Sermon Bible Commentary
1 John 3:2
Consider the short word "now." What is time present? What is the meaning of "now"?
I. This is a matter not so plain, nor lying so much on the surface, as we might at first sight imagine. Time is altogether a mysterious thing. There is every reason to believe that time is nothing more than a state ordained by God for the purposes of, and as a condition of, His finite creation. Succession, the waxing onward, i.e.,of hours and days and years, is that without which we cannot conceive existence at all. But that is not the condition of God's own being. His being is independent of the condition which limits ours. With Him is no waxing onward, no succession of hours and days and years. He is the high and holy One who inhabiteth eternity. He is the Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.
II. There is no such thing as "now," properly and strictly speaking. Time is a rapid stream in which no point is ever stationary. But and this is the important consideration it is a tendency inherent in us ever to be arresting in our thoughts certain portions of time and treating them as if they were, for certain purposes, stationary, and unaffected for the moment by the rapidity of transit of the whole. With reference to the subject of which the Apostle is writing, this this state revealed for and during this present space of time is all we know and all we can speak of. A ray of light is shed down on one portion of our course; in that portion all is distinct and clear all, that is, which it is necessary for us to know and to have revealed. Does not this clothe with immense interest and importance this present? We stand, as it were, on a promontory, and before and around us are the infinite waters. By our life here, by our gathering strength and our forming ourselves here, will the character of that vast unknown voyage be determined. Remember that as it is by very common acts and daily recurring duties that the main work of life must be carried on, so it is by these common thoughts made solemn that the soul's great work must be done.
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 1.
Possibilities of the Future.
We are grateful when we find in the word of God the recognition of the fact that that which is of the nature of perfection is quite incomprehensible to us; that we do not understand God Himself; that we do not understand the heavenly state; that we do not understand what our own perfected natures ought to be, nor what they are who have risen and are among "the spirits of just men made perfect." The annunciation of our ignorance reassures and comforts us.
I. All knowledge is measured by the attaining power of the human faculties. We do not know but there may be revelations coming to us all the time which break on us as the waves break on unknown shores. This is a fact which explains much of what men stumble over in regard to Divine revelation; for it has been supposed that the revelation of God would be one that would take all things of the Spirit, and shape them into crystalline accuracy, and put them beyond all cavil before men, whereas it is a revelation which is relative to the unfolding process of human life and of nature. As the eye increases in power it is able to bear more and more light; and as the power of apprehension in men has increased they have been able to take in more and more truth. And the word of God has been given to the world little by little. Small were the elements that were revealed at first. These elements have grown as men grew. And revelation has not preceded comprehension, but has rather followed it, because men cannot understand faster than they have the capacity to understand. The grand fact, then, on which all reasoning in respect to final states must proceed, is this: that man is not a creature complete and ended, but is a being who is in a state of change and process, as is distinctly recognised in the word of God; and that all teaching must conform to that universal and fundamental principle of evolution which is going on in the understanding and moral parts of human nature.
II. See how clear now, in the light of this thought, comes out the passage of our text, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." It carries with it a magisterial idea. Now that we are the sons of God, the higher things rule the lower; and higher than anything else, Paul being our witness, are faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love. The relation is to be that of sonship. We are to come, not into the relationship of magisterial power, nor of justice, nor of vengeance, but of love; and the centre of the universe is love; and the farther we go toward that perfection, the nearer we shall be to God. We have the hint of love here; but we are to see its full disclosure in the world to come: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." We are on this side in the beginning of it; and when we reach the other side when we have sloughed the chaff in which we grew, when we are wheat gathered into the eternal garner, when we are where all parts of our nature are effluent and effulgent, when we are in a society whose public sentiment nourishes and helps us, when we are in a sphere where God Himself is personally present though it doth not yet appear what we shall be then, it is because it is too high, too large, for any man to think of in this mortal state. Round and round the earth goes the spirit of instruction and inspiration, pouring out things which give to a man some hints (you cannot give him much more), some slight notion, of the vastness of that God who fills all space, all time, all eternity. And so, when we think of Him, sometimes we think of Him as a Father, sometimes as a Brother, sometimes as a Comforter, sometimes as a Leader, sometimes as a Judge, sometimes as a King, sometimes as one thing and sometimes as another. These, however, are only images, symbols, giving us intimations of qualities; but by-and-by we shall see Him as He is. The limitation of human faculty shall not prevent our knowing what God is. Now we have no conception of His form or of His glory except from the most insignificant sources; but the time is coming when we shall go home as the sons of God, and shall be changed, throwing off the raiment and chains of slaves for we have been in bondage: the time is coming when we shall be emancipated, and shall stand in the presence of God; and then we shall no longer go by hints and notions. "We shall see Him as He is."
