Christ Our Advocate
1
John 2:6 “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to
walk, even as he walked.”
He
that saith... Everyone who makes a Christian profession ought to walk as Christ did
(1Jhn.
2:6; 3:1-10; 4:17; 1Pet. 2:21). To be in Christ means that one is a
new creature and that affections and lusts of the flesh have been
crucified (2Cor. 5:17; Gal. 5:16-26; Rom. 8:12-13; Col. 3:5-10).
abideth
in him...
Ten
proofs of abiding in Christ:
1.
Walking as Christ walked (1Jhn. 2:6)
2.
Love of the brethren (1Jhn. 2:10; 3:14-15)
3.
God’s Word abiding within (1Jhn.
2:14)
4.
Doing the will of God (1Jhn. 2:17)
5.
Permission of individual (1Jhn. 2:24-25)
6.
Continued anointing (1Jhn. 2:27)
7.
Freedom from sin (1Jhn. 3:6)
8.
Keeping commandments (1Jhn. 3:24; John 15:10)
9.
Indwelling Spirit (1Jhn. 3:24)
10.
Fruit bearing (John 15:4, 15:7)
He
abideth in Him
(ἐν
αὐτῷ μένειν)
To
abide
in
God
is a more common expression with John than to
be
in
God,
and marks an advance in thought. The phrase is a favorite one with
John. See John 15:4 sqq.; John 6:56; 1Jhn. 2:24, 2:27, 2:28; 3:6,
3:24; 4:12 sq.; 4:15 sq. Bengel notes the gradation in the three
phrases to
know
Him,
to
be
in
Him,
to
abide
in
Him;
knowledge, fellowship, constancy.
Abides
or Abideth is one of John’s favorite terms for salvation. Even as
he walked: Jesus’ life of obedience is the Christian’s pattern.
Those who claim to be Christian's ought to live as He did (John 6:38),
since they possess His Spirit’s presence and power.
Ought
(ὀφείλει)
An
obligation, put as a debt.
See Luke 17:10, and on debts,
Mat. 6:12. The word expresses a special, personal obligation, and not
as δεῖ
must,
an obligation in the nature of things. See John 20:9 and compare
1Jhn. 3:16; 4:11; 3Jhn. 1:8.
This
is referring to Jesus’ earthly days. While no one can or need
duplicate Jesus’ atoning ministry, His disciples are called on to
imitate His devotion to God and compassion for others (see John 13:15
and 1Pet. 2:21).
Jesus
placed His footprints for us. If we are following Him as we should,
we will step in those footprints. Walk, in this instance, is speaking
of making it a habit to walk in the footprints of Jesus. This is not
an occasional encounter with God, but a way of life.
He
(ἐκεῖνος)
Always
of Christ in the Epistles of John. See ἐκείνης,
referring to ἁμαρτία
sin,
1Jhn. 5:16.
THE
INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK A PERSONAL INFLUENCE
This
verse is one of those in reading which we may easily fall into the
fallacy of mistaking familiarity for knowledge.
Let
us bring out its meaning with accuracy.
St.
John’s hatred of unreality, of lying in every form, leads him to
claim in Christians a perfect correspondence between the outward
profession and the inward life, as well as the visible manifestation
of it. He that saith always marks a danger to those who are outwardly
in Christian communion. It is the take notice of a hidden falsity. He
whose claim, possibly whose vaunt, is that he abideth in Christ, has
contracted a moral debt of far-reaching significance. St. John seems
to pause for a moment. He points to a picture in a page of the scroll
which is beside him-the picture of Christ in the Gospel drawn by
himself; not a vague magnificence, a mere harmony of colour, but a
likeness of absolute historical truth. Every pilgrim of time in the
continuous course of his daily walk, outward and inward, has by the
possession of that Gospel contracted an obligation to be walking by
the one great life walk of the Pilgrim of eternity. The very depth
and intensity of feeling half hushes the Apostle’s voice. Instead
of the beloved Name which all who love it will easily supply, St.
