1 John 1:6-7

2. First Inference: The True Fellowship.

1 John 1:6-7

6If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness,12 we lie, and do not the truth: 7But if we walk in the light, as he13 is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,14 and the blood of Jesus15 Christ his Son cleanseth16 us from all sin.17 18

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

The sequence is clear: the Apostle concludes from the Being of God the nature of their life who are and live in fellowship with God. He postulates that spiritual fellowship necessitates an affinity among persons in fellowship with one another, and that this internal fellowship must manifest itself externally in their life, so that fellowship with God is impossible without a corresponding godlike life as exhibited in the walk and conversation of men.

1 John 1:6. The negative part of the inference stands first, connecting with the last clause of the preceding verse (“and darkness in Him is none whatsoever”).

If we say.—John is very fond of this phrase, 1 John 1:7-10; 1Jn 2:1; 1 John 4:12; it is similar to ἐάν τις, 1 John 2:1; 1Jn 2:15; 1 John 4:20, or ὂς ἂν, 1 John 3:17; 1 John 4:15. As to the sense, the following phrases present parallels: πᾶς ὁ ἒχων, 1 John 3:3; πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν, 1 John 3:4; πᾶς ὁ μένων, 1 John 3:6; πᾶς ὁ , 1 John 2:23; without πᾶς, 1 John 2:4; 1Jn 2:6; 1 John 2:9-10. The Apostle is thus wont to describe an objective possibility (Winer, p. 308), i.e., he assumes that it may be so, and that the event would show whether it will be so. The Apostle renders this hypothesis general by the use of the communicative Plural, and thus makes his speech more lively; if we,—not excluding myself and the Apostles, beginning with myself down to the most humble reader of this Epistle, or to any individual Church-member,—should say. Thus John combines in the communicative and hypothetical form generality of application and considerate delicacy (Lücke). Saying does not denote here the inaudible language of the heart, that is thinking, but articulate utterance and assertion induced by the force of conviction. But it is not on that account nos gerere (Episcopius), as if the reference were to a testimony of our walk and practical conduct, although this saying and alleging must be taken as equivalent to an act, a fact or an action. [Wordsworth suggests that ἑὰν εἲπωμεν contains a reference to the saying of the Gnostics, who alleged that by reason of the spiritual seed in them, and of their superior spiritual knowledge, and communion with the light, they were free to act as they chose, and were not polluted thereby, and were not guilty of sin (Irenæus, I., 6, 20). Some of them even ventured to extol the workers of the most audacious acts of darkness, such as Cain, Korah and Judas, as persons gifted with superior freedom of thought and intrepidity of action, and to affirm that, since the soul could not attain unto perfection except by knowledge, it was even requisite for men to make themselves familiar with all manner of evil, in order that by a universal empiricism of evil they might arrive the sooner at their ultimate consummation. See Irenæus, I., 25, 4, ed. Stieren; p. 103, ed. Grabe; II., 32, ed. Stieren; p. 187, ed. Grabe, and cf. Blunt on the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, Lectures, 1John 9, p. 179.—M.]

That we have fellowship with Him.—See the notes on 1 John 1:3. Here the Father only is mentioned, of whom it was said above that He is Light, in order to draw therefrom a conclusion bearing on the nature of the Christian life. [Fellowship with God is the centre and foundation of the Christian life.—M.]

And walk in the darkness.—And combined with say makes one sentence.—Walk, περιπατεῖν, 1 John 2:6; 2 John 1:6, occurs also Romans 6:4; Romans 8:4; its synonymes are πολίτευμα, Philippians 3:20, ἀναστροφὴ and ἀναστρέφειν, Ephesians 4:17, sq., 1 John 2:2, sq.—Bengel: “actione interna et externa, quoquo nos vertimus.” It embraces all our actions, not only those perceptible to men (Ebrard), but also that on which these depend, whereby they are caused, the inward actions of our life.