H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 353.
Immortality.
I. This is revelation's last word on a great subject which theologians have too often forgotten in their positive statements and assumptions. Our English version does not quite correctly represent the Greek original. It is not "It does not appear as a result of human inference or speculation," but "It has not yet been manifested or revealed." God Himself still wraps our destiny among His "hidden things." Even Paul, when wading in these perilous depths, and talking of the change that awaits all, and attempting to describe the properties of a "spiritual body," felt himself to be confronted with a "mystery," and while satisfied that there would be a victory over the grave, and that mortality would be swallowed up in life, wisely brought back his readers' thoughts from dreamland to reality by bidding them simply "be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as they knew that their labour was not in vain in the Lord."
II. Nor can it be said that the great Teacher Himself, when He most clearly proclaimed the doctrine of the resurrection, drew aside for more than the briefest moment the curtain by which the mystery is veiled. But in the dim gloom that shrouds the land beyond the grave there is a streak of light like some sudden lightning flash, illuminating the darkness with hopes full of immortality; in the still silence of the chamber of death there is a voice heard, sustaining the soul in its passage through the shadowed valley: "He that believeth in Me shall never die." Grant me a right to believe in a personal God, in a living Christ, in an indwelling Spirit, in a life of the world to come, and, like that ship driven up and down in Adria upon which no small tempest lay, I shall have, as it were, my four anchors cast out of the stern, while I "wait for the day."
Bishop Fraser, University Sermons,p. 167.
I. We Christians are now, in this our earthly life, children of God. He is interested in the welfare of each with inexpressible tenderness and sympathy. He has showered upon us magnificent gifts, if we will but acknowledge them and use them to His glory. There is not one among us so poorly endowed but that his heart can swell with love of good, and admiration, and reverence, can feel the beauty and tenderness of the life of Jesus Christ, can believe in a God who hears prayer, and so taste of the powers of the world to come. And these are glorious gifts, the gifts of a Father to children whom He loves and respects.
II. There is a future awaiting us all beyond, and greater than all that we have ever yet reached. A child of God cannot die forever. Nothing can take him out of his Father's hands. Wherever he is, he must be about his Father's business. If he sleep for a time, it will be to gather strength for ampler service. "If he sleep, he shall do well," or if he enter at once on some fresh period of growth, of this at least faith assures us: that it must be growth towards God, and not away from Him. By some means, in some sphere of being, the child must be drawing nearer to his heavenly Father.
III. As to the nature of this future being, this much at least we know: that we shall be like God, because we shall see Him as He is. To see God is to be like Him. The man that gazes on the Divine is already transfigured and become a partaker of the Divine nature. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Thought fails in trying to conceive of this splendid growth that awaits us after death, when, by God's mercy, the lowliest will be "something far advanced in state," with a Divinely granted work adjusted to his renewed powers. This only we know as the climax and consummation of all: that we shall be like God, for we shall see Him as He is.
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 150.
I. We stand, then, on this bright, illuminated platform of the present, this sunny promontory in the midst of the dark, infinite ocean, and what is that light upon us which is said to be so clear? Now we are children of God, children of God. We are here introduced to a Being above us, a Being from whom we are said to have sprung, in some sense. Who and what is this Being? How can we know anything of Him? The will of a Person is the only intelligible origin of this world and of ourselves, because that agency is the only one which we know that is not subject to the laws by which matter is bound.
