Bible Commentaries

1 John 1:1

The ancient philosophers, too, spoke of a wise man who was the type and exemplar of all goodness, about whom strange paradoxes were affirmed—that he was a king, that he might be happy on the rack, and the like. This was their mode of describing philosophy. But they never supposed that Socrates or Chrysippus, or any other great teacher, really fulfilled this ideal. They did not "see with their eyes," nor "touch with their hands," the Word of Life. Nevertheless the Greek ideal, which is not confined to the Stoics, but is found to a certain extent in Aristotle and Plato, does throw a distant light on the relation of Christ to His disciples in the first ages. For it seems to show that in all ages mankind have been seeking for something more than ideas; they have wanted a person like themselves in whom they might see truth and goodness face to face.

—Benjamin Jowett.

I do not know what Christians generally make of that first Epistle of John. As far as I notice, they usually read only from the eighth verse of the first chapter to the second of the second; and remain convinced that they may do whatever they like all their lives long, and have everything made smooth for them by Christ. And even of the poor fragment they choose to read, they miss out always the first words of the second chapter.... But whatever modern Christians and their clergy choose to make of this Epistle, there is no excuse for any rational person, who reads it carefully from beginning to end, yet pretends to misunderstand its words. However originally confused, however afterwards interpolated or miscopied, the message of it remains clear in its three divisions: (1) That the Son of God is come in the flesh (ch; 5:20 , and so throughout); (2) That He hath given us understanding that we may know Him that is true (3:19; 4:13; 5:19-20); and (3) That in this understanding we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren (3:14). All which teachings have so passed from deed and truth into mere monotony of unbelieved phrase, that no English now is literal enough to bring the force of them home to my readers" minds.

—Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (LXXXI.).

For an Exposition of the Epistles see: Fellowship in the Life Eternal: An Exposition of the Epistles of St. 1 John 1:2

"Nothing," says Herbert Spencer in Education (ch. II.), "requires more to be insisted on than that vivid and complete impressions are all essential No sound fabric of wisdom can be woven out of rotten raw-materials."

References.—I:2.—Newman Smyth, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p392. J. N. Bennie, The Eternal Life, p1. R. J. Campbell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p211. J. T. Stannard, The Divine Humanity, p12. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p19. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp20 , 26. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p254. I:2 , 3.—Archbishop Cosmo Lang, Church Times, vol. lix. p817.

The Indwelling God

1 John 1:3

I. How are we to conceive of the indwelling God?

All nature is a revelation of God, and nature must be interpreted by what is highest in man. When we think of man we think not only of his will, his mind, and his goodness, but of something higher still of which he is capable—the quality of love. God therefore cannot be less. He can only be infinitely more than all we can conceive of love in its utmost intensity and self-sacrifice. In Him 1 John 1:3

Is it surprising that fellowship should be the keynote of this Epistle? Do we not find the explanation in that beautiful description recorded in the Gospel for the day, that St. John was "the disciple whom Jesus loved?"

True fellowship is the union of a common service of love for Christ's sake. What really is the triumph of Christianity in each life, in the Church, and in the world? It is getting each one to serve the others with his best.

I. Our Fellowship in Christ is Based on Relationships.—It is "with the Father". We are, as Christians, not a separated, scattered family; we are all with the Father; we are all at home; we are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, in the actual relations of family life, and our Father is with us. They who have present fellowship with the Father make up the "whole family in heaven and in earth". St John wanted those disciples to whom he wrote to have full fellowship with him; but he knew that they could only gain it as they had what he had, "fellowship with the Father".

II. Our Fellowship in Christ is Based on Character.—"With His 1 John 1:3

If we cannot commune with our friends, we can at least commune with Him to whom they are present, who is infinitely with them as with us. He is the true bond of union between the spirit-world and our souls; and one blest hour of prayer; when we draw near to Him and feel the breadth and length and depth and height of that love of His that passeth knowledge, is better than all those incoherent, vain, dreamy glimpses with which longing hearts are cheated. They who have disbelieved all spiritual truth, who have been Sadduceeic doubters of either angel or spirit, may find in modern spiritualism a great advance. But can anyone who has ever really had communion with Christ, who has said with 1 John 1:4

St. 1 John 1:4

"There comes a period of life," says Maeterlinck, "when we have more joy in saying the thing that is true than in saying the thing that is merely wonderful".

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.

—Charlotte Brontë.

References.—I:4.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p9715.—Ibid. vol. ii. p322. R. J. Wardell, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p83. R. W. Church, Village Sermons, p296. F. W. Farrar, Truths to Live By, p31.

1 John 1:6

The great and real source of doubt in which all lesser doubts seem to be swallowed up, is the apathy and indifference of Christian men, saying one thing and doing another.... No intellectual arguments have any power to pacify such doubts; the only answer to them is the removal of the grounds upon which they rest.

—Benjamin Jowett.

References.—I:6.—F. W. Farrar, Truths to Live By, p47. I:6 , 7.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No1986.

The Cleansing Blood of Christ

1 John 1:7

While there are happily many signs of return to a deeper and more Evangelic conception of Christianity, there are also symptoms that disquiet and dishearten. Among these we place the acceptance, so far as it has gone, among Evangelical teachers, of Bishop Westcott's exegesis of the text, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His 1 John 1:7

"There is no such firm, such attaching bond, as that of prayer and a common work for Christ," says Dora Greenwell in Two Friends (pp103 , 104). "A common work tends to a common life, fuller than the individual can ever live. Even in natural things there is no fulness except through participation; and I myself have been long persuaded that we do not fully live unto Christ except through mutual communion. How significant is that saying of St. John's, "If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another". The predominance of light as a figure and as a symbol in Clifford's writing will be remarked: he associates it with the right and all things good so constantly and naturally that it is one of the marks of his style. He had physically a great love of light, and chose to write, when he could, in a clear and spacious room, with the windows quite free of curtains.

