2.12 - Religion in Age and Youth
Chapter 12 Religion in Age and Youth (1 John 2:12-14)
Pause in the Letter—“I write,” “I have written”—Little children, Fathers, Young Men—All knowing the Father through Forgiveness—The “Fathers” deep in knowledge of Christ—Christology the Crown of Christian Thinking—“Young Men” and their Strength—Violence of Passion—Allurements of Novelty—Beacon Light of Scripture—The Militant Strength of Young Men.
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I write to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you, for His name’s sake:
I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him that is from the beginning;
I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the Evil One.
I have written to you, little ones, because you have known the Father:
I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him that is from the beginning;
I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the Evil One.
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HERE we come to a pause, and almost a new beginning, in St John’s letter. He told us at the outset that he was writing for the purpose of declaring anew the message he had received from Christ and testifying to the facts about Christ of which he and others had been witnesses. On the basis of this testimony, he reminded the readers, there is set up a holy fellowship of men with God, in which they too are partakers. To give this witness and to promote this fellowship is for St John and his companions in the testimony a perfect joy (1 John 1:3-4). Thus the ground of the Epistle was stated on its subjective side and as regards the intent of the author. But the letter assumes a corresponding disposition and attitude on the part of its receivers; it is grounded, objectively, upon their consciousness of the new life in Christ and the salvation from sin which it effects. To this side of the case the Apostle turns in 1 John 2:12, and appeals to the experience of Divine grace in those addressed by the Epistle: “I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven . . . because you have known the Father” (1 John 2:14). In the preface St John spoke of what moved him to write on his own account; here he tells what led him to write on the readers’ account,—to write particularly to them, and in this particular strain. This letter is meant for Christian people, for men delivered from sin and acquainted with God (see p. 59); for old men advanced in Christian knowledge, for young men who have used their strength to conquer evil.
In making the pause and change of attitude we observe, St John does not change his theme. He still pursues the thread that has been followed from 1 John 1:3 onwards; the thought of fellowship with God is dominant in this and the two succeeding paragraphs, as much as in those preceding them. “Forgiveness” is admission to such fellowship; “knowledge of the Father” is its continuance; “victory over the Evil One” is its counterpart and the condition of its maintenance; “love of the world” would be its negation (1 John 2:15-17); the “antichrists” are those who have departed from the Church’s fellowship with God in Christ, whose teaching means its dissolution (1 John 2:18-27). The emendation of the received text, and the right arrangement of the clauses, go far to expound the meaning of the section of the Epistle before us. We must certainly read, with the Revisers, “I have written” (ἔγραψα), not “I write “ (γράφω), in the last sentence of 1 John 2:13. The six statements of 1 John 2:12-14 are then seen to fall into two balanced sections of three clauses each—not into unequal parts of four and two clauses respectively—which are prefaced in the first half by the present tense, “I write,” and in the second by the past, “I have written.” In both sections “little children” (“or little ones”) are first addressed, then “fathers” and “young men” in turn. By the former name St John habitually accosts his readers—as τεκνία in verses 1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:28, 1 John 3:7, 1 John 5:21, and παιδία in 1 John 2:18 below; they were all of them the old Apostle’s “little ones” (see p. 163). Accordingly, the content of the first and fourth clauses is of a comprehensive nature and applies to Christian believers generally. It is therefore a mistake, though a natural one, to discriminate the children of this passage from the fathers and young men, and to suppose that “little children,” or “little ones,”52 is employed by the Apostle, like these other terms, as a definition of age. The order of the three classes—children, fathers, young men—speaks against this distinction. The Apostle, who was now ninety years old, out of his patriarchal dignity and affection thinks of all his flock as “little children,” while he distinguishes the elder and younger amongst them, to whom he writes as “fathers” and “young men” in terms appropriate to their several conditions. The duplication of the three-fold statement, under the verbs “I write” and “I have written,” is curious. It is St John’s manner to repeat himself; his mind hovers upon and plays round its cherished thoughts, bringing out at each turn fresh aspects of the same truth. Nowhere else in the Epistle is the repetition so formal and (as one may say) so barefaced as in this instance. The fourth clause is parallel to the first, but quite different; the sixth (the young men’s clause) enlarges upon the third; the fifth clause repeats the second unchanged. But what does the device of repetition mean? It is to be noted that the present tense, “I write,” which heads each statement in the first half of the passage, was used in 1 John 1:4 and 1 John 2:1, preceding this paragraph, while the past tense, “I wrote” or “have written,” displaces this in the later passages—viz. 1 John 2:21, 1 John 2:26 below and 1 John 5:13. This change of tense in the verb as between earlier and later parts of the Epistle goes to account for the variation made in this place. There is no need to suppose that some previous writing is meant, when St John says “I have written”; such reference is out of the question in 1 John 2:21, 1 John 2:26, and is very improbable here. The Apostle has reached an advanced point in his letter. He has restated the message committed to him by Christ, and drawn out its import; he will appeal to his children on the strength of this declaration (1 John 2:15-17). By way of supporting his appeal, he reminds them of their own knowledge of the things of God; this experience common to them all, this varied experience of old and young, furnishes the reason for which he thus writes, and sustains his warning against the friendship of the world. But as, in making this entreaty and after thrice reiterating “I write to you,” his eye glances over the manuscript in hand, he reminds himself that he had already written to this effect, and that the previous paragraphs imply in the readers the knowledge of God and the victory over sin of which he now speaks. Upon this suggestion he resumes his explanation, and states a second time, with added fulness, the reasons that justify him in using words of appeal so intimate and confident. What the Apostle has in mind to write, what he has written, —all is written as to men forgiven for Christ’s sake and knowing God their Father—not to those who are ignorant of the Gospel or disobedient to it. These are the cleansed and enlightened, the good soldiers of Jesus Christ, the deep students of eternal truth. With this high opinion of his children in Christ, St John observes a little later, in 1 John 2:20-21, “You have an anointing from the Holy One and know,—all of you: I have not written unto you because you know not the truth, but because you know it.” It is an Apostolic lesson, to be learnt both from St John and St Paul, that one should think as well as possible of those one has to teach and give them credit for everything they know, that further instruction should be built on past attainment.
Some of our best interpreters, including Bengel and Rothe, read the six ὅτι‘s of 1 John 2:12-14 as that instead of because,—as though the Apostle would give in these duplicated statements the content or substance of what he writes, rather than the reasons for writing as he does. That the ordinary rendering of the conjunction is correct seems to be evident from 1 John 2:21 just quoted. St John is expressing in a fatherly, confiding way his satisfaction in the character of his readers, his certainty that the entreaty he is making will not be in vain. It is the same man who writes in the Third Epistle, “I have no greater joy than that I hear of my children walking in the truth (3 John 1:4).
Now it is time to look at the experience of St John’s Christian flock and to compare it with our own.
1. Two things the Apostle says of his little children collectively; two features mark in common all those who have believed the Gospel and entered the fold of Christ: their “sins are forgiven for His name’s sake”; they “have come to know the Father.” These are concomitant gifts of grace, and correspond to the justification and adoption of St Paul’s teaching. They are pictured in their relation to each other by Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:4-32). Through forgiveness the sinner comes for the first time to know his father, whom in blindness of heart he had most shamefully wronged and wounded. His pitiful confession is smothered in the embrace and kiss of pardon; his rags are replaced by “the best robe”; the feast of reconciliation is spread for him; he is called “my son,” who had been a rebel and an outcast. In all this the love of the father’s heart, hitherto unguessed as it was undeserved, reveals itself to the humbled prodigal. In estrangement he had broken the ties of home, and carried with him into exile a false image of the father, measuring him out of his perverse and vitiated nature; but from this moment misunderstandings are gone, mistrust and bitterness are swept away. Above all the happiness of the wanderer’s reinstatement is this, that now the son knows his father; he feels, as never before, the infinite pity, tenderness, patience, generosity of a father’s heart. It is as “Father” that God forgives the sins of men, accepting the Advocate’s plea on their behalf, and is ready to do so for “the whole world” (1 John 2:2); only by forgiving can God prove His Fatherhood to the sinful. 1 John 2:1-2 and 1 John 1:7. I have shown these two elements to be fundamental and inseparable in St John’s message.
