Now please turn to the First Epistle of John—the First Epistle of John.
I am going to do something which, apart from its real inspiration and perhaps an element of surprise, could be rather tedious. I am going to ask you to look with me at quite a number of fragments in this letter, beginning in the first chapter.
“And this is the message which we have heard from Him and announce unto you.”
—1 John 1:5
“And this is the promise which He promised us, even the life eternal.”
—1 John 2:25
“And this is His commandment, that we should believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ.”
—1 John 3:23
“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for the witness of God is this, that He hath borne witness concerning His Son.”
—1 John 5:9
“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning His Son.”
—1 John 5:10
“And this is the witness, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”
—1 John 5:11
“For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.”
—1 John 5:4
“And this is the boldness which we have toward Him.”
—1 John 5:14
“And every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist.”
—1 John 4:3
“This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ.”
—1 John 5:6
“And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”
—1 John 5:20
Let us put all those fragments together:
I do not know what that conveys to you. In a very brief letter, so far as compass is concerned—a letter which you can read through in little more, if any more, than ten minutes—you have this tenfold reiteration: This is; this is.
Surely it very clearly indicates that the writer, the Apostle John, was wanting and intending to pinpoint the great factors of the Christian life and the Christian faith.
There is this tenfold repetition: This is. And each time there is an identification of something—ten different things. He is saying of every one, “Now, this is.” It is impressive. It is instructive. It is very challenging.
It all comes out of the first verse in the letter:
“That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life.”
—1 John 1:1
Everything springs out of that. That is the sum of all that the apostle is going to say: that which we heard from Him.
So John is here in this letter recapitulating what came with Christ, and what he, with the other apostles, had seen and heard and handled.
He has very serious business on hand. Indeed, John, in all his writings, had a burden—a burden which amounted to a passion.
You will have noted—perhaps, if you did not, you can learn—that in every one of these ten pointings, as we have called them, there is in some way one governing issue. There is one governing issue to the whole content of these “this is” declarations, and that governing issue, related to every one, is life.
Life. Did you notice that? Take note of it. Go and look at it again. This is—and the issue bound up with this is life. This is—and the issue bound up with this is life. And so right the way through, to the final summary:
“This is the true God, and eternal life.”
—1 John 5:20
John is saying that, and so strongly emphasizing that, he brings us to the issue of the whole battle of Christianity.
For, you perhaps will not need to be told, spiritual Christianity is a terrific battle. When you come into this kind of relationship with the Lord Jesus, which is life—which is living—you are precipitated into a tremendous conflict. You discover that sooner or later.
It was in that very context that John wrote. He wrote his Gospel, he wrote these three letters, and he wrote the Book of Revelation. He wrote them all very much about the same time.
No one who knows anything about these writings of John has any doubt whatever that they are set in the realm of a tremendous spiritual battle.
Can you recall his Gospel? Can you recall that Gospel from beginning to end? All that we have there about the Lord Jesus—in teaching and in works—is encompassed by an atmosphere of intense antagonism.
How many times did the Jews, the Jewish rulers, counsel together to kill Him because of things which He said? Until at last, they did it. But all the way through that Gospel, you will find that He is moving in this atmosphere of intense spiritual antagonism. And John wrote the Gospel with that clearly in view.
These three letters are only three aspects of one thing. The first letter is for the Lord’s people in general; the second is for a church; and the third is for a spiritual leader in the church. But they are only three aspects of one thing.
If you read carefully, you cannot fail to detect that what John is writing is because of the existence of a positive opposition, antagonism, and hostility to the spiritual life.
And if you have not recognized that in these letters, you cannot miss it in the Book of Revelation. For if there is one thing about that book, it is that it is a book of warfare, is it not? You know how the first three chapters gather around, “To him that overcometh”—seven times repeated. From then onward, it is warfare.
It would be good always if you would remember that, although there is some meaning and value in the position which these books occupy as they stand together, that arrangement can be misleading, or at least can cause us to lose or miss something.
I am not suggesting that you go and unbind your New Testament and rebind it in another way, but it would be a good thing if you could get hold of these books separately and bind together Gospel, letters, and Revelation as one continuous narrative, each part having its own particular purpose.
You must remember that John’s Gospel was not written way back there, just at the end of the life of the Lord Jesus, to give an account of His earthly life. That is historically where it is placed. It was written right at the end of the first Christian century, after the destruction of Jerusalem; and so were these letters, and so probably was Revelation.
They all come right at the end of that first Christian era, after all the other apostles had gone to the Lord, and John, the old, old man, was writing at that very critical point—turning point—in the history of Christianity.
Now, that is the parenthesis. Always remember that, because you must have the Gospel by John in order to understand the letters of John. It has been said that he wrote his Gospel and then wrote these letters as a kind of covering letter to the Gospel. Be that as it may, there are other very helpful things in that connection.
