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Expositor's Bible Commentary 1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; Chapter 5 ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL 1 John 1:1 IN the opening verses of this Epistle we have a sentence whose ample and prolonged prelude has but one parallel in St. John’s writings. It is, as an old divine says, "prefaced and brought in with more magnificent ceremony than any passage in Scripture." The very emotion and enthusiasm with which it is written, and the sublimity of the exordium as a whole, tend to make the highest sense also the most natural sense. Of what or of whom does St. John speak in the phrase "concerning the Lord of Life," or "the Lord who is the Life"? The neuter "that which" is used for the masculines "He who"-according to St. John’s practice of employing the neuter comprehensively when a collective whole is to be expressed. The phrase "from the beginning," taken by itself, might no doubt be employed to signify the beginning of Christianity, or of the ministry of Christ. But even viewing it as entirely isolated from its context of language and circumstance, it has a greater claim to be looked upon as from eternity or from the beginning of the creation. Other considerations are decisive in favour of the last interpretation. (1) We have already adverted to the lofty and transcendental tone of the whole passage, elevating as it does each clause by the irresistible upward tendency of the whole sentence. "The climax and resting place cannot stop short of the bosom of God." (2) But again, we must also bear in mind that the Epistle is everywhere to be read with the Gospel before us, and the language of the Epistle to be connected with that of the Gospel. The procemium of the Epistle is the subjective version of the objective historical point of view which we find at the close of the preface to the Gospel. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us"; so St. John begins his sentence in the Gospel with a statement of a historical fact. But he proceeds, "and we delightedly beheld His glory"; that is a statement of the personal impression attested by his own consciousness and that of other witnesses. But let us note carefully that in the Epistle, which is in subjective relation to the Gospel, this process is exactly reversed. The Apostle begins with the personal impression; pauses to affirm the reality of the many proofs in the realm of fact of that which produced this impression through the senses upon the conceptions and emotions of those who were brought into contact with the Saviour; and then returns to the subjective impression from which he had originally started. (3) Much of the language in this passage is inconsistent with our understanding by the Word the first announcement of the Gospel preaching. One might of course speak of hearing the commencement of the Gospel message, but surely not of seeing and handling it. (4) It is a noteworthy fact that the Gospel and the Apocalypse begin with the mention of the personal Word. This may well lead us to expect that Logos should be used in the same sense in the procemium of the great Epistle by the same author. We conclude then that when St. John here speaks of the Word of Life, he refers to something higher again than the preaching of life, and that he has in view both the manifestation of the life which has taken place in our humanity, and Him who is personally at once the Word and the Life. The procemium may be thus paraphrased. "That which in all its collective influence was from the beginning as understood by Moses, by Solomon, and Micah; which we have first and above all heard in divinely human utterances, but which we have also seen with these very eyes; which we gazed upon with the full and entranced sight that delights in the object contemplated; and which these hands handled reverentially at His bidding. I speak all this concerning the Word who is also the Life." Tracts and sheets are often printed in our day with anthologies of texts which are supposed to contain the very essence of the Gospel. But the sweetest scents, it is said, are not distilled exclusively from flowers, for the flower is but an exhalation. The Seeds, the leaf, the stem, the very bark should be macerated, because they contain the odoriferous substance in minute sacs. So the purest Christian doctrine is distilled, not only from a few exquisite flower’s in a textual anthology, but from the whole substance, so to speak, of the message. Now it will be observed that at the beginning of the Epistle which accompanied the fourth Gospel, our attention is directed not to a sentiment, but to a fact and to a Person. In the collections of texts to which reference has been made, we should probably never find two brief passages which may not unjustly be considered to concentrate the essence of the scheme of salvation more nearly than any others. "The Word was made flesh." "Concerning the Word of Life (and that Life was once manifested, and we have seen and consequently are witnesses and announce to you from Him who sent us that Life, that eternal Life whose it is to have been in eternal relation with the Father, and manifested to us); That which we have seen and heard declare we from Him who sent us unto you, to the end that you too may have fellowship with us." It would be disrespectful to the theologian of the New Testament to pass by the great dogmatic term never, so far as we are told, applied by our Lord to Himself, but with which St. John begins each of his three principal writings-The Word. Such mountains of erudition have been heaped over this term that it has become difficult to discover the buried thought. The Apostle adopted a word which was already in use in various quarters simply because if, from the nature of the case necessarily inadequate, it was yet more suitable than any other. He also as profound ancient thinkers conceived, looked into the depths of the human mind, into the first principles of that which is the chief distinction of man from the lower creation- language. The human word, these thinkers taught, is twofold; inner and outer-now as the manifestation to the mind itself of unuttered thought, now as a part of language uttered to others. The word as signifying unuttered thought, the mould in which it exists in the mind, illustrates the eternal relation of the Father to the Son. The word as signifying uttered thought illustrates the relation as conveyed to man by the Incarnation. