Studies in the First Epistle of John - Part 26

"If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." (vs. 9-11).

We have come to what is virtually the end of John's First Epistle. The three-fold witness of chapter 5, verses 6-8, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, constitute the climax to all his arguments and all his exhortations. There is really nothing more to say after he has invoked those three witnesses. The remainder of this final chapter, from verse 9 onwards, is in the nature of an orderly descent from the mountain-top which he had reached in the earlier part of chapter 5. All the argument, all the exhortation, all the warnings, of the earlier chapters culminate in the Witnesses. The Word Who is life, the life that is light, the light that banishes darkness, of chapter 1, all are illuminated once and for all by the Witnesses. The darkness that is sin, the sin that is death, of chapter 2, are condemned once and for all by the Witnesses. The love for God and love for fellow that leads eventually into the love of God, of chapter 3, are inspired by the Witnesses. The whole of John's Epistle leads up to this theme, that of the three Witnesses to the one central and all-embracing fact of Jesus' Messiahship. When John has led us to that point he has achieved the aim and object of his Epistle. His work is done and he has but to round off the discourse with words that both sum up in brief what he has already said and lead us gently back into the commonplaces of daily life. Our period of sojourn with him on these lofty themes is ended and we are about to step outside the golden sanctuary. In so doing he reminds us that if we are prepared to receive the reliable testimony of men as to the Messiahship of Jesus—as many did in John's own day from those who had known the Lord in the flesh—we must acknowledge that the testimony of God is infinitely more reliable and convincing and we should be correspondingly the more ready to receive and accept it. The Revised Version has it "The witness of God is this, that he hath borne witness of his Son". The very fact that God has borne witness, as He did do at the Annunciation, at Jordan, at Calvary, and above all at Pentecost, should be sufficient for each one of us. "God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." (Heb.1. 1), The witness of God concerning Christ is given to us through Christ! Is that what Jesus meant when He said (John 8. 17‑18) "It is also writ ten in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me". That mystic oneness which subsists between the Father and the Son and which, define or explain it how we will, is ever too deep and profound for us to understand utterly, is manifested in this witness as in so many other aspects of our Lord's revelation of the Father to the sight of men.

It is quite a natural consequence of this understanding that leads John to tell us next that the one who truly believes in the Son of God has the witness within himself. If believing were merely an intellectual exercise of the mind that statement would not necessarily be true. It is because believing on Christ - or "into" Christ, as some would have it - is an affair of the heart as well as of the mind that immediate results follow the act of believing. Justification by faith is the immediate consequence; the entry of a new power into the life that at once commences a transforming work. "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things become new". (2 Cor.5. 17). It is the realisation that such a change has taken place that constitutes the inward witness. No one can truly come into Christ and realise the grace that has filled his life without knowing also that he has this witness within himself, that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. In like manner the Roman centurion, beholding with affrighted eyes the signs and portents that accompanied the tragedy of Calvary, looked up into the heavens and cried aloud his involuntary testimony "Truly this man was the Son of God". So must all who have experienced the power of the risen Christ coming into their hearts and lives make the same confession, a declaration to their own selves and to others that by the power of Jesus of Nazareth they now stand whole and entire in the grace of God.

And he that believeth not? John has a word to say about him also; but it is the same word that he has elaborated so much previously in the Epistle. He hath made God a liar! The evidence is so clear and plain, the power of the Spirit so manifest, that for one who has received it to throw it back is tantamount to giving the lie to God. It comes to this, says John, that God has given to us eternal life, and the evidence of that gift is manifest and overwhelming, and here is a man who sees this wonderful thing and refuses to admit that it is so. And because he will not believe, it is impossible that he share in the precious gift; and because he does not share in the gift he has no witness within his own self as to its truth. So again it all comes back to the old question of belief or unbelief. There was the evidence, brought back on the shoulders of twelve strong men; the fruits of the land, fruits such as Israel had never seen before, fruits that bore out in every detail and to the full what God had told them concerning the land toward which they journeyed. But still they disbelieved; could not bring themselves to think they could ever win the land for themselves, even although God had told them they had but to march forward and all opposition would melt away. And so they never did enter in, "because of unbelief". So it must ever be with all who approach the sacred things. They are there to be grasped, and once grasped the evidence of their reality is inherent; but without that primary belief which is faith they cannot even be grasped.

So verse 12 becomes both a summing up of what has gone before and an enunciation of a great law in the fabric of God's dealings with those who would come to Him, one might say, the great law, for it enshrines the most important truth of all. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life."

That text has been used in the past to separate the sheep from the goats and point the respective pathways to Heaven and Hell. It does not have anything to do with that subject at all. It has nothing to do with the final judgment on the world of men - except as an expression of a principle which will always be valid. John is here speaking only of the Church of this Age, the "footstep followers" of Jesus, who have set their hands to the plough, including those who, in the Lord's expression, "look back" and hence are "not fit for the Kingdom of God". (Luke 9. 62). It is of these, probationary members of the Millennial Age "Royal Priesthood", he says, only those who "have the Son" are possessors of the eternal life that ensures their entrance into the everlasting Kingdom. Some there are who, like those in the parable, will claim to have eaten and drunk in His presence and to have listened to His voice in their midst and yet to whom He declares "I never knew you; depart from me". How evident it is that this whole matter is one of the heart's utter and unreserved dedication to God, without condition and without stipulation, like Isaiah "Here am I - send me"; or the Psalmist "Lo I come, to do Thy Will, O God".

So the high song of exultation is partnered with a solemn note of warning. The lofty mountain peak reaching up so near to God, serves also to reveal the dark and deep chasm beneath. We can attain to the highest salvation in this wonderful power that is given to us—we can find ourselves thrust down to the sides of the pit. John's very next words reveal his confidence that those to whom he writes will not thus make ship-wreck of their faith; he does not fear that his brethren and friends themselves stand in so perilous a position, but he recounts these truths that they may be reminded of the things from which they have so clearly escaped, and may be inspired to hold fast to their faith that they fall not after other men's examples of unbelief.

AOH