In the darkness indicates the sphere and element in which that walking takes place, cf. John 8:12. Darkness, which is not at all in God, does not in any way belong to Him, is the undivine, the unholy, that which is separate from Him—sin, evil. It is therefore not: to have still adhering to one sin or evil, or failure and falling through haste or weakness in temptation, in the struggle; but as the walk does not denote gross and common sin only, so walking in the darkness does not imply the presence of satisfaction with sin, or the entire passing through the whole territory of sin in all directions; the reference must be to one particular phase of life; some want to be Christians and make good their profession in every thing except honour; others are not severe with themselves or unfaithful to God and His Word in matters of worldly possession or in some master-passions, although in other respects they are strict and faithful. Such men walk, nevertheless, in the darkness, and the words “we lie” apply also to them. It is a contradiction and opposition, cf. 2 Corinthians 6:14, sqq. Not exactly intentional lying and conscious hypocrisy, but actual contradiction between Christian principle and the Christian sphere of life, and the real exhibition of life, certainly not without personal guilt; it is our guilt and our sin, our own lie, we ourselves are liars. Whenever, under those circumstances, we say that we have fellowship with Him, we lie; we lie to ourselves, if we say it only within ourselves, in our heart, think or imagine it, or we lie to others, if we say it to them in our words or our works. Such lying consists, therefore, in thoughts, words and deeds.

And do not the truth.—This is not the same as ψεύδεσθαι, as if ποιεῖν τὴν were identical with ἀληθεύειν, Ephesians 4:15. It is neither the same as agere recte (Socinus), nor sincere (Beza, Grotius, Carpzovius), nor veraciter (Calvin). The truth consists not only in words, but also in thoughts and deeds; its sphere embraces the whole life, the whole man. The truth, according to John’s view, must be done; saying with him implies acting; not to do the truth is here parallel with walking in the darkness, while to do the truth corresponds to walking in the Light. “It is one and the same truth, which is apprehended in faith and confessed with the mouth, which, as a holy, Divine power, recreates the life of the new man and manifests itself in internal and external deeds.” (Düsterdieck), cf. John 3:19-21 [where ποιεῖν τὴν is opposed to φαῦλα πράσσειν, and where special reference is made to the ἒργα.—M.]—Thus the Apostle raises his powerful protest against every form of show-, word- or lip-Christianity, but his reference is to Christians, and therefore he passes on to 1 John 1:7, to the positive part of the inference. But if we walk in the Light.—δὲ marks an antithesis. In the Light is explained by the antithesis ἐν σκότει, and by the additional clause, as He is in the Light, with reference to 1 John 1:5. [But this, it seems, is not the only antithesis, for it is also antithetical to ἐὰν εἲπωμεν, ὂτι κοινωνίανἒχομεν μετ̓ αὐτοῦ, 1 John 1:6, viz.: if we not only say that we have fellowship with God and not walk in the darkness, but if we really walk in the Light; so Huther, Ebrard.—M.].—Our walk in the light embraces, therefore, the holiness of our inner and outer life, a holiness which in its consequences operates a communion among the brethren, and fully corresponding to the Light-Being of God, which is also Love, exhibits its essential strength in the formation and preservation of fellowship. As He is in the Light is only formally different from God is Light; the latter phrase denotes Light as the Being of God, the former designates the element in which He is and lives.—ὡς indicates the oneness of element [in which Christians walk and God lives and moves—M.] and ground in God and ourselves; His holiness must be traceable in us if we have fellowship with Him. He indeed is in the Light, while we walk in the light, it matters not how poor and defective our efforts may be. The sense is very similar to 1 Peter 1:14-16; 2 Peter 1:4. [Cf. ἐστι and περιπατῶμεν. God is infinite—man finite.—M.]

