Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 922
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, March 6, 1870
“Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that says, I know Him, and keeps not His commandments, is a liar, and the Truth is not in him.” 1 John 2:3,4.
THE Epistles of John possess and combine certain qualities which seem, at the first blush, to stand opposite as the poles to one another. Their style of expression is simple, chaste, and unadorned. Short words are used. For the most part words of one syllable—such little homely words as a young child might easily spell. And the sense is so clear and obvious, that the captious critic or the astute reasoner must be puzzled to distort it. Yet there is no lack of dignity in the language, and as for the matter of these Epistles, it is grand and sublime. Where would you turn in the pages of the New Testament, save only to the book of the Revelation, given by the pen of the same writer, for more notable mystery?
The language charms our ears, while the Truth it expresses holds us in awe. There are deep meanings and veiled mysteries here. Albeit the hidden wisdom which baffles finite thought is not couched in strange terms, but declared in such plain speech as trips lightly off the tongue, and yet sinks deeply into the heart. Again, the spirit of John is love, all love. Every line he writes is perfumed with charity. And yet to what close self-examination, to what a severe testing does he put us! How truly may it be said that these Epistles are a touchstone by which we may discern between the true gold and the counterfeit!
Generous but discriminating, glowing with affection but rigid in fidelity, the Apostle mingles caution with caress, and qualifies the most soothing consolations with such stern warnings, that in well-near every sentence he constrains us to deep searching of heart. The text is a case in point. With a wise discrimination he draws a contrast between him who knows that he knows Christ, and him who says that he knows Christ. The one he acknowledges, but the other he brands with that hard word, that ignominious title, “a liar,” and sends him away as unworthy of further consideration.
Not only in this case, but all through his Epistles, John continues to unravel the tangled web of hypocrisy. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes and seem like Truth! To show the diverging point between facts and sayings, between realities and professions, between those who have, and those who only say that they have, was his constant aim. It may interest you just to open your Bibles and turn to one or two of the passages that illustrate this. In his first chapter, at the sixth verse, he has been speaking of those who walk in the light and have fellowship with God, and he adds, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.”
Then in the text he speaks of those who know Christ, and he adds, “He that says, I know Him, and keeps not His commandments, is a liar, and the Truth is not in him.” And further on, in the ninth verse, speaking of those who have the light, he says, “He that says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now.” Not to multiply the instances, there is a notable one in the fourth chapter, at the twentieth verse, “If a man says I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God Whom he has not seen?”
So to have a thing, or to boast that you have it—to be, or to pretend to be such-and-such a character—are as opposite as white and black, as light and darkness. Indeed, we scarcely need Revelation to tell us this, for it is so in things secular, and it must be certainly applicable to religion. We meet in common life with persons who say that they are rich, but this does not make them so. They apply for credit and say that they are wealthy when they are worth nothing. Companies will ask for your money with which they may speculate, and they say that they are sound, but they are oftentimes found to be rotten. Though some of them make a very fair show in the prospectus, the result appears very foul in the winding-up of the association.
Persons have been known to say that they were of distinguished rank, but when they have had to prove their title before the House of Lords, oftentimes has it been discovered that they have made a mistake. Lunatics in Bethlehem Hospi-
tal, near here, have been found by scores to say that they were kings or queens. In the old houses, where madmen were confined, it often happened that some poor creature twisted a crown of straw, put it on his head, and said that he was a monarch. But that did not make him so. No armies arose at his bidding. No fleets crossed the ocean to do his will. No tribute was brought to his feet. He remained a poor pauper madman still, though he said that he was a king.