In the Epistle the nomenclature of moral evil contains but three words - a`marti,a, sin; avnomi,a, lawlessness; avdiki,a, unrighteousness.  We shall first consider those passages in which a`marti,a, or some cognate, is the prominent term.¹

    The idea of sin - the conception which the word calls up in every mind - is twofold.  It denotes the character of an action as morally bad and in itself condemnable, and it implies the responsibility of the agent.  The sinfulness of sin is the joint product of these two factors; and the consciousness of sin, universally and necessarily, contains both.  Yet, in the actual view taken of sin, the one or the other is invariably the more prominent.  According to the standpoint occupied, the emphasis may be either ethical or judicial upon the quality of the act and of the moral nature displayed in it, or upon the culpability in which such act involves the agent.  In the Epistle each of these aspects of sin is strongly presented.  Of the two principal passages that have a direct bearing upon the subject, the first (1⁷-2²) contemplates sin as guilt, while in the second (3^4-9) sin is contemplated in its ethical antagonism to the nature of God and of the children of God.

    The judicial view of sin characterises the whole paragraph.²  According to the law of the moral universe, sin committed constitutes an objective disability for fellowship with God, which can be removed only by confession (1⁹), forgiveness (1⁹), and propitiatory cleansing (1^7,9, 2²).  It is true that 1^7,8 are very generally interpreted from the ethical standpoint.  But this is groundless.  With regard to 1⁷ ("The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin"), the significations of "cleansing" and "sin" are mutually dependent; and if, as I shall maintain in the next chapter, "cleansing" (kaqari,zein) is here attributed to the propitiatory power of Christ's blood, it follows that "sin" is regarded primarily as guilt.  In 1⁸ ("If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves") the judicial sense is unmistakable.  The phrase "to have sin" (e;cein a`marti,an) is peculiar to St. John, and has a quite definite sense.  Thus in John 15²² our Lord says, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin."  Here, beyond question, "to have sin" specifically denotes the guiltiness of the agent.  In John 9⁴¹, 15²⁴, 19¹¹ the sense is equally clear; and these parallels must be held as decisive for the meaning³ here.  "If we say that we have no guilt, no responsibility for the actions, wrong in themselves, which we have committed, we but deceive⁴ ourselves." In 1⁹ ("If we confess our sins,⁵ He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins") there is no ambiguity.  To confess our sins is not only to acknowledge the presence in our life of wrong action, but is to confess this as needing forgiveness to lay at our own door the full responsibility for it.  In 1¹⁰ ("If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar") the emphasis is directly on the fact of wrongdoing, the culpability of which has been asserted in the preceding verses.  Again, in 2^1,2 the judicial emphasis does not admit of doubt.  Sin is that which needs God's forgiveness; and, to this end, an Intercessor and a Propitiation have been provided.

    The doctrine of the paragraph may thus be stated in three propositions.  (a) Sin is action for which the agent is primarily responsible.  Whether his action contain more or less of the special elements of wrong, rejection of light, treason to God, his neighbour, or himself, his own evil will is the direct cause of its having existed.  And if we say that such guilt does not belong to us, our error is worse than ignorance - we lead ourselves astray (e`autou.j planw/men) in outer darkness.  It seems clear that the Apostle has here in view the doctrine of Gnostic Antinomianism, that the "spiritual" are free from sin, because sin is wholly of the flesh.⁶  But this heresy is older and newer than Gnosticism.  In manifold forms it reappears in modern thought.  For the modern materialist, as for the ancient Manichee, sin is a question of physiology; moral depravity only a manifestation of corporeal disorder.  Or the evil in the world is due to the social environment, is the result of bad education and bad institutions.  Against all such theories St. John lifts up the single word - Sin.  "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves."  (b) Sin is universal.  "If we say that we have not sinned, we" - not only deceive ourselves - we "make God a liar" (1¹⁰).  "All the institutions of the Divine economy, God's entire government and work upon earth, the whole manifestation of the Son of God, based upon the presupposition of human sin, are reduced to one comprehensive lie (Haupt).  At the contemplation of such denial, be it blind or wanton, the Apostle's soul is fired to passionate indignation.  (c) The immediate effect of sin is to embarrass and pervert man's relation to God, to disqualify him for that fellowship with God for which he was created, and the loss of which is death (3¹⁴, 5¹⁶).  The sole measure of its otherwise immeasurable evil is that only by the blood of Jesus, God's Son, can there be cleansing from its stain and restoration to the Divine fellowship.

