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First of all, to the institute itself and to its revered and beloved founder for this invitation to come and lecture. As you will know, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Stott himself has written one of the finest commentaries on the epistles of John to appear this century. Therefore, when it was decided that First John was the appropriate New Testament passage to accompany your other studies this week, reason might have suggested that John Stott himself should have been the expositor.
Instead, with characteristic grace and self-denial, he has invited me to take his place. You, I am sure, will hardly thank him for that. Now I see such an authority as himself sitting here in front of me, I'm not quite so sure that I thank him either. But I have undertaken it gladly as a token in some place of my gratitude for all that I and countless others have learned from him down the years. And certainly those of you who have read Dr.
Stott's commentary will perceive in the course of this week how much my lectures are everywhere indebted to him. Now, one or two practical matters you should have somewhere near your elbow a sheaf of notes, and if you have them, it will comfort me much. They should be on the studies in the first epistle of John, and if you have them, I'm glad to see that you are still sitting here and haven't run away at the sight of them. Let me comfort you by the observation that these notes are, by way of being an accompaniment to the talks.
They contain a lot of matter that we shall not possibly cover this week, but I thought it might be helpful, in addition to the talks, to have a little pot of commentary for you to take away. They will also be useful for you, and particularly for me, in the course of my remarks, if occasionally I might refer you to them. Now, the task assigned to me is to examine the first epistle by John, looking especially to see what it has to say on the topic of the family of God. I am told that I need not confine myself narrowly to that particular topic, but that I should perhaps put most of the emphasis of the week on the question of the family of God and life in that family.
I shall not therefore spend now time at this juncture in talking about introductory matters. I have made some notes on that score in the, uh, uh, sheaf of notes that I have given you. Occasionally, we shall be referring to them, uh, to these matters, that is, as the time goes by. But for the moment, I skip, for time's sake, normal introductory matters. Let us come immediately, therefore, to our topic of the family of God. If we chose, we could hunt through our first epistle by John and take out isolated verses here or there that bear more or less directly on the topic.
I have rejected that, uh, procedure as being too narrow and too arbitrary. Better perhaps for us to try, however briefly, to understand the flow of John's thought throughout the epistle as a whole, and then to see what he says about the family of God and how that fits into the context or contexts of his epistle as a whole, so that what he has to say about the family of God is colored by what precedes and by what follows it. Now, at first sight, you might think it were easy to pick out in such a small epistle as the epistle of John, easy to pick out the main line of his thought and to see some unified logical progression throughout the epistle.
Actually, that has proved an exceedingly difficult thing to do, and all commentators shed appropriate tears in the course of their introduction over the difficulties of their task. The reason is that John has been inspired to write in what at first sight, at any rate, looks like a series of pithy, though of course profound statements that are only loosely connected. His book resembles faintly the book of Proverbs, which, as you know, when you study it at first sight, you are bewildered by its teeming richness.
And then you notice a verse here and a verse that follows, and it appears it's going to follow a particular topic, when all to your grief it turns and goes off onto some other matter, and once more you are lost again, beginning with some new theme, as it would appear. Many scholars have found the paragraphs of John's epistles very much like that. If that is so, we have, of course, no reason for complaint. The truths that God has revealed in this fashion in the first epistle of John are immeasurably profound. Just to take the two of them that concern God's self-revelation to us, that God is light and that God is love.
Did those two statements stand in the middle of a wilderness? Then are they surely profound enough to exercise our minds for the rest of life, and doubtless for eternity as well. Nonetheless, it would be easy to track down our subject, easier at any rate, if we could find some logical scheme in the arrangement of his material. And understandably, many scholars have attempted to do it. Professor I. H. Marshall, in his commentary, cites seven different ways of analyzing the Epistle of John.