“We have an Advocate with the Father,” he has told us, “Jesus Christ the righteous,” who “is the propitiation for our sins,” and “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” The Son of God who has interposed with His propitiation, is the brother of those whose part He takes, and reveals His Father to them as also theirs; by His advocacy He wins their restoration to the forfeited estate of sonship toward God. “The name” on account of which St John’s little children have had their “sins forgiven,” is that of Jesus, God’s Son. His “name” signifies His person and achievements, His rights and standing with God, His relationship to mankind—all that prompted Him and qualified Him to sue with such effect for the forgiveness of a world of sinners (see p. 118). All the intercessory power that is in the name of Jesus Christ accrued to Him as the Son of God, and therefore goes to reveal the Father whom the world had not known (see John 17:25-26). Jesus has “shown us the Father” in Himself (John 14:7-11)—in His incarnate person exhibiting the Father’s nature, in His atonement accomplishing the Father’s will, and in His words of forgiveness conveying the Father’s grace to men. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, since it brings about a perfect remission of sins (compare Hebrews 10:1-18), has made it possible for men enstranged by sin for the first time to realize the Fatherhood of Almighty God. Jesus Christ has “brought us nigh” to God “through the cross” (see Ephesians 2:13-18; 1 Peter 3:18),—so near that we can see Him as He is, and know that He is light and love (1 John 1:5; 1 John 4:8-10). All who have received and kept the word of Christ, “have known the Father.” St John’s gospel was the message of forgiveness bestowed by the Father for Christ’s sake.
Here is the source of the distinctive Christian experience, the ground of all specifically Christian teaching and appeal, for young and old alike. None of us can ever outgrow this stage of knowledge. The sense of forgiveness through Christ, the right to call God “Father” through the Spirit of His love, the temper of a little child toward God, are confirmed in the Christian believer as life goes on; he becomes ever more childlike in heart, more humble in the remembrance of pardoned sin, as his fellowship with God grows deeper. Other truths are important; this is all-important. The Gospel has nothing to say except to sinful men; it can do nothing for those who will not confess their sins. Its countless benefits for the race of mankind rest upon this one boon of personal forgiveness by God and reception into His family. Men belong to two categories—the saved and the unsaved: to the latter the messenger of the Gospel has to say, “Confess your sin; know the truth, be reconciled to God”; to the former,” Your sins are forgiven you; you know the Father. Walk worthily, henceforth, of your calling; conquer the Evil One; grow in the knowledge of God, till you are filled with His fulness.”
Among St John’s “little children” there are seniors and juniors; some he calls “fathers,” others are addressed, as “young men.” To both classes he gives warm commendation. Knowledge is the excellence of the elder, strength of the younger amongst the Apostle’s approved disciples—the wisdom of age, and the vigour of youth. For the most part, these contrasted qualities are the properties of the two stages of life; but this broad distinction is crossed by varieties of temperament, vocation, and personal history. There is the difference between the sanguine and phlegmatic, between the active and. meditative disposition, between manual and intellectual occupation, between the life of town and country. One man is always keen to know; knowledge appears to him in itself the end and the treasure of life,—a pondering, probing, speculative mind; he wears “an old man’s head upon a young man’s shoulders.” To another knowledge is useless but as a means to action, as a tool to work with or a weapon with which to strike,—a scheming, contriving, restless brain; into old age such a man carries the eagerness and combativeness of his youth. St Peter represents the latter type, St John himself the former—the one marked from the first by quick speech and bold initiative, the other by brooding thought and reflective insight; the second was a “father” amongst young men, the first ayoung man “amongst the fathers. In St Paul the two factors were blended to a rare degree; we find him in contrary moods—keen, vehement, practical, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, or wrapt in heavenly communion, as in the Epistle to the Ephesians—now at the pole of action and now of contemplation. This union is complete in Jesus Christ, whom we scarcely think of either as young or old; for knowledge of the Father and strength to overcome the Evil One were combined to perfection in the Son of man.