    In the paragraph we have just considered the leading thought was that of walking in the Light; and by this the view of sin was governed.  Sin was regarded only in its concrete manifestations - as a fact of observation and experience.  In the second cycle of the Epistle the leading thought is that of the Divine Begetting.  The Christian life is regarded as a Divine sonship - participation in the essential nature of God.  Consequently, sin is now contemplated in its absolute ethical antagonism to the nature of God's children.  "Every one that is begotten of God doeth not sin; because His seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God" (3⁹).  Instead of the concrete a`marti,a, the abstract h` a`marti,a, denoting sin in its constitutive principle, becomes the distinctive term.  The phrase "every one that doeth sin" (o` poiw/n th.n a`marti,an, 3<sup>4,8</sup>) expresses the manifestation in actual deeds of the essential principle of evil, which is called Sin.  Sins are multiform; Sin is one.  A sin is never an isolated act of wrong-doing.  If so viewed, it is not seen in its full significance.  Individual sins are like islets, which appear as separate and casual specks on the surface of the ocean, but are, in reality, the mountain-peaks of a submerged continent.  He who "does sin" only gives particular embodiment to a universal principle, h` a`marti,a; just as the right-doer embodies h` dikaiosu,nh (2²⁹), and as the truth-doer embodies h` avlh,qeia (1⁶).  He shows, moreover, that this principle of evil is rooted in his own nature.  He is not a sinner because he commits sins; he commits sins because he is a sinner.  "Every one that doeth sin is of the devil; because the devil sinneth from the beginning" (3⁸).  The outward sin is the index to the inward nature.

    The word by which St. John defines the essential principle of sin (h` a`marti,a) is "lawlessness" (h` avnomi,a). "Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness "⁷ (3⁴).  This conception of sin as being essentially lawlessness corresponds to the strong emphasis which the Epistle lays upon the commandments of God and their careful observance (2^3,4, 3^22,24, 5^2,3).  But the thought is not to be limited by any of the historical deliverances of the Law.  Sin is fundamentally the denial of the absoluteness of moral obligation - repudiation of the eternal canon of Right and Wrong, upon which all moral life is based.  In other words, to sin is to assert one's own will as the rule of action against the absolutely good Will of God.  Thus it is but truth to say that every sin contains in germ the whole infinite of evil.  It embodies that principle which, given effect to, would overthrow the entire moral order of existence.  One little lie has in it that which would subvert the throne of God and extinguish the light of Heaven.  All sins have sin in them, and "sin is lawlessness."

    Though it does not occur in this paragraph, we may here consider another term by which an ethical significance is stamped upon sin "unrighteousness" (avdiki,a).  The word naturally suggests the negative aspect of sin - sin as declension from the standard of rightness (dikaiosu,nh).  And this sense satisfactorily meets the requirements of the three passages in which alone it occurs in St. John (John 7¹⁸, I John 1⁹, 5¹⁷).

    In the first of these, "He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh the glory of Him that sent him, the same is true, and there is no avdiki,a in him," the meaning obviously suggested is "unfaithfulness to the trust imposed in one," or, more generally, "dereliction of duty."  And the same sense admirably suits I John 5¹⁷.  The Apostle has been distinguishing between "sin unto death" and "sin not unto death"; but before leaving the subject he adds, "All unrighteousness is sin."  The purpose of the addition is evident.  The danger to be apprehended from emphasising the distinction between mortal and non-mortal sin is that we may fall into an attitude of comparative nonchalance toward the less heinous offences; and to obviate this danger we are reminded that every deviation from moral uprightness, however venial it may appear, is sin.⁸  The same meaning is most appropriate also in 1⁹, "God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  As God is faithful to His own revealed character in forgiving our sins, so He is not unrighteous but righteous in "cleansing" us from every failure in righteousness, in relieving us, that is, from the religious disabilities imposed upon us by it.⁹  Thus avdiki,a contemplates sin in its negative aspect as non-righteousness, unfaithfulness in the moral stewardship of life (cf. Luke 16⁸).  And the Apostle emphasises the fact that all such unrighteousness, any morally inferior course of action, is sin, and contains the elements of positive guilt.  This is continually overlooked.  Men often think more of the distinctions and gradations of sin than of its essential wrongness.  They speak of  "peccadilloes," "foibles," "failings," of things that are "not quite right" (as if they were not quite wrong).  The sinfulness of sin is wrapped around with euphemisms and circumlocutions.  Concerning all this St. John has but one word to utter, "All unrighteousness is sin."

