The nomenclature of the Epistle is noticeably different in some respects from that of the Fourth Gospel.  "Jesus Christ" has now become the proper personal name of our Lord (1³ 2¹ 3²³ 5²⁰).  "Jesus" is not found except in conjunction with ''Christ or some other term of theological significance, such as "Son of God" (1⁷), or where the sense requires some such term to be supplied (4³). The absolute use of evkei/noj (2⁶ 3^3,5,7,16 4¹⁷) and of auvto,j (2^8,12,27,28 3^2,3 4²¹) almost as a name of the Saviour is peculiar¹ to the Epistle.  Blending a certain idealising reverence with the allusiveness of familiar affection, this usage is singularly expressive of a state of mind to which, although the mists of time have gathered around the image of the historical Jesus, He is still the one ever-present living personality.  As in old-style Scottish parlance, a wife would speak of her husband, present or departed as "himsel";² so with the Apostle it is needless to say who "He" is.  There is but one "He."

    Other designations applied to Christ are "righteous" (di,kaioj, 2¹, 3⁷), "pure" (a`gno,j, 3<sup>3</sup>), "the Holy One" (o` a[gioj, 2²⁰).  The first of these (di,kaioj) expresses the broadest conception of His moral perfection.  In every aspect of character and conduct He absolutely fulfils the idea of "right."  In a`gno,j, again, the primary idea is that of freedom from moral stain.<sup>3</sup>  The word may indicate a previous state of actual impurity (Ps. 51<sup>12</sup>), and it necessarily implies the thought of possible impurity.  Broadly,we might say that Purity (a`gnei,a) is the negative aspect of Love.  The command to "purify oneself" (3⁸) is equivalent to "love not the world, neither the things that are in the world" (2¹⁵).  Purity is that element in holy character which is wrought out by the discipline of temptation; and thus the word imparts a peculiar significance to the passage in which it is applied to Christ.  Hoping in Him, we are to purify ourselves, even as He Who, though tempted in all points like as we are, was and is pure (3³).

    In a[gioj (= vAdq') the same root-idea of separation from evil has been merged in that of consecration to God.  The sense is religious⁴ rather than, per se, ethical.  To Christ it is applied in a technical Messianic sense.  He is the "Holy Servant" (o` a[gioj pai/j, Acts 4<sup>30</sup>), the fulfilment of the Old Testament ideal of the Servant of Jehovah. He is recognised by evil spirits (Mark 1<sup>24</sup>, Luke 4<sup>34</sup>), and confessed by disciples (John 6<sup>69</sup>) as "the Holy One of God" (o` a[gioj tou/ qeou/). He is o` a[gioj o` avlhqivo,j (Rev. 3⁷), the "true" or "genuine" Holy One, who hath the Key of David - who wields all Messianic prerogatives.  And it is obviously in the same sense that He is named "the Holy One" in the Epistle (2²⁰).  It is as the Messiah, the Anointed, that He bestows upon the members of the Messianic community the "anointing" (cri/sma) of the Spirit.

   Passing from these points, we proceed to consider the great Christological thesis of the Epistle.  That thesis is the complete, permanent, and personal identification of the historical Jesus with the Divine Being who is the Word of Life (1¹), the "Christ" (4²) and the Son of God (5⁵); and it is characteristic of the author's method that this, which is to be the subject of repeated development in the body of the Epistle, is preluded in its first sentence.  The abstract of the Apostolic Gospel which is there prefixed to the Epistle, as the fountain-head from which all its teaching is drawn, contains the two complementary truths: that Jesus is the "Word" in whom the Eternal Life of God has been fully manifested, and that this manifestation has been made through a humanity in which there is nothing visionary or unreal, and is vouched for by every applicable test as genuine and complete.  The Incarnate Word has been "seen," "heard," "handled" (1^1-8).⁵

    In the Epistle this thesis is maintained in the form of a vigorous polemic against certain heretical teachers whom the writer calls "antichrists,"⁶ in whom he discovers the true representatives of that arch-enemy of God and His Christ who figured so vividly in apocalyptic literature and in the popular belief.  That we must recognise in these "antichrists" one or more of the many ramifications of Gnosticism, is beyond question.  Though our knowledge of Gnosticism in the Johannine age is but dim and fragmentary, still, what we do gather from the scanty records of the Apostolic Fathers fits into the Christological passages of the Epistle so accurately that it renders their interpretation certain where otherwise it would be only conjectural.  From the Epistle itself we learn that the heretical teachers denied that Jesus is the Christ (2²²), or, more definitely, "Christ come in the flesh" (4⁸); they denied that Jesus is "the Son of God" (4¹⁵); and they asserted that He came "by water only" and not "by blood also" (5⁶).  Plainly, what is here in view is, in the one or the other of its forms, the Docetic theory of Christ's Person; for it appears that the theory existed in two more or less defined types.  There was the crude unmitigated Docetism described in the Ignatian Epistles, according to which Jesus was the Christ, but was in no sense a real human being.  It was only a phantom that walked the earth and was crucified.  The Incarnation was nothing else than a prolonged theophany.⁷  The other is specially associated with the name of Cerinthus,⁸ of whom Irenaeus reports (Haer. I. 26. i.) that he taught that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was the son of Joseph and Mary, and was distinguished from other men only by superiority in justice, prudence, and wisdom; that, at His Baptism the Christ descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and announced the unknown Father; that, at the end of His life, the Christ again left Jesus; that Jesus died and rose again, but that the Christ, being spiritual, remained without suffering.  According to this view, Jesus was not the Christ, but only, for the period between the Baptism and the Crucifixion, the earthly habitation of the heavenly Christ.  On either of the theories the Incarntion was only a semblance.  The one denied reality to the human embodiment of the Divine Life; the other, admitting the reality of the human embodiment, denied its permanent and personal identification with the Divine.  By some exegetes,⁹ traces of both forms of the Docetic theory have been discerned in the Epistle.  We shall find, however, that the Cerinthian heresy alone offers a sufficient objective for all the Christological passages.

    These passages are 2^21-23 4¹⁸ 4¹⁵ 5^6-8.  And we shall, in the first place, simply state the doctrinal content of each.

    "Who is the liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?" (2²²).  Here the assertion or denial that Jesus is the Christ has probably no relation to the early controversy regarding the Messiahship¹⁰ of Jesus in the Jewish sense.

    In Gnostic nomenclature "Christ" was one of the aeons - spiritual existences emanating from the Godhead - who appeared on earth in phantasmal or temporary embodiment in Jesus; and the Apostle also uses the name "Christ" as equivalent to the "Word" or "the Son of God," to signify the Divine pre-existent factor in the personality of Jesus.¹¹

    Evidently, then, it is the Cerinthian heresy that is here repudiated.  As to the manner in which this school of Gnosticism construed the personality of the composite Christ-Jesus during the period of union, we are ignorant; but the essential significance of the theory, truly and tersely stated, was that Jesus was not the Christ.  There was only a temporary and incomplete association of Jesus with the Christ.

    "Hereby recognise (or, ye recognise) the Spirit of God.  Every spirit that confesseth Jesus (as)¹² Christ come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God" (4^2,3a).  Here the statement is more specific, but to the same effect; it is still the Cerinthian heresy that is combatted.  The emphasis is not upon the real humanity of Jesus so much as upon the personal identity of the preexistent Divine Christ with Jesus.  There is no mere association, however intimate, between Jesus and the Christ, Jesus is the Christ, come in the flesh.

    A third time the Apostle returns to the same theme. "Whosoever confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God" (4¹⁵).  Here the true confession, "Jesus is the Christ," appears as "Jesus is the Son of God."  The terms are interchangeable, if not synonymous; and, in this instance, "Son of God " is preferred as bringing out the filial relation of Him who is sent to Him who sends (4¹⁴), and thus exhibiting the immensity of the Divine Love manifested in the mission of Christ.

    Finally, we have the much-debated passage, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?  This is He that came by water and blood; not by the water only, but by the water and by the blood"(5^5,6a).  The obscurity of the whole passage is due, doubtless, to the fact that the first readers of the Epistle, for whom it was written, were already familiar with the author's handling of the topics that are here merely indicated.  Such expressions as the "water" and the "blood" are a kind of verbal shorthand, intended merely to recall to his readers the exposition of those themes which they had heard from his lips.  Without attempting a full account¹³ of the extraordinarily numerous and diverse explanations, ancient and modern, of these words, it must suffice to say that an interpretation based on a supposed reference to the sacraments was inevitable (so Lutheran commentators generally; also, in part, Westcott).  But, while Baptism and the Lord's Supper do exhibit sacramentally those elements in Christ's saving work that correspond respectively to His coming by Water and by Blood, to explain the text by direct reference to these is inadequate.¹⁴  Equally inevitable was the effort to explain the passage by the account given in the Gospel of the effiux of water and blood from the Saviour's wounded side (Augustine and ancient commentators generally).  But it may be said with considerable confidence that while this passage in the Epistle may serve to explain the symbolical meaning which is apparently attached in the Gospel to that incident of the Passion, the incident in the Gospel sheds no light upon the passage in the Epistle.  The clue to this is the Docetic tenet that the aeon Christ descended upon Jesus at His Baptism, and departed again from Him before His Passion.  Thus it is evident that the "water" here denotes our Lord's Baptism, the "blood," His death on Calvary.  The Cerinthian heresy taught that the Christ came by "water," but denied that He came by "bloods" also.  Hence St. John's repeated and emphatic assertion that He came "not by the water only, but by the water and the blood."

