2 Peter 1

WKelly

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2 Peter 1:1-21

2 Peter Chapter 1 The first notable trait in this Epistle is that the writer not only repeats the new name Christ gave him (Matthew 16:18) with his apostolic office, but adds his old one, object of divine mercy, with the confession of absolute subjection to his Master conveyed in “bondman.” Paul loved so to call himself, and Jude, and John. The Lord Jesus had drawn it out of that shame and degradation which only it could have in the estimate of the first man, and had invested it in His own person, when the Word became flesh, with all that is right and lovely and devoted in the sight of God, and of all moment to the faith of those who have communion with Him. For who such a bondman as He that, being originally in the form of God, counted it not an object for grasping to be on equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking a bondman’s form, becoming in likeness of men; and losing found in figure as man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death, yea death of the cross? Nor did it atop there; for He gave before His departure the beautiful pledge of carrying on in heaven the lowliest service of washing the feet of His own, as the Advocate with the Father. Nor did this satisfy His love; for He also intimated that, when those bondmen of His, whom at His coming He shall find watching with girded loins and burning lamps, are thenceforward blessed on high at His coming again, He will gird Himself, and make them recline at table and come forth and serve them. Nay, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to the God and Father, all things having been subjected to Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all. As He will never cease to be man, He will abide throughout eternity bondman, without derogating from that deity which He ever shares as Son equally with the Father and the Holy Spirit. It is Christ who alone gives us the full truth, and so of bondman as of all else. It is in an evil world, the place of active and suffering divine love which He loved so well that He will never give it up. The same privilege and duty of love the Lord laid on His disciples, as we read repeatedly in all the Gospels, and in varying form. Let it suffice to quote what Luke (Luke 22) gives us at the last Supper; for he it is who brings together the deepest moral contrasts, if to man’s shame, for the believer’s profit, and above all to Christ’s glory. “And they began to question together among themselves which of them it could be who was to do this [i.e., give Him up]. And there arose also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted to be greatest. And he said to them, The kings of the nations have rule over them, and those that exercise authority over them are called benefactors. Ye however [shall be] not thus; but let the greater among you be as the younger, and the leader as he that serveth. For which [is] greater, he that reclineth at table, or he that serveth? [Is] not he that reclineth? But I am in the midst of you as he that serveth?” The apostles by grace were enabled to make His bondman character their own. O what a contrast with His servants too soon, and ever since, especially with such as claimed to have the succession, though by no means confined to them! It is no doubt a hollow name of pride where taken up in word only; but what is comparable with it when in power? To be somebody is the desire of fallen man, the world’s spirit; to give up all in love and obedience is Christ’s, who alone really had all things. It is our pattern now. Greatness according to Him is to be a true servant; and to be chief is to be a slave, as He became, who not only served every need, but gave His life a ransom for many, His peculiar glory. Peter therefore in his later Epistle, while he does not hide his Jewish name of nature with all its failure, puts forward before his apostolic title that lovely name of “bondman”; which more than ever shone in his eyes, so needful and good for the saints to ponder, delight in, and appropriate. “Simon Peter, bondman and apostle of Jesus Christ to them that obtained like precious faith with us in virtue of [the] righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (ver. 1). “Bondman and apostle of Jesus Christ,” he writes to the same saints as before (2 Peter 3:1). But the terms now employed strikingly differ, yet have they an equally appropriate application to those of the Jewish dispersion in Asia Minor, who believed in Christ. In his First Epistle he was careful to describe them as sojourners elect according to foreknowledge of God the Father by the Spirit’s sanctification unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ. This was a pointed and elaborate contrast with their previous position as of a chosen nation to Jehovah, severed from others by the fleshly ordinance of circumcision, and held to obedience of the law under the penal sanction of the blood of victims (Ex. 24) which kept death before them if guilty of transgression. Here in the Second Epistle they are said to have obtained like precious faith with the apostle and his brethren and theirs, in virtue of their God and Saviour Jesus Christ’s righteousness. “Like precious faith” raises no question of measure of faith in those who believe, but asserts that what is believed is equally precious for the simplest Christian as for an apostle, in its source, agent, object, and result. It is that full revelation of God in Christ, and not merely from God as had been from the first. There is however a remarkable expression that follows, differing wholly from “the righteousness of God” as used by our Lord in Matthew 5:33, as this does from its use by the apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans and elsewhere. Yet one is as true as the others, and all are in harmony as alike from God. It is therefore of interest and moment to distinguish them, whilst they all three agree in meaning God’s moral consistency with Himself in varying aspects. In the First Gospel the disciple is enjoined to seek first, not the supply of our natural wants for which we may count on our Father’s care, but “the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” This was then revealed in Christ, God’s power and authority supreme, and in all goodness but consistency with Himself. To this the new nature responds in subjection and love; and this the disciples were to seek first, assured that He would see to all their need. But there is not a word about redemption, or saving lost sinners, but saints answering to what the Christ brought out to faith in Himself and His teaching. Again, in Rom. 1, 3, 8, 10: 4, we have the gospel of God based on the work of Christ, and sent out to all mankind on the very ground that they are lost. It is therefore a righteousness that justifies the sinner through the faith of Christ; God’s righteousness, not man’s, grounded on His redemption, so that He, believing His witness to Christ, is justified by Christ’s death and resurrection. God can afford through the Saviour to bless him, whatever may have been his ungodliness, according to His cleansing blood and risen power. But in our text it is not the believer obtaining God’s righteousness through faith, but obtaining faith by the righteousness of their God and Saviour Jesus Christ*: a quite different truth, and peculiar to the remnant which God ever has in Israel. Branches may be and are broken off, but some, not all. There are ever the elect that obtain, while the rest are blinded; so it is at the present time, and so it was of old. They only of all men have this privilege, a remnant according to the election of grace. Of no other nation can it be predicated. As theirs were the fathers, so still better the promises.

Accordingly the apostle here attributes their receiving like precious faith to the righteousness of Jehovah Messiah, Jesus their Saviour and God. He at least was faithful to the promise, and in virtue of it they were given to believe, no less than the apostle and the saints in Jerusalem. So Peter had preached on the day of Pentecost; “for to you is the promise and to your children, and to all afar off, as many as Jehovah our God may call.” Them too He called, and they by grace believed; but it was in His righteousness - “our God and Saviour Jesus Christ’s.” *It may interest the reader that the most learned and able theologian among the Congregationalist Puritans did not understand “the righteousness of God” here to refer to Christ’s obedience of the law, as so many moderns have argued. Here are his words: - “In 2 Peter 1:1, the saints are said to obtain ‘precious faith, through the righteousness of God.’ It is a righteous thing with God to give faith to them for whom Christ died because thereby they have a right unto it. Faith, being amongst the most precious fruits of the death of Christ, by virtue thereof becometh their due for whom he died” (Works of John. Owen, D.D. Goold’s ed., X. 468). It is not that he understood its true bearing, but he was too intelligent and logical, not to say conscientious, to force the text as his followers and others commonly do. It did not occur to him to connect it with the believing remnant of the Jews and their peculiar hold on the promise; from which indeed his high Calvinism tended to preclude him. “Grace to you and peace be multiplied in knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (ver. 2). The text of the salutation in ver. 2 differs from that in the First Epistle only by the addition of the words, “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord”; which reappear in its course substantially elsewhere. They are characteristic of the Second Epistle, and of great weight and worth where living faith accompanied that full knowledge. Yet the solemn fact is shown in 2 Peter 2:20-22 that such a full knowledge might be only in the flesh, and end in a last state worse than a first, or total ruin. So we read in Romans 1:18 of men that hold the truth in unrighteousness: very zealous for an orthodox creed, but quite unrenewed, and hence holding fast the truth with unrighteousness. The faith, Christianity, is so rich in knowledge of the utmost interest, that the natural mind, where the conscience is not before God, nor the soul purified by obedience of the truth, may deceive itself and readily acquire much, which only puffs up, instead of building up. It is never in this case receiving the love of the truth, that they may be saved; but their mastering the truth, as they would any department of art or science, rather -than being searched by truth, and subject to it, unto salvation. In a word there is no repentance Godward, but intellectualism. When Christ is the object and the life, the truth is known and loved, while it also frees from bondage of every sort to make one all the more bondman of Jesus. Thus it was that the apostle desired “grace and peace multiplied in full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” It was of great moment for the Christian Jews to learn (and indeed it is imperfectly understood in Christendom) that, before our Lord came, the knowledge of God though true was vague, comparatively speaking. Yet all the O.T. saints looked away from themselves to Him in the sure hope of the woman’s Seed to destroy the enemy. They knew Him as a faithful Creator and Preserver and Saviour, and by sacrifice too. His ways with Adam and Abel, with Enoch and Noah, gave ever-increasing light; though but partial, it was blessed. To Abraham more was vouchsafed, and the name of the Almighty, as a present help in the midst of the race ripening for judgment, was no small thing. Much more became known when through Moses He gave the name of Jehovah the Eternal, as the grand national watchword to Israel His people, the security of their final and everlasting blessing on earth under His government, whatever their changes meanwhile. But the Lord Jesus has given us the knowledge of God His Father as He knew Him, generally in the days of His flesh, fully in His resurrection and ascension, that we might know Him as His Father and our Father, His God and our God, in the new creation consequent on His atoning death. What was all before in many modes and many measures, compared with this fulness? As the “beloved” disciple says in his First Epistle (1 John 5:20), “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” Is anything so wonderful, gracious, and practical, as the truth now made fully known? It could not be till He came who knew it Himself perfectly, and died and rose and ascended that we might be brought, as far as is possible, into His relationships, and have the Holy Spirit given to know it this day (John 14:20). Such is Christian knowledge of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

As the Father is revealed, so the Son reveals, and this only in its living reality by the Holy Spirit. It is the full revelation of God, confessed in our baptism, and needed, as it ought to be enjoyed, every step of the way till our pilgrimage closes in His coming to take us on high that where He is, we also may be. “As his divine power hath granted to us all things that [are] for life and godliness through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and excellence” (ver. 3). Such is the apostle’s testimony to the intervention of God’s grace in salvation. Who knew better than the chief workman on the great Feast of Pentecost when three thousand souls were added in one day? Who could testify as he of the power of God that wrought outside to save multitudes, and against evil within judicially, and assuredly not less in the devotedness with one heart and soul to Christ in love, which rose above all selfishness? Who could speak more nearly of the miraculous energy vouchsafed in those early days when, notwithstanding the awe that reigned, the sick were even carried into the streets and laid on beds and pallets, that, as he passed by, at least his shadow might overshadow some one of them; and this not of Jerusalem alone, but from the cities round about, the sick and the possessed, who were heeled everyone? Here however he speaks only of the divine power in its ordinary but supernatural operation. It is God’s prerogative to quicken souls that were dead in their offences and sins; the Father in communion with the Son gives life. He calls out of darkness into His wonderful light - yes, makes us, once darkness, now light in the Lord; once tasteful and hating, to love because He first loved us. Think, too, of the relationships He confers on the Christians, His children and sons, also, as the First Epistle said, a holy priesthood, and a royal one. Others we might recount; for, being Christ’s, all things are ours, with the Holy Spirit ever indwelling since we rested by faith on Christ’s redemption, that there might be power as well as capacity. How truly His divine power hath granted all things that are for life and godliness! Jews, we know, ask signs, Greeks seek wisdom. Never were such signs of power and of goodness as in Christ; yet the Jews rejected Him. Never was such wisdom of God as in Jesus; yet the Greeks, the world, disdained Him. Had the rulers of this world known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but none knew. They were blind in unbelief. And a new thing was brought in; not yet the expected kingdom restored to Israel in power and glory, but “some better thing “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,” who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to Him.

Hence, carrying out what was surprising even to the Twelve, His divine power has granted to us even now all the things that pertain unto life and godliness. For the Christian is called to the life of faith in all reverence and godly fear, as having nothing yet possessing all things, sharing now Christ’s reproach, while looking at the things unseen and eternal. Such is Christian faith, which the apostle set before these saints, once Jews, in his First Epistle; and confirms with point and solemnity in the Second against all corruption and scoffing. Therefore from the start he would establish their confidence in the provision of grace for all wants, weakness, and dangers. Even the Jews were counted Atheists, because they had no images. How much more open to the charge were Christians without visible temple, altar, or sacrifice! Yet they, and they alone, knew the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent. They alone had, now that Christ was on high, the other Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom the Father sent in the name of Jesus to be with them for ever, and to be in them, consequent on Christ’s death and their acceptance thereby. This was but part of the “all things” His divine power has given us for life and godliness. For we have now also an entirely new revelation, fully conforming to the O.T. which they had from of old, but conveying what was now suited to God, no longer hidden in the holiest whence His people were strictly debarred, but fully manifested in Jesus, His Son yet Man, perfect God and perfect man in one person. This involved a total change for all who now believe. We have redemption through His blood, and we await His coming for redemption of the body as well as of the inheritance. We are baptised in the power of the Spirit into one body whether Jews or Greeks, all fleshly distinctions therein gone which were strictly maintained in the O.T. We have a great High Priest gone through the heavens as He is, Jesus the Son of God, to sympathise and intercede; and if any one have sinned, we have with the Father Him as Advocate, the Righteous One that is the propitiation for our sins.

And we have a hope no less precious and high, that He is coming for us, we know not how soon, to receive us to Himself for the Father’s house, as well as to display us in the same glory with Himself before the world when we shall reign with Him. Hence we need, and we have, a new and special revelation in what is called the N.T., to guide us, not of the world as Christ is not, in His path till He comes. The Gospels, the Epistles, and the Revelation furnish this perfectly by the Spirit as our guide into all the truth. We see how carefully the apostle guards the truth from mere speculation or sentiment. Knowledge that puffs up is as far as possible from his thought, save in these who had nothing else along with their dissolute or unrighteous ways. There may be a knowledge of God and of Jesus which never rises above the human mind, leads into no communion with God, has not even moral roots in the conscience and heart, and is ever liable to heterodoxy, because it is only natural. But the knowledge which he commends to the saints is what his fellow-apostle John treats as life eternal, and he himself as the means of life and godliness; for our apostle is ever intent on practical result. For this indeed divine power cannot but be needed, as the saints are here cheered by the assurance of it. Its working is strikingly expressed, “through the knowledge of him that called us by his own* glory and excellence.” Man is fallen, and thus is in a condition wholly different from his first estate Then his duty was to obey, in thanksgiving to God for all the goodness that surrounded him. But with his disobedience came ruin not only for himself but for the creation of which he was head. Departing from God, he was an exile from paradise, a sinful dying man; and so the race in and by him. All deliverance hung on Another, the woman’s Seed, who crushed in heel should crush the serpent’s head; a Man, but necessarily more than man thus to deliver by the utter defeat of Satan. From that day forward faith clung to the Coming One, later called Son of God, and Son of man, Messiah, in Psalms and Prophets. But only the N.T. brings out the truth with all simplicity, clearness, and depth; and not His personal glory alone, but His reconciling work shining out in divine light. *The Vatican supports most copies in reading “through glory and excellence,” as in the Text. Rec. But ACP and other good witnesses warrant what is here given, and followed by the better critics save Westcott and Hort. It is peculiar to our apostle to predicate ἀρετὴ of God, whether plural as in 1 Peter 2:9, or singular as here in the Second Epistle. Virtue or moral courage suits the word, where man is meant. God’s excellence works virtue in the saint. This salvation is by God’s call; and one quits self, man, the world, sins and all, for the object of faith He sets before us. Hence God calls us by His own glory and excellence. It is in Christ, but it is His own glory and excellence, not ours. Instead of staying where we are, which had been quite right if sin and ruin had not come in, we turn to One in heavenly glory who here suffered for our sins, that we should be not only forgiven but with Him there; and even here and now, while we are weak indeed, to enjoy that excellence which goes out of Him to preserve and guard us in the present scene of evil. We leave all by faith for Him. Our calling is the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14); and there will the prize be.

But there is He, dead and risen now; and to Him the sinner looks to be saved, for His is the power that keeps from the paths of the destroyer. He that rests where he is rests in self and sin, blinded by the enemy. The voice of Christ awakes him to his lost condition; and he, obeying the word, repenting toward God, and believing on the Lord Jesus, is called by God’s own glory and excellence. The Saviour is there, and associates him who believes with Himself above in hope, thus separating him from the evil in him and around him. It may help souls if we illustrate the same by the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 3:23; especially as their sound is as familiar as the sense is not. “For all sinned, and do come short of the glory of God.” The first clause is plain; but what of the second? By sin man lost his place on earth as well as his life as it was. It became a question of meeting the glory of God, or of being cast into hell. And this is only met by the Saviour and His work on the cross to fit the sinner by faith in Him for heavenly glory Otherwise he is content with himself, neglects so great salvation, and refuses the Saviour who will judge him at the last day. He verily comes short of the glory of God; whereas the believer rejoices in hope of it. Without the blood of Jesus we could not stand by faith before the glory of God; but, knowing that His blood cleanses from all sin, we are entitled there to stand in spirit even now, and thus do not come short of it. We are called by His own glory and excellence. Justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, we repent toward God, we judge ourselves, and (instead of resting here on ourselves) we go forward in faith to Him who is at God’s right hand, thereby entitled to boast, no longer in self, or man, or the world, but in hope of the glory of God. Meanwhile we are guarded in (or, by) His power through faith for the salvation even of our bodies in that day. But it is by His own (not our) excellence and glory that He called us, instead of licence for ease, worldly honour, or natural enjoyment. Hence says the apostle Paul as the right experience of a Christian, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them dung, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, that which is of the law, but that which is of God by faith,” etc. “Not that I already attained, nor am already perfected, but I pursue, if also I may apprehend, seeing that also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:8-12). Instead of abiding as unfallen man ought in his first estate, there is but one thing, forgetting the things behind and stretching forward to the things before, to pursue toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. The apostle proceeds to explain through what God has granted now, not the manifested kingdom of the Messiah (for this is postponed to the day of His appearing in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory), but the greatest promises, as he calls them and precious, whilst we await Him, walking by faith, and not by sight. For what are those of earthly glory and power for Israel on earth in comparison? Ours are association with Christ in heaven. In short another and higher order of blessing now goes on. It is what we call Christianity. “Through which he hath granted to us the greatest and precious promises, that through these ye may become partakers of a divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world in (or, by) lust” (2 Peter 1:4). These words are the weighty expression of truth peculiarly appropriate to and needed by the persons addressed, but of permanent value for all saints since then to our day. “Which” refers to God’s own glory and excellence, whereon we have dwelt the more because the force is quite lost in the common Greek text, and the current translation. No less a standard suited His call. He would have the called to estimate the total difference of that object which was familiar to them as Jews under law. To live long on the earth and be blessed in basket and store presented an incomparably lower prospect; and a hopeless ground, if one applied it spiritually to such sinful creatures as they were in God’s sight, a ministry indeed of death and condemnation. The gospel proclaims grace reigning through righteousness unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord; it is a ministry of the Spirit and of righteousness, even of God’s righteousness which we become in Christ. Therefore are we always confident, even in view of death and the judgment-seat of Christ, because God holds us for the very triumph we know in Christ, and has also given us already the earnest of the Spirit till we too are glorified. Even the new covenant for Israel under the Messiah’s reign falls quite short of our heavenly associations with Christ already. Hence we can understand the bounteous provision of His word that we may enter intelligently into what He has communicated to us in the carrying out of His gracious purpose. Through His own glory and excellence He has granted us the greatest promises, far more elevated than any given to His earthly people Israel. Take as a little example what the apostle himself had said in the early verses of his First Epistle, and of its first chapter. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His much mercy, begot us again to a living hope through Jesus Christ’s resurrection from among the dead, unto an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance, reserved in [the] heavens for you who are kept (or, guarded) in (or, by) God’s power through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in [the] last time.” He does not, in the verse we are considering, repeat what these precious promises are, now proposed to the precious faith of the Christian. But this one sample may suffice to show their general character, in contradistinction from the earthly hopes, which once sufficed to fill them with satisfaction and pride in the highest degree, and so greatly contributed to their unbelief in the Messiah. The Christian promises do not at all lend themselves to human feeling or worldly ambition. We can easily understand how the Jew might carnally delight in looking on to the day when, as Isaiah predicted, kings shall be Zion’s nursing-fathers and Gentile princesses her nursing-mothers. Then they shall bow down to her with the face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of her feet. Then the sons of the strangers shall build up her walls, and their kings serve Zion, and her gates remain open continually day and night, to bring in to her the wealth of the nations, and their kings in triumphal train. For the nation and the kingdom that will not serve Zion shall perish; and those nations shall certainly be laid waste. It would be easy to accumulate, as any Christian can verify from the prophets generally, no less glowing visions of earthly glory assured to converted and restored Israel, when the day of Jehovah dawns. But here too a single inspired voice is surely enough. Flesh in its unbelief and vanity among professing Christians may abuse every word of God. But the exceeding great and precious promises held out to the Christian do not in themselves afford any real handle to carnality. They presume the Lord’s coming, and our body of humiliation transformed in order to be conformed to the body of His glory. In that day assuredly there can be no perversion for the Christian in heaven, nor will there be for Israel on the earth, all righteous under Messiah and the new covenant. It is now, in an evil world ruled by Satan, and with flesh still in us, that we are ever exposed to danger. But those promises has God granted to us, says the apostle, “that we may become partakers of a divine nature.” For it is in the exercise of His own will that the Father of lights begot us by the word of truth. It was not a mere operation, however excellent and powerful, on the mind. This of course there was. Conscience was penetrated and overwhelmed with a just sense of our sins and evil state; the heart was exercised truly before God by His manifested love in Christ and His work. But besides, a new nature was imparted, and this no less than supernatural in character. We were born of God, not only sons by adoption, but given the title and reality of His children (John 1:12-13). Throughout the Fourth Gospel the divine design was to declare life eternal in the Son of God, to manifest its character in Himself and His ways and words, but also to announce that this life He gives, all the more distinctly because He was the rejected of the Jews and man - the world in short. From John 3 to 20 this is written with more than sunbeam brightness; and if now denied by those who once rejoiced in that light, it can only be through the darkening power of Satan. O.T. saints had life in the Son; they were God’s children: without it they never could have walked in faith and fidelity as they did, nor share in the resurrection at His coming, nor reign with Him. But it was only revealed as a known, conscious, and present reality in John’s Gospel. Its future privilege for converted Israel and the Gentile sheep (Psalms 133:3, Daniel 12:2, Matthew 25:46) is plain; but then, and even before, we shall have it, if deceased, in a resurrection for the body, as now we have it in our souls as a revealed and existing certainty. To doubt, darken, or deny this fundamental truth of Christianity is of the evil one; it is connected with false doctrine as to Christ’s person, and more or less the loss of almost all the truth characteristic of the Christian and the church. Nor does it depend only on the phrase life eternal, or on the Gospel and First Epistle of John - the revelation of that blessed phrase which some would pare down to extinction. The apostle Paul intimates the same gift of grace substantially in other forms of speech suited to the scope given for his teaching. Let us look at the Epistle to the Romans only, though others are just as plain and abundant He tells us of life in the future (Romans 5:17; Romans 5:21), but of “newness of life” too in which we should walk now (Romans 6:4); he bids us reckon ourselves alive to God in Christ Jesus whilst here, and yield ourselves to God as alive from among the dead already (11, 13). In Romans 7:4 he says to those knowing the law that they were made dead to the law through the body of Christ to their being Another’s that was raised from among the dead, in order that they might bear fruit to God - an impossibility without life in Christ, serving too in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter. It would be mere letter in the way of exposition to deny that such a life is eternal, though the term is not employed. Again in Romans 8:2, what else was life in Christ Jesus? No doubt in Christendom, and in its most evangelical circles there is the utmost feebleness as to a real spiritual life communicated now to the believer. Hence there is a dangerous tendency either to the amelioration of the old man, or to a miserable blank, as if we had but the flesh, and the Spirit of God only to guide and reprove according to need. It is a sad loss to overlook Christ in us, Christ as truly the life of the saint as the fallen Adamic life is shared by the race. This is, according to Peter’s line of things, implied in “a divine nature” of which, he tells the saints, they had become partakers through the divine promises God had granted them, “having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust,” the spring of the evil. He does not speak of life eternal as John was given to do, nor of death and resurrection with Christ as Paul; but he presents the moral result, inseparable from the truth as each of them put it, and as important for the believer to apprehend and enjoy. Therefore he speaks of the same substantial privilege as partakers, or possessors in common, of a divine nature, with the moral blessing annexed of “having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” The one description looked more at the divine character into which the believer entered to form his practice day by day; the other, the negative side of the evil and danger from which grace had given the saints escape through faith: both eminently falling within the range of the truth on which the apostle loved to dwell. Of its source in Christ the Mediator, John delighted to testify; as Paul, on the association with Him to which His work entitles the believer in deliverance not merely from sins but from sin, on the eternal counsels of God for heavenly glory with Christ, and on His present power by the Spirit that should work in the inner man above all that we ask or think. We have seen how carefully from the first the apostle was led to point out the distinctive character of Christianity in dealing with souls. It was not now the law, as they had known, demanding consistency with obligations to the God of Israel from a people in the flesh already formed and owned, as well as directed by a divinely appointed priesthood to maintain them according to the legal covenant for the trial if thus they could stand in His sight. The result was not only idolatry but the rejection of their own Messiah, the Righteous One, and, as He told them, in the consummation of the age the reception of the antichrist (John 5:43), the man of sin, and the destruction of that generation with him. The gospel is founded on the wholly different principle of sovereign grace; another character of things follows with results in manifest contrast. It addresses Jew and Gentile as alike guilty and lost. It calls them by faith in Christ to the God that reconciled us to Himself by the sinless One whom He made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in Him. Therefore is the ministry of reconciliation to win sinful souls through the saving grace of God; and the ministry of the church to nourish and guide the saints into and by all the truth, Christ being the great Priest, Advocate, and Head, etc., and the saved made kings and priests now in title and enjoyment, manifestly so in the day of glory. Hence the stress here laid on their having received like precious faith (ver. 2), and (vers. 3, 4) on the same knowledge of Him that called by His own glory and excellence, through which He hath granted to us the greatest and precious promises, far beyond those to Israel, that through these they might become partakers of a divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world through lust. For Peter ever insists on plain moral realities. For these no ordinances or institutions avail. In Christianity there is and must be the direct communication of God’s grace and truth in Christ to the soul, and the consequent knowledge of God, with approach to Him in the confidence of His love and of our own nearness to Him in known favour, all sins being forgiven. For it is indeed no energy or desert on our part, but His divine power that has granted us all the things that pertain to life and godliness. Faith is the appropriating means. Yet is much more needed on our part, which the apostle proceeds to enforce. A divine nature requires all care and diligence that it may grow; and as its spring and fulness are in Christ, and it is communicated and revealed to us by the word through the Spirit’s agency, so is it formed in all that is suited to it by its requisite food and exercise, alms, and objects. “But for this very thing also, bringing in besides all diligence, in your faith supply virtue, and in virtue knowledge, and in knowledge temperance, and in temperance endurance, and in endurance godliness, and in godliness brotherly affection, and in brotherly affection love” (vers. 5-7). It is evident that the apostle is here enforcing experimental reality in the saints. But the Auth. Version hardly gives the force adequately. It is not “And besides this,” but an energetic call for what is due to the grace of God in communicating the signal blessing of being sharers in a divine nature through faith in His very great and precious promises. Even a fleshly mind might and does deduce from the power and certainty of divine grace that there is room for earnest and practical purpose of heart on the part of the believer. But scripture enlarges the argument, warns against sloth and easy-going, and summons to assiduous diligence on all sides. For this very reason also are they, along with what they had already, to apply diligence in every way. Thus it may be seen that salvation, as Peter was given to view it, is not regarded (as in Ephesians 2:8, 2 Timothy 1:9, and Titus 3:5) as complete in Christ, but rather a process going on to the end of the journey through the desert (as also in the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Philippians, Hebrews, etc.). They are distinct aspects of the truth, and one as true though not so elevated as the other, but both highly important to hold fast and discriminate. For it is our privilege as full-grown, or in that sense “perfect,” Christians to enjoy the unclouded certainty and comfort of a salvation so complete, that we are not only quickened together with Christ, but risen together, and seated down together in the heavenlies in Him. For this we must turn to the later Epistles of the apostle Paul. Yet none the less are we, as full grown also, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that works in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure, with the prize in view, and at the goal of His coming as Saviour to conform our body of humiliation unto His body of glory (Phil. 2, 3). We are already by grace partakers of a divine nature; but we are still in a body not yet redeemed, and passing through a world of corruption through lust. And we that are in the tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not as once when in bondage, but because we are only freed in the spirit and have still to await sonship in full, the redemption of our body (2 Cor. 5, Rom. 8). Hence we need meanwhile to bring to bear all diligence in presence of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Nor is it only a question of our weakness and exposure, if unwatchful to prayer or in any measure heedless of the word; for we belong to the Father and the Son, and are bound to witness a good confession by the Holy Spirit in word and deed. It is assumed that all those addressed have faith, and are therefore not told to furnish it. But that we might be formed spiritually, or grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as is said later, we are exhorted here, not exactly to “add to” our faith, but to “supply in it” virtue, or spiritual courage before a hostile world. Philippians 4:8 has been cited vainly to oppose this: whether moral worth or spiritual vigour, it is just as clearly the sense there as here. A sense more vague would enfeeble both texts. It is the first out of seven requisites here laid down for practical need and power. The Christian has urgent occasion for them all, and it might be an any day and every day; so that we are not to conceive a progress from one to the other by successive stages, however wisely the order is here given by His power who inspired the writer. There is a perceptible rise in their character; but the principle of each and all more or less marks the believer from first to last, though here he is called very impressively to make them all practically his own. Assuredly the youngest saint quickly finds the value of supplying in his faith virtue or moral power. This he needs to support faith, that he may not swerve from his new-born capacity of seeing things in God’s light, instead of using the light of his own eyes or those of other men. As the Lord Himself, after He was divinely acknowledged the Son of God, was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, so it is with each son of God by faith in Christ Jesus. We too in our measure are put to the proof, and need courage to resist the adversary, stedfast in faith, and subject to scripture. The confession of faith makes one an immediate mark for Satan’s attack. But we have to apply scripture in due season.

