1 John 5:21 - Guard Yourselves from Idols

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v. 13-21. CONCLUSION.

• Intercessory Love the Fruit of Faith (v. 13-17).
• The Sum of the Christian's Knowledge (v. 18-20).
• Final Injunction (v. 21).

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21 [My] little children, guard yourselves from idols.

21. "Little children." This is a term of endearment addressed to all readers, irrespective of age.

"Guard yourself from idols." Contrast is one of the laws of the suggestion of thought. In this Epistle we have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, Christ and antichrist, life and death, righteousness and sin, the children of God and the children of the devil, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, the believer protected against sin by the Only Begotten Son, and the world in the coils of the old serpent, the devil; and now we come to a fitting, practical, climacteric conclusion, "Worship the true God and eschew idols." We must bear in mind the environment of idolatry in which Christians in John's day lived, when every street and every house literally swarmed with idols, and magnificent temples and groves and seductive idolatrous rites constituted the chief attraction of Ephesus, the city of great Diana. Some of the Gnostic teachers were giving occasion for this warning against idols, by their sophistry that idolatry was harmless, or that there was no need to suffer martyrdom in order to avoid it. If it were sinful, it had no power to defile the spirit with the body, but the material envelope only. Says Bishop Westcott, "This comprehensive warning is probably the latest voice of Scripture."

1 John 5:18-20 - The Sum of the Christian's Knowledge

 

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v. 13-21. CONCLUSION.

• Intercessory Love the Fruit of Faith (v. 13-17).
• The Sum of the Christian's Knowledge (v. 18-20).
• Final Injunction (v. 21).

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18 We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not

18. "But he that was begotten of God." Rather "the begotten of God," otherwise called "the Only Begotten Son." The exegetes quite generally agree that the Son of God is expressed by the aorist participle "begotten." If John had in mind a regenerated man he would have used the perfect tense, as in the first clause of this verse, also in iii. 9. The A. V., in accordance with an uncritical manuscript, leaves every newborn Christian to "keep himself," but the best critical manuscripts, as in Westcott and Hort's text, supply him with a keeper and protector — not a guardian angel, but the only begotten Son of God. Hence he does not depend on his own resources in his warfare against the active and wily "evil one."

1 John 5:6-12 The Possession of Life

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d. iv. 1-v. 12. The Sources of Sonship: Possession of the Spirit as shown by Confession of the Incarnation.

•     The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error (iv. 1-6)
•     Love is the Mark of the Children of Him who is Love (iv. 7-21).
•     Faith Is the Source of Love, the Victory over the World, and the Possession of Life (v. 1-12) 

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6 This is he that came by water and blood, [even] Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood

6. "This is he that came." The identity of the man of Nazareth with the eternal Son of God is again emphasized as the central truth of Christian theology, the reception of which is necessary to the attainment of victory over the world and of translation out of darkness into the marvelous light of His kingdom. Then follow the witnesses to this truth which are "the water and the blood." Many are the explanations of these words. The ritualists understand them to signify the sacraments of baptism and of the Lord's Supper. Others see only symbols of purification and redemption. But it seems to the writer that John uses these words as a summary of Christ's earthly life and mission, baptism in the water of Jordan and His sacrificial death by the shedding of His blood for the redemption of the world. The cardinal truths of His gospel are here briefly stated; for at His baptism with water was His baptism with the Holy Spirit attended by the Divine announcement of His Sonship to God in words implying that He is the Son in a sense unique and peculiar. This was a sufficient opening and explanation of the whole of His ministry. His public and tragic death is at once the close and the explanation of His life of self-sacrifice. "The Gnostic teachers, against whom the apostle is writing, admitted that the Christ came 'through' and 'in' water; it was precisely at the baptism, they said, that the Divine Word united Himself with the man Jesus. But they denied that the Divine Person had any share in what was effected 'through' and 'in' blood; for, according to them, the Word departed from Jesus at Gethsemane. John emphatically assures us that there was no such separation. It was the Son of God who was baptized; it was the Son of God who was crucified; and it is faith in this vital truth that produces brotherly love, that overcomes the world, and is eternal life." (The Cambridge Bible for Colleges.)

1 John 5:1-5 - Faith Conquers the World

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d. iv. 1-v. 12. The Sources of Sonship: Possession of the Spirit as shown by Confession of the Incarnation.

•     The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error (iv. 1-6)
•     Love is the Mark of the Children of Him who is Love (iv. 7-21).
•     Faith Is the Source of Love, the Victory over the World, and the Possession of Life (v. 1-12) 

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In this chapter true faith is described as acknowledging the Messiahship of Jesus, as experiencing the new birth, as aflame with love to God and to all the regenerate, as keeping God's commands, as victorious over the world, as having inward self-attestation and eternal life, and as having boldness and success in prayer. The apostle in iv. 12 details the various evidences on which the Christian faith rests, and declares faith and love to be inseparable, that alike worthless is a faith which does not inspire love, and a love not the offspring of faith. The transition from the former chapter lies in the idea of brotherhood, not human, but Christian, arising from a love flowing from a vital apprehension of Christ as both an almighty Saviour and a supreme Lord. On the plane of love inspired by the Holy Spirit, this brotherhood is not an arbitrary command, but a natural outflow from this diffusive principle.

Concluding Notes on 1 John 4

 CONCLUDING NOTES.

1. In verse 3 an important variant reading is found in the Vulgate and in many Latin fathers. Instead of "confesseth not Jesus" they have "separates Jesus," i. e., separates the divine from the human, or divides the one divine-human person. Some of the Latin manuscripts read "annulleth" for "confesseth not." See R. V. margin. For the following reasons we reject these two variant readings: