001.30. Chapter 30
Chapter 30 CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
“I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.”
“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things” (1 John 2:20). It is important to perceive the intimate connection between those two things: the believer’s anointing and his knowledge are related as are cause and effect. Not only are the regenerate separated from the world by this unction, but they are also distinguished from the unregenerate in point of essential knowledge. The gift of the Spirit consecrates their souls and bodies as His temples to dwell in, and His gracious operation within imparts to them the true knowledge of Divine things. As we saw in our last, when we dwelt almost entirely upon the first part of the verse, the Spirit which Christ received without measure He communicates to His redeemed in a degree suited to finite creatures. In consequence thereof they are sharers, in their measure, of His knowledge, so that they can say, “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). Himself the Wisdom of God, His saved ones are the children of wisdom (Matthew 11:19), the children of light. Thus, from another angle, 1 John 2:20 is a reiteration of “which thing [namely the exercise of brotherly love] is true [is realized] in Him and in you” (1 John 2:8): in Him originally, in us derivatively; in Him essentially, in us reflectively; in Him perfectly, in us faultily.
“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” The last clause, equally with the first, calls for the expositor, that its meaning may be made clear. It is another example where we must distinguish between the sound and the sense of Scripture. To take the “ye know all things” at its face value, without restriction, would be to affirm that the regenerate are omniscient—a manifest absurdity. Let this be duly noted by those who are so fond of saying, “Scripture always means what it says, and requires no explaining by man.” There is not a little in the Bible which requires a Divinely qualified teacher to interpret, for it is God’s general way to make use of such in “opening” His Word to the rank and file of His people. “Ye know all things” signifies that those who have received the Spirit are given a saving apprehension of the fundamental parts of the Gospel, so that they are brought out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, and thereby fitted to commune with and obey Him. Believers can say that God “hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true” (1 John 5:20), and knowing Him they know all things which are necessary to their everlasting wellbeing.
“And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
We can have no saving and sound knowledge of Divine things without this anointing, for the natural man is incapable of discerning spiritual things. All the teaching of men, even of the Lord’s most faithful and eminent servants, is inefficacious without it. God cannot be apprehended merely by the intellectual faculty, for He is spirit (John 4:24), and therefore can be known only by those who are made spiritual. A living knowledge of God consists of a personal discovery of Him to the heart, such as conveys a true, supernatural, affecting realization of His surpassing excellence. When He makes such a discovery of Himself to the soul, its favoured recipient exclaims, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee” (Job 42:5), as a glorious Reality. Note well, John did not say “we know all things,” but “ye:” it was not a privilege peculiar to the apostles. Nor is this an experience reserved for the “fathers” in Christ only: rather is it shared by all the renewed. Said the Saviour to His Father, “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matthew 11:25). Contextually the “and ye know all things” means that by the gracious teaching of the Spirit believers are granted an experiential and effectual knowledge of Divine things so that no propagator of error can fatally deceive them. He alone can impart that wisdom which secures against delusions. The Spirit of Truth communicates such a personal and practical acquaintance with the things of God as preserves from total apostasy. Still more narrowly: they are admitted into a saving acquaintance with the person and work of Christ, which the antichrists denied. Not that any are vouchsafed a perfect knowledge, for in this life we only “see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12); nor all Christians to the same degree and extent. But each one has so opened to him the mysteries of grace that he is secured against all the ruinous cheats of the enemy: it is to be noted that in 2 Corinthians 1:21, “establisheth” and anointing are linked together. If, however, the “and ye know all things” be interpreted in the light of the general Analogy of Faith, it has a much wider meaning. “The whole truth concerning Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Father, in all its bearings on the Divine character and counsels, as well as on human experience and hope” (Calvin). Let us amplify the second part of the Reformer’s definition.
