Concluding Notes on 1 John: Seven Attestations of Atonement

The last seven scriptural attestations to the atonement are found in this Epistle. It is the opinion of the most scholarly experts that the so-called First Epistle of John is the final document of Divine Revelation. This fact enhances the value of the seven clear and emphatic testimonies to the atonement, the central doctrine of the Gospel and the keystone of the arch of Christian theology. Three of these are found in the third chapter and one in each of the other four, making seven in all. 

It has been beautifully said that this Epistle is a prism which gives all the seven colors that make up the one white light of redemptive truth. Each of these testimonies is really distinct from every other, and from all others in the Holy Scriptures. 

These unique presentations of this fundamental doctrine have a polemic value, since they are of the nature of apologetic protests against erroneous views of the atonement already commencing to disturb the church and certain to appear more distinctly in future centuries. Let us present a conspectus of these testimonies. 

The first is "the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin." This is the negative side of the Christian's high privilege, of which the positive is to have fellowship in the light of God. The sin which is cleansed away by the virtue of the Redeemer's blood is not viewed as transgression to be forgiven, but as defilement to be removed, because it disqualifies for the presence of God in his temple. Here we have a definition of the atonement, as that quality in the blood of Jesus the Son of God which annuls or cleanses conditionally the pollution of sin. Its uniqueness lies in the divine-human value of the sacrifice for sin nowhere else stated, although it is implied in Paul's word, "the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood." (Acts xx. 28.) Hitherto the value of Christ's blood has been expressed in such words as "incorruptible" and "precious," but now John's final testimony reaches an absolute climax. It is "the blood of Jesus His Son." This suggests how widely modern philosophers depart from the truth when they deny the theological and practical reality of the blood of our Incarnate Sacrifice, arguing that the sacrificial language of the Levitical altar-service comes into the New Testament only as a figure. Were this true we should find in the progress of doctrine in this volume a gradual transition from the figurative to the real. On the contrary, Levitical language is more distinct and real at the end of the gospels than at the beginning, at the conclusion of the Acts than at the commencement, and in the final epistle of Paul than in the first of the series. John, the last survivor of the apostles, opens and finishes his last writing with a most realistic allusion to the blood of the atonement. He gives no sanction to an interpretation of the Gospel so refined and so "spiritual" as to need no veritable oblation of blood, the medium of physical life. In his day the evangelical system had not been so sublimated as to clear itself of the wrath of God and its propitiation in "the blood of Jesus His Son." The modern theory is as false as it is fascinating. 

The second testimony to the atonement is still more emphatic: "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." The uniqueness of this declaration is seen first in the word "hilasmos., " "propitiation," used in no other book in the New Testament, and, secondly, in the fact that the Son of God himself is the propitiation, and not as in Rom. iii. 25, a propitiatory offering made by Christ. That which gives heavenly virtue to the sacrifice in this testimony goes beyond the preaching, which emphasizes the blood and the life, and announces the astonishing fact that the very self of the offerer is the propitiation, as the Son. His Person interposes between the divine displeasure and the world which "lieth in the wicked one." He is the standing propitiation. Hence the possibility of a Christian's receiving forgiveness if he should commit a single sin, as the aorist tense, "If any man sin," implies. The Advocate makes no special intercession for the professed Christian who, by persisting in a course of sin without repentance, ceases to be a child of God because he has lost his likeness to God. In the Septuagint there is this remarkable sentence, "There is propitiation (hilasmos) with Thee." This is not for the encouragement of the saint who has yielded to one temptation to sin, but for his warning to turn immediately in penitent faith in Christ. The Spirit of Inspiration adds these words, "that Thou mayest be feared."

The third testimony is in some respects the most striking of all the seven, though it is introduced quite incidentally and with the least formality. In stating the necessity that all who would see the Son of God as He is, when He shall be manifested, should be found like Him, "pure even as He is pure," it was very natural that His first manifestation should be suggested to the mind of John as making provision for all that the second manifestation would require. This requirement is purity of heart, for which the atonement is an ample conditional provision. In addition we have in this Scripture two distinct and peculiar points, the "taking away of sins," and "in Him is no sin." The words "take away" have a very special force in the New Testament statement of the atonement. In the sentence, "Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world," the meaning is that Jesus is the conditional substitute, not in punishment, but for punishment. But in 1 John iii. 5 the dominant thought is not that of the sacrificial purgation of sin, but of our complete separation from sin through Christ's hostility to sin and His removal of all sin from believers even as He is Himself sinless. This He does by the indwelling fullness of the Spirit entirely sanctifying spirit, soul and body. (1 Thess. v. 23.) Hence the atonement exhibits its highest efficiency in the entire removal of the hereditary bent to sinning.

The seal of perfection is put upon the atonement when its Author is thus described: "In Him is no sin." He who takes away our sins by forgiveness and our sinfulness by His mission of the Holy Spirit for our entire purification, makes Himself the standard of our perfection and makes us partakers of His own sinlessness. John displays our Pattern negatively as pure, and positively as righteous, not merely to magnify Christ's dignity, but to reveal our privilege and duty to be exactly like Him in purity and righteousness.