    Thus far, then, the Epistle's doctrine of Sin may be summarised as follows.  Sin is that which involves the culpability of the agent.  Sins are of various kinds; but all failure in duty, all deviation from the right is sin.  And all sin, in its real character, is repudiation of the supremacy of moral obligation is revolt against the holy Will of God.

    In the third cycle of the Epistle we encounter the perplexing topic of "sin unto death."  It ought to be observed, however, that the introduction of this is merely incidental, and that the main subject of the passage is "sin not unto death"; while its actual purpose is to use this as an example of those things regarding which we may pray with perfect confidence of success (5¹⁶).

    "If any man see his brother," to whom he is bound by the ties of Divine kinship (5¹), regarding whom he is persuaded that, at the root, he belongs to Him "in whom there is no sin" (3⁵) - if he see this brother, nevertheless, "sinning a sin," plainly not abiding in Christ but taking the way that leads to certain separation from Christ, yet not so as to have irrevocably fallen from Him - if he see this, "he shall ask," and God will grant him in answer to his prayer, "life for them that sin not unto death."  There is a sense in which every sin tends "unto death."  Conscious or unconscious, it is fraught with injury and loss to life.  It interrupts some channel of inter-communication between the Vine and the branch.  But the Epistle has already declared the means by which the interrupted fellowship may be recovered.  The renewed advocacy of Christ (2¹) and the renewed cleansing of His Blood (1⁷), will unfailingly restore fulness of Life.  But the condition of this is that we "walk in the light" (1⁷), that is, in the present instance, that there be confession of sin (1⁹).  In the case contemplated, however, the erring brother has not fulfilled this condition.  He is ignorant of his sin, or is impenitent, or is withheld from confession by fear or obstinacy (Ps. 32^3,4).  It is in such an emergency that his brother may come to the rescue and do for him what he lacks the power or the will to do for himself - confess his sin and seek his restoration.  And the Apostle affirms that such effort cannot be in vain; that God has so bound us together in the Body of Christ that one may by his prayer become the means of obtaining for another a fresh influx of "Life," by which he will be renewed unto repentance.  Now, it is only by way of contrast with this that mention is made of the "sin unto death."  The Apostle is jealous of misapprehension as to the Christian's assurance in prayer.  It might be extended beyond its proper scope, with the inevitable result of its being weakened everywhere; and against this he will guard his readers.  He will not forbid them to place in God's hands even him who has sinned unto death, with the fervent supplication that "if it be possible" he may yet be snatched from his doom.  But he does view as a possibility, and assert as a fact, that there are those for whose restoration and salvation we cannot pray with unconditional confidence as for a thing "according to His will."¹⁰ "There is a sin unto death: not concerning this do I say that he should make request."

    What, then, are the characteristics of the "sin unto death," as we may gather them from this passage?

     1.  It is a sin which may be committed by Christians, and it is only as committed by Christians that it is here contemplated.

    2.  It is a sin which is visible, or, at least, recognisable.  It is evident that the term "sin unto death" must have been one well understood by the first readers of the Epistle; and that it denoted a particular sin or kind of sin the characteristics of which were so definite that they were easy to perceive, and so familiar that they needed no description.  On any other supposition the reference to this sin as an exception to the full exercise of brotherly intercession is entirely pointless.¹¹  It seems strange that what was so recognisable then is so unrecognisable now.  Yet it is conceivable that, in our own religious dialect and modes of thought, there are phrases that to the Christian of two thousand years hence will be no less obscure, and conceptions no less difficult to locate in his religious and ethical system, than the "sin unto death" is to ourselves.  The singular thing is that even to the earliest Patristic writers who touch the subject the "sin unto death" is already an enigma - its meaning as much a matter of conjecture or inference as to us.

