1 John 5:18-21

The Epistle winds up with three summarizing declarations, each of which repeats the watchword, ‘we know,' taken, but in a better sense, from the Gnostic ‘we know:' the first, 1 John 5:18, asserts the fundamental opposition between life and sin; the second, 1 John 5:19, the fundamental opposition between the regenerate and the world; the third, 1 John 5:20, pays its final homage to the Son of God, in whom we are through an intelligent faith wrought of God. These three are linked, as always, one with the other; the evil one toucheth us not in the first, but in the second the world lieth in his arms, and in the third we, rescued from him, are in God and His Son. The final words close the whole, and close the Bible, with an exhortation against every false conception of God. Hence fellowship with God is the keynote into which all melts at the last: individually, it is communion with His holiness; collectively, it is perfect separation from the world; and both these go up to the Son in whom we are one with God, and safe from idols. This final ‘we know' is therefore an exhibition of the Christian privileges in their highest form.

1 John 5:18. We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that was begotten of God keepeth himself, and the evil one toucheth him not. Having admitted that the children of the Divine birth may sin, both unto death and not unto death, the apostle reminds them most solemnly of what had been established before, that the regenerate life is in itself inconsistent with both kinds. The characteristic and privilege of a child of God is to live without violation of law: all sin is of death, and there is no death in the regenerate life. This is a repetition of what had been said in chap. 3, but the apostle never repeats himself without some change in his thought. Here is said for the first time, that not only he who has been and is born of God, but he who has been once born of God, sinneth not. He has not been, therefore, all along speaking of the un-sinning state as the fruit of a finished regeneration, however true that may be. Again, as his manner is, he gives a specific reason for the assertion. The act of regeneration sundered the Christian from the empire of Satan; and it is his privilege to keep himself, in sedulous watchfulness and dependence on the Keeper of his soul, from the approach of the tempter; not from his approach as a tempter, but from any such approach as shall touch him to his hurt. It is wrong to limit this great saying by interpolating ‘sin wilfully' or ‘sin unto death' or ‘sin habitually;' it must stand as the declaration of a privilege which is an ideal, but an attainable ideal, that of living without that which God shall call sin. St. John does not rise to the word which only One could say, ‘He hath nothing in Me.' Concupiscence is in the Christian still, and it may conceive and bring forth sin; not, however, if the wicked one toucheth him not. And the concupiscence that the enemy has in us must die if it have not its desire in the soul ‘purified as He is pure.' This ‘we know' to be the privilege of the Christian estate, as in the middle of the Epistle the apostle has established it. ‘We know' is not without protest against all future doubt; it is like one of the ‘faithful sayings' with which St. Paul sealed his final doctrine. To understand ‘he that is born of God' of the Only-begotten who keepeth the saint, is contrary to the analogy of New Testament diction; and to suppose that the principle of regeneration keepeth him, introduces a certain harshness without obviating any difficulty. There is indeed no difficulty to the expositor who remembers that St. John never disjoins the Divine efficiency in man from man's own co-operation.

1 John 5:19. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one. The exquisite propriety of the words must be noted here. There is no ‘but,' as before: we know by infallible assurance of our regenerate life that we are of God. This is all we are assured of, and there is no emphatic ‘we' opposed to the world: it is as if the apostle would avoid even the semblance of exultation against the ungodly. But the awful contrast is laid down. It is the same ‘wicked one' as in the preceding verse holds the entire world, so far as the new life has not transformed it, in his power. It is not said that the world is ‘of the wicked one:' if the ‘children of the devil' had been spoken of in a similar connection (chap. 1 John 3:10), that is here explained and softened. The men of the world are ‘in him that is false;' but the ‘in' is not used in its bare simplicity, but ‘lieth in,' a phrase nowhere else occurring, and to be interpreted according to the tenor of the Epistle. The ‘whole world' is not, however, the men of the world only; but its entire constitution, its entire economy, its lusts and principles and motives, and course and end: all that is not ‘of God' lies in the power and bondage of the wicked one. This the apostle adds as an old truth, never so fearfully expressed as here. The diametrical contrariety between the regenerate who have fellowship with God, and the unregenerate whose fellowship is with Satan, could not be more keenly defined.

1 John 5:20. And we know moreover, we know finally that the Son of God is come: this word ‘is come' St. John reserves for the end. He who was sent and was manifested is here said to ‘be present' with us; and His abiding presence is as it were a sun which reveals and approves itself to all who have eyes to see. We are reminded of the only occasion on which the word is used in this sense, when our Lord declared to the Jews in one sentence the mystery of His eternal Sonship, His presence in the world by incarnation, and His mediatorial mission: ‘I proceeded forth from God I have come He sent me' (John 8:44). The children of God know with an assurance that is above all doubt that the Son of God is incarnate with the human race and ‘dwells among us:' this is the triumphant close of the Epistle, both as it is a testimony to the manifestation of the eternal life, and as it is a protest against all anti-christian error. Keeping both these objects still in view, the apostle goes on: and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true: this new word ‘understanding' signifies the inner faculty of the Spirit which discriminates in order to know, which is the result of the ‘unction from the Holy One.' Thus inwardly enlightened by Him who is the Truth, through His Spirit, we know ‘Him that is true,' that ‘only true God' whom thus to know, in His unapproachable distinction from all false gods or objects of hope, is eternal life. In the words of Jesus, which St. John here quotes, ‘and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent,' is added. But He ‘is come' as the revelation of the Father, and St. John hastens from the spiritual knowledge to the spiritual experience of fellowship with that Father, not ‘and Jesus Christ,' but ‘in Him.'

And we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. The absence of the ‘and,' leaving the plain assertion that we are in the true God by being in His Son thus making the true God and His Son one is the solution of the question to whom the next clause refers: This is the true God and eternal life. This His Son Jesus Christ is Himself the true God, His revelation and presence with us; nor know we any other. Those who see not God in Him, since He has come, serve a god of their own imagination. When the apostle adds ‘and eternal life,' he turns from the protest against anti-christian error, which was silently involved in the former part of the clause, to the happy privilege of all believing Christians. They have in the Son that perfect life ‘which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.' Thus the end of the Epistle revolves back to the beginning. Christian doctrine is the revelation of the true God in Christ; and Christian blessedness is life everlasting in the Father and the Son.

1 John 5:21. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. This brief but all-comprehensive sentence closes the Epistle, the entire apostolical testimony, and probably the entire revelation of God. Accordingly it must have a large interpretation. It is a solemn warning, most affectionate but most rigorous, against everything that may invade the supremacy of ‘the true God' as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, whether in the doctrine and worship of the Church or in the affections of the regenerate heart. External idols, as still retained in heathenism, though fast passing away, are not excluded from the exhortation of course; but there has been no allusion to them throughout the Epistle, nor did the danger of the ‘little children' lie in that direction. Though St. John does not use the Pauline expression that Christians are the temple of the Holy Ghost, the idea of this pervades his whole doctrine. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him: therefore every thought of the mind, every feeling of the heart, and every movement of the will must be faithful in all homage to Him. As addressed to the first readers of the Epistle, the warning was against the false theosophy of the Gnostics; as a prophetic exhortation, it foresaw and guarded against all violations of the doctrine of the Mediatorial Triunity; and, as spoken to the inmost soul of every regenerate Christian, it proclaims the one immutable principle of the Christian religion, that God must be to him. All in all.