1 John 3:2

Present and Future

1Jn 3:2

Just for one moment return to our last point, which was the agnosticism or know-not-ism which refers to Christians, as well as to Christ and Christianity. That point we found in the first verse: "Therefore the world knoweth us not." That is the agnosticism that is often overlooked. People who want to be very mentally superb and shining think themselves agnostic in relation to infinity, divinity, everlastingness, supernaturalness, and the like, involving the whole genus and every species of polysyllable. The Apostle tells us that there is another agnosticism or know-not-ism that goes along with that viz., the ism that does not know the good man. That is to say the good man is a puzzle, a problem, a mystery, an impenetrable cloud of character; nobody can account for his motives, or follow the range of his purposes, or understand that solemn and tremendous Cross that is at the heart of all his thought and action. Understand that men who do not know God, do not know the sons or children or disciples of God. The motive of a good man must be an absolutely inscrutable mystery to everybody who bounds himself by space and ticks off his little duration by time. The good man is to such an observer a fool. He is losing his life that he may save it; he is throwing away seed with both hands in the hope that it will multiply itself and come back a golden harvest: oh, fool is he! Why trouble yourselves about infinity when you cannot understand the good man, when you cannot understand your own saintly mother? Why all this evolution into empty intellectual grandeur about the immeasurable and inexhaustible, when you do not understand your own companion in life? Away with your solemn fudge, and remember that you do not understand the very man or the woman to whom you are bound for life. This is humiliating, because some of us would love to pose as those who have not capacity enough to entertain the Infinite. That would be delightful to us, to lay our head back on some velvet pillow and contemplate the astounding fact that in our measurable breast there is no room for the immeasurable God. That would be something to talk about. But to be told that we do not know a good soul, in its motive, inspiration, purpose; that we cannot follow all its dream and poetry and idealism it seems as if one ought to be able to understand another, but he is not. He who does not know God has no key with which to open anything; he is in the midst of ten thousand cabinets each of which contains gold and rubies and all manner of gems, but he has no key. To understand God through love is to understand everything else; then like God we take up the hills as a very little thing and handle constellations as if they were mere toys. He who lives in God turns the water into wine, raises the dead, makes flowers grow out of flints, in the wilderness sets up fountains of water. It is cruel on the part of any teacher or preacher to take away from a man the only idol which that man thinks it respectable to worship: such a fine golden idol, such a beautiful, noble-looking thing: what a felon is the true preacher! what a robber is he who is zealous for the living God! Even this old snow-haired patriarch will presently say, "Little children, keep yourself from idols." But what a port a man has as he walks along the thoroughfare to Parliament, to commerce, to journalism, and he says, I cannot understand or comprehend the supernatural. It seems a great pity to tear his cloak off when it is so bedizened with little daubs of gilt which those who do not know the higher metals mistake for gold. He who thus poses and imposes upon himself loses more by his non-religious knowledge than he supposes: he does not understand any good deed, any true heroism; he can only follow heroism to the higher grades of selfishness; when it lives thus and goes out to seek and enjoy inspiration and motive beyond the common ken, the agnostic knows no more about that motive than he knows about the supernatural, simply because that motive is supernatural, extra-natural, natural plus , nature in her best attire.

The Apostle is still talking about love, divine sonship, a possible future metempsychosis such as never entered into the dreams of theology. Hear him "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." He who uses terms of endearment now is looked upon as sentimental. Probably there is only one preacher in the world that addresses his congregation as "Beloved," and he is sometimes thought to be fanatical: certainly he is apostolic; but perhaps to be apostolical is to be fanatical in the estimation of those who never get beyond the commonest prose in their interpretation of life and character and development.

"Now" is a term on which I should fix special and expectant attention. It is something to have a "now" in our religious experience. That is the sad defect of the experience of many; that is to say, want of immediateness of conviction, presentness of real feeling. We may be too much in process or transition or action to have a definite and nameable present identity; we may be so fond of development as to have no present address. That would not be development, that would be lunacy. What are we now? What are we in thought, in feeling, in purpose, in recollection? How does our character total itself at this immediate moment? Reflections of this kind apply to thought as well as to conduct. Orthodoxy is a growth. There is nothing abiding in orthodoxy. It never reaches a point except for the purpose of leaving it. Yet right thinking has its points, and the points never contradict each other; they are in succession, in regulated and advancing series, the one taking up the other and abrogating it by consummation. Thus the Bible itself is one, and Genesis and John are the same: "If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me," said Christ, "for he wrote of me," and hardly knew it, sometimes did not know it at all. Men do not always know what they are writing or what they are doing. Every time a man passes his fellow-man he leaves behind an impression for which there are no words, and of which he is utterly unconscious at the moment; and so are the men through whose society he thus passes; yet a great work may be done, an abiding influence may be started. Sometimes we think that Moses would be startled, if he could hear us preaching evangelical sermons from the Pentateuch. That is what Jesus Christ himself did. Sometimes the reader has to tell the writer what he meant. That is a mystery, but it is a fact. In the matter of thought, we are at a certain point now, and that point is the present orthodoxy: tomorrow we shall be a point farther on, then that will be the orthodoxy, and the man who keeps to the first point becomes heterodox. Whatever opposes progress is heterodox and unworthy, is selfish and worldly. We should take care that we do move, and that our conduct moves along with our thinking. To have high thoughts, and low lives, what a tenantry is that with which to crowd and decorate the soul! It is everything to know what we are at any given moment. The difficulty is that some people will not advance as quickly as others. They have turned religion into a kind of sighing for things which other men have forgotten. A child of two struggling with the alphabet, writing a 's and b's of elephantine size, is a poem to look at, a right beautiful and wholesome thing all over; but for a man of twenty to be doing that is ridiculous, unless he is writing for babies, which in itself is a beautiful thing.