    3. It is "unto death" (pro.j qanaton).  What does this expression signify?  (a)  It is pointed out that the distinction of "sins unto death" and "sins not unto death" is common with Rabbinic writers, and is based on the Old Testament legislation, according to which the punishment for many offences (cf. Lev, 18²⁹, 20^9-21), especially for those committed with a "high hand" (Num. 15^30,31), was death, involving final "cutting off from the people."  This, however, while it may possibly indicate the origin of the phrase, does not materially help towards an understanding of what it signifies in the atmosphere of New Testament thought.  The interpretations which have been directly based upon the Old Testament usage - that "sin unto death" is sin punished by the civil authorities with death or by the Church with excommunication (thus the older Catholic theologians) - do not commend themselves.  Of the former alternative nothing need be said; of the latter, that not every sin incurring excommunication is "unto death."  In I Cor. 5⁵ the offender is excommunicated "for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."  In such a case brotherly intercession would be an urgent duty; and, in any case, excommunication does not constitute the "sin unto death," but is only the solemn recognition by the Church that it has been committed.  (b)  Nor is the proposal to interpret the passage by the aid of Jas. 5^14,15, as referring to sin that is punished by God with bodily sickness or death (cf. I Cor. 11³⁰), worthy of more consideration.  In the whole usage of the Epistle qa,natoj and zwh, have a spiritual significance, and there is nothing in the context to suggest that here "sin unto death" should be understood as sin punished by fatal bodily sickness.  (c)  And, if it is evident that qa,natoj means spiritual death, - separation from fellowship with God, - it is also evident that sin pro.j qa,natonmeans, not sin "tending towards death," but sin by which that fatal goal is reached.¹²  Westcott¹³ (p. 210) maintains that "St. John speaks of the sin as tending to death, and not as necessarily involving death.  Death is, so to speak, its natural consequence, if it continue, and not its inevitable issue as a matter of fact."  This view is quite untenable.  Intended to put a humane and merciful interpretation upon the "sin unto death," how inhumane and unchristian a construction does it place upon the Apostle's directions regarding it!  If there is a sin that does not already "necessarily involve death," but to which a special certainty attaches that, if it continues, death is the "inevitable issue," it is unimaginable that the Apostle should not enjoin the most urgent intercession, instead of positively saying that he does not enjoin it.  Of all possible interpretations, this is unwittingly the most repugnant to Christian feeling.  The only question which the Apostle's language leaves undecided is whether a resurrection even from this "death" is not possible.  And concerning this his language is noticeably guarded.  In the presence of such sin he does not command nor encourage intercession, neither does he forbid it.  All he commits himself to is that for those who thus sin, Christian prayer cannot have that "boldness" which is its prerogative elsewhere.  (d)  The question remains - On what grounds can it be pronounced of any sin that it is "unto death" - that it effects a total severance from Christ?  And the one answer which the first principles of Christianity permit to be given to this question is - final impenitence.  Every sin that can be repented of can be forgiven; every sin that is repented of finds forgiveness.  We cannot, however, define sin unto death simply as the sin of those who are finally impenitent.¹⁴  For this particular sin is recognisable now, and cannot be now recognised from final impenitence.  The question, therefore, presents itself in this form what sins are of such a nature as to render final impenitence, so far as we have reason to believe, their certain issue?  In the New Testament there is allusion to two sins, if they are two, by which this dreadful condition is fulfilled.¹⁵  There is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that unpardonable sin which our Lord's adversaries were, as He warned them, upon the verge of committing, when they accused Him of casting out evil spirits in the power of Beelzebub (Matt. 12^24-32).  In doing so they were deliberately outraging the eternal principle of goodness and truth, sinning against the Spirit of God, and extinguishing the light in their own souls; and this, because beyond repentance, would be beyond pardon.  Intercession is silenced.  Even the Saviour cannot plead, "Father, forgive them:  they know not what they do."  In this instance the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (or perilous nearness to it) is ascribed to malignant unbelievers.  Within the Church such sin can be manifested only in one certainly recognisable form - deliberate, open-eyed apostasy from Christ (Heb. 6^4-6).

    It is true that the same fatal result may be reached by other paths.  The professing Christian may so wilfully and obstinately persist in heinous sin, or may have become so inveterately and whole-heartedly a lover of the world that, even in the judgment of charity, he has finally chosen his sin rather than his salvation.  Yet, human nature being the same in New Testament times as now, to determine and pronounce upon the merits of such final hardening of the heart must have been so precarious, if not impossible, that one is constrained to believe that the "sin unto death" was the sin of those who by deliberate and avowed action severed themselves from Christ and from the Christian community.  It does not follow that those who so acted necessarily reckoned themselves as apostates; and I think it probable that what St. John chiefly had in view was the sin of the "antichrists" and false prophets, who "went out from us that it might be made manifest that they were not of us" (2¹⁹).  Once more, however, it is to be observed that all the Apostle says of "sin unto death" is that it does not present an object of confident intercession.  And though it was perhaps inevitable, it is unfortunate that the mention of the perplexing "sin unto death" has always awakened a livelier interest than that which is the central truth of the passage the Christian prerogative of fearless and expectant prayer for a restorative gift of Life to them that sin not unto death.