John uses the reverential He, the pronoun which specially belongs to
Christ in the vocabulary of the Epistle. He that saith he abideth in
Him is bound, even as He once walked, to be ever walking.
I
The importance of example in the moral and spiritual life gives
emphasis to this canon of St. John.
Such
an example as can be sufficient for creatures like us should
be at once manifested in concrete form and susceptible of ideal
application.
This
was felt by a great, but unhappily antichristian, thinker, the
exponent of a severe and lofty morality. Mr. Mill fully confesses
that there may be an elevating and an ennobling influence in a Divine
ideal; and thus justifies the apparently startling precept-be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.
But he considered that some more human model was necessary for the
moral striver. He recommends novel readers, when they are charmed or
strengthened by some conception of pure manhood or womanhood, to
carry that conception with them into their own lives. He would have
them ask themselves in difficult positions, how that strong and lofty
man, that tender and unselfish woman, would have behaved in similar
circumstances, and so bear about with them a standard of duty at once
compendious and affecting. But to this there is one fatal
objection-that such an elaborate process of make believe is
practically impossible. A fantastic morality, if it were possible at
all, must be a feeble morality. Surely an authentic example will be
greatly more valuable.
But
example, however precious, is made indefinitely more powerful when it
is living example, example crowned by personal influence.
So
far as the stain of a guilty past can be removed from those who have
contracted it, they are improvable and capable of restoration,
chiefly, perhaps almost exclusively, by personal influence in some
form. When a process of deterioration and decay has set in in any
human soul, the germ of a more wholesome growth is introduced in
nearly every case, by the transfusion and transplantation of
healthier life. We test the soundness or the putrefaction of a soul
by its capacity of receiving and assimilating this germ of
restoration. A parent is in doubt whether is susceptible of
renovation, whether the son has not become wholly evil. He tries to
bring the young man under the personal influence of a friend of noble
and sympathetic character. Has his son any capacity left for being
touched by such a character; of admiring its strength on one side,
its softness on another? When he is in contact with it, when he
perceives how pure, how self-sacrificing, how true and straight it
is, is there a glow in his face, a trembling of his voice, a moisture
in his eye, a wholesome self-humiliation? Or does he repel all this
with a sneer and a bitter gibe? Has he that evil attitude which is
possessed only by the most deeply corrupt-they blaspheme, rail at
glories. The Chaplain of a penitentiary records that among the most
degraded of its inmates was one miserable creature. The Matron met
her with firmness, but with a good will which no hardness could break
down, no insolence overcome. One evening after prayers the Chaplain
observed this poor outcast stealthily kissing the shadow of the
Matron thrown by her candle upon the wall. He saw that the diseased
nature was beginning to be capable of assimilating new life, that the
victory of wholesome personal influence had begun. He found reason
for concluding that his judgment was well founded.
The
law of restoration by living example through personal influence
pervades the whole of our human relations under God’s natural and
moral government as truly as the principle of mediation. This law
also pervades the system of restoration revealed to us by
Christianity. It is one of the chief results of the Incarnation
itself. It begins to act upon us first, when the Gospels become
something more to us than a mere history, when we realize in some
degree how He walked. But it is not complete until we know that all
this is not merely of the past, but of the present; that He is not dead but living; that we may therefore use that little word is about
Christ in the lofty sense of St. John-even as He is pure; in Him is
no sin; even as He is righteous; He is the propitiation for our sins.
If this is true, as it undoubtedly is, of all good human influence
personal and living, is it not true of the personal and living Christ
in an infinitely higher degree? If the shadow of Peter overshadowing
the sick had some strange efficacy; if handkerchiefs or aprons from
the body of Paul wrought upon the sick and possessed; what may be the
spiritual result of contact with Christ Himself? Of one of those men
specially gifted to raise struggling natures and of others like him,
a true poet lately taken from us has sung in one of his most glorious
strains. Matthew Arnold likens mankind to a host inexorably bound by
divine appointment to march over mountain and desert to the city of
God. But they become entangled in the wilderness through which they
march, split into mutinous factions, and are in danger of battering
on the rocks forever in vain, of dying one by one in the waste. Then
comes the poet’s appeal to the Servants of God: -
"Then
in the hour of need
Of
your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye
like angels appear!
