1 John 5:3 Love for God's Commands. I. People talk of "going to heaven" as if admission to future happiness had nothing to do with the bent and tone of their minds and their inward being here on earth. But salvation is the consummation of that eternal life which begins for Christ's true servants in... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:4 Office and Province of Faith. I. Faith is not primarily a light of the soul. Though its gaze ought ever to be fixed on the source of all light, it looks to that source rather in the first instance as being at the same time the source of all warmth and all life. It is the living principle... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:6 Christ Coming by Water and Blood. I. Let us settle the immediate sense of these words. There was living then at Ephesus a conspicuous and enterprising teacher, whom not a few were likely to regard as more profound and philosophical than St. John, who himself probably looked down with sup... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:6 The Spirit, the Water, and the Blood. I. Consider the testimony of the water. I believe that the reference here is exclusively to baptism the baptism of Jesus Himself, and probably also the baptism which He instituted, and which remains as a permanent ordinance in connection with His nam... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:6 The Witness of Christ. "Witness!" The word in its emphatic recurrence is typical of the situation out of which the Epistle springs. The special perils and anxieties with which the Church is now beset are changed from those with which we are familiar in the earlier epistles of St. Paul. A... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:10 The Inward Witness. I. The nature of the witness must be first ascertained. The illustration suggests that the witness must be something clear and definite, and capable of being ascertained beyond doubt. (1) There is the conscious experience of a new force acting upon the soul, a new l... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:12 The Lord and Giver of Life. I. If religion had nothing to do with this life, it would be enough to become religious when we are on the point of departing from life, when we are on the borders of another world; but it is never thus that the Bible speaks of religion. Rather it tells us th... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:14 Right Petitions Heard by God. The power by which we overcome the world is the Divine life which we have in the Lord Jesus Christ; but in order to our obtaining that life two conditions must be fulfilled: first, God must give it; and secondly, we must take it. I. God must give it, for a... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:14 The Sin unto Death. St. John appears to speak of some one sin as standing apart from all others, as a sin unto death a sin so fatal, so entirely beyond the possibility of pardon, that Christians should even refrain from making petitions to God on behalf of one who had committed this sin... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:18 Infirmity of Faith: its Cause and Remedy. I. If all the Christian people about us had a clear vision of God's face, if they distinctly heard God's voice, if they lived and moved and had their being under the constant control of the invisible terrors and glories of the spiritual universe... [ Continue Reading ]
1 John 5:21 Idols. I. Let us glance at three forms of idolatry against which we must ever be on our guard. (1) There is the worship of other gods, or false gods: the worship of Moloch, and Baalim, and Ashtaroth, gods of gold and jewels, of lust and blood. (2) There is the worship of the true God u... [ Continue Reading ]