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1 JOHN 3 COMMENTARY
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God! And that is
what we are! The reason the world does not know us is
that it did not know him.
1.BARNES, Behold, what manner of love - What love, in kind and
in degree. In kind the most tender and the most ennobling, in
adopting us into His family, and in permitting us to address Him as
our Father; in degree the most exalted, since there is no higher
love that can be shown than in adopting a poor and friendless
orphan, and giving him a parent and a home. Even God could bestow
upon us no more valuable token of affection than that we should be
adopted into His family, and permitted to regard Him as our Father.
When we remember how insignificant we are as creatures, and how
ungrateful, rebellious, and vile we have been as sinners, we may
well be amazed at the love which would adopt us into the holy
family of God, so that we may be regarded and treated as the
children of the Most High. A prince could manifest no higher love
for a wandering, ragged, vicious orphan boy, found in the streets,
than by adopting him into his own family, and admitting him to the
same privileges and honors as his own sons; and yet this would be a
trifle compared with the honor which God has bestowed on us.
The Father hath bestowed upon us - God, regarded as a Father, or
as at the head of the universe considered as one family.
That we should be called the sons of God - That is, that we
should be the sons of God - the word called being often used in the
sense of to be. On the nature and privileges of adoption, see the
Rom_8:15-17 notes; 2Co_6:18 note, and practical remarks on that
chapter.
Therefore the world knoweth us not - Does not understand our
principles; the reasons of our conduct; the sources of our comforts
and joys. The people of the world regard us as fanatics or
enthusiasts; as foolish in abandoning the pleasures and pursuits
which they engage in; as renouncing certain happiness for that
which is uncertain; as cherishing false and delusive hopes in
regard to the future, and as practicing needless austerities, with
nothing to compensate for the pleasures which are abandoned. There
is nothing which the frivolous, the ambitious, and the selfish less
understand than they do the elements which go into the Christians
character, and the nature and source of the Christians joys.
Because it knew him not - It did not know the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is, the world had no right views of the real character of the
Lord Jesus when he was on the earth. They mistook him for an
enthusiast or an impostor; and it is no wonder that, having wholly
mistaken his character, they should mistake ours. On the fact that
the world did not know him, see the 1Co_2:8 note;
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Act_3:17 note. Compare Joh_17:25. On the fact that Christians
may be expected to be regarded and treated as their Saviour was,
see the notes at Joh_15:18-20. Compare Mat_10:24-25.
2. CLARKE, Behold, what manner of love - Whole volumes might be
written upon this and the two following verses, without exhausting
the extraordinary subject contained in them, viz., the love of God
to man. The apostle himself, though evidently filled with God, and
walking in the fullness of his light, does not attempt to describe
it; he calls on the world and the Church to behold it, to look upon
it, to contemplate it, and wonder at it.
What manner of love. - What great love, both as to quantity and
quality; for
these ideas are included in the original term. The length, the
breadth, the depth, the height, he does not attempt to
describe.
The Father hath bestowed - For we had neither claim nor merit
that we should be called, that is, constituted or made, the sons of
God, who were before children of the wicked one, animal, earthly,
devilish; therefore, the love which brought us from such a depth of
misery and
degradation must appear the more extraordinary and impressive.
After , that we might
be called, , and we are, is added by ABC, seventeen others, both
the Syriac, Erpens
Arabic, Coptic, Sahidic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, and Vulgate.
Therefore the world - The Jews, and all who know not God, and
are seeking their portion in this life; knoweth us not - do not
acknowledge, respect, love, or approve of us. In this sense
the word is here to be understood. The world Knew well enough
that there were such
persons; but they did not approve of them. We have often seen
that this is a frequent use of the term know, both in Hebrew and
Greek, in the Old Testament and also in the New.
Because it knew him not - The Jews did not acknowledge Jesus;
they neither approved of him, his doctrine, nor his manner of
life.
3. GILL, Behold what manner of love,.... See, take notice,
consider, look by faith, with wonder and astonishment, and observe
how great a favour, what an instance of matchless love, what a
wonderful blessing of grace, the Father hath bestowed upon us: the
Father of Christ, and the Father of us in Christ, who hath adopted
us into his family, and regenerated us by his grace, and hath
freely given us the new name: that we should be called the sons of
God. The Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Vulgate Latin
version, add, "and we are", or "be"; and the Ethiopic version, "and
have been"; for it is not a mere name that is bestowed, but the
thing itself in reality; and in the Hebrew language, "to be
called", and "to be", are terms synonymous; see Isa_9:6; in what
sense the saints are the sons of God; See Gill on Gal_4:6; this
blessing comes not by nature, nor by merit, but by grace, the grace
of adoption; which is of persons unto an inheritance they have no
legal right unto; the spring of it is the everlasting and
unchangeable love of God, for there was no need on the adopter's
side, he having an only begotten and beloved Son, and no worth and
loveliness in the adopted, they being by nature children of wrath;
it is a privilege that exceeds all
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others, and is attended with many; so that it is no wonder the
apostle breaks out in this pathetic manner, and calls upon the
saints to view it with admiration and thankfulness: therefore the
world knoweth us not; that is, the greater part of the world, the
world that lies in wickedness, the men of the world, who have their
portion in this life, whom the god of this world has blinded, and
who only mind the things of the world, and are as when they came
into it, and have their conversation according to the course of it;
these do not know the saints are the sons of God; the new name of
sons is what no man knoweth but he that receiveth it; they do not
own the saints as theirs, as belonging to them, but reckon them as
the faith of the world, and the offscouring of all things; nor do
they love them, and that because they are not their own, but hate
them and persecute them: the reason is, because it knew him not;
neither the Father, whose sons they are, and who has bestowed the
grace upon them; wherefore they know not, and disown and persecute
his children; see Joh_17:25; nor the Lord Jesus Christ, the only
begotten of the Father, the firstborn among many brethren; who,
though he made the world, and was in it, was not known by it, but
was hated, abused, and persecuted; and therefore it need not seem
strange that the saints, who are the sons of God by adoption,
should be treated in like manner.
4. HENRY, The apostle, having shown the dignity of Christ's
faithful followers, that they are born of him and thereby nearly
allied to God, now here,
I. Breaks forth into the admiration of that grace that is the
spring of such a wonderful vouchsafement: Behold (see you, observe)
what manner of love, or how great love, the Father hath bestowed
upon us, that we should be called, effectually called (he who calls
things that are not makes them to be what they were not) the sons
of God! The Father adopts all the children of the Son. The Son
indeed calls them, and makes them his brethren; and thereby he
confers upon them the power and dignity of the sons of God. It is
wonderful condescending love of the eternal Father, that such as we
should be made and called his sons - we who by nature are heirs of
sin, and guilt, and the curse of God - we who by practice are
children of corruption, disobedience, and ingratitude! Strange,
that the holy God is not ashamed to be called our Father, and to
call us his sons! Thence the apostle,
II. Infers the honour of believers above the cognizance of the
world. Unbelievers know little of
them. Therefore (or wherefore, upon this score) the world
knoweth us not, 1Jo_3:1. Little does
the world perceive the advancement and happiness of the genuine
followers of Christ. They are
here exposed to the common calamities of earth and time; all
things fall alike to them as to
others, or rather they are subject to the greater sorrow, for
they have often reason to say, If in
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable, 1Co_15:19. The
unchristian world, therefore, that walks by sight, knows not
their dignity, their privileges, the
enjoyments they have in hand, nor what they are entitled to.
Little does the world think that
these poor, humble, contemned ones are the favourites of heaven,
and will be inhabitants there
ere long. And they may bear their case the better since their
Lord was here unknown as well as
they: Because it knew him not, 1Jo_3:1. Little did the world
think how great a person was once
sojourning here, that the Maker of it was once an inhabitant of
it. Little did the Jewish world
think that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was one of
their blood, and dwelt in their land;
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he came to his own, and his own received him not. He came to his
own, and his own crucified
him; but surely, had they known him, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory, 1Co_2:8.
Let the followers of Christ be content with hard fare here,
since they are in a land of strangers,
among those who little know them, and their Lord was so treated
before them. Then the apostle,
5. JAMISON, 1Jo_3:1-24. Distinguishing marks of the children of
God and the children of the devil. Brotherly love the essence of
true righteousness.