It may be for the babe the guileless milk of the word; but this is just the food whereby he grows unto salvation. It may be rather the solid for those of full age. In any case it is not the mere bread of man’s labour, but the revelation of God which is the means of growing up unto Christ in all things. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” His word quickens. It reveals Christ the life-giver, and thus associates the quickened soul with God Himself immediately. But clearly spiritual vigour is not all. Knowledge is necessary as well as courage. Scripture supplies it reliably, and in the N.T. both amply and with special precision to Christian privilege for direction and instruction. How beautiful the scene which Luke 2 presents of our blessed Lord, at twelve years of age, sitting in the midst of the Jewish teachers, both hearing them and asking them questions, when all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers! He was true man as well as God, advancing in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. As partakers of a divine nature we have a new capacity from above; and yet more we received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is of God, that we might consciously know the things freely given us by God.

There is thus the fullest provision made for these wants, and no excuse for a Christian’s ignorance of divine things. The natural or soulish man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But the spiritual discerns all things, and himself is discerned by no one. For which knew Jehovah’s mind, who shall instruct Him? But we have Christ’s mind. How wondrous yet true is this abiding privilege of the Christian! Again, “in knowledge” supply “temperance” or self-control. Knowledge, however precious, has its danger of puffing up, and begetting contentions; and in itself it is a poor safeguard against lust, ill-feeling, or passion. There is therefore the utmost need of self-restraint. Against such a guard there is no law: rather is it a calm preservative against inflation, and so falling into the fault of the evil one, as well as reproach and his snare. At no time do we more need to watch than when our feelings are acutely wounded. For they only blind us to the character of any hasty impulse and hurry us to sacrifice every Christian consideration to self.

But this we are bound to distrust. It wars exactly what in no case or degree wrought in Christ, who ever bowed to His Father in accepting from Him the utmost slight, dishonour, and contempt which came from those among whom He went about doing good, especially from God’s people in their unbelief. No doubt, there is the deeper pain if our trial come from His children, and the keener if from such as we specially trusted and valued. But the point for the soul, and above all for God, is not what this one has done or that said (lest it should rankle and inflame), but am I above it all by grace? am I self-restrained through (not self, but) Christ working in me? This enables one not to feed on what provokes, but to think on the things lovely, and of good report, which heat on our own account makes us forget. If others stumble, am I manifesting Christ? But there is suffering for righteousness, if not for Christ’s name, which is never far or long from a Christian’s path; and thus he has need of self-control supplying “endurance.” He is not to quail if called to suffer ever so wrongfully. How unworthy, natural as it is, to complain because of this! Would it be any satisfaction, or real alleviation, if one deserved it? “For it is better, if the will of God should will it, to suffer as well-doers than as evil-doers.” “But if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but glorify God in this name.” Yes, believers have need of endurance. Let us then, in “self-control” that puts a quiet but needed check on ourselves and on every device of self-will, supply “endurance” under any wrong inflicted by others. This is quite compatible with, not reserve, but plain rebuke of a saint who so errs. Yet another want of at least equal or greater weight is next urged: “in endurance godliness” or piety. What more momentous for the soul than to preserve the links of reverence and affection, of dependence and obedience, in fresh and constant exercise with God and our Lord Jesus! Yet such is the pressure of work, to say nothing of the course of the age, the deceitfulness of riches, the disappointment at loss, or lusts of other things, that the peril from any earthly preoccupation is great. But here we are reminded to supply godliness in its constant place. To confide in Him, to bow implicitly to His will assured that it is the best, is all the more blessed in the pressure of the persecutions that try our endurance. For indeed He is good, and does good, overcame evil in our case with His good, and strengthens even us not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.

If we do not know what we should pray for as befitting, we do know that all things work together for good to those that love God. And surely this true piety feels. To the same end he bade them in his First Epistle (1 Peter 3:14-15) not to fear the world’s fear, nor be troubled, “But sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord,” as He had Jehovah always before Him. Then we are reminded that paying God His due takes nothing from “brotherly affection,” but on the contrary both cherishes and controls it; for in godliness, which is fitting and necessary to be supreme, we are told to supply this exercise of grace. As the apostle Paul wrote concerning it to the young and dear Thessalonian converts, “Ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. For also this ye do toward all the brethren in the whole of Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, to abound yet more.” Nevertheless brotherly affection has its limits because of its nature and its objects; for it is not God, and it may often let in what shuts Him out. Thus brethren too frequently slip into evil of one sort or another; and if brotherly affection be pressed (as commonly it is) as the acme of love, what mischief must arise for the saints! and what dishonour to the Lord and the truth! Therefore mark the divine wisdom and the profit for us, in that the apostle here distinguishes, instead of confounding, “love”; for he closes with “in brotherly kindness love.” Higher than this last he could not rise; for not only is love of God, but God is love. It is of all moment that in brotherly kindness we should supply that love which is of God, and which God is. Nothing here evinces the wretchedly fallen state of Christendom more than the chorus of commentators who think of nothing beyond brotherly kindness save love to all mankind, even enemies, overlooking the source and power of all good. So Alford and Wordsworth, Bloomfield, Webster and Wilkinson, etc., among moderns speak for most shades of modern theology; and the ancients as far as one knows are no better. Even John Calvin’s remarks, which were consulted after writing thus, are singularly meagre, passing by the beautiful circle of truth here given us. From virtue and knowledge he turns off with few words to brotherly affection, and has no more to say of love than “Charitas latius patet, quia totum humanum genus complectitur” (“Love extends more widely, because it embraces the whole human race”). This is enough to represent the mind of the Reformers, of whom Calvin was regarded as the chief expositor. It is wholly defective and erroneous; for such a view loses what one of them calls “the crown of Christian virtue.” Surely it would be, not a meet climax, but a descent from the deep and faithful character of special affection toward the holy brotherhood to universal and benevolent love for men as such. He speaks like the author of Saturday Evening, chap 12, who was far too humanitarian. On the contrary it is an immense and blessed elevation from that affection, high as it is, to “love” in its fullest nature. And so speaks the apostle Paul who communicated not a little to his brother apostle of the circumcision for both his Epistles, and wrote to the Galatian brethren, after pressing on them “bowels of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering,” with a forbearing and forgiving spirit. “And over (or, to) all these, love which is the bond of perfectness” (Galatians 3:12; Galatians 3:14), as he wrote to the Colossians at a later day. Nor need we quote the Epistles of John, rich as is their contribution of proof to the same effect. The reason too is quite plain. God’s nature in its active energy of love is the complement of all, the standard withal that strengthens us against every evil. Love, as known in Him, of which Christ is the full expression, while the most expansive of affections as it is necessarily, maintains all His character intact, refuses any sacrifice of His rights to indulge or palliate a brother’s fault or error, and rises to its full height in God. Yet how deep and wondrous this is in the God who gave His beloved Only-begotten Son that we, lost and dead, might live through Him, who was sent into the world with life eternal in Himself for every one that believed! yea, to be the propitiation for our sins, that the evil in us, intolerable to Him and grief and abhorrence to us, might be blotted out for ever! Not that we then loved Him, but He us to the uttermost: wherefore we do love Him whose perfect love casts out fear. We love, because He first loved us. God is love; and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in Him. Thus love gives its best force but also its preservative guard to brotherly affection; whilst it has its own highest and deepest scope according to its divine spring, nature, and character. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11); but he never says that we “ought” to love God; for this we do, if indeed called according to purpose. It may be hard sometimes to love a brother when naughty: but we do love God always. What does it tell to leave this out? It may be of interest for some to know that the too famous Bp. Warburton preached a sermon on these three verses, entitled, “The Edification of Gospel Righteousness” (Works, v. 123-143, 4to, 1788). But able as it is in his peculiar fashion, and not without his strong impression of its divine wisdom, it is vitiated by his ignorance of grace and truth, and so completely that he takes for granted (p. 127) that the N.T., here as elsewhere, refers us to what the Religion of Nature (!) taught concerning virtue for example. The apostle enforces the importance of that diligence to which he had exhorted saints by a twofold consideration expressed in verses 8, 9. In the first of these he points out the blessing of being thoroughly furnished in our practical state for every good word and work; and in the second, the blighting effect of negligence as to our state. “For these things being in you and abounding make [you] not idle nor unfruitful for the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ: for he with whom they are not present is blind, shortsighted, having forgotten* the cleansing of his old sins.”

λήθηνλαβὼν here may be compared with 2 Timothy 1:5 and the simpler cases of Heb 11:29; Hebrews 11:36. It occurs in both classical and Hellenistic Greek, as in Jos. Ant. ii. 9,1, is precisely the same phrase. These varied qualities, set forth in a just order, were all of them requisite for the Christian character. The disciple is not above his teacher, nor the bondman above his lord. The Christian follows Christ and is His witness in the ways of every day. “Ye are our epistle,” says Paul to the Corinthian saints when recalled to obedience, “written in our hearts, known and read of all men, being manifested that ye are Christ’s epistle ministered by us, written not with ink but Spirit of a living God, not on stone tables but on the heart’s fleshy tables.” The new divine nature does not imitate outward points of moral propriety, but beholds Christ objectively, which with delight in His perfection works inwardly. Hence it participates in every thing that pleases God, and is particularly vigilant where an awakened conscience has felt and judged special failure. So we read here “These things being in you.” Divine life works energetically in every right direction. But the apostle was led to seek more. He urges that these things should “abound” also; and this they do where Christ dwells in the heart by faith. No doubt the words in Ephesians 3:17 go out immensely farther; but Christ is and must be the spring and strength of the heart for all that is acceptable to God. The exercise of the heart in the full confidence of Christ’s love promotes growth in what is good. These things are therefore not only a real subsistence in the Christian, but also abound through dependence on His grace. Nor do troubles distract, if instead of intensely occupying ourselves with them, we are simple in casting the burden on Him, who cares for us, and delights in hearing the cry of faith’s confidence in Him, and gives His own peace to guard our hearts and our thoughts by Christ Jesus. If we be ever so pained, the new nature, while in no way sparing self in ourselves or others, gives us to turn to its own congenial occupation with what is pure, true, noble, just, lovely and of good report, to think on these things, rather than to be occupied with evil, where it is not a positive duty. What is the effect? They “make you not idle nor unfruitful for the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It was a change for the worse when the A. V. for “idle” rendered the word “barren,” and led so many readers and preachers to guess what the difference could be between “barren” and “unfruitful.” But there is no room for doubt or difficulty. The first word is properly translated “idle” elsewhere in the A. V., as it should be here; and so Tyndale, Cranmer and the Geneva V. had given. Wycliffe and his follower, as well as the Rhemish, have “voide” or “vacant” (as the last), which can hardly be said to have any just sense. If the practical characteristics of Christianity abound in the saints, they themselves would be neither idle nor unfruitful. How unworthy to be idle, not only as standing in so blessed a relationship and possessed by grace of a new nature so excellent and repellent of every evil thing! How unworthy to be fruitless, if branches in the True Vine, such as those whom the Father purges that they may bear more fruit (John 15:2, 1 Peter 1:17)! “Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit; and ye shall be my disciples” (John 15:8). So the apostle Paul prays for the Philippian faithful that they might be pure and without stumbling for (or, against) Christ’s day, “filled with the fruit of righteousness that is through Jesus Christ unto God’s glory and praise” (Philippians 1:11). The holiness of the new nature makes all sin to be hateful in the believer’s eyes. But as the flesh is still in us, and ready to work and manifest itself, there is the constant necessity of prayer and the word watchfully applied in self-judgment. The brotherhood too has unceasing claims that we should never wink at sin but abhor it both in brotherly affection and yet more strongly in that love which strengthens us in keeping His commandments and in rebuking a brother’s disobedience and every iniquity. And if we cleave with purpose of heart to the Lord, can we be insensible to mankind around who remain, as once we were, unintelligent, disobedient, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another? If idle in confessing earnestly according to our measure the saving grace of God in the gospel, we cannot be but unfruitful “for the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Where is our heart then for God and His Son, for saints or for sinners? For what are we, since our deliverance, left in such a world as this? Is it not that God in all things may be glorified, as far as His children are concerned, through Jesus Christ, to whom is the glory and the might for the ages of ages, Amen? But the other side is next noticed, and we do well to take heed. “For” (this is the true connective, not “but”) “he with whom they are not present is blind.” How sad that such a description should apply to one bearing the Lord’s name! For had not Peter in his First Epistle set forth Christians as loving Him whom they had not seen, and not now looking on but believing, they exult with joy unspeakable and full of glory? Theirs was no mere natural but supernatural sight in God’s wonderful light. What a fall from divine privilege to be “blind,” or even short-sighted! It is the lack of spiritual perception by the neglect of communion with God, the result of habitual indifference and self-seeking, to the slight of Christ, and grief of the Spirit. It is explained by the next word, “shortsighted”: the things afar off, the heavenly, are no longer the objects before the eyes of the heart. Thus things that are near and before all mankind absorb the mind. It is a worldly spirit actively at work after the things of the world, and not those which the Father loves. Because all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, as the apostle John urges. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. The knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ is hindered and its separating power annulled, if we thus look, not at the unseen, but at the seen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. Another immense loss too follows: “having forgotten the cleansing of his old sins.” It is not that a soul may here deny the truth of the gospel, or oppose his justification by faith of Christ and His work. But enjoyment of peace with God is gone. For the Holy Spirit, instead of bearing present witness to his spirit that he is a child of God, testifies to his inconsistent and evil state. The doctrine, however certain and true, that the worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins ceases to be his joy, and becomes forgotten. His conscience is not clear but troubled as to his condition, instead of being trustful and bold before God. Till he is thoroughly self-judged, he feels, when he reflects, that his own heart condemns him; and if so how much more must the God who is greater than our hearts, and knows all things! Is it not in this duty and sense that he incurs forgetfulness of the cleansing of his old sins? It is not that he either gives up the truth or despairs as to himself; but there is no comfortable consciousness of that cleansing of our sins which the very gospel proclaims to every believer. How can it be otherwise in that government which God as Father keeps up with His children in our time of sojourn here? When the cleansing of one’s old sins is truly remembered, it acts on the soul to cleave to Him who for us died and rose, and strengthens us to hate evil of every kind, especially in our own ways. To forget the profession of being purged from one’s sins is to lose the power and duty of practical purity; and to be a Christian becomes but a name. Here again in these concluding words of the introduction we may see the practical earnestness which eminently characterises our apostle. His aim is not dogmatic clearing up but spiritual power for every day. “Wherefore the rather, brethren, use diligence to make your calling and election sure; for in doing these things ye shall never stumble. For thus shall be richly furnished to you the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour .Jesus Christ” (vers. 10, 11). The true knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord is characteristic of Christianity, and rises far above what the law and the prophets conveyed, excellent as they were and are. But that knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the gospel communicates, is meant to make us, as partaking of a divine nature, neither idle nor unfruitful meanwhile. Flesh has to be judged, and the world held aloof by such as have escaped its corruption by lust. We need, as all life does, to grow by suited divine fare; and we are called to do God’s will. There are the due affections to cultivate around us and upward. The pointed warning was just given of what surely follows indifference to the moral side, the blindness that ensues, the shortsightedness as to God’s own glory and excellence, Jesus crowned with honour and glory in all that becomes our relationship, and dangers here ever present. Otherwise one forgets the gracious and solemn remission of the gospel, and the meaning of baptism to Christ’s death at the start of the Christian profession. Thus the diligence called for in vers. 5-7 is impressed in another way in vers. 10, 11. There it was in faith as the starting-point to furnish the necessary and blessed elements that form Christian character, from moral courage to divine love reproduced in the heart and ways, with the happy result where they exist and abound, with the saddest effect where they are lacking. Here looking at both sides the apostle exhorts his “brethren” all the more to give diligence, not merely to bear in lively recollection, in thankfulness, and exercised conscience, their first confession of divine grace to them as guilty sinners, but “to make their calling and election sure.” In our fallen state, as in the world, there is nothing at all to help for life and godliness. The fairest show in flesh is the most deceptive and dangerous; and if Gentiles, like the Galatian and the Colossian brethren, were so prone to this snare, how much more were those who had been Jews, both to slip back from grace, and to make it a creed to own, instead of the spring and proof and joy of faith? It is plain that the fresh appeal is to our state and consequent course and character of walk. The very order of the terms indicates this; for on the side of divine grace election according to scripture necessarily precedes calling. God’s choice of the Christian is in eternity; as His calling of us is in time out of darkness into His wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). So in the opening of the First Epistle the saints were said to be elect according to God the Father’s foreknowledge; but it was in virtue of the Spirit’s sanctification that they were separated unto the obedience and blood-sprinkling of the Lord Jesus Christ. The well-known summary in Romans 8:28-30 is still more precise and full. “And we know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those that are called according to purpose. Because whom he fore-knew he also predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he should be firstborn among many brethren.

And whom he predestinated, these he also called; and whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified, these he also glorified.” Thus the chain of blessing is completed when the many brethren are brought even as concerns the body into conformity with their glorified Lord. The order is as clearly of God’s grace; as that in our text, where calling comes before election, is of its actual application to man. And this is in keeping with the context which deals with the present moral government of souls. The passage answers in its place to what we have in 1 Peter 1:17-18: “And if ye call on him as Father that without respect of persons judgeth according to the work of each, pass the time of your sojourn in fear, knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptibles, silver or gold, from your vain manner of walk handed down from fathers, but with precious blood of Christ as of a lamb unblemished and spotless,” etc. The fear enjoined is not from lack of certainty in our redemption, which on the contrary is enforced with all power and clearness. It is filial fear strengthened by the only efficacious sacrifice, but tempered because a Father holy and impartial watches over every step of our pilgrimage; and as He will not condemn us with the world, He chastens because He loves us too well to gloss over our failures. Here Christian responsibility is pressed, that there should not be inconsistency in our ways. His calling like His election is a matter of sovereign grace, and admits no question. But the case is different when we hear of our calling and election.