The Gospel was written with one object. It was written with this sole object: making known what was in Jesus Christ; in other words, what had come into the world in Him, what He had brought in in His own Person.
The object of the three letters is to show what is in believers because of Jesus Christ. What was in Him is now to be in believers, and what is in believers—that is the burden of the letters.
The Gospel and letters are part and counterpart: the Person of the Lord Jesus and what has come in with Him; the Lord’s people, and what is in them—or is supposed to be in them—because He is in them.
John was saying, and he was saying it in the spirit in which John always did say it, that Jesus brought many things with Him in His Person into this world as from God. But everything that Jesus brought was more than a doctrine, more than a teaching, more than a truth.
The meaning and the proof of everything that came in with Him is in this one word: life.
His teaching—the value of His teaching—was to be found in the effects of His teaching, in producing life. His teaching goes for nothing, unless it is condemnation, if the result is not life.
All His works that He did were to result in life. They were not just interesting, wonderful, marvellous, and miraculous works. The issue was intended to be life, and all the work of the Lord Jesus goes for nothing if it does not result in life.
It is not the teaching of Jesus, though that is important. It is not what Jesus did, although that is important. It is the result of all that He said and did and was—that is the crucial thing. The proof of the Lord Jesus is in the life which results from everything to do with Him.
John is very explicit about this. He sums it all up, both in Gospel and in letter. Look in his Gospel, chapter 20. Chapter 21 is a kind of additional chapter; he really closed with chapter 20.
“Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name.”
—John 20:30-31
You can shorten that statement, if you like, and say: all these are written that you might have life in His name. That is the issue. That is the object. That is the only purpose of having all this about Jesus and His teaching and His works: that you may have life.
Then, as you notice in the First Epistle, at the end of chapter 5, he does a similar thing:
“These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.”
—1 John 5:13
These things are written that you may know that you have eternal life. In the Gospel, it is, “That believing ye may have.” In the letter, “That ye may know that ye have.” You may know that you have.
Let us look at the occasion of this writing: the time and the occasion. We have pointed out that the date of John’s writing was at the close of the apostolic age.
What we have in the Book of Acts was history. All that we have in the epistles of Paul and the others stands on record as an accomplished thing, and the unveiling of the divine purpose is on hand.
Now John comes right in and, in effect, he says, “You have all that. You have all that. You know all that. That has been deposited with you. Now then, what about it?”
It is a call back. It is a call up to all that the church has received. It is a challenge at this time to the Lord’s people, to the Church of Jesus Christ, to come right into line with all that has been given, because the Lord, having given, holds His people responsible for all that.
Again, you see, he goes on with the Book of Revelation. At the opening of that book, he arraigns the churches before the written Word. He does so on the ground, surely, that the Apostle Paul had given to those churches in Asia, who had been the instrument of bringing into being a testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the risen Lord is calling them to account for all that Paul was used to give them. It is most impressive, dear friends. It is solemn, but it is encouraging.
One of the last things Paul says about his ministry was, “All they which are in Asia turned away from me.” They repudiated him. They threw him over. They had closed down on that ministry in Asia.
Now John writes to the seven churches in Asia—but it is not John; it is the risen Lord through John to the seven churches in Asia. It is as though the risen Lord, there in Revelation 1, is saying, “Oh, churches in Asia, you are not going to get away with it like that. You may repudiate My servant; you may turn from him; but it is with Me you will have to reckon. It was I who spoke to him, who worked through him. It is with Me that you have to reckon.”
That is encouraging for any servant of God who has been faithful and has suffered discrediting and repudiation. But it is very challenging and very solemn, is it not? The Lord never lets anybody get away with anything that He has given without, sooner or later, calling upon them to answer to Him for that trust.
That is the time of things, you see. It is a time thing. There comes a time when the Lord does that. But what about the occasion?
It is perfectly clear from these letters and Revelation, and it is implied by the Gospel, that a state of spiritual decline had set in—a state of spiritual change. The first, former days of glory in the church were passing, if they had not already passed.
All that devotion, that fruitfulness, that readiness to suffer, that purity, was passing. Declension had set in, and a big change was coming over Christianity at the time that John was writing—and a change not for the better.
It was a change: loss of standard, loss of calibre, loss of purity, loss of first love. Yes, a state of spiritual decline and sad change.
It was a time when pagan ideas were invading the church and Christianity. It might not interest you, and it would only take up time for us to point out what those pagan ideas were. But they were coming in—strange, mysterious kinds of teachings from paganism—coming in and being made a part of Christian teaching.
This was destroying the absolute purity of the Gospel, of the faith, and of the life of believers. That clearness and transparency of testimony and of life which had marked the early days was giving place to spiritual mixture.