Behold calling attention, as to some wonderful exhibition,
little as the world sees to admire. This verse is connected with
the previous 1Jo_2:29, thus: All our doing of righteousness is a
mere sign that God, of His matchless love, has adopted us as
children; it does not save us, but is a proof that we are saved of
His grace.
what manner of of what surpassing excellence, how gracious on
His part, how precious to us.
love ... bestowed He does not say that God hath given us some
gift, but love itself and the fountain of all honors, the heart
itself, and that not for our works or efforts, but of His grace
[Luther].
that what manner of love; resulting in, proved by, our being,
etc. The immediate effect aimed at in the bestowal of this love is,
that we should be called children of God.
should be called should have received the privilege of such a
glorious title (though seeming so imaginary to the world), along
with the glorious reality. With God to call is to make really to
be. Who so great as God? What nearer relationship than that of
sons? The oldest manuscripts add, And we ARE SO really.
therefore on this account, because we are (really) so.
us the children, like the Father.
it knew him not namely, the Father. If they who regard not God,
hold thee in any account, feel alarmed about thy state [Bengel].
Contrast 1Jo_5:1. The worlds whole course is one great act of
non-recognition of God.
6. C. SIMEON, BELIEVERS ARE SONS OF GOD
1Jn_3:1. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us, that we should be called the
sons of God.
RELIGION is altogether a mystery: every part of it is deeply
mysterious. The restoration of a fallen soul to
God! The means of effecting that restoration the death of Gods
only dear Son, as a sacrifice for sin;
and the operation of his Spirit in the sinners heart! The effect
producedthe translation of a soul from the
family of Satan to the family of Almighty God! This is the point
which the Apostle is contemplating in my
text: and it fills him, as we might well expect, with the
profoundest wonder and admiration: Behold, what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should
be called the sons of God!
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That we may enter into the Apostles views, and attain somewhat
of his spirit, I will endeavour to shew,
I. What is comprehended in the relation of sons
No one need to be informed on this subject, as far as it relates
to men. But in the relation as borne to
God, there is much which needs to be elucidated. In it are
comprehended,
1. An adoption into his family
[By nature, we belong to a far different family: for we are of
our father the devil: and, being children of
disobedience, we are also children of wrath. But God takes to
himself a people out of that wretched
mass, and adopts them as his own; giving to them the name of
sons, the privileges of sons, the
endearments of sons, and acting towards them in all respects as
a loving Father It is in and
through the Lord Jesus Christ that he effects this. In sending
his Son to redeem them that were under
the law, he did it, that we might receive the adoption of sons
[Note: Gal_4:4-5.].]
2. A participation of his nature
[When man adopts any person, he may deal with the adopted person
as his son; but he can never really
make him a son. But when God sets apart any for this high
relation, he creates them anew, and makes
them entirely new creatures. He imparts to them his Holy Spirit,
and makes them partakers of the divine
nature [Note: 2Pe_1:4.]; so that they become, in reality, his
sons; being begotten of him, and born unto
him [Note: 1Jn_5:1; 1Jn_5:18.]. Hence, with the new relation,
there spring up in their souls new views,
new dispositions, new desires, new habits altogether [Note:
Gal_4:6 and Rom_8:15-16.]: and in God also
there arises, not a mere arbitrary good-will, but a paternal
interest, a special regard, such as exists in
every part of the creation between the parent and the progeny.
All this, then, is comprehended, (this
change of nature on their part, and this peculiar regard on
his,) when we speak of any as made sons of
God.]
3. A title to his inheritance
[This does not necessarily exist among men; but with God it
does. Every one that is born of him, is
begotten to an inheritance, even an inheritance that fadeth not
away [Note: 1Pe_1:1; 1Pe_1:3-4.]. If we
are sons, we are also heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
Christ [Note: Rom_8:17.]. There is this
peculiarity also attaching to the children of God: they are all
his first-born [Note: Exo_4:22. Heb_12:23.].
They are the brethren of Christ; and partakers with him in all
that he himself inheritshis throne, his
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kingdom, his glory [Note: Rev_2:21. Joh_17:22.].]
And now let us contemplate
II. The wonderful love of God, in bringing us into that relation
to himself
When it is said, We are called the sons of God, it means that we
are really made so. And this change is
altogether the effect of Gods unbounded love. Behold, then, what
manner of love this is:
1. How sovereign!
[It is wholly unmerited on our part. There never was, there
never could be, any thing in us to attract the
Divine regards, since every imagination of the thoughts of our
hearts was only evil continually. In the
selection of his objects, God was as free as in the choice of
Abraham from amidst an idolatrous world, or
of Isaac and Jacob in preference to their elder brethren. In
conferring this high honour, God has respect
only to his own will, and to the glory of his own name. This is
marked with peculiar strength and force by
the Apostle Paul, when, speaking on this very subject, he says,
God has predestinated us to the
adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to
the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of
the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the
beloved [Note: Eph_1:5-6.]. In truth, He
loved us because he would love us [Note: Deu_7:7-8.]: and
because he loved us with an everlasting
love, therefore with loving-kindness hath he drawn us [Note:
Jer_31:3.].]
2. How beyond all human expectation!
[If man adopt any one, it is because, having no progeny of his
own, he feels a want of some one to
succeed to his estates: and in conferring this favour, he has
respect to some qualities in the person
selected by him. But God has no need of us. We can never add
either to his happiness or glory. Or, if he
needed any creatures to be objects of his favour, he could
create any number, either of angels or men, as
it should please him, and make them the happy objects of his
choice. But it is not thus that he has acted.
He has chosen from amongst men, corrupt and sinful men,
multitudes, who shall in time, be born to him,
and in eternity enjoy him. Nor is it of the best of men that he
has made his selection, but often of the
vilest. Even a murderous Manasseh has been made a vessel of
honour, and a monument of grace; whilst
millions of persons, less guilty, have been passed by. If we ask
the reason of this, our Lord assigns the
only reason that can be given: Even so, Father, for so it seemed
good in thy sight. The potter has power
over the clay, to do with it as seemeth him good: and shall the
thing formed say to him that formed it,
Why hast thou made me thus [Note: Rom_9:20-21.]? True it is,
that, in reference to this matter, we must
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say, as David did in reference to the favours conferred on him,
Is this the manner of men, O Lord God
[Note: 2Sa_7:19.]? No; it is not the manner of men; nor ought it
to be: because man has a claim on his
fellow-man; but we have no claim whatever on God. He might have
left us to perish, precisely as he did
the fallen angels, and never have saved so much as one: and, if
he have saved one, that person has
reason to exclaim with wonder, Why have I been taken, whilst so
many others have been left? God, in all
this matter, does as it pleaseth him; and he giveth not account
to us of any of his matters: His ways are
not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts: but as the
heavens are high above the earth, so are
his ways higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our
thoughts [Note: Isa_55:8-9.].]
3. How utterly incomprehensible!
[So the Apostle declares the love of Christ to be: it has a
breadth, and length, and depth, and height, that
passeth knowledge [Note: Eph_3:18-19.], and defies the search of
the brightest intelligence of heaven.
To all eternity will the wonders of this grace be unfolding; and
to all eternity will it remain as far from being
fully comprehended, as it was at the very first moment it was
revealed. Indeed, we must comprehend the
infinite distance between the glorious Creator and his
rebellious creatures; and then go on yet further, to
comprehend all the wonders of redemption, before we can
comprehend the smallest portion of this
mystery. We must close our meditations, after all, with that
with which we have commenced them: What
manner of love is this which the Father hath bestowed upon
us!]
Behold then, brethren, behold it: Behold it, I say,
1. With due solicitude to ascertain the fact
[God has bestowed this favour upon millions: but hath he
bestowed it upon us? In this inquiry we are
deeply interested: nor should any one of us leave it as a matter
of doubt for one single hour. But you will
ask, Can this point be ascertained? By the world around us, I
readily acknowledge, it cannot be
ascertained: and, if we profess to have been brought into this
relation to God, we must not wonder that
the world ascribe our pretensions to the workings of pride and
presumption. For they know nothing of
God, or of his operations upon the souls of men: how, therefore,
should they be able to judge of our
claims in this matter? The Apostle, in the words following my
text, justly adds, Therefore the world
knoweth us not, because it knew him not. But we may ascertain
the point ourselves; for we have a
standard by which to try ourselves; and we may examine ourselves
by it without any difficulty. St. John
elsewhere says, To as many as received him, to them gave he
power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name; who were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God [Note: Joh_1:12-13.]. Here are the very
relations of which we are speaking, and the
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means by which we are brought into it, and the test whereby we
are to try ourselves. Inquire, then,
whether you have ever received the Lord Jesus Christ into your
hearts by faith, and whether you are
living altogether by faith on him? If you have never come to
Christ as lost sinners, and cast
yourselves wholly upon him, you know infallibly that you are not
yet brought into this relation of sons of
God. But if Christ be all your salvation and all your desire,
then you possess this high privilege; for we
are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus [Note:
Gal_3:26]: and, if you look up to God for the gift
of his Holy Spirit, he will shine upon his own work, and give
you his Spirit, to witness with your spirits,
that you are indeed the children of God [Note: Rom_8:16.]. Again
then I say, Leave not this matter in
suspense; but examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith,
and try your own selves: and never rest,
till you can adopt the words of our text with a special
reference to your own souls.]
