1 John 3

1. BEHOLD, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.4 Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins: and in him is no sin.6 Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. 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.14 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?18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.19 And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.20 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.24 And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

No external vision or revelation could disclose the Infinitely Holy to natures imperfect and sinful. Divine Being, in its wondrous manifestations, might play around the unrenewed mind, but it would be as a luminous atmosphere bathing blind eyes, or sweet music rippling round deaf ears; the heavenly effluence could not pass inward, could wake no thrill of appreciation, no sympathetic delight within the soul. There must, in short, be something godlike in us before we can see and know God; we must be “like him” before we can “see him as he is.” And into this divine affinity, this penetrative moral insight, it is one great end of the Christian’s life on earth to train him. By every holy deed, by every spiritual aspiration, by each sacrifice of inclination to duty, of passion to principle, of the wayward human will to God’s, the spiritual instincts of the believer are becoming more refined, his spiritual perceptions more acute. Not one fervent prayer, not one act of earnest, thoughtful intercourse with God in holy ordinances, but is strengthening the wing of aspiration and purifying the eye of faith—training the spirit to rise nearer to the region of eternal light, and to bear its divine effulgence with more unlazzled gaze. The time will come when this process shall be completed, when love shall be refined from all admixture of selfishness, and the soul, to its inmost depths, assimilated to God, shall be prepared to reflect, without one dimming shadow, the beams of infinite beauty. Caird.

1. “Behold what manner of love!”—there is something touching in an old man like John thus suddenly changing the tone of calm reasoning and exhortation for one of ecstasy. The patriarch of the apostles feels himself in the highest sense of the term once more a child, a child of God, like the meanest of believers, with whom he here puts himself on a level, and boasts as Paul had done before, in the mercy vouchsafed him. Van O.—When you have thrown yourself into the arms of the Son of his love, and cleaved closely to his heart, then does the Father no more look upon you as you are in yourself, encompassed with all your sins, enveloped in your misery; he then loves you in the Son of his love, and the darkness within you is irradiated by the light that beams from his countenance. It is this love which calls forth the instant cry of amazement and of gratitude, and prompts us to exclaim with John, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath shown us, that we should be called his own children!” A. T.

2. “Beloved,” proceeds the apostle, “now are we the sons of God.” We have no empty title unattended with real dignities and real privileges; we are not only “called” (as in the preceding verse), but we “are” the children of heaven. We are not merely invested with our rank by adopting favor, but we are in the exercise of our privileges by regenerating grace. This is even now the dignity freely accorded to the disciple in the invisible empire of God. W. A. B.—We were strangers, yet are made sons, nay, heirs. It is God’s good pleasure to give those who were strangers to his family, and rebels to his crown, a joint heirship with his only Son! Every person in the Holy Trinity shows his love to believers. The Father adopts; the Son for a while resigns and lays aside his honor—nay, even dies to purchase our right—the Holy Spirit witnesseth that we are the sons of God! Oh, adore the love of the Trinity with high and raised thoughts! T. M.

What we shall be! How profoundly this question, this mystery, concerns us, and in comparison with this what are to us all questions of all sciences? What to us all researches into the constitution and laws of material nature, all investigations into the history of past ages, the future career of states and empires? What to us—what shall become of this globe itself? What we shall be, we ourselves, is the matter of surpassing and infinite interest! There is in the contemplation a magnitude, a solemnity which transcends and overwhelms our utmost faculty of thought. To think that we shall continue to be in some mode and scene of existence, for millions of ages, and that that will still be as nothing in comparison with what is still to follow! that a duration passing away beyond all reach of the stupendous power of numbers will still be as nothing! that it will still be we ourselves, the very same beings! that it will be a perfectly specific manner of being—with a full consciousness of what it is—an internal world of thought and emotion—a perfect sense of relations to the system in which we shall find ourselves placed; and this a continual succession of distinct sentiments and experiences, and with the constant certainty of the train going on for ever! J. F.—To our instructed hopes there is a certain future on which we can build, far more glorious, far more beautiful than anything in the past. “We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him.” We have a future, not of dim expectation and trembling hope, but of knowledge. Our word is not “it may be,” but “it will be.” That which is to be becomes as firm reality as that which has been. Hope is truer than history. The future is not cloudland, but solid fruitful soil on which we can plant a firm foot. A. M.

