1 John 1:1-4 - The Word of Life

•     The subject-matter of the Gospel employed in the Epistle (i. 1-3).

•     The purpose of the Epistle (i. 4).

  ---

1 That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life

1. "From the beginning." As in John i. 1, before the world was. But in ii. 7, 13, 14, iii. 11, it signifies from the commencement of preaching the Gospel.

The first verse of the Epistle declares the reality of Christ's body, as attested by all the special senses which in the nature of the case can be applied. Taste and smell are not related to this demonstration. But the eyes, the ears and the hands are summoned as witnesses in proof that the important witness is emphasized by the use of two verbs, that which we have seen with our eyes and continuously, calmly and intently "contemplated" or surveyed. The phrase "with our eyes" is not redundant, for it accentuates the direct, outward experience of a matter so marvelous in itself and in its basal relation to vital Christian truths. It was no mere trance or vision of the soul alone. "Your eyes have seen" is the formula for assured certitude in Deut. iii. 21, xi. 7, xxi. 7.

Leviticus 10:8-11

 "8 And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying, 9 Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations: 10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; 11 And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses." — Leviticus 10:8-11 KJV.

THE PRIESTS FORBIDDEN WINE AND STRONG DRINK, 8-11.

9. Do not drink wine — This wine is in Hebrew יַ֣יִן (yayin), the most general term for this beverage, especially when it is intoxicating. “Yayin is a mocker.” Proverbs 20:1. In seventy-five out of a hundred and thirty-six passages it is spoken of with condemnation by reason of its disastrous effects. Unfermented, or new wine, called must, is in the Hebrew expressed by תִּירוֹשׁ (tirosh). This is never prohibited or condemned. It occurs thirty-eight times, with no indication of any intoxicating quality. The solitary apparent exception in Hosea 9:11 is explained as the gluttonous use of sweet, nutritious wine as an article of food. The meaning of the passage is, that the three great appetites — the sexual, the bibulous, and the gluttonous — “take away the heart” or understanding. There are several other terms sparingly used, some of which always involve a bad sense, as שׂבַע sobe, signifying soak and soaker, while others are doubtful. Nor strong drink — The Hebrew שֵׁכָר (shecar) is a generic term applied to all fermented liquors except wine. It includes, 1.) Beer, which was largely consumed in Egypt under the name of zythus. It was made of barley and certain herbs, such as lupin and skirrett, as a substitute for hops. 2.) Cider, or apple-wine. 3.) Honey-wine, of which there were two sorts; the first consisting of a mixture of wine, honey, and pepper, the other a decoction of the juice of the grape, termed debash (honey) by the Jews, and dibs by the modern Syrians. 4.) Date-wine, which was the fermentation of dates mashed and mixed with water. 5.) The fermented juices of various other fruits and vegetables, as figs, millet, pomegranates, and carob fruit. According to the latest researches in philology, the English word cider is a modification of shecar, through the Grecized form sikera. See Webster’s Dictionary. When ye go into the tabernacle — The service of God requires the clearest head and the purest heart. It is an intelligent exercise, and not a blind, mechanical opus operatum, or going through with the motions. If the priest even medicinally used fermented wine or strong drink in the smallest quantity, it disqualified him for his office during that day. What a rebuke is this to the usage — still prevalent in some countries — of drinking wine in the vestry before going into the pulpit and reasoning of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come! The enactment of this law immediately after the slaying of Nadab and Abihu affords strong grounds for the theory that they were drunken when they committed the act of sacrilege. The Targum of Palestine plainly sustains this view. “Drink no wine nor any thing that maketh drunk, as thy sons did, who have died by the burning of fire.” See Numbers 3:4.