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father He interpreted Him." For the theologian of the Church Jesus is thus the Word; because He had His being from the Father in a way which presents some analogy to the human word, which is sometimes the inner vesture, sometimes the outward utterance of thought-sometimes the human thought in that language without which man cannot think, sometimes the speech whereby the speaker interprets it to others. Christ is the Word Whom out of the fulness of His thought and being the Father has eternally inspoken and outspoken into personal existence. One too well knows that such teaching as this runs the risk of appearing uselessly subtle and technical, but its practical value will appear upon reflection. Because it gives us possession of the point of view from which St. John himself surveys, and from which he would have the Church contemplate, the history of the life of our Lord. And indeed for that life the theology of the Word, i.e., of the Incarnation, is simply necessary. For we must agree with M. Renan so far at least as this, that a great life, even as the world counts greatness, is an organic whole with an underlying vitalising idea; which must be construed as such, and cannot be adequately rendered by a mere narration of facts. Without this unifying principle the facts will be not only incoherent but inconsistent. There must be a point of view from which we can embrace the life as one. The great test here, as in art, is the formation of a living, consistent, unmutilated whole. Thus a general point of view (if we are to use modern language easily capable of being misunderstood we must say a theory) is wanted of the Person, the work, the character of Christ. The synoptical Evangelists had furnished the Church with the narrative of His earthly origin. St. John in his Gospel and Epistle, under the guidance of the Spirit, endowed it with the theory of His Person. Other points of view have been adopted, from the heresies of the early ages to the speculations of our own. All but St. John’s have failed to coordinate the elements of the problem. The earlier attempts essayed to read the history upon the assumption that He was merely human or merely divine. They tried in their weary round to unhumanise or undeify the God-Man, to degrade the perfect Deity, to mutilate the perfect Humanity-to present to the adoration of mankind a something neither entirely human nor entirely divine, but an impossible mixture of the two. The truth on these momentous subjects was fused under the fires of controversy. The last centuries have produced theories less subtle and metaphysical, but bolder and more blasphemous. Some have looked upon Him as a pretender or an enthusiast. But the depth and sobriety of His teaching upon ground where we are able to test it-the texture of circumstantial word and work which will bear to be inspected under any microscope or cross examined by any prosecutor-have almost shamed such blasphemy into respectful silence. Others of later date admit with patronising admiration that the martyr of Calvary is a saint of transcendent excellence. But if He who called Himself Son of God was not much more than saint, He was something less. Indeed He would have been something of three characters; saint, visionary, pretender-at moments the Son of God in His elevated devotion, at other times condescending to something of the practice of the charlatan, His unparalleled presumption only excused by His unparalleled success. Now the point of view taken by St. John is the only one which is possible or consistent-the only one which reconciles the humiliation and the glory recorded in the Gospels, which harmonises the otherwise insoluble contradictions that beset His Person and His work. One after another, to the question, "What think ye of Christ?" answers are attempted, sometimes angry, sometimes sorrowful, always confused. The frank respectful bewilderment of the better Socinianism, the gay brilliance of French romance, the heavy insolence of German criticism, have woven their revolting or perplexed christologies. The Church still points with a confidence, which only deepens as the ages pass, to the enunciation of the theory of the Saviour’s Person by St. John-in his Gospel, "The Word was made flesh"-in his Epistle, "Concerning the Word of Life." Chapter 6 ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL HISTORICAL, NOT IDEOLOGICAL 1 John 1:1 OUR argument so far has been that St. John’s Gospel is dominated by a central idea and by a theory which harmonises the great and many-sided life which it contains, and which is repeated again at the beginning of the Epistle in a form analogous to that in which it had been cast in the procemium of the Gospel-allowing for the difference between a history and a document of a more subjective character moulded upon that history. There is one objection to the accuracy, almost to the veracity, of a life written from such a theory or point of view. It may disdain to be shackled by the bondage of facts. It may become an essay in which possibilities and speculations are mistaken for actual events, and history is superseded by metaphysics. It may degenerate into a romance prose-poem; if the subject is religious, into or mystic effusion. In the case of the fourth Gospel the cycles in which the narrative moves, the unveiling as of the progress of a drama, are thought by some to confirm the suspicion awakened by the point of view given in its procemium, and in the opening of the Epistle. The Gospel, it is said, is ideological. To us it appears that those who have entered most deeply into the spirit of St. John will most deeply feel the significance of the two words which we place at the head of this discourse-"which we have