First Epistle of John

“ He will also see that in the first Epistle of John, people “born of God” are said to have certain marks and characteristics which myriads of baptized persons never possess at any period of their lives. ”

“ The school of John was the most influential in the second century, and it is only by regarding the origin of the Gospel as coincident with the rise of the school, that the existence of the latter can be understood at all."
"The First Epistle, attributed to John, is certainly by the same author as the Fourth Gospel. Now this Epistle is recognised as from John by Polycarp, Papias, and Irenæus. But it is, above all, the perusal of the Fourth Gospel itself which is calculated to give the impression that John [154] must have written it. The author always speaks as an eye-witness. ”

“ John's mind in the Epistle. (Cf. 1 John i. 1, Gen. i. 1.—iii. 8, Gen. ii.—iii. 12, Gen. iv. 8—iii. 15, Gen. xxvii. 41.) St. John, also, connects the new birth of the sons of God, as did our Lord, with the birth of the [Pg 184] creation, whose first germ was "the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters" (Gen. i. 2; John iii. 5) . This parallel between the first creation and the second, between creation and regeneration, has always commended itself to profound Christian exegesis as being deeply set in the mind of Scripture. Witness the magnificent lines. ”

“ John surely addresses himself to a community where influences precisely of this kind exist, and are recognised when he writes,—"Beloved, believe [Pg 18] not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.... Every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God." [27] The Church or Churches, which the First Epistle directly contemplates, did not consist of men just converted. ”

“ For the writing of his first Epistle he also gives a reason, saying,—"That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled concerning the word of life, ... that ... declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us."
Through these words John draws us very near to his Lord and ours, Whom we behold through his eyes, and hear through his ears. We almost feel the grasp of a divine yet human hand. ”

“ When, for example, it is contended that the famous words in S. John's first Epistle (1 S. John v. 7, 8,) are not to be regarded as genuine, the fact that they are away from almost every known Codex is accepted as a proof that they were also away from the autograph of the Evangelist. On far less weighty evidence, in fact, we are at all times prepared to yield the hearty assent of our understanding in this department of sacred science. ”

“ The author, since deceased, was the Abbé Le Hir, M. Renan's instructor in Hebrew at Saint Sulpice, and pronounced by his pupil one of the first of European Hebraists and scientific theologians.]
[Pg 54]
DISCOURSE IV. THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL IN HIS EPISTLE. "He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend."—Prov. xxii. 11.
ὁ θεμελιος.... ὁ δευτερος σαπφειρος.—Apoc. xxi. 19.
"We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. ”

“ Farther, since John has not mentioned his own name in his gospel, the want of his name in the epistle is no proof that it was not written by him; but rather a presumption that it is his; especially as he has sufficiently discovered himself to be an apostle, by affirming, in the beginning of the epistle, that he was an eye and an ear witness of the things he has written concerning the living word. "The style of this epistle being the same with the style of the gospel of John, it is, by that internal mark likewise, denoted to be his writing. ”

“ In history John stands and must ever stand alone. He was one of the two who first accepted the call of Christ to come to Him: he was the last of the Apostles to repeat, in another and yet as true a sense, that invitation to multitudes of men. He was one of those two who first saw what may be called the beginning of the Christian Church, in the little booth by the Jordan: and the last one of the Twelve to remember its fuller establishments in the Upper Chamber of Jerusalem. He was the last man who had seen the last prophet who told of the coming Messiah ”

“ John's Gospel which divides with the proœmium of his Epistle, the glory of being the loftiest, the most prolonged, the most sustained, in the Apostle's writings.
It is the prelude of a work which might have seemed to be of little moment. Yet all the height of a great ideal is over it, like the vault of heaven; all the power of a Divine purpose is under it, like the strength of the great deep ”

“ John cover himself under the subterfuges by which men at different times have tried to get rid of a truth so humiliating to spiritual pride—sometimes by asserting that they so stand accepted in Christ that no sin is accounted to them for such; sometimes by pleading personal exemption for themselves as believers.
This Epistle stands alone in the New Testament in being addressed to two generations—one of which after conversion had grown old in a Christian atmosphere, whilst the other had been educated from the cradle under the influences of the Christian Church. ”

“ "Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names." ”

“ Verse 33
He that sent me - said unto me - From this we may clearly perceive that John had a most intimate acquaintance with the Divine Being; and received not only his call and mission at first, but every subsequent direction, by immediate, unequivocal inspiration. Who is fit to proclaim Jesus, but he who has continual intercourse with God; who is constantly receiving light and life from Christ their fountain; who bears a steady, uniform testimony to Jesus, even in the presence of his enemies; and who at all times abases himself, that Jesus alone may be magnified! ”

“ It is utterly incredible that accepted Memoirs of Christ, thus worshipped, should have been thrown aside by presbyters or bishops, and hundreds of churches, throughout the Roman Empire, without a shock that would have left unmistakable evidences of it in history. There being an entire absence of any evidence of displacement [60] and substitution, it is morally certain there was none. John’s Gospel, however, stands upon a different footing, since it came in not to displace, but to supplement. John lived to the close of the first century. ”

“ He taught a commonplace Jesus. At the beginning of his Epistle and Gospel, John "wings his soul, and leads his readers onward and upward." He is like a man who stands upon the shore and looks upon town and coast and bay. Then another takes the man off with him far to sea. All that he surveyed before is now lost to him; and as he gazes ever oceanward, he does not stay his eye upon any intervening object, but lets it range over the infinite azure. So the Apostle leads us above all creation, and transports us to the ages before it ”

