PREFACE
John the apostle – the Holy Spirit acting through apostolic gift – divides the epistle into three sections by the use of three phrases.
Section 1:
The first section, chapter 1:6-3:9, is characterised by the phrase “He is ….”. This occurs four times. That is, four aspects of the Person and work of the Christ in heaven, who characterises Christianity, are set forth.
Section 2:
The second section, chapter 3:10-5:2, has the phrase “In this …..” recorded eleven times, though the Authorised translates the Greek ‘en touto’ in different ways. That is, eleven aspects of Christianity are set forth as it is characterised internally.
Section 3:
The third section, chapter 5:3-21, has the phrase “This is …..” seven times. It sets forth the character of Christianity externally, or objectively, in the world.
Thus firstly, Christianity is a system, unlike Judaism, whose Christ is a Man in heaven. Judaism at its highest could contain the truth connected with Christ on earth. Now the ideal is embodied in Christ in glory. Spiritually speaking, we are “in Him” there and should live and practice our faith in all the light this gives. A new sort of Humanity now exists in God’s presence and the apostolic writings set forth all the truth involved in this fact.
Secondly, Christianity is a system established to reproduce this life on earth and to develop it to the fulness of the stature of Christ.
Thirdly, Christianity is God’s means of presenting testimony to revealed truth on earth. As well as being for the ultimate purpose of bringing perfection into creation by the present growth of the new man, it brings purpose and significance into human life in creation now. Christianity was the means of completing divine revelation, is the means of causing it to be fully appreciated and is the depository of revealed truth on earth so that this truth will be witnessed to men.
For the people of God to be effective for His purpose it is essential that they see the christian system from God’s viewpoint, which is revealed in the Word of God. Thus the three basic things must be surveyed as God sets them forth.
1. We must see what Christ in heaven is to God and then we will realise that He is this for us. The first section of the epistle has to do with this. Positive Christianity is God-centred. It is the form which is taken by present divine activity in creation for the establishment of all that God has purposed and committed Himself to in blessing. The Christ not only assumed humanity in fleshly humiliation but He has taken humanity, glorified humanity, back into Deity for God’s pleasure and purpose. In Christianity, we are involved in the realising of the purpose for which God became Creator and subsequently Redeemer. In it we should live for His pleasure now. God took up humanity for this end and in Christ in glory – Christ in this light – He has achieved all His intentions. That which He has acquired in the Christ of Christianity. Man alive in the light of His presence, He is mediating to His people on earth by Christ. God is introducing man into the fellowship which exists between Divine Persons.
2. Secondly, we must realise what the people of God are in God’s estimation. We must see the spiritual ideal involved in the family of God as it is set forth in the Word of God. This ideal is in the doctrine of God which forms the company or gathering. By being subject to all the essential doctrines of Christianity we can develop our spiritual potentialities to the full. The blessings of God in Christianity can be fully enjoyed by individuals only if the ideal is personified by the people of God becoming in spiritual reality a family of God, a spiritual entity. We cannot do without one another and without all who make up the family subscribing to christian doctrine if we are to embody the ideal, as did the Lord Jesus personally when alive in the flesh. “As the (human) body is one but has many members, so also is the Christ”, 1 Cor.12:12. The local church, the community of God, His family, is also called the Christ of God. It is the present realising and outworking of this ideal which John is concerned with in this second section.
3. Thirdly, as is set forth in the last chapter, we are called of God to realise what God intends His people in Christianity to accomplish in the present course of the world. There are commandments of God to be obeyed, difficulties to be overcome, a testimony to be borne and a goal to be reached. Christianity is ideally a system established by God to produce good works and to overcome the work of evil. The good works are not those which men call good works. They are the good works of the new man in the new creation. “This is the work of God that ye believe in Him whom He has sent”. Again, the fulfilment of this calling of God is collective. It is a familybusiness.
So, in summary, nature and natural powers have been set aside by God in the realising of divine purpose, the ultimate state of blessedness in creation for which He created us and has now called us. Natural wisdom and its resultant knowledge is inadequate for the people of God effectively to do His work. To do this work is to lay hold upon the full knowledge of a God who is now fully revealed. When God has acquired such a people He will have equipped them spiritually to administer His ultimate rule in creation for its universal blessing.
God has already, by His supernatural intervention in the course of nature, set a Man, Christ in glory, into the highest spiritual place and sphere. Such a Man has entered into the light of the outshining of God in His fulness. This Man is the means of introducing us into that light. The system God has established on earth as a result of this glorification of Christ sets us with Him before God in the highest spiritual sphere. We are called to inhabit this glory.
Whilst it is true that in Christ we are alive spiritually in the heavenlies, it is also true that we are ideally alive purposefully in the old creation while it still runs its course. By practising Christianity in truth, its exponents grow and develop spiritually so that they acquire the supernatural ability to appreciate God. The supreme function and purpose of spiritual growth is that man can so interpret the Word of God as to lay hold upon God and His Christ in Spirit and in truth. To reiterate, it is not by natural powers or scientific, critical ability that the Word of God will be understood.
It is true that naturally wise, scholarly men can give us an accurate translation and rendering of the Word of God. This, however, does not go beyond the letter,though that is essential. The letter of the Word of God has been given to man in the flesh by God, that is, God has come forth into creation and has contained the revelation of Himself in the language of men rather than, say, the tongues of angels. Natural wisdom, however, takes man no further than this, for when it interprets it necessarily corrupts. “The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him”, 1 Cor.2:14. The truth contained in the letter is, as it was with the Jews in their reading of Moses’ writings, veiled from man in his natural state. This is necessarily so because the glory of God, so contained and veiled, would otherwise drive him from God. God can, by the operation of His Spirit upon man through His Word, bring man out of his natural state by conferring upon him the mind of Christ. Adam has no place here. He remains, in his seed, cast out from God’s paradise, which contains the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.