2. With a becoming zeal to walk worthy of this high calling
[Certainly, this relation brings with it corresponding duties.
If you are made sons of God, it is that you may
serve and honour him as dear children. How this is to be done,
St. Paul informs us: Be blameless, and
harmless, as sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a
crooked and perverse nation, amongst whom
ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life
[Note: Php_2:15-16.]. Well, indeed, may the
world cry out against your vain conceit, if you are not walking
worthy of your high calling. God has called
you, that you should be holy: and if you have in you the hope of
which we have been speaking, then will
you purify yourselves, even as Christ is pure [Note: ver. 3.].
Look to it, then, that you walk as becometh
saints, in all holiness and righteousness before God and man. By
this test will you be tried at the last day;
and all your professions of faith in Christ will be found a
delusion, if you shew not your faith by your
works. But, if God have, indeed, bestowed this honour upon you,
then will his love have a constraining
influence upon your souls; and you will strive to be holy, as he
is holy, and perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect.]
7. CALVIN, 1Behold The second argument is from the dignity and
excellency of our calling; for it was
not common honor, he says, that the heavenly Father bestowed on
us, when he adopted us as his
children. This being so great a favor, the desire for purity
ought to be kindled in us, so as to be conformed
to his image; nor, indeed, can it be otherwise, but that he who
acknowledges himself to be one of God
children should purify himself. And to make this exhortation
more forcible, he amplifies the favor of God;
for when he says, that love has been bestowed, he means that it
is from mere bounty and benevolence
that God makes us his children; for whence comes to us such a
dignity, except from the love of God?
Love, then, is declared here to be gratuitous. There is, indeed,
an impropriety in the language; but the
Apostle preferred speaking thus rather than not to express what
was necessary to be known. He, in short,
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means that the more abundantly God goodness has been manifested
towards us, the greater are our
obligations to him, according to the teaching of Paul, when he
besought the Romans by the mercies of
God to present themselves as pure sacrifices to him. (Rom_12:1.)
We are at the same time taught, as I
have said, that the adoption of all the godly is gratuitous, and
does not depend on any regard to works.
What the sophists say, that God foresees those who are worthy to
be adopted, is plainly refuted by these
words, for, in this way the gift would not be gratuitous. It
behooves us especially to understand this
doctrine; for since the only cause of our salvation is adoption,
and since the Apostle testifies that this
flows from the mere love of God alone, there is nothing left to
our worthiness or to the merits of works. For
why are we sons? Even because God began to love us freely, when
we deserved hatred rather than love.
And as the Spirit is a pledge of our adoption, it hence follows,
that if there be any good in us, it ought not
to be set up in opposition to the grace of God, but, on the
contrary, to be ascribed to him.
When he says that we are called, or named, the expression is not
without its meaning; for it is God who
with his own mouth declares us to be sons, as he gave a name to
Abraham according to what he
was. (75)
Therefore the world It is a trial that grievously assaults our
faith, that we are not so much regarded as
God children, or that no mark of so great an excellency appears
in us, but that, on the contrary, almost
the whole world treats us with ridicule and contempt. Hence it
can hardly be inferred from our present
state that God is a Father to us, for the devil so contrives all
things as to obscure this benefit. He obviates
this offense by saying that we are not as yet acknowledged to be
such as we are, because the world
knows not God: a remarkable example of this very thing is found
in Isaac and Jacob; for though both
were chosen by God, yet Ishmael persecuted the former with
laughter and taunts; and Esau, the latter
with threats and the sword. However, then, we may be oppressed
by the world, still our salvation remains
safe and secure.
(75) Calvin, like our version, renders , but the word would be
better rendered we should be
called the children of God. The passage might be thus
paraphrased, what great proof of love the Father
hath given us, that we should be made the children of God Ed
8. KRETZMANN, The Glory, Privileges, and Obligations of
Sonship.
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The beauty of the sonship of God:
v. 1. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us that we should be called the
sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew
Him. not.
v. 2. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be; but we
know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we
shall see Him as He is.
v. 3. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth
himself, even as He is pure.
It was righteousness in life and conduct which the apostle had
been urging. He now introduces another
motive for such conduct: See how great a love the Father has
given to us that we should be called the
sons of God, and are. The Christians should behold and see, they
should use the eyes of both body and
mind, they should concentrate their attention upon that miracle,
upon that mystery, that we should be
honored with the name of children of God. To have been taken out
of the state of wrath and damnation
and to have been placed into such intimate fellowship with God
as to have been born anew through the
power of His Spirit in the Word, that is the experience which we
have had. Children of God, that is what
we are by faith in Christ Jesus, Gal_3:26, sons of God, led by
the Spirit of God, heirs of God and joint-
heirs with Christ, Rom_8:14-17. The image of God, lost by the
Fall, is being renewed in us. once more,
Christ Himself is being formed in us. Gal_4:19. What
unspeakable, immeasurable majesty is ours! With
this assurance in our hearts we can well bear what the apostle
tells us: For this reason the world does not
know us, because it does not know Him. The children of this
world will not know, will not acknowledge us,
will consider us beneath their notice, because we are the
children of God, with all that this relation
implies. The world did not know, did not acknowledge God as the
Lord, did not accept Him in faith, and
therefore it cannot possibly enter into friendly relations with
us. His children; the unbelievers refuse to
acknowledge the new, spiritual, divine character which the
Christians show.
For our comfort, however, the apostle repeats and amplifies his
statement: Beloved, now are we the
children of God, and not yet has it been manifested what we
shall be; we know that, when it shall be
manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.
By nature we were the children of wrath
and of Satan, but now, by our conversion, we have become and are
children of God. Of that fact we are
assured in so many passages of Scriptures that there can be no
doubt in our minds. This confidence is
not shaken either by the statement that it has not yet been
manifested what we shall be. Although we
have the certainty of our sonship even now and enjoy many of its
blessings, yet the full glory of our future
state has not yet been revealed to us. But when that revelation
will take place, on the day when Christ will
appear to us in the fullness of His glory, then we shall be like
God the Lord, as nearly like Him as it is
possible for creatures to become; then the image of God will be
restored in us in the perfection of its
beauty; then we shall be holy and righteous before Him. No
longer shall we then view Him through a
glass, darkly, but we shall see God face to face, as He is, in
all the inexpressible beauty of His holiness
-
and love. This seeing of God will, at the same time, be the
means by which the image of God in us will
ever again be renewed and kept in the fullness of its glory.
That is the certain hope of the believers, a
confidence which cannot fail.
It is self-evident, then, for a Christian: And every one that
has this hope resting upon Him will purify
himself, just as He is pure. Every one without exception that
clings to this hope of the final glorious
revelation, every one that rests his confidence in God, as the
Author and Finisher of his salvation, will find
it self-evident that he separates and cleanses himself from all
defilements and carnal allurements, from
everything that is an abomination in the sight of God. We have
the example of Christ before our eyes
always, as one who was perfectly pure and holy. It is impossible
for Christians that have such hope in
their hearts any longer to serve sin. This hope nourishes and
strengthens the new life which was created
in us in regeneration unto the genuine righteousness of
life.
9. GREAT TEXTS, The Love that Confers Sonship
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called children of God:
and such we are.1Jn_3:1.
1. St. John writes this Epistle on the highest peak of the
sunlit summits of Gods new revelation in Jesus Christ. The Epistle
is full of brightness. Every sentence tingles, and pulses, and
throbs with the joy of the daylight, and flashes back the glory in
streaming brightness to heaven. A new commandment write I unto you,
so the music flows on, because the darkness is passing away, and
the true light already shineth. How John basks and revels in the
sunlight! Light streams everywhere around him. God is light. The
light is shining. We walk in the light, even as he is in the light.
What has happened? The Dayspring has appeared from on high. The Sun
of Righteousness has risen upon the world with healing in His
beams. And then John sees the eternal light mirror itself on the
clouded sky of this world in an arch of holy beauty, and his music
grows soft and sweet as he sings, God is love. Behold what manner
of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children
of God.1 [Note: J. Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii.
323.]
The Missionary Ziegenbalg tells us that in translating this text
with the aid of a Hindu youth, the youth rendered it that we should
be allowed to kiss His feet. When asked why he thus diverged from
the text he said, Children of God! that is too muchtoo high! Such
shrinking was excusable in heathen converts, to whom these truths
came in a burst of light too dazzling for their weak eyes. It is
not excusable in us. In us it involves nothing less than a denial
of the faith which is the sole source of that
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.2 [Note: F. W.
Farrar, Truths to Live By, 188.]
