Epistles of John - The Preterist Archive

RELATION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE GOSPEL. 19
in the lifetime of his Master, viewed, apprehended, and retained
especially those aspects of the nature and doctrine of Jesus
themselves to bear victorious testi-
Christ, which now served of
mony against the Gnostic heresy. He, that is, alone among all
the disciples, had been fitted to apprehend and lay up in his
mind certain phases of the nature and doctrine of Jesus : to
wit, first, the Lord's own declarations concerning His eternal
relation to the Father, and His eternal, pre-temporal unity of
nature with the Father (John hi. 13 and 17, v. 17, vi. 33 and
51, vii. 16 and 28, viii. 58, etc.) ; secondly, those utterances of
our Lord concerning the profound mystical relation of unity and
communion of life into which the Lord would enter with His
disciples, through the Holy Ghost (John iii. 8, ch. vi., xiv. 16,
etc., xv. 1, etc., xvii. 21-23). Because St John was, in his personal
character, the complement of the other disciples, therefore
it was obvious of itself that he would give the complement of
their exhibition of Christ and His doctrine, by presenting, as
soon as the occasion should arise, in
doctrine and writing, that
peculiar side of it which he had beyond others apprehended.
And for that the occasion has now come. Merely taking a
human view of the matter, and apart from all inspiration and
enlightenment of the Holy Ghost, it must have now arisen to
his consciousness that he had in his own internal self the living
armoury against the new assaults of the spirit of lying ! The
Gnosticism of a Cerinthus must necessarily have awakened
within him his holy indignation ; for it directly contradicted all
that which St John bore in his heart as the most sacred treasure
from the lips of Jesus ;
and surely would he know that in these
discourses of our Lord he had already received the refutation
of Gnosticism, and the elements of a perfect victory over its
errors. To the doctrinal statements of lying speculation which
sundered the Father of Jesus Christ from the Creator of the
world, he had to oppose the doctrine that the Father of Jesus
Christ had created the world by the Logos ;— to the lie that
sundered the man Jesus from the JEon Christ, and separated
them entirely before the passion of Christ, he had to oppose the
doctrine of Jesus, the incarnate Logos, and of
the glorification
of the Father in His sufferings;— to the dead striving after
dead knowledge, he had to oppose the discourses of Christ
concerning the life of the Head in the members.