JO 1:1-2{The Epistle of John is the eternal life manifested in Jesus, and imparted to us-the life which was with the Father, and which is in the Son....
This life is so precious, manifested as it is in the person of Jesus, that the epistle has in this respect quite a peculiar charm. When I turn my eyes to Jesus, when I contemplate all His obedience, His purity, His grace, His tenderness, His patience, His devotedness, His holiness, His love, His entire freedom from all self-seeking, I can say, that is my life. This is immeasurable grace. It may be that it is obscured in me; but it is none the less true, that that is my life. Oh, how do I enjoy it thus seen! How I bless God for it! What rest to the soul! What pure joy to the heart; At the same time Jesus Himself is the object of my affections, and all my affections are formed on that holy object. And this is morally very important; while it is in Him, not in myself that I rejoice and delight....
The law promised life on obedience; but life came in the person of Jesus, in all its own divine perfectness, in its human manifestations. Oh, how precious is the truth, that this life such as it was with the Father, such as it was in Jesus, is given to us! In what relationships it sets us, by the power of the Holy Ghost, with the Father and with the Son Himself! The life has been manifested. Therefore we have no longer to seek for it, to grope after it in the darkness, to explore at random the indefinite, or the obscurity of our own hearts, in order to find it, to labor fruitlessly under the law, in order to obtain it. We behold it: it is revealed, it is here, in Jesus Christ, and he who possesses Christ possesses that life.
Now inasmuch as that life was the Son, it could not be known without knowing the Son, that is, that which He was, entering into His thoughts, His feelings; otherwise He is not really known. It was theirs, they had communion with Him-with the Son. Precious fact 1 to enter into the thoughts (all the thoughts) and into the feelings of the Son of God, come down in grace; to do this in fellowship with Him, that is to say, not only knowing them but sharing these thoughts and feelings with Him. In effect, it is the life.
But we cannot have the Son without having the Father. He, who had seen Him had seen the Father, and consequently he who had communion with the Son had communion with the Father, for their thoughts and feelings were all one. He is in the Father and the Father in Him. We have fellowship therefore with the Father. And this is true also when we look at it in, another aspect. We know that the Father has entire delight in the Son. Now He has given us, by revealing the Son, to take our delight in Him also, feeble as we arc. I know when I am delighting in Jesus—in His obedience, His love to His Father, to us, His single eye and. purely devoted heart,—I have the same feelings, the same thoughts, as the Father Himself. In that the Father delights, cannot but delight, in Him in whom I now delight, I have communion with the Father, so with the Son in the knowledge of the Father. All this flows, whether in the one or the other point of view, from the person of the Son. Herein our joy is full. What can we have more than the Father and the Son? What more perfect happiness than community of thoughts, feelings, joys and communion with the Father and the Son, deriving all our joy from themselves? And if it seem difficult to believe, let us remember, that in truth it cannot be otherwise; for in the life of Christ, the Holy Ghost is the source of my thoughts, feelings, communion, and He cannot give thoughts different from those of the Father and the Son. They must be in their nature the same. To say that they are adoring, thoughts is in the very nature of things, and only makes them more precious. To say that they are feeble and often hindered, while the Father and the Son are divine and perfect, is, if true, to say the Father and the Son are God, are divine, and we feeble creatures. That surely none will deny. But if the blessed Spirit be the source, they must be the same as to nature and fact.