2. The “fathers” are those who “have known53 Him that is from the beginning.” The Apostle reaffirms in 1 John 2:14 the ground of satisfaction respecting the older men of his Churches which he stated in 1 John 2:13. “That which was from the beginning” (1 John 1:1) is the subject of the whole letter and the matter of the Apostle’s preaching; he bears witness of “the eternal life” that “has been manifested” to mankind in Jesus Christ and “was with the Father” before the worlds were. The eternity of the life brought by Christ into the world inheres in the Bringer; it is “from the beginning” inasmuch as He is “from the beginning.” For, as St Paul has said, Christ “is our life” (Colossians 1:4); St John later affirms this identity in the words of 1 John 5:12: “He that hath the Son of God hath the life.” To be “in the Son” (1 John 2:24)—“in Christ,” as St Paul loved to say—to be one’s mere self no longer but a very branch of the trues Vine, this is “the life indeed,” for which death is abolished. Now the fathers of St John’s Churches “have known” this; they have entered intelligently, through mature experience, into the mystery of the life that is hid with Christ in God.
Christ is undoubtedly meant by “Him that is from the beginning,” in 1 John 2:13 and 1 John 2:14. To say of God the Father that He “is from the beginning” would have been a platitude; but that this is true of Jesus Christ—that He is “the Word” who “was with God” and so “was in the beginning,” the primordial source of life and light for men—is a matter of supreme importance for the writer to declare and for his disciples to realize, especially the senior and more responsible amongst them. This is the whole doctrine of the Prologue to St John’s Gospel. In John 1:3-4, it is true, God (not Christ) was the object of this same verb (“we have known,” “I have known Him”: see p. 133); but there the context was very different (see pp. 134-136). In this place Christ is before our thoughts as He “for whose name’s sake” His people’s “sins have been forgiven” (1 John 2:12). Such forgiveness is the fundamental experience of all believers: those of deeper knowledge discern in their Sin-bearer the eternal Word; they identify “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” with “the Son of God” coming “from the bosom” of the Father (see John 1:18, John 1:29-34). This sublime Christology belonged to the advanced Apostolic teaching; it is not contained explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount, nor in the message of the day of Pentecost; but it is conspicuous in. St Paul’s Epistles to Colossae and Ephesus, in St John’s Epistles and Gospel. This is meat for strong men, rather than milk for babes. For the Apostles themselves, their Master’s Deity was the last lesson to be learnt from Him. St Thomas’ exclamation, “My Lord and my God,” signalized the culmination of discipleship. The truths that are first in the nature of things come last in the order of acquisition. Christ is known as Saviour first, then as Lord; the death of the cross that wins pardon for human sin, leads to His enthronement as bearer of the name that is above every name and partner of the everlasting throne. This profounder apprehension of Christ, which had been more slowly gained, supplied (as we shall see in 1 John 2:22-24)54 the test of the Church’s faith at the close of the Apostolic age; and in the mastery of it lay the proof of ripeness and stability in the Christian life, and the qualification of those whom St. John ranked as “fathers.” The case is much the same amongst ourselves. The Christological question is the crucial problem of the day. The due knowledge of Christ in His Headship of the Church and Lordship over the universe, the acknowledgement of God in Christ and the consequent recognition, in the light of modern thought, of our Lord’s eternal attributes and sovereign relations to nature and to humanity, form the chief desideratum of theology at the beginning of the twentieth century, as they did at the close of the first century of our era. In the history of the soul, just as in that of the Church, “to know Him” is the supreme quest. Both the great thinkers amongst the Apostles, in their old age, set this down as the crown of knowledge. St Paul counted every other prize as vanity beside this—“that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings”; for the sake of this he had “suffered the loss of all things, and counted them dross” (Php 3:7-11). He represents the mark of the Christian calling in a different light from that in which it is set by our Apostle, for he sought the knowledge of his Master as it lay in the path of his ministry and came by the way of cross-bearing and self-emptying. St John contemplates the knowledge of Christ from the objective side, as it concerns what the Redeemer is, not in His servants and the members of His body, but in Himself, in His absolute relations to God and the world. The experimental question possessed the mind of the one Apostle, the theological question that of the other. But Jesus Christ is the centre of both problems. “To lnow Him” is the goal alike of life and thought, whether one would sink by fellowship into the depth of His sufferings or rise in contemplation to the heights of His glory. As time goes on, this becomes with each of these great men the supreme pre-occupation of life; to them “Christ is all things and in all.” What He was to St Paul and St John as the central object of the mind, Jesus Christ must increasingly become to the world’s deeper thought. It is for the fathers—for those who have learnt most and proved most of life’s needs—that the knowledge of Jesus Christ has the greatest wealth of interest.
