The New Testament Church began with a bang. We note in the book of Acts that one day 5,000 people were added to the church. Soon after another 3,000 were added.
But over time, Satan’s influence sapped some of that initial “first love” that the Church had when it began. False teachers began to worm their way into the Church. We know this from Christ’s words regarding the Churches in Revelation, particularly the Church in Ephesus. It was significant enough for Christ to mention to the Church in Ephesus that “. . . I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:4).
This is also somewhat evident from the Apostle John’s letters written towards the end of the first century. The Apostle John’s gospel was addressing the spiritual condition of the Church. The other three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are substantially different. For example, towards the end of John’s gospel we read: “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
John’s focus was on Jesus Christ as the Son of God. He was writing some sixty to seventy years after the New Testament Church began. The first love of some initial members was apparently waning, and we find that the role of Jesus Christ was being diminished: “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (I John 2:22-23). If someone believes that Christ was not God in the flesh, then the role of the Father is obviously diminished as well.
John is very focused on three aspects of the nature of God. In 1John 1:5 John simply says God is light. A little later in I John 4:8, he says God is love. And then in I John 5:11-12, John writes: “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life…”. God is life.
These three aspects of God tie the Father and the Son together. Something is happening within the Church to sever that connection. Severing the relationship with Christ severs the relationship with the Father also. John is clear that those who deny Jesus is Christ are liars: “I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son” (I John 2:21-22).
Clearly there were heretical teachers, antichrists who were trying to deceive members. The question is what is John trying to combat?
There were two major heretical teachings that existed at that time. One was Gnosticism. And we get Docetism from the teachings of Gnosticism. Both involve the denying of the divinity of Christ.
Gnosticism is a very intellectual exercise. In its simplest form it is the belief that only spirit is good and that all physical matter is evil. On one level, the personal effect was that within man is a spirit and our aim is to release that spirit from its evil prison, the body. Only secret, mystical knowledge can help the spirit be released from this evil prison. That’s the only way that this can happen. Docetism was an extension of Gnosticism, from the word dokein, which means “to seem”. Christ only “seemed” to have a body. It could not have been physical because God is spirit and physical is evil.
At this point we can see that this belief system moves us away from any aspect of Christ as Savior, Christ as being crucified, and His blood being shed. True Gnostic thought sought to free the spirit through elaborate rituals and secret knowledge.
On another level Gnosticism says that since God is perfect Spirit, He could not live in a physical body because the physical body is evil. Therefore, Christ as the Son of God could not have been a man. So other theories had to be developed to try and explain that away.
On a third level, since the body is evil, all licentious, sexual practices were okay. It didn’t matter if you sinned, if you practiced sexual immorality. The body is evil anyway. So what? You can’t make it any more evil than it actually is. Hence John references sin very strongly in this particular letter.
One false gnostic teacher, Cerinthus, was a contemporary of John. He was a Christian heretic whose errors, according to the theologian Irenaeus, led the Apostle John to write his New Testament gospel. Quoting from the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Cerinthus was probably born a Jew in Egypt. Little is known of his life save that he was a teacher and founded a short-lived sect of Jewish Christians with Gnostic tendencies. He apparently taught that the world was created by angels, from one of whom the Jews received their imperfect Law.” In gnostic thought, the God of the Old Testament is seen as evil. He’s a harsh, cruel God and He gave an imperfect law. It was later that the law was made perfect since it was done away, it was “spiritualized”.
Again quoting the Encyclopedia Britannica: “…Cerinthus taught that Jesus, the offspring of Joseph and Mary, (the physical Jesus) received “Christ” at baptism as a divine power reveling the unknown Father.” Their belief was that the dove that descended upon Jesus at His baptism, was the Christ coming into the body of the physical person, Jesus. “This Christ left Jesus before the Passion” (before His death on the stake.) He left the physical Jesus, and it was the physical Jesus who died on the stake.
That was a very real teaching of the day, hence John wrote I John 5:6: “This is He who came by water and blood — Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood.” That’s a reference to Christ’s water baptism. John adds the blood which embraces the death on the stake. It was Jesus Christ who died on the stake. Not just a man, Jesus. The Gnostic’s belief that angels created the world is why John began his gospel the way he did about Christ: He was the Word, He was with God, and He was God (John 1:1).