What is our "now," our immediate self-hood, our present active consciousness? John gave an answer, he said, "Now are we the sons of God." That word "are" ought to be pronounced with unction. Every part of the verb To be is juicy. Some other verbs may be dismembered in conjugation and lose next to nothing; in fact, we could do without the verb in some cases: but this verb To be is the spinal verb in all tongues. Whatever language you learn, first master the verb To be. All other verbs are little twigs of that parent stem. There could be no language but for this verb. Now are we, not, we think, we imagine, we suppose, but we are inverbed, inlived, we are part and parcel of this very substance and quality. What a new view this gives us of religion! We do not now talk about the rise and progress of religion in the soul, we talk about the rise and progress of the soul in religion. If our religion is put upon us as a mere robe it may be laid off suddenly or forgotten sometimes, or it may attract the dust and mud of the world through which we pass; but if our religion, our Christianity, is part of ourselves, part of our very soul, then we have an immediate present of which we are not ashamed any more than we are ashamed of the identity of the best aspects of our character.

"The sons of God." We ought! to be that. There is a tone of kinship in that definition. We do not know what it means, but it means what is right, and we feel it to be so. In the Revised Version we have translated "the sons of God," in the first verse, into "the children of God," a sort of larger or more inclusive term: but "sons of God" will stand as carrying with it all possible endearment, all affectionateness of suggestion, all nearness of kin. Literally, Now are we the sons out of God, struck out of him like sparks; part of his very fire: see how the spark flies when the stone and the metal strike one another sharply! So we seem by a kind of friction to be struck out of God, sons out of God, carrying with us his quality, his Deity; we are partakers of the Divine nature.

What wonder then that the world does not know the sons of God? You must know the father before you can know the children. If you would know the father well, you must study him oftentimes through the children: the action is an interaction, now started from this point, now from that, but always going back upon itself in definite and profitable lines. The apostles were never content with the immediate present; they always said, There is more to be seen, there is more to be felt, there is more to be heard; we have not begun yet. It is thus we feel about the Bible. When we have concluded it, it is only that we may begin it again with new energy and new delight. The old student says, O spare me, Father of Light, a little longer! I would read again the roll prophetic, again I would read the psalter that resounds with the music of heaven: spare me that I may once more read the fourfold story of Bethlehem, and Calvary, the endless story.

Hence we find the Apostle saying here, "And it doth not yet appear what we shall be." He is still in the verb To be; he passes from the indicative to the future, but he is still within the same range; it is a question of being, identification, absorption. "What we shall be." But are we not measurable? No, we are not measurable. Can we not guess at the possibilities of development? Never. You never could guess the harvest from the seedtime if you had never seen the harvest. No man can imagine a harvest. Granted that he has seen one, then he can multiply it, he can fancy it still more abundant and still more golden, but given only the seedtime and a harvest never seen, no man could imagine a wheatfield, matured and goldened for the sickle: it is the mystery of growth, it is the apotheosis, the very deification of the agricultural idea.

