CHAPTER II
CHAPTER 2
2:1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate* with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2:2 and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.
* Or, Comforter Or, Helper Greek Paraclete.
John uses two different Greek words in this epistle when he addresses his readers as “children.” That used here and six other places74 is teknia, the plural of teknion. Jesus uses it in John 13:33 when speaking to His disciples in the upper room; Paul uses it in a tender passage in Galatians 4:19. The other is paidia, the plural of paidion. It is used only twice in this epistle (in verses 13 and 18 of this chapter),75 although it is much commoner than teknia in the New Testament as a whole and indeed in general Greek usage. Since teknia retains something of its diminutive force (teknion being the diminutive form of teknon),76 it is properly translated “little children.” Paidia, on the other hand, while also a diminutive in form (paidion being the diminutive of pais), had lost its diminutive force by this time, so it might well be rendered “children” (as in John 21:5).
While insisting, against the false teachers, that it is wrong to say either that “we have no sin” or that “we have not sinned,” John does not wish to give his readers the idea that sin may be regarded as a normal phenomenon in the Christian life. Far from it: the main purpose of his touching the subject at all is to put them on their guard against committing sin. Sin, indeed, is so thoroughly uncharacteristic of the Christian life that a life which is marked by sin cannot be called Christian, and this is a point to which John returns in chapter 3. But instead of making false claims about sinlessness, a Christian should be grateful to know that if he does commit sin, his case is not hopeless. In the presence of God he has an Advocate, a powerful counsel for the defense. This Advocate does not need to resort to questionable devices to secure acquittal for his clients; he is a righteous Advocate. The designation “The Righteous One” was used of the coming Messiah or Son of Man in pre-Christian times,77 and in the New Testament it appears as a title of Jesus (cf. Acts 3:14, 7:52, 22:14); but here the epithet (Greek dikaios) has special reference to His advocacy on His people’s behalf.
In the New Testament the word “Advocate” (Gr. paraklētos) is found only five times, all in the Johannine writings. Its four other occurrences are in the Gospel, on the lips of Jesus, in reference to the Holy Spirit as “another Advocate”—or, as RSV has it, “another Counselor” (John 14:16; cf. 14:26; 15:26; 16:7).78 The implication of the expression “another Advocate” is that Jesus Himself is the primary Advocate. While the word itself does not appear outside the Johannine writings, the idea which it conveys is embedded in primitive Christian teaching. Paul speaks of the Spirit as one who “intercedes for the saints” (Romans 8:26, 27) and describes Jesus as the one “who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (Romans 8:34). The promise of Luke 12. 8, “every one who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God,” found an early fulfillment in Stephen who, having witnessed a good confession before men, saw “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56)—in the posture of an advocate. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, too, advocacy forms part of our Lord’s intercessory ministry as His people’s high priest.79
This intercessory ministry is not a new activity on His part. We recall His promise to pray for Peter that his faith might not fail (Luke 22:32) and in the upper room His high-priestly prayer, as it has been aptly called from the time of David Chytraeus in the sixteenth century, embraces in its intercession both His immediate disciples (John 17:9-19) and their converts (John 17:20 ff.). But now this ministry is reinforced by His perfect sacrifice.
There is no question of this Advocate’s having to extort a favorable verdict from a reluctant Judge. His presence before the Father is advocacy enough by itself, for He is there as the “propitiation” for His people’s sins. With the word hilasmos (used in the New Testament only here and in 1 John 4:10) we may compare hilastērion (from the same root) in Romans 3:25. We need not stay to enquire whether “expiation” (RSV) or “remedy for defilement” (NEB)80 would be a preferable rendering of hilasmos. “Propitiation” or “atonement” will do well enough, if we use either word in its biblical sense—not as something which men must do to placate God,81 but something which God has provided in His grace to bring men into His presence with the assurance that they are accepted by Him, since He has removed the barrier that kept them at a distance—guilt, with its attendant retribution, the “punishment” which is banished by “perfect love” (4:18). “Now in Christ Jesus,” says another New Testament letter, “you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).
This is the truth that John states here in different language.82 Nor will John let his readers think of their blessings in restrictive terms. The propitiation that has availed to wipe out their sins is sufficient to do the same for all. Jesus is “the general Savior of mankind” as well as the particular Savior of each believer. According to the Fourth Gospel, He is “the true light that enlightens every man” (John 1:9) or, in the forerunner’s language, He is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).83 Christians must not rest content with the assurance of their own salvation, but spread the joyful news worldwide. I know of no commentary on 1 John 2:2 so suitable as Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Arise, my soul, arise:”84
He ever lives above
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood, to plead;
His blood atoned for all our race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.
Five bleeding wounds He bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly speak for me;
Forgive him, O forgive! they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!
3. THE NEW COMMANDMENT (2:3-17)
(a) The test of obedience (2:3-6)
2:3 And hereby know we that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
The test of obedience is simple and can be applied to all kinds of religious profession. “If you love me,” says Jesus to His disciples in the upper room, “you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). In our present passage the object “him” probably denotes God, since the seceding teachers had so much to say about their knowledge of God, but since the knowledge of God is mediated through Christ, to know the Father is to know the Son. Those who boasted of their knowledge of God could give proof of their claim by their obedience to Him. The expression “hereby we know” or something very similar occurs frequently in this epistle when a practical test of verbal profession is laid down (see 2:5b; 3:10, 16, 19, 24b; 4:2, 13; 5:2).
2:4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him:
This sentence is the converse of the preceding one. The same damning indictment is pronounced against one who falsely claims to know God as is pronounced in 1:8 against those who say they have no sin. Here we have the first of three statements introduced by “he that saith,” where the introductory words serve much the same purpose as “if we say” in 1:6, 8, 10. The two others come in verses 6 and 9 of this chapter. They all underline the importance of matching profession with practice.
2:5a but whoso keepeth his word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected.
“The love of God” here is “our love for God” (in other words, “of God” represents the objective genitive). As our knowledge of God is to be tested by our obedience, so too is our love for Him—in fact, obedience is the full flowering of our love for Him. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3). What is involved in this perfection of love is spelled out in greater detail in 1 John 4:12, 17 ff.; there too it is made plain that the love of believers for God (and for one another) is the response to His love for them.
2:5b Hereby know we that we are in him: 2:6 he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked.
A further test is introduced, as in verse 3, by the words “hereby know we.” It is easy for a man to claim that he is “in God”—that his life is bound up in the life of God, that he has fellowship with God. (To distinguish between being in the Father and being in the Son is to make a distinction without a difference; the one involves the other). But such a claim—introduced, as in verse 4, by “he that saith”—is to be verified by a searching practical test. As we have been told already that no one who walks in darkness can have fellowship with the God of light, so now it is emphasized that the character of God will be displayed in those who abide in Him.
And the character of God is not something about which we are left to speculate. God incarnate lived on earth; the character of God has been manifested in the conduct of Christ. The emphatic pronoun ekeinos occurs in a personal sense six times in this letter, always with reference to Christ, and usually with reference to Christ as His people’s example. Indeed, in four occurrences out of the six (of which this is one) it appears in the phrase kathōs ekeinos, “as he” (see also 3:3, 7; 4:17).85 We know how Christ conducted Himself. The glory which His disciples discerned in Him was “full of grace and truth,” and something of these qualities will be evident in anyone who truly “abides”86 in Him, which is another way of denoting the experience of truly “knowing” Him (verse 4). What is meant by abiding in Him is illustrated at greater length in the parable of the vine and the branches in John 15:1-17. As it is the life of the vine in the branches that enables them to produce the fruit of the vine, so the life of Christ in His people will be manifested as their behavior resembles His.
(b) The test of love (2:7-11)
2:7 Beloved, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning: the old commandment is the word which ye heard.
Love and obedience are inextricably interwoven because all the commandments of God are summed up in the law of love. “You shall love the Lord your God” was the authoritative summary of the Old Testament law (Deuteronomy 6:5), and when Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment of all, this was the one which He quoted, coupling with it the similar commandment of Leviticus 19:18 enjoining love to one’s neighbor (Mark 12:28 ff.). These words of Jesus were embedded from the earliest days in the apostles’ witness. “The whole law,” says Paul, “is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14; cf. Romans 13:8-10).
