graces unexercised decay. The slothful servant wraps his talent in a napkin, and buries it in the ground. He may try to persuade his Master and himself with 'There Thou hast that is Thine'; but He will not take up what you buried. Rust and verdigris will have done their work upon the coin; the inscription will be obliterated and the image will be marred.

You cannot bury your Christian grace in indolence without diminis.h.i.+ng it. It will be like a bit of ice wrapped in a cloth and left in the sun, it will all have gone into water when you come to take it out. And the truth that you do _not_ live by, whose relations and large harmonies and controlling power are not being increasingly realised in your lives; that truth is becoming less and less real, more and more shadowy, and ghostlike to you. Truth which is not growing is becoming fossilised.

'The things most surely believed' are often the things which have least power. Unquestioned truth too often lies 'bedridden in the dormitory of the soul side by side with exploded error.' The sure way to reduce your knowledge of Jesus Christ to that inert condition is to neglect increasing it and applying it to your daily life. There are men, in all churches, and there are some whole communions whose creeds are the most orthodox, and also utterly useless, and as near as possible nonent.i.ties, simply because the creed is accepted and shelved. If your belief is to be of any use to you, or to be held by you in the face of temptations to abandon it, you must keep it fresh, and oxygenated, so to say, by continual fresh apprehension of it and closer application of it to conduct. As soon as the stream stands, it stagnates; and the very manna from G.o.d will breed worms and stink. And Christian truth unpractised by those who hold it, corrupts itself and corrupts them.

So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy. This decay may be most real and unsuspected. There are many, many professing Christians all ignorant that, like the Jewish giant of old, their strength is gone from them, and the Spirit of G.o.d departed. My brother, I beseech you, rouse yourself from your contented slothfulness. Do not be satisfied with merely having come within the Temple. Count nothing as won whilst anything remains to be won. There is a whole ocean of boundless grace and truth rolling sh.o.r.eless there before you. Do not content yourselves with picking up a few sh.e.l.ls on the beach, but launch out into the deep, and learn to know more and more of the grace and truth and beauty of your Saviour and your G.o.d.

But remember dead things do not grow. You cannot grow unless you are alive, and you are not alive unless you have Jesus Christ.

Have you given yourselves to Him? have you taken Him as yours? given yourselves to Him as His servants, subjects, soldiers? taken Him for yours as your Saviour, Sacrifice, Pattern, Inspirer, Friend? If you have, then you have life which will grow if you keep it in union with Him. Joined to Him, men are like a 'tree that is planted by the rivers of water,' which spreads its foliage and bears its fruit, and year after year flings a wider shadow upon the gra.s.s, and lifts a st.u.r.dier bole to the heavens. Separated from Him they are like the chaff, which has neither root nor life, and which cannot grow.

Which, my friend, are you?

I. JOHN

THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS

'This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that G.o.d is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 6.

If we say that we have fellows.h.i.+p with Him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: 7. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellows.h.i.+p one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.'

'My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2. And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 3.

And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of G.o.d perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him. 6. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.'--1 John i. 5-ii. 6.

John is the mystic among the New Testament writers. He dwells much on the immediate union of the soul with G.o.d, and he has little to say about inst.i.tutions and rites. His method is not to argue, but to utter deep, simple propositions which convince by their own light. But he is also intensely eager for plain, practical morality, and in that respect sets the example which, unfortunately, too many of the more mystical types of Christian teaching have failed to follow. To him the outcome and test of all deep hidden union with G.o.d is righteousness in life.

The blending of these two elements, which is the very keynote of this letter, is wonderfully set forth in this pa.s.sage. They would require much more s.p.a.ce than we command for their treatment, for every clause is weighty as gold. We can but skim the surface, and try to bring out the salient points.

I. We have, first, a wonderful gathering up of the whole gospel message into one utterance as to the essential nature of G.o.d. Light is in all languages the symbol of knowledge, of joy, of purity. It is the source of life. Its very nature is to ray itself out into and conquer darkness.

Its splendor dazzles every eye; all things rejoice in its beams.

Darkness is the type of ignorance, of sorrow, of sin. But, whilst the symbol is thus rich in manifold revelations, probably purity and self-communication are the predominating ideas here.

John has been honoured to give the world the three great revelations that G.o.d is spirit, is light, is love. And this profound saying in some sense includes both the others, inasmuch as light, which to the popular mind is most widely apart from matter, may well stand for the emblem of spirit, and, since to radiate is its inseparable quality, does represent in symbol the delight in imparting Himself, which is the very heart of the declaration that G.o.d is love. If, then, we grasp these two thoughts of absolute purity and of self-impartation as the very nature and property of G.o.d, John tells us that we grasp the kernel of the Gospel.

And he thinks that men never will grasp them certainly unless a 'message' from G.o.d, a definite revelation in historical fact, certifies them. We may hope or doubt, or desire, but we cannot be sure that G.o.d is light unless he tells us so by unmistakable act. John knew what act that was--the sending of His only-begotten Son. To the positive statement John, in his usual manner, appends an emphatic negative one: 'Darkness is not in him, no, not in any way.' He is light, all light, only light.