11. That ye may teach — The priest was the earliest religious teacher of the Levitical law, “for the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth.” Malachi 2:7. The two sides of the priestly vocation, teaching and offering, are embraced in Deuteronomy 33:10. The Pentateuch knows nothing of a scholastic inculcation of the divine laws; it knows no formal religious instruction at all except the reading of the law before the assembled people, at the feast of tabernacles, in the Sabbatic year. Deuteronomy 31:10-13. All religious teachers should be τελειοι, perfect, having their senses — internal and external — exercised to discern or discriminate both good and evil. Hebrews 5:14. Wine draws a film over the spiritual eye and confounds moral distinctions. If the priests have aught to do with wine in a lawful way, it is only that it may, in the holy place,” be poured unto the Lord for a drink offering.” Numbers 28:7. Wine symbolizes joy. The joy of all believers is not the joy of earth but of heaven — of the sanctuary. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Knowing the Holy Spirit

In what sense may believers know the Comforter? Jesus, who sends Him, assured His disciples that they should know Him because of His intimate relation to them, dwelling with them and ultimately being in them. The indwelling would be true after His future coming. If we fulfill the condition, which is love to Christ certified by obedience, we shall receive the Comforter and shall know Him. Of course we shall know when we receive so important a person. It will be a crisis marking a new era in our lives. It is evident that this is not inferential knowledge, though this is important as a confirmation. It comes from noting the fruits of the Spirit described in the Bible and comparing them with the Christian graces observed in ourselves, love, joy, peace, etc. Knowledge of God in the scriptural sense is assimilative. No man can truthfully say that he knows the Comforter when these fruits of the Spirit are absent. But knowledge of a person includes more than an acquaintance with his works. I had known the military career of Gen. Grant, and had read his brief dispatches after his battles, but I had no personal acquaintance with that great soldier till one day in June, 1856, he permitted me to be presented to him and to shake hands with him on the veranda of a Saratoga hotel. I then for the first time knew Ulysses S. Grant.

In like manner we may have such a second-hand knowledge of the Paraclete as we find in the Holy Scriptures and in the testimony of persons filled with the Spirit, while strangers to the personal Holy Spirit. It is one thing to know much about Him; it is quite a different thing to have an intuitive perception of Him, and to feel the thrilling and transforming touch of His hand, and to commune with Him by day and by night more intimately than with any earthly friend. This is the kind of knowledge invoked in the so-called apostolic benediction. We do not understand that in our knowledge of the Holy Spirit we differentiate Him from the Father and the Son, though some eminent Christians testify to an acquaintance with each Person of the adorable Trinity, one in substance, but three in subsistences. If such a knowledge has been given to any believers, it is quite exceptional. It may be universal in the future world; it is certainly very rare in this. In our present state it is enough for us to receive the love of God and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ commingled in one blissful stream descending through the channel of the Holy Ghost. A distinctive knowledge of each person would tend to divide the divine substance and to lead to tritheism, three Gods.

In the scheme of revelation the Father revealed Himself in His incarnate Son. After His visible form was received by the cloud which hid Him from the eyes of His gazing disciples on the day of His ascension, the Paraclete was sent down to testify of the absent God-Man, to keep Him in the world's thought and to glorify Him who came to glorify the Father. Hence the Paraclete glorifies both the Father and the Son when He glorifies the Son. Hence Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church, "That the Father would give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him." This and other texts show that it is not the mission of the Comforter to give prominence to Himself, but to Christ, to whom He bears witness. Thus

"...when a messenger comes to tell a king, when a witness gives a testimony for his friend, neither speaks of himself. And yet, without doing so, both the messenger and the witness, in the very fact of giving their evidence, draw our attention to themselves, and claim our recognition of their presence and trustworthiness. And just so the Holy Spirit, when He testifies of Christ and glorifies Him, must be known and acknowledged in His divine commission and presence." (Andrew Murray.)

It is in this sense that we are to have a knowledge of the Paraclete while He holds up a light for us to see the Father in His adorable Son.

— from The Gospel of the Comforter, Chapter 22.