So John, in underlining afresh the law of love, is not telling his readers anything they did not already know. It is no innovation but “an old commandment” which they had been taught “from the beginning”—an expression which, as in the opening clause of the epistle, denotes the beginning of the gospel. The apostolic witness which they received at the commencement of their Christian experience included both the record of God’s saving work in Christ and instruction (based on the teaching of Christ Himself) about the way of life befitting the beneficiaries of this saving work. In this “word” which they “heard” in those early days, the commandment of love had a foremost place; in this sense it was an “old commandment.”
2:8 Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth.
Yet, old as the commandment of love is in one sense, there is a sense in which it is new. Jesus had summed it up in words from the Old Testament law which were centuries old by His time, but when He laid it on His disciples afresh in the upper room, He called it “a new commandment:” “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another” (John 13:34a). And it was new because by His own fulfillment of it He was giving it a depth of meaning which it had not possessed before: “…even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34b, 35).
This aspect of the “new commandment” will be insisted upon repeatedly in this epistle, and indeed it is implied here, where John tells his readers that the substance of this commandment has come “true [perfectly] in him [i.e. in Christ] and [in measure] in you.” But here it is “a new commandment” because it is the characteristic commandment of the new age. Christ, the Light of the world, came to dispel the darkness of sin and ignorance and to inaugurate the era of light and love. The language is not peculiar to the Johannine writings in the New Testament. In 1 Thessalonians 5:5, for example, Paul says, “you are all sons of the light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.” In Colossians 1:12 f., God has qualified His people “to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” and has delivered them “from the dominion of darkness.” And in Ephesians 5:8 believers in Christ are told, “once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” But the terminology of light and darkness is especially characteristic of John,87 and he uses it to describe the difference that Christ has made. Jewish eschatology distinguished “this age” from “that age,” i.e. the resurrection age (cf. Luke 20:34 f.), sometimes interposing “the days of the Messiah” between the two.
This general framework is adopted by the New Testament writers, but it is radically modified and reinterpreted in terms of the work of Christ. In His ministry the new age (“the kingdom of God”) is in process of inauguration; when His ministry is crowned by His death and resurrection, it is fully inaugurated (the kingdom of God has “come with power”). The “days of the Messiah” have begun with His exaltation to the throne of God, from which He reigns until God has put all His enemies beneath His feet (1 Corinthians 15:25). For His people the new age has been anticipated. Having died with Him they share His resurrection life and are already enthroned with Him in the heavenly realm, in the sense of Ephesians 2:6. Eternal life (“the life of the age to come”) is theirs to possess and enjoy here and now. All this is made possible for them by the Spirit, who both makes effective in them what Christ did for them and enables them to realize the heritage of glory which will be theirs in fullness at the consummation. But as long as the new age is inaugurated but not yet consummated (as it will be by the parousia of Christ), the old age is still in being. Believers who belong spiritually to “that age” live temporally in “this age.” Although “the true light” is already shining, the darkness has not passed completely away; it is in process of “passing away.”88
Thanks to the victory of Christ, the outcome of the conflict between light and darkness is a foregone conclusion, but the conflict is still going on. Hence the tension of Christian life in the present world, a tension reflected throughout this epistle, not to say throughout the whole New Testament. In the words of Lord Eustace Percy,
Ever since Christianity was first preached, the Christian citizen has been a puzzle both to himself and to his rulers. By the elementary necessities of his creed he has been a man living in two worlds. In one he has been a member of a national community, in the other of a community “taken out of the nations.” In one he has been bound to obey and enforce the laws of his State, in the other to measure his conduct by standards not recognised by those laws and often inconsistent with them. This dualism has been made tolerable only by the prospect of a reconciliation. That prospect is, again, an elementary necessity of the Christian creed. Somehow, somewhere, the conflict of loyalties will end. The kingdom of this world will pass: the Kingdom of God will be established.89
2:9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now. 2:10 He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. 2:11 But he that hateth his brother is in the darkness, and walketh in the darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes.
Since the new commandment of love is the distinctive commandment of the new age, the test of obedience is preeminently a test of love. The claim to be “in the light”—once more introduced by the phrase “he that saith”—is a claim to have fellowship with God. In 1:6 John has insisted that such a claim is incompatible with walking in darkness; here he insists that such a claim is incompatible with loveless behavior. No one is allowed to imagine that he can get away with a claim to be a lover of God on the ground that this is an inward attitude, invisible to other men. The twin commandments of love to God and love to one’s neighbor are like two sides of a coin; the one is essential to the other. So the claim to live “in the light,” to enjoy fellowship with the God of light, must be tested by a man’s treatment of his brother. The word “treatment” should be emphasized because, as John makes clear later, it is not a matter of sentimental feelings and language, familiar in certain brands of pietism, but of loving “in deed and in truth” (3:18).
That the rights of knowledge must be exercised in consistency with the claims of love is emphasized in other parts of the New Testament as well as in the Johannine writings, as Paul’s teaching about the obligations due to fellow believers with weaker consciences illustrates (cf. Romans 14:15; 1 Corinthians 8:11). Paul, indeed, insists that knowledge divorced from love is not true knowledge. “But if one loves God, one is known by him” (1 Corinthians 8:3) and his knowledge of God will manifest itself in his love towards others. The two great affirmations about God in John’s first epistle are that “God is light” (1:5) and “God is love” (4:8, 16); the knowledge of God will therefore produce holiness resembling His and acts of love resembling His.
John characteristically sees life in terms of black and white; intermediate greys have no existence for him. So there is no middle course between love and hatred, and by hatred he does not necessarily mean positive animosity but mere lack of love. Lack of love (including that form of it which postpones an act of charity to a more convenient season) can blind a man’s spiritual vision as effectively as the prejudice arising from hatred does, so that he is tripped up by all kinds of moral obstacles that lie in life’s way, and is disabled from forming ethical decisions which are crystal clear to his brother whose love of heart and hand maintains him in fellowship with God, in whose light he sees light.90 If it is possible, on the one hand, to oversimplify moral issues through one-sided prejudice or inadequate appreciation of the relevant facts, it is possible, on the other hand, to find them more complex than they really are through failure to assess them in the light of the love of God. This consideration applies not only to personal ethics, but to issues of global scale.
John has more to say about divine love later in this epistle.91 Here he is content to anticipate his fuller exposition of the subject by insisting that religious profession must be tested by the presence or absence of love in action. Before he proceeds to a further stage of his argument, he rounds off his statement of the new commandment with two paragraphs of encouragement and warning.
(c) Encouragement to three age groups (2:12-14)
2:12 I write unto you, my little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.
2:13a I write unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning.
2:13b I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil one.
2:13c I have written* unto you, little children, because ye know the Father.
2:14a I have written* unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning.
2:14b I have written* unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one.
* Or, I wrote.
