This highly systematic epistle appears to set forth the essential content and purpose of Christianity. New revealed truth concerning God was communicated by the apostles in writing. New christian doctrine was also taught by them so that God’s present people, called the family of God by John, might be able to interpret the truth revealed.
Good, what is wholly and solely of the God of revelation, has to be laid hold upon. Systematised evil and error has to be avoided. Christianity is the means whereby man can do this and fulfil the purpose and function for which God has acquired a new people for Himself in creation. Good and evil run their courses concurrently in creation. Christianity, however, is the means whereby God is acquiring ultimate good so that subsequently His blessing might be established and evil’s course then terminated
Two frequently occurring words in the epistle are “love” and “knowledge”. Love is God in unhindered, unqualified activity, which results in complete revelation of Himself.Knowledge is what such activity produces in those who receive the virtue of this divine love. Christianity is thus, essentially and ideally, the ultimate system whereby God reveals Himself and brings man into a spiritual sphere and state in which he can receive the full knowledge of God. It would have been purposeless for God to have revealed Himself were He not also capable of acquiring a people who could understand and lay hold upon Him in this revelation of Himself in creation.
God is love and He acts accordingly. The Word of God, coming forth as here in apostolic writing, is what results from this in creation. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son”. The Son of God is of course no longer in the world in human form as the embodiment of divine love. As a result of His having been here, however, there is a complete Bible which can be understood by men. This is the external proof and embodiment of the fact of divine love and its unlimited activity in the world. The only thing that man has received which is wholly of God, good unmixed with evil, is His Word. God presents this record to man for his reception of it as the oracles of God.
The relevant question now is not whether there is a God but whether there is a God of self-revelation. The Word of God is the evidence He has given that this is so. If there is a God and if He has revealed Himself, it must follow that the greatest thing that man can acquire in this world is the knowledge of God. This knowledge true Christianity can mediate to its adherents. It is not at all like other religions (apart from Judaism), which are a means for improving human nature or the world. It is God’s means of producing divine life in man, 2 Pet.1:4, and causing that form of life, which alone is capable of appreciating the things of God, to develop spiritually into full growth and so to acquire full knowledge.
Some christians speak disparagingly of knowledge. They say that what really matters is the sort of life a christian leads, thus making Christianity the means of improving fleshly human nature. Such an attitude is manifestly erroneous because by it the Word of God is corrupted in being applied to nature and natural life. It does not recognise the end of Adam in God’s sight. Man and all he is by nature has been set aside by God as to the realising of divine purpose. The Word of God speaks of a form of knowledge and wisdom that is from above and another which is of the earth. Just as there are two sorts of human life, man in Adam and man in Christ, so there is natural knowledge and supernatural or spiritual knowledge – the knowledge of man and the knowledge of God.
Man uses his natural abilities to arrive at a knowledge of natural things and may thus even apprehend the God of nature. God, however, is not merely the God of nature but the God of redemptive revelation, the Spirit contained in the letter. By natural wisdom man can learn about the letter of Scripture, interpreting and applying it to nature. Thereby human ability is made determinative even in divine things. So Adam displaces Christ, man displaces God and the flesh displaces the Spirit in man’s comprehension of the God of revelation. However, by these naturalistic methods of approach to God and His Word, man can never fully understand God. God declares that “the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God”. The Word of God is spiritually discerned, 1 Cor.2:14 and only he who is spiritual discerns all things in it. The god which results from a naturalistic handling of divine things is a god dependent upon man’s natural ability and talents for the perception of the knowledge of himself. He is in fact “the god of this world who blinds the minds of them that believe not”.
Man argues that if there is a God who was the Creator, then He gave man his intellectual abilities to use for the acquisition of knowledge, even that which is knowable about God Himself. This argument is based upon outward natural appearances and natural conceptions only. It might be valid ideally in natural theology if God were merely the God of creation and providence and if there were no spiritual powers of evil to corrupt human appreciation of the truth of God. The argument is not valid as to the fulness of divine truth contained in ideal Christianity in the spiritual realm. The spiritual realities of the new creation are defined by divine revelation, by the Word of God alone. Man must dwell in this new creation to learn its contents. “If any man be in Christ it is new creation”, 2 Cor.5:17 (Newberry).
The Word of God declares human nature to be insignificant to the purpose which God is realising in making Himself known by His supernatural intervention. It declares what is an obvious fact, that man has a fallen, imperfect nature susceptible to the influences of evil. This is true spiritually rather than merely emotionally, socially or intellectually. Man is not fit spiritually for the presence of God, that is, to receive the knowledge of God made available by Christ. If it took Christ the Son of God to bring the fulness of the truth of God into creation, it takes a Christ to apprehend the full knowledge of the truth. The purpose of Christianity is to form such a Christ in full stature, collectively, in His people.
God’s work of redemption cancels out the past spiritually and gives man the present possession of eternal life. Redemption is not God’s way of improving human natureso as to cause man’s mind to comprehend Himself and His purpose. It puts human nature to death in the death of Christ. The cross manifests the ultimate worthlessness of natural humanity in divine purpose. Natural humanity exists in creation to be blessed ultimately rather than to be the means of blessing.