We know that we are of God.' Where did John get that form of expression, which crops up over and over again in his letter? He got it where he got most of his terminology, from the lips of the Master. For, if you remember, our Lord Himself speaks more than once of men being of God.' As, for instance, when He says, He that is of God heareth God's words. Ye therefore hear them not because ye are not of God.' And then He goes on to give the primary idea that is conveyed in the phrase when He says, in strong contrast to that expression, Ye are of your father, and the lusts of your father ye will do.' So, then, plainly, as I said, what was a point in the previous certitude, is here prolonged into a line, and expresses a permanent state.
The first conception in the phrase is that of life derived, communicated from God Himself. Fathers of the flesh communicate life, and it is thenceforth independent. But the life of the Spirit, which we draw from God, is only sustained by the continual repetition of the same gift by which it was originated. So the second idea that lies in the expression is that of a life dependent upon Him from whom it originally comes. The better life in the Christian soul is as certain to fade and die if the supply from Heaven is cut off or dammed back, as is the bed of a stream to become parched and glistering in the fierce sunshine, if the head-waters flow into it no more. You can no more have the life of the Spirit in the spirit of a man without continual communication from Him than a sunbeam can subsist if it be cut off from the central source. Therefore, the second of the ideas in this expression is, the continual dependence of that derived life upon God. Christian people are' of God,' in so far as they partake of that new life, in an altogether special sense, which has a feeble analogy in the dependence of all Creation upon the continual effluence of the Divine power. Preservation is a continual creation, and unless God operated in all physical phenomena and change there would neither be phenomena, nor change, nor substance, which could show them forth. But high above all that is the dependence of the renewed soul upon Him for the continual communication of His gifts and life.
If that life is thus derived and dependent, there follows the last idea in our pregnant phrase, viz., that it is correspondent with its source. Ye are of God,' kindred with Him and developing a life which, in its measure, being derived and dependent, is cognate with, and assimilated to, His own. This is the prerogative of every Christian soul.
Then there is another step to be taken. The man that has that life knows it. We know,' says the Apostle, that we are of God.' That word know' has been usurped, or at all events illegitimately monopolised by certain forms of knowledge. But surely the inward facts of my own consciousness are as much facts, and are certified to me as validly and reliably as are facts in other regions which are attested by the senses, or arrived at by reasoning. Christian people have the same right to lay hold of that great word, we know,' and to apply it to the facts of their spiritual experience, as any scientist in the world has to apply it to the facts of his science. I do not for a moment forget the differences between the two kinds of knowledge, but I do feel that in regard of certitude the advantage is at least shared, and some of us would say that we are surer of ourselves than we are of anything besides. How do you know that you are at all? The only answer is, I feel that I am.' And precisely the same evidence applies in regard to these lofty thoughts of a Divine kindred and a spiritual life. I know that I am of God. I have passed through experiences, and I am aware of consciousness which certify that to me.
But that is not all For, as I tried to show in my last sermon, the condition of being born of God' is laid plainly down in this very chapter by the Apostle, as being the simple act of faith in Jesus Christ. So, then, if any man is sure that he believes, he knows that he is born of God, and is of God.
But you say, Do you not know that men deceive themselves by a profession of being Christians, and that many of us estimate their professions at a very different rate of genuineness from what they estimate them at?' Yes, I know that. And this whole letter of John goes to guard us against the presumption of entertaining inflated thoughts about ourselves as being kindred with God, unless we verify the consciousness by certain plain facts. You remember how continually in this epistle there crops up by the side of the most thorough-going mysticism, as people call it, the plainest, home-spun practical morality, and how all these lofty, towering thoughts are brought down to this sharp test, Let no man deceive you; he that doeth not righteousness is not of God; neither he that loveth not his brother.' That is a test which, applied to many a fanatical dream, shrivels it up.
There is another test which the Master laid down in the words that I have quoted already for another purpose, when He said, He that is of God heareth God's words. Ye, therefore, hear them not because ye are not of God.' Christian people, take these two plain tests--first, righteousness of life, common practical morality, the doing and the loving to do, the things that all the world recognises to be right and true; and, second, an ear attuned and attent to catch God's voice--and control your consciousness of being God's son by these, and you will not go far wrong.
And now, before I go further, one word. It is a shame, and a laming and a weakening of any Christian life, that this triumphant confidence should not be clear in it. We know that we are of God.' Can you and I echo that with calm confidence? I sometimes half hope that I am.' I am almost afraid to say it.' I do not know whether I am or not.' I trust I may be.' That is the kind of creeping attitude in which hosts of Christian people are contented to live; and they stare at a man as if he was presumptuous, and soaring up into a region that they do not know anything about, when he humbly echoes the Apostle, and says,' We know that we are God's.' Why should our skies be as grey and sunless as those of a northern winter's day when all the while, away down on the sunny seas, to which we may voyage if we will, there are unbroken sunshine, ethereal blue, and a perpetual blaze of light? Christian men and women! it concerns the power of your lives, their progress in holiness, and their possession of peace, that you should be far more able than, alas! many of us are, to say, and that without presumption, We know that we are of God.'