No completely satisfying explanation has been given by commentators of the duplication of this threefold encouragement. The three sentences in verses 13c and 14a, b may represent a later and fuller rewriting of what is preserved as an earlier draft in verses 12 and 13 a, b. The tense of the verb “write” changes from the first to the second draft. In the former it is the present graphō; in the latter it is the aorist, egrapsa, but there is no material significance in the change, since the aorist “I have written” is here probably the epistolary aorist, denoting the time perspective of the readers rather than of the writer. Another minor distinction is that between “my little children” (teknia) in verse 12 and “little children” (paidia) in verse 13c. As both nouns take their precise meanings from their correlation in the two contexts with “fathers” and “young men,” they must be synonymous, indicating a more restricted group than the general “my little children” (teknia) of verses 1 and 28 or “little children” (paidia) of verse 18.92
The threefold grouping relates to spiritual maturity, not years reckoned by the calendar. Even if, in the third Christian generation, there was a growing tendency for spiritual maturity and natural age to coincide (as we may find in many Christian churches today when we compare the elderhood with the Bible class), nevertheless it is spiritual experience that is emphasized. The younger believers have made a beginning by knowing their sins forgiven for Christ’s sake. They have also started to appreciate their new status as children of God (cf. 3:1) in that they have come to “know the Father.” The senior believers, as is stated twice, have come to “know him who is from the beginning.” This is the same God as the children have come to know, but whereas the children have come to recognize Him as their Father—demonstrating thereby, as Paul would say, that they have received the Spirit that makes them sons,93 the Spirit of Christ Himself, since like Him they now call God “Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15 f.; Galatians 4:6)—the fathers, through long experience of Him, have come to know Him in a fuller and deeper fashion. While it is to be hoped that all the children of God know Him as their Father and love spontaneously to address Him and speak of Him thus, there are some men and women whom we naturally describe as people who “know God” because over the years they have sought, and been freely granted, such access to the heart of God that God knows them, as He knew Moses, “face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10).94
The children, then, have made a good beginning by knowing that through Christ their sins have been forgiven and that God is their Father, and with proper guidance and care they may advance from there. The fathers have attained a ripe and intimate acquaintance with the eternal God (whatever “from the beginning”95 may mean elsewhere in these epistles, it can denote nothing less than God’s eternity here). But it is the young men who receive chief attention—as is indicated perhaps even by their being placed last in each of the two drafts. They are the believers who have reached a stage of spiritual development where they are expected to bear the burden and heat of the day. They are the church’s first line of defense against attack, whether that attack takes the form of overt persecution or of subtle undermining of Christian faith and life. The young men whom John addresses have shown themselves worthy of his commendation. They “have overcome the evil one,” as he assures them twice, and thus they have proved that they “are strong,” endued with spiritual power, and that “the word of God abides” in them.
In all the main Johannine writings—Gospel,96 First Epistle97 and Revelation98 alike—the theme of overcoming is present, and in all three it is through Christ, the supreme Overcomer, that His people overcome. When in the wilderness He overcame “the evil one,”99 it was by virtue of the word of God abiding in Him (“It is written,” “It is said,” was His weapon), and so His people, according to Paul, may not only “quench all the flaming darts of the evil one” by means of “the shield of faith,” but may go over to the offensive against their spiritual foe with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:16 f.). (While rhēma is the noun rendered “word” in Ephesians 6:17 and not logos, as in our present passage,100 the point is that, for both Christ and Christians, “the word He hath spoken shall surely prevail”).
(d) Warning against the world (2:15-17)
2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, 2:17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
The “world” (Greek kosmos) has a wide range of meaning in the Johannine writings, and the context must determine, from one place to another, which phase of its meaning is to be understood. On the one hand, the world was made by God through the agency of His “Word” (John 1:10); it was loved by God (John 3:16); it is the object of God’s saving purpose (John 3:17). Christ is the Light of the world (John 1:9; 8:12; 9:5), the Savior of the world (John 4:42; 1 John 4:14), the propitiation for the whole world (1 John 2:2), “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
On the other hand, the world at present lies in the grip of “the evil one” (1 John 5:19) and is therefore orientated against God.101 Accordingly, when He who is the Word and the Light came into the world, the world failed to recognize Him (John 1:10; 1 John 3:1) and similarly it does not recognize His followers (1 John 3:1). Indeed, it hates them (John 15:18 f.; 17:14; 1 John 3:13), just as it hated Him (John 7:7; 15:18, 23, 24, 25). What John says about the world is similar to what Paul, in different language, says about the creation. It “was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
What John warns his readers against in the present passage is the world orientated against God, “the godless world,” as the NEB paraphrases it. The spirit that dominates the world so orientated—“the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience,” as it is put in Ephesians 2:2—is inimical to the love of God and to the uninhibited outflowing of His love in the lives of His people. Conformity to that spirit is worldliness.
Worldliness, it must be emphasized in face of much superficial thought and language on the subject, does not lie in things we do or in places we frequent; it lies in the human heart, in the set of human affections and attitudes. It may manifest itself in petty but soul-stunting ambitions like “keeping up with the Joneses;” it may manifest itself in unthinking acquiescence in current policies of monstrous malignity, as when too many Christians in Nazi Germany found it possible to go along with (or close their eyes to) their government’s genocidal treatment of the Jews. Worldliness of the latter sort is not that which has usually been denounced by popular pietism; our Savior’s remark about the gnat and the camel may come to mind in this connection. If, in a world where the richer nations tend to become richer and the poorer to become poorer, the administration of a richer nation makes further increases in economic prosperity a major plank in its platform, the Christian—especially, perhaps, the Christian who prefers to remain as detached as possible from political responsibility—must be constantly vigilant lest his own life reflect the unadmitted assumptions underlying such a policy. To share political, social or economic presuppositions which are inconsistent with the Father’s love is one form of worldliness.
Indeed, John’s understanding of worldliness seems to be very much of this character, when we consider the three elements which he specifies as making up what is “in the world.”102 For the “desire of the flesh” and the “desire of the eyes”103 and the “pretentiousness of life,” as it may be rendered,104 comprise the outlook which is commonly designated materialism. Worldliness does not reside in “things,” but it does certainly reside in our concentration on “things.” If our affections, instead of being set on what is of permanent importance, are set on passing things that the heart desires and the eye delights in, or things that encourage us to have a good conceit of ourselves, we are fearfully impoverished. If my reputation, my “public image,” matters more to me than the glory of God or the well-being of my fellows, the “pretentiousness of life” has become the object of my idol worship.
This “pretentiousness of life” is equated in the lexicon of Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich with “pride in one’s possessions,” and it can be a very subtle enemy of the soul. My house, my garden, my car, my library or some other status symbol—whatever it is I take most pride in—can minister to this peril. One begins to understand why R. C. Chapman, returning to live in the town where he used to drive his carriage drawn by a pair of horses, with coachman and footman, took a working-class house in a back street, said, “my pride never got over it.”105 But even such an action as that, on the part of a lesser soul than Chapman, might simply be an inverted form of “the pretentiousness of life”—the exceptionally deadly “pride that apes humility.” The one effective antidote to worldliness is to have one’s heart so filled with the Father’s love that it has no room for any love that is incompatible with that.
Another form of worldliness, highly relevant to the situation in which John wrote, is the adaptation of the gospel to some contemporary tendency or philosophy or spirit of the age. It used to be said by acute foreign observers that Christians in this country had difficulty in distinguishing the interests of the kingdom of God from those of the British Empire. Nowadays this tendency to confuse the gospel with national or imperial ideals may be more clearly manifested in equal and opposite degree in other parts of the world. There are other Christians, more internationally minded, who are prone to identify the rule of God in the world with the advancement of the United Nations.
Deplorable as these forms of worldliness are, they are not so deplorable as the identification of the kingdom of God with this or that ecclesiastical organization, whether it be the World Council of Churches or my own particular “Little Bethel.” Such an identification has too often served as an excuse for all sorts of ethically dubious policies and actions. Nothing that is unrighteous or uncharitable in itself is ever truly done for the glory of God, however much we may persuade ourselves that it is so.
Reference has already been made to that variety of worldliness which consists in restating the gospel so thoroughly in terms of the current climate of opinion that the restatement bears no relation to the original essence of the gospel.106 John deals faithfully with proponents of such a restatement in his day; the same sort of thing is perfectly familiar today. When we are told that “thoughtful men can no longer accept” one or another of the articles of the historic Christian faith, we need not be overmuch concerned, for the way in which this affirmation is made begs the question at issue. Some “thoughtful men” find no intellectual difficulty in believing what other “thoughtful men” reject. Much depends on the axioms or premises on which one’s thought is based. We may listen respectfully to a well-reasoned case for the acceptance or repudiation of some belief or other, but if the argument amounts to no more than that the belief is in conformity (or out of conformity) with the contemporary climate of opinion, it is wise to bear in mind the possibility that the contemporary climate of opinion may be wrong.