heard," "which we have seen with our very eyes" (which we contemplated with entranced gaze), "which our hands have handled." More truly than any other, St. John could say of this letter in the words of an American poet: "This is not a book-It is I!" In one so true, so simple, so profound, so oracular, there is a special reason for this prolonged appeal to the senses, for the place which is assigned to each. In the fact that hearing stands first, there is a reference to one characteristic of that Gospel to which the Epistle throughout refers. Beyond the synoptical Evangelists, St. John records the words of Jesus. The position which hearing holds in the sentence, above and prior to sight and handling, indicates the reverential estimation in which the Apostle held his Master’s teaching. The expression places us on solid historical ground, because it is a moral demonstration that one like St. John would not have dared to invent whole discourses and place them in the lips of Jesus. Thus in the "we have heard" there is a guarantee of the sincerity of the report of the discourses, which forms so large a proportion of the narrative that it practically guarantees the whole Gospel. On this accusation of ideology against St. John’s Gospel, let us make a further remark founded upon the Epistle. It is said that the Gospel systematically subordinates chronological order and historical sequence of facts to the necessity imposed by the theory of the Word which stands in the forefront of the Epistle and Gospel. But mystic ideology, indifference to historical veracity as compared with adherence to a conception or theory, is absolutely inconsistent with that strong, simple, severe appeal to the validity of the historical principle of belief upon sufficient evidence which pervades St. John’s writings. His Gospel is a tissue woven of many lines of evidence. "Witness" stands in almost every page of that Gospel, and indeed is found there nearly as often as in the whole of the rest of the New Testament. The word occurs ten times in five short verses of the Epistle. { 1 John 5:6-12 } There is no possibility of mistaking this prolixity of reiteration in a writer so simple and so sincere as our Apostle. The theologian is a historian. He has no intention of sacrificing history to dogma, and no necessity for doing so. His theory, and that alone, harmonises his facts. His facts have passed in the domain of human history, and have had that evidence of witness which proves that they did so. A few of the stories of the earliest ages of Christianity have ever been repeated, and rightly so, as affording the most beautiful illustrations of St. John’s character, the most simple and truthful idea of the impression left by his character and his work. His tender love for souls, his deathless desire to promote mutual love among his people, are enshrined in two anecdotes which the Church has never forgotten. It has scarcely been noticed that a tradition of not much later date (at least as old as Tertullian, born A.D. 90) credits St. John with a stern reverence for the accuracy of historical truth, and tells us what, in the estimation of those who were near him in time, the Apostle thought of the lawfulness of ideological religious romance. It was said that a presbyter of Asia Minor confessed that he was the author of certain apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla-probably the same strange but unquestionably very ancient document with the same title which is still preserved. The man’s motive does not seem to have been selfish. His work was apparently the composition of an ardent and romantic nature passionately attracted by a saint so wonderful as St. Paul. The tradition went on to assert that St. John without hesitation degraded this clerical romance writer from his ministry. But the offence of the Asiatic presbyter would have been light indeed compared with that of the mendacious Evangelist, who could have deliberately fabricated discourses and narrated miracles which he dared to attribute to the Incarnate Son of God. The guilt of publishing to the Church apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla would have paled before the crimson sin of forging a Gospel. These considerations upon St. John’s prolonged and circumstantial claim to personal acquaintance with the Word made flesh, confirmed by every avenue of communication between man and man-and first in order by the hearing of that sweet yet awful teaching-point to the fourth Gospel again and again. And the simple assertion-"that which we have heard"-accounts for one characteristic of the fourth Gospel which would otherwise be a perplexing enigma-its dramatic vividness and consistency. This dramatic truth of St. John’s narrative, manifested in various developments, deserves careful consideration. There are three notes in the fourth Gospel which indicate either a consummate dramatic instinct or a most faithful record. (1) The delineation of individual characters. The Evangelist tells us with no unmeaning distinction, that Jesus "knew all men, and knew what is in man" John 2:24-25 . For some persons take an apparently profound view of human nature in the abstract. They pass for being sages so long as they confine themselves to sounding generalisations, but they are convicted on the field of life and experience. They claim to know what is in man; but they know it vaguely, as one might be in possession of the outlines of a map, yet totally ignorant of most places within its limits. Others, who mostly affect to be keen men of the world, refrain from generalisations; but they have an insight, which at times is startling, into the characters of the individual men who cross their path. There is a sense in which they superficially seem to know all men, but their knowledge after all is capricious and limited. One class affects to know men, but does not even affect to know man; the other class knows something about man, but is lost in the infinite variety of the world of real men. Our Lord knew both-both the abstract ultimate principles of human nature and the subtle distinctions which mark off every human character from