So we shall assure our heart before Him in whatsoever our heart condemn us. Not with the conceited assurance of self- righteousness; not with a drugged and dulled perception of the vileness of sin; not with an elixir which shall relax our spirit- ual fibre and moderate our enthusiasm for spiritual victory ; but with the thought that we are God’s children, loving, though erring, in our Father’s hands; with our elder brother Christ in- terceding for us; with the knowledge that the judicial element in our Christian experience is transferred from our own heart to God; with the knowledge that, being His, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things pres- ent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As I read this passage I wonder if John, as he penned it, had not in mind that inter- view of Christ and Peter at the lake after the resurrection. There was Peter with a heart stung with self-accusation, as well it might be: Peter who had denied and forsaken his Lord: and yet Christ meets all this self-accusation with the words “Lovest thou Me?” And Peter’s reply is in the very vein of our passage. ‘God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things:” “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love Thee.”
On this interpretation, the remainder of the passage follows simply and naturally. Once assured that we are children of God, we have boldness toward God. That assurance, carrying with it the assurance of pardon and sympathy, is the only means by which the heart’s condemnation is legitimately allayed. If, under that assurance, our heart ceases to condemn us, “ then have we confidence toward God.” It is noteworthy how the line of thought coincides with that in the latter part of the fourth of Hebrews. There too we see the Divine omniscience emphasized—the discernment of the living word, “quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any crea- ture that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Then comes the priesthood and the sympathy of Jesus, the