The prevalent secularism of western man has so influenced some Christian thinkers of our own day that they endeavor to “restate” Christian doctrine or Christian ethics in terms which would be equally relevant whether one believed in the living God or not—sometimes, indeed, in terms which would make better sense if the living God were dismissed from our thinking. Whatever such a restatement may properly be called, it cannot be called Christianity. As the Docetism which John attacked was one way in which worldliness was invading the church at the end of the first century, so the passing fashion of the “death of God” theology (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) is one way among many in which worldliness has invaded the church today. There may be something to be said for what has been called “holy worldliness,” if that means giving that place to the material order as God’s creation which the Bible gives it, instead of dismissing all things temporal as evil. But a system of thought or way of life from which the Creator is deliberately excluded is a manifestation of unholy worldliness.
The world, as Paul said, is to be used by the Christian as a means to the true end of his Christian living, not as an end in itself, “for the form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31). So, says John, “the world is passing away,”107 and so is all our desire for it—or, if desire (Greek epithymia) can be taken here in a concrete sense, all the desirable things that it contains. Why should heirs of the eternal world concentrate their interests and ambitions on such a transient order? Why should they place all their eggs in such a perishable basket? Why does Christian practice so often fall short of Christian profession? If it is indeed in the ever-living God that we have placed our trust, if it is by His love that our lives are dominated, then His interests will be paramount with us. His kingdom, into which He has called His people, is the one unshakable order.
“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,” said our Lord, “and all these things [temporal necessities] shall be yours as well” (Matthew 6:33). It was thought by some to be mildly blasphemous when, in recent years, an African ruler modified this wording in a public inscription to read, “Seek ye first the political kingdom…” (and he soon discovered how mistaken he was). But without overtly modifying our Lord’s words, many people who would regard themselves as better Christians than Dr. Nkrumah put their own private glosses on them (to be proved as mistaken in their turn as he was). Since all live to God (Luke 20:38) it is well if all live for Him. “He who does the will of God abides for ever.”
4. THE TEACHING OF ANTICHRIST (2:18-27)
(a) Many antichrists (2:18)
2:18 Little children, it is the last hour: and as ye heard that antichrist cometh, even now have there arisen many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour.
Here John addresses all his readers as his “children” (paidia).108 The days between the first appearance of Christ and His coming advent in glory are the “last days” in New Testament parlance—the days which witness the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament prophets foretold as destined to happen “in the latter days.” The “last hour” (eschatē hōra) might be regarded as an alternative expression for the “last days,” but more probably it denotes the terminal phase of the “last days,” like the “last time” (kairos eschatos) of 1 Peter 1:5 at which the final salvation is to be revealed. According to Jude 18 the apostles of Christ foretold that scoffers would arise “in the last time” (ep’ eschatou chronou). Jude sees the fulfillment of their words in the emergence of the false teachers whom he denounces in his epistle. So John infers from the appearance of the false teachers against whom he warns his readers that the end time Antichrist is now at hand and that his spirit is active in these teachers; that is how “we know that it is the last hour.”
But in what sense was it “the last hour?” John may have thought that in fact the last decade of the first century was five minutes to midnight on the clock of destiny—that he and his fellow Christians were witnessing the onset of the great revolt which would immediately precede the parousia. Nothing that he knew precluded such an expectation; much that he knew encouraged it. But if “the last hour” be understood thus in terms of common chronology, what validity could John’s expectation and language have for his readers today, between eighteen and nineteen centuries later? If the last hour is to be dated between AD 90 and 100, what terminology can be applied to AD 1970? The truth is, as John Henry Newman put it last century, that
though time intervene between Christ’s first and second coming, it is not recognized (as I may say) in the Gospel scheme, but is, as it were, an accident. For so it was, that up to Christ’s coming in the flesh, the course of things ran straight towards that end, nearing it by every step; but now, under the Gospel, that course has (if I may so speak) altered its direction, as regards His second coming, and runs, not towards the end, but along it, and on the brink of it; and is at all times near that great event, which, did it run towards it, it would at once run into. Christ, then, is ever at our doors.109
In the Christian era it is always five minutes to midnight. But as “the course of things” runs along the edge of the final consummation, that edge at times becomes a knife edge, and at such times the sense of its being “the last hour” is specially acute.
So it was with John. That Antichrist would come he and his readers knew, and in the false teachers he discerned the agents, or at least the forerunners, of Antichrist, sharing his nature so completely that they could be called “many antichrists.” “You have heard,” he says, “that Antichrist is coming.” But this is the first occasion in the New Testament—or indeed in the Greek Bible—where this term appears. John is the only biblical writer who uses it; he does so in this present context (verses 18, 22), in 1 John 4:3 and in 2 John 7. It must not be inferred that his readers had heard something unknown to readers of the earlier New Testament letters or to those who listened to our Lord’s teaching, for while the word “Antichrist” may be peculiar to John’s letters in biblical literature, but the idea expressed by the word is not.
If we ask where and when John’s readers had heard of the coming of Antichrist, the answer probably is that they heard of it from their first instructors in the faith. But these instructors did not invent the doctrine; they delivered what they themselves had first received. One of the earlier New Testament letters includes a passage that is especially relevant in this regard. The passage is 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, where Paul warns his Thessalonian converts against unsettling forms of eschatological expectation which lack any foundation. The day of the Lord, he says, is not here yet,
for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this? And now110 you know what is restraining him so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming. The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.111
John’s readers had no doubt received teaching to much the same effect as Paul gave to the Thessalonian Christians both while he was still with them and in the words just quoted from 2 Thessalonians. That is to say, a day would come when the restraint at present imposed on the forces of lawlessness and anarchy by the power of law and order would be removed, and lawlessness would break forth in all its malignity, incarnated in a sinister figure called “the man of lawlessness” or “the lawless one.” This “lawless one” is appointed to final destruction by the brightness of the epiphany of the true Christ. But during the heyday of his reign he would claim divine honors, and so skillfully would he hoodwink men by impressive signs, performed by Satan’s aid, that they would bow to his claims and follow him blindly to perdition. It is to this figure that John probably refers when he says, “You have heard that Antichrist is coming.”
But even Paul was not the first to give such teaching, although he gave it to the Thessalonians, both by word of mouth and in writing, as early as AD 50. His description of “the lawless one” setting himself up as God in the very temple of God recalls our Lord’s words about “the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not”112 (Mark 13:14, RV)—the reference being apparently to a person who embodies the principle of idolatrous outrage portrayed in similar terms in the book of Daniel.113
Several historical figures and events have contributed to the New Testament picture of Antichrist: Antiochus Epiphanes banning the worship of Israel’s God and turning the Jerusalem temple over to the cult of Olympian Zeus, of whom he himself claimed to be the manifestation on earth (167 BC);114 the Emperor Gaius demanding that his image be set up in the temple at Jerusalem to show his Jewish subjects that they must offer sacrifice to him as well as for him (AD 40);115 the Roman soldiers setting up their legionary standards in the temple court, opposite the east gate, and sacrificing to them in celebration of their victory (AD 70).116 In the eyes of pious Jews these persons or incidents were blasphemous, inspired by a spirit hostile to God, variously called Belial (Beliar in Greek)117 or Mastema118 (we may compare the role of Satan in 2 Thessalonians 2:9 or of the dragon in Revelation 13:2, 4). But while they made their contribution to the New Testament picture of Antichrist, the New Testament picture is controlled by the fact that God has revealed Himself definitively and brought His salvation near in Jesus, His Son, the long-expected Christ. In the mind of the church, Antichrist is so called because he claims for himself the honor that rightly belongs to Christ. The imperial beast of Revelation 13 is Antichrist (in fact, although it is not expressly so called in Revelation) not simply because of its persecution of the church but because it claims universal worship. When Christians were commanded to acknowledge Caesar as Lord in the sense which was reserved for Christ alone, they recognized Caesar as Antichrist and refused his demand. In the same way their successors of more recent times have recognized and resisted the spirit of Antichrist in modern totalitarian systems which have endeavored to enslave the souls of men.
