1 John 5:9-12 - Homiletics

The Divine witness subjectively verified.

Connecting link: The main topic is now the witness of God. In the preceding sketch we dwelt upon the witness of God objectively given. Now we have for our topic— The witness of God verified in the individual experience. The apostle gives us this in two forms—the positive and the negative.

I. LET US INQUIRE WHAT THIS INWARD WITNESS IS . "The witness in himself." So far as the expression is concerned, apart front the context, the apostle's words might bear either of two meanings:

1 . God gives man life through Christ, and premises it to all that believe.

2 . Man believes unfeignedly in the testimony God has given of his Son.

3 . Believing in Jesus, he already enjoys the life which God has promised to bestow.

4 . Therefore he has within him an actual verification of God's own faithful Word. He believed the testimony was true, and no he knows it to be so.

II. WHAT IS THE SPECIAL VALUE OF THIS INWARD EVIDENCE ? It has a sevenfold value.

1 . It is a distinctively personal verification of the truth of God's Word concerning his Son. It is emphatically the believer's own, which may be paralleled in the experience of others, but cannot be shared by them. There is first of all a firm and unwavering certitude that he has a life above and beyond that of nature. Then there is the knowledge gained by continuous experience that only by and through Christ has such a life been initiated, nourished, and sustained.

2 . It is an evidence that attends him everywhere. It is always with him. He affirms, "The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God." This is what Dr. Chalmers used to call "the portable evidence of Christianity." It can be carried about with a man, go where he will. It takes up no space on the shelves in his library, but ever fills a snug corner of his heart.

3 . It is an evidence which is independent of what man may say. At one time, when the only evidence he knew of was that which is external to the man, he was dependent on what this or that one might say, and his belief would be stronger or weaker according to the speaker's success or failure in argument. But his faith is no longer a traditional one. It is the result of the Spirit's work within him; and if no other advocate for the Saviour should appear, what Christ has done for him and in him would lead him to say from his own experience, "I know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world."

4 . It is an evidence which brings a joy along with it, with which a stranger intermeddleth not. Evidence which merely shows a man the glory of what he ought to believe, and that it is binding on him to believe, may but irritate, and will, if there, be a dislike to the truth. But when a man has God's witness within himself, then he knows whom he has believed, and the knowledge brings a joy unspeakable and full of glory. His may be—yea, is—a life of calm resting in the promise, "Where I am there shall also my servant be."

5 . Such an evidence gives him power as a pleader for God. With what zest can he tell to sinners round what a dear Saviour he has found! He can speak, not from hearsay, not merely out of a book, but of "what he has tasted and handled and felt of the Word of life."

6 . This evidence accumulates in strength with advancing years. The longer his experience of the power and grace of Christ to sustain in him the eternal life, the more he has received from the fullness of the Saviour, and the severer and the more frequent the trials which have thrown him on his Redeemer for sympathy and for strength,—the stronger will this inward evidence become. The value of the testimony, "Not one thing hath failed of all that the Lord hath spoken," must needs increase with the number of the years that such testimony includes.

7 . This is an evidence of which its possessor cannot be deprived. All evidences that are without a man—historical, philosophical, moral—may lose their hold on him, "when mind and memory flee." And besides, of any evidence for which he is dependent on man, by man he can be deprived. An evidence of which man cannot rob us must be an evidence man cannot give us. And here it is: "The witness in himself"—the life within, which, when nature sinks, will rise the higher, and which will enable the believer even in death to shout, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory!"

Note:

1 . When we summon up before our imagination the thousands and millions of this and of past ages who have known and declared that life in Christ is their certain experience, we see how great the problem which the destructive skeptic has to solve ere he can demolish the evidences of and for Christianity! He might as well try to put out the sun's light! If it were possible (which it is not) for an unbeliever to know all the evidence of Christianity, objective and subjective, he would give up his puny attempts at disproof thereof.

2 . Let those who do not possess this inward witness look at the fact that, unless they arc to disbelieve in, or to regard as fools, the holiest of their friends who speak of the life in Christ as theirs, this evidence, though inward to their friends, is outward to themselves, and as such must be taken into account by them as pertaining to human experience. For it is by no means allowable to claim experience as a basis of evidence, and at the same time to decide a priori what that experience ought to be.

3 . If a man knows that some have an experimental and living faith which he himself lacks, if he feels painfully that religion is as yet something entirely outside him, how great should be his desire to pass from a dead faith which is dependent on man, to a living one imparted and sustained by God!

4 . Let us use the doctrine of the text as the basis of an earnest and loving appeal; and say, "We know what Christ is, for he is our Saviour; we know how freely he forgives, for he has forgiven us; we 'speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen,' we have tried his own words, and have found them true, 'He that believeth on me hath the everlasting life.'"