every other. Of this peculiar knowledge he who was brought into the most intimate communion with the Great Teacher was made in some degree a partaker in the course of His earthly ministry. With how few touches, yet how clearly, are delineated the Baptist, Nathanael, the Samaritan woman, the blind man, Philip, Thomas, Martha and Mary, Pilate! (2) More particularly the appropriateness and consistency of the language used by the various persons introduced in the narrative are, in the case of a writer like St. John, a multiplied proof of historical veracity. For instance, of St. Thomas only one single sentence, containing seven words, is preserved, outside the memorable narrative in the twentieth chapter; yet how unmistakably does that brief sentence indicate the same character-tender, impetuous, loving, yet ever inclined to take the darker view of things because from the very excess of its affection it cannot believe in that which it most desires, and demands accumulated and convincing proof of its own happiness. Further, the language of our Lord which St. John preserves is both morally and intellectually a marvellous witness to the proof of his assertion here in the outset of his Epistle. This may be exemplified by an illustration from modern literature. Victor Hugo, in his "Legende des Siecles," has in one passage only placed in our Lord’s lips a few words which are not found in the Evangelist. Everyone will at once feel that these words ring hollow, that there is in them something exaggerated and fictitious-and that, although the dramatist had the advantage of having a type of style already constructed for him. People talk as if the representation in detail of a perfect character were a comparatively easy performance. Yet every such representation shows some flaw when closely inspected. For instance, a character in which Shakespeare so evidently delighted as Buckingham, whose end is so noble and martyr-like, is thus described, when on his trial, by a sympathising witness: "‘How did he bear himself? ‘When he was brought again to the bar, to hear His knell rung out, his judgment-he was struck with such an agony, he sweat extremely. And something spoke in choler, ill and hasty; but he fell to himself again, and sweetly. In all the rest show’d a most noble patience.’" Our argument comes to this point. Here is one man of all but the highest rank in dramatic genius, who utterly fails to invent even one sentence which could possibly be taken for an utterance of our Lord. Here is another, the most transcendent in the same order whom the human race has ever known, who tacitly confesses the impossibility of representing a character which shall be "one entire and perfect chrysolite," without speck or flaw. Take yet another instance. Sir Walter Scott appeals for "the fair license due to the author of a fictitious composition"; and admits that he "cannot pretend to the observation of complete accuracy even in outward costume, much less in the more important points of language and manners." But St. John was evidently a man of no such pretensions as these kings of the human imagination-no Scott or Victor Hugo, much less a Shakespeare. How then-except on the assumption of his being a faithful reporter, of his recording words actually spoken, and witnessing to incidents which he had seen with his very eyes and contemplated with loving and admiring reverence-can we account for his having given us long successions of sentences, continuous discourses in which we trace a certain unity and adaptation; and a character which stands alone among all recorded in history or conceived in fiction, by presenting to us an excellence faultless in every detail? We assert that the one answer to this question is boldly given us by St. John in the forefront of his Epistle-"That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes-concerning the Word who is the Life-declare we unto you." St. John’s mode of writing history may profitably be contrasted with that of one who in his own fine was a great master, as it has been ably criticised by a distinguished statesman. Voltaire’s historical masterpiece is a portion of the life of Maria Theresa, which is unquestionably written from a partly ideological point of view; for those who have patience to go back to the "sources," and to compare Voltaire’s narrative with them, will see the process by which a literary master has produced his effect. The writer works as if he were composing a classical tragedy restricted to the unities of time and place. The three days of the coronation and of the successive votes are brought into one effect, of which we are made to feel that it is due to a magic inspiration of Maria Theresa. Yet, as the great historical critic to whom we refer proceeds to demonstrate, a different charm, very much more real because it comes from truth, may be found in literal historical accuracy without this academic rouge. Writers more conscientious than Voltaire would not have assumed that Maria Theresa was degraded by a husband who was inferior to her. They would not have substituted some pretty and pretentious phrases for the genuine emotion not quite veiled under the official Latin of the Queen. "However high a thing art may be, reality, truth, which is the work of God, is higher!" It is this conviction, this entire intense adhesion to truth, this childlike ingenuousness which has made St. John as a historian attain the higher region which is usually reached by genius alone-which has given us narratives and passages whose ideal beauty or awe is so transcendent or solemn, whose pictorial grandeur or pathos is so inexhaustible, whose philosophical depth is so unfathomable. He stands with spellbound delight before his work without the disappointment which ever attends upon men of genius; because that work is not drawn from himself, because he can say three words-which we have "heard," which we have "seen" with our eyes, which we have "gazed" upon. 1 John 1:4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. Chapter 2 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN 1 John 1:4 FROM the wholesale burning of books at Ephesus, as