2. The Apostle uses the word children, not sons as in the
Authorized Version. He would call attention, not as St. Paul, who
uses sons, to the adoptive act, but to the antecedent, eternal,
natural relation. God has freely given us His love, in order that
our title may be children of Godand, in the true reading, he adds,
and such we are. Children we now are, in recognized name, in real
fact; what we shall be hereafter we know not; but that shall be
manifested in due time; and when it is manifested, then, beloved,
we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. When we wake
up after His likeness, we shall be
-
satisfied with it. The image which we now bear shall become the
perfect semblance. We shall be like clouds, cradled near the sun,
dyed, bathed, transfused with its glowing beams; their lurid menace
softened, their darkness palpitating with reflected splendourtheir
very substance transformed from gloom to whiteness, from whiteness
to crimson, from crimson to gold, from gold to sunbeamschanged into
the same image, from glory to glory. Oh! how shall I, whose native
sphere Is dark, whose mind is dim, Before the Ineffable appear, And
on my naked spirit bear That uncreated beam? There is a way for man
to rise To that sublime abode: An offering and a sacrifice, A Holy
Spirits energies, An Advocate with God. These, these prepare us for
the sight Of Holiness above; The sons of ignorance and night May
dwell in the Eternal Light!
Through the Eternal Love.1 [Note: Thomas Binney.]
I
The Wonder of the Fathers Love
1. Gods love is original and spontaneous. Love is that
mysterious power by which we live in the lives of others, and are
thus moved to benevolent and even self-sacrificing action on their
behalf. Such love is, after all, one of the most universal things
in humanity. But always natural human love is a flame that must be
kindled and fed by some quality in its object. It finds its
stimulus in physical instinct, in gratitude, in admiration, in
mutual congeniality and liking. Always it is, in the first place, a
passive emotion, determined and drawn forth by an external
attraction. But the love of God is an ever-springing fountain. Its
fires are self-kindled. It is love that shines forth in its purest
splendour upon the unattractive, the unworthy, the repellent.
Herein is love, in its purest essence and highest potency, not in
our love to God, but in this, that God loved us. Hence follows the
apparently paradoxical consequence, upon which the Epistle lays
a
-
unique emphasis, that our love to God is not even the most
godlike manifestation of love in us. It is gratitude for His
benefits, adoration of His perfections, our response to Gods love
to us, but not its closest reproduction in kind. In this respect,
indeed, Gods love to man and mans love to God form the opposite
poles, as it were, of the universe of love, the one self-created
and owing nothing to its object, the other entirely dependent upon
and owing everything to the infinite perfection of its object; the
one the overarching sky, the other merely its reflection on the
still surface of the lake. And it is, as the Epistle insists, not
in our love to God, but in our Christian love to our fellow-men,
that the Divine love is reproduced, with a relative perfection, in
us. In my old parish there was a little loch in the midst of the
forest, and I was fond of visiting it. Its chief attraction for me
was the multitude of wild birds which peopled its banks and islets;
and once I observed a novelty. I had been accustomed to see there
all manner of familiar water-fowlcoot, ducks, swans; but that
evening I noticed others such as I had never seen beforebirds of
brilliant plumage, crimson, blue, and glossy green. And I
recognized them as strangers from another clime than ours, from
some far-off land where the air is warmer and the sun shines
brighter and paints everything in gaudier hues. I said: These are
no natives: they are foreign birds; and I learned by and by that
they had been imported from Africa. And this is precisely the
thought in the Apostles mind. That love, he says, the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord, is a love which never sprang from earths
cold soil. It is from some far-off region; it is from
Heaven itself. Behold what unearthly love the Father hath
bestowed upon us!1 [Note: D. Smith, Mans Need of God,
139.]
2. In the Apostles eulogy of love we find his memories of Jesus
crystallized. To St. John the love of God was something more than
wonderful. He was now a hoary-headed saint. He had laid his head in
his youth on Jesus bosom, and was beginning to realize the love of
God in Christ even then. Even then, as he looked up into those
human eyes, the reality of Gods love had flowed into his
consciousness. But there was more to be known than he knew at the
supper table. As he stood by the cross, it may be that in those
moments, when faith triumphed, the love of God became still more a
reality. As he gathered with that little chosen band round the
Person of the risen Lord, and saw that Face radiant with
resurrection glory, the love of God was already a stronger power
within his being. As the mighty Spirit at Pentecost came down and
shook the house, and filled their hearts, and as he himself, as one
of the first missionaries, went forth to tell the glad tidings of
great joy, the love of God had already begun to be a stronger power
within him still. Now, his head is hoary, the winter of age has
gathered round him, life is fast receding, the world is
disappearing, and eternity is drawing near. But it would seem that
in each fresh step of his human career he had attained a fresh
revelation of this Divine object, and now, in his last days, he
calls upon all the world to gaze upon it, as if it were the most
attractive of all spectacles. Behold, he says, as though he would
fain draw aside the curtain of unbelief, and reveal to man that
which man most requires to know,Behold what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us. The phrase which the Apostle employs
is remarkablelove the Father hath given to us. Not the love the
Father hath felt, or manifested toward us, but the love He hath
given to us. It reminds us of another remarkable passage in the
Gospel of this same Apostle. God so loved the world that he gaveHe
gavehis only begotten Son. As John began writing this sentence,
Behold what manner of love, it would seem that the love gathered
shape and form before his mind, embodied itself in the form of the
incarnate Son. It refused to remain an abstract conception, a mere
principle. It took shape, it became the incarnate love,Gods
unspeakable gift to man. And so John finished his sentence thus,
the Father hath given to us. And then there was another thought
that would suggest the word give. There was another way in which
the Divine love was embodied before the eye of John. John saw that
love embodied in the distinction, the honour, the glory conferred
on those that believe in Jesus Christ. He saw the Divine love in
the love-gift, the glorious bounty of God towards those who believe
in Jesus Christ. And so John declares that the believers title to
power and honour is Gods love-gift, the gift of His free love.
You
cannot go behind that love for an explanation. It is the gift of
Gods free elective love.1 [Note: J. Thomas, Myrtle
Street Pulpit, iii. 328.]
-
3. The love of God finds its type and shadow in the love of
parents for their children. There is no love that we understand so
well as a parents love. It is the first love we know, and every day
of our early years gave us fresh and sweet illustrations of it.
There is no love so pure, so disinterested, so unselfish. The
affections of friendship and wedded life are strong, tender,
passionate, and fervent, but in them there is always a more or less
selfish joy. We get as much as we give. The parents love for a
little child looks for no return. It is unlimited, uncalculating
grace. It is given freely before there can be the least thought or
ability to reciprocate it. It is given to helplessness, feebleness,
ignorance, incapacity. It is an immense delight in that which has
nothing to commend itself. It is an unbounded joy in that which by
ordinary reason should evoke only pity. It is a holy sentiment
which sets at nought literal fact and common sense. There is no
logic in it. It has no apparent cause. It is inexplicable. It is
one of the great mysteries of life. We should not believe it
possible if we had never seen it; yet it is everywhere, and it is
everywhere a symbol of the Divine, a proof of the Divine. The love
of the Almighty for us is wonderful. It is well-nigh incredible.
But there it is! Behold what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God. I have
a formidable book in my library which contains an elaborate
treatise on Divine love. It is wonderfully clever. It soars through
all the heights of metaphysics, and dives through all the deeps of
mysticism; but though you are pursuing Divine love all the way you
seem to lose it more and more in thick clouds of words, and at last
give it up in despair. It is a wonderful relief then to come upon
such words as these (you have not to wear the brain to tatters in
comprehending them): Behold what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God. Gods
greatness we cannot grasp, Gods wisdom is unsearchable, but Gods
love is something that any heart can hold and any mind picture. It
is higher than the heavens and deeper than all seas, yet it is so
homely and so human and so near that to realize it you have but to
take some dear child of your own upon your knees, and express
in
tender kisses what you are to that child and what the child is
to you.1 [Note: J. G. Greenhough, The Cross in Modern Life,
64.]