    According to the teaching of the Epistle, sin is not an abnormality of human life alone a phenomenon of the ko,smoj; it belongs to a more gigantic system in which it has its origin, and in which, again, it bears its final fruits and reaches its goal.  There are organised kingdoms both of Righteousness and of Sin, in the one or the other of which every man has his citizenship. The one has its prototype in Christ (3⁷); the other, in the devil (3⁸).  As it is in Christ alone that we see what Righteousness is when it becomes the absolute principle of life, so it is in the devil only that Sin is manifested to its last possibility.  Sin in its proper nature is diabolical; it is what has made the devil to be the devil.

    But the devil, o` ponhro,j, is not only the prototype to which all sin tends and is ultimately conformed, he is also, in some important sense, the source from which all human sin is derived.¹⁶  In what sense, we must more particularly inquire.  The terms in which the relation of human sinning to diabolic influence, and those in which the relation of human righteousness to Divine influence are expressed, are strikingly parallel.

    Is it to be inferred that the relations thus identically expressed are identical in fact?  Some do not shrink from drawing the inference.  "It is an appalling thought that man may enter into the same relation to the devil in which he originally stands to God" (Rothe).  "The life that animates the sinner emanates from the devil" (Huther).  But such statements are over-statements.  That the devil is immanently and directly the source of all sin; as the Holy Spirit is of all holiness, is a thesis that cannot be seriously maintained.  This is to ascribe to his agency an omnipresence and an omniscience which, so far as one can conceive, are impossible to a finite being.  True, the Johannine phraseology might bear such an interpretation, nay, most naturally would bear it, if it could; but it does not absolutely demand it.¹⁷

    On the other hand, more is signified than merely moral affinity or likeness.  The devil is an active influence to which there is a corresponding receptivity in the life of the "world" (5¹⁹).  That he gave the first impulse to human sinning (John 8⁴⁴); that he still gives fresh impulse to it (John 13²); that, directly or indirectly, all human evil may be described as the "works of the devil" (3⁸), and that thus he is the father of all who do wickedly, is clear Johannine teaching: - "He that doeth sin is of the devil."  He is of the devil's lineage, in the direct line of spiritual descent from him "who sinneth from the beginning."

    Thus the personality of the Wicked One is not only recognised in the Epistle; it is related in no unimportant sense to its doctrine of sin.  Yet, regarding his person, St. John is as reticent as other New Testament writers.  In the Epistle all that is said is that "he sinneth from the beginning"¹⁸ (3^8a).  Plainly, "from the beginning" is here relative to human history.  His is the sin from which human sin is derived.  When and why and how Satan became Satan is to us unknown.  He is the aboriginal sinner; and what he became he still is.  The first to sin, he still abides in sin (a`marta.nei).  But, while there is in the Epistle no attempt to account either for the existence of the Wicked One or for his power (the "whole world" is his domain, 5¹⁹), there can be no doubt that, underlying all the Apostle's utterances on the subject, there is the ordinary assumption that he is a fallen angel.  Meagre as is the support which the idea of the fall of Satan has in the New Testament (2 Pet. 2⁴ Jude ⁶), speculation on the subject has no other possible issue.  Any other conception is "inconsistent with the absoluteness, or subversive of the goodness, of God" (Steven, Johannine Theology, p. 145).

    The New Testament conception of diabolic agency is one for which modern Christian thought has no small difficulty in finding a place."¹⁹  But, as presented in the Epistle, three great thoughts all, I believe, of permanent validity are contained in it.  (a)  Sin in its principle has that character which we call diabolic.  There is a darker strain of evil in the world than human weakness, ignorance and folly, or overpowering circumstance can account for.  There is the manifestation of an essentially evil will, of opposition to good, enmity against God.  (b)  The great moral conflict of which human history always has been and will be the theatre - which is fought out around every human soul - is a conflict of personal agencies, not of abstract moral ideas.  It may be said that of impersonal influences, or of actual moral force residing in impersonal laws, the New Testament knows nothing.  And to this mode of conception modern thought is in some measure returning.  Modern psychology tends at some points towards the New Testament standpoint.  (c)  The third truth is the ultimate triumph of Christ over His great adversary, in their conflict for the possession of humanity, "The whole world lieth in the wicked one"; but "to this end was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil."  The "strong man armed" has encountered an antagonist mightier than himself.  Evil is overcome with good.  On the downfall of the kingdom of the devil arises the Kingdom of the Son of God.

