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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 John 3:3

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And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

3. that hath this hope in him ] This is certainly wrong: the preposition is ‘on’, not ‘in’, and ‘Him’ is either the Father or Christ; probably the former. It is precisely the man who has the hope, based upon God, of one day being like Him, that purifies himself. For the construction ‘to have hope on ’ a person comp. ‘ On Him shall the Gentiles hope’ (Rom 15:12; comp. 1Ti 4:10; 1Ti 6:17).

purifieth himself ] In LXX. this verb ( ) is used chiefly in a technical sense of ceremonial purifications, e.g. of the priests for divine service: and so also even in N. T. (Joh 11:55; Act 21:24; Act 21:26; Act 24:18). But we need not infer that, because the outward cleansing is the dominant idea in these passages, it is therefore the only one. Here, Jas 4:8, and 1Pe 2:22, the inward purification and dedication become the dominant idea, though perhaps not to the entire exclusion of the other.

‘Purifieth himself ’. See on 1Jn 1:8 and 1Jn 5:21. S. John once more boldly gives us an apparent contradiction, in order to bring out a real truth. In 1Jn 1:7 it is ‘the blood of Jesus’ which ‘cleanseth us from all sin:’ here the Christian ‘purifieth himself’. Both are true, and neither cleansing will avail to salvation without the other. Christ cannot save us if we withhold our efforts: we cannot save ourselves without His merits and grace.

even as he is pure ] As in 1Jn 3:2, the ‘ even as’ brings out the reality of the comparison: similarly in Joh 17:11; Joh 17:22 we have ‘that they may be one, even as we are’. It is not easy to determine with certainty whether ‘He’ means the Father or Christ. There is a change of pronoun in the Greek from ‘on Him’ ( ‘ ) to ‘He’ ( ), and this favours, though it does not prove, a change of meaning. Probably throughout this Epistle means Christ ( 1Jn 3:5 ; 1Jn 3:7 ; 1Jn 3:16, 1Jn 2:6. 1Jn 4:17). He who, relying on God, hopes to be like God hereafter, purifies himself now after the example of Christ. Christ conformed Himself to the Father, we do the like by conforming ourselves to Christ. This interpretation brings us once more in contact with Christ’s great prayer. ‘For their sakes I consecrate Myself, that they themselves may be consecrated in truth’ (Joh 17:19). Moreover, would S. John speak of God as ‘pure’? God is ‘holy’ ( ): Christ in His perfect sinlessness as man is ‘pure’ ( ). Note that S. John does not say ‘even as He purified Himself:’ that grace which the Christian has to seek diligently is the inherent attribute of Christ. The consecration of Christ for the work of redemption is very different from the purification of the Christian in order to be like Him and the Father. Comp. Heb 12:14.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

And every man that hath this hope in him – This hope of seeing the Saviour, and of being made like him; that is, every true Christian. On the nature and influence of hope, see the notes at Rom 8:24-25.

Purifieth himself – Makes himself holy. That is, under the influence of this hope of being like the Saviour, he puts forth those efforts in struggling against sin, and in overcoming his evil propensities, which are necessary to make him pure. The apostle would not deny that for the success of these efforts we are dependent on divine aid; but he brings into view, as is often done in the sacred writings, the agency of man himself as essentially connected with success. Compare Phi 2:12. The particular thought here is, that the hope of being like Christ, and of being permitted to dwell with him, will lead a man to earnest efforts to become holy, and will be actually followed by such a result.

Even as he is pure – The same kind of purity here, the same degree hereafter. That is, the tendency of such a hope is to make him holy now, though he may be imperfect; the effect will be to make him perfectly holy in the world to come. It cannot be shown from this passage that the apostle meant to teach that anyone actually becomes as pure in the present life as the Saviour is, that is, becomes perfectly holy; for all that is fairly implied in it is, that those who have this hope in them aim at the same purity, and will ultimately obtain it. But the apostle does not say that it is attained in this world. If the passage did teach this, it would teach it respecting everyone who has this hope, and then the doctrine would be that no one can be a Christian who does not become absolutely perfect on earth; that is, not that some Christians may become perfect here, but that all actually do. But none, it is presumed, will hold this to be a true doctrine. A true Christian does not, indeed, habitually and willfully sin; but no one can pretend that all Christians attain to a state of sinless perfection on earth, or are, in fact, as pure as the Saviour was. But unless the passage proves that every Christian becomes absolutely perfect in the present life, it does not prove that in fact any do. It proves:

(1)That the tendency, or the fair influence of this hope, is to make the Christian pure;

(2)That all who cherish it will, in fact, aim to become as holy as the Saviour was; and,

(3)That this object will, at some future period, be accomplished. There is a world where all who are redeemed shall be perfectly holy.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

1Jn 3:3

And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure

The Divine hope perfecting the sinless family likeness

We must look here, as always, to Christ. He had a hope in God, or upon God; a hope having God for its object, and God for its ground and warrant. And it was substantially the same hope that we have as children that He had as the Son. True, He could not say, with reference to Himself, and His own knowledge or consciousness, It doth not yet appear what I shall be; at least not exactly as we say it. He knew better what He was to be than we can know what we are to be. But even He, in His human nature and human experience, did not adequately know this; for even He walked by faith and not by sight. It really did not yet appear what He was to be. One thing, however, He did know, that whatever the future discovery or development, to Himself or others, of His Sonship was to be, it would be all in the line of His being like the Father; and being like the Father through seeing Him as He is. To see God as He is, when the present strange problem–a dispensation of long suffering patience, subservient to a dispensation of present mercy and salvation, and preparatory to a dispensation of retribution and reward–is at last solved–to see God as He is, when the shifting shadows of time flee away, and the repose of the final settlement of all things come;–that was to Christ a matter of hope; exactly as it is to us. It must have been so. And if it was so, is it too much to say that this included, even in His case, the idea of His hoping to be like God, when He was thus to see Him as He is, in a sense and to an extent not within the reach and range of His human experience, when it was among the ordinary conditions of humanity here on earth that He had to see Him? That was His trial, as it is ours; to be in a position in which, seeing God as He is, and being consequently thoroughly like Him, in respect of full and ultimate contentment, complacency, satisfaction, and joy, is a thing hoped for. It is in such a position that our purifying of ourselves is to be wrought out, even as it was in such a position that His being pure was manifested and approved. We have to realise our sonship, as He had to realise His Sonship, in a world that knows not God; and we have to realise it, like Him, in hope. So realising it, and having this joint hope with Him in God, we purify ourselves as He is pure.

II. With all this the commission of sin is incompatible. He that doeth righteousness, and he alone, is born of God (1Jn 2:29). The doing of sin is inconsistent with so righteous a parentage; for it is the doing of that which is against law (1Jn 3:4). Sin is lawlessness; insubordination to law. It is to be so regarded; especially by us who, on the one hand, being born of God, make conscience of doing righteousness as God is righteous (1Jn 2:29); and who, on the other hand, having this hope in God–that we are to be like Him when we shall see Him as He is–make conscience of purifying ourselves, as our model, His own beloved Son, is pure (1Jn 3:2-3). We are to look upon sin as a breach of law. That is our security against committing sin, and so compromising the righteousness which we do, and the purity to which we aspire. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

Purifying hope

I. That every true Christian is animated by the hope of being with Christ. We make three remarks relative to this hope.

1. It is well founded.

2. It is soul sustaining. Great is the power of genuine hope.

3. It is increasingly active.

II. That the possession of this hope tends to promote personal holiness. Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself. He not only feels obliged to cultivate personal purity, but, stimulated by this hope, he makes every effort to become pure. We shall make two or three inquiries relative to personal purity.

1. What is its nature?

2. How is it promoted?

3. What are its evidences? He purifieth himself, even as He is pure. (J. H. Hughes.)

The self purifying hope

I. The work of self-purification.

1. This is a personal work, not only accomplished in us but by us.

2. It includes such things as–

(1) Purity of imagination. This is the very fount of our hearts. The issues of life are from hence. Beware what books we read, etc.

(2) Purity of word. Our Lord teaches this. Watchfulness is needed.

(3) Purity of conduct. Struggles with the flesh, especially in youth. Keep thyself pure.

II. The motives to the work of self-purification.

1. Hope of the coming of Christ–when He shall appear.

2. Hope of likeness to Christ we shall be like Him.

III. The pattern of this work–as He is pure. What a height! But the higher we aim the higher we reach. A painter, a sculptor, a poet, all work to some ideal. (Family Churchman.)

Christian hope

Hope is a feeling that animates every human bosom; that forms the motive power to active exertion, is the soul of enterprise, and is one of the main springs that keep the world itself in motion. Is the morning of life fair and promising? Hope gives freshness to the scene, and buoyancy to the spectator. Is the meridian of life bright and prosperous? Hope casts its radiant glories over lifes pathway, and infuses its sweet ingredients into lifes enjoyments. In a word, hope is the great cordial of human life, the lightener of all our cares, the sweetener of all our joys, and the soother of all our sorrows.

I. The nature of Christian hope.

1. The points of resemblance, or rather of agreement, it bears to hope in general, are the three following:

(1) Like every other hope, this hope has reference to what is good. In this respect hope differs from fear, which is the dread of evil, present or prospective, real or imaginary.

(2) Like every other hope, this hope has reference to good, yet future in its realisation and enjoyment. In this respect hope differs from both faith and possession–

(a) It differs from faith, which credits things that are past as well as things that are future, threatened evils as well as promised blessings;

(b) It differs also from possession. But hope that is seen is not hope–that is, the thing hoped for, when realised, is no longer hope, but possession and enjoyment.

(3) Like every other hope, this hope has reference to what is attainable. And in this respect hope differs from desire. We may desire some future good, real or imaginary, which is far beyond the reach of attainment; but we cannot be said to hope for what is unattainable. And just in proportion as the possibility, and especially the probability of its attainment, seems great or small, certain or uncertain, will hope or expectation be strong or weak, lively or languid.

2. The points of contrast are chiefly two.

(1) That hope is a mere natural emotion, springs eternal in the human breast, is produced by natural objects, and common to all natural men; this hope is a Christian grace, is produced by the Spirit of God, through faith in the gospel is fixed on the things of the spirit, and is common to all that are spiritual.

(2) The future and attainable good things, on which that hope is fixed are all earthly and material, seen and temporal; the future and certain good things on which this hope is fixed are all spiritual and heavenly, unseen and eternal.

II. The foundation of this hope. In this the goodness of this hope consists, and appears still more manifest than in its nature. Christ, in His person, in His mission and mediation, and especially in His work of propitiation, finished on the Cross and accepted by the Father, is the true and only foundation of a sinners hope. Jesus Christ, in His propitiatory work, is not merely the foundation, but the only foundation of a sinners hope toward God. The mere mercy of God, apart from the mediation of Christ; their comparative goodness, as not being so bad as some other men; their descent from godly parents; their Christian profession; the soundness of their faith and the orthodoxy of their creed; their many prayers and their great charity–these are sonic of the countless foundations which deluded mortals have tried on which to build their hopes lot eternity. What are they, but the sandy foundation of the foolish builder? Not only must the foundation be revealed to faith, the revelation must be received by faith, in order to have this hope on Him. Every man must have faith in Christ before he can have this hope on Him. Christ must be in him before Christ can be to him the hope of glory. And every man must be in Christ ere he can have or exercise this hope on Christ.

III. The object of this hope.

1. Perfect likeness to Christ. The many sons whom He has brought unto glory shall be perfectly like Him, not only in immortality, but also in moral excellence; not only in holiness, but also in happiness. Their minds, like His, shall be filled with heavenly light; their imaginations, like His, shall be filled with heavenly purity; their wills, like His, shall be filled with heavenly righteousness; their consciences, like His, shall be filled with heavenly peace; their hearts, like His, shall be filled with heavenly love; and their bodies, like His, shall be clothed with heavenly glory.

2. The full enjoyment of Christ. We shall see Him in all His glory, in the glory of His Father, and in the glory of all the holy angels with Him.

IV. The influence of this hope. Every man having this hope on Christ is not only the subject of sanctification, but likewise the agent of its progressive advancement in his own soul and life.

1. This hope is a Christian grace; and, like every Christian grace, forms part of sanctification, and contributes to its increase and advancement to perfection. For it is influenced by means and by motives felt, by arguments adduced, by examples exhibited, by goodness experienced, and by promises given unto us.

2. This hope forms an essential element of their new nature; it is the constant attendant and efficient assistant in their spiritual life. What assistance does it give to them in its course? Is the Christian life compared to a race? This hope casts aside every incumbrance, braces every limb, strains every nerve, and puts forth every energy to reach the goal and gain the prize.

3. This hope furnishes the best counteractive of the adverse and conflicting influences of the world. It is the ships best ballast during the voyage of life. It is its subjects best reminder of what he is, whither he is going, and how he is to occupy his Lords talents till He comes.

4. This hope is the chief prompter to lifes activities, in whatever state its possessor may be found. Forevery man that hath this hope knows, delights in, and seeks after, conformity to the will of God, which is our sanctification. He knows also that indolence and inaction are among the chief incentives to the pleasures of sin, which are contrary to the will of God and inimical to our sanctification. But this hope which he has, is not the dead hope of the formalist, or the hypocrite, nor the dying hope of the worldling, but the lively hope of the sons of God. It makes them all alive to Gods requirements, and lively in His service, in His House, in His cause, and in His kingdom in the world.

V. The pattern of every man having this hope. Christ is at once the foundation on which he builds his hope for eternity, and the pattern of purity he imitates in purifying himself. He has not yet attained, neither is he already perfect. But it is the present pursuit, the daily, habitual practice of every man having this hope: he purifieth himself, and he will continue to purify himself, as certainly as he will hope, to the end; when the purifying process will be perfected, and the conformity to the perfect pattern of purity will be complete.

1. A warning to sinners. You too have a hope. Granted. But your hope is not this hope, yourselves being judges. It is of nature, not through grace. Being a mere natural emotion, it is subject to incessant fluctuation and sudden extinction. Your hope, besides, exerts a baneful, corrupting influence over your whole spirit and soul and body. It blinds the mind to the truths, the promises, and blessings of the gospel of Christ; alienates the heart from the life of God; and by stimulating to the exclusive pursuit of the things of the world, the lusts of the flesh, and the pleasures of sin, the whole faculties and feelings of the inner man become contracted, corrupted, and defiled. And if the influence of your hope be so baneful, what must be the end of it? The end of these things is death–to the body, and to the soul.

2. An incentive to saints. Having this hope on Christ, see that ye purify your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren. The Holy Spirit, by whom this hope is inspired, that dwelleth in you, is its best supporter and friend. Therefore quench not the Spirit. Sin is the greatest enemy to this hope and to its purifying influence. Therefore, stand in awe and sin not. (Geo. Robson.)

The purifying influence of hope

That is a very remarkable and with which this verse begins. The apostle has just been touching the very heights of devout contemplation. We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And now without a pause, and linking his thoughts together by a simple and, he passes from the imaginable splendours of the beatific vision to the plainest practical talk, Mysticism has often soared so high above the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New Testament insisting on plain morality as vehemently as his friend James could have done. The combination is very remarkable. Like the eagle he rises, and like the eagle, with the impetus gained from his height, he drops right down on the earth beneath!

I. If we are to be pure, we must purify ourselves. There are two ways of getting like Christ, spoken about in the context. One is the blessed way, that is more appropriate for the higher heaven, the way of assimilation and transformation–by beholding: If we see Him we shall be like Him. That is the blessed method of the heavens. Ah! but even here on earth it may to some extent be realised. Love always breeds likeness. And there is such a thing, here on earth and now, as gazing upon Christ with an intensity of affection and simplicity of trust, and rapture of aspiration, and ardour of desire which shall transform us in some measure unto His own likeness. But the law of our lives forbids that that should be the only way in which we grow like Christ. The very word purify speaks to us of another condition; it implies impurity, it implies a process that is more than contemplation, it implies the reversal of existing conditions, and not merely the growth upwards to unattained conditions. And so growth is not all that Christian men need; they need excision, they need casting out of what is in them: they need change as well as growth. Then there is the other consideration, viz., if there is to be this purifying it must be done by myself. To take a very homely illustration, soap and water wash your hands clean, and what you have to do is simply to rub the soap and water on to the hand, and bring them into contact with the foulness. And so when God comes and says, Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, your hands are full of blood, He says in effect, Take the cleansing that I give you and rub it in, and apply it: and your flesh will become as the flesh of a little child, and you shall be clean. That is to say, the very deepest word about Christian effort of self-purifying is this–keep close to Jesus Christ. You cannot sin as long as you hold His hand.

II. This purifying of ourselves is the link or bridge between the present and the future. The act of passing from the limitations and conditions of the transitory life into the solemnities and grandeurs of that future does not alter a mans character, though it may intensify it. You take a stick and thrust it into water; and because the rays of light pass from one medium to another of a different density, they are refracted, and the stick seems bent; but you take the human life out of the thick, coarse medium of earth and lift it up into the pure rarefied air of heaven, and there is no refraction; it runs straight on! The given direction continues; and whereer my face is turned when I die, there my face will be turned when I live again. Dont you fancy that there is any magic in coffins, and graves, and shrouds to make men different. The man is the same man through death and beyond. Death will take a great many veils off mens hearts. It will reveal to them a great deal that they do not know, but it will not give the faculty of beholding the glorified Christ in such fashion as that the beholding will mean transformation. Every eye shall see Him, but it is conceivable that a spirit shall be so immersed in self-love and in godlessness that the vision of Christ shall be repellent and not attractive; shall have no transforming and no gladdening power.

III. This self cleansing is the offspring of hope. There is nothing that makes a man so down hearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress. Slowly we manage some little patient self-improvement; gradually, inch by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes some gust and outburst of temptation; and then the whole painfully reclaimed soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, that we have to remove slowly, barrow load by barrow load. To such moods then there comes, like an angel from heaven, that holy, blessed message, Cheer up, man! We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. A great deal of the religious contemplation of a future state is pure sentimentality, and like all pure sentimentality is either immoral or non moral. But here the two things are brought into clear juxtaposition, the bright hope of heaven and the hard work done here below. Now, is that what the gleam and expectation of a future life does for you? (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The purifying power of hope

A great hope, a great duty, a great example are here put before us.

I. What is the hope? An agnostic would say there is none; for the apostle plainly tells us that though we are now the children of God, it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But then hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why does he yet hope for? This hope, of which St. John tells us, is set on Jesus our Lord. It is not the hope of the Pharisee, trusting in himself apart from Christ. It is not the hope of the man of the world, who considers that he is no worse than others, though, like them, he does neglect Christ. It is the hope of the penitent and faithful follower of Christ, who walks by faith in the unseen Saviour, and casts himself for pardon, acceptance, and strength on Him. And this hope, as he learns it in Holy Scripture and in holy living, becomes gradually clear and definite to him.

II. What a duty is laid upon us! The hope is so glorious that it fires us to seek its fulfilment. It is a long and difficult task, this of purifying ourselves. In many of us it needs a deep thinking on old, forgotten ways. In all of us the field to be cleansed is very wide, and the roots of the vicious, deadly weeds are far down below the surface. How much it means–to purify oneself! There must be purity of heart, but the heart is deceitful above all things, and how shall we know it? There must be purity in the affections; but, even in our highest relationship, we are prone to selfishness. There must be purity for our body; but fleshly lusts keep warring against the soul. There must be purity of speech; but certain companionships, and our own forgetfulness of Gods presence, make this very difficult: and one word of uncleanness may set on fire the whole course of nature in us, and destroy our growth in grace. There must be purity in the eye, turning it away from beholding vanity; purity in the ear, casting out as evil the filthy communication of the thoughtless and the profligate; purity in the mind, lest it absorb the things it hears, or take delight in the writings of hell, or pervert even holy teaching to the purposes of sin. Yes, and there must be purity of intention–a high aim in dealing with all men, the setting of a guard over ourselves when danger is near, a resolute acting on that Divine and comfortable saying, that to the pure all things are pure. Oh, may we all go forward in this holy, difficult, blessed duty, while we have the Light to walk by, and the Cross to be our guide!

III. And remember, once more, whose light this is, and whose cross. It is His glorious example which should help us most–the example of Him who died for us, who liveth for us. (G. E. Jelf, M. A.)

The lost purity restored

Let us see–

I. If we can form a fit conception of what purity is. If we refer to examples, it is the character of angels and of God–the simplicity, the unstained excellence, the undimmed radiance, the spotless beauty. Or it is God, as represented here on earth, in the sinless and perfect life of Christ. If we go to analogy, purity is, in character, what transparency is in crystal. It is water flowing, unmixed and clear, from the mountain spring. Or it is the white of snow. Or it is the clear open heaven, through which the sparkling stars appear, hidden by no mist of obstruction. Or it is the pure light itself in which they shine. A pure character is that, in mind, and feeling, and spirit of life, which all these clear, untarnished symbols of nature, image, in their lower and merely sensible sphere, to our outward eye. Or, if we describe purity by reference to contrasts, then it is a character opposite to all sin, and so to most of what we see in the corrupted character of mankind. It is innocent, just as man is not. It is incorrupt, as opposed to passion, self-seeking, foul imaginations, base desires, enslaved affections, a bad conscience, and turbid currents of thought. It is the innocence of infancy without the stain–that innocence matured into the spotless, positive, and eternally established holiness of a responsible manhood. Or we may set forth the idea of purity under a reference to the modes of causes. In the natural world, as, for example, in the heavens, causes act in a manner that is unconfused and regular. All things proceed according to their law. Hence the purity of the firmament. In the world of causes, it is the scientific ideal of purity that events transpire normally, according to the constitutive order and original law of the creation. Or, finally, we may describe purity absolutely, as it is when viewed in its own positive quality. And here it is chastity of soul, that state of the spiritual nature in which it is seen to have no contacts or affinities but such as fall within the circle of unforbidden joy and uncorrupted pleasure. In all these methods we make so many distinct approaches to the true idea of spiritual purity.

II. Distant as the character is from anything we know in this sad world of defilement and corrupted life, still it is the aim and purpose of Christian redemption to raise us up into the state of complete purity before God. The call of the Word is, Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. It would seem, on looking at the manifold array of cleansing elements, applications, gifts, and sacraments, as if God had undertaken it as the great object and crowning mercy of His reign, to effect a solemn purgation of the world. But a question rises here of great practical significance, viz., whether, by a due improvement of the means offered in Christ, or by any possible faith in Him, it is given us to attain to a state which can fitly be called purity, or which is to itself a state consciously pure? To this I answer both Yes, and No. There may be a Christian purity that is related to the soul as investiture, or as a condition superinduced, which is not of it, or in it, as pertaining to its own quality or to the cast of its own habit. The point may be illustrated by a supposition. Let a man, habitually narrow and mean in his dispositions, fall into the society of a great and powerful nature in some one distinguished for the magnanimity of his impulses. Let this nobler being be accepted as his friend, trusted in, loved, admired, so as virtually to infold and subordinate the mean person, as long as he is with him, to his own spirit. This, at least, we can imagine, whether any such example ever occurred or not. Now it will be seen that, as long as this nobler nature is side by side with the other, it becomes a kind of investiture, clothes it, as it were, with its own impulses, and even puts it in the sense of magnanimity. Consciously now the mean man is all magnanimous, for his mean thoughts are, by the supposition, drunk up and lost in the abysses of the nobler nature he clings to. He is magnanimous by investiture; that is, by the occupancy of another, who clothes him with his own character. But if you ask what he is in his own personal habit, cast, or quality, he is little different possibly from what he was before. He has had the consciousness waked up in him of a generous life and feeling, which is indeed a great boon to his meagre nature, and if he could be kept for long years in the mould of this superinduced character he would be gradually assimilated to it. But if the better nature were to be soon withdrawn by a separation, he would fall back into the native meanness of his own proper person, and be what he was with only slight modifications. Now Christ, in His glorious and Divine purity, is that better nature, which has power, if we believe in Him with a total, all-subjecting faith, to invest us with a complete consciousness of purity–to bring every thought into captivity to His own incorruptible order and chastity. To illustrate how far it is possible for this purifying work to go on in the present life, I will simply say that the very currents of thought, as it is propagated in the mind, may become so purified that, when the will does not interfere, and the mind is allowed, for an hour, to run in its own way, without hindrance, one thing suggesting another, as in reverie, there may yet be no evil, wicked, or foul suggestion thrust into it. Or in the state of sleep, where the will never interferes, but the thoughts rush on by a law of their own, the mixed causes of corruption may be so far cleared away, and the soul restored to such simplicity and pureness, that the dreams will be only dreams of love and beauty–peaceful, and clear, and happy; somewhat as we may imagine the waking thoughts of angels to be.

III. Having this view of Christ and His gospel as the plan of God for restoring men to a complete spiritual purity, seeing that He invites us to this, gives us means and aids to realise this, and yields to them that truly desire it a hope so high as this, I inquire in what manner we may promote our advancement toward the state of purity, and finally have it in complete realisation? And, first of all, we must set our heart upon it. We must see the degradation, realise the bitterness, confusion, disorder, instability, and conflict of a mixed state, where all the causes of internal action are thrown out of Gods original law. We must learn to conceive, on the other hand–and what can be more difficult?–the dignity, the beauty, the infinitely peaceful and truly Divine elevation of a pure soul. St. Francis de Sales had been able, in his knowledge of the cloistered men and the cloistered life, to see how necessary it is for the soul to be aired in the outward exposures of the world; and, if we do not stop to question the facts of his illustrations, no one has spoken of this necessity with greater force and beauty of conception. Many persons believe, he says, that as no beast dares taste the seed of the herb Palma Christi, so no man ought to aspire to the palm of Christian piety as long as he lives in the bustle of temporal affairs. Now, to such I shall prove that, as the mother pearl fish lives in the sea without receiving a drop of salt water, and as, toward the Chclidonian Islands, springs of fresh water may be found in the midst of the sea, and as the fire fly passes through the flames without burning its wings, so a vigorous and resolute soul may live in the world without being infected with any of its humours, may discover sweet springs of piety amidst its salt waters, and fly among the flames of earthly concupiscence without burning the wings of the holy desires of a devout life. Having this determined–that he who will purify himself, as Christ is pure, must live in the world–then one thing more is needed–viz., that we live in Christ, and seek to be as closely and intimately one with Him as possible. And this includes–First, a willingness wholly to cease from the old man, as corrupt, in order that a completely new man from Christ may be formed in you. Secondly, the life must be determined implicitly by the faith in Christ.