Professor R. E. Brown, in his recent Anchor commentary, cites many, many more different ways of analyzing the Epistle of John. Some of them, he points out, are divisions into two parts, and some of them, he points out, are divisions into three parts, and some of them are divisions into seven parts. It begins to look as if you pay your money and make your pick. Marshall finds all of these analyses inadequate for one reason and another. He says they force the evidence, and for himself he feels it's best to make simply a list of contents, and I have copied out here his list.
Let me interrupt, I see I have been working without the machine. Is that for you? Is, uh, Professor Marshall's analysis of the contents of the First Epistle of John. He says it contains, first of all, the prologue, the s- uh, words about the word of life, and then a paragraph about walking in the light, followed by another keeping his commands, and then all of a sudden another, the new status of believers and their relation to the world, followed by a warning against antichrists, then another paragraph dealing with the hope of God's children, followed yet again by a further one about the sinlessness of God's children.
Then some exhortations on brotherly love as the mark of the Christian, followed yet again by a paragraph on assurance and obedience. And then a paragraph dealing with the spirits of truth and the spirits of falsehood, and how you may distinguish between them. Followed yet again by a paragraph on God's love to us and our love to God. Then another paragraph about assurance and Christian love. Then a paragraph, quite long this time, on the true faith confirmed.
And finally, some remarks about Christian certainties. So, as you see, according to Professor Marshall, the first epistle of John, says he, it seems preferable to regard the epistle as being composed of a series of connected paragraphs whose relation to one another is governed by association of ideas rather than by any logical plan. This does not mean, says Professor Marshall, that John is illogical, but rather that his epistle is not meant to be divided into large sections on a logical basis.
Well, Professor Marshall's standards, of course, are exceedingly high and exact, and he will not allow anything that does not account for every jot and tittle of the text, without any repetition and without any overlap. And that, I'm sure, is exceedingly proper, but for our practical purpose this week, we shall perhaps look to others for a little bit more help, that we can comprehend the thought flow of the epistle a little bit more logically. In a very recent commentary, Dr. Stephen Smalley has suggested that, yes, you can see some kind of logical coherence in the contents of the epistle, and he analyzes it in this fashion.
He says it has a preface dealing with the word of life, and then, says he, it has two major sections, to live in the light, to live in the light because God is light, and all that is implied therein. And then, under rubric three, the exhortation that we are to live as children of God, because God is not only light, but God is our Father. And under those two, uh, major sections of the book, he lists a number of what he calls conditions.
If we are going to live in the light as God is in the light, then the first condition is that we must renounce sin. And the second condition, that we be obedient. The third condition, according to him, is that we reject worldliness. And the fourth condition is that we keep the faith. And then, under the second major rubric, live as children of God because God is our Father, Professor Marshall lists a number of conditions, and if you notice them, according to Professor Marshall, there is a kind of repetition, not a complete symmetry, but a repetition nonetheless.
The first condition for living as children of God, according to Professor Marshall, is that we renounce sin. And the second, once more, be obedient. And the third condition, reject worldliness. And then Professor Marshall, like most people that invent analyses of the first epistle of John, has to spoil his symmetry a little bit by saying, ah, but there is now a fourth condition, be loving. And I suspect if Professor Marshall would hear, he would say, ah, but you know, under rubric two, there were some verses, if we looked around in that part of the epistle, that talked about being loving, surely.
We shall not find fault in that way. Our object is to find as much practical help as we can to get the whole epistle in front of our minds with some idea as to where its practical thrust lies. And what Professor Smalley is helping us to do is at least to see that John is, has behind him an exceedingly practical thrust when he writes to us about the word of life. We are to live in the light as God is in the light. We are to live as children of God because God is our Father, and according to him, John is laying down certain conditions that we must fulfill if we will live in the light and then live as children of God.
And the conditions repeat themselves. So here in this number three, the second division, we, the condition is to renounce sin, to be obedient, to reject worldliness, to be loving, and then to keep the faith. And it all, says Professor Smalley, is, uh, rounded off by a paragraph on Christian confidence. Now, Professor Smalley's insights are quite similar in their way, and it is interesting to see a modern commentator, uh, arranging his material this way, very similar to a famous old analysis of the epistle that was put about, at least publicly first, by a certain Robert Law.