Our fourth allusion to the atonement is found in John's sudden transition from sin to Satan's agency in its origin: "The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil." The past tense, "was manifested," renders it certain that John is not speaking of the destruction of sin at and after his second coming, as some erroneously teach. Here in our earthly sphere, and now in our probation, while contending against these three battalions of enemies to holiness, the world, the flesh and the devil, the usurping prince of this world, is the scene of the most glorious victory of the Son of God over His antagonist taking place on the very ground of Satan's first apparent triumph in the fall of Adam, the progenitor of a race bearing his image marred and scarred by sin through his evil agency. The works of the devil in this world are found only in the human heart. His works do not consist in our actual sins. These are the works of men. His work is that bent to sinning which the sin of Adam, at the solicitation of Satan, the father of lies, entailed upon our race. It is the overthrow of this power of Satan enthroned in human souls. The Son of God came for this purpose that He might, not by physical omnipotence, but by the power of His cross, expel the forces of Satan and regain for Himself and His Father His rightful possession. There is nowhere outside of the Apocalypse so full and explicit a statement of the relation of the death of Christ to the dissolution of the empire of the evil one. If the sins are actual and personal they are taken away into the land of forgetfulness through faith in Christ's redemption. If they are the works of Satan, then are they to be cast out by the entrance of a stronger than he. John does not go into the detail. He leaves the matter in its broad generality. He does not use the Pauline phrase, "sanctify wholly," and "our old man is crucified," but be certainly purposes to accentuate the inspiriting truth that those who are born of God may 'be delivered from every trace of the work of Satan within them as a downward propelling force. With this idea in his mind let any candid person read the whole passage: "He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin." What is this but a positive assurance that those who fully rely on the atonement may, and must, share their Saviour's freedom from sin? What is this but a declaration that all which is "of the devil" may in this life be removed from our regenerate souls, which have now become the temple of the indwelling Christ?

The fifth testimony to the atonement regards it as the example and pattern of self-sacrificing devotion to the good of others: "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

In the presence of a passage like this we must admit that the atonement was a perfect surrender and oblation of the human and divine self to His Father; a perfect example of the opposite of the sin and selfishness of mankind and a sublime reproof of man's separation from God. But the idea of example does not explain the atonement. There is some purpose infinitely deeper than example. On the Godward side there must have been some barrier to the salvation of a sinful race which the atonement removed. Whether the difficulty was in God's essential justice, as some assert, or in His governmental rectitude, as we believe, we cannot here demonstrate. There is a very wide interval between the kenosis, or self-emptying of the Son of God, and the self-devotion of his imitating servants. But this is true that the love which devised the atonement in the wisdom of the Father, and prompted the self-sacrificing of the Son, is that perfect love in purified human hearts which inspires self-abnegation even unto death in the spiritual interest of our fellow-men.

As we advance in this wonderful Epistle we come to the sixth testimony to the atonement, which is the largest and most comprehensive of the seven. "God is love. Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him." That here, for the first time in the Bible, God is said to be love, must awaken our keen attention. Love has the preeminence here as everywhere, and rules the whole passage. It is the fountain out of which the atonement flows. It presides over the mission of the Redeemer, providing for believers a divine life which itself presupposes and requires a propitiation. It is the melody of all God's Revelation, and it strikes its highest note in the gift of His only begotten Son to the manger and the cross, that the believer might not perish, but have eternal life. In no other sense is love the essence of God's nature than in the intercommunication of the Persons of the Trinity. Upon the fact that the Son was the object of the Father's love from eternity is grounded the manifestation of His love to us in the gift of His Son, that believers "might live through Him." John does not use any of Paul's terms, "reconciliation," "ransom" and "redemption," but their full meaning is contained in the twice used word "hilasmos," "propitiation" required by holiness and provided by love. This great word in chap. iv. 10, stands between the positive purpose of the atonement in verse 9, "that we might live through him," and the negative in verse 14, "to be the Saviour of the world." The latter teaches the universal extent of the atonement as an objective provision, and the former the free, subjective appropriation which limits its ultimate benefits to those who comply with its conditions.

The seventh and last of John's testimonies and the last in all Revelation relates to the virtue of the atonement as the source of life, eternal life, conditionally inspired in a fallen race. This is the supreme benefit of God in the death and resurrection of His Incarnate Son. If there is one sentence worthy of being God's final word respecting this whole subject, it is this: "And this is the record (testimony) that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life;" or, in the emphatic order of the Greek, "the life he hath not." Searching the "record" just written we find the Spirit, the author and giver of life; the water, the indispensable supporter of life, "the well of water" within the believer "springing up into everlasting life," and the blood flowing from His pierced side. We may not explain the great miracle of living streams, "water and blood," out of a dead Saviour's side. In the sacrifice of our redemption they flow together, the water signifying the new life imparted in the new birth. This with John is the supreme if not the only meaning of water as a symbol, as all purifying by washing is with blood. "He has washed us from our sins in His blood." The two streams signify the unity of spiritual life in the purgation of sin and the removal of death by the impartation of life, the beginning of life everlasting. He who receives the one receives the other. The blood avails for the whole world as a provision placing all men on salvable ground. But it is not so with the water. It must be drunken before life can be experienced. For eternal life is in His Son. "He," and he only, who hath the Son hath life. To have the Son in this vital sense is to be united with Him as the branch is united with the vine.

There is no book of the New Testament which makes the propitiation of Christ so absolutely all-prevailing; it is the beginning and ending and the interval between them. It is something unspeakably solemn in the appeal of the last page of the Bible to the significance of the atonement, as if the Holy Spirit who inspired it would end His work at the cross and leave ringing in the ears of every reader the words, "we have life in the Son" through His propitiation. Much of the current theology rejecting propitiation seeks in vain for life, not in the blood, but in human philosophy. Our Lord's final testimony is, "I am the Propitiation and the Life."