IV. Some of the signs by which our growth in purity may be known. Fastidiousness, I will first of all caution you, is not any evidence of purity, but the contrary. No, the true signs of purity are these–That we abide in the conscious light of God, while living in a world of defilement, and know Him as a presence manifested in the soul. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Purity sees God. A good conscience signifies the same; for the conscience, like the eye, is troubled by any speck of defilement and wrong that falls into it. A growing sensibility to sin signifies the same; for, if the conscience grows peaceful and clear, it will also grow tender and delicate. If you are more able to be singular and think less of the opinions of men, not in a scornful way, but in love, that again shows that the worlds law is loosing its power over you, and your devotion to God is growing more single and true. Do you find that passion is submitting itself to the gentle reign of God within you, losing its heat and fierceness, and becoming tamed under the sweet dominion of Christian love? That again is the growth of purity. (H. Bushell, D. D.)

The hope of future glory excites to holiness

1. Is it possible for any man to purify himself? Is it not the Spirit of God that must work in us both to will and to do? To this I answer, that we must distinguish of a twofold work of purification.

(1) The first is, the infusing of the habit of purity or holiness into the soul, which is done in regeneration or conversion; and in this respect no man living can be said to purify himself.

(2) The other is the exercising of that habit or grace of purity, which a man received in conversion; by the acting or exercising of which grace he grows actually more pure and holy. And in this respect a man may be said in some sense to purify himself, yet not so as if he were either the sole or the prime agent in this work.

2. But admitting that a man may purify himself in the sense mentioned, yet can he do it to that degree as to equal the purity of Christ Himself?–to purify himself even as He is pure? To this I answer, that even as, denotes here only a similitude of kind, not an equality of degree; that is, he that hopes for glory, gets his heart purified with the same kind of holiness that is in Christ, though he neither does nor can reach it in the same measure of perfection: he gets the same meekness, the same spiritual mindedness and love to the Divine precepts; that is, the same for kind.

I. What is implied and included in a mans purifying of himself, here spoken of in the text. Now that which a man is to remove and to purify himself from is–

1. The power of sin.

(1) Wherein it consists.

(a) A most serious and hearty bewailing of all the past acts of sin by a continually renewed repentance. We may here compare the soul to a linen cloth, it must be first washed to take off its native hue and colour, and to make it white; and afterwards it must be ever and anon washed to preserve and to keep it white. In like manner the soul must be cleansed, first from a state of sin by a converting repentance, and so made pure, and afterwards by a daily repentance it must be purged from those actual stains that it contracts, and so be kept pure. Till it be our power and privilege not to sin, it is still our duty to repent.

(b) The purifying ourselves from the power of sin consists in a vigilant prevention of the acts of sin for the future. If we would keep our garment clean it is not sufficient to wash it only, unless we have also a continual care to keep it from trailing in the dirt. For a restraint of ourselves from the committing of sin bereaves the power of sin of that strength that it would certainly have acquired by those commissions. While a beast is kept in and shut up he still retains his wild nature; but when he breaks out and gets loose his wildness is much more hurtful and outrageous. Now, for the keeping of sin from an actual breaking out, a man should observe what objects and occasions are apt to draw it forth, and accordingly avoid them.

(c) The purifying ourselves from the power of sin consists in a continual mortifying and weakening the very root and principle of inherent corruption. Sin is not only a scar, or a sore, cleaving to one part or member, but it has incorporated itself into the whole man (Job 25:4). A man draws so much filth from his very conception and nativity, that it is now made almost as natural and essential to him to be a sinner as to be a man. Now the chief work of purification lies in the disabling and mortifying this sinful faculty. The power of godliness must be brought into the room of the power of sin.

(2) The means by which it is to be effected–

(a) The first is, with all possible might and speed to oppose the very first rising and movings of the heart to sin; for these are the buds that produce that bitter fruit; and if sin be not nipped in the very bud, it is not imaginable how quickly it will shoot forth. When an enemy is but rising, it is easy to knock him to the ground again; but when he is up, and stands upon his legs, he is not then so easily thrown down.

(b) A second way to purify ourselves from the power of sin is to be frequent in severe mortifying duties, such as watchings and lastings, the use of which directly tends to weaken the very vitals of our corruption. For they are most properly contrary to the flesh; and whatsoever opposes that proportionably weakens sins. Better were it for a man to restrain an unruly appetite, and to stint himself in the measures of his very food and his sleep, than by a full indulgence of himself in these to pamper up his corruption, and give it strength and activity to cast off all bonds, till at length it becomes unconquerable.

(c) A third way to purify ourselves from the power of sin is to be frequent and fervent in prayer to God for fresh supplies of sanctifying grace. There is no conquest to be had over sin but by grace, nor is grace any way so effectually to be procured as by prayer. A praying heart naturally turns into a purified heart.

2. I proceed now to the other thing from which we are to purify ourselves, and that is, the guilt of sin. In speaking of which I shall show–

(1) Negatively, what cannot purify us from the guilt of sin.

(2) Positively, what alone can.

(a) For the first of these. No duty or work within the power and performance of man, as such, is able to expiate and take away the guilt of sin. In this matter we must put our hands upon our mouths, and be silent forever.

(b) In the next place therefore positively, that course which alone is able to purify us from the guilt of sin, is by applying the virtue of the blood of Christ to the soul by renewed acts of faith. It is from His crucified side that there must issue both blood to expiate and water to cleanse our impieties. Faith also is said to purify the heart (Act 15:9). But how? Why certainly, as it is instrumental to bring into the soul that purifying virtue that is in Christ. Faith purifies, not as the water itself, but as the conduit that conveys the water.

II. How the hope of heaven and a future glory comes to have such a sovereign influence upon this work.

1. First upon a natural account; this hope purifies, as being a special grace infused into the heart by the Holy Ghost, and in its nature and operation directly contrary to sin: as heat is a quality both in nature and working, contrary to and destructive of cold. When leaven is cast into the lump it presently begins to work and to ferment, till by degrees it has thoroughly changed the whole mass. In like manner every grace will be incessantly working, till it has wrought over the heart to its own likeness. Now hope is one of the principal graces of the Spirit, so that we have it marshalled with faith and charity, and placed immediately after faith in regard of the method of its operation, which is immediately consequent upon that of faith. For what faith looks upon as present in the promise, that hope looks upon as future in the event. Faith properly views the promise, hope eyes the performance.

2. The hope of future glory has an influence upon this work of purifying ourselves upon a moral account; that is, by suggesting to the soul such arguments as have in them a persuasive force to engage it in this work.

(1) The necessary relation that this work has to the attainment of heaven, as the use of the means to the acquisition of the end.

(2) It is purity alone that can fit and qualify the soul for so holy a place. He that is clothed in filth and rags is not a fit person to converse and live in a court; nor is there anyone who designs the course of his life in such a place but will adorn and dress himself accordingly.

(3) The obligation of gratitude. If I expect so great a gift at Gods hands as eternal happiness, even humanity and reason cannot but constrain me to pay Him at least a temporary, short obedience. For shall I hope to be saved by Him whom I strike at and defy? Or can I expect that He should own me in another world when I reject, despise, and trample upon His commands in this?

(4) Purity is the only thing that can evidence to us our right and interest in those glorious things that we profess ourselves to hope for. (R. South, D. D.)

The Christians hope and its fruits

The one great object of the revelation which God has given us, is to make us happy in making us holy. To this end every part of revealed truth more or less directly tends.

I. The Christians hope–what it is. This hope is, that he shall in every respect, in body as well as in soul, be made wholly like his Saviour. Further, observe that this is a real hope. It is not a mere wish, a doubtful surmise, a faint desire; it is a sure and certain hope. We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him. And, let me add, that hope implies not only a bare expectation, but expectation accompanied with desire, consequently, if the great subject of his hope be the presence of Christ, that presence is what the Christian will desire above all things, and feel to be the perfection of happiness.

II. The effects of this hope. Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure. Now, observe in this the implied certainty of the connection between the hope of the Christian and the life of the Christian; between the sure anticipation of glory hereafter and holiness here. Here, then, are two points we have to consider the extent to which the Christian attains purity, and how far the work of purification is his own. With reference to the first point the meaning manifestly is not that the Christian is even now actually as pure as Christ, but that he endeavours to make himself so. But in what sense is this work his own? The Christian does not, as an independent agent, purify himself. The idea is absurd, and involves an impossibility. But although the work of purification is Gods, we are not mere machines, nor does He treat us as such. He deals with us as with rational, intelligent beings, capable of discerning between good and evil, and of choosing for ourselves. (A. Jenour, M. A.)

The Christians hope and its results

I. The object of a Christians hope.

II. The foundation of these hopes. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. The foundations of such high expectations should be strongly laid; and they are strongly laid, even in the grace of Gods adopting love.

III. What is the practical result of this hope within a believers heart? It is equally powerful and universal. (R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)

The great hope of the sons of God, and its influence on life

I. The great hope of the sons of God–To be like Christ, and that implies an unbounded progress towards perfection. To be like Christ implies two things: perfect communion with God, as the blessedness of life; and perfect self-sacrifice, as the law of life. These were the two great features of Christs human character: to have them is our destiny; to have them is to be perfect.

II. Its influence on life–He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure. To the question, How shall I realise an aim so glorious? John answers–Hope for it–and the hope will gradually become the means of fulfilling itself.

1. As an unconscious influence.

2. As a safeguard against lifes temptations. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)

The purifying effect of hope in Christ

I. The present privileges and future hope of the Christian.

1. The present privilege of the Christian is to look up to God as his Father.

2. But this state of privilege is preparatory to something still higher, more precious and valuable.

II. Is whom and on what basis is he permitted to entertain so glorious and exalted a hope?

1. He has this hope in Christ Jesus our Lord; in God who hath given us His eternal Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and the Holy Spirit to them that obey Him.

2. His hope rests upon the work of Christ upon earth and His glorification in heaven.

III. The effect of this hope on the believers heart and life.

1. This hope is calculated altogether to ensure his sanctification, to cleanse and sublimate his soul.

2. But what is the effect of hope in bringing about this purification? Much every way. The hope of the Christian is altogether calculated to elevate the soul and ennoble the character. Is he the inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, and shall he not prepare himself to take possession of his inheritance?

IV. But after what model must we purify ourselves? We must purify ourselves even as He is pure. He must propose to himself no faulty or defective pattern. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)

A purifying hope

I. The first thing here implied is incorruption. In purity or in holiness there is incorruption, or incorruptibility. Every man that hath this hope has a knowledge of his entire corruption and depravity; and he consequently comes, in his faith, in his desires, in his hope, out of this, and his hope centres in an incorruptible God. He has an incorruptible religion; God the Father appears in His incorruptibility in all the love of His heart, God the Son appears in His incorruptibility, God the Holy Ghost appears in His incorruptibility. We shall be invigorated to all eternity with all the freshness of incorruptibility.

II. Purity signifies also qualification. Every man that hath this hope, comes out of his own thoughts into Gods thoughts, comes out of his own sentiments into Gods sentiments, comes out of his own ways into Gods ways; and therefore we read of a mans ceasing from his own wisdom. What is the whole object of the gospel towards us? Why, to make known the mind of the Lord concerning us; and if I know the mind of God concerning me, that what He has done is for me, that His Holy Spirit is for me, that His testimony in the Holy Scripture is for me, why, being of one mind with Him, I am fit to live with God. There is no collision; there is perfect harmony.

III. Purity also supposes right. Every man that hath this hope conies out of his state of having no right to anything, into a right and title to the things of eternity. And what is our right to eternal glory? Why, that question may be answered several ways, but I answer it in these few words: our right to eternal glory is the authority of God.

IV. Purity supposes also liberty. Where is our bondage? In sin. Sin is our bondage. The flesh, the law, the world–these things are our bondage. But holiness purity is our liberty. Then every man that hath this hope comes into liberty. Christ having led captivity captive, has for Himself and for us perfect liberty. What is to hold Him? The law is established, the covenant confirmed, the promises Yea and Amen: He has dominion over all worlds. (James Wells.)

The pattern of purity

1. The workman is everyone that hath hope in Him, everyone that looks to be like the Lord Jesus in the kingdom of glory, he is the man must set about this task.

2. The work is a work to be wrought by himself; he is a part of the Lords husbandry, and he must take pains as it were to plough his own ground, to weed his own corn, he must purify himself; this is the work.

3. The pattern by which he must be directed is the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christs purity.

I. That a man that is careless of purifying himself, that man must have no hope. Shall we encourage men to that hope, that they shall carry with them to hell? May we say, thou mayest hope to be like Christ in glory, when thou dost not labour to be like Him in purity in this world? We should betray that soul. And do you know, this is the beginning of salvation. When a man hath run hitherto in a naughty course, and now comes to be resolved in his conscience, that if he continue thus he shall perish, I say the revolving of his conscience that way is the beginning of his conversion.

II. Whosoever hopes to be saved must set himself upon this work, to purify himself. But here is as great a difficulty as the other. Doth it lie in the power of a man to purify himself? That is the work of God (Psa 51:10). You must not make one truth of God to destroy another; therefore, for the clearing of it, consider what the apostle writes (Php 2:12). God doth not work things in us or with us, as we do with a spade or a shovel; that is, that we shall be mere patients only, but He works with us suitably to the reasonable soul He hath bestowed upon us. Though principally God, yet there is a concurrence between God and thee; and this is grace, when thy will is made active and able to do things, that now the things done by Gods grace are attributed to men. How may it be done? The examples of the world are like a stream that carries a man clean out of the way of purity.

1. Remember we come to do service to a Father; that is, for encouragement.

2. No means in the world so effectual as when a man would go to Christ to look to His ordinances. What are they? His word and His sacraments.

3. Then go and read a lecture to thyself of watchfulness. What it is to watch, that implies when a man is in great danger to be surprised, that all is untrusty within him, and false abroad; then reason, I had need of a strong watch of every side; I have a false nature, and this flesh of mine is ready to betray me into the hands of the world and of the devil; therefore there must be a marvellous strong guard.

III. The pattern to which we should conform ourselves. The glass we should imitate is our Saviour Jesus Christ, as He is pure. It is not meant thou shouldst ever hope to be as pure in quantity. As is not a note of quantity, but of quality–it shows a likeness. A man that would have his child to write a fair hand, he will not give him an ill copy to write by, but as fair as may be, though there be no possibility the child should write so well as it. So we cannot possibly attain to that purity in Christ, yet the copy must be fair. Scholars, if they will have an elegant style, they set the best orators before them. Thus, though the law of God be perfect, though such a thing as a man is not able to fulfil, yet it is a fit pattern; the copy must be fair, that I may mend my hand by it. And thus, if we go on following our pattern, as the scholars hand, by practice, mends every day, though it never come near the copy, so shall we grow in grace. (R. Sibbes.)

The influence of the Christian hope on the Christian character

The apostle is here speaking of true Christians only. Now are we the sons of God. They have been brought into closer relationship to Him, through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They have received the grace of adoption, and are members of His family. Then the apostle turns our thoughts from the true Christians present advantages to his coming blessedness. They shall see their Saviour as He is. Having spoken of the believers position and prospects, the apostle proceeds to state a third great matter–the influence which a Christians expectation for the future should have on his consecration for the present. The confidence that he will one day be with Jesus, the confidence that he will one day be fully like to Jesus–that helps to make him, in some measure, like to Jesus, even on this side the grave. He that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure. Heaven is largely unknown. Eye hath not seen it, heart hath not conceived its joys; but enough is revealed to make the hope of being there one of the mightiest agents in moulding the character of man, even in this mortal state. What we shall be there is to regulate what we are here. There, there are harps of gold and songs of triumph; there, the light that never fades. From us all that is far away; far from us in point of time and place and character. But yet it is intended by God to work upon us here and now. Through all the intervening space that heavenly glory is to stretch forth its hand, and touch our souls and transform them into the image of our Lord and Master. Let me in the next place direct your attention to some of the details of this great matter. There is no grace of Christian character, to be acquired here, which may not be fostered by the thoughts of what we shall have there. There is that first of all the graces Faith–the foundation stone in the temple of Christian character, the root out of which all other fruits of the Spirit do grow. Maybe some of you have sore conflict with doubts. You have tried many expedients without being satisfied. Have you tried what a clearer hope of heaven will do? If amidst the darkness of this mortal state you can yet read your title clear to mansions in the skies, you will then remember that there is no night there; you will be able to say with the greathearted Arnold of Rugby, In the presence of an admitted mystery, I can lie down as calmly and contentedly as in the presence of a perfectly comprehended truth. Next to faith, the apostle Peter mentions courage. Add fortitude to your faith. Because he is a soldier, a Christian needs to be brave. There will be no cowards in heaven; and there ought to be none in the visible Church below. You will remember what they tell of Nelson, when he had cleared his deck for action and was about to enter into the deadliest struggle with the adversary. Now, he says, now for Westminster Abbey or the peerage! He looked beyond all the darkness and danger of the bloody conflict. If I fall, said he, they will bury me among the noble dead; if I survive, they will give me a place among the noble living. Therefore had he no fear. Therefore was he forgetful of peril. The sight of the future glory inspired him with all the courage the occasion required. Maybe some of you have sadly felt your lack of soldierly courage. You have wanted the boldness to say no, when asked to do some forbidden thing; or if you had the courage to say no, you had not the courage to give the real reasons for so saying. It is in the latter respect that so many fail. I am sure I speak to some who have often been ashamed of their shamefacedness and faithlessness. They have mourned over their want of soldierly fortitude, and have longed for more of the heroic spirit that could dare anything for Jesus sake. Have you ever tried the power of a clearer, stronger hope of heaven? The bravest soldiers of the Cross have been men who drew their inspiration from the world to come. Temperance is a grace of character we have to cultivate in this life. Some of you are saddened by your felt want of this Christian moderation. You feel a constant peril of the world getting too much power over you. The saints of God have tried many remedies for this. Simeon Stylites built his high pillar, and lived on the top of it for thirty years. I am not aware that his worldly mindedness was much diminished by it. The only effective cure is that which Gods Word prescribes, Set your affections on things above. Until you get the other world into its right place in your hearts, you will never keep the present world in all due subordination. The starry circle of Christian graces is not yet complete. There must be patience as well as temperance. What would patience be if it had no hope of heaven to sustain it? It would never be strong enough to do its perfect work. It would languish and die in many a heart. It was never before the mighty thing it hath been since Christ brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Some of you, maybe, have heavy burdens to carry, and you long to carry them more like Christ carried His Cross–without one word of complaint, without one feeling of discontent. Sometimes your greatest trouble is that you cannot bear your troubles. You know what you ought to do, you desire to do it; but, while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. You must try this expectation, a bright hope of heaven. This expectation has never failed. I have seen an aged Christian who has toiled through many a weary year and was a poor man still. Age and infirmity had weakened his efforts, but still he must work to earn his daily bread. Yet have I seen such a one free from all fretfulness and murmuring. He had hope in Christ; and that hope did soar away to heaven, and then came back again with leaves from the tree of life. I pass by other virtues we have to cultivate to speak of those which are last but not least in the apostles inventory of Christian graces–brotherly kindness and charity. Amidst all our divisions and differences, what power of reconciliation there is in the thought: We go to the same home, to join in the same song, to cast our crowns at the feet of the same Divine Saviour! (C. Vince.)

Hope making pure

No sacred inspiration, no emancipating impulse, no consecrating motive, no uplifting enthusiasm, no grand ethical or spiritual force of any sort, can spring from self-despite. Good is not born of evil nor of the mere contemplation and realisation of evil. Convince a man that he is a low creature, a mere animal, evolved fiord lower types, and he will go far toward proving the doctrine true. Make out that a man is the slave of circumstances, the victim of base necessity, and the slave of circumstances and the victim of base necessity will he be. Helpful moral ministry lies in the revelation of the noble and divine in man, the elements of worth, the germs, the potencies of good. The grand characteristic of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it makes a man feel that he is a being of capacity and worth, one whom God loves and cares for, desires to redeem and save, and purposes to do great things by, counting not the cost the process of His grace involves. It sets forth the ideal relation of man as the child of God. What soul but recognises this as the highest, deepest, grandest truth concerning it? What so accentuates the evil into which men have actually fallen as the light of this sublime truth? And what so brings the sense of shame with regard to evil in ourselves and starts the reactions of repentance and resolve, as to realise from what height we have fallen into it, what better purpose our sin has foiled, and with what pain and grief it is regarded by those who know us best and love us most! This is the effect of the revelation of Jesus Christ to the soul. It reveals the man to himself, shows him what he truly is, and awakens the instincts which belong to his deepest affinities and relations. It makes him feel how foreign sin is to his real nature and life, and starts the yearning after goodness. It sets the child of God crying out unto and claiming his Father. Nothing is so terrible as the theory–call it philosophy, science, rationalism, agnosticism, or what you will–that man is abandoned to the evil into which he has fallen, with no help for his recovery. This subverts all the moral principles and paralyses all the moral forces of a life and opens the way for all manner of delusions, sophistries, subterfuges, and shams. But that is a grand, Divine, redeeming, saving religion which shows man that he is a child of God, awakens the instincts of this relation, and leads him into the actual and effectual realisation of what he natively and ideally is, enabling him to say, Beloved, now are we the sons of God. But that will not do for man what he needs which destroys aspiration, and allows to settle upon him the dull satisfaction of a finality, the thought that he has attained to the highest, and that there is no grander possibility and idea calling to him, and challenging endeavour. Mans true life is one of progress and growth. And it is another eminent characteristic of Christianity that it meets this requirement. It sets before man lofty ideals. But something has grown certain by that which already is. We know that our perfecting must come in our religion, not out of it; in our Divine sonship, not out of it. Oh, the sadness of those whose religion has failed them, or who have become stolid and moribund in it, to whom it has become a memory, but ceased to be a hope, and whose good days are behind them! Christianity, where it has a true effect, makes us know that, if certain influences could act upon us completely, if we could be perfect correlation to certain forces, the result would translate and fulfil all our best desires. It is the nature and inevitable effect of hope to train the life into preparation for its own realisation, and to purify it of all that is inconsistent therewith. We pitch our lives at the height of the good we anticipate. The ideal draws us into itself. Thus, hope is the beginning of its own fulfilment. Especially is this the case if the hope be centred, as every great and noble hope must be, by a heart of living personality, and the looked for event is to give to us, and give us to, not only somewhat, but some one. We see this in the forecast of and preparation for the great, solemn, tender, and sacred relations of the present life. How the anticipation of these lifts up the life to their plane! Change is impending by which our life is going to be translated from the present scene and setting, with their poverty and hardness, to a condition of affluence and advantage. How we set our lives in the order of the new days and ways! We say, I shall do this and that by and by, and we begin to do this and that now; I shall have this and that when the change has come, and the anticipation already moulds our tastes and consciousness; my friend lives thus and so, and we begin to live like Him with whom we are soon to be. The provincialisms fall off from us as we contemplate the grand capital of being. The prodigal, through all his homeward journey, must have been becoming ever more and more a son, because he was going to his father. Hawthorne has given profound truth pictorial form in his allegory of The Great Stone Face: The young man, Ernest, had heard, when a child, from his mothers lips, the local prophecy, that some day there should come to the valley one bearing an exact resemblance to the great stone face which they could see in the neighbouring mountain, and being the greatest and noblest personage of the time, should be a great blessing to those among whom he lived; and he had taken the prophecy more seriously than the other inhabitants of the valley. As he had greater faith, he had the power of seeing more clearly than his neighbours the grandeur of the strange, stony outline, and so the prophecy meant more to him than the rest, and the hope of its fulfilment entered more deeply into his life. Ever as the years passed that hope became stronger and of richer meaning. When this one and that one came to the valley and was regarded as the fulfilment of the prophecy–Mr. Gathergold, the millionaire; General Blood and Thunder, the military hero; Old Stony Phiz, the eminent statesman; and the poet, whose wondrous songs glorified both nature and humanity, and had such meaning and charm for Ernest himself, his hope was most eager and rejoicing; but he was always the first to discover that the prophecy was not yet fulfilled. But ever as the prophecys fulfilment was thus deferred, the great stone face seemed to whisper to him, Fear not, Ernest; he will come. As he thus dearly cherished the hope of the great mans coming, he gave himself to doing good, preparing the valley for the great benefactors arrival, doing in his imperfect way what he thought the great one who would fulfil the prophecy would do in his better way when he came. He learned a heavenly wisdom and became involuntarily a preacher, the pure and high simplicity of his soul, which dropped silently in good deeds from his hand, flowing also from his lips in words of truth, so that the people came to him with their needs and troubles, felt in his presence the benignity of the great stone face, and had a greater confidence that one would come who resembled it, until at length, when Ernest had grown old, and with the grey about his face like the mists which often hung about the face in the mountain, the people saw that he resembled it. His hope had configured his features, even as the character of which they were the expression. And the people said, The man resembling the great stone face is with us; but Ernest the more firmly believed that a wiser and better than himself would yet appear. Thus is it ever with our noblest hopes. Thus is it with the grandest of all hopes–that of seeing God. All grossness, triviality, selfishness, sordidness, falsity, scorn, bitterness, and contempt are purged from the heart where such hope abides. Pessimism is the grave of heroism, aspiration, the nurse of noble purpose and generous ardour. He who believes the worst will be, will be his worst. He who believes the best will be, will be his best. And he who hath the hope of seeing Christ and being like Him, will purify himself even as He is pure. The life that is pitched only at temporal ends will be weak in its ethics and liable to allow itself large licence as to means. But when one has attained to the love of the highest and has come to realise that the highest is the most human too, the soul then knows that it belongs to the highest and must be joined to the highest, and the life is governed by sublime attraction. The great question in regard to every life is, Does it respond to the highest, does it cleave to the best? The great Elder Brother, revealing your Divine sonship, making possible its realisation, and setting before you the glory of its consummation, claims you for Himself, claims you for the Father whom He reveals, claims you for the life for which you were made. (J. W. Earnshaw.)

The Christians hope

I. A Christian is described by his hope. Hope is a special act of the new life, and an immediate effect of our regeneration. The animal life fits us to live here, but the spiritual life hath another aim and tendency; it inclineth and disposeth us to look after the world to come.