II. Now, this one great point being granted, many others follow from it. If it were the will of that supreme Being to create, if it is His present will to uphold, the universe, then we can judge of His character by the laws which He has established and keeps in working. We see these laws calculated to promote and to conserve order, life, happiness, beauty. He is, then, a Being who loves and approves these, who wills order, life, happiness, beauty, in His creation. But more than this, there are laws in our own minds and spirits as fixed and invariable as those which act on matter; and by the character of these also we may judge of His character who ordained them. In our own spirits there is no rest in evil; He who made us willed that we should be good.
III. On this platform of the present life we have two parties brought together: ourselves and God. The greater part of mankind go on day and night, and never think of the awful presence around them; they lose the safeguard and they lose the dignity of a life in which God's presence is realised. Have you ever travelled as the dawn of a bright day was waxing onward, the place of every object more and more indicated, but a dimness over all, the reaches of the rivers faintly reddening through the mist, the trees and the hills massed together in indistinctness, groups of forms, but without the life of detail? And then on the sudden, as you look, here and there beams of brightness leap forth, the hillsides glow with rosy light, the rocks burn like molten metal, living fire looks forth from the streams, and heaven and earth rejoice because the sun is risen. Even such is the change when the presence of God arises upon the inner life of a man. All things were seen before but dimly and in their outlines; but now they are full of clearness and light. Now, now first, he has put on the dignity of his nature, and is fulfilling the ends of his nature.
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 25.
I. "Now are we children of God." It must be plain to us with very little consideration that the Apostle could not here mean the absolutely general relationship which exists between the great Father and all His creatures. To this there is no exception; all men and all living things may in this sense be said to be children; and the assertion of this fact would lead to no consequences with regard to the future such as are here implied. We are here treating of a state above and beyond nature, a new state, in which we are brought into some different relation to God from that which we held to Him by the mere tie of our creation. As by that we were in some sense His children, so by this we are His children in another and a more blessed sense. So that this of which we speak may well be called a new creation.
II. "Now are we children of God." Now have our spirits become, by some grand and glorious process or other, alive again to God, endued with His very nature, adopted into His family. We could not be children of God, in the sense here intended, without such a new birth, without the entrance of new life into this withered and paralysed noblest portion of us.
III. "Now are we children of God." What a position to stand in, and to what a Father, the recovered, the adopted, the chosen children of Him that made heaven and earth, not destined for, not to end in, this world, but with God's heavenly abode for our Father's house, God's throne for our family centre, the light unapproachable in which He dwelleth pointing out our distant home across the dark waste of life! In the blessedness of this knowledge is all the happiness of the life present, and in the trust which this knowledge gives is all the hope for the great non-apparent future.
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 53.
I. First of all, observe that which must strike every one on hearing the words viz., that a well-meaning Person is here spoken of as He: "We shall be like Him." The Apostle's thoughts are so fixed on his Divine Master, that He is their continual object, spoken of without introduction or explanation: "We shall be like Him" the Lord Jesus Christ "for we shall see Him" i.e.,Christ "as He is." Christ has entered into and taken upon Him in full that mysterious unknown state; His present shall be our future. When that state, now all dark to us, shall be manifested, we know that it will consist in likeness to Him.
II. To what does this knowledge amount? This is certain: that we that means His saved ones, His Church shall see Him as He is, and this, the Apostle argues, can only be brought about by our being like Him. That glory of His cannot be beheld except by those who have entered into His likeness; that we shall see Him as He is is of itself sufficient proof that we must be like Him.
III. But here arises an important question: Who are they that shall be manifested? who are they that shall be like Him, and thereby shall have the sight of Him? Observe that this is not a mere question of bodily sight. Even if it were, we might have something to say of refined vision, of the training of the sense to perceive glory, and majesty, and beauty. Even thus we might say that the eye of man might fail to apprehend that glory even when manifested. In order to see the glorified Redeemer as He is, the eye of man's spirit must be educated. For of this one thing be sure: that, whatever and however great the change may be which shall introduce us into that state, we ourselves shall remain the same. I mean that our inner desires and purposes, our bent of custom and thought these will not be rooted up and superseded by new ones; but as in this present life the boy is father of the man, and the youth's views and thoughts in their main course survive the change from youth to age, so in our whole life of time and eternity the childhood of the state now present must contain the germs of that future maturity. What has never begun now will not be first implanted then. A man must have yearned after the image of Christ here, if he is to wear the image of Christ there.