Whenever mixture comes in, there is always confusion. Confusion. You can discern how much confusion there was by just reading this short letter—how much indicates that the Lord’s people were in a state of confusion, born of this mixture which had come into Christianity.
I am not talking to you, dear friends, only about something of nearly two thousand years ago. That might be interesting, but we are really living in our own day. I have no hesitation in saying that we are living in conditions very similar to those in which John wrote this letter.
What a mix-up Christianity in general is today, is it not? What confusion there is in Christianity, using that word generally. What a loss of tone and level, of impact and purity, and of passion for the Lord Jesus. What a loss! Everybody is aware of it. Everybody is deploring it.
There was this extra factor at that time, which no small part of this world is knowing something about today, and that is persecution. John wrote Revelation as an exile in the Isle of Patmos, “for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
It was a time of severe testing of the church by persecution, opposition, and antagonism. We may not know so much about it in this Western world, and yet that is not to our credit.
Our brethren in the East are knowing all about this. They are in the fiery trial of persecution and suffering. When I say that it is not to our credit that we do not know it, I mean this: while, just at present, the form of it that is over there may not have reached us—
If, dear friends, we were more vital in our spiritual life and testimony, we would meet more of that powerful opposition.
If, dear friends, we were more vital in our spiritual life and testimony, we would meet more of that powerful opposition. I think it is because we do not count for enough that we do not meet enough.
Speaking of the church generally—and, as individuals, there are quite a lot of exceptions—as a whole, the church in the West is not a persecuted church because it does not count for enough. That is true.
Well, this was the occasion of the writing. But why have I said all that, mentioned all these things? We are going to get behind them and to the heart, and say: Why? What is the explanation? What is the meaning?
These are only aspects of a great battle. The battle has many forms; it takes many different aspects.
It means that there is something against—something against Christianity, against vitality, against the life of the people of God. There is something against them. What is it? That is the object of it all. What is at the heart?
John does not leave us in any doubt when he underlines, underscores, this one word all the way through: life. You meet it in Gospel, in letters—life. What is it all about, then?
Anything by anything, anyhow—from subtle subterfuge, deceit, and trickery, to every other form, until it comes to open, deadly persecution—anything, anyhow, to destroy this life.
Anything to destroy this life, because this life is the eternal issue: from eternity past, through all the ages, into eternity to come. This is it. This is it.
God intended the man of His creation to possess, according to His own design, eternal life—to share His life with Him. That is symbolized, of course, in the tree of life in the garden at the beginning.
It represents a symbol of God’s thought that man should, on certain conditions—on a certain basis of faith, of obedience, of fellowship with Him, of walking in the light as He is in the light—on that ground become the possessor of this which is called eternal life.
Now, if that should happen—if that should happen—in a universe where there is a hostile, inimical, and antagonistic hierarchy to God, a hierarchy set against God and all His purposes and intentions, if that should happen, the whole situation for that hierarchy is hopeless.
The forces of antagonism are fully and finally ruled out if that should happen, because this life is indestructible. It is indestructible. It just cannot be destroyed.
John is telling us that it was in the Son of God. We learn from another Scripture:
“Whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it.”
—Acts 2:24
It was just not possible—an impossible thing—that the One in whom this life dwelt should be holden of death. It is indestructible. It will be irresistible—irresistible.
This person was once asked if he would become a member of a committee for the defence of the Bible. He looked at the man who had come to ask him and said, “Does a lion need defending? You let him loose from his chains; he will look after himself all right.”
The Word of God needs no defending. Let it loose, and that is all you have to do. Irresistible.
I do not know whether you read recently in the paper of something that happened somewhere, I think on the northeast side of this country. A whole stretch of concrete road had to be torn up and relaid because mushrooms had forced their way through it and cracked it open. Mushrooms cracking open a concrete highway!
There you are: the power of life. Irresistible, if it gets a chance, if it is let loose, if it takes things into its own hands.
This life calls out everything in this universe to defend itself against this life—to save itself from this life. That is an explanation of a lot, dear friends, is it not? It is a life which provokes opposition because of its inherent potentiality. Irresistible.
This life, John says, was in His Son Jesus Christ. Look at Him. Look at Him.
Everywhere He went, He met, in many different forms, antagonism to the life that was in Him. Because it was in Him, all the evil intelligences in this universe—the devil and demons—came out and woke up. “This is a critical situation. This thing has invaded our realm.”
He met it in every form: demon possession, and all the forms of satanic work in human bodies and human minds. Not one could stand against Him. Not one could stand against it. Not one could hold the ground against Him.
John sums up all his signs in his Gospel—signs of this very thing, the mighty irresistible power of the life that was in Jesus—in one cumulative instance: Lazarus.
