CHAPTER 3
Verse 1 “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.”
This verse declares that they had also the ability to look upon the Father’s deeds and see their significance – behold, what manner of love. This is the great work which the people of God are called upon to perform. They are to behold what the activity of God has wrought for us and in us. ‘See what love the Father has given us’! Christianity is a matter of seeing, of seeing spiritually with divine discernment. “See” is in the aorist tense, a completed act for those who practise righteously in response to receiving a true knowledge of the Christ. The love of the Father has been manifest in what Christ is now for us. It has been bestowed upon us that we might know what Christ is in us. This two-fold activity of the love of the Father shows how Christ mediates all His love for us and how His being in us makes it effective. The first, God’s love to us, is manifested in the life, death and subsequent glorification of Christ. The second, Christ being in us – our being called the children of God – is the present effect produced in us whereby we can realise all the fulness of the former.
Love is the Father in action, whereby He makes good His thoughts and intentions to others according to the fulness in Himself. He expresses Himself to man through Christ and produces a new nature in us by which we can appreciate His fulness. The children of God have been created by His love so that they might know all things freely given them by God. Not only are we begotten children of God by the love of the Father but we are called children. We are acknowledged, owned and responded to as such by God. The Father’s love is begetting a family of God in the world for His purpose. In our being called the people of His love and purpose, His Name is put on us as it was originally with Israel.
This new life and nature in us, which now constitutes us His children, is something the world has not the spiritual insight and ability to perceive. Woe to us if our Christianity is worldly. A ‘Christianity’ in which men devote their natural talents to their God is not the righteousness which God looks for in His people. The world did not know the Lord Jesus as God when He was presented to it in the flesh. It still does not know Him as God in the Holy Spirit’s presentation of Him in the gospels. Nature cannot interpret the Word of God so as to come to know the God of revelation. Many christians are seeking to show the world what their Christianity has done in them, changing their old nature (an impossibility and self-deception on a grand scale). They present the moral or social advantages it can give to men if they will accept it. Obsessed and preoccupied with the flesh and the world, they miss the whole basic point of Christianity, the possession and growth of the new nature which perceives divine love.
Verse 2 “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
John then again emphasises essentials: he calls them beloved because of what God’s love makes them and they are now, even in the present state of the world, already children of God. God has begotten by His love a new sort of humanity, which is alive and active to Him in possession of His life. However, it is not yet manifested what we shall be in the present course of the world. The treasure is hid in the earthen vessel. So also the Lord Jesus did not use His supernatural powers to manifest Himself to the world as He might readily have done. For Him, as it is now for us, eternal life lived in the flesh in the world was concerned with making the necessary preparations so that one day we will together be manifested in what we are Godwardly.
The knowledge we are concerned with in Christianity demands that we know what God is doing dispensationally. We know that when God’s present purpose is realised, Christ will be manifested to the world to make known what He has done for the establishment of ultimate peace and prosperity in creation. But this demands that God first acquire a people who are like Him in nature and ability. “Behold I and the children God has given me”. God is acquiring a perfected people, perfect not merely in numbers but in spiritual ability. So, as it was with the Lord Jesus on earth, our lives in Christianity are to be lived with the ultimate goal of the manifestation in view: God is bringing many sons to glory and making them like His only-begotten Son in the process.
“We shall see Him as He is”. This is what Christianity is preparing us for and leading us into. This is the ultimate ability, to see the Man in glory. Now we are being changed, in beholding Him, into the same image from glory to glory, 2 Cor.3:10. He is Man, alive in glory and nothing but glory now. The flesh and the world have no part in His present existence and this characterises Christianity for His people now. It is a divine system established on earth in which man lives in glory spiritually in preparation for glory physically also. The love of the Father is the present transforming power. It does not transform the flesh, what we are by nature, but what we are in divine life. In this we are growing to the ultimate, now personified in the Lord Jesus as He is. What God desires and will get out of Christianity is a people rendered capable of seeing the Son in His glorified humanity. What we shall do in glorified bodies, through glorified eyes, we should do with present spiritual vision, which gives insight into the Word of God.
Verse 3 “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”
“He is pure“. He is wholly given up to God in His present life. Having attained to the highest pinnacle of glory by His own righteous response to God and His revealed will for Him, He still devotes Himself wholly, in spiritual purity, to the realising of divine purpose. He is, in this glory, the firstborn of many brethren. The realising of God’s intentions demands that the new man be like Him and with Him in manifested glory. God has committed Himself to reproducing His life and image in those who by nature were originally merely created beings. The Lord Jesus is now devoted to bringing this about. In heavenly glory He is pure in having no earthly or fleshly entanglements in doing so. More than new birth is required of those who are involved on earth in the present outworking of divine purpose. The Christ has assumed and embodies such a place in glory that He makes available to the children of God, by the Christianity He mediates, all that the Father is in love for the children that God has given Him to perfect.