Soul Winning and the Fullness of the Spirit

The intimate connection between efficiency and success in saving souls and the fulness of the Spirit, may be seen in the study of the lives of those among the laity and the ministry who have instrumentally turned many to righteousness. It is an open secret that their suasive power dated from the hour when their hearts were enlarged by the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

From this experience in the city of New York, in answer to the prayers of a few consecrated women, Dwight L. Moody dates the beginning of his highest efficiency as an evangelist. This made Mrs. Catherine Booth's preaching so pungent in convicting of sin among the middle and upper classes in the West End of London; while by the same mighty power as a conscious experience, her husband, Gen. Booth, was conquering the slums in the East End of that city of nearly five millions of souls. Dr. Finney, after the Spirit anointed him, was like an electric dynamo from which streams of power went forth whenever he stood up to preach, and sometimes from his speechless presence. Benjamin Abbott, converted late in life, so extremely illiterate that he preached on the "oyster man," misreading "austere man," preached in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland under the anointing of the Spirit with so great success that thousands were added to the Lord. A layman by the name of Carpenter was comparatively a cipher in the Presbyterian church until he was filled with the Holy Ghost, when he became, through personal effort, the most successful winner of souls in his generation. He drew men to Christ to the number of several thousands as estimated at his funeral. These are a few instances out of myriads in which the baptism of the Spirit has given all the qualities requisite for moving souls from sin unto Christ, love, self-sacrifice, persistence, fear, fearlessness, tenderness and sympathy.

We should have mentioned joyfulness as an element of great power in drawing sinners to salvation. Joy always attends the of the Holy Spirit. It differs from all other kinds of happiness which arise from a pleasant environment and depend on things external and hence changeable and transient. The joy of the Holy Ghost is internal, abiding and eternal. The joy of men and women pelted with brickbats and rotten eggs, taking joyfully the spoiling of their goods, has a strange power to convince the persecutors of the truth of the gospel, on the principle that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church."

— edited from The Gospel of the Comforter, Chapter 21.

An Encouragement to Seekers of Joy

Let no one throw away his Christian experience because it is not joyful. This is what the adversary of your soul desires. Are you a servant of God, fearing him and working righteousness? Thank God and ask him to adopt you as a son. Are you adopted and have the witness of the Spirit now and then? Ask for the abiding witness. Are your peace and joy interrupted and variable? Ask in faith for the indwelling Paraclete in the plenitude of his grace. Take large views of God's mercy and benevolent purpose toward you in this life.

Let Paul's cumulative phrases in the ascription at the end of his wonderfully comprehensive prayer inspire you to ask for large things, even to be filled with all the fulness of God: "Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." This power is the personal Holy Spirit, the fountain of supreme joy through the inspiration of supreme love. Get an enlarged view of God's love as the ground of a larger faith. To this end study not only the Bible but the Christian poets. Let this spark from C. Wesley's glowing fire enkindle your soul:

Your Joy May Be Full

To every believer did Christ give his gracious command, "Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."

To restrict this promise of fulness of joy to only a few of the many who pray is to destroy all ground of faith for anyone. Fullness of joy was not designed to be a rare and exceptional Christian experience. Ever since the day of Pentecost Satan has been busy in all Christian lands spreading the wicked lie that only a few favorites of God, one in a thousand or a million, can be victorious over sin and permanently dwell on the sun-lit summits of assurance and fulness of joy. Alas, the majority of Christians believe this falsehood and dwell ever on the lowlands of doubt and depravity, and ascribe their wretched state to their constitution or their circumstances, in other words, to their Creator and not to their own failure to claim their full heritage in Christ. The promise of fulness of joy is to all believers today and to-morrow and forever, absolutely without exception. It is the business of your preacher to drive this lie out of both pulpit and pew where it has dwelt for ages, and to get men to believe Christ's glorious truth instead. It is encouraging to know that the truth is steadily mastering and exterminating the lie. Many are panting after a complete conformity to the image of the Son of God, crying, "Nearer, my God, to thee." Many in all the evangelical churches are claiming an experimental demonstration that the Holy Spirit can sanctify wholly and preserve blameless. Many are believing it as a doctrine and attesting it by a joyful experience. When this becomes general in Protestant churches their oneness in spirit will be complete and the prayer of our Saviour will be answered, "That they may be perfected in one." The chief obstacle to Christian unity hitherto has been a lack of love to the common Master.