II
The Design of the Fathers Love
1. God bestows His love in order that He may call us children.
The Scriptures seem to run on two lines in their teaching about the
Divine Fatherhood. In the Epistles it is always the followers of
Christ who are called sons of Godsons and daughters of the
Almightythey only. But in the wider language of the Master the
Fatherhood of God is as universal as humanity; every man, woman,
and child received from those sacred lips his title-deed to a
Divine sonship; every human mouth was commissioned to say Our
Father. The larger thought and the narrower thought are equally
beautiful and equally true. We are all His children by right; there
is something of His image in all. There are possibilities of large
Divine growth in all, and there is a place for all in His almighty
heart of love. But only they who know it and rejoice in it are
children in actuality and possession. Only those to whom it is an
inspiration, an incentive to obedience, a source of immeasurable
hope, a furnace kindling love, are sons indeed. The rest are
children in possibility, but outcasts in fact. They have a great
inheritance, but they are ignorant of it or despise it. They walk
through life as orphans, though a Fathers love is ever stooping at
their feet. It is only as we believe it that the wealth and dignity
of it become ours. Behold what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God. 2. The
purpose of the Fathers love is not only to call us children but to
make us morally and spiritually true children, to bring us into
right relations with Himself. We might have been told that He is
our Father by creation, and that He hates nothing that He has made;
that He is the Father of our spirits especially, and would place a
merciful limit to His contendings with us, lest the spirit should
fail before Him. But we require something more than this. We desire
a Father to look to, and love, and trust; a Father to run to in
danger, and take counsel with in doubt, to listen to us when no
other friend will, and to help us when no other friend can. We
cannot bear to think that God should be indifferent to us, as if we
were the seed of
-
the stranger; but would fain feel that He loves us, as being His
own children by adoption and grace. And, in Christ Jesus, we may
feel this. We were made children by Him who taught us to call God
Father. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Our spiritual pedigree is traced easily. Faith makes us Christs;
being Christs, we are made sons; being sons, we become heirs of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ. The words of the Apostle mean
much more than that God is the Father of all men. Creation does not
amount to parentage. All force and meaning would disappear from our
text if we were to suppose that the power, the right, to become
children of God, which is mens as the result of believing in
Christs name, was simply a re-statement of the doctrine of
creation. We may use the fact that God has created us as the basis
of our hope that men may become His children, but that does not
identify creation with fatherhood. St. Paul said to the men of
Athens, In him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain
also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
But these statements are immeasurably below the truth. Paul held,
in common with John and Peter, that believers in Christ are the
children of the
heavenly Father.1 [Note: A. Mackennal, The Eternal Son of God,
36.]
There is a Fatherhood of God, what the theologians call His
creative Fatherhood, which includes all the race. There is still a
higher, His redemptive Fatherhood, which includes all who come back
home to the Father through Jesus. Man became a prodigal. He left
his Father. He still remains a son creatively, but has cut himself
off from the Father by sin. When he returns he becomes a son in a
new higher sense also, a redeemed son. The Holy Spirit puts the
child spirit into his heart, and he instinctively calls God
Father again.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals,
146.]
I know of no satisfactory account of the Divine Fatherhood. Dr.
Candlish wrote a book on the subject which I read thirty years ago
or more; it did not satisfy me at the time, but I think there were
some good things in it. I have often preached about it and have a
theory; but I do not remember that there is anything to indicate my
position in what I have published. The main points seem to me to be
these: (1) Our ideal relation to God is that of sons; this comes
from our creation in Christ. (2) Sonship involves community of
lifelife derived from life. But the life of God has essentially an
ethical quality; it is a holy life. (3) Ethical quality cannot be
simply given; it must be freely appropriated. We were created to be
sons; but to be sons really and in fact we must freely receive and
realize in character the holiness of God. (4) There is a potency of
sonship in every man, and ideally every man is a son; but it is
only as a man becomes like God that he actually becomes a son.
This, in the case of all who know Christ, is effected initially by
receiving Christ; when He is freely accepted as the Root and Lord
of life the principle of sonship is in us. This approaches the
Divine Fatherhood from the human side; but I think that it is in
this way that we can
best approach it.2 [Note: The Life of R. W. Dale, 654.]
Some time ago a woman died in an institution on Blackwells
Island, who was found, afterwards, to have been a descendant of an
English earl. Her birthright entitled her to a high position, but
she had led a dissipated life and died a paupers death. With a name
and a nature which unite us to God, shall we live
like homeless waifs and die like paupers?3 [Note: J. I. Vance,
Tendency, 213.]
3. In calling us children, God confers a new status, a high
privilege, upon us. His desire is not merely to bring us into a
true spiritual relation and condition, but to give us new rank,
dignity and honour. It is the rank given by God to the children of
the new kingdom, and this kingdom was inaugurated by the coming of
Jesus Christ. From that there follow two or three important facts.
The first is that the saints of the old dispensation did not obtain
this honour, this rank did not belong to them under the old era.
This is a new title, a new dignity. They were servants, not
children. Our Saviour marked the transition when He said to
-
His disciples: Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends.
A closer relationship had begun. A new honour had been achieved.
This is one of those things that the Old Testament saints did not
receive, so that they without us should not be made perfect. The
Scriptures also intimate that this rank, this status, is different
from, and in some sense higher than, the status of the angels
themselves. The relation of Jesus Christ to man is unique. He laid
hold not of angels, but of the seed of Abraham. When He became
manifested, He became manifested as the Son of man. And so man has
entered into a unique relationship to Jesus Christ, and through Him
to God, a relation closer, more intimate, higher, than the
relations sustained to God and His Son even by the angelic hosts
themselves. Now it necessarily follows from this that the
unbeliever has neither part nor lot in such a title, such a
distinction, such an honour as is here involved. Corregio stood
before a grand painting, enraptured; and as he gazed, grasping the
sublime conception, amazed at the wondrous execution and colouring
of the picture, he exclaimed, Thank God! I, too, am a painter. So,
when a Christian looks steadily at what it is to be children of our
Father, with sublime thrills of
joy he can say, Thank God! I, too, am a child of the Lord God
Almighty.1 [Note: G. C. Baldwin.]
4. Christs Sonship is the true type of ours. No doubt the
only-begotten Son occupies a unique place. He is by nature what we
become by grace. But on that account we can look up to Him, and see
in Him our true ideal. Not once does He call any one father but
God, while He hardly ever calls God by any other name. Nothing is
more impressive than the filial consciousness of Christ. It sounds
so natural on His lips. Even as a boy, the very first words of His
that have come vibrating down to us through the ages have this
filial ring in them: How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that
I must be in my Fathers house? Men noticed that He was eaten up
with zeal for His Fathers house. It was His meat and drink to do
His Fathers will. Every now and again we overhear an interchange of
confidences and mutual understandings with His Father. Now it is a
remark in a prayer, an aside: I know that thou hearest me always;
or an Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. Thus we
might go on quoting word after word till the very cross is reached
and He breathes His latest breath, Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit. What does it all say but this? The true filial spirit is
one in which there is perfect understanding with God, from which
all misgiving as to Gods will and purpose is banished. For Him
misgiving never existed. For us it was there begotten of our own
misjudgment of God through listening to the lies of the tempter.
But it has disappeared when we become sons with the assurance of
His forgiveness and good will guaranteed by the Cross of Christ.
Now the attitude of the soul to God should be that of unfaltering
trust, and constant anxiety to perceive and anticipate Gods will,
gladly to accept it, and delightedly to fulfil it. It should be the
reproduction of the example set in Jesus Christ, for, as Sabatier
truly says, Men are Christian exactly in proportion as the filial
piety of Jesus is reproduced in them. All that we see in the Divine
manhood of Jesussuch evident facts as the sense of the Fathers
affection, the constancy of fellowship with Him, the knowledge of
Him which comes in spontaneous movements of the heart, and shows
itself in simple loyalty and unerring reading of His willis the
revelation of what is meant when we too are called children of God.
We are very far from the realization of this; we are only little
children, very imperfectly acquainted as yet either with Him or
with the possibilities of our own sonship; children learning very
slowly, and with much waywardness and indifference, what are our
privileges and His claims. But we are children of God, as the cry,
Abba, Father! bears witness. We make the childs appeal to His
tenderness; we feel the childs shame when we wrong His confidence.
In our penitence we say, I will arise and go to my Father; our
submission is the utterance, Father, thy will be done. And our
final hope is no other than conformity to the image of Christ: It
doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he
shall appear, we shall be like him. Christ will be the
first-born
among many brethren.1[Note: A. Mackennal, The Eternal Son of
God, 36.]
For what good doth it to the Soul to know the Way to God, if it
will not walk therein, but go on in a contrary Path? What good will
it do the Soul to comfort itself with the Filiation of Christ, with
His Passion and Death, and so flatter itself with the Hopes of
getting the Patrimony thereby, if it will not enter into the Filial
Birth, that it may be a true child, born out of the Spirit of
Christ, out of His Suffering, Death, and Resurrection? Surely the
Tickling and Flattering itself with Christs Merits without the true
innate
Childship, is Falsehood and a Lie, whosoever he be that teacheth
it.1 [Note: Jacob Boehme.]
-
Knowing as I do what the revelation of God means to me, knowing
what Gods Fatherhood and the presence of Gods Spirit is to my own
life, my whole heart goes out with infinite pity towards those
whose lives are unblessed by what is to me the very pole-star of my
existence. I cannot bear to think of some stumbling blindfold
through the pitfalls of life while my hand is clasped by a
never-failing Guide; or of others who look forward to the end of
their earthly life with dread and trembling while I see only
the
outspread arms of the everlasting Father and the welcome of a
life-long Friend.2 [Note: Quintin Hogg, 310.]