We have fellowship one with another.—The reading μετ̓ αὐτοῦ cannot be right; for to walk in the Light and to have fellowship with Him coincide. But we naturally expect an advance in the argument. It is, therefore, not right to take μετ̓ ἀλλήλων as ἡμῶν τε καὶ τοῦ φωτός (Theophrast., Oecumen.), especially because God and men, the Creator and His creatures, are not of sufficient equality to be comprised in μετ̓ αλλήλων. Equally inadmissible is the construction of Beza (cum illo mutuam communionem), and that of de Wette, who renders our fellowship with God. It is the fellowship of Christians one with another, as 1 John 1:3, μετ̓ ἡμῶν, cf. 1 John 3:11; 1 John 4:7; 1 John 4:11-12. To have (see note on 1 John 1:3) and to keep this fellowship is not a light matter; it is the fruit of the walking in the Light, of the fellowship with God, of a holy life and of holy aspirations. For sin separates, impedes and constantly destroys that fellowship. [This passage shows that the fellowship of Christians, or the “communion of Saints,” as it is expressed in the Apostles’ Creed, rests on a truly Catholic basis, and that its restriction to the narrow limits of a sect is at once un-evangelical, un-Apostolic and un-Christian.—M.] Hence the Apostle continues:

And the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us.—The copula καὶ establishes a parallel with the preceding words, and points consequently not to fellowship with God and the brethren to be established, but to a fellowship already existing, and so well established that the first, viz.: fellowship with God, has already yielded the fruit of the second, viz.: fellowship with the brethren. It is impossible to take and interpret καὶ = γὰρ, as alleged by Oecumen., Bede, Calov, Semler, al. The question is not to supply proof of the fellowship with the brethren, but to state a consequence of walking in the Light. The only question is whether the cleansing through the blood of Christ takes place alongside or inside the fellowship of the brethren with one another. The work of redemption is a whole, and not mechanical, but organic and moral, so that this cleansing takes place inside the fellowship of the Church, of the fellowship essential to and established for redemption. Exegetically important is, moreover, the meaning and the Present form of καθαρίζει. This word cannot be the same as ἀφιέναι τὰς , because it recurs, 1 John 1:9, by the side of and after that phrase. The reference is, therefore, not to the remission of sins, to exemption from punishment or the pardon of guilt, but to the cancelling of sin and redemption from it. The Apostle does not advert here to justification, regeneration, conversion, the actus judicialis or forensis concerning the sinner, but to sanctification. The Present may suggest the idea of daily repentance and forgiveness of sins, but the meaning of the verb forbids also this reference. But wherein that cleansing consists is defined by the cleansing subject: the blood of Jesus His Son. It is said αἷμα, consequently not: God’s new covenant with us established by the blood of Christ (Socinus), not: our faith in the sufferings of Christ (Grotius), not: Jesus Christ who shed His blood for us, not: the contemplation of the death of Jesus (Paulus), not: the reasonable belief of the moral end of the crucifixion of Jesus (Oertel); τὸ αἶμα Ιησοῦ is the blood shed upon the cross, the bloody death of Jesus on the cross, as in 1 John 5:6, sqq. [The blood which Jesus, so-called because of His incarnation, shed as a sacrifice at His Crucifixion, or the bloody sacrificial death of Jesus, so Huther, Düsterdieck, Ebrard.—M.]. This indicates the historical fact when the man Jesus died upon the cross at Golgotha, the sufferings of the Lord when He made experience of the sins of men, suffered for them, carried them also, assumed them (ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ αἲρων, etc., John 1:29), and took them away as Reconciler, but takes them away also as our Saviour, having died for us, but now lives and works in us, cf. 1 John 3:5. [Wordsworth: “No less a sacrifice than the death of the Son of God was required to propitiate the offended justice of God for sin; and no less a price than His blood, to ransom us from the bondage of Satan, to which we were reduced by sin.”—M.]. The addition of τοῦ υἲου αὐτοῦ points to His relation to God the Father, consequently to His Divinity, where two things are to be considered, first, the exaltation and glory, secondly, the humiliation and servant-form of the Crucified One; the blood of the God-Man is the subject which cleanses. Now the death of Jesus is a sacrificial death, His blood sacrificial blood, shed for the atonement of committed guilt, for reconciling the offended majesty of God and the inimically disinclined sinner, a ransom for mankind doomed to death and condemnation. See 1 John 2:2; 1 John 3:5; 1 John 4:9; 1 John 5:6, sqq. He creates to believers justification before God, but the power that creates preserves also that which it creates. The redeemed congregate at the cross of Jesus; sin is forgiven, the debt remitted, sin must now be cancelled and fresh guilt avoided; in believers pecatum manet but non regnat. Thus in the Church congregated at the cross and preserved in unity, sanctification continues in operation, after having begun its operativeness in justification. It is not our walking in the Light, not our own efforts in sanctification, but the blood of Jesus which cleanses us. (See Doctrinal and Ethical, No. 3).