a consequence of awakened convictions, the most pregnant of all commentators upon the New Testament has drawn a powerful lesson. "True religion," says the writer, "puts bad books out of the way." Ephesus at great expense burnt curious and evil volumes, and the "word of God grew and prevailed." And he proceeds to show how just in the very matter where Ephesus had manifested such costly penitence, she was rewarded by being made a sort of depository of the most precious books which ever came from human pens. St. Paul addresses a letter to the Ephesians. Timothy was Bishop of Ephesus when the two great pastoral Epistles were sent to him. All St. John’s writings point to the same place. The Gospel and Epistles were written there, or with primary reference to the capital of Ionia. The Apocalypse was in all probability first read at Ephesus. Of this group of Ephesian books we select two of primary importance-the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John. Let us dwell upon the close and thorough connection of the two documents, upon the interpretation of the Epistle by the Gospel, by whatever name we may prefer to designate the connection. It is said indeed by a very high authority, that while the "whole Epistle is permeated with thoughts of the person and work of Christ," yet "direct references to facts of the Gospel are singularly rare." More particularly it is stated that "we find here none of the foundation and (so to speak) crucial events summarised in the earliest Christian confession as we still find them in the Apostle’s creed." And among these events are placed, "the Birth of the Virgin Mary, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Session, the Coming to Judgment." To us there seems to be some exaggeration in this way of putting the matter. A writing which accompanied a sacred history, and which was a spiritual comment upon that very history, was not likely to repeat the history upon which it commented, just in the same shape. Surely the Birth is the necessary condition of having come in the flesh. The incident of the piercing of the side, and the water and blood which flowed from it, is distinctly spoken of; and in that the Crucifixion is implied. Shrinking with shame from Jesus at His Coming, which is spoken of in another verse, has no meaning unless that Coming be to Judgment. The sixth chapter is, if we may so say, the section of "the Blood," in the fourth Gospel. That section standing in the Gospel, standing in the great Sacrament of the Church, standing in the perpetually cleansing and purifying efficacy of the Atonement-ever present as a witness, which becomes personal, because identified with a Living Personality-finds its echo and counterpart in the Epistle towards the beginning and near the close. We now turn to that which is the most conclusive evidence of connection between two documents-one historical, the other moral and spiritual-of which literary composition is capable. Let us suppose that a writer of profound thoughtfulness has finished, after long elaboration, the historical record of an eventful and many-sided life-a life of supreme importance to a nation, or to the general thought and progress of humanity. The book is sent to the representatives of some community or school. The ideas which its subject has uttered to the world, from their breadth and from the occasional obscurity of expression incident to all great spiritual utterances, need some elucidation. The plan is really exhaustive, and combines the facts of the life with a full insight into their relations; but it may easily be missed by any but thoughtful readers. The author will accompany this main work by something which in modern language we might call an introduction, or appendix, or advertisement, or explanatory pamphlet, or encyclical letter. Now the ancient form of literary composition rendered books packed with thought doubly difficult both to read and write; for they did not admit footnotes, or marginal analyses, or abstracts. St. John then practically says, first to his readers in Asia Minor, then to the Church forever -"With this life of Jesus I send you not only thoughts for your spiritual benefit, moulded round His teaching, but something more; I send you an abstract, a compendium of contents at the beginning of this letter; I also send you at its close a key to the plan on which my Gospel is conceived." And surely a careful reader of the Gospel at its first publication would have desired assistance exactly of this nature. He would have wished to have a synopsis of contents, short but comprehensive, and a synoptical view of the author’s plan-of the idea which guided him in his choice of incidents so momentous and of teaching so varied. We have in the First Epistle two synopses of the Gospel which correspond with a perfect precision to these claims. We have: (1) a synopsis of the contents of the Gospel; (2) a synoptical view of the conception from which it was written. I We find in the Epistle at the very outset a synopsis of the contents of the Gospel. "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we gazed upon, and our hands handled-I speak concerning the Word who is the Life-that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you also." What are the contents of the Gospel? (1) A lofty and dogmatic procemium, which tells us of "the Word who was in the beginning with God-in Whom was life." (2) Discourses and utterances, sometimes running on through pages, sometimes brief and broken. (3) Works, sometimes miraculous, sometimes wrought into the common contexture of human life-looks, influences, seen by the very eyes of St. John and others, gazed upon with ever deepening joy and wonder. (4) Incidents which proved that all this issued from One who was intensely human; that it was as real as life and humanity-historical, not visionary; the doing and the effluence of a Manhood which could be, and which was, grasped by human hands. Such is a synopsis of the Gospel precisely as it is given in the beginning of the First Epistle. (1) The Epistle mentions first, "that which was from the beginning." There is the compendium of the