36 Philo, vol. ii. p. 649.
his enjoyments are of the decaying body; his heart and his thoughts are set on things which soon fly away. But the earnest believer in God pierces through all these superficial and transitory objects and pursuits, and fastens his affections to imperishable verities: he feels, far down in his soul, the living well of faith and fruition, the cool fresh fountain of spiritual hope and joy, whose stream of life flows unto eternity. The vain sensualist and hollow worldling has no true life in him: his love reaches not beyond the grave. The loyal servant of duty and devout worshipper of God has a spirit of conscious superiority to death and oblivion: though the sky fall, and the mountains melt, and the seas fade, he knows he shall survive, because immaterial truth and love are deathless. The whole thought contained in the texts we are considering is embodied with singular force and beauty in the following passage from one of the sacred books of the Hindus: "Who would have immortal life must beware of outward things, and seek inward truth, purity, and faith; for the treacherous and evanescent world flies from its votaries, like the mirage, or devil car, which moves so swiftly that one cannot ascend it." The mere negation of real life or blessedness is predicated of the careless worldling; positive death or miserable condemned unrest is predicated of the bad hearted sinner. Both these classes of men, upon accepting Christ, that is, upon owning the Divine characteristics incarnate in him, enter upon a purified, exalted, and new experience. "He that hates his brother is a murderer and abides in death." "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." This new experience is distinctively, emphatically, life; it is spiritual peace, joy, trust, communion with God, and therefore immortal. It brings with it its own sufficient evidence, leaving its possessor free from misgiving doubts, conscious of his eternity. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself." "Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his spirit." "That ye may know that ye have eternal life."
The objects of Christ's mission, so far as they refer to the twofold purpose of revealing the Father by an impersonation of his image, and giving new moral life to men by awakening within them a conscious fellowship with Divine truth and goodness, have already been unfolded. But this does not include the whole: all this might have been accomplished by his appearance, authoritative teachings, miracles, and return to heaven, without dying. Why, then, did he die? What was the meaning or aim of his death and resurrection? The apostle conceives that he came not only to reveal God and to regenerate men, but also to be a "propitiation" for men's sins, to redeem them from the penalty of their sins; and it was for this end that he must suffer the doom of physical death. "Ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins." It is the more difficult to tell exactly what thoughts this language was intended by John to convey, because his writings are so brief and miscellaneous, so unsystematic and incomplete. He does not explain his own terms, but writes as if addressing those who had previously received such oral instruction as would make the obscurities clear, the hints complete, and the fragments whole. We will first quote from John all the important texts bearing on the point before us, and then endeavor to discern and explain their sense. "If we walk in the light as God is in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." "He is the propitiation for our sins." "Your sins are forgiven through his name."
"The whole world is subject to the evil one." These texts, few and vague as they are, comprise every thing directly said by John upon the atonement and redemption: other relevant passages merely repeat the same substance. Certainly these statements do not of themselves teach any thing like the Augustinian doctrine of expiatory sufferings to placate the Father's indignation at sin and sinners, or to remove, by paying the awful debt of justice, the insuperable bars to forgiveness. Nothing of that sort is anywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in the faintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingness or inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransom and pardon, he expressly avows, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Instead of exclaiming, with the majority of modern theologians, "Believe in the atoning death, the substitutional sufferings, of Christ, and your sins shall then all be washed away, and you shall be saved," he explicitly says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." And again: "Whosoever believeth in him" not in his death, but in him "shall have eternal life." The allusions in John to the doctrine of redemption and reconciliation do not mean, it is plain enough, the buying off of the victims of eternal condemnation by the vicarious pains of Jesus. What, then, do they mean? They are too few, short, and obscure for us to decide this question conclusively by their own light alone. We must get assistance from abroad.
The reader will remember that it was the Jewish belief, and the retained belief of the converts to Christianity, at that time, that men's souls, in consequence of sin, were doomed upon leaving the body to descend into the under world. This was the objective penalty of sin, inherited from Adam. Now, Christ in his superangelic state in heaven was not involved in sin or in its doom of death and subterranean banishment. Yet at the will of the Father he became a man, went through our earthly experiences, died like a sinner, and after death descended into the prison of disembodied souls below, then rose again and ascended into heaven to the Father, to show men that their sins were forgiven, the penalty taken away, and the path opened for them too to rise to eternal life in the celestial mansions with Christ "and be with him where he is." Christ's death, then, cleanses men from sin, he is a propitiation for their sins, in two ways. First, by his resurrection from the power of death and his ascent to heaven he showed men that God had removed the great penalty of sin: by his death and ascension he was the medium of giving them this knowledge. Secondly, the joy, gratitude, love to God, awakened in them by such glorious tidings, would purify their natures, exalt their souls into spiritual freedom and virtue, into a blessed and Divine life. According to this view, Christ was a vicarious sacrifice, not in the sense that he suffered instead of the guilty, to purchase their redemption from the iron justice of God, but in the sense that, when he was personally free from any need to suffer, he died for the sake of others, to reveal to them the mighty boon of God's free grace, assuring them of the wondrous gift of a heavenly immortality. This representation perfectly fills and explains the language, without violence or arbitrary suppositions, does it in harmony with all the exegetical considerations, historical and grammatical; which no other view that we know of can do.