[The whole doctrine of this verse is very fully and admirably set forth in Düsterdieck. The sum of what he says we give in the language of Alford: “St. John, in accord with the other Apostles, sets forth the Death and Blood of Christ in two different aspects:1. As the one sin-offering for the world, in which sense we are justified by the application of the blood of Christ by faith, His satisfaction being imputed to us.2. As a victory over sin itself, His blood being the purifying medium, whereby we gradually, being already justified, become pure and clean from all sin. And this application of Christ’s blood is made by the Spirit which dwelleth in us.The former of these asserts the imputed righteousness of Christ put on us in justification: the latter, the inherent righteousness of Christ wrought in us gradually in sanctification. And it is of this latter that he is here treating.”—M.]

From all sin—whether sins of thought, word or deed, sins of rashness or sins of ignorance, sins of malice, sins of omission or sins of commission, sins in affectu or sins in defectu, sins of pleasure or sins of pain, sins committed at our work or during our recreation, sins against the first or the second table of the decalogue. Bengel: originale, actuale.

[Wordsworth notices the completeness of this doctrinal statement, which declares that Jesus is the Christ, against the Cerinthians (but this rests on the doubtful reading χριστοῦ, see App. Crit., 1 John 5:7; 1 John 5:4), that He is the Son of God, against the Ebionites, that He shed His blood on the cross, against the Simonians and Docetæ, that it cleanseth from all sin, against those who deny pardon on earth to deadly sin after baptism, and that it cleanseth us if we walk in the Light, against the Antinomian Gnostics, who changed the grace of God into lasciviousness (Judges 4:0), and alleged that a man might walk in darkness and yet be clean from all guilt of sin.—M.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. As He is in the Light, 1 John 1:7—is not a Gnostic dogma simply required to be known and understood, but an ethical principle for the governance of our walk. Light, as it is the Being of God (1 John 1:5), so it is also the element of God, and because it is the Being of God, therefore it is also His element, wherein He dwells and lives. Light must become our element in order that it may also become our Being; we must live in Him that He may more fully live in us, for we are destined to become θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως, 2 Peter 1:4. To strive after resemblance of God (Lücke) is saying too little. Nor is Bengel altogether right in saying: “imitatio Dei criterium communionis cum Illo.” For if the Lord says (Matthew 5:48): “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (cf. Luke 6:36), perfection or compassion is not set down as a foreign and distant goal, or held up as an ideal rule, but the experience and enjoyment of the perfect compassion of God is to become an impulse for receiving and appropriating it, in order that we, in our turn, may exhibit it. 1 Peter 1:15-16 is similar. Even Paul says (Ephesians 5:1): γίνεσθαιοὖν μιμηταὶ τοῦ θεοῦ ὡς τέχνα . As children they are in their converse with the Father to inhale and receive what they experience at His hands, in order that they may have within themselves a living fountain, causing in its turn the streaming forth of Divine life, and to do as the Father doeth. The reference is not to an artificial imitation, but to a filial following the Father in ardent attachment to Him. The child is not so much literally to imitate as to cleave to the Father, to receive Him, and as the Lord so often requires it, to follow Him. Such a life in converse with God, in the life-sphere of God, John emphatically demands as the chief requirement of individual Christians, as well as of the whole Church.