But the early Christians recognized Antichrist not only in the enemy who attacked them from without but also in the enemy who seduced them from within. In this sense antichristos is practically synonymous with pseudochristos, the word used in Mark 13:22 where our Lord warns His disciples that “false Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.” It is people of this latter class—“deceivers,” as he calls them in 2 John 7 (where the noun planos is related to the verb apo-planaō rendered “lead astray” in Mark 13:22)—that John has in mind when he warns his readers that “many antichrists” have already appeared. He is not the only New Testament writer to think in this way of subverters of the apostolic teaching. Jude, for example, describes other false teachers as “loudmouthed boasters,” echoing the language used in Daniel 7:8 of the “little horn” with “a mouth speaking great things” and in Daniel 11:36 of the “wilful king” who will “speak astonishing things against the God of gods” (the Theodotionic Greek version of Daniel119 uses the same adjective, hyperonka, in the latter passage as is used in Jude 16 and 2 Peter 2:18, where RV renders “great swelling words”). The little horn and the wilful king of Daniel, two figures which were identical from the start, are regularly interpreted of Antichrist in early Christian literature.120
(b) The test of perseverance (2:19)
2:19 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.*
* Or, that not all are of us.
To the tests already laid down—the test of obedience and the test of love—another—the test of perseverance or continuance—is now introduced. Steadfast persistence in the way of God, without turning aside from it, is inculcated and commended throughout the biblical record. As the parable of the sower teaches, to make a spectacular beginning is not the important thing. It is those who “hear the word and accept it and bear fruit” (Mark 4:20), not those who merely “endure for a while” (Mark 4:17), who show the genuineness of their profession.
The perseverance of the saints is a biblical doctrine,121 but it is not a doctrine designed to lull the indifferent into a sense of false security; it means that perseverance is an essential token of sanctity. Not that perseverance is the product of the saints’ native resolution and energy; it is He who “began a good work” in them who “will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). But the maintenance and completion of the good work provide the evidence that the good work was ever begun. When Paul, not without reason, says to the Corinthian church, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5), he implies that all those in whom the risen Christ is present by His Spirit will indeed meet the test, while those who fail to meet the test, who show themselves “reprobate” (adokimoi), prove by that fact that the root of the matter was never in them, whatever appearance of genuineness they may once have presented. Continuance is the test of reality.
So in the present situation, the fact that the dissenters had left the apostolic fellowship simply showed that at heart they had never belonged to it. Had they been securely built on the foundation of eternal life, they would not have been so easily shifted from it. John’s words are not applicable (although they have sometimes been misapplied) to people who leave one Christian company for another. They are applicable only to people who deliberately abandon the ground of Christianity rightly so called—and one should be quite certain that this is what they have done before speaking or thinking of them in these terms. John, however, is concerned that his readers should not be shaken in their faith by the secession of their former associates. The situation was not one in which a group of true believers held a position at variance with that held by another group of true believers, rather the seceding group by their action had shown that they were not true believers at all.
The last clause of verse 19, introduced by the distinctive Johannine expression all’ hina (“but…that”),122 is ambiguous. The two senses which it can bear are indicated in the text and footnote respectively of the NEB. “They went out,” says the NEB text, “so that it might be clear that not all in our company truly belong to it.” But the variant rendering in the footnote runs, “so that it might be clear that none of them truly belong to us.” The footnote rendering does little more than repeat what has just been said in the first part of the verse. The rendering in the text, which is probably to be preferred, discloses the general truth involved in a special situation. Membership in a Christian society does not always imply that one belongs to the persevering saints; enrollment in the register of a local church on earth does not necessarily carry with it enrollment in the heavenly book of life.
(c) Distinguishing truth and error (2:20-27)
2:20 And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things,* 2:21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and because** no lie is of the truth.
* Some very ancient authorities read and ye all know.
** Or, that.
The seceders claimed to have been initiated into an advanced grade of knowledge, and may have spoken disparagingly of those who remained content with “elementary” teaching like those whom they left behind. C. S. Lewis has warned us of the seductiveness of “the inner ring,”123 the temptation to gain admission at all costs to that exclusive elite of the people who really matter, who know what’s what. The fascination of such an inner circle can be as powerful and dangerous in religion as in society. We are flattered by the idea that we are different from the rank and file, that we have access to deeper teaching, to more esoteric truth, even, it may be (and this is supremely soul-destroying), to a higher level of holiness than the majority. Our Lord crushed such pretensions when He thanked God for hiding from the wise and understanding things which were revealed to babes (Matthew 11:25).
Paul did the same when he told the Corinthian Christians who prided themselves on their intellectual attainments that he could impart the “secret and hidden wisdom of God” only to those who were spiritually mature—that is, mature in agapē rather than in gnōsis—and to all of those (1 Corinthians 2:6-3:3). Or when he emphasized to the Colossians (who were being invited in their day to savor the attractions of a superior brand of wisdom) that his commission consisted in “warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).
So John assures his readers at a later date that the “anointing” they have received “from the Holy One” admits them to the true knowledge. Paul had used the same term in relation to the gift of the Spirit. “It is God,” he writes to the Corinthians (coupling them with himself and his colleagues), “who…has anointed us;124 he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (2 Corinthians 1:21, 22). Of these three terms by which the bestowal of the Spirit is described—chrisma, sphragis and arrabōn—John employs the first as most appropriate to his purpose125 of assuring his readers that they suffer no disadvantage as compared with the “inner ring.” “You, no less than they, are among the initiated; this is the gift of the Holy One, and by it you all have knowledge” (NEB).
NEB “you all,” like RV margin and RSV, follows the reading pantes (nominative plural masculine), whereas RV text, “ye know all things,” follows the reading panta (accusative plural neuter). The latter is the majority reading, but the former has the weighty support of the early witnesses to the Alexandrian text-type.126 In favor of pantes is the fact that it is the more difficult reading (an object is normally expected after the verb “know”) and therefore more likely to be changed to panta than vice versa. Against this, it has been suggested that the reading pantes may have been influenced by the occurrence of the same word in verse 19 (“they all are not of us”). The reading panta (“all things”) could be understood in the same sense as verse 27, “his anointing teaches you about everything.”127
If we adopt the reading “you all know” here, the point is that the true knowledge is not confined to a favored elite but is accessible to them all. What they all know is made clear by the words that follow— they know the difference between truth and falsehood. They know the difference between these not because they have explored the mazes of falsehood but because they “know the truth.”128 For believers this “truth” is embodied in a person, in Him who said “I am…the truth” (John 14:6). They know it because they know Him, and this knowledge is theirs because they have received “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). When He comes, said Jesus of the Spirit, “he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), and to the same effect He prayed for His disciples, “Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth” (John 17:17). Those who have come to know the truth “as the truth is in Jesus” (Ephesians 4:21) have, it is implied, a built-in spiritual instinct which enables them to detect and refuse whatever is basically incompatible with that truth, no matter how speciously and eloquently it may be set before them. They know that “no lie is of the truth”—or, to quote the NEB rendering again, “lies, one and all, are alien to the truth.”
So contrary to the truth of the gospel, so subversive of the saving message, is this “lie” that it must be stamped as the teaching of Antichrist. Some two decades later John’s disciple Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, echoes his teacher’s language: “Every one who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is Antichrist. And whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts and says that there is neither resurrection nor judgment—he is Satan’s firstborn.”129 By “the testimony of the cross” Polycarp appears to mean the witness which our Lord’s passion and death bore to Him as the incarnate Son of God (cf. John 19:35; 1 John 5-8).
2:22 Who is the liar but that he denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son. 2:23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also.
“Lies, one and all, are alien to the truth.” But John, like Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:11,130 is thinking of one fundamental Lie. Plato made a distinction between those lies which are errors of fact and the mortal disease of “the lie in the soul.”131 To John the Lie par excellence is that which refuses to see the Godhead shine in the human life and death of Jesus, that which drives a wedge between “the Christ” and the man Jesus of whom, according to Cerinthus, “the Christ” took temporary possession.132 To deny that Jesus is the Christ is to deny that He “is the Son of God” (5:5) or that He “has come in the flesh” (4:2). This denial is deadly, because only in the Christ, the Son of God, who came in the flesh is eternal life to be had (5:11).
