This is the true God, and eternal life. 21. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.'--1 John 5:20-21.
So the Apostle ends his letter. These words are probably not only the close of this epistle, but the last words, chronologically, of Scripture. The old man gathers together his ebbing force to sum up his life's work in a sentence, which might be remembered though much else was forgotten. Last words stick. Perhaps, too, some thought of future generations, to whom his witness might come, passed across his mind. At all events, some thought that we are here listening to the last words of the last Apostle may well be in ours. You will observe that, in this final utterance, the Apostle drops the triumphant' we know,' which we have found in previous sermons reiterated with such emphasis. He does so, not because he doubted that all his brethren would gladly attest and confirm what he was about to say, but because it was fitting that his last words should be his very own; the utterance of personal experience, and weighty with it, and with apostolic authority. So he smelts all that he had learned from Christ, and had been teaching for fifty years, into that one sentence. The feeble voice rings out clear and strong; and then softens into tremulous tones of earnest exhortation, and almost of entreaty. The dying light leaps up in one bright flash: the lamp is broken, but the flash remains. And if we will let it shine into our lives, we shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.
This is the true God.' The first question is, What or whom does John mean by this'?
Grammatically, we may refer the word to the immediately preceding name, Jesus Christ. But it is extremely improbable that the Apostle should so suddenly shift his point of view, as he would do if, having just drawn a clear distinction between Him that is true,' and the Christ who reveals Him, he immediately proceeded to apply the former designation to Jesus Christ Himself. It is far more in accordance with his teaching, and with the whole scope of the passage, if by' this' we understand the Father of whom he has just been speaking. It is no tautology that he reiterates in this connection that He is true.' For he has separated now his own final attestation from the common consciousness of the Christian community with which he has previously been dealing. And when he says, This is the true God' he means to say,' This God of whom I have been affirming that Jesus Christ is His sole Revealer, and of whom I have been declaring that through Jesus Christ we may know Him and dwell abidingly in Him,' this'--and none else--is the true God.'
Then the second question that I have to answer briefly is, What does John mean by true'? I had occasion, in a previous sermon on the foregoing words, to point out that by that expression he means, whenever he uses it, some person or thing whose nature and character correspond to his or its name, and who is essentially and perfectly that which the name expresses. If we take that as the signification of the word, we just come to this, that the final assertion into which the old Apostle flings all his force, and which he wishes to stand out prominent as his last word to his brethren and Lo the world, is that the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and with whom a man through Jesus Christ may have fellowship of knowledge and friendship--that He and none but He answers to all that men mean when they speak of a God; that He, if I might use such an expression, fully fills the part.
Brethren, if we but think that, however it comes (no matter about that), every man has in him a capacity of conceiving of a perfect Being, of righteousness, power, purity, and love, and that all through the ages of the world's yearnings there has never been presented to it the realisation of that dim conception, but that all idolatry, all worship, has failed in bodying out a Person who would answer to the requirements of a man's spirit, then we come to the position in which these final words of the old fisherman go down to a deeper depth than all the world's wisdom, and carry a message of consolation and a true gospel to be found nowhere besides.
Whatsoever embodiments men may have tried to give to their dim conception of a God, these have been always limitations, and often corruptions, of it. And to limit or to separate is, in this case, to destroy. No pantheon can ever satisfy the soul of man who yearns for One Person in whom all that he can dream of beauty, truth, goodness shall be ensphered. A galaxy of stars, white as the whitest spot in the Milky Way, can never be a substitute for the sun. This is the true God'; and all others are corruptions, or limitations, or divisions, of the indissoluble unity.
Then, are men to go for ever and ever with the blank misgivings of a creature, moving about in worlds not realised ? Is it true that I can fancy some one far greater than is? Is it true that my imagination can paint a nobler form than reality acknowledges? It is so, alas! unless we take John's swan-song and last testimony as true, and say:--This God, manifest in Jesus Christ, on whose heart I can lay my head, and into whose undying and unstained light I can gaze, and in whose righteousness I can participate, this God is the real God; no dream, no projection from my own nature, magnified and cleansed, and thrown up first from the earth that it may come down from heaven, but the reality, of whom all human imaginations are but the faint transcripts, though they be the faithful prophets.
For, consider what it is that the world owes to Jesus Christ, in its knowledge of God. Remember that to us orphaned men He has come and said, as none ever said, and showed as none ever showed: Ye are not fatherless, there is a Father in the heavens.' Consider that to the world, sunk in sense and flesh, and blotting its most radiant imaginations of the Divine by some veil and hindrance, of corporeity and materialism, He comes, and has said, God is a Spirit.' Consider that, taught of Him, this Apostle, to whom was committed the great distinction of in monosyllables preaching central truths, and in words that a child can apprehend, setting forth the depths that eternity and angels cannot comprehend, has said, God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' And consider that he has set the apex on the shining pyramid, and spoken the last word when he has told us, God is Love.' And put these four revelations together, the Father; Spirit; unsullied Light; absolutely Love; and then let us bow down and say, Thou hast said the truth, O aged Seer. This is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This--and none beside--is the true God.'
I know not what the modern world is to do for a God if it drifts away from Jesus Christ and His revelations. I know that it is always a dangerous way of arguing to try to force people upon alternatives, one of which is so repellent as to compel them to cling to the other. But it does seem to me that the whole progress of modern thought, with the advancement of modern physical science, and other branches of knowledge which perhaps are not yet to be called science, are all steadily converging on forcing us to this choice --will you have God in Christ, or, will you wander about in a Godless world, and for your highest certitude have to say, Perhaps ? This is the true God,' and if we go away from Him I do not know where we are to go.