2. The Person of Jesus is again taken as uniting the Godhead and Manhood, when His blood is spoken of as αἶμα τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ (of God). The word αἶμα testifies against Docetism, because it is operative as a real power, and against Ebionism the words “His Son,” whose the blood is: the Godhead, in brief, is a factor in the work of redemption. This combined expression opposes as much Nestorianism, which separates the two natures, as Eutychianism, which confounds them, and testifies for the Lutheran doctrine with its communicatio idiomatum, and against the Reformed principle: finitum non capax infiniti. Luther, in his Confession of Faith, A. D. 1528–29 (Guerike: Symbolik, p. 666), says: “Again I believe and know that the Scripture teaches, that - - God the Son - - did assume a whole, full humanity, and was the true seed or child promised to Abraham and David, and was born as the natural son of Mary, every way and in every form a true man, as I am myself and all others; but that He came without sin, of the Virgin alone, by the Holy Ghost. And that this man is truly God, and became (other reading: was born) one inseparable Person of God and man, so that Mary the holy Virgin is a very and true mother not only of the man Christ, as the Nestorians do teach, but of the Son of God.” But if Luther in a Trinity Sermon (Erlangen edit., 9, p. 25), on the ground of Acts 20:28, calls the blood of Christ straightway the blood of God, it is to be borne in mind that in that passage κυρίου and not θεοῦ is the best authenticated reading, and that such an oxymoron must not be pressed beyond seeing in it the doctrine of the inseparable God-Man. Calov’s following Luther cannot be regarded as a precedent of great moment, since the Scripture, with its wisdom in the choice of terms, does not require us so to do.—Cf. Doctrinal and Ethical, on 1 John 1:3, No. 3. [Also the last note on 1 John 1:7, in Exegetical and Critical.—M.]

[Article II. of the 39 Articles of the Church of England and the Prot. Episc. Church in the U. S. states thus briefly the doctrine of the Person of Christ: “The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.” And the Athanasian Creed, 1:28–35, thus defines:

28. Est ergo Fides recta, ut credamur et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Jesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus pariter et Homo est.

29. Deus ex substantia Patris ante sæcula genitus: Homo, ex substantia Matris in sæcula natus.

30. Perfectus Deus, perfectus Homo, ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens.

31. Æqualis Patri secundum Divinitatem: minor Patre secundum Humanitatem.

32. Qui licet Deus sit et Homo, non duo tamen, sed unus est Christus.

33. Unus autem, non conversione Divinitatis in carnem, sed assumptione Humanitatis in Deum.

34. Unus omnino, non confusione Substantiæ, sed unitate Personæ.

35. Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est Homo; ita Deus et Homo unus est Christus.”—M.]

3. The work of Jesus is strongly characterized in one direction: “His blood cleanseth from all sin.” This statement involves the following particulars:

1. We can nevermore cleanse ourselves, our cleansing remains the work of Christ.

2. It is just the death of Christ that effects and accomplishes our cleansing; dying for sin, He conquers it; the victory of sin is its defeat, and the defeat of Christ is His victory; fighting unto death, He acquires the life of His own, and sin in its triumph over Him on the cross is discomfited. For His sake God turns to the world His reconciled countenance, and through faith in the Crucified One the world abandons sin, which is enmity against God. The cross, the death upon the cross, possesses an overwhelming power of attraction, and the life of the Son of God shut up in the life of the body breaks through in the life of the Spirit, in the working of the Spirit sent by Him and the Father, who now becomes operative in believers (John 7:39; Col. 16:7; Acts 2:33).

3. Sin still cleaves to the justified; justification does not miraculously or magically cancel sin by a judicial decree, it only absolves us from punishment, guilt and condemnation, but requires the carrying on of the work of redemption (of which it is the beginning), and of its consummation in sanctification; justification does not end, but it does begin redemption.