The Spirit of grace shows us that the moral perfections of God are the end and reason of the natural. And who can doubt but that, when matter and its dark symbols are done with, that which is principal shall seem so? In bursting from the confinement of the body, the spirit shall in a moment reverse the order of its old conceptions; and almost cease to think of Omnipotence, Eternity, Infinitude, while the more dominant notions of Purity, and Blessedness, and Love, fill the soul. I. T.—Whatever knowledge we gain in heaven will be transforming. All our ideas will be as fuel, to feed the flame of love, which will then burn upon the altar of the soul; all will be quickening, penetrating, influential. Our opinions will be principles of action. Everything will lead us to see more of God, to love him with a more intense glow of holy affection, and to be more conformed to him. The light of truth will ever be associated with the warmth of love. “We shall be like God, for we shall see him as he is.” J. A. J.

We know that there is a God whom it is no longer a hopeless enthusiasm to call on man to imitate—one with whom, it would seem, a connection so perfect may be established of heart and hope, that all the story of his earthly career is spiritually acted over in each of his earthly followers—who are declared to be “born with Christ,” “suffering with Christ,” “crucified with Christ,” “buried with Christ,” “risen with Christ,” “exalted with Christ”—until at length these analogies are lost in a deeper and more heavenly resemblance, when, admitted into the sunlight of his glory, they catch the reflection of his eternal beams—as they gaze, approach, and, as they approach, become more and more completely invested with his radiance, are transfigured as they adore the God and man, in the clear truth of his own unshadowed essence—“are like him; for they see him as he is”! W. A. B.—The open vision of God in Christ will then transform us into his image. By that the most amazing miracle of divine love and divine power will be consummated, the complete forgiveness of sin crowned by the transfiguration of the sinner; and in the mean while to look for that, to prepare for that, as far as we may do, to treasure up such glimpses of that ineffable glory as may be shown to us, to carry with us throughout our whole work the recollection of the risen Saviour, is the profession to which we are pledged, the mission to which we are called, the strength with which we are clothed. To make of life one harmonious whole, to realize the invisible, to anticipate the transfiguring majesty of the divine presence, is all that is worth living for. Death, after earthly duty loyally, humbly, patiently fulfilled, is not the end, but the beginning of life. B. F. W.

3. For “this hope in him,” read “this hope on him.” “Him” refers to the Lord Jesus; “this hope, resting on him”; whereas, as it stands, it seems as if “in him” meant “in himself,” in his breast; and is very generally so read. A.—He who will purify himself as Christ is pure must live in Christ, and seek to be as closely and intimately one with him as possible. This includes a willingness wholly to cease from the old man, as corrupt, in order that a completely new man from Christ may be formed within, and a life determined implicitly by the faith of Christ. It is Christ beheld, reflecting God’s own beauty and love upon us, that changes us from glory to glory. If by faith we go with Christ; if we bear his cross in duty after him; if we hang upon his words; in a word, if we are perfectly insphered in his society, so as to be of it, then we shall grow pure. The assimilating power of Christ, when faithfully adhered to as the soul’s divine brother, and lived with and lived upon, will infallibly renovate, transform, and purify us. H. B.—“He that hath this hope in Him” knows that the resemblance to God is the great element of the celestial state, and that the depths of the spirit are the scene and subject of that resemblance. He therefore labors that God’s image be so reproduced in his heart, that not merely his outward actions, but his motives and principles of action, may be such as harmonize with those of the august society he anticipates. W. A. B.

6. We are living to be pure, as Christ is; but, regarded as apart from him, the work is only initiated—we still have sin, we are broken, disordered, and corrupt. Yet as long as we abide in Christ, our action is from him, not from our own corrupt and broken nature, exactly as the apostle writes, Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not. He lives in a consciousness, that is, which is not sustained by his own mere humanly personal character, but by the sense of the righteousness that is of God by faith upon him. H. B.—How can we live unto sin, seeing that by coming unto Jesus, crucified for us, we have died unto sin? How can we sin, seeing that we are not under the law, which condemns and gives no life, but under grace, which brings to us both the pardon and the power of God, because it brings God to us, and us to God? A. S.

8. The death of Christ destroys the works of the devil, as it displays the glory of all the divine perfections and enlarges the kingdom of God among men, by the very means which Satan employed to sully the one and to diminish the other. The death of Christ is no less effectual to purchase and secure the salvation of men, in spite of all Satan’s attempts to ruin them. His blood is the price which redeems the soul; it expiates the guilt of sin and gives full satisfaction to divine justice; so that now the grand obstacle is removed, which obstructed the sinner’s access to God and excluded him from any share in the fruits of his beneficence. But this is not all. The death of Christ doth likewise afford the most persuasive and effectual motives to that holiness, “without which no man shall see God.” The Son of God will finally destroy the works of the devil, when he shall come the second time to judge the world in righteousness. Then shall the kingdom of darkness be plucked up by the roots; then shall the ransomed of the Lord be confirmed in a state of unchangeable purity and happiness. Satan shall no more vex and seduce them; but he, with all the workers of iniquity, shall be thrust down into those everlasting burnings which the wrath of God doth kindle. R. W.