“ There must be a point of view from which we can embrace the [Pg 86] life as one. The great test here, as in art, is the formation of a living, consistent, unmutilated whole. [140]
Thus a general point of view (if we are to use modern language easily capable of being misunderstood we must say a theory) is wanted of the Person, the work, the character of Christ. The synoptical Evangelists had furnished the Church with the narrative of His earthly origin. St. John in his Gospel and Epistle, under the guidance of the Spirit, endowed it with the theory of His Person. ”

“ To a character so exemplary as John's, the highest respect and veneration are due; and the testimony of such a man deserves not to be lightly regarded. John's birth was six months prior to his Lord's, [24] and being the first who used water-baptism as a divine ordinance, he was surnamed the Baptist. He abode "in the deserts" of Judea "until the day of his showing unto Israel," and had never seen his Lord [20] (who resided at Nazareth, in Galilee) , until he came to Jordan for baptism. The testimony he then gave to the person of Jesus merits observation. ”

“ The influence of every great Christian teacher lasts long beyond the day of his death. It is felt in a general tone and spirit, in a special appropriation of certain parts of the creed, in a peculiar method of the Christian life. This influence is very discernible in the remains of two disciples of St. John, [114] Ignatius and Polycarp. In writing to the Ephesians, Ignatius does not indeed explicitly refer to St. John's Epistle, as he does to that of St. Paul to the Ephesians. But he draws in a few bold lines a picture of the Christian life which is imbued with the very spirit of St. John. ”

“ And John said, "Though I go from you, Christ is always with you. If you love him purely, you shall continually enjoy the blessing of his communion. For though he be loved, he loved those first who love him."
59. Having spoken thus, and having parted from them, he left much money to the brethren for distribution, and went to Ephesus, all brethren being sorrowing and weeping. Those that were with him from Ephesus were Andronicus and Drusiana, Lycomedes and Cleobius and their attendants. ”

“ The second synopsis, not of the contents of the Gospel, but of the aim and conception which it assumed in the form into which it was moulded by St. John, is given by the Epistle with a fulness which omits scarcely a paragraph of the Gospel. In the space of six verses of the fifth chapter the word witness, as verb or substantive, is repeated ten times. [43] The simplicity of St. John's artless rhetoric can make no more emphatic claim on our attention. The Gospel is indeed a tissue woven out of many lines of evidence human and divine. Compress its purpose into one single word. ”

“ It is true that for us Christians, who acknowledge the Divine authority of St. John, his bare word is sufficient; but as the apostle had to combat with adversaries who made no such acknowledgment, the only method of convincing them was to support his assertion by the authority of Christ himself. "Some of the Gnostics placed the 'Word' above all the other Aeons, and next to the Supreme Being: but Cerinthus placed the 'Only begotten' first, and then the 'Word.' Now St. John lays down the following positions: - "1. The Word and the Only begotten are not different, but the same person, [24] . ”

“ Towards the close of this Epistle St. John oracularly utters three great canons of universal Christian consciousness—"we know," "we know," "we know." Of these three canons the second is—"we know that we are from God, and the world lieth wholly in the wicked one." "A characteristic Johannic exaggeration"! some critic has exclaimed; yet surely even in Christian lands where men lie outside the influences of the Divine society, we have only to read the Police-reports to justify the Apostle. ”

“ This is the first time John thus speaks of himself. He never uses his own name. His place was at the right of the Lord. There he reclined during the meal, once changing his position, as we shall see. Judas was probably next to Jesus on His left. This allowed them to talk together without others knowing what they said.
John begins his story of the upper room as a supplement to Luke's record of the contention. He first tells two things about Jesus,—His knowledge that His hour "was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father," and His great and constant love for His disciples. ”

“ Every pilgrim of time in the continuous course of his daily walk, outward and inward, has by the possession of that Gospel contracted an obligation to be walking by the one great life-walk of the Pilgrim of eternity. The very depth and intensity of feeling half hushes the Apostle's [Pg 119] voice. Instead of the beloved Name which all who love it will easily supply, [167] St. John uses the reverential He, the pronoun which specially belongs to Christ in the vocabulary of the Epistle. [168] "He that saith he abideth in Him" is bound, even as He once walked, to be ever walking. ”

“ John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, is also a very significant and beautiful combination, and one very frequently met with. Though both these saints were as children contemporary with the child Christ, and so represented in the Holy Families, in these solemn ideal groups they are always men. The first St. John expresses regeneration by the rite of baptism the second St. John, distinguished as Theologus, "the Divine," stands with his sacramental cup, expressing regeneration by faith. The former was the precursor of the Saviour, the first who proclaimed him to the world as such ”

“ In fact, what John laid as the foundation of his Gospel,—that the Christ who came to redeem was He by whom all things were at first made,—Jesus also advanced as the first step in His revelation of Himself. He appears as the Source of life, whose will pervades all things. He comes, not as a stranger or interloper who has no sympathy with existing things, but as the faithful Creator, who loves all that He has made, and can use all things for the good of men. He is at home in the world, and enters physical nature as its King, who can use it for His high ends. ”

“ John's writings. His Gospel is a tissue woven of many lines of evidence. "Witness" stands in almost every page of that Gospel, and indeed is found there nearly as often as in the whole of the rest of the New Testament. The word occurs ten times in five short verses of the Epistle. [142] There is no possibility of mistaking this prolixity of reiteration in a writer so simple and so sincere as our Apostle. The theologian is an historian. He has no intention of sacrificing history to dogma, and no necessity for doing so. ”