This is the true God, and eternal life.' Now, let us distinctly and emphatically put first that what is here declared is primarily something about God, and not about His gift to men; and that the two clauses, the true God,' and eternal life,' stand in precisely the same relation to the preceding words, This is.' That is to say, the revelation which John would lay upon our hearts, that from it there may spring up in them a wondrous hope, is that, in His own essential self, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and brought into living fellowship with us by Him, is eternal life.' By eternal life' he means something a great deal more august than endless existence. He means a life which not only is not ended by time, but which is above time, and not subject to its conditions at all. Eternity is not time spun out for ever. And so we are not lifted up into a region where there is little light, but where the very darkness is light, just as the curtain was the picture, in the old story of the painter.
That seems to part us utterly from God. He is eternal life'; then, we poor creatures down here, whose being is all cribbed, cabined, and confined' by succession, and duration, and the partitions of time, what can we have in common with Him? John answers for us. For, remember that in the earlier part of this epistle he writes that the life was manifested, and we shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,' and we declare it unto you; that ye also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son.' So, then, strange as it is, and beyond our thoughts as it is, there may pass into creatures that very eternal life which is in God, and was manifested in Jesus. We have to think of Him because we know Him to be love, as in essence self-communicating, and whatsoever a creature can receive, a loving Father, the true God, will surely give.
But we are not left to wander about in regions of mysticism and darkness. For we know this, that however strange and difficult the thought of eternal life as possessed by a creature may be, to give it was the very purpose for which Jesus Christ came on earth. I am that Bread of Life.' I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.' And we are not left to grope in doubt as to what that eternal life consists in; for He has said: This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' Nor are we left in any more doubt as to that bond by which the whole fulness of this Divine gift may flow into a man's spirit. For over and over again the Master Himself has declared, He that believeth hath everlasting life,'
Thus, then, there is a life which belongs to God on His throne, a life lifted above the limitations of time, a life communicated by Jesus Christ, as the waters of some land-locked lake may flow down through a sparkling river, a life which consists in fellowship with God, a life which may be, and is, ours, on the simple condition of trusting Him who gives it, and a life which, eternal as it is, and destined to a glory all undreamed of, in that future beyond the grave, is now the possession of every man that puts forth the faith which is its condition. He that believeth hath'--not shall have, in some distant future, but has to-day--everlasting life,' verily here and now. And so John lays this upon our hearts, as the ripe fruit of all his experience, and the meaning of all his message to the world, that God revealed in Christ is the true God,' and as Himself the possessor, is the source for us all, of life eternal.
Little children, keep yourselves from idols,' seeing that this is the true God,' the only One that answers to your requirements, and will satisfy your desires. Do not go rushing to these shrines of false deities that crowd every corner of Ephesus--ay! and every corner of Manchester. For what does John mean by an idol? Does he mean that barbarous figure of Diana that stood in the great temple, hideous and monstrous? No! he means anything, or any person, that comes into the heart and takes the place which ought to be filled by God, and by Him only. What I prize most, what I trust most utterly, what I should be most forlorn if I lost; what is the working aim of my life, and the hunger of my heart--that is my idol. We all know that.
Is the exhortation not needed, my brother? In Ephesus it was hard to have nothing to do with heathenism. In that ancient world their religion, though it was a superficial thing, was intertwined with daily life in a fashion that puts us to shame. Every meal had its libation, and almost every act was knit by some ceremony or other to a god. So that Christian men and women had almost to go out of the world, in order to be free from complicity in the all-pervading idol-worship. Now, although the form has changed, and the fascinations of old idolatry belong only to a certain stage in the world's culture and history, the temptation to idolatry remains just as subtle, just as all-pervasive, and the yielding to it just as absurd. You and I call ourselves Christians. We say we believe that there is nothing else, and nobody else, in the whole sweep of the universe that can satisfy our hearts, or be what our imagination can conceive, but God only. Having said that on the Sunday, what about Monday?
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and hewed to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water.' Little children '--for we are scarcely more mature than that--little children, keep yourselves from idols.'
And how is it to be done? Keep yourselves.' Then you can do it, and you have to make a dead lift of effort, or be sure of this--that the subtle seduction will slide into your heart, and before you know it, you will be out of God's sanctuary, and grovelling in Diana's temple. But it is not only our own effort that is needed, for just a sentence or two before, the Apostle had said: He that is born of God'--that is, Christ keepeth us.' So our keeping of ourselves is essentially our letting Him keep us. Stay inside the walls of the citadel, and you need not be afraid of the besiegers; go outside by letting your faith flag, and you will be captured or killed. Keep yourselves by clinging to Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless.' Make experience by fellowship with Him who is the only true God, and able to satisfy your whole nature, mind, heart, will, and these false deities, the whole rabble of them, will have no power to tempt you to bow the knee.
Brethren! here is the sum of the whole matter. There is one truth on which we can stay our hearts, one God in whom we can utterly trust, the God revealed in Jesus Christ. If we do not see Him in Christ, we shall not see Him at all, but wander about all our days in a world empty of solid reality. There is one gift which will satisfy all our needs, the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. There is one practical injunction which will save us from many a heartache, and which our weakness can never afford to neglect, and that is to keep ourselves from all false worship. These golden words of my text, in their simplicity, in their depth, in their certainty, in their comprehensiveness, are worthy to be the last words of Revelation; and to stand to all the world, through all ages, as the shining apex, or the solid foundation, or the central core of Christianity. This '--this, and none else--is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.'
THE END