1. The nature of it. It is a certain and desirous expectation of the promised blessedness: the promise is the ground of it; for hope runneth to embrace what faith has discovered in the promise (Tit 1:2).

(1) The expectation is certain, because it goeth upon the same grounds that faith doth, the infallibility of Gods promise, backed with a double reason, both of which do strongly work upon our hope. First, the goodness of Christ; He would never proselyte us to a religion that should undo us in this world, if there were not a sufficient recompense appointed for us in another world (1Co 15:19). Secondly, the simplicity, and faithful and open plainness which Christ ever used; this is pleaded (Joh 14:2).

(2) The expectation is earnest and desirous, because it is as great a good as human nature is capable of.

2. The necessity of this hope, which is twofold–

(1) To support us under our difficulties. How else could we subsist under the manifold troubles of the present life. Oh, how would a Christian be tossed up and down, and dashed against the rocks, if he were without his anchor!

(2) To quicken our diligence, and put life into our endeavours and resolutions, that we may not faint in the way to heaven (Act 24:16). All the world is led by hope; it is the great principle which sets everyone a work in his vocation and calling. The merchant trades in hope, the husbandman ploughs in hope, and the soldier fights in hope. So what sets the Christian a work, notwithstanding the difficulties which attend his service, the temptations which assault his constancy, the calamities which attend his profession, but only hope? You see to what to turn your eye, and direct your pursuit; it is the everlasting fruition of the ever-blessed God. Secondly, this hope. It is not said he that hath hope in Him, but he that hath this hope; it is not a sensual enjoyment which is propounded as our blessedness, but seeing God as He is, and being like Him; if our hearts be set upon the vision and likeness of God, we will be purifying ourselves more and more. It is not a sensual paradise, but a pure sinless state. Thirdly, this hope in Him. If we expect to receive it from God, we must receive it upon Gods terms, and according to His manner of promising it. Now He promiseth it not absolutely, but conditionally, to the pure and holy, and to none else. Fourthly, observe the quantity of the proposition; it is not particular nor indefinite, but it hath an expression of universality affixed; every man that hath this hope. It is not spoken of some eminent saints, who shall have a greater degree of glory than the ordinary sort of Christians, but of all who have any interest or share in it.

II. The purity and likeness to Christ, which is the effect of this hope.

1. Here is an act done on the believers part, he purifieth himself, or a serious endeavour of purity and holiness. God giveth the new nature, first infuseth the habits of grace, and then exciteth them; and being renewed and excited by God, we set ourselves to seek after holiness and purity in heart and life.

2. It noteth a continued act; it is not he hath purified, but, he purifieth himself; he is always purifying, making it his daily work to clarify and refine his soul, that it may be fit for the vision of God, and the fruition of God.

3. It noteth a discriminating act, He purifieth himself. It is not said, should purify of right, de jure, but de facto; he is, and will be in this work. It is not laid down here by way of precept, or as a rule of duty, which yet would be binding upon us, but as an evidence and mark of trial, whereby the heirs of promise are notified and distinguished from others.

4. It noteth an unlimited endeavour, He purifieth himself. He doth not say from what, he leaveth it indefinitely, because he would include all sin, and exclude none. There must be an endeavour after universal purity. If you will have me descend to particulars, let me warn you of two things–first, fleshly lusts (1Pe 2:11); and, secondly, worldly lusts (Tit 2:12).

III. I now come to the connection between both these.

1. You may take notice of the suitableness of our heart to the object, or the things believed and hoped for. That which we hope for is conformity to Christ, a pure immaculate state of bliss. Men are as their hopes are; if they pitch on carnal things, they are carnal; if upon worldly things, they are worldly. Our affections assimilate us into the objects they fix upon.

2. It is the condition indispensably required of us; it is not an indifferent thing whether we will be holy, yea or no, but absolutely necessary. Heaven is the portion of the sanctified (Act 26:18). (T. Manton, D. D.)

The practical influence of the believers hope

I. The standard of purity is Christ.

1. We should consider Him attentively as the means of elevating our views of holy obedience by His blessed example, and of stimulating us to seek for higher attainments in grace than we are likely to find by our very imperfect knowledge of our yet imperfect brethren.

2. The moral sight, like the mariners, acquires by practice an almost inconceivable keenness; and the highest points of moral beauty in the temper and conduct of Jesus are only visible to him who looks on Him and His perfections continually with ardent attachment, with keen and steady scrutiny, and with holy desire to follow in His steps.

II. The principles of purification which are in operation in the Christians mind.

1. A sense of the love and mercy of God in this dispensation of salvation.

2. Filial affection to God, as having become His child.

3. The expectation of the promised blessing.

4. The spiritual influence by which his belief is maintained.

III. The result accomplished in the believers mind.

1. He that has the Christian hope, obtains a purity of thought and intention.

2. He attains to the purifying of his tempers and dispositions.

3. He attains to the purifying of the affections.

4. He attains to purity of conversation in the world, and of intercourse with his fellow men.

5. He attains to purity of conscience. (Edward Craig, M. A.)

The Christians hope

I. Its objects.

1. The second and glorious appearance of Christ.

2. Complete resemblance to His image.

3. The contemplation of His glory and the enjoyment of His love as the means of perfecting this resemblance.

II. Its certainty.

1. Think on what it rests: not on the schemes of men, which a thousand unforeseen events, and even the failure in a single instance of the means which are employed to accomplish them, may render abortive; but on the purposes of God towards those who are in Christ Jesus–on the determination of infinite wisdom, which no event can thwart.

2. Think of the security of its foundation: this is the work and the grace of Christ.

3. Think, again, what the character and origin of this hope is. It is the hope of seeing Christ, and being like Him; it is the fruit of the Spirit which is shed abroad in the heart.

III. The purifying influence of this hope.

1. The hope of Christs appearance must have a purifying effect on all who truly possess it, because without holiness it is absolutely impossible for them to inherit His glory.

2. The very nature and object of this hope have a purifying tendency. Why is it that the Christian longs for the manifestation of the sons of God? Not merely, or chiefly, because then he shall no more struggle with the distresses, or toils, or sorrows of life; but because then his grateful affections shall flow out in perpetual streams of adoration and obedience towards God and the Lamb; not checked, as at present, by any obstruction of temptation and sin. And can the love and dominion of sin subsist in union with such a hope as this? (D. Dickson, D. D.)

Purification by hope

The Christian is a man whose main possessions lie in reversion. Most men have a hope, but his is a peculiar one; and its effect is special, for it causes him to purify himself.

I. The believers hope.

1. It is the hope of being like Jesus. Perfect, glorious, conqueror over sin, death, and hell.

2. It is based upon Divine love.

3. It arises out of sonship.

4. It rests upon our union to Jesus.

5. It is distinctly hope in Him.

6. It is the hope of His second Advent.

II. The operation of that hope.

1. The believer purifies himself from–

(1) His grosser sins. From evil company, etc.

(2) His secret sins, neglects, imaginings, desires, murmurings, etc.

(3) His besetting sins of heart, temper, body, relationship, etc.

(4) His relative sins in the family, the shop, the church, etc.

(5) His sins arising out of his nationality, education, profession, etc.

(6) His sins of word, thought, action, and omission.

2. He does this in a perfectly natural way.

(1) By getting a clear notion of what purity really is.

(2) By keeping a tender conscience, and bewailing his faults.

(3) By having an eye to God and His continual presence.

(4) By making others his beacons or examples.

(5) By hearing rebukes for himself, and laying them to heart.

(6) By asking the Lord to search him, and practising self-examination.

(7) By distinctly and vigorously fighting with every known sin.

3. He sets before him Jesus as his model.

(1) Hence he does not cultivate one grace only.

(2) Hence he is never afraid of being too precise.

(3) Hence he is simple, natural, and unconstrained.

(4) Hence he is evermore aspiring after more and more holiness.

III. The test of that hope. Actively, personally, prayerfully, intensely, continually, he aims at the purification of himself, looking to God for aid. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Christians hope

The hope of the Christian is the one worthy, enduring hope that is capable of lifting man above the earth and leading him to heaven. For all earthly and human ideals are too near the man to last him more than a little while. No sooner does he propose one such to himself, and begin to mount toward it, than it begins to lose its excellence as he draws nigh to it, and soon it has no power to hold his affections. There is no imaginable state that he cannot so disenchant except heaven, and no model that he cannot unidealise except the Son of God. Therefore, every mere earthly hope is unworthy to rule a man, and if he have no higher, will at last degrade him; because man is greater than any earthly honour he can aspire to, and greater than the world he lives in, and greater than all its achievements and glories–yes, greater than anything except God. Here, now, is the eternal grandeur of Christs religion. It proposes the only worthy and enduring hope to man. It says to you and to me, If you will you may be God-like, for you are the sons of God. And you may be like Him if you will, and see Him as He is. This is the way to the stars. And Jesus, our Elder Brother, has gone before, and opened the way for aspiring man to follow. Behold, they go to Him, out of every nation. One by one they shake off all meaner desires, and lay all meaner purposes down, and as they climb toward Him along the various paths of suffering and of duty their hearts are filled with a common hope–to be like Him, and see Him as He is. (Bp. S. S. Harris.)

Purifying power of hope

In the moulding room of an iron foundry you may see workmen making in fine sand the moulds into which the molten iron will be poured in a day or two. It is delicate work, requiring care and skill. Compared with it, the pouring of the molten iron into the mould seems very easy. But it is not. Air bubbles that weaken the iron are more dangerous than a wrong pattern. It is a great thing to get a good ideal of life. But to work out the ideal, to make it real, to get the work just like the perfect pattern, is no easy thing. There are more failures from the want of faithfulness and skill in the worker than from the want of a good model of the work to be done. Hope has a purifying power.

1. Because it knows that without holiness no man shall see the Lord.

2. Because it creates an atmosphere of life that is death to personal impurity.

3. Because it encourages us to believe that the work of our being made like Christ will be accomplished. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.

4. Because we grow like those we ardently love. (Geo. Cooper, D. D.)

Christian hope influencing present Christian life

There is, in one of the valleys of Perthshire, a tree which sprang up on the rocky side of a little brook, where there was no kindly soil in which it could spread its roots, or by which it could be nourished. For a long time it was stunted and unhealthy, but, at length, by what may be called a wonderful vegetable instinct, it has sent a fibre out across a narrow sheep bridge, which was close beside it, and that fixed itself in the rich loam on the opposite bank of the streamlet, whence it drew sap and sustenance, so that it speedily became vigorous. Now, what that tiny bridge was to the tree, the Resurrection of Christ is to the believer. The Christian life on earth is growing in an unkindly soil; and if it could find no better nourishment than that can furnish it would die; but, taught by the Holy Spirit of God, through faith in the resurrection and ascension of the Lord, it sends a rootlet across the river into the better land, and draws from that all the support it needs to keep it fresh and healthy. (W. M. Taylor.)

The purifying hope

Let thy hope of heaven moderate thy affections to earth. You that look for so much in another world may be very well content with a little in this. Nothing more unbecomes a heavenly hope than an earthly heart. You would think it an unseemly thing to see some rich man, that hath a vast estate, among the poor gleaners in harvest time, as busy to pick up the ears of corn that are left in the field as the most miserable beggar in the company. Oh, how all the world would cry shame of such a sordid man! Well, Christian, be not angry if I tell thee that thou dost a more shameful thing by far, if thou, who pretendest to hope for heaven, be as eager in the pursuit of this worlds trash as the poor carnal wretch is who expects no portion but what God hath left him to pick up in the field of this world. Certainly thy hope is either false, or at best very little. The higher the summer sun mounts above the horizon, the more force it bears to clear and heat the air with his beams; and if thy hope of salvation were advanced to any ordinary height in thy soul, it would scatter these inordinate desires after this world, with which now thou art choked up, and put thee into a greater heat of affection after heaven. (Christian Treasury.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 3. And ever man that hath this hope in him] All who have the hope of seeing Christ as he is; that is, of enjoying him in his own glory; purifieth himself-abstains from all evil, and keeps himself from all that is in the world, viz., the lusts of the flesh, of the eye, and the pride of life. God having purified his heart, it is his business to keep himself in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. The apostle does not here speak of any man purifying his own heart, because this is impossible; but of his persevering in the state of purity into which the Lord hath brought him. The words, however, may be understood of a man’s anxiously using all the means that lead to purity; and imploring God for the sanctifying Spirit, to “cleanse the thoughts of his heart by its inspiration, that he may perfectly love him, and worthily magnify his name.”

As he is pure.] Till he is as completely saved from his sins as Christ was free from sin. Many tell us that “this never can be done, for no man can be saved from sin in this life.” Will these persons permit us to ask, how much sin may we be saved from in this life? Something must be ascertained on this subject: 1. That the soul may have some determinate object in view; 2. That it may not lose its time, or employ its faith and energy, in praying for what is impossible to be attained. Now, as he was manifested to take away our sins, 1Jo 3:5, to destroy the works of the devil, 1Jo 3:8; and as his blood cleanseth from all sin and unrighteousness, 1Jo 1:7; 1Jo 1:9; is it not evident that God means that believers in Christ shall be saved from all sin? For if his blood cleanses from all sin, if he destroys the works of the devil, (and sin is the work of the devil,) and if he who is born of God does not commit sin, 1Jo 3:9, then he must be cleansed from all sin; and, while he continues in that state he lives without sinning against God, for the seed of God remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born, or begotten, of God, 1Jo 3:9. How strangely warped and blinded by prejudice and system must men be who, in the face of such evidence as this, will still dare to maintain that no man can be saved from his sin in this life; but must daily commit sin, in thought, word, and deed, as the Westminster divines have asserted: that is, every man is laid under the fatal necessity of sinning as many ways against God as the devil does through his natural wickedness and malice; for even the devil himself can have no other way of sinning against God except by thought, word, and deed. And yet, according to these, and others of the same creed, “even the most regenerate sin thus against God as long as they live.” It is a miserable salvo to say, they do not sin so much as they used to do; and they do not sin habitually, only occasionally. Alas for this system! Could not the grace that saved them partially save them perfectly? Could not that power of God that saved them from habitual sin, save them from occasional or accidental sin? Shall we suppose that sin, how potent soever it may be, is as potent as the Spirit and grace of Christ? And may we not ask, If it was for God’s glory and their good that they were partially saved, would it not have been more for God’s glory and their good if they had been perfectly saved? But the letter and spirit of God’s word, and the design and end of Christ’s coming, is to save his people from their sins. Dr. Macknight having stated that , purifieth, is in the present tense, most ridiculously draws this conclusion from it: “In this life no one can attain to perfect purity; by this text, therefore, as well as by John 1:8, those fanatics are condemned who imagine they are able to live without sin.” Yes, doctor, the men you call fanatics do most religiously believe that, by the grace of Christ cleansing and strengthening them, they can love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and their neighbour as themselves; and live without grieving the Spirit of God, and without sinning against their heavenly Father. And they believe that, if they are not thus saved, it is their own fault. But a blind man must ever be a bad judge of colours.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Purifieth himself; i.e. not only is obliged hereto, but by the efficacious influence of this hope, if it be of the same kind, (that lively hope, unto which Christians are said to be begotten, 1Pe 1:3), is daily more and more transformed, through a continual intention of mind towards the holy God, upon whom that hope is set, (for it is said to be hope in him, or rather upon him, ), into the image of the Divine purity; knowing also, (which must be a potent inducement to very earnest endeavour this way), that our future conformity to God in glory and blessedness hereafter, depends upon our present vigorous and effectual pursuit of conformity to him in holiness here, Mat 5:8; Heb 12:14. And it is enforced by what follows.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

3. this hopeof beinghereafter “like Him.” Faith and love, as wellas hope, occur in 1Jn 3:11;1Jn 3:23.

inrather, “(resting)upon Him”; grounded on His promises.

purifieth himselfbyChrist’s Spirit in him (Joh 15:5,end). “Thou purifiest thyself, not of thyself, but of Him whocomes that He may dwell in thee” [AUGUSTINE].One’s justification through faith is presupposed.

as he is pureunsulliedwith any uncleanness. The Second Person, by whom both the Law andGospel were given.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And every man that hath this hope in him,…. Or on him, Jesus Christ; for a true hope of that eternal happiness, which lies in likeness to Christ, and in the vision of him, is only founded on his person, blood, righteousness, and sacrifice: and this hope every man has not, only he who is born again; for this grace is implanted in regeneration, when men are of abundant mercy begotten unto it, and have it bestowed upon them as a free grace gift; and which is of great service to them both in life and in death; and among the rest it has this influence and effect upon them, that every such person that has it,

purifieth himself even as he is pure; not that any man can purify or cleanse himself from sin, this is only owing to the grace of God and blood of Christ; nor that any man can be so pure and holy as Christ is, who is free from all sin, both original and actual; but this must be understood either of a man that has faith and hope in Christ, dealing by these with the blood of Christ for purity and cleansing, with whom and which these graces are conversant for such purposes; or of such a person’s imitating of Christ in the holiness of his life and conversation, making him his pattern and example, studying to walk as he walked; to which he is the more excited and stimulated by the hope he has of being a Son of God, a dear child of his, and therefore ought to be a follower of him, and walk as Christ walked, in humility; love, patience, and in other acts of holiness; and by the hope he has of being like unto him, and with him in the other world to all eternity: but then this “as” is only expressive of some degree of likeness and similitude, and not perfect equality, which is not to be expected in this, or in the world to come; believers indeed, who have faith and hope in the justifying righteousness of Christ, may, and should consider themselves pure and righteous, and free from sin, as Christ is; being clothed upon with his robe of righteousness, in which they stand without fault before the throne, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but this does not seem to be the sense of the place here, the argument being to engage the saints to purity and holiness of life and conversation, from the consideration of the great love of God bestowed upon them in their adoption, and from their hope of eternal happiness, as the context shows; see 2Co 7:1; other arguments follow.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Set on him (‘ ). Resting upon () with locative rather than , looking to, Ac 24:15. That is upon Christ (Brooke), upon God (D. Smith), upon God in Christ (Westcott).

Purifieth himself ( ). Present active indicative of , old verb, from (pure from contamination), used of ceremonial purifications (John 11:55; Acts 21:24; Acts 21:26 as in Ex 19:10) and then of personal internal cleansing of heart (Jas 4:8), soul (1Pe 1:22), self (here). Cf. Php 2:12f. the work of both God and man.

As he is pure ( ). As in 1John 2:6; 1John 3:9 (emphatic demonstrative) refers to Christ. Christ can be termed “in virtue of the perfection of his humanity” (Westcott). Our destiny is to be conformed to the image of God in Christ (Ro 8:29).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

1) “And every man that hath this hope in him.” The “this hope” refers to the personal, visible bodily, manifest appearance of Jesus Christ in His return to this earth. John affirmed that valid evidence existed so that every believer was assured of a bodily resurrection, in the likeness of his Lord.

2) “Purifieth himself.” (Greek agnizei) purifies, purges, or cleanseth (heauton) himself, reflexive pronoun. Paul kept his body under subjection, 1Co 9:26-27; John assured this daily cleansing was available to all, 1Jn 1:7-9; Tit 2:12.

3) “Even as he is pure.” (Greek kathos ekeinos agnos estin). Just as or like that one (Jesus Christ) is pure. The purity and holiness of Jesus Christ is the goal of behavior to which each believer should strive Mat 5:48; Heb 12:14; 1Pe 1:15.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

3 And every man that hath this hope He now draws this inference, that the desire for holiness should not grow cold in us, because our happiness has not as yet appeared, for that hope is sufficient; and we know that what is hoped for is as yet hid. The meaning then is, that though we have not Christ now present before our eyes, yet if we hope in him, it cannot be but that this hope will excite and stimulate us to follow purity, for it leads us straight to Christ, whom we know to be a perfect pattern of purity.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

2. Purification from actual sin the test of our sonship, 1Jn 3:3-10.

3. And Even in our humble state the very hope inspires every man to purify himself, aspiring even now to a divine likeness.

Purifieth himself Outwardly, by abstaining from the external acts of sin; inwardly, by cultivating the grace of the sanctifying Spirit within us. He God. If our faith holds to an impure God above us, we are indeed abandoned to impurity; but if the divine holiness is ever our standard of character, then we aspire to the high and holy.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1Jn 3:3. That hath this hope The phrase , signifies, he that keepeth, holdeth, or retaineth: he purifies himself; consequently he is not like a stone, or like a machine, which is entirely passive: God, it is true, gives him all the power by imparting his grace unto him; and this is the use which he is obliged to make of it. It is not said that he purifies himself, as Jesus Christ purifies himself; Jesus Christ was never polluted with any immorality, he therefore has no occasion to purify himself: he is absolutely pure, without spot or blemish, the standard of all moral excellence and perfection; and they who would see him, and be like him in immortal glory and felicity hereafter, must be like him in holiness here. This purifying ourselves, even as Jesus Christ is pure, denotes not an absolute equality to his purity, for that no man can attain unto, but a likeness or resemblance. We may finally observe, that the sacred scriptures do not propose to us a Mahometan paradise of sensual enjoyments as our eternal portion, (the very prospect of which is enough to encourage men in debauchery and sensuality;) but the seeing Christ, and being like that pure and infinitely holy personage: that is, the purest, most spiritual, and most refined enjoyments are proposed to us, as our everlasting reward. The hope of such things, which grace alone can bestow, has the most direct tendency to excite us to purity and holiness; and, in this view, how excellent must that religion be, which promises the promoting of holiness and the spiritual enjoyment of God, as its grand and ultimate reward!

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

1Jn 3:3 shows the moral effect of the Christian hope; not the condition with which the fulfilment of it is connected, as Lcke thinks. The same combination of ideas, only in the form of exhortation, occurs in 2Co 6:18 ; 2Co 7:1 ; 2Pe 3:13-14 .

] namely, the hope of one day being like God. [198] “In the case of . we can, as in 1Jn 2:29 , bring out the converse in the meaning of the apostle: every one and only such” (Dsterdieck). The phrase with dative only here; Act 24:15 : . . ; but with dative: Rom 15:12 and 1Ti 6:17 .

, i.e. ] God is regarded as the basis on which the hope is founded. The idea of maintaining (Spener) is not contained in .

. . .] (comp. on 1Pe 1:22 ), not “to keep oneself pure” ( Mons, Bengel, Russmeyer, etc.), but “to purify oneself, i.e. to make oneself free of everything that is unholy;” in Jas 4:8 it is used synonymously with . This self-purification necessarily follows from the Christian’s hope, because the object of this is to be like God, and therefore also to be holy.

In reference to the opinion that this purification is described as an act of man , Augustine says: videte quemadmodum non abstulit liberum arbitrium, ut diceret: castificat semetipsum. Quis nos castificat nisi Deus? Sed Deus te nolentem non castificat. Castificas te, non de te; sed de illo, qui venit, ut habitet in te. The active impulse of this does not lie in the natural liberum arbitrium of man, but in the hope , which the salvation work of God presupposes in man.

This purification takes place after the pattern ( ) of Christ ( , 1Jn 3:4 ), who is , i.e. “pure from every sinful stain.” The want of harmony which exists in the juxtaposition of the of the Christian and the of Christ, must not induce us to take here otherwise than in 1Jn 3:7 ; 1Jn 2:6 ; 1Jn 4:17 , namely = quandoquidem, so that this clause would add a second motive for the , as Ebrard thinks; the sense rather is, that the purity of Christ is the pattern for Christians, which the Christian by self-purification strives to copy in his life also.

: “the is a quality inherent in Christ” (Lcke); the present is not put for the preterite, but signifies the unbroken permanent state; chap. 1Jn 2:29 .

[198] Ebrard groundlessly would understand by the treasure which is the object of the hope.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2443
THE FRUITS AND EFFECTS OF HOPE

1Jn 3:3. Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

THE people of God are but little known to an ungodly world: instead of being considered according to their true character, they are regarded as hypocrites, enthusiasts, and disturbers of their brethrens peace. But this is easily accounted for: the world know not God; and therefore it is no wonder that they know not his people. But the saints themselves have a very inadequate conception of the honour that is put on them, or of the glory that is reserved for them. They know indeed that they are sons of God; but they have very little idea of what is comprehended in that relation: and as to their eternal state, they can form no precise judgment respecting it; they only know, in the general, that they shall be like God, and be with him for ever. Yet though so little known to the world, and to themselves, they have marks whereby they may be clearly distinguished; they may be known by their uniform endeavours after holiness. To this effect the Apostle speaks in the words before us; from which we shall take occasion to consider,

The Christians hope

Christ is the fountain and foundation of a sinners hope: without Christ, all must have perished: nor has the most eminent saint any more hope than a fallen angel, except as he is interested in the merits of Christ. But through him [Note: The text does not say, , in himself, but , in him, that is, in Christ.] the believer has a glorious hope;

That he is a child of God

[Christ, having purchased us with his own blood, has reconciled us to God, and made us his children. He teaches his followers to consider themselves as standing in this relation to God, not merely like the angels who are his sons by creation, but in a more exalted manner by regeneration and adoption: and he teaches them to expect from him throughout their whole lives the blessing suited to that high dignity [Note: ver. 1. Joh 1:12-13. Mat 6:6; Mat 6:8-9; Mat 6:31-33.]

Now the true Christian hopes that he is brought into this happy state, and that he shall receive from God all those endearing tokens of affection which the relation of sonship emboldens him to expect. This hope of his is founded partly on the merits of his Saviour, and partly on the internal evidence which he has, that he is interested in the Saviour. The mere circumstance of Christ having laid down his life for him, would not be a sufficient ground for him to number himself among the family of God: but when he has the testimony of his own conscience that he has sought acceptance with God through the death of Christ, then he is enabled to indulge a hope that the privileges annexed to such a state belong to him.]

That he shall be with God, and like him, for ever

[The blessings which the saints enjoy are not confined to this life: Being sons of God, they are also heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ [Note: Rom 8:15-17.]. Though they know not yet what they shall be, they know that, when they shall see him, they shall be like him; for they shall see him as he is [Note: ver. 2.]. The time is coming, when they shall all be introduced into his immediate presence, and be with him and like him for ever. This also is an object of the Christians hope He believes that this is the heritage of the saints; and that what God hath promised, he is able, and willing, to fulfil.]

That this is no barren hope, will appear from,

II.