procemium of the Gospel. (2) One of the most important constituent parts of the Gospel is to be found in its ample preservation of dialogues, in which the Saviour is one interlocutor; of monologues spoken to the hushed hearts of the disciples, or to the listening Heart of the Father, yet not in tones so low that their love did not find it audible. This element of the narrative is summed up by the writer of the Epistle in two words-"That which we heard." (3) The works of benevolence or power, the doings and sufferings-the pathos or joy which springs up from them in the souls of the disciples occupy a large portion of the Gospel. All these come under the heading, "that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we gazed upon," with one unbroken gaze of wonder as so beautiful, and of awe as so divine. (4) The assertion of the reality of the Manhood of Him who was yet the Life manifested-a reality through all His words, works, sufferings-finds its strong, bold summary in this compendium of the contents of the Gospel, "and our hands have handled." Nay, a still shorter compendium, follows: (1) The Life with the Father. (2) The Life manifested. II But we have more than a synopsis which embraces the contents of the Gospel at the beginning of the Epistle. We have towards its close a second synopsis of the whole framework of the Gospel; not now the theory of the Person of Christ, which in such a life was necessarily placed at its beginning, but of the human conception which pervaded the Evangelist’s composition. The second synopsis, not of the contents of the Gospel, but of the aim and conception which it assumed in the form into which it was moulded by St. John, is given by the Epistle with a fulness which omits scarcely a paragraph of the Gospel. In the space of six verses of the fifth chapter the word witness, as verb or substantive, is repeated ten times. The simplicity

That which was from the beginning 1 John 1:1-4 The preface to the First Epistle of John George G. Findlay, B. A. This is a homiletical Epistle, the address of an absent pastor to his flock, or to disciples widely scattered and beyond the reach of his voice. It is a specimen of apostolic preaching to believers, a masterpiece in the art of edification. The address is based on the gospel history, which it presupposes throughout. Some have thought the Epistle written on purpose to accompany St. John's Gospel, in order to serve as its practical application and enforcement. The two lie so near to each other in their cast of thought and dialect, and are connected by so many turns of expression, that it is evident they are the outcome of the same mind, and, we may safely say, of the same stage and state of mind. The preface to the Epistle is, in effect, a summary of the Gospel according to John, as we see at once when we compare it with the opening and closing words of that narrative ( John 1:1-18 ; John 20:30, 31 ). The revelation of God through His Son Jesus Christ, a revelation entirely human and apprehended already by his readers, is that which the writer desires to communicate and set forth in its living effect. This revelation is the spring of a new eternal life for all men, a life of fellowship with God Himself, in which St. John would fain make his fellows sharers with him. It is this preface that we have now to consider, consisting of 1 John 1:1-4 . Its subject is the eternal life manifested. We adopt the revised translation of these four verses, preferring, however, in ver. 1, the marginal " word of life," without the capital. For it is on life rather than word that the stress of the sentence lies ("for the life was manifested," John continues); and Word must have stood alone to be recognised as a personal title, or could at most be qualified as it is in the Apocalypse ( Revelation 19:13 ): "His name is called the Word of God." John's "word of life" resembles the "word of life" that Paul bids the Philippians "hold forth" ( Philippians 2:16 ), "the words of life eternal" which Peter declared his Master to possess ( John 6:68 ), and "all the words of this life" which the apostles were bidden to "speak in the temple to the people" ( Acts 5:20 ). It is synonymous with "the gospel," the message of the new life which those bear witness to and report who have first "heard" it and proved its living power. "Concerning the word of life" stands in opposition to the four preceding relative clauses ("that which we have heard...our hands handled") and states their general subject matter and import; while the first clause, "That which was from the beginning," stands alone in its sublime completeness. "Declare," in vers. 2, 3 more precisely understood, signifies "report" ( ???? ??????? ). It is the carrying of tidings or messages from the authentic source: "What we have seen and heard we report also to you" ( cf. ver. 5) — we are the bearers to you of the word we received from Him. So in ver. 2: "We bear witness and report"; where, as Haupt acutely says, in the former expression the emphasis lies on the communication of truth , in the latter on the communication of truth. Readers of the Greek will note the expressive transition from the perfect to the aorist tense and back again, that takes place in vers. 1-3. When John writes, "That which we have heard" and "have seen with our eyes," he asserts the abiding reality of the audible and visible manifestation of God in Christ. This is now the fixed possession of himself and of his readers, the past realised in the present; and to this immovable certainty he reverts once and again in vers. 2, 3. The sudden change of tense in the middle of ver. 1, missed by our authorised translation, carries us back to the historical fact. Looking with John's eyes upon this mysterious Person, feeling and grasping with his hands its flesh and blood reality, and pondering its meaning, we say with him: "The life was manifested, the eternal life that was with the Father, was manifested to us." While ?????????? (we beheld) implies an intent contemplative gaze, ?????????? , occurring, in the New Testament, only in Acts 17:27 , and Hebrews 12:18 beside these two