    In the Johannine writings the word ko,smoj has a peculiar elasticity of application.  Three chief uses (besides others more occasional) may be distinguished.  When the ko,smoj is material, it signifies (a) the existing terrestrial creation (e.g. John 1¹⁰), especially as contrasted with the sphere of the Heavenly and Eternal.²⁰  When it refers to the world of humanity, it is either (b) the totality of mankind as needing redemption and as the object of God's redeeming love (e.g. John 3¹⁶), or (c) the mass of unbelieving men, hostile to Christ and resisting salvation (e.g. John 15¹⁸).  In the Epistle the word occurs in the first of these senses (3¹⁷, 4¹⁷), also in the second (2², 4⁹, 4¹⁴), but most frequently and characteristically in the third (2^15-17, 3^1,13, 4^1,3-5, 5^4,5,19).  Of the world in this sense it is said that it had no perception of the true nature and Divine glory of Christ (3¹; cf. John 1¹⁰), and that it is equally blind to the true nature of the children of God (3¹); that it hates the children of God as Cain hated Abel (3¹³; cf. John 15^18,19, 17¹⁴); that the spirit of Antichrist dwells in it (4^3,4), and that to it belong the false prophets and their adherents (4^1,5); that it is wholly subject to the wicked one (5¹⁹; cf. John 12³¹, 14³⁰,16¹¹); that whatsoever is begotten of God conquers it (5⁴; cf. John 16³³) by the power of Christian Faith (5⁵); that it is not to be loved (2¹⁵); that the constituents of its life are "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life" (2¹⁶); and that it "passeth away" (2¹⁷).  We shall for the present confine our attention to the last quoted passage: -

    "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."  I shall not attempt to thread the maze of various interpretations that have gathered around the term "world" in this passage.  The real possibilities are only two.  The word may be understood as signifying the whole content of material, sensuous, and therefore transient existence - "the sum of all phenomena, within the human horizon, which are sensuous, and which awaken sensuous desires" (Rothe).  This interpretation, however, has serious difficulties, both logical and moral.  How can it be logically affirmed that "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" which are subjective, constitute "all that is in the world" which is objective?  And if this difficulty be waived, the more formidable moral objection remains: - How can it be said that the material and senuous ko,smoj, which God has created for man to dwell in, and between which and human nature He has established so many links of necessary and also delightful correspondence, has no other effect than to excite immoral desire and ungodly pride, or that the natural environment of human life is so ill-adjusted so inimical to its supreme spiritual interest; - that the one command regarding it must be an absolute "love not," and the one certainty, "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him?"  Had the writer been a Gnostic of the extreme ascetic type he might have been credited with such a thought, but it has no place in the New Testament.  Recognising this, the exponents of this interpretation import into it, in one way or other, a subjective element.  The "world" is the material and sensuous, not in itself; but in its relation to unregenerate human nature.  Westcott's definition - "The order of finite being regarded as apart from God" - may be taken as one now generally accepted.

    This definition is admirable as giving the widest idea that underlies St. John's use of the word; but it is by a process of logical abstraction that the idea is obtained. And it seems to me scarcely imaginable that the Apostle intended his readers to understand "the order of finite being regarded as apart from God" as the object of a command so terse and practical as "Love not the world."  The same objection applies a fortiori to other varieties²¹ of the same interpretation.