The effect it produces in him

Every Christian will endeavour to purify himself to the uttermost
[The Christian cannot wilfully live in any known sin: he will search out his corruptions, in order to subdue them; and his duties, in order to fulfil them He will propose to himself the Lord Jesus Christ as his pattern: and though he can never hope to attain absolute perfection in this life, he will not rest satisfied with any thing short of that. He would gladly he holy as God is holy, and perfect, even as his Father in heaven is perfect. He considers how the Lord Jesus acted in reference to God: how in reference to man; and what tempers he manifested in the whole of his deportment; then he labours to follow his example, and to walk in all things as he walked.]

To these endeavours he will be stimulated by his hope in Christ:
[He cannot endure to think himself a child of God, and yet act like a child of the devil: he cannot please himself with a prospect of enjoying and resembling God in a future life, without seeking communion with him and a resemblance to him in the present world. He will feel himself impelled to holiness by a sense of duty [Note: He knows he cannot be saved in any other way. Psa 24:3-4. Mat 5:8. Heb 12:14. Rev 21:27.]; by a sense of gratitude [Note: 1Th 2:12. 2Co 5:14-15.]; yea, moreover, by a love of holiness itself [Note: Psa 119:128.]

We must not however imagine that it is by any power of his own that he thus purifies himself; the duty and the exertion are his [Note: Jam 4:8.]: but the power, both to will and to do, proceeds from God alone [Note: Php 2:13.].]

We shall improve this subject,

For conviction

[All profess to have a hope in Christ: but before we conclude that to be well-founded, we must examine what fruits it produces: Are we seeking after universal holiness? Are we contented with no measure of holiness short of perfection itself? Are we setting the Lord Jesus before us, and taking him for our pattern in all our tempers, and in our conduct towards God and man? This is the criterion by which St. John himself teaches us to judge of our hope [Note: ver. 610.]: and St. James confirms itby declaring, that, if in any one point (the not bridling of our tongue, for instance) we allowedly deviate from this path, our religion is vain [Note: Jam 1:26.]. O consider this, lest your hope be only as the spiders web, that will be swept away with the besom of destruction!]

For encouragement

[Though we must not think our hope well founded, unless it produce in us the fruits of righteousness, yet we must not imagine that our righteousness is to be the ground of our hope, or even our warrant to hope in Christ. The only ground of our hope must be found in Christ, and in the promises which God has made to those who believe in him. We must go to Christ as sinners; and then he will enable us to live as saints. This distinction is clearly marked in the text: our hope in Christ is to precede, not to follow, the purification of our hearts: and our holiness is to be the fruit, not the root, of our hope. The same distinction is made by St. Paul also, who, having spoken of our sonship with God, says, Having therefore these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness both of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God [Note: 2Co 7:1. See the same also by St. Peter, 2Pe 1:4.]. We must not wait till we are cleansed, and then embrace the promises: but first embrace the promises; and then make use of them for the cleansing of our souls.

What encouragement does this afford to those who feel the corruption of their hearts, and who, if their own purity were to be the foundation of their hope, would be in utter despair! Go then, how polluted soever ye are, and seek pardon and sanctification at the hands of Jesus; and you shall find him faithful and just to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness [Note: 1Jn 1:9.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

The purity here spoken of must be wholly derived. No man can purify himself. Much less make himself pure, as Christ is pure. But the sense is, that being by regeneration quickened into a new and spiritual life, the child of God that hath this hope in him, beholds himself pure, as Christ is pure in Christ’s purity. He considers himself accepted before God in the Beloved. And he pleads on this well-grounded and assured hope, for a complete justification before God, and a complete sanctification of himself in Christ on this footing. Being justified, (saith the Apostle,) freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; Rom 3:24 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Practical Proofs

1Jn 3:3-12

Sometimes we think it is unspeakably comfortable to live in the society of John the Apostle, because he is so full of tenderness and love and fatherly clemency. He seems to have one subject, and to amplify it with the poetry of the heart; the subject of the Apostle is love: Love God, love one another, love the brethren. In no other part of Holy Writ is the word “love” so frequently and tenderly employed. Yet, if we listen to John wholly, that is to say to his entire speech, we shall find that he is as disciplinary as James, and as doctrinal and practical as Paul. He has a way of his own in introducing practical admonition. It is the way of sacred cunning. The Apostle John never strikes a man down and says, You shall be good, I insist upon it; if you are anything but good I will chastise you, I will hold you up to scorn, and you shall reap the consequences of your own wickedness even here and now, to say nothing of another place and another time. No such language does the Apostle John ever employ; yet, whenever he speaks of love, he makes it a kind of flowery road along which he passes, that at the end of it he may be practical in admonition; that at the close of his wondrous poetic exhibition of love he may state the moral, and enforce it with the omnipotence of tenderness. Sometimes we might think John almost weak in his way of speaking. It is not unusual to represent him as an old man, which he was indeed in years, borne into the Church when he could no longer walk into it, and to further represent him stretching out his hands as if in papal benediction, and saying, “Little children, love one another.” That is only one aspect of his great character; none could sing more sweetly, none could drop his voice into a more touching and pathetic minor: yet who could be more like Sinai? who could hurl the Ten Commandments as if in one sentence with such tremendous force and unerring precision? We have just been revelling in the prospect of development. John has called us “sons of God,” and said, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be,” because life is a revelation, a continual unfolding and infolding, a marvellous and subtle and imperceptible advance, but a sure and inevitable progress: yet, looking over all the detail, he says, this will certainly occur: when our God appears, we shall see him with the vision of our love, we shall hail him with all the animation of our thankfulness, and the very sight of God shall transform us into the image of his divinity.

So the Apostle knew, and did not know. That is the very highest philosophy. To know precisely what we have and what we have not; to put the finger upon the possession, and then to lift it, and point to some other treasure not yet attained but sure to be possessed that is knowledge, that is wisdom, and that is peace. There is no finality in Christian progress. What we know as heaven is only the beginning of our better being. We think of heaven as final, but heaven only opens; the brightest seer that ever peered through the clouds, and read the apocalypse of the sky, only said: “Behold, I see heaven opened.” That is enough: to see openings indicative of further progress, higher education, nobler life; that is heaven, and no other heaven is worth having. The formal conventional notion of heaven must be driven out of men’s minds. We are either in heaven, or we are not in it, or never will be in it. Men are in heaven or in hell now; not in the full heaven, not in the intensest hell, but in our consciousness, our convictions, our spirits witnessing with other spirits, we know where we are. Some men are always talking to God. Others never speak to him; they chatter to the devil; they know his language, they like his style of speech, it suits the vulgarity of their soul, it sets fire to their worst passions and their unholiest ambition. They never pray; what wonder if they dispute about prayer and ask if prayer is ever answered? What wonder that they tire of the altar? they were never there. He who has once prayed prays without ceasing. There is an attitude of prayer which is a posture of weariness: there is an act of fellowship in which the soul says, Disturb me no more, for I have come to the point of rest: here I would build my soul’s tabernacle and here abide for ever.

The Apostle John now says to Christian men, You will know whether you have this hope in you by the degree in which you set to the work of self-purification. We will ask the Apostle to tell us by what signs we may know that we are sons of God. O thou sire of the Church, thou seer of the ages, thou to whose wondering eyes all heaven was revealed in pomp of glory, tell us by what tokens we shall know that we are sons of God. We expect him to give some sentimental reply, as who should say, Are you quiet in soul? do you enjoy a sense of luxuriating in the green pastures? do you know that you are walking by the still waters, the waters of rest, the streams of comfort? Nothing of the kind: he says, If you are good men, you will go with both hands and with all-growing energy at the work of self-cleansing. “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself.” Here is John the disciplinarian, here is the poetry of love brought down to the prose of service. Yet in service, properly accepted and discharged, there is no prose: all work having a good object and a holy inspiration is poetry. When we lose the true idea of work in any sphere of life we become hirelings, and serve with the narrow measure of eye-service and not with the affection and fire of the willing and assenting heart. Then the standard is accessible to every one. It is a practical standard. A man has only to ask himself such questions as, Am I really trying to get purer, tenderer, nobler? do I look as through a microscope at every spot that befouls the robe of my life, that I may get rid of it at once and for ever? have I relaxed my self-discipline? have I said, as a fatalist, I will simply take life as it comes, and let it work out its own consequence? or am I continually giving myself to self-vigilance and self-purification? If we answer these questions, we shall know at once and with certainty where we are in spiritual education and in spiritual prospect. This is reason; behold here, as in a thousand cases which have passed before us, we have our own method of life uplifted, glorified, and applied to its highest uses. In proportion to the measure of our expectation is the measure of our preparation. A man is going to a feast, he is going to sit with great men, he is for an hour or two to be associated with the best life of the metropolis: what does he do? We all know; he prepares himself for the event, he will not be out of harmony with the colour of the occasion, he will not appear without a wedding garment; he will even ask questions as to the etiquette of the occasion, that in no point he may fall short of the dignity of the invitation which he has accepted. O thou wicked and foolish servant, out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee: dost thou prepare for some social pleasure, and forget to put on thy best heart-robes and life-garments in which to meet the King of Glory? I gather up all thy disused robes and rags, and say, Here by these signs I convict thee: thou didst prepare for little feasts, and empty banquets, and noisy revels; on no account wouldst thou walk to the feast; thou must needs ride in some hired, painted chariot: what preparation, what anticipation, what a desire to fall into the harmony and fitness of things! and yet see, O thou worse than beast of the forest, thou hast neglected to provide for the only interview which is worth securing and realising, the interview with thy God. The back-stroke of Christian appeal is tremendous. Christianity substantiates and authorises itself by reason. Christianity gathers up all our fashions customs, methods, and policies, and says at last when we begin to stammer out some vain excuse, Thou wicked and foolish servant, out of thine own mouth do I condemn thee: thy tongue is the sword which shall be thrust through thy life.

By what standard are we to purify ourselves? The words are comparative. Purity admits of degrees; comparing ourselves with ourselves, we may be honourable men. The standard is “as he is pure.” Why, John must have heard the Master say these very words “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect; be ye holy as your Father in heaven is holy.” He brings this flower, this lily, fairer than snow, from the garden of Christ, the paradise of the heart of God. Who can set up the ideal standard? We now say, It is impossible to do what Jesus Christ commands; he must have had some other meaning; when he tells us to resist not evil, we say he must have meant that we are, as far as in us lies, not to strike back when we are struck. He did not say so; if he meant that, it is a pity he did not say it. When Jesus Christ says, “When thou art smitten on the one cheek, turn the other also to the smiter,” we say, That is evidently and obviously impossible; this is idealism, very limpid and extremely beautiful, a thought of translucent idealism, a very fine celestial light shining on the other side of it, making it almost transparent: but it is evidently the higher poetry. It is not given in blank verse, it is not reduced to hexameters. Count Tolstoi comes forth and says, All this means what it says, and if we do not carry out these propositions and commandments to the letter, we have no right to the title of Christians. It would be easier to reply to the Count than to answer him. “Even as he is pure.” Is there no hope? Our hope is in believing that final purity cannot be suddenly snatched; it must be grown up to, attained little by little: “Brethren,” said one, “I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” In that “I press” is everything. He who wants to be pure is pure; he who says he will endeavour by the mighty power of the Eternal Spirit to be as pure as God, has already begun the lustration that will take out of him every taint and stain of evil, a detergence infinite, complete.

After this the Apostle protests against lawlessness. He talks of “transgression.” “Transgression” is only a kind of theological term for lawlessness. John will not have any lawlessness, any eccentricity that starts on its own account and its own motion to work out some other spheres and heavens in God’s universe. John lays down the law after having spoken thus elaborately and poetically of love. Read the fourth verse and onward, and you will find that John talks as if he had never heard of anything but law. John’s mountains faced north and south; on the south all the midday rested, on the north what darkness, and yet what sense of massiveness and majesty!

The Apostle points his appeal by a historical case: “Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother,” literally, “who cut his brother’s throat.” Cut-throats are an ancient race. And wherefore cut he the throat of Abel? “Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous” ( 1Jn 3:12 ) a theological conflict. Theology has shed more blood than ever wicked kings have shed. Theology is often a man-hater and a man-destroyer. The odium theologicum is the most fatal stigma that can be attached to any man. We cannot overcome it or forget it. The sects are fighting to-day, and cutting each other’s throats to-day. The spirit of madness is in the so-called Christian denominations. They do not love one another beyond the point of occasional conference, and the point of an occasional enthusiastic resolution which means nothing. This is another test of Christian progress. Let men drop all theological conflict, and say, Brother, you have as much right to think as I have to think, but, before either of us begins to think farther, let us pray. What unity there is in prayer! what diversity in opinion! Hear these theologues as they resolutionise one another. What statements, what anger, what holy or unholy feeling! so that we say, with the ancient poet, “Can anger dwell in such celestial hearts?” What striving for the victory, what protestations about orthodoxy and heterodoxy! When they come to pray, they say, as they bow, hand-in-hand, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” Let us have no more conflict let us pray without ceasing.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

Ver. 3. Purifieth himself ] That is true hope that runs out into holiness. Faith and hope purge, and work a suitableness in the soul to the things believed and hoped for.

Even as he is pure ] In quality, though not in an equality. There shall be comparatio, though not aequiparatio.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

3 .] And every one that hath this hope (viz., that of being like Him hereafter) on Him (i. e. rested and grounded on God. In God, and grounded on His promises, is all our hope), purifieth himself (these words are not to be taken in any Pelagian sense, as if a man could of himself purify himself: “apart from me,” says our Lord, “ye can do nothing.” Joh 15:5 . The man who purifies himself has this hope, resting upon God. This mere fact implies a will to purify himself, not out of, nor independent of, this hope, but ever stirred up by, and accompanying it. So that the will is not his own, sprung out of his own nature, but the result of his Christian state, in which God also ministers to him the power to carry out that will in self-purification. So that Aug [41] who pleads strongly for free will here, is right when he says “castificas te, non de te, sed de illo qui venit ut inhabitet te.” See 2Co 7:1 , which is remarkably parallel: and 1Pe 1:21-22 . The idea of is much the same as that of , ch. 1Jn 1:9 ; it is entire purification, not merely from unchastity but from all defilement of flesh and spirit. “In the LXX, the word ( ) appears to be synonymous with , being used for and like words. Levitical purity of persons and things (Num 8:21 ; Num 31:19 ; Num 31:23 ; 1Ch 15:12 ), the pure life of the Nazarenes ( Num 6:2-3 ), the purity of God’s word (Psa 11:7 ; Psa 18:10 ), all these are expressed by , &c. And correspondent to this is N. T. usage. The purity of the wisdom that cometh from above ( Jam 3:17 ), the purity of those who had to keep a vow (Act 21:24 ; Act 21:26 ; Act 24:18 ), the absence of moral stain in the Christian character generally, which includes above all things purity of heart (1Pe 1:22 ; Jas 4:8 ; 2Co 6:6 ; 1Ti 5:22 ; cf. Phi 4:8 ; 1Pe 3:2 ), and the particular purity of chastity (Tit 2:5 ; 1Ti 4:12 ; 1Ti 5:2 ; 2Co 11:2 ), all these are rightly included in the name .” Dsterdieck), even as He is pure (Who is intended by ? Clearly below in 1Jn 3:5 , Christ, from the facts of the case. But is it as clear here? Almost all the modern Commentators assume it. And certainly, first appearances are greatly in its favour: the usual rule requiring that shall point to a third person as yet not spoken of in the context, and differing from . The inference is also upheld by a first view of ch. 1Jn 2:6 , where much the same expression is used, and used of Christ. But there are some weighty considerations against the view. First, it is the Father , of whom it is written, “Be ye holy, for (or, as) I am holy,” 1Pe 1:15-16 ; Lev 11:44 ; Lev 19:2 ; cf. also Mat 5:48 . Secondly, it would be very harsh thus to introduce a new subject, in the face of this Scripture usage. Thirdly, it would be against the whole spirit of the context: in which sonship of God and likeness to God are joined together, and the hopes belonging to the state are made motives for the duty. Fourthly, if it be asserted that Christ is our Pattern, in whom we see the Father’s purity shewn forth; I answer that this would be perfectly intelligible, if allusion was made, as in ch. 1Jn 2:6 , to some historical manifestation in our Lord’s life ( ): but being as it is in the present tense, it refers to the essential divine attribute of purity: and if so, then to that attribute in its primary inherence in the Father. Fifthly, the usage of with does not at all require the change of persons, only a change of the phase of predication regarding the same person, and the throwing up into emphasis some new particular which is brought into view. See this discussed on 2Ti 2:26 , and consult also the note on ch. 1Jn 2:6 , where it is very doubtful whether and do not refer to the same divine Person. For these reasons, I would interpret here of the Father, in whom essentially abides this perfection of purity, and after continual increase of likeness to whom his sons, having the ultimate hope of being completely like Him, will be striving. In 1Jn 3:5 the case is otherwise: see there, and also on 1Jn 3:7 ).

[41] Augustine, Bp. of Hippo , 395 430

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

1Jn 3:3 . The duty which our destiny imposes. , “resting on Him,” i.e. , on God as Father. Cf. Luk 5:5 : , “relying on Thy word”. , Christ; see note on 1Jn 2:6 . also proves that the reference is to Christ. As distinguished from , which implies absolute and essential purity, it denotes purity maintained with effort and fearfulness amid defilements and allurements, especially carnal. Cf. Plat. Def. : . Suid.: . God is called but never . Christ is because of His human experience. The duty of every one in view of his appearing before God, his presentation to the King, is , like the worshippers before the Feast (Joh 11:55 ), like the people before the Lord’s manifestation at Sinai (Exo 19:10-11 , LXX). It is his own work, not God’s, or rather it is his and God’s. Cf. Phi 2:12-13 . Aug.: “Videte quemadmodum non abstulit liberum arbitrium, ut diceret, castificat semetipsum . Quis nos castificat nisi Deus? Sed Deus te nolentem non castificat. Ergo quod adjungis voluntatem tuam Deo, castificas teipsum.”

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

1 John

THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE

1Jn 3:3 .

That is a very remarkable ‘and’ with which this verse begins. The Apostle has just been touching the very heights of devout contemplation, soaring away up into dim regions where it is very hard to follow,–’We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’

And now, without a pause, and linking his thoughts together by a simple ‘and,’ he passes from the unimaginable splendours of the Beatific Vision to the plainest practical talk. Mysticism has often soared so high above the earth that it has forgotten to preach righteousness, and therein has been its weak point. But here is the most mystical teacher of the New Testament insisting on plain morality as vehemently as his friend James could have done.

The combination is very remarkable. Like the eagle he rises, and like the eagle, with the impetus gained from his height, he drops right down on the earth beneath!

And that is not only a characteristic of St. John’s teaching, but it is a characteristic of all the New Testament morality–its highest revelations are intensely practical. Its light is at once set to work, like the sunshine that comes ninety millions of miles in order to make the little daisies open their crimson-tipped petals; so the profoundest things that the Bible has to say are said to you and me, not that we may know only, but that knowing we may do, and do because we are.

So John, here: ‘We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ ‘And’–a simple coupling-iron for two such thoughts–’every man that hath this hope in Him’–that is, in Christ, not in himself, as we sometimes read it–’every man that hath this hope,’ founded on Christ, ‘purifies himself even as He is pure.’

The thought is a very simple one, though sometimes it is somewhat mistakenly apprehended. Put into its general form it is just this:–If you expect, and expecting, hope to be like Jesus Christ yonder, you will be trying your best to be like Him here. It is not the mere purifying influence of hope that is talked about, but it is the specific influence of this one hope, the hope of ultimate assimilation to Christ leading to strenuous efforts, each a partial resemblance of Him, here and now. And that is the subject I want to say a word or two about now.

I. First, then, notice the principle that is here, which is the main thing to be insisted upon, namely, If we are to be pure, we must purify ourselves.

There are two ways of getting like Christ, spoken about in the context. One is the blessed way, that is more appropriate for the higher Heaven, the way of assimilation and transformation by beholding–’If we see Him’ we shall be ‘like Him.’ That is the blessed method of the Heavens. Yes, but even here on earth it may to some extent be realised! Love always breeds likeness. And there is such a thing, here on earth and now, as gazing upon Christ with an intensity of affection, and simplicity of trust, and rapture of aspiration, and ardour of desire which shall transform us in some measure into His own likeness. John is an example of that for us. It was a true instinct that made the old painters always represent him as like the Master that he sat beside, even in face. Where did John get his style from? He got it by much meditating upon Christ’s words. The disciple caught the method of the Master’s speech, and to some extent the manner of the Master’s vision.

And so he himself stands before us as an instance of the possibility, even on earth, of this calm, almost passive process, and most blessed and holiest method of getting like the Master, by simple gazing, which is the gaze of love and longing.

But, dear brethren, the law of our lives forbids that that should be the only way in which we grow like Christ. ‘First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,’ was never meant to be the exhaustive, all-comprehensive statement of the method of Christian progress. You and I are not vegetables; and the Parable of the Seed is only one side of the truth about the method of Christian growth. The very word ‘purify’ speaks to us of another condition; it implies impurity, it implies a process which is more than contemplation, it implies the reversal of existing conditions, and not merely the growth upwards to unattained conditions.

And so growth is not all that Christian men need; they need excision, they need casting out of what is in them; they need change as well as growth. ‘Purifying’ they need because they are impure, and growth is only half the secret of Christian progress.

Then there is the other consideration, viz., if there is to be this purifying it must be done by myself. ‘Ah!’ you say, ‘done by yourself? That is not evangelical teaching.’ Well, let us see. Take two or three verses out of this Epistle which at first sight seem to be contradictory of this. Take the very first that bears on the subject:–’The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin’ 1Jn 1:7. ‘If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ 1. 9. ‘He that abideth in Him sinneth not’ 1Jn 3:6. ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith’ 1Jn 5:4.

Now if you put all these passages together, and think about the general effect of them, it comes to this: that our best way of cleansing ourselves is by keeping firm hold of Jesus Christ and of the cleansing powers that lie in Him. To take a very homely illustration–soap and water wash your hands clean, and what you have to do is simply to rub the soap and water on to the hand, and bring them into contact with the foulness. You cleanse yourselves. Yes! because without the friction there would not be the cleansing. But is it you, or is it the soap, that does the work? Is it you or the water that makes your hands clean? And so when God comes and says, ‘Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, your hands are full of blood,’ He says in effect, ‘Take the cleansing that I give you and rub it in, and apply it: and your flesh will become as the flesh of a little child, and you shall be clean.’

That is to say, the very deepest word about Christian effort of self-purifying is this–keep close to Jesus Christ. You cannot sin as long as you hold His hand. To have Him with you;–I mean by that to have the thoughts directed to Him, the love turning to Him, the will submitted to Him, Him consciously with us in the day’s work. To have communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently; and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives, by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller lights at night–it keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the fold.

Christ’s fellowship is our cleansing, and the first and main thing that we have to do in order to make ourselves pure is to keep ourselves in union with Him, in whom inhere and abide all the energies that cleanse men’s souls. Take the unbleached calico and spread it out on the green grass, and let the blessed sunshine come down upon it, and sprinkle it with fair water; and the grass and the moisture and the sunshine will do all the cleansing, and it will glitter in the light, ‘so as no fuller on earth can white it.’

So cleansing is keeping near Jesus Christ. But it is no use getting the mill-race from the stream into your works unless you put wheels in its way to drive. And our holding ourselves in fellowship with the Master in that fashion is not all that we have to do. There have to be distinct and specific efforts, constantly repeated, to subdue and suppress individual acts of transgression. We have to fight against evil, sin by sin. We have not the thing to do all at once; we have to do it in detail. It is a war of outposts, like the last agonies of that Franco-Prussian war, when the Emperor had abdicated, and the country was really conquered, and Paris had yielded, but yet all over the face of the land combats had to be carried on.

So it is with us. Holiness is not feeling; it is character. You do not get rid of your sins by the act of divine amnesty only. You are not perfect because you say you are, and feel as if you were, and think you are. God does not make any man pure in his sleep. His cleansing does not dispense with fighting, but makes victory possible.

Then, dear brethren, lay to heart this, as the upshot of the whole matter: First of all, let us turn to Him from whom all the cleansing comes; and then, moment by moment, remember that it is our work to purify ourselves by the strength and the power that is given to us by the Master.

II. The second thought here is this: This purifying of ourselves is the link or bridge between the present and the future.-

‘Now are we the sons of God,’ says John in the context. That is the pier upon the one side of the gulf. ‘It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He is made manifest we shall be like Him.’ That is the pier on the other. How are the two to be connected? There is only one way by which the present sonship will blossom and fruit into the future perfect likeness, and that is,–if we throw across the gulf, by God’s help day by day here, that bridge of our effort after growing likeness to Himself, and purity therefrom.

That is plain enough, I suppose. To speak in somewhat technical terms, the ‘law of continuity’ that we hear so much about, runs on between earth and Heaven; which, being translated into plain English, is but this–that the act of passing from the limitations and conditions of this transitory life into the solemnities and grandeurs of that future does not alter a man’s character, though it may intensify it. It does not make him different from what he was, though it may make him more of what he was, whether its direction be good or bad.

You take a stick and thrust it into water; and because the rays of light pass from one medium to another of a different density, they are refracted and the stick seems bent; but take the human life out of the thick, coarse medium of earth and lift it up into the pure rarefied air of Heaven, and there is no refraction; it runs straight on. Straight on! The given direction continues; and in whatever direction my face is turned when I die, thither my face will be turned when I live again.

Do not you fancy that there is any magic in coffins and graves and shrouds to make men different from their former selves. The continuity runs clean on, the rail goes without a break, though it goes through the Mont Cenis tunnel; and on the one side is the cold of the North, and on the other the sunny South. The man is the same man through death and beyond.

So the one link between sonship here and likeness to Christ hereafter is this link of present, strenuous effort to become like Him day by day in personal purity. For there is another reason, on which I need not dwell, viz., unless there be this daily effort on our part to become like Jesus Christ by personal purity, we shall not be able to ‘see Him as He is.’ Death will take a great many veils off men’s hearts. It will reveal to them a great deal that they do not know, but it will not give the faculty of beholding the glorified Christ in such fashion as that the beholding will mean transformation. ‘Every eye shall see Him,’ but it is conceivable that a spirit shall be so immersed in self-love and in godlessness that the vision of Christ shall be repellent and not attractive; shall have no transforming and no gladdening power. And I beseech you to remember that about that vision, as about the vision of God Himself, the principle stands true; it is ‘the pure in heart that shall see God’ in Christ. And the change from life to the life beyond will not necessarily transform into the image of His dear Son. You make a link between the present and the future by cleansing your hands and your hearts, through faith in the cleansing power of Christ, and direct effort at holiness.

