Proclaimer Blog
1 John (talk 1, part 4)
A rival Christ
Let me define antichrist a little further. When you see the word ‘antichrist’ written down, you immediately think of someone who is an opponent of Christ and of course that is undoubtedly true. Some who leave evangelicalism do sadly become opponents, even bitter opponents of the gospel they once embraced. But antichrist has, as well, (I think this is very important – I twigged it rather late in the day) the idea of a rival Christ. We use that of the antipopes in the medieval times. I think I’m right in the saying that in the course of church history, there have been 25 antipopes, that is, rival popes, set up in Avignon or somewhere else like that who claim to be the true pope over against the one at Rome. So when the word ‘anti’ is used it means not only an opponent but a rival. So the term does not mean simply opposing; it includes the idea of counterfeiting. Plumber again: “The antichrist is therefore a usurper who under false pretences assumes a position that does not belong to him and who opposes the rightful owner.” For example, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 where Paul talks about deceitful workers whom Satan sends into the church who appear to be genuine but are actually fraudulent. So it does mean opponents and adversaries and enemies and they can do us much harm; but our opponents may frighten us but they won’t deceive us. It looks certainly as though increasingly our government is becoming hostile to Christian claims and that was certainly true in the first century. That may alarm us as we see some of the stupid things being done by ministers at the moment in the imagination that they can curtail the witness of Christians, but I don’t think they are counterfeiting Christians. The counterfeit claims superior powers, advanced knowledge, and deeper spiritual experiences and I don’t think any of these government ministers would claim that.
Now obviously, these kind of claims – “If we claim to be without sin…” – what a claim! “If we claim to know him”, “to be in him” – these tremendous claims, which apparently some of the antichrists were making, shake the assurance of the ordinary Christian. Chapter 1:6, 8, 10 and chapter 2:4, 6 and 9. On 1:6 “If we claim to have fellowship with him…”, Michael Eaton (whose little commentary in the Focus series is excellent and I recommend it but here I think he makes a small mistake) says, if it had been the antichrists who had made these claims it would run: “if they claim”. Now there may be some truth in that. They may have had effects in the churches, so John writes “if we claim”. But that doesn’t follow grammatically at all, does it? If I’m giving a talk to some young people and I say, ‘If we claim that there is no hell we contradict the teaching of Christ’, that’s a normal way of talking, isn’t it. I don’t mean that I’m claiming that – I’m just saying, ‘If we claim that, then we’re making a mistake’. And there obviously are people who do claim that, so when John says, “If we claim to have fellowship with him”, he’s actually talking theoretically in a sense but his finger is pointing at the antichrists.
Shaken assurance
How much influence they are having no one can tell. This shaking of assurance happens, of course, within the boundaries of the real Christian church. If a Pentecostal friend of yours who is as sound as a bell on the person of Christ and the atonement, tells you that unless you speak in tongues you’re not experiencing the Spirit of God, that will shake your assurance, will it not? I can remember a dear friend of mine from college days who told me that we’ve all been missing the best and explained to me the new charismatic experience. When people do that, it does shake your faith. You think, ‘Have I missed out? Am I properly founded? Have I really known the Spirit?’ So these superior claims can shake Christian confidence, but in that case with the Pentecostal it’s well within the boundaries of orthodoxy. So it was with the Full Gospel Business Men International who at one period began to come to our Tuesday lunchtime services. They espouse that Jesus bore our sicknesses as well as our sins on the cross and, therefore, if we put our faith in Christ crucified, we shall be perfectly healed. And they stood at the back after the service and drank coffee and chatted with young Christians and said something like this: ‘What Dick has been telling you is wonderful – but there’s more to it’. Now, that shakes your confidence in the preacher and in what you’ve heard. In the end, sadly, I had to ask them to go because they were causing a great deal of difficulty with many young believers, recently converted.
21st century parallels
Now, can we identify these false brethren with the heretics of the first century? This is a very important question for those of you who have a great sheaf of commentaries at home and know something about the problems of the first century. Moving around in the first century church were the Docetists, the Syrinthians and the proto-Gnostics, as Carson calls them. It was in the second century that Gnosticism was fully developed, but there must have been some seeds of it in the preceding century. And this kind of quasi-Gnosticism is, of course, always with us. It’s the brother who comes to you and says he’s had some great experience and he knows. No argument will ever reach him; he knows, he’s superior, God has shown him. That is the characteristic mark of Gnosticism which has been with the church for 2000 years.
It does seem that the heretics of 1 John are not precisely the same as the docetists, the Syrinthians or the proto-Gnostics. In other words, the cap does not fit well enough. This is the conclusion of Howard Marshall, whose commentary in the New International Series is a very sound and good one, and it’s the conclusion of Colin Kruse. So if I may quote from a very learned theologian called Schnackenberg, a Roman Catholic commentator who gives us some very fine work on these letters, he says, “The heresy which occasioned 1 and 2 John cannot be paralleled with any other manifestation of heresy known from that era. Yet [this is important] it has affinities with more than one such movement.” Now I think that’s very balanced. Yes, it does have affinities, as we shall see when we look at some of the problems in chapter 5. All those heretics played down the historic person of Christ and his atoning sacrifice. And that person of Christ is absolutely central of course to 1 John.
The person of Christ
Many of you will be experts in the various creeds, like the Creed of Constantinople, which we know as the Nicene Creed. I remember taking up a prayer book and simply adding up the lines. As you know, the Nicene Creed tells us about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. About the Father we have three lines: I believe in God the Father almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, and so on. About the Holy Spirit we have nine lines – of course it will be different according to difference printings. There are nine lines about the Holy Spirit and the church and the resurrection and so on. About the person of Christ in the middle: 16 lines. Isn’t that striking? 3 lines; 16 lines; 9 lines. Now what the Nicene Creed tells you is that for the first three centuries that was the battleground. That every phrase you’ve got there – light of light, very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation – every one of those was a battleground. Every one of those has been fought for. Every one of those has been defined until finally it is precisely what the leaders wanted to say is the teaching of the Bible. Now I didn’t need much persuading on this business because I for a long time have had the conviction that God, providentially, doesn’t allow us to make a tight connection between the heresies we read of in the New Testament and the heretics of our day. What he gives us is sufficient evidence to gain the principles of heresy, which we shall apply in a number of different ways.
The point is obvious, isn’t it. Supposing actually this heresy was docetism, denying the real humanity of Christ. Well then, that’s the end of the matter – is anyone here a Docetist? Of course not. I’m sure there aren’t any Docetists in your local church, so we don’t need 1 John. Throw it into the wastepaper basket; the warning is redundant, we don’t need it. But we can see that some of Docetus and Syrinthius’ principles turn up here in modified form, causing trouble in John’s churches in all sorts of different ways. In fact, one of the difficulties I’ve found in 1 John is that the errors of the secessionists, (I’m now going to call them secessionists following Kruse – I think that’s a good name for the antichrists, the secessionists: people who have gone out) seem to be mutually contradictory. On the one hand they believe this and then they believe something that seems to be contradictory, and yet you find it applies so much to things today. So you don’t see Docetism today. So you see, God has prevented us from labelling these people in a way that would stop 1 John being useful to us and therefore we are not able to apply it to things today, which we can so easily do.