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 155.
In speaking of the new life which the love of the Father hath bestowed on men, we observe
I. That new life begins with new birth. Man is found in the state into which our race has come by the Fall, a state of deadness as to the life of the noblest part of him, viz., his spirit. Over the wide world, to all nations (such is His command), goes the glad message, "Christ in you the hope of glory" the message which makes known man's disease and God's remedy. The effects of this proclamation, the good spell, or Gospel, going forth upon the world, are twofold. It acts upon the individual heart, and it acts upon men as a society; it reawakens the dead spirit of him who hears, and it brings about a society or body of men in which this new condition may be put upon men by stated ordinances and a prescribed covenant. God has ordained the rite of baptism, speaking with His own mouth, and He has appointed it to be the symbol and ordinary vehicle of the new birth, insomuch that St. Paul, writing to Titus, calls the vessel in which the water for baptism was contained "the laver or font of the new birth."
II. Well, then, we are children of God; we are regenerate, new-born. In the Son of His love, who has taken our nature into His Godhead, and has become the Lord our Righteousness, He has adopted us into His family and made us His children. But between various persons among us there is a wide distinction. Some know not of, some care not to know of, this glorious relation between God and themselves. Still it is true of us as a whole, true in the main and general, that now we are children of God; that on this portion of the great stream of time known as the present, and designated by the term "now," there shines this clear beam of God's love to us, by which He hath bestowed on us a place in His family of spiritual children, and hath given us an inheritance among the saints in light. This we know with the knowledge of faith, faith resting on evidence, resting on the assured persuasion of those who can render a reason for their hope.
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 79.
Of the future we know nothing. We may speak of this day, or this year, or this life, and in each case of another day, another year, another life. It doth not yet appear, no one has ever been able to show us, what shall be, or what we shall be. All that we say of our own minds about another day, another year, another life, is founded on surmise, is true on certain conditions. We assume that what has been will continue to be.
I. Surely it is a strange and solemn thing to think of this standing up against total darkness, this evermore taking steps into an unknown void. And still stranger it is to think that we and the whole race of mankind evermore exist and go onwards under these solemn circumstances so quietly, so contentedly, so assuredly. It is as if one should march to the edge of a precipice continually receding before him, but uncertain when it will stop, and he take the step which will be his fall.
II. In the very terms of the text it is taken for granted that there is a future for us beyond the present life. From us as Christians thus much of the darkness has been lifted from the future; we know that it will not bring us annihilation. As the concealment of the manner and phenomena of the future life is for our God, so is the revealing of the certainty of our further development in it as the perfected children of God. We may work by the sunlight, though we cannot gaze upon the sun.
III. "Who knows if life be death, and death be life?" sang the old Greek tragedian in the days of darkness. What he nobly guessed, we know by faith, and live upon that knowledge. The children of God now are like sick men in the long night vexed, and tossing, and crying out for repose; in them dwelleth no good thing; anxiety seems too much for them, grace too little. Now are we children of God; still it is an inheritance long coming, a hope deferred that maketh the heart sick. But meanwhile the unknown state is coming nearer and nearer; the streaks of day are gathering in the horizon; like the throbbing of the distant train upon the wind, the tokens of His coming are beginning to be heard. "Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus."
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 105.
I. In none of the Old Testament books is any direct revelation made as to what we shall be. Rather is that momentous question, by the very terms of some of these passages, left involved in additional mystery. The absence of sorrow and pain, the presence of triumph and joy, are set forth in the New Testament in most vivid terms; but it is in language drawn entirely from the habits and wants of this our present state, not from the new habits and wants of our future one. What we shall be, if set forth at all, is only set forth by negativing or intensifying that which we are. It is all as if we were with our thoughts and imaginations, even when they are Divinely guided, only building up a ladder which may reach to heaven, but whenever we attempt to place it against the bulwarks of the celestial city, it proves all too short, and will not reach. And so it will be to the end. We shall be changed. We shall pass, as it were, through a crucible, and our whole spirit, soul, and body, remaining in identity the same, will come out new, partakers of a different life, using different senses, thinking different thoughts. On the one hand, this must be; and, on the other, it very well may be.