The false teachers who perverted the received teaching about Jesus as the Christ and Son of God probably did not expressly deny the Father. Indeed, “the Father” was the designation that many of them reserved for the God who is above all, in contradistinction to the inferior deity whom they envisaged as creator of the world.133 According to Cerinthus, it was after “the Christ” descended on the man Jesus at His baptism in the form of a dove that “He proclaimed the unknown Father.”134 But words have value only in accordance with their meaning, and the Cerinthians and those like-minded might speak of the “Father” but they did not give the same meaning to the term as John does when he speaks of “the Father.” To John, the Father is He who has revealed Himself uniquely and fully in the incarnate Jesus, not only in the ministry of word and work for which He was anointed by the Spirit at His baptism, but equally so—indeed, supremely so—in His death on the cross.
Those who denied the incarnation of the Son of God and saw no revelatory element in His passion refused that revelation of the Father which is imparted in the gospel. In denying the Son, they denied the Father too, little as they may have intended to do so. This is a corollary to the repeated assertion in the Gospel of John, that the knowledge of the Father is inseparable from the knowledge of the Son (John 8:19; 14:7), and to a passage like John 5:23, where the divine purpose in the committal of judgment to the Son is said to be “that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” “The only Son,135 who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18); to deny the Son is to deny the knowledge of the Father which He unfolds, and so to deny the Father Himself. This is not to exclude those prior and preparatory forms of divine revelation implied in the prologue to the Gospel of John,136 but rather it is to affirm that those earlier forms of divine revelation were brought to perfection when the Eternal Word became incarnate in the Son, so that it is no longer possible to confess the Father except as He has made Himself known in the Son, while it is impossible to believe in the Son without acknowledging the Father whom He has made known.137 Whether Jesus expressed Himself in the imperative or in the indicative mood when He said, “Believe in God, believe also in me”138 (John 14:1), He spoke essentially of one form of belief, not two.
2:24 As for you, let that abide in you which ye heard from the beginning. If that which ye heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son, and in the Father.
“What you heard from the beginning” is the apostolic message as it was first delivered to them, as we have seen already in verse 7. Like the Gospel of John (cf. John 5:38; 15:7), so the Epistles can speak interchangeably of the word of God or of Christ “abiding” in men (1 John 2:14; 2 John 2) and of their “abiding” in it (2 John 9). Either way, it is faithful adherence to the message that is intended and this carries with it faithful adherence to the Father and the Son to whom in that message the Spirit bears witness. This personal relation with the Godhead is similarly mutual. Those who “abide” in God have God “abiding” in them (cf. 1 John 4:12-16). But those who have abandoned the foundation of their faith in the original apostolic testimony have severed themselves from fellowship with the true God, for that is the true testimony to God (cf. 1 John 5:9-11).
2:25 And this is the promise which he promised us,* even the life eternal.
* Some ancient authorities read you.
Eternal life is the promise held out to believers by God in the message which makes Him known; it is embodied, as has been made plain in 1 John 1:2, in the Son of God who is the center and circumference of that message. The original force of the phrase, especially in the Hebrew or Aramaic expressions which underlie the Greek zōē aiōnios, relates to “the life of the age to come,” i.e. resurrection life. But for those who are united by faith to Him who by His triumph over death is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), the promise of resurrection life is already realized; they enjoy it here and now. John’s readers will do well if they hold fast to the message and remain in the fellowship, without which eternal life is unattainable. If eternal life consists in the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John 1:3), then it cannot be dissociated from the message which conveys that knowledge.
2:26 These things have I written unto you concerning them that would lead you astray, 2:27 And as for you, the anointing which ye received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you; but as his anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you,* ye abide in him.**
* Or, so it is true, and is no lie; and even as etc.
** Or, abide ye.
“I have written” is the aorist tense (Greek egrapsa), as in verses 13c-14 and 21. Once again we may recognize the “epistolary aorist,” or perhaps the reference here is to what has just been written about the “many antichrists.” The most effective safeguard which the readers have against these people and their teaching is that “anointing from the Holy One” already mentioned in verse 20 which enables them to recognize the truth and refuse falsehood. The fact that they have not followed the teachers of error in their secession is a token that this “anointing” remains in them. The statement that because of it they do not need any one to teach them is to be understood in its context. It is not to be taken as absolute affirmation that the experience of the Spirit in personal life carries with it independence of the ministry of teaching in the church. The ministry of teaching is the Spirit’s gift by which He provides instruction for believers. What is John himself doing in this letter if he is not “teaching” his readers? But the ministry of teaching must be exercised by men who themselves share the “anointing” of which John speaks, men who remain in the fellowship of the Spirit. No one from outside that fellowship—and the false teachers had placed themselves outside it—can provide teaching which will either correct or supplement the truth of the Christian revelation. The believers to whom John writes have not become so impoverished within their fellowship that they need any one from outside it to teach them. It is within the fellowship that the Spirit operates; it is there that He teaches the people of God. So Paul prays that those who are inwardly strengthened by the Spirit of Christ “may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth” (Ephesians 3:18).
In the period before the canon of the New Testament began to circulate as a documentary collection, oral ministry was even more necessary than afterwards as the means by which the Spirit guided believers “into all the truth.” They had their sacred scriptures in the books of the Old Testament, but these books had to be understood in the light of their fulfillment by Jesus, and a great part of early Christian teaching consisted in the imparting of this understanding. The Spirit by whom the prophets spoke was the Spirit by whose illumination the words of the prophets were understood (1 Peter 1:10-12).
In assuring his readers that the Spirit’s “anointing” teaches them about “all things,” John echoes the promise to the disciples in John 14:26: “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit…will teach you all things.” The apostolic teaching which the readers have already received represents the fulfillment of this promise. Here is the truth; whatever contradicts it is falsehood. Those who have been taught it will do well to adhere to it, to “abide” in the Spirit’s anointing as that anointing “abides” in them.
It is not completely clear whether we are to understand the anointing or the Spirit in the last two clauses of verse 27. RV text, following KJV and followed by RSV, makes the anointing (“it”) subject of “taught” but takes en autō at the end of the verse to refer to the Spirit (“in him”), not to the anointing (“in it,” which is also a permissible rendering). Since “the anointing” is the subject of the earlier part of the sentence, we might well retain it throughout: “as it has taught you, abide in it.” NEB, on the other hand, sees the Spirit in both of the two last clauses: “As he taught you, then, dwell in him.” Certainty is not attainable; practically it makes no difference, since the anointing is the Spirit’s anointing.
5. CHILDREN OF GOD (2:28-3:24)
When John in this epistle addresses his readers as his “children,” he uses the diminutive form teknia (except, as we have seen, for two places in Chapter 2—verses 13 and 18—where he calls them paidia), but when he calls them “children of God” he uses the plural tekna (the form of which teknia is the diminutive). The phrase tekna tou theou occurs similarly for “children of God” in the Gospel (John 1:12; 11:52). When speaking of believers’ relationship to God, John never uses the noun hyios (“son”); he reserves it for Christ, as the unique (monogenēs) Son of God.139 The words used to denote relationship to God carry with them also the connotation of likeness to God; the two ideas are inseparable, for likeness is the proof of relationship.
(a) The two families (2:28-3:10)
Some students of this epistle have discerned behind these verses an earlier document consisting of a series of antitheses,140 e.g.:
(i) Every one who does right is born of him
Every one who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness (2:29 / 3:4)
(ii) No one who abides in him sins
No one who sins has either seen him or known him (3:6a / b)
(iii) He who does right is righteous
He who commits sin is of the devil (3:7 / 3:8)
(iv) No one born of God commits sin
Whoever does not do right is not of God (3:9 / 3:10)
This identification of an earlier document, no longer extant, behind an existing document is a precarious exercise. But it is a perfectly reasonable, and even probable, supposition that the Elder, in his teaching, whether oral or written, was accustomed to sum up the contrast between the true way and all others in pairs of antitheses like these. As previously, so here he insists on the ethical criteria of the true way; no amount of profession will compensate for their absence.