And I have listed to you, uh, his ideas on page two of your notes, under number four C. Robert Law held the view that John is supplying us, if not with conditions, like Professor Smalley thinks, then with tests, criteria, by which everyone who professes to be a Christian may be able to test his own profession of Christianity, and if need be, test other people's profession of Christianity as well.
The tests, so Law suggested, are three. The test by righteousness, the test by love and the test by belief. Or as John Stott would put it in his commentary, the first test, that of obedience or the moral test. The second test by love or the social test, and the third test by belief or the doctrinal test. And it was Law's thesis that in the epistle, John is applying these three tests, one after the other, three times over, in three cycles.
A very practical way to use to hammer home the point that he is making, that all true profession of Christianity ought to be able to stand up to these three tests. The test by righteousness, the test by love, and the test by doctrine. Marshall, of course, as usual, will not allow that Law's analysis either fully comprehends and truly represents the text of First John.
He feels in particular that when Law comes to his third cycle, he has to push the evidence a little. That need not deter us this morning from profiting by this insight into what the general message of the epistle is. I repeat that if we are members of the family of God, then we must be able to pass these tests when they are applied to us by God's Holy Spirit. And we must be able to pass all these tests, so to speak, simultaneously. The test by righteousness.
It is no use arguing, as some heretics did, the Gnostics, for instance, whom I have listed to you in- for you on the notes, and as some modern interpreters of Christianity still do, that sin does not really matter because God is love and we should be loving, and that therefore, if God is love and we are loving, then sin does not really matter. John the Apostle will apply his test of righteousness to us and say quite bluntly in chapter three verse eight, he who commits sin, that is he who goes on practicing sin as the norm of his life, is of the devil.
It is true that our salvation is not of our works in the sense that our works cannot deserve it. But true salvation is a thing that operates in us and leads to works of righteousness, so that if the works of righteousness are not there, our profession of faith is more than doubtful. But then Law would say, John wants us to feel the fact that righteousness by itself, righteous behavior, doing good is not enough.
We must also be loving. To keep the commandments of God in a hard, cold, self-righteous fashion is the mark of a Pharisee rather than the mark of the member of the family of God. Therefore, John lays it down that if you do not practice righteousness, you are not of God, chapter three, verse ten. But similarly, he adds, he who does not love his brother is not of God. We need to be able to pass the test of righteousness and the test of love.
And then there is a third test, says Law, the test of doctrine, of right belief. It is a commonplace today, is it not, that doctrine is supposed to have divided people and led to all sorts of squabbles and fightings in the church. So much so that people say, if only we could forget the doctrine and get on with loving one another and doing right, then all would be well in the family of God. Too long, they say, have we had too much doctrine and warred and divided ourselves over points of doctrine.
But the Apostle John will not allow us that idea at all. He says that the test of doctrine is exceedingly important, and it does matter what we believe, and it does matter that we believe the right things about Jesus Christ, God's son. For while, as we shall presently see, we ought to do righteousness in the family of God, yet from time to time all of us fall, and we need a savior to make it possible for us to enter the family of God and to make it possible for us to be maintained in fellowship with God.
Unless Jesus Christ is God's son incarnate, the eternal life that was with the Father and was manifested for our sake and died at Calvary for our sake, then of course there is no salvation. Then there is no family of God, for there would be no way for us to enter that family or to be maintained in it. Now, Law's analysis has proved very popular with all true expositors, at least with all practical expositors of the Gospel of John.
It appeals to them as putting across very directly, very clearly, the exceedingly practical purpose for which John wrote, that we may be able to test ourselves and see whether our experience is genuine Christianity, or whether it comes short by any of these tests. With a perversity that is inherent within me, I suppose, I shall be following a slightly different scheme, though you will find, uh, that I owe tremendous, a tremendous deal to what Robert Law has taught generations of expositors.
