In the third chapter of the first Epistle of John we have presented to us three manifestations of Jesus, each one of which is directly connected with our salvation and glorification. In verse three, "When He shall appear we shall be like Him." In verse five, "He was manifested to take away our sins." In verse eight, "The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil." Each step in the elevation of man is directly connected with some revelation or manifestation of the Lord Jesus as the direct cause. It would be an interesting study, sufficient for a volume, to trace out in history all the moral upliftings of the race, and find the connecting link between such upliftings and some revelation of the Lord Jesus.
Let us notice these three manifestations as they occur in the history of experience.
1. "He was manifested to take away our sins." Here are several suggestions. One is, the sins are emphatically ours. The law is broken by our wills, our choice, our consent; the evil dispositions are indulged in by our hearts; our faculties and powers have been the instruments of transgression. They are not Satan's sins, and if they were necessitated, they would be God's and not ours. Another suggestion is the divorcement of us, ourselves, from our sins, which, to be Scripturally understood, does not imply that the act of sin is annihilated, or that an event of sin can be non-evented, for what is done as an act can never be undone, but that the guilt and offensiveness of our sinful acts are removed from us. So that while the act of sin does not cease to be an act, yet the quality of the act is taken away, the color, the odor, the morale, is removed from the actor. Another suggestion is that this taking away of the quality of action from the actor is by the manifestation of Jesus. He was manifested on the cross historically to the world, to bear the death penalty attached to committing sin, but in addition to that He must also be manifested as our personal Saviour and sin-bearer by the Holy Spirit to the eye of faith. Here is one of the deepest and most scientific truths in salvation, namely, that the quality of sinful actions can never be removed from the actor until Jesus is disclosed to that soul as its sin-bearer, and when such disclosure is made, and the soul truly apprehends Jesus by saving faith, instantly all the moral turpitude of its thousands of sinful acts vanishes away, and while the act remains as an unchangeable event, yet the essence of the act is gone, its color has been, as it were, bleached out. A beautiful illustration of this is given in the Scripture where God says, "I have blotted out thy transgressions as a thick cloud." Many a time on summer mornings you may notice a thick cloud in the sky, but when the sun ascends the heavens, and is manifested in direct heat upon the cloud, it will rise to a higher altitude and be dissipated into viewless vapor, so that no telescope could find a part of it. Now, the atoms composing the cloud have not been annihilated, but the form, the color, the specific gravity, the motion, the quality of the cloud has been so wrought on by the manifested heat of the sun as to be taken away, while the atoms still remain. This scientific fact is equally true in the justification of the soul. Our actual sins form a cloud. But the word "sins" does not refer to the act itself, but to the moral quality of the act, so that when the bad moral quality of our actions are removed, it is emphatically true that our sins are taken away.
2. "He was manifested to destroy the work of the devil." In a great variety of ways the Bible sets forth the difference between actual and original sin. In this chapter this distinction is clear, concise and philosophical. Actual sin is traced to the sinner, original sin is traced to Satan. The greatest work of Satan was to corrupt the human heart, and the carnal mind is emphatically a result of his work. When believers are earnestly seeking heart purity, they are distinctly conscious of a defection of nature, a corruption within which they clearly distinguish as not being of their own choice or work. They are conscious, in the language of Scripture, that "an enemy hath done this." Superficial or backslidden Christians often speak slightly of true believers groaning after heart purity, but it is because they have never gone deep enough into spiritual things to find the strata of inherent human nature or the mining processes of the Holy Ghost. Every Christian who has gone through with perfect inward crucifixion knows that we can be conscious of having every Christian grace, and, at the same time, conscious of an inherent perversity, which is the opposite of every grace. We feel it and hate it. We know it is in us but not of us, that it is a foreign element to our true normal human nature. Now the question is how this inward corruption can be destroyed. So many try growth, development, repression, and any and every subterfuge except the remedy mentioned here, a special manifestation of Jesus as the direct cause of heart cleansing. But what can it mean to destroy the carnal mind? It will be easily understood if we remember that sin is not an entity, that it has no substance or existence apart from a moral creature, that it is of the nature of a pain, or a fever, or a dream, none of which can exist apart from some living being. Thoughtless persons sometimes ask, "Where does inbred sin go when cleansed away?" The sufficient answer is Where does a fever go, or a headache go, when the body is restored to normal health? Just as fever can exist only in the derangement of the blood, so the. carnal mind exists only by some fundamental derangement of the moral heart, which is to the soul what blood is to the body. And when the earnest Christian, struggling for perfect heart rest, apprehends Jesus as the only and all sufficient and present Cleanser, the Holy Ghost will so manifest him as a Sanctifier,. that the leprosy of inward sin instantly vanishes as darkness when a light enters a room.
3. "When He shall appear we shall be like Him." This is the final manifestation of Jesus in His capacity of Redeemer. According to the Scripture, redemption is not complete till the body is raised from the dead and soul and body glorified in the beatific presence of the Lord. Though our sins are taken away, and though the carnal mind is destroyed, there are yet a multitude of infirmities, limitations, afflictions, which beset and load down more or less the saintliest persons. The pure in heart are conscious of these hindrances, and yet, at the same time, conscious that they are not sin in the Scripture sense of that word. There is a transcendent work, utterly beyond our thoughts, which is to pass like seraphic lightning over our whole being at the glorious appearing of our Saviour. We may conjecture a thousand blissful changes such a sight will produce in us, but it is all summed up in the words of the Holy Ghost: We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