There are several independent facts which lend strong confirmation to the correctness of the exposition now given. We know that we have not directly proved the justice of that exposition, only constructively, inferentially, established it; not shown it to be true, only made it appear plausible. But that plausibility becomes an extreme probability nay, shall we not say certainty? when we weigh the following testimonies for it. First, this precise doctrine is unquestionably contained in other parts of the New Testament. We have in preceding chapters demonstrated its existence in Paul's epistles, in Peter's, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in the Apocalypse. Therefore, since John's phraseology is better explained by it than by any other hypothesis, it is altogether likely that his real meaning was the same.
Secondly, the terms "light" and "darkness," so frequent in this evangelist, were not originated by him, but adopted. They were regarded by the Persian theology, by Plato, by Philo, by the Gnostics, as having a physical basis as well as a spiritual significance. In their conceptions, physical light, as well as spiritual holiness, was an efflux or manifestation from the supernal God; physical darkness, as well as spiritual depravity, was an emanation or effect from the infernal Satan, or principle of evil. Is it not so in the usage of John? He uses the terms, it is true, prevailingly in a moral sense: still, there is much in his statements that looks as if he supposed they had a physical ground. If so, then how natural is this connection of thought! All good comes from the dazzling world of God beyond the sky; all evil comes from the nether world of his adversary, the prince of darkness. That John believed in a local heaven on high, the residence of God, is made certain by scores of texts too plain to be evaded. Would he not, then, in all probability, believe in a local hell? Believing, as he certainly did, in a devil, the author and lord of darkness, falsehood, and death, would he not conceive a kingdom for him? In the development of ideas reached at that time, it is evident that the conception of God implied an upper world, his resplendent abode, and that the conception of Satan equally implied an under world, his gloomy realm. To the latter human souls were doomed by sin. From the former Christ came, and returned to it again, to show that the Father would forgive our sins and take us there.
Thirdly, John expected that Christ, after death, would return to the Father in heaven. This appears from clear and reiterated statements in his reports of the Savior's words. But after the resurrection he tells us that Jesus had not yet ascended to the Father, but was just on the point of going. "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father." Where, then, did he suppose the soul of his crucified Master had been during the interval between his death and his resurrection? Dormant in the body, dead with the body, laid in the tomb? That is opposed to the doctrine of uninterrupted life which pervades his writings. Besides, such a belief was held only by the Sadducees, whom the New Testament stigmatizes. To assume that such was John's conception of the fact is an arbitrary supposition, without the least warrant from any source whatever. If he imagined the soul of Jesus during that time to have been neither in heaven nor in the sepulchre, is it not pretty sure that he supposed it was in the under world, the common receptacle of souls, where, according to the belief of that age, every man went after death?
Fourthly, it is to be observed, in favor of this general interpretation, that the doctrine it unfolds is in harmony with the contemporary opinions, a natural development from them, a development which would be forced upon the mind of a Jewish Christian accepting the resurrection of Christ as a fact. It was the Jewish opinion that God dwelt with his holy angels in a world of everlasting light above the firmament. It was the Jewish opinion that the departed souls of men, on account of sin, were confined beneath the earth in Satan's and death's dark and slumberous cavern of shadows. It was the Jewish opinion that the Messiah would raise the righteous dead and reign with them on earth. Now, the first Christians clung to the Jewish creed and expectations, with such modifications merely as the variation of the actual Jesus and his deeds from the theoretical Messiah and his anticipated achievements compelled. Then, when Christ having been received as the bringer of glad tidings from the Father died, and after three days rose from the dead and ascended to God, promising his brethren that where he was they should come, must they not have regarded it all as a dramatic exemplification of the fact that the region of death was no longer a hopeless dungeon, since one mighty enough to solve its chains and burst its gates had returned from it? must they not have considered him as a pledge that their sins were forgiven, their doom reversed, and heaven attainable?
John, in common with all the first Christians, evidently expected that the second advent of the Lord would soon take place, to consummate the objects he had left unfinished, to raise the dead and judge them, justifying the worthy and condemning the unworthy. There was a well known Jewish tradition that the appearance of Antichrist would immediately precede the triumphant coming of the Messiah. John says, "Even now are there many Antichrists: thereby we know that it is the last hour."37 "Abide in him, that, when he shall appear, we may not be ashamed before him at his coming." "That we may have boldness in the day of judgment." The evangelist's outlook for the return of the Savior is also shown at the end of his Gospel. "Jesus said not unto him, 'He shall not die;' but, 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?'" That the doctrine of a universal resurrection which the Jews probably derived, through their communication with the Persians, from the Zoroastrian system, and, with various modifications, adopted is embodied in the following passage, who can doubt? "The hour is coming when all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth." That a general resurrection would literally occur under the auspices of Jesus was surely the meaning of the writer of those words. Whether that thought was intended to be conveyed by Christ in the exact terms he really used or not is a separate question, with which we are not now concerned, our object being simply to set forth John's views. Some commentators, seizing the letter and neglecting the spirit, have inferred from various texts that John expected that the resurrection would be limited to faithful Christians, just as the more rigid of the Pharisees confined it to the righteous Jews. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."