 As Westcott rightly points out, "He that cometh," "He that came" (o` evrco,menoj o` evlqw,n), are terms used in the Gospels, and notably in St. John, as a technical designation of the Messiah.¹⁵  When, therefore, it is said that Jesus the Son of God "came" by water and by blood, it is signified that first by His Baptism and then by His Death, Jesus entered actually and effectively upon His Messianic ministry.  He "came" by water (div u[datoj).¹⁶  In their own sense the Gnostics maintained that Christ "came" by water; in another sense, the Epistle asserts the same¹⁷ - in what sense is clearly demonstrated in the Gospels, where the Baptism is invariably regarded as the actual beginning of His Messianic ministry (John 1³¹, Acts 1²²; Mark's Gospel begins with the Baptism).  When Jesus definitely consecrated Himself in the full consciousness of His calling (Matt. 3¹⁵); the Spirit was bestowed on Him "not by measure" for its accomplishment (Matt. 3¹⁶); and the voice from Heaven testified His predestination to it (Matt. 3¹⁷).  But He came by Blood also.  This the Gnostics denied; this the Apostle affirms.¹⁸  He who was baptized of John in Jordan, and He whose life-blood was shed on Calvary is the same Jesus, the same Christ, the same Son of God eternally.  For He "came" by blood.  He did not depart by blood.  He laid down His life only that he might take it again.  Death was for Him only the entrance upon the endless career of His redemptive work, the unhindered fruitfulness of His life (John 12²⁴).

    If the foregoing exposition of the chief Christological passages has been right, it has been made clear that these passages all promulgate the same truth in substantially the same way.  If one might express it mathematically, there is on one side of an equation the Divine, or, at least, super-terrestrial, Being Who is the "Word of Life," the Christ," the "Son of God"; on the other side, the human Jesus.  But the two sides of the equation are not only equivalent, they are identical.  Without ceasing to be what He is, the Son of God has become the human Jesus; and Jesus, without ceasing to be truly human, is the Son of God.

    An investigation of the wider problems presented by the Johannine use of these titles, Logos, Christ, Son of God, cannot be undertaken here.¹⁹  Only the more immediate theological implications of the passages that have been passed under review may be adverted to.  It is at once evident that, in the Epistle, these titles imply the pretemporal existence of the Person to whom they are applied.  Further, while for the abstract monotheism of the Gnostic the "Christ" could be nothing more than an emanation from the Eternal God, for the writer of the Epistle He is Himself Eternal and Divine.  He is the "Word of Life" (1¹); and that this title implies relationship and fellowship within the Godhead itself is signified by the fact that the life manifested in Him is that Eternal Life which was in relation to the Father (h[tij h=n pro.j to.n pate,ra, 1²).  This relation is otherwise expressed by the terms "Father" and "Son"; and these terms are employed in no figurative or merely ethical sense, but in their full signification.  The Son, no less than the Father, is the object of religious faith (5¹³), hope (3³), and obedience (3²³).  He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also (2²³).  Our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ (1³).  Believers are exhorted to "abide" in Christ (2²⁸), as elsewhere to "abide" in God.  The very syntax of the Epistle testifies how the truth of the essential Divinity of Christ has become the unconscious presupposition of all the Apostle's thinking; for again and again²⁰ it is left uncertain whether "God" or "Christ" is the subject of statement, an ambiguity which would be reckless except on the presumption of their religious equivalence.