III
The Recognition of the Fathers Love
1. Such we are. The Apostle was not afraid to say I know that I
am a child of God. There are
many very good people, whose tremulous, timorous lips have never
ventured to say I know.
They will say, Well, I hope, or sometimes, as if that were not
uncertain enough, they will put in
an adverb or two, and say I humbly hope that I am. It is a far
robuster kind of Christianity, a far
truer one, and a humbler one, too, that throws all
considerations of our own character and merits,
and all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind us, and when God
says My son! says My Father;
and when God calls us His children, leaps up and gladly answers,
And we are!
Luther started from the necessity of a comfortable assurance.
Unconscious justification was not
enough; a man must know whether he was being saved. And this
assurance grace brought him,
when it awakened his heart to faith; for anyone could tell
whether he had faith or not.3 [Note: Viscount
St. Cyres, Pascal, 247.]
O heart! be thou patient!
Though here I am stationed
A season in durance,
The chain of the world I will cheerfully wear;
For, spanning my soul like a rainbow, I bear
With the yoke of my lowly
Condition, a holy
-
Assurance.1 [Note: J. T. Trowbridge.]
2. How are we to awaken to our sense of sonship? As many as
received him, to them gave he
power (the right) to become children of God, even to them that
believe on his name. None of us
know Christ until He reveals Himself to us in our association
with Him; and as we commune with
Him, and learn of Him, He becomes more and more to us. Accept
Christ for what you feel He can
be to you. Admit Him to your friendship; He will admit you to
His.
That day, if I had dared, I should not have set foot inside the
chapel. I was out of humour, and
certainly not the least inclined to endure the tedium of a
sermon. To my great surprise M. Jaquet
did not preach one, but began to read us a little tract. It was
a sermon, but of a new kind: Wheat
or Chaff, by Ryle [afterwards the well-known Bishop of
Liverpool].
The title in itself struck me. Wheat or chaffwhat does that
mean? And at every fresh heading
this question re-echoed more and more solemnly. I wanted to stop
my ears, to go to sleep, to
think about something else. In vain! When the reading was over
and the question had sounded
out for the last time, Wheat or chaff, which art thou? it seemed
to me that a vast silence fell and
the whole world waited for my answer. It was an awful moment.
And this moment, a veritable hell,
seemed to last for ever. At last a hymn came to the rescue of my
misery. Good, I said to myself,
thats over at last. But the arrow of the Lord had entered into
my soul. Oh, how miserable I was!
I ate nothing, could not sleep, and had no more mind to my
studies. I was in despair. The more I
struggled the more the darkness thickened. I sought light and
comfort in the pages of Gods
Word. I found none. I saw and heard nothing but the thunders of
Sinai. Your sins: how can God
ever forgive them? Your repentance and tears! You do not feel
the burden of your sins: you are
not struck down like St. Paul or like the Philippian jailer.
Hypocrisy, hypocrisy! insinuated the
voice which pursued me. I had come to the end of all strength
and courage. I saw myself, I felt
myself lostyes, lost, without the slightest ray of hope. My
difficulty was, I wished I knew what it
could be to believe. At last I understood that it was to accept
salvation on Gods conditions; that is
to say, without any conditions whatever. I can truly say the
scales fell from my eyes. And what
scales! I could say, Once I was blind, and now I see.
Never shall I forget the day, nay, the moment, when this ray of
light flashed into the night of my
anguish. Believe, then, means to accept, and accept
unreservedly. As many as received him,
to them gave he powerthe rightto become the sons of God, even to
as many as believed on
his name. It is plain, it is plain, it is positive. O my God, I
cried, in the depth of my heart, I
-
believe. V A peace, a joy unknown before, flooded my heart. I
could have sung aloud with
joy.1 [Note: Coillard of the Zambesi, 19.]
10. BI, Children of God
These two verses of St. Johns Epistle contain a simple summary
of true religion. If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that
everyone that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him. Thus far the
Old Testament goes. Israel had learned this primary lesson of true
religion, that the Almighty is the Righteous Power. Knowing
Jehovah, not as a national deity who would help His own people
whether they were right or wrong, but as the righteous God over
all, who would reject His chosen people if they did wrong, the
prophets saw clearly also that only those men who do right can
claim to be the sons of the Most High. The next verse contains a
summary of the New Testament revelation of real religion: Behold
what manner of love, etc. It is all from Gods love in Christ that
we have right to be called children of God. These two wordsone
fulfilling the Old Testament, the other opening the riches of the
Newmark the essence of real religion: righteousness and sonship.
Let us first take up the Old Testament word for it. It is a solid
word. The true religion is not a moral veneering of life; it is not
a piece of pious ornamentation, nor an official robe drawn over an
unprincipled heart. It is not an emotional substitute for conduct.
The Old Testament word for religion is a word of cubic
contentsrighteousness, a real thing, concrete as just dealing
between man and man. A present indisputable argument for belief in
Moses and the prophets as holy men of old inspired of God is that
they made the superhuman effort of building a nation on the Ten
Commandments. They had the supernal faith to command a people to do
right, and to live together in just relations in the fear of God.
We do not yet dare bring our politics up to that level of the
prophets. The religion which first mastered the lesson of eternal
justice and made it the foundation of a state was not a faith which
had sprung up of itself out of the jungle of Canaanitish
superstitions. It was not found in Babylon. Assyrias power perished
for the lack of it. The true God impressed Himself upon Moses and
the prophets. We know that they were the appointed bearers of a
Divine revelation, and the bringers of the light, very much as we
might know that a highway running up to some clear mountain height
through the swamp and the underbrush at its foot was never a
spontaneous freak of nature, but marks the course of some
intelligent purpose. The Lord God made that way of righteousness
through all the superstitions and idolatries of the nations on and
up to its Messianic height. The religion of eternal righteousness
is the supernal fact of history. Once gain sight of the everlasting
righteousness, and nothing else seems great. Observe that the
righteousness which from beginning to end the Old Testament presses
for is no abstraction, but concrete, solid right-doing. The
preachers of righteousness in the Old Testament faced men, and
threw themselves in the name of the holy God into the thick of
events. They were the fearless advocates of the oppressed; they
were Gods statesmen amid the shifting politics of Jerusalem. They
could flash the eternal justice into the covetous eyes of princes.
Righteousness in the old testament is no scholars candle flickering
in an attic; it is an electric light revealing the street; all
classes have to pass under it and be seen. Turn now from the
prophets to the New Testament. We hear ringing clear and full
through the preaching of the apostles another word for the true
religion. It is sonship. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. The
essence of the New Testament is in the Lords parable of the
prodigal son. So Jesus Himself opened the heart of the gospel
toward us sinners. The grandest thing in the world for any man to
do is really to live day and night, alike in the darkness or in the
joy of life, as a son of the Most High God. Only one ever
accomplished perfectly this task; and we for the most part do but
succeed as yet in living here and there, now and then, as the
children of the Father in heaven. But think a moment what it is to
do this. It
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would signify within us a very genuine humility. In a life of
sonship humility would have to be at times that conscious sense of
evil or of wrongdoing which is repentance for sin. The humility of
a life of filial dependence on God will become so deep and pure
that no possible outward success or inward spiritual triumph will
be able to cause the son of the living God to dwell in any other
habit and atmosphere. Sonship, again, so far as this New Testament
word for religion is realised by any of us, will free us from the
haunting sense of strangeness in this world. It is not simply the
mystery of things; it is the mystery of ourselves that baffles us.
Death does not grow less strange from our increasing familiarity
with it. All things are strange, and will grow stranger to us,
unless we can discover some diviner thoughtfulness in them; unless,
amid all the mystery of the universe, we shall know ourselves as
Gods children, and begin on this earth to be in our hearts at home
with our God. This likewise will be the mark of true sonship, and
the religion of sonshipobedience, strong, cheerful obedience. The
Christian sense of sonship, so far as we receive the spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father, will enable us, in short, to
live the simple life of trust. It is life up on the sunny heights.
Trust is final spiritual mastery of things. It is perfect poise of
spirit, like the poise of the eagle after it has beaten its way up
against the wind into the sky, and rests circling with buoyant
wings upon the sunny air. Trust is ability of soul to live happily
without Divine explanation. Faith in God is willingness to wait for
explanations of things. You ask for reasons why certain event, have
happened to you; why any evil, such as we may meet in the street,
is tolerated for a moment in a world which has a God over it; why
human life has otter proved so tragic; why death reigns; why a
thousand shadows fleck the light; why in short, we mortals seem to
be like wanderers in a forest, where it is both dark and bright.