II. With characteristic moral earnestness, John pa.s.ses at once to the practical effects which the message is meant to have. We are not told what G.o.d is simply that we may know, but that, knowing, we may do and be. If He is light, two things will follow in those who are in union with Him--they will walk in light, and they will in His light see their own evil. John deals with these two consequences in verses 6-10--the former in verses 6 and 7; the latter in verses 8-10. The parallelism in the construction of these two sets of verses is striking:

VERSES 6, 7. VERSES 8, 9.

If we say If we say

that we have fellows.h.i.+p with that we have no sin Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

But if we walk in the light, If we confess our sins, as He is in the light,

we have fellows.h.i.+p one with He is faithful and righteous to another. forgive us our sins,

and the blood of Jesus His Son and to cleanse us from all cleanseth us from all sin. unrighteousness.

As to the former of these two paragraphs, the underlying thought is that fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d necessarily involves moral likeness to Him. Wors.h.i.+p is always aspiration after, and conformity to, the character of the G.o.d wors.h.i.+pped, and there can be no true communion with a G.o.d who is light unless the wors.h.i.+pper walks in light. In plain language, all high-flying pretensions to communion with G.o.d must verify themselves by practical righteousness. That cuts deep into an emotional religion, which has much to say about raptures and the like, but produces little purifying effect on the humble details of daily life.

There are always professing Christians who talk of their blessed experiences, and woefully fail in prosaic virtues. It is a pity that a man should hold his head so high that he does not look to keep his feet out of the mud. Such a profession is for the most part tainted with more or less conscious falsehood, and is always a proof that the truth--the sum of G.o.d's revelation--is not operative in the man; that he is not turning his belief into act, as all belief should be. On the other hand, the true relation resulting from the message is that we should walk in the light, as He is in it.

Verse 10 seems to be simply a reiteration of the preceding idea, with some intensifying, and that chiefly in the description of the true character of the denial of sin. To make G.o.d a liar is worse than to lie or to deceive ourselves; and all ignoring of sin does that, because not only has G.o.d declared its universality by the words of revelation, but all His dealings with men are based upon the fact that they are all sinners, and we fly in the face of all His words and works if we deny that which we ourselves are. Therefore the Apostle further varies his expression, and says 'His word' instead of 'the truth,' thus bringing into prominence the thought that 'the truth' is made accessible to us because G.o.d has spoken.

III. Chapter ii. 1-6 is in structure a.n.a.logous to the preceding section.

As there, so here, the 'message' is summed up in one great fact,--Christ's work as advocate for believers and as propitiation for the world. As there, so here, two practical consequences follow, which are drawn out on corresponding lines. Observe the repet.i.tion in verses 3 and 5 _b_, of 'hereby know we,' and in verses 4 and 6 of 'He that saith.'

Note, too, the reappearance of 'is a liar' and of 'the truth is not in him' in verse 4. The drift of the section may be briefly put as follows.

John's heart melts as he thinks of the possibilities of holiness open to believers, and of the sad actualities of their imperfect lives, and he addresses them by the tender name, 'my little children.' The impelling and guiding motive of his letter is that they may not sin. Practical righteousness is the end of revelation, and its complete attainment should be the aim of every believer.

But the sad experience of 'saints' is that they are not yet wholly delivered from its power. Therefore 'the message' is not only 'G.o.d is light without blending of darkness,' but, 'we Christians have an Advocate with the Father.' Jesus is to-day carrying on His mighty work of prevalent intercession for all His servants, and that intercession secures forgiveness for their inconsistencies and lapses, because it rests upon Christ's finished work of 'propitiation,' which is for the whole world, even though it actually avails only for believers.

Such being the power of Christ's work in its twofold aspect of propitiation and of intercession, the same practical issues as in the preceding section were shown to flow from the revealed nature of G.o.d are here, in somewhat different form, linked with that work. First, keeping his commandments (which is equivalent to 'walking in the light') is the test to ourselves, as well as to others, of our really knowing Him with a knowledge which is not mere head work, but the acquaintance of sympathy and friends.h.i.+p, or, in the words of the previous paragraph, having fellows.h.i.+p with Him.

Clearly, the scope of this section requires that 'His commandments'

should here mean Christ's, not the Father's. All professions of knowing Jesus which are not verified by obedience to Him are false. If we do keep His word--not merely the individual 'commandments,' but the word as one great whole--our love to G.o.d reaches its perfection, for it is no mere emotion of the heart, but the force which is to mould and actuate all our acts.

Verse 5 _b_ should be separated from the preceding words, for it is really the beginning of the second issue from the work of Christ, and is parallel with 'hereby know we,' etc., in verse 3. Observe the progress in thought from the a.s.surance that we _know_ (ver. 3) to the a.s.surance that we _are in_ Him. The Christian's relation to Jesus is not only that of acquaintance, however intimate, loving, and transforming, but that of actual dwelling in Him. That great truth s.h.i.+nes on every page of the New Testament, and is not to be weakened down into metaphor or rhetoric. It is the very heart of the Christian life, and the test that we have attained to it, and that not merely as an occasional, but as a permanent, condition (note that '_are_ in Him' is strengthened to '_abideth_ in Him') is that our outward life, in its manifold activities, shall be conformed to the pattern of all holiness in the life of Jesus. To walk as He walked is to walk in the light. Profession is nothing, conduct is everything, and we shall only be clear of sin in the measure in which we have Him who is the light of men for the very life of our lives.