    It would be a questionable proceeding, indeed, to read into the Epistle the full Trinitarian doctrine of the hypostatic Sonship.  The problem of recognising personal distinctions within the Godhead and at the same time preserving its essential unity - a problem of which the Trinitarian doctrine is, after all, only the mature statement - has not yet been fully confronted.  Yet it is not too much to say that all the elements of that problem are present here in the fundamental implication that Jesus Christ, in His pre-incarnate form of being, existed eternally in an essential unity of nature with God.

    This, however, is only an implication.  The crucial truth of the Epistle is Christological, not theological; its doctrinal emphasis is not upon the relation of Divine Father and Divine Son, but upon the relation of the Divine Son to the historic Jesus.  And it will be well to look more closely at the most explicit of the various forms in which this relation is defined. "Every spirit that confesseth Jesus as Christ come in the flesh (VIhsou/n Cristo.n e,n sarki. e,lhluqo,ta) is of God" (4²).  The statement, simple as it is, is of exquisite precision.  The verb used (e;rcesqai) implies the pre-existence of Christ.  The perfect tense (e,lhluqo,ta) points to His coming not only as a historical event, but as an abiding fact.  The Word has become flesh for ever.²¹  The noun (sa,rx) indicates the fulness of His participation in human nature, the flesh being the element of this which is in most obvious contrast with His former state of being²² (John 1¹⁴).  Even the preposition evn is of pregnant significance.  It is not altogether equivalent to "into" (eivj).  The Gnostics also believed that Christ came into the flesh.  But the assertion is that He has so come into the flesh as to abide therein; the Incarnation is a permanent union of the Divine with human nature.  Finally, this union is realised in the self-identity of a Person, Jesus Christ, who is at once Divine and human.

    Again, however, we must not read into this the results of later Christological developments.  It may be argued that the orthodox formula, "one Person in two natures for ever," is implied in the teaching of the Epistle; but there is nothing that asserts it.  The truth taught in all its simplicity, and in all the majesty of its immeasurable consequences, is that of one Person in two states, a preincarnate and an incarnate state of being.  Without change of personal identity, the Eternal Son of God is become and for ever continues to be Jesus.  Jesus is the Son of God - the Christ - come in the flesh.

    We next proceed to a most interesting and important part of our subject the practical signifcance of the doctrine, as this is exhibited in the Epistle.  For it is neither in the interests of abstract theology nor as the champion of ecclesiastical orthodoxy that St. John proclaims the truth of the Incarnation as the "roof and crown" of all truth, but solely from a sense of its supreme necessity to the spiritual life of the Church and the salvation of the world; because he perceives in the denial of it the extinction of the Light of Life which the Gospel has brought to mankind.  Thus, in introducing the subject, he first of all sets himself to awaken in the minds of his readers an adequate perception of its gravity: - " I write unto you not because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth" (2²¹).²³  He writes because they know the truth.  His aim is not to instruct their ignorance, but to arouse them to realise the significance of their knowledge.  He has no actually new elements of Christian truth to impart, but would quicken their sense of the irreconcilable opposition of truth and falsehood, and of its stupendous import in this instance.  It was no merely speculative antagonism that existed between the truth they had heard from the beginning (2²⁴) and the corrupt doctrine of the antichrists.  The matter at issue was no mere difference of opinion.  The alternative was between making truth or falsehood, and that on the greatest of all subjects, the guide of life.  "Who is the liar," he passionately exclaims, "but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?," and then, without conjunction or connecting particle of any kind, clause follows upon clause like the blows of a hammer, "This is the antichrist, (this is) he that denieth the Father and the Son.  Whosoever denieth the Son hath not even the Father; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also" (2^22,23).

    Here we perceive the first of the great practical consequences which depend upon the Incarnation.  (a) It alone secures and guarantees the Christian revelation of God, and with its denial that revelation is immediately cancelled, "He that hath not the Son hath not even the Father"²⁴ (2²³).