If you look on page two of the notes, under section three, you will find there a very simple practical device that I put forward for our practical purposes this week, under page two four three— oh, sorry, page four D, little D. Now, I am not putting forth this as an academic analysis of John's text, simply as a practical device that may help us come the more nearly to our topic of the family of God.
And I'm going to divide the, uh, text into three, what I call great movements of thought. Starting in chapter one, verses one to four, with what John has to say about the manifestation of the life eternal, that life that was with the Father and was manifested to us. And following his movement of thought down towards the end of chapter two, where he comes to a long warning against antichrists who deny that Jesus is the Christ.
I shall take that as our first major movement of thought. And then I shall begin the second movement of thought this week in chapter two, verses twenty eight following, where John recurs to this topic of manifestation, the manifestation of the Son of God, both in his first coming and then in his second coming. And then also the manifestation of the children of God. As John says, it does not yet appear what we shall be. We are already children of God.
But when he appears, that is when the Lord Jesus appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And I shall follow John's thought from that point onward, until in chapter four, verses one to six, we come across another great paragraph of warning, this time a warning against believing the spirit of falsehood as distinct from the spirit of truth. When we have completed that second movement, I shall ask us to consider a third great movement of thought, beginning in chapter four, verses seven following, where John once more recurs to this topic of manifestation.
This time, the manifestation of the love of God. In this was manifested the love of God. The manifestation of that love in God's Son, first of all, historically, and then in us, his people, nowadays. And I shall follow that great movement of thought till we come to the end of the epistle, where we find yet another solemn warning, a warning this time against putting idols in the place of the true God. Now, I repeat, I shall not be offering this as a technical analysis of the epistle, just a little preacher's practical device for comprehending the thought flow.
It will help us to distinguish what at first sight looks like a lot of repetition when we read this epistle. For instance, take those warnings that end our movements. The first, at first sight, all three warnings look very much alike, but they do have differences. The first is a warning against antichrists who deny that Jesus is the Christ. And in that paragraph, John will tell us that we have the help of the Holy Spirit, an anointing from the Holy One, to guard us against these false doctrines.
False doctrines aimed at the person of the Lord Jesus. When we come to the second warning, it does, of course, contain much that is the same, but the emphasis is different. This time it is a warning about false spirits. You'll see, if the first warning has reminded us that we have the Holy Spirit to guide us, in the second warning, the question will be raised, but then how do I know who the Holy Spirit is? And how shall I distinguish the teaching of the Holy Spirit from the teaching of false prophets?
Many claim to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. How shall I recognize among all these claims to being inspired utterances of the Holy Spirit, the voice of the Spirit of truth, and not be taken away by the voice of the spirit of falsehood? So if in warning one the emphasis is upon the person of the Lord Jesus, here in warning two we are thinking specially of the Holy Spirit. And the third warning is a warning against idolatry, of putting anything in the place of the true God.
Not simply now the Son of God or the Spirit of God merely, but warning against substitute gods of loving or trusting anything or anyone in place of the true God. I shall not need to argue the point that the manifestations at the beginning of our movements deal with obviously different things. But just let me put before you the observation that, um, when we look at these three great movements of thought, we shall find in each a great deal of material that will talk to us about the family of God.
And the next thing we shall notice, that when John talks to us about the family of God, he then talks to us in close context about the world. So that this week, if we would understand what John means by the family of God, we shall also need to understand what he means by this term, the world. It is not perhaps the easiest of terms to, to grasp. It is certainly very easy to get a superficial view of what John means by it as something narrowly moralistic.
So we shall be spending quite a bit of time this week considering the family of God, of course, as is our brief, but also considering what John puts over against the family of God, namely the world. And we shall find that in each of those three movements of thought, John puts different emphases both on the family and on the world. In the first great movement of thought, he will talk to us about the family and its members, the children, the little children, the young men, and the fathers, and will picture the members of the family united in the father's love to them and their love to the Father and to one another.