One other thing we should note about Gnosticism is its divisive effect among church members. As noted, you needed to have secret knowledge to be able to unlock the spirit from this evil body. But not everybody had that secret knowledge. There was an intellectual elite that possessed secret knowledge. And just a few elites had it. In other words, an IN group and an OUT group. An IN group and an OUT group results in a breakdown of true fellowship of the entire group. Hence John emphasizes that God is love and that members are to love their fellow brethren. This comes through powerfully in this particular letter:
“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also” (1 John 4:20-21). These two concepts cannot be separated because God is love. The love of God strengthens the love of the brethren.
John continues: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him (a brother) who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments” (1 John 5:1-2). The reference to the commandments takes us to the Torah, the law in the Old Testament which Gnostics believed was an imperfect law.
John is refuting many different things in his writings about what was going on within the Church at that time. He wrote in response to an existing set of circumstances which made it difficult to maintain a spiritual “first love” condition. Time and the dominant social/religious conditions can wear God’s people down.
And problems caused by false teachers did not come from outside by men who were committed to destroying the Church; they came from within. They wanted to make Christianity intellectually respectable. William Barclay in his commentary states: “They knew the intellectual tendencies and currents of the day and felt that time had come for Christianity to come to terms with the secular philosophy and contemporary thought.” In other words, disconnect society from Christ. If that spiritual connection between Christ and members is broken, then the body scatters. The disconnect takes place with the Father also.
Another cause for a disconnect is when any humanly devised forms of government within a church is focused on human leadership instead of on Christ as the Head of the Church. John was working to reconnect the members to Christ, not to other men. John addresses this disconnect by putting the focus onto Christ as the “eternal life” which was with the Father and has now appeared to the people. He says:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life — the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us — that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (I John 1:1-3).
John is talking about his own personal experience of walking, talking, eating, sleeping with Jesus Christ as one of His disciples over a three and a half year period of time. He’s going back to those experiences and he’s not referring to Him as Jesus. He’s referring to Him as the Word of life. Remember, this is the man who started his gospel by saying, “The Word was with God. The Word was God.” If we lose sight of the significance of Christ and His sacrifice as the Son of God, we lose sight of the Father. We wander off into a spiritual no-man’s land. If we do that then we will be left with humanly devised philosophical reasoning.
For John, Light and sin are dominant issues because of the belief that “if the body is evil it doesn’t matter what you do”. John counters this idea too: “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:5-7).
Clearly sin is a disconnector. John continues: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (I John 5:8-10).
Declaring that God is light is a direct challenge to the secret gnostic thought. It also highlights Christ’s role in being a light: “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (John 1:3-5). It is through Christ that we have access to God’s light.
Sin is equated with darkness throughout scripture: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God” (John 3:19).
John’s point was that truth is never only an intellectual exercise. Those who practice truth are those whose lives reflect the mindset of one who is walking in the Light. Someone whose behavior exemplifies the heart and mind of Christ. Truth, when practiced, facilitates fellowship (I John 1:7). Sin and darkness break apart fellowship.
Gnosticism’s infiltration into the early Church broke up the Church. A group of people within the congregations believed that they were going to make the law more spiritual. That this imperfect law that was given to Moses had to be improved on. And they “improved” on it by saying Christ did it all for us and therefore this law is no longer applicable to followers of Christ. However, John is addressing the need for unity within the body, unity of belief based on love and truth: “These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you” (I John 2:26). John connected the love of God, the keeping of His commandments, and member’s love for one another as foundational belief and practice:
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:2–5).
Deceivers within the Church were trying to disconnect members from Christ and therefore achieving the disconnect with the Father. They obscured the truth of God. While John wrote near the end of the first century when the Church had lost some of its “first love”, he was trying to bring it back. We need to think about the relevance of John’s writing as it applies to the Church as a whole and to each of us today. God’s word is truth so anchoring ourselves as followers of Christ in scripture is of upmost importance to our salvation.
Brian Orchard