Here negligence disorders the walk, and compromises our profession of His name, takes away our joy and enfeebles or hinders our testimony, and all the more if our conscience be tender. The heart condemns us, as is said in 1 John 3:20; and how much more does God, who greater than our heart knows all things, and draws us into self-judgment, so that it should not condemn us! Practical fidelity, then, is urged the more with diligence to make our calling and election sure; “for doing these things” which please God, and are His will concerning us, they are made firm to our enjoyment, instead of being loose and unstable by a careless state; and so one may add, they are to others who look for our ways agreeing with our words. Walking in dependence and obedience we shall never stumble. It is therefore a most humbling thing when one thus trips by the way, and mistakes his own will or the enemy’s suggestion for the Lord’s guidance. How painfully it is learnt that all knowledge here fails; and that we must be brought to deep self-judgment, and vigilance in looking to and leaning on the Lord that we may follow Him closely. For any one can see a failure, and flesh can censure without measure or heart. Grace alone can purify according to the standard of the sanctuary; but this may be retarded by failure in penetrating to the roots of what misled. And here it is ourselves who are to blame; for there is in Christ and the word all resource to meet the need, yea, so as to strengthen one’s brethren also, as Peter himself had to learn, and learnt so well. But more encouragement follows here. “For thus shall be richly furnished to you the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Here again it is not a predicted fact that is prominent, but the full realization even now by the soul that walks blamelessly before God. Thus it is that the entrance into the kingdom should be furnished. One is thus enabled to anticipate in rich measure the everlasting kingdom. So the Spirit was pleased to describe it. At any rate it is not put as a mediatorial display of glory in reigning over the earth for a thousand years, blessed as this will be; but rather what is unchanging. For there is also revealed that His servants shall serve Him and see His face, and reign for ever and ever. Here then to those walking by grace faithfully “shall be richly furnished the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Not only is evil avoided, but there is nothing to dim the eyes or burden the heart. And the future glory is made richly to fill the soul as that which, as it belongs to Him, is shared with us, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. We are thus led into it for heart enjoyment; for the Spirit, being ungrieved, is not stopped by our errors and wrong-doing to humble us, but can show us things to come. “He shall glorify me, because he shall receive of mine and shall declare [it] to you.” The entrance into it shall be richly furnished in the case described for practical joy and power over all that is present, whereby Satan seeks to dazzle and occupy the unwary. A great principle of God appears in the words that follow, to which we do well to take heed. For the proof is abundant and plain, and a serious warning at this very time, and at all times, of the peril to God’s glory, so far as His saints are concerned, from neglecting it. “Wherefore I shall be ready always to put you in mind of those things, though knowing [these] and established in the present truth” (ver. 12). Can any thing give clearer evidence of the all importance of the written word, not only to communicate the truth on divine authority, but to keep it intact in the living remembrance of the saints, than the earnestness with which this inspired bondman and apostle of our Lord impresses its need in his last message? We learn, from Galatians 1:6-10, how prone those mercurial Gentile brethren were, under evil influence, to forget even the fundamental principle of the gospel they had heard from the greatest preacher that ever lived. “I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel, which is not another [one]; only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But if even we, or an angel from heaven, proclaim a gospel to you besides [or, other than] that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we said before, now also I say again, If anyone preach a gospel besides that which ye received, let him be accursed. For am I now persuading men or God? or am I seeking to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be Christ’s bondman.” We learn also from 1 Corinthians, that the vain Greek mind in the capital of Achaia, where the same apostle had preached and won much people to the Lord, was soon slipping away, when his back was turned, from the ways and will of God, even to the compromise of the resurrection, though not of the immortality of the soul, which philosophy favoured and the first man might and did misuse to exalt himself. Hence that first Epistle, early as the date was, reproved their carnal schools with leaders, their low moral sense, their worldliness in going to law, their tampering with idol feasts as if nothing, and the laxity as to natural relationships. Even the gospel demanded re-statement in 1 Cor. 15, as their disorders at the Lord’s supper, and in the assembly, called for rebuke and rectification in 1 Cor. 11, 12 and 14. Nor need there be more than a reference to the “doubtful disputations” which endangered the peace of the saints in Rome; nor to the preaching for envy and strife of some at Philippi, nor to others who caused weeping to the apostle while he named it, enemies as they were of the cross of Christ, whose end was destruction, whose God was their belly, and their glory was their shame, who minded earthly things. Nor does the Epistle to the Colossians here call for notice, though it might well be a lengthened and appropriate one in view of the havoc which threatened those saints from the inroads of Gentile philosophy and of Jewish elements on the glory of the Head and the unity of the body with Him. We know too that the Epistles to the Thessalonians were written among other things especially to disabuse those young Christians of error: the First, as to the departed saints at Christ’s coming, the Second, as to His day for the living saints. Then the letters to the trusty fellow-labourers, Timothy and Titus, explicitly deal with falling away from the faith, profane babblings, with vain talkers and deceivers, specially those of circumcision; and in every case supplying the adequate remedy in God’s grace and truth, as we ought to learn. Eminently instructive is the opposite snare exposed in the grand Epistle to the Hebrews. Therein the apostle sets out the glory of Christ in person, office, and work, to deliver the circumcised believers from their traditional attachment to Judaism with its priesthood, ordinances, and sanctuary, from which they had not got clear after so many years of knowing Christ. But the Spirit of God would no longer tolerate this dulness, natural to babes, but inconsistent with the solid food of full-grown men, who have their senses exercised for distinguishing both good and evil. There is therefore exhortation from God to take their true Christian place of entering with boldness into the holies by the blood of Jesus, and of going forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. This was expressly before the destruction of the city and the temple; that the saints might shake off their old swaddling clothes, to be thoroughly and only Christ’s by faith, before the coming acts of God’s providence. The later Epistles are just the fullest on the impending ruin of the professing church, the latest of all (Jude’s and John’s) pointing out apostasy at the end with the Lord’s unsparing judgment. For “the last hour,” however it might be prolonged in divine patience, was characterised even then by “many antichrists,” the sure token of “the Antichrist” to be destroyed in the day of the Lord. Even this short survey of inspired correction is the most convincing proof how dependent the Christian saints were on fresh scripture to guard our souls from forgetfulness of the truth and the aberrations from all round its circle provoked and promoted by the spirit of falsehood. But, besides this, food was provided in due season. To the Roman saints the apostle only refers to revelation of a mystery or secret as to which silence had been kept in everlasting times, but now manifested, and by prophetic scriptures according to the eternal God’s command made known for obedience of faith unto all the nations. But it was not here revealed. Nor was it to the Corinthians in its heavenly side but only in its earthly working; still less to the Galatians or the Thessalonians. Not till he was a prisoner in Rome did he unfold it fully to the Ephesians and the Colossian saints, and thence to the church gradually far and wide. The word is the truth, and its written form under the inspiring power of God adds to it His abiding permanence as alike the supply and the standard for His children. Nor can it be doubted that today beholds the most fearful and widespread and deadly onslaught on scripture ever since the apostles departed. At all times bad men had yielded; and with more or less daring circulated their doubts and disbelief. But now so shameless is unbelief that the seats of human learning are its citadels; and theologians vie with scientists and literary men in thinly if at all disguised denial of God’s word from Genesis to the Apocalypse. Divine revelation is therefore a burning question today; and the more because it taints largely and deeply every sect in Christendom. And how fares it with such as abjure a sectarian place? Has it not been affirmed among such, orally and in print, that the church needed not scripture, at least if walking decently and in order? Again, “it is no good sending out Bibles if there are not preachers”? Again, “the word of God is in the scriptures”? Not that scripture is the written word but Christ is the word of God? That “the scriptures are more the record of it, than the thing itself”?

We are all familiar with such language among adversaries of the truth; but how solemn that such praise of incredulity should pass as from God’s Spirit among the more ignorant of those once most staunch for the Bible! And how still more solemn that such impiety has not been judged on the guilty, and repudiated with horror and humiliation by the more intelligent! Are there not some true-hearted enough for God and His word to be above the dread of consequences? There is another phase of unbelief which prevails among such brethren as claim to be the faithful in disowning and separating from that depraved confraternity. Their danger made itself manifest from the time when both these parties, now opposed, staked all on what they called assembly-judgments. It was a phrase unknown in days when faith and patience reigned, and scripture was demanded and given for every legitimate judgment. No right-minded saint conceived of a godly action save in obedience of the word. What honour the Lord habitually put upon it! But just when party-spirit was beginning to blow up ecclesiastical fire to a white heat, and scripture was found unavailable to justify an extreme and revolutionary action desired, the strange proceedings brought in strange phrases. Scripture was denied to be necessary, when it could not be produced. Very distressing became the course of these brethren who claimed all the faithful qualities and denied them to those who blamed their doings as without and beyond scripture. It was laid down that all were bound by an assembly-judgment, however partial or hasty, nay, even if known to be wrong! And this, not only prima facie but excluding in future any revisal, when it was distinctly urged that the right should alone be done by such as were assured of error. No, there could be, there ought to be, no rectification, no owning of a wrong! An assembly-judgment, once made, must be accepted as irrevocable, even if known afterwards and certainly to be unrighteous and erroneous! This did not matter; it was bound on earth and in heaven! Therefore the prime duty henceforth of the intelligent saint was to accept this as due to the Lord’s word and name! The natural home for such fanaticism seems to be Babylon. No doubt in regular cases of discipline, conducted according to scripture, the assembly is entitled to pronounce in the Lord’s name, and individuals are bound to hear. Even then elder men acquainted with facts well knew that, in ordinary times, errors if unredressed might be fatal, and that unsound decisions were abandoned to the Lord’s honour and the assembly’s shame, yet so done heartily for His name’s sake. How much more was it called for, when souls were perplexed, agitated, and prejudiced on all sides; when the unprecedented step was taken, as in the world’s way to change the venue, and this not as even there to secure impartiality, but to judge a question where strong bias for and against was known to exist! Hence some were satisfied that there was no scriptural authority for such a case, declined even going to hear, and only staid in fellowship till there was no remedy, and a case occurred which compelled them to act according to conscience guided by the word. These samples of the need, not exemplified among the distant denominations, but among saints who were once simple, gracious, and faithful, may help, as really existing facts, to show how invaluable was the help of which our apostle here speaks to the saints. He should be ready always to put them in remembrance of these things, just before urgently pressed on their heed, though they knew them, and were established in the truth present with them. How considerately he appeals, and gives them credit for the utmost possible! He was truly a bondman as well as apostle of Jesus Christ, and ruled not over their faith, but as with Paul a fellow-worker, not only of their joy, but of their stability and safety. It was not enough then that the saints should know the things which the gospel communicates to them, nor even that they should be established in them. Those grand facts of divine grace with the moral responsibility they involve are “the present truth”: Jesus the Messiah actually come, rejected by the chosen nation, as the prophets did not omit to announce and the basis of all, yet easily let slip, because of the glowing visions of His kingdom not yet accomplished but apt to eclipse what was deepest and essential. Hence the earnestness of the apostle to impress on his brethren the truth which was then before them, so distinct from the past and from the age to come. It is, as he had said, the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord (ver. 2); the knowledge in particular of our Lord Jesus Christ (ver. 8), without which none can know God as He now needs to be known. In vain people cried up that which was so precious in foregoing time. All the prophets and the law prophesied until John; and none greater than John the Baptist had arisen among those born of women. But from his days the kingdom of the heavens suffered violence, and men of violence seize on it. It is now a question of faith breaking through every difficulty and obstacle in the power of the Spirit to receive the Son of God come, which necessarily tests every soul of man. For this is life eternal, that they should know the Father revealed by the Son whom He had sent to this end.

What was any knowledge compared with that? In vain they talked of “father Jacob,” or of all the fathers from Abraham, who exulted that he should see Christ’s day, as he by faith saw and rejoiced. For One was come, who, though man also, could say, Before Abraham was, I AM. This changed all for faith, and made inexcusable the unbelief that only stuck to the past. To slight “the present truth” was to lose God and His Son. For it alone puts the believer into living relationship with God, and makes available His divine power which has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness; for this is inseparable from the knowledge of Him that called us by His own glory and excellence. It is in fact what we mean by Christianity, as the life no less than the faith we confess; and therefore it involves growth practically as we have seen in all that becomes the Christian, of which God is the judge, who deigns to instruct us with all precision, as having become partakers of a divine nature, and thus escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh! God, sending His own Son in likeness of flesh of sin and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous import (or, requirement) of the law might be fulfilled in us that walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit. For He slights mere forms now and will have reality in those that are His.

The greater the present privileges; the more are saints to be diligent to make their calling and election sure, avoid stumbling, and have richly furnished to them the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For as another apostle dear to Peter says, “he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” But practically believers are exposed to such injurious influences, distractive of spirit and attractive to flesh, that they are like watches in need of habitual winding up. It is not enough to know and to be established in the present truth. Therefore the readiness of the apostle always to put them in mind of these things (ver. 12). Here again he reiterates it as their urgent need while he lived, and in view of his speedy departure. “And I deem [it] right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting [you] in minds knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle is speedy, according as our Lord Jesus Christ manifested to me” (vers. 13, 14). Whoever believes, as every Christian is bound to believe, that the great enemy sets himself most against all that God has actually in hand, can readily understand the importance of this care for the saints. It was always so. Cain and Abel were severally put to the proof by the then urgent truth of sacrifice, which faith prized and unbelief disdained. Enoch and Noah both recognised the old truth, but were tested by, and faithful to, what God revealed to each in their day. Abraham held all that went before, but believed in the promises and confided in the divine revelation of “God Almighty” to himself, a pilgrim among races to be destroyed for their iniquity. Israel again had God bringing them out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the land of Canaan, under condition of the law which they undertook to obey in their self-confidence.

The Christian begins with redemption by His blood who gives us life eternal, walking in the light of the true God revealed in love and calling us to His eternal glory. In every case power of faith shows itself in specially appropriating “the present truth,” whilst valuing all that had been made known previously, because it was all God’s doing and communicating. But, if this be true as a principle, the infinite nature of God’s revelation of Himself in Christ makes the actual deposit of faith precious and momentous beyond all comparison. It is not merely revelation from God but of God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are now made known through our Lord a man, and in His work of redemption who is now consequently in heavenly glory, and, by the Spirit sent forth from heaven, the Spirit of God and of glory rests on the Christian. Not that our apostle makes known all these wondrous privileges, individual or of the church, Christ’s body; but he does insist on the all-importance of the knowledge of God, which is now the portion of faith, beyond what could be before Christ came, or what is to be displayed in the kingdom to the world by-and-by. It was the inspiring Spirit who laid this duty on the apostle, knowing that his time was short, and the putting off of the earthly tabernacle at hand. Of tradition, in the sense of handing down man’s oral addition, he never thought. What had this done for men before the deluge or after it? What was the issue of pretending to it in Israel or in Christendom? The prophet spoke out on the worthlessness of the fear of Jehovah taught by a commandment of men; the Lord still more decidedly, as transgressing the commandment and making void the word of God on account of their tradition. Inspiration makes it not a word of men, but as it is truly, God’s word, which also works in those who believe, and clothes it with divine permanence as being written in the Spirit. So the apostle Paul bade Timothy abide in the things which he had learnt and was assured of, knowing of whom he learnt, and that from a child he had known the sacred letters that are able to make wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. This of course refers to the O.T. But he adds more: “Every scripture [is] God-breathed (or, inspired), and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly fitted for every good work.” It is a sentence framed expressly to embrace not only whatever of the N.T. had already appeared, but every part of it that remained to be written. Terms could not be devised more simply or absolutely predicating God’s authority of every part of the written word. To call it genuine or authentic was wholly short of what is conveyed. It was inspired or God-breathed, that we might know the things freely given to us by God; and this spoken in words, not taught by human wisdom, weakness, defect of any kind, but taught by the Spirit. Thoughts and words were alike spiritual, that the result might be God’s word certain and complete. Our apostle, like Paul, had his dissolution before his eyes as well as the increasing evil through false teachers in depravity, and scepticism. Both are distinct in pointing to scripture as the great safeguard. As they alike set aside tradition, so they exclude any thought of apostolic succession. Grace might raise up faithful men to teach the truth they had learnt, or even to instruct others competent to communicate it. But scripture alone is the rule of faith, the sole unerring standard given of God to all His children whereby to test what they hear; and it is all the more blessed and necessary, as wicked men and impostors advance for the worse, leading and led astray. Scripture alone has divine authority.

Therein God speaks directly to every soul; as indeed the apostle John also expresses it in his First Epistle, We [the inspired, apostles and prophets] are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. From this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6). No one honoured scripture as Christ did from first to last, on the cross, and when risen from the dead. He even set the written word as a definitive witness beyond His own spoken words (John 5:47). These are but a portion of what might be cited to explain what the apostle here felt as guided of God to write these last words of his. Tradition must be a foundation of sand; and the foundation of the apostles and prophets is too well laid by divine grace to admit of a supplement, either of a vague and imaginary apostolic succession, or of a rival twelve set up by modern (?) prophets. Scripture must be itself complete to make the man of God complete and fully equipped for every good work But divine power is needed to receive, enjoy, and carry out the written word; and this is imparted to every Christian in the gift of the Holy Spirit abiding in and with us for ever. Yet that word is the only standard. With his departure in near view the apostle would write his last inspired words to stir up the saints by recalling what is easily forgotten, but by his speedy departure made the more urgent, “according as our Lord Jesus Christ manifested to me.” Peter remembered the grave lesson he had learnt through Paul at Antioch, when he himself failed to keep in mind the truth conveyed so vividly by the vision at Joppa and its fulfilment in Caesarea, the grace of God to Gentile now as to Jew. The pillar of the circumcision stood condemned, and he who was entrusted with the apostolate of the uncircumcision resisted him before all, and for the truth’s sake recorded so great a failure in scripture. For little as it might seem to carnal eyes, it was dissimulation to please certain that came from James, compromised Gentile liberty, and surrendered the truth of the gospel. God thus took care to register it as such, the overwhelming disproof of an infallible Roman see, even if there had been evidence, which there is not, that Peter was the founder of the church there, or its first bishop. So tradition says, and the credulous believe, not only without but contrary to the clear testimony of the written word. Nor did Paul found it, but wrote his Epistle to the Roman saints before he was carried there a prisoner of Jesus Christ for the Gentiles, as at length also His martyr there. Yet Irenaeus, who stands above all the fathers in the second century as Clemens of Rome above those in the first, tells us, in his book III. against Heresies, that Matthew brought out his Gospel in Hebrew, “when Peter and Paul were evangelising in Rome and founding the church.” This the famous and we may say first ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius, adopts (H.E. v. 28), though an error irreconcilable with scripture; as he had before (2: 25) from Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, that Peter and Paul had founded the church in Corinth before going on to Rome for a similar work. Paul we know to have been its planter, not Peter. Can any thing more plainly indicate the absurdity of trusting tradition even of early days, in presence of the sure light of God’s word? Yet all goes to justify our apostle in his zeal to leave nothing for edification to such a haphazard channel, but to write all needed to help, guard, and stimulate the saints in words taught by the Spirit, that they might thereby be brought face to face with Him who inspired these exhortations. Thus only can we know and have communion with God. In a third form the apostle presents the urgent importance which he felt in the Spirit for the written word; here expressly that “after his departure” they should be enabled also at any time “to call to mind these things.” “And I will be diligent also that at every time ye may have [it, or the power] after my departure to call to mind these things” (ver. 15). This is one of the many and immense advantages of scripture above the oral word, no matter how distinctly this might be given by the highest authority. No one lays it down more clearly than our blessed Lord in John 5, where to the reluctant Jews He recounts the varied testimonies to Himself as grounds of faith. (1) “Ye have sent unto John, and he hath borne witness to the truth.” (2) “But the witness I have is greater than John’s; for the works which the Father gave me to complete, the very works which I do bear witness concerning me that the Father hath sent me.” (3) “And the Father that sent me hath himself borne witness concerning me.” (4) “Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have life eternal, and those are they that bear witness concerning me…. For if ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote concerning me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” Never spoke man as this Man, His enemies themselves being judges; yet in His great climax of witnesses the Lord does not hesitate from that point of view to set the written word in the superior place of authority with a permanence peculiar to itself, so that the reader or hearer can weigh it again and again with prayer. Those who slight scripture to the exaggeration of ministry ought to consider His decision. And how remarkable that the Lord should thus speak of the books of Moses, which beyond fair question were then what they are now as many citations show, and not least His own! Yet modern audacity has lifted up its heel against those books quite as much as against Isaiah’s or Daniel’s. But He who knew what is in God no less than what was in man anticipated and pronounced against all this self-vaunting criticism of unbelief. It is equally plain that the apostle followed His Master in abhorrence of tradition. Never was it trustworthy since God saw fit to convey His mind in holy writ; least of all then, when a fresh body of truth was being revealed for the enlargement, instruction, exercise and comfort of faith in what we call the N.T. The higher the truth, as is necessarily due to the person, work, and offices of Christ, opening out to an unlimited sphere, even of heavenly things morally, as well as of things to come, the more was new scripture needed imperatively and supplied bountifully, with the same Spirit personally given to help the believers as had inspired the chosen instruments for its perfect communication. One of the greatest perils which the apostles foresaw on their own departure is the rise and increase of impostors, corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith. These men withstand the truth: some by superstition, fables, and tradition; others by scorn and scoffing at God’s word generally, and at prophecy in particular. As it may be read of Paul in 2 Tim. 3, so here of Peter, the great safeguards are (1) knowing of what persons the truth had been learnt, not teaching only but conduct, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings; and (2) not only the sacred scriptures, the O.T., able to make wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus, but “every scripture,” divinely inspired as it is and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness; that the man of God might be complete, out and out furnished unto every good work. The value of a known source in immediate relation to the God who communicated His mind and grace and will is thus shown to be of the highest degree, as well as the divinely assured certainty that the words were as unequivocally Spirit-taught as the thoughts themselves. No safeguard entrusted ’to the church, not to ministers only but to all the saints, is so sure and unfailing as scripture. It is merely a cheat of unbelief to argue from the infirmity of the men employed for this all-important work. Granting all the infirmity, we are assured (from what God tells us in 1 Cor. 2, as well as 2 Tim. 3) that His inspiration precludes the action of human weakness to impair the absolute reliableness of what is revealed to bring our souls who believe it into direct subjection to God. Conscience, understanding, and heart, are all addressed suitably; but the aim is that we may have fellowship with the inspired messengers, and thus by the Holy Spirit have communion with God Himself, with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, and have power in the new life for holy walk. Hence the prime duty for the Christian to turn away from these evil men, no matter how learned humanly they may be, and sanctimonious in manner, who either undermine the scriptures or substitute tradition for them. The form of godliness only makes such self-deceived deceivers more dangerous. It is in vain to reason on the scriptures as partial or fragmentary. It is an essential feature of them that God therein selected, out of much more that was given by the Spirit orally, all that was intended to be permanent and useful, all that was requisite to make the most advanced and honoured complete, fully equipped for every good work. Even if we could have from an uncertain source stray words carried down from the Lord’s teaching or that of any apostle, what could it add to produce the spiritual result which scripture claims for itself? Nor is it the least of its merits that scripture, so astonishingly full as it is to meet every want and to refute every error, should be also unburdened by superfluity. How worthy of Him who gave it as it is! Nor is it only against the sceptic we have to be on our guard. Corruption comes in through those who do not openly deny but pare down inspiration, allow errors in history or other (as they call it) secondary matter, and attribute the selection of what is written to the instruments without God. But this is to deceive themselves and others, to say and unsay. If God inspired the writings, He suggested, He selected, He included, He left out. He gave the thoughts and the words; He guided and controlled all. This is scripture. The first and grandest characteristic is that God inspired every scripture, every whit that was so written when Paul wrote his last to Timothy, his final to any. Every scripture is God-breathed, even anything that He would add afterwards. This is enough for all that know God, and have every reason to distrust themselves or other men who were not inspired. As the apostle John later still and most trenchantly says, “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them [the deceivers and antichrists], because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world; therefore speak they [as] of the world, and the world heareth them. We [the inspired] are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he who is not of God heareth us not.

By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” What an awful warning to “higher critics,” and their victims! Scripture possesses beyond all else the indelible authority of God, not only what was meant but what is written; but if this be so, it is in the fullest way profitable. Their value, not only as the ultimate source of truth but as the standard by which the highest ministry, even an apostle’s, was to be tried (Acts 17:11), is without a rival. Ministry is the exercise of a gift from the ascended Lord (Eph. 4) who not only gave His precious gifts at Pentecost, whether to lay the foundation by the apostles and prophets, or to perpetuate other gifts till the body is complete in the fullest sense (ver. 13). But its basis and its supplies depend on the authority of the written word; and so He led the way when on earth who was the supreme Apostle of our confession as He is the Great Priest. Who so honoured, loved, and used the scriptures with God, with man, with Satan? So we see with all the inspired writers. Whatever new truth had to be imparted, they were led by the Spirit to impress on the saints the divine claims of the old holy writ to the uttermost. Nor is anyone more notable in this way than he who calls himself the least of all saints, to whom we are indebted as to none else for the administration of the mystery hidden throughout the ages in God, but now revealed (Eph. 3), minister of the church (as he says in Col. 1) to complete the word of God. We may next observe how carefully the apostle Peter excludes all dependence not only on tradition but on ecclesiastical office of any kind after his departure When faith decays and the power of the truth proportionately, then man’s energy displaces the Holy Spirit, and the world enters with the love of worldly things to dim, darken, and destroy the love of the Father; external things gain an undue and growingly false place. Baptism and the Lord’s supper, instead of being kept in their true niche, become at length traps of error, and engines of destruction, being invested with the reality of the grace that is in Christ Jesus. So it was with the elders, especially when they had no longer apostolic authentication, direct or indirect. And so yet more proudly when the figment of apostolic succession was conceived, to say nothing of the modern dream of a whole twelve-fold apostolate nominated by prophets as pretentious and as false as those apostles themselves. Peter is silent on every such resource for the future. He was led of God to provide scripture for the saints. “And I will be diligent also that at every time ye may have [it, or the power] after my departure to call to mind these things.” It was exactly so that the great apostle of uncircumcision charged the elders or bishops of the church in Ephesus who met him at Miletus (Acts 20). “I know that after my decease grievous wolves shall come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Wherefore watch, remembering that for three years, night and day, I ceased not admonishing each one with tears. And now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build up and give an inheritance among all that are sanctified.” The very elders were to become a danger and evil to themselves and the disciples, not they only but they prominently; for out of them emerged ere long the clergy (not gifted men) unknown while the apostles lived. Had the word of Christ dwelt in the saints richly, such a change could not have been. Man was looked to, and the word of God’s grace became more slighted, forgotten, and powerless. And who that looks at Christendom, or even at that part of it which boasts of an open Bible and separation from the idolatries and mummeries of Popery, can doubt that the apostle’s warning has been verified, and that far worse is in rapid progress? Who can survey the enormous change during the last seventy or eighty years, for spreading and deepening evil, whether in superstition or in free-thinking, without humiliation or horror, unless he be under either delusion? One of the most painful and certain signs of the great enemy’s work is the all but universal spread of error and worldliness, not in the greater communities only but throughout them all, down to the least. So it is in the new or western hemisphere as in the older world; so it is in almost every land and tongue, and very markedly in those which once hailed whatever of truth the Reformation recovered to hungry and thirsty mortals. How little those who glory in the light and liberty and progress of the opening century are aware that both the sensuous and sentimental church revivalists, and the irreligious intellectualists who mangle the scriptures, are fast preparing the way for what the apostle Paul calls the falling away, “the apostasy,” when both the O. and N.T. will be cast away with scorn; when the Saviour and His cross, His glory in heaven and His coming again, will be objects of open derision and general ribaldry! Christianity as a whole will be rejected by Papists and Protestants, by Episcopalians and Presbyterians, by Independents and Baptists, by Wesleyans, etc., by Quakers, passive resisters and disputers of all sorts. The prevalent neglect of the prophetic word will only hasten the awful catastrophe. His zeal in furnishing the saints with divine grounds of faith the apostle fortifies, by reminding them of an unique display of glory, into immediate vision of which he had been admitted personally and with adequate witnesses. “For we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not following cleverly devised fables, but made eyewitnesses of his majesty” (ver. 16). A sight more marvellous than any miracle, a scene more impressive and august than any other vision on earth, a living miniature of the future kingdom more instructive, vivid, and glorious than any prophecy could present, was there given to saintly eyes and ears, that it might be divinely recorded and strengthen the hearts of the faithful. All the Synoptic Gospels had already recorded it. But manifestly it did not fall within the scope of the fourth Gospel to describe it, though many have conceived it alluded to in the latter clause of Joh 1:13. But here our apostle attests it as one of the chosen three who actually beheld the glory and heard the Father’s voice about the Son, by a word in the N. T. peculiar to Peter, capable of a wide application, but going beyond eye-witness and appropriated to those admitted into the highest grade of the mysteries among the Greeks. For ἐπόπται here is not the same as αὐτόπται in Luke 1:2. Nevertheless, without going into details, we can all perceive that the Epistle omits one most important lesson for the Christian which the Gospels were inspired to convey: “hear Him,” the Christ, the Son of God. It was drawn out by Peter’s hasty, shallow, and irreverent proposal to make here three tabernacles, one for the Lord, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah. For, as Mark adds, and Luke too, he knew not what to answer, being affrighted as the others also. And their fear could not but be aggravated by the bright cloud (the pavilion of God’s presence) that overshadowed them, into which they entered and out of which the Father’s voice said in gracious rebuke, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I found my delight: hear Him,” Moses and Elijah disappearing. Yet “hear Him” Peter alone omits, as he alone gives the emphatic personal expression of the Father’s complacency (ver. 17). To impute to men’s shortcoming either the omission or the addition is to betray one’s own unbelief in God’s perfect word. These differences are as much intended as their concurrent evidence; they are in no real sense discrepancies, but distinct intimations of the truth to carry out the Holy Spirit’s special design in each part of holy writ. The Gospels were to initiate and maintain the primary value and authority of Christ’s word, not only as spoken but to be communicated permanently in due time in what is commonly called “The New Testament.” Peter is here corroborating the testimony to Christ’s kingdom by the magnificent scene witnessed on the holy mount of the Transfiguration. But no body had such reason as himself in every point of view to remember “Hear Him” in that never to be forgotten incident. His omission is therefore the fruit, not of weakness but of divine design. He is here, as he says, making known to his believing Hebrew brethren “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” to which that blessed oracle was comparatively as uncalled for here as indeed it was of the utmost moment for God’s purpose by the Synoptic evangelists. Let us then briefly consider the character and teaching of what came to pass on the mountain. What drew out the display of His glory in the kingdom before the time of its establishment was to strengthen His own in taking up the cross and following the Master. For the disciples, like the unbelieving brethren, like Christendom too, looked for progress and triumph, and overlooked faith and love put to the proof in suffering with Christ, the pattern of all holy endurance. Hence the Lord told them plainly of His own sufferings and the glories after these. So indeed it must be for sinners to be saved righteously; and for saints that, suffering with Him, they may also be glorified with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign together. “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of man also be ashamed when he shall come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