It is with the desire to help some of our weaker and fearing brethren that we now enter into detail. Such are inclined seriously to doubt that they have “an anointing from the Holy One,” for so far from being assured that they savingly “know all things,” they are painfully conscious of their ignorance. Then, first, those who have received this anointing are firmly persuaded that the Bible is the Word of God, so that they doubt not its inspiration, nor question its authority. A work of grace is attended with a spiritual conviction of the judgment of the reality and certainty of Divine things. Its subjects are assured of the truth of the Gospel, so that they no longer halt between two opinions of its Origin. God’s way of salvation ceases to be a doubtful thing to them. These are matters which are settled in their minds beyond any dispute, so that they value them above all else. They know the Bible to be God’s Word, for it has judged and searched them, exposing the secrets of their hearts. They have the weight and power of it on their souls.
Second, they have a humbling and experiential knowledge of sin: not merely from an awakened conscience, but more immediately from the anointing they have received. The former occupies the mind more with sin’s consequences, the latter with its nature. The Holy Spirit is the great Convicter of sin (John 16:8). It is an essential part of His office work to remove the scales from the eyes of those in whom He operates, so that they behold Him in the light of God’s holiness. As He does so, the soul perceives the awful sinfulness of sin: its excuselessness, its filthiness, its vileness; that it is “that abominable thing” which the Lord hates (Jeremiah 44:4). The soul now realizes what all sin really is, namely a revolt against God, an opposition to Him, the outbreaking of the heart’s inveterate enmity against Him. The Holy Spirit brings to light the hidden things of darkness and makes the convicted soul recognize that the whole of his life has been one of selfseeking and self-pleasing, of continuous insubjection to God. That brings him to condemn himself as a guilty criminal, as a vile leper, and to take his place before God in the dust.
Third, they know what real repentance is: not only theoretically, but practically. As the sinner learns what he is in himself—in a state of depravity, darkness and death, utterly unfit for the presence of God—he is overwhelmed with horror and anguish. God now reproves him, setting his sins in order before his eyes (Psalms 50:16-21), so that he exclaims, “my sin is ever before me” (Psalms 51:3). “The arrows of the Almighty” stick in his heart (Job 6:4), so that he cannot get rid of them. He is made to feel what an evil and bitter thing it is to treat his Maker with contempt. He realizes that he has acted toward God with the basest ingratitude, abusing His goodness, perverting His mercies, despising His authority. His comeliness is turned into corruption (Daniel 10:8), and he cries, “Woe is me! for I am undone” (Isaiah 6:5). He is filled with the most poignant sorrow for having offended so infinitely gracious a Being as the Majesty of heaven. He confesses: “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight” (Psalms 51:4).
Fourth, they know Christ as the sinner’s Saviour. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
None but those with an urgent sense of need really turn unto the great Physician. It is only those who are conscious of being heavily laden who come unto Christ for relief and rest. Yet so legalistic and self-righteous is the human heart that, generally, a convicted sinner sets about his reformation and gives himself earnestly to religious performances, hoping to find peace for his conscience therein. But proving all self-efforts to be utterly vain, he is driven to despair. Then it is that his heart is prepared to welcome the good news of the Gospel. Then it is that this anointing gives him to see that Christ is in every way suited to his wretchedness, that His finished work is perfect, that His blood and righteousness require nothing whatever to be added unto them, that His so-great salvation is free, without money and without price. The blessed Spirit now works faith in such a soul, causing him to place his entire confidence in the Lord Jesus for the whole of his salvation. Now it is that he personally knows Christ to be an all-sufficient Saviour.
“I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:21).
Once more the apostle inserts an explanatory word (compare 1 John 1:4; 1 John 2:1; 1 John 2:12-14), stating why he has penned this section of his epistle. The frequency with which he did so strikingly evinced his modesty. Can the reader imagine “the Pope” of Rome, when sending a message to his “cardinals and priests,” condescending to give any reason for his conduct? No indeed, he is far too self-important and arrogant to do so. Not so this honoured ambassador of Christ, who almost apologizes for writing what he has. He pauses to assure them that it is not because he deems them to be uninstructed, nor because he fears they are unsound, or even wavering, in the Faith. Those are points on which the saints are very tender, resenting any suspicion upon their orthodoxy. Thus, this explanatory word of John’s was not only a mark of his humility, but a delicate consideration of their feelings as well. He would at once relieve their minds by letting them know that he entertained no doubts about their spiritual intelligence, but assured them that, since they had received an unction from the Holy One, he was fully persuaded that they were savingly acquainted with the Gospel in all its parts.
