this experimentally ascertained fact, that He is to God what no other is, and therefore discharges in the carrying out of God's redeeming work functions on which no other can intrude, which is represented when He is designated the only-begotten Son (1. 4). It is perhaps an outcome of it that the apostle never calls Christians sons of God; the title Son is reserved for the Only-begotten, on whom all are dependent for their knowledge of the Father; the other members of the family are not vio (sons) to John, but réxva (children). It even leads to such an unparalleled expression as we find in the salutation of the second epistle: Grace, mercy, peace shall be with you from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

The fellowship with the Father and the Son in which eternal life consists is maintained by walking in the light. When Christians walk in the light, it is made evident in two results: first, their unity is maintained— they have fellowship one with other; second, their holiness is promoted-the blood of Jesus, God's son, cleanses them from all sin (1. 17). Sin is that which mars fellowship with God, and makes it impossible; and if eternal life can only be realised in divine fellowship, then the work of the Son of God, in putting such fellowship within our reach, must be in its very essence a work related to sin. This may be said without exaggeration to be the burden of the first epistle. 'My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world' (1. 21f.). 'I write to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake' (1. 212). These two ideas-the eternal life into which men are initiated by Christ; and the propitiation

for sins on which it is dependent-are combined in the wonderful passage in 1. 4f, where both are interpreted as manifestations of the love of God. 'In this was the love of God manifested in our case, that God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins.' When we put these various utterances together we see the universal and absolute significance of Jesus in the faith of the writer. Jesus determines everything in the relations of God and man, not only eventually or once for all, but continuously; His blood cleanses, in the present tense: if any man sin, we have an advocate for the emergency; Christians are those who are in the Son (1. 25), and who abide in Him (1. 2). The full apostolic testimony is that the Father has sent His Son as Saviour of the world (1. 41⁄4). It is only excessive familiarity which can deaden our minds to assertions so stupendous. There is nothing like them elsewhere in Scripture. No earlier messen ger of God, Moses, Elijah, or Isaiah, has anything analo gous said of him. The conception of a prophet does not help us in the very least to appreciate the conception of the only-begotten Son, who is the Saviour of the world because He is the propitiation for its sins. He cannot be understood except as one who confronts men in the truth, love, and power of God-not one of ourselves, to whom we owe no more, at least in kind, than we owe to each other; but one through whom, and through whom alone, God enlightens, redeems and quickens men. The idea of His exaltation is not so constantly expressed as in the epistles of Paul, but His Parousia or manifestation in glory is expected, and the consummation of all Christian hopes is connected with it. The believer is so to live that he may not be

ashamed before Him at His coming (1. 228), nay, that he may have boldness in the day of judgment (1. 417): we know that if He shall be manifested we shall be like Him; and having this hope set upon Him we must purify ourselves as He was pure (1. 32 f.).

18-22

And yet, side by side with this presentation of Jesus, which may be said to be at once transcendent and experimental, we find a persistent emphasis laid on the reality of His human life. The epistle is a testimony to one who had lived as man among men, and everything that imperils this historical basis of Christianity imperils the Christian life itself. This at least is how the matter is conceived by the author. He is the only New Testament writer who uses the term antichrist; and the antichrist is identified by him with the denial of Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh (1. 2 43, 11. verse 7). The reference in these passages is to the mode of thought which is usually associated with the name of Cerinthus. Cerinthus distinguished Jesus from the Christ.' The Christ was a divine being who descended from heaven and was associated with Jesus from His baptism onward; this is what is meant by coming 'through the water.' But according to Cerinthus, he came through the water only; he was not indissolubly associated with Jesus so as to pass also through His agony and death. He did not come in the water and in the blood. This is the mode of thought which, to the writer, is 'antichrist,' a denial of the essential facts on which Christianity depends for its being. For him the only Christ is Jesus; the only fatal lie is that which declares that Jesus is not the Christ (1. 222). He has what might almost be called a dogmatic test for 'spirits' speaking in the Church: every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ as come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus

'Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. i. 21.

1

is not of God (1. 4). The one victor over the world is he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God, the Jesus who came in the water and in the blood, and whose whole life from the baptism to the passion, unquestioned in its historical reality, is perpetuated in the Church, in its spiritual meaning and virtue, in the Christian sacraments-Baptism answering to 'the water' and the Supper to the 'blood.' What has been already said about the Son as standing in some sort of co-ordination with the Father-about His confronting men as the Saviour of the world, the propitiation for all sin, the sole bearer of eternal life-is not to be put into any kind of competition or contrast with this; in the mind of the writer, the Person of whom these extraordinary things are true is the historical person who was baptized by John in Jordan and who hung at Calvary on the Cross. It is the historical truth and reality of the life of Jesus on which the eternal life of believers is dependent; to assail or undermine the one is to threaten the other at its foundation.

The Cerinthian interpretation of Christianity was no doubt derived from the dualistic philosophy of the time; people shrank or affected to shrink from the idea that a spiritual or divine nature could be intimately or permanently related to matter, and especially from the idea that it could pass through the degrading and odious squalor of the crucifixion. Although the same motives do not operate now, what is practically the same result is often reached under another impulse. Men are attracted by the idea that the Christian religion should be lifted above the region in which historic doubts are possible; they wish to refine it, to spiritualise it, to make it an affair of ideas. to which any given historical fact is immaterial. It is as if they said, All these things are true-but they are true in independence of Jesus. There are such realities as

1See Expositor, May, 1908. Article by the writer.

eternal life, divine sonship, forgiveness of sins-yes, and even propitiation for sins-but they are realities which belong to the eternal world; they have their being in God, and Jesus is only accidentally related to them. Once grasp the principle of Christianity, and Jesus, like every other historical person, is indifferent to it. He has no place in the gospel, though He (and no other) may have been the occasion of these eternal truths breaking upon one or another mind. All that has to be said about this at present is that it is not the understanding of the writer of these epistles. It is a mode of thought which in all essentials was present to his mind, and which he deliberately and decisively rejected. It was not simply incongruous or uncongenial, it was fatal to Christianity as he understood it. For it is impossible to read otherwise than literally the words with which he introduces himself to his readers: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and our hands handled, concerning the word of life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and announce to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us-that which we have seen and heard we announce to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ' (I. I 1-3). It is this unity of the historical and the eternal, this eternal and divine significance of the historical, which is the very stamp and seal of the Christian religion.

(c) The Gospel according to John

In examining the synoptic gospels we had occasion to remark on the distinction which has to be drawn in them between the testimony of the evangelists to Jesus