And he said unto them, Verily I say to you, There are some of those standing here that shall in no wise taste death till they see the kingdom of God come in power. And after six days Jesus taketh with [him] Peter and James and John, and bringeth them up on a high mountain by themselves apart. And he was transfigured before them” (Mark 8:33, Mark 9:2). Not only did the fashion of His countenance become different as He prayed, shining as the sun, but His garments were effulgent as the light. Again, not angels but Moses and Elias appeared in glory, and spoke of His departure which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Here then was an anticipative and unparalleled sample of the kingdom, not as it has ever been since in mystery, but in manifestation as when He comes in its power and glory. As there was so much to try the disciples in His yet to be deepened humiliation, what could be more gracious on His part, or more suited to their need, than to grant chosen ones of the twelve who were to be alone with Him in His anguish, to be also with Him beholding so unexampled a foretaste! For here were the great elements of the coming kingdom. It is not at all a picture of eternity, when the kingdom is given up to Him that is God and Father, after Christ shall have annulled all rule and all authority and power, and the Son Himself shall be subject to Him that put all things in subjection to Him, that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) may be all in all. This we easily recognise in Revelation 21:1-8. But here it is the exalted Man, made both Lord and Christ after man crucified and slew Him. Here He is seen as He will reign in power that all shall see, with the dead saints raised and the living changed, answering to the two glorified men. There will be also the righteous in their natural bodies, like the three honoured disciples made free of the blissful vision. This may seem to Corinthian minds, that savour the things of men, an abhorrent mixture. But what an utter prejudice! For the kingdom is God’s “Hand scheme and answer to the shame the world puts on the faithful Christians, as before on Christ to the uttermost. If they in their devotedness to Him became a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men, how righteous in the coming day of glory their exaltation with Christ! Then the world shall know that the Father sent the Son, however low He stooped in grace, and that He loved the saints, however weak and unprofitable they feel themselves to be, as He loved Christ (John 17:22-23) here will be “the world” of men not glorified; there will be Israel and the nations on earth to learn this; not indeed in the eternal state, but in the kingdom which Christ will establish and manifest during the “age to come.” When eternity follows the “white throne” judgment, righteousness dwells in the new heavens and a new earth, instead of ruling as in the millennial earth. For the latter the Son of man receives the kingdom and returns (Luke 19:15) to reign; for the former He gives up the kingdom to the Father, that God may be all in all, after the mediatorial reign and judgment are quite over, and the universe is brought into perfect harmony with God’s counsels and ways in grace and in righteousness, and as to good and evil, for His glory for ever and ever. It was reserved for Pope Leo X. to avow without a blush that to the Roman communion and its chief the gospel had turned out a profitable fable; and St. Peter’s in Rome stands as the monument, built out of part of the cash paid by benighted souls for indulgences! the base traffic in sins, which brought on the Reformation. What a contrast with the holy man whom they falsely claim as their first pope! Here is the simple and true averment of a true fisherman of souls: “For we followed not cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were made eye-witnesses of his majesty.” What the three witnesses saw and heard on the mountain was a glorious display which God alone could accomplish. But it was not merely the manifestation of the highest honour put upon the rejected Christ. It was also a most instructive type of His glory in the coming kingdom in due time to close all suffering, when His church should be complete which began to be gathered on and from the day of Pentecost.

Of that kingdom the vision shown was the wondrous pattern and the certain pledge. Hence the apostle expresses its difference from His first coming by the phrase “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” First He came to suffer and to die; “for ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he being rich became poor, that ye by his poverty might be made rich.” Yes, He was crucified out of (or, as we say, in) weakness. But when He appears again, He will come on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, the indisputable Lord of all. Hence we must avoid the error of godly Puritans who apply the verse to the power of Christ in the preached gospel for saving from the guilt as well as the corruption of sin. So they applied it either exclusively, or including His future advent also. But such vagueness as this last implies is the way to lose the precision of the truth, and at best a makeshift when men are not sure, and seek to cover it by that style of accommodation. For the Transfiguration was significant, not of grace to perishing sinners, but of that glorious kingdom of God to come, which will consist of heavenly things as well as earthly, and the Lord the glorified chief and centre of them all. Compare Matthew 6:10, Matthew 13:41-43, Matthew 19:28, Ephesians 1:10. It is to be noticed that angels are not seen on the mount of Transfiguration. Yet we know that, when the day arrives for the establishment of His kingdom, the Son of man will come in the glory of His Father with His holy angels, or, as Luke puts it fully, “in His glory, and of the Father, and of the holy angels.” Here not a word is breathed about them. Men are prominent, two saints in glory of the past who represented the law and the prophets, three of the present followers of Christ in their natural bodies. The delights of Divine Wisdom were with the sons of men; the Life was the Light of men, and so when He deigned to enter on His earthly mission and work, He takes not hold of angels but of the seed of Abraham, not only for all that the promises to the fathers assured, but for heavenly and eternal counsels. But there is more that we do well to observe, the unmistakable voice out of the cloud of the Divine Presence, not in thunder but in accents of the tenderest love, and in evident answer to Peter’s well-meant but utterly unmeet desire to exalt His Master. The Father alone knows how His Son should be honoured; as He indeed loves the Son supremely, and has given all things to be in His hand. Let us too hear the Father; for He is Christ’s Father and ours, His God and ours. “For he received (literally, having received) from God the Father honour and glory, when such a voice was borne to him by the magnificent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I found my delight (or, complacency)” (ver. 17). The Lord Jesus was Man, the Messiah, on the road to the most extreme humiliation, even to the death of the cross, and by none so keenly consigned to it as by His own people, the Jews. Such was the ruinous blindness and the guilty unbelief which pervaded mankind. Hence to encourage His feeble followers in a path of suffering, least of all anticipated by themselves, it suited Him Who is wise and good and righteous to rise above all natural limits which ordinarily prevailed, and to manifest in the most unwonted fashion and impressive way His predestined exaltation in the coming kingdom. This indeed is not even yet come; while Israel abides in hard incredulity, and the church is meanwhile being called to its special blessedness in heavenly places. Then the Jew too shall become object of God’s healing mercy, as the Gentile now does, though rapidly abandoning the truth for the crisis at the end of the age like the mass of Jews. Hence, in view of Christ’s sufferings, and His glories to follow in due time, not only in the heavens but on the earth, grace gave to chosen witnesses this extraordinary anticipation on a small scale but with divine depth and power. As He prayed (so tells us Luke, who speaks most of His human perfection), the fashion of His countenance became different, and His very raiment white, effulgently so. And the two men of olden time, so renowned for fidelity to Jehovah and His people, talked with Him, the central Object for saints above or below. They appearing in glory spoke of His departure which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. How full of interest and instruction! One was the promulgator of God’s law, the other its restorer and vindicator when Israel apostatised and worshipped Baal.

Yet it was of our Lord’s death they talked, not of the law. Where was anything comparable to His death? and how ominous, “in Jerusalem”! Thereby alone was God glorified morally as to sin; there Satan for ever defeated; there man’s sin, there the Jew’s was darkest; there grace shown to the uttermost; there the judgment of our sins so borne, that God can only justify the believer in Jesus. What had either Moses or Elijah revealed to them that could fairly be put alongside of these truths? Yet they are the common faith of Christians, the faith once delivered to the saints. Peter who was there does not say a word about His wondrous converse; and Luke who was not there is the only one to record it. Nor was Paul at that time anything but a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to law a Pharisee, ignorant of Christ after the flesh, only to know Him as dead, risen and ascended to heaven, and in no way cognisant of the days of His flesh. What it proves is God’s design and power and will as to inspiration; who gave to each writer what consisted with His purpose by each. Here the apostle, having before him the power and coming of our Lord Jesus, testifies the honour and glory He received from God the Father, when initiated into that mystery which transcended all the secret mysteries of the heathen; as much as the Father and the Son in truth and love transcended their wretched divinities, morally contemptible on their own showing, whether in their fables or in moral effect on their votaries. But it was in view of the coming kingdom and Christ’s revelation to introduce it, with which this and the former Epistle teem. Peter does however speak here of “such a voice being borne (or uttered) to him by the magnificent glory: This is my beloved Son in whom I found my delight.” Soon, soon, would be proved by His departure in Jerusalem, that the city over which He wept saw in Him no form nor comeliness that it should at all desire; yea, hid as it were its face from Him, as an aversion of men and as smitten of God and afflicted. But here is attested by the voice out of the glory, This is my beloved Son in whom I found My delight. So it had been in eternity before creation; so it was when the world was made by Him, and in all the dealings of providence, in the secret working of grace with individuals, and in the public government of Israel under the law. So still more when the incarnate Word presented that object of His everlasting complacency as man on earth in unwavering dependence and obedience on His way to death for His glory, for man’s salvation, for the church’s blessedness, for His people’s deliverance, and for the reconciliation of all things. But Peter here too omits, what all three Synoptics tell us, the “hear Him” so important for their purposes, but not for God’s task assigned to himself. Christ had lost nothing of His eternal glory by His extreme humiliation even to the cross. On the contrary, as He had thus glorified God both as Father and as God, so He was the object for God the Father to glorify; and here in view of His coming kingdom, incomparably more glorious in itself and in Him who would display its full character and power than ever Rabbi had conceived. Their aspirations and anticipations were as short of it as of Himself, the true Messiah and the beloved Son of God. As the apostle once more recurs to the Father’s voice, let us follow him also. “And this voice we heard uttered (or, brought) out of heaven, being with him on the holy mountain” (ver. 18). The three apostles were truly eye-witnesses of the Lord’s majesty, all the more wondrous because it was His power and coming for a brief view in the midst of His humiliation in grace for God’s glory. Every part of the scene before their eyes was a magnificent testimony to the future kingdom of the Son of man beheld on a small scale, before the Lord come to establish it in its visible grandeur and its appointed season before the universe. But the emphasis is manifestly laid on “this voice we heard,” borne out of heaven as it was, when we were with Him on the holy mountain. Already had the Father’s voice been heard in terms identical with these now recorded, save the pregnant construction of εἰςὃν for ἐνὧ in the Gospel which makes no difference in translating. But none, as far as we know, heard the first time but the Lord Himself and the Baptist, though the Lord adduced it as one of the four testimonies to His personal glory which proved the Jews to be thoroughly unbelieving: John the Baptist His predicted herald; then the greater witness which the Father gave Him to complete; next, the Father that sent Him had Himself borne witness concerning Him by His voice; and lastly the scriptures, to which He assigned a very great place (John 5). But man’s will can resist any and all, as the Jews then verified to their ruin, and will another day and in another form, as He then warned them. The occasion too was quite different. For the grace of the Lord Jesus led Him to take His place with the feeble remnant of the Jews who obeyed John’s call to repentance, and came to the Jordan to be baptised as they did. Holy, guileless, undefiled, He associated Himself with those who had nothing but sins; yet as they confessed them, the first mark of awakened conscience in bowing to God’s call, He would not stand aloof though He had not the least evil to confess. It was the perfection of man’s position in lowly active love; and so He, the Righteous One, corrected John’s reluctance in the gracious words, Thus it becometh us (you and Me) to fulfil all righteousness. “And Jesus being baptised went up straightway from the water; and, behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him; and, behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The heavens opened to Him, the Holy Ghost’s descent as a dove on Him, the Father’s voice expressing His delight summed up there and then, bore witness to the divine delight in Him and never so much as in that act of humiliation in grace. Yet at the mount of Transfiguration the immediate occasion of the voice again heard, and by the chosen witnesses, was Peter’s own attempt to honour his Master in the highest way he could then suggest. But to put Him on a level with the chiefs of the law and the prophets would not suit the Father. “This is my beloved Son: hear Him.” And the terrified disciples fell upon their faces; but lifted up at the touch and the comforting words of their Master, they saw no one but Jesus, alone with themselves. He was to be heard, He paramountly, He the truth. Others at best were His forerunners. As noticed already, Peter here was not led to recall this last part of the utterance given in all the synoptic Gospels. His aim was to concentrate attention on Jesus as the centre of divine affection and glory; theirs was also to attest Him as the complete fulness and revealer of all the truth. Matthew gives the Father’s voice undiminished: as his province was to show the full consequence of the rejected Messiah, His larger glory as Son of man, and higher still as the beloved Son of God, the Rock on which the church was to be built. Mark and Luke omit here the expression of God’s complacency in Him, so as to throw stress on hearing Him; the former as the Servant Son in the gospel, the latter as God’s Son, yet fully man. Our apostle omits the clause they carefully record, not because he could or would forget it, but to make the more prominent the good pleasure the Father had in Him, His beloved Son. We next hear of the confirmation given by the vision on the mount to the prophetic word, the light of which, however valuable, is very briefly shown to yield to the superior brightness of a heavenly light for the hearts of saints, not a display to the world. “And we have the prophetic word firmer, to which ye do well in paying heed, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawn and a (or, the) morning star arise in your hearts” (ver. 19). The prophetic word of O.T. and of N.T. alike converges on the coming and kingdom of our Lord Jesus; and this, the apostle here declares, was made firmer, or confirmed, by what the witnesses were there given to behold and hear, the glorious anticipation and precursor of that day of power and glory for the universe. The predictions were absolutely true and reliable; but it seemed good to the All-wise at the first coming of Christ and in view of His death of shame (so essential to lay a basis for the ways and purposes of grace), to confirm the truth of His second coming and kingdom by a sight which set on the word another seal more. A vivid though brief realisation of its chief elements confirmed the prophetic word in a way beyond aught else. No season was so appropriate for it as when He earnestly charged and enjoined His disciples to tell no man that He was the Christ, saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and the third day be raised up. This was a fact wholly unexpected by all, even by him who had just owned His personal dignity as the Son of the living God. It was the substitution, for the Messianic testimony and hope utterly rejected by the people and their rulers, of the death and resurrection of the Son of man and Son of God. This laid the basis for introducing not only the kingdom of the heavens but the church, which now occupy the place which Israel once had in an earthly way under law, and when they repent shall have under Messiah and the new covenant. The Christian Jews, as the apostle says, were doing well in paying heed to all that the prophets had announced of those coming days of glory. They did not misapply their words, as Christendom soon began to do, to the different character of the parenthesis which runs on between the first and the second comings of Christ. It is now an unseen victory which faith beholds in Christ raised from among the dead and seated on His Father’s throne, and in Christians united to Him on high by the Spirit sent here below, whilst they suffer on the earth as their Master did (His atoning death excepted), not of the world as He was not. It will not be so in that day when Christ will appear and sit on His own throne, and they shall reign with Him, who now suffer with Him, if not also for Him. Then Israel, instead of being lost in unbelief, shall be saved, and become Jehovah’s witness in truth of heart and in power. And all the nations shall bow to His behest, not only having learnt righteousness when His judgments are on the earth, but truly subject to His anointed King on Zion, the centre of all the world’s kingdoms, whence the law goes forth, their idols of silver and gold consigned to the moles and to the bats. For the great invisible organiser of iniquity is shut up in the abyss, whilst this display of righteousness, peace, and glory is enjoyed by all the earth, till the hour strikes for God to sift those who have multiplied when war and want and pestilence are unknown. But those who are on the earth (the risen being above), as many as are not born of God, will fall under Satan’s power once more, when he is let loose to tempt, and prove that man’s fallen nature is as unimprovable under a dispensation of glory, as of grace, or law, or anything else. Man ever prefers Satan to God that he may have licence for his corruption or his violence. Dull as the Jewish Christians were as to our highest privileges, they were not so beguiled as to imagine that the prophetic word, save quite exceptionally, describes the Christian state which is now our portion. Their danger was rather to make the future kingdom to be their hope, instead of reading in the prophets the hope of Israel and of all the peoples who in that day accept Jehovah’s word from Jerusalem. It is the delusion of Christendom to appropriate it now by what they call spiritualising, and relegating to eternity what they cannot thus force. The believer called to heavenly hopes meanwhile does not forget that Jehovah will renew and restore Israel to their place of promise on the earth. Here accordingly they were told that, however well it was to heed the word of prophecy, it is but “as a lamp shining in a dark place;” for so the earth is and must be till the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings. But he just glances at the higher light of heavenly truth, which they might have as yet but feebly entered into, however truly they had received Christ Jesus as their Lord. The prophetic word did show the ruin of Israel as a whole for its idolatry, and the special further sin of Judah for the rejection of the Messiah. The prophetic word made clear the rise of the four Gentile empires while the Jews are Lo-ammi (not-my-people), and between Daniel and the Apocalypse also the reappearing of the last or Roman empire with the apostate Jews, who set up the Antichrist in Palestine, to be destroyed by the Lord shining out from heaven. But the prophetic word nowhere reveals those heavenly counsels which the mystery (hid from the ages) made known through Paul. Nor does Peter here do more than allude to it under the strikingly distinct figures of “day” and “morning star.” The lamp is excellent to cast adequate light on this dark world, its evil and its doom; and they did well in paying it heed, “till day dawn and a (or, the) morning star arise in your hearts.” That is to say, till they apprehend with enjoyment the bright heavenly relationship which Christianity fully understood gives us now in Christ, and the heavenly hope of His coming to introduce us into the Father’s house. The prophetic lamp is good to help us against the squalid place; but how much more is “daylight” in Christ to lift us above the world in all our associations of faith, and the bright hope, Christ as Morning Star, which He not only is, but has promised to give the overcomer (Revelation 2:28, Revelation 22:16-17)! The apostle adds an important caution to the commendation in ver. 19. They did well in taking heed to the prophetic word. God alone can speak with certainty of the future, for a world in confusion and change, prone to sin; and He has been pleased, not only to speak but to write by chosen instruments, that those who believe may profit by His communications, where otherwise they were liable to stray, but thereby were enabled by faith to enjoy the measure of light thus afforded. His people could not despise it, save to His dishonour and their own loss. Before the deluge Enoch prophesied as to the ungodly in deeds and words, whose daring would bring on the Lord’s coming with His holy myriads to execute judgment on their ungodliness: a prophecy preserved and cited by the inspired Jude as yet to be accomplished on those that deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Later still by faith Noah, oracularly warned concerning things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house; by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness that is according to faith (Hebrews 11:7). Abram had not only prophecy but a prophetic vision, centuries before the facts of his seed’s oppression in Egypt and of deliverance from the oppressor by divine judgments, which should also deal in due time with the enemies who filled Canaan (Gen. 15). Further, he was given as: a mark of divine friendship to learn from Jehovah Himself the imminent destruction of the cities of the Plain. Nor is it otherwise with us Christians; for if given an incomparably “better thing” now in and with Christ glorified after the accomplishment of redemption, we do not lose the present value of prophecy. The same Holy Spirit, who guides us into all the truth (as He empowered the apostles and prophets to make it known to us), was to declare unto us the things that are to come, and He is in us to make all good instead of leaving us to unprofitable guesswork. But for this reason we need the authority of God’s. word, and here we have it, “Knowing this first that no prophecy of scripture is (or, becometh) of its own interpretation” (ver. 20). “Its own,” which is the simplest and the strictest and the most frequent usage of the disputed word, alone satisfies the context. It is hard to see why the A.V. and the Revision adopted “private” except that they did not know what to make of it. So does Dean Alford, following in his commentary Huther’s idea “that prophecy springs not out of human prognostication.” Such a view may be intelligible where the freethinking of higher criticism prevails as an antidote; but it could only be regarded with horror by the Christian Jews, whom the apostle was addressing. Nor was the canon which the apostle lays down directed against such humanizing sceptics; it is a serious caution to the believer for his profit in seeking edification and intelligence in studying the writings of the prophets. Dean A. says “two references seem to be possible” (to us, and to the prophets themselves). He has overlooked a third, which is even grammatically the most exact, the prophecy itself, “No prophecy of Scripture is, or comes to be, of its own interpretation.” If you isolate prophecy and make each part its own interpreter, you counteract its origin and character, and lose its force as pertaining to God’s grand scheme for glorifying His Son, the Lord Jesus. It is divine design which gives prophecy of Scripture, like the rest, this character. The apostle is therefore guarded in his language beyond what the commentators in general have apprehended. He does not deny that many a prophecy had its scope only in a particular and passing event of sufficient moment to call for it. And not a few such are mentioned in scripture. Take in Genesis the dreams of Pharaoh and of his two chamberlains previously. Take in the Acts of the Apostles the prophecies of Agabus as to the faming and the apostle Paul. Many such are recorded in the O.T. Yet none of them is a prophecy of Scripture as here intended, not for instance so much as Jacob’s in Gen. 49 or Moses’ in Deut. 33., nor yet Balaam’s in Num. 23, still less the Prophets’ so-called. They had their importance at the time, as the Scripture intimates. By “prophecy of scripture” the apostle, to my mind, appears to mean exclusively such as look on to the future Kingdom of God for Christ’s glory; and this is the object in the prophets, so that it may be predicated of every “prophecy of scripture” whether in O. or N.T. They may speak not a little of the moral evil which necessitates God’s intervention to put down Satan and a revolted world, and to bring in the long promised reign of the Lord in righteousness, peace, and glory. But it is of that blessed Kingdom as His theme that the inspiring Spirit delights to speak, because it will then be the sphere of Christ’s glory manifested in the universe; as He has already in the N.T. made known to the Christian His hidden glory as the exalted Man on high. Hence it is that from Isaiah to Malachi no “prophecy of scripture,” whatever the importance of any event in God’s providence and the application of prophecy to it meanwhile, stops short of the grand fulfilment, “when the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” Satan loses his bad eminence, and Israel shall be saved, to blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit. It is what the first man never attained, neither Nebuchadnezzar nor Cyrus, neither Alexander nor Caesar. It will be verified in Jehovah Jesus when “Jehovah shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall be one Jehovah, and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9). We need not here speak of Christ’s exaltation over all the heavens as well as the earth; nor of the church’s union with Him, as Head of the body over all things: the two parts of that mystery which, hidden from the ages in God, was now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit’s power, and hence to us Christians in the N. T. But the kingdom was in full and increasing view from God’s sentence on the serpent throughout the ages; and any turning aside at the comparatively small events within their compass frustrates the design of God in the testimony of them all to the coming Deliverer and King. Yea, this was so notorious that the very heathen were aware that His birth was expected at or about the time when our Lord appeared and had the cross assigned Him by the Jews and Gentiles, instead of the crown. Tacitus and Suetonius attest this; and so does their own historian of the siege of Jerusalem. Yet prophecy of scripture predicted that so it was to be, and in the true moral order of “the Christward sufferings, and the glories after these” (1 Peter 1:11). For thus only could those who believe be rescued from evil and share His glories. To reign first, and afterward suffer, would be nugatory and purposeless, with utter confusion. But because Christ was thus faithful in His infinite love, the unbelieving Jews rejected Him; and therefore God rejected them for a season of rich mercy to the Gentiles meanwhile. We can understand accordingly that “prophecy of scripture” is fraught with God’s mind about Christ’s kingdom in power and glory, and this after His sufferings, though the latter element is not so frequent as the former, yet well attested in one form or another in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets. But where is not the future kingdom over the earth held out? One exception may be alleged, the very peculiar but deeply interesting and instructive book of Jonah, which on the surface has no “prophecy of scripture,” but only a conditional threat of judgment arrested by repentance. Yet it conveys a true prophetic narrative on which the Lord affixed His seal, not only as preaching to the heathen Ninevites that repented, but as a sign of His own death and resurrection, when the Gentile that believes enters the blessing of grace, and the Jew who refused reaps the judgment of his unbelief. For Jonah shows us Israel shut up in a selfish prejudice that despised the Gentile, unwilling to warn, and jealous lest, if Nineveh repented, God should be gracious enough to arrest the judgment, and thus set aside the prophet’s denunciation. In the way of a contrast Jonah typified. Christ, though himself an unfaithful witness, and hence cast into the sea, and even for three days and nights swallowed by a great fish. Even then whilst going to the Gentiles, he sulked at God’s grace, at the time when God made him feel his folly. Whereas Christ was the Faithful Witness, saved His ungrateful people, delighted in grace to the Gentile, and for the joy lying before Him in love and obedience endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God’s throne. Jonah’s course was a true type prophetically of Christ, but as much to his own shame as to God’s glory in the end; as to which his writing the book by inspiration is the best proof of his repentance. It also contrasts strikingly with the perfection of Christ, and prefigures the mercy God as a faithful Creator will show, not only to the dark heathen but to the meanest of His creatures.