    The simple solution, and that which satisfies every requirement of the passage, is to understand the "world" as the mass of unbelieving and unspiritual men - the social organism of evil.  This is the sense, except when another is clearly indicated by the context, which the word bears throughout the Epistle (and is by far the most frequent in the Fourth Gospel as well).  To the Apostle's readers "Love not the world" would convey, as it does more or less to Christians in every age, a very definite and needful warning, and one that has many parallels in the Apostolic writings (e.g. 2 Cor. 6^14-18, Jas. 4⁴), "Love not the world."  Do not court the intimacy and the favour of the unchristian world around you; do not take its customs for your laws, nor adopt its ideals, nor covet its prizes, nor seek fellowship with its life.  "Neither the things that are in the world."  For what are the things that are in this "world."  This aggregate of unspiritual persons, with their opinions, pursuits, and influences - what are the elements of its life?  They are such that "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."  God lays down one programme of. life for His children; the world proposes another and totally incompatible programme to its servants.  And in exact proportion as men are attracted by the world's programme - the life of fullest gratification for all unspiritual instincts and appetites - they are tempted to mistrust and dislike the absolutely different programme of self-denying love and obedience which God lays out for them, and by which He would make them trustful, pure, patient, and strong.  For, as the Apostle with inimitable terseness proceeds to expound, the essential constituents of the world's life are these, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life."  This is literally "all that is in the world"; there is nothing nobler which it is in its power to give.

    A.  First, there is the "lust of the flesh" (the sensuous gratification which the flesh longs for).  The evil significance of the phrase lies in "lust,"²² not in "the flesh."  Least of all New Testament writers can the Apostle, whose message of Redemption begins with the announcement that the Flesh has become the organ of the Divinest life, be credited with the mystical bias which sees in the bodily organism an inherent and intractable element of evil.

    The bodily appetites are in themselves absolutely wholesome; without them neither the race nor the individual could long subsist; nor can anything be more innocent than the pleasure that accompanies their legitimate satisfaction.  Their degradation comes not from the body itself; but from the soul.  And it comes because life is not dominated by these nobler aims and affections under the rule of which the lower fulfil their appointed purpose in the harmony of nature.  It is when the love of God, the love of one's neighbour, and the love of one's nobler self are shut out from the soul, that natural appetite becomes the corrupt "lust of the flesh," asserting itself in sloth, intemperance, and sensuality, or in the tyranny of the anxious thought, "What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

"What is he but a brute,
Whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?"

    B.  The second element in the life of the "world" is the "lust of the eyes."  Here we rise from the merely animal²⁴ into the region of the intellect and the imagination, to which the eye, among the bodily organs, is the chief ministrant.  The most obvious example under this category - the master-lust of the Eye - is Covetousness.²⁵  But the phrase includes every variety of gratification of which sight is the instrument, from the love of mere material splendour and vulgar display in apparel and personal adornments, pomp and luxury in the appointments of public or private life, the spectacular excitements of the theatre, the arena, and the racecourse, to the most refined cult of the physically beautiful in nature or in art.  Nay, if the Apostle's classification is to be regarded as at all exhaustive, we must give to the "lust of the eyes" a wider scope than the merely sensuous.  It must include the craving for novelty of intellectual sensation (Acts 17²¹), the whole pursuit of knowledge, science, and art, when these are severed from the spiritual ends of life and are made, as in their own right, the object of man's devotion.  The relation of intellectual and aesthetic culture to the spiritual life is a problem that did not urgently touch the Hebrew Christian, and probably did not gravely affect those classes of Greek and Roman society from which the members of the Church were chiefly drawn in the Apostolic age; and it is scarcely touched upon in the New Testament.  But the principle on which it must be determined is the same as that which assigns their right place to the bodily appetites.  The Creator Himself is the original and perfect artist.  The Eye and all that it desires and delights in are His thought and handiwork.  We cannot behold the beauty with which He has dowered all His works, from the tiniest crystal to the constellations, without believing that in all this we see the passing gleams of an Ideal Beauty, which as truly belongs to the Divine Nature itself as wisdom or power.  In our own nature, made in His likeness, the sense of beauty seems to be a fact as ultimate as the sense of truth or of right and wrong.  It is of God and for God.

"All earthly beauty hath one cause or proof
To lead the pilgrim-soul to Heaven above;
Joy's ladder it is; reaching from home to home."

    C.  Next, the Apostle displays the obverse of the medal.  He has designated the cravings of human nature when it is without the Knowledge and Love of God, as the "lust of the flesh" and the "lust of the eyes."  Now he declares what results from the attainment of these - the "vainglory of life."  Vainglory (h` avlazonei,a) does not so much signify arrogance towards ones fellows (u`perhfani,a), as the fatuous pride of worldly possession and success, the vain sense of security that is based, like a house on the sand, upon a false estimate of the stability and worth of worldly things (cf. Dan. 4³⁰, Prov. 18¹¹, 2 Chron. 32²⁵, Acts 12^20-23).  But these two varieties of pride, though distinguishable in thought, are inseparable in fact.  The supercilious consciousness of superiority to one's fellow-men is possible only when the sense of dependence upon God has been lost (I Cor. 4⁷).  And here the "vainglory of life" must be regarded as including both the egotistical and the atheistical attitude of mind.  The same human life, the cravings of which, in those who are not animated by the love of God and the quest of Righteousness, are the "lust of the flesh" and the "lust of the eyes," has for its least transient satisfaction nothing better than this deluded self-security and empty self-satisfaction, against which all the facts of human experience offer in vain their unceasing protest.  To live without looking up to God in dependence and submission, to live looking down on a larger or smaller number of one's fellow-men - this, which from the spiritual point of view is the worst and deadliest life can give, is, in the world's reckoning, its most enviable prize.

