"This is the Testimony"

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - A Preliminary Survey

"This is the message..." (1 John 1:5).

"This is the promise..." (1 John 2:25).

"This is the commandment..." (1 John 3:23).

"This is the spirit of the antichrist..." (1 John 4:3).

"This is the love of God..." (1 John 5:3).

"This is the victory..." (1 John 5:4).

"This is he that came..." (1 John 5:6).

"This is the witness..." (1 John 5:11).

"This is the boldness..." (1 John 5:14).

"This is the true God..." (1 John 5:20).

Thinking of one of these fragments and changing the word to another English equivalent of the Greek original, I make it the title of our meditation: "This is the Testimony". "This is the testimony", instead of 'witness', which is the same word originally; "This is the testimony", because all the others are gathered into that. If you want to know what the testimony of Jesus is, then all the others will tell you what that testimony is, with the one exception which, of course, is an indication of the positive by the negative: "This is the spirit of the antichrist."

Identification of the Truth of God in Christ for the Church

Before we can get into the heart of the message of these statements, there are a number of things which lie on the face of them, things indicated by them collectively, and it may be that this meditation will be occupied with those things which are indicated by these passages, these statements, altogether. In the first place, from them we clearly see that the Holy Spirit, through the apostle, was seeking to re-state precisely and in a final way the truth of God in Christ for the church as to the basic features of the truth. Let us get hold of that, it is very important.

The Holy Spirit was seeking to restate the truth in its basic features in a precise way: the truth of God in Christ for the church. These fragments are like a finger identifying: this and this and this and this - identifying the truth. It is very precise and very concise. A very great deal is gathered into the fragments, a whole vast realm of Divine revelation. Here it is just stated and presented like this: "This is the message which we received"; "this is the promise"; "this is the commandment". It is as though the Spirit was singling out these things as things which comprehend and sum up all that is vital in the revelation of God for our apprehension, identifying the truth in its various aspects.

The truth is one - we must not speak of truths. The truth is a whole, it is complete, but it has different aspects, and these are the aspects of the truth, the whole truth of God. The church is said by Paul to be the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). That is only saying in another way what the Spirit is saying here, that Christianity is based upon the truth which is here indicated in its various aspects. In other words, here is the very basis of Christianity and these are the things which constitute that foundation, and very precisely and finally (for we are at the end of things here) this is what Christianity is. That is the first thing that lies on the surface.

Identification of the Lord Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man

The next thing which goes with the first is that the Spirit, through the apostle, was seeking to identify the Lord Jesus as the Son of God and Son of Man, to bring Him out, to attest Him with a new emphasis and a clear distinctiveness. You look at the letter (I must take for granted that you know the letter to some extent) you will see how true that is as we go on. You will see all that is related to this presently.

For instance, just by way of helping you, you know how in this letter the apostle makes it his business to point out that no one who is born of God will ever question that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, but there is a spirit of antichrist abroad, and there are other spirits at work denying that Jesus came in the flesh or "came in flesh", as it really is [in the Greek]. Now, what the Spirit is doing here is taking up that challenge of antichrist in spirit and in principle which denies the Lord and denies the incarnation; and the Spirit is identifying the Lord Jesus in His twofold capacity as Son of God and Son of Man by bringing in the evidence, which evidence is deposited in the vessel of the church. "Believing..." believing... is another phrase of John. At the end of his gospel, which is taken up here and developed spiritually, he wrote, "believing ye may have life in His name"; and the evidence that He is come is that you have Life. It is a work of identifying Christ, and if that does not convey to you very much at the moment, I am sure it will as we proceed.

The Necessity for Such Identification

The next thing that lies on the surface here is that a time had come when this identifying of the truth, this identifying of the Son of God, was absolutely necessary. John was living in the last days of the apostolic age; a second generation of Christians was alive, which meant that many people had been born into Christianity and brought up in Christianity. Therefore Christianity was, for a great many (it ran into millions even then) something which was in the world before they came into the world, as established and recognised, and was fast becoming a traditional thing. Christianity had already assumed certain fixed forms and they had come into it. They were born into Christian homes and they came into something already made.