4. Justification does not even effect the independence of the believer, but merely introduces him into the walk in Light, to the fellowship of the brethren one with another, as into the sphere within which redemption may be carried on and consummated, and also in the individual; redemption, like the knowledge of infinite Love, is a common experience (Ephesians 3:18, sq., σὺν πᾶσιντοῖς ἁγίοις).

5. Sanctification is the continuation of justification, it must ever return to it and recur to its power and might.6. Sanctification is a work gradual in its growth.7. It has respect to all sin, not only to its manifestation, but to its seat and origin.

8. Justification and sanctification, the power of the death upon the cross and the fellowship with the brethren, the walk in the Light and the cleansing from all sin, all these reciprocally operate on and promote each other; this holds more particularly good of brotherly, of Church-fellowship, and of the hallowing power of the Saviour’s death upon the cross, so that we are reminded of the words of Cicero: “Nisi in bonis amicitia esse non potest.” Or, we must distinguish, but not separate Christ for us, before us, and in us.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Every thing depends on the reply you give to the question whether sin rules you or as yet only adheres to you. If sin reigns over you, you belong as yet to the darkness, but if the reign of sin is broken in you, though there be still sin in you, you belong to the children of light.—It is not with pride, but with gratitude to God, that the Christian contemplates his being in the light. —Love of God and of the brethren is the power of sanctification, and this is the life of love.—It is just the sanctified who see even the smallest sins with painfulness and perceive that they stand in need of cleansing through Jesus Christ.—If thy sin troubles thee in its deep motions, know that in the cross thou hast a well, whence thou mayest and must draw consolation. It is not sufficient that thou art a Christian who is shone upon, thou must become an enlightened Christian.

Starke:—The ungodly are children of darkness without admitting it, they walk in the darkness without perceiving it, they commit the works of darkness without believing it. O, terrible blindness! Lord, open thou their eyes that they may see, tremble and return from their evil way.—How busy are people during the natural day! O, that they would not suffer the acceptable time and the day of salvation to pass by idly and without profit! Walk in the Light!—The virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ effects not only our first cleansing from dead works, but also our daily cleansing.

Spener:—We may say it and glory that we have fellowship with God; nor is it spiritual pride to acknowledge the grace of God which we nave received, provided we do not ascribe it to ourselves.—Light is impatient of darkness, and God of sin. By this test thyself, whether thou art God’s. Moses shone beautifully through long converse with this light; why should not the soul wherein He dwelleth do likewise? Let thy light shine, and do not deceive thyself by false conceits.

Neander:—To those who sincerely strive to walk in the Light, yet make daily experience of the still remaining influence of sin, and are disquieted in their conscience on hearing that fellowship with God, who is Light, can only be had by those who walk in the light,—to such is offered the comfortable assurance of entire cleansing from the sin as yet adhering to them. But the self-deception of those is also met, who trust to cleansing through the blood of Christ, without a corresponding course of life. The close connection between Christ in us and Christ for us is here indicated.

Heubner:—Only among the pure is fellowship, i.e., true concord, love, confluence of the hearts. Evil separates, and is the source of discord.—The kingdom of God is the kingdom of love and peace; that of Satan the kingdom of discord.

Ahlfeld:—Which are the seals and evidences of true fellowship with God? 1. That we walk in the light; 2. that we have fellowship one with another; 3. the humble confession that we owe the cleansing from our sins solely to the blood of Jesus Christ.—Providence moves pari passu from the first creative fiat to the last judgment.—Thou knowest that every transgression enshrouds thy heart in night.—True fellowship does not flow from our natural life, not from leagues for the commission of common sin, not from common pleasure or common profit, but only from the walk in Light.—First His passion, then thy passion; first His dying, then thy dying.—As long as Christ is our Righteousness, you also must go with Him into the walk in Light. As long as He is truly your Surety and Sacrifice, you also must with Him present to God your heart and will as a sacrifice of sweet savour. But he that learns to sacrifice himself, remains also in the fellowship with the brethren.

