Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2556
“We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” 1 John 3:14.
I HAVE heard it said, by those who would be thought philosophers, that in religion we must believe, but cannot know. I am not very clear about the distinction they draw between knowledge and faith, nor do I care to enquire because I assert that, in matters relating to religion, we do know! In the things of God, we both believe and know. If you will read this Epistle through and, with a pencil draw a line under the word, “know,” wherever it occurs, you will be astonished to see how John continually asserts about the great Truths of our faith, “We know, we know, we know, we know.” He does not admit that any one of these things is the subject of conjecture, but he asserts it to be a matter of positive knowledge. These philosophical gentlemen call themselves Agnostics—that is a word derived from the Greek and has the same meaning as the word, “ignoramus,” which comes from the Latin—and is the English equivalent for a “know-nothing.” Well, if they like to be called ignoramuses, I have not the slightest objection to their keeping the title, but they should never presume to argue with Christian men! They put themselves out of court, directly, for we say, ” We know.” They cannot deny anything we choose to affirm, after that, because confessedly they do not know. If we do know and they cannot allege against us that we are deceivers—if, in any court of law they will admit that our testimony would be taken quite as quickly as theirs, and that our general repute is that we are as upright and as honest as they are—then they ought, in modesty, never to contradict us in anything, but to believe what we declare to be true.
As they do not know anything, themselves, let them be guided by those who doknow. At any rate, whether they choose to agree with us or not, we shall always affirm that we know what we know! And there are some things about God, and about the future, and about prayer and about the work of the Spirit of God in our own souls which we do not fancy, or imagine, or even make to be merely matters of faith. We know them, we are sure of them, for we have felt them, tasted them, handled them—and we know them as surely as we know the fact of our own existence. My text seems to me to speak of four things about which Believers in Christ are and ought to be positive and certain.
I. First, WE KNOW THAT ONCE WE WERE DEAD IN TRESPASSES AND SINS. That is implied in the text— “We know that we have passed from death unto life.” We could not have passed from death if we were not in death. Neither would there have been a change in bringing us into life if we were in life before. Herein, I believe, lies the Doctrine of the Natural Ruin of Man—his original sin, the depravity of his heart. I have heard it said that the children of some Christians are so very good—I suppose on account of their having such wonderfully good fathers and mothers—that they may be considered to have been born in the Church. They, I am assured, have no need of any conversion, and they never ought to need it. There are such principles within the dear little souls that you have only to nourish those blessed principles and they will turn into veritable angels! I have seen some of these children and I regret to say that I have not found them different in nature from other people’s boys and girls, neither have they grown up to be better than the children of the most ungodly. I believe, concerning everybody’s child, that it must be born again, that the Spirit of God must change its natural heart if it is to become a child of God. At any rate, whatever may be the theory as regards other people, we know that wewere once dead in sin—we have no question about that!
We who have been converted and become the subjects of the work of the Spirit of God know that we were once fast bound in spiritual death—at one time we were utterly insensible. We heard the Word of God and were pleased, perhaps, with the oratory of the speaker, or moved by his earnestness. But we were never led, by all his pleadings, to hate sin and to believe in Christ. We were shaken, but we were not awakened. We were insensible, spiritually, to the power of the Law of God. We heard it preached and we might be, for a moment, disquieted, but we never felt the terror of the condemnation which God pronounces upon the sinner who breaks His Law. If we did feel anything of it, we strived to get away from its influence—and drowned in pleasure and in sin all thoughts of the wrath of God. We could also hear the Gospel, as well as the Law, and the sweetest note in it had no music for our ears. What cared we for Jesus and His bleeding wounds? What respect had we for Infinite Love and the invitations of the precious Word? We came and we went, yet continued just as we were. We saw our face in the glass, but we did not wash it—and the spots of sin still remained.