— Jesus Exultant, Chapter 7.

The Value of Christian Joy

The notion is widely prevalent that an emotional religion must be fitful and unstable.

It is true that feeling excited by appeals to the sensibilities only, without any inculcation of truth upon the intellect, is to be deprecated. This results in a Christian character described by Christ as the stony-ground hearer that hears the word, and anon with joy receives it, but having no root in himself he endures only for a while. The failure is not to be ascribed to the joy, but to the lack of deep moral convictions resulting from a reception of Christian truth used by the Holy Spirit as a subsoil plowshare breaking up the fallow ground of the heart as a preparation for a spiritual life which will grow more and more robust as persecutions and tribulations increase.

Scholarly men are apt to think that feeling stands on a lower plane than the understanding and that it is not consistent with large thinking powers. Hence comes the error which spoils so much preaching warming at the head instead of the heart. It is thought that he who addresses the emotions and melts his hearers to tears is not so great as the master of syllogisms who welds a flawless chain of argument. Hence the tendency of the schools is to repress feeling and to intensify the dry intellect; whereas few people reason while all feel.

The Uniqueness of Christian Joy

The peace of Christ and the joy in the Holy Ghost depend on persistent, appropriating faith. The perpetual fulness of the Spirit resulting from this kind of faith is the condition of fulness of joy.

The joy inspired by the Spirit is unique. It is totally unlike natural gladness such as arises in worldly men when their corn and wine are increased. Hence it is indescribable. A simple emotion cannot be defined. You may talk forever of the peculiar emotion of the young mother who feels the first pulsation of maternal love, when her first-born child is laid in her bosom. The feeling must be forever unknown except to those who have had such an experience. It is so with every kind of emotion. We can describe it only by stating under what circumstances it arises. If you have never been in those circumstances the person who speaks of such an emotion speaks to you in an unknown tongue. The joy of the Holy Ghost is to an unbeliever as vague and meaningless as the colors of the rainbow described to one born blind.

The Kingdom Realm of Joy

"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." — Rom. xiv. 17

But great as is the blessedness of peace, Paul intimates that the kingdom of God affords a richer banquet. We have three degrees of beatitude set before us, rising like a climax: righteousness is good, peace is better and joy in the Holy Ghost is best of all, the crowning grace which God has to bestow on believers in his adorable Son. It is the link which unites us with God. It is the first installment of heaven paid on earth in advance.

This is more than the joy which is the natural sequence of right doing. The approval of conscience is the lowest degree of the joy of righteousness. If the act be not merely right but beneficent, if we have by sacrifice benefited some person, the joy rises in quality and intensity. Hence the generous deeds of the unregenerate are to them a source of felicity. This arises from the very constitution of human nature. Happiness and virtue are not divergent but parallel lines. We are as moral beings so constituted that joy must follow the exercise of benevolence. This joy is natural. But the joy of the Holy Ghost is supernatural. It is handed down direct from the Giver of all good gifts through the agency of the Holy Spirit. It flows not in the channels of nature, but is a fruit of the Spirit. Paul intends to discriminate between the natural joy of rectitude and this heavenly joy in Christian experience by styling it the joy of the Holy Ghost. It attends his residence in the soul. For there is a mystery next to the three-fold personality in the unity of the divine nature, the two-fold personality of the believer, the human interpenetrated by the divine personality inhabiting it as his temple. This miracle of the fulness of the Spirit was first manifested in Adam in Eden when the breath of God conveyed not merely animal and intellectual life, but spiritual life resulting from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Sin dissolved this mysterious union and the heavenly personage withdrew from his polluted sanctuary. From being filled with joy pervading every capacity, Adam became desolate indeed. The supremely blessed became supremely wretched. To be sundered from God, the fountain of bliss, is hell. When sin entered the soul of Adam that deep celestial spring ceased to send up its refreshing waters, and he became the subject of intense thirst. His posterity born in his fallen image share also his tormenting thirst. They all flew from spring to spring of sensual pleasure, but still they thirsted till Jesus stood up in this spiritual Sahara and cried, "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." The satisfying nature and the inexhaustible abundance of the water of life are intimated in the fact that out of the believer shall flow, not drops as from a spile, not brooks which dry up "in the summer's heat, but rivers, Amazons and Mississippis of living water. Then John, in a blessed parenthesis, for which I mean to thank him when I shake hands with him in heaven, strips off the imagery and tells us in plain words that Jesus is describing the joy of the Holy Spirit, who was not yet given in Pentecostal fulness. To this fountain Jesus sets a perpetual finger-point in his last words in the Bible, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come . . . and take the water of life freely."

