ii. 29-v. 12. GOD IS LOVE.
c. ii. 29-iii. 24.The Evidence of Sonship: Deeds of Righteousness before God.
- The Children of God and the Children of the Devil (ii. 29-iii. 12).
- Love and Hate: Life and Death (iii. 13-24).
4. "Every one that doeth sin," despite his philosophic theories and the intensity of his fancied illumination and superior knowledge, "doeth also lawlessness." Sin cannot be concealed by fine sounding phrases, such as an innocent misstep, a pardonable error. Every voluntary violation of the known law of God is a realization of sin in its completeness (Greek — "the" sin).
"Sin is lawlessness." These are convertible terms, and with equal truth the sentence may be read backwards. Sin is a wilful collision of a finite will with the highest authority in the universe. A failure to fulfil the law which man was created to keep, on which his happiness is suspended, is more than a disaster, it is a sin. Duty is threefold, to God, to men and to self. Hence there are three forms of sin. In each form there may be the doing of what is forbidden, which is a sin of commission, and the failure to do what is required, which is the sin of omission. In the last analysis sin may be traced to selfishness. See James i. 14, 15, for the first form of sin as selfishness, and James iv. 17 for the second form, a selfish failure in duty to others, which is emphasized by Christ in His description of the final judgment. (Matt. xxv. 31-46.) Sin reaches its climax when, having heard of the mission of Christ, the sinner sets Him at naught in His purpose "to take away sins." This He does, says Bede, "by forgiving sins, by helping us to keep from committing sins, and by reason of our moral inability to sin wilfully (Gen. xxix. 9) against one whom we love with the whole heart. Deliverance from punishment is the least part of Christ's work of taking away sins. He takes away the disposition to sin from every one who by faith claims His full heritage of divine grace. "He came to remove all sins, even as He was Himself sinless." (Bishop Westcott.) This explains how sin is utterly incompatible with fellowship with Him. It implies a rebuke of the Gnostic teachers, for the practice of sin, and it proved their professed knowledge of Christ to be unreal and hypocritical.
6. "Abiding in Him." This is more than simply "being" in Christ, because it expresses effort, and the present tense denotes that it is continuous.
"Sinneth not," literally "is not sinning." Character and fixed habit are here predicated, and not an isolated act contrary to the general trend of a holy life. The possibility of such a single wrong act under a sudden temptation is implied in ii. 1. It does interrupt fellowship, but it does not necessarily extinguish spiritual life and forfeit sonship to God, if there is an immediate resort to the "Advocate with the Father." The essence of the new life is love flowing Godward and manward. Anything which stops the flow of this current is fatal to the divine life. A single inadvertent sin, like a backward eddy, does not arrest the onward moving river, though it impedes its progress. Yet it remains true that there cannot be —what the gnostics professed — a sinning companionship with the sinless Christ. "He receiveth sinners" for conversion and not for complacent communion.
"Hath not seen Him." This seems to indicate that some teachers were giving authority to their destructive errors by appealing to the fact that they had looked upon the person of Christ. But Paul teaches us that there is no saving effect of such a sight. (2 Cor. v. 16.)
"Neither knoweth Him." "The point regarded," say Dean Alford and Bishop Westcott, "is present and not past." Whatever sympathetic intimacy with Christ he may have formerly had, it is certain that he who is now in a course of sin is a stranger to Him.
7. "Let no man lead you astray." This caveat relates especially to such misconceptions of Christian truth as lead to unrighteous conduct. Action follows opinion. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." This is seen in the derivation of the word "miscreant" from two Latin words, "minus" and "credo," signifying misbeliever. Orthodoxy is not saving, but it is the appointed medium of salvation.
"He that doeth righteousness." Whose entire activity is prompted by righteousness in its completeness and unity. Character underlies conduct.
"Even as He (Christ) is righteous." Well says Bishop Westcott: "The Christian's righteousness, of which Christ is the perfect type, must extend to the fulness of life." (John xiii. 15, xv. 12, xvii. 14, and notes on 1 6, iv. 17.) Christ's earthly life is the complete model of right action under all possible conditions.
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8. "Is of the devil." Not by creation, nor by generation, for the devil has neither created nor begotten anybody. But he who imitates the devil in his disposition and deeds, in Hebrew phrase, is of him, or by a still stronger metaphor, he is a child of the devil. Paul in his genesis of sin traces it back to Adam, but John goes back of the first parent, to the first tempter, Satan.
"Sinneth from the beginning." The present tense denotes incessant action. The first human being soon discovered that he was between two antagonistic forces — sin and holiness — and that he could not maintain a neutral position, but must link his destiny with one or the other of these hostile powers. He must affiliate with light or darkness. He cannot by combining them create a medium element in which to dwell.
