3. Ideas. — The doctrinal and ethical ideas which meet us in the other NT Epp. appear also in this letter. But they are presented in a special light, and with distinctive notes. The Thevlogy of the Ep. has its own points of interest. God is seen in this Ep., as elsewhere, in His Fatherhood, His truth, liis righteousness. His forgiving grace, and in the fulness of His life as expressed in His triune Being. But, above all else, He is 'light' (1°) and He is 'love,' loving us before we loved Him, and so imparting Himself to us that He dwells in us (4''' '"• "). The ChrUtology also has its peculiar features. Christ is the Son, ' the Son of God,' ' the Only-begotten,' who was with the Father before He appeared in the world. He is the explanation of all things. F'or in Him we see the eternal life that is behind all things, and from Hira we have the life that is life indeed. His divine and jire-temporal relations are not left with- out expression or intimation. But it is especiallj- in His numan nature and relations that He forms the great subject of this Epistle. He is never called ' the Son of Man,' it is true, yet it is the integrity of His humanity that is especially allirmea— the fact that He appeared on earth in the full reality of the ' liesh,' neither in phantasmal form nor in divided being, neither as mere spirit nor yet with the divine and the human in any loose or temporary connexion, but as at once 'Jesus' and ' the Chri.st,' — Jesus Christ come in the llesh, and ' not by water only, but by water and blood ' (2^ 4^-' 5"). His sinle.ssness is a-sserted (3°), as it is in the Pauline and Petrine writings, and He is said to have been 'sent' by God (4"), as St. Paul also speaks of His appearance on earth. But Ilia entrance into our world, and His a-ssumption of our nature and estate, are not given, as they are in St. Paul, under the aspect of a humitittlivn. The designation 'the Paraclete,' which occurs in the NT only in the Joliannine writings, and is used in the Fourth (Jospcl directly of the Holy Spirit and only imidicitly of Chri.st, is applied here to the Son Iliniself directly and delinitcly [i'). Further, in tliis E|). Christ is presented less in re.spect of what He was and is, and more in respect of what pro- ceeds from Him and is done by Him. It is a (juestion whether the term 'the Word' is used ilirectly and personally of llim. The form which the sentence takes in which that great term ia used is indirect, and its subject is neuter and im-
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JOHN. I'TISTLES OF
fersonal (!'"'). It is specifically as 'the life' that le is set before us here, and the more general term is chosen to express His appearance on earth. It is a (pavepovaSai. It is not wiid of Him that ' the Word was made flush'; and though the idea that His entrance into our world was a real incania- tion is implied in the description of Him as ' come in the llesh,' that event is exhibited rather as a manifcstntion, and in particular the manifesta- tion of life.
Tlie Uuly Spirit, again, is spoken of especially as given by God and as bearing witness to Christ (3^5"). Sin is 'unrighteousness' (1» S"-' 5") and ' lawlessness ' (S*) ; but itisalst ' darkness' (1*) and •death' (3"). The believer is the 'child' of God {HKyov, not vl6s), ' bom ' or ' begotten of God,' the special relation in which he is introduced being ttiat of the new life rather than the new standing (3'' '). Larije expression is given also to the forces of evil which are opposed to Christ and the children of God. They are the de\'il and his works (3"), the spirit of deceit (4' rvev^a. ttj! vXdviii), seducing spirits that have to be tried {4'), the many 'anti- christs' who have separated themselves from the Church or been cast out of it, and in whom the antichrist of prophecy is seen (2'*- " 4'). Among these forces is mentioned also 'the world,' an ex- pression which in this Epistle conveys the largest and most complex conception of immediate, en- circling evil (2'»-" 3" 4'-*5'>-'9). Faith, too, has its special aspect and compass here. It is the great subjective condition of the Christian life and Btandiii", but it is not presented here either in the broad idea of it which is expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11'), or in the definite character given to it in the great Pauline Epistles. It is neither generally ' the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen,' tliougli it comes near to that, nor distinctively the faith that
J'uslifies and gives peace with God. It is belief in esus Christ, the belief that comes with regenera- tion, that is of the new life, that is the character- istic note of the man who is born of God. As such it is power, it is victory, it is its own witness
(51-.. 10).
The Ep. also has its doctrine of the Inst things. Its theology, indeed, is not distinctively an eschato- logical theology. Its fundamental idea is rather that of life, and that ' life ' not as a thing wholly or specifically of the future. It is a ' life ' that has been with the Father from the beginning, and that has been historically revealed in Christ (!'''). It is in Christ, and it becomes our possession ncnp in virtue of our belief in Him and attitude to Him (5"- "). It is ' eternal ' life, and that not in respect of its perpetuity merely, or its changelessness, but distinctively in respect of its quality — as essential life, a new ethical order of being, not a certain duration of existence, but the kind of life that means the ideal good of life, the perfection of life, its satisfaction in God. This great conception of life as ' eternal life,' which bulks so largely in the Fourth Gospel, occurring there some seventeen times, has an equally prominent place in this Ep., meeting us here six times in the forms fan; aliivios (316 511.78.20) and t; f w^j ^ aMi-ios (P 2»). I5ut while this (jualitative or ethical conception of life, which lifts It above distinctions of present and future, is the prevailing idea, it does not exclude the escha- tological. The ' life ' which is essential, and which is ours now in Christ, also looks to a fuller com- pleteness, a future perfection. The Ep. speaks of a manifestation of what the children of God are destined to be (3'). It has its word of hope, its vision of a blessedness still prospective, its antici- pation of a manifestation in which we shall see Christ as He is, its doctrine of an advent of Christ which it expresses, as St. Paul also expresses it, as