Languor
is not in your heart,
Weakness
is not in your word,
Weariness
not on your brow.
Eyes
rekindling, and prayers
Follow
your steps as ye go.
Ye
fill up the gaps in our file,
Strengthen
the wavering line,
Stablish,
continue our march-
On,
to the bound of the waste-
On
to the City of God."
If
all this be true of the personal influence of good and strong
men-true in proportion to their goodness and strength-it must be true
of the influence of the Strongest and Best with Whom we are brought
into personal relation by prayer and sacraments, and by meditation
upon the sacred record which tells us what His one life walk was.
Strength is not wanting upon His part, for He is able to save to the
uttermost. Pity is not wanting; for to use touching words attributed
to St. Paul in a very ancient apocryphal document, He alone
sympathized with a world that has lost its way.
Let
it not be forgotten that in that of which St. John speaks lies the
true answer to an objection, formulated by the great antichristian
writer above quoted, and constantly repeated by others. The ideal of
Christian morality, says Mr. Mill, is negative rather than positive;
passive rather than active; innocence rather than nobleness;
abstinence from evil, rather than energetic pursuit of good; in its
precepts as has been well said, thou shalt not predominates unduly
over thou shalt. The answer is this.
(1)
A true religious system must have a distinct moral code. If not, it
would be justly condemned for expressing itself (in the words of Mr.
Mill’s own accusation against Christianity elsewhere) in language
most general and possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or
eloquence than the precision of legislation. But the necessary
formula of precise legislation is, thou shalt not; and without this
it cannot be precise.
(2)
But further. To say that Christian legislation is negative, a mere
string of thou shalt nots, is just such a superficial accusation as
might be expected from a man who should enter a church upon some rare
occasion, and happen to listen to the Ten Commandments, but fall
asleep before he could hear the Epistle and Gospel. The philosopher
of duty, Kant, has told us that the peculiarity of a moral principle,
of any proposition which states what duty is, is to convey the
meaning of an imperative through the form of an indicative. In his
own expressive, if pedantic, language-its categorical form involves
an epistatic meaning. St. John asserts that the Christian ought to
walk even as Christ walked. To everyone who receives it, that
proposition is therefore precisely equivalent to a command - walk as
Christ walked. Is it a negative, passive morality, a mere system of
thou shalt not, which contains such a precept as that? Does not the
Christian religion in virtue of this alone enforce a great thou
shalt; which every man who brings himself within its range will find
rising with him in the morning, following him like his shadow all day
long, and lying down with him when he goes to rest?
II
It should be clearly understood that in the words even as He walked,
the Gospel of St. John is both referred to and attested.
For
surely, to point with any degree of moral seriousness to an example,
is to presuppose some clear knowledge and definite record of it. No
example can be beautiful or instructive when its shape is lost in
darkness. It has indeed been said by a deeply religious writer, that
the likeness of the Christian to Christ is to His character, not to
the particular form in which it was historically manifested. And
this, of course, is in one sense a truism. But how else except by
this historical manifestation can we know the character of Christ in
any true sense of the word knowledge? For those who are familiar with
the fourth Gospel, the term walk was tenderly significant. For if it
was used with a reminiscence of the Old Testament and of the language
of our Lord, to denote the whole continuous activity of the life of
any man inward and outward, there was another signification which
became entwined with it. St. John had used the word historically in
his Gospel, not without allusion to the Saviour’s homelessness on
earth, to His itinerant life of beneficence and of teaching. Those
who first received this Epistle with deepest reverence as the
utterance of the Apostle whom they loved, when they came to the
precept-walk even as He walked-would ask themselves how did He walk?