Now, faith is not an answer to any of these inquiries; faith does
not yet lead us out with the clearing, but faith is trust in the
light between the shadows trust that the light is high and eternal,
and the shadows only for the moment Trust is the discovery of the
soul that it can live awhile without explanations, and not be
disturbed. Such trust is the confidence of sonship. Now, I am aware
that men who have to meet the practical urgencies of life often
find it easier to come to some determination of righteousness than
it is for them to let their lives be lifted up into the assurance
of sonship. It is less difficult for some of you to be Old
Testament worthies than it is to become New Testament saints. You
love righteousness, and you hate injustice and fraud. There you are
inclined to stop. It is better for anyone to live according to the
righteousness of the Old Testament than not to live at all from the
Bible. The seeds of the perfect life of sonship are contained in
the religion of the prophets. Nevertheless, the Christ came to
fulfil the righteousness of the old dispensation. The righteousness
which is by faith is out full salvation. Let ones dutiful living
spring directly out of his sense of sonship, and it will become a
transfigured conscientiousness. The light of love will play all
through
2. To this higher life we are called. Men will finally do right
toward one another when they shall learn to live together as sons
of God. The present revival of right-doing will be complete when in
the power of the Holy Spirit men are born anew as the children of
the Father in heaven. (Newman Smyth.)
The Divine birththe family likeness
The first verses of the third chapter are to be viewed as
inseparable from the last verse of the second. It is that verse
which starts the new line of thought; our knowing that God is
righteous, and doing righteousness accordingly, in virtue of our
being born of Him. Born of Him! That is what awakens Johns grateful
surprise.
I. In every view that can be taken of it, our being called the
sons of God is a wonderful instance of the Fathers love.
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II. And we are His children: Beloved, now are we children of
God. Our being called children of God is a reality; our being born
of God makes it so. The world may not know us in that character,
for it knows not God, and has never known Him. Let us lay our
account with having to judge and act on principles which the world
cannot understand. Let us be Gods children indeed; though on that
very account the world that has not known God should not know
us.
III. For whatever the world may think or say, we are the
children of God, His dear children; sharers of His Divine nature;
the objects of His fatherly love. It concerns us to bear this in
mind, to feel it to be true. It is our safety to do so. It is what
is due to ourselves; it is what God expects, and has a right to
expect from us. Let us stay ourselves on the conviction that our
being Gods children is not a matter of opinion, dependent on the
worlds vote, but a matter of fact, flowing from the amazing manner
of love which the Father hath bestowed upon us. And let us be put,
as the saying is, upon our mettle, to make good our claim to be
Gods children by such a manifestation of our oneness of nature with
Him of whom we are born as may, by Gods blessing, overcome some of
the worlds ignorant unbelief, and lead some of the worlds children
to try that manner of love for themselves, to taste and see how
good the Lord is.
IV. And we are to do so all the rather because these drawbacks
and disadvantages will not last long. We are only at the beginning
of our life as Gods children.
1. What is set before us as matter of hope in the future life is
not something different from what is to be attained, enjoyed, and
improved by us, as matter of faith, and of the experience of faith
in the present life.
2. When it does appear what we are to be, when that is no more
hidden but disclosed, we shall be like God whose children we are as
being born of Him: for we shall see Him as He is. The full light of
all His perfection as the righteous God will open upon our view; we
shall know the righteous Father as the Son knows Him. Is not this a
hope full of glory? And is it not a hope full of holiness too? (R.
S. Candlish, D. D.)
Gods adoptive love
I. First, we are arrested by the manner in which the apostle
opens the subjectBehold, what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us. It is the language of adoration and wonder. Our
astonishment might well be excited that God had created us that He
preserved us, notwithstanding our unworthiness. But that He should
adopt sinners was condescension which might well prompt the
exclamation, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us. What, then, is the manner of this love? It passeth
knowledge. It was everlasting love, gratuitous love, and at the
same time costly love. And then how rich the blessings procured by
such love.
2. We are called the sons of God. It is clear this statement
must be understood in a restricted sense. All are the sons of God
by creation, also by providence. The text refers to a sonship
peculiar to those who are the objects of redeeming love. Adoption
into the family of God is singled out as evidence and effect of His
love. Nor can we wonder at this selection. Think of the work that
is done when the sinner is made a son of God. It is a new birth
unto righteousness. The sinner is made alive unto God. Think,
again, of the change that is effected in such a work. Think of the
privileges of sonship. Think, finally, of the inheritance in store
for them. If children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs
with Christ.
3. The estimate formed of the privilege of sonship by the world.
Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. It
might have been supposed that all men would applaud them as the
happiest and most excellent of the children of men. But, alas! it
is very different. The world does not know the sons of God. The
world both disapproves and dislikes
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the peculiarity of the sons of God. The reason is suggested in
the text. Therefore, saith the apostle. He had only said it was a
blessed thing to be called the sons of God. Can it be, then, this
is that which the world dislikes? This is clearly his meaning.
Worldly men do not understand the doctrine of sonship. It is too
spiritual for their perception. They scorn it as the offspring of
spiritual pride. Unhappily, however, for their hot displeasure,
there is an indisputable fact to prove this enmity of the world to
the sons of God. It is quoted by the apostle. It is the rejection
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says of the world and of Him, it knew
Him not. This accords with the history, He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus
shall suffer persecution. Ought this, then, to offend them?
Certainly not. It ought to profit them. It should put them on their
guard, that they may give no unnecessary offence. It should make
them thankful they are not of the same spirit.
4. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. How carefully the views
of the apostle are balanced in this passage. When he set forth
sonship and its high privileges he annexed a caution, the world
knoweth us not, lest any might be disappointed and injured. So
again after he had given that caution he reassures them of the
reality and continuance of their blessedness, Now are we the sons
of God. This might be rendered necessary by the dark suspicions of
their own minds. They found much within them contrary to what they
could desire or might expect. Let them not be cast down. Or it
might be rendered necessary by the conduct of others towards them.
They might find themselves suspected and evil entreated. Through it
all let them remember they are still the sons of God. Nor should
they forget what was required of them as such. Only let your
conversation be as becometh the gospel of Christ. Walk worthy of
your high vocation. So living they might enjoy the sweet
consciousness that, let the world do or say as they might, they
could appropriate the assuring words, Now are we the sons of
God.
5. Their thoughts are directed to the future. It doth not yet
appear what we shall be.
6. Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself even
as He is pure. (J. Morgan, D. D.)
Adopting love of the Father
I. Look at the result or purpose of this love, and we shall be
the better prepared to understand its manner. What manner of love
is this, in transforming those who were once so unlike Him? Love
prompted Him to adopt them; and after they are adopted He has
peculiar delight in them. What manner of love is this, that the
fallen should at length have a place in His bosom which the
unfallen can never occupy! Still more, a glorious destiny awaits
them. When the years of minority are expired the children are taken
home to the household on high, where the whole family form one
unbroken and vast assemblage. The extraordinary love of the Father
is also seen in the entire circuit of discipline which has been
arranged for His children. And will not such a child be content in
any circumstances? What is good for him his Father will give him.
As much of temporal blessing will he get as he can improve.
II. The singularity of the Divine affection.
1. And first, the love that leads a man to call a child his own,
which is not his by natural descent, has not such a manner about
it. For when among men a child is adopted, it is usually because
the adopter thinks it worthy of his regard; because there is
something in its features or character that pleases him. But no
such motive could prompt the Divine affection, for we are utterly
lost and loathsome before Him.
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2. Again, if one adopts a child, it is commonly because himself
is childless, or his hearth may have been desolated by war or
disease. He longs to have some object near him on which to expend
his attachment. But Jehovah had myriads of a flourishing
progenyuncounted hosts of bright intelligences, who have never
disobeyed Him. But the present condition of the sons of God is
veiled and incomplete. Therefore, the apostle adds, the world
knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. The mission of the Son of
God was spiritual, was too ethereal for the coarse vision of the
world to detect, or its sordid heart to admire. Its great ones, and
not its good ones, divide among themselves the worlds homage. Not
that the world is able to ignore Christianity. But it admires it
not for itself but for its splendid resultsfor the beneficial
effects, in the form of patriotism and philanthropy, which it has
produced. It is not Wilberforce the saint, but Wilberforce the
queller of the slave trade, that men admire. The dignity and
prospects of the sons of God are not of a secular and visible
nature. The world knoweth them not. But should this ignorance on
the part of the world dispirit you? By no means. Your case is not
solitary. It did not recognise the Son of God. Now are we the sons
of God. Despite of this non-recognition on the part of the world,
we are the sons of God. The reality of our adoption is not modified
by the worlds oblivion of it. It may be undiscovered by others, but
our own experience gives ourselves the full assurance of it. But
noble as is our present condition, our ultimate dignity surpasses
conception. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. Even though we
now revel in the Divine favour, yet such transcendent felicity is
scarcely a premiss to reason from as to the glory of our ultimate
heritage. There is so much about us that clogs and confines usso
deep is the shadow that earth throws over the children of God that
any inference as to coming freedom and glory is all but an
impossibility. Such being the present eclipse of our sonship, there
is the less wonder that the world knoweth us not. Their aim is to
be as like Him as they can be here, in the hope that they shall be
perfectly like Him hereafter. (John Eadie, D. D.)