John was the apostle of love, he was gentle, but it is his Epistles in which there comes out most broadly, most sternly, the principle that all mankind are divided into two great classes—the one, those that are of God; and the other, those that are of the world and the devil. That is his love. Whatever is not light is darkness. Whatever is not life is death. Whatever is not God is Satan. He has no idea of some on the one side and some on the other, and a great neutral-tinted mass in the center that belong to neither. The contrast embraces all classes and conditions. Every man is one thing or the other—God’s or Satan’s! A. M.—Nothing but good comes from good; nothing but evil comes from evil. If you declare that nothing but good comes from any man you meet with on this earth, some startling wrong in him will confute your assertion. If you declare that nothing but evil comes from any man you meet with on this earth, some good which you did not expect will confute that assertion. Let all wickedness, without respect of persons, be assigned to the devil as its parent; let all good, without respect of persons, be assigned to God as its parent. And let each person be encouraged to say, I have no right whatever to acknowledge the evil spirit as my parent. If I have done so, it has been under a dark and horrible infatuation. For in very deed nothing in me is of him, but that which is destroying me. No living powers, energies, affections are from him; only that which extinguishes my powers, energies, and affections, only that which is making me not a man. I have a right to say that God is my parent. For every power, energy, affection, that is awake or slumbering in me, I have received from him. Jesus Christ has bidden us say, “Our Father.” Maurice.

9. Saving grace is distinguished by its prevalency and constancy. There may be a declination in saints tending to a downfall, but the seed of God, that supernatural grace that remains in them, will by the power of the Holy Spirit recover the supremacy. Where the Spirit savingly works, he is said to dwell. He is not like a tenant at will that neglects the house, but as the owner he keeps perpetual residence in true Christians, and by his continual influence preserves them from apostasy. Bates.—It is the distinguishing character of a believer that he has fellowship with the Father and the Son, through the indwelling of the Spirit. Whatsoever has not this fellowship with God, hath fellowship with sin; and fellowship with God and fellowship with sin are incompatible. Yet a believer may have many sad falls into sin without having fellowship with it. Grace and nature are inmates in the heart of a renewed man; yet they are just like two persons who dwell under the same roof and are always at variance; they have no fellowship at all the one with the other. The regenerate part “can not sin, because it is born of God,” the divine seed remaineth in the believer uncorrupt and immaculate. “It is no more I,” says the apostle, “but sin which dwelleth in me.” Hill.

10. It is remarkable how—more in fact now than for many ages—Christ forces himself upon the notice of those who believe him not. When they speculate about religion, when they trace human culture back through history, Christ stands right in their way; doctrines of men, claims of churches, moral codes they might pass by; but they can not pass

Christ by; he confronts them with a revered yet not welcome presence. They can not be indifferent to him; they must examine his pretensions; he perplexes them like some problem hard to be solved. They say to him, “Thou who hast killed the old religions, thou who hast divided history in twain, and begun a new order of ages, and hast struck thy roots into all human interests, who art thou? Give us more proof of thy rights over us than gospels and their fruits in the world afford.” They raise this and that objection, they pare down the Gospel, they lop off myths, but still there he stands to be accounted for, and claims of them that they follow him. They must be for him or against him; for his side, whoever he be, is the side of all virtue. They can not be neutral, even when they deny that he has any right over them, for whatever else he has done or not done, he has set up a kingdom of love and well-doing in the world; every one that loveth, and doeth well, must be for him, every one who loveth not, and doeth evil, is against him. T. D. W.

Love of the brethren is, with John, a habit or state of mind which leads directly to practice, and is treated as utterly worthless apart from practice. The love of God to man is manifested not in any tenderness to his evil ways, but in bringing him into the right way. The two indications of the offspring of evil he gives us here are, he doeth not righteousness, and he loveth not his brother. We shall find that the two are never separated. Love does not interfere with the strictness of right, but establishes it. Right does not make love less deep, or less universal; apart from right it would be superficial and partial. Maurice.

11. A touching incident is related by Jerome in his exposition of Galatians. In his extreme old age John was too weak to go into the assembly, and had to be carried. Unable to deliver long discourses, he simply said: “Little children, love one another.” When asked why he continually repeated this one exhortation, he replied, “Because this is the command of the Lord, and enough is done if this one command be obeyed."—Assuredly so. For as God himself is love, love to him and to the brethren is the essence and sum of religion and morality, the fulfilling of the law and the prophets, the bond of perfectness. P. S.