What do we know of the great rule of life thus proposed to us? The
Gospel which accompanied this letter, and with which it was in some
way closely connected, was a sufficient and definite answer.
III
The character of Christ in his Gospel is thus, according to St. John,
the loftiest ideal of purity, peace, self-sacrifice, unbroken
communion with God, the inexhaustible fountain of regulated thoughts,
high aims, holy action, constant prayer. We may advert to one aspect
of this perfection as delineated in the fourth Gospel- our Lord’s
way of doing small things, or at least things which in human
estimation appear to be small.
The
fourth chapter of that Gospel contains a marvelous record of word and
work. Let us trace that record back to its beginning. There are seeds
of spiritual life scattered in many hearts which were destined to
yield a rich harvest in due time; there is the account of one
sensuous nature, quickened and spiritualized; there are promises
which have been for successive centuries as a river of God to weary
natures. All these results issue from three words spoken by a tired
traveler, sitting naturally over a well-give me to drink.
We
take another instance. There is one passage in St. John’s Gospel
which divides with the proscenium of his Epistle the glory of being
the loftiest, the most prolonged, the most sustained, in the
Apostle’s writings.
It
is the prelude of a work which might have seemed to be of little
moment. Yet all the height of a great ideal is over it, like the
vault of heaven; all the power of a Divine purpose is under it, like
the strength of the great deep; all the consciousness of His death,
of His ascension, of His coming dominion, of His Divine origin, of
His session at God’s right hand-all the hoarded love in His heart
for His own which were in the world-passes by some mysterious
transference into that little incident of tenderness and of
humiliation. He sets an everlasting mark upon it, not by a basin of
gold crusted with gems, nor by mixing precious scents with the water
which He poured out, nor by using linen of the finest tissue, but by
the absolute perfection of love and dutiful humility in the spirit
and in every detail of the whole action. It is one more of those
little chinks through which the whole sunshine of heaven streams in
upon those who have eyes to see. (John
13:1-6)
The
underlying secret of this feature of our Lord’s character is told
by Himself. My meat is to be ever doing the will of Him that sent Me,
and so, when the times come, by one great decisive act to finish His
work. All along the course of that life walk there were smaller
preludes to the great act which won our redemption- multitudinous
daily little perfect epitomes of love and sacrifice, without which
the crowning sacrifice would not have been what it was. The plan of
our life must, of course, be constructed on a scale as different as
the human from the Divine. Yet there is a true sense in which this
lesson of the great life may be applied to us. The apparently small
things of life must not be despised or neglected on account of their
smallness, by those who would follow the precept of St. John.
Patience and diligence in petty trades, in services called menial, in
waiting on the sick and old, in a hundred such works, all come within
the sweep of this net, with its lines that look as thin as cobwebs,
and which yet for Christian hearts are stronger than fibres of
steel-walk even as He walked. This, too, is our only security. A
French poet has told a beautiful tale. Near a river which runs
between French and German territory, a blacksmith was at work one
snowy night near Christmas time. He was tired out, standing by his
forge, and wistfully looking towards his little home, lighted up a
short quarter of a mile away, and wife and children waiting for their
festal supper, when he should return. It came to the last piece of
his work, a rivet which it was difficult to finish properly; for it
was of peculiar shape, intended by the contractor who employed him to
pin the metal work of a bridge which he was constructing over the
river. The smith was sorely tempted to fail in giving honest work, to
hurry over a job which seemed at once so troublesome and so trifling.
But some good angel whispered to the man that he should do his best.
He turned to the forge with a sigh, and never rested until the work
was as complete as his skill could make it. The poet carries us on
for a year or two. War breaks out. A squadron of the blacksmith’s
countrymen is driven over the bridge in headlong flight. Men, horses,
guns, try its solidity. For a moment or two the whole weight of the
mass really hangs upon the one rivet. There are times in life when
the whole weight of the soul also hangs upon a rivet; the rivet of
sobriety, of purity, of honesty, of command of temper. Possibly we
have devoted little or no honest work to it in the years when we
should have perfected the work; and so, in the day of trial, the
rivet snaps, and we are lost.