3. The “young men” are congratulated on that they “have overcome the Evil One” (1 John 2:13); and again, more explicitly, “because” they “are strong, and the word of God abideth in” them, and they “have overcome the Evil One.” A victory is recorded, and the forces are noted by virtue of which it is gained. In the years of early manhood, for the most part, the decisive battles of life are fought out. The paths open before the youth as he steps on from the shelter of home and the bounds of school into the untried world—“the narrow gate and the strait way that lead to life,” “the wide gate and the broad way that lead to destruction.” God or Mammon, Christ or Belial, offer themselves for his choice; by the choice that he makes at the outset, he is likely to abide. The bent of a man’s mind and character, the groove in which his life’s course will run, in most cases are settled by the time he is twenty-five or thirty. If he does not “overcome the Evil One” before he has reached that point, it is too probable that he never will. With God nothing is impossible; but it lies in the laws of our nature that the practices of youth become the habits of age, that in our later days we are limited to building on the foundations earlier laid, and have little choice but to work out the plans and realize the ideas that were conceived in the prime of manhood. In young manhood the inward conflict between the spirit and the flesh springs up, when the passions are in their first heat, and when the conscience and heart, with their manifold susceptibilities, are most impressionable. For many this means a secret and severe struggle. Personal chastity, a manly self-respect and self-mastery, are gained at adolescence or are forfeited. To win a clean heart—an imagination pure and sweet, affections unsullied, a soul to which love is altogether high and sacred—is a great prize of victory. “The Evil One” assails Christ’s young soldier with insidious and searching temptations; the world spreads snares at each step for the unwary feet. On the outcome of the conflict for youth’s crown of purity the hope depends of an honourable and happy future; wholesomeness of mind, integrity of conscience, and the moral vigour and purpose of the man’s work through life, the soundness of his relations to society as well as to the laws of God, turn on the delicate issues that are here involved.
If evil is strong in its assault on the young man when this battle rages, the powers of good are also strong within him and about him; he may feel their might, and ally his unspent force to them, as at no other age. How beautiful is holiness to the ingenuous youthful heart; how keen the shame of sin; how glorious the fight of faith, and how inspiring the examples of its heroes; how dear the love of Christ; how sovereign the authority of truth; how splendid to his eyes are the shining walls of the city of God! “You are strong,” cries St John to his young men, “and should be brave and glad in the strength of a consecrated youth.” At the same blossoming-time of life, along with the passions the intellect and will assert themselves. The young man has his own notions and impulses, which are bound to differ from those of his elders. New fancies, schemes, ambitions pour in upon him; they catch his imagination and take hold of his reason at the plastic stage, while the mind is unprejudiced and open to every generous impression. The world’s progress from one generation to another depends upon the susceptibility of young men’s minds, upon the responsiveness to fresh ideas, the power of entertaining and working out new conceptions, which is the priceless gift of youth. But this brings with it a grave peril. The young man is apt to embrace new principles because they are new, because he can make them his own and air his independence on the strength of them. There is no vanity more foolish or treacherous than the vanity of thinking for oneself; contentiousness, irreverence, frivolity are bound up in this conceit. Humility, patient discipline, thoroughness in labour, are the price at which truth is won; to this yoke the pride of youth and talent will not bend its neck. Eager and sympathetic young men, but of volatile, unbalanced temper, unschooled in mental effort, unseasoned by experience, form the natural prey of plausible theorists and clever talkers. Having no anchored faith, no grasp on the deeper verities of life, they drift with the currents; they are swept along now by this gust, now by that, of the “winds of doctrine.” The lessons taught by the “fathers” who “have known Him that is from the beginning,” the long-tested wisdom of God in Scripture, count for nothing with such minds as against the latest novelties of unsifted modern thought.