    These, then, are the ideals the "world" of unspiritual men recognises; these are the marks that characterise it, the forces that govern it; these are its wants and its wealth; and plainly to every one who knows the God revealed in Christ, these things are "not of the Father," have not their origin in His will, have no affinity with His nature, are directly antagonistic to the life He intends for men and to which He calls men.  They belong to a life which, if it could succeed in realising itself; would be without need of God, righteousness, purity, love or moral sense of any kind; in which the world, as the sum of all the "permanent possibilities" of enjoyment, would take the place of God as the object of trust and the source of all good; and whose heaven would be a paradise of sensuous and egotistical gratifications without limit and without end.  Such a life, in the very idea and principle of it, is not "of the Father," but is "of the world."  In no sense is it normal or natural.  It exists only as a corruption and caricature.  It is possible only to a nature that is made for fellowship in the highest order of life, but is used as an equipment for the role of a more highly-endowed animal.  It is "of the world" - has no other basis or foothold in actual existence than the perverted human will.  It has in it no principle of individual development; for it presents no object adequate to the greatness of human nature, has no outlet or outlook towards the infinite Good for which man is made.  And it has in it no principle of social development.  Selfishness can never make a Kingdom of Heaven; for, in the nature of the case, every man's selfishness must collide with every other man's.  But the Apostle does not philosophise upon the theme.  He sweeps the whole phantasmagoria of worldliness aside.  "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof."²⁶  These words might well be understood as St. John's version of what has been the theme of preachers and moralisers from the beginning - "Tune to whose rise and fall we live and die" -  pa,nta r`ei/.  But if our interpretation of the passage is the true one, this is not the direct reference.  The world is still the world of human society which is "in darkness until now."  "Love not the world" is the sternly affectionate exhortation: "for that world, that whole framework of society which is hostile to Christ and His Kingdom, - imposing as it looks, stable and impregnable and overpowering, is doomed.  With all that it delights in and pursues, it is passing away.  Even while I write it is moribund, its final dissolution is at hand."²⁷  But over against this prophecy of doom, the paragraph ends with the note of triumph  - "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."  Here the Will of God stands as the absolute contrast to the Lust of the World.  The Lust of the world degrades and desecrates all the best things in life upon which it lays its hand, - renders them trivial, ignoble, and evanescent.  But the Will of God consecrates, glorifies, imbues with a Divine worth and permanence even the lowest things of life, the humblest gift, the most commonplace drudgery, the most unheroic affliction, renders the lives of men day by day, uneventful as they may seem, of imperishable significance.  The Will of God alone is great, and it lays an equalising touch upon all who truly serve it (Matt. 12⁵⁰).  The Will of God is the one Eternal Reality to which the life of the creature can attach itself; the one bond of permanence that makes human life and human history, not a thing of fragments and patches, but a vital part of an ordered and enduring whole.  If a man do the Will of God, his deeds abide, his works "do follow him."  The fruit he brings forth "neither withers upon the branches nor decays upon the ground.  Angels unseen gather crop after crop as they are brought forth in their season, and carefully store them up in heavenly treasure-houses."  Yet what the Apostle says is that he himself "abideth for ever."  Already he has eternal life and is doing its works.  What he is, that he will ever be.  What he does, that he will ever do.  The change will be only from the "few things" in which he has been found faithful to the "many things" of which he will be judged worthy.  Doing the will of God, he has thrust his hand through the enclosing screen of the transient and laid hold of the abiding, and partakes of the immortality of Him Whose Will he does.

    "And the world is passing away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

    In all literature there is no more solemn magnificence of effect than is produced by these few simple words; in all Scripture there is no more ringing challenge to the arrogant materialism of the "world" than sounds out of the depth of their calm.