Besser:—But how many, who, perchance, do not know the school-name of the modern Nicolaitanes, the Pantheists, yet do their works, while from the fear of a separateness from sin, grievous to the flesh, they change the frontier-line between good and evil, put light for darkness and darkness for light, and then spread a figment of their own thoughts, which they call God, as a pillow for their worldly-mindedness.—Our fellowship with God, whom we do not see, is evidenced by our fellowship with one another, where one sees the other.—There are also will-o’-the-wisp-fellowships, and the mere saying of any Church-fellowship that it has fellowship with God is not sufficient.—Anna, the electress of Brandenburg, ordained in her will: “Our text shall be 1 John 1:7 : The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

Steinhofer:—“A soul washed in the blood of Jesus Christ has very delicate perceptions. The light which has risen in her shows her the smallest dust-particle of sin and the most subtle motions of the flesh, and makes her perceive whatever accords with her happy frame in gladsome converse with God and the Saviour, and whatever disturbs it.”

[Rieger:—The Bible-verse of the blood of Jesus Christ and its cleansing virtue is a verse for the children of God, for the children of the Light, and says to them: your love of the light, your hatred of darkness with its unfruitful works were insufficient to warrant your access to God, your joyous appeal to His Love; with these only your approach of the Light would have caused you to melt away as wax exposed to the heat of fire; but it is the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God, that is, God’s sending His Son into the world to make atonement for your sins, whatever He did and suffered, especially His sacrificial blood-shedding in the voluntary surrender of Himself, and His present priestly appearance before the face of God with His blood and the treasure of all His merits contained therein, it is this which must be of avail to you. The design of this blood-shedding was the cleansing of your sins; and thus we find it declared in the Gospel, for our use in penitence and faith; thus it was sprinkled over us in Holy Baptism; and thus the Holy Ghost applies it in our daily renovation, bestowing upon us the double benefit of the forgiveness of our sins and the cleansing from all unrighteousness. At every motion of sin in our conscience or in our members, we may, under the influence of the Spirit, apply to this blood and its cleansing virtue, and thus prevent the calling into question or the sundering of our fellowship with God, and that in the power of the power of the high-priesthood of Christ we may ever become and remain nearer to God.”—M.]

[Bp. Hall:—As He is Light, so every aberration from Him is darkness; if we then say that we have fellowship with this pure and holy God, and yet walk in the darkness of any sin whatsoever, we belie ourselves, and do not according to that truth which we profess.—M.]

[Sermons:—

Griffith, M.:—The spiritual antidote to cure our sinful souls.

Charnock, Stephen:—The virtues of the blood of Christ.

Earle:—The Popish doctrine of purgatory repugnant to the Scripture account of remission through the blood of Christ.—M.]

Footnotes:

[12][1 John 1:6. ἐν τῷ σκότει, in the darkness; so German, Lillie, al., Dutch, Ital., French verss.—M.]

[13][1 John 1:7. ὡς αὐτὸς ἐστιν, as He Himself is, etc.; so Meyer, Lillie, Wordsworth, al. Winer: “Among the Greeks, as is well known, αὐτός in the casus rectus does not stand for the mere unemphatic he, nor could any decisive examples of this be found in the N. T.”—M.]

[14]μετ̓ ἀλλήλων. The best Codd., also Sinait., have this reading; μετ̓ αὐτο͂ν is substituted chiefly by Latin Codd., but the less authentic reading, and clearly a correction designed to conform 1 John 5:7 to 1 John 5:6.

[15]After ̓Ιησοῦ A. G. K., al. read χριστοῦ, probably on account of 1 John 5:3. [It is omitted by B. C. Sin., al., Lachm., Tischend., Buttm.—M.]

[16] καθαρίσει or καθαριεῖ lacks sufficient authority.

[17][Sin. reads ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν.—M.]

[18][German of the last clause:—“and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”—M.]