b. ii. 12-28. What Walking in the Light excludes: the Things and Persons to be avoided.
Three-fold Statement of Reasons for Writing (ii. 12-14)
Things to be avoided: the World and Its Ways (ii. 15-17).
Persons to be avoided: Antichrists (B. 18-26). [Transitional.] The Place of Safety: Christ (ii. 27, 28).
18. "It is the last hour." This expression denotes a crisis and not the end of the world. Christianity is the last dispensation in human history. It will be a period of suffering and conflict ending in victory over all the foes of Christ. Of these the most subtle and the most difficult to conquer is that evil power which antagonizes Christ by proposing to take His name and to continue His work while denying Him. This hypocrisy on the part of men professing faith in Christ is personified under the name of antichrist, a word meaning far more than an adversary of Christ. Says Bishop Westcott, "The essential character of antichrist lies in the denial of the true humanity of Messiah, as in verse 22, in iv. 3, and 2 John 7." To refute the Gnostic denial of the reality of Christ's body is the purpose of this Epistle. If He is not the God-man, very God and very man, there is an impassable gulf between God and the world. It is not bridged by the incarnate Son, if He is not a real man. If His body was a phantom, His incarnation, atoning death and resurrection are unreal. God is still unknown and unknowable, and all men are, and ever must be, agnostics groaning under the burden of unforgiven sins.
"Even now . . . many antichrists" have arisen in foreshadowings of one great future antichrist.
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us: but [they went out], that they might be made manifest how that they all are not of us
19. "They were not of us." This means that these false teachers were not in sympathy with the church at the time of their withdrawal. It does not signify that they were never genuine Christians. The fact that there are withered and fruitless branches now in the true vine (John xv. 2) does not prove that those branches were never alive, but, rather, it proves their former life. It is a case of manifest apostasy, beginning in the spirit and ending in the flesh. They remained awhile in the church after the extinction of their spiritual life, "as evil humors in the body of Christ." (Augustine.) The clear revelation of their changed character was a divine safeguard against further harm; for by going out they neutralized their future bad influence within the church.
20. "But ye have an unction." The word "ye" is emphatic. The outward symbol of the Old Testament, the sacred oil compounded, as in Ex. xxx. 22-25, is here used to signify the gift of the Spirit, the characteristic endowment of every believer who aspires to his full heritage in Christ, "the Holy One." Jesus was called in the Hebrew Messiah, anointed, and in the Greek, Christos, because he received the chrisma, or unction of the Holy Spirit, inducting Him into His three-fold office of prophet, priest and king. (1 Kings xix. 16; Ex. xl. 15; 1 Sam. ix. 16.) This chrism is used by John in contrast to the antichrists, who, because they had either not received or had lost the sanctifying and illuminating chrism, were in revolt against their Teacher, Saviour and Lord. The Holy Spirit is the conservator of orthodoxy and of loyalty to Christ. Since Christ sends the Paraclete it seems to be more natural to refer "the Holy One" to the Second Person of the Trinity.
"Ye know all things." The text of Westcott and Hort is, "Ye all know," i. e., the truth. Hence no false teaching respecting fundamentals can deceive you, so long as ye dwell under the anointing by the exercise of a persevering faith in the incarnate Son of God. The anointing with oil as a part of the ceremony of baptism is a human invention having no scriptural authority.
21. "No lie is of the truth." This truism is John's way of expressing the eternal distinction between truth and falsehood. He had no notion that he could be of use to believers in Christ unless there was in them a capacity of distinguishing truth from a lie and of recognizing intuitively and feeling instinctively the everlasting opposition of one to the other. The most hopeless case is that of a person who has lost this capacity, who enjoys the rainbow hues of error and regards it as truth, and despises the granitic reality of truth and treats it as fiction.
"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." (2 Thess. ii. 11) 12.)