passages, denotes not the bare handling, but the searching, exploring use of the hands, that tests by handling. So much for the verbal elucidation of the passage. Let us look at its substantial content. I. ST. JOHN HAD WITNESSED, AS HE BELIEVED, THE SUPREME MANIFESTATION OF GOD. The secret of the universe stood unveiled before his eyes, the everlasting fact and truth of things, the reality underlying all appearances, "that which was from the beginning." Here he touched the spring of being, the principle that animates creation from star to farthest star, from the archangel to the worm in the sod: "The life was manifested, the life eternal which existed with the Father, was manifested to us." If "the life" of this passage is identical with that of the Gospel prologue, it has all this breadth of meaning; it receives a limitless extension when it is defined as "that which was from the beginning." The source of spiritual life to men is that which was, in the first instance, the source of natural life to all creatures. Here lies the foundation of St. John's theology. It assumes the solidarity of being, the unity of the seen and unseen. It contradicts and excludes, from the outset, all Gnostical, dualistic, and docetic conceptions of the world. This essential and aboriginal life, he tells us, became incarnate, that it may have fellowship with men; it was slain, that its blood may cleanse them from iniquity — for the cross is not far off, we shall find it in the next paragraph. It is the fourth verse, rather than the first of the Gospel, which supplies the text for the Epistle: "That which hath come to be, in Him was life; and the life was the light of men" (R.V. margin). II. In the second place, observe the energy with which the apostle asserts THE ACTUALITY of the manifestation of the life of God in Jesus Christ. Thrice in three verses he reiterates, "we have seen" it, twice "we have heard"; and twice he repeats, "the life was manifested." This stupendous fact has, naturally, always had its doubters and deniers. In any age of the world, and under any system of thought, such a revelation as that made in Jesus Christ was sure to be met with incredulity. It is equally opposed to the superstitions and to the scepticisms natural to the human mind. In truth, the mind that is not surprised and sometimes staggered by the claims of Christ and the doctrines of Christianity, that has not felt the shock they give to our ordinary experience and native convictions, has hardly awakened yet to their full import. St. John feels that the things he declares demand the strongest evidence. He has not believed them lightly, and he does not expect others to believe them lightly. This passage, like many besides in the New Testament record, goes to show that the apostles were well aware of the importance of historical truth; they were conscientious and jealously observant in regard to this cardinal requirement. Their faith was calm, rational, and sagacious. They were perfectly certain of the things they attested, and believed only upon commanding and irresistible proof, that covered the whole extent of the case. But the facts they built their faith upon are so largely of the spiritual order, that without a corresponding spiritual sense and faculty they can never be absolutely convincing. Already, in St. John's old age, the solvents of philosophical analysis were being applied to the gospel history and doctrine. The Godhead incarnate, the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, was pronounced impossible and self-contradictory; we know beforehand, the wise of the world said, that it cannot be. The incarnation, the miracles, the resurrection, the ascension — what are they but a myth, a beautiful poetic dream, a pictorial representation of spiritual truth, from which we must extract for ourselves a higher creed, leaving behind all the supernatural as so much mere wrappage and imaginative dress! So the Apostle John confronts them, and their like in every time, with his impressive and authoritative declaration. Behind him lies the whole weight of the character, intelligence, and disciplined experience of the witnesses of Jesus. Of what use was it for men at a distance to argue that this thing and that thing could not be? "I tell you," says the great apostle, "we have seen it with our eyes, we have heard Him with our very ears; we have touched and tested and handled these things at every point, and we know that they are so." As he puts it, at the end of his letter, "We know that the Son of God is come; and He hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true." The men who have founded Christianity and written the New Testament were no fools. They knew what they were talking about. No dreamer, no fanatic, no deceiver, since the world began, ever wrote like the author of this Epistle. III. And now, in the third place, there is founded upon the facts thus attested, there is derived from the eternal life revealed in Christ, A NEW DIVINE FELLOWSHIP FOR MEN. To promote this end St. John writes: "That you also may have fellowship with us." To communicate these truths, to see this fellowship established and perfected amongst men, is the apostle's one delight, the business and delight of all those who share his faith and serve his Master: "These things we write, that our joy may be fulfilled." We have a great secret in common, we and the apostles. The Father told it to Jesus, Jesus to them, they to us, and we to others. Those who have seen and heard such things, cannot keep the knowledge to themselves. These truths belong not to us only, but to "the whole world" ( 1 John 2:2 ); they concern every man who has a soul to save, who has sins to confess and death to meet, who has work to do for his Maker in this world, and a way to find for himself through its darkness and perils. The Apostle John is writing to Greeks, to men far removed from him in native sympathy and instinct; but he has long since forgotten all that, and the difference between Jew and Greek never once crosses his mind in writing his letter. He has risen above it, and left it behind through his fellowship with Christ. The