A dangerous heresy
A dangerous heresy that wasn’t really a danger to true believers
This section, 1 John 2:18-28, explains the background to the whole letter. The apostle John was writing this letter because there had been a church split. Some people had left the church, not over something minor, they had completely abandoned John and the other apostles (‘they went out from us’ v19) and were teaching new doctrines, specifically that Jesus was not God, and John calls them little antichrists.
These people had “moved on” literally (they had left the church) and theologically (they were claiming new revelation and better fellowship with God). They were trying to deceive or seduce others to join them v26. John is typically frank and says if you move away from us (i.e. the apostles), you move away from the Father and the Son, you move away from eternal life, you lose salvation. This was not a church split over some minor doctrine or practise, this was an attempt inspired by Satan to split away from true Christianity to form a whole new religion. Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses are all splits away from the Christian faith, and they all get the same fundamental thing wrong that this group were getting wrong. They all deny the deity of Jesus.
The stakes were massive, if John’s readers followed this teaching they would lose salvation itself, but thankfully there was no danger of them doing that. Why? Because of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is referred to as their anointing by the Holy One (v20). He is pictured as a special endowment or gift that Christ has poured out upon His people to keep them safe. And this is one of His main jobs; alerting us to heresies. In particular heresies about the person of Christ. Jesus told us in John’s gospel chapter 16 that the Holy Spirit was coming to lead us into all truth and to glorify Him, and that’s what He has been doing for centuries; maintaining the glorious truth about Jesus. If there is one truth that Satan wants to wipe from this world it is that Jesus is God. Satan doesn’t mind if people think Jesus did not exist, or was just a man (like the Jews), or a prophet (like Muslims), or an angel (like Jehovah Witnesses), or one god among many (like Mormons, Buddhists or Hindus), anything at all other than the one true God become man. Because if Jesus is not God become man then there is no salvation. A mere man could not die to save us. A mere man couldn’t bring us into an eternal fellowship with God. So whenever this fundamental doctrine is attacked, the Holy Spirit protests. He works in the people of God to immediately help us see the implications. For example, if some theologian questions the virgin birth, or his death, or resurrection as being real, literal, physical events, the Holy Spirit helps the people of God see instinctively that if that were true it undermines everything.
These believers were safe, in no danger of denying the deity of Christ, and losing salvation, because the Holy Spirit would protect them. However there was another danger.
The other danger that was a real danger to them
They were in danger of being distracted. The whole ordeal had understandably disturbed and distracted these believers and John is determined to help them forget these nonsense ideas and get back to the apostle’s message ‘what they heard from the beginning’ (v24). So that they grow up. The Holy Spirit will always protect us from serious error but He really wants us to grow up so we can not just sense when ideas are false but know why they are false. These false teachers were likely targeting those new in the faith, the ‘children’ (v18) who didn’t have the knowledge to argue. They had an uncomfortable sense it was wrong, but John wants them to become strong, like the ‘young men’ of v14, with the Word of God in them, able to overcome the lies and deceit of the wicked one.
In this passage John is teaching us how we grow into strong young men and women able to overcome the lies of the evil one. For that we need two things: the Word and the Spirit. We already have the Spirit within us (v27) but we need to add the Word (v24).
I’m not sure about you but I find the Bible hard to understand, and it is, yet we can understand it. Verse 27 tells us that Jesus has given us the great anointing, the Spirit of truth, to be within us and to teach us about everything; to open up our understanding of the entire Word of God. The Holy Spirit is like our personal tutor ready to lead us into all truth. But how?
In his gospel John admits that there were a lot of things that Jesus said that he did not understand at the time, and only after Jesus rose from the dead, and sent the Spirit to teach John did it make sense (see John 2:22). When John thought on Jesus words in retrospect, the Spirit showed him what they meant. God has arranged it so that we need His help to understand His Word. It’s like a guy who is really good at maths. And the girl he fancies is less good. And she asks for his help, to his delight. He doesn’t just point her at the YouTube videos, he meets with her personally, to study together, as often as she wants to. Nor does he give her all the answers all at once, for a start she couldn’t handle it all at once, and for him the relationship is more important than the maths. God wants to teach us the truth and has arranged it so that we need His help to understand it. Through the Holy Spirit God Himself abides in us, ready to show us what His Word means. He doesn’t want to hide anything, but it takes a long time, we can only learn so fast, and we often get distracted.
There is one thing we can do to help the process along. John says ‘Let what we heard from the beginning abide in you’ v24. In Colossians 3:16 Paul says something similar ‘Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly/abundantly’. This is not just doing our daily readings, or listening to sermons in church, this is letting God’s Word remain or abide in us; memorising it, dwelling on it, meditating on it, listening to it, reading it slowly and thoughtfully. When we do that the Holy Spirit can really show us what it means. Previous generations of Christians used to do this more as they had less distractions and more time to think.
In some other countries where the Bible is illegal when the Christians manage to get a Bible they tear pages out of it and pass them around systematically for people to memorise. In case the authorities confiscate the pages. The authorities are actually helping them grow in the faith as it is forces them to get the Word into their heads. We have the Bible too readily available. We just look it up on our phones, but that means it is not in our heads.
John is teaching us how the Bible is designed to work. As we think on it and ask God to show us what it means He does. Try it out for yourself! Take a passage, any passage, and try to really get it in your head. Read it over and over, listen to it, memorise it. And then ask God to show you what it means.
The Bible is hard to understand, God has made it deliberately like that, but the Holy Spirit knows exactly what it means, and He wants to show us. He wants to be our personal tutor. But He can’t show us what it means if we are never thinking about it. He must be very frustrated with us at times. Like being tutor to a lazy teenager who refuses to do any thinking between the tutor sessions. But He is very patient with us all.