14. In the same degree that men are near to Christ, we are commanded that they be near to us. All humanity claims our affectionate sympathy, for He has assumed the nature of a man; every regenerate believer in Christ Jesus claims yet higher and more peculiar affection, for with him Christ is one not in body alone, but in Spirit also. W. A. B.—It is vain to imagine that you can let God’s love flow in if you can not let it flow out. We must let the love we are to receive have free course, flowing through us in such kind of works and lovings as it will naturally instigate. It must be allowed not only to beget itself in us, but to make us to others what God is to us. Hence the soul that is actuated or impelled by any kind of hatred or revenge, or that holds a grudge against another, and can not, will not forgive him, can not really be said to let God love him; for God’s love to him is a forgiving love that bends in blessing and even bleeds over all enemies. H. B.

15. The apostle says not that all hatred will end in murder—far from it—nor that all hatred is equally intense and equally reckless, nor that hatred which bursts out into great crime may not imply a worse state of soul than such as remains within, and does no obvious harm to others. Nor does he intend to confine the murderous quality to positive hatred. Want of love, hardened selfishness, acting on calculation with no rage or wrath in it, may be as deadly, as murderous, as malignity or revenge. The apostle teaches us in these words, that evil lies in the heart, and that the evil there, which meets with some temporary or some lasting hindrance, differs not in kind from that which is ripened by opportunity. It may be for ever dormant as far as the notice of man is concerned. It may never burst forth into wicked action, yet the hatred within and the hatred in the wicked action are one and the same, one quality runs through both. The powder that is explosive and the powder that explodes do not differ. But if there be no principle reigning in the soul, which will introduce love instead of hatred, and change the nature of the soul itself, the thought and the act will be both evil, and the act will be the measure of the thought. T. D. W.

16. Hereby perceive we love.** The cure which God has provided, while it reveals the depth of man’s ruin, has in it also a token of the greatness of man’s nature. It is God giving himself for man’s deliverance, a free, unbought love, which devotes itself to suffering and death that it may awaken a response in the sinful heart, and recall the sinner to the Father’s arms, when he knows that all has been atoned for, and that the past of guilt is ready to be forgiven and forgotten for ever. It reveals to us the nature of God, but it also reveals to us something of the nature of man; for man’s nature must be capable of appreciating free, unselfish love, if it is to return it. Ker.

17. If the pursuits of some of us do not allow of our visiting the haunts of distress in our own persons, we may at least contribute to the great work of relief our utmost of sympathy, of prayer, and of almsgiving. Remember that in the relief of distress in some or other of its forms stands to a great extent the vitality of your religion. For if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

And the spirit of Christ is not to sit apart from suffering in selfish isolation, but to come down to it with tender sympathy and timely succor. This is what the Infinite Love did for us all; and unless a similar character be formed in us, we shall not be among those whom at the last day he will recognize and set upon his right hand. E. M. G.

18. True Christians do “not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” “Love unfeigned” is perpetually passing into act with regard to every member of Christ who can be reached. In this way a true follower of Christ fills up his life. The new nature is continually working its way outward, according to the various objects which invite its flow; and benevolence inspired of God seeks new ways of communicating happiness even in the smallest particulars. Nor are these effluences of the sanctified nature in the way of kindly acts the less Christian even if at the moment of performance the happy spirit does not distinctly think of its being done to Christ himself. The inward spring is perpetually running, marking its track by the green margin which it irrigates. A kind, merciful, unselfish heart is always looking around for some one to be the object of its care; and love is the same in its kind when it gives a kingdom and when it gives a flower. J. W. A.

19. We know.** When we say that we have come to realize a doctrine we mean that, somehow, that doctrine has been wrought into the roots of our life. It has passed from a proposition accepted into an influence that actuates. For our religion is neither a dogma nor a theory. It has a spiritual power. It is a personal presence. It is a comfort or actual sorrows. It is a quickening to every noble work. It is not a stranger to be scrutinized, but a friend to be loved because it has first loved us. It is not a guest to be entertained, but a leader to be followed. F. D. H.

20. The law can not condemn a believer—Christ has fulfilled it for him; divine justice can not condemn him—that Christ has satisfied; his sins can not condemn him—they are pardoned through the blood of Christ; and his own conscience, upon righteous grounds, can not condemn him because Christ, who is greater than his conscience, has acquitted him. Brooks.—When my soul contemplates his divine love, then am I comforted; for he who loves me thus can not condemn me. Condemn me, my conscience! Accuse me, Satan! Slander me, oh world! Curse me, oh law! Behold, my peace stands immovable before you and your voice of thunder and cursing; for Jesus who loves me and redeems me is far greater than are all my accusers! A. C.

21. If the illuminated tender conscience doth not accuse us of insincerity, “we have confidence

toward God” that he will spare and accept us notwithstanding our frailties, and give free and safe access into his presence. Bates.