— Jesus Exultant, Chapter 7.

There Is No Drudgery in True Prayer

In the higher states of Christian experience, there is a blending of prayer and praise. This is noticeable in St. Paul. If he begins with thanksgiving, he ends in prayer; if he begins with prayer, he ends with praise. Phil. 1:3, 4, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy." There is no drudgery in true prayer. He to whom communion with God the Father is a task has not advanced far in grace. It is very evident that the fullness of the spirit of grace and supplication has not been poured upon him. All who through faith in Christ have boldness and access or introduction to God "make requests with joy." All who come in their own name approach the throne of grace with fear and servility. To them prayer is a sad necessity, and not a delight transcending all the pleasures of sense. Bishop Janes had full sympathy with St. Paul in the joyfulness of prayer. To his roommate who had slept an hour, and awakening saw the bishop still on his knees breathing out his silent supplications, and asked why he prayed so long, he replied, "I delight in prayer." It was the recreation of his soul and body after a day of toil in conference and cabinet. How far in the opposite extreme is the practice of the Papal priests to prescribe prayer as a penance and a penalty, imposing so many Pater Nosters and Ave Marias after the confession of sins.

There cannot be a more sad departure from the true spirit of prayer than to treat it as a punishment. We often feel like weeping over the millions of benighted souls to whom the gladness of prayer is perverted into sadness through sacerdotal despotism.

Yet young Christians to whom prayer is not a delight should be encouraged to persevere in the use of this means of grace, and to pray for such a baptism of the Spirit and fullness of love as will change its irksomeness into an unspeakable joy. Thousands can attest the possibility of such a sudden transformation. They have lived months and years in a state of communion with God so intimate and delicious that, whenever they bow the knee to pray, hallelujahs spontaneously burst from their lips. This shows that in the quality of their piety they are approaching the heavenly state where prayer will be completely lost in praise.

— Half-Hours with St. Paul and Other Bible Readings Chapter 5.

The Ebb and Flow of Christian Joy

Do not imagine that the sudden subsidence of ecstatic joy is the withdrawal of the abiding Comforter.

You retain him by faith and not by feeling. The highest Christian experience is subject to variations. Joy, like the tide, ebbs and flows. There are times when the soul, without effort, apprehends the love of God, and joy unspeakable fills, floods, and overwhelms it. Suddenly this bright manifestation is withdrawn, while no testimony of the Spirit is left behind against any act of ours as the cause. While there is no cloud nor doubt, there is no direct assurance. All is a waveless, breathless calm. Then is the time to walk by the lamp of faith, since the sunlight of the direct and joyful witness of God's love is withdrawn. Beware lest you admit the thought that the fullness of God has left you with the cessation of the exultant joy of the Holy Spirit. These alternations of feeling are doubtless regulated by hidden but benevolent laws. They may be requisite for the development of higher faith, when the soul, humbled and hungering, cries out,

"My heartstrings groan with deep complaint,
My flesh lies panting, Lord, for thee."