III. Now I must briefly add finally: that this self-cleansing of which I have been speaking is the offspring and outcome of that ‘hope’ in my text.

It is the child of hope. Hope is by no means an active faculty generally. As the poets have it, she may ‘smile and wave her golden hair’; but she is not in the way of doing much work in the world. And it is not the mere fact of hope that generates this effort; it is, as I have been trying to show you, a certain kind of hope–the hope of being like Jesus Christ when ‘we see Him as He is.’

I have only two things to say about this matter, and one of them is this: of course, such strenuous effort of purity will only be the result of such a hope as that, because such a hope will fight against one of the greatest of all the enemies of our efforts after purity. There is nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then all at once he drops down, and further down than he was before he started.

Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, that we have to remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. And then we feel that it is all of no use to strive, and we let circumstances shape us, and give up all thoughts of reformation.

To such moods then there comes, like an angel from Heaven, that holy, blessed message, ‘Cheer up, man! “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”‘ Every inch that you make now will tell then, and it is not all of no use. Set your heart to the work, it is a work that will be blessed and will prosper.

Again, here is a test for all you Christian people, who say that you look to Heaven with hope as to your home and rest.

A great deal of the religious contemplation of a future state is pure sentimentality, and like all pure sentimentality is either immoral or non-moral. But here the two things are brought into clear juxtaposition, the bright hope of Heaven and the hard work done here below. Now is that what the gleam and expectation of a future life does for you?

This is the only time in John’s Epistle that he speaks about hope. The good man, living so near Christ, finds that the present, with its ‘abiding in Him’ is enough for his heart. And though he was the Seer of the Apocalypse, he has scarcely a word to say about the future in this letter of his, and when he does it is for a simple and intensely practical purpose, in order that he may enforce on us the teaching of labouring earnestly in purifying ourselves.

My brother, is that your type of Christianity? Is that the kind of inspiration that comes to you from the hope that steals in upon you in your weary hours, when sorrows, and cares, and changes, and loss, and disappointments, and hard work weigh you down, and you say, ‘It would be blessed to pass hence’? Does it set you harder at work than anything else can do? Is it all utilised? Or if I might use such an illustration, is it like the electricity of the Aurora Borealis, that paints your winter sky with vanishing, useless splendours of crimson and blue? or have you got it harnessed to your tramcars, lighting your houses, driving sewing-machines, doing practical work in your daily life? Is the hope of Heaven, and of being like Christ, a thing that stimulates and stirs us every moment to heroisms of self-surrender and to strenuous martyrdom of self-cleansing?

All is gathered up into the one lesson. First, let us go to that dear Lord whose blood cleanseth from all sin, and let us say to Him, ‘Purge me and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’ And then, receiving into our hearts the powers that purify, in His love and His sacrifice and His life, ‘having these promises’ and these possessions, ‘Dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

in = upon (App-104.), i.e. set, or fixed on.

purifieth. Greek. hagnizo. See Act 21:24.

even as. See 1Jn 2:6.

pure. Greek. hagnos. See 2Co 7:11.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

3.] And every one that hath this hope (viz., that of being like Him hereafter) on Him (i. e. rested and grounded on God. In God, and grounded on His promises, is all our hope), purifieth himself (these words are not to be taken in any Pelagian sense, as if a man could of himself purify himself: apart from me, says our Lord, ye can do nothing. Joh 15:5. The man who purifies himself has this hope, resting upon God. This mere fact implies a will to purify himself, not out of, nor independent of, this hope, but ever stirred up by, and accompanying it. So that the will is not his own, sprung out of his own nature, but the result of his Christian state, in which God also ministers to him the power to carry out that will in self-purification. So that Aug[41] who pleads strongly for free will here, is right when he says castificas te, non de te, sed de illo qui venit ut inhabitet te. See 2Co 7:1, which is remarkably parallel: and 1Pe 1:21-22. The idea of is much the same as that of , ch. 1Jn 1:9; it is entire purification, not merely from unchastity but from all defilement of flesh and spirit. In the LXX, the word () appears to be synonymous with , being used for and like words. Levitical purity of persons and things (Num 8:21; Num 31:19; Num 31:23; 1Ch 15:12), the pure life of the Nazarenes (Num 6:2-3), the purity of Gods word (Psa 11:7; Psa 18:10), all these are expressed by , &c. And correspondent to this is N. T. usage. The purity of the wisdom that cometh from above (Jam 3:17), the purity of those who had to keep a vow (Act 21:24; Act 21:26; Act 24:18), the absence of moral stain in the Christian character generally, which includes above all things purity of heart (1Pe 1:22; Jam 4:8; 2Co 6:6; 1Ti 5:22; cf. Php 4:8; 1Pe 3:2), and the particular purity of chastity (Tit 2:5; 1Ti 4:12; 1Ti 5:2; 2Co 11:2),-all these are rightly included in the name . Dsterdieck), even as He is pure (Who is intended by ? Clearly below in 1Jn 3:5, Christ, from the facts of the case. But is it as clear here? Almost all the modern Commentators assume it. And certainly, first appearances are greatly in its favour: the usual rule requiring that shall point to a third person as yet not spoken of in the context, and differing from . The inference is also upheld by a first view of ch. 1Jn 2:6, where much the same expression is used, and used of Christ. But there are some weighty considerations against the view. First, it is the Father, of whom it is written, Be ye holy, for (or, as) I am holy, 1Pe 1:15-16; Lev 11:44; Lev 19:2; cf. also Mat 5:48. Secondly, it would be very harsh thus to introduce a new subject, in the face of this Scripture usage. Thirdly, it would be against the whole spirit of the context: in which sonship of God and likeness to God are joined together, and the hopes belonging to the state are made motives for the duty. Fourthly, if it be asserted that Christ is our Pattern, in whom we see the Fathers purity shewn forth; I answer that this would be perfectly intelligible, if allusion was made, as in ch. 1Jn 2:6, to some historical manifestation in our Lords life ( ): but being as it is in the present tense, it refers to the essential divine attribute of purity: and if so, then to that attribute in its primary inherence in the Father. Fifthly, the usage of with does not at all require the change of persons, only a change of the phase of predication regarding the same person, and the throwing up into emphasis some new particular which is brought into view. See this discussed on 2Ti 2:26, and consult also the note on ch. 1Jn 2:6, where it is very doubtful whether and do not refer to the same divine Person. For these reasons, I would interpret here of the Father, in whom essentially abides this perfection of purity, and after continual increase of likeness to whom his sons, having the ultimate hope of being completely like Him, will be striving. In 1Jn 3:5 the case is otherwise: see there, and also on 1Jn 3:7).

[41] Augustine, Bp. of Hippo, 395-430

Fuente: The Greek Testament

1Jn 3:3. , hope) He has treated of faith, and he will treat of it again: in the next place, he will treat of love; now he speaks of hope.- , in Him) in God.-, purifieth) This mention of holiness is appropriate after speaking of sight, which is delighted with purity.-, He) Jesus Christ: 1Jn 3:5.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

1Jn 3:3-12

ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS

OF SINFUL CONDUCT

(1Jn 3:3-12)

3 And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.–The “hope” which we have is in being like him when he shall appear; and he who is in possession of this hope keeps himself pure, even as Christ, whom we shall be like when he appears, is pure. The meaning is, we have a hope; this hope is to awake in the likeness of the Saviour; the possession of this hope leads one to keep himself pure, this being a condition precedent to its realization; the pattern for this purity is Christ, himself. The verb “purifieth” (hagnizei, present active indicative), is a continuous act, keeps on purifying, an essential prerequisite to the maintenance of the hope which we have in him. Taught here, in the most emphatic fashion is, (1) the con-ditionality of our salvation; (2) the necessity of abstaining from every form of impurity; (3) the encouragement to faithfulness which hope affords; and (4) the example of purity which Christ himself supplies.

This passage may not be legitimately cited to sustain the view that it is possible for a child of God to live above sin here. (1) Such a view is opposed to other statements by the same writer. (1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 2:1.) (2) Such is a misapprehension of what is here taught. If this passage teaches that one can purify himself to the extent he is above sin, it teaches that every one who has hope in Christ can do so, in which case all who have hope in the Lord are above sin. We are purified by complying with the con-ditions on the basis of which the Lord forgives us: “If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1Jn 1:7-9.) This passage, instead of teaching us that it is possible to live above sin, actually teaches the opposite of this, by indicat-ing the means by which we overcome the effect of sin in our lives. By striving for the purity which the Lord possesses we reach for the goal which will be finally realized when he appears.

4 Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness and sin is lawlessness.–Here, again, the connection with what has gone before, in the Epistle, is immediately apparent, and should not be overlooked. The theme of this section is set forth in 2:29: “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him. Verses 1-3, of this chapter, in the development of this theme, emphasize the fact that the doing of righteousness is proof of the new birth; and when such evidence does not exist, there is no sonship. Verses 4-10, establish the utter impossibility of reconciling sin with the work of redemption, with fellowship with Christ, and with the new birth. These con-necting links are not to be ignored in the study of the Epistle; they are, indeed, essential to the understanding of the design of the author. Having shown, in the foregoing verses, what the fatherhood of God (and the consequent sonship which relates) includes, he then proceeds to show what it excludes.

In the statement which constitutes a definition of sin, the apostle wrote, “Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness and sin is lawlessness.” It is easily possible that it was the purpose of the apostle to encourage his readers to refrain from sin by showing its essential and inherent nature, more than to set out a formal defini-tion thereof, but it still remains that his statement is a definition of sin, simply and plainly put. Sin is translated from the Greek hamartia, the literal meaning of which is “to miss the mark,” and as here used, to veer away from that which is right. It is a general term embracing every form of wrong-doing, all divergence from that which is right. The verbs “doeth” in the first clause are both in the present tense, the force of which, in Greek, is to indicate continuous action. It is the habitual practice of sin which is here contemplated. “Lawlessness,” (anomia) is that state or manner of life wherein one fails to conform to law, whether in positive disobedience thereto, or in failing to come up to its demands. It is action contrary to law, whatever the form in which the action takes place. It embraces si both positively and negatively; it in-cludes sins of omission as well as sins of commission.

The meaning is that whoever practices sin is a lawless person; by his sinful life he has become a violator of the law for “sin is the transgression of the law.” (1Jn 3:4 AV.) This, John wrote, in order to impress his readers with the fact that all sin is a viola-tion of the law of God; and since the violation of his law leads to condemnation, no sin, however small or insignificant it may ap-pear to us to be, should be regarded lightly. In view of conditions which then prevailed this was a sorely needed lesson. Certain heretical sects of the time held that their superior knowledge (the Gnostics) made them immune from the demands of the law, and that God did not, in their case, impute to them wrongdoing even though their conduct was in conflict with God’s law. The apostle here shows that the wickedness of sin is in the fact that it is dis-regard for, and disobedience to, the law of God, for sin, all sin, any sin, is lawlessness. It follows, therefore, that any sin is serious, because it puts one under condemnation of the law

In the Greek text, both sin and lawlessness have the article before them; each term is the equivalent of the other and they are, therefore, interchangeable. Sin is lawlessness; and lawlessness is also sin. One who veers away from the right is a lawless person ; a lawless person is one who veers from the right. To “miss the mark,” whether it be going beyond that which is right, or in failing to measure up to it, puts one in the position of being a law vio-lator, and one who violates the law of God is, of course, a sinner. The connection with the context thus becomes apparent: if we would sustain and preserve the hope which we possess, we must continue to purify ourselves. A failure to do so is to lapse into a life of sin; and a life of sin is lawlessness.

5 And ye know that he was manifested to take away sins ;and in him is no sin.–Two additional reasons are thus ad-vanced why Christians are not to engage in the practice of sin (1) Christ was manifested to take away sins (2) in him, who is our example, there is no sin. The manifestation of Christ here referred to was his entrance into the world, in the flesh, the purpose of which was to “take away sins.” (Mat 1:21.) The article (the) appears before the word “sins” in the Greek text, and the meaning is, Jesus came into the world to take away the sins of the world, all sin, not merely one sin here and another there.

The design of the Lord’s appearance was, therefore, in part, to take away sins. The verb take away is translated from arei, first aorist subjunctive of afro, occurring also in Joh 1:29. It conveys the idea of a burden or load which is lifted in order that it may not crush him upon whom it rests; and, as here figuratively used, it signifies the lifting and carrying away of sins that they may be upon us no more. Being in the aorist tense, the act is a once-for-all process, in which by one offering the Lord accomplished his purpose henceforth and forever. Implied in the word is the idea of atonement, reconciliation, expiation and sanctification, all of which the Lord accomplished in his death, though the primary meaning here is the bearing away of sin. The lesson the apostle desired to reach is that all sin must be shunned and voided for Christ came into the world for the purpose of removing sin from us, and to continue to participate therein would frustrate his pur-pose and thwart his plan for those for whom he suffered. Forms of the word thus translated occur in the Septuagint translation in Isa 53:11, and in Heb 10:4; Heb 10:11, in each of which the primary meaning “to take away” is retained. In taking away sin, the Lord abolishes the guilt, the power, and the punishment thereof, thus making it possible for his children to entertain an assured hope of salvation. Such Paul must have had in mind when he wrote, “Christ . . . gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a people for his own possession, zealous of good works.” (Tit 2:14.)

In view of the fact that the Lord became incarnate in order that he might take away our sins, the proper regard for this should serve as a mighty incentive to all Christians to refrain from all wil-ful participation therein. (1) To engage in sin, in view of the design which led to his death, is to thwart the purpose and plan of the Lord and to render his sacrifice in vain. (2) As disciples of his, it is proper that we should follow such a course as would result in the furtherance of his purposes and plans for men. (3) To indulge in sin is to practice that which was the occasion for the ignominy and shame which were heaped upon the Lord at his crucifixion. (4) To persist in such practices in view of what sin did to him reveals a perverseness and depravity of heart wholly inconsistent with that which characterizes those who love and serve him.

The second clause, “and in him is no sin,” is, if literally rendered, and sin in him is not.” It is an emphatic and positive affirmation of the Lord’s freedom from sin. Being himself ab-solutely free from sin, and without any admixture of wrong in him whatsoever, it is only as we “purify” ourselves, (verse 3), and abstain from all sinful practices, that we are able to approach the perfect standard his life constitutes. That our Lord was wholly free from sin every moment of his life is a fact clearly taught in the sacred writings. Jesus declared it himself (Joh 7:18; Joh 8:46) and it was often affirmed of him (2Co 5:21; Heb 4:15; Heb 7:26; Heb 9:13). It follows, therefore, that those who would imitate him in manner of life today must strive for the same inherent purity. “For hereunto were we called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.” (1 Pet. 2 21-23.)

6 Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sin-neth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him.–The ideas which this verse contains were favorite ones with the apostle, and are repeated, in one form or another, throughout his writings. The word “abideth,” for example, occurs (in one of its various forms) in John 5:38; 6:56; 14:10 15:4, 5, 6, 7, 9; 1 John 2 6, 10, 14, 17, 27; 3:6, 25; 4:12, 13, 15, 16. It was likely sug-gested to him by the Lord in the familiar and impressive statement of Joh 15:4-6 : “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit for apart from me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” The word “abide” is translated from a word (Meno) which means to settle down and remain, as in one’s permanent home. Here, in addition to its literal meaning, it denotes the intimate relationship which exists between the Lord and his disciples, the close and continuing connection which obtains between him and those who derive their life from him. Not only does the word itself suggest an abode in Christ; the tense necessitates this conclusion also, “whosoever keeps on abiding . . .”

“Whosoever keeps on abiding in him sinneth not.” Here, too, the apostle gives utterance to an idea which is often expressed in one way or another in his Epistles. (1Jn 2:24; 1Jn 3:9; 1Jn 5:18 ; 3Jn 1:11.) (1) Whosoever abides in him sins not (2) whoso-ever is begotten of God does not sin; (3) he that does evil has not seen God. These propositions are developed in much detail throughout the first Epistle; and the ideas which they contain were favorite ones with John. The apostle did not intend to af-firm that one who abides in Christ is not capable of commiting a single act of sin such a concept would be in conflict with his af-firmation of the universal prevalence of sin, even among the saints (1Jn 1:8); moreover, the designation of the means by which to overcome sin through the intercession of Christ (1Jn 2:1), implies its possibility. Thus to teach it is possible or even probable that one will attain to a life of sinlessness here, is in con-flict with his own teaching in the instances cited, and must not be attributed to him here.

The meaning of this verse, and indeed, all of those of similar import in the writings of the apostle John (e.g., 3:9; 5:18; 3Jn 1:11), is to be sought and found in the significance which attaches to the tense of the verbs which set forth the action involved. The word “tense” as applied to the Greek verb is misleading, if it be accorded its literal signification, for it is derived from the French temps, time, and originally the Greek tense had no reference to time, as such. This characteristic, so prominent in the English verb, is only incidental in the Greek, the tense of the Greek verb having to do with the state of the action, and not necessarily with the time when it occurred. Its function is to indicate the state of the action, accordingly as it is conceived of as an indefinite event, (aorist tense), an action in progress, (present tense), or a com-pleted action with existing results, (perfect tense). Other tenses, such as the imperfect, etc., are variation of one or the other of these types of action. In the English language the time element is the prominent feature of the verb, and we think of an act as either past, present, or future.

The present tense, in Greek, indicates action in progress at the present time. It is thus distinguished from the aorist tense which is a single act indefinitely conceived of, without regard to time. The distinction between the present and the aorist tenses may be seen in the following manner…..

In the passage under consideration, the verb sinneth not is the translation of ouch hamartanei, third person singular, of the pres-ent indicative active, of hamartano. Inasmuch as the chief char-acteristic of the Greek present tense is to indicate action in prog-ress contemporary with the time of speaking, whereas the English verb does not distinguish between such action in progress, and a single act occurring, the significance of the verb sinneth, as used by the apostle, does not fully appear in the translation. It can be brought to the attention of the English reader only by an expanded translation thus: “Whosoever continues to abide in him, does not keep on sinning” (i.e., habitually as he did before his conversion). Had the apostle intended to convey the idea that one who abides in Christ is incapable of committing a single act of sin, he would have utilized the aorist tense. In such a case, however, he would have been in conflict with his own previous statements which assert the fact of sin in the lives of Christians, and the means provided for their removal. The meaning of the verse is, He who has taken up his abode in Christ, and settled down to a permanent existence in him, has terminated his former manner of life and has ceased the practices then characteristic of him. He no longer engages in habitual and persistent sin. That he has broken the hold of sin- in his life, and no longer regularly yields to evil im-pulses as a manner of life, however, is far from asserting that there are never occasional lapses into sin through weakness or ignorance. (Cf. 1Co 9:27; Php 3:12.) For these inadvertent lapses, a plan has been provided. (1Jn 2:1.)

“Whosoever sinneth bath not seen him, neither knoweth him.” The verb “sinneth” here, as in the first clause of the verse, is in the present tense. Whosoever sins following his conversion dem-onstrates the fact that he has neither seen nor known the Lord. This passage, as translated, appears to teach that sinful conduct on the part of one who affects to be a child of God is evidence of the fact that such a one is not only not saved at the time, but never has been! This conclusion is obviously erroneous, because it is in conflict with other statements in the same Epistle, and by the same author. He had earlier said that Jesus is our Advocate when we sin, and that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1Jn 1:7-9; 1Jn 2:1.) How is it possible to confess sins never committed? Why do Christians need an Advocate for them when they sin, if they never sin? The verb sinneth, as in the first clause, indicates a continuous practice. Whosoever keeps on sinning . . .,” has neither seen nor known him. The verbs “seen” (heoraken) and “knoweth” (egnoken) are Greek perfects. The Greek perfect tense denotes action absolutely past, which lasts on in its effects. It is the function of the Greek perfect to indicate the result which follows the action, the action, meanwhile, dropping out of view. In this respect it differs greatly from the English perfect which keeps the action in view and in which the past idea predominates. When, for example, we say. “I have known,” the mind instinctively at-tributes the time of knowing to the past; in this, the true function of the English perfect is seen. In the Greek perfect, however, the time element is lost sight of, and the force of the tense is to point to an existing state produced by the action which has already ter-minated. Thus, the significance of “I have known,” regarded from the viewpoint of the Greek perfect, is, “I know” (now).

Thus, in the study of this verse if we keep in mind that the verbs seen and knoweth, as here used, express result, the meaning becomes clear. “Whosoever continues to abide in him does not keep on living a life of sin; whosoever does keep on living such a life, does not see him or know him.” Obviously, one who has lapsed into a life of habitual sin, such as characterized him before his conversion, no longer sees (enjoys) God, nor knows (recog-nizes) God in his life.

In the implication that one who abides in Christ sees the Fa-ther, we do not, of course, infer from this that it is possible for one to look upon, with physical eyes, the likeness of the great Jehovah. “No man bath seen God at any time.” (1Jn 4:12.) The seeing which is thus possible is to exercise the knowledge and in-sight which such a relationship allows–the perception possible to the faithful. To see in the New Testament is a figure often used of such spiritual insight. (Joh 1:18; Joh 6:46; Heb 2:8.)

7 My little children, let no man lead you astray: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous:–The address here is the same, and the same ones are addressed as in 2:1 and 2:18. The warning, “Let no man lead you astray,” appears, in one form or another, often in the Epistles. (1:8 2:18, 26; 4:1-3.) These words have particular reference to men who sought to deceive the saints of that day by alleging that it is pos-sible to live a life of habitual sin, and yet have the approval and approbation of God. Such views were progapated by false and heretical sects of the time, and many were deluded and led into a life of sin by them. (See under “Design of the Epistle,” in the Introduction.) These false teachers advocated the view that they pleased God without living a life of righteousness, and that what-ever might be the case with others who were without their alleged superior knowledge (gnosis), there was no need for them to work righteousness, because they were eternally saved by the grace of God, regardless of what their works might be. The effect of this teaching was to lead those who accepted it into a life of gross and unrestrained indulgence, and that in the name of religion!

To counteract such teaching the apostle laid down the maxim that “He who doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he (Christ) is righteous,” i.e., the man who does righteousness is righteous, and no other is. It is a positive affirmation that character and conduct cannot be separated. It matters not how much one may assert his righteousness; it is of little consequence to what extent one may declare his love for the Lord; the acid test is, does he do righteousness? If yes, he is a righteous man; if no, his claims are false.

Here, as in 2:29, the doing of righteousness is not a condition precedent to righteousness, but evidence that such salvation exists. However tempted we may be to cite these passages in support of the scriptural doctrine that obedience is essential to salvation from past, or alien, sins, such is an unwarranted use of them. It is never allowable to take passages from their context and use them in support of a proposition even though the proposition we seek to prove is taught elsewhere in the scriptures. A passage should never be used in any sense other than that for which it was orig-inally written by the sacred writer. The use of texts out of their contexts, so common to denominational preachers, has led people to the conclusion that it is possible to prove anything by the Bible. It is well to remember that “a text, taken from its context, becomes a mere pretext.” It was John’s design to show here that the doing (practice) of righteousness is the only test of a righteous (ap-proved) person, whatever his claims may be. Long ago Luther truthfully said, “Good works of piety do not make a good pious man, but a good pious man does good pious works . . . fruits grow from the tree and not the tree from the fruits.”

The verb “doeth” in this verse, as often elsewhere in the Epistles of John (e.g., 2:29; 3:4; 3:7; 3:9, etc.), is a present active participle in the Greek text (poion), and signifies to keep on doing. As occasional lapses into sin through weakness, inadvertence, or ignorance do not demonstrate that one has never been saved, so isolated and infrequent acts of righteousness (outward conformity to some of God’s laws) do not justify the conclusion that such a one is a righteous man. To be righteous, one must practice righteousness as a settled habit in life. Such a one, the apostle, affirms, is a righteous man; no other is.

“Even as he is righteous” is a reference to Christ. “Even as” does not signify that one attains to the same righteousness as that Christ possesses; it means that Christ constitutes the model or pattern of righteousness toward which all of his followers are ever to strive. As he is righteous, so are we to seek to be; and such righteousness is attained through right-doing. (Psa 119:172 ; Act 10:34; Mat 3:14.) The right-doing essential to such righteousness includes the duties and responsibilities of the Chris-tian life.

8 He that doeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.–He who lives a life of habitual sin is of the devil; he demonstrates his relation to satan by his conformity to the character which the devil possesses. The devil has sinned (has been sinning, ap’ arches hamartanei, present active indicative) from the beginning, i.e., from the first sin which resulted in his becoming the devil. Being the first sinner, the devil is the source of sin, the fountain from which it springs, the father of all those who practice it. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father thereof.” (Joh 8:44.) Inasmuch as the devil is the original sinner, and since he has persisted in sin with-out interruption from the occasion of the first sin, it follows that whoever sins thus persistently partakes of the character of him who is their spiritual father. Such being the pattern of his exist-ence, those who conform thereto must be regarded as his off-spring and imitators.

But here, again, we must not confuse mere occasional lapses into sin with a life of persistent and willful transgression. (1) To affirm that this passage teaches that it is possible to live a sinless life here is to (a) ignore the significance of the terms employed and (b) to put the writer in conflict with himself in other passages in the same Epistle. (1Jn 1:7-9; 1Jn 2:1.) (2) Such a claim is refuted by the sober consciousness of all thoughtful persons who, though it may have been years since they have engaged in willful sin, are aware of defects of character, and the like, which occas-sionally lead them inadvertently into sin. (3) The wisest, greatest, and best characters of whom we read in the scriptures never laid claim to sinlessness in this life, but, on the contrary, exhibited the weaknesses- common to humanity, and often confessed them with penitence and shame. (Cf, the lives of Abraham, David, Peter, and Paul.) (4) It must not be overlooked in the consideration of this passage that the evil contemplated is that which flows uninter-ruptedly from an evil heart, and is deliberate, willful, and persist-ent. The steady stream of pollution unmistakably reveals that the source is equally corrupt. It follows, therefore, that the type of sin under contemplation here is that which is habitual. Those who live as the devil lives must be regarded as belonging to the devil; in exhibiting the traits and characteristics of the devil, they evidence the fact that they are his children.