And hard on the heels of his description of the family of God will be his description of the world and its seductiveness. So much so that when John has to urge us love the members of the family, then he has to add, but do not love the world. And he thinks of the world's seductiveness, all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life, and he says, it is not of the Father.
So much so that if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. You cannot simultaneously love the world and love the Father. It is obviously important, then, for our understanding of the family of God and life in the family of God that we come to understand what John means by the world. It is clean contrary to the family of God. And here we shall be thinking about our love.
Shades of Robert Law are already creeping up upon us. In the next great movement of thought, we shall think of the family of God. I- the origin of its life and character. Every member of the family, says John, is begotten of God, is of God, as to the source of his life and the source of his character. And then once more, John talks to us about the world, this time not in all the colors of its seductiveness, but in the somber blacks of its evil.
The world and its origin, the origin of its character, John says very bluntly, but like his Lord said, it is of the evil one. And according to John, there are but two families in this world, the family of God and the family of the evil one. And that is not wild talk. We shall find it is a profound statement about the human condition in this world and the problem of sin and the way of salvation.
And then in the third great movement of thought, we shall think again of the family. This time not of its love, nor of its righteousness, if you will allow me, its character of doing good, but this time of its faith and therefore of its victory. The faith that overcomes. Who is he that overcomes the world, save he who believes that Jesus is the Christ? And what we have to overcome is, of course, the world. This is the victory that overcomes the world.
Love the children of God, says John, and that will mean loving God. But we ask, is that not very difficult, John, in this modern world? Does not the world put every kind of obstacle in our way so that we should not keep the commandments of God? Yes, John says, that is perfectly true, and we think of the world and it. But there is a faith that overcomes the world, and the secret of its strength are the great and glorious facts, the doctrinal facts, you might say, about the Son of God.
So that will be the way I shall be coming at the epistle this week, and I hope it is already apparent that our study shall be practically orientated. Let us now begin to get down to the facts, as we have a little time left. I see, uh, I'm confused. I thought that clock was ten minutes fast, but it seems to have reformed itself. Yes, it does. Well, never mind, uh, we can, we can, uh, we needn't key to the program of the notes. We should get a little bit out of phase, maybe, from time to time.
Uh, we shall catch up in the end and arrive at the last full stop by Friday morning, I hope. But let us now at least begin, uh, to look at our text. First Epistle of John and chapter uh one, and what is commonly called the prologue. And here John first introduces us to what is the nature and basis and content of the fellowship. That great fellowship that is to form the family of God, to be its chief treasure, its very heart.
John writes, he says in verse three, of what we have seen and heard. We declare it unto you, he says, that you also may have fellowship with us. Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things we write that our joy may be fulfilled. We notice, therefore, that this term fellowship means basically a sharing in, a partnership in. So that when we think of fellowship, we are thinking about our sharing in something with somebody else.
We have to have something in common, in other words. And what we have in common is no less than that eternal life that was with the Father. What we have in common, then, is not some vague mood, some vague feeling that steals over us in our more religious moments. What we have in common is that eternal life that was with the Father and was manifested in history in Jesus Christ our Lord, in his life and death and resurrection.
There is content to our fellowship. This is what we share. When it says that, that eternal life was with the Father, does not, of course, merely signify location. It does not even merely indicate that, uh, the eternal life was pre-existent, though in these days we do well to emphasize again to ourselves the pre-existence of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
He always was, eternally was, with the Father. But as I say, it means more than location or his eternity. It indicates a person who was ever the full and infinite delight of the Father, that eternal life that was with the Father. So that now we have a series of wonders to contemplate. And the first wonder is surely this, that the eternal God the Father would be willing to share with us this eternal and uncreated life.
And secondly, the sec- basic consideration, on what conditions may we come and have fellowship thus with God? Would it be appropriate, therefore, now, if you came to lead us in some response to the Lord.
