Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John. John Alexander Williams

Christ." Again Ignatius cries – "desire to use one Eucharist, for one is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup unto oneness of His blood, one altar, as one Bishop, with the Presbytery and deacons."[117] Hints are not wanting that sweetness and life in public worship derived inspiration from the same quarter. The language of Ignatius is deeply tinged with his passion for music.[118] The beautiful story, how he set down, immediately after a vision, the melody to which he had heard the angels chanting, and caused it to be used in his church at Antioch, attests the impression of enthusiasm and care for sacred song which was associated with the memory of Ignatius.[119] Nor can we be surprised at these features of Ephesian Christianity, when we remember who was the founder of those Churches. He was the writer of three books. These books come to us with a continuous living interpretation of more than seventeen centuries of historical Christianity. From the fourth Gospel in large measure has arisen the sacramental instinct, from the Apocalypse the æsthetic instinct, which has been certainly exaggerated both in the East and West. The third and sixth chapters of St. John's Gospel permeate every baptismal and eucharistic office. Given an inspired book which represents the worship of the redeemed as one of perfect majesty and beauty, men may well in the presence of noble churches and stately liturgies, adopt the words of our great English Christian poet —

      "things which shed upon the outward frame

      Of worship glory and grace – which who shall blame

      That ever look'd to heaven for final rest?"

      The third book in this group of writings supplies the sweet and quiet spirituality which is the foundation of every regenerate nature.

      Such is the image of the soul which is presented to us by St. John himself. It is based upon a firm conviction of the nature of God, of the Divinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement of our Lord. It is spiritual. It is pure, or being purified. The highest theological truth – "God is Love" – supremely realised in the Holy Trinity, supremely manifested in the sending forth of God's only Son, becomes the law of its common social life, made visible in gentle patience, in giving and forgiving.[120] Such a life will be free from the degradation of habitual sin. Yet it is at best an imperfect representation of the one perfect life.[121] It needs unceasing purification by the blood of Jesus, the continual advocacy of One who is sinless. Such a nature, however full of charity, will not be weakly indulgent to vital error or to ambitious schism;[122] for it knows the value of truth and unity. It feels the sweetness of a calm conscience, and of a simple belief in the efficacy of prayer. Over every such life – over all the grief that may be, all the temptation that must be – is the purifying hope of a great Advent, the ennobling assurance of a perfect victory, the knowledge that if we continue true to the principle of our new birth we are safe. And our safety is, not that we keep ourselves, but that we are kept by arms which are as soft as love, and as strong as eternity.[123]

      These Epistles are full of instruction and of comfort for us, just because they are written in an atmosphere of the Church which, in one respect at least, resembles our own. There is in them no reference whatever to a continuance of miraculous powers, to raptures, or to extraordinary phenomena. All in them which is supernatural continues even to this day, in the possession of an inspired record, in sacramental grace, in the pardon and holiness, the peace and strength of believers. The apocryphal "Acts of John" contain some fragments of real beauty almost lost in questionable stories and prolix declamation. It is probably not literally true that when St. John in early life wished to make himself a home, his Lord said to him, "I have need of thee, John;" that that thrilling voice once came to him, wafted over the still darkened sea – "John, hadst thou not been Mine, I would have suffered thee to marry."[124] But the Epistle shows us much more effectually that he had a pure heart and virgin will. It is scarcely probable that the son of Zebedee ever drained a cup of hemlock with impunity; but he bore within him an effectual charm against the poison of sin.[125] We of this nineteenth century may smile when we read that he possessed the power of turning leaves into gold, of transmuting pebbles into jewels, of fusing shattered gems into one; but he carried with him wherever he went that most excellent gift of charity, which makes the commonest things of earth radiant with beauty.[126] He may not actually have praised his Master during his last hour in words which seem to us not quite unworthy even of such lips – "Thou art the only Lord, the root of immortality, the fountain of incorruption. Thou who madest our rough wild nature soft and quiet, who deliveredst me from the imagination of the moment, and didst keep me safe within the guard of that which abideth for ever." But such thoughts in life or death were never far from him for whom Christ was the Word and the Life; who knew that while "the world passeth away and the lust thereof, he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."[127]

      May we so look upon this image of the Apostle's soul in his Epistle that we may reflect something of its brightness! May we be able to think, as we turn to this threefold assertion of knowledge – "I know something of the security of this keeping.[128] I know something of the sweetness of being in the Church, that isle of light surrounded by a darkened world.[129] I know something of the beauty of the perfect human life recorded by St. John, something of the continued presence of the Son of God, something of the new sense which He gives, that we may know Him who is the Very God."[130] Blessed exchange not to be vaunted loudly, but spoken reverently in our own hearts – the exchange of we, for I. There is much divinity in these pronouns.[131]

NOTES

Note A

      1 John iv. 8, 9, 10. Modern theological schools of a Calvinistic bias have tended to overlook the conception of the nature of God as essential or substantive Love, and to consider love only as manifested in redemption. Socinianising interpreters understand the proposition to mean that God is simply and exclusively benevolent. (On the inadequacy of this, see Butler, Anal., Part I., ch. iii., and Dissertation II. of the Nature of Virtue.) The highest Christian thought has ever recognised that the proposition 'God is Love' necessarily involves the august truth that God if sole is not solitary. ("Credimur et confitemur omnipotentem Trinitatem – unum Deum solum non solitarium." Concil. Tolet., vi. 1.) "Let it not be supposed," said St. Bernard, "that I here account Love as an attribute or accident, but as the Divine essence – no new doctrine, seeing that St. John saith 'God is love.' It may rightly be said both that Love is God, and that love is the gift of God. For Love gives love; the essential Love gives that which is accidental. When Love signifies the Giver, it is the name of His essence; when it signifies His gift, it is the name of a quality or attribute." (S. Bernard., de dil. Deo, xii.). "This is nobly said. God is love. Thus love is the eternal law whereby all things were created and are governed – wherewith He who is the law of all things is unto Himself His own law, and that a law of love – wherewith He bindeth His Trinity into Unity." (Thomassin. Dogm. Theol., lib. iii., 23.)

Note B

      ἡ ῥιζα της αθανασιας και ἡ πηγη της αφθαρσιας· ὁ την ερημον και αγριωθεισαν φυσιν ἡμων ηρεμον και ἡσυχιον ποιησας, ὁ της προσκαιρου φαντασιας ῥυσαμενος με και εις την αει μενουσαν φρουρησας (Acta Johannis, 21). These sentences are surely not without freshness and power. One other passage is worth translating, because it seems to have just that imaginative cast which makes the Greek Liturgies, like so much else that is Greek, stand midway between the East and West; and because it apparently refers to St. John's Gospel. "Jesus!