37 See the able and impartial discussion of John's belief on this subject contained in Lucke's Commentary on the First Epistle of John, i. 18-28.
To force this figure into a literal meaning is a mistake; for in the preceding chapter it is expressly said that "They that have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; they that have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation." Both shall rise to be judged; but as we conceive the most probable sense of the phrases the good shall be received to heaven, the bad shall be remanded to the under world. "Has no life in him" of course cannot mean is absolutely dead, annihilated, but means has not faith and virtue, the elements of blessedness, the qualifications for heaven. The particular figurative use of words in these texts may be illustrated by parallel idioms from Philo, who says, "Of the living some are dead; on the contrary, the dead live. For those lost from the life of virtue are dead, though they reach the extreme of old age; while the good, though they are disjoined from the body, live immortally."38 Again he writes, "Deathless life delivers the dying pious; but the dying impious everlasting death seizes."39 And a great many passages plainly show that one element of Philo's meaning, in such phrases as these, is, that he believed that, upon their leaving the body, the souls of the good would ascend to heaven, while the souls of the bad would descend to Hades. These discriminated events he supposed would follow death at once. His thorough Platonism had weaned him from the Persian Pharisaic doctrine of a common intermediate state detaining the dead below until the triumphant advent of a Redeemer should usher in the great resurrection and final judgment.40
John declares salvation to be conditional. "The blood of Christ" that is, his death and what followed "cleanses us from all sin, if we walk in the light as he is in the light;" not otherwise. "He that believeth not the Son shall not see eternal life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." "If any man see his brother commit a sin which is not unto death, he shall pray, and shall receive life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it." "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he [Christ] shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." The heads of the doctrine which seems to underlie these statements are as follow. Christ shall come again. All the dead shall rise for judicial ordeal. Those counted worthy shall be accepted, be transfigured into the resemblance of the glorious Redeemer and enter into eternal blessedness in heaven. The rest shall be doomed to the dark kingdom of death in the under world, to remain there for aught that is hinted to the contrary forever. From these premises two practical inferences are drawn in exhortations. First, we should earnestly strive to fit ourselves for acceptance by moral purity, brotherly love, and pious faith. Secondly, we should seek pardon for our sins by confession and prayer, and take heed lest by aggravated sin we deprave our souls beyond recovery. There are those who sin unto death, for whom it is hopeless to pray. Light, truth, and the divine life of heaven can never receive them; darkness, falsehood, and the deep realm of death irrevocably swallow them.
And now we may sum up in a few words the essential results of this whole inquiry into the principles of John's theology, especially as composing and shown in his doctrine of a
38 Vol. i. p. 554.
39 Ibid. p. 233.
40 See vol. i. pp. 139, 416, 417, 555, 643, 648; vol. ii. pp. 178, 433.
future life. First, God is personal love, truth, light, holiness, blessedness. These realities, as concentrated in their incomprehensible absoluteness, are the elements of his infinite being. Secondly, these spiritual substances, as diffused through the worlds of the universe and experienced in the souls of moral creatures, are the medium of God's revelation of himself, the direct presence and working of his Logos. Thirdly, the persons who prevailingly partake of these qualities are God's loyal subjects and approved children, in peaceful communion with the Father, through the Son, possessing eternal life. Fourthly, Satan is personal hatred, falsehood, darkness, sin, misery. These realities, in their abstract nature and source, are his being; in their special manifestations they are his efflux and power. Fifthly, the persons who partake rulingly of these qualities are the devil's enslaved subjects and lineal children: in sinful bondage to him, in depraved communion with him, they dwell in a state of hostile banishment and unhappiness, which is moral death. Sixthly, Christ was the Logos who, descending from his anterior glory in heaven, and appearing in mortal flesh, embodied all the Divine qualities in an unflawed model of humanity, gathered up and exhibited all the spiritual characteristics of the Father in a stainless and perfect soul supernaturally filled and illumined, thus to bear into the world a more intelligible and effective revelation of God the Father than nature or common humanity yielded, to shine with regenerating radiance upon the deadly darkness of those who were groping in lying sins, "that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly." Seventhly, the fickle and perishing experience of unbelieving and wicked men, the vagrant life of sensuality and worldliness, the shallow life in vain and transitory things, gives place in the soul of a Christian to a profoundly earnest, unchanging experience of truth and love, a steady and everlasting life in Divine and everlasting things. Eighthly, the experimental reception of the revealed grace and verity by faith and discipleship in Jesus is accompanied by internal convincing proofs and seals of their genuineness, validity, and immortality. They awaken a new consciousness, a new life, inherently Divine and self warranting. Ninthly, Christ, by his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, was a propitiation for our sins, a mercy seat pledging forgiveness; that is, he was the medium of showing us that mercy of God which annulled the penalty of sin, the descent of souls to the gloomy under world, and opened the celestial domains for the ransomed children of earth to join the sinless angels of heaven. Tenthly, Christ was speedily to make a second advent. In that last day the dead should come forth for judgment, the good be exalted to unfading glory with the Father and the Son, and the bad be left in the lower region of noiseless shadows and dreams. These ten points of view, we believe, command all the principal features of the theological landscape which occupied the mental vision of the writer of the Gospel and epistles bearing the superscription, John.