2. Character. — It appears, therefore, that the argument of the Epistle, if such a term can be applied to it, turns on a few large and simple ideas. It unfolds itself mostly in terms of cer- tain broad antagonisms — those between Christ and Antichrist, believers and the world, the children of God and the children of the devil, the love of God and tlie love of the world, righteousness and unrighteousness, confidence and fear, love and hate, sins and a sin unto death, walking in the light and walking in darkness, being begotten of God and being touched by 'that wicked one.' In connexion with these fundamental and recur- ring antitheses we have a series of statements of what the message of the gospel is ; of what fellow- ship with God is, how it comes, and what it implies ; of what Christ is, and what His mission into this world means ; of what the believer is, and what the Christian vocation involves.
JOHN, EPISTLES OF
JOHN, EPISTLES OF
J3\
The message of the gospel is that God is light ; tliat we are to love one another ; that in Clirist (Jod has given us eternal life. The fellowship with tJoii w hich is in view is made possible by two things — the liistorieal manifestation of Uod in Christ and tlie believer's faith, the former being the objective pound of this new and gracious relation, the latter its subjective condition. This fellowship brings with it the graces of joj', for^'iveness, knowledge, the cleansing of the life, the liberty of intercession, the answer to prayer, the assurance and fearlessness of children. It involves a walking in the liglit, the doing of righteousness, the purify- ing of ourselves, love to God and love to tlie brulliren, lilial obedience, practical benevolence, the observance of the divine commandments, the forswearing of idols. Christ is the Son of God, the only-begotten Son, the manifestation of the Father and of that eternal life wiiicli was with the Father ; preexistent as being sent by God into the world : true man, righteous, sinless, the Paraclete with the Father, the propitiation for the sin of the world. His mission is to destroy the works of the devil, to bring us back to God, to give us eternal life, to put away our sin, and to be the Saviour of the world. .\nd tlie Christian is one who lias fellowship with God ; who confesses his sin and is cleansed and forgiven ; wlio is begotten of God and sins not; who bus the ;'iftof knowledge and can distinguish good from evil, the children of God from the world, truth from error, the false prophet or the false spirit from the true ; who walks in the light and does the truth, loWng God and the bretliren, imitating Christ, and finding no grievousness in the divine commandments; who has passed out of death into life ; who knows that his prayers are heard, and looks with holj- con- fidence to the coming of his Lord and the judg- ment, and has the consciousness of eternal life in him.
Alike in the matter of its thought and in the way in which its ideas are expressed, this Epistle has a character wholl}' its own. The only E]>p. of the NT which are of the same stamp are the two smaller letters wliicli are a.ssociated with it. It dill'ers most of all from the Fpp. which bear St. I'aul's name. It liaa nothing of the formal structure, the systematic course, the dialeeticiil movement of these. The logical particles which abound in the Pauline writings are strange to this Epistle. Its thought moves on, but not in an obvious progress to a goal. It takes the form of a succession of ideas which seem to have no logical relation, and which fall only now and again into a connected series. They are delivered, iiol in the way of reasoned statements, but as a series of rellcc- t ions and declarations given in meditative, aphor- istic fa.shion. This lack of the constructive quality gives the teacbinf; of tlie Epistle a pecidiar direct- ness and simplicity. But it is the directne».s of authority, the simplicity of truths which are felt to be seffattesting. These characteristics add to the vigour, tlic originality, the attractiveness of the Epistle. They have strangely been reganlcd by some as tokens of weakness, and have been reckoned among the things which are 8upi>o.sed to speak of the 'feebleness of old age' (S. G. I.ange). Even 15iiiir discovered a certain ' indetinitencss,' a tendency to repetition, a want of ' logicjil force,' ill the tenor of the Ep. which gave it a 'tone of childlike fecblene.-^s. liut those critics show a b'tter insight — and they are of Uaur's school as wcil as of others — who find a peculiar beauty, rich- ness, anil originality in the Epistle, a special fresh- ness ami vividnes.s, particularly in what it says of the 'subjective, inner life of Ciiristianity ' (Hilgen- fold).
If the characteristic ideo* nf the Ep. are few and
simple, they are of large signilicance, and the}' are presented in new a.spects and relations as often as they recur. They belong to the region of primary principles, realities of the intuition, certainties of the e.xperience, absolute truths. And they are given lu their absoluteness. The regenerate man is one who cannot sin ; Christi.an faith is presented in its ideal character and completeness; the revela- tion of life is exhibited in its tinality, not in the stages of its historical realization. They are ideas which take us into the inner and essential nature of things, into the real that is behind the phe- nomenal, the inward that is the heart of the out- ward, the permanent that is the ground of the transitory, the future that is in the bosom of the present. They are mystical in the sense that thej' are given as truths of immediate certitude, abso- lute reality, inward vision. But they are not mystical in the sense of being the jiure products of intuition, things only of the subjective world. or superior to the common experience of life. Tlu-y are given in practical relation to the ordinary course of Christian life and conduct. They have their roots, too, in the great facts of the objective revelation of God in Christ, in that which 'we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of tlie word of life' (1').