So everyone that has this hope in Him purifies himself. Such have the hope that Christ is able to confer upon them all that they need for (spiritual) perfection, so they purify themselves from having anything to do with the flesh and the world in their Christianity. This is no mere puritanical, fleshly purification to which so many seek to dedicate themselves by their own conscious will, itself a sinful, fleshly faculty. There is no spiritual virtue in being strongwilled or in giving up one’s will to God.
Moral purity, an illusion of the spiritually blind at best, is not in view. God demands spiritual purity of the adherents and exponents of the spiritual system He has formed for His purpose. To this they must dedicate themselves on earth, as the Lord Jesus has done in heaven. Their Christianity is wholly about the Father, the Son and the family of God begotten by the Holy Spirit. To go out into the present world with our Christianity for social, humanistic purposes, applying it to natural life as other religions do is to corrupt it and so render ourselves and our service impure. Our hope for personal glory and the ultimate salvation and blessing of the world universally is in Him. Our true response to having such a hope is to live and act spiritually as children of God, to acquire Christ-likeness, to arrive at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ, Eph.4:13. To strive for moral purity, to develop a healthy mind, to adapt oneself effectively to present life in the world by means of christian doctrine, are hopes which deny our true hope.
Verse 4 “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law.”
This is in contrast to the ‘everyone that’ of the previous verse. “Everyone that practises sin practises also lawlessness” (JND). It is a commonly used expression by John, specifying the true spiritual characteristics of discipleship in Christianity. The sin spoken of would be the greatest and most destructive sin now possible, sin against the divine order established in Christianity by its apostles, as in chapter 1:10. It is sin in christian practice by those called to be the people of God that John speaks of here, rather than the natural sins of the flesh. The full light of divine revelation has come into the world in the Word of God. It is possible for those who receive divine life to go on practising sin against light. The practice of such is the activity of the old nature. They seek to do good by it and to repress what society and natural conscience calls bad.
Godly order has been established over the people of God ideally. Those who still see themselves as alive in the flesh before God are in fact introducing the old nature, Adam-in-us, into a sphere which can only be filled by the new nature, Christ-in-us. Such sin is directed against the rule of God over His people. The sin is lawlessness. By it man’s order replaces God’s order. The realising of the purpose for which God has established Christianity, to form Christ in His people, is thereby rendered impossible.
John is here concerned with bringing home to the people of God the true significance of the present time for them. Firstly, they must know about the future and how Christianity is preparing them for this. The Lord Jesus will be manifested in glory to rule on earth. They are now ideally coming under His law to be fitted to become co-rulers. Secondly, as set forth in v.5, He was manifested in His life in flesh to take away our sins. Thirdly, as in v.8, He was manifested as Son of God to undo the works of the devil. They are to know what His manifestation is intended to produce.
Verse 5 “And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin.”
As to the manifestation of the Lord Jesus in flesh, they knew the reason for this insofar as it had produced results for them. He came in flesh to take away, once-for-all, our sins. The taking away is in the aorist tense, an act complete in itself. This has closed before God forever the question of our sins. These do not arise because of the perfect work of Christ, virtue of which has become ours. Yet even though when He was in the flesh He bore our sins, now there is no sin in Him. He has finished with such a work and so has left behind for us also, the sins He bore. In leaving His life in the flesh He has left behind forever the life in which He bore them. We now know Him no more after the flesh, 2 Cor.5:16.
Verse 6 “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him.”
This is of great practical importance and significance for us. Everyone that is abiding in Him does not go on sinning. The answer to our difficulties, but also more positively the means whereby we can attain to the perfections embodied in Him, is to realise who and what He is as our Lord Jesus Christ. Here it is our abiding in Him, as in 2:27. To abide in Him as a people who have no more consciousness of sins and so no concern in their divine life with the issues of ordinary natural life, is how not to sin against revealed truth. To continue to ask divine forgiveness for natural sins is in fact a denial of the perfect work of Christ, from which we get the virtue once-for-all as to our sins. It is a failure to realise that the nature which sins is not the nature with which Christianity is concerned.
Everyone that views himself as going on sinning has not seen Him or known Him. They have never had a proper vision of the Lord of glory. The fulness of the Christ for the people of God has not been envisaged by those who go on sinning in their practice of Christianity. Such immature practice is continued sin against revealed truth. It is of fundamental importance to realise that the sins of the old nature are forever dealt with by God on a once-for-all basis at conversion. But christians are held responsible for spiritual sin, that is sin against revealed truth. If they fail to understand and avail themselves of all God’s provision whereby they can become fully mature, they are practising sin instead of practising righteousness.
Verse 7 “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.”
John then again addresses them as dear children, inclusively, that they may not go on letting anyone lead them astray. It is possible that false understanding, wrong teaching, may prevent the people of God from realising the fulness of their place before God in the Lord Jesus. The danger lies in this rather than in fleshly impurities. A child of God who is still struggling with the flesh has failed to realise that its activity will not prevent him realising all the potentialities of Christianity. It is the struggle that does the damage for it is weakening spiritually. There never will be absolute victory by conscious efforts. If a man wins what is termed a moral victory in some sort of natural temptation, he is only making his flesh, human nature, stronger: thereby it becomes more important in his practice of Christianity. We are not decrying moral victories but only seeking to point out that this is not Christianity: in fact it can militate against its true exposition by those who are obsessed with the flesh.
