The personal history and character of Christ: the influence of character
It has always been felt, even by men who did not view the matter from the Christian standpoint, that the immediate effects of the mission of Christ must be largely ascribed to the influence of that Divine personality which He allied with human nature, and which brought Him into contact, at every stage of His earthly sojourn, with the sorrows, the necessities, and the sympathies of life.
The same feeling has brought it to pass that the love of Christ, rather than any other form of the religious sentiment, represents the very heart and centre of the Christian character. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” says the apostle; and the love of Christ alone supplies the strong and overruling motive which can conquer the unrighteousness, the impurity, the selfish darkness of the world. It is a leading principle thus suggested by the history of Christ that the power of individual character, with all the special force of sympathy, self-sacrifice, and love, is the most essential element in every kind of influence which has ever brought about great movements or given a right direction to the impulse of change. It is true that the influence must be followed up and perpetuated by a wise organisation; but the best organisation will go for little or nothing if it is not permanently actuated by this individual power. Never has this fruitful principle received so grand an illustration as when the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. The amazing power which our Lord exerted lay not so much in His words and deeds as in the character from which they sprang, not so much in His maxims of charity as in His life of love. This is a more than sufficient answer to the cavils of some who have endeavoured to depreciate the greatness of our Saviour’s teaching by trying to prove that it has no new message that He brought into the world. Be that as it may, it was something greater then a new message--it was above all things a new life. When Gibbon mockingly wrote that he had read the golden rule of doing as we would be done by in a moral treatise of Isocrates, written four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel, his words were true enough, but perfectly irrelevant. No one need be in the least surprised to hear it. He might have found much that sounds like the golden rule in a hundred places; hut what he would have found was the shadow, not the power. The mere precept was nothing better than a well-sounding phrase till it was lifted into life and energy by the quickening influence and example of the love of Christ. The power of Christ was both Divine and human--exerted by One who was the Son of Man aa well as the only begotten Son of God. Consider how these two elements were always blended together to constitute the unprecedented manifestation of the Gospel. The life of Christ, then, is the noblest example of the power of influence, just as the Church of Christ is the grandest illustration of the value of system, that have ever yet been made known among mankind. Here we are dealing with a law of universal application. For the two things, influence and system, are the elements which meet in all great institutions; the one to give force and impetus; the other to supply a preservative and perpetuating power. In God Himself these two principles are united in completeness and perfection. His power is as supreme as though no such thing as law existed. His order is so perfect that He is “a law unto Himself and to all other things besides.” While both of these are illustrated in the life of Christ and in the Church, both of them rank among the best gifts which God has bestowed on His creatures for the discharge of their work and the improvement of their race. The life of influence is indispensable to give vigour to system; the protection of system is just as requisite to prevent the life of a new impulse from evaporating and loving itself when the motive power has been withdrawn. For such as ourselves the strongest element of personal influence will be found in the sympathy of simple human fellowship--a sympathy which will lead us, in spite of all differences of education and position, to lay mind to mind and heart to heart in dealing with those whom influence can reach, so that, lowly as may be the object which we seek to elevate, a loving and unselfish sympathy may enable us, if the word be not too bold, and if only we may be so highly privileged to lift their nought to value by our side. There never was a time when it was more important to realise this great social gift of sympathy. (Archdeacon Hannah.)
The secret of sinlessness--abiding in the Sinless One as manifested to take away our sins
I. Consider, first, for what end He was manifested. It was to “take away our sins.” John has just described sin as “the transgression of the law” (verse 4). He has fastened upon this as constituting the essence of sin. He is of the same mind with Paul (Rom_8:7). His, like Paul, knows that as our sins are against the law, so the law is against our sins. In the grasp and under the power of the law, as condemned criminals, we are fettered; and can no more get rid of our sins than a doomed felon can shake off his irons. An impotent sense of failure deadens and depresses us, while the feeling of our prostrate bondage in our sins irritates our natural enmity against God. And if we do not relapse into indifference, or take refuge in formality, or sink into sullen gloom, we are shut up to the one only effectual way of ending this miserable struggle between the law and our sinful nature--the way of free grace and sovereign mercy; the way of embracing Him whom “God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.” Then indeed “sin shall no more have dominion over us, when we are not under the law, but under grace”; when “there is now to us no condemnation because we are in Christ Jesus.” All this, I think, must be held to be comprehended in the fact stated--“He was manifested to take away our sins.” And it is all consistent with the object for which John reminds us of it: our purifying ourselves, as He is pure. He was manifested to take away our sins, root and branch. Their power to condemn us He takes away; and so He takes away also their power to rule over us. Nor is this all. In virtue of His being manifested to take away our sins, we receive the Holy Ghost. The obstacle which our sin, as a breach of the law, interposed to His being graciously present with us and in us is taken away. A new nature, a new heart, a new spirit, as respects the law of God and God the lawgiver, a new character as well as a new state, is the result of Christ being manifested to take away our sins. We know that, personally, practically, experimentally, and our knowledge of it is what enables as well as moves us to purify ourselves as Christ is pure. It is so all the rather because, secondly, we are to consider that He is manifested as Himself the Sinless One--“In Him is no sin.”
II. With this sinless person we are one, “abiding in Him as the Sinless One manifested to take away our sins.” And that is our security against sinning--“Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not.” This is the statement of a fact. Between abiding in Christ and sinning there is such an absolute incompatibility that whosoever sinneth is for the time not merely in the position of not abiding in Christ, but in the position of not having seen or known Him.
1. We abide in Christ by faith; by that faith, wrought in us by the Spirit, which unites us to Christ. Our abiding in Him by this faith implies oneness, real and actual oneness. When we sin, when we suffer any such thought, or feeling, or wish to find harbour in our breasts, we cease for the time to be abiding in Him.
2. We abide in Christ by His Spirit abiding in us. That is a filial spirit--the Spirit of God’s Son in us crying Abba Father--the Spirit of adoption in us whereby we cry Abba Father. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