Yet as we first ponder this verse as a whole, there seems to be somewhat of a lack of coherence between it and the remainder of the passage of which it forms a part. After consulting many expositors, we consider that J. Gill best perceived its force. He suggested that the apostle was here obviating an objection which he saw might be made against what he had last said. Since he acknowledged that they “knew all things” why was it necessary for him to write as he was here doing? To this question John replies that he writes to them not as ill-informed but as instructed ones. They “knew the truth:” the Father as “the God of truth” (Jeremiah 10:10); Christ as the embodiment of the truth (John 14:6); the Spirit as “the Spirit of Truth” (John 15:26); the Scriptures as “the word of truth” (Ephesians 1:13), by which the truth is to be defended and confirmed. If they had not “known the truth,” it had been to no purpose for him to write them about the antichrists.
Moreover, though they were already taught of God, it was very proper for him to declare afresh those things which were most surely believed by them (Luke 1:1), that they might be still further established in the Faith and fortified against false doctrine. The connection between our present verse and the preceding one appears too in that there the “ye know all things” (as the result of the Spirit’s anointing) is here defined more definitely as a knowledge of “the truth,” and therefore qualified to detect error. As Calvin expressed it, “they would be able readily to distinguish between light and darkness because they had the Spirit for their Guide.” From the above paragraph it will be seen that we do not restrict “the truth” in our text to either the personal Word or the written Word. We are always chary of limiting any biblical expression., Christ Himself is “the truth,” because the whole Truth of God is summed up and embodied in Him. Equally, as Christ said to the Father, “Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17). Even where the Truth is already known, there needs to be “precept upon precept, line upon line” (Isaiah 28:10). As Jude said, “I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this” (Jude 1:5), and Paul: “To write the same things to you, to me is not grievous, but for you it is safe” (Php 3:1). Not only are the eyes of our understanding opened gradually, but memory is weak, affections sluggish, and much opposition is made by the flesh. Truth requires to be driven home, blow upon blow, if it is to be fixed “as a nail in a sure place.” Christ often repeated the same thing.
Having shown above something of the scope and contents of the believer’s knowledge, let us now consider the kind or nature of it. There is a real and radical difference between the knowledge which a Christian has of the things of God and that which non-Christians may obtain of them as there is between the substance and the shadow cast by it. The latter is but “the form of knowledge” (Romans 2:20), a merely traditional, intellectual and historical knowledge, such as children have when they are taught to read and memorize the Scriptures without believing or understanding them. Later, it becomes an opinionative knowledge, so that they form their own ideas about certain doctrines or aspects of the Truth, and are able to discuss and dispute about them; yet it cannot be said of them that “wisdom entereth into” their hearts (Proverbs 2:10). They do not act out what they talk about. Yet there is a further degree of this speculative and theoretical knowledge, which may in some measure exercise their conscience and work upon their natural affections so as to offer opposition to temptations from without. They may be influenced thereby to lead moral and decent lives, so as to escape “the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the [not “their”] Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 2:20), yet their knowledge falls far short of conforming them to the image of God’s Son. The difference between gracious and graceless professors as to their knowledge lies not so much in the matter as in the manner of it. Some of the latter may greatly outstrip the former in the extent of their theological lore, and yet know nothing yet as they ought to know, nothing in a right manner, nothing spiritually; whereas the excellence of a believer’s knowledge lies not in the largeness of his apprehension of Divine things, but that he sees them in the light and knows them in the power of the Spirit, so as to produce communion and walking with God. “The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20), which means that the rule or dominion which God has over the hearts of His children is not a theory but a reality; it consists not in bare notions, nor in confident assertions, but in God’s working effectually in the soul. “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance” (1 Thessalonians 1:5) inclining the heart to heavenly things. When the effects and fruits of the Gospel are accomplished in the inner man, an indelible and affecting impression is made upon the soul, such as the apostle had reference to when he said “even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you” (1 Corinthians 1:6).
