Week 32—Sunday John 10:1-4
John 10:1-4
“THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST”
In the light of what we have been interpreting we are now ready to understand an otherwise startling passage: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already” (1 John 4:2-3).
The immediate reference here was to the gnostics. They were “the knowers”—they knew by immediate intuition apart from the Incarnation of Jesus. They bypassed the Incarnation and said they could know immediately within by intuition. They affected to regard the flesh as impure and the spirit alone as pure—so they could know God and life apart from Jesus coming in the flesh. This, John brands as antichrist. His words sound severe, but he was profoundly right, for it was the substituting of the Word become word, for the Word become flesh. People have the answers in themselves instead of finding the answers in the Incarnate Jesus. In other words, people make themselves the medium of revelation instead of taking the Son of God as the medium—people make themselves God.
No words are too sharp at this point, for the division is sharp—this is antichrist. This cuts the root of the whole of the Christian revelation and substitutes human wisdom. And yet the descendants of the gnostics are many and are with us now and have many followers.
Those who turn the Christian faith into a philosophy or moralism are descendants—distant descendants of the gnostics—for philosophies came from philosophers and moralism came from moralists. Human ideas tinged with Christian nomenclature, but human ideas are still earthborn. The gospel produces philosophies, but it is not a philosophy—it is a Fact—the Fact of Jesus Christ. Philosophies are human ideas about God, Jesus is God’s idea about God—the Word become flesh.
O Lord Jesus, we turn to you. To whom else can we go, for you have the words of eternal life, for you are the Word of Eternal Life become Flesh? In you we see and we find our Heavenly Father. And seeing and finding God suffices us. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The answers are not in me—they are in Jesus, not self-reference but Christ-reference.