But more, at this time there was a positive departure from primitive Christianity, from the primitive purity and livingness of Christianity. A Christian system was present, very largely lacking the three major features of God's very idea for man as represented in the Lord Jesus and as intended for the church. We are not going to mention those three major things at the moment; we will come on to them before long. There were three major things which were the very idea of God in creating man, from which man had altogether fallen away and departed, which three things were gathered right up in the new man, Christ Jesus, in a perfect way and represented by Him. These were intended to be the things which obtained in that one new man, the church. They were there at the beginning in the first days, but were now very largely absent.

Identification of That Which Constitutes Christ

Then a third thing. A great deal of un-Christlikeness, both in character and in behaviour, was found in the Christianity of John's later years. Well, this letter is perfectly clear on that matter. Paul had been with the Lord a good many years when John wrote this letter, and we already see this sort of thing setting in before Paul went to be with the Lord. All this constituted the necessity for re-stating what Christianity is, and all this lies behind this reiteration, as though the Spirit through His instrument is saying, "This, this, this is Christianity, this is what Christianity is, this is what the Christian life is, this is what the church is, because this is what Christ is".

We often use the word 'identification' with Christ, but we limit it to identification with Him in His death and in His burial and in His resurrection, and then we talk about union with Christ. But here is a comprehensive presentation of identification with Christ: this, this, this, and this is identification with Christ. If you can lay hold of all these things, then you know what Christ is and what it means to be identified with Christ.

So the Spirit is seeking to identify that which constitutes Christ and therefore constitutes the Christian life, and constitutes the church. He is saying, "This... this... this... and this..." and because of the time in which John lived and the conditions, it became necessary to do this. And who will dare to say that things are any better in Christianity today than they were at the end of John's life? And therefore we are compelled to recognise the same necessity for ourselves, not for some imaginary thing called "the church" out in the world, but for ourselves. It is this, it is this, it is this.

The Comprehensiveness of John's Epistle

That leads us to another thing. As we read this letter, we are impressed with two other things. One is how all the elementary things of Divine revelation are mentioned. It is a short letter, so far as actual space is concerned. When you sit down to it and analyse it, you find few things in the Bible, if anything, more comprehensive.

Listen to some of the things which are definitely mentioned and brought into view in this little letter: God, Christ, man, satan, sin, life, death, light, darkness, truth, error, the Blood, propitiation, children of God, sonship, the Fatherhood of God, the spiritual family, the brotherhood in Christ, love, faith, incarnation, and so you can go on. But I say they are the things which stretch from Genesis to Revelation, they really take the whole Bible.

All the things of Divine revelation are packed into this little letter and some of them are dealt with in a most illuminating way. Why do we say that? Not just to study the Bible and get Bible content, but for this purpose: we are at the end when we come to this letter. There is not going to be much more after this.

It may be that the book of the Revelation was written after this letter, it may have been the other way round, but in any case, there is nothing between of time. They were both written very much at the same time, about 95 A.D. so you are really near the end. So it says, "Well now, at the end, God is ranging the whole course of revelation and bringing it all together, and fixing it upon, and centring it in, His Son". And about that in Christ it says, "Now, this is the message, the promise, the commandment, and this and this". Everything is gathered up from Adam to the end and is here presented at the end in this very precise way as a challenge. It is God's thought on all these things, the revelation of God's mind all gathered up, and you are presented with that at the end. Well, wait a minute to see the effect of that or the meaning and value of that as we go on.

The Three Great Themes of John's Writings

The other thing that impresses us as we read this letter is the underlying spiritual unity between John's gospel, his letters, and the Revelation. And that underlying spiritual unity is found in three connections, along three lines: Light, Life, and Love. You know they are the three great themes of his gospel. Here they are the three major things in the letter, but, remarkably enough, they are the three things with which the book of the Revelation begins.

