Epistles of John - The Preterist Archive

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X
ST JOHN THE APOSTLE, AND HIS WRITINGS.
would have been the reaction or vehemence of
a hot temperament,—but
he goes with his brother to Jesus, and asks— again
purely receptive and self-resigning ;
but what he asks testifies
to the internal absoluteness with which he apprehends the two
perfect opposites—he asks whether he should not call fire down
from heaven. In his nature and temperament he is everywhere
and always receptive : not prominent, active, interfering, challenging
; but expectant, observant, listening, and self-devoting.
But in his internal distinctive character, he is always most fixed
and decided. His is a self-devoting nature ; but it is devoted
only to one object, and to that altogether and absolutely devoted.
And, because his nature was so self-devoting, therefore
it needed such strong- decision.
The same positive decisiveness, the same incapacity to
tolerate vacillation and middle points, appears also in St
John's views of the plan of salvation. St Paul views it as
becoming, and pauses and lingers in the conflict between the
old and the new man ;
St John beholds salvation as the simply
perfected victory of light over the darkness : he who is born
of God is light, and hath light, and sinneth no more.
St Paul,
in his writings, has more to do with sin qua weakness ; St John,
although he does not omit this aspect (1 John i. 8, ii. 1), yet
has more to do with sin as wickedness. St John also well
knows that the victory of light over darkness is won only by
what seems to be a subjection, abandonment, and succumbing ;
as in the case of Christ Himself, who overcame death by dying,
so also in every individual (1 John v. 4) in the collective
Church (Rev. ii. 8, vii. 14, xx. 4). But he contemplates the
victory, which in time is still future, as already decided from
eternity (comp. 1 John iv. 4, " Ye are of God, and have overcome
the spirit of Antichrist ;" ch. v. 4, " Our faith is the
victory which hath overcome the world ;" and, in respect to
holiness, ch. hi. 6 and 9). To St John there are only two
postures of heart: for and against. He knows no third;
and the points of transition from the one to the other he brings
not into consideration.
Such a nature, sanctified by grace, would never have been
in a position to win the heathen world for Christ ; never could
St John have done the work which St Paul did,— who became
a Jew to the Jews, and a Gentile to the Gentiles, and, with