1 John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.… I. Examine THE GENERAL CONCEPTION OF "THE DAY OF THE JUDGMENT," as given in the New Testament. But against one somewhat widely spread way of blotting the day of judgment from the calendar of the future — so far as believers are concerned — we should be on our guard. Some good men think themselves entitled to reason thus: "I am a Christian. I shall be an assessor in the judgment. For me there is therefore no judgment day." The only appeal to Scripture which such persons make, with any show of plausibility, is contained in an exposition of our Lord's teaching in John 5:21, 29. But clearly there are three resurrection scenes which may be discriminated in those words. The first is spiritual, a present awakening of dead souls, in those with whom the Son of Man is brought into contact in His earthly ministry. The second is a department of the same spiritual resurrection. The Son of God, with that mysterious gift of life in Himself, has within Him a perpetual spring of rejuvenescence for a faded and dying world. A renewal of hearts is in process during all the days of time, a passage for soul after soul out of death into life. The third scene is the general resurrection and general judgment. The first was the resurrection of comparatively few; the second of many; the third of all. 1. General history points to a general judgment. If there is no such judgment to come, then there is no one definite moral purpose in human society. Progress would be a melancholy word, deceptive appearance, a stream that has no issue, a road that leads nowhere. 2. If there is to be no day of the general judgment, then the million prophecies of conscience will be belied, and our nature prove to be mendacious to its very roots. II. THE REMOVAL OF THAT TERROR WHICH ACCOMPANIES THE CONCEPTION OF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT, and of the sole means of that emancipation which St. John recognises. For terror there is in every point of the repeated descriptions of Scripture — in the surroundings, in the summons, in the tribunal, in the trial, in one of the two sentences. "Boldness!" It is the splendid word which denotes the citizen's right of free speech, the masculine privilege of courageous liberty. It is the tender word which expresses the child's unhesitating confidence, in "saying all out" to the parent. The ground of the boldness is conformity to Christ. Because "as He is," with that vivid idealising sense, frequent in St. John when he uses it of our Lord — "as He is," delineated in the fourth Gospel, seen by "the eye of the heart" with constant reverence in the soul, with adoring wonder in heaven, perfectly true, pure, and righteous — "even so" (not, of course, with any equality in degree to that consummate idea, but with a likeness ever growing, an aspiration ever advancing) — "so are we in this world," purifying ourselves as He is pure. (Bp. Wm. Alexander.) Parallel Verses KJV: Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. |
    |