2:28 And now, my little children, abide in him; that, if he shall be manifested, we may have boldness, and not be ashamed before him* at his coming.**
* Greek from him.
** Greek presence.
The emphatic “And now” (Greek kai nyn) introduces a new thought. Even if “abide in it” were the right rendering at the end of verse 27, the same clause at the beginning of verse 28 is certainly to be understood personally, “abide in him.” There is no material difference. Those who “abide” in the “anointing” and in the teaching which accompanies it are bound to “abide” in Christ (cf. John 15:4). Those who “abide in him” can look forward to His coming with joy; they “have confidence for the day of judgment” (4:17, RSV). This is the only place in the Johannine writings where the word parousia (“advent”) is used, but the idea that it expresses is frequently conveyed by other terms, as in this very context by the clause “if he shall be manifested.” Neither here nor in the repetition of the clause in 3:2 does “if” suggest any uncertainty; it is the equivalent of “when.” “The life which was manifested” (1:2) will be manifested again. The first person plural in “we may have boldness”…is probably the inclusive “we,” meaning “we and you together.”
Attempts have been made to interpret the passage as though it meant “You must abide in Him, in order that we (your teachers) may have confidence and not be ashamed…” (a similar sentiment to Paul’s in Philippians 2:16; 1 Thessalonians 2:19 f., etc.). But in that case we should have expected the contrast between the pronouns to be expressed more emphatically, as it is in 1:3. Here as elsewhere John takes away the ground from any antinomian perversion of the gospel. What else could an unfaithful servant do than “shrink in shame”141 (cf. RSV) from his Master’s searching eye? “Boldness” (“freedom of speech”)142 in the Lord’s presence is the antithesis to such shame.
2:29 If ye know that he is righteous, ye know* that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him.
* Or, know ye.
That God is righteous is a biblical axiom: “the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds” (Psalm 11:7). In Old Testament times He required righteousness in His people because they were called by His name: “righteousness, righteousness you shall follow” (to give the literal rendering of Deuteronomy 16:20). In the teaching of our Lord, not least in the Sermon on the Mount, it is emphasized that the children143 of the heavenly Father will reproduce His character (Matthew 5:45, 48; Luke 6:35 f.). So John makes it clear that membership in the family of God is to be recognized by the family likeness; since the Father of the family is righteous, the children will practice righteousness. If anyone claims to belong to His family and does not practice righteousness, his claim cannot be admitted; anyone who practices righteousness is known by that very fact to be a child of God, even if he makes no such claim in words. Actions speak louder than words.144
74 In 1 John 2:12, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21. Where teknia is not accompanied by the possessive pronoun “my” (Greek mou), as it is in 2:1, RV in this epistle distinguishes it by adding this pronoun in italics: “my little children.”
75 It appears as a variant reading to teknia in 1 John 3:7.
76 In these epistles teknon occurs in 1 John 3:1, 2, 10 (twice); 5 : 2; 2 John 1, 4, 13; 3 John 4 (always in the plural).
77 E.g. in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 38:2, etc.).
78 The form paraklētos is a verbal adjective from parakaleō. The KJV and RV rendering “Comforter” in the Gospel passages gives it an active force, relating it to the sense “comfort” or “encourage” which the verb frequently has (cf. Matthew 2:18; 5:4; Luke 16:25; 2 Corinthians 1:4, 6). But its force is more probably passive (as is usual with such verbal adjectives), related to the sense “call to one’s side (as a helper);” cf. Latin ad-uocatus, whence our “advocate.” In this sense paraklētos was taken over as a loanword into Mishnaic Hebrew, in the form pĕraqlit, “advocate,” “intercessor.”
79 E.g. in Hebrews 7:25.
80 For the relevance of the NEB rendering see note .
81 This was the force of these words (associated with the verb hilaskomai, “propitiate”) in pagan Greek. But the New Testament force of this word group is based on its use in the Septuagint to render the Hebrew word group associated with the verb kipper (“atone”), in which God, far from being the object, takes the initiative. Cf. Romans 3:25, where it is God who has set Jesus forth as a propitiation by means of His blood—i.e. His sacrificial death (); the word there rendered “propitiation” (Greek hilastērion) is the same as is used in the Septuagint (cf. Hebrews 9:5) to render Hebrew kappōreth, “mercy-seat,” “place (or means) of propitiation.” The object of the propitiatory action is men’s sins, as in Hebrews 2:17, where “sins” (Greek hamartias) is in the accusative case after the infinitive hilaskesthai (“to make atonement for,” “to expiate”).
82 Cf. Hebrews 10:19: “we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus.”
83 For the world (kosmos) as the object of Christ’s saving work cf. 1 John 4:14; also John 3:16, 17; 4:42; 12:47. John Calvin, in commenting on the present passage, agrees that “Christ suffered sufficiently for the whole world but effectively only for the elect” but denies (no doubt rightly) that this is John’s meaning here (Commentary on John 11-21 and 1 John, trans. T. H. L. Parker, Edinburgh, 1961, p. 244)
84 So magnificent a composition that for the sake of the rest of it I can even bring myself to sing “My God is reconciled”—provided I may treat “reconciled” as an adjective, describing God’s attitude to mankind, and not as a participle, as though the sacrifice of Christ produced a change in His nature.
85 The other two occurrences are 1 John 3:5 (“he was manifested…”), 16 (“he laid down his life…”).
86 The verb “abide” (Greek menō), in addition to its ordinary usage, appears frequently in the Johannine Gospel and Epistles with a distinctive sense, setting forth the mutual coinherence of the believer in Christ (and in the Father) and of Christ (and the Father) in the believer. Paul does not use the verb in this sense, but occasionally expresses a similar idea by means of oikeō, enoikeō, katoikeō, “dwell” (cf. Romans 8:9, 11; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 3:17), and in one well-known passage by means of zaō,, “live” (Galatians 2:20: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”), but more often without the use of any verb, in such phrases as “in Christ,” “Christ in you.” The quotation from Epimenides in Acts 17:28 (“In him we live and move and have our being”) presents a formal parallel, but there it is physical life that is meant.
87 See commentary on . W. Dittenberger quotes a Greek inscription (dated AD 515/6) from the Church of St. George in Zorava, Syria (in allusion to its having been built where a pagan temple once stood), “The saving light has shone, where darkness once concealed” (Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, Leipzig, 1905, No. 610, 2).
88 This is the force of the present tense paragetai (used also of “the world” in verse 17).
89 E. Percy, John Knox (London, 1937), pp. 73 f.
90 Cf. John 11:9 f.; 12:35 f., quoted in the commentary on
91 Cf. 1 John 3:10 ff.; 4:7 ff.
92 This is more probable than the view that these terms in verses 12 and 13c also apply to the whole body of John’s readers, who are then subdivided into “fathers” and “young men.”
93 See note .
94 See commentary on with note .
95 Greek ap’ arches, as in Micah 5:2, LXX (see note ).
96 Cf. John 16:33.
97 Cf. 1 John 4:4; 5:4 f.
98 Cf. the promises to the “overcomer” in the Letters to the Seven Churches (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21) and in Revelation 21:7; also Revelation 5:5; 12:11; 15:2.
99 “The evil one” (Greek ho ponēros) appears several times in the New Testament as a designation of the devil or the tempter, especially in Matthew; e.g. in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13) and in the interpretation of the parables of the Sower (Matthew 13:19) and of the Tares (Matthew 13:38). In John 17:15 our Lord prays that His disciples may be kept “from the evil one.” Cf. 1 John 3:12; 5:18 f.
100 The distinction between logos and rhēma should not be overpressed; cf. John 8:31, “if you abide (menō) in my word (logos), you are truly my disciples,” and 15:7 f., “if…my words (rhēmata) abide in you,… so shall you be my disciples.”
101 The “world” in this sense corresponds to the “darkness” of verse 8 (see commentary on ). Compare Paul’s language about “the present evil age (aiōn)” in Galatians 1:4 and the Qumran description of the current era as “the epoch of wickedness” (Damascus Rule 6.10, etc.).