The manner of love bestowed upon us
I. The manner of love which the Father hath bestowed upon
us.
1. Sovereign in its exercise.
2. Gracious in its communication.
3. Merciful in its regards.
4. Everlasting in its continuance.
II. The consequences which flow to us from that love.
1. Present adoption into Gods family.
2. Future restoration to His image.
III. The attention with which the whole should be regarded.
1. Your attention should deepen your humility.
2. Your attention should strengthen your confidence.
3. Your attention should excite your affection. (W. Mudge, B.
A.)
The present relationship and future prospects of the
faithful
I. The Christians present state is one of relationship to God.
It implies
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1. Godlikeness.
2. Confidence.
3. Liberty.
4. It entitles us to a glorious inheritance.
II. The circumstances of his future life are in a great measure
unknown to him.
III. We have, nevertheless, sufficient knowledge of that future
to make us happy in the present. (H. P. Bower.)
The wonderful love of God as displayed in human redemption
I. The unworthiness of its objects.
II. The expensiveness of the sacrifice.
III. The variety and vastness of the blessings secured to us
through this adopting love.
1. Present.
2. Future.
IV. This love is to be to us a subject of meditation.
Behold.
1. Admire it.
2. Trust in it.
3. Extol it.
4. Believe it. (W. Lloyd.)
What manner of love
Here, you notice, that although St. John had been learning more
and more about the love of God all his days, he does not trust
himself to characterise it. I believe throughout eternity we shall
never find the right word for it. Even if we think that we have
made some such grand discovery as to present it to us in an
altogether new light, we shall still go on discovering that there
is more to be said about it. Mark, the love spoken of here is the
love of the Father. This text takes us right back to the source
from which all other blessings flow. That word Father!there is
scarcely a heart in which there does not seem to be awakened
something like a sympathetic thrill at the soundeven those who are
most estranged from God by sin and wicked works. Does it not answer
to an inward yearning of our human hearts? Orphans are we, and
desolate, unless we know that within the veil we have One who not
only bears a Fathers name but possesses a Fathers heart. Now
observe, this love is represented as being definitely bestowed,
with a view to a specific end, and that end is in order that we
might be called the sons of God. We might hay, Deer called the sons
of God in the sense of creation, without any such love being
bestowed upon us, without any gift being made. There was no
particular difficulty in our being placed in such a position;
indeed, as an historical fact, we are His offspring. Nor, again,
was there any special difficulty in the way of His adopting a
certain ecclesiastical relationship to us, standing to us in the
relation of Father to an ecclesiastical theocracy, which He Himself
established; there was no difficulty in that. But in order that He
might stand in the relationship indicated to us in this sense, as
our Father, and put us in the position indicated by the word son in
this passage, it was necessary that He should make such a
manifestation of His love towards us as He has made
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in the Incarnation. Now we pass on to consider this special
relationship, and the first thought that strikes me is this, that
in order theft you and I might attain to it the love of God had
first of all to surmount a stupendous difficulty. There was a
question which God represents Himself as putting to Himself, and
that question is, How shall I set thee amongst the children? Oh,
you say, by an act of Gods sovereign power. But an act of Gods
sovereign power would not make us real children of His. The child
partakes of the nature of his parent. Now, we have lost the nature
of our spiritual Parent, we have inherited the nature of our
earthly parent: the old Adam. We come into the world with an
hereditary taint of rebellion against God. How many of us there are
who, from our earliest days, have gone on living consistently with
this start. Now, under those circumstances, how can God put us
amongst the children? If God were to say to one of you, You are My
child, would that make you His child unless He were first to
perform a moral miracle upon you? Now, God performs moral miracles,
but He does it in a particular way. He so performs the miracle that
in the actual performance of it our will shall be consciously
cooperating with Him. How shall I set thee among the children? The
answer is given in the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was
only one way in which the love of God could achieve this marvellous
result. It was to be done by a giftthe gift of Incarnate Love. What
do we know about the love of God? I see it revealed in the human
form of Jesus. What is that love of God like? I apprehend its
character by gazing into the face of Jesus. What is it that the
love of God actually does achieve? It achieves its very end, it
achieves the end of bringing me, poor, guilty rebel as I am, into a
filial relationship with God; enabling me to look up into Gods face
and say, Thank God, I now am a child of God. How is this done? It
is done by a new birth. How is this birth to be elected? Ye must be
born again. But how am I to pass from the old life into this new
life of God? I am born not of the flesh nor of the will of man, but
of the will of God. How am I born? By complying with that will, by
surrendering myself to the revealed love of God in the person of
Christ. If at some great cost some boon which you very much require
is brought within your reach, and if you spurn it, I venture to say
it is impossible to cut your benefactor more to the heart than by
such a line of conduct. Now, then, are you called a child of God?
Does God call you so? Is it so? If not, why not? Dont say that God
has made it so difficult. Do you think it probable that God should
refuse the very boon which He has given His Son in order to bestow?
(A. H. M. H. Aitken.)
The sons of God
1. The privilege itself is to be called the sons of God. Mark,
not subjects or servants, but sons; and to be called the sons of
God is to be the sons of God.
2. The fountain and first rise is the love of the Father, who is
everywhere represented as the first Cause of our blessedness. Gods
love is nothing else but His goodwill and resolution to impart such
great privileges to us; He did it because He would do it; He was
resolved to do it, and took pleasure in it.
3. The wonderful degree in the expression of His love, What
manner of love. The expression noteth not only the quality, but
quantity.
4. The note of attention, or the terms used exciting our
attention, Behold. There is a threefold behold in Scripture, and
they are applicable to this place; as
(1) The behold of demonstration, which is referred to a thing,,
or person present, and noteth the certainty of sense
(Joh_1:29).
(2) The behold of admiration, or awakening our drowsy minds,
when any extraordinary thing is spoken of (Lam_1:12). So here in
the case of good, is there any love like unto this love? And all is
that we may entertain it with wonder and reverence.
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(3) The behold of gratulation, as rejoicing and blessing
ourselves in the privilege (Psa_121:4).
I. There is such a relation as that of father and children
between God and His people.
1. It proceedeth from a distinct cause, His special and peculiar
love, not from that common goodness and bounty which He expresseth
to all His creatures (Psa_145:9). But this is the special act of
His grace or of His great love (Eph_2:4-5).
2. The foundation of this relation is not our being which we
have from Him as a Creator, but our new being which we have from
Him as a Father in Christ.
3. The whole commerce and communion that is between us and Him
is on Gods part fatherly, on our part childlike.
II. That this is a blessed and glorious privilege will appear if
we consider
1. The person adopting, the great and glorious God, who is so
far above us, so happy within Himself, and needeth not us nor our
choicest love and service; who had a Son of His own, Jesus Christ,
the eternally-begotten of the Father, the Son of His love, in whom
His soul found such full complacency and delight.
2. The persons who are adoptedmiserable sinners.
3. The fountain of this mercy and grace, or that which moved
God, was His love: this was that which set Hts power and mercy at
work to bring us into this estate.
(1) This was an eternal love; the first foundation of it was
laid in the election of God; there is the bottom stone in this
building.
(2) It was a free love: I will love them freely.
(3) It is special, peculiar love, not common to the world; yet
this love was bestowed upon us.
(4) It is a costly love, considering the way how it is brought
about.
4. The dignity itself nakedly considered; it is a greater honour
them the world can afford to us, a matter to be rather wondered at
than told.
5. It is not a naked and empty title, but giveth us a right to
the greatest privileges imaginable.
(1) With respect to the present state; and there
(a) He will give us the Holy Spirit to be our sanctifier, guide,
and comforter.
(b) He giveth us an allowance of such temporal things, of
outward mercies, as are convenient for us (Mat_6:25; Mat_6:30).
(2) With respect to the life to come. Eternal blessedness is the
fruit of adoption (Rom_8:17).
III. Believers ought to be excited to the earnest consideration
of it.
1. To quicken our thankfulness, which is the chief motive and
principle of gospel obedience.
2. That we may keep up the joy of our faith and comfort in
afflictions from the world. Though we be Gods children, yet the
greater part of the world treateth us as slaves. It doth support us
often and frequently to consider the world cannot