'... As He is, so are we in this world.'--1 John iv. 17.
Large truths may be spoken in little words. Profundity is often supposed
to be obscurity, but the deepest depth is clear. John, in his gospel and
epistles, deals with the deepest realities, and with all things in their
eternal aspects, but his vocabulary is the simplest in the New
Testament. God and the world, life and death, love and hate, light and
darkness, these are the favourite words round which his thoughts
gather. Here are nine little monosyllables. What can be simpler than,
'As He is, so are we in this world?' And what can go beyond the thought
that lies in it, that a Christian is a living likeness of Christ?
But the connection of my text is quite as striking as its substance.
John has been dwelling upon his favourite thought that to abide in love
is to abide in God, and God in us. And then he goes on to say that
'Herein'--that is, in such mutual abiding in love--'is love made perfect
with us'; and the perfection of that love, which is thus communion, is
in order that, at the great solemn day of future trial, men may lift up
their faces and meet His glance--which is _not_ strange to them, nor met
for the first time--with open-hearted and open-countenanced 'boldness.'
But 'love' and 'abiding' are the source of confidence in the Day of
Judgment, because love and abiding are the source of assimilation to
Christ's life. We have boldness, 'because as He is, so are we in this
world'; and we are as He is, because we love and abide in Him. So here
are three thoughts, the assimilation of the Christian man to Christ; the
frank confidence which it begets; and the process by which it is
secured.