1 John
1Jo 5:21 - Informed Faithfulness
by Joe Holder
Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. (1Jo 5:21)
Throughout this letter John has contrasted the false knowledge of the gnostic philosophers whom he opposed with the true knowledge that comes through the gospel. They claimed a secret and at times mystical knowledge of which traditional Christianity knew nothing. After the close of the Apostolic Age, the gnostic teachers often claimed that the apostles shared their knowledge and passed it along to them by oral transmission. But with John still alive they could not succeed at this tactic, and in this letter he establishes the record with his rejection of this philosophy. With our Western slant on love as a sentimental emotional quality, we read 1John and think of it in those terms. But in fact this letter is one of the most polemical of the New Testament letters. For John love does not relate to how we feel but to how we act. It is a system of ethical conduct, both toward God and man. And for John knowledge of salvation and of God's eternal truths does not relate to secret mystical revelations or to private sources, but to the public record of Jesus' teachings, carried forward by the apostles and faithfully transmitted from one generation to another through the church.
By word John hasn't mentioned idolatry in this letter, but the letter confronted idolatry from the first sentence. For John Docetic gnosticism was not simply another acceptable way of looking at the truth. It was idolatry, error in its worst form. All the forms of ancient docetism rejected the core truth of the incarnation. Three major perspectives appeared under their general teaching.
The most specific error attributed to docetism proper was that Jesus did not possess a material human body. As angels do not possess a material body but sometimes appear in visible form, so the Christ appeared to have a material body, but it was actually a "spirit body."
The other two ideas appear more as hybrid forms of gnosticism. The "Christ" spirit descended on the man Jesus at his baptism and ascended from him just prior to his crucifixion.
And finally Jesus was an ordinary human who studied under gnostic masters and got in touch with his divine side, eventually becoming a god. This view is most similar to the modern New Age movement's philosophy. Frequently New Age advocates will speak in glowing terms of Jesus, but when asked for details, they will offer this very ancient heresy.
All three of these ideas compromises the gospel at its most essential point, the incarnation where God became man and resolved our sin problem. They both deny the exclusive deity of God and either the humanity or the deity of Jesus, or both. They leave Christianity with a farce of a gospel and with a confused image of God at His nearest point to man, the incarnation. If Jesus in the incarnation was not both fully God and fully man, He could not atone for sins. To the extent we either compromise His deity or His humanity we compromise His substitutionary atonement. According to Paul in 1Co 15:1-58, this compromise will leave us in our sins, found to be false witnesses when we preach the gospel, and hopeless in terms of the future.
By combining an emphatic list of "We know" statements with this closing sentence in his epilogue, John reveals a notable truth to our minds. The method by which we avoid idolatry relates to our knowledge. The more we know about God and His eternal purposes, the more we know about why we know what we know, the more we will insulate ourselves against the potential for idolatry. The cults are full of sincere people who truly believe what they teach. Sincerity does not insulate us against ignorance or idolatry. The primary cult rejected by John in this letter claimed a private line of knowledge not available to ordinary believers in his time. So knowledge alone cannot insulate us from idolatry. Many members of the cults hold advanced degrees and demonstrate significant knowledge within their fields of study. So we must pursue a unique kind of knowledge, and pursue it uniquely, in order to avoid the pitfalls of idolatry. Knowledge that, as Paul terms it, puffs up and feeds the ego will not protect the believer from idolatry. In fact in the case of the gnostic philosophy John exposed here knowledge itself may well have been the idol!
We live in an age of convenience. Throw a meal in the microwave and eat it in less than ten minutes. Back your car out of the garage and drive in air-conditioned comfort to your destination. Pick up the phone, dial a few numbers and talk instantly with anyone you wish anywhere in the world. And we have transferred that convenience mindset to our faith. Turn on your computer or pull your Strong's concordance down off the shelf and find any verse, indeed any word, in the Bible at a moment's notice with minimal effort or time invested. Do you want to know more about the word in the original language in which the Bible was written? On your computer simply double click your mouse and a little window opens on your screen that gives you Strong's or Thayer's definition of the word in Hebrew or Greek. Without your computer, follow the Strong's numbers to the dictionary and simply locate the number and there you find your definition.
But despite all this information we know less of God's will and less of Biblical truth than perhaps any generation of Christians ever. We pride ourselves in knowing, but we demonstrate amazing vulnerability to the most whimsical and trivial of false notions. Why? What causes this proliferation of knowledge and this coincidental drought of functional wisdom? Do you doubt my case? Ask a person you consider a faithful believer to give you the Bible definition of the fear of God? You'll hear something like "reverential fear." What does that mean? It is a cliché they heard, but they have no idea of the fear of God beyond the well-rehearsed cliché.
Biblical insight, the true knowledge of which John wrote, does not grow out of desire. It grows out of long dedicated investment in Bible study. Reading a chapter or two before going to sleep at nights is not Bible study; it is recreational Bible reading at best. Often it is little more than a sleeping pill for often those who spend no more time than this with their Bibles will not get through their nightly reading before they begin nodding off to sleep.
This concordance style of Bible study will connect superficial words in various passages in the reader's mind, but it will not impart sound thoughtful insight into Biblical truth. Why? We live under our own modern form of idolatry that blinds us to effective and insightful study of Biblical truth. And we have so adopted the attitudes of our convenience age that we refuse to invest the time, mental energy and discipline necessary to gain it. We can rehearse what someone told us. We may recall having read what a pious dead man wrote about it. But we have no sense of bearing by which to gain personal depth into Scripture's fertile soil. We suffer through life with blighted souls. But our cultural blindness refuses to apply the Biblical remedy necessary to correct the problem.
Few people who read this work on 1 John believe the Docetic gnostic error. But too many likely leave their minds and lives open to idolatry through a consistent refusal to invest sweat, tears and time in a concerted Bible study to gain the depth of which John writes here. Too often we gain a little knowledge and satisfy ourselves that we know all we need to know. The Bible at that point becomes more of a superficial adornment than a tool in our hands. We wouldn't think of consulting the Bible or even the God of the Bible as we prepare to go to the polls to vote for high office and to vote for propositions that often include significant social morality in their premises. We make life's most important decisions apart from Scripture because we hold Scripture in such low regard. Oh we profess to revere it, but our lives say differently. We suffer great risk of idolatry in our time. Why are people boastful of being "neo-pagans" today? And we do not understand the vital significance of Scripture to protect us.
We face grave choices in our future. Will we step up to the task and preserve God's truth for the next generation? Or will we continue the neglect that caused our drought? The history of the Christian church resembles that of a nomadic tribe. It has not long remained in one place. There is no church in any of the seven cities named by John in Revelation. There are few remnants of vital faith in Europe today. Will we stand by while our own culture trivializes our faith and views us as irrelevant? Are we turning the world upside down for God or putting it to sleep? John challenges us with the reality of aggressive and convincing error. It will lose eventually, but we may allow it to win the day in the short term. What will be the result in our city, in our home, of our faith on the next generation? Will we welcome or keep ourselves from idolatry?
1 - Enhanced Strong's Lexicon, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1995.
2 - Enhanced Strong's Lexicon, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1995.
3 - Walvoord, John F., and Zuck, Roy B., The Bible Knowledge Commentary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Scripture Press Publications, Inc.) 1983, 1985. ? 67