    Contrary as it might be to the intention of the Gnostic teachers or to their interpretation of their own tenets, the result was that, by taking away the real Divine Sonship of Jesus, they subverted the Divine Fatherhood itself.  It must be observed that the argument is not one of abstract logic, namely, that if there be no Divine Son there can be no Divine Father.  It is concrete and experiential.  What is in question is not God's absolute Being, but our "having " - not Fatherhood and Sonship as inherent in the Divine Nature, but the revelation to men of the Father in the Son.  Refusing to recognise more than a shadowy and dubious connection between the historic Jesus and the Eternal Son of God, Gnosticism took away the one medium through which a sure and satisfying revelation of the Eternal Father has been given to the world. It was still true that no man had seen God at any time; but it was not true that the Only-Begotten Son had declared Him; not true that he who had seen Jesus had seen the Father.  With the denial of Jesus as the full personal incarnation of the Divine, the whole Christian conception of God was but the "baseless fabric of a vision," having no point of contact with the world of known fact.  As regards Gnosticism, the Apostle's statement was entirely true.  Its God was a being so absolutely transcendent as to be incapable of actual relation to humanity; and the gulf between absolute Deity and finite being remained unbridged by all its intricate hierarchy of semi-divine intermediaries.  But the Apostle's contention, that to deny the Son is to be unable to retain even the Father, is no less verified in the history of modern thought.  It is not matter of argument, but of fact, that the God-consciousness finds its true object most completely in Jesus Christ; and that when God is not found in Christ, He is not ultimately found either in nature or in history.  Theism does not ultimately survive the rejection of Christ as the personal incarnation of God.  The process of thought that necessitates the denial of the supernatural in Him has Agnosticism as its inevitable goal.²⁵

    (b) But, if the validity of the whole Christian Revelation of God is involved in the fact of the Incarnation, this is most distinctly true of that which is its centre. It is highly significant that the writer whose message to the world is "God is Love" derives it so exclusively from this single source.  He has nothing to say of that benevolent wisdom of God in Nature, of that ever-enduring mercy of God in History, that kindled the faith and adoration of Old Testament psalmists and prophets.  His vision is concentrated on the one supreme fact, "Herein was the Love of God manifested towards us, that God sent His Only-Begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him "(4⁹).  Compared with this, all other revelations are feeble and dim, are "as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."  Here is Love worthy to be called Divine.  And the one unambiguous proof of the existence of such Love in God and of His bestowal of such Love upon men absolutely vanishes, unless the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem and died on Calvary is Incarnate God.  Here, again, it is in the practical significance of the Gnostic theories that we discover the source of St. John's indignation.  It was not in the metaphysics of Gnosticism so much as in its ethical presuppositions and consequences that he discerned the veritable Antichrist.  Its theory of the absolute Divine transcendence denied to God what, to the Christian mind, is the "topmost, ineffablest crown" of His glory - self-sacrificing Love.  It was, in fact, the translation into metaphysic of the spirit of the world, of the axiom that the supreme privilege of greatness is self centred bliss, exemption from service, burden-bearing, and sacrifice.²⁶  "They are of the world, and, therefore, speak they of the world, and the world heareth them" (4⁵).  Ignorant of the Divine secret of Love, having no comprehension that greatness is greatest in self- surrender, and that to be highest of all is to be servant and saviour of all, unable, therefore, to see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of a crucified Jesus, Gnosticism fashioned to its own mind a God wholly transcendent and impassible, a Christ who only seemed to suffer and lay down His life for men, a Gospel drained of its life-blood, a Gospel whose Divine fire, kindling men's souls to thoughts and deeds of love and righteousness, was extinguished.  And the result of thus making man's salvation easy, so to say, for God - salvation by theophany - was to make it easy for man also salvation by creed without conduct, by knowledge without self-denial for righteousness' sake, without self-sacrifice for love's sake.

    For the Gnostic it was not "hard to be a Christian."  The natural outcome of a Docetic incarnation was a Docetic morality; righteousness which consisted in the contemplation of high ideals (2^4,6, 3⁷); love which paid its debt with fine sentiments and goodly words (3^17,18).  The actual meaning of Docetism could not be more truly touched than by the pathetic question of Ignatius, eiv de., w[sper tine.j a;qesi o;ntej . . . le,gousin to. dekei/n pepovqe,nai auvto.n, auvtoi. to. dokei/n o;ntej, e;gw ti, de,demai*²⁷

    And here again, the significance which St. John finds in the Incarnation is of undiminished validity for modern thought.  That God is Love has for us the force of an axiom; it has become part of ourselves.  If there be a God, a Being who is supremely good, He must be Love; for