Lazarus was allowed not only to die—deliberately allowed to die—but allowed to be in the grave until the end of four days, to be in a state of corruption; allowed, deliberately, in order to show that death—really dead, not imaginary, not fictitious death, not seeming death, but real, terrible death—cannot stand before Him who is the resurrection and the life.
He exemplifies the nature of this life. It is indestructible. It is irresistible.
I would like to take you through the many instances of Jesus bringing life into situations which were naturally quite hopeless. You must remember that John deliberately selected a whole line of impossible situations in order to show that, with this One, there is nothing impossible.
No matter what it is—whether it is the water into wine, a hopeless situation in Cana of Galilee, an end of everything; whether it is the woman of Samaria, a pretty hopeless situation in herself; whether it is the nobleman’s son, reaching the verge of death.
That nobleman would undoubtedly have used all his wealth to find some help for that son. He himself travelled all the way from Capernaum to Cana to come into contact with Jesus and venture to ask Him to do something. A hopeless situation in this world.
So we might go on. John deliberately selected these things to show that this life in Christ has no match and no master. It is the Master. It is the Master.
In a situation of growth, spiritual death and darkness, decline and loss, John writes all this and says, in effect, “All you believers, what you need to recover in this day is your knowledge and your experience of this life that is in Christ.”
This matchless life, this mighty life—it is the life that is going to solve the problems, answer the questions, meet the need, overcome the adverse forces, and triumph at last. It is life in Christ that you need to know.
Apart from that, things will go from bad to worse and from worse to awful. They are just decline. John stands in that gap and says, “The answer is a recovery of Jesus Christ as the eternal life, in the power of this endless life—a recovery in your spiritual history, in your spiritual experience.”
Now, dear friends, I have taken enough time to introduce the matter, and I must, I fear, close there for the present. As I said this afternoon, here is something to cover the whole weekend. If the Lord will, we will continue with this after the Lord’s Table tomorrow morning for a little while, unless He leads us otherwise.
But we come with a great fact tonight: over against what anybody with any spiritual knowledge, spiritual experience, or spiritual discernment will agree is a time of lost spiritual power on the part of the church and the people of God today, there is need of much more power.
Do you not agree? To meet the present situation—the adverse forces, about which we have yet to speak more specifically—to meet it and counter it, this is what is needed, as John shows in his Gospel, his letters, and Revelation: bring back the Lord Jesus into His proper place in terms of eternal life. Bring Him back.
John, with his Gospel, seeks to bring in the Son of God in a new way to a fresh apprehension. In his letters, that is his interest: the real introduction of the Son of God in the power of eternal life.
May the Lord say something to our hearts about this, because really we are so much farther on than John was in the dispensation. Surely none of us here will question the statement that we are getting very near the end.
In the little time since we were together here—since I was with you in your class—what advances have been made? What a headlong rush has taken place. How much nearer that day mentioned by Peter, in his prophetic inspiration, when the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and all these things be burnt up.
Now we understand it today. In a few short months or years, we have come to know this is not fiction. This is terrible reality. It only needs some madman, with the restraint taken off him, to push a button today, and civilization will be well-nigh wiped out, if the Lord were to allow it. It is possible—possible.
We are very near the end. I can only trust that all the prayer that has gone before our time together here, all the seeking of the Lord, means that the word which is coming to you is a timely word—a word for the hour and for the present situation.
Few as we are, and weak as we are humanly, may we at least individually, and as a company of the Lord’s people, come into a new knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of this mighty, indestructible, and irresistible life.
That really is where John meant to bring the Lord’s people by writing. He said, “I have written these things, that you may know that you have eternal life.” It is possible to believe that you have it and not know it. It is possible to have the doctrine of it and not know it. It is possible even to put your feet down upon the truth of it and not be living in the knowledge of it.
These were Christians, and doctrinally and theoretically they had eternal life because they had believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. But they were not living day by day in the knowledge of that life. That is possible, you know.
John, when he wrote Revelation, made perfectly clear to one church that you can be doing all the Christian works without all the Christian love. The dynamic of all the activities has gone, though you are carrying on the activities.
It is just possible to be full of Christian works without the life of love being there. A lot of people are working tremendously hard in Christianity, but there is lacking something, is there not? Something is lacking.
That is just what John was saying. No, it is not the teaching; it is not the profession; it is not even the works that you are doing. It is the mighty power of this life, which you know in your own experience every day. His life is a resurrection life in you, in me, every day. That is the testimony. This is the testimony. This is the message.
Of course, we would want a very long conference to take every one of those pointings and say, “This is the message: what is it? This is the witness: what is it? This is the commandment,” and so on.
But, as I have said, whether we deal with them separately or not, when you put them all together, they focus upon one thing. All these things have to do with life. Life is the issue.
Well, I will stop there for the present. May the Lord write this very strongly on our hearts.