That presentation of the Lord Jesus in the first chapter of the Revelation is a figurative gathering up and presenting of these three things, and then the challenges to the churches are all upon this basis. Light - "you are a lampstand"; Life - "I am the Living One"; Love - "girt about the breasts with a golden girdle". It is a challenge to test and to determine everything on the basis of these three things - Life, Light and Love - the underlying things. Does it not impress you (it did me as I read this letter) that those three things should come out three times over through the same man at different times and with different objects? Unless you knew, you would say, "Well, John had an obsession; he was obsessed with three things and could never write anything without writing about those things." They are his three-pronged fork; he feeds everybody with these things. I challenge anybody's ingenuity to represent either as it is presented in the first chapters of the book of the Revelation and gathered up into that Figure, and then say about it all in the first three chapters - "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto His servants" (Rev. 1:1). The Holy Spirit is behind this thing, so that when John writes his gospel, he, without planning, without forethought that he would write it on the principles of Light, Life and Love, does so.

And when he, under the same Spirit's government, takes his pen to write this letter, without premeditation the same thing comes up, but in another way. Not now historically as to the earthly life of the Lord Jesus, but spiritually. Then, whether it was before or after, when he, under that mighty command, "Write the things...", when under that control he sits to write the Revelation, this same thing comes out again. You cannot fail to see it; it is Light, Life, and Love, the three major realities which come up at the end. And in effect it all says this: "This is Christianity in essence and substance: Life, Light and Love". Everything is challenged by that, everything is tested by that. Everything is judged by that, and if a lampstand no longer has a light, then remove the lampstand. That is what the Lord says. If you have a name to live and are dead, well, get out of the way, you are a contradiction. If you have lost your first love, there is no justification in going on professing to have a testimony. You see, it is all there, and many fragments of the same thing, the underlying unity of the Spirit. He has a message that He is going to get out. This is the testimony: Light, Life, and Love, with all that that means which we are not going to be able to touch at present.

God's Standard of Spiritual Life in Terms of Light, Life, and Love

Let us gather that up. The message, then, in the first and inclusive way is this. Ultimately, that is, at the end, everything will stand or fall according to the measure in which these three things are found, and found together. Not that you have a lot of Light without Love or Life, but they are found together, and according to the measure in which they are found together, you stand or fall before this One Who stands with His eyes as a flame of fire, and out of Whose mouth proceeds a sharp, two-edged sword. At the end, that is the basis of deciding everything. You notice from this letter that these three things are said to be the very essence of Divine nature. "God is light" (1 John 1:5); "God is love" (1 John 4:8); and, while it is not stated exactly in that way, the last thing is: "This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20); in effect, God is Life. The very essence of the Divine nature - Light, Life, and Love.

Further, this letter says that these three things are perfectly embodied in the Lord Jesus, the Son. It is the object of the letter to point to Him. And then it goes a stage further and these three things are said to be the unalterable thought of God for believers, for the church and for the churches.

Now, what does that mean at the end? It means this, that, ultimately, God demands a very high standard of spiritual life in terms of Light, Life and Love. To put that another way, God will not accommodate Himself to the spiritual decline of an end-time. He will not accommodate Himself to spiritual decline. He will not accept the state of things among His people as it exists at the end; He just will not do it. He will not accept substitutes for these things. That is what His messages to the churches mean. "I know... I know..." - then He catalogues lots of things: your faith, patience, works and labour. The Lord says, "I know all these things, but I cannot accept substitutes for the essential, the supreme thing". He will not accept substitutes.

Oh, the time is short. "Behold I come quickly" - yes, but that is no argument for being superficial, that does not mean that God will have anything that He can get because the time is short and be satisfied with whatever you like to do for Him and bring to Him. Is not that a peril? We say, "The time is short!" and, by inference or implication, "There is no time to go into this - let us do the work, let us do as much as we can, let us expand, cover as much ground as we can; it does not matter how superficially". And this is the argument from God's side, and it is a mighty argument, that God will not have substitutes for spiritual fulness.