II. It must be. As flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, so neither can the senses which inform flesh and blood inform us of the realities of that new state. If they bear in their new state some analogy to their present uses, this is all that we can at present surmise. How much of our present selves will survive the change, how much will bear transmuting into that new existence, whether traits of character, outward or inward, which are now fleeting or unpromising, may pass, as it were, through fire, and become fixed and brightened in the enamel of eternal beauty and freshness, we cannot say; but the change must be: so much is evident. And it very well may be, even according to our present conceptions. As St. Paul shows in the case of the body, so might it be shown in the case of the whole man, with his thoughts and habits. Circumstances in their change will also completely change the character, and thoughts, and habits of a man.
H. Alford, Sons of God,p. 131.
Self-discipline.
I. Intelligent service. There is, first, the body. We must take care of that. It needs the full power of forethought and resolution if we are ever to present these bodies as a living sacrifice, such as God could actually view with favour and with pleasure, as something undamaged, unspoiled, sound and whole in every part. And then after the body there is the mind. That is to be transformed by a gradual process of renewal, which will purge it of its old instinctive conformity to the world, those habits and standards we had lived in, and will build up in it a faculty of apprehension and sensitiveness of touch by which it will respond with rapid readiness to all those emotions by which the will of God prompts it towards that which is good, and desirable, and perfect. And then, moreover, as the mind bends to the control of this directed will, it will have to learn its proper place in society and in the Church; it will have to subordinate itself to the general excellence of the whole.
II. The Epiphany is made manifest in our purified lives. His glory is to show itself through us. He houses the glory within the body of His believers, and thence He shines out upon the world, as through a lamp, and their goodness of life is the vehicle of illumination, the medium through which His light passes out to irradiate the surrounding darkness. That is the plain band that binds the Epistles to the Gospels. The Epistles illustrate the issue and continuance of that which the Gospels require. That very Christ, at whose feet the wise men of the East presented frankincense and myrrh, shall shine out now upon the intellectual thought of the world, through that renewed and transformed mind of those who have won the faculty to recognise what is the good, and perfect, and acceptable will of God.
III. Christ's epiphany in the world is bound with terrible intimacy to our moral fidelity to His commandments. It is because we have seen Him that we are summoned to the task of self-discipline. He was manifested to take away our sins. As our task is always simply just to admit Jesus Christ in fuller measure into our souls, therefore, if we can ever succeed in doing this at any one point in our lives, we shall be doing it for all other parts. For Christ is one, and all the variety of duties only represents the behaviour of that one character under varying circumstances. Secure Him, then, at one corner of your being; get closer to Him, then, at some point where you have to beat under some one special temptation, some one all-besetting sin, at some point where you have to work hardest to develop one most needed virtue; admit Him there, by that door, and it is the whole Christ that enters, and the whole of you will feel the effect of that entrance; the whole of you will be nearer Him; the whole of you will be warmer, purer, truer, gentler; through every part of you the presence now admitted will speak.
H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 148.
I. What is this sight awaiting us which shall accomplish so much? Observe (1) It is the sight of a personal Saviour. "We shall see Him." It is only natural that we should desire to see the countenance of one whose works we have read, and whose friends we have often met, and who is often in our thoughts and affections. It is but natural that there should be a longing to see any one of whom we have read much, and of whom we have thought more. Is it, then, surprising that when the heaven of the saint is described it should be represented as the sight of a personal Christ? Yes, we shall see the Christ of the Scriptures, the Christ of whom Moses and the prophets spake. We shall see also the Christ of our own thoughts. There is not a believer but has his ideal Saviour. We shall see Him a living, personal Saviour, arrayed in human form. We shall not have to inquire who He is, or where He is. We shall see Him in the very identical body that once hung in shame on Golgotha. (2) It is the sight of a glorified Saviour: "We shall see Him as He is." Jesus has been beheld as we shall never behold Him. We shall never see Him as the Magi saw Him: the Infant; we shall never see Him as the disciples saw Him: so tired out that He was sound asleep on the open deck of a fisherman's boat; we shall never see Him, the cursed Substitute, groaning under the horrible load of His people's sins; but as He is now: highly exalted. Take the most blessed season earth has ever known, and it is only seeing Christ through the glass darkly. And these feebler manifestations are never as clear as they might be. I question whether there has ever been a saint but has had in some measure a veil over his soul. The veil may vary in thickness. Sometimes it is dense and dark as a London fog, and at other times it seems no more hindrance than the thinnest gauze. Then we see, as it were, the outlines of His beauty, but no more.