22. "Who is the liar?" This is the exact original. The word "lie" suggests to John the biggest liar in the universe who sums up in his own person all that is false. "The denial of the fact 'Jesus is the Christ,' when grasped in its full significance — intellectual, moral, spiritual — includes all falsehood; it reduces all knowledge of necessity to a knowledge of phenomena; it takes away the highest ideal of sacrifice; it destroys the connection of God and man." (Westcott.) There are no liars if he who denies that Jesus is the Christ is not one. This is parallel to Abraham Lincoln's terse expression, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." "These Gnostic teachers, who profess to be in the possession of the higher truth, are really possessed by one of the worst of lies." (The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.)
"Denieth the Father." This follows the denial of the Son, who is the only personal revelation of the Father. The Supreme Divinity of Christ is our only safeguard against polytheism on the one hand and pantheism on the other. Our knowledge of the unity, the personality and the moral perfections of God is revealed in Jesus Christ, and in Him only.
23. "Hath the Father also." The sentence of which these words are a part for no good reason is in italics in the A. V. There is no doubt of the genuineness of the original. It is correctly printed in the R. V. The confession of the Son is more than an intellectual act; it is the surrender of the will and the reliance of the heart on Him alone for salvation. To such a person says he, "My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him."
24. "Let that abide in you." The emphatic word is "you." "As for you" in contrast with the Gnostic errorists spoken of in verse 22. The strength of the Christian is not in his good resolutions, but in the Holy Spirit, the author of life abiding within the believer. In iv. 15 this strength is still more emphatically expressed in the mutual indwelling — a double mystery, "God in us, we in God." We let the Spirit abide when we with a right attitude of the will exercise an appropriating faith in His promises. "Looking unto Jesus" is the conquering attitude of the soul. In modern phrase the exhortation of John is this, "Hold fast the Gospel which ye first heard, and reject the innovations of these false teachers." From the beginning Christianity is perfect and incapable of improvement.
"Ye also." Divine life is the source of divine fellowship.
"Shall abide in the Son and in the Father." Through faith in the Son we mount up to the knowledge of the Father. How my spirit can interpenetrate and abide in the personality of the Son and that of the Father is a mystery next to the mystery of Three Persons in one Divine nature. But the heart can feel what the intellect cannot comprehend.
25. "Eternal life" is only another view of abiding in the Son and in the Father. It is the heart knowledge of God. "And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." It was the mission of Christ to offer spiritual life and lead men to seek it through faith in Himself.
26 These things have I written unto you concerning them that would lead you astray
26. An experimental knowledge of Christ is the best safeguard against the Gnostics, "them that would lead you astray." This knowledge no human instruction can teach. The Holy Spirit, here called "the anointing," imparts life to the penitent believer and the power of spiritual perception. These fundamental facts are revealed only by the Holy Spirit — regeneration, forgiveness, adoption and entire sanctification. In minor particulars teachers are helpful, but in respect to these fundamentals and experimentals "Christians needed not fresh teaching, even from apostles, still less from those who professed to guide them into new 'depths"' (Westcott), who made spiritual excellence to consist, not in a holy life, but in knowledge of an esoteric kind open only to the initiated, who boasted that they "knew the depths" and could say, "this is profound." Says Augustine, "He who teaches hearts has His chair in heaven."
.jpg)
28. At this point John turns from the ideal to the practical view of Christian truth and duty, the sum of which is "abide in Him," and give proof of it by your conduct.
"When He shall appear." Better, "if He shall be manifested." The "if" implies doubt as to the time, not as to the future facts of Christ's final coming to the general judgment.
"We may have boldness." A word which in the Greek always implies unreserved utterance or freedom of speech. No word could be found in that language which so strongly expresses deliverance, not only from guilty fear, but also from speechless awe.
"Not be ashamed before Him." Not shrink back with shame or dread from His presence as the judge of all men. It is the privilege of every Christian to live on the earth every day with love to Christ so pure and perfect as to prompt him, if possible, to meet the descending Judge more than halfway. See iv. 17, note.
No comments:
Post a Comment