These inexplicable vacations of the manifestation of Divine love may be necessary for the more deliberate examination of our hearts. It is said that in the early days of railroading the careful engineer would occasionally stop his train in order to tap the wheels and test their soundness and safety. So God may at times interrupt the current of conscious love, to afford us an appropriate occasion for spiritual introspection. The man who walks by faith through these intervals will soon find even a clearer and more joyful out-beaming of the Saviour's countenance to reward his faithful clinging to the Divine promise.

— from Love Enthroned, Chapter 11.

Theory and Experience

Never before were there so many believers, of every denomination, honestly and earnestly calling for really clear light on the subject of the higher life. Therefore, let every one who has a heaven-lit torch now lift it high, and keep it aloft, that all may see the light and rejoice therein. 'Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all tribulation, that we may be able to, comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.' Let there be laid before the Church, especially before souls panting after 'all the fullness of God,' the exact transcript of each Christian consciousness under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, so far as language can be a vehicle of that which 'passeth knowledge,' and not only will souls in trouble be comforted, but there will be accumulated a mass of facts out of which some analytic mind — some theological Sir William Hamilton — may do what all systemizers have hitherto failed to do, construct out of the Bible and experience a consistent and symmetrical science of Christian perfection.

A Most Marvelous Manifestation

I have experienced a most marvelous manifestation of the love of Christ to me. O the unsearchable riches of Christ! Do you know how unspeakably precious Jesus is when you trust him fully? My experience was never marked. I never could tell the day of my conversion. My evidence was chiefly an inference, rarely the direct testimony of the Spirit. Hence my utterances have been feeble and destitute of power. But all this is gone by. God has so certified this blessed Gospel to my soul, that I shall no more blow the trumpet with an uncertain sound.

Christian Joy

Christ Jesus glorified in the soul by the Holy Ghost, is the fountain of true joy. The kingdom of God is "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." When the blessed Comforter fills the hearts of a people with his joy-inspiring presence, they burst out into spontaneous singing. But where formalism, worldliness, and unbelief have crowded the Comforter out of their hearts, they pay thousands of dollars to a quartette to perform the service which their backslidden souls refuse to render. Hence joy is a very good test, not only of orthodox opinions, but of the strength of our faith in Christian truth, and our personal devotion to Christ.

But not all joy is Christian. Joys may be classified as, 1) unnatural, 2) natural, 3) supernatural.

Be Fillled with the Holy Spirit

It is sometimes said that Christ's new commandment, "Love one another," is the eleventh commandment. In the same way we have the twelfth in Paul's mandatory precept, "Be filled with the Spirit" (Eph. v. 18). There is an error quite widely spread in the Church, that the baptism or fulness of the Spirit is not universally obligatory, but rather that it is an elective experience, a privilege and not an imperative duty.

We note that the passive voice, "be filled," implies that we cannot actively fill ourselves, but that the Spirit is present like the atmosphere and ready instantly to fill every vacuum. It is ours to create a vacuum by an unreserved self-surrender to Christ as both Saviour and Lord. This implies strong faith. In truth, faith is man's only capacity to receive God. He cannot enter us through the senses, for they report only material things; nor can the Spirit enter the soul through the reason, which apprehends only relations, not realities. Therefore faith is the only door by which the Spirit comes into the human spirit. Man, a spirit, is an image of God the Spirit. The creature is made for the occupancy of the Creator, and he finds his highest joy only when as a temple he is "the habitation of God through the Spirit."

--

Turning to our Greek Testament we note that the command "Be filled with the Spirit" is in the present tense, denoting not a mechanical fulness once for all, but a vital fulness, a constant appropriation and a perpetual reception, a ceaseless drinking and a ceaseless thirst. Hence the paradox of Charles Wesley:

"Insatiate to this spring I fly;

I drink, and yet am ever dry."

— From The Gospel of the Comforter (1898) Chapter 31.