Here, incidentally, is additional proof of the personality of the devil–a fact often taught in the scriptures. (a) He exists; (b) he has existed from the beginning; (c) he is the spiritual progenitor of all who sin as he does; and (d) false teachers are his agents in seeking to seduce and lead astray the saints.

To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. “To this end” indicates the purpose for which the Son of God was manifested (appeared in the world), that he might “destroy” (bring to naught) the “works of the devil.” The “works of the devil” include his plans, purposes, designs, schemes, aims, and ends which he hopes to accomplish. These Jesus came to “destroy” (luso), literally, to weaken, deprive of power, abolish in principle. Included among the works of the devil are not only sins, but the consequences of sin–pain, sorrow, misery, and death. Christ has abolished death “and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” (2Ti 1:10.) The eventual triumph over death will be realized in the resurrec-tion: “But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1Co 15:54-55.) There, too, will all sorrow, pain, and misery be forevermore terminated: “And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God him-self shall be with them, and be their God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more: the first things are passed away.” (Rev 21:3-4.)

9 Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.–The familiar rendering, “Whosoever is born of God loth not commit sin,” of the King James’ Version, has given place to the American Standard rendering, “Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin,” and here, as often elsewhere, the Standard rendering is the preferable one, though it, too, as we shall later see, does not fully and adequately convey the meaning of the text. (1) The phrase “begotten of God” is a decided improvement over “born of God” (gegennemenos ek tou theou), for gegen-nemenos, from gennao, means to beget. (2) Correctly translat-ed, the scriptures never refer to a “birth of God.” (3) It is absurd to predicate the act of birth of a masculine personality exclusively. We are not, however, from this to infer that the reference here, or in the numerous other instances where the phrase occurs, signifies an embryonic or prenatal state. Obviously, here and in 2:29 and 5:18, the reference is to children of God. While the context establishes the fact that children of God are contem-plated, accuracy of translation necessitates the rendering “begotten of God” rather than “born of God.”

Whosoever is begotten of God “doeth no sin.” (“Doeth no sin” is translated from the phrase, hamartian ou poiei, present active indicative of polo, does not keep on doing sin (as a life habit.) The reference here is to persistent, continuous, willful sin, such as that contemplated in 3:6, and the remarks there (which see) apply with equal force here.

But why does the one begotten of God refrain from habitual and persistent indulgence in sin? Because his seed remains in him and he cannot sin. Whose seed? God’s. What is God’s seed? The word of God: “The seed is the word of God.” (Luk 8:11.) In whom does this seed abide or remain? In the child of God. What does the word “abide” signify? That the word of God has made its home, as it were, in the heart of the one begot-ten. Is this a scriptural concept? “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” (Col 3:16), which we translate more vividly, “May the word which Christ speaks to you have in your hearts in all its fullness its home.” What is the result of such? The child of God cannot sin.

Does this mean that it is impossible for a child of God, under any circumstances, to commit a single act of sin? No. The phrase “Doeth no sin” does not adequately convey the meaning of the original text. Here, as in 3 6, in order to discover the full significance of the verb doeth, it is essential to take into consider-ation the tense thereof, a better rendering of which would be, “worketh no sin.” (See comments on 1Jn 3:6.) What rea-sons have we for concluding that it was not the intention of the apostle to teach that it is impossible for a child of God to commit a single act of sin? (1) Such a conclusion is in conflict with 1Jn 1:7-9; 1Jn 2:1, and many other passages in the scriptures. (2) The words “he cannot sin” cannot be correctly construed to mean that one cannot commit a single act of sin after being begotten of God. Why is it alleged that such a conclusion is in conflict with what the apostle taught elsewhere? Because he affirmed, in the references cited, that children do sin, and he moreover revealed the conditions on which they may be forgiven.

Why is it thought that the phrase “he cannot sin” may not be correctly interpreted to mean that it is impossible for a child of God to commit a single act of sin? “And he cannot sin” is trans-lated from the phrase “kai ou dunatai hamartanein. Hamartarein is a present active infinitive, the force of which is, “he cannot con-tinue to live a life of sin” (as before). But why cannot he continue to live such a life? The seed, which is the word of God, and which is in him, forbids it. How did David recognize and apply the principle taught here? “Thy word have I laid up in my heart, that I might not sin against thee?” (Psa 119:11.) How did Jesus resist the seductions of Satan? By relying on the same power. Suppose one is tempted to steal. Such a one remembers that the Word says, “Thou shalt not steal.” So long as this injunction remains in the heart and governs the life, one cannot steal. “It is written” is as effective in resisting the blandishments of Satan today as it was when the Lord utilized it on the mount of temptation. Why, then, cannot one thus begotten persist in sin? (1) The seed (the word of God), which forbids it, is in him, controls his life, and directs his energies. (2) A life of sin is inconsistent with the spiritual parentage of the one thus begotten. But does this mean that it is never possible for one possessed of this nature to sin? No. All, through weakness, error, ignorance, and inadvertence, occasionally sin; but children of God do not work sin as a life principle, for its author–Satan–they have repudiated and his nature abandoned. When, in such instances, sin occurs, it is a momentary lapse; it is due to an imperfect hold-ing of the word in the heart; it is recognized as contrary to the higher impulses of the person thus sinning, and it is confessed and put aside with shame.

Paul and John are in strict harmony in their teaching on the difference between such occasional lapses into sin and a life wholly devoted to it. The former wrote,

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resur-rection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer be in bondage to sin.” (Rom 6:1-6.)

We are thus no longer to continue in sin, for (a) we have died (separated ourselves) from the practice thereof; (b) we have risen from the baptismal grave to walk a new life; (c) the body of sin has been done away; (d) we have been delivered from the bondage of sin. The careful dis-tinction which the inspired writers make between a life of contin-uous and habitual sin and the infrequent deviations of children of God who, while they ever reach upward toward a nobler life, now and then falter through weakness or error, may be seen by a com-parison between Rom 6:1, “Shall we continue in sin” (epimeno-men tei hamartiai, present active subjunctive) and 6:15, “Shall we sin” (hamartesomen, first aorist active subjunctive), “Shall we commit a single act of sin?” (because we are not under law, but under grace). Carefully and pointedly the apostle to the Gentiles make it clear that even isolated acts of sin were not to be indulged in on the assumption that the grace under which we live, instead of the law, would make provision for such.

Properly interpreted, neither 1Jn 3:9 nor any other scripture, countenances the view that it is impossible for a child of God to live above sin in this life; and theories to this end, whether drawn from this passage or some other, are clearly erroneous.

10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the chil-dren of the devil:–That is, in the matters immediately pre-ceding. We indicate by our manner of life our parentage. The word “manifest” means to make known, to reveal. Children of God and children of the devil are readily distinguished from each other by the fact that the former abstain from a life of unrelieved sin, whereas such a life is ever characteristic of the latter. The nature exhibits itself in the individual and reveals who is his father. As a life of constant and continuous sin justifies the conclusion that such a one is a child of the devil, so a life of righteousness is evidence of the fact that such a one is a child of God. “Ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him.” (1Jn 2:29.) “Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” (1Jn 3:4.)

Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.–The first clause of this verse relates to what had just been said; the second expands it and makes it applicable not only to the spiritual, but also to the social side of life. The love under consideration here is that which one brother in Christ should have for another and where it does not exist, there is an absence of divine parenthood. We are taught here that he who does not love his brother actually has no brother to love, for in his failure to comply with this normal and natural principle, he demonstrates that God is not his Father. In refusing to love one of God’s family, he simply excludes himself from the family itself!

11 For this is the message which ye heard from the begin-ning, that we should love one another:–“For,” i.e., with ref-erence to what had just been written, “Whosoever doeth not right-eousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.” John’s readers had heard this “message” from the beginning of their acquaintance with Christianity, since this was a cardinal principle of the movement itself. (Joh 13:34-35.) It is called a message from a word which, in the New Testament, signifies things announced in order that they may be done. It is referred to here as a message, instead of a commandment, though such it was, and is, because it was announced in words, and conveyed by messengers. See further on this in the comments on 1Jn 2:9.

12 Not as Cain was of the evil one, and slew his brother.–This statement is put in contrast with that of verse 11, and Cain is offered as an example of what children of God are not to do. The meaning is, We should love one another, and not be as Cain was, who was of the evil one, and slew his brother. (Gen 4:1-17.) Those who do righteousness are “of God” Cain, who did not obey the commandment to love, was “of the evil one,” i.e., the the devil. He demonstrated the fact that he was of the devil by killing his brother Abel. The word translated “slew” here (spha-zo) means, literally, to butcher, to slit the throat with a knife; and from this it may be inferred that this was the manner in which Cain took the life of Abel. If the word is to be taken in its literal import, this conclusion follows, though it is, of course, possible that it is used figuratively to kill, and thus without any indication of the method by which the murder took place.

And wherefore slew he him? Because his works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.–The question, “Wherefore slew he him?” is immediately answered, “Because his (Cain’s) works were evil, and his brother’s (Abel’s) were righteous. The reason for God’s rejection of Cain’s offering and his acceptance of Abel’s, though not detailed in the Genesis record, is made clear in the reference thereto by the writer of Hebrews: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing wit-ness in respect of his gifts; and through it he being dead yet speaketh.” (Heb 11:4.) Cain’s offering was “of the fruit of the ground,” Abel’s “of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.” (Gen 4:3-4.) “And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” Inasmuch as Abel made his offering “by faith,” it fol-lows that the Lord had specified the nature and the type of offering to be made, since faith comes by hearing God’s word. (Rom. 10 17.) Cain’s offering was rejected because it was in violation of express instructions from Jehovah. Though not stated in the Mosaic account, it is implied in the following statement: “And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And Jehovah said unto Cain, why art thou wroth?and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee shall be its desire ; but do thou rule over it.” (Gen 4:5-7.)

Resentful because his brother’s offering was accepted and his own rejected, and filled with envy at Abel because his brother enjoyed the approbation of Jehovah while he smarted under the rebuke which he had received, “it came to pass that when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him.” (Gen 4:8.) In this terrible deed, Cain acted from envy, he was influenced by the evil that was in him, and he was directed by Satan whose servant he was. In citing this well-known Old Testament instance of the first murder, it was evidently the apostle’s design to show the extent to which one is led when under the influence of envy, bitterness, and hate. His reasoning appears to have followed this pattern: Cain murdered his brother; therefore Cain hated his brother; hate is a characteristic of those who are children of the devil; therefore, Cain was of the devil. (Verse 12.) His brother identifies himself as of the same spirit as Cain, and likewise demonstrates that his works are evil. Basic in every difficulty and dispute between brethren today is the ab-sence of brotherly love. Whatever may be the immediate occasion which prompts such, each difficulty and dispute may, in principle, be traced to the resentment which the evil feel toward the good. Why did Cain murder Abel? Because his works were evil, and Abel’s works were righteous.

Commentary on 1Jn 3:3-12 by E.M. Zerr

1Jn 3:3. Hath this hope means the hope of seeing Jesus and being like him. With such an incentive it is expected that all who have become the sons of God will cleanse themselves of impurity in life and strive to be like his Son.

1Jn 3:4. Since committeth is a key word in verse 9 I shall leave my comments on it until that verse is reached. Sin is the transgression of the law. It should be observed that John does not say transgression is the only thing that constitutes sin; it is the only phase of the subject being considered at this place.

1Jn 3:5. In him is no sin. This is what is meant in Joh 14:30 where Jesus says the prince of this world (Satan) cometh “and hath nothing in me.” No sacrifice could have atoned for the sins of the world if attempted by a person who was himself tainted with sin.

1Jn 3:6. Abideth signifies a continuous life in Christ and not a wavering from side to side. Such a person sinneth not which is akin to the word committeth as to its ending which will be explained at verse 9. A person cannot abide in Christ until he first comes into Him, then if he continues in that relation it can be said that he is abiding in Him. By the same token if a man sinneth it is proof that such a person has not yet made his acquaintance with Christ.

1Jn 3:7. Little children is general and is used as explained at 1Jn 2:1. They are again warned against being deceived which evidently refers to the antichrists who are mentioned in the preceding chapter. The first he stands for the faithful follower of Christ and the second he means Christ himself. Doeth and is righteous are related and will receive some more light at verse 9.

1Jn 3:8. Committeth and sinneth will be explained by the comments on the next verse. Is of the devil refers to the practice of sin which was introduced into the world by the devil. From the beginning means the beginning of mankind on the earth. Not that he had not sinned before that, for he had, by reason of which he was cast out of heaven (Luk 10:18). But John is here concerned only with the devil’s first attack upon man as the rest of the verse indicates. We know that the Son of God was manifested in the world to destroy the works of the devil, therefore the word beginning can apply only to the beginning of man on the earth.

1Jn 3:9. The two key words in this verse are commit and cannot. Words, like people, “Are known by the company they keep,” which is another way of saying that the meaning of words may be learned by their connection or by the use that is made of them. The first word is from POIEO and Thayer uses three pages of his lexicon with definitions and explanations, which indicates the wide scope of its meaning. Among his comments on the word are, “To follow some method in expressing by deeds the feelings and thoughts of the mind; carry on; describing a plan or course of action.” Robinson gives as one explanation, “What one does repeatedly, continuedly, habitually.” One of Webster’s definitions is, “To pledge; to bind; as, to commit oneself to a certain course.” The Englishman’s Greek New Testament translates the word by “practice.” All of these definitions and translations show the word has no reference to what a man does occasionally or incidentally, but it means what he makes a practice of. The term “practicing physician” does not mean a man who occasionally gives a dose of medicine to a friend. If a man “retires” from the occupation of a carpenter he may occasionally drive a nail or saw a board, yet we would not say he -has gone into the occupation again. Likewise a man who becomes a child of God ceases to commit sin as a “practice,” but that does not mean he will never do anything that is wrong. (See the comments at chapter 1:7, 8.) We are certain an inspired man would not contradict himself, so John would not use the word commit in this verse to mean an occasional sin, when he taught in chapter 1:7 that even a man who “walks in the light” needs to be cleansed from sin by the blood of Christ. Cannot is from OUDUNAMAI, which means morally unable and not that it is physically impossible. We will consider some other passages where the same word is used. Mat 5:14 says “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” Yet all of us know that during the war many cities and other important places were actually hid by camouflage. In Mar 2:19 Jesus says of certain persons that “they cannot fast”; does this mean they actually could not refrain from eating? Luk 11:7 says the man who had retired but was asked to give a friend some bread replied, “I cannot rise and give thee.” We know the man did not lack the physical ability of getting out of bed. And so the word in our verse does not mean that the child of God has come to the place where he is physically unable to do any wrong, but that he is morally restrained from it, just as a good man who is asked to join another in some crime would reply, “0 no, I couldn’t do anything like that.” Besides, to say a man has reached a condition where it is impossible for him to do anything wrong, would be like taking from him the necessity of watching his step, and would also make it unnecessary for him to seek the services of the Intercessor. The principle on which all these things are said of the child of God is the truth that he is born (begotten) of God. He has been conceived and born of a parentage that is spiritual and hence that holy characteristic is constantly in his spiritual person to urge him in the right course of life.

1Jn 3:10. In this refers to the practice of sin as explained in the preceding verse. Doeth is used in the same sense as the word commit (or commiteth), meaning the continual or general manner of life. The children of the devil may occasionally perform some act that is good in itself but their life as a whole is devoted to the service of Satan.

1Jn 3:11. From the beginning means from the start of man’s existence on the earth. The message is the teaching that we should love each other.

1Jn 3:12. This verse confirms the comments on the preceding one as to when the beginning occurred. The case of Cain and Abel is the first one in the divine record that pertains to the subject of love. Cain would not have slain his brother had he loved him. John’s explanation of the cause of the lack of love is that his own works were evil while those of his brother were righteous. It seems strange that such a circumstance would cause the hatred. The basic or remote cause actually was envy which gave him a feeling of spite.

Commentary on 1Jn 3:3-12 by N.T. Caton

1Jn 3:3-And every man that hath this hope.

Every faithful Christian has this hope. The hope of being like and dwelling with the Lord of glory will cause us to strive to be like him. Christ was, and is, pure; therefore, every faithful Christian will strive to be pure.

1Jn 3:4-Whosoever committeth sin.

The idea is, habitually or continually does wrong. This idea must be borne in mind in order that we may fully understand other statements contained in this chapter and thereby insure perfect harmony. Doing, working, or committing sin is a transgression of the law, and will surely be followed by punishment.

1Jn 3:5-And ye know that he was manifested.

One of the objects of Christ’s coming into the world was to take away our sins, by remitting the same; but a second object had in that coming was, by his example and the course of instruction given by him, which, if pursued by us, would take away even our disposition to sin. He could be our example, and give this kind of instruction, because he was himself without sin.

1Jn 3:6-Whosoever abideth in him.

Keeping close to his example, trustingly, lovingly following his instructions, we abide in him, and thus, abiding in him, sin not; have no disposition or desire to sin.

1Jn 3:6-Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him.

We cease to abide hi him when we engage in sinning. Such an one hath not seen Christ; that is to say, had no true insight into his character, or that of his doctrine, for no experimental knowledge is by such an one exhibited. It is safe to say of such that they have not known Christ, for if they had, the same would have been manifested in their conduct.

1Jn 3:7-Little children, let no man deceive you.

Exhortation is here made to prevent delusion or deception. Those claiming to be righteous are those only who do righteousness. Works are demanded in the economy of heaven to show the existence of faith. Those who abide in Christ do righteousness because Christ was righteous.

1Jn 3:8-He that committeth sin is of the devil.

Since sin emanates from the devil, and is, therefore, of him, those who work sin, who exhibit a sinful life, give, thereby, all the proof sound reason can demand that they are under the dominion and control of the devil. From the very beginning of the world the devil sinned.

1Jn 3:8-For this purpose the Son of God was manifested.

That he might destroy sin and its punishment, which are the works of the devil, is the purpose for which the Son of God came into the world and appeared among men in the flesh. Dr. Macknight says: “Demolish that horrible fabric of sin and misery which the devil, with such art and industry and malice, hath reared in our world. From this text some have argued that all moral and penal evil will, at length, be extirpated from the universe.”

1Jn 3:9-Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.

Here some have failed to catch the apostle’s idea. It is not that those born of God become so far out of the reach of sin that temptation can not assail them, but those who are born of God do not habitually sin or live a life of sin. One can not sin and at the same time remain a child of God. Yet, while in the flesh, the old nature may for a time exert an influence in the wrong direction, requiring the constant watch-care of the Christian. He, however, can not lead a sinful life while the principle of the divine life remains in him. Paul gives us a thought, throwing light along this line of investigation, well to remember for our good. “Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.” (Rom 7:20-21).

1Jn 3:10-In this the children of God.

Here, a sure mark of distinction is drawn between the children of God and the children of the devil. It is easy to tell one from the other. The child of God habitually performs good acts, deeds and works, and with a real affection loves his brother, while the children of the devil manifest no such fruits. The rule of measurement is plainly designated. The children of God show by their pure lives, their constant endeavors to do good, their affection not only for the distressed, but for all, who their Father is. By the same rule the parentage of the evil may be easily determined.

1Jn 3:11-For this is the message that ye heard.

Christ brought from the Father, and we apostles proclaimed the message from the establishment of the kingdom on earth, that we should love one another. This message is God-given; it came from him, and this was evidently God’s will from the beginning of time.

1Jn 3:12-Not as Cain, who was of that.

This is the opposite of love-it is hate. Hate is of the devil. Cain was, therefore, begotten by the devil-that is to say, so controlled as to do the works of the devil. The child of God-one begotten of God-loves and does not hate. “This hater and murderer is condemned far more severely in the Scriptures than the disobedient Adam.” (Johnson’s Notes.)

1Jn 3:12-And wherefore slew he him?

Cain’s offering was not accepted, because it was offered in disobedience. His works, therefore, were evil, while the works of his brother were righteous, because offered in obedience. His brother being accepted, and he rejected, he therefore hated him. So, the Savior foretold, would be the result to all righteous lives-hatred by the world. It hated him. Why should his followers escape?

Commentary on 1Jn 3:3-12 by Burton Coffman

1Jn 3:3 –And everyone that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

And everyone that hath this hope set on him … The RSV is a better translation: “Everyone who thus hopes in him.” This means, “everyone who hopes in Christ.” The great obligation of every person “in Christ” is to exhibit the righteousness and purity so perfectly exemplified in him.

There is another glimpse in this of the “perfection” that God requires of his children. Being as pure as Christ is pure is the same as being “perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mat 5:48), or being “holy, for I am holy” (1Pe 1:15-16). This idea, or goal, of absolute perfection is unattainable in human strength; but it is achieved for Christians and ascribed to them by reason of their having denied themselves, being baptized “into Christ,” and thus made partakers of his sinless perfection. People are saved, not in their own identity, but “as Christ,” and “in Christ.” This points up the great importance of the expression “in him” as used in this verse (RSV). This should not take away from the power of the exhortation that all Christians should strive to achieve and maintain the very highest state of purity and perfection of which they are capable. Sin can never be any casual business with the Christian.

1Jn 3:4 –Everyone that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

And sin is lawlessness … Here the KJV is far better: “Sin is the transgression of the law.” And what law is in view? “He is not thinking of the law of Moses.”[14] Nor can we agree with Blaney that, “transgression of the law of love”[15] alone is meant. “It means the law of God in the fullest sense, not Moses’ law, but transgression of the will of God.”[16] Particularly, it is “the law of Christ” which sin transgresses; and that may not be limited to any classification of Jesus’ commandments, but includes “all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mat 28:18-20). Inherent in this is the epic truth that the grace of God has not abolished sin. The proposition that “we are not under law but under grace,” while true enough as related to the law of Moses, does not relax any of the law of Christ (See more on this in my Commentary on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, pp. 115,117).

[14] W. N. Sinclair, op. cit., p. 483.

[15] Harvey J. S. Blaney, op. cit., p. 378.

[16] A. Plummer, op. cit., p. 71.

1Jn 3:5 –And ye know that he was manifested to take away sins; and in him is no sin.

In him is no sin … Even the sins of Christians who are “in Christ” are cleansed automatically by the blood of Christ as long as they so remain. There is no compatibility whatever between Christ and sin.

He was manifested to take away sins … For more on what Christ came into our world to do, see under 1Pe 1:19.

And in him is no sin … Although in the present tense and bearing the meaning noted above, this is also true in the past tense of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus committed no sin (1Pe 2:22); he was holy, guileless, undefiled, and separated from sinners (Heb 7:26); he knew no sin (2Co 5:21); he was without blemish and without spot (1Pe 1:19), etc.

1Jn 3:6 –Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him.

From what John had already stated in 1 John 1, we know that he had no intention here of contradicting himself with any teaching to the effect any one having committed sin was in no sense a Christian. Many of the scholars assure us, based upon the Greek verbs used here, that “sinneth” in this context means “leads a life of sin.”

Abideth in him … This is the key to the sinlessness of Christians, since their sins are forgiven continually through the power of the blood of Christ (1Jn 1:7). It is only in such a sense as this that any child of God was ever sinless.

1Jn 3:7 –My little children, let no man lead you astray: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous:

In this verse, there is a strong suggestion that some of the false teachers who were troubling the church of that era were teaching that one could be saved without living a pure and godly life. Deceitful arguments to the same effect are current in our own times; and there has never been, perhaps, a period of church history when such deceitful heresies were not skillfully advocated. What John said here is: “Make no mistake about it, living the Christian life is the one and only proof of a person’s being a Christian.”

Even as he is righteous … This is possible only through perfect unity with and identification with Christ who is truly righteous. Nothing short of the perfect righteousness of Christ can ever save any one. Let every man decide, therefore, if he will dare to appear before God in judgment clad in his own personal righteousness alone, or if he will deny himself and be baptized “into Christ,” thereby becoming a participant in that righteousness which alone is sufficient and efficacious.

1Jn 3:8 –he that doeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

The devil … Any willful or continual commission of deeds which are contrary to the will of God reveals the sinner for what he is, a child of the devil. Significantly, John, like all of the holy apostles, accepted without question Jesus’ teaching regarding the malignant ruler of this world’s darkness. John’s teaching here is clearly derived from Jesus’ words in Joh 8:44, and is like Paul’s denunciation of Elymas as, “Thou son of the devil.” (Act 13:10). It is a false view that explains away John’s powerful words here as an “impression he received from the law of Moses,” due to his Jewish background! As Plummer said, “For every single time the devil is mentioned in the Old Testament, he is spoken of twenty times in any gospel or epistle!”[17] Someone wrote a question to F. F. Bruce, asking, “How can a child of God be of the devil?” Bruce replied: “He cannot; that is the point John is making.”[18] Of course, for a child of God who might commit a sin occasionally, John had already written of the provision that God has made for that contingency (1Jn 2:1-2). Here again, “doeth sin” refers to deliberate choice and continuity in sin.

The devil sinneth from the beginning … This does not mean from the beginning of time, nor from the beginning of Satan’s existence, nor from the beginning of the Christian age, but “from the beginning of human sin”[19] in the garden of Eden. Jesus said of Satan, that “he was a murderer from the beginning” (Joh 8:44); and these texts shed a great deal of light on the purpose of the evil one. By Christ’s denomination of him as a murderer,” the purpose of Satan to accomplish the death of Adam and Eve is evident; and from John’s mention of the devil’s sinning from that same time shows that Satan’s deception of Eve was a diabolical and sinful act. It was for that sin that God pronounced the curse upon Satan.

REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

The Scriptures do not give a categorical answer to the question of Satan’s origin; but Eze 28:12-19 has the nearest approach to an answer. If, as usually thought, “King of Tyre” in that passage refers to Satan, who had been “in Eden,” who was lifted up because of his beauty, who “was created,” who was perfect in his ways “till iniquity was found” in him, whose heart “was lifted up” because of his beauty, who was “corrupted” because of his wisdom, etc., then the origin of Satan is revealed in that remarkable passage.

Certainly, it is wrong to think of Satan’s sharing, in any manner, the control of the universe with God. That he was the leader of a band of rebellious angels would appear to be a proper deduction from Jesus’ mention of “Satan and his angels” (Mat 25:41), leading to the supposition that Satan himself was, at first, an angel of God who led some of his fellow-angels into rebellion. This is an awesome subject, and little more than a few suggestions may confidently be offered. That there is indeed a being of great magnitude of powers, an inveterate enemy of mankind, the prince of this world, the ruler of the world’s darkness, a prince of evil, who has organized and directed the wickedness of mankind is a fact so plainly set forth in the New Testament that only an unbeliever may deny it. The Lord’s Prayer is a constant testimonial to the existence of Satan: “Deliver us from the evil one!”