Had He listened to the Jew, yea and a real Jewish prophet, not a Ninevite had been spared in honour of his woe on the city. But God is righteous to the claims and worth of Christ’s atoning death, which in the coming kingdom will shine in the mercy and blessing of all nations, so that “beasts and all cattle” shall join the chorus of praise to His name from the earth (Ps. 148). Thus even the book of Jonah in its exceptional way differs only in its form from other prophecies of scripture. All point to Christ’s coming Kingdom over the earth, which was so soon forgotten after the apostles, that there is no proper statement of it in a single ancient creed, any more than in the symbols of the Reformation. Neither the Fathers, nor the Reformers, were at all versed in prophecy. The Oxford revival of the Fathers accordingly in no way helps; still less does the Rationalist school, which denies it in principle. Nor has Nonconformity any light of God as to the future, least of all since it has entered the arena of politics, and become as worldly as Popery itself in setting its mind on earthly things. The last verse of our chapter gives the reason why no prophecy of Scripture can be limited to its own isolated solution, but forms part of a vast circle of divine predictions centring in Christ and His kingdom. “For no prophecy was ever brought by will of man, but [holy] men* spoke from God, moved (or, borne along) by [the] Holy Spirit” (ver. 21). *The MSS. are here very confused, both in order which is of less importance, and in words added or omitted. Yet all the uncials omit the article before ἄνθρωποι (men) as the best do ἅγιοι (holy). It is not surprising that those who are only conversant with man, his thoughts, sayings and doings, believe not in prophecy any more than miracle, and despise grace and truth. For all these are of God, and utterly impossible save by His power: grace and truth are only in and through our Lord Jesus. If we now turn our attention to prophecy, consider how Isaiah the prophet was led to triumph over heathen prognosticators and idolatrous stargazers, as Moses did over the magicians of Egypt, and Elijah over the priests of Baal. “Produce your cause,” we read in Isaiah 41:21 etc., “saith Jehovah, bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob; let them bring forth and show us what will happen; let them show the former things what they [be] that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye [are] gods; yea, do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold [it] together. Behold, ye [are] of nothing and your work of nought: an abomination [is he that] chooseth you. I have raised [one] up from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name; and he shall come upon princes as [upon] mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay. Who hath declared from the beginning that we may know? and before time, that we may say, [He is] righteous? Yea, [there is] none that showeth; yea, [there is] none that declareth; yea, [there is] none that heareth your words.” Here the challenge was beyond any votary of a false god to take up, though the demand was small compared with prophecy of scripture. It was beyond mar’s will to speak even in an isolated way of a future person or event. But those given by God’s intent are each part of an immense web which He has woven, on which is indelibly traced His purpose of glorifying Him who gave up the glory proper to Him as divine, that He might become man and by His death and resurrection conciliate the most jarring principles and join the most opposed persons. He will take away all the sins and iniquities of believers; He will establish righteousness, peace and joy over all the earth where self and will wrought only evil and mischief. He has defeated and will defeat the subtle and mighty adversary and all his host. He wine back the weak rebels (deceived to set God at defiance) into repentance, meekness and humility, rejoicing to be the ready servants of His will; for God deigns to make them His children, and His sons, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. They enjoy even here and now fellowship with the Father and the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit by His working on life in Christ; and they reign with Him when He reigns before the world, as for ever before God. Nor is it only that the reconciliation is what we receive now; but it will embrace the heavens defiled by the enemy’s evil, and the earth where he, through man’s servitude, set himself up as prince and the god of the world. Through Christ’s death on the cross all things shall be reconciled unto God, the things whether on the earth or in the heavens; not those who live and die despising alike the unseen God and His Son who stooped so low and suffered infinitely for sin that God might be able to say righteously to the worst, Be reconciled to God. As He will have the risen saints above with Christ, thus giving His children their special joy in the Father’s house, so they share Christ’s glory before the universe. Nor shall anything fail of His magnificent plans for the earth, when Israel shall be delivered from his stiffneckedness, and adore the crucified Messiah, and rise out of all abasement to be God’s son, His firstborn nationally upon the earth; and all the nations shall abandon their shameless idolatries, and willingly own the long guilty people to be the seed Jehovah has blessed. “And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister to thee; and the nation and kingdom that will not serve Zion shall perish,” when Messiah reigns, and Israel are under the new covenant. To all this the will of man is adverse; but were it ever so zealous to help, who is sufficient but God to take in a range so vast, deep, and high? Hence the only possible power is that of the Holy Spirit; and God has deigned, in His great love of man’s blessing, to tell us beforehand of those coming glories of Christ, as by holy men He also predicted His sufferings. It was a competency so entirely conferred by God’s grace, that now to pave the way for the apostasy Satan has raised up a new school of men in all the world’s seats of learning, and very largely among the clerical and ministerial ranks, who agree in nothing so much as that true prophecy is impossible. They thus bear on their forehead and hands the stain of infidelity, and spend their activities in propagating their lie about a large part of both Testaments as God’s truth. Yet the fact is that direct, formal, and avowed prophecies abound in scripture, positive and definite, some of the largest and loftiest character, and others minute to a degree that none could expect who is not familiar with the most condescending tenderness in God. But also the narrative of persons and facts from the first book of the O.T. has a deep scope of prophecy below its surface. The same principle applies to His instructions for His earthly people which none but the unspiritual fail to see running through not Genesis only but Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and in a less degree Deuteronomy, and really scripture in general which is not open prediction. Who but God was sufficient for those things? Truly when we accept and understand as well as believe that no prophecy was ever brought by will of man, but men spoke from God moved by the Holy Spirit, we can but say, flow gracious of God! how needed by us! But how base that man should be so deaf to His word, so ready to heed the shallow reasonings of Satan’s emissaries who add to their guilt the pretence of bearing the Christian name, though sinking lower than decent Jews!

In the second Epistle of Peter (and here I must be brief, because of the hour; and I may be brief because Jude will afford us a further consideration of it) we have the same substantial truth of God’s righteous government maintained. But the apostle here supplements his first letter by bringing in its effect on the world in that coming day, and especially in its judgment of Christendom or corrupted Christianity. Written of course for the guidance of the saints, it may well serve as a warning to sinners, whether in the profane world or as to those that abuse righteousness and truth. There is an expression in 2 Peter 1:3 to which I particularly call your attention. “According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us by glory and by virtue.” It is really not to glory and virtue, but by His own glory and by virtue. This seems to me an important statement of the Holy Ghost’s to understand. What serves to make it plain is this: — Adam was not “called” when in Paradise. When innocent, he was not called by God’s own glory and by virtue. What Adam was bound to do was just to stay where he was. That is, he was responsible to do the will of God, or, rather, not to do what God prohibited in his case.

There was a simple test of obedience. It was not a thing that Adam really needed in the smallest degree. He had everything that he wanted and much more, for God showed Himself to be one that delights in abundantly blessing when He put man in Paradise. The business of man, then, was to keep his first estate; he should have simply abode in his position. When he listened to the devil, this was a call not by God’s own glory and virtue, but to do the devil’s will. It was a seeking of his own independence by disobeying God’s express word.

Our calling is by God’s own glory. The whole principle of Christianity is just this. It takes the believer out of the place in which he naturally is, and alas! now in sin; and therefore it is spoken of as a calling. The Christian “calling” supposes that the gospel, where received, deals with the soul by the power of the Spirit of God; and that he who receives it is called out of the condition in which man is now plunged by sin, not put back again into the position of Adam, but taken into another position altogether. It is no longer a question of man on earth; he is called by God’s own glory and by virtue. It is by God’s own glory, because if God saves, He calls to stand in nothing less than that glory. The declared effect of sin is, as it is said in Romans 3:1-31, that all “come short of the glory of God.” By this they are now measured.

Are they fit to stand in presence of the glory of God? The glory of God is the standard of judgment now for a sinner; it is no question of regaining the lost paradise or of keeping the law, even if it were possible. The blessedness of the gospel is that it calls a man not to put him in the place of the unfallen man or of a Jew on the earth, but by God’s own glory; and along with this “by virtue.” There is a holy restraint put on the allowance of the flesh in any respect whatever. It brings in not “virtue” as the first great point, but God’s own glory, and then virtue along with this (that is, the moral courage which refuses the gratification of the old nature). “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature.” Such is the efficacy of the call of grace. A new nature is communicated which loves the will of God, and abhors the evil whereby Satan has inundated the world. “Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” Then he shows there is no time for waiting or ease. “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue” (or the moral courage I have already described); and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness love.” These last two qualities are not the same. “Love” is a great deal more and deeper than “brotherly kindness.” The latter makes one’s brother the prominent object; the former tests everything by God and His will and glory. Therefore you may find a Christian very full of brotherly love, but sadly at fault when the test of love comes, which feels and insists that the first of all duties is that God should have His way. “By this we know,” as John said, (and who knew love better?) “that we love the children of God, if we love God, and keep His commandments.” In the next part of the chapter (2 Peter 2:1-22) we have the kingdom introduced, which is really the main object of Peter’s testimony in the first epistle as well as in the second. Being about to depart himself, he as it were throws open the blessed prospect of the Lord’s interference to put aside evil in the world, and display His own power and goodness here below. Such is the kingdom that will be brought in at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. His coming, or presence, embraces the kingdom within its wide circumference. But then in stating this, the utmost pains are taken to show that there is something better than the prospect of the kingdom, glorious as it is; and this is of capital importance to see clearly. Thus verse 19 opens the matter, which I must give you rather more exactly than as it stands in our version: “We have also the word of prophecy more confirmed, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed.” They were quite right in holding fast the old prophetic scriptures. Even as Jews they had known those portions of the word of God, and the apostle in no way blames them for adhering to them tenaciously. So far, it was quite right. “Ye do well that ye take heed” to them. It was needless to press attention with greater warmth; but still he commends the heed they paid to the prophetic word of the Old Testament. Yet study it either in the New Testament or in the Old Testament, one cannot but dread when prophecy becomes the all-absorbing object.

It is not meant deeply to engage the affections. It may occupy the mind to the exclusion of what is better still. Its nature forbids it from adequately filling the heart that is purified by faith; nor does the apostle mean that it should ever have such a place. When he says, “Ye do well that ye take heed to it,” he adds the instructive comparison, “as unto a lamp that shineth in a dark place.” This is what prophecy resembles. He does not then stop, but points us to another and brighter light — “until the day dawn, and the morning-star arise in your hearts.” He means that prophecy is a divinely given lamp for this dark scene. None can despise without loss the light it casts on this obscure place, the world which is going to be judged.

It shows us the awful end and thereby guards us all the way through. As a lamp for the dark, prophecy is therefore excellent; it is given of God for this purpose; and no Christian can afford to slight or overlook it as an unprofitable study, which does not claim and cannot reward his heed. They were quite right, then; but let them see to it that the heart possess a far better treasure. And what can this be? Not Christianity indeed as a whole, but the Christian hope. The Lord’s coming, and all that is bound up with Him on high as the hope of the Christian and of the church, must not be lowered to a mere prophetic event. Prophecy deals with the earth, with the Jew, with the nations, with evil here below; prophecy declares men to be so bad that the Lord must come and judge them, and then introduce His own kingdom, no longer morally and in testimony, but in power and glory.

But is this all that Christ is for us? Do you confound the Christian hope with the judgment of Babylon, the overthrow of the Gentiles, the restoration of Israel? A Christian has the faith that in principle all evil has been judged long ago in the cross; that it has been absolutely and perfectly condemned, beyond whatever can be in the creature here below. His hope, therefore, rises far above the revelation of that display of power in righteousness as well as mercy which is to put aside evil, and then bless a long guilty and miserable world with peace and joy and every form of creature goodness. The Christian hope is the taking the Christian out of the world altogether to be in glory with Christ, the object of his heart. Therefore Peter says, “Until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.” When does he mean by this expression?

When the Christian lays hold of this hope; when he is not merely warned by prophecy, but has his heart reached and filled with the heavenly hope, the light of a better day, yea, Christ Himself the source and centre of it all. Accordingly, “till the day dawn” does not mean till the day come — till the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings, and the wicked are trodden down like ashes under the feet. This is not at all the meaning of the phrase. It is the dawn of day in the heart; it is a hope that should be realized now because we are children of the day. Consequently we ought to have, as a present thing, that daylight dawning, and the morning star arising in our hearts. A soul born of God might believe all that is in the prophecies — and it is well to heed it all — but this is not enough. Not the downfall of Nineveh, nor the judgment of the great whore, nor the destruction of the beast, is the Christian hope.

Our hope is that we and all Christians are to be taken out of the world, and translated into heavenly glory. Consequently the light of the lamp does not suffice; we need also daylight. Good as the lamp is, its main value in an obscure place is “till daylight dawn” — not till we acquire more of its own light, but till a brighter character of light, daylight, dawn. It is not the actual arrival of the day that he means, but the light of day before itself comes: “Till daylight dawn, and the morning-star arise in your hearts.” Christ is made known in this heavenly light for the Christian. It is not Christ dealing with the world and judging the nations. This is the way in which Christ is described in prophecy.

But not thus is Christ set before the Christian. In short, the apostle means that it is well to hold fast the prophetic lamp, which he did not want to disparage in any way, provided it were kept in its proper place. It foreshows the judgment of the world, and it separates the believer, if he believes it, from the world. But this is negative. Do we not ourselves belong to another scene? It is all well then to turn our back on the world, which the prophetic lamp judged; but are we also turning our faces to the light that dawns from above? There are many Christians now that seem to be all occupied with the vast changes either in progress or in anticipation for the earth.

About them they fritter away thought and time with no worthy, positive, sanctifying object for their affections. How can one have affection for the judgment of Babylon and the beast? I am not called to anything of the sort. The lamp shows it me, and I am glad to be warned and responsible to warn others. But am I not called to have the only worthy object filling my heart? It is Christ Himself; and this not in the execution of judgment, but in the fulness of grace about to take us out of the world to heaven, and not merely to be assessors with Himself in judging the world when He appears in glory. Therefore I do most strenuously oppose the petty efforts that have been made to sever the expression “in our hearts” from this verse. It is a sorrow to see them, and to know that any Christians could be influenced by them. Only this morning I was looking at a book in which there was a most misleading parenthesis introduced, as if the meaning were, “Ye do well to take heed in your hearts;” thus severing the connection of “in your hearts” from “the day dawn and the day-star arise.” What can one call this but abominable? There is another way also in which I have seen the truth sought to be destroyed, by connecting “in your hearts” with “knowing this first,” contrary to all analogy of Peter or any one else, and in fact without the smallest reason, but with the evident object of obliterating for the heart the value of the heavenly hope. Such dealings with the text I cannot characterise as mistakes only, but as unwarrantable meddling with the word of God. There is not the slightest foundation for either the one punctuation or the other. The English version is perfectly, correct in this at least. And it may help some enquirers perhaps if I show them that Peter elsewhere thoroughly confirms this to a plain English reader. In the first epistle it is written, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.” It is clear that the expression “in your hearts” is no unimportant phrase in Peter’s epistles. If we do not “sanctify the Lord God in our hearts,” we shall not gather much good either from prophecy or from the heavenly hope; but if we do, it is of. the highest moment for us to have Christ as the morning-star arising in our hearts, and not such a knowledge of prophecy satisfying us as a godly Jew might once have possessed. Compare also “knowing this first” in 2 Peter 3:3. There is no connection with “in your hearts” there any more than here. It is difficult to speak with patience of these rash ways with the word of God. I hold it to be a grievous sin indeed to warp scripture from the purpose for which God has written it. If it be said that these innovations meant only what is good, the question is whether any are at liberty without the best reasons to change the form of the text, and particularly to do so without telling you. In this very place for instance, in a book which professes to be the authorised version of the bible, you unsuspectingly take up the book without knowing. any chance has been made in the punctuation, and your hope is destroyed before you know why, — that is, if you trust their form of the book, which the compilers meant you should. There is another phrase that follows, on which it may be well to say a word: “No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” Many a soul asks, What is meant by this? Of course, the error of Catholicism is not to be thought of: the remedy against making prophecy of private interpretation is in no way ecclesiastical tradition. I am speaking now to persons uninfluenced by such thoughts, and need not expose its irrelevant absurdity. But, again, there are many Protestants like Bishop Horsley who think it means that the way to hinder prophecy from being of private interpretation is to take history to interpret prophecy. In this I do confess I see little change for the better. Whether you take the church to interpret prophecy, or look into the world to read its interpretation, it is but a sorry choice, and as far as possible either way from the sense.

The meaning is, that no prophecy of scripture is of its own insulated interpretation. Limit a prophecy to the particular event that is supposed to be intended by that scripture, and you make it of private interpretation. For instance, if you so regard the prophecy of Babylon’s fall in Isaiah 13:1-22; Isaiah 14:1-32, you make this prophecy of private interpretation. How? Because you make the event to cover the prophecy, you interpret the prophecy by the event. But this is precisely what scripture prophecy is made not to be; and it is to hinder the reader from this error that the apostle writes as he does here.

The truth, on the contrary, is that all prophecy has for its object the establishment of the kingdom of Christ; and if you sever the lines of prophecy from this great central point on which they all converge, you destroy the intimate connection of these prophetic lines with the centre. It is like lopping off the branches from the tree to which they belong, or limbs from the body of which they are integral parts. So it is with prophecy. All prophecy runs on to the kingdom of Christ, because it comes from the Holy Ghost. If it were the forecasting of men, a man might apply it to a particular event; and there it would end. It might be a sagacious conjecture or not. But supposing it to be ever so correct, after all it is only within the limits of a man’s mind. But not so with prophecy of scripture.

The Spirit of God is satisfied with no aims short of the kingdom of Christ, and hence therefore prophecy as a whole looks onward to that bright end. It may have had a partial accomplishment, a just application by the way, but it never stops short of His coming and “that day.” For the very same reason, when Moses and Elias were put by Peter on the smallest approach to equality with the Lord Jesus on the mount, the Father set aside Moses and Elias with the words, “This is my beloved Son: hear ye him.” His object is not Moses, or Elias either: it is Christ, the beloved Son of God. So the Holy Ghost in prophecy does the self-same thing. He had the same object as the Father — the glory of the Lord Jesus. Only as the Father held to the glory of His Son as such, the Holy Ghost in prophecy looks to the kingdom to be put under the Lord Jesus: and so “the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” They could not therefore have any object other than that of the Holy Ghost who inspired them; and so prophecy must be interpreted, not isolatedly, but as forming part of the Spirit’s testimony to the purpose of God in glorifying Christ. The second chapter shows us the opposite side — Satan’s instruments in defaming Christ and injuring souls — the false teachers in Christendom, just as there had been false prophets among the people of old. What an awful character is given to them, justifying the judgment that is coming upon them! In the last chapter (2 Peter 3:1-18) we have not merely false teachers, corrupt in their ways as in their doctrines, but scoffers ridiculing the coming of the Lord Jesus. What is the answer of the Holy Ghost to this? Their ground was the assumed unchangeableness of the world. Oh the folly of man when he opposes God! What a confirmation it is that at this present time philosophy is precisely coming to this! Christendom is going back to heathen conclusions as fast as possible.

It does not matter whether we look at the popular physiologists, geologists, naturalists, astronomers, economists, metaphysicians, historians, or any others you like, they are in general hastening to this humiliating end; that is to say, a denial of the distinct statements of scripture and an exclusion of God from His own world. Their idea is, that a sort of cycle governs nature, ever repeating itself through the same round. It is the same at bottom as Peter denounces here — the notion that there is a perpetuity in the state of things around us. Consequently such as believe in nature must scoff at the assertion of the Lord coming to change the face of all things. The apostle warns them to abandon that delusion, for after all God has intervened already. The God that caused the flood, and destroyed the world that once was, can destroy the world again. And this is precisely what the Lord is going to do. Therefore, if you tauntingly say," Where is the promise of his coming?" I answer you, not that He is coming for you, but that the day of the Lord is coming on the world. What can scoffers have to do with the coming of the Lord for His own people?

You may ask with a scoff, “Where is the promise of his coming?” But we can answer with assurance that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night — as sudden, unexpected, and unwelcome, for the judgment and destruction of the creation which is your rest and ruin. When everything has disappeared that can, and all that is to be shaken shall have been dissolved, the result will be the new heavens and new earth, “wherein dwelleth righteousness,” without one scoffer more. The believer then in the face of this is exhorted to holy conversation and godliness. “Ye therefore, beloved, seeing that ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away by the error of the wicked, should fall from your own stedfastness;” for there is danger of the Christian’s contamination by the spirit of the world. What then is the preservative? “Grow in grace, and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-29; 1 John 3:1-24; 1 John 4:1-21; 1 John 5:1-21 The Epistles of John have evidently a character altogether peculiar to themselves. Christ Himself personally is more before us than in any other of the inspired epistles. Nevertheless there is this difference between the Gospel and the Epistles of John: that his gospel necessarily treats of Christ in a direct and immediate way, and then the provision that He made, when He was about to leave the world and His disciples in it, by the Holy Ghost taking His place down here (these being the two chief subjects of the Gospel of John); in the Epistles, on the other hand, while Christ is still prominent, the main characteristic is to show Christ is in us, as well (so to speak) as Christ in Himself — that it is the self-same life, Christ personally being its full perfect expression. In order to set out this astonishing truth with all clearness, the Epistle opens directly with the Lord, and this as He was manifested in this world. The Gospel begins with Christ before all worlds. Such is not the manner in which the Holy Ghost begins here. I am aware that some have been disposed to take “That which was from the beginning,” (1 John 1:1) as if it taught the same truth as “In the beginning was the Word.” No doubt there is an allusion, but there is also a marked difference. We gain nothing by forcing scripture: we always lose somewhat. In the Gospel, where Christ Himself directly and immediately is the object, the Holy Ghost starts with revealing His divine subsistence when there was none but God: “The Word was with God,” and lest there should be any question of His glory, “the Word was God” — not the creature. “The same was in the beginning with God.” Thus He had a distinct personal existence, which had been from everlasting. No matter how far one goes back, we may still find the Word, and the Word with God: it is not said exactly with the Father, but with God. We never in scripture find the “Word” coupled with the “Father.” We do find it in what is not scripture, as I shall show before we have done with considering this Epistle. In unquestionable scripture, “the Word” and “God” are correlative, — the “Son” and the “Father.” Man cannot even imitate the word of God without exposing his own weakness. The Gospel therefore, in order to assert His glory, goes back before all time. And “in the beginning” — no matter where you may ask to place the point within eternity — the Word was there. But this is not at all the object of the Epistle. It is assumed no doubt, but It is to show how truly the life is the very same. It is not union. Life is never confounded with union, though in the Christian closely connected. Union is by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, but life was before this, whether in Christ personally, or even in us. Christ Himself is our life. Hence, when flesh had hindered and overlaid the power of the Spirit; when the world was gaining vast influence; when Satan was working with all subtlety to undermine the foundations, the Holy Ghost directs attention to Christ, in whom the life was manifested. In what the Son of God was before entering the world, there could be no instruction for us how the life is to be now displayed in us; and what God looks for, — how by the Holy Ghost He nourishes and exercises us. The weightiest instruction turns on what Christ was here, having to do with man — with Satan — above all, with His God and Father. So have we. Hence, therefore, it is not here, “He was in the beginning with God,” but “That which was from the beginning.” This is a phrase (ἀπ᾽ἀρχῆς) constantly used as to the manifestation of the one or thing spoken of: it matters not whether it be good or evil. We find the formula used, for instance, of Satan. There is no reference to what he was before he became the devil; there is silence as to his subsistence as an unfallen angel, but when he departed from God, he sins from the beginning. Such is his character as devil: he sinned. As for our Lord Jesus, He was manifested as man here below; but before we hear of what was manifested, John says, “That which was from the beginning.” He had a personal being as man here below — a divine person no doubt, but He took a real place in this world. This seems to be referred to in the expression “which was from the beginning.” Next we have the fact that others are directed towards Him — what we have “heard” about Him — what we have “seen with our eyes.” It was not a mere phantom, but a real person in this world — hence “that which we have looked upon,” or contemplated. Even though from above, He was really an object seen; He was not a passing shadow, but a person, “which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled” (coming down as it were into the closest familiarity) “concerning the word of life.” It will be understood that all these different clauses refer to the Word of life — what was from the beginning about the Word of life: what we have heard about the Word of life: what we have seen, and so on. “And the life was manifested.” The second verse yet makes the first plainer; for there we find His pre-existence with the Father, when the apostle has stated His manifestation (for that expression “the life was manifested” is a kind of summary of what had been laid down in the preceding verse): “The life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and announce to you that eternal life, which was with the Father.” Now here we have the Son’s eternal being, so that there is no holding it back in this verse. It is supposed and treated of as a known truth; but the present object is to put forward the Lord Jesus as He was displayed in this world; for “it was manifested to us: that which we have seen and heard” (taking up the two verses) “announce we to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” Thus the evident aim here is to show that there has been a manifestation — an adequate personal revelation of God the Father. The only such adequate manifestation was Christ Himself. But it was Christ Himself in this world, a man as truly as any other, though infinitely above man, but a man who displayed what divine life is in all imaginable circumstances. He became a babe, a child, a full-grown man. He grew up subject to His parents; He entered on public life, as before He was traced in the, unobtrusive privacy of His home after the flesh. He is then found confronted with the enemy, going forth in the power of the Spirit, dealing with every kind of pain and sorrow that pressed down humanity, in everything showing out what God is, but in everything also displaying what man ought to have been, and was not — Himself always absolute perfection, but perfection as man in dependence on God. What, it may be asked, has this to do with us? Everything. It is not true that we only want propitiation, or as guilty sinners to be justified. We want life — eternal life. But have not the children of God eternal life? Certainly, but where shall I look at it? I see a beautiful trait of the divine life in this saint; I see something else sweet, and at the same time humbling to my soul, in another — perhaps where least expected. But in all there is weakness and even positive failure.