    It may seem as if there were no intuition of the human spirit more self-evidencing than this; nor is there, when once it is seen.  But, as a matter of history, the conviction, the idea, that God is Love, has been generated by nothing else than belief in Jesus Christ as Incarnate God, Who laid down His life for man's redemption.  In the pre-Christian and non-Christian religions every quality, good and bad, has been deified except self-sacrificing Love.  Power, beauty, fecundity, warlike courage, knowledge, industry and art, wisdom, justice, benevolence and mercy the apotheosis of all these has been achieved by the human soul.  The one deity awanting to the world's pantheon is the God Who is Love.  And if we inquire what, in the world of actual fact, corresponds to this conviction that God is Love, we today are still shut up to the answer, "Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins."  With that as the key to the interpretation of the facts of life, we are able to read in them much that testifies, and are sure that, in the light of God's completed purpose, we shall find in them nothing that does not testify, that the universe is created and conducted by the Love of the Heavenly Father Who is revealed in Christ.  Yet, even to those who are most jealous for the vindication of this, both nature and history are full of ugly and intractable facts.  And, even at their clearest, the pages of natural revelation can give evidence for nothing more than a wise benevolence, a bloodless and uncostly love.  If we ask what God has ever done for His creatures that it cost Him anything to do, the one fact which embodies the full and unambiguous revelation of this is that "the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (4¹⁴).  Meanwhile, it may seem as if the Christian ethic could claim to exist in its own right, though severed from its historical origin and living root.  The atmosphere is full of diffused light, and it may seem as if we might do without the sun.  But if the history of thought has shown that, with the denial of the Incarnation, the Christian conception of the Being of God is gradually dissipated into the mists of Agnosticism, it begins also to appear that Christian ethics have no securer tenure.  To Positivism, with the enthusiasm of humanity as its sole religion, succeeds neo-paganism, with the enthusiasm of self as the one true faith and royal law.  Like the giant of mythology who proved invincible only when reinvigorated by contact with mother-earth, the Christian ethic, the ethic whose supreme principle is Love, maintains and renews its conquering energy only as it derives this afresh from Him who was historically its origin, and is for ever the living source of its inspiration.

    (c)  But, again, the Epistle exhibits the vital significance of the Incarnation for Redemption.  The primary purpose of the Incarnation is not to reveal God's Love, but to accomplish man's salvation.  God has sent His Son to be the Saviour of the World (4¹⁴); to be the Propitiation for our sins (4¹⁰).  It is the same truth that underlies the more cryptic utterance of 5⁶:  "This is He that came by water and blood; not by the water only, but by the water and by the blood."  The reference to the Cerinthian heresy has been already explained; but the peculiar phraseology in which Christ's Passion is here insisted upon, the repeated assertion that He came by blood, - not by water only, - reveals the motive of St. John's energetic hatred of that heresy.  For it is "the blood of Jesus, His Son, that cleanseth us from all sin" (1⁶).  "Not by water only."  The tragedy of human sin demanded a tragic salvation.  And the Apostle's whole-hearted denunciation of the Docetic Christology was due to the fact that it not only dissolved²⁸ Christ, but took away from men their Redeemer.

    (d)  The final necessity of the Incarnation, for St. John, is that in it is grounded the only possibility for man of participation in the Divine Life, "He that hath the Son hath Life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not Life" (5¹²).  When Christ came into the world, the most stupendous of all events took place.  The Eternal Life, the Life that the Word possessed from the Beginning in relation to the Father (1²) was embodied in humanity, and became a fountain of regenerative power to "as many as received Him" (John 1¹², 3¹⁶).  This is the ultimate significance of the Incarnation and the core of the Johannine Gospel, a Christ who has power to place Himself in a unique vital relation to men, to pour into their defilement His purity, into their weakness His strength, into their deadness His own spiritual vitality; reproducing in them His own character and experiences, as the vine reproduces itself in the branches - doing that, the ineffable mystery of which is only expressed, not explained, when we say that He is our "Life" (John 14^19,20, 15⁵).  And to deny the truth of the personal Incarnation, to dissolve the integrity of the Divine-human nature of Jesus Christ, is either, on the one side, to deny that human nature is capax Dei, or, on the other side, that it is the life of God that flows into humanity in Jesus Christ; on either supposition, to annul the possibility of that communication of the Divine Life to man in which salvation essentially consists.  And here also the perspicacity with which the writer of the Epistle discerns the logical and practical issue is very notable.  The history of theology, so far as I am aware, offers no instance in which the truth of the Incarnation has been rejected and a doctrine of Atonement or Regeneration, in anything approaching to the Johannine sense, has been retained.

    Such are the practical²⁹ aspects of the fact of Incarnation which the Epistle brings out. The full impersonation of the Divine Life, the perfect effulgence of the Divine Light, the supreme gift of the Divine Love, is this - "Jesus Christ come in the flesh."