II. Notice the effect wrought by the sight: "We shall be like Him." In a minor degree, this is true on earth. Nobody can look on Jesus long without getting something of His image. Any man or woman who is in habitual communion with Jesus Christ will have something about them that betrays their intercourse. Now, if seeing Jesus through a glass darkly makes me something like Him, seeing Him in all His glory, without a veil, will make me altogether like Him. When this poor green bud is brought into the sunshine of His countenance in glory, how in a moment will all the green shields that hide its beauty fly apart, and all its leaves of loveliness expand in His own light, and I shall be like Him!
A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 848.
The Apostle admits that there is obscurity hanging over much of our eternal future. He glances at this part slightly; but it is the background of that one bright scene to which he afterwards points. (1) The place of our future life is obscure. (2) The outward manner of our final existence is also uncertain. (3) Many of the modes and feelings in the life to come perplex us. The atmosphere is too subtle, the azure is deep even to darkness, and from every endeavour we must come back to realise the lesson of our present state: that, while Christians are now the sons of God, the heir is but a child. It would be unsatisfactory enough if this were all that could be said and done. But the Apostle puts this dark background upon the canvas, that he may set in relief a central scene and figure: Christ and our relation to Him.
I. The first thing promised is the manifestation of Christ: "Christ shall appear." It is not merely that Christ shall be seen, but seen as never before. The first thought of the Apostle was no doubt the human nature of Christ as appearing again to the eyes of His friends, but he must also have thought of His Divine nature. The glory that He had with the Father before the world was shall be resumed, and if we may venture to say it, raised, for the glory of the Divine shall have added to it the grace of the human.
II. The second thing promised at the appearance of Christ is a full vision on our part; we shall see Him as He is. This implies a necessary and very great change on us before we can bear and embrace, even in the smallest measure, the perfect manifestation of Christ. We shall be changed (1) in our material frame; (2) in our soul. It will be a vision free from sin in the soul, free from partiality, intense and vivid, close and intimate.
III. The third thing promised is complete assimilation to Christ. We shall be like Him. (1) Our material frame will be made like unto Christ's glorious body. (2) Our spiritual nature will be like His. God has used this way of revealing the future (a) as a method of spiritual test and training; (b) as a means of quieting our thoughts; (c) as a means of making Christ the centre of the soul's affections and aims.
J. Ker, Sermons,p. 365.
The Unrevealed Future of the Sons of God.
I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future. That consciousness of belonging to another order of things because I am God's child will make me sure that when I am done with earth the tie that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home, where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to be here, where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the half-completed circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the crescent moon into full-orbed beauty.
II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of much in that future. That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness which lies on that beyond. "We are the sons of God, and," just because we are, "it does not yet appear what we shall be," or, as the, words are rendered in the Revised Version, "it is not yet made manifest what we shall be." The meaning of that expression "It doth not yet appear," or "It is not made manifest," may be put into very plain words. John would simply say to us, "There has never been set before man's eyes in this earthly life of ours an example or an instance of what the sons of God are to be in another state of being." And so because men have never had the instance before them they do not know much about that state.
III. The last thought is this: that our sonship flings one all-penetrating beam of light on that future in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness: "We know that when He shall be manifested we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like Him.
A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry,2nd series, p. 255.
References: 1 John 3:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 196; vol. ii., Nos. 61, 62; J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year,vol. i., p. 18; R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 6; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. x., p. 228; Ibid.,vol. xxvi., p. 259; E. D. Solomon, Ibid.,vol. xvi., p. 353; P. W. Darton, Ibid.,vol. xxxiv., p. 101; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 353; vol. ix., p. 337; Homiletic Magazine,vol. vii., p. 265; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. v., p. 31.