Who would not confess it? who does not feel it? This, then, after all, is but an unworthy expression of what divine life is, because it is shaded too often and modified by the effect of the world, by the allowance of nature, by a thousand thoughts, feelings, ways, habits which do not savour of Christ. All these things break in upon and mar the perfect outshining of that new life that is communicated to all the children of God. And here is the blessedness of what the Holy Ghost at once ushers in without a single note of preface, — without the smallest allusion to any other person or topic. With Christ before Him, could it be otherwise? There was but one adequate and worthy object of the Holy Ghost, and it was Christ.

Neither was it at all requisite to say for whom John was inspired to write thus. Of necessity, Christ was for His own.

For whom could Christ be portrayed,. if not for the Christian? But then the suitable homage to Christ was to bring into prominence none but Christ Himself; and so we find the epistle of John opening in a way unlike any other. There may be some approach to analogy in the remarkable manner the apostle Paul writes to the Hebrews. He who writes and those who are written to are in the back ground, that God may unfold His ancient oracles about the Messiah His Son. But in Hebrews, the reason is rather the grace that condescended to Jewish weakness. In John, the reason is the all-eclipsing glory of Him, the Eternal Life, who deigns in grace and by redemption to be our life. It was John’s allotted province thus to bring Christ before those that are His; and he has done so in the power of the Holy Ghost, and with a wisdom that proves itself altogether divine to him who has ears to hear. Through such a revelation as this the great comfort is that God is showing His children, conscious of their own weakness, what in this respect grace has given them in Christ — what the very life is that they have received. Often cast down and groaning in the feeling of how little they manifest the life of Christ, and needing to know what His life — their life — Christ — is in its own excellency, they are directed to Himself. In its perfection it is seen in Christ alone. This it is therefore that opens our epistle; and what is the effect? “These things which we have seen and heard we announce to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.” The apostles had fellowship with the Son of God, and they were particularly chosen out, as we find in the Lord’s prayer (the proper prayer of the Lord, not that which is commonly so called in Matthew 6:1-34, Luke 11:1-54, blessed as it is, but in John 17:1-26) For it is evident that the apostles have a singularly distinguished place assigned them. But Christians also are immediately concerned; for there is no doubt that others were to be brought in and to believe through their word. And thus they are expressly the objects of their Lord’s communications to the Father. Here, too, the design was that others should have fellowship with the Son of God: the first favoured ones were not to keep it to themselves, but to spread abroad the riches of His grace. As we see in John 17:1-26 that others were to believe through the apostles’ word, so here John acts on the intimation himself The object is, “that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” It is with “the Father,” because he communicates what He loves best. Never was anything, or one in His sight, so precious as the manifestation of His own Son in manhood here below. It was what opened the heavens, so to speak; it was what caused the Father’s voice to be heard; and this in various critical circumstances, where it might have seemed that a dishonouring shade hung over the Anointed of God. But not so; it was but an appearance in the eyes of dimly seeing man — Christ was perfection always. Take, for instance, the scene of His baptism; or, again, the mount of transfiguration.

Our fellowship then is with the Father. He shares with us the object of His own delight. But our fellowship is no less with His Son Jesus Christ, who lets us into the secret of the Father’s love, and gives a place with Himself to His own, as far as it could be communicated to the creature. “Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” And what is the designed effect? Fulness of joy. “These things write we unto you that your joy may be full.” If any believer, then, looks at Jesus as He was here below, and if the effect on his heart is to take away from the spring of joy in his soul, or to fail in ministering divine joy, it is clear that he has misapprehended God’s own object and love. He has not interpreted aright the revelation of the Son of God. Now there are many that do so read the gospels. They derive far more joy from that which Paul brings before them in Romans 5:1-21 or 8. One can understand this at first.

Ought it to be so always? There are states no doubt where the clearing and consolidating chapters in the epistle to the Romans supply the requisite food of the soul. Nor could one in the least desire to weaken this, still less to set one part of scripture against or above another. But while assuredly in the first learning of salvation it is of consequence that we should be built up in the good news of grace that God sends us through the work of the Lord Jesus, the object of God in settling us on redemption is to make us free to enjoy the Son and the Father. We are not to be arrested along the way however precious, but to enjoy Himself who has reconciled us by Jesus Christ, — to appreciate and adore our God and Father who has manifested His glory in Christ His Son. Short of this we cannot rightly stop.

We may pause midway, but we ought to be going on until we can rest perfectly in this blessed communion of love — fellowship “with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” The effect then, I repeat, is fulness of joy. And mark, all this is simply from the manifestation of grace in Jesus Christ the Lord. There is not one question of ourselves, but the simplest receiving what God has brought and given us in His own Son; the intended issue is the overflowing of joy in the Holy Ghost. But if we had a manifestation, there is also a message. The manifestation, with its connections and result, was given us in the first four verses. The message begins from the fifth verse. If you have this life of Christ, if I too have it, if we who believe are brought thus into fellowship with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ, — if we possess the wondrous place of being (so to speak) in the family circle, and the most intimate affections of our God and Father through the Son of His love, I cannot be there, nor you, without the creating of a certain demand on our souls by virtue of the divine nature of which grace has made us alike partakers. No doubt love is the spring, but it is in truth; and the God who thus brings us by His own Son into the present enjoyment of life everlasting makes the soul sensible of the antagonism between the state of nature and of all around us with God Himself. But mark the grace of God. not a word of that whatever until fulness of joy is established, and this solely by the gift of Jesus the Son of God to us, and eternal life in Him.

But having given us the joy, now He turns us back, as it were, and gives the eye inwardly to discern as those enabled to see according to God, — to judge all that is of self, and consequently all false pretensions wherever they may be. It could not, ought not to be otherwise. We can afford to judge ourselves now that we have the fulness of the blessing, which is eternal life. Remember it, and Him in whom it is, and by whom only we could have it. God the Father has given in Christ that sure blessing, and assured it for ever, in order that the soul may be free to look at anything, and to take up everything in the interests of His own holiness and glory, as having fellowship with the Father and the Son. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light.” It is not the Father now. In the early verses it was expressly and only as the Father, because there it was the outflow of grace through the Son. But now, this nature being communicated, we cannot if we would avoid having to do with God; and we feel for His will, holiness, and glory, just because we are so blest by His grace. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you.” It is not the law but a message. Grace does not put under law, but it does communicate the judgment of God Himself on all that is contrary to His nature. The message is that God is light. Heathenism was founded on a quite contrary assumption. They supposed darkness to be the source of everything; but not such is God to the Christian. “God is light.” Consequently all is detected and judged. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Even Moses, in view of the hardness of men’s hearts, allowed a little darkness; for the law made nothing perfect; it was not the perfect expression of God: Christ only is this. It is only divines, or those misled by their errors, who give His glory to the law as the image of God. But according to scripture (and it “cannot be broken”) Christ is the image of God: never is the law so styled. The law had not to reveal God but to deal with man, — it condemned the first Adam.

God under law had fallen sinful presumptuous man before Him. Law was really the expression of the lowest claim that God could assert over the first man had he been able to meet it. He could not abate those terms. It was the very least measure — the ten words — that God could accept even from a sinful man. But it was altogether different when the Son of God came. Undoubtedly He vindicated the law, which fell through all other hands. Perfectly and in all things He retrieved the honour of God, which might else have seemed only committed to man to be sullied. Alas! the first man had done nothing but sin or break the law of God. The last Adam not only rescued the jewel from the filth of the men who had brought it into obloquy and turned it if not to corruption to their own ruin, but set it off so as to shed its own lustre and glorify the God who gave it. The mischief lay in sin, never in the smallest degree in the law.

There was everything wrong in the first man; and this was the true secret. But to lower the Son of God to a mere doer of the law is unconsciously to deny His divine glory; nay, it is unwittingly to deny even His human perfection. No doubt the Lord never failed to magnify the divine law; but I venture to say He never did one thing in which He did not go beyond the law. It must be maintained further that not to speak of Christ, the Christian, who does not go beyond the law does not understand, enjoy, or adorn Christianity. And so far is this rising above the character of law in our walk from being an extraordinary effort, it is what the Christian man is called to do every day in his life. I admit this, that you cannot even contemplate such a thing until you know your place in Christ, and that Christ risen is your life; but when this is a settled truth for your soul, you will soon understand its certainty and preciousness, as well as your own new responsibility, as living in the Spirit, to walk also by the Spirit. Let me repeat once more the message — “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Nothing is now allowed in view of the hardness of their hearts. This was the license under law, as our Lord Jesus Himself tells us, but it will not stand the revealed light of the gospel. There is nothing tolerated except what suits the nature of God Himself. Christ, the reality of it in His own person and ways on earth, alone has brought us the revelation of this truth. Where was it ever seen or heard of before? It was seen and heard in every way, in every word, of Jesus.

It was so because He was God, but it was never so till He became man. It is there we see adoringly the wondrous truth of the person of the Lord Jesus. As long as He remained simply God, no such manifestation was or could be. Had He been merely man, it would have been simply impossible; but being not only what He was, but who He is, in Him here below we have God as well as man perfectly displayed. This it is that judges — judges everything in us. Accordingly there follows the various testings of this divine nature in the believer. “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” It is no longer a question merely of an open falsehood. Of course this cannot but remain always immoral and inexcusable; and its true gravity is brought out incomparably more under the gospel than ever it was under the law. But then what is spoken of here goes far deeper than a pronounced lie; it might be only such virtually and practically — a lie that we live and do where we may not speak one. “If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” The Christian walks in the light; and the reason why he walks there is this, because he sees Christ, who alone is the light of life. And if he sees and follows Christ, which all His sheep do, he cannot but walk in the light, because following Jesus, who is the light, he necessarily walks in the light I do not say that he necessarily walks according to the light. This is a very different matter, often confounded with it, but in fact wholly distinct, though it too ought to be. But every Christian walks in the light, if he is walking according to it, then glory is brought to the Lord; if, as is too often the case, he fails to walk according to the light, he dishonours the Lord so much the more because he does walk in the light. A Jew as such did not walk in the light. When God had His dealings with Israel, there was nothing of the kind. He, though always light Himself, dwelt in the thick darkness. Not that He was darkness: this never was nor could be; but He dwelt in the dark, veiled and shut up by curtains and clouds of incense, sacrifices and priests. Thus He dwelt because man was in the dark; and God, by the very fact that He dwelt surrounded by His people Israel, dwelt in dark seclusion in view of the condition of Israel — the first man — in whose midst He deigned to dwell. But now that Christ the Son is come, the full unclouded light of God shines out in love. Accordingly, as we have seen, He reveals Himself as light, with whom is no darkness at all. More than this, “if we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” Further, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” This total and evident contrast is what every Christian by his Christian profession assumes. If you are a Christian at all, you walk in the light; it is where you walk, and not here a question of how. The apostle John is not here at all discussing how far it may be made good, or how far you have realised it — albeit an important question for conscience. Here he is showing what is true and real, and so absolutely necessary that it is involved in the very being of a Christian man. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light (for Christ can be no less a standard than this) “we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Manifestly he is describing, not some special class among the faithful, but all genuine Christians, whoever they may be. As having seen and followed the Lord Jesus, they walk in the light, and being in that light, where all sin is judged, there is fellowship mutually. For the fellowship here is not with the Father and the Son: this had been already settled in the early verses. But here John is speaking of the communion of Christians one with another; and he says that being in the light of God (because the light is no less than Christ), the hindrances to fellowship are judged: — “We have fellowship one with another.” You see it every day, and wherever you may be. If you pass through any circumstances where you look to find no Christian, a little word is dropped, — Christ’s own name, or that which betrays to your heart the sense of His grace, and at once you are knit to the man, no matter who, indeed, the more, so to speak, because of the sound falling on your heart in such unexpected circumstances: — “We have fellowship one with another.” Then there is another comfort not less needed — “that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” Such is the precious place grace has given us, the ever abiding power of the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us from every sin. This is not put here as a provision against our failure and for our restoration. The apostle treats of the place in which we are set by the grace of God from the beginning of our Christian career, and which remains unchanged right through. No doubt the apostle does not contemplate such a thing here as the departure of a real Christian from Christ. Still less, if possible, does he contemplate a Christian’s trifling with sin: this could not be, for the Spirit of God never does. We shall find, however, in its own just place, that if he slip into evil of a practical kind, or sin, God does not leave him without a resource. The grace that never fails appears for the child, if he have been drawn aside.

But this is not at all the object in the verse before us, which is simply the assertion of the Christian’s place; and this, too, when it is a question of God’s own nature, which might produce (not searching only, but.) trial and anxiety in the spirit. But if there is, the very place where the power of the blood of Jesus Christ cannot fail to cleanse you from all sin is asserted. But there might be another form of pretension. Instead of setting up to fellowship with God, while indifferent to His will, without sense of or care for standing in the light of God, the flesh might assume another character of delusion — the denial of sin. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” By a Christian is not meant one insensible to his own sinfulness. The truth is in him; and he confesses instead of hiding or ignoring his sins. He has fellowship with God; but, far from saying along with this “I have no sin,” he is the very man that hates and spreads out his sins before God. Accordingly verse 9 tells the tale of that which grace and truth effect in the Christian: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So the Christian does from the very starting-point of his career. Still less does the Christian refuse to own that he has sinned. This is a yet grosser form of contrariety to the truth of God. Therefore the condemnation is still more stern: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” The word of God, not to speak of conscience, declares so plainly that all have sinned, that it proves the audacity of unbelief and rebelliousness in those that deny, and this denial is incomparably more guilty since Christ came, to whose name these deniers laid claim. This then closes the second part of the chapter. The first was the manifestation of the fulness of grace in Christ; the next, the detection of what is contrary to God in us. Hence we are now judged before God in His light. Having a nature which feels according to God, we at once discover what is inconsistent with Himself. For this very reason the Christian would be extremely cast down if, when drawn aside through the power of the enemy, there were not the provision of grace to meet and restore his soul. Hence two verses follow in the beginning of 1 John 2:1-29 as a sort of appendix to the doctrine and application of the first chapter: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.

And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for . . . the whole world.” I leave out “the sins of.” It is clear enough that they ought never to have been inserted in the common English Bible. Not only are they not required for the sense, as words generally are, but they injure the sense, and really insinuate erroneous doctrine.

If the sins of the whole world were met by the propitiation of Christ, the whole world would be saved. No such statement occurs anywhere in the word of God. There is a righteous ground in the sacrifice of Christ on which God can meet the whole world — not only bear with it, but send the gospel to every creature. This, however, is a totally different statement from a “propitiation for the sins of the whole world.” In the real phrase it is clear that we have the beautiful wisdom of scripture, and at the same time an exact expression of the Lord’s rich grace without exaggeration: “My little children, I write unto you that ye sin not;” but if any one should alas! sin, instead of cause for despair, “we have an advocate with the Father.” Wondrous mercy! Jesus as much lives to take up the failure of His own, as He died to put away their sins by His blood. This too is founded on propitiation; but there is besides the blessed fact that He is the righteousness of the believer in the presence of God. His one expiatory sacrifice avails in abiding value; His place is before God as our righteousness; and there for the failing He carries on His living active advocacy with the Father. Such is the doctrinal ground of this epistle, with the added special provision for those who may fail. From 1 John 2:3 we begin the consideration of the characteristics of life in Christ which the believer possesses, and is bound to manifest. What is the leading trait? what the especial features of divine life in man? It is not power, nor love, nor even righteousness. What is it then? Obedience. This, it is clear, gives no importance to man.

It necessitates the just subjection of the creature, and maintains also the majesty of God. How dreadful when grace, so-called, lowers His glory in the eyes of any soul! It is not denied that danger there is; but the danger is fully met by the precious word of God: “And hereby we do know that we know* him, if we keep his commandments.” Do not call this legal: where is anything of the sort in John? Indeed there can be nothing legal in one who under the Holy Spirit unfolds Christ. And let me say further that, where love is, nothing is sweeter than the doing the will of the one that is loved, particularly where we know that He whose will we do is absolutely good and wise in all that He lays upon us. We know that this is the case with God. *The first “know” is in the present, this (the second) in the perfect, ἐγνώκαμεν, which means (not “have known,” but) “have the knowledge of.” “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” He is no Christian at all, any more than those that pretended to have fellowship with Him and walked in darkness, or said they had no sin, or denied that they had sinned. The contrast is of real Christians with mere pretenders. It is not a comparison between faithful Christians and unfaithful ones. Banish all this kind of notion from your minds. It is delusion, and you lose thereby the profit for your soul.

It is not what the Lord is treating of here. He is putting down a new class of evil that was beginning to spring up, of persons pretending to fresh light, but involving a departure from the only light of God, — persons who indulged in fine-spun speculations and claimed undiscovered truth, but were in the awful predicament of contradicting the revealed mind of God. It was a different Christ, who was not another but antichrist, as we shall see, — a different truth which was not really truth. The characteristic object of the epistle is to maintain that none can ever rise above the Christ already manifested in this world. After all you may have learnt from Paul or any other, know as you may the Christian’s place in grace and all he hopes for in glory, if you want to behold perfection in man you must look back at what Christ was in this world — the self-same Jesus who is now in the glory of God. Such is Christ everywhere. There is a season when one needs most of all to think of the cross. There is a season when one needs the comfort of having Him as the Priest in heaven. There is a season when one can appreciate Him as the glorious Head of the church.

But it is false that any of these points of view is to make Christ less precious as manifested in this world. Nor is there one who treats it with such decision and solemnity as John. The time was come for this: “Even now are many antichrists.” It is the very point and object of our apostle’s writing to maintain the indefeasible glory and the infinite excellence of the Lord Jesus in every respect, and this as displaying God the Father in this world. This Satan was seeking to annul through the false teachers now in view. Therefore are we shown from the first, as I have endeavoured to explain, the fulness of grace that came in His person, as well as the revelation of the moral nature of God. But now we have the first great test of the reality of divine life in man, namely, obedience.

In this the unbeliever, no matter what his profession may be, is sure to fail. His will is unjudged. He either seeks his own way in pleasure, or he bows to man in superstitious asceticism, without knowledge of the true God or confidence in His grace. His failure is not perhaps in notions, but in obedience. On the other hand the Christian keeps the commandments of God; but he goes farther. It is said, “Whoso keepeth his word.” It is more than what is commanded. He loves to do whatever may be the will of God, no matter what the form. It may be simply seeing how He manifests His character in Christ: this is enough. The obedient heart enters into and ascertains the will of God where disobedience would find nothing but difficulties, obstacles, and uncertainties. There is always to such either a lion in the way or no light. We find it too often in our families. See a child whose heart is not in obedience: what readiness of excuse! “Indeed, I did not know.

You never told me. Why did you not forbid me before?” On the other see the obedient child. She has watched her mother’s looks even when not the appearance of a command was heard. She knows right well what will please her parent. Just so should we cherish the will of our Father as obedient children. It is not in this case the keeping of the express commands, but of His word.

Let me add, that this is the answer to all the pride of man’s heart. For take the most moral man you ever saw: on what does he rest? He does this and that because he judges them right. This is his boast: “I always do what I believe is right.” Such is the desire of the moral man. I answer, that even if always consistent, and you always did a thing because it is right, you must inevitably be always wrong. The true ground for a believer, and that which pleases God, is this, — not to do a thing simply because it is right, but because it is His will. The life that is formed on obedience is of an altogether different texture and source. To do things because they are right is to do without God and His word. It is merely idolizing self. The man becomes judge of all: “I think this, I do that, because it is right in my judgment.” Obedience alone puts man down, and God in His place. This only is right. Hence therefore we find, as the first distinguishing trait of the divine life, the exercise of obedience: not only are His commandments to be kept, but also His word. But there is more than this. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” I need not only commandment and word, but Himself as a living person before my eyes. It is always thus in John, who treats of Christ Himself Thus while providing for the deepest, there is a grace which wins the simplest. It is clearly Christ Himself, as He walked day by day in this poor world. But there follows another and a remarkable word, which needs a little explanation. “Beloved,” says he (for this is the true word in verse 7), “I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning.” It means, as before, from the time that Christ was manifested in this world. “The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you.” The old commandment was manifested in Christ Himself He alone was always the obedient one. It is now not merely an old commandment, but a new one, yet the very same. Why? Because it is the same life, whether viewed in the Christian or in Christ. If I look at Christ Himself, it is the old commandment seen in Him from the beginning; but now it is no longer this solely, but a new commandment, “which thing is true in him and in you.” It is the same life, seen in Christ in its perfection, in us often hindered and obscured by the activity of what is of the first man.

Christ alone was its fulness; now we have it in Him. As John tells us, it is true in Him and in you because it is the very same life. “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.” Love now comes in. It is not disobedience only which detects that a man is not really born of God, but also hatred. He that loves not is not born of God. “But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.” This was the more important to press, because these false teachers had not the smallest concern about their brethren. What they sought was self — in one form or another; and consequently light, as they called it, was no more than the invention of novel notions. But the true way in which divine light (Christ) shows itself is in obedience as its effect, and so surely in love, You cannot obey God without loving your brethren also. This, however, leads into a remarkable parenthesis in the epistle, on which we need not dwell, because it is perhaps more than any other part of the epistle familiar to all. The great characteristic throughout, being life in the Son of God, forbids the apostle from entering into the different measures of attainment as a rule; yet as it is a fact that there are some more mature, some more vigorous, and some comparatively feeble in the expression of Christ here below, the Spirit of God in this parenthesis notices these differences briefly. Before this is done, He lays down what they had all in common. They were forgiven for Christ’s name. Then the fathers were known by their knowledge of Christ — a beautiful and blessed distinction. They had “known him that was from the beginning.” This we have seen to be the great text of the whole epistle, and it is the more remarkable that he does not mention any depths or heights of knowledge. Not a word is said about dispensations, or prophecy, or anything that is thought abstruse. There was one that was beyond all others and included everything else: it was Christ Himself. The fathers were those marked by knowing Him. Wherever they might have learned, however their vigour might once have gone forth, they came back to what they started with — even Christ. It was a deeper appreciation of Christ, and this as manifesting God the Father here below. Such are the fathers. The young men went forward in the ways of God, undaunted by difficulties, feeding on the word, and overcoming the wicked one. The babes (παιδία) had a real enjoyment of the Father’s love. The apostle traverses the ground again, and in doing so simply repeats in so many words what he had said of the fathers, adding a little more as to the young men, and most of all when he comes to the babes. The gracious condescension of love in this must be manifest to any spiritual mind. Those are peculiarly the objects of our Father’s care who need it most. The babes therefore have the chief place in this expanded form. The fathers did not so much want it. It is in addressing the babes that we find the development of the antichrists.

They require to be guarded against. They abound in snares and seductions. We have therefore very important light as to the nature of the antichrists; and this consists of two great parts. All Jewish hope is denied, and so is all Christian truth. He denies the Christ, that is, the Jewish expectation. He denies the Father and the Son, and that is the sum of Christianity.