It is by a hazardous fight, and often through much tribulation, that the thoughtful young man, in times of change and distraction such as those in which the Apostle wrote, attains a stable faith and a reasoned persuasion of Christian truth. This will not come to him without much prayer to the Father of lights, nor without the aid of the Spirit who “guides” Christ’s disciples “into all the truth” (John 16:13). Hard indeed it seems to win a footing on the Rock of Ages, round which the storms beat and surge on every side; but the Captain of Salvation is there Himself to grasp the outstretched hand and to raise the sinking head. Once more He says, “Peace, be still! “when the waves mount high against His trembling Church. Shaken in mind and sick at heart, Christ’s servants hear Him cry, out of the midnight of His passion and from the blackness of the tempest, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world!” and the winds are hushed and there is a great calm. An hour ago discomfited and beaten down, now they are more than conquerors through Him that loved them. In His will is our peace, and in His word our strength. The Apostle holds a guarantee for the safety of his young men, surer than their own strength and courage: “The word of Godabideth in you, and you have overcome the Evil One.”
Holy Scripture holds the lamp for the path of each ew generation; its light has guided the leaders of mankind for ages past. In the Bible, to say the least of it, is treasured the best spiritual experience of sixty generations of our race, and the young man who scoffs at that is ignorant and vain beyond all other folly. As safely might the mariner, crossing unknown waters, leave his chart upon the shelf and mock at the familiar beacons, as may the new voyager on the sea of life discard the word of God, or the men of the coming generation attempt to steer by other lights. For that word to “dwell in” us, it must become familiar by daily consultation, by devout and pondering use. It will not do for the young man to take the word of Christ and the Apostles upon credit as from the faith of others, to adopt at second-hand what minister or church may tell him about Scripture, and to let his judgement of its worth and of its meaning be determined by the popular notions of to-day or yesterday concerning it. He must come to the Bible and deal with it, under all the light available, for himself and upon his own part, listening to hear through it “the word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Within the general word, there is laid up “the word of God” for himself in particular, which will meet him when he seeks it, to awaken, enlighten, cleanse, and save him. Thus becoming his personal possession, it will “abide in” him, making itself the tenant of the house, the garrison that keeps the fortress of his soul for God and beats back the assault of evil. By this aid Jesus Christ foiled the Tempter, when, as a young man on the threshold of His life’s work, He found in the indwelling word of God the shield to quench Satan’s fiery darts, the sword with whose thrust He drove back the malignant foe. Recalling that great encounter, and thinking of conflicts that he had himself passed through in youth, when the word of God brought deliverance in hours of extreme peril, St John testifies, “The word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the Evil One.” The inward and personal conflict opens out into the universal warfare between Christ and the Prince of this world, which still pursues its course. The Church of God counts now, as she did in St John’s day, upon her young men. Young men form the strength of every militant and progressive cause. Forward movements, in all fields of action, depend upon their sympathy. The sacred optimism and heaven-kindled fire of youth, its unspent, incalculable energy and ingenuity, its high daring and capacity for self-sacrifice, its readiness to follow heroic leading, carry the day wherever victory is gained on the world’s battlefields. Christian young men swell the tide of each successive advance in the kingdom of God; they give to each new assault on evil its impetus. “We are strong,” says St John to Christ’s young men—to such as the writer himself had been when he and his comrades followed Jesus sixty years before; and the Church is strong, and the ministry, that know how to enlist such men while “the dew of youth” is upon them, and to use for the warfare of God’s kingdom their fresh ardour and un-wasted vigour,—men of pure heart and resolute will, men in whose soul there burns as a deep fire the word of the Living God.