only difference he knows is that existing between men who "are of God" and men who "are of the world." In St. John the idea of the Church catholic as a spiritual brotherhood is perfected. But our fellowship is not only with prophets, apostles, martyrs, saints of God. We do not hold with the apostle merely such fellowship as we have with other great minds of the past; nor was John's communion with his Lord that which we cherish with our beloved dead, the communion of memory, or at best of hope. If the facts the apostles test are true, they are true for us as for them. If the life manifested in the Lord Jesus was eternal, then it is living and real today. As it "was from the beginning," it will be to the end. Jesus Christ had brought His disciples into spiritual union and fellowship with the living God. He had shown them the Father. He had made them individually children of God, with Himself for elder brother. He had passed away from their sight, to be with them forever in His Spirit. In this way He had really come to them, and the Father with Him, when He seemed to be going ( John 14:18-23 , R.V.). They felt themselves to be in direct communion and communication, every day they lived, with the Almighty Father in heaven, and with His Son Jesus Christ whom they had known and loved on earth. To this fellowship they invite and summon all mankind. The manifestation of God in Christ makes fellowship with God possible in an altogether new and richer way. Does not the very distinction revealed in the Godhead render such communion accessible, as it could not be otherwise to human thought? "Our communion," writes John, "is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ" — with each distinctly, with each in and through and for the other. We have fellowship with Christ in the Father. He has explained the Father ( John 1:18 ), and talked to us about Him; and we are entering into His views. We share Christ's thoughts about God. On the other hand, we have fellowship with God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is God's; but He is ours as well! God has told us what He thinks about His Son, and wishes us to think with Him. Showing Him to the world, He says: "This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I am ever well pleased." And we agree to that: we are well pleased with Him too! We solemnly accept the testimony of God concerning His Son. Then we are at one with God in respect to Christ. And all harmony and peace centre there. "The Father Himself loveth you," said Jesus to His disciples, "because you have loved Me, and believed that I came out from the Father." In Him God is reconciling the world to Himself. Only when we think aright of Christ, and are rightly disposed toward Him, can we have fellowship with each other, and work together with God for the world's redemption. ( George G. Findlay, B. A. )

1:1-4 That essential Good, that uncreated Excellence, which had been from the beginning, from eternity, as equal with the Father, and which at length appeared in human nature for the salvation of sinners, was the great subject concerning which the apostle wrote to his brethren. The apostles had seen Him while they witnessed his wisdom and holiness, his miracles, and love and mercy, during some years, till they saw him crucified for sinners, and afterwards risen from the dead. They touched him, so as to have full proof of his resurrection. This Divine Person, the Word of life, the Word of God, appeared in human nature, that he might be the Author and Giver of eternal life to mankind, through the redemption of his blood, and the influence of his new-creating Spirit. The apostles declared what they had seen and heard, that believers might share their comforts and everlasting advantages. They had free access to God the Father. They had a happy experience of the truth in their souls, and showed its excellence in their lives. This communion of believers with the Father and the Son, is begun and kept up by the influences of the Holy Spirit. The benefits Christ bestows, are not like the scanty possessions of the world, causing jealousies in others; but the joy and happiness of communion with God is all-sufficient, so that any number may partake of it; and all who are warranted to say, that truly their fellowship is with the Father, will desire to lead others to partake of the same blessedness. 1:5-10 A message from the Lord Jesus, the Word of life, the eternal Word, we should all gladly receive. The great God should be represented to this dark world, as pure and perfect light. As this is the nature of God, his doctrines and precepts must be such. And as his perfect happiness cannot be separated from his perfect holiness, so our happiness will be in proportion to our being made holy. To walk in darkness, is to live and act against religion. God holds no heavenly fellowship or intercourse with unholy souls. There is no truth in their profession; their practice shows its folly and falsehood. The eternal Life, the eternal Son, put on flesh and blood, and died to wash us from our sins in his own blood, and procures for us the sacred influences by which sin is to be subdued more and more, till it is quite done away. While the necessity of a holy walk is insisted upon, as the effect and evidence of the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus, the opposite error of self-righteous pride is guarded against with equal care. All who walk near to God, in holiness and righteousness, are sensible that their best days and duties are mixed with sin. God has given testimony to the sinfulness of the world, by providing a sufficient, effectual Sacrifice for sin, needed in all ages; and the sinfulness of believers themselves is shown, by requiring them continually to confess their sins, and to apply by faith to the blood of that Sacrifice. Let us plead guilty before God, be humble, and willing to know the worst of our case. Let us honestly confess all our sins in their full extent, relying wholly on his mercy and truth through the righteousness of Christ, for a free and full forgiveness, and our deliverance from the power and practice of sin.