Like the rest of the New Testament authors, John had no doubt that behind the rebel wills of men there is a master-rebel, who sinned before they were in being, and who, as the enemy of all good, is called the devil, the slanderer, Satan, or the adversary.[20]

[17] A. Plummer, op. cit., p. 72.

[18] F. F. Bruce, Answers to Questions (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1972), p. 133.

[19] W. N. Sinclair, op. cit., p. 484.

[20] Charles Gore, The Epistles of John (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), pp. 144,145.

1Jn 3:9 –Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.

Whosoever is begotten of God … This is a reference to the new birth, as indicated in the KJV, “born of God,” and as rendered in the New Catholic Bible and the New English Bible (1961).

Doeth no sin … As long as one who has believed in Christ, repented of sin, and been baptized into Christ, and in consequence of such obedience has received the earnest of the Holy Spirit, – as long as such a person continues in that status, he will not sin. The evidence of this is visible in countless thousands of Christians in all ages who have turned their backs upon wicked conduct and have taken seriously the high claims of their holy religion, the same being exhibited for all people to see in the godliness of their new lives in Christ. What is the reason for such a change? John gave it in the next clause.

Because his seed abideth in him … The New Testament supplies abundant proof of what the “seed” is which is mentioned here. It is the word of God. Paul instructed the Colossians to let “the word of Christ” dwell in them richly, etc. (Col 3:16), and John had in mind the same thing here. The Lord Jesus himself said of the kingdom of heaven, “the seed is the word of God” (Luk 8:11). In speaking of the new birth, Peter also mentioned the “incorruptible seed” which he promptly identified as “the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (1Pe 1:23). Therefore, it is the word of God which is eternal, incorruptible and continually abiding in Christian hearts. This word is no mere “dead letter,” but “living, active … and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb 4:12); and, with such a monitor of their conduct, Christians are strongly persuaded to continue in the path of honor. Indeed, if the child of God will walk fully in that holy light, he will be effectively restrained from all sin. God, however, has given people the freedom of their will; and a failure of the human will can always result in the commission of sin.

And he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God … This statement has been alleged to teach a whole anthology of errors, such as:

(1) The meaning is restricted to what Roman Catholic writers call “mortal” sins, and does not apply to ordinary sins!

(2) What is sinful in unbelievers (as adultery, greed, theft, etc.) is not sinful to the Christian!

(3) It is only the “old nature that sins”; the new man in Christ cannot sin. The new man is not connected in any manner with the old man! (“My old nature did it; I didn’t.”)

(4) John is here only holding up the ideal, or goal of the Christian life, not really meaning that the Christian cannot sin.

(5) It means that Christians cannot “consent to sin,” that is, deliberately and purposefully walk in forbidden paths.

(6) It means that Christians cannot continue in a life of sin. Illustrations: Once, when traveling, this writer stopped at the entrance of a city and asked a policeman a question; and he volunteered the information that, “you cannot turn right on a red light in this city,” not meaning in any sense whatever that it was impossible to do so, but that it was illegal to do so. John’s words here may be viewed as exactly the same kind of prohibition, meaning, “those who are begotten of God are forbidden to sin”; it is against God’s law. In view of what John said in 1Jn 2:1-2, there could hardly be any doubt that this is exactly what he meant. “He cannot sin” is not a statement of impossibility at all, but a declaration of what is forbidden. Those commentators who see “impossibility” affirmed here favor the interpretation that makes “CONTINUING in a life of sin” to be the impossibility.

1Jn 3:10 –In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

In this the children of God are manifest … has the meaning that Christians may be identified by their conduct. Any and all transgressions of the law of Christ deny such transgressors any status whatever as children of God. Those who speak loudest about their “faith in Christ,” but who do not display the type of behavior set forth in the New Testament as Christian conduct, may in no sense establish by their profession a status which their unchristian lives deny. People who do not make a serious and consistent effort to do what the New Testament teaches that Christians should do are “the children of the devil.” As Plummer said:

This teaching about the devil is not at all agreeable to those who dwell exclusively upon the sunny aspects of the world and of life, and would shut ttheir eyes to what is dark an terrible. They like to hear of a Being who is all gracious and loving … “the devil … ?” They wish to suppose that he belongs to the world’s infancy, and disappears as we know more![21]

Children of God … children of the devil … This is the only place in the New Testament where these two expressions stand side by side”[22] and they correspond perfectly with the grand cleavage of humanity into two, and only two classes: the wheat and the chaff, the good and the bad, the sheep and the goats, those on the right hand and those on the left, the good fishes and the rejects, the builder on the rock and the builder on the sand, lovers of God and lovers of mammon, the wheat and the tares, the ready and the unready, the faithful and the unfaithful, the children of God and the children of the devil. It is easy to rationalize sin as “goodness” in the making, etc.; but it appears in the New Testament that these two classes are radical opposites and totally irreconcilable.

Neither he that loveth not his brother … This is cited as a particular instance of Christian character, and not as the sum total of it, much in the same manner that Paul often spoke of “faith in Christ.”

His brother … Does this mean every man on earth, or does it have special reference to the Christian’s brother in the faith? Despite learned opinion to the contrary, the conviction here is that it is the “brother in Christ” which is meant. Plummer said it means: “mankind at large,”[23] citing the example of the good Samaritan as Jesus’ example of “who is my neighbor?” Macknight also stated that the passage, “signifies all mankind, who are all brethren by virtue of their common nature and their descent from Adam.”[24] The brotherhood of man is, of course, a fact “in Adam”; but the particular viewpoint of the New Testament is that of the “brotherhood in Christ”; and there is a world of difference in these. Significantly, Paul did not go about among the churches raising a collection for the oppressed heathen in the ghettos of Rome, but for the “poor saints” in Jerusalem. Although, there is a true sense in which the Christian loves every man on earth, it can never be the same as that for the beloved “in Christ.”

Love of the world in general will issue in deeds, charities and benefits to “all people,” to the extent that these may contribute to their redemption; but the apostolic restriction is sternly laid on this in the words, “As we have opportunity, let us work that which is good toward all men, and especially toward them that are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10). In this last clause, there is clearly a difference between the love of brethren and the love of the whole world. From these considerations, we believe that Blaney is correct in the view that, “Brother here means a brother Christian, as a representative of all Christians, rather than of all men.”[25] The love of Christians is a mutual love (1Jn 3:11), and no such love is possible for the world which hates Christians (1Jn 3:13).

[21] A. Plummer, op. cit., p. 73.

[22] Charles C. Ryrie, Wycliffe Bible Commentary, New Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1971), p. 1020.

[23] A. Plummer, op. cit., p. 73.

[24] James Macknight, op. cit., p. 72.

[25] Harvey J. S. Blaney, op. cit., p. 380.

1Jn 3:11 –For this is the message which we heard from the beginning, that we should love one another:

We heard from the beginning … The unchanging nature of the Christian revelation is inherent in this. Not even the apostles busied themselves with the production of “new ideas” regarding man’s redemption. The great basics of Christianity are unchanging, fixed and permanent. “When false teachers brought forth new and esoteric (secret) doctrines about faith and morals, their very newness refuted them.”[26]

That we should love one another … The mutuality of the love mentioned here is a denial that John is speaking of the Christians unilaterally loving all people. This distinction is important, because much of the current theology tends alarmingly toward mere “humanism” as the one and all of Christian teaching. Such a statement as that of Smith, while true enough in a limited sense, actually falls short of New Testament truth:

The righteousness of the Pharisees consisted in ritual observance, that of Jesus in love … meaning “kind” or “sweetly reasonable,”[27]

True Christianity, and the righteousness of Christians in any adequate sense, cannot mean merely the manifestation of an attitude of sweet reasonableness toward the human race. As John will point out before the chapter ends, it is the acceptance of all that Jesus taught which must characterize the response of Christians.

[26] J. W. Roberts, op. cit., p. 88.

[27] David Smith, op. cit., p. 185.

1Jn 3:12 –not as Cain was of the evil one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his works were evil, and his brother’ s righteous.

The story of Cain is recorded in Gen 4:1 ff, where Cain’s wickedness (which long preceded the murder of Abel) at last issued in his offering being rejected by God. In the ensuing hatred of Abel, Cain killed his brother. It is an important point to remember why God rejected Cain’s offering. Stott has a remarkably clear word on this:

If Cain had done well, his offering would have been accepted (Gen 4:7). According to Heb 11:4, it was by “faith” that Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain … we may assume that God had revealed his will to the two brothers … By faith Abel obeyed … Cain was willfully disobedient.[28]

Stott’s deductions in this are so obviously true that one may only wonder about those who consciously try to make allowances for Cain.

Cain was of the evil one … It is a mistake to suppose that God punished Cain merely for making a mistake in the worship; this reveals that Cain was controlled by evil principles. “It is inferred here that even before Cain slew Abel, there was something in the actions of the brothers that revealed their difference.”[29] The New Testament reveals that Abel was righteous and that Cain’s works were evil, as this very verse flatly declares.

And slew his brother … This sheds further light upon what is recorded in Genesis 4, where it is recorded merely that Cain rose up and slew his brother. The word John used in this place properly means: “slaughtered,” “butchered,” “by cutting the throat (“jugulare”) like an ox in the shambles.”[30]

And wherefore slew he him … ? It was not for any offense of Abel’s against his brother, but simply and only because, “Cain’s works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” Thus quite early in human history the hatred of darkness against the light was revealed. Cain was the archtype of the world’s eternal opposition to truth and righteousness. Roberts was of the opinion that John’s choice of Cain as his example of evil could very possibly have been due to the fact that the odious heresy of the Cainites (which flourished a little later) might already have made its appearance at the time he wrote.[31]

The heroes worshipped by this monstrous system were Cain, Korah, the Sodomites and Judas Iscariot. They advocated such nonsense by means of a “Gospel of Judas.” … They taught that men could not be saved until they had passed through every kind of experience, even the most vile, claiming that an angel attended their orgies and urged them on to incur pollution. Out of their debaucheries, they claimed to have “perfect knowledge,” and did not shrink to rush into such actions as it is unlawful even to name?[32]

[28] John R. W. Stott, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Vol. 19 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1964), p. 140.

[29] J. W. Roberts, op. cit., p. 89.

[30] David Smith, op. cit., p. 185.

[31] J. W. Roberts, op. cit., p. 89.

[32] Irenaeus, Against Heresies I, 31 in The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, n.d.), Vol. I, p. 358.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Power of the Christian Hope

And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.1Jn 3:3.

1. St. John has been urging upon his poor, obscure brethren the fact that now, even in this life, with its infirmities, and weaknesses, and limitations, and sins, men are the children of God; that the very fact that God calls us children reveals the greatness of His love for us; that sonship here is a promise of glory hereafter; that that hereafter is to be lived with Christ, and in a state of likeness to Christ; that though we cannot form a definite conception of the greatness, and glory, and dignity of sonship in the Fathers house, yet we may know that as Hethe Christis, so shall we be:

Soul and body

Shall His glorious image bear.

This hope is a light that burns above the darkness of this worlds troubled sea, and to it they may look as to the beacon light which directs them home. Beyond the sorrows, and persecutions, and wearinesses of life, they may look for their perfect consummation and bliss, of both body and soul, in the heavenly kingdom, in the Fathers House, towards which they are all hastening. And then from the unimaginable splendours of this Beatific Vision he passes to the plainest practical talk:If you entertain this hope, you must remember that there are conditions connected with it; to be Jesus Christs there, you must be Jesus Christs here; to attain to the fulness of His likeness in heaven, you must have here and now the elements of His character; sonship in heaven means sonship on earth; seeing God there means purity here. Every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

2. So when in this chapter St. John has for an instant opened for us the door leading into the future home of the redeemed, he shuts it again, brings us back to earth once more, and says to us, as stated in the text, that the matter immediately before us is not what we are going to be there, but what we are going to be and do here, and that the only legitimate effect of the glimpse he has just given us into the celestial world will be to steady and encourage the steps that are to be taken by us in this world. And every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. That preserves the continuity between the life there and the life here, but the use to which he puts that continuity is to enhance our interest in this world rather than to diminish that interest.

This is the only time in Johns Epistle that he speaks about hope. The good man, living so near Christ, finds that the present, with its abiding in him, is enough for his heart. And though he was the Seer of the Apocalypse, he has scarcely a word to say about the future in this letter of his; and when he does, it is for a simple and intensely practical purpose, in order that he may enforce on us the teaching of labouring earnestly in purifying ourselves.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

The Character of Christian Hope

1. The Christian has a hope peculiar to himself.It is the hope of being like Jesus Christ. We shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. Now some would not put it in that way: they would say that their hope as Christians is to tread the golden streets, pass within the pearly gates, listen to the harpers harping with their harps, and, standing upon the sea of glass, be for ever free from toil and pain. But those are only the lower joys of heaven, except so far as they indicate spiritual bliss. The real truth, the truth that is contained in these metaphors and figures, and underlies them all, is that heaven is being like our Lord. While it will consist in our sharing in the Redeemers power, the Redeemers joy and the Redeemers honour, yet, it will consist mainly in our being spiritually and morally like Himbeing purified as He is pure. And if we may become like Jesus Christ as to His characterpure and perfecthow can any other joy be denied us? If we shall have that, surely we shall have everything. This, then, is our hopethat we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.

One of the greatest fallacies under which men live is hoping for heaven when they themselves are out of sympathy with heaven. Heaven is not infrequently regarded as a place to which admission is gained by some lenient act of Divine amnesty, or by some special pleading of a mediatorhuman or Divineor by some clever piece of juggling at the last moment. Instead of this the Bible tells usif it tells us anything at all about that other lifethat heaven is not a place into which we are admitted, but a life into which we must grow. Heaven is not location, or circumstantial environment: Heaven is character. What we are here determines whether we shall have heaven or hell in the life to come.

Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity.1 [Note: W. J. Hocking.]

2. This hope goes beyond the present life.It is far above man: it is set on God. In climbing towards it, he must leave all meaner things behind and beneath him. The hope of the Christian is the one worthy, enduring hope that is capable of lifting man above the earth and leading him to heaven. For all earthly and human ideals are too near the man to last him more than a little while. No sooner does he propose one such to himself, and begin to mount towards it, than it begins to lose its excellence as he draws nigh to it, and soon it has no power to hold his affections. There is no imaginable state that he cannot so disenchant except heaven, and no model that he cannot unidealize except the Son of God. Therefore every mere earthly hope is unworthy to rule a man and, if he have no higher, will at last degrade him; because man is greater than any earthly honour he can aspire to, and greater than the world that he lives in, and greater than all its achievements and gloriesyes, greater than anything except God. Sic itur ad astra: This is the way to the stars. And Jesus, our elder brother, has gone before, and opened the way for aspiring man to follow. Behold they go to Him, out of every nation and every land, the leal, the loving, the true-hearted, even those who believe on His name. One by one they shake off all meaner desires, and lay all meaner purposes down, and as they climb towards Him along the various paths of suffering and of duty, their hearts are filled with a common hopeto be like Him, and see Him as He is.

In a letter to Bishop King, Dr. Bright wrote: Blessed are they that hope, is not formally among the Beatitudes; but it is, as you have made us feel, a summary of very much of the New Testament teaching.1 [Note: Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 78.]

3. This hope, being unworldly, does not appeal to mercenary instincts.It does not centre itself on surroundings like Mohammeds Paradise or the Elysian fields. Lower motives inevitably appeal more strongly to self-interest. People are often struck by seeing the indifference of Mohammedans in the face of death; soldiers have often testified how bravely they will go to death, and have argued that their religion must be more of a reality to them than ours. No doubt the lower, more mercenary conceptions of reward hereafter would make men more careless of their lives than the Christian one of being with Christ. The certainty that he was to pass into a sensual paradise would cause a sensual man, perhaps, even to put an end to himself. But one has yet to learn that there is really anything great in absolute indifference to death. Whatever the relative value of this life and the next, this is certain, that this life has a value, that in it man has a work to do, that it is wrong to try to shorten it, and that, therefore, indifference to its sudden close is no real sign of greatness. That is one thing; another is that, even granting that lower conceptions do produce greater indifference and consequent carelessness in the face of death than the higher ones, at any rate with the mass of mankind, yet we can never say, with the memory of Gordon and Havelock and a host of others before us, that the Christian conception, when realized, does not help men to die quite as bravely as any other conception, when there is any real and adequate reason.

The hope of reward is a powerful agent, in fact the only effective one. Our Lord said so when He was among men. But neither Jesus nor the beloved disciple would have held out heaven as the object of mens desire without first revealing heaven to them. Jesus brought heaven down to men, in His own person. He said, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He said, I and the Father are one, and He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. He showed to them in His daily companionship that every lovely deed and word He enforced was but an expression of His own nature. He told them He should leave them and go to the Father. He said that in that Fathers house were many mansions; that He should go to prepare a place for them, and that where He was there they should be. Was there any fear, when He had taught these lessons, and inspired this spirit, that the disciples, who looked up to Him with adoring love, would think of heaven as a place of selfish luxury? According to their view of Him would be their view of heaven.1 [Note: A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, 16.]

I do not love thee, Lord, my part and lot,

For that bright heaven thou hast promised me;

I am not moved by fear because I see

A yawning hell for those who love thee not;

Tis thou thyself dost move me; salt and hot

The tears flow down my cheeks to think on thee

Nailed to the cross and mocked, that men might be

Freed by thy death on that accursed spot.

Thy love hath moved me; and I see it clear

That, even robbed of heaven, I should love;

And freed of hell and torment, I should fear.

For, giving nothing, thou wert still as dear,

And had I naught to hope one day above,

No less to thee, O Lord, my soul must move.2 [Note: Roy Temple House, in S.S. Times, Aug. 17, 1912.]

4. If the future is not a hope it will be a fear.If we resolve to forego the hope, we shall still be haunted by the fear that in that sleep of death there will come dreams, and that these dreams may be of darkness rather than of light. The love of God and of His righteousness is the key to the appreciation of heaven. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived it, because it is spiritually discerned. We may speculate fancifully on its nature; we may cultivate curiosity till we bring ourselves, when on the brink of death, to say with the famous Frenchman, Now for the great secret; but we have not been raised by such speculations any nearer to the height to which God is ever calling us. For He is calling us to hope, and to hope for Him.

It would not, perhaps, be true to say that fearlessness is always the product of hope; it is true to say that, where hope is, fear cannot be. Hope, in the deepest, truest sense of the word, casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. Bunyan, in his great classic, makes this clear to us, in his delineation of the man whom he names Hopeful. In the dungeon of Giant Despair, with his companion, Christian, it is the younger pilgrim who consoles and enheartens the older. And when the two enter together the last river, and Christian cries out, I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head, Hopeful calmly replies, Be of good cheer, my brother; I feel the bottom, and it is good.1 [Note: J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 126.]

The Operation of Christian Hope

1. The Christian hope has a purifying power.There are very few religions which have not made purifying of some kind a part of their duty. The very savage, when he enters (as he fancies) the presence of his God, will wash and adorn himself that he may be fit, poor creature, for meeting the paltry God which he has invented out of his own brain; and he is right as far as he goes. The Englishman, when he dresses himself in his best to go to church, obeys the same reasonable instinct. Whatsoever we respect and admire we shall also try to copy, if it be only for a time. If we are going into the presence of a wiser man than ourselves, we shall surely recollect and summon up what little wisdom or knowledge we may have; if into the presence of a holier person, we shall try to call up in ourselves those better and more serious thoughts which we so often forget, that we may be, even for a few minutes, fit for that good company. And if we go into the presence of a purer person than ourselves, we shall surely (unless we be base and brutal) call up our purest and noblest thoughts, and try to purify ourselves, even as they are pure. It is true what poets have said again and again, that there are women whose mere presence, whose mere look, drives all bad thoughts awaywomen before whom men dare no more speak, or act, or even think, basely, than they would dare before the angels of God.

It has been truly said that children cannot be brought up among beautiful pictures, even among any beautiful sights and sounds, without the very expression of their faces becoming more beautiful, purer, gentler, nobler; so that in them are fulfilled the words of the great and holy Poet concerning the maiden brought up according to God, and the laws of God

And she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.

But if mere human beings can have this personal influence, as it is called, over each others characters, if even inanimate things, if they be beautiful, can have itwhat must be the personal influence of our Lord Jesus Christ?1 [Note: C. Kingsley, All Saints Day, 24.]

From Bethel Jacob went on his journey (Gen 29:1). He lifted up his feet, as the livelier Hebrew has it. He went forward with a new buoyancy in his step and a higher courage in his heart. He was animated by the hope which always thrills the soul when it is fresh from real communion with God. There are spiritual experiences after which we become physically nimble and lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be so. It is a rapture to face the unknown future, if God has promised to be with us and guide us. As the Hebrew prophet says: They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.2 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 49.]

2. This hope will materially weaken our hold on this world.What is wealth, when we have illimitable riches laid up in heaven? What are pleasures, when we have before us endless joysthe most pure and intelligent that the wisdom and resources of God can create? What are earthly attachments, when compared with the society of saints and angels, and, above all, the Lord Himself, which awaits the child of God? What is knowledgeeven the profoundest that earths sages can fathomcompared with that ocean of all that is knowable in the near future? While it is certainly a gain to have a cupful of knowledge instead of a thimbleful, yet, in either case, it is a mere nothing in comparison with knowing fully, even as we have been known fully.

Clearly, then, just in proportion to our having such bright hopes lighting up the gloomy recesses of our earthly lives shall we be able to sit loosely to the things of only passing interest, and set our affections on heavenly things. We shall use earths mammon only as a handmaid to add lustre to the everlasting habitations.

We cling too much to this worlds affairs. Many of us are like the little boy of whom Mr. McNeill tells, who was one day playing with a vase, and who put his hand into it and could not withdraw it. The father failed to free his boys hand, and was talking of breaking the vase. But he suggested another trial first. He told his boy to open his hand and hold his fingers straight out and then to pull his hand away. To his astonishment the little fellow said that he could not put his fingers out as his father had shown him, for if he did he would have to drop his penny. He had been holding on to a penny all the time.1 [Note: J. Dinwoodie.]

3. This hope will supply courage and patience.There is nothing that makes a man so downhearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps an inch or two, and then all at once he drops down, and farther down than he was before he started. Slowly we manage some little, patient self-improvement; gradually, inch by inch and bit by bit, we may be growing better, and then there comes some gust and outburst of temptation; and the whole painfully reclaimed soil gets covered up by an avalanche of mud and stones, which we have to remove slowly, barrow-load by barrow-load. And then we feel that it is all of no use to strive, and we let circumstances shape us, and give up all thoughts of reformation. To such moods, then, there comes, like an angel from Heaven, that holy, blessed message, We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Every inch that we make now will tell then, and it is not all of no use. Set your heart to the work, it is a work that will be blessed and will prosper.

I think this was the first year that I took a leading part in opposing the Adjournment for the Derby (which Tom Hughes had previously engineered) and was beaten by about three to one. This was one of the many Forlorn Hopes which I have lived to see successfulfor I think the Derby adjournment is now virtually killed. In those days everyone laughed at the idea of stopping the scandal. Surely the words of Charles Greville (himself a Turfite) in his Journal indicate the true nature of racingThen the degrading nature of the occupation; mixing with the lowest of mankind and absorbed in the business for the sole purpose of getting money, the consciousness of a sort of degradation of intellect, the conviction of the deteriorating effect upon both the feelings and the understandingall these things torment me, and often turn my pleasure to pain. How often in looking back on these forlorn hopes do I think of the lines

Though beaten back in many a fray,

Yet freshening strength we borrow:

And where the vanguard halts to-day

The rear shall camp to-morrow.1 [Note: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 107.]

Two serious defeats had within the week been inflicted upon the British forces in South Africa. Cronje, lurking behind his trenches and his barbed wire entanglements, barred Methuens road to Kimberley, while in the northern part of Cape Colony Gatacres wearied troops had been defeated and driven by a force which consisted largely of British subjects. But the public at home steeled their hearts and fixed their eyes steadily upon Natal. There was their senior General, and there the main body of their troops. As brigade after brigade and battery after battery touched at Cape Town, and were sent on instantly to Durban, it was evident that it was in this quarter that the supreme effort was to be made, and that there the light might at last break. In club, and dining-room, and railway carwherever men met and talkedthe same words might be heard: Wait until Buller moves. The hopes of a great empire lay in the phrase.2 [Note: A. Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, 175.]

It is neither blood nor rain that has made England, but hopethe thing all those dead men have desired. France was not France because she was made to be by the skulls of the Celts or by the sun of Gaul. France was France because she chose.3 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw.]

Westcott gave us hope, in an age which needed, above all things, to be saved from hopelessness. We can keep hope fresh, so he cried to us of the Christian Social Union.

Hope, the paramount duty which Heaven lays,

For its own honour, on mans suffering heart.

This is the debt that we owe to himto cling to the high hopes with which he was inspiredeven though we see not our token, and there is no prophet more; no, not one among us who under-standeth any more.1 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 138.]

We are of those who tremble at Thy word;

Who faltering walk in darkness toward our close

Of mortal life, by terrors curbed and spurred:

We are of those.

We journey to that land which no man knows

Who any more can make his voice be heard

Above the clamour of our wants and woes.

Not ours the hearts Thy loftiest love hath stirred,

Not such as we Thy lily and Thy rose:

Yet, Hope of those who hope with hope deferred,

We are of those.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 196.]

III

The Pattern of Purity

1. Christ is the Patternas he is pure.He exhibits perfection in the inner and outer life. The inner life consists in oneness with Christ, the outer life in intercourse with our fellow-men. The two are well combined in those words of St. Peter: What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? This holiness of character has its root in its close companionship with Christ, and is exhibited in all manner of Christian conversation. Look at the Pattern. His holiness was pre-eminently practical. Look at His submission to His mother when He was subject unto her, His care for her in His dying hour, His compassion for the multitude, His love for His chosen flock, His faithfulness to those whom He loved, His meekness and gentleness, His sinless purity, His forgiveness of wrong, His delight in the Fathers will, His absolute submission to the Fathers purpose, His marvellous self-sacrifice, giving Himself a ransom for many.