102 Cf. the NEB paraphrase, “Everything the world affords, all that panders to the appetites, or entices the eyes, all the glamour of its life.”
103 In 2 Peter 2:14 the lust of the eyes has a sexual connotation (cf. Matthew 5:29), but that is not necessarily so here.
104 On John’s use here of Greek alazoneia (RV “vainglory”) E. K. Simpson says, “He is contemplating the unregenerate world as a Vanity Fair, and the full strength of his expression can be brought out only by some such translation as the charlatanry or make-believe of life” (Words Worth Weighing in the Greek New Testament, London, 1946, p. 18). Cf. the same word in James 4:16: “you boast in your arrogance” (RSV).
105 F. Holmes, Brother Indeed (London, 1956), p. 37.
106 Cf. pp. f., f.
107 Greek paragetai, as in verse 8. In 1 Corinthians 7:31 Paul uses the active voice paragei intransitively in the same sense. Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:18, “the things that are seen are transient.”
108 See commentary .
109 J. H. Newman, “Waiting for Christ,” Parochial and Plain Sermons, vi (London, 1896), p. 241.
110 The resumptive adverb “now” is more naturally construed with “you know” than (as in RSV) with “what is restraining him.” W. Kelly stigmatizes the latter construction as a solecism (The Epistles to the Thessalonians,3 London, 1953, p. 146).
111 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.
112 That the “abomination” is personal in Mark 13:14 is indicated by the choice of the masculine participle “standing” (Greek hestekota) although the noun which it qualifies is in the neuter gender (bdelygma). Cf. NEB: “when you see ‘the abomination of desolation’ usurping a place which is not his.”
113 Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11.
114 1 Maccabees 1:41-61 (especially verse 54: “on the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-fifth year [i.e. of the Seleucid era, beginning 312 BC], they erected an ‘abomination of desolation’ [i.e. a pagan altar] on the altar of burnt-offering”).
115 Philo, Embassy to Gaius, 203 ff., Josephus, War ii. 184 ff., Antiquities xviii. 261 ff.
116 Josephus, War vi. 316.
117 2 Corinthians 6:15; the word, used in the sense of “death” or “hell” in Old Testament (cf. Psalm 18:4 f., where it appears in synonymous parallelism with “death” and “Sheol”), is employed in this personal way in the Qumran texts and other Jewish and Christian literature of the late BC and early AD epoch.
118 Literally “enmity,” used personally (like Belial/Beliar) in the Qumran texts and other Jewish and Christian literature of this period.
119 Theodotion’s Greek version of the Old Testament, intended to replace the Septuagint for Jewish use, appeared late in the second century AD. His version of Daniel was so far superior to the older, paraphrastic Septuagint version that it was adopted by Greek-speaking Christians. It seems, however, to have been based on an earlier, non-Septuagintal, version with which some of the New Testament writers were acquainted.
120 They are thus interpreted in the earliest surviving full-scale exposition of the doctrine of Antichrist in Christian literature—Hippolytus’s treatise On Antichrist (c. AD 200).
121 For a detailed exegetical study of this doctrine see I. H. Marshall, Kept by the Power of God (London, 1969); the evidence of the Epistles of John is examined on pp. 183 ff.
122 Cf. John 1:8, 31; 3:17; 9:3; 11:52; 12:47; 13:18; 14:31; 15:25.
123 “The Inner Ring,” in Transposition and Other Addresses (London, 1949), pp. 55 ff.; Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces (London, 1965), pp. 28 ff.
124 Jesus Himself is said similarly to have been “anointed…with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 10:38; cf. Isaiah 61:1 in the light of 11:2; 42:1); this is probably a reference to the descent of the dove at His baptism (Mark 1:10, etc.).
125 Perhaps because the seceders laid claim to a special “anointing” (chrisma) which admitted them to esoteric “knowledge” (gnōsis, a noun never used in the Johannine literature, surprisingly but no doubt designedly). In the following century the members of the gnostic sect of the Naassenes claimed, “we alone of all men are Christians, for we complete the mystery at the third gate and are anointed there with unspeakable chrism” (Hippolytus, Refutation of Heresies v. 9.22). Cf. the anointing of Aseneth mentioned in note .
126 Especially Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the Sahidic Coptic version.
127 T. W. Manson, following A. Harnack, states his preference for “all things,” partly on the ground that oida (“I know”) “is not used absolutely in the Fourth Gospel or the Johannine Epistles,” and refers to John 14:26 (“Entry into Membership of the Early Church,” JTS 48, 1947, p. 28, n. 1).
128 The tense of “I have…written” in verse 21 is the epistolary aorist (egrapsa), as in verses 13c and 14.
129 To the Philippians 7. 1. The expression “Satan’s firstborn” seems to have been a favorite of Polycarp’s: many years later (AD 154), when Polycarp was on a visit to Rome, the heresiarch Marcion is said to have sought an interview with him and asked the aged bishop if he recognized him, to which he received the answer, “I recognize— Satan’s firstborn!” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies iii. 3. 4).
130 Where God sends “a strong delusion” on those who refused the love of the saving truth, so that instead they believe “the Lie.” Cf. Romans 1:25, where disobedient mankind “exchanged the truth about God for the Lie.” In the teaching of Zoroaster, “The Lie” (Avestan druj) denotes the whole system of evil.
131 Republic ii. 382 b-c.
132 See pp. f.
133 This is plain, for example, in the later Gospel of Thomas (a compilation of sayings of Jesus with a gnosticizing tendency), where the supreme Being, proclaimed by Jesus, is called “the Father,” whereas the designation “God” is reserved for an inferior power.
134 See p. .
135 So RSV text. But the reading which is relegated to the margin of RSV (as of RV, ASV and NEB), “God only-begotten, who has his being in the Father’s bosom…,” has strong external and internal support.
136 The Divine Word was in the world in various ways before “becoming flesh” and so communicating the fullness of God’s glory (John 1:914); cf. the “many and various ways” in which God spoke to men before “in these last days” He spoke His definitive word in the Son (Hebrews 1:1 f.).
137 There is no valid ground for the italicization in KJV of the second part of verse 23. Although the words “he who confesses the Son has the Father also” are absent from later manuscripts and from the Received Text, they are well attested in our major authorities.
138 The repeated form pisteuete is identical in both moods.
139 Paul uses tekna (“children”) and hyioi (“sons”) indiscriminately to denote Christians’ relationship to God, as an examination of Romans 8:14-21 shows, though he prefers hyioi (as in Galatians 3:26-4:7), perhaps because of its presence in the compound hyiothesia, “adoption” (see commentary on ff. A near exception in the Johannine usage is the phrase hyioi phōtos, “sons of light,” in John 12:36, but this was probably a stereotyped phrase (cf. Luke 16:8;1 Thessalonians 5:5, although Ephesians 5:8 has tekna phōtos).
140 Cf. W. Nauck, Die Tradition und der Charakter des ersten Johannesbriefes (Tübingen, 1957), pp. 1 ff. Somewhat similar is P. Carrington’s working out of a primitive Christian catechism in 1 John 3 (The Primitive Christian Catechism, Cambridge, 1940, pp. 19 ff.).
141 Greek aischynomai apo, a construction not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It occurs five times in LXX, but never quite in the same sense as here (usually the noun following apo denotes something or someone of which the subject of the verb is rightly ashamed). The nearest parallel is Sirach 21:22: “The foot of a fool rushes into a house, but a man of experience stands respectfully before it (aischynthēsetai apo prosōpou).”
142 Greek parrhēsia; cf. 3:21; 4:17; 5:14.
143 In Matthew 5:45 and Luke 6:35 the word used is hyioi (“sons”). Those who press a distinction between this and tekna should reflect that in Hebrew or Aramaic no such distinction is possible; one and the same word (bnê, construct plural) must be envisaged behind either rendering.
144 As RV margin indicates, the verb ginōskete may be imperative as well as indicative, RSV (“you may be sure …”) and NEB (“you must recognize…”) probably present free renderings of the imperative.