"But we know." John never leaves this point of knowledge. He always holds something in his hand; he has not got the whole chain, but he has got hold of one link, and that he holds as if he meant never to forego the treasure. What do we know? The answer is "when he shall appear, we shall be like him." Why? "for we shall see him as he is." We see nothing at present. We have instruments by which we come into contact with space and magnitude, those instruments we call our eyes, but our eyes themselves are often glad to call in little helps, that through pieces of glass they may see the reality which they themselves unaided could never discover. So the microscope helps the eye; the telescope brings the worlds within the range of the vision. Who can see? Sight is not a question of the eyes exclusively. Sometimes we exclaim, "I see!" What is the meaning of the exclamation? is it an optical act? Nothing of the kind; it is a larger, an intellectual, act, I see, I perceive, I observe, I follow you completely. That is the larger sight. "We shall see him as he is": we have only seen him hitherto in appearances of a superficial kind, in facets, little aspects, transitory movements, but we shall one day see him, comprehend him, perceive him, grasp him as he is, touching his quality, his central virtue, the element that makes him God, and the Son of God and the Spirit of God. The old philosophical theory was that a man is turned into what he looks upon lovingly; that is to say, there were philosophers who would contend strenuously that if we looked at beauty we should become beautiful, if we looked at hideousness we should become debased by the sight. There is an element of truth in that theory; that element of truth finds its culmination, its glorification in this very doctrine, of seeing God, whether the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost: and seeing him is to be transformed by the sight into the same image. But there must be responsiveness, sympathy; there must be a real love of the object that is gazed upon, or no action of that kind will ever be set up: else then those who live in mountain scenery would be men of the finest intellect, absolutely independent of all narrowness of thought; every conception would be enlarged, every outlook would be ennobled, every speech would be punctuated as by the mountain within which the birth took place. It is not so: or the florist would be the most beautiful man on earth. But you may so handle a flower as to do it merely for the sake of getting wages; then the flowers work no wizardry upon your face, they do not help your wrinkles into furrows for the reception of the seed of heaven. You must love your art, and you will be affected by it: love your flowers, and you will become beautiful, if not in form yet in spirit and aspiration, in desire after the celestial. Love your Bible, and you will become beautiful; not in form or in feature, but in spirit, in thought, in chastened feeling, in inspired and ennobled ambition. One day, we are promised, that we, being sons of God now, shall see God, and seeing him shall become like him; then shall come to pass the saying that is written, "God created man in his own image and likeness." Blessed Gospel! Without this music our lives would sink into monotony!

Prayer

Father in heaven, how wonderful is thy word unto the children of men! how much there is in it that we can never fully see! Holy Spirit, open our understanding that we may understand the Scriptures; open thou our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Teach us that we have not yet begun to read thy Book: Lord, increase our light; Lord, grant unto us that sensitiveness of spirit which omits nothing, but feels all the life and knows all the music of God. To this end do thou abide with us, Holy Paraclete; dwell with us, take up thine abode with us; call us thine. Help us to read thy Book so that we may become established in our faith, lest the flippancy of ignorance should deprive us of part of our inheritance in Christ. Thou knowest those who go about because they cannot rest, who are continually moving hither and thither because they have no soul-home in which to worship and in which to rest; they would destroy or disturb our faith, or breathe upon its pureness some breath from lower places. May we know that thy Word is full, deep, complete, eternal; there may we rest in sweet, undisturbed repose. To this end do thou send unto us thy Holy Spirit, through godly ministers, teachers, and friends, who shall be able to read the Bible to us; yea, when we take it into our own hands may our minds be under divine illumination, so that we may see afar, and hear music which comes to us from the very temple of heaven. How rich is thy Word! how noble in all grandeur! how it stretches forth itself to every one, near and far, of every clime and colour and name, that it may bring every man home to God, to acquire his right status and claim the inheritance bought with blood. Save us from all ignorance, superstition, folly; save us from all superficial views of things, as if we could judge anything by the outside and by one little moment of its history; show us that our longest life is but the twinkling of an eye; prove to us that we were of yesterday and can know nothing, and that not until we have been with thee countless ages do we even begin to be with God. Thus do thou chasten us, and ennoble us by modesty, and enrich us with the spirit of reverence, yet the spirit of expectation; and fill our souls with good things from heaven. We bless thee for what little we have seen; if we have multiplied it sometimes foolishly, thou knowest that we are dust, children of the earth on the one side, whilst children of heaven and eternity on the other; pity us and smite us not in thy great power. Sometimes we think we have knowledge, whereas we have none; help us to feel that we are only little scholars in God's great and everlasting school, where there is no vacation, where there is no time for frivolity, where all the ages constitute the first point of the span thou hast given us wholly to compass. Whilst we are here, help us to accept our little lot meekly and lovingly, and to work all the day right industriously, not considering what we have to do but how we have to do it; and may we do everything for the Master, whom we call Christ, because he lived for us, and died for us, and lives again evermore for us, that from the fountains of eternity he may replenish the streams of our existence. Thus do thou give every man a new view of life and a new sense of responsibility. We have played the fool before God, thinking we knew when we did not know, and undertaking things we had no right to undertake, because of the littleness of our power, and our inability to do what was to be done. May we be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, always wondering whether we are not too ignorant even to pray. Lord, teach us how to pray, how to put our own wants into words. We do not know our own wants when we hear them put into speech, the speech is so far below them, so wanting in the agony of their desire. The Lord help every man to do his work simply, kindly, meekly, and not in the spirit of an hireling; and teach every man that it is better to be wronged than to wrong, better to be treated unjustly than to treat any child with injustice. Thus may we all be good servants of Christ, willing, faithful, self-sacrificing, and deriving all our power from him who is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Thou wilt judge us at the Cross, thy mercy endureth for ever; thou knowest our frame, thou knowest all the weariness of our life, thou knowest our unspoken and secret troubles and sorrows, and thou wilt heal us with great healing, and wilt find for us balm in Gilead. Let our homes be beautiful places, though the poorest in the world; may they be beautiful with patience and heroism and self-sacrifice and all the noblest virtues and graces; may the walls be all hung round with instances of fine fidelity. The Lord hear us, make his word a new word to us. Amen.