God will not accommodate Himself to spiritual superficiality, however earnest and enthusiastic it may be. He will not accept just anything because there is no time for anything better. No, He has His unalterable thought, He brought it in fully in Christ. Look at Him, and that is God's requirement, and He will not lower His standards. It was His first thought when He made Adam who disappointed Him, and He brought in the last Adam Who satisfied Him, and He will not lower His standards.

There may be urgency because the time is short, but urgency relates just as much to quality as to quantity, and it is because the urgency in relation to quality is not found, that the church is in the terrible spiritual plight and predicament that she is in. Bigness is the great idea today in accordance with things in the world at large; it is the big thing that is going to carry the day! The spirit of the world has got inside Christianity and even into evangelical Christianity, but as the Lord's dealings through history show, very often He gets His greatest heart satisfaction in a day of small things. In a day of small things there is found that which answers to God's heart most. It is intrinsic spiritual worth and value that God is after.

Get to the end of the book of Revelation when that vessel is seen "having the glory of God; her light... like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal" (Rev. 21:11). That light may mean a lot of elimination leading up to it, a lot of stripping. The point here is that in this letter, as in the Revelation, at the end things decline spiritually; but God does not decline with things, God does not decline with the church in its state. God does not say, "Well, this is the best that I can get so I must accept it and be satisfied; it is rather disappointing, but we must give up hope of anything better...". He never lowers His standards and accommodates Himself. While He sees things that are good, and mentions them as being good, He nevertheless says, "They do not justify your existence, they do not justify your continuance. The only thing which justifies your being a lampstand at all, a vessel of testimony, is that My thought as expressed in My Son is found in you in full measure, and in this threefold way - Light, Life, and Love."

What a snare and a deception is that slogan which has been taken over even by Christianity: 'Nothing succeeds like success. Give the impression to the world that Christianity is a successful thing and people will come to it'. They want something successful, they will associate themselves with anything that is successful, but not with anything unsuccessful, and you must mean by successful what the world means by successful. God's standard of success is altogether different from the world's. So the apostle is teaching what I have only put into modern language. The apostle, in other words, says here to believers, to the church, "Marvel not if the world hates you" (1 John 3:13). The world hates us because it hates Him and for the same reason: it knows us not. Well, how can you identify the church with the world if it knows us not, and how can the world identify itself with that which it cannot recognise as after its own kind at all? Let us beware of these slogan snares. 'Nothing succeeds like success; bigness is the thing that will win through!' No. Not at all.

It is all boiled down to this: "To him that overcomes". If you care to look at it and see what it is that has to be overcome, it is things that are contrary to Light, Life, and Love every time. Right up to the end it is said of Laodicea: "Thou art neither hot nor cold" (Rev. 3:16). You think you are alright: "I am rich, I am increased in riches, I have need of nothing. Thou knowest not that thou art poor, wretched, blind in what matters." Well, if you are blind, you do not have Light. If you are lukewarm, you do not have Love. It is all there all the time; these three things are everywhere.

So the Lord comes to us and says, "This is the Testimony. It is what Christ is and what Christ is in these terms of Light, Life, and Love." Life, the Living One; Light, the Shining One; and Love, the Suffering One. That is the book of the Revelation - the Lamb.

We dare not go further for the time being. It is only just passing over the surface of the letter to see what the implications are, what lies there, what it all means. This, this, this; this identifying, this marking out, this indicating, this pointing to, what is it all about? Well, it is all about Him in that way. What do you mean by the testimony of Jesus? We should not abbreviate it to 'the testimony'. We hear people talking about 'the testimony', we are standing by the testimony, we are in the testimony. This is horrible phraseology. This is the testimony of Jesus. Notice it is His earthly title: Jesus, Son of Man. It is a key to everything for us, God as a man in whom three things are embodied to perfection: Light, Life, and Love. That is the testimony of Jesus.

How do you stand up to it? Do not talk about the testimony unless you mean that, but may the Lord do such a work in us that these three things shall be brought to fulness, that the whole effect of our being here will be the Light of God, the Love of God and the Life of God.