In the Standard Office of the British Government there is a bronze bar, a yard long, the unit of measurement throughout the British Empire. Everything is measured by reference to that bit of metal. It is the final court of appeal in the matter of measurement. The interesting thing about it is that it is reputed to be the same length as the arm of the king in whose reign it was made. So that we really measure by reference to a royal arm. It is in the realm of heart and soul as in the realm of the market-place: our unit of measurement is something about a Kingnot the sweep of His arm, but the heart and the life of Him.

In white all the colours are blended. A perfectly white substance combines all the colours of the rainbow merged in true proportion; but green or indigo, or red are only the reflections of a part of the solar rays. So John, Peter, Paulthese are parts of the light of heaven; these are differing colours, and there is a beauty in each one of them. But if you want to get the whole you must get to Christ the perfect Lord, for all the light is in Him. In Him is not the red or the blue, but in Him is light, the true light, the whole of it. You are sure to get a lop-sided character if any man shall be the copy after which you write. If we copy Christ we shall attain a perfect manhood through the power of His Spirit.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon, Grace Triumphant, 215.]

2. The Pattern is an everlasting challenge to us.The promise of likeness to God does not mean perfect freedom from sin now, far from it; but it does mean progressive growth, gradual conquest, ever, in some small way, coming to know God and His purposes better, and so growing, even if it be in ways almost undiscernible, to a likeness of something in Him. Every man that hath this hope in Christ, every one, that is, who realizes the blessing of His Baptism, the dignity of his being Gods child, this manner of love whereby he, all unworthy, is called the son of God, and sees that this is but the beginning; that God means to lead him onwards to the full knowledge of Himself, till, at last, he is counted worthy to see His faceevery man to whom these thoughts and hopes are real will long to use every means given of God for his cleansing, will suffer no lower ideal to overshadow and obscure his hope.

In the beautiful legends which tell us of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, one knight is described as the bright and consummate flower of chivalry, the brave and spotless Sir Galahadwhose good blade carved the casques of men, whose tough lance thrusted sure, whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. It was no fond tale, no idle fancy; for many Sir Galahads have lived since Christ came to show men how to be great; and such are the men who have done all the fairest and gentlest deeds of human history. And sordid and commonplace as the world seems to have grown, the only real leaders of men are the men who, like Sir Galahad, are high-minded and pure-hearted. The time was when such rode forth in armour to resist the spoilers, and keep the far frontiers of Christendom against the heathen invader. Now, however, they do the less conspicuous but not less glorious part. In every Christian community there are pure-hearted Christian men who are the real champions of right, the warders of all that men cherish and hold dearmen who are kept stainless and pure by the high hope of their Christian calling; men whose high-mindedness gives tone to our society, who are the real defenders of public safety and domestic peace. These are the true defenders of our country, the unconscious champions of its homesmen to whose star-eyed vision the Christians hope has risen, and whom by Gods grace it has purified and is keeping pure.1 [Note: S. S. Harris, The Dignity of Man, 229.]

3. How then is our purification to be effected?The answer is, and must be, that it is the work of the Spirit. But as, on the one hand, there would be nothing so vain as to try to do the Spirits work for ourselves, so, on the other hand, there is nothing so useless as to expect the Spirit to do our work. There is a purification which God alone can effect for us. There is another purification which God cannot and will not do. Sin is forgiven, sinfulness is removed, grace is bestowed by God. None of these things can be obtained by man. But grace must be used by man like all other gifts of God. He must learn to be obedient, he must learn to avoid sin, he must learn to be active in goodness, by the use of grace; not by merely standing still as if he were asleep or dead. Whatever may be the source of his activity, he must, so far as he knows, choose, determine, plan, persevere in the way of holiness, as much as in the way of learning, in the way of working, counselling, or pursuing any other energy which God has set before men. And it is plain that unless it were so we should not enjoy the human freedom, the human faculties in that thing which most belongs to humanitythe knowledge and love of God.

See how he does not take away freewill in that he saith, purify himself. Who purifieth us but God? Yea; but God doth not purify thee if thou be unwilling. Therefore, in that thou joinest thy will to God, in that thou purifiest thyself, thou purifiest thyself not by thyself, but by Him who cometh to inhabit thee.1 [Note: Augustine.]

To have communion with Jesus Christ is like bringing an atmosphere round about us in which all evil will die. If you take a fish out of water and bring it up into the upper air, it writhes and gasps, and is dead presently; and our evil tendencies and sins, drawn up out of the muddy depths in which they live, and brought up into that pure atmosphere of communion with Jesus Christ, are sure to shrivel and to die, and to disappear. We kill all evil by fellowship with the Master. His presence in our lives, by our communion with Him, is like the watchfire that the traveller lights at nightit keeps all the wild beasts of prey away from the fold.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

I saw a smith the other day cleaning his grimy workshop. Through one high and narrow window streamed a golden ray of sunshine, and where the beam fell the broom swept. But under benches and dark corners one caught a suggestion of cobwebs and long-gathered dust on them. The smith took a piece of burnished tin, and catching on its face the ray of sunshine, he flashed it into the hiding-places of ancient dirt and disorder, and straightway followed the cleansing. It is a homely parable. Every man with this hope set on him purifieth himself; will send its flashlight into the dark places of the heart where hidden foulness still lurks, and by its revealing straightway set about self-cleansing. The vision splendid is greatly practical. You can do so many things by it. You can harness a stubborn temper with it, bridle an ill tongue, cauterize with the fire of it a hidden plague spot, yoke it to a sluggard self so slow to seek anothers good at any cost of comfort. Every man that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself.3 [Note: T. Yates.]

Then life isto wake, not sleep,

Rise and not rest, but press

From earths level, where blindly creep

Things perfected, more or less,

To the heavens height, far and steep,

Where, amid what strifes and storms

May wait the adventurous quest,

Power is Lovetransports, transforms

Who aspired from worst to best,

Sought the souls world, spurned the worms!

I have faith such end shall be:

From the first, Power wasI knew.

Life has made clear to me

That, strive but for closer view,

Love were as plain to see.

When see? When there dawns a day,

If not on the homely earth,

Then yonder, worlds away,

Where the strange and new have birth,

And Power comes full in play.1 [Note: Browning.]

The Power of the Christian Hope

Literature

Ainger (A.), Sermons in the Temple Church, 13.

Bushnell (H.), The New Life, 176.

Campbell (R. J.), A Faith for To-day, 107.

Cooper (T. J.), Loves Unveiling, 144.

Dale (R. W.), Christian Doctrine, 198.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 162.

Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 84.

Eadie (J.), The Divine Love, 104.

Eyton (R.), The True Life, 207.

Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 61, 197.

Glazebrook (M. G.), The End of the Law, 71.

Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 222.

Hoare (E.), Great Principles of Divine Truth, 256.

Holland (W. L.), The Beauty of Holiness, 68.

Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 1.

McGarvey (J. W.), Sermons (1894), 16.

Maclagan (P. J.), The Gospel View of Things, 57, 130

Maclaren (A.), A Years Ministry, i. 3.

Murray (A.), Like Christ, 241.

Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 91.

Punshon (W. M.), Sermons, i. 66.

Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 479.

Robertson (F. W.), The Human Race, 43.

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 65.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xliii. (1897) 133.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Grace Triumphant, 199.

Talbot (E. S.), Some Titles and Aspects of the Eucharist, 19.

Vincent (M. R.), The Covenant of Peace, 174.

Westcott (B. F.), Village Sermons, 82.

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

every: Rom 5:4, Rom 5:5, Col 1:5, 2Th 2:16, Tit 3:7, Heb 6:18

purifieth: Act 15:9, 2Co 7:1, Heb 12:14, 2Pe 1:4, 2Pe 3:14

even: 1Jo 2:6, 1Jo 4:17, Mat 5:48, Luk 6:36, Heb 7:26

Reciprocal: Psa 17:15 – with Psa 71:14 – But Pro 21:8 – but Mat 5:8 – for Joh 14:3 – I will Joh 15:18 – General Rom 8:24 – saved 1Co 13:13 – hope Eph 2:12 – having Eph 4:4 – as Eph 4:24 – righteousness Phi 4:8 – are pure 1Th 1:3 – and patience 1Th 2:13 – effectually 1Ti 1:5 – a pure 2Ti 2:21 – purge Tit 1:2 – hope Tit 2:13 – blessed Jam 3:17 – first Jam 4:8 – purify 1Pe 1:3 – unto 1Pe 1:13 – hope 1Jo 3:7 – even 1Jo 5:18 – keepeth Rev 22:4 – they Rev 22:14 – Blessed

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE HOPE OF THE ADVENT

And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.

1Jn 3:3

The Epistles of John, it has been said, with their ideal teaching, find the future in the present. In them, as in the fourth Gospel, stress is laid upon the essential continuity of the life hereafter with the present spiritual life of the Christian. None the less, as the same writer has pointed out, the final consummation is never lost sight of. The use of the term Parousia, which elsewhere, and especially in the Pauline writings, has a very definite sense, indicates that, while to John, Christs return was in one sense a spiritual advent, a present act of grace or judgment, it was in another sense an objective event of the future. In this passage the Apostle refers to it as a definite manifestation in time, and he urges the expectation of it as an incentive to self-purification. In a few simple but moving words he reminds his readers of their wondrous privilege of Divine sonshipa privilege pointing to the infinite love and condescension of God. The worldfallen and estrangeddespised them, persecuted them, rejected them. But then the same world had nailed Him to the cross. Divine sonshipnow are we children of Godwas their present high calling; but the glory in which that calling was to culminate was not yet revealed. But this much at leastand it was enoughcould be foreseen. When that supreme Self-disclosure should be vouchsafed it would result in all who were fit to behold it being brought into perfect resemblance to Him. The vision of Him in His beauty would transform them into His likeness.

I. An earnest expectation.The hope of the Advent! St. Paul speaks of it as an earnest expectation in which all nature joins. He himself rejoiced in the thought of it as the day which should bring deliverance, glory, renewal, incorruption. It was to himself the expectation which enabled him to bear with patience and cheerfulness the sufferings of this present time. To no man has the petition Thy kingdom come been fuller of meaning, of hope, of encouragement, than to him who was in labours abundantly, in prisons abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft, who was daily oppressed by anxiety for all the Churches, who bore branded on his body the marks of Jesus.

II. Christs purity triumphant.In that day the mind of Christthe mind which is made known to us in the sacred records of Himwill be all in all. Then whatsoever is opposed to Himwhatsoever denies and rejects Himwill be swept away for ever. Then the long and varying struggle between sin and righteousnessthat struggle which wearies and often disheartens uswill have terminated. Then His purity will be everywhere triumphant. And that triumph we shall witnesseither to be saved or condemned by it. Do let uswhile this period of probation lastsseriously set ourselves to overcome the faults and frailties, the sins or vices, which dishonour and degrade us. Do let us make a resolute endeavour to get rid of the moral stains which defile our characters. We say to ourselves that we cannot do so altogether. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. But is the spirit willing? That is the vital question. Do we honestly desire to be quit of our evil nature? Do we wish for spiritual salvation? Would we be pure if we could? Surely it is idle for manyonly too manyof us to attempt the pretence that we are seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness. We are engrossed with our business, our pleasuresare they always innocent pleasures?our self-advancement, our prosperity, our worldly ambitions, our personal schemes. We labour and strive for these, we discipline ourselves carefully enough to run the race for such prizes; we throw all our mental powers, all our force of character, all our skill and perseverance, all our resourcefulness and determination, into the contestnot always too honourably fought outwhich has these things for its rewards. But on self-consecration, moral idealism, spiritual strength, on all that St. John here includes in the thought of purityon these we lay comparatively little stress. If we are thus willing to barter the kingdom of heaventhe kingdom in its infinite gloryfor success in this world, how can we think, how can we wade so far in hypocrisy and self-deception as to persuade ourselves that we are really and truly fit in heart and mind for that awful, that unimaginable revelation?

III. Christs example.Even as He is pure! I have given you an example. In Himin His earthly ministrywe have the absolute ideal, the perfect and faultless pattern. The New Testament puts before us for our acceptance and imitation a definite type of charactera type which has proved itself by the continuous trial of centuries and by a thousand tests; by infinitely varied images of mercy, nobleness, self-discipline, self-devotion; by the martyrs fortitude and the missionarys sacrifice; proved itself in many a patient and suffering life, in many a generous enterprise, in many a holy death-bed, in the blessed peace and innocence of countless homes. Meekness, compassionateness, loving-kindness, readiness to forgive, willingness to be offered for others, self-surrender, self-denial, humility, poverty in spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousnessthese are among its constituent parts. And wewhat are we? What are we seeking to be? Such questions, if we press them upon ourselves, if we are honest with ourselves in our answer to them, may well check and awe us. But our self-examination need not terrify us. We think of Calvary and all that followed. It is not only that there is that wondrous breadth of free pardon even for the worst; not only that there is no wickedness, however black, which may not be washed away in the Divine Blood; not only that our robes may be cleansed, whatever the defilements adhering to them; it is not only this, though this by itself would be a priceless boon, but that there is graceHis graceto help and discipline and prepare us. In the solemn task of self-purification we are not left to ourselves. His aid is offered to us, if only we will avail ourselves of it. No struggle with some special fault, some besetting sin, need go on without Him. No temptation need be faced in spiritual solitude. Lo, I am with you alway was His promise to His Church; but it is also His promise to each individual disciple. If a man love Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him. It is with Him and His Father abiding with us that we have to make ready for that second coming. The Son of Man, the Crucified, will then be our Judge. But He Who will then be on the thronethe great white throneis now with each one of those that believe in Him, transforming them into His own image. Even as He is pure. So, too, shall we be pure in that new world,

When God has made the pile complete,

when all that is now provisional and transitory shall have given place to the perfect and the everlasting, when the preparation shall have ended and the fulfilment have commenced, when He shall be manifested in His glorious Majesty, and we shall see Him even as He is.

Rev. the Hon. W. E. Bowen.

Illustration

Lo, as some ship, outworn and overladen,

Strains for the harbour where her sails are furled;

Lo, as some innocent and eager maiden

Leans oer the wistful limit of the world,

Dreams of the glow and glory of the distance,

Wonderful wooing and the grace of tears,

Dreams with what eyes and what a sweet insistence

Lovers are waiting in the hidden years:

Lo, as some venturer, from his stars receiving

Promise and presage of sublime emprise,

Wears evermore the seal of his believing

Deep in the dark of solitary eyes,

Yea to the end, in palace or in prison,

Fashions his fancies of the realm to be,

Fallen from the height or from the deeps arisen,

Ringed with the rocks and sundered of the sea;

So even I, and with a pang more thrilling,

So even I, and with a hope more sweet,

Yearn for the sign, O Christ, of Thy fulfilling,

Faint for the flaming of Thine Advent feet.

Myers, St. Paul.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE INCENTIVE TO HOLINESS

It is the prerogative of Christianity, as a body of truth, to have made the prospect of immortality both definite and bright. But immortality is more than a doctrine; it is a power, a practical power, affecting and transforming human character and life.

I. What is the condition indispensable to future happiness?The answer, in one word, is purity.

(a) Not the ceremonial cleanness of the Old Testament; not mere outward separation from the world; not mere external respectability of conduct.

(b) But such spiritual purity as is required by Christ, and illustrated in His perfect life.

(c) For this fits for fellowship with God, and for the joys and services appropriate to Christs associates in the abodes of light.

II. Upon what is the Christians hope of future happiness fixed?It is set upon Christ Himself. Upon the vision of Christ; we shall see Him as He is; upon likeness to Christ, Whom we hope morally to resemble. It is quite in accordance with the spirit of Christianity that we should be taught to anticipate not so much personal enjoyment as a spiritual conformity to the Lord Whom we honour and love.

III. What is the disciplinary and preparatory power of this hope?Can it help to realise itself, to bring about the appropriation of that to which it aspires?

(a) Hope is generally a powerful and beneficial motive. To hope confidently and brightly for any object is a step towards securing it.

(b) Hope set on Christ has a necessarily purifying influence. If faith in Christ and love to Christ be powerful motives to holy conduct, why not hope in Christ? Directed towards so holy a Being, hope cannot but hallow and elevate.

(c) For such hope induces to personal resolution and effort. The hoper purifieth himself, i.e. uses the appointed means of endeavour, prayer, and Divine communion to that end.

(d) Above all, hope contemplates the model of such purity. To study the model is to be changed into the same image.

Illustration

Immanuel is the Incarnation of Divine purity, the image of Divine holiness in human nature, to which we are to be conformed. God has not told us merely in so many words what purity is, or given us a bare and rigid code by obeying which we may become pure, or provided a series of means and instruments by which purity may be secured in us. He has given us a living model, a perfect human pattern in Jesus Christ, Whose character and actions, as those of a Man, we can so far understand and imitate. Thus the task of purification becomes easier to us. We are to follow in His footsteps; to be in the world as He was; to walk by faith as He walked; to be obedient as He was; to learn obedience, as He learned His, by the things which we suffer; to bring our human wills into subjection to Gods will, as He did, by self-denial. In all things is He our pattern, our perfect pattern which we are to imitate, not artificially or mechanically, but in spirit and principle. How high the standard and lofty the ideal of our purity!

(THIRD OUTLINE)

HOLINESS OF HEART AND LIFE

There are four points to which I would direct attention: the nature of holiness, the standard of holiness, the difficulties of holiness, and the power of holiness.

I. The nature of holiness.Holiness is a personal quality of the individual person, and, just as a good tree bears fruit, the living man becomes holy in his personal character. From this is seen the very marked distinction between holiness and justifying righteousness. Justifying righteousness is the righteousness of the Blessed Saviour imputed to us. It is wholly external to ourselves. It is reckoned to us, but in no sense is it in us. The wedding garment in which God clothes us is the righteousness of the Son of God, imputed though not inherent. It is perfectly different from holiness. To use Hookers phrase, Holiness is inherent. I prefer the expression inwrought, because it is wrought in the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, and does not grow there of itself. Thus the individual becomes holy.

II. The standard of holiness.In the Word of God there is only one standard set before us. That is the perfect will of God, as taught in His law and exhibited in the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no lower standard. The words of Scripture are, As He Who hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. And the hope of the believer is, that the day is coming when we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. If we consider this standard, there are three great truths that immediately follow.

(a) It is perfect. A good deal is said about perfection, and we find it in Christ Jesus. He is holy and undefiled, and separate from sinners, a perfect exhibition in human form of the perfect character of the perfectly holy God.

(b) It is universal. It is exactly the same for all classes, the learned and the ignorant, the young and the old. It does not vary with our position or our opinions. It does not depend upon our consciousness. It does not alter with our thoughts of right and wrong, so that what may be right to-day may be wrong to-morrow. But it is the same and always the same, and from all eternity has been the same, and to all eternity will be the same. So it is the same for the whole universe. The standard for men is the same as that for angels, and the standard for the first beginner is the same as that for the most ripened and experienced believer.

(c) It combines in perfection the inner and outer life. This holiness of character has its root in its close companionship with God, and is exhibited in all manner of Christian conversation.

III. The difficulties.It is a rash man that can suppose that he can walk in the path of holiness without encountering both danger and difficulty. There are difficulties without and difficulties within.

(a) Without there is the environment, if I may use a hackneyed modern term, of a wicked world strengthened by the perpetual malice of a wicked spirit. Respecting these, I would give only one caution. While we believe in the deadly power of Satans temptation, we must beware of accusing him of that which really belongs to ourselves.

(b) Then there are difficulties within. In Romans 6. I find that those who are directed to reckon themselves dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God are warned not to let sin reign in their mortal body. Surely, then, sin must be there, or there would be no need of such a warning. Our ninth Article is perfectly right when it says that the infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated; and if any speak of the higher life lifting them up above the level of the regenerate, I can only say that I can find no account of it in Scripture, and that I know no record of any one saint of God in which he is described as being released in this present life from the difficulty and conflict of indwelling sin.

IV. Now let us turn to the power.There is a power and a very great one. That power is the power of God the Holy Ghost.

(a) Do we want strength for victory? According to Eph 3:16, we may be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.

(b) Do we want purity of heart? According to Act 15:9, it is the Holy Ghost that purifieth the heart by faith.

(c) Do we want transformation into the very likeness of our Lord Himself? According to 2Co 3:18, we must be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. He is an indwelling Sanctifier, perfectly acquainted with all the windings of the human heart, perfectly able to direct, and perfectly able to frustrate all the designs of Satan, so that in our present struggle we have all that can be desired, an omnipotent, indwelling God, perfectly able to give the victory.

Rev. Canon Edward Hoare.

Illustration

I often hear the expression, the possibilities of faith. I cannot say I altogether like it. I greatly prefer to hear of the omnipotence of the Spirit, for there is no limit to that; and when we speak of the possibilities of faith, it is important to remember that there is a limit to that, for it is not true faith to expect that which God has not promised in His Word, or led us by that Word to expect. We cannot rightly take a verse from its context and use it as a proof text for some particular point not referred to in that context. But this we can rightly do: we can look at the eternal purpose of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost; we can look at the never-failing covenant of God; we can look at the mighty power of the grace of Christ; we can look forward to the day when we shall see Him as He is and shall be like Him, when God shall have completed the whole number of His elect, and we shall stand before Him in perfect, spotless, everlasting holiness.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

1Jn 3:3. And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. That the calling and the being, the privilege and the reality, may be hereafter eternally one and indistinguishable, the children of God must in this life become like the Son in His purity: the Divine gift will be consummated as a gilt when the Son is revealed; but it is consummated in this world not without human co-operation. Here alone St. John calls in the energy of Christian hope: its object is the appearing of Christ, it is set on Him; within the soul it is an incentive: the faith which worketh by love worketh by hope also. The meaning of the word purifieth himself will best be understood by collating it with doeth righteousness: the latter is a complete conformity with the requirements of law, the former is the deliverance from all interior sin; the latter is our finished justification, the former is our entire sanctification. Christ is the standard of both: even as He is righteous, even as He is pure. Neither the one nor the other connotes the idea that He became what He is. He is pure, and that is the same as saying that the Divine holiness is essentially in Him. Be ye holy, for I am holy. That He is called pure and not holy has two reasons. First, it springs from the idea of our purifying ourselves. Secondly, it is more limited than holy, and refers to His human nature as free from the stain that all other human nature has. It is never used of God, but is strictly appropriate to God incarnate. Then our purifying ourselves has reference to the gradual attainment of that entire deliverance from the stain of sinnot unchastity or any specific form of itwhich is represented in the first chapter as the effect of Christs blood. The word there used St. Paul adopts to express our own evil: Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement. St. John keeps that for the Divine work, and uses a term which St. Peter and St. James agree with him in adopting for the human act: Seeing ye have purified your souls (1Pe 1:22); Purify your hearts, ye double-minded (Jas 4:8).

Regeneration and sinning incompatible: first considered with reference to our union with Christ as manifested to take away sin, and our true knowledge of Him; and then secondly with reference to the utter abolition of our fellowship with the Devil.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Every one that hath this hope, that is, the hope of seeing and enjoying Christ in glory, he now endeavours to purify himself, according to the pattern and copy which Christ hath set before him, labouring to imitate it, though he cannot reach it.

Observe here, 1. The character of a Christian by this hope, every man that hath this hope in him.

Learn, That a Christian is a person of high hopes, and raised expectations, as to future blessedness; the author of this hope is God; the object of this hope is some future good promised and expected; the grounds of this hope are the promise and oath of God, the purchase and undertaking of Christ, and the sanctifying work of the Spirit, in and upon his soul.

Observe, 2. A description of this hope by its inseparable effect, it purifies the Christian; he that has this hope purifies himself; where it is implied,

1. That sin is a pollution which we must be purified from. 2. That the holiest of saints here on earth, are not perfectly purified from this pollution, but are daily endeavouring to purify themselves more and more.

Observe, 3. The pattern after which the sincere Christian doth conform in this work of purification, and that is Christ: he purifies himself, even as he is pure; intimating, that the Lord Jesus Christ was a perfect pattern of purity; and that it is the Christian’s duty to eye this pattern, and to endeavour to conform himself thereunto, by purifying himself, even as Christ is pure.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

1Jn 3:3. And every man that hath this hope in him An expectation of seeing Christ as he is, built on a solid foundation, namely, the foundation of being a child and heir of God; purifieth himself By applying to, and confiding in, the purifying blood of Christ, with a penitent, believing heart; by earnestly praying for and receiving the purifying Spirit of God; by obeying the purifying word, (1Pe 1:22,) and by exercising purifying faith in the truths and promises of the gospel, Act 15:9 : even as he is pure The person who is inspired with this well-grounded hope, will keep before his eyes the pure and holy character of Christ, as the mark to which he is to press, that he may be prepared to receive the prize of his high calling of God in Christ Jesus, (Php 3:14,) it being Gods will and pleasure that believers should be conformed to the image of his Son, in order to their having the high honour and great happiness of dwelling with him, Rom 8:29; and that they should not expect to enjoy the privilege of sitting down at the marriage-feast, unless they had previously put on the wedding-garment. Mark this, reader: and give up all hope of being admitted into heaven hereafter, without a conformity to Christ in holiness here.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Verse 3

Purifieth himself; that is, his hope of being hereafter joined to Christ in happiness and glory, leads him to seek now to resemble him in character.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

3:3 {4} And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even {e} as he is pure.

(4) Now he describes this adoption (the glory which as yet consists in hope) by the effect that is, because whoever is made the Son of God, endeavours to resemble the Father in purity.

(e) This word signifies a likeness, but not an equality.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

In the meantime we anticipate seeing and knowing Jesus Christ fully, and that anticipation has a purifying effect on us now (cf. 1Jn 2:1; 1Jn 2:6; 1Jn 2:29; 1Jn 3:7; 1Jn 3:16; 1Jn 4:17; Mat 5:8). [Note: See Wayne A. Brindle, "Biblical Evidence for the Imminence of the Rapture," Bibliotheca Sacra 158:630 (April-June 2001):149-50.] Similarly in the future seeing and knowing Christ will have a completely purifying effect on us (cf. 2Co 3:18). The believer’s hope is not "in him" (AV and NIV; i.e., "within himself"), but "on Him" (NASB; i.e., "set on Christ"; Gr. ep auto).

"John states two reasons why the Christian ought to be pure. One is related to a past work of God and the second to a future work." [Note: Ryrie, "The First . . .," p. 1472.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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