tive; they have reached a higher stage of development and intelligence. So it is in the family of God. Our Lord not only kept and obeyed His Father’s commandments, but He also came to do His “will.” We are truly in fellowship with Him when we do likewise. Oftentimes Christians say, when challenged re g a rd in g some thing they practice, “What Scripture do you have to prove that I am doing wrong?” The answer is that a be liever does not need a “Thus saith the Lord” for every detail of his life; he is to walk in love and keep His Word as well as His commandments. He should know and want to know the Lord’s mind because he walks in communion with Him. Thus he will keep His Word, and thus the love of God will be made perfect in him. By keeping the Lord’s Word it does not say that believers are in Him, but that they know they are in Him. We are in Him by the very fact of our conversion. But We know we are — we have the enjoyment and experi mental blessing of it — when we seek to please Him. Thus we really enjoy fellowship with Him. Being in Him is true from the time we are saved and the Holy Ghost was imparted to us (see John 14:20); knowing it is due to keping His Word. There are therefore three stages in verses 3-6: We know Him; and we know that we know Him by keeping His com mandments—ver. 3 We are in Him, and we know that we are in Him, by keeping His Word—ver. 5 We abide in Him, and should walk even so as He walked—ver. 6. All that the Lord said from chap ter 1 to chapter 12 in John’s Gospel is called in chapter 12:49 of that Gospel the “Father’s commandment.” That commandment was the Eternal Life — the revelation of it in Christ, as recorded in 1:1 of John’s First Epistle. In verses 3 to 6 of the second
chapter of this Epistle, John writes of the activity of that eternal life in the soul of the child of God. Then, in ver. 7, he assures us that he is not penning something new, not a new commandment, bu t th e very truth he had heard from the lips of the Lord Jesus Himself. Writing thus, he is not introducing something new; he is not speaking of some ad vanced revelation. But he writes of the old commandment true in Him, and heard from the beginning (from the beginning of the Lord’s minis try). Yet in a sense it is new never theless, for it is now true in us as well, as once it was only in Christ. Once we were in the dark; now we are in the light. This is the nature and character of what is in us— not the degree of its manifestation. In the Lord Himself there was noth ing to cloud its outward manifesta tion; in us there is so much! The eternal life that has been imparted to us is so covered over to a large extent by the life which is natural to us by our natural birth, that the characteristic activities of this im parted eternal life are not shown forth by us as they were by Him. Mere profession is tested in the verses we are now considering — as in verse 9. The chief attribute of God is love. This proves whether one is a true believer, or false professor. Mere profession is not a reality; it is a scandal, as the word stumbling in verse 10 should read. As we have already considered, and as verses 7 and 8 again emphasize, obedience is the first and foremost essential sign of divine life. We do right because God has His rights. To do right always, simply because it is right in our eyes, would be to do wrong, because it would leave God out. The divine requisite fo? a be liever is to walk in obedience to God’s Word, to God’s thoughts. Verse 7: “Beloved” [John uses the word “brethren” only once, in 3:13], “I write . . . an old commandment 31
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