Such the antichrist will be — the result of a total rejection of both Old Testament and New. He denies the object of a Jew’s faith, and also the person into whose love and fellowship the gospel brings those who believe now. All this will be completely swamped by the antichrist. This is the very point to which things are rapidly carrying men in the world at the present moment. I do not mean to say that more than currents everywhere are setting in toward that direction; but undoubtedly there is an undermining of the Old Testament, and a total ignoring as well as a growing rejection of the true grace of God in the New. After all this is closed, in verse 28, the whole family are seen joined together as little children once more. “And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence.” The way in which people commonly understand it is, that you may have confidence, but it is “we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.” This is exceedingly blessed. He appeals to divine love in the saints. Do you be careful how you are walking; that when Christ appears, we may not be ashamed because of the little you have profited by the grace and the truth of God we have been ministering to you in Christ. This seems the meaning of it. “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.” Now he is going to enlarge on the subject of righteousness. However, before he enters into it fully, he gives us a prefatory note beginning with the last verse of 1 John 2:1-29, and then shows us the privileges into which grace brings those who are born of God. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God.” (1 John 3:1) It may be mentioned here that “sons of God” is never the expression of the writings of John. We have “sons of God” as well as “children” in Paul’s epistles. But “children of God” the Holy Ghost employs exclusively both in the gospel and in this epistle of John. Is it asked what is the difference? It lies in this, that son (υἱὸς) is more the public, title, whereas child (τέκνον) conveys rather the closeness of connection by birth. It expresses community of nature as born of God.

For it will be understood that a person who was not a child might be adopted as a son; but the Christian is not only a son adopted by our God — he is really a child as being a partaker of the divine nature. This only it is John puts forward and prominently speaks of; and it is seen at once how it connects itself with his doctrine everywhere. We are born of God, born of water and of the Spirit, made partakers of the divine nature (in the sense, of course, of having the life that was in Christ). “Therefore the world knew us not, because it knew him not.” So absolutely is the life of Christ found in us, that we have the same fare, so to speak, as Christ in this world. The world did not know Him; therefore it does not know us. It is simply because of Christ, unknown then personally, unknown now in us who live of His life. When He was here, it was no other life than that which we now have in Him. The world never knew, never appreciated, the life that was in Christ; neither does it recognise that which is in the children of God. But this can in no way hinder the blessedness of the result for the children of God. This is no mere empty title. “Beloved, now are we the sons (children) of God; and it doth not yet appear” (that is, it has not been manifested) “what we shall be.” As far as the word of God could show, (and how well it does!) it is clearly revealed there. This remark is added to cut off misapprehension of the sense, as it may hinder the vagueness that prevails in many minds. Indeed, an hope has been revealed to us most distinctly: what we shall be is revealed not only elsewhere, but here also. The apostle does not at all overlook this. But “it doth not yet appear,” in the sense that it has not yet been manifested as a fact before the world; but “we know,” says he, and we only know because it has been revealed by the Holy Ghost in the word. “We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” There is no haze over the future of the child of God. He has the certainty in his soul, because he has the revealed assurance in scripture that he shall be like Christ.

Christ being his life now, no wonder that he must be like Christ then; and this too is founded on a ground blessedly sure and simple, and at the same time full of glory to Christ: “We shall see This is enough. Such and so great is the gracious assimilating energy of the Second man, that for us to see Him is to be like Him. When we saw Him here on earth by faith, we were made spiritually like Him; when we shall see Him bodily by and by, we shall be like Him even in our bodies. Such then is the portion of the Christian by grace; and here is the moral consequence: “Every one that hath this hope on him” — founded on Him — “purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” Thus for the Christian it is not any longer a law that demands this thing or that. There is the full operation of the Spirit by the entire word of God, no part of scripture being excluded from the enjoyment, instruction, and admonition of the Christian. At the same time, what gives all scripture its fulness of application to the believer is the possession and knowledge of Christ Himself. Without Him you cannot understand any part of the Bible spiritually — that is, neither certainly nor thoroughly. It is Christ, who not only gives us intelligence, but gives it power by the Spirit over and in us. Then John proceeds naturally to trace the difference between the two families: “Every one that committeth sin committeth also lawlessness.” I give you the sense rather more exactly than it stands in our common version. There is no allusion to transgressing the law. Perhaps there is hardly a worse translation than this in the New Testament, nor one as to which even scholars seem duller. Sin is declared to be lawlessness. Beyond a shadow of doubt it may be asserted that the apostle does not define sin as “the transgression of the law.” It is a false version which nothing can justify, and I am perfectly persuaded the more any man understands either the word of God in general or the language in which John wrote, with the less hesitation he will confess this. That a person who is only spelling out his Greek, and learning to render by the help of the Authorized Version, may make difficulties about the matter is intelligible; but it is hard to see how an unbiassed honest man who knows the language could have the slightest question about it.

Do I insinuate that our translators were not men of integrity, able, erudite, and pious? They were under no small difficulties, but they tried to do their best. Possibly their attention was never drawn to the point. Even intelligent men were considerably muddled as yet from the past as well as the actual struggles of that day, But instead of either finding fault with them or endorsing all they said, what we have to do is to profit by whatever is good and true, and at the same time to be warned by whatever mistakes others have made. Now I maintain, not only that the word (ἀνομία) will not bear such a meaning, but that it is altogether foreign to the scope of the passage and the drift of the apostle’s reasoning. He is not speaking of particular acts, but about nature manifesting itself in our ways. “Every one that committeth sin committeth also lawlessness.” A man who sins shows his will alienated from God — an evil nature derived from him who fell through Satan. Here the apostle regards man as doing nothing else but his own will, which is exactly what the natural man does. He acts independently of God, and, as far as he is concerned, never does anything but his own will. John is not speaking of positive overt acts, but of the man’s habitual bent and character — his life and nature. The sinner, then, sins, and in this merely shows out his state and the moral roots of his nature as a sinner (namely, lawlessness).

He has neither heart nor conscience towards God: he does what he likes as far as he can. He practises lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. What makes it of practical as well as dogmatic importance is, that the common view entails the accompanying error that the law is always in force for all the necessary expression of God’s mind and will. But this we know from many scriptures is not true. The Bible is thoroughly explicit, that one particular nation was said to be under law, and that the rest of mankind had no such position, though responsible on their own ground. (See Romans 2:12-15; Romans 3:19.) Here, therefore, the translation cannot be correct which contradicts other passages of undoubted holy writ; for if the common version of 1 John 3:4 held good, the rest of mankind outside the Jews could not have been sinners at all, because they were not under law. Thus, evidently, this error throws the whole doctrine of what sin is and of God’s dealings with men into hopeless confusion. It necessarily darkens some vitally momentous parts of God’s word as to past, present, and future. For instance, according to the scripture already referred to, in the day of judgment God will by Jesus Christ deal with the Jew according to the law, with the Gentiles that have it not according to conscience; and, by parity of principle, with professing Christians according to gospel light.

There is no hint of judging all by the measure which was given to Israel. The idea springs from a source no better than traditional ignorance. Again, taking Romans 4:15; and Romans 5:13-14, it would perplex all to bring in the common version of 1 John 3:4; for it would follow thence that there was no sin, because it had not the form of a transgression of law between Adam, who had a law, and Moses, by whom the law was given. So fatal may be a mis-translation of scripture. In fact, practically, it lowers the sense of what sin is throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, others having fallen into an error similar to that of our own translators. It is therefore as certain as it is important to see that sin embraces much more than a transgression of the law. In this case there could be no such thing as sin without the law, and all would be judged alike as under the law and transgressors of it, contrary to the express word of God. Our version is wrong.

Sin is not the transgression of the law, though every transgression of the law is a sin. The true meaning, as I have said, is, “sin is lawlessness.” As for the Christian, then, to resume our sketch, all is different (not conduct only but rather a new nature) from man as such. We know that He (Christ) was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin. “Whosoever abideth in him” — and this is the consequence of really knowing Christ — “sinneth not.” Such is the life of the Christian that this is the consequence of abiding in Him. If grace has turned my soul to Him, if I am resting on Christ as my Saviour and Lord, my life and righteousness, I shall also by grace abide in Him, and “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not. In fact, who ever sinned with Christ before his eyes? When a Christian is drawn aside, another object usurps the place of Christ, and his own will exposes him to the wiles of Satan working on his fleshly nature through the world. And “Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.” He evidently speaks of one unconverted — a man in his natural state. If he had only seen and known Christ, how changed all would be! “Little children, let no man deceive you.” This the false teachers and antichrists were doing. They had invented the awful theory that the great blessing of Christ had swept away all need of self-judgment and holiness — that sin was gone in every sense. Hence a believer might take his ease in the world. If Christ had taken away all sin, why talk more about it? What need of repentance or confession, as the croakers talked who refused to go on to higher life and truth? “Little Children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that doeth sin is of the devil.” Here we see the ground for saying that John traces all up to two distinct families-the family of God and that of the devil. “The devil sinneth from the beginning:” such is his character, though he is not under law. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.” That was His character, and the result of His appearing and work in this world. “Every one that has been born of God doth not sin.” Such is the deduction: “for his seed remaineth in him;” — the life that God has given through faith, Christ Himself being the source and expression of it — “and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” There is shown the new nature. It is a matter of course that every one lives according to his nature: only the Christian, having two, must mortify the evil and walk according to the good. Take the simplest animal, — the bird above, or the reptile below, or any other around us, — every creature lives according to its nature. So does the sinner. He lives according to that nature which is now under Satan’s power. The believer lives in Christ.

John is not here looking at modifications through circumstances, it is to be observed. He is not here looking at particular cases of unfaithfulness. John as a rule does not occupy himself with the details of fact. He looks at truth in its own proper abstract character apart from passing circumstances; and if you do not read John’s writings thus, especially the epistle before us, I am afraid that there is little prospect that you will ever understand them. Having shown this, he now brings in the other test, that is, not simply righteousness but love. “This is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain” — no love was there. “Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.” There is the connection He has brought in the wicked one and his family. Man now is not only a sinner, but especially shows his character in this, that he exhibits no love. By love he means what is of God, and this exclusively. He does not of course deny natural affection, but insists on love as divine. Cain had no love, and proved it by slaying his own brother. “And wherefore slew he him?

Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” He here traces the link that binds righteousness with love. We have had righteousness separately as well as love: now he shows that the two things are intertwined, and are found only in the same persons. But here too, as in Christ was no sin, so in Him we behold perfect love, and in the world hatred. Ought we then to be surprised at the world’s hatred? Hence, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Every one that hateth his brother is a murderer.” Thus things are followed to their full result, as we have seen them traced to their hidden sources before God. How different was all with Christ! “Hereby perceive we the love” . . . To add “of God” spoils the sentence. There is no ground for interpolating any words. But One showed such love, and He was man as surely as God. “Hereby perceive we the love, because he laid down his life for us.” If you want to know what love is, look here. This was love indeed. “And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” The same life of which we live was in Him: ought it not to be exercised in similar love?

We may not often be called to lay down our life for our brethren; but are there not plain, simple, common ways by which it may be tested every day? My brother may have need: it is no use talking about readiness to die for my brother, if I at once shrink back from meeting his ordinary and perhaps urgent necessity? There is nothing great here; it is homely, but how practical! How it puts the heart to the test, and one that might be presented any day of the week! “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? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” He here puts before them the great danger of trifling with the practical consequences of the truth. Suppose that a man knows what God says and wishes, and yet does not act upon it, what is the consequence? He must get into consciousness of distance from God. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin,” says James.

So we have the same question here. The point is not a man’s losing his place in Christ, but his ground of confidence with God. Communion is almost as strikingly a characteristic point of John, as life in Christ, and the love from which both flow. He is not satisfied that men should be simply Christians, but that they should enjoy Christ practically. An idle word, a passing thought unjudged, might disturb this. “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.” Looking up, a simple soul goes on with the Lord. “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.” It is the beginning of everything good, and goes right through to the end, as I need not say. There is the one and only starting-point in the mind of the Holy Ghost, who always gives Christ His own primary place. To be saved even is not put as the first duty, but to “believe on his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him.” Here we come to a very important expression, which we find more particularly in 1 John 4:1-21. It is not simply our dwelling in Him: this we had already in 1 John 1:1-10 (and abiding in Him is the same word); but He dwells in us. Wonderful truth! This is here applied to one of these two things. “Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Holy Spirit which he hath given us.” The Holy Ghost given to us is the palmary proof that God abides in us. He dwells in us by His Spirit. This does not necessarily involve our abiding in God; but if God gives His Spirit to any believer, He abides in that man. We shall find more than this in what follows; but before these truths are explained more fully, John cautions the saints. Hence 1 John 4:1-21 begins with this warning. He is going to tell us about the Spirit of God and His abiding in us, but he would have us on our guard because there are evil spirits, as certainly as the Holy Spirit, and this as proved by the false prophets that have gone out into the world. “Believe not every spirit.” There is nothing that exposes the believer (and it has always been so) to greater danger, than severing the Holy Spirit from Christ. The apostle ever binds His power with Christ’s name. We shall be kept in the truth if we remember that the one object of the Holy Ghost is to glorify Christ, and this therefore becomes the test in practice: the Spirit of God must ever operate to keep Christ before our eyes. If not, we are not far from snare. Connect the Spirit with the church merely, and then you will have popery; connect Him simply with individuals, and you will have fanaticism.

He is a free and evident witness to Christ. There is the truth. The Holy Ghost is sent down to take of the things of Christ, and to show them to us. He is come to glorify (not a priest nor even the church, but) Christ Himself. This, I admit, is the truest glory of the saint and the church — their greatest blessedness and joy. In Christ’s name the church is formed by the Holy Ghost; through Him also the Holy Ghost dwells in the believer.

This is not doubted; but all this, and the testimony and ways of each and all are invariably for exalting our God by Christ Himself. If they fail here, the salt has lost its savour. Take, I will not say the grossness of popery but, the Quaker system, as an instance which painfully reverses the truth. The reason is plain: the Spirit is practically severed from Christ, and the result is that, under colour of humility, their testimony constantly tends to exalt the first man. Every child of Adam is supposed to have the Spirit of God. The consequence is that the truth is darkened, impaired, and destroyed, and all due sense of the ruin of man destroyed by their extreme form of Pelagianism, deifying not ordinances indeed but conscience. However this may be, here we find the apostle solemnly warning the saints against false prophets. Many such men were gone into the world. We want therefore some sure means of discerning them. It is not a question of deciding who are Christ’s and who are not; but rather what sort of spirit it is that acts by this teacher or that. It is not at all the point to pronounce on man’s state before God or his destiny. People have always been prone enough to form and give opinions when the Lord forbids it. It is clear that we are called of the Lord frankly to accept persons as born of God when they render a true testimony to Christ; but, on the other hand, we ought to beware of endorsing those whose testimony in word or deed is against the name of Jesus. This then is the test of what is or is not of the Holy Ghost. “Hereby ye know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of God.” Let me beg the reader here to leave out a word or two which are not printed in italics. “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” The difference is great. As it reads in the Authorised Version, it is altogether inadequate. It may be in the recollection of not a few here that a generation ago there were manifestations of spirits (evil, I doubt not), which did not deny that Jesus came in the flesh. On the contrary, they seemed to lay the greatest stress on the fact of His incarnation, and chid the orthodox for want of heed to this truth if not of faith in it. The point of their own false doctrine lay in maintaining that Jesus took the flesh in the same condition of corruption in which all others are born, and that Jesus showed His perfection in subduing and purifying the flesh. Of course you will understand that my reference is to the Irvingite movement. To confess therefore that Jesus is come in the flesh is not satisfactory. What then does the apostle say and mean here? Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of God. This is to confess His person; not His deity alone, still less His humanity alone, but Him who thus came. The one is a bare acknowledgment of a fact; the other is the confession of a divine person, yet a man. Now there is no demon that ever acknowledges the person of Christ. There is no evil spirit but winces at and refuses to endorse the glory of Christ; whereas the direct object of the Spirit of God is always to maintain His person in all the fulness of His glory, and in all His grace.

Let none take it as a statement of His human nature. This is not the meaning. The real humanity of Jesus is contained in it, but it is by no means the whole or chief part of the confession. Take any man — yourself, for instance; who would describe you as having come in the flesh? No man that had common sense; because one might well ask in what other way you could come. Here was the difference between the Son of God and any other that ever was born.

All mankind must come in the flesh if they come at all. The wonderful thing was that this divine person should come in the flesh. For what claim had flesh on Him in the slightest degree? Nothing but His grace hindered His coming in His proper divine glory. Had He been thus manifested in this world, of course it must have involved the destruction of all the race. According to the will and counsels of the Godhead He was pleased to come in the flesh.

It was not the manifestation of glory save of His person morally and in love, but of that very grace which we have seen from the beginning of this epistle, and which runs through to the end. The spirits, then, which are not of God refuse (save when divine power bent and broke them) to own the personal glory of Christ, while the Holy Spirit of God loves to own it. Such is the test. If therefore any doctrine undermine the glory of Christ, you have an unequivocal proof that it is of Satan as certainly: whatever exalts Christ, according to the word, is of God. This leads him to speak of the difference of what is in the world from that which is of God. In the world there is ever at work a restless spirit of contrariety to Christ. It is the spirit of antichrist, which will be manifested fully in its own season. Hence it is said, “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.

Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” These false teachers being of the world, speak of what has their heart, and this attracts the world. There is sympathy between the world and them. “We are of God,” says the apostle, speaking of himself and his fellows raised up to declare the word of God fully.

He is peremptory; and this rouses the spirit of unbelief as it meets faith: “He that knoweth God heareth us; and he that is not of God heareth not us.” Here again is a serious test. It is not only the confession of Christ, but that man is proved to be of the world who refuses subjection to the apostolic word. Many a man might profess to acknowledge the literal words of Jesus; many another might own only those of the Old Testament. If you do no more than this now, you cannot be of God. He who is really of God, while thoroughly owning every word He wrote of old, feels especially the blessedness of that which He has now given by His holy apostles and prophets. (Compare Ephesians 2:1-22; Ephesians 3:1-21) This was of the utmost moment to urge at the time the gospels and epistles appeared. At the same time, though not of course in exactly the same shape and manner, it always abides a grand test, next to the person of Christ.

The time hastens which will prove how few among those that acknowledge the New Testament really hear and believe it. The saddest proof that they do not believe it to be God’s word will be their giving it up.

Did they believe it, they would no more abandon it than the true mother would allow the child to be cut in twain. But this brings us to another point — not the truth, but loving one another. The truth comes first, and then love. “For love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God” (whatever may be his pretensions and his talk); “for God is love.” This leads him to speak of the way in which God has shown His love. He brings it out in three forms. First, there is the wondrous manifestation of God in Christ which is the foundation of the gospel; and in a twofold way also He was manifested in Christ — as life, and as propitiation. If we had not Christ as life, we never could understand God. Could we have understood Him by having Christ as our life without propitiation, as His holiness and judgment would have been slighted, so we could. only be intensely miserable. To have the knowledge of what God is and of what we are, and withal not to have our sins borne away, must be alike His dishonour and our everlasting shame and anguish; and so many a quickened soul who is ignorant of the efficacy of redemption proves in its measure.

God in His great mercy does not permit any to know it to its depths. But how many of us have known what it is to be converted, and yet for a while ignorant of the judgment of sin, and its absolute removal for us by the cross of Christ! Consequently one had no taste for the world, a horror of sin, a real desire to do God’s will, but not the least rest for heart and conscience in Christ before God. It is a mercy to be thus converted, a misery to abide in this state. What a joy that God does not divorce but unites for us life and propitiation in our Lord and His work! Let not man meddle here.

What God has joined let no man put asunder. He has given the same Christ who is life to be also a propitiation for our sins. Such is the teaching of the verses 9, 10, both being the display of the love of God, and in contrast with law (the latter especially), which had no life to give, and could only judge, not put away, sin. But this is not all. “If God so loved us” (and He has demonstrated it as nothing else could), “we also ought to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” It is a wonderful word, evidently connecting itself (whether written before or after is of no account) with what is said in John 1:18. There Christ stands the manifestation of God in love. Here the saints are called to be no less. Beloved brethren, how far do we manifest our God and Father by this divine love that never seeks its own, and is at all cost bent on the good of its objects, His children, yea all, even enemies? “Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” This goes farther than the last verse of 1 John 3:1-24, which said that He dwells in us, not we in Him. But we shall see more of this, and therefore I do not pause on it, now. “And we have seen and testify that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” I hardly know anything that concerns us more profoundly affecting than these verses; for what can be conceived near to God, if it be not dwelling in God and God in us? There is no image that tells out intimacy and mutuality, so to speak, more than this. And when we think who and what God is, as well as what we are, it is indeed a great word to say. Of whom does the apostle say it? Of every Christian; and this too as the simple fruit of the gospel. But let us look a little at the force of the passage more closely. In the one case we read, “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” in the other it is, “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” It is not now said, “Hereby we know.” In this instance, perhaps, the person may be without objective knowledge of it: this does not hinder the truth of the blessing. If you confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in you, and you in God. He dwells in you, having given His Spirit to be in you. This is the way in which His dwelling in man is effected; but the consequence of that gift to you is that you make God your refuge and delight. There is no such thing is the dwelling of the Spirit in a saint without bringing the soul to judge itself, as well as to peace with God. To this it seems to me that every Christian comes by grace sooner or later, though not always at first. He will be brought to it in God’s goodness, were it, as it is often, on a death-bed. We do not always judge aright. There may be not seldom hindrances to comfort through bad teaching, as well as through unjudged sin.

Of these I do not speak now, nor of defect in intelligence. Still less do I speak of the effects of the Calvinistic system or of Arminianism, both of which are prejudicial to enjoying the grace of God, Calvinists are apt to think an Arminian cannot have peace. — This is all nonsense: he may enjoy peace with God as really as the Calvinist. Indeed experience would say it is more frequent than with those of the opposite school, though each in a different way look within (I believe, unscripturally). The truth is that peace rests on our faith of Christ and His work. Arminianism is no more to me than Calvinism, and I doubt that I admire one more than the other. As systems they seem to me narrow, unsound, and pernicious.

But I thank God that to not a few who are committed to both sides He has given to taste of His own grace in Christ. Be this as it may, if I confess Jesus the Son of God as Him on whom my soul rests, and on His rich redemption, the Holy Ghost says, “I can dwell there.” He does dwell there; and if so, He is graciously pleased to draw out the heart to confide and repose in God. This is what is meant by dwelling in God. It is to find in God one’s hiding-place, as well as spring of counsel and cheer and strength. One turns to Him in each trial and difficulty as well as joy. I am pretty sure there is not one of us who uses this privilege as he ought. Nor does John speak of degree at all.

Such a thought is foreign to the abstract style of the apostle John. He treats of a great fact for the Christian, though it may be more or less realized, and “God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” This is what faith receives and has. The beginning is God making His abode in us; the result is that we dwell in God. But sometimes he puts it in the order of our dwelling in God and God in us. It would seem that he then speaks of experience, where he puts our part first, and then God’s abode in us. I must briefly point out the third ground, — not the display of love, or its operation in us, but the perfection of love with us (verse 17). It is not only that we know that we dwell in God and He in us by this, that He has given to us of His Spirit; but herein has love been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. It is not a state given to us in the day of judgment; we are so dealt with now; but this gives boldness even with the thought of the day of judgment before us. How could it be otherwise? If I really believe and am sure that God has made me now to be what Christ is, what can the effect of the day of judgment be but to display the perfections, not only of what Christ is for me, but of what you and I are by and in Christ our Lord? And this we are now. The last chapter (1 John 5:1-21) speaks of another thing. Here I must be brief indeed. It is connected with the charge at the end of chapter 4 to love one’s brother. The apostle had shown the various displays of divine love, with the falsehood of professing to love God while one hated a brother. But this might elicit the question, who my brother is. We need simplicity, as with our God, so with His children. It is in vain to pretend that this is hard to find out. The Spirit of God does lay down unsparingly and in all their fulness the tests of divine life; but now let the question be raised, who my brother is, and the answer is as plain as possible: “Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” Is it not sweet that after all the fulness of truth had been revealed, after all the display of Christ in glory had been made by the apostle Paul, after the apostle John had set us in presence of the divine nature and eternal life in His person, we have here such a proof of the unchangeable testimony to the Lord Jesus as Christ? What was the truth that Peter and the rest preached at Pentecost? That Jesus is the Christ. What is the truth with which the epistle of John concludes? That Jesus is the Christ. There is no wavering in what is divine. No doubt there is the unfolding of truth admirably suited to all the varying needs of the church; but when you come to the question after all — who and what is God’s child and my brother? — this is what he is: the man that believes that Jesus is the Christ. I grant you it is the very lowest confession that the Holy Ghost could accept; and it would be a very poor thing if the Christian only believed that Jesus was the Christ. If made exclusive, what an unworthy dealing with all the glory of Jesus] But it is to me a blessed thing that the Holy Ghost maintains to the end the value of what He began with; not that more was not made known, but that this abides in freshness and power. No doubt such a confession might be most unintelligent, but at least there is this divine reality in his soul — he does believe that Jesus is the Christ. That this should be said at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles we can all understand; but it seems to me that none but God would have thought of insisting on it at the end of the Christian testimony; as if, among the last words that the Holy Ghost uttered, He should saying — I have been leading you into all depths and all heights; I have laid open in fresh scriptures the full circle of revealed truth, but I stand to what I began with. Learn the truth, have it developed in your souls, not by the truth developing, but by your growing up into it; but never give up first principles. “Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.” It is not now loving God only, but His children; and thus your love is proved to be divine, and that you really love God Himself.