"Destroy the works of the devil." The bent to sinning which Satan by tempting Adam and Eve to disobedience, induced in all their descendants. We cannot accept the declaration of some persons that "the works of the devil are the sins which he causes men to commit." Every sinner is the first cause, the cause uncaused, of his own sins. Hence his guilt is his own. The agency of Satan in giving a downward trend to human nature in the fall of Adam is the occasion of the voluntary sins of his posterity. The removal of this proclivity to sin called in theology original sin, or depravity, through faith in the blood of the Son of God producing entire sanctification is the destruction of the works of the devil. These are summed up in "original sin," which is their occasion. When men sin they indorse the devil's works and make them their own, from the guilt of which their only release is through the atonement in Christ as a conditional, substitute for punishment.
9. "Whosoever is begotten of God." Literally "has been begotten," implying that he still remains a child of God, his faith retaining the continuous efficacy of the divine birth.
"Doeth no sin." Literally "is not committing sin." Says Athenagoras: "Know ye that those whose ideal standard of life is the character of God will never enter upon the purpose of even the least sin."
"He cannot sin." Rather, "be sinning." A course of wilful sin is incompatible with continued sonship or likeness to God. Moral contradictions cannot co-exist in one person. He cannot be a thief and an honest man at the same time; neither can he be sinning and a true child of God at the same instant. Persistence in sinning extinguishes sonship or similarity to God, loving what He loves and hating what He hates. So long as love to God is the undiminished motive there can be no career of sin. But faith may become weak and love may decline. Then under the pressure of temptation the child of God may commit a single sin, as ii.1 implies, and have recourse to the righteous Advocate with the Father, and thus retain his birthright in the kingdom of God. Or he may with Judas pass out of the light into so total an eclipse of faith as to enter upon a returnless course of sin entirely sundering him from the family of God, and enrolling him as a "son of perdition," a "child of the devil," whose characteristics he has permanently taken on. Says Bishop Westcott: "The ideas of divine sonship and sin are mutually exclusive. As long as the relationship with God is real, sinful acts are but accidents." Sin in the proper acceptation of the term always implies the consent of the will, and therefore can never be an accident. Yet it is possible that an improper word may leap suddenly from the tongue of a true child of God or a sinful act which does not proceed from love may escape the will, while the deliberate purpose is righteous, and the ruling principle is love. This explains the dangerous phrase, "accidental sin," an isolated act contrary to the tenor of a holy life. This comes very near to Wesley's definition of an infirmity, an omission, or inadvertent wrong act springing from some weakness, or defect in a person whose character is rooted in love to God and man. Says Augustine: "There is a certain sin which he who has been born of God cannot commit, and because this is not committed the rest are excused. What is this sin? It is to do contrary to the command of Christ, contrary to the New Testament." So far as love, the new commandment (John xiii. 34) is the determining element in Christian character, Augustine agrees with Wesley that a thousand infirmities, errors of judgment and so called sins of ignorance may consist with perfect love, and are daily covered by the blood of Christ.
10. "In this the children of God are manifest." They are known by their victory over sin. Absence of sinning is their characteristic mark. "The children of the devil" are known by sinning. They who by evil conduct take on a likeness to the devil are called in this unique phrase children of the devil.
"Doeth not righteousness." This negation of doing implies that a Christian cannot be passive; he must be active in deed and in word. A nominal Christian is a delusion. "To do righteousness is a necessity for him who has been born of God."
"He that loveth not his brother" — his spiritual brother who wears, at least in outline, the image of Christ whom no one can love while failing to love him who bears His image, whether rich or poor, learned or ignorant, white or black. "If you fail to possess love and have everything else, nothing is profitable to thee. If you have not other things, have love and you have fulfilled the law." (Augustine.) Righteousness is the fulfilment of the divine law in its requirement of duties to God and to man. Holiness is conformity to the divine character. Perfect love is the root and loftiest embodiment of both righteousness and holiness.
11 For this is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another
11. "This is the message." The mandatory announcement. "That we love." In order that we love one another. Love is not merely the content of the message, but its purpose to incite self-sacrificing love in the hearts of believers. Christ's incarnation, life, preaching, example and death all aim to implant in human hearts that love which proves its genuineness by self-sacrifice. A self-indulgent disciple of Christ is a contradiction.
"Heard from the beginning." Of Christ's public teaching. "If the world hateth you." The "it" does not intimate a doubt; it assumes a fact. The emphatic word in the original is "hateth." In his banishment to Patmos John had fathomed its meaning.
12. "Not as Cain was of the evil one." The words "who" and "that" in the A. V. are not in the Greek. John goes back of Adam and Eve, the first human sinners to the first angelic sinner. Paul traces sin only to Adam. Cain manifested the Satanic spirit of hatred. Hence he belonged to the party of the wicked one, and, unless he sought forgiveness he will share the punishment of the devil. (Matt. xxv. 41.)
"Slew his brother." This is a terrible verb, literally signifying "to cut the throat," to butcher as an animal.
"And wherefore?" When one hates another because he has wronged him we call it a human sin, because it has an apparent reason; but hatred on account of righteousness is diabolism. Augustine traces the temptation of Cain to envy, a human sin most closely bordering on the Satanic: "He who envies does not love. The sin of the devil is in him. . . . For he fell and envies him who stands, not because he wishes to hurl him down in order that he himself may stand, but in order that he may not fall alone."
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