There
is one word of encouragement which should be finally spoken for the
sake of one class of God’s servants.
Some
are sick, weary, broken, paralyzed, it may be slowly dying. What-they
sometimes think-have we to do with this precept? Others who have
hope, elasticity, capacity of service, may walk as He walked; but we
can scarcely do so. Such persons should remember what walking in the
Christian sense is all life’s activity inward and outward. Let them
think of Christ upon His cross. He was fixed to it, nailed hand and
foot. Nailed; yet never-not when He trod upon the waves, not when He
moved upward through the air to His throne-never did He walk more
truly, because He walked in the way of perfect love. It is just
whilst looking at the move-less form upon the tree that we may hear
most touchingly the great thou shalt-thou shalt walk even as He
walked.
IV
As there is a literal, so there is a mystical walking as Christ
walked. This is an idea which deeply pervades St. Paul’s writings.
Is it His birth? We are born again. Is it His life? We walk with Him
in newness of life. Is it His death? We are crucified with Him. Is it
His burial? We are buried with Him. Is it His resurrection? We are
risen again with Him. Is it His ascension-His very session at God’s
right hand? He hath raised us up and made us sit together with Him in
heavenly places. They know nothing of St. Paul’s mind who know
nothing of this image of a soul seen in the very dust of death,
loved, pardoned, quickened, elevated, crowned, throned. It was this
conception at work from the beginning in the general consciousness of
Christians which moulded round itself the order of the Christian
year.
It
will illustrate this idea for us if we think of the difference
between the outside and the inside of a church.
Outside
on some high spire we see the light just lingering far up, while the
shadows are coldly gathering in the streets below; and we know that
it is winter. Again the evening falls warm and golden on the
churchyard, and we recognise the touch of summer. But inside it is
always God’s weather; it is Christ all the year long. Now the Babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes, or circumcised with the knife of the
law, manifested to the Gentiles, or manifesting Himself with a glory
that breaks through the veil; now the Man tempted in the wilderness;
now the victim dying on the cross; now the Victor risen, ascended,
sending the Holy Spirit; now for twenty-five Sundays worshipped as
the Everlasting Word with the Father and the Holy Ghost. In this
mystical following of Christ also, the one perpetual lesson is - he
that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk even as
He walked.
John
added, This
is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk
as Jesus did.
(The translators have supplied the word Jesus which is represented in
the original by a pronoun.) In these statements, John used two other
expressions (in Him and live in Him) which further his thought. As
with the connection he makes between obedience and the knowledge of
God, here too the Upper Room Discourse (John 13-16) is the seed-plot
from which these ideas come. The concept involved is derived
especially from the Parable of the Vine and the Branches (John
15:1-8).
The vine-branch relationship is an image of the discipleship
experience. Jesus said, “This is to My Father’s glory, that you
bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples” (John
15:8). In 1Jhn. 2:5-6 discipleship
is also in view, as is seen from the reference to the imitation of
Christ in 1Jhn.
2:6.
Moreover, the Greek term rendered in the NIV by live (menō)
is the same verb used in John
15:4
where the NIV translates it remain.
It
would be a mistake to equate the concept of being in Him as John uses
it here with the Pauline concept of being in Christ. For Paul, the
words in Christ describe a Christian’s permanent position in God’s
Son with all its attendant privileges. With John, the kind of
relationship pictured in the vine-branch imagery describes an
experience that can be ruptured (John
15:6)
with a resultant loss of fellowship and fruitfulness. Thus here in
1John, the proof that a person is enjoying this kind of experience is
to be found in a life modeled after that of Jesus in obedience to His
Word. In short, 1Jhn.
2:5-6
continues to talk about the believer’s fellowship with God.