—Sir Frederick Pollock, on Prof. W. K. Clifford.

1 John 1:7

When James Chalmers of New Guinea was a young careless fellow at Inveraray in1859 , he was led to the light finally, out of great depression, by the text: the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. It helped him to believe that salvation was possible for him, and so "some gladness came," followed by assurance soon afterwards.

About ten or eleven o"clock one day, as I was walking under a hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), and bemoaning myself for this hard hap, suddenly this sentence bolted in upon me: the blood of Christ remits all guilt. At this I made a stand in my spirit: with that, this word took hold upon me, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Now I began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the Tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin, and the blood of Christ thus represented to me, that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clot or stone before me is to this vast and wide field that here I see. This gave me good encouragement for the space of two or three hours.

—Bunyan, Grace Abounding (143 , 144).

References.—I:7.—E. A. Stuart, The Great High Priest and other Sermons, vol. xii. p17. W. Redfern, The Gospel of Redemption, p165. W. M. Sinclair, The Record, vol. xxvii. p780. F. W. Farrar, Truths to Live by, p74. R. J. Campbell, New Theology Sermons, p217. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No663 , and vol. iv. No223. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p122; ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p158. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— 1 John 1:8

Let us consider the bearing of the text—

I. On our conceptions of truth. Truth is a wide word, but I use it here in St. John's sense as equivalent to the truth of the Gospel—the truth which regulates the kingdom of God. Some of these truths, to speak of it as consisting of many component parts, underlie the faith of the Church as such, and are embraced by all its branches. It is through these we become Christians, though some of them we may state in different terms, and apprehend from different sides, as Scripture itself does. But there are others, over and above, which it is difficult and indeed impossible to harmonise, and others, again, which it is not too much to say have not yet been fully understood. That we should do our best to understand and combine them into a consistent system, or creed, is not only natural and right, but we cannot do otherwise if we are earnest students of Holy Writ. But we must remember that our conclusions about many subjects, and points of doctrine, must be held provisionally, and with minds open to conviction and further light. God has not given us an infallible judgment, nor promised to guide us to an absolutely right verdict, in regard to all matters in dispute. An infallible judgment can only exist in perfect or sinless character.

II. Consider the bearing of the text in relation to guidance in practical conduct. When we know the Gospel we wish to act in accordance with it. In other words, we desire not only to be led into right views of truth, but also into right conceptions of duty. In reality these two are one. To think truly will secure our acting rightly. If we always knew the truth completely, with that sympathetic knowledge which is a characteristic of Christian faith, we should always act rightly—at least so far as the spirit and intention of our act is concerned. How does God answer our prayer for guidance? He gives us what the Scriptures call grace, inward enlightenment, or strength, according as the occasion may require. Without it sin works unqualified by any Divine control, with it sin is always under restraint. Hence no act or perception on the part of a Christian man is wholly the result of grace, but more or less of grace and more or less of sin. This being so there will always remain some liability to error even when grace is specially granted. The liability will, no doubt, decrease as we grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, but it will never wholly disappear.

—C. Moinet, The Great Alternative and other Sermons, p171.

1 John 1:8

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." But although we have sin still abiding in us, and, like the bias in a bowl, warping us to the world, yet that vital seminal principle of the grace of God in Christ always keeps its ground, its life, and tendency towards heaven, and wears out, wastes, and gradually subdues the contrary tendency of sin and corruption.

—Sir Matthew Hale.

Reference.—I:8.—F. W. Farrar, Truths to Live By, p47.

The Sense of Sin

1 John 1:8-9

"If we say we have no sin." Yes, but who would say it? How rarely we come upon anyone who would stand before his fellows in private or in public and claim to have no sin.

I. But there are other vehicles of expression besides words. Language has many modes. (1) Our prayers can say it. The very silence in our prayers can make it appear that we are not conscious of sin. (2) And surely our pride can say it. (3) And our very walk can testify to our fellows our conscious immunity from sin. (4) And, further than all this, I think that sometimes our very posture in the house of God testifies that the sense of sin is absent.

II. But in whatever way the assumption is made, we may deduce two inferences such as are drawn by the Apostle himself. (1) First of all "the truth is not in us". That is to say, the high standard is absent. (2) And the second and consequent inference is this, that we are self-deceived. "We deceive ourselves."

III. When we bring in the truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, and measure all the issues of our being by its exacting demands, our imperfections troop out in countless multitude. What, then, shall we do with them? "If we confess." But confess to whom? (1) Let us first of all confess them to ourselves. "To thine own self be true." (2) And there are some sins which we might very well confess to our brother. We are bound to confess them to our brother if we have done our brother a wrong. We can never find health and peace so long as personal injury is unconfessed and unrepaired. (3) But these confessions are only preparatory to the all-essential one of confession to the Lord.

IV. And what will be the issues of such confession? (1) Forgiveness. Freedom in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord. (2) And with the freedom there will come purity. The Lord will cleanse the life He has just emancipated.

—J. H. Jowett, The British Congregationalist, 10th January, 1907 , p36.

References.—I:8 , 9.—J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p308. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p169. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passiontide, pp63 , 73. I:8-10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No1241. I:8 , 20.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p66. I:9.—Hugh Price Hughes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p225. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. ii. p439. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p78. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p140. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v. No255. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p373. I:10.—R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p259. I:12-14.—A. H. Moncur Sime, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p341. I:15.—H. S. Holland, ibid. vol. li. p321.