The positive thing to follow after, the righteousness, is the true means whereby Christ-likeness is now to be acquired. He that does the righteousness, the working of the new nature, is righteous even as He is righteous. The Christ is now alive and active only in this realm of righteousness, having completed His work for sins. The divine nature in the children of God in the world is then also active to produce the results God desires. The new man builds himself up after the image of Him that created him unto good works. The good works are spiritual, not natural. God has given us a complete revelation of Himself, a whole Bible, which His people have to go to work upon to gain the full knowledge of God. Being righteous consists in our having the divine life. Doing righteousness is its activity in the service of the God of revelation.
Verse 8 “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”
Another factor is then introduced by John, which became important as Christianity developed. This is the fact of organised spiritual evil. He that practises the sin spoken of is of the devil. If human nature, the flesh, projects itself into the practice of Christianity it is sin and is of the devil. The means which Satan lays hold upon in his attempts to bring the present work of God to nought are the natural powers of humanity, which he can readily dominate. Satan seeks to reduce man’s understanding and practice of Christianity to a naturalistic level. He has been highly successful in this in the world: its ‘Christianity’ has become a fleshly religion for the supposed natural benefit of the present world, Satan’s world.
“The devil sinneth from the beginning”. Presumably, as elsewhere in the epistle, this would mean the beginning of Christianity. As it became established, so his work to corrupt man’s part in making it effective and productive for God also became established. He got his ‘early christian fathers’ established within, and even over, the followers of the new system. Membership of the divine family exposes man more intimately than in nature to essential evil. From the divine viewpoint this is intentional. It is for such conflict that we endure.
The devil had of course previously been active in God’s creation and had successfully brought man under his influence. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He undo the works of the devil” (JND). The Son of God was manifested in flesh to do a work which would ultimately undo all the effects produced by systematised evil. He was manifested as the Son of God in unlimited power and wisdom in a sphere in which the devil’s system had already been established that, by His activity, it might be undone. The undoing is also in the aorist tense, a completed act. In God’s sight it is already destroyed, despite outward appearances. The important thing for the people of God is to realise the effects of the work of God already complete in this respect.
The works of the devil still proceed in the old creation but God has already created a spiritual sphere, the new creation, in which the devil cannot prevail. As a result, organised evil need not prevent the children of God from attaining to the spiritual perfections opened up to them. The two systems, God’s and the devil’s, meanwhile operate antagonistically in a conflict by which divine purpose will inevitably be realised.
Verse 9 “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin: for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
John then states a basic fact of Christianity, from which comes spiritual success in its practice. ‘Everyone, having been and being, born of God does not practise or commit sin’. A new sort of life has been formed in the world in the people of God, as a result of the successful manifestation of the Son of God, which is incapable of sinning. The devil can find nothing in this life which is in any way defective or susceptible to his powers. So also was it with the Lord Jesus, who possessed this life in full measure. “The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me”. This is the only sort of life that is perfectly capable of practising Christianity truthfully. It is a religious system of the new nature, the divine nature produced in man by God Himself.
God has successfully reproduced His life on earth as a result of the Lord Jesus having been here. He has undone the works of the devil in result. Further, God has produced His seed in man in such a way that it goes on continuously abiding in Him. This gives the lie to the notion that one can be saved and lost. Eternal life is given to man by God, so it would take a power greater than God to take it from him.
He cannot sin because he has been begotten of God. He has an indefectible nature, begotten in him as a result of what God’s work has already manifested and effected in the world. This is the foundation of the christian position on which we are to build. We are God’s workmanship, His masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus unto the good works which God has afore-prepared that we should walk in them, Eph.2:10.
—–ooOoo—–
This brings John to the end of the first division of the book in which he has set forth the ideals embodied in the Christ of Christianity and particularly as to how we are concerned in this. He now proceeds to set forth the truth to be practised in the christian community and how the ideal is to become embodied in it.
The expression “in this” appears to characterise this second section or division of the epistle, which proceeds from chapter 3:10 to 5:2. The Christ of Christianity has been presented in the previous section. John now presents the spiritual ideal involved in God having a people for Himself on earth as an effect produced by the Lord Jesus being glorified in heaven. “In this” signifies what went on in this sort of Christianity, which the apostles aimed to produce. The expression occurs 11 times.
§ The first three occurrences of the expression set forth the character of divine life in man, displayed in Christ Himself on earth, being manifested in the children of God. Its righteousness, love and purity is declared.
§ The second three set forth the effects of the Holy Spirit being in the children of God.
§ The final five occurrences set forth the activity of God as Father in all His fulness in Christianity. His being God the Father is a present effective reality in creation for the people He has for His pleasure and His purpose.
So the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God in full manifestation of Himself, are active in creation in spiritually ideal Christianity. This is the new wine which the old wineskin of Judaism was not able to contain.
—–ooOoo—–