But there is another query often put: How am I to know that I do love the children of God? Be sure you are in the right path.

Here it is — “By this we know that we love the children of God.” It is not by gratifying them, or going where they go perhaps, or forcing them where you go. You might be totally mistaken; you might hurry souls, or be drawn away by them yourself. There is no love in either one or other, but there is in this — “when we love God and keep his commandments.” If my soul goes out to Him in love, and I show it by unreserved fidelity to His will, there is nothing that is more truly an exercise of love to His children. You may seem to the careless not thinking of them, but you are then loving them best. When you make an object of the children of God, there is no real love. When you are really devoted to God and to His will, you truly love the children of God. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” The law was a yoke so grievous that neither their fathers nor they were able to bear; but it is not so with the truth of God. The law of God was for the punishing as well as testing of the old man; the word of God is the food and directory of the new man. But is not the world a great hindrance? No doubt; but there is a something that overcomes the world; and what is this? Faith. But mark, he does not say that “every one who believeth that Jesus is the Christ” overcomes the world.

Perhaps you may see some whom you cannot doubt are the real children of God, but they do not overcome the world. What then will enable them to overcome the world? Believing that Jesus is the Son of God. “The Christ,” I might perhaps say, connects Him with the world, with the Jews and the nations He is to govern; “The Son of God” connects Him with the Father above the world. Such is the difference. Thus, while holding fast and giving all its value to the confession that Jesus is the Christ of God, I am not to be tied to it. We need a growing sense of what Christ is, and of His glory, in order to resist the downward tendency and the ensnaring power of the world around; and true power over the world is by advancing in the knowledge of Christ.

There is no other thing that will wear so well. “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” “This is he that came by (διὰ) water and blood.” John keeps us fully in the consciousness of our deliverance, but also of our responsibility (i.e., as God’s children). “This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by (ἐν) water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” This, and no more here, is genuine scripture. A good deal of the two verses is and ought to be left out, if all legitimate authority is heeded by us. The historical fact, which becomes the basis of the teaching, is that recorded in the Gospel, John 19:34, to which special attention is drawn in the following verse, as recorded by John who saw it; “and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” Here, instead of putting that inspired witness forward, the Spirit takes this place, the greatest of all present witnesses for Christ. The idea of baptism here is as childish for “the water” as the Lord’s Supper is confessed to be for “the blood.” Purification, propitiation, and power answer to the three, all flowing to us in or consequent on the death of Christ, the Son of God. “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath witnessed concerning his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness which God hath witnessed concerning his Son,” etc. That is, God bears His testimony in this wondrous triad — the Spirit, the water, and the blood, — three witnesses, yet only one testimony: namely, that there is no life in the first man at all, and that all the blessing is in the Second; that He it is who by His death expiates my sins and purges me, and that the Holy Ghost gives me the joy of both by faith. The Holy Ghost is come not to bear witness to the first man — He has only to convict him of sin — but He testifies to the glory of the Second man, the riches of God’s grace in Him, and the efficacy of His work in death for the believer. The church was becoming a ruin; but the believer has the witness in himself. Eternal life is superior to all change; and that he has — even Christ — an object of outward testimony, but also by grace in himself. This is farther pursued, showing that it is in the Son of God. “He that hath the Son hath life;” and if a man has not the Son of God, it does not matter what else he may have, he has not life. It is in the Son, and only in Him. Then comes the conclusion. “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life,” And there he stops. What is added as the last clause of verse 13 only spoils the verse. It was put in by man. “And this is the confidence,” — it is not a question of life only, but of confidence. “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us.” Thus after life comes confidence, and then the formal close of all follows, as we see in verses 18-21. “And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him.” But is there not such a thing as sin? Yes. “If any one see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: concerning that I do not say that be should make request. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.” Let me make a brief remark on this. The “sin unto death” has nothing to do with eternal death, but with the close of this life. It means not some extraordinarily grievous act, but any sin whatever under special circumstances. For instance, when Ananias and Sapphira lied in presence of the grace that the Holy Ghost was then bestowing on the church, this was “sin unto death.” Many a man since then has told a lie which has not been so judged: it was not therefore a “sin unto death.” The circumstances of the case have an important influence in modifying it and giving it character. So with any other sin. I mention this because it is there precisely where spiritual power is necessary very often; and all children of God might not see the bearing of a sin and its peculiar heinousness under a given state of things; but when once it is shown, they can understand it perfectly, because they have the life of Christ in them, and the Holy Ghost too. “All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not unto death.” We must not think that all sin is unto death; but any sin under peculiar circumstances might be. And then the last verses sum up the whole matter. “We know that every one that is born of God sinneth not.” We saw that to be born of God, to have life, is the great doctrine of the epistle. Here is its character. Such an one does not sin, “but he that has been born of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth him not.” Here we have not merely its character, but its source. The character was Christ; the source is God. “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” This is the other sphere. “And we know that the Son of God hath come.” Now we have the object given. “The Son of God hath come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” — objects apt to rise with blinding power between their eyes and Christ. ON 1 John 5:7-8.It is much to be regretted that excellent persons in all ages have been prone to rest some of their defences of the truth on untenable ground. The danger is that when any of these mistakes in proof are set aside, especially by foes of the truth, not only are such uninformed and incautious disputants apt to fight stubbornly for what is indefensible (i.e., really for self), but others, partly through timidity, partly through ignorance, may dread that the truth itself is imperilled, or be even disposed to stand in doubt of it, confounding the ill-conduct of its advocates with its own impregnable evidence. Thus one hears with humiliation that any man of learning should seek to shelter the famous passage of the three heavenly witnesses from the reprobation which to say the least an interpolated gloss deserves, and from none so heartily as from pious men jealous for the divine glory of the Lord Jesus. Truth is itself too sacred to admit of giving quarter to that which is spurious, the continued sanction of which is hostile to the authority of the Bible, and in particular to the very point which the suspicions article is meant to support. Let us remember that the study of the authorities on which the Greek Testament rests has greatly developed during the last seventy years, and especially perhaps the last thirty. During this time many fresh manuscripts, some of great value and antiquity, have been brought to light, along with a fuller and more exact collation of all that had been previously known; and this makes an error of the kind less excusable and more painful, if it be in a quarter one respects. I will not cite, however, from any volume of the day, but confront a sentence of the famous J. Calvin with the facts, that every intelligent Christian who may want information, but values nothing but the truth, may be enabled to judge for himself. “Since, however, the passage flows better when this clause [from “in heaven” to “in earth” inclusively] is added (!) and as I see that it is found in the best and most approved copies (!!) I am inclined to receive it as the true reading.”* (Calvin, Translation Soc. Comment. on the Cath. Epistles, p. 257. Edinburgh, 1855.) Then, again, Beza, who ought to have known more of the manuscripts, follows in the wake of his leader. Such statements, I confess, are inexplicable, save on the supposition both of strong prejudice and of surprising inattention to the facts of the case.

For so decisive is the testimony of ancient documents (whether manuscripts, versions, or citations by the earliest ecclesiastical writers), that if this portion can be allowed to be scripture against their testimony, a fatal blow is inflicted on all certainty of evidence for the rest of the New Testament; for all the uncials preserve a dead silence as to it, more than 160 cursives, all the lectionaries, all the ancient versions except the Latin, and even of the Latin more than fifty of the oldest and best copies, and of the rest it is in some cases inserted by a later hand, and with that uncertainty of position which often accompanies an interpolation; while it is not once quoted in any genuine remains of the early Greek or even Latin fathers, even where the occasions seem most to call for it. Its supposed citation by Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome, etc. is an illusion.

“Quia tamen optime fluit contextus si hoc membrum addatur, et video in optimis ac probatissimis fidei codicibus haberi, ego quoque libenter amplecter.” — Comm. in loc. Ed. Genev. p. 74. Hence Erasmus, in his first (1516) and second (1519) editions of the Greek New Testament, so far faithfully followed his MS, and did not print verse 7. It would seem that the Complutensian editors must have boldly translated the Latin version as it stands in the majority of the extant copies; for in the captious attack now before me (Annotationes Jacobi Lopidis Stunicae contra Erasmus Rot. in defens. translationis N.T. Complut. 1520), the ablest of them does not pretend to diplomatic authority for the Greek they venture to print, but arraigns the Greek MSS. as corrupted, and backs up the common text of the Vulgate by a quotation from Jerome’s (?) - Prologue to the Canonical Epistles. “Sciendum est hoc loco graecorum codices apertissime esse corruptos: nostros (!) vero veritatem ipsam ut a prima origine traducti sunt continere. Quod ex prologo beati Hieronymi super epistolas canonicas manifeste apparet. Ait enim Quae si sic ut ab eis digestae sunt ita quoque ab interpretibus fideliter in latinum verterentur eloquium: nec ambiguitatem legentibus facerent: nec sermonum sese varietas impugnaret illo praecipue loco ubi de unitate trinitatis in prima Ioannis epistola positum legimus, In qua etiam ab infidelibus translatoribus multum erratum esse a fidei veritate comperimus trium tantummodo vocabula hoc est aquae sanguinis et spiritus in ipsa sua editione ponentibus et patris verbique ac spiritus testimonium ommittentibus in quo maxime et fides catholica roboratur et patris et filii et spiritus sancti una divinitatis substantia comprobatur.” [I give the quotation as S. cites it, not as it stands in the Benedictine edition of Jerome’s works.] Erasmus had already replied to our notorious countryman, Edward Lee (afterwards Popish archbishop of York), that he did not find in the Greek what was so common in the Latin, and edited accordingly, without expressing approval or blame; that he had at different times seen seven manuscripts, in none of which was anything that answered to the ordinary Vulgate. “Porro quod Hieronymus in Praefatione sua testatur hunc locum ab haereticis depravatum, si velim uti jure meo, possem appellare ab Hieronymi auctoritate, quod Leus facit quoties ipsi commodum est And then he proceeds to expose the exaggeration of Lee, and to propose a conjectural correction in the citation from the prologue. (Desid. Erasmi. Opp. tom. ix., coll. 275, 276.) The truth is, that, by the common consent of the learned, including the Benedictine and other editors of Jerome’s writings, this prologue is confessed not to be his production, but of a much later age, and by an inferior hand. To his Spanish critic he answers, “Hic ex auctoritate Hieronymi [which we have just seen is no authority at all, being a forgery], docet Stunica Graecos codices palam esse depravatos. Sed interim ubi dormit codex ille Rhodiensis? Porro nos non susceperamus negotium emendandi Graecos codices, sed quod in illis esset, bona fide reddendi.” Then, after a long argument intended to neutralize the alleged statement of Jerome’s (which Erasmus says, and no wonder, he does not quite understand), he adds, “Cum Stunica meus toties jactet Rhodiensem codicem, cui tantum tribuit auctoritatis, mirum est, non hic adduxisse illius oraculum, praesertim cum ita fere consentiat cum nostris codicibus, ut videri possit Lesbia requla.

Veruntamen ne quid dissimulem, repertus est apud Anglos Graecus codex unus, in quo habetur, quod in vulgatis deest. Scriptum est enim hunc ad modum· Ὅτιτρεῖςεἰσὶνοἱμαρτυροῦντεςἐντῳοὐρανῳ, Πατὴρ, Λόγος, καὶΠνεῦμα [ἅγιον is omitted], καὶοὗτοιοἱτρεῖςἓνεἰσίν. καὶτρεῖςεἰσὶν [οἱ is omitted] μαρτυροῦντεςἐντῃγῃ, πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, καὶαἷμα, εἰτὴνμαρτυρίαντῶνἀνθρώπων, etc. Quanquam hand scio an casu factum sit, ut hoc loco non repetatur, quod est in Graecis nostris, καὶοἱτρεῖςεἰςτὸἓνεἰσίν. Ex hoc igitur codice Britannico reposuimus, quod in nostris dicebatur deesse: ne cui sit causa calumniandi. Quanquam et hunc suspicor ad Latinorum codices fuisse castigatum. Posteaquam enim Graeci concordiam inierunt cum Ecclesia Romana, studuerunt et hac in parte cum Romanis consentire.” (Ib. coll. 351-353.) Therefore Erasmus in his third edition (1522) inserted verse 7, correcting two errors and supplying the omission at the end of verse 8 in what he called the Cod. Brit. (or Montfort MS.), which probably had the Acts and Epistles added about this very time to the Gospels written a few years before, as the Revelation was added by another hand later still — copied, it would seem, from the well-known Leicester MS. Erasmus put in the passage to keep his promise, not because he counted it genuine. Is it too strong to fear that a document so framed, which cannot be traced beyond a friar named Froy, and which came in so opportunely to supply an apparent authority for a Greek text (of which more presently) for the three heavenly witnesses, points to a dishonest source? It is remarkable too, as Sir I. Newton noticed long ago, that there is a marginal note by the side of this passage in the Complut. Polyglot, as in 1 Corinthians 15:51 and Matthew 6:13, where the Vulgate is in conflict with the Greek MSS. It is a pity, however, that they were not as explicit on 1 John 5:7 as there, and that they did not cleave to the Greek against the Latin, as they did in rejecting its absurd misrepresentation of 1 Corinthians 15:51. They do indeed cite Thomas Aquinas for 1 John 5:7. “Now to make Thomas thus in a few words do all the work was very artificial” (says Sir I. N., Works, vol.

V. P. 522); “and in Spain, where Thomas is of apostolical authority, it might pass for a very judicious and substantial defence of the printed Greek. But to us Thomas Aquinas is no apostle. We are seeking for the authority of Greek manuscripts.” To what then is the passage due? It is as clear as anything of the sort can be, that what we call verse 7 sprang from Augustine’s remarks on what now stands as verse 8, possibly suggested by words of Cyprian to a similar effect. Compare his treatise contra Maximinum Arian. Episcop. 1. ii. c. 22. (Tom. viii. col. 725, ed. Ben.) Not that the celebrated bishop of Hippo cites the passage: what he says is professedly his comment or gloss on the words spirit, water, and blood. “Si vero ea, quae his significata sunt, velimus inquirere, non absurde occurrit ipsa Trinitas, qui unus, solus, verus, summus est Deus, Pater, et Filius et Spiritus sanctus, de quibus verissime dici potuit, Tres sunt testes, et tres unum sunt: ut nomine Spiritus significatum accipiamus Deum Patrem: de ipso quippe adorando loquebatur Dominus ubi ait, Spiritus est Deus. (Id. iv. 24.) Nomine autem sanguinis Filium quia, verbum caro factum est. (Id. i. 14.) Spiritum sanctum,” etc. From the reputation of Augustine this fanciful idea at first gained currency and acceptance, though not always in precisely the original shape; then it seems to have been inserted in the margin as a gloss, till at length, through the ignorance of the transcribers and the clergy in general, it positively crept* into that text which the Council of Trent, with a temerity as amazing as the lack of knowledge it betrays, pronounced authentic.

Hence the danger of demoralising Roman Catholic scholars, some of whom, like R. Simon, were doomed to do a perpetual violence to their conscience, while others, bolder in evil, misdirect every weapon that ingenuity can devise to make the worse appear the better reason. Most, no doubt, entrench themselves with a sort of blind honesty in their last stronghold: they believe what the church believes — a pitiful answer where it is a question of revealed truth.

Jerome (Epist. cvi. ad Sunn. et Fret.) speaks of a similar course of mistake in copying his own version. “Et miror quomodo e latere Adnotationem nostram nescio quis temerarius scribendam in corpore putaverit, quam nos pro eruditione legentis scripsimus hoc modo,” etc. (S. Hieronymi Opp. tom. i. p. 659, Ed. Ben.) But we need not go outside the commonly received text of the Greek New Testament in order to find another instance of what was first a marginal gloss, which at length crept into the text; for such seems to be the history of Act 8:37. It is curious that here the conditions are reversed as between Erasmus and the Complutensian editors; for he owns the verse wanting in his Greek copies, yet inserts it in deference to the Latin, whilst they follow the Greek spite of the Latin. As to internal evidence, it is equally conclusive against the passage foisted in. To bear witness “in heaven” is nonsense; to say “on earth” is superfluous; for earth is the constant scene of testimony. Again, the Father and the Son are the true scriptural correlatives — never the Father and the Word, which last is in correlation with God, as we see in John 1:1-51. Further, since Pentecost the Holy Ghost is distinctively said to be sent down from heaven, and this with a view to the testimony of the gospel, instead of bearing record in heaven with the Father and the Son. Lastly, those who adopt the passage as it stands in the vulgar Latin copies are led to lower the character of the witness borne; for as they of course treat the first three as divine, so they regard the last three as earthly and created witnesses, making the πνεῦμα to be no other than “the created soul of Christ which he breathed forth on the cross, thus witnessing that he was true man.” It would be awkward to make the same Spirit witness both in heaven and on earth. Objections to the omission of verse 7 have been imagined, as many are aware, for various reasons, all of which seem to me weakness itself. 1. As to the supposed breach of connection, one has only to read verse 6 in order to be convinced that, on the contrary, the three heavenly witnesses come in most strangely between the water and the blood and the Spirit, of which that verse treated, and verse 8, which pursues the same subject. Internally therefore, as much as externally, verse 7 can only be viewed as an intrusion. The Trinity (fundamental a truth as it is, and without it Christianity is a myth) has no possible link with the context. Christ in death, yet withal life eternal, is the point on which the three witnesses converge with their one testimony. 2. The expression οἱμαρτυροῦντες, said of the Spirit, the water, and the blood, is no difficulty without verse 7, because they are evidently personified. 3.

The wonder is great how Bishop Middleton, the able investigator of the usage of the Greek article, could have so palpably erred as to say that the τὸ before ἓν in verse 8 presupposes ἓν in verse 7, and therefore that both verses stand or fall together. Previous reference is only one of the sources of the article. Ἓν, I grant, might be used of the persons in the Trinity (compare John 10:30 for the Father and the Son); but τὸἓν is absolutely necessary for the Spirit, the water, and the blood, where identity of nature is not in question but unity of scope. Compare Philippians 2:2. Other arguments, such as that founded on two editions of the Epistle, or on the influence of Arians, or on the negligence of transcribers, do not call for a detailed consideration in this place if at all. Of the state and manner in which the passage is found in the few real or factitious Greek manuscripts that contain it, we may observe, (1) that both in the Graeco-Latin Cod. Ottobon. (Vat. 298) and in the Greek Cod. Montfort. (Trin. Coll. Dubl. G. 97) the three heavenly witnesses are set down without the Greek article to any one of them (πατὴρ, λόγος, καὶπνεῦμαἅγιον)! — a construction which indicates not obscurely the hand of one used to Latin (which has no article) and grossly ignorant of Greek; (2) that the same Cod.

Ottobon. gives ἀπὸτοῦοὐρανοῦ, translated in the corresponding Latin by in celo, though not ἀπὸ, as Scholz has strangely read, but, ἐπὶτῆςγῆς; (3) that whilst the Cod. Ottobon. represents that the Father, Word, and Holy Spirit (εἰςτὸἓνεἰσὶ) “are to one purpose,” or agree in one, (translated by itself unum sunt!) the Cod. Montfort. says ἓνεἰσὶ, “are one;” and both (like the Complut. Polyglot) leave out the grand point of the genuine scripture; for neither gives the smallest hint of the revelation that the three witnesses, the Spirit and the water and the blood, conspire in one testimony. I may say that the Montfort MS. unquestionably Latinizes elsewhere in 1 John, and in the immediate context, in opposition to all other Greek manuscripts. As for the only other documents as yet produced in favour of the amplified text, suffice it to say that the Codex Ravianus of Berlin is now (as well as one of those at Wolfenbόttel) acknowledged to be a forgery, copying the very characters (in themselves peculiar) of the Complutensian Polyglot, and even repeating some of its misprints! That which Scholz cited as 173 in his list is the Codex Regius Neapolitanus, which in the text really confirms the truth, but adds on the margin in more recent characters the disputed clause. Here only, as compared with Codd. Ottobon. and Montfort., the article is duly inserted; but there is this unfortunate flaw in its value, that while the manuscript was written in the eleventh century, the addition cannot claim a higher antiquity than the sixteenth, if indeed so high. Such evidence as this might be easily multiplied by dishonest hands; but the weight of it all would be nil. It may be worth while to mention, as corroborating the testimony to the source of this mistake, not without fraud, that its earliest known occurrence in Greek is in the Greek version of the Acts of the fourth Lateran Council (in 1215), where it stands thus - ὅτιτρεῖςεἰσὶνοἱμαρτυροῦντεςἐνοὐρανῳὁπατὴρ, λόγος, καὶπνεῦμαἅγιον· καὶτοῦτοι (sic!) οἱτρεῖςἓνεἰσίν. εὐθύςτεπροστίθησι . . . καθῶςἐντισὶκώδηξιν (sic = ἀντιγράφοις) εὑρίσκεται. So the passage stands both in Hardouin’s Collection (tom. vii. p. 18) and in Mansi’s (tom. xxii. p. 984).I can hardly doubt that this it was which encouraged the Complutensian editors to venture on their daring importation into the Greek New Testament of a passage which, however well meant doctrinally, bears the indelible trace of human infirmity, even after Stunica and his companions did their best to make decent Greek of it by inserting τῳ before οὐρανῶ, ὁ before λόγος, and τὸ before (not πν. but) ἅγιονπνεῦμα,* correcting also τοῦτοι, which was no doubt a blunder for οὗτοι. But they went a little too far when they changed ἓν into εἰςτὸἓν after the first three, and left out εἰςτὸἓν after τὸπνεῦμακαὶτὸὕδωρκαὶτὸαἷμα where these words beyond controversy ought to be. No doubt they were guided by Latin copies made since Th. Aquinas’ day and that council. They refer in their marginal note to the perverse doctrine of Joachim on the Trinity, which was condemned at this very council of the Lateran.

Hence Calecas in the fourteenth century, and Bryennius in the fifteenth, as Bishop Marsh noticed, being native Greeks, and feeling the deficiency of the Lateran Acts in Greek, wrote ὁλόγοςκαὶτὸπνεῦματὸἅγιον. The copyist of the Montfort MS. omitted the article even before πατὴρ, not to speak of the other words which require it. If we turn to Thomas Aquinas, as referred to, the erroneous statement is sufficiently startling. He cites verse 7 as it stands in the later Latin copies, and reasons on the heterodoxy of Joachim, who applied the unity there, not to essence, but to affection and consent. Then, quoting verse 8, he says, “In quibusdam Libris attexitur: et hi tres unum sunt; sed hoc in veris exemplaribus non habetur (!), sed in quibusdam Libris dicitur esse appositum ab haereticis Arianis ad pervertendum intellectum sanum auctoritatis praemissae de unitate essentiali trium personarum (!!).” (Divi Thomae Aquinatis. Opera, tom. viii., p. 83, Venetiis, 1776.) This probably accounts for the omission of the clause that concludes verse 8 in the Complutensian Polyglot, as well as in some of the Greek copies manufactured after the fourth Lateran Council. Some excuse may be allowed for one like the “angelic doctor,” who was unacquainted with the Greek scriptures; but why then did he dogmatise on so serious a subject? Total ignorance is the only conceivable palliation of his assertions, which are notoriously opposed to truth.

And what can one think of the deliberate sanction given to all this by Cardinal Ximenes and his editors in the renowned Polyglot of Alcala? Are we to shelter them also under such a plea? If not, what then? Again, what can one judge of the knowledge or the moral integrity of keeping up such a note to 1 John 5:7 in modern reprints of Jerome’s works (e.g. the Abbι Migne’s, Paris, 1845) as the following? “Caeterum nota sunt pro ejus versiculi germanitate testimonia Patrum Africanorum, Tertulliani, Cypriani, Eugenii, Fulgentii, Vigilii, Victoris, e[t]quatuor centum Episcoporum in fidei professione, quam Vandalorum regi obtulerunt. Major omni exceptione est Cassiodorus,” etc. (Patrologiae Curs., tom. xxix., coll. 846.) Not to speak of the silence of the Greek fathers on a question of the Greek text, it has been proved repeatedly and minutely that not one of these could have read the passage in the Greek as it now appears in the Vulgate. All that can be fairly drawn from Victor Vitensis’ story of the symbol of faith presented by the African bishops to Hunneric is that the three heavenly witnesses must have been then read in their Latin copies. But it is certainly not so in the oldest and best Latin manuscripts that are extant, as all intelligent Romanists must know.

William Kelly's Commentary and Lectures

William Kelly (1821–1906) was an Irish-born Plymouth Brethren Bible teacher and editor who succeeded John Nelson Darby as the intellectual leader of the Exclusive Brethren. Extraordinarily prolific, Kelly produced commentaries, lectures, and introductory studies on nearly every book of the Bible. …

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Old Testament

GEN EXO LEV NUM DEU JOS JDG RUT 1SA 2SA 1KI 2KI 1CH 2CH EZR NEH EST JOB PSA PRO ECC SOS ISA JER LAM EZK DAN HOS JOL AMO OBA JON MIC NAH HAB ZEP HAG ZEC MAL

New Testament

MAT MRK LUK JHN ACT ROM 1CO 2CO GAL EPH PHP COL 1TH 2TH 1TI 2TI TIT PHM HEB JAS 1PE 2PE 1JN 2JN 3JN JUD REV

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