2 John 1:9 Whoever transgresses, and stays not in the doctrine of Christ, has not God. He that stays in the doctrine of Christ… This ninth verse appears to contain one of the counsels that occurred to the apostle, as he thought on the one hand of youthful impulsiveness and love of novelty, and on the other of the fascinations that are wont to attach to dubious doctrines and to evil deeds. Its real meaning may be seen in the rendering of the Revised Version. St. John wrote, not "whosoever transgresseth" (for he was not thinking of general breaches of the law of God), but specifically "whosoever goeth onward, and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God." If that be taken in connection with the preceding verse, where a man is represented as through half-heartedness, losing whatever he has gained, the unexpected but important lesson is obtained, that "to advance over-eagerly and to hang back are alike violations of duty." I. THE FIRST THING TO AVOID IS OVER-EAGERNESS. "Whosoever goeth onward" (at too great a rate, it means, or impelled by a hot fancy that has broken away from every restraint) "hath not God." It is possible to imagine that the phrase might be interpreted in a different way, as denoting that all progress in the statement or application of religious truths is for ever barred, and that the incapacity or the refusal to see in them any other bearings than have been found in the past must be classed amongst the virtues. But with such teaching no sympathy can be found in the Bible. The body of revealed truth is not a dictionary, and when Christ teaches, He teaches free men, providing them not with endless minute rules which they must mechanically follow, but with great principles which they must use their own wits in interpreting and their own responsible skill in applying. The germs of religious truth will be perpetually unfolding themselves, expanding into new conceptions of the glory of God and of the spiritual privileges possible to man; and through all the future, one of the rewards of loyalty to Christ is to be that the loyal will be continually advancing in Christian thought, ever more completely knowing as they are known. To make this or similar paragraphs, therefore, an old man's protest against progress, or an apology for intolerance, is to sin against the entire Scripture. The warning is against needless progress, a progress that is suicidal and unworthy the name, the impulsiveness and the haste that ignore all the restraints of reason. It is more than doubtful whether any Christian can get to know much about God, unless he be stirred by an ambition to know, or can make much progress in personal religion, unless he be taken possession of by the ambition to be made like his Saviour. The mistake is in allowing the ambition to separate itself from Christ, and, as men say, to run away with them, so that no influence from above or from within can withhold them from extravagance, but the force of every reasonable restraint is broken. Of the serious mistakes, in matters of opinion and in matters of practice, to which this over-eagerness leads, the disposition that sweeps onwards under the dominancy of a single idea, and consents neither to look back upon the point from which it started, nor to glance around at the facts with which relations should be maintained, there are instances enough. One man, for instance, is led to no good result by his own investigations into God's existence, and quickly pronounces that all such investigations must prove sterile, and founds an entire system upon the alleged impossibility of attaining any certainty in certain branches of knowledge. II. AT THE OTHER EXTREME THERE IS THE EQUAL, PERHAPS THE MORE COMMON FAULT OF HANGING BACK, AND SO, AS THE APOSTLE TEACHES, GRADUALLY LETTING SLIP AND LOSING EVERY BENEFICENT TRUTH AND EVERY HOLY PRIVILEGE WE HAVE GAINED. It is a fault that goes by many names — half-heartedness, colourlessness, lack of principle, of decision, of earnestness; but there can he no doubt that it is one of the most prevalent defects in the modern Church, tending throughout the Christian world to destroy the force and very vitality of personal religion. The fashion is to hold opinions and views that are as colourless as possible, and carefully to refrain from committing oneself to anything; to remember that every question has "so many sides that life is not long enough for men to examine them all," and that therefore a man should not venture to be positive about anything. Accordingly men compromise with obligation, hesitate in their allegiance to truth, and make a disposition to hang back, and a lack of thoroughness in opinion and in practice, the most prominent feature of their lives. There can be no question as to the effect. The man who hangs back, permitting his convictions to become indefinite, and his sense of duty to die down into silent weakness, must in reason hold himself responsible for so much of the evil in the world as is done, because he provides the opportunity, or at least removes the hindrance. But that is not all. Let a man try to discover the reason why his progress in religion is slow, why he does not throw off evil habits that have disturbed him for years, why his influence for good in his own neighbourhood is so limited and uncertain; and he will generally, though not always, find that the secret of it all is his own half-heartedness, the superficiality of his religion. III. Those being the faults at either extreme against which the apostle warns us, THE CONCLUSION IS OBVIOUS, THAT THE BEST AND MOST PERFECT CHRISTIAN LIFE IS ONE IN WHICH BOTH ARE AVOIDED, AND THE PATH MIDWAY BETWEEN THE TWO IS TRODDEN. The ideal Christian life, according to this old apostle, is one in which the progress of the fancy in regard to religious truth or duty is restrained by the reins of a sanctified reason, in which all backwardness is for ever prevented by thorough religious earnestness. There is a tendency at times to imagine that such matters are merely a question of temperament; that the vivacious man will be certain to go forward, and the languid man to hang back; and that neither can be held responsible for faults that arise from the peculiarities of their very natures. But that is not the way in which the Bible looks at the matter. To plead personal temperament in excuse for the habit of over-eagerness or of backwardness, is to overlook the grace of God. But it is well to look a little more closely at the reasonableness and advantage of maintaining this intermediate position between the two extremes. That it avoids on the one hand presumptuous positiveness concerning everything, and on the other the faltering that turns religious conviction and obligation into matters for compromise, is in itself a sufficient, but far from the only, commendation. It is also the course that should be adopted, the state of mind that is most defensible and helpful, in relation to the fluctuations of religious opinion and the controversies that periodically shake the kingdom of God. In the department of Christian service similarly, most men will agree that the best human qualifications for doing it well are not over-eagerness, still less backwardness, but steady earnestness or well-controlled zeal. The man who in his work hangs back, never manages to get much done; and the man who is always apt to go a little too far forward, is also always apt to miss his mark, and to awaken in others suspicions of his discretion that seriously weaken his influence. The strongest man is he whose enthusiasm is disciplined by self-control, whose devotion to Christ is whole-hearted and well-nigh incapable of increase, but yet is closely regulated by a sanctified reason, and thus made provident of its resources and unalterable in its purposes. In all associated warfare or service, the perfect heart of devotion is good, but waste and failure follow unless there is also the power to keep rank. But the teaching of the verse applies quite as much to personal religious life as it does to service or to opinions; and what it urges as the condition of swift progress to the highest spiritual attainments, is that the spirit and the life should be, as it were, ringed round with the teaching of Christ, never advancing far forward from the neighbourhood of Him, never drifting far behind, but keeping day by day as closely as possible within the circle which His influence fills. If he be tempted to advance beyond the Saviour, the master-passion of love for Him will hold him back; or if he be tempted to linger behind, the love will draw him on. A more blessed kind of life no man can conceive; and that becomes our kind of life, according as we crush out the disposition to regulate our ways in independence of Christ, and pour our hearts upon Him in continuous trustfulness. (R. W. Moss.) Parallel Verses KJV: Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. |
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