Christian knowledge is an experiential one. The different aspects of Truth are no longer abstract propositions to him, but are by the effectual operation of the Spirit wrought into the very warp and woof of his soul. Hitherto he had at best only a nominal information of them, but now he has an inward and intuitive realization of the same. To the Jews Christ said, “I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me is true, whom you know not” (John 7:28). Despite all their boasted belief in the one only, true and living God (Romans 2:17-18), they were at heart complete strangers to Him: well informed theologically, they had no spiritual union with Him. Nor had the writer or the Christian reader until they could say, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). It is only by an inward revelation that He is savingly known: “and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me” (Galatians 1:15-16).
Christian knowledge is a soul-humbling and self-abasing one. That knowledge of Divine things which is received in a natural way from men or from the reading of books “puffeth up” (1 Corinthians 8:1), producing self-esteem and presumption. But that spiritual knowledge which comes from God reveals to a person his empty conceits, his ignorance, his worthlessness. The teaching of the Spirit convinces the soul what a miserable failure he is, how very far short he falls of measuring up to the standard of conduct set before him, what horrible corruptions indwell him, and that makes him little in his own eyes.
Among those born of women was not greater than John the Baptist: wondrous were the privileges granted him, abundant the light he was favoured with; yet he felt that “I am not worthy to unloose” Christ’s shoe’s latchet. None granted such an insight into heavenly things as Paul, yet he regarded himself as being not “the greatest Bible teacher of the age,” but as “less than the least of all saints” (Ephesians 3:8).
Christian knowledge is a certifying one. Its glorious Object is no longer known speculatively and inferentially, but truly and immediately: not by a process of reasoning, but directly. He who is spirit and invisible is made visible and palpable to the soul: Moses endured “as seeing Him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27)—God was real to his faith though imperceptible to his senses. Believers know “the grace of God in truth” (Colossians 1:6) by a sensible experience. As it is one thing for a friend to call upon us and inform us that the wind is biting cold, and quite another for us to walk with him or her to the bus and have the frost nip our nose and ears, so it is a very different thing to hear the preacher saying God’s grace is sufficient for His children, and for them to prove the sustaining power of the same under the most trying and painful afflictions. So, too, to read that God is a prayer-hearing God, and for me to obtain definite and wonderful answers to my petitions. Again, as I ponder Romans 7:1-25 I know it is a true and accurate description of the saint’s inward conflict, for it is verified in myself.
Christian knowledge is an operative one, for it is not a species of information which adds to our mental store, but an inspiration that stirs the soul unto action. However Scriptural be the notions possessed by the natural man, they exert no sanctifying influence upon him, and yield no godliness of character and conduct. His light is like that of the moon: it quickens not, nor produces fruit; however orthodox, it leaves the heart cold and barren. Whereas the light which the blessed Spirit communicates is like that of the sun: it not only illumines the understanding, but it searches the conscience, moves the will, and sets the heart on fire for God. His teaching is dynamical, having a vitalizing effect upon the whole of the inner man, stirring its subject unto holy endeavours. Spiritual knowledge is intensely practical, altering the disposition, producing obedience, conforming unto Christ.
There are multitudes in Christendom today of whom it must be said that they are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). They are not only regular attenders upon preaching, but many of them are even engaged in running around to one special “meeting” or “communion” to another, read much religious literature and have their heads stored with a mass of undigested theological details, yet arrive not at an experiential, practical, humbling, operative and transforming acquaintance with the things of God. And why is this? Because they have never received an anointing from the Holy One: that is what makes all the difference! But that anointing gives the regenerate a supernatural and sanctifying realization of the Truth. Not that they know as fully as they ought, or so as to preclude their duty of a diligent application on their part to make further progress therein. While they only “know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9), and a very small part, yet they know it in a spiritual and saving way.